A Beguiling Intensity

The American Cinematheque’s “Outside Looking In: A Tribute to Malcolm McDowell” at the Egyptian is highlighted by two premieres: Paul McQuigan’s corrosive and compelling “Gangster No. 1” (Friday at 7 p.m.) and “The Assassin of the Tsar,” an ambitious 1991 British-Russian co-production never before released in the U.S. “Assassin” screens Saturday after Nicholas Meyer’s beguiling “Time After Time” (1979), in which McDowell plays H.G. Wells in simultaneous pursuit of David Warner’s Jack the Ripper and a lovely young woman (Mary Steenburgen); it is a rare McDowell foray into romance and adventure.

“Gangster No. 1” opened in the U.K. a year ago but has not yet been released in the U.S. It’s a gangster picture in the classic “Little Caesar”-”Scarface” mold, with both Shakespearean overtones and the matter-of-fact, in-your-face violence of such British pictures as “The Krays,” which was also set in the ‘60s. “Gangster No. 1” is exciting and McDowell, in the title role, exudes the intensity and authority he’s brought to many memorable roles, in particular the starring role in Stanley Kubrick’s savage and prophetic “A Clockwork Orange” (1971), which opens the retrospective tonight at 7:30. McDowell will discuss the film following the screening, after which Paul Schrader’s 1982 “Cat People” will be screened.

McDowell’s unnamed gangster has been a kingpin of the London underworld for three decades when he’s jolted by the news that the man he usurped and framed, Freddy Mays (David Thewlis), is being released from prison. A flashback to the late ‘60s introduces Freddy, a fast-rising, young gangster who recruits the young man who will betray him.

In an uncommonly good matchup, Paul Bettany plays Gangster No. 1 in his youth, when his canny ruthlessness swiftly makes him Freddy’s most trusted henchman. Gangster No. 1 is ambitious but he’s also sexually attracted to Freddy, though reluctant to admit it. His envy of Freddy’s wealth and position turns to lethal jealousy when Freddy falls in love with an attractive nightclub singer (Saffron Burrows). “Gangster No. 1,” which evokes swinging-’60s London, is sensational, as is McDowell.

As an English-language production set in Russia, “The Assassination of the Tsar” is fluid and natural-sounding, but as an allegory on the unhealed wounds of Russia’s bloody past it is ponderous. McDowell expresses beautifully the torment of a Moscow mental patient who believes he was not only Yakov Yurovsky, principal assassin of Nicholas II and his family at Ekaterinburg in 1918, but also assassin of Nicholas’ grandfather, Alexander II, in 1883.

A newly appointed psychiatrist (Oleg Yankovsky) tries to treat the patient by attempting to enter the man’s imagination. Flashbacks are triggered: Alexander’s death, a persuasive re-creation of the last days of the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg and confrontations between Alexander and Nicholas II (also played by the aristocratic-looking Yankovsky) in the afterlife. Yurovsky finds the czar disappointingly mild and his family depressingly ordinary. McDowell and Yankovsky are moving and eloquent, but in evoking the oppressiveness of Russia, director and co-writer Karen Shakhnazarov’s film is more oppressive than compelling.

Beginning at 5 p.m. Saturday, the retrospective will present the celebrated Lindsay Anderson satirical trilogy composed of “If ...,” “O Lucky Man!” and “Britannia Hospital,” which follows McDowell’s hero from rebellious youth to documentary filmmaker. (323) 466-FILM.

Among films screening in the final day of the third annual Method Fest at the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena is Rolfe Kanefsky’s standout “Tomorrow by Midnight” (2 p.m.). Just as a video store near USC is about to close for the night, Tom (Scott Rinker), his girlfriend Kira (Tamara Craig Thomas) and his film student/film-nut pal (William Vogt) enter and meander.

By the time Tom, an obnoxious, overly privileged type, is ready to rent a tape, the store’s tired, fed-up clerk, Sidney (Alexis Arquette), says it’s too late and the store is closed. Tom goes ballistic, pushing Sidney over the edge, who is heckled by Tori (Jennifer Lambert), a regular customer to whom he’s attracted. The tormented clerk pulls a gun and takes everyone hostage, including Cosmo (Karim Prince), whom Tori intends to seduce.

Giving this film an edge is its writing and direction, Arquette (never better or more serious) and Kanefsky’s adroit suggestion that Tom has a hard time distinguishing between movie-shaped fantasy and a dangerous reality. The result is a provocative, hostage-suspense thriller, which also features Carol Kane as an LAPD hostage expert attempting to de-escalate the standoff. (310) 535-9230.

Producer-director Scott Summerhays’ “Ocean Oasis” is a beautiful and illuminating nature film opening Friday at the California Science Center’s Imax Theater in Exposition Park. Baja California’s peninsula and its plankton-and coral-rich Sea of Cortes, with nurturing cool waters and desert shores, sustains an abundance of life, its myriad inhabitants uniquely equipped for survival and attack in a cycle of life in a region of ecological balance. Creatures range from delicate-looking crystalline forms to vast numbers of huge elephant seals.

Designed to appeal to and inform youngsters and adults, “Ocean Oasis” raises ecological awareness, sending audiences home with a reminder that the ocean can thrive without us but that we can’t survive without it. (213) 744-2014.

The renovated Warner Grand Theater, 478 W. 6th St., San Pedro, screens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. the 1998 Oscar-nominated “Central Station,” directed by Walter Salles, produced by Arthur Cohn and starring Fernanda Montenegro, an Oscar nominee for best actress. She is unforgettable as Dora, a retired schoolteacher who supplements her pension by writing letters for the illiterate in Rio’s vast train station.

This mean-spirited, dishonest, judgmental individual is the last person to whom you would trust a child. Yet when one of Dora’s customers is killed by a car, Dora is the only person in Rio with whom the woman’s 10-year-old son Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) has had contact.

To dismiss this film as another movie about an aging curmudgeon melted by an irresistible kid is to discount the scope and vision that Salles brings to his story. “Central Station” belongs to the grand humanist tradition of Italian neo-realism and has been made with the care and concern for values and emotions that characterize the films of Cohn, a six-time Oscar-winner. It is also to underestimate the power of Montenegro, widely regarded as Brazil’s greatest actress, and the remarkable acting ability of De Oliveira, who in fact was spotted by Salles at Rio’s airport, where he had been spending several hours a day shining shoes to earn money for his family. (310) 548-7672.