Where life is an item for sale

Writer-director Li Yang’s relentlessly jolting “Blind Mountain” is his response to the consequences of worshiping money in a society in which rapid economic development threatens to destroy traditional values and ethics. Shockingly revelatory rather than didactic, this boldly confident film calls attention to how hundreds of thousands of women and children are abducted and sold off every year in China.

An attractive recent college graduate (Huang Lu) can’t find a job and is therefore only too grateful to take a well-paying position to go to a remote mountain region to buy medicinal herbs for resale. She ends up sold off to a brutal farmer (Yang Youan). His family and community, which includes other kidnapped “brides,” are apathetic to her plight. This is an ignorant, primitive world of intense machismo in which women indeed are chattel, and life is made worse at every turn by an epidemic of money-grubbing that snuffs out even the smallest acts of kindness between people. This is a resolutely tough-minded, beautifully crafted film so compelling as to make bearable watching the nearly unbearable.

-- Kevin Thomas

“Blind Mountain.” Unrated. Sexual violence and pervasive brutality. In Mandarin, Shaanxi dialect, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. At the Grande 4-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, (213) 617-0268.

--

Too little a lesson in ‘Four Minutes’

Though crafted with obvious skill and vision by writer-director Chris Kraus, the German import “Four Minutes” is so relentlessly oppressive it suffocates its potentially strong themes and characterizations. It might also be the most unsatisfying, unsentimental, least cathartic teacher-student drama ever made. Call it the anti-”Madame Sousatzka.”

The curdled octogenarian Traude Kruger (the committed Monica Bleibtreu), a piano teacher at the same women’s prison since World War II, takes on her most challenging pupil in the form of Jenny von Loeben (Hannah Herzsprung), a former child music prodigy convicted of murder.

It’s the ultimate odd coupling as uber-rigid Frau Kruger imposes her unpleasant brand of discipline on the feral young Jenny, driving her to perfect the classics to win an upcoming piano competition. Prison politics provide additional motivations but tend to clutter the story.

The bleak journey of these two damaged souls sometimes drifts into a kind of morose, unintentional campiness, a problem compounded by Bleibtreu’s overly austere old lady drag (she’s aged by 20 years here) that suggests “Young Frankenstein’s” Frau Blucher meets “SNL’s” Church Lady.

The selections from Schumann, Mozart and Beethoven, however, can’t be beat.

-- Gary Goldstein

“Four Minutes.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes. In German with English subtitles. At Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.

--

A brave ‘Walk,’ guided by history

The raw power of footage depicting 1960s-era civil rights protesters and their usually harsh treatment at the hands of white authorities is an evergreen gut punch, and “Dare Not Walk Alone” -- a documentary about the lesser-publicized role St. Augustine, Fla., played then in awakening the country -- makes extensive use of it. There’s something surrealistically grim and ludicrous in watching heated, violent standoffs at beaches and pools -- segregation’s evil defiling places of relaxation -- but this was where demonstrators’ bravery made a moral impact.

Filmmaker Jeremy Dean interviews 81-year-old former whites-only motel proprietor James Brock, whose caught-on-camera frantic dumping of skin-burning muriatic acid into his motel’s pool during a swim-in made for nationwide outrage. Now less a racist icon than a sad old figure still asking why-me, Brock’s story and the vivid remembrances of protesters -- school-age girls arrested on a church’s steps, the assaultive peril of crossing a street during a march -- are the film’s assets. Clumsier is Dean’s attempt to revive calls for social justice regarding today’s poverty-stricken West St. Augustine. But that’s a complex problem that deserves more than a fuzzy act-now addendum to an otherwise crudely powerful slice of roiling American history.

-- Robert Abele

“Dare Not Walk Alone.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 11 minutes. At the Grande 4-Plex, 345 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, (213) 617-0268.

--

‘Jack and Jill’ takes a tumble

In the opposites-attract indie hiccup “Jack and Jill vs. the World,” Jack (Freddie Prinze Jr.) wears suits all the time (yecch!), works in advertising (grr!) and hates fun (what?), while free spirit Jill (Taryn Manning) climbs trees (aww), wants to start a revolution (awesome!) and has a suspicious cough (uh-oh). The world, meanwhile, shrugs, and rents “Something Wild” instead. Or “Sabrina.” Or any of the countless number of movies about a stuffed-shirt awakening that director/co-writer Vanessa Parise -- who also appears in the film as Jill’s sassy friend -- obviously thinks we’ve never seen before.

Bubbly to the point of indigestion and mechanical about ticking off the romantic trajectory (here’s where he rebels at work, here’s where she hides her illness, here’s where they disappoint each other) the movie is blind to the fact that it should be rising up against its own formulaic kind. Not aiding matters is that Prinze confuses regimented acting with a regimented character, and Manning’s street waif in pastels suggests a feral Disney Channel reject rather than a poster child for bewitching spontaneity. When she calls in a bomb threat to Jack’s building so the pair can reunite, the perky alt-pop means we’re supposed to think this is sweet, but you’re more likely to imagine a courtroom sequel called “Jack and Jill vs. City of New York.”

-- R.A.

“Jack and Jill vs. the World.” MPAA rating: PG for sexual content and brief strong language. Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes. At Mann Beverly Center 13, 8500 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (310) 652-7760.

--

When a ‘Sword’ is hefted for belief

When devout Christians take in an image of Jesus on the cross, what are they choosing not to see? Such is the nature of Catholic-raised author James Carroll’s literary and now filmic probing into a billions-strong Christian faith he believes is long overdue an honest reckoning with its violent past as a doctrine of intolerant might begun under Roman Emperor Constantine, not to mention its currently perilous intrusions into affairs of state.

Inspired by his 2000 nonfiction book of the same name, the documentary “Constantine’s Sword” (directed by Oren Jacoby) follows Carroll on a spiritual quest meant to shake us all up. He looks in on the evangelism-infiltrated U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.; visits Trier, Germany, to uncover the seeds of Christian anti-Semitism; then heads to Italy to meet descendants of Jews ghettoized by a 16th century pope.

The movie covers an immense amount of shameful historical ground, but the soft-spoken Carroll’s mission is less about winning an argument than prodding true believers -- of which his ex-priest-self is one -- to question any authority that subverts religion’s ability to be a force for peace.

-- R.A.

“Constantine’s Sword.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes. Laemmle’s Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869.

--

So what’s the big ‘Deal’ here?

In “Deal,” Burt Reynolds plays a former big-shot poker player who takes a cocky young upstart under his wing. There are complications along the way and, next thing you know, they’re both in the big tournament.

Reynolds doesn’t convey any of the lightning bolt insouciance that made him arguably the greatest movie star of the ‘70s and ‘80s (really) but rather just stands there. There are literally endless shots of him standing around, wearing sunglasses and looking vaguely wizened and suspiciously tight in the face. The direction by Gil Cates Jr. is inept at best, and the script by Cates and Marc Weinstock seems to operate under the assumption that trafficking in flabby cliches -- the kindly call girl, the scrappy youngster, the angry dad -- will somehow smooth over the underdeveloped characters.

-- Mark Olsen

“Deal.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for language, sexual content and brief drug use. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes. In limited release.