XX/XY Young Austin Chick's directorial debut is full of dramatic rough spots, and his confused twentysomethings are awfully fond of whining and whimpering. But this unstinting look at growing up in the 1990s never pulls its punches. Bridging the angst of Generation X and the uncertainties of Generation Y, Chick reveals the romantic traumas, career screw-ups and self-absorbed fantasies of a group of eastern college grads sailing without much navigation into the whirlpools of middle age. Mark Ruffalo (the Oscar-nominated star of You Can Count on Me) heads up a spirited ensemble cast including Kathleen Robertson, Maya Stange, Petra Wright and David Thornton. November 17, 9:30 p.m., Magnolia.(BG)
Zero Day No one in Zero Day appears to be acting, and many of them aren't; the families of Calvin Robertson (blond, angelic Cal Gabriel) and Andre Kreuk (bitter, bullet-crazed Andre Kriegman) play themselves, and everyone uses his real first name. So until the final credits roll, it's hard not to buy into the idea that director Ben Coccio's mesmerizing film was culled from the videotapes Cal and Andre left behind when they shot and killed a dozen or so students at Iroquois High School on May 1, 2001. (And the film's Web site, www.officialreport.org, plays along as well, Blair Witch-style.) Those tapes follow Andre and Cal (or "the army of two," as they prefer) as they prepare for Zero Day, their "final big-ass mission," but they start almost innocently. Early on, they inventory one of their "supply depots"--Andre's bedroom closet, with a Star Wars poster on the door--and in it are BB guns and bottle rockets, fake IDs and Peruvian currency; the most dangerous item is a box of shotgun shells. Their first mission is just as innocuous: pelting the home of Brad Huff with 6-week-old eggs. Huff, never seen on camera, represents everything they hate. He's the "biggest shithead motherfuck-o," captain of the wrestling team, drinking and driving in his Range Rover. (If this were a teen movie, he'd likely be the villain.) But the covert ops soon escalate: Before long, Andre and Cal are making bombs and showing how to add an illegal pistol grip to a shotgun, making final preparations for Zero Day. (In the film's one moment of levity, Cal explains that the attack was supposed to happen on the first day of the school year when it was zero degrees outside, hence the name. But, thanks to the unusually warm winter, it was only zero degrees once, and that day Andre had diarrhea.) When the moment arrives, Coccio's film never breaks character: Andre and Cal leave the video camera in the car, and Zero Day's chilling climax is rendered in grainy security camera footage and 911 tapes. But before Andre and Cal get there, they provide the answers that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, whose similar killing spree at Columbine High School in 1999 is the inspiration, did not: This wasn't because of Mortal Kombat, not because of books or CDs or anything else. "This was our idea," Cal says, as he and Andre burn all of those things, just so no one else will take the blame. That two seemingly normal teen-agers--with loving parents and summer homes and sitars (in one memorable scene, Cal explains his motives while strumming along)--would choose to declare war on their high school is more frightening than any script Hollywood could ever produce. November 20, 9:30 p.m., Magnolia. Ben Coccio will attend.(Zac Crain)
Tilting at windmills: Terry Gilliam directs Johnny Depp in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the making (or not) of which is the subject of the hysterical, tragic Lost in La Mancha.
Gas huffer: Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a man who loses himself in a petrol haze after his wife commits suicide in Love Liza.
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