Written and directed by Tim Kirkman

Starring: Kip Pardue, Michael Kelly, Tess Harper and Bonnie Hunt

95 minutes

Three seemingly unrelated stories set in North Carolina take place over the course of three consecutive years. Kure (pronounced: Curie) Beach, 1999: While on his morning jog, George (Michael Kelly), a local motel manager, spots drifter Mark (Kip Pardue) protecting a turtle’s nest. Sympathetic to learn that Mark is HIV positive (and dumbstruck by the young man’s beauty), George takes him in. Eden, 2000: Robert (Chris Sarandon) and Elizabeth (Tess Harper) are the town minister and wife. He frets that the new neighbors are Mexican (or worse – gay) while she empties half a can of air freshener every time she sneaks a cigarette. Asheville, 2001: Grace (Bonnie Hunt), a rental car agent, searches the eyes of a young customer for the son she gave up for adoption. Breaking rank from the mother she was forced to move back in with (Michael Learned), Grace quits her job to search for her boy.

This is a film that’s near impossible to discuss without revealing key plot points. Even though the “how” is infinitely more interesting to uncover than the “why,” I will not play the role of spoiler. Here is what I can safely tell you about Loggerheads. So as not to disorient the viewer, sounds and overlapping dialogue are initially used as location identifiers. After about the third transition where crashing waves are used to signify Kure Beach, we get our sea legs and the technique is put to rest. The three stories do eventually intertwine, and what is most interesting is the way in which screenwriter/director Tim Kirkman doles out the information.

With the exception of some clunky exchanges between Grace and her mother, Kirkman’s dialogue is as biting as it is condescension-free. (This is his first narrative film. He directed the 1998 documentary Dear Jesse, in which the openly gay filmmaker addressed America’s favorite homophobe, Sen. Jesse Helms.) The actors are all to be commended. No offense to Ms. Harper, but she looks and acts the role of an uptight pastor’s wife a little too convincingly. Best remembered for his roles as Al Pacino’s “wife” in Dog Day Afternoon, Mariel Hemingway’s rapist in Lipstick and the voice of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas, it was great to once again see Chris Sarandon in a film that didn’t go directly to home video. He is no less menacing in short-sleeved Wal-Mart “dress” polyester than he was wearing hip ’70s gear, particularly since he was promoted from a casual sociopath to one ordained by the Catholic church. The film’s biggest revelation is Bonnie Hunt. As the scared (and scarred) daughter who finally decides to come to terms with the son she was forced to part with, Hunt finds just the right blend of inner-anguish and tension-breaking asides.

Obviously, the title refers to the situation all of the characters find themselves in. There is also Mark’s fascination with Loggerhead sea turtles, animals that in his mind represent recognition and acceptance in a world where shame is the ultimate destroyer. The shame of giving up a child, the shame of being abandoned and the shame of being gay are, as Kirkman states, “all unnecessarily assigned by our culture in a variety of forms.” This film got to me. Before the gay cowboys ride into town, do yourselves a favor and check out this superior love story.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Written and directed by Craig Lucas

Starring: Peter Sarsgaard, Patricia Clarkson and Campbell Scott

101 minutes

When asked who his dream director would be for the first-time screenplay he just sold for $1 million, Robert Sandrich (Peter Sarsgaard) picks Gus Van Sant, “since [Francois] Truffaut is dead.” For all intent and purpose, Van Sant’s career died with his “remake” of Psycho. The director of Jules and Jim seems the more logical choice for this “Hollywood on Hollywood” turned chilling cyber ménage.

Craig Lucas’ monumental Longtime Companion was the first play to attach a human face to the AIDS epidemic. The film version, which Lucas adapted, starred Campbell Scott. Fifteen years later, the writer (now first-time director) and actor reunite for this darkly comedic gay horror film.

The hilarious opening scene in which studio head Jeffrey (Scott) advises newbie Sandrich on how to soften his AIDS-themed script (also entitled The Dying Gaul) for the middle class could have been lifted from Robert Altman’s The Player. “Most Americans hate gay people…. To get people into the movie theaters, they have to think it’s going to be fun…. No one goes to the movies to have a bad time or learn anything.” The script’s title metaphorically refers to a statue of a wounded Roman soldier. Could this guy write something less commercial?

All Jeffrey asks is that Robert makes his lead character a heterosexual woman with AIDS. What really makes these demands all the more unsavory is Jeffrey’s undying gall. At a cocktail party, the closeted, self-loathing exec coos into Robert’s ear, quickly shifting gears when his wife, Elaine (the radiant Patricia Clarkson), comes within earshot. “I want to suck you until there isn’t a drop left, lick you from head to toe, have you inside… foreign markets and video; you’ll be able to afford a house looking down on us.”

Once a screenwriter, now a Malibu housewife, Elaine is touched by both Robert’s artistry and his tortured soul. She tracks him down in an Internet chat room, and as their conversation progresses, Jeffrey and Robert’s affair is revealed. These online scenes are highly engaging.

Lucas has constructed a tight, irony-laced post-modern film noir. Sprinkler systems that go bump in the night replace the rain-soaked pavement of ’40s noir. He brilliantly juxtaposes sun-bleached shores with dark, cramped work spaces. The ending may be a bit harsh, but up until then, The Dying Gaul delivers tension, superb acting and more than a few nasty chuckles.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Directed by Karyn Kusama

Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi

Starring: Charlize Theron, Marton Csokas, Jonny Lee Miller and Sophie Okonedo

93 minutes in CinemaScope

Based on characters created by Peter Cheung for the hit MTV animated series, Aeon Flux follows in the shallow footsteps of Barbarella, Logan’s Run, Ballistic: Sever and Ecks and any other sci-fi film that looks as though it were shot in an industrial park and/or shopping mall. Paramount took a pass on a critics screening, and 10 minutes into it the reason becomes blindingly clear: This thing is unwatchable!

Set 400 years in the future, Charlize Theron stars as a Monican soldier at war with the totalitarian government’s Good Child regime. Aeon establishes a logic-free universe where anything can happen at the filmmaker’s behest. It is the type of film where about two-thirds of the way through, one character turns to another (and subsequently the audience as well) in an attempt to explain everything that just took place. Theron looks great in the costumes, especially in the first action scene where a black leather number is topped off by a Hitler hairdo, so why not wait and peruse the layouts in upcoming fashion mags.

In my review of North Country, I expressed concern over this film being a hit and luring an exceptional actress over to the money-lined dark side of comic book movies. No chance. I’ll watch Catwoman a hundred times before ever stepping into this again. At least that had plenty of unintentional laughs. Advice to Ms. Theron: In the future, cross the street every time you happen upon a comic book shop.

Rating : BOMB

Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan

Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Peet

126 minutes

Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan tries his hand at directing, and the results are incomprehensible at best. As confusing as it is, Aeon Flux plays like Chicken Little when compared to Syriana.

The previews for Syriana promise to expose links between the Bush crime family and Saudi oil. What you see in the trailer is pretty much what you get: A few brief assertions that preserving chaos in the Middle East is as essential as keeping secret the plans that would fuel cars with water. Otherwise, the filmmakers seem content to deal strictly in over-the-top melodrama.

George Clooney plays a CIA operative who begins to question the career he devoted his life to. Why the drowning of Matt Damon’s son motivates him to side with an idealistic prince is never made clear. Corporate lawyer Jeffrey Wright puts the finishing touches on the merger of two powerful oil companies. And poor Amanda Peet spends most of the time bawling her eyes out. (With the exception of the last comment, were it not for the press notes, I’m not sure I could have told you any of the plot.)

The film is loaded with unnecessary sub-plots. Did we really need for Clooney to have a teenage son reluctant to move to Islamabad because he heard that their proms suck? Why start on a classic structure that opens in mid-action and cuts to backstory only to blur and convolute characters and bisecting plot lines? If you have to read a book or see a film three times in order to make sense of it, the filmmakers are not doing their jobs.

One of the great joys in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic was the ability to keep you informed of every location through purely visual terms. Instead of learning from his mentor, Gaghan brands dozens of location names in the corner of his frames. Wait for home video. At least you can rewind.

Rating: 1 star