APRES VOUS
R, 110 mins.

A morbid French farce, “Apres Vous” is full of hilarious hopelessness, but nothing in it is funnier than lead actor Daniel Auteuil. With his puckered mouth, bulging eyes, and trembling cheeks, he looks like the bottled essence of middle-aged discontent.

One night Antoine (Mr. Auteuil) rescues a would-be suicide named Louis (Jose Garcia) and winds up taking him in. The poor dope is so miserable that he can barely speak, but Antoine nurses him back to health. Louis rediscovers his voice and begins to make demands: He wants a job and a friend; he wants his old girlfriend back. The ever-obliging Antoine ruins his own comfortable life trying to provide him with everything he desires.

The truth, as Mr. Auteuil’s splendid performance makes clear, is that Antoine yearns for change with every fiber of his flabby being. He never says it, but every lie he tells, every impossible reconciliation he attempts to orchestrate, every ridiculous stunt he barely pulls off betrays his desire to break out of his stifling life. His desperation to overturn all his old habits is very funny for a very long time, but the fun curdles at the end.

A warning: The film is set in a restaurant, so the screen is groaning with beautiful food; sneak in a bottle of wine and a roast chicken if you want to make it through without hunger pangs.

–Grady Hendrix

ROCK SCHOOL
R, 93 mins.

Sometimes, a popular documentary will inspire a fictional motion picture. But in the case of Don Argott’s “Rock School,” it was the other way around. We already got to see Jack Black frolicking amongst his pack of photogenic munchkin rockers in the raucous “School of Rock.” Now we see real-life rock ‘n’ roll teacher, Paul Green, coax his pimple faced charges through the Satanic musical hoops of Black Sabbath.

“Rock School” tells the story the Paul Green School of Rock, an after-school program in Philadelphia with 175 students whose parents pay for them to learn how to rock ‘n’ roll all night – and some of them are pretty good at it. There’s also plenty of cuteness on display, from two little twins who channel Ozzy Osbourne, to C.J., who’s a miniature Pete Townsend.

But “Rock School” has a problem that “School of Rock” didn’t: Paul Green is a monster. He screams, throws tantrums, insults his students, kicks walls, mocks them relentlessly, and humiliates them when they don’t learn their music. “I’m not their friend,” he says. To him, the kids are lazy and manipulative. He takes Led Zeppelin seriously, and he assigns ridiculously complicated songs. Yet he also calls the ankle-biters on their dirty tricks and gets better results than he would if he tried to be their big goofy pal.

Toward the end of the movie, the students are invited to perform in a prestigious Frank Zappa festival in Germany. With the screaming done, and the wall-kicking and the tantrum-throwing stopped, they pick up their instruments and walk out onstage in front of a thousand hyper-critical Germans. And they rock.

–Grady Hendrix

CATERINA IN THE BIG CITY
unrated, 106 mins.

Dorky and awkward 13-year-old Caterina, the choir-loving spaz of the title, grew up in a backwater Italian town. When her dad finally gets a transfer to Rome, the family loads up their hopes and takes off for the big city, thinking that they can finally leave those small-town blues behind. Fat chance.

Caterina enrolls in a school full of rich children and her creepy, social climbing dad, who slowly cracks under class pressures, going humiliatingly bonkers, pushes her to make friends with the daughters of the rich and powerful. Her much-abused mom is just as embarrassing.

The film is meant to be an Italian take on “Mean Girls.” But gosh darn those European young ones are sophisticated. Instead of having to pick between the geeks and the chic, Caterina hangs out with the hard-drinking communist intellectual teens, before barfing all over their floors and switching sides to swing with the well-heeled discotheque-hopping fascists who sit on the other side of the classroom.

Rousing itself to occasional moments of miserable poetry, “Caterina in the Big City” teaches us a timeless lesson: Even in Italy, high school sucks.

–Grady Hendrix

BUNTY AUR BABLI
PG, 170 mins.

When did dangerous become the new safe? “Bunty Aur Babli,” the latest sugary confection from Bollywood’s hit factory, Yash Raj Films, is a Bollywood “Bonnie and Clyde.” But the two titular outlaws are as menacing as puppies in sweaters.

Abhishek Bachchan (son of Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan) and Rani Mukerji play Bunty and Babli, two losers from the sticks with an infinite supply of matching outfits, big dreams, and broad acting. After suffering setbacks at the hands of callow city slickers, they become con artists, fleecing suckers and zipping from town to town with an outraged mob hot on their heels. They pause only for musical numbers. Things pick up around the intermission mark, when Amitabh Bachchan makes his entrance playing Inspector Dashrath Singh, who wants to shut down the party for B & B – he’s so cool that whenever he appears he gets his own groovy organ solo.

“Bunty Aur Babli” is far more entertaining than it has a right to be, though its shallowness can be exhausting. There’s a long segment, however, in which Mr. Bachchan pere and Mr. Bachchan fils meet in a nightclub, get drunk, and perform a musical number. It’s the sweetest and silliest 20 minutes you’ll see in a movie this year.

-Grady Hendrix

MILWAUKEE , MINNESOTA
R, 95 mins.

Albert Burroughs (Troy Garity) is a 20-something champion ice fisher who is slow to think, slow to speak, and displays a child’s naivete. He lives with his mother, Edna (Debra Monk), in a dilapidated house on a depressing street in suburban Milwaukee. When Albert’s mother gets mowed down by a hit-and-run one night, Tuey Stites (Alison Folland) and Jerry James (Randy Quaid) – two grifters passing through town – each attempts to bilk the mildly retarded Albert of his fishing competition winnings.

Jerry convinces Albert that he is his long-lost father. But he soon runs into Tuey, a gap-toothed, bitchy young woman with a penchant for 1980s-style clothing who is fronting as a writer for Time interested in doing an article on Albert. Mr. Quaid plays the slick hick with ease: His cheap leather jacket, absurd tan, and obsession with stray cigarette butts render him the least contrived character in the film.

“Milwaukee, Minnesota” fails as a farce. But it does cast something of a spell. The cracked streets, gray skies, and hushed environment of the setting are absorbing. No doubt we’re supposed to feel sympathy for Albert as he utters bromide after bromide. But the film suffers from an over reliance on our visceral reactions to people like him.

-Tayt Harlin