Movie Reviews: An American Affair, Phoebe in Wonderland, 12

AN AMERICAN AFFAIR Even the most insatiable JFK-conspiracy-theory freak won’t get much juice out of William Sten Olsson’s An American Affair, which subscribes to a pretty tiresome CIA/Cuba scenario (reprisal for failing to assassinate Castro or something). Until the end, all that is window-dressing for the summer of ’63 story of one Adam Stafford (Cameron Bright), a thoroughly loathsome, unprepossessing 13-year-old creep. Adam gets into the habit of playing rear window with new neighbor Catherine Caswell (Gretchen Mol), who likes to sit topless in her window in between chauffeured assignations with Kennedy. Having played Bettie Page as an adorably innocent and vacant dominatrix-next-door type, Mol now walks through the part of a blandly free-spirited artist — the kind who tears up her backyard because “form is dead” and goes on acid trips with droning sitar music (in 1963! So ahead of the curve!). You know no good can come of Adam landscaping Catherine’s garden, peeking through her windows at night, and getting caught by trenchcoated CIA types who speak ominously of “the Cubans.” (Many lines like, “Christ! Bobby!” ensue.) Only Noah Wyle, as Adam’s unreadable dad, rises above the muck; he deserves his Tarantino-aided resurrection sooner rather than later. (Sunset 5) (Vadim Rizov)

BETWEEN LOVE & GOODBYE Aching to stay close to East Village glam-pop singer Kyle (Simon Miller), strapping French actor Marcel (Justin Tensen) weds a lesbian pal for his green card, but blood proves thicker than the spit these boys swap in Casper Andreas’ melodramatic, low-budget bummer. Named from a sampling of Kyle’s lyrics, Between Love & Goodbye follows said timeline in the couple’s relationship, as they’re torn apart by the poisonous arrival of a jealous new couch-surfer, Kyle’s transgendered ex-prostitute sister April (Rob Harmon). Dispassionate about conveying any personality depth beyond Marcel’s oversensitive clinginess, April’s bitchy entitlement, and Kyle’s power-bottom passivity, the story Andreas seems more devilishly eager to tell is what happens after goodbye, when the break-up degenerates into catty feuding. All the players recruit friends and roomies to take sides and soon this is war, with eviction threats, tattling to Immigration, and a hair-pulling scrap that ends in stitches and assault charges. Few will see a point to this soap-opera hysteria, but the perspective needed is from outside the theater: If this unconvincing bore weren’t gay-themed, who would even watch it? (Sunset 5) (Aaron Hillis)

ECHELON CONSPIRACY The box-office suicide title refers to the National Security Agency’s database for collecting surveillance material. Echelon Conspiracy’s “chilling” what-if proposition is that it should become a sentient, self-operating force — aptly, the screenplay’s blind trowelling of action clichés (“You try to run and I will hunt you down!”) seems like the work of Final Draft operating on its own. Or of Pat Hobby. Or of ... Iron Eagle scribe Kevin Elders. Shane West, apparently being paid for every finicky overreaction, is an American tech guy abroad, swept into a Mysterious International Conspiracy after his random receipt of a clairvoyant cell phone that text messages him the keys to easy money ... and easy death. Exposition is reeled out with Bangkok, Prague and Moscow variously visible in the background. Edward Burns, with his eternal air of midtown bartender, drops in as a casino detective/ex-government operative. Digressions to dyspeptic overseer Martin Sheen in a commercial park building playing NSA headquarters open the door to some lazy-cynical Buck Fush material. Given the passivity of computer use, the “hacker thriller” is film history’s great running joke, but special attention should go to Echelon Conspiracy’s authors for conceiving a climax that tries to juice tension out of someone using a search engine and staring at a download countdown. (Selected theaters) (Nick Pinkerton)

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EVERLASTING MOMENTS Lovely to look at but too slow to get lost in, Jan Troell’s new movie is a tribute to still photography filtered through a portrait of working-class life wracked by war and want in early 20th century Sweden. Written by Niklas Rådström from a story by Troell and his wife Agneta about her ancestor Maria Larsson, a mother of seven who won a camera in a lottery and used it both to record and survive her harsh life, the movie satisfies for an hour, but never quite persuades that its subject is worth two. For all its tumultuous backdrop, Everlasting Moments plays out on a much narrower canvas than Troell’s 1996 masterpiece Hamsun, which gave us a hugely transcendent figure to chew on. Where Hamsun probed the power of art to corrupt the soul, Everlasting Moments stakes a claim for the power of craft to elevate the spirit. In other words, it’s pretty like a Rembrandt, but far less exciting. We never learn whether Maria’s photos were ever seen outside her family, which wouldn’t matter much if Troell were able to make more of his heroine (played by Maria Heiskanen) than a regulation Ma Joad who achieves some measure of control. Mikael Persbrandt is the life of the party as the unfaithful lush of a husband who nonetheless provided his wife with as many everlasting moments as did her camera. (Ella Taylor)