MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
G, 80 mins.

Nature is disgusting, but only an audience with hearts of stone will not be moved by the moment in “March of the Penguins” when, after a four-month absence, a rookery of mother penguins appears on the horizon with their stomachs full of fresh, life-giving vomit that they will spray down the throats of their starving newborn chicks.

Thanks to this, and many other grotesquely memorable moments, “March of the Penguins” is required viewing. A French documentary, shot in Antarctica, it tells the story of how penguins reproduce (a more difficult process than you might imagine). First, these oily creatures have to waddle 70 miles inland to a special breeding area, then they have to mate (something the filmmakers choose, thankfully, not to dwell upon).

The female lays her egg and the male sits on it while the female plods 70 miles back to the sea and gorges on fish and squid for several weeks. She then treks, her stomach full of partially digested food, 70 miles back to the hatchery and regurgitates into the maws of her mate and her newly hatched chick. The penguins trade chick-warming and binging-and-purging duties for months until the chick is old enough to strike off on its own.

Stately, waddling penguins provide terrific visuals, but you’d be well advised to plug your ears. The odious narration by Morgan Freeman drips with the kind of leaden non-humor that used to be reserved solely for classroom educational films. Composer Alex Wurman defaces the movie with a syrupy, New Age score that is sheer torture: There’s not a hardwon emotional moment that Mr. Wurman doesn’t underline with a twittering French horn or a mystical wind chime. Ultimately, however, the movie proves inspirational: If these penguins can get lucky, anyone can.

LILA SAYS
unrated, 89 mins.

The first thing Lila (Vahina Giocante) says in “Lila Says” is a deliciously vulgar come-on directed at Chimo (Mohammed Khouas), an Arab teenager living in a Marseille ghetto. The rest of what she says is wonderfully filthy, an unending stream of porn-movie suggestions and superheated teenage fantasy: She talks a blue streak, in both senses of the word.

Lila is the kind of blond-haired, angel-eyed teenage seductress that preachers warn the faithful about. Chimo goes along for the ride and he gets addicted to his potty-mouthed vixen; before long the two are an item. He keeps it a secret from his Muslim pals, who enjoy harassing her when they aren’t killing time with petty larceny. But when they begin to suspect that their little Chimo has ambitions beyond their own dead-end lives, they become seriously miffed.

Coming-of-age movies are like opinions: Everyone’s got one, and they all stink. But “Lila Says” keeps it light with deceptively stylish handheld camerawork and a zippy soundtrack of bubblegum techno-pop. Even the fact that Chimo is a wannabe writer trying to win a scholarship to an art college isn’t heavy enough to sink this movie’s summery fun. American-educated Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri (“West Beirut”) stretches that tantalizingly erotic moment just before the first kiss into a feature film without ever showing the strain.

DALLAS 362
R, 100 mins.

Dallas (Scott Caan) is a troublemaking bohunk who never met a bar fight he didn’t like. He grew up in a hick town, sucking down cigarettes and Budweiser with his longtime best friend, Rusty (Shawn Hatosy), two studs busting their knuckles on the skulls of everyone they meet.

Rusty is the more stable of the two, and if you take it for granted that Mr. Caan, who wrote and directed “Dallas 362,” is imitating Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets,” then Dallas is playing the Robert De Niro part and Rusty is playing Harvey Keitel’s.

There’s no reason to dismiss “Dallas 362” out of hand, but there’s no real reason to watch it, either. The film is ultimately a victim of its own vanity: It’s so busy striking poses in the mirror that it ignores the fact that other people are not only in the room, but have paid good money to be there.

Shot in various shades of tobacco stain, the flick follows Dallas and Rusty as they collect money for the local thug, Bear (an under-written Heavy D), and engage in some small-time crime. Rusty goes to therapy with his mom’s boyfriend, played by a pot-smoking Jeff Goldblum, and everything heads toward the inevitable unhappy ending.

Everyone in this movie is acting as hard as they can, and it isn’t all bad, but you begin to treasure the time you spend with Mr. Goldblum and Kelly Lynch, playing Rusty’s single mom. They’re the only two actors who don’t seem to be auditioning for future roles.