Short Takes

SNOW ANGELS Writer-director David Gordon Green’s first three movies—George Washington, All the Real Girls and the underrated Night of the Hunter reworking Undertow—were studies of childhood’s end threaded with a rich vein of plaintive, lyrical American weirdness; as if to escape getting pegged as a Terrence Malick acolyte, this summer he’s got the Seth Rogen stoner farce Pineapple Express, and his next movie is reportedly (dig this) the remake of Dario Argento’s splatter opera Suspiria. But if this haunting mosaic of first love, failing marriages and fatal obsession in a wintry small town marks a farewell to the mood and milieu of his early films, it proves Green’s a talent worth following wherever he goes next. His adaptation of a Stewart O’Nan novel begins with a high-school band practice interrupted by gunfire; the story rewinds to link the lives of the desperate townspeople—a born-again ne’er-do-well (Sam Rockwell) fighting a losing battle with jealous fury; his ex (Kate Beckinsale), who’s carrying on a sordid affair with an adulterous cop (Nicky Katt); the cop’s hard-bitten wife (Amy Sedaris, very good in a rare dramatic role), who happens to be the ex’s closest friend. The tragic outcome is foretold in the first scene, but Green balances his many unhappy endings with a sense of renewal—embodied by the fetchingly awkward romance between teens Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby, whose scenes show there’s not a director working who captures the breathless stumbling rush of young love more sweetly or sensitively. Despite all the snow, the pervasive cold avoids the movie’s heart. —Jim Ridley (Opens Friday at the Belcourt)

THE RUINS If you turn the first page of Scott Smith’s The Ruins, a friend said astutely, you won’t put it down—but if you know what it’s about beforehand, you won’t pick it up. So let’s just say that if the movie version never comes close to the abandon-all-hope ferocity of Smith’s hair-whitening source novel, it’s still a superior shocker with an edge of hallucinatory madness. (Call it Werner Herzog’s The Little Shop of Horrors.) Five tourists (four American, one German) are forced atop a remote Mayan temple, where they face two options: a quick death from armed villagers who suddenly surround the site, or a slow death from the snaky, insatiable tendrils of the ruins’ entrenched resident. What follows is a study in situational ethics, destabilized group dynamics and existential panic, as each new choice between the lesser of two evils brings only greater evils. Though Smith adapted his own book, the briskly paced, neatly telescoped movie is too short to recapture the novel’s grinding psychological devastation, leaving a gory but strangely slight allegory of America cut off from its lulling creature comforts. But first-time feature director Carter Smith, working with resourceful cinematographer Darius Khondji, pulls off the neat trick of using the wide screen to claustrophobic effect. And the lead actors—Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, Laura Ramsey, Shawn Ashmore and Joe Anderson—give such a convincing display of starvation-fueled fear that they deserve their own private craft-service table. Just keep an eye on that salad. —Jim Ridley (Now playing)