New to the Queue

Nothing's really jumping out at us this week:

Compared favorably to "Primer," the low-budget psychodrama "Coherence."

Using a snowmobile race in Michigan as an excuse to explore the dynamics of a community, the documentary "Northern Light."

Writer/director/star Jocelyn Towne spins the tale of a woman who pretends to be her recently deceased mom to soothe her Vietnam-vet dad's senility, "I and I."

I'll probably tell myself that I told me so, but I'm tempted by Roman Polanski's version of the Broadway hit "Venus in Fur."

Eighteen years after it was made, Eric Rohmer's "A Summer's Tale" gets a U.S. release.

An improvised portrait of a marriage, "Exhibition." The writer/director, Joanna Hogg, has had her three films released in New York; the other two are family dramas based in Italy, "Archipelago" (2010) and "Unrelated" (2007), so we'll put those in the queue, too, when available.

The documentary abut the renowned Boston mobster, "Whitey: United States of America v. James J Bulger."

One-Liners

THE ROVER (B-minus) - What the ... ? I was hoping for more from the sophomore effort by Australian writer/director David Michod, after his steller debut "Animal Kingdom" a few years ago.

Guy Pearce plays Eric, a scowling sociopath 10 years after "the collapse," which looks like "Mad Max" Lite. His car is stolen by three men escaping a shootout, leaving one of their gang's brother for dead. They leave a perfectly operable vehicle behind, and you'd think Eric would be cool with the trade, but he's not. He not only follows them but turns zealously obsessive about tracking them down. Must be something about that car, right? Maybe something's in it?

Michod has a way with sparse dialogue, spare scenery (just like this movie's period-piece cousin, "The Proposition," I was swatting at the on-screen flies throughout); however, his story is just too slim here. Halfway through I was tired of Eric's mumbling and his dead-eyed glare. I just wanted to skip ahead to the end to find out Eric's true mission. (It is a quite moving ending.) Thankfully, former teen idol Robert Pattinson shows up as the wounded brother, Rey, a monobrowed, monosyllabic moron who teams up with Eric to help him find those three rascals. Rey injects dry humor and an expressive character to the dry desert.

Here's an interesting experiment: My movie companion didn't care for Pattinson's performance; I did. I didn't know who the actor was until the credits rolled; she is an avid People reader, and even without seeing the "Twilight" films knew to look for him. Was her experience spoiled by her preconceived notions going into the movie? Was I helped by being clueless to the star wattage? Was it an expectations game? I was reminded later that I had a similar negative reaction to Pattinson when I knew it was him drowning throughout "Cosmopolis." Any lessons to be learned?

Oh, right, a review. I like the way A.O. Scott of the New York Times put it:

There is both too much story and not enough. The contours of this desolate future are lightly sketched rather than fully explained, which is always a good choice. But that minimalism serves as an excuse for an irritating lack of narrative clarity, so that much of what happens seems arbitrary rather than haunting. And at the same time, the relationship between Eric and Rey, as it develops into something almost tender, feels as familiar and simplistic as the nihilism that surrounds them.

ADULT WORLD (B-minus) - I loved it, I hated it. Another odd little experiment, this little could-be gem stars the adorable Emma Roberts as Amy, an aspiring writer running out of wunderkind status as she approaches 22, hoping her salvation will be as muse to her idol, the miserable middle-aged poet Rat Billings (a delectable John Cusack).

Rife with possibilities, this concoction from actor-turned-director Scott Coffey and TV writer Andy Cochran suffers from a fatal cast of the cutes. (Even its Sylvia Plath references are cloying and quaint.) Not sure whether it wants to be a dark indie comedy or a feel-good Disney romp, it fails at both. You can guess every plot "twist" three scenes in advance. Tired of the haranguing from her cardboard-cutout parents in the suburbs, Amy impulsively moves out and crashes in the seedy city. (You can tell where she's going, because the sign on the front of the bus reads, lazily, "Downtown.") Amy's got a hunky co-worker at the porn store she slums at for rent money, and their agonizingly slow courtship is both predictable and devoid of zing. Amy rooms with a transvestite with a heart of gold, if you can believe that.

But still ... there's something appealing about this, not the least of which are Roberts and Cusack, and their secret-weapon co-star, Armando Riesco as Rubia the transvestite. Riesco is a revelation, snapping off that clipped urban-street-girl patois. (Spotting Rat with a paper sack, he exclaims, "You brown-bag it? You a thug!"  He also gets a big laugh with the untimely line "Omigod, Jonathan Franzen!") Cusack isn't your average curmudgeon; he looks like he's having a lot of fun batting Amy about, and he doesn't overdo the Yoda-like pearls of wisdom from the tortured artist. Roberts gives it her all, and she mostly succeeds. 

And yet, Coffey and Cochran (whoever they are) undermine things at every turn. They want this to so much be like an '80s youth classic that they load the soundtrack with the generic pop of a band called Handsome Furs that must have bought its synthesizer from a John Hughes family garage sale before its first Human League karaoke contest. They hammer the viewer repeatedly with winking references to these young twentysomethings crossing over to the "adult world." And the plot twist toward the end is both underwhelming and ridiculous.

So, I didn't feel robbed of that 93 minutes of my life. (I did zone out a few times, like to clear the dinner dishes without hitting pause.) There's something charming and familiar about the whole effort, and something oddly comforting about its corny structure. If you can filter out the crap, it's not half bad.

BONUS TRACK
Robert Pattinson grooves to this one in "The Rover" -- Keri Hilson's "Pretty Girl Rock":

Desperate Lives

A classic and a new release are double-featured:

NIGHT MOVES (B) - Indie rambler Kelly Reichardt -- director of a trio of wonderful films, "Old Joy," "Wendy and Lucy" and "Meek's Cutoff" -- tries her hand at a noir thriller with mixed results. The main problem is that she has taken two stories and awkwardly spliced them together in the middle.

Working with a big-name (for her) cast -- Jesse Eisenberg, Peter Sarsgaard and Dakota Fanning -- Reichardt slowly spins the story of three off-the-grid environmentalists who decide to bomb a damn in Oregon. The first half of the film involves their preparation for the task; the second half examines the repercussions from that attempt. The shift in tone is quite a jolt, and the experiment doesn't quite work.

Reichardt takes her damn sweet time in the first half, introducing us to the loosely affiliated trio. We eventually settle into a rural millennial utopia, and the build-up to the big event is expertly rendered.

Up to that point, Eisenberg hammer on one note -- a classic Ethan Hawke slow burn, sporting the goatee and the scowl -- which threatens to drag the drama down. It's only in the second half, when his anger and fear leak out of him, that the first-half performance makes sense. Fanning struggles a bit, squeezed by her intense co-stars. Sarsgaard is always compelling, and here he barely has to try -- a tossed-off comment and a narrow glare speak volumes; even heard only by phone in the second half, he still overwhelms Eisenberg. He certainly is missed, though, after the midpoint. Reichardt leans way too hard on Eisenberg, and the strain shows.

Reichardt initially evokes the stunning imagery of her beloved Northwest, but she falls back on visual tropes of a thriller, such as holding a shot on a door to make us wonder what's on the other side, and horror cliches like the frightened woman's door that is mysteriously ajar.

There's no denying that the second half -- including a twist that is more disappointing than shocking -- doesn't quite deliver. It's a rare misstep for a brilliant writer and director.

UMBERTO D (1952) (A-minus) - Italian legend Vittorio De Sica assembles an amateur cast for a heartbreaking drama about an old man's slide into relevance in the modern postwar world.

We're introduced to Umberto (Carlo Battisti) to the strains of workers marching through the streets. He's a pensioner who can't catch up on his debts, principally back-rent to his harsh landlady for the room he rents in her ant-infested building. (She tends to rent his room out to couples by the hour while he's out.) He is comforted by the friendly house maid, Maria (Maria Pia Casilio), who confides her pregnancy to him (not sure which of the men she's dating is the father) and helps him run out the clock until his hoped-for pension check might show up to bail him out by the end of the month. He also has his faithful and talented companion, his dog Flike (an obvious inspiration for Uggie in "The Artist").

Umberto fakes an illness to get admitted to a hospital to kill time. When he returns after a few days, his room is under construction. Gradually, desperation creeps in to poor Umberto. De Sica masterfully builds the tension as he lends a gritty documentary feel to comic bits that recall Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. A scene at the dog pound (after Flike has run away) is harrowing.

Umberto starts selling off his possessions, but he still comes up short. His dignity draining away, he seriously considers begging for handouts. (In a cute bit, Flike shows that he's game to help out.) Like a frog in a pot of water brought to a slow boil, the viewer eventually realizes that a somewhat whimsical story has grown disturbingly dark. Umberto is seriously depressed, with nothing to lose.

This is a sharp observation of society's penchant for shoving the old folks aside. But never underestimate the life-affirming qualities of the love of a good dog.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer for "Night Moves":

Doc Watch

FIVE BROKEN CAMERAS (B+) - West Bank resident Emad Burnat spent the second half of the past decade filming the resistance to Israel's building of settlements on Palestinian lands, capturing the brutality and futility along with the humanity of the people of Bil'in.

Beginning with the infancy of his fourth son, Gibreel, in 2005, Burnat transforms himself from farmer to journalist, persistent in his documentation of the peaceful demonstrations at a key barrier, where locals meet up with heavily armed soldiers. He burns through five cameras, as advertised, most knocked out by bullets and tear-gas canisters.

Burnat narrates in a matter-of-fact monotone, creating a plain, simple film that finds the joys and horrors of life under a militarized invasion of one's homeland. He turns his focus on two of his friends and the most colorful and charismatic of the protesters, Adeeb and Phil (that latter labeled "El-Phil," which means "elephant"), introducing them in such a way that you fear that one or both won't survive to the end.

Burnat's other major theme is his sons, particularly little Gibreel, who grows up before our eyes. He goes from cradle to the front lines before his fifth birthday. Burnat's various cameras peer straight into Gibreel's big brown eyes, trying to calculate the toll the regular violence has taken on the boy. (In one scene, the boy sits calmly as he watches men slaughter a sheep.) Those eyes don't reveal much. At one point the boy asks his father why he doesn't just use a knife to kill the soldiers. "Because they have guns," Burnat glumly answers.

Burnat himself is injured at one point and spends a month in a Tel Aviv hospital (if he'd gone to a Palestinian hospital, he reckons, he would have died). Toward the end, when he insists on continuing his filming under the threat of arrest, his long-suffering wife gives him an earful about taking care of his family.

The footage at times seems repetitive, but that seems to be the point. (To quote Ann Magnuson, it's remarkably unremarkable.) The camera doesn't blink, and the oppression of a people by a faceless government through its thugs is documented in very human terms, in the struggles, year after year, and in the fraternity of a people. The protests continue weekly, with various strategic moves that eventually budge the Israeli government. It's hard to tell whether that's a small victory or a huge one. 

It's just another day on the West Bank. 

AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: TANAQUIL LE CLERCQ (C) - A bland disappointment. In the 1950s, the tall, leggy Tanaquil Le Clercq was the new face of ballet, the muse of the legendary George Balanchine. Sadly, she was felled by polio, harshly ending her career.

Writer/director Nancy Buirski (2011's "The Loving Story") is hampered by stale archival footage and drab source material. What might have made a Lifetime dramatic blockbuster sits lifeless as a documentary. Actors give voice to Le Clercq and others, such as choreographer Jerome Robbins, mostly reading from long tedious letters from a day when people wrote earnest missives.

"Tanny," unfortunately, just isn't that interesting of a subject, despite the personal horror she suffered. She managed to live to a ripe old age. Was she a tortured soul? Did she live a fulfilling life? Buirski gives it a workmanlike effort here, but she's either not up to the task, or no one could make an interesting documentary about the ballerina who was robbed of the chance to be one of the all-time greats of the stage.

Maybe Hollywood could do better. Is Greta Gerwig free?

"Afternoon of a Faun" is streaming at PBS.org.

BONUS TRACK
Magnuson's duo Bongwater with "Nick Cave Dolls":

Above-Average Joe

JOE (B-minus) - I'm glad that David Gordon Green makes movies. Case in point: Last year's little gem "Prince Avalanche."

However, his latest, the Nicolas Cage vehicle "Joe," is a shaky southern-gothic fable. Joe's a former felon who runs a rural Texas crew with a unique task: They go through a stretch of forest poisoning trees (with hatchets hooked up to portable pumps they carry on their back), so that the owner of the land can come in after the trees die and plant strong pines. (The gig echoes the work done by the duo in "Prince Avalanche," who were re-striping a rural road in Texas.)

Teenage Gary (Tye Sheridan from "Mud") stumbles across the crew, and finds a surrogate father to replace his no-good-bum boozin', violent, cheatin' dad. Gary's a hard worker who, based on a clunky merging of images, reminds Joe of his young self, only with a brighter future. Joe's quite the chain-smoker with a persistent cough, and you get a hunch that the hacking might be behind his reckless death wish.

Too often, the proceedings degrade into amateur night at a Sling Blade karaoke competition. Most of the men mumble, to the point where key snippets of dialogue get lost. The work crew is mostly black, and they are nothing more than props here. The women are just abused things, kind hookers and other victims of the war between the bubbas. (Gee, why doesn't Gary's sister ever speak?)  Only the white men -- the two main good guys and the two main good guys -- have a modicum of depth to them.

Still, Green's cast sticks to the shallow end. Struggling with an ordinary script by journeyman Gary Hawkins (based on a novel by Larry Brown), Cage and the gang just don't have the chops to make this yokel-fest quite believable. Cage can't help letting his superhero persona bleed into the gritty gloom. (Do we need yet another scene where the tough guy pours whiskey on his gunshot wound and digs out the bullet himself? Or a bloody dogfight?) Why, there's nothing Joe can't do -- step aside, mousy foreigner with accent, and let the big man slice the meat off that deer hanging in your living room! Grown men a-feared of snakes? Joe'll manhandle that rascally rattler.

The film does find some footing and brightens up briefly at the start of the second half, when Joe and Gary (finally slipping into a comfortable rapport) take a daylight jaunt looking for a lost dog. But the scene is an outlier. Green does better when the sun's out. Here he continues his communal connection to nature, lingering over stately trees, chirpy birds and dappled sunlight.

The final half hour slips back into darkness. Cage's shtick wears thin. The evil dad conspires with Joe's nemesis (you can tell he's a villain, because he has scars on his face). Gary sees his chance to escape this brutal life. (Sheridan, so brilliant in "Mud" is a disappointment here, as flat as his accent.) Green loses his grip on the sloppy plot.

Who will survive when the shooting subsides and flashing lights arrive in the dead of night? Sadly, it doesn't matter much. Green's lovely coda (a beautiful movie ending if there ever was one) is wasted tacked on to an average film.

'60s Polish Road Movie

We hand out our first straight A to a 2014 release: 

IDA (A) - This modest, flawless, gorgeous film tells the simple story of a Polish orphan, on the eve of joining a nunnery, discovering that she's Jewish and exploring her family roots.

Set in 1962, "Ida" follows Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) -- born Ida Lubenstein -- who grew up after World War II in an orphanage run by nuns. Poised to take her vows, she is encouraged to seek out the relative who wouldn't take her in -- her Aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza). Anna shows up at her aunt's door dressed in her habit, and not long after Wanda shoos off her latest one-night stand, she bluntly spills the beans about Anna's heritage. ("So, you're going to be a Jewish nun?")

Wanda is unapologetic about her lifestyle. She drinks too much, chain smokes and sleeps around indiscriminately. It's her way of sublimating her guilt and self-hatred over being a judicial apparatchik complicit in the postwar Communist nation. She urges Anna to loosen up a bit and encourages her niece to misbehave a bit so that her sacrifice will mean something. They decide to pay a visit to her childhood home, which was taken from her parents, who were killed during the war.

They hit the road. Pawel Pawlikowski ("My Summer of Love" and the recent guilty pleasure "The Woman in the Fifth") shoots in exquisite black and white, in a spare, square 1:1 ratio. The cinematography is so authentic that it looks like the movie was made in 1962 (or 1952); I felt swept up, lost in a classic film noir. It's like an epic lost road movie come magically to life.

As gorgeous as Pawlikowski's movie is, it would be nothing without the rich storytelling and compelling performances from Trzebuchowska, with the face of an angel (she has the big eyes and round face of Claire Danes), and the hard-bitten Kulesza. Anna seems curious about her aunt's vices. They pick up a hitch-hiker, a handsome saxophonist who plays in a pop band but who dreams of being the next Coltrane (featured on the soundtrack). He and Anna engage in a chaste flirtation.

Will Anna/Ida give in to temptation? Her aunt continues to goad her. "This Jesus of yours," Wanda snarls, "adored people like me."

Eventually she and Wanda find the family living in the Lubensteins' former home. Both women seek closure.

Pawlikowski stretches his characters in interesting ways. A shock towards the end shakes Anna's faith.

Long before that, though, you're already haunted by this poignant film.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer:

New to the Queue

June swoons:

 I've been a fan of Clark Gregg ever since his role as the corporate savior in the final episodes of TV's "Sports Night," and his sophomore directorial effort (after "Choke") about a children's talent agent looks good: "Trust Me."

The Australian writer/director of "Animal Kingdom" returns with an apocalyptic tale starring Guy Pearce, "The Rover."

Bobcat Goldthwait has never let me down, going back to his debut, "Shakes the Clown," but I'm wary of yet another found-footage spooker, "Willow Creek."

Agnieszka Holland's four-hour mini-series about the 1968 Prague Spring student movement, "Burning Bush."

Sometimes I just have to trust Stephen Holden of the New York Times, so I'll find time for the whimsical French New Wave homage "2 Autumns, 3 Winters."

It looks like it might be a slog (2 hours, 18 minutes) but we're drawn to Emmanuelle Devos starring in a biopic of a WWII-era French author, "Violette." 

Depending on word of mouth, I might devote a rental down the road to the Millennials' "Love Story," the sappy cancer romance (and box-office hit) "The Fault in Our Stars."

Another rental? I saw the first one with a teenager, and I could be talked into the sequel in a moment of weakness: "22 Jump Street."

Face the Face

VISITORS (B) - Godfrey Reggio, the guru behind the beloved "Qatsi" trilogy of mind-benders, trains his elegant digital camera on faces and buildings for 87 minutes. Yep, that's the movie.

It's a bit of a slog, not exactly perked up at all by a Philip Glass soundtrack, but an interesting experiment. A fellow moviegoer afterward recognized scenes from New Orleans and drew a Katrina connection. That's as good an analysis as any.

Among the faces (the first one, actually) is a gorilla's. Message? Don't know. Most of the younger faces were apparently captured while the people were watching television or playing video games. Noted. Occasionally we get group shots of folks watching a stage or a movie screen, like in those old shots of audiences in the '50s, though they were wearing the 3-D glasses. One of those group shots at the end suddenly makes the audience realize the mirror effect at work between us viewers and the images on the screen.

Did I mention the shots of the surface of the moon (presumably)? Indeed, there are those.

But, yeah, mostly close-ups of faces and buildings. In black and white.

FREE ANGELA AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS (B-minus) - A faithful and mostly fawning chronicle of the odyssey from radical professor to fugitive to revolutionary icon in the late 1960s and early '70s never finds traction.

This one-sided documentary goes beyond sympathetic and thus skims the surface of Angela Davis the person. Writer/director Shola Lynch previously created a documentary about Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential run, so she certainly has a unique niche. (She also starred in "Sesame Street" back in the day.)

Lynch chooses to focus entirely on Davis' murder trial (the guns used in the courthouse siege were registered in her name) and the events leading up to it. The depiction of Davis' romance with jailed Black Panther George Jackson has an odd Harlequin Romance innocence to it.

Lynch's narrow focus is unfortunate. A more comprehensive study of Davis, her politics and her life after her legal ordeal would have been much more interesting. Or a more balanced look back at the Black Panther movement and the developments that enveloped Davis and others. Even recollections by Davis (along with her sister and others involved in the movement) fail to enlighten or add much perspective.

This is by-the-numbers storytelling. It falls short of "Black Power Mix-Tape" and its collection of archival footage.

Quick doc check

RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES (2011) (C) - Probably best filed under "For Diehards Only." John Foy tags along with mystery chasers eager to figure out who placed bizarre tiles on streets all over the eastern United States and in South America (from Philly to Chile).

The basic tile message states: "Toynbee Tiles / in Kubrick's 2001 / Resurrect Dead / on planet Jupiter." Our main sleuth is Justin Duerr, who spent years tracing the mystery back to the early 1980s. The clues involve a caller to Larry King's old late-night radio show, a David Mamet play, and short-wave radio broadcasts.  We follow Duerr to Chile to hunt down No. 1 suspect Sevy Verna, who may have been using a pseudonym in Philadelphia, ground zero of the saga.

Whoever was placing the tiles was deeply paranoid, distrustful of the media and convinced that a Philadelphia member of the Knight-Ridder empire and other media titans were trying to kill him. The most coherent explanation we get for the tiles' main mantra is that a group in Philadelphia, echoing the ending of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," believed that a human being's molecules could be reassembled (taking a leap from the writings of early 20th century historian Arnold Toynbee) to start a colony of reanimated people on Jupiter. Or something like that.

Foy uses dekes and feints to keep us guessing; however, the result is a bunch of wheel-spinning that annoyingly delays the conclusion (a rather unsatisfying one at that). His Sherlock Holmes can't really carry a film on his own, and you'll be tempted to just Google "Toynbee Tiles" rather than sit through this laconic documentary. 

THE CATS OF MIRIKITANI (2006) (C+) - A slight curiosity from Linda Hattendorf, a New York filmmaker who found Tsutomu "Jimmy" Mirikitani living and creating art on the streets of lower Manhattan around the time of 9/11. Concerned for his health in the dangerous, dusty days following the attack on the twin towers, she takes him in to her home.

Mirikitani is a survivor of the West Coast internment camps, where he spent time as a young man during World War II. Most of his family would die back in Japan in the bombing of Hiroshima. One surviving relative crops up during the film. Hattendorf takes it upon herself to get Mirikitani back on his feet, with a roof over his head and Social Security benefits to keep him afloat.

None of this really sticks. Mirikitani, who claims to have once cooked for Jackson Pollack, goes on and on declaring himself an Artist. (One drawback: His art isn't very compelling. Much of it looks like it was scratched out by a high school art-class student; the more elaborate paintings, like those of tigers, wouldn't be out of place on black velvet.) Hattendorf talks to him as if he were a child.

Mirikitani sits around a lot and doesn't give the filmmaker much to work with. Hattendorf uses the 9/11 fallout to hammer home the imagery of America headed to war in a fervor of xenophobia. As gimmicks go, this one's pretty gimmicky. Overall, even at 74 minutes, the movie drags.

Occasionally we get glimmers of a good film. One cute scene shows him upset with worry after she stays out until midnight going to the movies. And the pet cats are adorable.

Hattendorf does manage to craft a decent climax. It's probably giving nothing away (it's hinted at throughout the film) to divulge that Mirikitani eventually travels back to California to visit the internment camp that he had been kept in. But even here the directors talents show signs of strain.

Loss: Part 3

CHILD'S POSE (B+) - A man drives recklessly on a rural highway outside Bucharest and strikes and kills a 14-year-old boy who was carelessly trying to cross traffic. Most films would focus on the kid's working-class family, milking it for every maudlin angle. Here, writer/director Calin Peter Netzer focuses instead on the upper-class family of the driver and the lengths they go to make any potential criminal charges go away.

At the center is Luminita Gheorghiu, a veteran of some of the most notable Romanian films in recent years -- "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu," "12:08 East of Bucharest," "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," and the more recent "Beyond the Hills."  She uncorks a nearly two-hour slow burn as Cornelia, a middle-aged elitist seizing on the tragedy to try to reassert a role in her adult son's personal life. She's prepared to throw her money and influence around and press the main witness to alter his original statement to police.

Gheorghiu's characterization plays like a cross between Edie Falco's Carmela Soprano and Doris Roberts' Marie Barone from "Everybody Loves Raymond." She has the temerity to place her own situation -- seeing her adult son go off to jail for three to ten years -- on a par with that of a mother grieving over the violent death of a teenage son. (At least, Cornelia figures, the other mother has a younger son to keep her company.)

And maybe she has a little Tony Soprano in her, too. She has pounded her husband into a shell of a man. She breaks into her son's apartment and packs his suitcase so that he can come stay in his parents' house. Her would-be daughter-in-law is marginalized because she won't give Cornelia a grandchild, and Cornelia's heart-to-heart with that competitor for her son's affections is riveting, anchoring the second half that builds to a showdown between Cornelia and the dead boy's family. 

Netzer juggles this all expertly, subtly exposing Cornelia's weaknesses and riding the roller-coaster emotions of her stunned son, who deep down wants to express his condolences to the boy's family. It's layered storytelling that holds its own with the best of Romania's impressive output over the past decade.

BIRTH (2004) (B) - Nicole Kidman is compelling in this creepy drama as Anna, a long-grieving widow who is convinced that a 10-year-old boy is the reincarnation of her husband, Sean. Unsettlingly, she's not afraid to welcome her boy-husband back with gestures of intimacy -- to the chagrin of her fiance and others.

This is the sophomore effort from Jonathan Glazer, who wowed with his debut, "Sexy Beast," and disappointed this year with "Under the Skin." Here, he conjures up a tension and spookiness reminiscent of "Rosemary's Baby" (with Kidman's pixie cut an obvious nod).

Glazer's camera is in love with Kidman, and it's difficult to take your eyes off of her. In a memorable extended take, Glazer trains the camera on Anna for a full two minutes as she sits in the audience of a Wagner concert. Kidman can barely contain the waves of emotions flowing within her; few actresses could rivet the viewer like that. In another scene, Anna is babbling to her former brother- and sister-in-law (Peter Stormare and Anne Heche), slowly unraveling not unlike Mia Farrow's Rosemary.

Cameron Bright is strong as the new version of Sean. His adult-like brashness is convincing. He wins Anna over by ticking off intimate details of her marriage to Sean. The controversial scene in which he strips and steps into the bathtub with a naked Anna is tastefully rendered.

Glazer, however, is not fully in command. He fumbles a key twist, in which the sister-in-law knows a secret about dead Sean that would devastate Anna. Danny Huston, as Anna's fiance, is a cipher. The first 20 minutes drag, and the ending comes on a bit rushed.

Still, the script -- attributed to Glazer, Milo Addica and noted French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere -- is smart, the story unique, and the star at the top of her game. 

BONUS TRACK
Cornelia's ringtone in "Child's Pose":

Loss: Part 2

FUSE (2003) (B+) - From Bosnia, set two years after the end of the brutal civil war that tore Yugoslavia apart, Muslims and Serbs in a small town must quickly learn to get along so that they can clean up their act in order to host a visit from President Clinton.

This Bosnian Hooterville features a crumbling top cop helming a bumbling police department, rampant graft and a low-level thug who runs a prostitution ring. With international overseers looking over their shoulder, the townsfolk must cobble together at least the illusion of democracy. Not to mention a ragged marching band and a child choir learning their way around "The House of the Rising Sun."

The result is a bittersweet throwback to more wholesome moviemaking. Director Pjer Zalica borrows the pace and styling of veteran filmmaker -- and fellow Sarajevan -- Emir Kusturica ("Underground," "Black Cat, White Cat") to great effect.

The fly in the ointment -- besides keeping the thugs in line for a few days -- is Zaim, the retired police chief who is shell-shocked and hallucinates face-to-face conversations with his son, virile Adnan, who was killed in the war. Zaim's other son, firefighter Faruk, is at a loss as to his father's mental breakdown. A woman he fancies falls victim to land mines. He and a pal bond with two Serbs assigned the same ragtag duties of "security."

With the title "Fuse," you would expect an explosive conclusion, and Zalica delivers, keeping his sense of humor to the end. What he has crafted is both touching and lovably amusing. It's a thoughtful time capsule.

BONUS TRACK
From the soundtrack, the chanteuse take on "Guarda che Luna":

Loss: Part 1

BONSAI (2011) (A-minus) - From Chile, a sweet, sad look back at first love, told by a mopey guy shuffling through his 20s, and an affecting homage to the written word.

The plot is solid: In the present day, Julio (Diego Noguera) is in line to be typist for a renowned novelist looking for someone to turn his hand-written notebooks into a neat manuscript. Julio bids too high and doesn't get the gig, but he's afraid to admit such to his new girlfriend, Blanca (Trinidad Gonzalez), so he buys a bunch of blank notebooks and ink, and he starts scribbling his own narrative into the books. For effect, he roughs the pages with coffee stains and cigarette ash, just like the novelist's authentic version.

As a jumping-off point, Julio takes the general idea that the novelist had: a man learns from a radio report that his first girlfriend has died. This launches the first of just a few flashbacks to college, eight years earlier, when he met a classmate from his literature course, Emilia (a brooding Nathalia Galgani). I don't think I've ever seen a more tender first kiss on screen. Their love-making (which is frequent) is slow and loving, as well. They have a charming disaffected rapport, often serenading each other with the pet phrase "blah, blah, blah."

He likes to read aloud to her in bed each night (be still my heart), though they usually nod off after only a few pages. They are partial to classics. The first time he takes his shirt off in front of her, he's got a sunburn with a white rectangle on his chest from where a book lay. "What's that?" she asks him. He responds, "Proust." A quote from "Swann's Way" -- about dozing off while reading in bed as the mind tricks itself into thinking that you are part of the narrative -- bookends the film. (Several scenes get echoes, pressing the theme of duality.) For Julio, that might make him wonder whether the novel he's writing is recording memories that are real or imagined.

Back to the present, Blanca offers criticism of the work in progress, thinking that it is the stylings of the noted novelist, not a rookie. Julio takes both the compliments and the cutting remarks in stride.

At one point in the flashback, Julio finds a fledgling clover plant, which is meant to symbolize the growth of them as a couple. Unfortunately, the plant reminds them more of the fragility of their relationship. Like most first loves, Emilia eventually turns into just a memory, the gap in time giving us no clue as to how or why they split up.

In the present, Julio seeks out a bonsai tree, nurturing it as if it were an infant. One day he runs into Barbara, Emilia's old college roommate. She gives him Emilia's number. He put off trying to reach her. Eventually he finds out her fate. Cut to the crooked little bonsai plant sitting on the window sill.

BONUS TRACKS
In America, the tagline for the movie is "A story about love, books and blah, blah, blah." In France, it is "Une histoire d'amour, de literature, de botanique."

The soundtrack (featuring some club performances) is quite good. Emilia is partial to Ramones T-shirts. (Look for it on Julio late in the film.) Here is a sample from the soundtrack, "Waka Chiki" by Panico: