Films that emphasize acting before action

The sixth annual Method Fest, devoted to independent films with an emphasis on acting, returns to Burbank starting Friday with 26 features and 46 shorts, as well as panel discussions and other events. The festival this year has honored Dennis Hopper with its lifetime achievement award.

The strongest film available for preview is Gary B. Yates’ “Seven Times Lucky,” an adroit neo-noir set in a seedy section of downtown Winnipeg, Canada. The film provides veteran actor Kevin Pollak with a solid yet subtle role as Harlan, a small-time grifter living in a faded old Beaux-Arts hotel.

Harlan’s life starts unraveling when he “borrows” $10,000 from his ruthless underworld boss (a vivid Babz Chula) and blows it on a horserace. In desperate straits, he’s open to a scheme proposed by his young protege, Fiona (Liane Balaban), a nervy pickpocket. As double-crosses escalate and cons become dizzyingly elaborate, it becomes virtually impossible to keep track of the shenanigans. But no matter because the confusion is part of the fun.

The inclusion of Polish filmmaker Wiktor Grodecki’s ultra-bizarre “Insatiability” in the festival is both venturesome and apt -- first, because it is so exuberantly surreal and decadent; second, because it offers a good example of actors maintaining high energy while playing demented types delivering dialogue that, via literate subtitles, comes across as witty, well-turned nonsense.

Based on a 1930 novel, at once retro and futuristic, by avant-garde writer-artist Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (1885-1939), the film is a fable of power, sex and politics carried to absurdist limits. “Insatiability’s” extravagant dementia is demanding but also provocative. Grodecki is best known for “Mandragora,” an expose of post-Communist Czech youths in the dicey world of hustling and pornography.

It’s scarcely unusual for talented actors to turn up in misfired movies, and that is the case with two surprisingly -- and depressingly -- similar pictures, Adam Goldberg’s “I Love Your Work” ( Friday at 7 p.m.) and Mark David’s “Intoxicating” (Saturday at 7:45 p.m.). Both are about young men unable to cope with the pressures of a demanding career whose downward spirals are hastened by their infatuations with gorgeous European blonds. In the first, Giovanni Ribisi is an unstable movie star married to a German actress (Franka Potente). In the second, Kirk Harris is a workaholic heart surgeon caught up in drugs and a beautiful Dane (Camilla Overbye Roos). “Intoxicating” is less arty and pretentious than “I Love Your Work,” but both become as insufferable as their self-absorbed antiheroes. Ribisi and Harris are both talented, but their efforts don’t make these movies any less hard to watch.

Film Noir Festival

Also in its sixth edition is Side Streets and Back Alleys: The Festival of Film Noir, one of American Cinematheque’s most popular annual events. opens tonight with a sure-fire James M. Cain double feature. First up is Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” (1944), with blond femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck wreaking havoc on Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson. Then comes Michael Curtiz’s “Mildred Pierce” (1945), which won an Oscar for Joan Crawford as a waitress who rises to restaurateur only to be undone by her nasty daughter (Ann Blyth, in a bold cast-against-type performance). The familiar pleasures continue Friday with the 1942 version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key,” sparked by the memorably cool teaming of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

“Murder, My Sweet,” the terrific 1945 version of Raymond Chandler’s “Farewell, My Lovely,” stars Dick Powell as private eye Philip Marlowe -- Chandler is said to have found him better casting than Humphrey Bogart -- and Claire Trevor as a tough dame who married well and strives mightily to come across as a high-class lady. It is the first part of a double feature that includes “The Blue Dahlia” (1946), another Ladd-Lake teaming, which boasts an Oscar-nominated Chandler original screenplay.

Saturday brings a clutch of rarities, plus Nicholas Ray’s classic “In a Lonely Place” (1950) as well as “The Fallen Sparrow” (1943) with John Garfield.

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Screenings

Method Fest

Where: AMC Media City Center 8, 201 E. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank

* “Seven Times Lucky,” Sunday, 6:30 p.m., and Tuesday, 7:30 p.m.

* “Insatiability,” Tuesday, 9:30 p.m.

* “I Love Your Work,” Friday, 7 p.m.

* “Intoxicating,” Saturday, 7:45 p.m.

Info: (800) 965-4827 or www.methodfest.com

Side Streets and Back Alleys: The Festival

of Film Noir

Where: American Cinematheque at the Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

* “Double Indemnity,” tonight, 7:30, followed by “Mildred Pierce.”

* “The Glass Key,” Friday, 7 p.m.

* “Murder My Sweet,” Friday, 9 p.m., followed by “The Blue Dahlia.”

* “The Fallen Sparrow,” Saturday, 5 p.m., followed by “In a Lonely Place.”

Info: (323) 466-FILM or www.americancinematheque.com