Doc Watch

PARTICLE FEVER (B+) - This is a geeked-out and thoroughly enjoyable chronicle of the rollout of the large hadron collider in Bern, Switzerland, in 2010 as physicists searched for the secret of the universe.

Director Mark Levinson often chooses gloss over depth and in doing so he simplifies a complex subject for simpletons like us. We often see the scientists working out mind-boggling equations on blackboards, but no one ever tries to explain any of the gibberish. Snappy graphics do help in providing a layman's overview of the task at hand.

Instead, Levinson tells a more human story, focusing on six players, including the highly quotable Monica Dunford, who captures the excitement and anxiety inherent in an exercise bent on explaining all of the universe, once and for all. We also spend time with David Kaplan and Nima Arkani-Hamed, two pals approaching middle age and philosophically split, along with their mentor, Savas Dimopoulos, a Stanford physicist who watches many of the proceedings warily from afar (and via Skype). The effervescent Fabiola Giannoti oversees the project like a worrisome mother hen.

The successes and failures of physics' best and brightest are all laid bare, and Levinson manages to drum up drama in a story whose events are readily accessible on Wikipedia or in news archives. He finds the human in a swirl of theory and leaves us pondering not only the origins of time but the here and now.

BIG MEN (C) - The latest provocation from Rachel Boynton ("Our Brand Is Crisis") is a true waste of a grand opportunity to blow the cover off of the colonial mind-set of American oil exploration in Africa.

Boynton gained incredible access to the deal-makers from inside Kosmos Energy, a Dallas oil company, and the government of Ghana, where oil reserves were discovered nearly a decade ago. And some of her footage is truly revealing and provocative. However, the 99-minute narrative she has crafted is a bit of a mess.

The events unfold over the course of about five years, and small revelations come out in drips and drabs. The film loses its momentum over and over and never finds a groove. Boynton repeatedly cuts from Ghana -- going through the oil dance for the first time -- to Nigeria, which serves as a cautionary tale about American exploitation and African piracy,  both at the expense of Nigerians. The leaders of Ghana vow not to enrich themselves but to raise the standard of living for their people.

Boynton introduces a good deal of characters, and it is sometimes hard to keep track of them. Accents are difficult to understand, so she uses subtitles, but not always, so we miss some of the dialogue. Especially in the first half, as she's setting up her story, she blankets the screen with expository information, making the viewer have to read too much; investing in a narrator would have been much more helpful.

We wait patiently for a Big Reveal and it never comes. The Americans are rather slimy but never evil; the Ghanaians are neither naive nor complicit. Granted, life is not so neat between good and evil, and such stories have nuances. But I can't help but think that this footage in the hands of another filmmaker or editor could have been much more powerful.