Targets

THE FITS (B+) - What is it like to be an adolescent outcast? This audacious debut feature from Anna Rose Holmer, working with an amateur cast, strikes sharply at the heart of that troubling question.

The story follows Toni (newcomer Royalty Hightower), a wiry, boyish 11-year-old, who works out with her older brother at a boxing gym but who is drawn to a dance troupe across the hall. Teased as a tomboy by the guys, she cautiously explores the idea of acceptance by the elegant girls across the way. She is friends with two of the nerdier ones, Beezy (Alexis Neblett) and Maia (Lauren Gibson).

Not long after Toni's arrival, though, members of the troupe, one by one, suffer from epileptic-type seizures. What is causing these fits? The water in the gym's fountains? Something else more mysterious and nefarious? Is Toni's mere presence causing them?

She certainly develops quite a complex over the coincident arrival of her and the episodes. As she loses the connection to the boys (including a more strained relationship with her brother), she plunges into the lonely divide between the two groups. Her sense of homelessness is heartbreaking.

Hightower is a revelation in the lead role, with an expressive face made for the big screen. Her devoted repetition of the dance moves she is learning feel authentic and lived-in. One scene of her studying herself in a mirror is itself a study in contemplative filmmaking.

Holmer's background in the technical tasks of movie production, including as a cinematographer, is apparent from the camerawork here. She is fond of static long shots of wide sets, with slight figures passing through the shot. She shoots on location in Cincinnati and has a keen eye for the seedy underbelly of the city, including a puny, ratty sign that announces a rundown building called Lincoln Center, certainly the destitute stepchild of the Manhattan institution.

The narrative floats along at a tidy 72 minutes, and by the end you can sense a bit of a strain on the unprofessional cast and the plot itself. So it is both welcome and unsettling when a burst of magical realism carries Toni to a heart-swelling conclusion. In the end, she manages to "fit" in by proving that she, too, is as special as the others.

AMANDA KNOX - (C+) - This curious documentary is as straightforward as its title. And it probably will grab your attention only if you didn't follow the eight-year odyssey of the young American accused of the lurid murder of a fellow exchange student in Italy.

Filmmakers Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn, expanding beyond shorts for the first time, lean heavily on personalities to tell Knox's tale: Knox herself; the boyfriend she had only recently met at the time of the slaying, Raffaele Sollecito; a pulp British journalist, Nick Pisa; and the avuncular prosecutor, Giuliani Mignini, a character out of a PBS mystery series.

Knox was hit with a verdict every two years or so -- first guilty, then acquitted on appeal, then guilty again, and finally acquitted by Italy's highest court. The tabloids loved her story because she blond and American and because the group she was hanging with were apparently flaunting their sexuality.

Here, Knox sits primly for the camera, frequently in full-figure shots, thinner and slightly more haggard than the cherubic girl-next-door sexpot we see in archival footage before and immediately after the slaying of Meredith Kercher. She has a look in her eye that makes it difficult to believe that she wasn't somehow involved in the murder. (A burglar was convicted during the course of Knox's saga.)

The filmmakers, however, never gin up the proper momentum, perhaps deciding that every human was transfixed to the spectacle as it unfolded, so better to play up the personalities. But Pisa is no more than your typically slightly obnoxious tabloid reporter, and Sollecito is a bit of a cipher. Knox comes off as a somewhat creepy ice queen with PTSD. Mignini is philosophical at times, bumbling at others.

This one lacks an edge, and with its devotion to the chronological march of events, it eventually becomes a bit of a plod.