Outlaw Country

NEVER LOOK AWAY (A-minus) - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has been dismissed as a one-hit wonder during the more than 10 years since his masterpiece "The Lives of Others."  He has finally dispelled it with "Never Look Away," a three-hour postwar epic based roughly on the life of artist Gerhard Richter, and a moving story of creativity and perseverance.

Reminiscent of Francois Ozon's "Frantz," this one is held together by an unabashedly corny love story. Artist Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling) is influenced by the mental breakdown of his aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) when he was a child during World War II. The aunt was subject to the Nazis' sterilization program, eventually euthanized over her schizophrenia. Kurt, as a young adult, meets and falls in love with her doppelganger, Ellie (a nearly identical actress, Paula Beer), whose father happens to be the physician who oversaw Elisabeth's case.

The film effortlessly passes from national socialism to communism to capitalism, as the couple eventually end up in Western Germany. Von Donnersmarck sublimely captures the creative process, avoiding the pitfalls of most biopics that oversimplify an artist's actual inventive process and development of style. Schilling is sturdy as the idealistic auteur, and both Rosendahl and Beer can be heartbreaking. Sebastian Koch, the hero from "Lives of Others," plays the evil doctor. Divide this one into two or three nights like a mini-series, and you'll be rewarded with powerful storytelling, gorgeous camerawork (truly mesmerizing at times), and a fascinating thread to follow through the second half of the 20th century.

THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN (B-minus) - This innocuous swan song for Robert Redford is all sweetness and light, and thus it goes down pretty easy. He and Sissy Spacek have a nice banter as an inveterate bank robber and his new love interest.

Casey Affleck, however, is unbearably tedious in the cliched role of a 1970s/80s cop and family man tracking his unlikely prey. He and writer/director David Lowery ("Ain't Them Bodies Saints," "A Ghost Story") have gotten way too lazy together. We've seen this story before, but Redford carries the load here with the charm of a performer calling it a career. Tom Waits and Danny Glover have fun as Redford's grey-haired accomplices.

There's not much heft to this whole series of escapades, but it passes the time inoffensively.