This week in local theaters

MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA You've got to hand it to Spike Lee for managing to secure the financing for this big-budget, three-hour World War II epic, performed largely in Italian and German with English subtitles and lacking so much as a single marquee name in the cast. But as Orson Welles wisely cautioned: The enemy of art is the absence of limitations. Adapted by James McBride from his own novel about the African American "buffalo soldiers" who served bravely—and largely anonymously—for the U.S. during the Second World War, Miracle at St. Anna begins with a clunky 1980s prologue, eventually flashes back to the war, and then further flashes back within those flashbacks, all to tell the ultimately slight story of four soldiers (Michael Ealy, Derek Luke, Laz Alonso, Omar Benson Miller) from the all-black 92nd Infantry Division who find themselves stranded behind enemy lines. There, the men rescue a young Italian boy trapped in the rubble and take shelter with a family of chatty, gesticulating, tea-leaf-reading villagers—at which point you may wonder if Lee really initiated this project, or if it only fell into his hands after Roberto Benigni proved unavailable. The rest of the movie is piled to the rafters with cutesy-kid antics, Olive Garden Italians, Hogan's Heroes Krauts, and even a mythical peasant hero named the Great Butterfly. Mostly, though, our heroes cool their heels for what must only be a few days, but feels like months. (A longer version of this review appears online at nashvillescene.com.) —Scott Foundas (Opens Friday)

WATCH OUT Narcissism clouds the senses, but in Steve Balderson's assaultive film it's virtually an airborne toxic event. In a role that's an exhibitionist's dream, Nashville actor-filmmaker Matt Riddlehoover lets it all hang out as Johnny, an effete, persnickety dweeb who's fallen for the perfect guy. But he's not gay, as he's quick to tell the unfortunate women (and men) who lust after him—the perfect guy is himself, and he's dying for a tryst. Holed up in a hotel room where he's ostensibly waiting for a college interview, he caresses his buff bod, devotedly Polaroids his dick and tapes his face to a blow-up sex doll for some hot, throbbing, inflatable self-regard. While his infatuation with himself grows, however, his loathing of the rest of humanity only deepens—and his incessant narration, a kind of Wile E. Coyote annoyance in the early scenes, spirals into something like a serial killer's journal entries. It's impossible to tell where the character's misanthropy ends and the movie's begins: With Johnny's sexual pathology smearing a hate filter over every frame, Balderson's film (adapted with author Joseph Suglia from his novel) is ugly, garish and repulsive in the extreme, and the grotesque overacting forces us to share Johnny's distaste for his fellow man. (This would make a good companion piece to Catherine Breillat's similarly all-but-unwatchable Anatomy of Hell.) But you can't fault the movie for punking out on its bleak nihilism—an early shout-out to Fight Club proves to be a warning worth heeding. —Jim Ridley (Makes its local premiere 7 p.m. Oct. 1 at The Belcourt; scheduled to attend are Riddlehoover, Balderson, co-star Jillian Lauren with her husband, Weezer bassist Scott Shriner, and Nashville actors Thashana McQuiston and Starina Johnson from Riddlehoover's film To a Tee)