LAFF: the Best of the Fest

TINY FURNITURE Writer/director Lena Dunham stars as Aura, a recent film-theory grad, YouTube artist and family black sheep who moves home to the Tribeca loft shared by her artist mom and annoyingly graceful, accomplished younger sister. Aura takes a restaurant job, falls into ill-defined and ill-advised relationships with two dudes, and becomes obsessed with old journals documenting her mom's own lost 20s. Awkward sex and acute ego skewering ensue. Indisputably autobiographical (Dunham's real mom and sister play Aura's mom and sister; the family apartment plays itself), Tiny Furniture has earned the 23-year-old Dunham comparisons to Woody Allen. She's a gifted comedienne, eager to plumb her insecurities over her imperfect physical appearance for both poignancy and laughs. Dunham's willingness to put it all out there both physically and emotionally may be tied to the fact that she's gestated her talent in Web video. Consider Tiny Furniture the "oversharing" impulse of contemporary Internet culture, embodied in (and stabilized by) comparatively old-fashioned cinematic technique. (Regal; Sat., June 19, 7:30 p.m., Mon., June 21, 10 p.m.) (K.L.)

UPSTATE After the death of her mother, Liz (Iracel Rivero) takes a road trip to visit Steve (Max Arnaud), a former partner in crime now living in the middle of nowhere with his decade-older wife, Sylvia (Suzan Mikiel Kennedy). Awkwardness gives way to crisis, which more or less resolves in trippy psychological inquiry. Directors Andrew Luis and Katherine Nolfi initially seem to be pitting the women against each other, even while slowly revealing their similarities; it's suggested that they could be two versions of the same woman, 10 years apart. After a bumpy start, Upstate clicks into place about halfway through, when the tension between Liz and Sylvia builds to a peak, and the film's more pedestrian love-triangle plot beats are absorbed by a highly assured, hazy hangout vibe reminiscent of Olivier Assayas in party mode. Shooting on 16 mm, the filmmakers at times achieve an intimacy that feels hyperreal. Too bad Steve is characterized as such a grating goofball that it's never clear what either of these complicated, comely women would ever see in him. Maybe that's the point? (Regal; Mon., June 21, 7:45 p.m., Thurs., June 24, 5 p.m., Fri., June 25, 9:45 p.m.) (K.L.)

Totally blogged out: Joshua Leonard in Bitter Feast

Disco and Atomic War

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• Christina Kolozsvary Chrissy
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WAITING FOR "SUPERMAN" In this summer of pumped-up fictional action heroes, it seems doubtful we'll see a more courageous or inspiring individual than Geoffrey Canada, the real-life president and CEO of Harlem Children's Zone, an organization dedicated to keeping inner-city kids in school. Canada is one of the key figures in the fight for the future of the U.S. classroom, which propels Davis Guggenheim's sobering documentary Waiting for "Superman." Painfully aware that his children can attend stellar private schools that other parents can't afford, the Oscar-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth briskly covers the many obstacles impeding American students' ability to learn — incompetent public school systems, stubborn unions, a dearth of truly committed teachers. "Superman" may be too glossy to be the final word on the subject, but Guggenheim's examination of how our nation's poor educational system jeopardizes all our futures resonates with genuine concern for the complexity of the crisis. (Regal; Mon., June 21, 8 p.m., Tues., June 22, 5:15 p.m.) (Tim Grierson)

CRITIC'S PICK WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME? For the first several minutes of director Kimi Takesue's documentary, viewers may well be asking the question in the film's title. Delivered sans voice-over or any establishing context, Takesue's film drops the audience into an elliptical journey through layers of life in modern Uganda: a high-society wedding (whose groom looks like he's attending a funeral); a female weight-lifting competition; a break-dance battle that's stolen by a young child. Once you're acclimated to the unforced pace, the wonderfully composed images (some quite painterly) wash over you. It's only near the end that any reference to the country's bloody history arises, and you realize you've been watching a poetic corrective to lingering stereotypes. (Regal; Sun., June 20, 7:30 p.m., Mon., June 21, 9:45 p.m., Thurs., June 24, 5:15 p.m.) (E.H.)

CRITIC'S PICK THE WOLF KNIFE In her photographs and videos, visual artist/filmmaker Laurel Nakadate often uses her body as a loaded weapon, playing with her ability to "pass" as a younger lady in ways both relatively harmless (as a Yale MFA student, she dressed as a Girl Scout and sold cookies door to door with a hidden surveillance camera on her sash) and downright dangerous (she's also made videotapes with strange men who try to start conversations with her, sometimes on solo road trips that she's described as "my little version of Lolita, only Lolita's on her own, taking herself on a trip"). Her second feature film, The Wolf Knife, explores these reverse–Little Red Riding Hood dynamics further. An ultra-low-budget road-trip flick, Wolf stars Christina Kolozsvary as Chrissy, a scrappy, pouty, ballsy would-be bombshell totally skeeved out by her mom's new fiancé. June (Julie Potretz), Chrissy's shyer, blonder, effortlessly hot best friend, offers to tag along on a journey to track down Chrissy's real dad. Once they hit the road, we never see the girls in transit — we catch up with them once they've flopped out in sweaty motel rooms, where they munch Cheetos and feed each other secrets and lies. For its first hour, Wolf is a loose but evocative portrait of the relationship between two girls alienated from everyone but each other, still feeling out the difference between affection and attraction and discovering the relationship between cause and effect, dying for attention but a long way from being able to manipulate desire. And then the limbo snaps, and everything goes gloriously off the rails: Two desperate, unbearably tense confrontations raise the stakes, revealing Chrissy to be more sociopathic than the average mixed-up teen girl, and The Wolf Knife to be far bolder and more controlled than it initially seems. (Downtown Independent; Sun., June 20, 7:30 p.m., Regal; Tues., June 22, 5 p.m., Wed., June 23, 10 p.m.) (K.L.)