2 for Love in ‘Groundhog Day,’ 3 for Adventure in ‘Wild America’

The bill of fare for screenings this week is slim: “Groundhog Day” (1993), a mildly entertaining absurdist comedy starring Bill Murray, and “Wild America” (1997), a mildly entertaining family-style adventure.

Both screen this weekend at dusk, outdoors, at Newport Dunes, 1131 Back Bay Drive, Newport Beach--”Groundhog Day” on Friday and “Wild America” on Saturday. Free; parking is $6. (949) 729-3863.

In “Groundhog Day,” Murray plays an arrogant, cynical Pittsburgh weatherman who wakes up in Punxsutawney, Pa., on Feb. 3--the day after Groundhog Day--and discovers that it’s still Feb. 2 and that (if he’s not hallucinating) he’s trapped without parole in the dullest place on Earth.

The weatherman, who hits the rural town for the annual end-of-winter search for the groundhog’s shadow, is so arrogant he believes “he doesn’t just report the weather, he creates it,” as Times film critic Kenneth Turan has written.

Though not the funniest collaboration between Murray and director Harold Ramis, Turan noted, “Groundhog Day” is “a sweet and amusing surprise package.” Andie MacDowell co-stars as Murray’s romantic foil.

“Wild America” tells the story of three brothers who leave their Fort Smith, Ark., farm in an old truck and take along a 16-millimeter camera to film their summer odyssey. The movie, reportedly inspired by real-life exploits of three teens, is “a delightfully farfetched family adventure,” according to The Times’ review.

In L.A. and Beyond

Throughout a major, remarkably consistent three-decade career, director Peter Weir has invited audiences to peer beyond surface reality to discover different worlds, whether they may be of the imagination or the supernatural, as a route to self-discovery. This is as true of his eerie “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975), which begins a one-week revival Friday at the Nuart, as it is of his current hit, “The Truman Show.”

Presented in the director’s cut with seven minutes restored, in newly remastered Dolby stereo, the exquisite and seductive “Picnic at Hanging Rock,” which helped revive the Australian film industry as well as establish Weir’s reputation, is cinema at its most evocative. On Valentine’s Day in 1900, several students from a posh finishing school went on a forest outing to nearby Hanging Rock, a gigantic volcanic phenomenon sacred to aboriginals. Some inexplicably vanished, others returned with no memory of what had occurred.

Working from Joan Lindsay’s novel, Weir displays his already formidable mastery of mood and powers of suggestiveness, with Hanging Rock itself becoming a brooding yet beckoning presence. Set at the end of the sexually repressive Victorian era, “Picnic” is erotic in its symbolism and implications.

A gardener at the school remarks matter of factly of the missing girls, “They may have fallen down a hole,” and he may well be right. Weir, however, suggests infinite, teasing possibilities, suggesting that they fell under some kind of spell related either to the supernatural or sexual hysteria.

While the mystery thickens, the school’s stern, tyrannical headmistress (Rachel Roberts, in one of her best roles), slowly becomes unhinged. “Picnic at Hanging Rock” remains a gorgeous-looking, superbly wrought enigma. (310) 478-6379.

Killing-Spree Satire

There have been countless killing spree/road movies and a number of pictures about the hilarious realities of low-budget filmmaking, but now first-time writer-director Mark Weidman fuses them in “Killer Flick” (Friday and Saturday at midnight at the Sunset 5), an outrageous, inspired satire on the ways in which violence and cinema have mutated to the extent that his pack of young filmmakers (Zen Todd, Christian Leffler, Emmett Grennan, Creighton Howard and Kathless Walsh) is just as likely to shoot a person with a gun as a camera.

Crossing the desert on the way to Hollywood, where they intend to lasso their favorite B-movie star (veteran Fred Dennis) this group is writing and filming along the way, hoping to incorporate incidents violent and otherwise into a movie intended to glorify them as bothroad warriors and auteurs.

Weidman touches all the bases uproariously and provocatively. The film gives midnight moviegoers plenty of bang for their buck but is pertinent and enough to deserve much wider, more accesible play. (213) 848-3500.

Melville’s French Crime

The Jean-Pierre Melville and the French Crime Film series is a succession of wonderful movies. In the opening sequence of Melville’s 1962 “Le Doulos” (The Fingerman), which screens Friday at 7:15 p.m. at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Ave., we watch a man approach a handsome if shabby 19th century townhouse, standing alone in the deserted outskirts of Paris. A train rushes nearby; there is weak light from ancient street fixtures. The man enters the building and proceeds to the attic, where a fence is disassembling some jewelry in front of an oval window.

The visitor (Serge Reggiani) guns down the fence, steals his loot and buries it by one of the lampposts. Melville accomplishes all of this with such economy and easy bravura, the effect is pure joy.

Once Melville swiftly moves past the robbery, he plunges us into a dizzyingly intricate thicket of betrayals that may leave you confused momentarily--and perhaps longer than that--but also floored by an array of duplicity that is charged with an ambivalence as we realize how provisional the whole notion of honor among thieves can be.

“Le Doulos” offers such a chain of crooks reacting drastically to partial truths that you can actually understand why, according to Melville, that Jean-Paul Belmondo--who plays Reggiani’s pal-turned-stoolie--upon seeing the finished film, was astonished to discover he was in fact playing the title role. Reggiani by 1962 was a well-established, versatile star, while Belmondo was just three years into his enduring stardom. It’s a jolt to see him playing a ruthless, brutal heavy.

With the superb “Le Boucher” (The Butcher), which follows “Le Doulos,” Claude Chabrol as usual works within the form of the suspense thriller. The setting in this 1970 gem is the quaint town of Tremolat in the Perigord region of southwest France. The town is struck by a series of grisly murders, and Chabrol plays for all its worth the ironic contrast between these heinous crimes and this most beautiful of pastoral backgrounds and its friendly, kindly inhabitants.

So simple, yet so profound, “Le Boucher” finds Chabrol mainly concerned with the dualism of human nature and the paradox of love, with its power to destroy as well as redeem.

“Breathless” (Saturday at 7:15 p.m.) is just as fresh and startling as when it was first released nearly 40 years ago. Jean-Luc Godard’s restless, shoot-from-the hip style hasn’t become dated, but because we’re more familiar with it, it’s easier now to appreciate how truly extraordinary are Belmondo and Jean Seberg, who seem to be living rather than acting their roles.

Belmondo, whose crook has a terrific sense of style, is enormously attractive to women and knows it. They emerged as screen icons in this landmark film, whose place in cinema history is secure.

Saturday also brings a double feature from Jacques Deray, who teamed Belmondo and Alain Delon in the memorable period gangster picture “Borsalino” (1970). Deray followed it up with the 1973 “The Outside Man” (9:30 p.m.), unjustly dumped into second-feature slots. It’s worth overlooking some awkward looping here and there to follow hit man Jean-Louis Trintignant to Beverly Hills, where he’s to rub out an underworld kingpin only to become the instant target of a professional assassin (Roy Scheider) himself.

Deray’s 1961 black-and-white “Rififi in Tokyo,” which follows, is more problematic. Visually, it is as terrific as “The Outside Man” or “Borsalino” but suffers from the dubbing and casting problems of the international co-productions of the era. (213) 466-FILM.