“Old, old. Chita Rivera, Sylvia Miles and Tina Louise — Ginger from
‘Gilligan’s Island.’”

“Octogenarian Trim.”

“Exactly. Old slags who couldn’t get invited to the real one.” I
pictured some hairy old white vulture gawking at the rivulets of puckering
skin down the neckline of Tina Louise, trying to get her fucked up on
Frangelico. Ow.

Once again, the Academy has made it perfectly clear that Retards are the
order of the day. This has been true ever since “The Miracle Worker.”
Anybody portraying somebody with the bootprint of a clumsy god pressed into
their forehead — waggling palsies and tongues like tennis balls — will
take home a naked gold man on Oscar Night. The Academy has never figured
out that doing those spasms and tics is much easier than simply delivering
an emotionally complicated line.

Last night, added to Billy Bob Thornton and Geoffrey Rush were ACTUAL disabled
persons David Helfgott and Muhammad Ali, both doddering vegetables,
although Helfgott was still able to crank out a savant edition of “Flight
of the Bumblebee” better than most ninth-grade piano competition winners.
Ali, teetering on the verge of any unimaginable flight of punch-ruined
behavior, had to be escorted away from the cameras as quickly as possible
before he urinated on Sigourney Weaver or something equally unsocialized.
When the camera was cutting away to people’s faces Moved by the Presence of
Ali, they made the mistake of showing James Woods, who was shaking his head
in agony and saying something out of the side of his mouth like “Jesus, get
that poor uncomprehending infant off the stage. Give him some soft foam
animals and a bag of Cheetos, and let him go play with Rodney King.” The
cameras quickly pulled all the way back to the 900th row in the balcony and
focused on Oscar’s golden buttocks, while the music and applause knobs
turned to deafening levels designed to obliterate Ali entirely.

I noticed with some amusement that “When We Were Kings” won for best
documentary — I guess it was the (H)Ooops! Dreams Award. Yeah. I guess
that makes it all OK now.

Everyone looked lovely, with the exception of Mira Sorvino, whose dress
was made entirely of Cheerios, blowsy old Susan Sarandon and the generally
dowdy Diane Keaton, who appeared to be wearing a rhinestone whiplash brace.

I found it incredibly ironic that Courtney Love presented the award for
Best Makeup Artistry, her own appearance being a feat of rubber tubing and
silicone putty disks no less spectacular than that of Eddie Murphy’s
award-winning transformation in “The Nutty Professor.”

Madonna has always looked naked to me at the Oscars, because at the
Oscars there are usually six or seven truly talented people in the
audience, and she’s performing in front of them, and they can see exactly
what she is, and she knows it, and she’s always shivering with fear and
bracing herself with that steely “You Must Love Me” brand of tenacity she’s
always had. She did it with some forgettable Dick Tracy number a couple of
years back, and last night felt compelled to weep real tears singing the
Andrew Lloyd Webber snore lullaby because she knew she couldn’t actually
sing it, and decided to balance out her lack of pipes with some “acting”
that the folks could appreciate. “My, she can cry on cue, just like an
Actress,” we were meant to say, not noticing her weak, tremulous, dumb
musical theater voice. It was like watching your cousin in a high school
talent show sing some bad slow song real sincerely with too much vibrato,
where the guilelessness of it hurts because she isn’t very good and it’s
cringeworthy. It always becomes blindingly clear, whenever she has done
this, that Madonna isn’t a singer, and should go with that thing she does
do, which I guess is be personally interesting and super-famous, like
Courtney Love, who now has the advantage over Madonna of being able to play
herself on film. That’s something Madonna could never do, because she never
had a self. Courtney was lucky in a way Madonna wasn’t : You can’t avoid
having a self if you’ve done a ton of drugs while you’re a mom and your
husband is dead. Celine Dion is a worthless establishment whore, a
simpering, white-cake Karen Carpenter stroking the most banal priapic nerve
denominator in the music industry, but she still sounded a lot better than
Madonna. And I even LIKE Madonna.

LORD OF THE DANCE. Jesus save our poor imperiled souls. Watching the
obscenely huge, swollen phenomenon of Michael Flatley, the hopping, bucking
satyr in the rubber pants and leather headband, was sort of like peeking
into Oscar’s top drawer and seeing a two-foot black strap-on dildo on top
of a bunch of Zamphir CDs. The pipes of Pan are deep up inside of Michael
Flatley. That man is ubiquitous, and it is because he is the Devil. If
they’re supposed to be Irish jig dancers, why are his back-up dancers
dressed like French maids from a German latex fetish video? Why is his
chest shaved and oiled? Why is he wearing LaToya’s matador jacket? Why? He
is the Devil. Those aren’t fire pots on the stage. Those burning explosions
that came like exclamation points to each jab of sweatily jigging torso
came directly from Michael Flatley’s sulfury bowels. I beg of you. The Lord
of the Dance is a False God, a heathen aberration intent on the smiting of
everything pure! Beware!

There were at least two great things about the Oscars: Billy Crystal,
who is now so utterly relaxed and pleasant in front of everybody in the
world that it doesn’t matter what he says, he’s just nice to watch, and
Frances McDormand, the least likely
Best Actress of the bunch, but easily the most fun. Choreographer Michael
Kidd, who won some kind of special Oscar for all of his work in the past,
said something to the effect that film has forgotten how to celebrate the
Joy of Living. We certainly need more Frances McDormands in Hollywood, even
if her husband did make her famous. She delivers the Joy.

As I wrote last week in reviewing “Moonrise Kingdom,” Anderson’s new fairytale romance set on a remote New England island in 1965 (that is, in a Wes Anderson version of 1965), I’m pretty much on board with his whole trip. Furthermore, I think that those who accuse Anderson of precious or pretentious postmodern poseur-ness are missing the fundamental sincerity that lies beneath his view of movies and the world. “Moonrise Kingdom” may be the loveliest of Anderson’s films, and is undeniably art-directed to the moon, but it captures both the sweet intensity of early adolescent love and the rueful complexity of adult emotion. While newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward are enjoyable as the preteen lovers, the movie’s real heroes are Bruce Willis as the heartbroken island cop and Edward Norton as a lonely scoutmaster, who both give their finest performances in years. (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand are also terrific in smaller parts as a crumbling married couple.)

I recently caught Wes Anderson on the phone from his Los Angeles office, just after his return from Cannes, where “Moonrise Kingdom” opened this year’s festival. We established, first of all, an odd point of connection: A family friend and Brooklyn neighbor of mine, the author, activist and sociology professor Alex Vitale, is Anderson’s cousin. (I only bring that up because Alex played a role in our discussion of Sam, the rebel Boy Scout — sorry, “Khaki Scout” — in “Moonrise Kingdom.”)

Wes, congratulations on the opening-night slot at Cannes. How did that go?

I think it went over pretty well, but you know, I’m probably not the best judge of it. It was a very good experience for me. I had a lot of fun.

Tell me what came first with “Moonrise Kingdom”: The place and the period, or the characters?

I think the first thing was just the emotion of what it’s like to fall in love at that age, and how it’s completely overwhelming and powerful.

What was it about that particular period, the mid-’60s, that spoke to you? I mean, you weren’t actually alive then.

You know, I think it was the feeling of being the end of — at least when I look back on it, it looks like a more innocent time in the culture. When these kids in the story are 18, there’s going to be such a radically different climate. I thought of it as the end of this Norman Rockwell time in our country, sort of.

Yeah, it feels like that. There was this period of optimism in American life, and that was pretty much the tail end of it.

Yeah, I think so. Again, I don’t know how much of this is what we project as we look backward, but at least that’s what it symbolizes for me.

I know you actually grew up in Texas, and you weren’t even born until 1969. Do you have any family connections to that part of the world, the islands and coast of New England? Did you spend summers there or anything?

No, not really. It really has nothing to do with me. But I have spent quite a bit of time on a New England island over the last 15 or 20 years, visiting friends. One of the inspirations for the movie is one particular island where I’ve gone that’s a place with no cars. It’s only accessible by boat, there’s no shops. There’s only one farm on the island, and it really has its own whole set of traditions. The way this place has been for a long, long time is very well preserved, in fact, and when you go to this place it’s like stepping back in time. It has a very particular sort of atmosphere, and that was something I wanted to conjure up a bit.

Right. It’s like the people in the movie aren’t just cut off from us because of 40 years of history. They’re also geographically cut off.

Yes, I think they may be a bit further out to sea than you might think automatically. They’re also very isolated characters, each one of them. So maybe that all ties together.

I have to ask you this: Were you ever a Boy Scout?

Uh, I tried it. I did not succeed. But, you know, I definitely wanted to be! I did not achieve any rank.

So Sam, the rebel outcast Scout in the movie, isn’t personal to you. He almost feels like he might be.

I actually think he might be like Alex. [See above.] I can definitely see Alex rebelling against his Scout troop and walking out in protest. And that’s probably where I would have ended up too.

I don’t even know if I want to come out on this issue, but I wasn’t just a Boy Scout. I was an Eagle Scout! And I have to say, for somebody who wasn’t really a part of that world, you captured its terrors and delights wonderfully. Some of those summer camp scenes made me break out in a cold sweat.

I have to say: The idea of somebody being an Eagle Scout — I’m still impressed by that. One of my closest friends in high school had a mohawk and listened to the Cramps and the Dead Kennedys, but at the same time was secretly continuing his Scouting. It was not something that any of us were ever in on, but when he graduated from high school, at the same time he was becoming an Eagle Scout. And it was interesting, in a way it was something I kind of recognized. He was a very independent thinker, and he didn’t let the preconceptions about Scouting, or the aura of Scouting, which can be taken as quite square — he didn’t really let that deter him. Although I will say he kept it a bit compartmentalized.

You have no idea how strongly I identify with that, actually. Not to get sidetracked, but a good friend from my Scout troop, who came out as gay, is the guy whose discrimination case against the Scouts went all the way to the Supreme Court in the ’90s, when they decided it was OK for the Scouts to kick him out.

Wow! Really? And they upheld it? On what basis can that be legally upheld?

Well, it’s a private organization. Within certain limits, they can kick out whoever they want for any reason.

OK. That’s the reason!

Now let’s talk about Benjamin Britten! I thought using his music was such a weird and wonderful choice, and I wondered how you got there.

Well, first of all, my older brother and I were in a production of a Benjamin Britten opera or play, “Noye’s Fludde.”

The one we see in the movie. Where Sam and Suzy, the young lovers, first meet.

Yeah. So that was the first Britten, the thing that I had in mind. And then came “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” which is a recording conducted and produced by Leonard Bernstein, with a 1960s child’s voice reciting this narration — which I guess is written by Bernstein. It felt very period, and also this music is very powerful to me. I’m a great fan of Britten. During a period of a year when I was trying to write the film, a big part of what I was doing was not actually writing the film, but just getting the sound of it figured out.

Well, you definitely inspired me. I’m going to track down that recording and play it for my kids. I have no idea if it’ll still work.

I bet it will. It’s very interesting, that whole piece, and we only used some of it in the movie. I think kids will still respond to it. Britten wrote quite a bit of music specifically for children, and also Leonard Bernstein was so interested in sharing classical music with children. I think there’s still room for that, although I guess kids might have to be coaxed into it these days.

Some people have expressed the view that the characters and emotions in “Moonrise Kingdom” are childlike, or that it’s basically a movie for children, and I have to say I totally disagree. I think you’re always addressing the conflict between childhood emotions and adult emotions, but this movie strikes me as being more about the grownups.

I think there are parallel relationships going on in this movie, and the children are the only ones who have any real clarity about what they want. They have the limitation of not thinking very many steps ahead, but they certainly know what they want their next steps to me, and I think the adults don’t even really have that. There’s a simplicity to knowing with some certainty what you’re trying to accomplish.

Right. Very often the experience of adulthood involves losing that emotional clarity.

It’s the thing that happens when you’ve seen it go wrong.

You create such specific looks for your films, and I guess I’ve always thought of that as part of the process of characterization. The design, the interiors and the exteriors kind of fuel who the people are. Is that close?

That is usually what I’m trying for. My kind of movie — the kind I’ve always been interested in making — are ones where part of it is that we’re inventing a setting where I hope the audience has never been before. Part of the experience of the movie is going into this world, and the characters are a part of the world. They’re a part of what is making that world. When I start a movie, I am very interested, from the script forward, in creating this universe where the story can take place and these characters can interact, but I very rarely think of myself as designing anything. I sort of think of it as all one thing together. It’s just fleshing it out and trying to bring it to life and figuring out the details of artwork and behavior that can create this experience.

All filmmakers do a version of that, I think. But we don’t notice it as much with the ones who depict the world more naturalistically. Your way of doing it calls our attention to the fact that the world you’re creating is an illusion.

Yes. Well, I can’t say that I am conscious of making an effort to call attention to what I’m doing, but I’m definitely making a point of trying to make something that’s unfamiliar. To make the visual part of it a surprise, and contribute to it being something new. I guess I want to emphasize that I’m very conscious of wanting to make this world, but I don’t particularly want people to think about me making it. I just want to make something that they’re experiencing.

“Moonrise Kingdom” is already playing in Los Angeles and New York. It opens this week in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and Washington; June 8 in Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., St. Louis, San Diego, San Jose, Calif., Seattle, and Austin, Texas, with more cities to follow.

Mind you, a lot of things go wrong in “Snow White and the Huntsman,” so many that it’s surprising the film feels as exhilarating and entertaining as it finally does. The problems start with the central premise and the leading actress, but there are also the wobbly CGI effects, uncertain character arcs and unresolved subplots, not to mention the regional British Isles accents, which may be tough for American viewers to follow. (This is essentially a British film, although partly fueled with dollars from Universal Pictures.) Let’s accentuate the positive, though, by beginning with the stunning and sinister Charlize Theron, who plays the usurper Queen Ravenna (aka Snow White’s evil stepmother) as a proto-feminist vengeance seeker clad in a succession of delirious, lapidary outfits out of Jean Paul Gaultier’s nightmares. (The costume designer is the estimable Colleen Atwood.)

An embittered beauty determined to resist the aging process — she has moved on from Botox and plastic surgery to physically sucking the life force out of virgins and flowers, it seems — Ravenna is such a complicated and intriguing character that Sanders and his team of writers run themselves into a version of the infamous “Satan problem” from Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” In that epic poem, the fallen angel Lucifer, who devotes all his energies to perverting and destroying mankind, is a much more interesting, and indeed appealing, character than God, a figure singularly lacking in dramatic possibility. It doesn’t help that Theron’s icy but tormented queen completely blows Kristen Stewart’s anodyne and somewhat androgynous Snow White off the screen, leaving us feeling that the overdetermined pagan-Christian parable at the heart of this story — the tomboy princess is The One to whom ancient forest beasts bow down, The One who will make the land bloom again — is both unfair and rather dull.

I’m a fan of Stewart’s, generally speaking, and will irritatingly add that I always think of her, first and foremost, as “that girl from ‘Adventureland.’” She badly needs to get out of the business of playing storybook virginal princess types, however, and I hope she and the people around her have enough sense not to let Bella define the rest of her career. (I haven’t seen “On the Road” yet; maybe that will help.) She cuts a fetching line in both gowns and suits of armor, but this Snow White — who is sometimes Bilbo Baggins (and sometimes his Ring), sometimes Luke Skywalker, sometimes Joan of Arc and sometimes Henry V — calls for both broad hambone instincts and a natural aristocratic bearing. Stewart possesses neither, looking and acting rather too much like a standoffish American girl faking a posh accent.

In fairness, I have no idea whom else I’d have cast or how well she’d have done. Sanders and his writers — the story is by Evan Daugherty, who co-wrote the screenplay with John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini — never quite decide whether they’re doing a sardonic, young-adult update of the 1937 Disney classic or cutting themselves free from that material and going back to its roots in European folklore. Mostly, in fact, it’s the former: If the scene where Snow White gets lost in the forest scared you when you were 5, they seem to say, wait till you see the super-scary haunted forest we’ve got for you now! Cute bunnies? We’re doubling down on the cuteness! Seven dwarves, you say? Well, OK then — but let’s make them debauched, violent, pseudo-Celtic little bastards! (The gang of dwarves includes Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone and Toby Jones, who are rendered small through both newfangled and old-fashioned trickery and are highly enjoyable, overall.)

Sanders mounts an impressive faux-medieval spectacle in the first third of the film, although he has little gift for action, and therefore the battle scenes are uniformly disappointing. We see how Ravenna seduces and destroys Snow White’s father, locking the child princess in the tower and seizing the crown for herself. The resemblance to HBO’s “Game of Thrones” (and the George R.R. Martin books behind it) may be coincidental, but it is nonetheless strong, and the intrigue even includes a semi-incestuous relationship between Ravenna and her perverted brother Finn (Sam Spruell), whose lecherous advances upon Snow White give her an opportunity to escape. Not daring to pursue the girl into the Dark Forest, Finn hires a drunken, widowed huntsman with no known name (Chris Hemsworth of “Thor” and “The Avengers”) to fetch her back so his enraged sister can tear Snow White’s heart from her breast and thereby live forever.

There’s no denying that taking the repentant huntsman, a brief and buffoonish cameo role in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and making him the ennobled working-class hero of the whole story is an ingenious twist. Whether it pays off, I’m not sure. Hemsworth is an agreeable action hero with tremendous charisma, and the long midsection of this movie, as Snow White and the huntsman go on a Tolkienian voyage of adventure and discovery, is both enjoyable and predictable. Stewart’s best and most delicate acting, in fact, comes as Snow White begins to wrestle with the unexpected possibility that this uncouth muscleman — and not the effete, aristocratic William (Sam Claflin) who has loved her since childhood — may be her real Prince Charming.

I don’t think I can be accused of issuing spoilers when it comes to a fairytale, but let’s leave a faint shroud of mystery over precisely how this triangle is resolved, or not resolved. Ravenna’s delivery of the poisoned apple to Snow White is brilliantly done, perhaps the movie’s best revisionist moment, but after that the momentum declines sharply. Snow White “dies” and is revived — more mysteriously, and with less emotional impact, than in the Disney film — and then she must lead her rebel troops into battle, delivering a knockoff version of the St. Crispin’s Day inspirational speech from “Henry V” (which Stewart, frankly, can’t pull off at all). This is a big, crude, cynical and impressive movie that will leave almost any viewer with mixed feelings, partly because it kills off its best character in what seems like an irrevocable fashion. It ends by virtually begging us to call for a sequel, stopping just short of an on-screen ellipsis and question mark. I’m inclined to conclude that “Snow White and the Huntsman” is a vigorous simulacrum of classic fantasy, rather than the real thing. But keep your expectations reasonable, and that’s enough to make it one of the summer’s unexpected delights.

Now, I’m not copping some elitist attitude — or at least not the one you’re thinking. I’m plenty excited to see Ridley Scott’s “Alien” prequel “Prometheus” later this week, believe me. And I have a funny feeling about Chris Nolan’s last “Dark Knight” chapter, which might wind up being a lot better, and tougher, than skeptics like me are inclined to expect. But there is a lot of smaller-scale summer movie goodness to look forward to, and arthouse-type specialty distributors have learned that packing the season with alternative fare aimed at grownups can definitely pay off. Please note that I do mean “summer movies,” that is, those possessing high entertainment value and ample sensual rewards. Of course I still love three-hour fillums from Turkey about the meaninglessness of existence (like that one some of you will never forgive me for), but I also agree they don’t go all that well with flip-flops, the smell of spray-on sunscreen, and those mind-altering cola-slush concoctions.

So here are 10 terrific blockbuster alternatives for the summer of 2012, ranging from some mildly offbeat studio fare to low-budget indies that will spread slowly and gradually across the country. (Several will also be available on-demand, and I’ve tried to note that.) I should mention that three excellent such options have already opened in major cities and should reach you soon if they haven’t already: Wes Anderson’s blissful, tragicomic mid-1960s fantasy “Moonrise Kingdom”; Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s heartbreaking one-man, one-day character study “Oslo, August 31st”; and Nadine Labaki’s “Where Do We Go Now?” a sweet-natured, mildly experimental retake on “Lysistrata” set in a Lebanese village.

Extraterrestrial A guy wakes up next to a hot chick after an apparent one-night stand — but why can’t he remember anything about it? And why is there a flying saucer hovering over their now-abandoned city? From Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo, who made the deceptively silly and thoroughly enjoyable time-travel heist movie “Timecrimes,” comes this appealing hybrid of indie relationship comedy and alien-invasion flick. (Opens June 15 in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Seattle; Austin, Texas; and on VOD. Other cities will follow.)

Your Sister’s Sister This irresistible indie rom-com from Seattle-based filmmaker Lynn Shelton may be less distinctive than her provocative bromance “Humpday,” but Shelton has stepped up her game, movie-star-wise, while retaining her sharp-edged dialogue and real-life characterizations. Mark Duplass plays a grieving loser who has a fun, drunken one-nighter with a lesbian friend (Rosemarie DeWitt) — but it’s her sister (Emily Blunt), the ex of his late brother, for whom he’s kept a torch burning. (Opens June 15 in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C., with a wider release to follow.)

Beasts of the Southern Wild First-time director Benh Zeitlin’s magic-realist fable is already the year’s most acclaimed debut. Set in an isolated corner of Louisiana’s bayou country, where a six-year-old girl lives in a fantastical harmony with nature — at least until the big storm hits — “Beasts” has won both the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, for best first film in any section of the festival. This is a genuinely visionary work, albeit one that will strike some viewers as a mite too precious. I simply can’t tell whether it’s a breakout hit waiting to happen or this year’s version of “Uncle Boonmee” — a film loved by a handful of cinephile insiders but ignored by most. (Opens June 27 in major markets, with wider release to follow.)

Magic Mike Yeah, picking this one is probably cheating. It’s a studio film (at least at the point of release) that stars Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer and Matthew McConaughey as male strippers. In other words, it’s got obvious audience appeal and will probably be a hit, at least at some level — but it’s also a Steven Soderbergh film, meaning it was shot fast and cheap and close to the ground. (Soderbergh shot and edited the whole damn thing himself, as usual.) That also means it’s got at least a bit of clinical, borderline-misanthropic edge to go along with the ample humor and even ampler servings of beefcake. Honestly, what’s not to love? (Opens June 29.)

Take This Waltz Actress-turned-director Sarah Polley’s second film (the first was the wonderful “Away From Her”) is an almost ruthless examination of one woman’s journey out of an apparently happy marriage into a stormy new relationship, featuring 2011 Oscar nominee Michelle Williams in what I think is her best role to date. (And Seth Rogen is so terrific as her jilted husband that I hereby forgive him his willfully dumb comedy roles.) By turns erotic, comic, tragic and even experimental, “Take This Waltz” has divided critics and audiences at festivals so far. I think it’s one of the year’s best movies, and it announces Polley’s arrival in the front rank of North American filmmakers. What will you think? (Now available on VOD; opens June 29 in theaters.)

Ballplayer: Pelotero Summer simply isn’t summer without an unconventional take on the baseball movie. In this acclaimed documentary, already a hit at numerous festivals, directors Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin and Jonathan Paley take us inside the rarely seen world of Major League Baseball’s training camps in the Dominican Republic, where teenagers from the poor island nation are bred to become future diamond superstars (or, more likely, to wash out somewhere along the way). The filmmakers follow two highly ranked prospects as they approach their 16th birthday — the moment they can sign professional contracts. (Opens July 13 in New York, with other cities and home video release to follow.)

The Queen of Versailles A Florida real-estate tycoon and his appealing, immensely flawed wife try to build the country’s biggest McMansion in photographer-turned-filmmaker Lauren Greenfield’s documentary, which is stranger than any work of fiction. Surrounded by controversy since well before its Sundance premiere (when subject David Siegel tried to sue the festival), “Queen of Versailles” veers from profound human compassion to domestic horror as Siegel’s wife Jackie wanders through her enormous but trashed home scraping dog crap off the carpets. It’s like a Theodore Dreiser novel for our time, infused with the vivid, vulgar spirit of reality TV. (Opens in theaters July 20; VOD release is likely but has not been announced.)

Killer Joe A mean-spirited plot about a guy who takes out a hit on his own mother, a delightful-sounding cast headed by the resurgent Matthew McConaughey (what a big year for him!), and an NC-17 rating. Add that all up, and this Coens-flavored tale of backwater deviance, written by playwright Tracy Letts, could finally be the comeback film that onetime Oscar-winner William Friedkin (“The Exorcist,” “The French Connection”) has been pointing toward for decades. Mind you, like all of Friedkin’s recent movies, “Killer Joe” was made on the cheap, far away from Hollywood and its piles of money. That only makes me want to see it more, especially with Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church and Gina Gershon all along for the ride. (Scheduled to open July 27 in limited release.)

Premium Rush This one’s another studio movie, technically speaking — but everything about this Manhattan chase thriller screams irresistible August sleeper, from its indie-rific star (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, still a niche-oriented leading man) to its director (A-list screenwriter David Koepp, who’s made several other films, none of them hits). Gordon-Levitt plays a bike messenger who picks up a mysterious envelope that lures a dubious cop (the inimitable Michael Shannon) into an extended street pursuit, complete with BMX-style bike acrobatics and action-movie clichés galore. (Scheduled to open Aug. 24 in wide release.)

Lawless This bootlegging saga set in Depression-era Virginia, from the Aussie duo of director John Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave (yes, the post-punk music legend, who also wrote Hillcoat’s “The Proposition”), has run through three titles during its brief existence, which often signals a troubled production. (It was previously “The Wettest County in the World” and then just “The Wettest County” — and the filmmakers only switched to “Lawless” after Terrence Malick agreed to give it up.) Reviews and reactions at the Cannes premiere ran the gamut from raves to outrage, but with an ensemble that includes Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce and Mia Wasikowska (along with the much-mocked Shia LaBeouf), I can’t believe it won’t be fascinating. (Scheduled to open Aug. 29.)

Which brings us to this week’s double bill. “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” just out today, is an unrelentingly grim, absolutely depressing, difficult-to-recommend-to-anyone work of sublime, essential filmmaking. Say again? OK. In the words of Preston Sturges, there is “nothing like a deep-dish movie to drive you out into the open.” “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is that kind of movie, an absolutely brilliant work of narrative and deliberately elliptical narrative storytelling. It takes this trope of the bad seed and plants it so it grows into some kind of hallucinatory kudzu. It cannot be easily eradicated once it is experienced first-hand. Not since Billy Mumy wished those pesky adults into the cornfield in one of the all-time creepiest works of TV Noir has a demon child been depicted as being quite so, well, “hellish.”

Based on the 2004 novel by Lionel Shriver, “We Need to Talk About Kevin” is told from the point of view of worldly travel writer Eva Khatchadourian. Besides having to cope with a difficult-to-spell last name, Eva has to endure a nightmarish life as the mother of perhaps the worst child in cinema history. This slow-motion torture of Eva is capped with a Columbine-style school massacre that tears this movie’s heart wide open. No surprise there, but the brilliance of the film is the way the chronology of catastrophe coils around itself, yet propels relentlessly forward. I must mention here that the editing of the film is wonderful. I also must mention that the editor of this film is my friend and colleague Joe Bini, but I’m not just saying this to butter Joe up so he takes my notes seriously next time. If anything, the editing in this film makes me nervous to ever suggest anything to Joe ever again — it is that good. But there is enough praise to go around. The film’s director, Lynn Ramsey, has a command of film vocabulary that keeps it from becoming the Art House “Omen” it so easily might have been. Yes, there are many scenes of mannered excess, but what manners, what excess!

Now, no film about a Bad Seed can succeed with a bad child actor – and “We Need to Talk About Kevin” has two extraordinary seeds. Ezra Miller plays the teenage Archer from Hell, and Jasper Newell is simply terrifying as a Satan in Snuggies. Both not only look alike and talk alike, at times they even glare alike. You can lose your mind, as Tilda Swinton does, thoroughly, across two excruciating hours. Any parent who read the recent New York Times Magazine article on 9-year-old newly diagnosed psychopaths cannot help but empathize with Swinton’s Eva. Those same parents also should not — repeat not — watch this movie. Cherish your pet hamster and let this one go. Trust me on this.

This brings us to the only real problem with “We Need to Talk About Kevin” — the reason for its existence. One wonders just why this story demanded to be told and why so many consummate craftsmen felt compelled to tell a story of such absolute darkness and despair. It reminds me of another work of scary excellence that was pretty much a career black-hole for all connected with it, Bob Fosse’s “Star 80.” Perhaps the worst first-date movie of all time, “Star 80” worked brilliantly on just about every level, except for the basic story it told, which had even Fosse disciples screaming for the exits and pretty much torpedoed the career of Julia Roberts’s far more talented brother.

Both “Star 80″ and “We Need to Talk About Kevin” get the “Michael Powell Peeping Tom” award for Excellence In Service of Repulsion, and both are great films. I really just wonder what the filmmakers thought they were doing, what audiences they thought they were going to reach, and why they wanted to reach them in the first place. I’m not going to ask my friend Joe, but, God bless Lynn Ramsey and her creative team, and Bob Fosse and Michael Powell, for going for it – whatever they thought “it” might be.

“The Bad Seed,” on the other hand, did nothing to derail the career of its director, Mervyn LeRoy. Perhaps it should have. A too-faithful translation of the 1954 hit Broadway play, it’s a film best consigned to legend and not actually watched, unless, of course, as the first part of this double bill with “We Need to Talk About Kevin.” LeRoy was the ’50s king of Broadway adaptations, with “The Bad Seed” following “Mister Roberts” and leading into his translation of “No Time for Sergeants.” His best work helming Warner Brother’s Pre-Code quickies was 25 years behind him, not to mention a guest shot at the “Wizard of Oz.” LeRoy brought very little to the “The Bad Seed.” Most of the cast of the play were imported to LeRoy’s set, and most were still delivering their lines to the far balcony. LeRoy’s camera just got in the way.

And what lines they delivered! “The Bad Seed” is one long pulled punch.

Remember the ending of “Psycho” where all of the delicious crimes are explained away in a long exposition scene? This film is stuffed with what Orson Welles called “dollar-book Freud,” apparently necessary for 1950s audiences who could not – or would not – imagine a child who actually did enjoy pulling the wings off flies. Even Bosley Crowther, the arteriosclerotic film critic for the New York Times, called the movie out on its staginess and over-the-top acting — and this was in 1956. Sadly, the film isn’t really bad enough to be really good. With the exception of Patty McCormack’s trailblazing performance as Rhoda Tasker, the titular Bad Seed in question, all the other performances are mannered beyond belief. Henry Jones, in particular, must be signaled out for essaying the role of Leroy, the dimwitted proto-pervert maintenance man. Leroy has Rhoda’s number early on, but keeps forgetting to add it up correctly, until Rhoda demonstrates convincingly why children should not play with matches.

But, rejoice, fans of Hollywood tacked-on Hays Code endings. You will absolutely love the very end of this film, where the cast takes an actual curtain call (!) and demon Rhoda gets an actual spanking (!!) from a smiling mom. And all this after God smites Evil in just about that amount of time. Astonishing now, and I have to believe astonishing then. This is as complete an act of dramatic self-negation as ever appended to a Hollywood movie. When TCM junkies pine for the days of classic old Hollywood, movies like “The Bad Seed” do not help them make their case. “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” on the other hand, is a fully realized work of committed cinematic virtuosity, in the service of a story that many simply do not want to hear. It has the courage of its convictions, and in this era of focus-group-driven filmmaking, courage is more than enough.

Watching this double bill shows just how far we have come – on a journey we may not want to make.

Worst first-date movie of all time? I suggested “Star 80,” but perhaps you, dear readers, can help with other titles, and, perhaps, the saga of other disastrous movie dates. See you in the comments section!!

I saw “Oslo, August 31st” last year at Cannes and found it powerfully affecting, but I never would have guessed that this small movie from a small country would have touched an international nerve the way it apparently has. In the wake of a breathless profile of doctor-turned-actor Lie and his supermodel wife, Iselin Steiro, in the New York Times’ style magazine — which made the film sound rather like a fashion accessory, or a handbook to Oslo architecture — I almost feel the need to dial back expectations a little. Yes, there are drugs and dance clubs and traveling shots but, honest to Pete, we’re not talking stylish, scenic, lovable hipster romp here, people. While “Oslo, August 31st” definitely has the dynamism and street-level energy of, say, an early Godard picture, and may indeed leave you eager to visit Norway, it’s first and foremost an intimate tragedy about a likable young man who has wandered off the path of life into some very dark woods, and isn’t necessarily finding his way back.

As in Trier’s equally wonderful first film, the 2006 “Reprise” — I’m pretty much the president of the cult on that one — the director is interested in exploring the existential dark side of Scandinavian social democracy, with its largely homogeneous character and devotion to equal opportunity. When I talked to Trier about that film, which featured Lie and Espen Klouman-Hoiner as a pair of arrogant, doomed aspiring novelists, he observed that in Norway “there are a lot of people with a lot of choices. It sounds wonderful but there’s a darker side to that. Lots of people are not dealing with those choices very well.” Anders in “Oslo, August 31st” is something like the worst-case outcome for Lie’s character in “Reprise”; he’s a guy from a loving, middle-class family who’s got looks, health, intelligence and education, but for unknowable reasons finds himself on the edge of middle age as a penniless, unemployable, supposedly recovering junkie.

Trier and co-writer Eskil Vogt adapted their central premise from “Le Feu Follet,” a 1930s novella about alcoholism by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, but “Oslo, August 31st” could really be set anywhere at any time. It’s about the painful necessity of adapting to change, every single day that we’re alive, and if we identify with Anders even as we rage against his despair, it’s because every living human has at some point considered the possibility that it’s just too much and the struggle isn’t worth it. Anders is doing well in drug rehab, and has cautiously been granted a one-day leave to visit Oslo friends and apply for a job. But we can tell from the first moments of the film that his agenda is more complicated than that; Anders is in the position of a certain Danish prince, evaluating the reasons for being against the reasons for ceasing to be. (Trier, by the way, is cousin to another famous Dane, “Melancholia” director Lars von Trier, and one could argue their visions of the world are related as well.)

“Oslo, August 31st” runs a lean, mean 95 minutes, and not one second seems unimportant. Anders moves through the streets of Oslo looking for reasons to live and reasons to die, and even though we don’t know those streets as he does, we can tell that they’re haunted with memories and private agonies. The city is dotted with construction cranes and demolition sites, remorselessly regenerating itself while he appears to stand still. Indeed, Anders’ family home will soon be sold, and one of his personal missions is to pay a final visit. (The fluid, poetic cinematography is by Jakob Ihre.) He insults a prospective employer, refuses to make peace with his alienated sister, falls off the wagon — at first tentatively, and then enthusiastically — and leaves increasingly pathetic messages for his lost love, a woman who’s now in New York. (It’s the voice of Steiro, Lie’s real-life spouse.) On the other hand, he flirts with a younger girl who seems affectionate and charming, and who seems to open for him the promise of a new beginning. Their scene together at an Oslo swimming pool that has just closed for the season, so suggestive of both death and rebirth (and, literally, of baptism) is so gorgeous I wanted to cry. OK, I did cry, and that wasn’t the only time.

But none of that, not even the scenes where we feel that Anders is in imminent danger of taking his own life, are quite as painful as his visit with Thomas (Hans Olav Brenner), an old friend and veteran of long literary discussions and booze-and-drug sessions. Thomas has a wife and a kid now, and his vices involve an occasional bottle of beer. In the manner of one-time bohemians who’ve more or less grown up, he’s kind of an ostentatious jerk about it — but then admits to Anders, when they’re alone, that he’s desperately unhappy. Perhaps that’s the “ordinary unhappiness” Freud wrote about, the unhappiness we all have to accept to get from the last day of August into the first day of September, in Oslo or anywhere else. But is that enough? Is that ever enough, for anybody? And can we forgive those who decide that it isn’t?

“Oslo, August 31st” opens this week at the IFC Center in New York, and June 1 at Laemmle’s Playhouse 7 and Laemmle’s NoHo 7 in Los Angeles, with more cities and DVD release to follow.