Getting family dynamics right

Eschewing feel-good bromides in favor of messy authenticity, “The Black Balloon” is a tough-minded coming-of-age drama. At the center of the Australian independent film is 15-year-old Thomas, who as the son of a career army man is adjusting to yet another new school. He’s also taking tentative steps toward first love. But overshadowing the usual teen conflicts and thrills are the constant pressures of being younger brother to Charlie, who’s severely autistic and suffers from ADD.

Filmmaker Elissa Down has drawn terrifically natural performances from her cast, which includes Toni Collette as the boys’ relentlessly cheery and sensible mother. She’s about to have her third child, which may or may not be the last thing she needs when her eldest is essentially an oversized, unruly toddler. Communicating in grunts and basic sign language, Charlie (Luke Ford) requires that every cabinet in the house be locked and is given to violent tantrums in the supermarket. He also inspires the meddling of a nasty neighbor, much to the no-nonsense disgust of Dad (Erik Thomson).

The presence of a “talking” teddy bear suggests the hours this family has clocked in with therapists. But Thomas (Rhys Wakefield), navigating the predictable cruelty of other kids and the less easily categorized discomforts of home, still wishes for Charlie’s impossible recovery -- and resents his neediness. Beneath preternaturally sunny suburban skies, turmoil lurks, exploding in shocking physical altercations. Helping Thomas come to terms with the reality he’d rather escape is lovely classmate Jackie. Gemma Ward transcends the perfect-blond aspect of the role, creating a girl of intelligence and compassion.

The film doesn’t avoid sentimentality, notably in an unnecessary putting-on-a-show sequence at Charlie’s school, which dulls the impact of the powerful scenes preceding it. But for the most part, this unblinking family drama packs a visceral punch. Thomas’ journey toward acceptance is blessedly free of noble lessons and filled with real people.

-- Sheri Linden

“The Black Balloon.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for some sexual content, a scene of violence and brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. At the Crest, 1262 Westwood Blvd., Westwood, (310) 474-7866; Edwards University Town Center 6, 4245 Campus Drive, Irvine, (949) 854-8818; Regency Theatre Rancho Niguel 8, 25471 Rancho Niguel Road, Laguna Niguel, (949) 831-0446; Laemmle’s Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 981-9811.

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Nothing to add but wallowing

Writer-director Damian Harris (son of Richard, brother of Jared and director of “The Rachel Papers”) struggled for almost 20 years to bring “Gardens of the Night” to the screen. A painstakingly researched account of child abduction and exploitation and the hardscrabble life of teenagers on the streets, the film exudes an anguished sincerity.

Harris has put together a genuinely oddball cast -- John Malkovich, Peta Wilson, Jeremy Sisto, Harold Perrineau and Michelle Rodriguez all pop up, some for basically one line -- but the film’s emotional core comes from actresses Ryan Simpkins as a young abductee and Gillian Jacobs (also seen recently as a kindly stripper in “Choke”) as the teenage version of the same character.

The film makes no real insights into the psychology of those who perpetrate these crimes, while also offering too little about those upon whom the crimes are committed, never reaching the empathetic heights of Gregg Araki’s masterful “Mysterious Skin.” For too long, “Gardens” feels like some sort of child predator instructional film, as presented by celebrity pitchman Tom Arnold.

Do these heartbreaking stories exist in the real world? Yes, yes, they do. Does dramatizing these stories with nothing to add except a certain cruel wallowing in the existence of unspeakable human depravity serve any real purpose? No, no, it does not.

-- Mark Olsen

“Gardens of the Night.” MPAA Rating: R for disturbing content involving sexual exploitation of a child, language, sexual content and some drug use. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. At Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 848-5100.

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A young talent finding his way

“A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy” opens with a shot of a woman in the throes of personal ecstasy, the camera revolving around her like a spinning record while a luscious retro typeface splays the title across the screen.

What follows is something like the free-spirited change-ups of a vintage-vinyl-45 dance party, as the film plays out in a series of witty, sharply drawn scenes that focus on the immediate before, after and just a bit of the during of in flagrante delicto with no through-line to connect them.

Writer-director Dennis Dortch, making his feature debut, seeks out the broader implications of his film’s title, as he explores the breadth of what it means to be “Black and Sexy” from boho to buppie, from player wannabes to aspiring accountants, capturing illicit loves, meet-cute couples and disastrous mismatches. The film’s vignette structure helps in keeping things fresh and playful, but it also dooms the entire effort to feeling somehow slight and insubstantial, a series of snapshots rather than a more studied portrait.

“A Good Day” certainly shows Dortch as a talent to watch. Whether he does anything more with that talent will be up to him.

-- Mark Olsen

“A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy.” MPAA rating: R. Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes. At the Bridge: Cinema de Lux, 6081 Center Drive, the Promenade at Howard Hughes Center, Los Angeles, (310) 568-3375.

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‘Hunger’ is an endurance test

Life for Irish Republican prisoners during “The Troubles” was grueling, brutal and relentlessly grim. These words also describe British visual artist Steve McQueen’s “Hunger,” a hard look inside Belfast’s Maze Prison and its infamous H-Block around the time of the IRA’s 1981 Hunger Strike.

McQueen deserves credit for his bold, confident approach to depicting the ordeals of such unyielding inmates as Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan), Gerry Campbell (Liam McMahon) and, most notably, Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender). But the first-time director’s unflinching camera, deliberate pacing and maddeningly long takes (including a 10-minute, single-shot conversation that, while hypnotic, belongs on stage) just amplify the story’s innate harshness and test audience endurance levels.

As fully as the film exposes its characters’ gaunt bodies, it rarely reveals their souls, which limits our emotional investment in their torturous journeys. Worse, midway in, the starkly unconventional script by McQueen and Enda Walsh shifts focus entirely onto Sands and his fatal immersion into the hellish Hunger Strike, diffusing our loyalties and rupturing momentum.

The last act, which graphically chronicles Sands’ wasting away from starvation, is extraordinarily performed by Fassbender but, given the film’s preceding slew of agonizing images, may finally prove too much for viewers.

-- Gary Goldstein

“Hunger.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. At Landmark’s Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.

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In need of some judicious editing

The Holocaust is a film subject that, for good reason, rarely inspires subtlety. Veteran Israeli director Amos Gitai takes the decidedly opposite approach -- to detrimental effect -- in his ponderously low-key adaptation of Jerome Clement’s autobiographical novel, “One Day You’ll Understand.”

This potentially potent story, set against the 1987 trial of Lyon Gestapo head Klaus Barbie, involves Victor (Hippolyte Girardot), a Catholic-raised French businessman obsessed with his family’s Jewish roots. Since his elderly mother, Rivka (Jeanne Moreau), with whom he enjoys a warm if dutiful relationship, refuses to discuss her parents’ concentration camp deaths or Victor’s father’s signed Aryan declaration, Victor finally sets out to uncover the truth.

Why he chooses this very moment to do so (Barbie trial aside) might be less troublesome if his minor investigation, which includes a visit to a remote hotel where Rivka’s parents hid out during the war, took a more organized or engrossing path. Instead, the movie, written by Gitai and Marie Jose Sanselme from a story by Dan Franck and author Clement, spends time on too many sluggish, negligible scenes that detract from plot and character development, particularly Victor’s.

The chance to watch the grand Jeanne Moreau is this flat memoir’s saving grace.

-- Gary Goldstein

“One Day You’ll Understand.” MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes. In French with English subtitles. At Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869; Laemmle’s Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 981-9811.

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This road journey takes an odd turn

Perhaps the best thing one can say about the brothers-on-the-road indie “Tennessee” is that having one of the biggest music stars on the planet as the third lead doesn’t upset director Aaron Woodley’s visually arresting but overly self-conscious glum-fest.

In fact, Mariah Carey, as a Texas diner waitress who joins Carter (Adam Rothenberg) and his sick younger sib Ellis (Ethan Peck) on their return journey to the childhood home they escaped years ago, makes for a naturalistically sweet, tough and sexy bit of counterpunch casting to the beautiful male brooders at the center of screenwriter Russell Schaumburg’s cliched redemption yarn. (Carey’s Krystal is an aspiring singer/songwriter, so don’t worry, fans, a stage mike is one destination on this trip.)

Despite a narrative drive stuck in second gear, “Tennessee” actually carries a trunk full of plot: flashbacks, alcoholism, family dysfunction, flirtations, illness, showbiz dreams and Krystal’s abusive state trooper husband (an effortlessly menacing Lance Reddick) chasing them across state lines. Unfortunately, the dramatic payoffs are either nonexistent or overly manipulated, and for a journey that starts with so much deep-set pain and regret to end with a sentimental twist feels, to use a phrase anathema in Carey’s world, off-key.

-- Robert Abele

“Tennessee.” MPAA rating: R for language. Running time: 1 hour, 39 minutes. At Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 274-6869.