Smallville

CAUCUS (B+) - Here in one fine collection are the Greatest Hits (and Misses) of the 2012 Republican presidential candidates in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses that January.

Long ago I was a fan of C-SPAN's quadrennial "Road to the White House" series, which often streamed raw video of candidates on the campaign trail. One memorable moment was Bob Kerrey, in 1992, greeting workers as they exited a factory at the end of their shift. It consisted entirely of Kerrey repeatedly introducing himself to mostly indifferent blue-collar grunts. It exposed the tedium of running for office.

Similarly here, director AJ Schnack ("Kurt Cobain: About a son") captures the indignities of slumming for votes among the plebians of small-town Iowa.

I'm not embarrassed to admit that this film did little to mitigate my unsettling longtime attraction to Michele Bachmann. The Minnesota congresswoman (a native of Iowa) has the most energy among the candidates and the greatest fervor for engaging voters. Of course, she's as dumb as a box of boxes, but that only makes her more appealing. In many ways, she's the star of the show.

The revelation here is Rick Santorum. This is somewhat painful to admit: He comes off as, by far, the most genuine of the candidates. It doesn't hurt that he's got one dead son and a dying daughter to bring out some raw emotion that connects with the crowds. But he's also self-effacing; he seems genuinely amused, for instance, by a New York Times graphic showing him to have the leanest of campaign operations -- essentially a body man and a pickup truck.

Many of the candidates must vamp when confronted by left-wingers who slip through security and challenge them. Mitt Romney comes off as a heartless robot. (He has the greatest of the hits -- "Corporations are people, too, my friend," the $10,000 bet, etal.)

And don't miss the final shot after the credits roll; it's a perfect punchline.

THE IDENTICAL (C-minus) - This bizarre little Christian film -- which essentially asks the musical question "What if Elvis Presley's twin brother had lived?" -- is not without its charms. One of them is Ray Liotta's devoted performance as a preacher who, with his wife, adopts that twin at birth

This has the production values of a '70s TV movie and the plot of a '50s teen-rebellion film. Newcomer Blake Rayne certainly has the Elvis look down, if not much range as an actor or singer. The extended cast is fairly impressive: Naomi Judd, Joe Pantoliano, Chris Mulkey, Amanda Crew ("Silicon Valley"), Danny Woodburn (Mickey on "Seinfeld").

New director Dustin Marcellino and writer Howard Klausner ("Space Cowboys," "The Last Ride" and other cheesy inspirational fare) clunkily take us through the '50s, '60s and '70s, straining on a lean budget to make it all believable. Rayne has flashes of competence playing both twins, but mostly the obscure one, named Ryan Wade, who wants to sing his own songs but ends up getting pigeonholed in the role as an impersonator for his superstar twin Drexel Hemsley, especially after the latter's tragic death in an airplane crash.

The narrative is sluggish, the tone is maudlin. We get a lot of "Mama Liked the Roses" type of schmaltz. But the filmmakers are quite earnest and the cast gives it the old college try, and despite the ridiculous premise, the final product has a certain dumb charm.

ARAYA (1959) (C) - A stunning achievement of cinematography from more than 50 years ago, this quasi-documentary about salt miners in Venezuela has not aged well.
 
Obscure filmmakers Margot Benacerraf and Pierre Seghers present images of salt miners in northeastern Venezuela with beautiful crisp black-and-white photographer. However, the story itself -- the dedicated natives slaving away day and night -- has an acute colonialist condescension and now feels embarrassingly dated.

The individual stories meanders. Everyone is portrayed as a selfless saint. It gets tiresome.