Los Angeles Film Festival 2011 Preview

SELF MADE In British artist Gillian Wearing's experimental docu-stunt, a group of non-thespians are put through a crash course in Method acting, with the goal of translating their traumatic personal histories into staged short films within the film. The process — the intense workshopping the participants go through, alone and as a group, to learn how to first access and then express their memories — is more interesting than the end product. One player, after acting out a dramatization of his worst fear, sums up my feelings about the short films exactly: "I was hoping it would be metaphorical, rather than explicit. But it just turned into explicit." But the tension that runs throughout between "real" and performed, recorded and created, is compelling, particularly if you think of Self Made as a companion to that other recent, British performative documentary puzzle, The Arbor. (K.L.)

SENNA Asif Kapadia's documentary on the life, career and death of Brazilian Formula One race car driver Ayrton Senna is composed entirely of archival footage — from TV broadcasts, home movies and, most powerfully, the flickering feeds captured by helmet cams, which put the viewer in Senna's seat for a number of races, including the one that killed him. Audio interviews with racing experts and Senna intimates are laid on top of a pulsing electro score, but they fall a bit short in providing context: While illustrating in depth the racer's complicated relationship with the sport's governing body and his rivals, the film fails to make a case for why Senna's story has any larger relevance outside the world of Formula One. But there's no denying the visceral impact of its best sequences, particularly the harrowing climax. (K.L.)

Family Instinct

Mysteries of Lisbon

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Los Angeles, CA 90015

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• Heather Courtney
• Chely Wright
• Plymouth Sundance
• Arts, Entertainment, and Media
• Film Festivals

SEX CRIMES UNIT In many ways, Sex Crimes Unit is just a couple of real-life Law & Order: SVU episodes mixed together. But this documentary about the formation and day-to-day challenges of New York's sex crimes unit is so engrossing that its surface familiarity is not an issue. Particularly illuminating are the talking heads who outline the history of the unit, and the countless ways it has been at the forefront of changing laws and cultural attitudes (viewers are reminded — or newly informed — that as recently as 20 years ago, marital rape was not a crime, and acquaintance rapes weren't prosecuted almost everywhere in America). Both behind-the-scenes strategizing and courtroom footage of real-life cases unfold before the camera, illustrating just what's at stake for this office and the victims it represents. (E.H.)

TYRANNOSAUR Written and directed by actor Paddy Considine, Tyrannosaur traverses well-trod territory — a damaged old crank brought to redemption by an angelic female savior — without offering much in the way of invention. Peter Mullan plays Joseph, an elderly vandal who kicks his own dog to death. Hannah (Olivia Colman) is the religious shop owner who prays for his soul while fighting to escape her monstrous husband (Eddie Marsan). A color palette inspired by the low-hanging Leeds sky enhances a lingering sense of doom. Virtually hopeless and brutal for brutality's sake, the film does feature multifaceted performances by Mullan and Colman, and careful direction by Considine, all of whom won prizes at Sundance for their work. (S.L.)

GO  UNFINISHED SPACES In 1961, Fidel Castro asked three architects to design a complex of buildings to house Cuba's new National Art Schools. Inspired by the feeling of freedom in the air, the chosen designers set out to create structures that would embody the utopian ethics of the revolution. And then the ethics of the revolution changed, and construction was halted indefinitely. The unfinished buildings still stand, a reminder of the lost promise of the '60s, and of how the ideals that fueled that era soured once given practical application. Composed primarily of archival footage and candid interviews with the now-aged architects, Spaces gets flabby as it goes on, but it's still a fascinating example of a nation's evolution told through the life of a single art project. (K.L.)

UNRAVELED In 2009, attorney Marc Dreier admitted to forgeries that netted his law firm more than $750 million. Directed by former Dreier employee Marc Simon, Unraveled investigates the strange mix of hubris and low self-esteem that drives people with enormous amounts of money to do incredibly stupid things. Under house arrest in his Manhattan apartment, Dreier narrates his own rise and fall through interviews interspersed with graphic-novel-style re-enactments of his crimes, an odd directorial choice that verges on distracting. Simon's stated goal is for audiences to understand Dreier on his own terms, so Dreier, his son and his lawyers constitute the film's entire cast. The absence of input from others involved and a lack of compelling visual footage detract from this otherwise mesmerizing glimpse inside the mind of a white-collar thief. (S.L.)

WISH ME AWAY This confessional documentary looks at the country music world from a new angle: the closet. Directors Bobbie Berleffi and Beverly Kopf relay Chely Wright's long, painful process of coming out as the first openly gay country singer, and subsequently going from mainstay of the Nashville-centric scene to pariah. Archival footage of Wright's public life is backed with intimate voice-over in which she recalls private agonies: the dissolution of relationships, acts of deflection and repression, and a near-suicide attempt with a loaded gun. Betraying a need to be liked that hasn't left her even as she's gained a renewed sense of self, the image Wright leaves is of a woman tiptoeing in and out of the spotlight, hoping to reconcile her star persona with her true self. (M.N.)