They’re back on the radar

THE Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. and the American Cinematheque have joined forces to present “The Films That Got Away,” composed of nine movies that reviewers caught at previews or festivals but that either never received distribution or were not properly promoted. Not surprisingly, the selection is venturesome, at times demanding, but largely worth the effort. The series runs through Sunday at the Egyptian and Saturday and Sunday at the Aero with discussions after some screenings.

Celina Murga’s “Ana and the Others” (2002) swiftly draws the viewer into its world with the subtlety and acuteness of its observations, for it has minimal plotting and exposition. Ana (Camila Toker) is a woman in her 20s who comes to the Argentine coastal city of Parana. In time it is revealed that this is her hometown, that she is a single career woman living in Buenos Aires and that she has returned to finalize the sale of her parents’ home. In a series of encounters with old friends, most of whom have settled lives, Ana is self-possessed yet ever so gradually becomes caught up in tracking down her first love. Left implicit beneath Ana’s assured facade is a woman longing for love and passion more than she acknowledges. “Ana and the Others” is a quiet, graceful film with a considerable understated effect.

Michael Almereyda followed up his remarkably effective “Hamlet,” starring Ethan Hawke and set in present-day Manhattan, with the beautiful but confounding “Happy Here and Now,” made in 2002 but unreleased. A total lack of exposition and a densely convoluted plot make the film daunting indeed.

A young woman, Amelia (Liane Balaban), has come to New Orleans in search of her missing sister, Muriel (Shalom Harlow). Amelia stays with her spacey aunt (Ally Sheedy), who introduces her to her neighbor, a frail but sharp private eye -- and former CIA agent (Clarence Williams III) -- who tries to help Amelia make sense of some philosophical chat sessions that Muriel has had with a young man, Eddie Mars (Karl Geary), that they find on Muriel’s laptop computer. The Eddie we’re seeing is, in his body, also Tom, a firefighter, but his voice belongs to Tom’s brother Eddie (David Arquette), a thuddingly inept aspiring filmmaker trying to make an apparent porn picture about a girl having sex with a clone of inventor Nikola Tesla (!).

Almereyda seems to be suggesting the possibility of an alternative universe unleashed by computers as a way of commenting on the permutations of identity and how this affects young people. The film offers a generous slice of the seedy but vivid side of New Orleans and packs much terrific music on the soundtrack.

Peter Watkins’ “La Commune” (2000) is monumental in length -- nearly six hours -- and in achievement. Watkins’ landmark “documentary” re-creates the rise and fall of the Commune, the revolutionary government established in Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. But it is presented as if TV then existed and that the tumultuous period was covered extensively by Commune reporters while France’s National Assembly, in retreat at Versailles, issued TV reports on their version of events. The familiar cries of the desperately poor for freedom, work, healthcare, education for their children, separation of church and state and women’s rights run long and repetitively, but powerfully, as this complex moment in history unfolds.

Scott King’s ambitious and surreal “Treasure Island” (1999) focuses on two World War II cryptographers: the macho Sam (Nick Offerman) and the sophisticated Frank (Lance Baker), stationed in San Francisco on the site of the 1939 Golden Gate International exposition. They begin to believe a corpse for whom they are composing letters of disinformation for the enemy is coming alive. Sam is working through his latent homosexuality, while Frank has two wives and a mistress. King means to skewer the sexual hypocrisy of the era as well as its racism, and he takes great pains to make his picture look authentic. It’s too bad it doesn’t have the brisk pace and lack of pretense that characterized actual wartime serials and films noir.

The other extraordinary films in the series are William Greaves’ “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” (1968) and the sequel “Take 2 1/2 “ (2005). The first deals with actors making a low-budget film, and the second catches up with them 35 years later. Also playing are the full-length version of Terry Gilliam’s surreal “Brazil” (1985); Bertrand Tavernier’s splendid “Fresh Bait” (1995), in which three French youths go on a crime spree in a quest to live the American dream; and Chris Marker’s “Grin Without a Cat” (1977), a survey of the rise and fall of the worldwide revolutionary movement.

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Screenings

‘The Films That Got Away’

* “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” and “Take 2 1/2 “: 8 tonight, Egyptian

* “Brazil”: 8 p.m. Friday, Egyptian; 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aero

* “Ana and the Others”: 6 p.m. Saturday, Egyptian

* “Fresh Bait”: 8 p.m. Saturday, Egyptian

* “La Commune”: 2 p.m. Sunday, Egyptian

* “Treasure Island”: 4 p.m. Sunday, Egyptian

* “Grin Without a Cat”: 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Aero

* “Happy Here and Now”: 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Egyptian

Where: Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood; Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica

Info: (323) 466-3456; www.americancinematheque.com