Not Rated

A pair from the X files:

A LIFE IN DIRTY MOVIES (B-minus) -  A portrait of sexploitation legend Joe Sarno, who along with his wife, Peggy, sought immortality as the Bergman of porn in the 1960s and '70s but who faded into obscurity upon the explosion of hardcore, videotape and the internet.

Sarno is a pathetic figure here. His younger wife (she's 70, he's in his late 80s) tends to his physical infirmities, their shaky finances, and his bid to return behind the camera. Her parents were well off and helped finance Sarno's later pictures. The mom, pushing 100, shows up here for an interview, and she still betrays remnants of disappointment at her daughter's choice to wed a pornographer.

Sarno's work was artsy and sophisticated compared with modern skin flicks. Wikipedia sums up his style well: "Sarno's work of the sexploitation period is typified by stark chiaroscuro lighting, long takes and rigorous staging. He was also well known for scenarios centering around issues of psycho-sexual anxiety and sexual identity development." Titles include Cheeverian "Sin in the Suburbs" and "The Swap and How They Make It." (Sarno eventually abandoned his high-brow pretensions and spent the '80s cranking out hardcore films under various pseudonyms.)

The psycho-sexual themes include family issues, bordering on the incestuous. The clips shown here are tasteful while offering a provocative glimpse of a lost era of skeevy underground cinema. The talking heads include film historians, former actors like Annie Sprinkle, admirer John Waters, as well as Sarno's former colleagues, more sad figures who still struggle with a world that changed 40 years ago.

Wiktor Ericsson (the Sarnos had a second home in Bergman's Sweden) is a serviceable director, but this is definitely a no-frills production. He is rescued here by the clips from Sarno's films, which definitely deserve revisiting.

THE TELEPHONE BOOK (1971) (B-minus) -  A curiosity from 1971, this explicit  and scatterbrained offering follows squeaky-voiced Alice (Sarah Kennedy, a Goldie Hawn 2.0 from late-era "Laugh-In") as she hunts down the John Smith who made an obscene call to her.

Alice encounters a series of folks, not just obscene callers, one kinkier than the other. Some mainstream actors participate. Barry Morse (Lt. Gerard from "The Fugitive") plays an aging porn star engaging in an orgy with a half-dozen women (as Andy Warhol regular Ultra Violet looks on with a whip at the ready). William Hickey ("Moonlighting") is a bed-ridden man suffering from chronic priapism. Roger Buell ("The Mothers-In-Law") plays an analyst who gets off on Alice's tales of other lovers. Jill Clayburgh is Alice's phone friend mostly seen in an eye mask.

It all plays like prurient farce. Alice's apartment has soft-core images on the walls, dirty magazines on the floors and a stars-and-stripes bedspread. She frequently frolics in the buff. One man shampoos her hair while she splashes in a bathtub. There is extensive frontal nudity (mostly female) throughout accompanied by raw language. The movie takes a detour in the final act as a man in a pig mask spins an extended psychedelic story, suggesting that Alice is indeed wandering around Wonderland.

This has elements of Russ Meyer, "Kentucky Fried Movie" and Woody Allen's "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex." The climax, if you will, is an insane final 10 minutes of mostly animation that would make Terry Gilliam blush.

A Couple of Rounds

I AM ALI (A-minus) - About five years ago I was in Phoenix watching a spring training game. Random. I want to say Dodgers vs. Royals. Late in the game, between innings, a bullpen car ambled along the third base/left field line, another seeming innocuous distraction that ballparks assault fans with. A buzz started. A muffled announcement came over the loudspeakers. Word of mouth confirmed it: Muhammad Ali was in that bullpen car, waving to us. Random. He quickly disappeared, but the excitement of being in the same stadium with the Champ, albeit a distant drive-by, gave me a genuine thrill like no other celebrity could provide.

I seem to never get enough of documentaries about Muhammad Ali. He has towered over my life for as long as I can remember. This quiet little film -- an unabashed love letter to the man -- gave me one more thrill.

TV documentarian Clare Lewins here unspools an incredibly intimate portrait of the boxing legend. This story has been told many times before, treading the same territory, but never as personal as this. As a framing device, Lewins utilizes home movies (film and videotape), as well as cassette tapes of phone calls Ali made, mostly to his children. In particular, we hear him bantering with little Maryum (one of his nine children from multiple marriages and affairs), getting her to recite her ABC's or asking the girl what she thinks God's plan for her is.

Some will find this ridiculous and sentimental. They will be appalled when one talking head describes looking into Ali's eyes and seeing God; another calls him the greatest human to ever walk the earth. This is, indeed, unrepentant hagiography. It's one side of the story. But it's hard to take your eyes off of it. It's easy to get wrapped up in Ali's fascinating world. The tale of his interaction with a boy dying of leukemia is magical.

Ex-wives, a brother and children testify here. So do contemporaries and rivals like George Foreman, Jim Brown, Joe Frazier's son Marvis, and successor Mike Tyson. Oddballs like the singer Tom Jones -- describing a publicity sparring session -- offer entertaining tidbits. Manager and pal Gene Kilroy and legendary trainer Angelo Dundee provide insightful commentary. Lewins drops in extended clips of lesser-known interviews, such as Ali describing to David Frost how he was going to defeat the slow-footed Foreman (whom Ali dubbed "The Mummy").

The culled images seem fleeting, (from his rural training camp to Zaire), but they slowly gel into a bigger picture. They create one version of Muhammad Ali, the man. He was and is a cultural phenomenon, a central figure in the history of the second half of the 20th century. He's known in every corner of the world. With this portrait of a family man, a friend, a spiritual being, we now know him just a little bit better.

TAPIA (C) - This is a 52-minute version of the documentary, available on HBO. It is the story of Johnny Tapia, the five-time boxing champ and troubled soul from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This is a serviceable overview of Tapia's career, but it wallows in the boxer's origin story -- the murder of his mom when he was a kid, his longtime drug addiction as an adult -- in a way that goes beyond maudlin. A fellow New Mexico native, Eddie Alcazar, helmed the project, and he falls into the trap of glorifying the hard-scrabble New Mexican-ness of one of the state's favorite (yet troubled) sons.

Tapia himself, in the days before his death in 2012, sits for the camera, bloated, in full ring gear. His ramblings have the musk of rationalization throughout. Alcazar uses kid gloves throughout, finding few other voices that would help provide a more rounded portrait. This is a simple primer that hints at a more in-depth documentary to be made someday.

Inadvertent Double Feature: America's Sweetheart

A pair of Anna Kendrick movies on the holiday, from different ends of the cinema spectrum, hipster indie to Disney musical:

HAPPY CHRISTMAS (B-minus) -  An interesting but ultimately pointless exercise in holiday gloom from love-hate director Joe Swanberg.

He assembles three very talented women -- Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey and Lena Dunham -- for some first-rate riffing on romance and marriage. Kendrick plays Jenny, a twenty-something dealing with a breakup who shows up at the Chicago home of her brother Jeff (Swanberg) and his Aussie wife Kelly (Lynskey) and their toddler, immediately stirring up trouble with her erratic behavior and binge drinking.

Dunham is Carson, Jenny's loquacious pal. Early on, they share a drink with Kelly, drawing out of her some ennui and frustration over having given up life as a novelist to have a child. The three women have a few very good scenes together -- including brainstorming the plot of a cheap romance novel -- and their banter features some quality indie improv. Kendrick is fine, as usual, but Swanberg gives her only one note to play (and an annoying Valley Girl patois). Lynskey, much better in 2012's "Hello, I Must Be Going," looks lost most of the time. Dunham again proves she's the nimble comic mind behind "Girls."

The story, however, goes nowhere. Swanberg stretches our patience by repeatedly featuring cutesy scenes with his real-life child -- at the risk of turning this into an unbearable home movie. This had all the ingredients of a quiet gem -- and there are some fine moments to be found in these 82 minutes -- but it ends up being a disappointment.

INTO THE WOODS (C-minus) - If you want to see a good musical (and we're rarely in the mood), find one with memorable music. This fairy-tale cocktail drones too often and never soars like a movie musical should.

Our annual Christmas Day Mainstream Movie gave us two hours of visual delights and a few sharp performances, but as a story -- merging Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella and Rapunzel in a forest setting with a wicked witch -- this Broadway adaptation is a mess.

Ms. Kendrick acquits herself well as Cinderella the Bird Lady, playing coy with a dolt of a prince, a wry turn from Chris Pine. Emily Blunt is surprisingly strong (and in wonderful voice) as the Baker's Wife, seeking to lift the witch's curse so they can have a baby. Newcomer Lilla Crawford holds her own with the adults as Red Riding Hood. Others tend to be distractions: Johnny Depp is silly as the Big Bad Wolf; Christine Baranski is miscast as Cinderella's step-mother; Meryl Streep is out of control as the Witch.

James Lapine adapted his own musical. "Chicago's" Rob Marshall directs. Few of us will be singing or humming these tunes in the coming days. I had a good 10-minute nap halfway through, which helped me survive the spectacle. Those who witnessed the whole thing were not as lucky. 

BONUS TRACK
Swanberg assembled a soundtrack with a retro sound, including this one from Swede Joel Alme:

Funny People

TOP FIVE (B+) -  This is a very funny movie with an unfortunate rom-com middle act, as if Chris Rock had to compromise with the studio and somehow prove his art-film cred.

Rock plays Andre Allen, a mid-career actor who is having trouble reconnecting with his blockbuster comedy roots (he got rich wearing a costume in the "Hammy the Bear" trilogy) and is now ensnared in a reality-TV vortex, in the final days of prep for his wedding to a reality star (Gabrielle Union) on her Bravo show. Meantime, Andre consents to an interview with a free-lancer for the New York Times, Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson).

Unfortunately Dawson's Chelsea comes pre-packaged as the gorgeous single mom who can't find the right guy. (The movie's nadir features her dating a mope and a closet case named Brad who doesn't hide his affinity for being violated.) In fact, the several key plot twists are gimmicky, as if decided by the Committee on Hollywood Tropes. For instance, both Andre and Chelsea are recovering alcoholics; begin the countdown to one of them cracking open a bottle and having a meltdown.

Andre and Chelsea eventually hit it off. (He's wary of her at first, because the Times critic has delivered blistering hit jobs on his movies.) They wander New York City (lovingly filmed, although Rock's version is a quirky paradise where adorable black girls play jump rope on seemingly every corner), and are nimbly chatty and intimate. Suddenly Rock seems to be riffing on Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" trilogy; unfortunately, it's a weak imitation that doesn't have quite the ear of the source material. 

(Some are comparing this to "Annie Hall," but I didn't see that at all, thankfully. If you want a Woody Allen homage -- and a full circle to the "Before" movies -- try Julie Delpy's neurotic "2 Days in New York," in which Rock plays her husband named Mingus.)

One the true gems here is Rock playing off the hilarious J.B. Smoove, who portrays Silk, Andre's body man. The actors' rapport is exquisite, providing genuine depth to childhood friends who are still always there for each other. Smoove kills it in a late scene in which Andre, riding princely in the back seat of his town car, is going through a gift bag from his bachelor party. (Earlier, Tracy Jordan eviscerates the idea of a brother attending any event that results in a gift bag.) As Andre picks through the items, dismissing each one, Silk is there to find his own use for them. Scented candle? "I know a Mexican girl; she a candle bitch." And Silk's affinity for full-figured women leads to a quaint sight gag.

In fact, the true appeal in this movie is the talented cast, which goes quite deep in comedic chops. As a result, this is often laugh-out-loud funny.

Rock's old stand-up pals are here (Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Brian Regan, and Jim Norton pass through), but he also gives some younger comics a decent amount of screen time (SNL cast members Michael Che, Jay Pharoah and Leslie Jones populate a boisterous pivotal scene brimming with black culture references). Characters come and go as if in a variety show. Cedric the Entertainer is a local greeter/chauffeur with a vulgar penchant for prostitutes. (His delivery of a line about hotel-room coat hangers is perfect; see the punchline to the trailer below.) Kevin Hart riffs as Andre's agent. Just fleeting glimpses of talented supporting actors -- Ben Vereen, Tichina Arnold, Luis Guzman, Allan Havey -- are satisfying.

There are truly sublime moments: the rapper DMX crooning in a prison cell (while providing a bookend to a Charlie Chaplin reference early in the film); Jerry Seinfeld letting his hair down at a bachelor party (and providing a meta punchline, in his patented sing-song delivery, "Do I HAVE to say it?!"); Rock and Seinfeld bantering comfortably with Goldberg and Sandler (whose "Funny People" is a touchstone here) about marriage; an extended-family gathering, with Jordan at the center of it, in which he launches the charming "top five" running gag -- Andre and others constantly spouting a list of their favorite rappers/hip-hoppers. A touching scene, in which Andre returns to a comedy club, features genuinely funny standup material from working comics. (Andre himself tops them all with a groaner of a JFK assassination joke.) That one scene exhibits both Rock's attention to detail and his generosity with the comedy community, and it pays off as a key plot device, as well.

It is in scenes like that where Rock is in command, and his talents meld as a joke machine and a filmmaker. It is a shame that he is too often hampered by a conventional narrative. If you can survive the trite and quaint, you'll be rewarded with a comedy gift bag.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer:

New to the Queue

Is that all there is? ...

With trepidation, we give Paul Thomas Anderson and Joaquin Phoenix (last collaborating in the disappointing "The Master") another chance, with Thomas Pynchon's L.A. noir story "Inherent Vice."

Turkish master Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns with his latest Anatolian epic, "Winter Sleep."

Chris Rock's shot at the next tier, what we hope is a smart and funny film, "Top Five."

The debut of writer/director Talya Lavie about women marking time in an Israeli military outpost, "Zero Motivation."

It looks stupid, but the cast is strong (J.K. Simmons, Nikki Reed, Greg Kinnear), in a story about a man investigating the death of his pet, the noir spoof "Murder of a Cat."

A devastating look at our corporate overlords and income inequality, the documentary "Poverty, Inc."

Our gal Melanie Lynskey is a wife who dumps her husband (Paul Schneider) in "Goodbye to All That."

The one-two punch of Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric in a stalled marriage, "If You Don't, I Will."

Europa, Europa

A pair of clever films with twists that are better experienced fresh, so I'll tread carefully:

FORCE MAJEURE (B+) - This is a good film on the brink of being great, but it never gets there. The Swedish sleeper tackles one of my favorite subjects -- the quiet, sometimes comic, dissolution of a marriage.

The premise is delectable, but the two-hour running time weighs on its three-act structure. A model family -- Wahlberg-handsome husband, model of a wife, cute boy and girl -- are ensconced at a resort in the French Alps for a ski holiday. They sleep together in a king bed in matching jammies, they brush their teeth in front of the bathroom mirror together, they hit the slopes together.

[MILD SPOILER in this paragraph, but nothing that's not in the trailer.] One afternoon, at lunch on an outdoor terrace, we hear a bang that sparks a regular controlled avalanche, and we see the waves of snow peel down a nearby slope. (The cinematography is quite lovely throughout the film.) It quickly becomes clear -- as small talk among the diners grows nervous -- that this avalanche is getting too close for comfort. Panic ensues, and the father, Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), reacts in a less-than-valiant manner. Everyone survives, but Tomas' wife, Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), is chilled by the experience.

Writer/director Ruben Oestlund handles this tectonic shift in the marriage masterfully. The way the lunch scene is shot, it's apparent what has occurred but it's not patently obvious. When the dust clears (literally), the gravity (and dark humor) of what has occurred slowly sinks in for the viewer. It isn't until Tomas and Ebba are dining with friends that she blurts out the festering little secret. The tension in their marriage is split open like a wound, and true drama builds as the couple, and their perceptive children, struggle to come to terms with what may have been a shell of a relationship all along, just a white-picket-fence fantasy.

But it's the cutting humor that does the heavy lifting here. We are treated to a wonderful dinner-party scene with another couple, Fanni (Fanni Metelius) and Mats (Kristofer Hivju), who give off the wacky vibes of Carol Kane and Zach Galifianakis. Hivju is a rubber-faced comic, and his expressions are priceless, as Fanni's confidence in her man is shaken, as if Tomas and Ebba's crisis of faith is a communicable disease. (A lurking, heavy-faced maintenance man also provides a few Buster Keaton moments as a silent one-man Greek chorus.)

Meantime, Oestlund drops in the ominous first few bars of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (Summer) at key moments, using it as a cue that he's ratcheting up the stakes and portending more troubles in paradise. He maniacally takes a seemingly innocuous event and shows how it can exploit the smallest of fissures in a relationship.  Oestlund would have been well-served to have tried to whittle this down closer to a lean 90 minutes. With a nip and tuck here and there he might have wrought a devastating masterpiece. 

BIRD PEOPLE (B) -  Do you ever stop to notice the birds? This film does, though its message can be as inscrutable as that conveyed in a robin's tweet. A quirky study of the human condition, "Bird People" is well served by strong lead performances but it is undercut by a droning middle act that nearly sinks the film.

Successful businessman Gary Newman (our guy Josh Charles from TV's "Sports Night" and "The Good Wife") is holed-up in an airport hotel at Paris' Charles de Gaulle. On the eve of a big meeting, he is having a major midlife meltdown. As the hour of his early-morning flight approaches, he has puddled into a full-on panic attack. When the sun comes up, he has made a major decision that affects his career and his family.

Meantime, we see perky Audrey Cazumet (Anais Demoustier, "Elles"), a college dropout slumming as a maid at the hotel. In subtle movieland fashion, Gary and Audrey's paths will cross. What we don't know is what significance (if any) there is to their pairing at this place and time.

Gary eventually has a video-chat showdown with his wife back in America. Their conversation is alternatively raw and tone-deaf. It drags on for an unbearable length of time (if you notice the background of the scenes their discussion apparently lasts hours; in the film it only seems like it lasts that long).

There's not much more that can be said without spoiling the entire second half of the film, when the focus switches to Audrey. Demoustier has an appeal similar to that of Shailene Woodley, and Audrey bounds around the hotel, privy to intimate glimpses of the residents hotel rooms, just like a sneaky little mouse or, of course, a curious little sparrow perched on the window sill.

Suddenly, magical realism swoops in. The point of view shifts dramatically and we get a literal bird's-eye view of the outskirts of Paris, not only from the sky, but skittering along paths and flitting through buildings. The director, Pascale Ferran (writing the script with Guillaume Breaud), handles this jolt to the senses beautifully. Her camera captures every little movement of our little feathered friend with the same intimacy with which she studies those humans in the hotel. (It appears to be an actual trained bird, not a special effect.) Ferran transforms this live action into an experience akin to the most fanciful of animated stories. It's an incredible feat.

"Bird People" can be quiet and profound, as well as numbingly frustrating. (We really don't need to watch various characters pensively light a cigarette a dozen or more times throughout the proceedings.) Go for a popcorn run during the interminable marital Skype session but then settle back in for a cinematic delight.

That '70s Drift: Late Genius

Stretching the conceit to include a hangover from the '70s, late Cassavetes:

LOVE STREAMS (1984) (B+) -  This plays like John Cassavetes' greatest hits. He's got wife Gena Rowlands in full meltdown mode, he himself plays an aging playboy bent on self-destruction, and there are plenty of women (young and old) for him and his camera to flirt with.

Here Cassavetes are brother and sister. We observe their various breakdowns and idiosyncratic behavior -- he's a wealthy writer, Robert Harmon, with a big home and a harem, she, Sarah, is going through a divorce and trying to retain custody of her daughter. And about halfway through the film (fairly cumbersome at 141 minutes), they meet up. The question is, will they rescue each other, find succor in the love between them.

Cassavetes reaches back to his earliest work, like "Shadows" and "Faces," trafficking in jazz and bebop and oddball characters, like a transvestite who chats him up at a bar early in the film. Robert makes a move on a jazz singer while stumbling drunk and later slow-dances ("Killer of Sheep" style) with her mother, in a scene that references "Husbands," perhaps Cassavetes' masterpiece. Robert's ex appears on his doorstep with the 8-year-old son he's never paid attention to, and Robert baby-sits the boy by taking him to Vegas and abandoning the child while he spends the night with a woman. Because that's what guys do, so get that through your head, OK?

"Love is dead," Robert intones at one point, his voice rising in irritation. "Love is a fantasy little girls have."  His sister has a different opinion. She notes that love "is a stream" that is "continuous, it doesn't stop."

Rowlands is the star here. She is both manic and heartbreaking. She babbles to a luggage attendant somewhere in Europe trying to herd two carts piled high with bags and what is apparently the entirety of her worldly possessions. At one point, back at Robert's house she goes to an animal farm and returns home (via cab) with a small menagerie, including two ponies. Robert doesn't blink; soon he's playing Farmer Bob, tending to the flock as if it's no big deal. He apparently is grasping the emptiness of zipless sex and is finding non-romantic love in a household with his sister.

That household is Cassavetes and Rowland's own home. The rooms are dimly lit (one memorable shot shows a neon jukebox in a darkened room, silhouetting a couple dancing) and the setting claustrophobic. The milieu adds confusion and a sense of dread that helps you identify with the characters. Cassavetes regular Seymour Cassel joins the epic pair in providing some gritty ad-libbing that brings a true 1970s feel to the story.

In the end, though, rather than serving as a career-capping masterpiece (Cassavetes would direct one more film that he didn't write), "Love Streams" never completely comes together as a transcendent narrative. The pieces -- echoes of earlier great films -- never cohere into a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts. 

FEDORA (1978) (B-minus) - You've got to give Billy Wilder credit. His penultimate film as a writer/director is a bald attempt to sum up his career, and it's quaint as hell.

The genius of 20th century cinema brings back William Holden to bookend his own role in "Sunset Boulevard" to reprise the story of the denouement of the golden era of Hollywood. Like in that classic film, we open with a dead body, this one an aging actress who has run into a speeding train. Here Holden carries the story of Barry "Dutch" Detweiler, a struggling indie producer, who is intent on tracking down the reclusive Fedora (Marthe Keller), a Polish star of the studio era, to get her to attach her name to his rewrite of "Anna Karenina" in order to lure investors.

After we see the death of Fedora, we flash back two weeks, when Detweiler was hunting her down in Corfu. It doesn't take long for him to starts unraveling a mystery surrounding Fedora and the tragic events that lead to her death. Who's the old lady who holds a guru-like spell over Fedora, and just what is the creepy Dr. Vando (Jose Ferrer) doing to Fedora to make her seem ageless? And what's with Fedora's obsession with Michael York, the actor she abandoned on the set of her last movie?

Wilder was making a statement about the end of that golden era and the rise of the American New Wave. In a clever meta moment, he has a camera assistant on the set of an early Fedora film point out that the "boobs" she's displaying will run afoul of censors -- a dull observation in 1978, in a movie in which those boobs, tastefully displayed, are the only ones seen in this quaint, PG-rated fare. Elsewhere, Wilder twists himself in knots name-checking as many old actors and directors he can in one screenplay.

Detweiler, as Wilder's avatar, grumps his way throughout this one. "The kids with the long hair have taken over," Dutch laments in one scene. "They don't need a script -- just give them a hand-held camera with a zoom lens." We get it, Billy. Things just ain't like they used to be.

Instead of a loving paean to the past, this plays more like a bitter lament about the hippies and the vulgar "auteurs" trashing the beauty and the legacy of the classy "pictures" he and the studio greats used to produce. It doesn't help that the script is stretched out to a plodding two hours.

Holden makes with the wisecracks, and a plot twist in the second hour is worth waiting around for (or fast-forwarding to). If only Wilder had the zip and the energy to make this one soar like his memorable old films used to.

Noir Chronicles

KISS ME DEADLY (1955) (B) - And do the dames ever kiss him. Clean-cut, wisecracking Mike Hammer is irresistible in this take on Mickey Spillane's iconic gumshoe from director Robert Aldrich ("The Dirty Dozen").

Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving along a stretch of road in L.A. when he runs across a woman, Christina (Cloris Leachman's debut) dressed in only a trenchcoat, having escaped from a mental institution. Some men would like a word with her. After their car crashes, Hammer wakes to the sounds of Christina being tortured to death. The thugs put Hammer in a car with her body and push it off a cliff, but damn if Hammer doesn't survive.

The rest of the plot is rather convoluted. It involves another woman in just a trenchcoat, Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), who is after a secret, glowing box. (Insert Cold War chills here.) The bodies pile up as Hammer and his assistant/lover Velda (a sexy, often sweaty Maxine Cooper). Velda is willing to do just about anything for her boss, including activities that would qualify him as a pimp.

Aldrich is in command here. He shoots in crisp black and white. He mounts a camera on the back of Hammer's two-seater sports car for a great night shot at a gas station. This is the classic seedy L.A. you think about when conjuring up such old movies.

And check out the young faces. Jack Elam looks like a young Steve Buscemi. Meeker is a dead ringer for Bill Paxton (HBO's "Big Love"). Strother Martin is nearly unrecognizable as a whippersnapper in his one scene. Percy Helton shows up as a coroner.

The third-act twist borrows special effects from the era's monster movies. The ending is a howler. But for most of the film you can dig the snap of the dialogue and the sheen of a city.

The Insurgents

CITIZENFOUR (A-minus) -  Laura Poitras presents one of the ultimate scoops: She wielded a camera in the Hong Kong hotel room of Edward Snowden as he was in the process of spilling government secrets to Glenn Greenwald. The result is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall documentary.

Snowden comes off as a regular guy who earnestly believes that he is doing the right thing in this clearly sympathetic portrait. He has a simple, almost goofy demeanor as he coolly explains the technology behind what he is doing and the reasons for his actions. We see him sit barefoot on the hotel room bed, fuss over his hair, pause before setting the proper gauge on his beard-trimmer. He is polite to his visitors, including a Socttish journalist who doesn't know a thing about him. That aw-shucks presentation doesn't make this any less compelling.

Poitras is slow out of the gates as she tries to set the table, spilling a lot of words on the screen and reading from Snowden's emails, sent under the code name Citizenfour. But throughout the film, she manages to present images that pierce the claustrophobia of the hotel room. She offers blank-eyed views of the construction site of another government warehouse for data collection.

The spy-game exchange of encrypted emails isn't what drives the movie, though it doesn't really drag it down. What jumps off the screen here is the old-fashioned journalism on display. It's not an exaggeration to say that this film has the whiff of "All the President's Men." Greenwald, working at the time for the Guardian, starts releasing drips and drabs of this epic leak. Poitras, herself already under government surveillance for her previous work, shows how Greenwald and Snowden can't hide a certain level of fear that strikes them on occasion, though it's hard to distinguish it from adrenaline or just the buzz from breaking such a big story as the feds close in.

This is history unfolding. It's expert filmmaking. With a little editing, it could be a masterpiece.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY - PART I (C-minus) -  Easily the worst of the three movies released so far, this shoot-'em-up mostly sits on the screen, presumably pulling its punches in anticipation of Part II, the series grand finale.

With its constant war games (the revolution has begun), this loud mess comes off as a cheap "Batman" movie. That's a shame, because the previous installment -- the second half of the second film -- was a truly artful cross between fine storytelling and teen pop art. Jennifer Lawrence comes off as distracted in her portrayal of Katniss, our fearless heroine.

You can't help feeling bad for the adults, suffering through bad dialogue and slumming like this. Phillip Seymour Hoffman huffs and scowls; Julianne Moore (as the rebel leader) seems shocked that she's actually in such a movie; Donald Sutherland is a cartoon villain at this point; even Stanley Tucci is improbably wooden. (Those pathetic boys -- Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth -- we won't mention.) Only Woody Harrelson who shows up as a sober Haymitch (cursing the Nouveau Prohibition that has taken hold in the District) brings any energy to the proceedings. Elizabeth Banks provides sharp comic relief as a stripped-down, de-glamored Effie Trinket.

This mercifully ends within two hours. And even though the were splitting the final book in two parts, they couldn't come up with a decent cliffhanger. When Katniss's sister's cat steals half the scenes, you know you've got a dud on your hands.

One-Liners: Archives

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER (2011) (A-minus) - Director Eran Riklis followed up "Syrian Bride" and "Lemon Tree" with this equally affecting character study of a burnt-out corporate manager who reconnects with his own humanity as he accompanies the body of the victim of a Jerusalem bus bombing back to her home in Romania.

The HR manager (he isn't given a name; he's played by TV actor Mark Ivanir) is struggling with his marriage and has returned to work at a major bakery after a sabbatical. He becomes the point man for the company (owned by the "Widow" (Gila Almagor)) in a PR crisis after an employee's body lingers at the morgue a week after the terrorist attack. It turns out that the employee had been quietly dismissed by a lower-level supervisor, but the company still could get raked over in the press for such callous treatment of a worker. (What a quaint idea.) It turns out that the supervisor had fallen in love with her, dismissed her a month earlier to save his marriage, but kept her on the payroll for a while. So, the Widow tells the HR manager to act as an ambassador and accompany the body of Yulia back to her homeland, with a reporter (Guri Alfi) tagging along for the scoop.

A classic road trip and hero's journey ensue. The HR manager and the casket are greeted by the loopy Israeli consul and her husband, and immediately he has to bribe the locals just to get the body on a vehicle out of the airport. Yulia's husband turns out to be her ex-husband, so he can't sign a burial certificate. He helps them track down their son (an engaging Noah Silver), who is living wild on the streets. The Boy insists that they take his mother's body to her hometown and her mother. The 100-kilometer trip through a snowstorm is filled with folly.

When they finally arrive, the Mother's response is heartbreaking. The journey continues.

Riklis (working from a script by Noah Stollman, based on a novel by Abraham Jehoshua), like in his previous efforts, strikes a balance between humor and drama, mainly by finding the basic civility in each of the finely etched characters. Slapstick blends well with pathos. This is a moving human story.

MASCULIN FEMININ (1966) (B) -  Merely above-average Godard from his '60s peak era.

We follow sensitive writer/agitator Paul (Godard regular Jean-Pierre Leaud) as he courts an aspiring pop singer Madeleine (Chantal Goya, sporting a proto-Parker Posey smile). Godard, shooting in grainy black and white, created a near-documentary chronicling the bubbling anti-war movement in Paris in late 1965 and early 1966. We are immersed in the real events of the middle of the decade, with preppy young adults, still Kennedy cute, awakening to the horrors of American's actions in Vietnam. Godard is announcing the arrival of youth power as the Baby Boomers progressed into their 20s. An interstitial title card announces, "This film could be called The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola."

"Masculin Feminin" reminded me of "David Holzman's Diary," shot a year later in New York by Jim McBride, who placed his romantic characters into real settings throughout the city, absorbing its authentic sights and sounds as background material. That American masterpiece compares favorably with this offering from the godfather of the French New Wave. Godard uses natural lighting and dialogue that seems partly improvised (or written on the fly).

Here, Paul and Madeleine date rather chastely while pontificating about love and sex. Paul messes around with a couple of others in Madeleine's circle. Long scenes unfold in cinema verite style, as the characters drone on in conversation. Often one subject is out of frame -- usually Paul as he interrogates the women individually to various degrees. Godard was feeling his way through the early days of the sexual revolution, as his female characters occasionally find a feminist voice. That probably was revolutionary at the time.

New to the Queue

An early holiday lull:

Reese Witherspoon was good in "Mud," and she's assisted by Gaby Hoffmann and Laura Dern in the picturesque "Wild."

A boy growing up with a single mother in Venezuela, "Bad Hair."

Because I'll be coerced: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part I"

An examination of the exploitation of tomato pickers in California, "Food Chains."

A documentary about two men, a Brit and an American, pursuing eternal life, "The Immortalists."

A drama about Haitian emigres in Brooklyn, "Stones in the Sun."

An Australian spooker, and a directorial debut, Jennifer Kent's "The Babadook."

A documentary about a woman exploring the mystery of her heritage, "Little White Lie."

L'Etranger

NUIT # 1 (B+) - Canadian Anne Emond's feature film debut not only screens like a filmed two-person stage play, but it's mostly made up of two extended monologues, one by the man and the other by the woman, two 30-ish adults who hooked up after a rave for a gloomy one-night stand.

Only two scenes take place beyond the rooms (and surrounding property) of Nikolai's dumpy apartment -- the film opens with slow-motion shots of dancers at a rave, and the film ends in a brightly lit classroom of third-graders. After the rave, Nikolai (Dimitri Storoge) and Clara (Catherine de Lean) stumble through his door and start pawing at each other, stripping in the foyer as they remind each other of their names. The next 15 minutes consist of explicit sex between Clara and Nikolai in the flat.

Clara wouldn't mind a tender night of snuggling the rest of the night or perhaps some conversation. Nikolai doesn't really want her to stick around. He insults her until she runs off in the rain, only to return, soaking wet and in need of his warm shirt. Nikolai eventually unleashes a prolonged riff about his meaningless and hopeless life; he can't hold a job and is essentially a lazy slacker, a beta Millennial. He insults Clara again, she runs out again, and he chases her down and drags her (literally) back to the apartment.

Then it's Clara's turn to unload. A grade-school teacher, she fills the hole inside with sex, drugs and alcohol, shared with random passing strangers. De Lean delivers her epic monologue naked (tastefully) from the bathtub as the man sits quietly listening. The spiel is an impressive tightwire act. At times it threatens to devolve into teen emo diary entries, but it holds together in the end beautifully. (I also feared that she'd be freezing by the end of it without running the hot water. Continuity.)

Emond then breaks the dark mood and offers a coda with Clara's students in her classroom. It's an unexpected exclamation point that is both touching and profound. It can almost be said that it makes the whole movie worthwhile.

This is another tale of arrested development, a true exploration of the insecurities of Nietzsche-loving Millennials. (One reviewer compared it to one of my favorites from the last decade, the Scottish "Morvern Callar.") It's a drab future these drones are facing. Imagine what hell those third-graders will emerge into someday.

ABUSE OF WEAKNESS (C-minus) -  Catherine Breillat had a fine three-picture run with "Romance," "Fat Girl" and the elegant "Brief Crossing." Since then, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage only to return to the director's chair but with unspectacular results.

Here, Breillat tells the story of her medical breakdown and recovery, complicated by the presence of a con man she invited into her life to star in a film and who cleaned her out for more than 700,000 euros. Perhaps her book about the episode was compelling; on screen it fails.

If not for the electrifying Isabelle Huppert, this might not be watchable. Perhaps the greatest actress of our time, she not only embodies the physical struggles of the half-paralyzed "Maud," but she also conveys the mental challenges brought on by the cerebral hemorrhage. She has the most expressive face imaginable even though it seems so often to be a stoic mask.

But Breillat has crafted a tedious and rather inconsequential film. Scenes of Maud struggling to walk and needing assistance grow grating. There must be at least a dozen scenes throughout of Maud lying in bed, usually sleeping, and being interrupted by her buzzing cell phone. What is the point Breillat is trying to make? Is it a form of psychological torture? (It's usually the con man, Vikko (Kool Shen), ringing her up to sweet talk her.) We get repeated scenes of Maud cutting Vikko yet another check.

We're taught to "follow the money," but that's difficult here. Twice Maud claims to Vikko that she doesn't have enough money to buy food. Yet she keeps writing checks on her account to him and to the contractors performing 1.5 million euros worth of work to her mansion. Maud also befriends Vikko's wife, Andy (Laurence Orsino), and there never is a hint of sexual transaction between Maud and either of them.

With little for the viewer to grab on to, this plays more like an acting exercise for Huppert, which is usually worth tuning in for. But "Abuse of Weakness" plays like one of those Hollywood "My Left Foot" vanity projects; and here very little seems to be at stake.

The B Team

LOCKE (B) - If you're going to make a film exclusively about a man driving for 70 minutes while talking on his car phone, there had better be a decent payoff in the end. The ending of "Locke" can be considered understated and bittersweet. Most viewers, I suspect, will feel cheated.

Writer/director Steven Knight presents Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy, "The Dark Knight Rises") a key figure at an international construction company who is expected to oversee a big concrete pour for a major high rise. But on the eve of that assignment, he gets news from a woman he impregnated during a one-night stand that she is going into labor early, so he gets in his car and heads off toward London. During the drive he must assure his baby-mama that he's on his way, break the news to his family, and coach his replacement at work through the preparation for the next day's big pour.

It's to Hardy's credit that he can command the screen for so long and make this artificial writing/acting exercise meaningful. He maintains a calm Vincent Price patter as Locke juggles his personal and professional challenges.

All but the opening shots are filmed in the confines of Locke's car. Knight and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos avoid claustrophobia and play with focus and the color palette of an urban highway at night. The visual conceit loses its snap by the end.

It's hard to ignore the artificiality to the production. Locke's back story is made literal through his rants into his rearview mirror, directed at the person who hurt him most. What's it all building to? Eh, not much. 

JEALOUSY (B-minus) - We give the father-son team of Philippe and Louis Garrel another chance after "A Burning Hot Summer."

Here, young Garrel  plays Louis, a 30-year-old actor who has walked out on his girlfriend, Clothilde (Rebecca Convenant), and their adorable daughter, Charlotte (Olga Milshtein). He lives in a ramshackle apartment with actress Claudia (Anna Mouglalis), who toys a bit with his emotions and wants nothing more than to get out of that dump.

Claudia finds that opportunity through a man of means who is willing to fund a higher standard of living. Clothilde is still reeling from the breakup, reminded of it in some way by little Charlotte, a smart, inquisitive kid. Louis, as Garrel tends to do in these roles, mopes around a lot. He kisses another troupe member. Claudia makes out with a guy she meets in a bar.

The adults are not particularly compelling. What makes this worth watching is Charlotte, the being who connects the main players. Milshtein is quite a talent, and she makes Charlotte playful but perceptive. The outing in which her dad introduces her to Claudia is a small thrill. Rather than portraying the girl as a pawn of the adults or an emotionally scarred child to be pitied, the elder Garel positions Charlotte as a serious character in her own right. That move adds depth to the story and highlights the insecurities and immaturity of the adults around her.