Growing Apart

Tonight’s American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen offering at 7:30 is Mark Anthony Galluzzo’s “Trash,” a potent coming-of-age melodrama set on the wrong side of the tracks in a small Southern town. The focal point is the close bond between two high school seniors, Sonny (Jeremy Sisto) and Anthony (Eric Michael Cole), who have grown up together almost like brothers but whose relationship is beginning to strain as the effects of their differing family lives are shaping their goals and destinies. Sonny is cursed with unloving, constantly fighting, totally destructive parents whereas Anthony not only has a caring, encouraging mother (Grace Zabriskie) but also a concerned principal (Victoria Cartwright) who has discovered his writing ability, and eventually even a pretty, well-off girlfriend (Jaime Pressly), who has more reason to understand him than he knows.

In this highly personal film, Galluzzo makes us wonder which young man will most influence the other as Sonny becomes more self-destructive in his rage whereas Anthony is beginning to want more out of life despite terrific social pressure not to. In his feature debut, Galluzzo impresses as a storyteller and in his ability to draw strong portrayals from his cast; even though Sisto is a little too mannered, he is nevertheless an emotional dynamo in expressing the conflicts that are tearing Sonny apart. The filmmakers are scheduled to appear with their film. At the Lloyd E. Rigler Theater at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. (323) 466-FILM.

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L.A. County Museum of Art’s “Changing the Guard: The Festival of New British Cinema” (Bing Theater, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.) commences its concluding weekend Friday at 7:30 p.m. with Jez Butterworth’s “Mojo,” which he adapted from his extravagantly praised 1995 play. The movie’s theatrical roots are obvious, and one can only assume that it was lots more credible on stage. Even so, as lurid camp it is never less than energetic and entertaining.

Set in 1958, when rock ‘n’ roll from America was just beginning to have its impact on Britain’s youth, “Mojo” takes us to a club in London’s Soho, where Silver Johnny (Hans Matheson), a skinny, frenetic teenage singer, is beginning to attract a following. He also attracts not only the club’s middle-aged proprietor, Ezra (Ricky Tomlinson), but also a suave, sinister underworld operator (Harold Pinter, no less), who seems as interested in Johnny’s body as in his career potential. Meanwhile, Ezra swiftly meets a memorably dire fate, leaving his pouty poseur of a son (Adrian Gillen) and his ambitious second-in-command (Ian Hart) locked in a power struggle. and involving a trio of club hangers-on (Ewen Bremmer, Martin Gwynn Jones and Andy Serkis). Quite swiftly, “Mojo” jettisons any real concern for the rock invasion and what it portends, for a familiar homoerotically charged psychological drama that gives way to a blood bath. Playing with it is “Small Time,” a run-of-the-mill comedy about a gang of petty crooks.

Saturday’s program begins (at 7:30 p.m.) with “Gallivant,” a quirky travelogue-diary film in which filmmaker Andrew Kotting follows his doughty, good-humored 90-year-old grandmother, Gladys Morris, and his 7-year-old daughter, Eden, a bright, cheerful child whose mobility, hearing and life expectancy have been curtailed by a disorder called Joubert’s Syndrome. “Gallivant” is inevitably touching, but it is also jaunty, fresh and unpredictable. It will be followed by Shani Grewal’s frenetic cross-cultural comedy “Guru in Seven,” about an Indian (Nitin Chandra Ganatra) artist-playboy who, when ditched by his longtime girlfriend, accepts a bet that he can score with seven women in seven days. It’s a tossup as to which is more grating: Grewal’s hero or Grewal’s relentlessly jerky hand-held camera style. Concluding the series is a repeat of “Divorcing Jack,” starring David Thewlis, which screens after “Guru in Seven.” (323) 857-6010.

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Howard Hall’s 40-minute “Island of the Sharks,” which opens Friday at the California Science Center IMAX Theater in Exposition Park, is a classic nature documentary that takes us deep into the shimmering, exquisitely beautiful undersea world in the waters off Cocos Island, 300 miles off the Costa Rican coast. Hall invokes the eternal cycle of life as the deep ocean currents that hold a wealth of nutrients start ebbing, exposing immense schools of fish to the world’s largest concentration of sharks. It’s an effective example of the tried-and-true survival-of-the-fittest formula pioneered by Disney’s “The Living Desert” long ago. By the time the film is over, a cycle of renewal, prompted by a return of the cold currents, is underway. Since nature films fall into the category of family entertainment, “Island of the Sharks,” like countless such films before it, leaves you wondering whether the implications of the forthright depiction of the ruthlessness of nature--and also the realities of reproduction--are grasped by children. (213) 744-2019.

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“World Cinema” continues Saturday and Sunday at the Sunset 5 (8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood) at 10 a.m. with Nadia Fares’ “Honey and Ashes,” which gracefully links three stories of Tunisian women caught between past and present. Nozha Khouadra’s Leila, a beautiful student, faces a terrible fate for defying custom and following her heart; Samia Mzali’s Naima, an elegant 45-year-old doctor, admits to her college-age daughter that she lacked the courage to commit to a man she met in medical school in Moscow; and Amel Ledhili’s Amina dares to want out of a marriage gone sour. Through these stories, Fares reveals the terrible plight of women within a brutal patriarchal society. “Honey and Ashes” will screen at 11 a.m. July 3 and 4 at the Monica 4-Plex (1332 2nd St., Santa Monica). Sunset 5: (323) 848-3500; Monica 4-Plex: (310) 394-9741.

Ann Kaneko’s “Overstay,” which screens Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Japan American National Museum (369 East 1st St.) focuses on six young foreigners working in Japan in the mid-’90s. They are among the 290,000 immigrants who have come to Japan in the last 15 years, and they face formidable obstacles in a homogenous society that has a tradition of xenophobia. They all come for economic reasons and, due to severe government restrictions, soon overstay their visas to become illegal aliens.

“Overstay” is as engaging as it is wide-ranging. None of the six has had an easy time of it, but several have succeeded in creating new lives for themselves. The best-adjusted are three Pakistanis, who work for small manufacturers who can’t afford native labor, and two of whom have exceptionally kind and responsible bosses.

Not doing nearly as well as the men are a woman from Peru, who has gone from one menial job to another yet has succeeded in forging a friendship with a Japanese woman who has become like a second mother to her, and a homesick Filipina, who loathes her job as a bar hostess. Throughout, Kaneko, a third-generation Japanese-American, reveals an acuteness to the flow of daily life that alternately brings people of different nationalities together yet also distances them from each other. The stories of her six people are accompanied by a rich blend of songs from around the world. “Overstay” is a warm, embracing work of subtlety, compassion and implicit irony. (213) 830-5625.

“Queen of Diamonds” (1991), from Nina Menkes, one of the most challenging and provocative artists in film today, will screen Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at LACMA’s Bing Theater as part of the “I’m a Stranger Here Myself . . . Melancholia and the City” series. Menkes’ pale, beautiful sister, Tinka, stars, cast as a Las Vegas blackjack dealer whose monotonous existence is punctuated by her ritual caring for a dying old man.

Tacky, barren side-street Vegas is a perfect locale for Menkes’ vision of alienation and decay as she evokes a sense of the eternal cycle of life and death with both scenes of a marriage and of a funeral. Taxing, shimmering, hypnotic, “Queen of Diamonds” demands being seen more than once to fully absorb its beauty and meaning. (323) 857-6000.