Box of Moonlight

Life, in Tom DiCillo's films, is like a Box of Moonlight -- he may strive embarrassingly hard to come up with something offbeat and original, but you always know what you're going to get next. In this, his third film, it's yet another case of inner-childishness. John Turturro is miscast as Al Fountain, an anal, unlikable electrical engineer who advises his emotionally traumatized young son to learn multiplication tables and who alienates his crew at their remote worksite -- a windshield-wiper factory -- when he shuts down their impromptu stickball game. The project is canceled suddenly, and Al is left adrift. He decides to recover his youth by heading out to a nearby lake resort where he used to have fun as a kid.

That project fails too -- the lake is now a toxic-waste dump -- but Al does meet up with the Kid (Sam Rockwell, a kind of Brad Pitt without the grit). A new-age, happy-go-lucky anarchist who subsists on Hydrox cookies in milk and makes a living selling purloined yard ornaments, the Kid helps Al shed his inhibitions and even some of his clothing. After a couple stints at the swimming hole, a drunken fight in a bar, an adulterous fling with a couple of local girls, and a profound insight into why he's been seeing things running in reverse time, Al finally learns how to Live. Maybe after getting this contrived treacle out of his system, the fitfully inspired DiCillo will learn how to make movies. At the Harvard Square.

-- Peter Keough