LA Weekly

CHOP SHOP (USA) Nothing enlivens the screen like a sharp kid, and they don’t come sharper than 12-year-old Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco). With black-bean eyes and a bush of tight curls, Alejandro is our guide through the scrap yards and repair shops of Willet’s Point, the Queens neighborhood where he spends his days buffing cars and running errands for square-jawed adults. Neo-realist pieces like this tend to come with a hefty dose of moralizing, but Man Push Cart director Ramin Bahrani’s C hop Shop triumphs in its refusal to judge its characters. We’re asked only to watch: Alejandro microwaves popcorn for a midnight snack; hawks candy on the subway for extra cash; plays ball with a pal in the shadow of Shea Stadium. Chop Shop is about the tragedy of being a grown-up kid — Alejandro is tough enough to maneuver in an unforgiving adult world, but too young not to be hopeful. He gets hurt for it in the end, but the movie won’t spend time punishing him. What lasts is the image of the eagle-eyed boy running BMW fenders twice his size across the cluttered backstreet of Willet’s Point. It’s hard to imagine a more concise summation of what it’s like to be a kid. (Sun., Nov. 4, 6:30 p.m.; Tues., Nov. 6, 12:30 p.m.) (Sam Sweet)

CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY (USA) Thirty years apart in age, British novelist Christopher Isherwood (whose Berlin Stories inspired the musical Cabaret ) and the American portrait artist Don Bachardy remained a couple for 34 years, until Isherwood’s 1986 death. From their Santa Monica bungalow, the duo held court, welcoming movie stars, writers, and the generally fabulous — all of which Bachardy, now 73, recounts in this affecting and long-overdue documentary. Co-directors Guido Santi and Tina Mascara get off to a wobbly start, jumping from archival footage of Isherwood’s life-defining early travels with the poets W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender to Bachardy’s recollections of Isherwood’s disapproval of Liza Minnelli’s performance in the film of Cabaret. Once Isherwood’s timeline catches up to Bachardy — the documentary’s undeniable star — the filmmakers relax, and what emerges is a genuine love story grounded in the artistic inspiration the two men found in each other. (Isherwood’s masterpiece, A Single Man, was prompted by a brief period of estrangement between the two.) To describe the novelist’s final days, Bachardy opens a drawer and begins pulling out the magnificent deathbed drawings he did of Isherwood — a fusion of art and love that’s deeply moving. ( Sat., Nov. 10, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 11, 1:15 p.m. ) (Chuck Wilson)

CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO (USA) A more beautiful documentary you’re unlikely to find — director Matthew Ogens has composed every scene as though it could be freeze-framed and hung on a wall. But beneath its shimmering beauty is the kind of ugly truth about Hollywood Boulevard panhandlers — the struggling actors and daydream believers and other assorted losers and lifers — who dress up in shabby blockbuster attire, hoping to collect tourists’ spare change in exchange for a gag Polaroid. Ogens focuses on a low-rent Justice League: Superman fetishist Chris Dennis (who says his mom is actress Sandy—dubious), Batman rage-aholic Max Allen, small-town prom queen turned Wonder Woman Jennifer Gehrt, and a homeless Hulk named Joe McQueen. Ogens, an ad man, treats his subjects with considerable kindness and care, so what could have been a condescending descent into bottom feeding turns into a rather loving, often heartbreaking portrait of decent people just trying to scrape by. Dennis emerges as the star of the movie as he battles for truth, justice, and the American way on his own little piece of real estate, where evildoers smoking cigarettes in Wolverine costumes threaten the enterprise. By the time he meets up with Margot Kidder at a costume contest, you’ll believe the man can fly. (Fri., Nov. 2, 9:45 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 4, 3:30 p.m.) (Robert Wilonsky)

THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS (France) This exquisite new film by the ever-youthful Jacques Rivette (who turned 79 this year) adapts the titular Balzac novella about the tempestuous affair between a married 19th-century duchess (Jeanne Balibar) and the brusque war hero (Guillaume Depardieu) who has survived a perilous African campaign only to fall victim to passions of which he scarcely knew he was capable. Although more conventional in its narrative structure and running time (a mere two hours and 15 minutes) than such legendary Rivette opuses as Celine and Julie Go Boating and Out 1, The Duchess of Langeais nevertheless stands as a considered rumination on two of the director’s eternal themes: unrequited love, and the tension between life and theater. Here the characters aren’t literally actors, but as a curtain closes violently on one scene and parts on another, it’s clear that for Rivette all the world is a stage and those of us upon it are but marionettes in the grip of our desires. That is especially true of Balibar, whose heartbreaking performance pivots from womanly decorum to girlish ardor and whose every nuanced gesture belies the terrible longing she doesn’t allow to pass her tightly pursed lips. (Wed., Nov. 7, 6:45 p.m.; Fri., Nov. 9, 3:45 p.m.) (Scott Foundas)

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (Romania) The title refers to the length of a pregnancy — specifically, the one a college student named Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) seeks to terminate in a midsize Romanian town circa 1987, when Ceausescu is still in power and abortions are illegal. Helping Gabita to coordinate the backroom procedure is her friend and roommate Otilia (the brilliant Anamaria Marescu), who emerges as the central figure in director Cristian Mungiu’s masterfully crafted, intensely claustrophobic drama, which has become known by the rather dubious shorthand of “the Romanian abortion movie” ever since it won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. True, those who accused Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up of being a thinly veiled Family Values polemic may find 4 Months more to their liking, but it becomes clear early on that Mungiu is less interested in the life-vs.-choice debate than in the way people living in a socially repressive society adapt to circumstance — how a pack of cigarettes becomes a form of currency, a hot shower a luxury item. Is this a world in which any mother should endeavor to raise a child? That is the question 4 Months implicitly asks and leaves us to grapple with well after its final images have faded from the screen. (Sat., Nov. 3, 9:45 p.m.; Mon., Nov. 5, 4:30 p.m.) (SF)

THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS (Canada) “My name is Tracey Berkowitz, 15. Just a normal girl who hates herself.” So narrates Tracey (Ellen Page), who is, on the surface, a typical miserable movie teen — her parents treat her hatefully, the kids at school call her terrible names, and the alt-punk boy of her dreams may be a louse. We have been here before, but Canadian director Bruce McDonald brings such passion and fury to the telling of Tracey’s tale that storytelling clichés take on renewed authenticity. Taking the film’s title literally, McDonald and co-editors Jeremiah Munce and Gareth C. Scales turn each scene into multi-panel mosaics that skitter across the screen like playing cards — two panels, then eight, then 14, then 23. One loses count and gradually worries less about technique and more about Tracey, who’s wandering an unknown city trying to find her missing little brother, who doesn’t talk but barks like a dog, and is as dearly loved by their parents as Tracey is loathed. Adapting her 1998 novel, screenwriter Maureen Medved resorts to stereotype with every character except Tracey, a flaw I began to think might actually be true to how some teens perceive the world. Regardless, Ellen Page makes us believe, with a fierce, uncompromising performance that deserves to be noted as one of the year’s bravest. (Tues., Nov. 6, 6:45 p.m.; Wed., Nov. 7, 2 p.m.) (CW)