By Hook or By Crook, The Hard Word, and More

BY HOOK OR BY CROOK
Fri., June 27-Sun., June 29 at Little Theatre

In this worthy "buddy" flick by the editing/writing/producing/directing team of Silas Howard and Harry Dodge, resilient loner Shy (Howard) is a gender-bending Midwestern dyke who blindly sets off into the world when faced with the threat of losing her childhood home. ("I was like Dorothy," she says in soberly funny, Days of Heaven-ish narration, "but with biceps and no dog.") Intending a bit of larceny, Shy runs into Valentine (Dodge), a manic-obsessive fellow butch she rescues from an ass-kicking. What follows is a scruffy, confident commingling of Midnight Cowboy, Warhol Factory laissez-faire, and any number of fugitives-on-the-make moviesCrook certainly meanders but never lets its low-rent bravado become junky. The film is like a scrapbook of woozy snapshots bristling with life. Crook screens as part of the five-day "The New Gay" series that also includes a performance cabaret; curator Bill Taylor's rare collection of campy (and probably very eerie) anti-gay educational films; and the Seattle premiere of Estranged, the new live-action short from Todd Downing (the mischievous guy behind the hilarious horny-gay-dolls lark Jeffrey's Hollywood Screen Trick). (NR) STEVE WIECKING

After a series of bland mediocrities (The Time Machine, Till Human Voices Wake Us, The Count of Monte Cristo), it's good to have Guy Pearce back all tattooed, feral, and bent on crime. He plays the oldest and smartest of three Australian brothers with an ingenious method for pulling robberies: They're already in jail, which gives them an airtight alibi for their perfectly timed, blood-free heists, done with the assent of their crooked attorney and the corrupt Sydney cops. I have no idea what the title of this raggedly derivative but undeniably entertaining crime flick means, but it may perhaps refer to the (subtitled) Aussie dialect the Twentyman boys use to disguise their fraternal conferences from unwanted ears. This band of brothers trusts nobody but themselvesand with good reason. Their lawyer's a blow-dried weasel who's shagging the trashy, coked-up wife (Rachel Griffiths) of ringleader Dale (Pearce).

There's no point pretending Word is anything but Quentin Tarantino meets Guy Ritchie Down Under, but it works for that reason. Sometimes a lack of ambition is good for a movie, particularly with lowlifes like these. Visiting Dale in the pen, Griffiths' Carol feels herself up and paints a little smiley face on the Plexiglas with her secretions. Hotheaded baby brother Shane has got a serious breast fixation, while amiable middle brother Mal is, literally, a butcher who wouldn't mind employing his cleaver on different cuts of meat. Double crosses, shoot-outs, car chasesyes, all the he-man movie food groups are covered here.

It takes a lot of setup to advance comparatively little plot (a Melbourne race-track score), but Word comes garnished with plenty of garish Aussie kitsch. One guy gets offed with a Lava lamp, and a key plot point involves a giant inflatable cow. All the actors look like they're having fun slumming it, perhaps none more so than Griffiths, whose peroxide moll declares, "I know I'm a cunt, but I'm not a psychopath." Somehow it makes perfect sense. (R) BRIAN MILLER

Suffused with family, Catholicism, and sepia-toned nostalgia, this year-2000 Italian coming-of-age flick filters 1954 Naples through the perspective of an unnamed boy of 8 or so. Many POV shots alternate with close-ups of his eyes, which then alternate with close-ups of the orbs of a grown man. His voice, too, blurs together with the recollections of an older narrator, and what the kid sees is thus doubly understoodor misunderstood. He lives with his mother and their bickering extended family in a big, dusty old house. Dad's away on business (or has abandoned them), and the lad is constantly spying on their maid and her lover partly jealous, partly curious about sex, always worried about mortal sin. His favorite nun gives a hilariously stern and oddly convincing lecture on the Antichrist, who seems as real and close as the statues of saints and martyrs (which indeed come to life in the boy's feverish imagination). Although frequently clumsy, slow, and disjointed, Glance evokes a lost era (and innocence) with the mournful conviction that the past can only be recalled fleetingly and imperfectly. The original title translates as Pictures Deep in One's Eyes, appropriate, since it's less about voyeurism than memory. (NR) B.R.M.

This leaden piffle grounds two fine actors more completely than the air traffic controllers' strike that throws their mismatched characters together. Ditsy, over-made-up beautician Juliette Binoche, heading for Acapulco to get away from a jealous boyfriend, is stranded along with Jean Reno's businessman at Charles de Gaulle airport. The idea may have been a light-hearted American-style romance, but it's fizzless chemistry until more than halfway into the film when these polar opposites get togetherin a conveniently shared hotel room, of course! Foodie Reno fixes them a midnight supper from the conveniently closed hotel kitchen; she washes off the layers of makeup, and they finally connect. Separated in the morning, especially by the arrival of her boyfriend, the rest of the film nudges them together via passionate, crystal-clear trans-Atlantic cell phone calls. For anyone with a cell phone, it's the picture's most hilarious idea. (R) SHEILA BENSON