It’s difficult to exaggerate the impact of the global financial meltdown of 2008, a tsunami that, if we were lucky, a lot of us felt as a pinch or a slap. The additional wallop that Charles Ferguson’s revelatory new documentary Inside Job packs comes from what it augurs for the future, and how it reveals the collapse to be both at once a crime of greed and an entirely systemic (if sadly preventable) failure, a de-pantsing of American capitalism to the rest of the world.

The word “empathy” was derided in some quarters of political discourse when President Obama mentioned it in 2009 in the context of a necessary ingredient of a Supreme Court justice, but clearly there isn’t that sort of honest feeling for constituents and the public at large in so many of those charged with protecting the interests of average Americans. Narrated by Matt Damon and told in breathtakingly concise, calmly reasoned strokes, the ire-evoking Inside
Job makes this abundantly clear. In his follow-up to No End in Sight, Ferguson rivetingly connects the dots on the shadowy financial derivatives world and a subprime lending market that swelled to over $600 billion, over one-fifth of all lending in 2006. It all adds up to a corporate-friendly dance party on the backs of retirement fund pensioners and others who can least afford it. The thing that’s most irritating, however, is the sort of shock, befuddlement and indignation at the exceedingly reasonable, base-level questions Ferguson puts to various voices of the status quo in the film. Clearly, their plan is just to dance until the music stops. For more information on the film, click here. (Sony Pictures Classics, PG-13, 105 minutes)

“Mike Leigh meets The Sopranos” is the not entirely inaccurate production-notes shorthand for this British kitchen-sink drama, which stars real-life father and son Bob and Robin Hill as Bill and Karl, middle-management-type sectional chieftains of a crime family struggling to keep their business together as, over the course of a hectic week, infighting and hazy rumors of a police informant in their midst threaten to unravel it completely.

Simpleton Karl (above right, a sort of scruffy, neutered, blue-collar
cousin of John Oliver, physically at least) suffers
his father’s serial disrespect and baiting, and doesn’t do much about it. But when he brings home pregnant
girlfriend Valda (Kerry Peacock), it really doesn’t go over well with either of
his already frazzled parents, including mom Maggie (Julia Deakin). As they press him to cut her lose, Karl’s spine stiffens, coinciding with a series of decisions by Bill to “drain the swamp,” as it were, and methodically eliminate long-time henchmen and allies who might be the potential mole.

Co-written and directed by Ben Wheatley, Down Terrace starts off slow,
impaired by impenetrably thick accents and a misguided, unnecessarily
claustrophobic visual scheme. Opening things up a bit — with wider shots to better give a sense of the movie’s drab domestic settings, which serve as ironic counterpoint to its criminal mischief — would have done small wonders for the movie. Still, for fans of certain British TV crime serials, and particularly those schooled in the cinema of Shane Meadows, Down Terrace eventually takes hold as a passable
slice of darkly humorous, stakes-free entertainment — its narrative
pivots, in which ratcheted-up paranoia gets seriocomically spun off in
homicidal directions, employed in purely functional fashion, against a
backdrop of colorful familial bickering. If anything about this domestic
brood rings true, though, seek counseling immediately. For more information on the film, click here. (Magnet, unrated, 89 minutes)

Whether it’s sports, dancing or eating, if there’s something that Americans like more than recreational activities, hobbies and interests, it’s watching other people compete in those arenas. When it comes specifically to baking and cooking there are, by my last count, 4,752 shows on the Food Network and other cable channels about culinary competitions and/or niche specialties, so it comes as no great surprise that a high-stakes dessert competition would get the full-fledged documentary treatment in the form of Kings of Pastry, opening this week in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Music Hall, Town Center 5 and Playhouse 7.

Co-directed by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, the film focuses on the prestigious Meilleurs Ouvriers de France competition (Best Craftsmen
in France), held, like the Olympics, only once every four years. The sixteen finalists, French-born pastry chefs all, gather in Lyon for three intense days of mixing, piping and sculpting everything from delicate chocolate confections to six-foot sugar sculptures in hopes of being declared one of the best by President Nicolas Sarkozy, and winning a coveted blue, white and red-striped collar — the culinary elite equivalent of a green Master’s jacket in golf, or an Academy Award in cinema.

The film predominantly charts Jacquy Pfeiffer (above), co-founder of
Chicago’s French Pastry School, as he journeys back to his childhood
home of Alsace more than a month before the event to practice for the contest. Two other finalists are
profiled in the film — Regis Lazard, competing for the second time after a crucial drop of his sugar sculpture the first time, and Philippe Rigollot, a chef from
Maison Pic, France’s only three-star restaurant owned by a woman.
During the grueling final competition, chefs work under constant
scrutiny by a squad of master judges, and subject themselves to the critical palates of some of the
world’s most renowned chefs, who evaluate their elaborate pastries. Finally, in a twist that will likely ring familiar to anyone who’s paused on the Food Network for more than five minutes, these pastry marathoners must complete their race against the clock by hand-carrying all their
creations, including their fragile sugar sculptures, through a series of
rooms to a final buffet area without shattering them.

Filmmakers Pennebaker (Monterey Pop, Bob Dylan: Don’t Look Back) and Hegedus (Startup.com) are experienced “name” documentarians and established collaborators (The War Room, Down the Mountain), but they seem to coast a bit here on the exclusivity of their secured access to the never-before-filmed event, largely eschewing probing questioning of its subjects and their unique world in the name of an uninspired, point-and-shoot style that rivals Sarah Palin for its lack of inquisitiveness. The selection process for the finalists? Not addressed. Other competitors outside of the aforementioned trio? Not addressed. The number of designated winners? Not addressed. The specifics of the chefs’ job duties and backgrounds, and how that might either advantage or disadvantage them in certain areas of the competition? Not addressed.

So it’s a sign of the artistry on display that Kings of
Pastry, after a slow start, eventually matures (ripens? comes to a boil?) into something not only engaging, but actually also kind of poignant. The film showcases the extraordinary level of skill and nerve required to tackle the competition, certainly (as well as practice: Pfeiffer sweats out time trials with his coach, while Lazard’s wife notes that his basement kitchen is his true home), but it also
highlights how luck plays a part in things too. (Taste and artistic merit scores are
still subjective, after all.) That makes the culmination of the competition, with its failures and inspirational elevations, something to which everyone can relate. The biggest tangential takeaway, however, is how and why European chefs will always remain, collectively, a cut above their American counterparts — the exactitude required is immense, and Stateside notions of masculinity don’t allow for this much attention to be paid to food of any sort, without much derision. For more information on the movie, click here. (First Run, unrated, 84 minutes)

The Hollywood studio system, almost by its very nature, tends to stifle
and suppress the urge for big screen rumination. In action and horror
films, of course, there’s hardly any precious time for reflection, but
even outside of the lucrative genre realm rarely is there a mainstream
American movie where emotional fumbling or a lack of certitude seems to
define all of the main characters. Audiences desire more rigidly defined
journeys, and don’t want to see the inherent unsettledness of life,
it’s thought.

Directed by John Curran, from a script by Angus
MacLachlan, Stone quietly challenges some of those assumptions. It’s not
wildly esoteric or steeped in unrecognizable metaphor, but Stone is a
film largely (though not entirely) devoid of typical dramatic markers
and signposts. Starring Robert De Niro and Edward Norton, it’s a meditative work about people awash in latent unhappiness, coming up from the mud, and slowly pawing their way to a place where they might (but just as likely might not) be able to get out of it.

Moral crisis, and the flickering possibility of awakening, is at the center of Stone. The film unfolds on the economically depressed outskirts of Detroit, where parole officer Jack Mabry (De Niro), a hard-drinking, introverted Episcopalean, is counting down the days to retirement, which will put him at home more and exacerbate tensions with his long-suffering wife Madylyn (Frances Conroy). Reviewing the case of Gerald “Stone” Creeson (Norton), a cornrowed ex-addict who’s already put in eight years out of a 10- to 15-year sentence for setting a fire to cover up the murder of his grandparents, Jack finds himself on the receiving end of, alternately, flattery and spiteful rage and negativity. Stone needs to convince Jack that he’s remorseful and reformed, but seems caught somewhere in between a sincere, be-what-may roll of the dice and darker impulses.

Part of that negative energy involves Stone’s seemingly devoted wife, Lucetta (Milla Jovovich). In the beginning, they seem to have about as healthy a relationship as one can imagine for a couple physically separated for so long, but as the date for Stone’s hearing draws closer, fissures and tears develop. Outwardly, Madylyn and Lucetta seem to have little in common, the former having channeled her marital frustrations into religion, and the latter characterized by a sunny proactivity and sexual frankness. Both, however, are women that have suffered the sins of the men in their lives, albeit in radically different fashions. It’s here, as Lucetta flirts with and then makes a special proposition to Jack, that the film flirts heaviest with convention — another story of a married man succumbing to sexual temptation. But, even as boundaries are irrevocably crossed, Stone does not content itself with charting expected waters.

Curran has put swallowed domestic misery under the microscope before — both in We Don’t Live Here Anymore and The Painted Veil, the latter on which he teamed with Norton — and here he’s again fascinated with the varying impulses of man, especially when they awaken to the fact that there’s no longer any shared beliefs or purpose tethering them to their loved ones. What is love without commonality, in other words? This deeper psychological investment in action is paramount to Stone‘s adult appeal.

The performances here are all something special, too. For all his scholarly adroitness with book-read characters, Norton
can also breathe wonderful three-dimensionality and humanity into greaseballs and fringe-dwelling types, which he does here. Jovovich,
meanwhile, is great at conveying Lucetta’s swallowed, almost snake-y female
power. It’s different than mere sexual aggressiveness, but a cousin of the
same, and powered by an inner heat to which men respond but also frequently
kind of fear. De Niro, seemingly invigorated by material that asks more of him, also brings his A-game.

An honest appraisal of Stone cedes points for novelty of effort over execution that is solid if not always constructed for cathartic payoff. It’s a shame that the material built around Stone and the intrigue of an in-prison epiphany — is it real, feigned, or somewhere in between? — doesn’t connect more strongly. While bearing witness to a brutal shanking seems the emotional tipping point for Stone, Curran depicts the manifestations of this stirring with a gauzy indistinctness that — if true to the blissed-out, relaxed nature that sometimes flows from religious awakening — is at times a bit maddening. Admittedly, this is tough terrain, since Jack is the only person off whom Stone can bounce these changes, and their interactions are governed by a certain structure, but they feed into a feeling that quietly lingers — that at times the character of Stone has an oppositional-literary feel rather than that of a full-bodied man.

Still, these criticisms take only a bit of shine off of what is otherwise a thoughtful and bracing story of ethical compromise and moral ambiguity. It’s been a long time since the traces of French filmmaker Robert Bresson have been detected in a mainstream Hollywood work, but the ascetic, tightly focused nature of its scripting and telling mark Stone as unmistakably his progeny. It’s a slow and fairly willful psychological seduction, but Curran’s film is still a fascinating work, often times as much for what lies around the edges and in the interstices as for what actually unfolds on screen. (Overture, R, 105 minutes)

Nowhere Boy exists for the same reason that Googling “celebrity high school photos” will yield over 35 million results — there is, in modern society, a deep and abiding obsession with famous people, and so one of the correlative expectations floating about out there is that there surely must have been some fascinating signs of greatness in their adolescence.

Or maybe not. Set in Liverpool in 1955, coming-of-age tale Nowhere
Boy centers around 15-year-old John Lennon (Aaron Johnson, of Kick-Ass), and his differently strained relationships with his stuffy aunt and guardian, Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas), and party-girl mother Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), with whom he has only recently reconnected. Amidst the syrup-thick accents, there’s teenage fisticuffs, a burgeoning awareness of girls, the discovery of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and other music, the formation of a band and, eventually, an encounter with a young Paul McCartney (Thomas Brodie Sangster).

The acting here is fine. In particular, Johnson wears well the mantle of young legend, capturing the hidden effort that so often goes into affecting an air of teenage insouciance, while also slyly spotlighting unspoken feelings of jealousy and competition awakened by Paul — feelings that he himself doesn’t even yet fully understand, but will eventually spur him on to great artistic heights. When the movie is just charting John’s knockabout adventures, and letting Johnson’s lingering silent glances fill in the spaces of quiet heartache and confusion he feels at learning his biological mother has lived virtually around the corner his entire life, it’s in good hands — something trusting, unhurried and subtle.

The problem is that Nowhere
Boy, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood, wants to hurry and get John together with Paul, and poke us in the ribs and show us how important music is to John. And, dramatically speaking, this material is a non-starter. (Damaged kids escape into what they can; for John it was eventually music, though it could have been something else.) Ergo, the second half of the movie just kind of unfolds, without much in the way of surprise, save a late jolt related to familial tragedy. It’s a serviceable snapshot of the developing mind that eventually created some great music — some of the pain and disconnect that found an escapist home in rock ‘n’ roll — but unless one impresses upon the movie some sort of sweeping scope and emotionalism born of a grander investment in the Beatles mythology, Nowhere Boy is at its core a rather unexceptional story, told in conventional fashion. For more information on the movie, click here. (Weinstein Company, R, 98 minutes)

With films like Remember the Titans, The Rookie, Miracle, Invincible and The Greatest Game Ever Played, Disney has not just revitalized but almost entirely owned the truth-based inspirational sports drama subgenre in recent years, with smash hit The Blind Side being a notable exception. Secretariat, starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich, follows in these well-worn grooves, detailing in earnest and narratively conventional fashion the story of the same-named 1973 Triple Crown-winning racehorse. If the drama of its last hour-plus seems predetermined, the film consistently and pleasantly holds one’s attention, albeit more lightly than grippingly. Director Randall Wallace pulls all the emotive levers rather effectively, aided by a slick technical team. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here. (Disney, PG, 123 minutes)

Infidelity, in either temptation or its actualized form, has always offered up rich dramatic terrain, because in addition to being about sex (which immediately piques the interest of at least half of the population), it’s also all wrapped up in betrayal and insecurity. But as the nature of modern marriage has evolved — it’s now much less about providing a base of financial security for women, and more about actual shared values, notions of family and a vision for moving forward together — so too have the manner in which some movies approach the topic of romantic cheating. If couples are cognizant of the differences between men and women, and allowed to have that honest conversation, then that’s but a stone’s throw away from a conversation in which certain extracurricular flings or activities are allowed, or pre-approved.

All of which brings us to multi-hyphenate Katie Aselton’s The Freebie, which bowed at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. A spare, almost enervated character sketch, the movie centers on Darren (Dax Shepard) and Annie (Aselton, above), who from the outside seem to have a solid relationship, and still enjoy each other’s company. Unfortunately, they can’t remember the last time they had sex. When a dinner party conversation leads to a later discussion about the state of their love life, and when an attempted bikini seduction leads to a crossword puzzle race instead of some horizontal action, the pair begins to flirt with an idea for a way to spice things up. The deal they strike: one (calendar-fixed) night of freedom, no strings attached and no questions asked.

Though it has at its core a provocative premise, The Freebie is in certain ways a kind of chaste treatment of the notion that monogamy is a fairly awkward (and unnatural?) state when the
haze of lust has faded, and there are no children involved. The film was workshopped at the Sundance Institute, and it’s no coincidence that it’s executive produced by one of the Duplass brothers (Baghead, The Puffy Chair), reigning kings of the so-called mumblecore movement. Even though they strike upon this radical experiment, its characters are reticent, cuddly-smoochy PDA-types, and they in essence lean back rather than forward, no matter what choices the story foists upon them.

This works well for a bit, establishing a certain intrigue as it relates to who exactly these characters are, and why they find themselves in such a rut. Shepard, who heretofore has specialized in more out-there comedic characters, channels a bit of Owen Wilson’s penchant for cud-chewing conversational ellipticism, and Aselton is equally subdued. Some of the dialogue here is quietly smart, for how it locates what the characters are avoiding saying to one another, and the laughs the movie proffers exist for the most part entirely outside of itself, in our judgments of the characters’ earnest declarations (“The way we love each other is so far beyond whether we have sex every night”).

It’s a disappointment, then, that The Freebie doesn’t take this at-odds tension — the foisting of a hot-and-heavy premise on a couple of characters who have started to look through rather than at or into one another — and ultimately do something with it, in terms of sparking a deeper analysis of their current state of being. The manner in which Aselton constructs her film — its intercut, did he/did she? structure, which vacillates between the couple first agreeing to the deal and the beginning stages of them acting out their trysts — is interesting, but she chooses the wrong wind-up for her third act. The big emotional argument to which The Freebie builds is inherently less interesting than what causes that outburst — the offshoot reasons for Darren and Annie’s individual and collective unhappiness, either in a continuing, latent insecurity or serial sexual unfulfillment. Aselton’s failure to recognize that makes The Freebie‘s climax both empty drama (“You slut, I can’t believe you did that!”) and something of an emotional-psychological cheat. With neither empty titillation, complete feel-good resolution, nor an honest accounting of what triggered this foray into “on the side” fulfillment, the film comes across — despite the quiet rhythms of its scene-to-scene successes — as a watered-down exercise in gender-play sociology. (Phase 4, R, 77 minutes)