'49 Up'

After four decades, Jackie finally gives director Michael Apted what-for. He has been chronicling her life and that of a dozen others for British television (in this country, movies) since the early '60s.

	Jackie, Sue and Lynn in Michael Apted's "49 Up." Click photo for larger image. Related article Three Rivers Film Festival schedule

Jackie is still smarting over a long-ago question about whether she was ready for marriage. Now 49, she knows what reality-show TV participants everywhere have learned: "You will edit this program as you see fit."

But she adds, "This one may be -- may be -- the first one that's about us, rather than about your perception of us." His perception seems rather keen, although it's fascinating to contrast the attitudes of adolescence with adult realities.

Some are on second marriages, and all but one are parents or grandparents, and their families are their greatest source of joy. Like 49-year-olds around the world, they know the sting of their parents' deaths.

Confronted with archival footage, they often say they don't recognize themselves as 7-year-olds. Bruce, a teacher who married late in life and now seems a sweet dad, calls his younger self "a little bit sad, little bit lost."

Imagine, though, if someone visited you every seven years and dragged your painful past out of the compartment where you parked it. That's what a quiet participant named Suzy says. Married for 27 years, mother of two and at long last comfortable in her own skin, she acknowledges, "I don't like a million people picking over my life."

When she turns 50, she might bow out of Apted's project. That would be perfectly understandable but a shame for those of us who feel as if we know this gang; it's like encountering friends of a friend at a party every so often. It's always good to catch up.

-- Barbara Vancheri, Post-Gazette movie editor

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'Stolen'

The fact that it took place on St. Patrick's Day of 1990 should have told them something, but it didn't: Sophisticated thieves disguised as policemen conned their way into Boston's Isabella Gardner Museum and pulled off the biggest art heist in modern history: 13 priceless paintings by the likes of Rembrandt, Degas, Manet and Vermeer.

Art detective Harold Smith in "Stolen." Click photo for larger image.

That art crime-of-the-20th-century is the subject of "Stolen," director Rebecca Dreyfus' riveting documentary at hand in the Three Rivers Film Festival. No one with a serious interest in the European masters should miss it.

Chief among those masters was Dutchman Jan Vermeer, whose obscurity and early death left the world with just three dozen canvases, brilliant explorations of light, perspective, mood and color. One of the stolen gems was a Vermeer masterpiece called "The Concert," whose texture, text and subtext are glorious mysteries in themselves.

The sorrowful mystery is why it and the dozen other pictures haven't been recovered, which is a separate and much more important issue than why the culprits haven't been caught. Dreyfus' beautifully assembled doc makes it clear that local, state and federal investigators -- then and now -- foolishly prioritized perpetrator apprehension instead of art recovery.

The resulting loss is only grievous to effete snobs, right? Wrong. Through a delicate melding of enhanced visuals and expert interviews, Dreyfus shows us -- lovingly and insightfully -- the inner depth and universal value of the Vermeer and Rembrandt pictures beyond any price tags attached to them.

That's what inspires her (and our) hero of the piece, Harold Smith, world's most renowned art detective. She follows this Lloyd's of London sleuth as he checks out the criminal underground leads on two continents and gets tantalizingly close to a solution involving the IRA. Droll, deadpan Mr. Smith strikes a weird figure in his bowler hat and eye patch, like a Magritte figure come to life. We learn that he looks the way he does not for effect but to try to hide the terrible skin cancer that is disintegrating him.

Equally fascinating is the life and acquisitive motivation of Isabella Gardner (1840-1924), the woman whose fabulous collection and private museum are the victims of what one forlorn aficionado calls "this most reckless form of hostage taking."

It's a terrific mystery, less -- or maybe a little more? -- satisfying for being unsolved.

-- Barry Paris, Post-Gazette film critic

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'Requiem'

Christian literalists don't like to hear it, but many biblical scholars believe the "demons" that Jesus and his apostles were often called upon to cast out consisted of mental illness and/or epilepsy. Which doesn't necessarily diminish the "miracle" of casting them out.

Hans-Christian Schmid's "Requiem" is derived from the true story of a small-town girl from a strictly religious Catholic family who is determined not to let an epileptic condition prevent her from going to college.

Michaele (Sandra H? is exceptionally bright as well as devout -- but terribly sheltered. Her sympathetic father supports her aspirations; her cold mother opposes them. Neither the parents nor the priests they consult can quite bring themselves even to utter the word "epilepsy" -- they call it "that thing" -- but all of them are well-meaning, and Michaele, indeed, attends university in T?n.

There, she acquires a fun-loving friend (Anna Blomeier), a caring boyfriend (Nicholas Reinke) and a happy student life -- for a while. But the demonic "thing" in her still lurks and eventually manifests itself. Are the torments she's suffering for some higher purpose, as a charismatic young priest-consultant advises? Is he helping or hurting her?

In any case, prayers, pills and doctors aren't working. At the breakdown, when she can no longer bring herself to touch her crucifix or rosary beads, an exorcism is called for.

It is fittingly powerful, like "Requiem" itself and the restrained performances therein. Fragile, agonized H?is magnificent in her modern martyrdom. No Hollywood histrionics, no Linda Blair, no pea-soup projectiling here, and no neat, clear, happy ending, either.

In the final disturbing analysis, the difference among "real," "imaginary" and physiological demons seems mostly semantic. Failing to "cast them out" (or succeeding, for that matter) neither proves nor disproves their existence.

-- Barry Paris

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'Home Front'

The national debate over the invasion of Iraq won't end with "Home Front."

	Jeremy Feldbusch's life following injuries while serving in Iraq is documented in Richard Hankin's "Home Front." Click photo for larger image.

But Richard Hankin's frank documentary is both a testament to the courage and perseverance of a Blairsville soldier blinded in the war, and the directorial debut of the co-producer and editor of the award-winning "Capturing the Friedmans." "Home Front" was screened at this year's Tribeca Film Fest.

Hankin wastes little stock footage of the battlefield, where during the initial thrust to oust Saddam Hussein, Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, a mortar specialist with the U.S. Army's 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, was helping to defend a dam northwest of Baghdad. Shrapnel from an Iraqi artillery round sliced under his goggles and lodged in his brain's frontal lobe.

Less than four months after his deployment, Feldbusch awoke in darkness in a Georgia hospital to the voices of his parents. In time, he learned that his blindness was permanent. Proud of his service, confident of the Army's mission in Iraq and determined to fight on, the former high school wrestler returned home to wage a battle for normalcy.

Like an embedded reporter assigned to the Blairsville front, Hankin documents Feldbusch's recovery, from his first tentative taps of a cane on a local mall escalator to his return to the Western Pennsylvania woods. Despite his blindness, Feldbusch won a change in Game Commission regulations that allows him to hunt with a weapon equipped with a laser sight. Accompanied by a sighted hunter who tells him when the laser is on target, Feldbusch has bagged two deer.

"People thought I'd never be able to go out hunting again, but I did," he told the Post-Gazette last year. "Wounded veterans may feel they can't move on and be successful in the things they want to do in life. We need to show people they can be successful. ... To achieve a large goal, you have to set small ones first."

Much of the film follows Feldbusch's involvement in a support group that preaches those values to disabled Iraqi war vets, the New York-based Wounded Warrior Project.

"Home Front" is a well-made, nonpartisan and sensitive look at the personal cost of war. Feldbusch's unwavering support for the war may keep the documentary from advancing through the art film circuit, but it will air on cable, presented by Showtime at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 11, for Veterans Day.

-- John Hayes, Post-Gazette staff writer. Alyssa Cwanger contributed to this story.

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'Wassup Rockers'

"Wassup Rockers" follows teen Hispanic skaters as they sit around bored in the ghetto and then take an ill-advised voyage to Beverly Hills, where they confront racist cops, violent preppies and pedophiles.

Seven willowy-haired, tight-pants-wearing boys leave the ghetto. But not all return. It's similar to the dynamic with the audience -- not all who pay for tickets will stay to the end. The listless drama sets out to explain just how boring it is to be an aimless teenager and does far too good a job of it.

The latest from writer-director Larry Clark does an exemplary job of making the viewer feel young, restless and vaguely depressed. You're quickly introduced to the tight-knit group of lads, including sex-obsessed Jonathan (Jonathan Velasquez), free-spirited Kiko (Francisco Pedrasa) and reserved, introverted Spermball (Milton Velasquez). They're into skateboarding, messing with one another's heads and exchanging stories about past and potential sexual conquests.

The kids take a joyride in a car, despite the fact that no one has a license, and then hop on the bus to Beverly Hills, where they meet two promiscuous white girls and their overprotective male friends. Then they get harassed by a police officer and happen upon an eclectic party at the house of a creepy photographer who tries to trick one of the boys into a compromising situation.

Most of the charms of "Wassup Rockers" can be found in the conversations between the boys. Even though they rib each other, they also provide the support and affirmations it takes to get by in a harsh world. Clark too often drops the dialogue in favor of loud blasts of punk and metal music as the boys skateboard.

Clark, a teen-obsessed photographer turned filmmaker, has generated controversy for his first three films, "Kids," "Bully" and "Ken Park," all of which featured teens in sexual situations. Less debatable is Clark's sheer talent for crafting cinematic worlds all but unreachable by much of the population. He shows what teens are like when they're not rebelling against adults or putting on a front for them.

"Wassup Rockers" is by far his tamest film to date and also his dullest, but it's refreshing to see a film that focuses on the all-too-often neglected Hispanic youth culture. And it's all the more a shame that a film that treats the group with dignity and respect happens to be such a bore.

R for pervasive language, some violence, sexual content.

-- Phil Villarreal, Arizona Daily Star