Milk and Honey
Unrated, 91 minutes

New York proves to be a small world after all in “Milk and Honey.” Joe Maggio’s film brings a group of characters together repeatedly in various ways in a series of interwoven vignettes.

Upper-class stockbroker Rick (Clint Jordan) has recently been released from a mental institution and throws himself a “welcome back” party for friends and family. At the gathering, he reproposes to his wife of 10 years, Joyce (Kirstin Russell), who rejects him and subsequently drives Rick out into the night. Depressed and dejected, Rick meets Moses (Dudley Findlay Jr.), a crime-scene cleaner, and bribes him to help end his life.

A certain awkwardness that Mr. Maggio (“Virgil Bliss”) places in the opening scenes of the film works very successfully, but he cannot recover when he chooses to move the film toward more melodramatic territory. Mr. Maggio finds little to do with Ms. Russell, who leaves a lasting impression even though she’s saddled with the film’s blandest role.

Indie purists and “Henry Fool” fans may be interested to know that Hal Hartley wrote the score – his first for a film not his own; they may be disappointed to learn that, like Mr. Maggio’s movie, it’s not very good.

Hollywood Buddha
Unrated, 98 minutes

Vanity Project Alert! Producer Philippe Caland (who wrote the story for – yikes – “Boxing Helena”) plays himself in “Hollywood Buddha,” which he also wrote, produced, and directed. The film follows his adventures as he tries to sell his five-year-old film “Dead Girl” (which in real life stars actors such as Val Kilmer and Amanda Plummer) to various distributors. All the while, he’s attempting to find spiritual enlightenment with the help of his religious guru (Jim Stewart) and “The Most Powerful Buddha in Los Angeles,” which he rents for $ 2,000 a month.

The first half of this film is self-deprecating and clever enough, but once things begin to go right for Caland in the latter half, and remain going right for the rest of the film, it becomes a shrug-worthy hohum affair. You would think that, for someone involved in such controversial films in real life (“Dead Girl” features a well-preserved corpse repeatedly being sodomized), Mr. Caland’s directorial debut would have a little more edge to it.

Schizo
Unrated, 86 minutes

“Schizo” features Olzhas Nussuppaev as its title character, a 15-year-old boy who, after dropping out of school, goes to work recruiting boxers to take part in illegal street fights for his mother’s small-time-thug boyfriend. One recruit, lying mortally wounded after a brutal loss, pleads with Schizo to take his earnings to his wife and son. Schizo obliges and brings the money to Zinka (Olga Landina), an older woman whom Schizo immediately takes a liking to.

Guka Omarova’s mild film moves awfully slowly, with several silent passages of Schizo walking, Schizo looking, and Schizo walking some more. This would be fine if something about the filmmaking – the cinematography, the mise-en-scene, even the score – were compelling. But it’s not. “Schizo’s” brief running time does not allow it to develop any real substantial meat, and the film’s tedious passages try the audience’s patience.