70 minutes isn't a long time at all for a feature-length film, but those 70 minutes that are packed into director Josh Safdie's indie work, "The Pleasure of Being Robbed," are far too many. The movie is centered around Elenore (played by co-writer Elenore Hendricks) and her kleptomania that may or may not be caused by something deeper going on in her psyche. She steals not to profit, but just to peek into strangers' lives. Elenore steals a lady's purse, then a father's gift for her daughter which consists of a bag containing a dog and some kittens, and eventually she works her way into stealing someone's car keys just to see what the inside of the victim's car looks like. It's literally like watching someone's bad home movies. At this point, Safdie himself appears as "Josh," Elenore's friend who convinces her to drive him back to his apartment, even though she has no clue how to drive. They manage to make it out of the city and back to his pad, and this takes up the majority of the movie and feels like it's going in real time. Hell, it may actually be. There is no "plot" here, no real tale behind the characters, and no reason to care for anyone involved. This is indie filmmaking at its most uninspired, which of course has led some other critics to absolutely gush over it. But don't believe the quotes on the back of the box; there is no pleasure of being robbed here, especially when you've just had 70 minutes of your life stolen.

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If you frequented the better L.A. rock clubs during the 90s and early 2000s, you were likely acquainted with the work of Stew. First with his band, The Negro Problem, and later as a solo act, the talented singer-songwriter's between-song patter was half the thoughtful fun. Still, it's a pleasant surprise to find Stew headlining his own Broadway show, a clever combination of traditional musical theater and a wordy musical performance. This version of "Passing Strange" is not so much a movie in a traditional sense but a very well done video documentation by Spike Lee of the show staged by director Annie Dorsen. As narrated both in spoken word and song by the volubly imposing Stew, it's a presumably autobiographical coming-of-age tale dealing with the travels of an artistically inclined young man (Daniel Breaker), first through the tail end of his middle-class upbringing in South Central L.A. and conflicts with his religious mother (Eisa Davis), and then on to the sex-and-drug positive bohemian enclaves of Amsterdam and Berlin. As you can imagine, it's a heady journey and Stew's narrative and Dorsen's witty staging keep things hopping. At times, "Passing Strange" falls prey to the same artistic pretensions it skewers, and I remember liking Stew's older music a bit better than the songs he and his life/songwriter partner, Heidi Rodewald, created for the show. Nevertheless, as preserved for posterity by Lee, this is a consistently thought-provoking, funny, and moving theatrical look at growing up creative and ethnic in an ever changing world.

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The Norwegian horror film, “Dead Snow,” came out of Sundance last year riding a wave of good buzz. It didn’t exactly sound like a cult classic, but the concept seemed strong enough to make for a fun midnight movie. Unfortunately, director Tommy Wirkola can’t even manage that, instead churning out a relatively dull horror film that fails to take advantage of its comic potential. The story is like so many others before it, with a group of medical students falling prey to a horde of zombies during a sex-and-booze-fueled weekend at a remote cabin in the mountains. What makes this film different, however, is the fact that these particular zombies also happen to be Nazis. It’s a match made in horror-comedy heaven that could have earned “Dead Snow” a spot among the other zombie classics. But instead of finding the humor in the situation like “Evil Dead 2” and “Dead Alive” (both of which are referenced in the film), Wirkola’s movie is an absolute bore until the final minutes when it suddenly turns into the silly romp it so desperately needed to be. Had the blood-gushing, chainsaw-slicing antics started sooner, “Dead Snow” might have won me over, but as it stands, it’s far too little, too late to make any real impact.

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