Blackbird

Writer-director Adam Rapp's gritty urban romance Blackbird unfolds in mid-1990s Manhattan. The picture dramatizes the ill-fated courtship between two melancholic heroin addicts - Gulf War veteran Bayliss (Paul Sparks) and ex-stripper Froggy (Gillian Jacobs) - as they fall in love and battle magnetizing addictions. The possibility of redemption waxes strong from time to time, with hope for some semblance of a "normal life" lingering quietly in the background, but Bayliss and Froggy never quite seem to find the strength and control to pull everything together. And in the end, they join one another on a downward spiral that leads inexorably toward mutual self-destruction.