One-Liners

Three that are just OK:

OMAR (B) - Hany Aub-Assad, the man behind the edgy "Paradise Now," serves up a surprisingly quaint and corny tale of terrorism and true love in the Israeli-occupied territories.

Omar (Adam Bakri) is a baker and freedom fighter who regularly scales a separation wall at great risk in order to visit his girlfriend, Nadia (Leem Lubany). He is constantly harassed by Israeli security, and for good reason -- he's plotting an insurrection with pals Amjad (who harbors a major crush on Nadia) and the ringleader, Tarek. Omar is captured on one of his jaunts, and he's tortured and apparently turned by Agent Rami, who sends him back home to undermine the resistance.

The performances here are strong, including many of the supporting cast. Bakri is particularly compelling. However, the story devolves into a mix of soap opera and police procedural. I lost count of the number of times he was beaten or tortured (and healed perfectly). We also get too many similar scenes of Omar, like a parkour master, outfoxing and outrunning his pursuers. Lubany, with her puppy-dog eyes, recalls a young Phoebe Cates, but the depiction of young love could be borrowed from a Lifetime movie. A twist in the story that ratchets up the love triangle is rather strained. The tension among the conspirators (who's really in and who might be a rat?) never unnerves.

The ending is powerful, but by the time we get there, we're a bit exasperated.

BASTARDS (B) - A weak link in the oeuvre of Claire Denis. Our favorite, Vincent Lindon, stars as Marco, a tanker captain, who returns to Paris after news of the suicide of his sister Sandra's husband. Sandra suspects a business associate, Edouard Laporte, of having had a hand in her husband's demise, so Marco rents an apartment above Laporte and his younger wife, Raphaelle (a wonderfully melancholy Chiara Mastroianni), and young boy.

Meantime, Marco's niece, Justine (the amazing Lola Creton from "Something in the Air" and "Goodbye First Love"), the daughter of the dead man, has been traumatized by sexual assault. The film opens with her wandering the dark streets naked and in high heels.

It's evident fairly early on that Laporte and the dead man had something to do with Justine's trauma. Sandra gets nowhere with the police. Marco investigates. He also seduces the wife. (Unfortunately, any chemistry between Lindon and Mastroianni is often wasted.)

Much of this is sluggish, and Denis revisits the same seemingly innocuous scenes over and over (including Raphaelle dropping her son off at school) and throws us off with some misdirection. Too often, it's just hard to get a handle on where this is all headed. After 100 minutes, we get a compelling twist at the end. But it doesn't feel satisfying. This one is way too much mood and not enough story. But it's Denis ("Beau Travail," "Friday Night"), so at times it is riveting.

WELCOME TO PINE HILL (2012) (C-minus) - I haven't been annoyed by an indie darling's non-story since Matthew Porterfield's "Hamilton" in 2006.

A reformed drug dealer, Shannon (Shannon Harper), now toils away numbingly as an insurance claims adjuster, and writer/director Keith Miller proves emphatically here that claims adjusting isn't exactly Jason Bourne work. He's also a lackadaisical bouncer at a dive bar. None of this is interesting. Eventually, Shannon gets bad news from a doctor and he reacts to the grim prognosis by wandering off to reconcile with the past (hanging with his drug buddies) and commune with nature.

This is surely intended as a meditation on death and how we sort out our affairs and come to terms with our ghosts. Harper, a soft-spoken hulk of a man, gives off little charisma in his debut performance. He does convey menace in the fascinating opening scene, in which he confronts a meek older man on the street one night and insists that the dog the man's walking is his own runaway. The tension is unsettling. Apparently, Miller filmed that confrontation, based on a real run-in with Harper, as a short and then expanded the story into this.

Unfortunately, nothing that follows justifies the feature length (even at a slim 81 minutes). This wants to be "Old Joy," but it's little more than just another indie ramble.