Art-house films: ‘Some Days Are Better Than Others,’ ‘Undertow,’ ‘Winter in Wartime,’ ‘Cat Run’

• Reprints

Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Opening this week on the local specialty film circuit:

A pair of Portland indie musicians and a Portland music video director collaborate for this endearing drama. “Some Days Are Better Than Others” introduces three likable lost characters seeking company in some form. Resonant with local color, this feature debut by Matt McCormick departs from the overcast mise-en-scene as seen in the recent indie “Cold Weather,” which was set and shot in the same city. The sky is brighter, even if the job opportunities are still downbeat.

Jesse (James Mercer, from the band the Shins) and Katrina (Carrie Brownstein, former guitarist in Sleater-Kinney) share a scene only at the very end, in a nicely timed surprise. Jesse does demeaning temp work. He wants to pay off his college loans and go back for a degree so he can work as a substitute teacher in high schools. Dumped by her boyfriend of five years, Katrina works at a dog shelter. She shoots a video diary to audition for a reality TV show. Her efforts recall the performance videos that Portland artist Miranda July worked into her own indie debut “Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005).

The third character, whose story occupies a smaller part of the film, is Camille (Renee Roman Nose), a middle-aged woman from Latin America who lives alone. She works as a sorter at a recycling center. One day she finds an urn holding the ashes of a little girl. She takes unofficial custody of the abandoned remains. Carrie is similarly concerned about dogs on her shelter’s “unadoptable list.”

McCormick almost adds too many sad motifs: Carrie videotapes a building demolition scene, and Jesse gets hired to clean out the house of an old woman who died. “Some Days Are Better Than Others” is a mood piece with a lonely heart. No fake silver linings offer a sunny finale. Despite a supporting role played by a now defunct site called www.mumblemail.com, this 2009 indie articulates its sentiment with clarity.

No MPAA rating. Running time: 93 minutes. Opening today at Facets Cinematheque.

‘Undertow’ ★★1/2

Peru’s Oscar entry for best foreign language film was “Undertow,” a gay ghost love story shot and set in Cabo Blanco. The feature debut by writer-director Javier Fuentes-Leon, it screened earlier at both the Chicago Latino Film Festival and Reeling: The Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival. Its message is that it takes a real man to come out of the closet, and it takes a village to let him.

Fishing is the way of life in this Catholic community. Painting is not a local livelihood. But that is what Santiago (Manolo Cardona) does. Only one resident has any idea what this newcomer from the city sketches and paints. That is fisherman and father-to-be Miguel (Cristian Mercado), Santiago’s secret lover. After the gay painter drowns , Miguel discovers he was his lover’s muse and nude model.

Fuentes-Leon, a Telemundo television writer and Hollywood film subtitler, scripts Santiago’s return from the deep. Only Miguel can see him in this supernatural form. Soon the village will see Santiago’s art and see Miguel for who he really is.

The uplifting plotline draws on the typical elements of cowardice and intolerance followed by courage and acceptance. More than a scenic telenovela, “Undertow” is a sincere drama that swims with familiar sentiments.

No MPAA rating. Running time: 100 minutes. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Opening today at Music Box.

Set in January 1945, “Winter in Wartime” opens with an RAF pilot crashing in a snowy woods and shooting the German soldier who finds him. Hidden in a pit by the Resistance, the injured Jack (Jamie Campbell Bower) will depend on a 13-year-old local boy and his older sister, a nurse, to evade the Nazis.

Dutch director Martin Koolhoven and co-writers Paul Jan Nelissen and Mieke de Jong adapted their script from the 1972 youth novel by Jan Terlouw. Koolhoven wanted the look of “The Bourne Supremacy” for this action adventure shot in the Ukraine. Michiel (Martijn Lakemeier) encounters three male role models; as mayor, his father must deal with the Nazis; his visiting uncle seems more worldly as an apparent member of the Resistance. and Jack, who treats the lad as a comrade.

Two of these men get shot in his sight, as will Michiel’s beloved horse. Besides risky errands and suspenseful chase sequences, the plot is guided by boyish emotion. Michiel is jealous when he finds his sister in bed with Jack. It’s as if he doesn’t want to share a new pet or prized toy.

Koolhoven claims his WWII drama, which is polished yet pat, is about the “loss of innocence.” Michiel removes the clothes-pinned cards that flap between his bike spokes. Later, he feels more grown-up playing with cards decorated with pin-ups. When the war ends, a former playmate hands him a souvenir from the RAF wreck that is repurposed as a plaything. In a hokey last shot, Michiel makes an unlikely metamorphosis back into a giddy kid. In his book, however, Terlouw admits peacetime was less fun.

Rated R for language. Running time: 103 minutes. In Dutch, German and English, with English subtitles. Opening today at the Music Box.

‘Cat Run’ ★★

In sex comedy “EuroTrip” (2004), Scott Mechlowitz played an American teen running around Europe after a girl. In “Cat Run,” his character Anthony is an ex-pat chef from Philly doing the same thing. Except his German pen pal is replaced by an Andorran prostitute named Cat (Paz Vega), and the body count goes way up.

Writer-director John Stockwell, who directed the anti-gringo slasher film “Turista” (2006), calls “Cut Run” a “hilariously violent action-comedy.” He’s got the violent part down. Many bullets enter heads and exit trailing bloody goo. One interrogator uses a cigar-tip cutter on human appendages.

All this tissue damage is triggered by Cat fleeing the estate of a high-tech weapons dealer with a “level-5 encrypted hard drive.” It contains video that could damage the image of the high-profile American shown strangling a prostitute. This naked kinky creep is variously described as a U.S. senator, an ex-senator and the secretary of defense.

Anthony and his boyhood pal Julian (Alphonso McAuley) have just formed a European detective agency, with an office in a porn theater. Their receptionist is a triple amputee (D.L. Hughley) and survivor of a shark attack. They decide to track Cat. She and her baby are also tracked by Helen (Janet McTeer), a tony assassin with cheeky calling cards identifying her as Virginia Woolf and Emily Bronte.

Shot in Serbia, “Cat Run” offers off-color jokes about ethnic cleansing. A Serb character reacts to a nationalist insult about genocide with a guffaw. This juvenile fare needs onscreen tips to cue laughs, especially for gore fans who never heard of Srebrenica.

Rated R for strong bloody violence, sexual content, nudity and language. Running time: 102 minutes. Opens today in local theaters.

Bill Stamets is a free-lance writer and critic.