Mini reviews of 'Beach Rats' and 'The Nile Hilton Incident'

⋆⋆⋆½ out of four stars

Rated: R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language.

Theater: Lagoon.

Hazy summer nights lit with neon lights. Salty mist, smoky cigarettes. Peeking midriffs, lanky arms and torsos dripping with seawater; undulating in a cheap motel. This is the furtive, nocturnal, sensory world of Frankie (Harris Dickinson), effortlessly spun like sugar by writer/director Eliza Hittman in her sophomore feature, "Beach Rats."

Frankie and his friends, a group of young Coney Island hoodlums without much to do, spend their evenings trolling the boardwalk.

We quickly discover that Frankie is interested, sexually, in men, as he tentatively explores local gay dating sites, eventually meeting up with a few men for hookups. But he is deeply closeted within his bubble of teenage machismo, and so his boardwalk flirtation, Simone (Madeline Weinstein), becomes his beard, all while he's venturing into anonymous sexual relationships with older men.

This is essentially the entire plot of the movie, but the film is riveting and deeply compelling with the one-two punch of Dickinson's astonishing performance and Hittman's direction — awarded the directing prize at Sundance.

Alas, he makes the wrong choices again and again.

Hittman has a lyrical, dreamy aesthetic, also seen in her debut feature, "It Felt Like Love," a similar tale of sexual coming of age. She and cinematographer Hélène Louvart use mood, environment and lighting masterfully.

In Hittman's world, there is a place for everything and everything is in its place, even if it has the haphazard feeling of unrefined reality. She has an eye for the details of cultural iconography, from dirty mirror selfies to grimy vape shops filled with billowing chemical clouds.

A theater and television actor from London, Dickinson makes his film debut here, bringing an unstudied rawness to his character. It almost seems like Hittman scooped Frankie up off the beach fully formed, the accent, the pout, the downcast eyes already intact.

Katie Walsh, Tribune News Services

Rated: Unrated.

Theater: Uptown.

"The Nile Hilton Incident" owes debts to "Chinatown," "The Long Goodbye" and half a dozen other crime mysteries that are marinated in cynicism.

Cairo police detective Noredin Mostafa (Fares Fares) trolls the city, demanding payoffs from whoever is unlucky enough to cross his path. To call him corrupt is not to say that the rest of the force is clean. Everyone here is on the take, all the time, from cops to clerks to politicians. Nonetheless, his father looks upon him and his ill-gotten gains with disappointment and says, "You can't buy dignity, son."

Noredin is called to a hotel to investigate the death of a guest. His higher-ups are eager for him to label it a suicide. But based on the testimony of a maid who saw something suspicious — and, perhaps, spurred by thoughts of his father — Noredin suddenly develops a conscience that leads him to investigate.

It's fascinating to watch. But it's also distracting. Saleh is so keen to survey Egypt's dysfunction that his pacing wanes. It's possible to admire each scene and still see this film, in its entirety, as in need of some serious sharpening.

Ken Jaworowski,