In today’s Godless world, the claim for divine inspiration as genuine artistic kudos may be a dead limb, but hell... some shit really does write itself. For instance, the story of one Richard Gazowsky, a Pentecostal minister from San Francisco, who, upon receiving the green light from above, embarks on a mission to seed the gospel by way of the box office. In this case, Gazowsky must’ve accidentally channeled Don Simpson, because getting his vision for a Christ-core Star Wars (Gravity: The Shadow of Joseph) off the ground requires a purported $200 million (a cool $50 million more than Transformers) – no doubt to encompass such pointless extravagances as shooting in 70mm, as well as flying the entire production company (hilariously titled What You See is What You Get, or “Wizzywig” for short) to Italy.

Unfortunately, not even Jenny Lewis’ soundtracked pipes prove chaste enough to ward off the devil, and, under Gazowsky’s starry-eyed control, production soon breaks down irretrievably. In the meantime, having surely spied doom from the start, documentarian Mike Jacobs is there to capture every inflated moment of goodwill being undone by riotous amateurism, as Gazowsky is made to contend with underpaid natives, a rebellious stuntman, and the dazed henwalk of ex-druggie-hippies-turned-devout.

Yet Herzogian song of thwarted ambition this is not, at least insofar as Gazowsky is a talentless hack, who finally admits that he “may not be the best man for the job” after his German cameraman walks out on him 3/4 of the way through. Nor, however, is it an hysterical left-wing grenade à la Jesus Camp or Deliver Us from Evil. Gazowsky, in all his blustery naivete, may fit the bill for what we’ve come to expect from Christian wackjobs, but there’s a pathology to his belief that’s always moving, especially once it’s made to stare down the narrowing hallways of back-owed rent and an imminent lawsuit. What’s weird is that, for his part, Jacobs tries to remain inculpable, telegraphing the company’s downfall in remote, sketchy bursts that can’t quite contain the gravitas of Gazowsky’s mental state. It all culminates into a brilliant final shot – a freeze-frame of Gazowsky’s face, mid-rejoice, torn clownishly between ecstacy and agony – but in skating the surface with comic looseness, Jacobs fails to penetrate the true logic of faith.

In a bid to outdo the turbo-hormones and beersoaked euphoria of most male bonding, Falkenberg Farewell opts for a hippy forlornness that’s equally contrived (and a whole lot more cloying) than its more American counterpart. Which basically goes to say that, once pals David and Holger strip down completely and start rollicking through a field, you get the feeling that things aren’t going to end in the backseat of a limousine – post-prom ‘n’ all. Intended as a timecapsule of sorts, the film tails the dead-end psyches of five friends, as they fall into a summer daze: drifting inconsonantly on mushroom clouds, and dodging past and future like a bad buzz. But in his commitment to detailing the pains of small-town living, writer/director/star Jesper Ganslandt oversteps, mistaking the tropes of realism as a thruline to legitimacy – as if by casting the actors alongside their real-life family members, in roles that mirror their first-names, he’s avoiding the warpings of nostalgia. It’s a shallow idea of dramatic truth, and one that can barely sustain a sense of character or place on the backbone of its feelbad poetry and deadwood local chatter (because, y’know, that’s how real people talk). By the end of it, you’ll be longing for four fat guys and a beerhorn.—David Levinson