A LEAGUE OF ORDINARY GENTLEMEN
unrated, 93 mins.

Bowling: the sport of last resort. An athletic event where a pendulous gut doesn’t eliminate you as a contender and where the best seats in the house are at the bar. But the documentary, “A League of Ordinary Gentlemen,” manages to elevate this faux-sport into an epic contest between middle-aged heroes reaching for glory one last time.

Professional Bowling Association tournaments were yanked off TV in 1997 because people preferred to watch something – anything – else. In 2000, three ex-Microsoft employees bought the PBA on a whim and hired marketing man, Steve Miller, to turn it around. The past is a gallery of tacky trophies, giant checks, and unforgivable haircuts. The present is a wasteland of strip malls, karaoke, and video poker. This documentary tracks four resurrected players on their journey through the 2003 PBA Tour, ending with the world championship. All these guys have hit hard times since their glory days in the 1980s when millions watched their every strike and spare.

There’s bland family man, Chris Barnes, and no-hope lifer, Wayne Webb, but the title fight is simply elemental. Foul-mouthed, chain-smoking bratty bad boy, Pete Weber, is right out of pro wrestling, while soft-spoken horseshoe champ, Walter Ray Williams Jr., feels like a school teacher from the Old West. While the movie loses its grip on the story more than once, it manages to bring anyone with a pulse to the edge of their seat more than once, as well.

Bowlers play on a team of one, and one is the loneliest number. Whether we’re watching Steve Miller peck at a gourmet meal in his surgically sterile apartment, or seeing Wayne Webb, out of time and out of talent, lugging his balls off into the night, we’re constantly reminded that he who bowls, bowls alone.

-Grady Hendrix

SECOND BEST
unrated, 86 mins.

Earlier this week Charles Barkley described a loser as being a fan of “American Idol,” or someone who dresses up like “Star Wars” characters. In the slight, but funny “Second Best,” Elliot (Joe Pantoliano) displays neither characteristic, but he nevertheless wears his social status on his sleeve. While Elliot makes his living selling suits at the mall, he spends his free time distributing weekly missives on what, exactly, makes a loser.

“A loser is a genius of self-delusion” is how he opens one of his diatribes. He reads each rant weekly to three of his closest friends, all of whom he considers colosers (one because his wife sleeps around, another because he has prostate cancer), who enjoy Elliot’s take on what he thinks defines them. When not writing his columns, Elliot is playing golf or borrowing money from his ex-wife and his adult son.

We suspect Elliot’s been at this so long he no longer feels embarrassed. But when his lifelong friend Richard (Boyd Gaines), a successful Hollywood producer, comes home to Jersey to scout location for an upcoming film, Elliot convinces him to stay with him, and the two bond, while bringing out jealousies and insecurities in each other.

Probably a third of Eric Weber’s film is devoted to Elliot’s love of golf, so there are several prolonged sequences devoted to watching him play – and watching someone play golf is almost as interesting as listening to Nascar on the radio. Chris Norr’s digital cinematography is also distractingly unfocused and shaky. But Mr. Pantoliano, famous for playing grittier, confident characters succeeds nicely here as the insecure Elliot, and Mr. Weber’s screenplay includes quiet, poignant moments, as well as a few genuine laugh-out-loud gags.

-Edward Goldberger

SEQUINS
unrated, 88 mins.

Sensuality and attention to detail are the hallmarks of Eleonore Faucher’s tender film “Sequins.” From the opening shot of fertile, French soil to close-ups of pristine, embroidered tulle, this film makes clear that, when needed, even something as tiny as a sequin can become life affirming.

“Sequins” begins with Claire (Lola Newmark), a lonely 17-year-old French country girl who is several months pregnant. To avoid telling her family or sparking gossip in her small town, she quits her job at the supermarket. She also spreads a false rumor by announcing that she has cancer – and her weight gain has to do with her medicine.

In need of work, she turns to a highly dignified woman, Madame Melikian (Ariane Ascaride), a master of embroidery whose work is used by haute couture designers in Paris. Claire, too, has a passion for sewing and embroidery.

Claire’s pregnancy secret is balanced by Madame Melikian’s sadness at the recent loss of her adult son. Together, they are the picture of grief; and neither wants too much to do with the other. But when Madame Melikian attempts suicide, the two are brought closer together.

Ms. Faucher’s film is rich in simple contrasting elements. Claire digs in the dirt to harvest cabbages, but her embroidery work is clean and pure. Her apartment is filled with rusty enamel pots, but Mme. Melikian’s is full of beautiful perfume bottles and fine fabrics. The camera is so direct that you can almost feel what you’re looking at on screen, whether it’s hospital gel or cashmere. There is no unnecessary dialogue.

This is not a nice way of saying that the film is “dull.” There are pockets of suspense and romantic tension between Claire and a local young man. Yes, “Sequins” can move slowly, but this is a film for the senses. It’s for anyone who likes to have the time to look, think, and consider what is before them.

-Pia Catton