Pick of the day
`A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints’ (star)(star)(star)1/2 (Dito Montiel, United States; 1:38)
No one can accuse Dito Montiel of sugarcoating his past. The memoirist turned screenwriter turned director has hit it out of the park with his first feature, an unflinching, often brutal retrospective of his formative years in Astoria, Queens.
It was the worst of times … and that’s it. Simmering violence, drug abuse, aggressive sexuality, and supreme dysfunction were facts of life for Dito and his friends. Not that they saw it that way. Wandering through the streets, kicking garbage, catcalling girls, harassing bodega owners, the young Dito (Shia LaBeouf, in a sharp, clear-eyed, career-defining performance) pronounces, “This is heaven.” The movie intersperses flashbacks from the summer of 1986 with the present day, when Dito returns home after 15 years to confront his dying, bitter father.
“A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” is culled from Montiel’s book of the same name, but anyone who buys a ticket expecting a faithful page-to-screen translation will be disappointed. Montiel labored to smooth the book’s jagged edges and stream-of-consciousness transitions into a narrative flow but left the intensity of his memories intact.
The movie is awash in great performances. Robert Downey Jr. plays the adult Dito, and he ricochets with his trademark nervous energy between Rosario Dawson, in the small but beautifully realized part of the grown-up childhood love interest, Chazz Palminteri as his tortured, dying father and Dianne Wiest as his mother, her weariness surrounding her like a fog.
The real revelation here, however, is Channing Tatum, a relative unknown whose turn as doomed tough guy Antonio reaches heights barely hinted at in his previous roles (in “Step Up” and “She’s the Man”). Brooding, physically commanding and dangerous, Tatum’s performance recalls Brando at his peak.
Abrasive and challenging, “Saints” is also deeply warm, without succumbing to sappiness. That’s a real feat given its subject matter; homecomings, as lesser films have proven, are ripe for sentimentality. 8:15 p.m Fri., AMC; 6 p.m. Sun., LM.
–Jessica Reaves
Other choices
`Severance’ (star)(star)(star)1/2
(Christopher Smith, U.K.; 1:36)
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The anti-“Saw”: A slasher pic with an ingenious premise and a sly sense of humor. On a corporate team-building exercise somewhere in rural Hungary, the sales team of a British weapons manufacturing firm runs afoul of a psychopath of shadowy origin. Part of the Chicago fest’s “Late Night Screamings!” line-up, director Smith’s rollicking horror bash settles for some routine gore in the later scenes, but most of it’s a gas. Plus there’s an outlandish sight gag involving a misfiring missile and an unlucky jetliner, as audacious as anti-American jokes get these days. And these days there are a lot of ’em. 11 pm. Fri., AMC; 11 p.m. Oct. 13, LM; 8:30 p.m. Tue., LM.–Michael Phillips
`Thicker Than Water’ (star)(star)(star)
(Arni Olafur Asgeirsson, Iceland; 1:30)
It’s like modern-day Ibsen, from the land due west of Ibsen’s Norway. With his wife (Margret Vilhjalmsdottir) about to give birth to their second child, a Reykjavik optometrist (Hilmar Jonsson) learns that he is not the biological father of their 10-year-old son. A well-ordered life suddenly tailspins. Director Asgeirsson maintains a controlled and perceptive surface, under which all the rage and jealousy and pain sloshes around. Well acted by all, en route to a humane and forgiving conclusion. 6 p.m. Fri., LM; 8 p.m. Sat., AMC; 5 p.m. Sun., AMC.–M.P.
`King and the Clown’ (star)(star)(star)
(Jun-ik Lee, South Korea; 1:59)
This lusty Korean period epic, in the Im Kwon-taek tradition, became South Korea’s all-time box-office champ this year. In it, two traveling 16th Century player-clowns, one a swaggering macho brawler, the other a gentle drag artist, are trapped in a Scheherazade-like relationship with a tyrant-king who demands that they keep him laughing to stave off their execution–and who develops a yen for the female impersonator. An offbeat crowd-pleaser: flashy, bawdy, gorgeously designed and shot. (In Korean, with English subtitles.) 7 p.m. Fri., THN; 8 p.m. Sat., AMC; 5:30 p.m. Oct. 15, LM.–Michael Wilmington
`Street Thief’ (star)(star)1/2
(Malik Bader, U.S.; 1:26)
The mock-documentary genre continues to expand its dramatic parameters, as proven by this small, homegrown bit of deception. Shooting in his native Chicago on high-def digital video, director Bader portrays a burglar named Kaspar Carr. The conceit is this: The thief allows a camera crew to follow him around and make a movie of his steely exploits. Mercurial and manipulative, Carr plays his chroniclers like a fiddle. While the film lacks sharp edges and narrative surprises, it at least asks a good question: At what point does a media witness to a crime become an accomplice? 6 p.m. Fri., AMC; 6:15 p.m. Mon., AMC; 8:30 p.m. Oct. 18, AMC.–M.P.
`Fireworks Wednesday’ (star)(star)
(Asghar Farhadi, Iran; 1:44)
A day in the life of marital dysfunction, “Fireworks” follows Hedieh Tehrani as a suspicious wife who’s convinced her husband is cheating on her and Tareneh Alidousti as a soon-to-be-wed housekeeper who is drafted into a plot to expose the husband’s deceptions. The film marks the third feature outing for Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, who might consider snappier pacing next time; “Fireworks,” while moderately entertaining, is at least 30 minutes too long. (In Farsi, with English subtitles.) 5 p.m Sat., AMC; 4 p.m. Sun., AMC.–J.R.
`Renaissance’ no star rating
(Christian Volckman, France, U.K., Luxembourg; 1:45)
This new motion-capture animated film is visually wondrous experience in high-contrast black and white, bogged down by a slow, underwrought story and uninvolving characters. It would be easy to dismiss it as another great-looking film with little else to offer, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. The film mixes sci-fi and noir in ways familiar to anyone who has been exposed to “Blade Runner,” “Minority Report” and any number of other novels and films. However, the result is an original visualization that advances both the look of motion capture and the ability of the medium to adapt elements from other media–in this case, opening up the possibilities in borrowing the style of a graphic novel and successfully expanding it to the scope of cinema in ways that surpass even “Sin City.” With Daniel Craig, Romola Garai and Ian Holm. 8:15 p.m. Fri., LM; 7:30 p.m. Sun., AMC; 8:45 p.m. Tue., LM.
–Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times