“Victor Frankenstein”: This doc needs less time in the lab and more on the couch

Victor-Frankenstein

“Victor Frankenstein” opens Wednesday at Point, Palace and AMC Fitchburg, PG-13, 1:49, one star out of four.

In the terrible 2004 film “Van Helsing,” Frankenstein makes a cameo appearance along with Dracula and the Wolfman, swinging on a giant chain like Tarzan. “Victor Frankenstein” is only slightly less ridiculous than that.

I expected the latest iteration of the Frankenstein franchise to be bad, but would it be enjoyably bad? Then, in the first scene, we see Daniel Radcliffe capering about as a hunchback in clown makeup, and I thought, “Go on . . . I’m listening.”

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“Heaven Knows What”: Lacerating drama lets homeless junkie tell her own story

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“Heaven Knows What” has its Madison premiere at the UW-Cinematheque, 4070 Vilas Hall, at 7 p.m. Friday. R, 1:34, three stars out of four. FREE!

Brothers Ben and Joshua Safdie make films about people that we wouldn’t really want to be around in real life, and keep us uncomfortably close to them, force us to really look at them, until we see them.

“Daddy Longlegs” was a drama about a harried divorced dad so bad at parenting that his neglect borders on abuse. In “Heaven Knows What,” we’re attached to the hip of a 19-year-old homeless junkie, Harley (Arielle Holmes), caught in an endless and vicious cycle of addiction. When the movie starts, she’s panhandling (“spanging” in street parlance) to get enough money to buy razor blades to slit her wrists. You don’t get much lower than that.

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“Cemetery of Splendor”: Taking the big sleep in enchanting Thai film

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“Cemetery of Splendor” has its Madison premiere on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, 227 State St. Free for non-members, $7 for all others. Not rated, 1:51, three stars out of four.

In the films of Thai director , the line between the living and the dead is not a wall, but a thin beaded curtain through which each side can see each other, wave to each other, even visit each other. In his last film, the beautiful and strange “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” a dying man is visited at the dinner table by the ghosts of his wives and son (his son having turned into a red-eyed Chewbacca-looking creature) and he welcomes them warmly, like they had RSVP’ed ahead.

Weerasethakul’s new film, “Cemetery of Splendor,” is comparatively simpler than “Boonmee” — you won’t see a princess get seduced by a talking catfish this time around. But that placid, normal-seeming exterior seems appropriate for a film that is about digging beneath the layers, digging to the past, digging to the subterranean heart of ourselves.

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Instant Gratification: “Ex Machina” and four other good movies to watch on Amazon Prime and Netflix

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Pick of the week: “Ex Machina“ (Amazon Prime) — My full review is here. In Alex Garland’s sleek sci-fi thriller, a young programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) is tasked with evaluating the humanity of an android (Alicia Vikander) built by his boss (a great Oscar Isaac). Naturally, complications ensue. Garland largely dodges deeper questions about humanity and identify, instead making a beautiful and tense movie that’s something special.

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Marquee Film Festival Day 4: “Tu Dors Nicole” and “The Black Panthers”

Photos de plateau du tournage «Tu dors Nicole» de Stéphane Lafleur, une production micro_scope

Photos de plateau du tournage «Tu dors Nicole» de Stéphane Lafleur, une production micro_scope

The free four-day festival at Union South’s Marquee Film Festival, 1208 W. Dayton St., finishes up with another strong selection of films, plus a preview of next weekend’s Polish Film Festival.

“Amour Fou” (1 p.m.) — The formal rigor of this Austrian film set in the Romantic era camouflages a rather strange and wicked story, as a young man searches for a woman who loves him in order that they can execute a suicide pact together. And he might just have a taker.

“Tu Dors Nicole” (3:30 p.m.) — This languid French-Canadian comedy-drama follows an aimless post-graduate young woman who spends the summer lounging around her parents’ house, watching her brothers’ band practice, trying to figure out the next move in her life. With gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and gently offbeat humor (like the guy driving around the neighborhood listening to whale noises, which actually has a totally plausible explanation), “Tu Dors Nicole” is a winning film.

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“The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” (5:30 p.m.) — As America grapples with a new generation of racial issues, this documentary looking back on the ’60s black activist movement couldn’t be more relevant.

“Call Me Marian” (8 p.m.) — Next weekend’s Polish Film Festival gets a preview with this empathetic documentary about Marianna, a transgender Polish woman struggling to find acceptance among her family as she transitions.

Marquee Film Festival Day 3: “Breathe” and “The Second Mother”

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The 2015 Marquee Film Festival has a full day of free programming slated for Saturday, from noon till midnight, in the Union South Marquee Theater, 1208 W. Dayton St. Visit wudfilm.com for more details. Saturday’s lineup seems to emphasize world cinema, with new films from Austria, Brazil, Mexico and France.

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“Labyrinth of Lies”: What did you do in the war, Vater?

Alexander Fehling (Rolle: Johann Radmann)

Alexander Fehling (Rolle: Johann Radmann)

“Labyrinth of Lies” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. R, 2:04, two stars out of four.

The terrific drama “Phoenix” showed us a post-war Germany in moral as well as physical ruins, where Nazis and Jews alike longed to slip quietly back into their old lives and forget what happened, only to find that was impossible. The crimes committed were too vast, the betrayal of one countryman by another too great.

“Labyrinth of Lies” at times feels like the Hollywood version of that same theme, with a hard-charging attorney battling his superiors to uncover the truth of what happened in places like Auschwitz and bring the Nazi perpetrators, who have slipped seemlessly back into German society, to justice.

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Marquee Film Festival, Day 2: “I Believe in Unicorns” and “Mistress America”

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There’s nothing “Mini” about the Marquee Film Festival put on by the student programmers at the Wisconsin Union Directorate at the University of Wisconsin Union South’s Marquee Theatre, 1208 W. Dayton St. Originally called the “Mini Indie Film Festival” when it came on the heels of the Wisconsin Film Festival in the spring, the festival was moved to November last year so as not to compete for eyeballs with the much bigger WFF. The “Mini Indie” name was dropped this year.

The festival is a free, four-day, 14-film festival, running Thursday through Sunday, featuring films that either didn’t play Madison or probably didn’t get the theatrical runs they deserved. I already missed writing about Thursday’s double feature of Charles Burnett’s sublime African-American drama “Killer of Sheep” and the wrenching Amy Winehouse documentary “Amy,” but I’ll try and keep up from here on out. Visit http://www.wudfilm.com for a full schedule and other info, and check back here Saturday and Sunday for more previews.

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“All Things Must Pass”: How the Tower of music came crumbling down

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“All Things Must Pass” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:36, three stars out of four.

The numbers on them were usually too high, but I still miss those little yellow price stickers. Whether it was going to the two-story Tower Records on Chicago’s North Side or making a pilgrimage to the massive store on Columbus and Bay whenever I was in San Francisco, there was something special about Tower Records. While the Sound Warehouses and Sam Goody’ses felt impersonal, Tower seemed like that rarity — a successful franchise that was also your neighborhood record store.

But nothing lasts forever, especially in the music business. Tower Records was a billion-dollar business in 2001 and dead in 2006, succumbing to a combination of market forces (hello Napster!) and self-inflicted wounds. The entertaining and elegaic documentary “All Things Must Pass” by Colin Hanks (son of Tom) tells the story of Tower Records’ rise and fall, mixing testimonials from some famous customers (Elton John, Bruce Springsteen) with war stories from the guys who started it all.

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Instant Gratification: “Anna Karenina” and four other good films new to Netflix

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Pick of the week: “Anna Karenina“: Director Joe Wright and actress Kiera Knightley reunite from “Atonement” in this bracing adaptation of Tolstoy’s novel, written by playwright Tom Stoppard, in which sets blur into each other, and country houses become stages, the better to heighten the artificiality of Anna’s life. At the center of this maelstrom, Knightley holds her own with a finely-tuned performance as the tragic heroine.

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