Movies to watch this week: Kevin James’ romcom return, Amanda Seyfried’s religious drama, rave mystery and heartbreaking doco

Things pick up for him when he starts chatting to Gia (Nicole Grimaudo), who runs the cafe near his hotel. She is such a charmer that Julian (Kim Coates) and Neil (Jonathan Roumie), the most ebullient of his self-appointed guardian angels, can’t believe his luck.

The movie is written and directed by Chuck and Dan Kinnane, two of eight brothers who describe themselves as a filmmaking collective, producing, directing, writing and editing everything they make. James has become a regular collaborator and he co-wrote this screenplay with them.

The film has been a hit at the US box office, profiting from an inventive online campaign featuring video clips with James shown in character as Matt conducting his grade school art class. The clincher came when he again appeared in character in the audience at the Super Bowl.

None of this would have worked if the film were not so likeable. Along with James’ unassuming performance, there is the feelgood appeal of Rome itself, shamelessly augmented by a side trip to Tuscany. We’re taken to the Piazza del Campo for the Palio after being treated to a surprise appearance by Andrea Bocelli, who turns up in the role of Gia’s uncle. The sequence was filmed at Bocelli’s country estate, which is designed and decorated in a style that invites you to move right in and naturally, Bocelli delivers an impromptu performance. Matt then has his own moment of glory by joining him in singing Nessun Dorma.

The story is very slight, climaxing in a contrived emotional complication which doesn’t make much sense, but there’s plenty of fun to be had in the double act worked up by the hyperactive Jules and the tin-eared Neil, both of whom are expert in the art of giving unwelcome advice, although they finally come round with a few useful insights about their own marriages.

And the script rights itself in time for a ruefully upbeat ending. It’s rare to find an American movie which approaches mature-age romance as engagingly as this one. It’s sweet-natured with a big heart.

There is, in fact, a search going on, undertaken by the protagonist Luis, played by the familiar and versatile Spanish actor Sergi Lopez, perhaps best known as the villain in Pan’s Labyrinth. Driving a modest van and accompanied by his young son Estefan (Bruno Núñez Arjona), he’s on the trail of Estefan’s older sister, who disappeared into the desert a few months earlier.

Luis’ charismatic averageness contrasts with the studied exoticism of the ravers, who are mostly younger though not youthful, veterans of the latter-day hippie trail adorned with beads, tattoos and other tribal affectations (some are physically unusual in other ways as well).

Still, Luis manages to form an alliance with a group of Spanish-speaking friends who form a surrogate family akin to travelling circus folk, played by non-professional actors who use their own names (or nicknames).

To describe where the story goes from here, even vaguely, would amount to a spoiler – and while the film holds up on a second viewing, much of its initial impact depends on having no idea what will happen down the track.

When I saw it originally at last year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, I emerged shaken up but also a little suspicious. Laxe doesn’t shrink from pushing our emotional buttons, and indeed does so more ruthlessly than most Hollywood filmmakers dare.

The impact of this button-pushing is boosted by the score by the French electronic musician Kangding Ray (otherwise known as David Letellier), which strives to make us feel as if we were attending the rave ourselves. Indeed, on all levels Sirat is designed as a shock to the system, meant to affect the body as much as the mind.

That said, it earns its audacities, and is also in its way a film of ideas. The ominous tone eventually turns downright apocalyptic, though not in the way you might be picturing (there are no aliens).

Where so many modern horror films centre on individual grief, Laxe appears to be dealing with mourning on a larger scale. While there’s room for a range of interpretations, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to view Sirat as partly a film about the fate of the planet, in an era when environmental collapse is not merely on the horizon but visibly taking place.

When loss is irreparable, what can it mean to hold onto hope of any sort? Sirat doesn’t give easy answers, but nor is it purely a howl of despair. One option is to keep on dancing, for as long as that remains possible. Another is to push on relentlessly into the future, even if what that future might look like is impossible to guess.

When it’s over he sounds a little less philosophical but he is still bent on staying for reasons expressed in the film’s opening montage – a dreamily evocative celebration of the river with its waterfalls, its bordering rainforest and its chorus of birdsong.

It’s always been Eli’s home. He loves it and the flood has only strengthened his ties with his neighbours as they embark on the horrendous job of clearing away the mud and debris left in the flood’s wake.

It’s a story which takes you far beyond the headlines and the TV news clips about the Lismore floods. Giusti has been a regular visitor to the Northern Rivers region for years and he’s treating us to an insider’s look at its history and the variety of views its residents hold about its future and their willingness to go on living there.

In Eli’s case, his emotional attachment to the place still outweighs its disadvantages and dangers. His friend Harper is more practical. He, too, wants to stay on, but he’s campaigning for the establishment of a house-raising scheme through which the houses at risk would be hoisted up and transported to higher ground.

He’s put together a thick folder of impressive research detailing almost 200 years of poor planning and flagrant mismanagement going right back to fundamental errors made by the area’s early settlers. Describing the district as wok-shaped, with his and Eli’s houses at the bottom of the bowl while their more affluent neighbours are up on the rim, he reminds us that the town is also in the wrong place. Add the settlers’ energetic bouts of deforestation to the mix and the seeds of a disaster are sown.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Dr Carlie Atkinson, a Bundjalung and Yiman community leader who is a social worker in the area. The Indigenous tribes, she says, based themselves up on the hill, coming down to the river only to fish and forage.

When a second flood arrives a few weeks after the first, even Eli is shaken. During the clean-up he met Jess, who is renting a house on the hill with her six-year-old son, Jensen, and the couple have fallen in love. Now that the waters have again swept through his house, he’s reluctant to chance a return.

The film offers no firm solution to any of this. How could it? Giusti’s devastating analysis shows how the errors of the past have combined with climate change to heartbreaking effect, leaving the people of the Northern Rivers facing life on the frontline.