THE CARTEL A union-busting doc with an adamant — if not quite apolitical — focus on the children slipping through the cracks, The Cartel uses New Jersey as Exhibit A in its case against this country's crooked education system. Though it is first in education spending, New Jersey has an abysmal dropout rate and equally dire testing scores; director Bob Bowdon cites what a former school superintendent calls "rampant, pervasive, institutionalized" budgetary corruption and a deeply entrenched, self-interested teachers union as the culprits. Bowdon, a former local television reporter and anchorman, pulls together a familiar repertoire of talking heads, man-on-the-street interviews, remedial graphics and stilted B-roll, and ultimately this information-packed indictment plays like a feature-length "in-depth" news segment. Moving loosely from angle to angle — the tenure system, the plot against voucher programs, the stonewalling of charter schools — The Cartel makes up for what it lacks in style and structure with selective but stone-cold facts. Although a school-district president rolling up to a budgetary hearing in a white limo and an administration parking lot clogged with luxury cars are undeniably good gets, Bowdon's strength as a documentarian is more evident in the patience and logic with which he makes an argument for a state and a system in desperate need of reform. (Michelle Orange) (Sunset 5)
DANCING ACROSS BORDERS When 16-year-old Sokvannara Sar, a charismatic Cambodian with a gift for his native folk dances, arrived in New York City in 2001 as the protegé of the unbelievably rich Manhattan socialite (and generous dance patron) Anne Bass, he had never seen ballet — and wasn't that stoked about it. "This ballet thing is going to turn me into a duck," he remembers thinking. "I don't think I want to do this." It's a sentiment Sar repeats throughout Dancing Across Borders, and it is to first-time director Bass' credit that she marked his ambivalence in this otherwise blithely tone-deaf ode to her own generosity and that of dance instructor Olga Kostritzky. Several uncomfortable factors are at play in the story of Sar's success — the clear class and culture shock; the pressure to compress 10 years of ballet training into three lest he lose his patron's attention — but Bass, enamored of his talent and determined to shape it to her liking ("I hope he's going to be what I want him to be," Kostritzky says), elides every one. Instead, we get white folks ruminating lyrically on the peasant Asian's role as a kind of grand jeté bridge between East and West, and long performance sequences that are dazzling to behold but quite troubling to contemplate. (Michelle Orange) (Nuart)
DEATH AT A FUNERAL It doesn’t take much to improve the first Death at a Funeral, the flat Frank Oz–directed Britcom of 2007; a few tossed-off references to Jet and sickle cell anemia will do it. Though the plot of Dean Craig’s original script remains almost entirely intact (he receives the sole writer’s credit), the tweaks by star-producer Chris Rock — who replaces the pallid ninnies of London with a mostly African-American extended clan gathered in Pasadena to say goodbye to a deceased patriarch — yield some particularly sharp specifics. Rock plays elder son Aaron, whose successful-writer younger brother, Ryan (Martin Lawrence), has made his riches off books titled Mama’s Secret, Black Hurt and Rhonda’s Tiny Box. Eulogizing Dad before learning about his life on the “waaaaay down-low” (Peter Dinklage reprises his role as the extorting secret boyfriend), Aaron refers to his father’s “love of Golden Girls, especially when it went into syndication.” But Rock’s interventions can’t compensate for excessive fealty to dumb gags involving watery poop and designer hallucinogens. Some cast members bring welcome controlled mania: Tracy Morgan, as a hypochondriacal friend of the family, further hones his logorrheic outbursts. Others, like Luke Wilson, as a scorned suitor of Zoe Saldana, are such null presences that they should have been in the original. (Melissa Anderson)
GO EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP Exit Through the Gift Shop is not just the definitive portrait of street-art counterculture but also a hilarious exposé on the gullibility of the masses who embrace manufactured creative personas. Though it's credited as a Banksy picture — as in the ever-elusive U.K. graffiti ninja — the film began with him as its on-camera subject. Banksy's talking head appears faceless under a dark hood to help explain how the role reversal occurred. The real "director" of most of the footage herein is Thierry Guetta, an eccentric French expat in L.A. who began videotaping his cousin — the mosaic artist Space Invader — on his night bombing missions. From there, Guetta earned the trust of DIY art notables Banksy, Swoon and Shepard Fairey, whom Guetta meets on camera at a Kinko's as Fairey's printing out enlarged copies of his notorious "André the Giant Has a Posse" designs. The irony of creating art with tools from a commercial franchise is not lost on Fairey, who admits that his logos "gain real power from perceived power." Without ruining the late-breaking surprises, the impact of Fairey's quote sharply resonates after Guetta rechristens himself as the artist "Mr. Brainwash," exploiting his connections for his first solo exhibition, an inexplicably successful event aided by an L.A. Weekly cover story that inspired frothing among gallery patrons. Too clever to dismiss as another recycled joke on the inanity of modern art, Exit is strangely inspirational. Go on, pick up an aerosol can, paint yourself an empire, and see if we call your bluff. (Aaron Hillis) (ArcLight, Landmark)
