SPIRITS OF ST. PAUL

If you can look past the visual anachronisms that pepper the production (were there really storefront coffee and gelato emporiums in the 1920s?), "Spirits of St. Paul" is a pretty spiffy little homegrown production. Set in the Saintly City's gangster era, the film is a living history lesson about police chief John O'Connor's friendly understanding with visiting hoodlums. So long as they didn't disturb the peace inside the city limits, crimes committed elsewhere were none of his concern. The script and acting are solid, with the personality conflicts among gang members and authorities neatly sketched. The kidnapping of beer baron William Hamm begins in a modest home that might have belonged to one of his brewmeisters, but not the boss of the company, yet the film has a "let's put on a show" pluck that makes you overlook such stumbles. The father-and-son team of Brian and Gary Crask co-wrote, coproduced, codirected and handled every technical aspect of the production. Job well done.

  • ★★ 1/2 OUT OF FOUR STARS
  • Unrated; brief violence and language.
  • Where: St. Anthony Main, Fri-Sun.

FOOTNOTE

The tart Israeli comedy "Footnote" plays like "A Serious Man," Tel Aviv style. Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik (Shlomo Bar-Aba and Lior Ashkenazi) are father and son, eminent Talmudic scholars, and participants in a fraught professional and emotional rivalry.

When the crabby, conservative father is mistakenly informed that he is about to receive an academic prize actually intended for his son, the stage is set for a crisis. The humor here is bone dry, a steady accumulation of grievances and passive-aggressive revenge strategies. Bar-Aba's elder Shkolnik is as tense as a clenched fist, ostentatiously humble yet envious of the acclaim that comes all too easily to his more progressive and personable son.

The family dynamics play out in the next generation, too, with Ashkenazi furiously informing his own child that he hopes "you'll suffer so I can gloat." The film darkens throughout, its sprightly musical score falling away and the situation curdling into bitterness without catharsis.

  • ★★ OUT OF FOUR STARS
  • Rated: PG for thematic elements, brief nudity, language and smoking. In subtitled Hebrew.
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