More a reverie of romantic banditry and paean to movie love than rat-a-tat-tat gangster yarn, director Michael Mann's dreamlike "Public Enemies" imagines the Depression-era "Golden Age of Bank Robbers" as the final, sputtering flame of American lone wolf integrity and contrariness, extinguished by a lethal squall of FBI bullets and the windstorm profit margins of modern organized crime.

You'd never guess it from my happy-go-lucky persona, so beloved by readers, but I'm a fan of dark and pessimistic world views, especially when expressed in the incongruous context of a so-called comedy by characters with little apparent reason for their assertions of superiority. (See, for example, Richard Grant in "Withnail and I.")

So even though "Whatever Works" -- the 39th (!) theatrical feature film from writer-director Woody Allen in 43 years -- is stagey, unconvincing and somewhat stale in its kneejerk existentialism (Allen originally wrote the script in the 1970s, for Zero Mostel), it's also frequently very funny. To paraphrase a magical British nanny, a spoonful of sugar helps the misanthropy go down.

If you're a fan of "motorboating" (look it up at urbandictionary.com, if you don't know), you might want to catch the premiere of what might be dubbed the Breast Picture of the Year, "Brumski's," a comic short film written and directed by longtime Memphis event promoter Chris Walker, the Deep South Wrestling impresario who has brought John Waters, Crispin Glover and Jello Biafra to town, to name a few.

This 20-minute "Crypt Walker Production" from "Okey Dokey Me No Jokey Films" -- which screens Friday (July 3) at the Hi-Tone Cafe -- stars Dulius Jay as an office worker who discovers an underground club that caters to his predilecton for "pendulous breasts." Nationally recognized cult co-stars include bizarro standup comic Neil Hamburger (billed under his real name, Gregg Turkington); shock publisher Jim Goad; and top-heavy thespian Brandy Talore, whose Wikipedia entry includes this boast: "She is regularly mentioned on 'The Howard Stern Show' as Eric the Midget's favorite pornstar."

Memphian Brandt Edwards -- a Byhalia, Miss., businessman who now lives on South Main, after returning to the South from New York in the 1980s -- was an original member of the 1975 Broadway production of "A Chorus Line," now regarded as one of the greatest and most significant of all musicals.

Brandt -- who also danced in Broadway productions of "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and the "42nd Street" -- can be seen onscreen, in a few vintage clips, in "Every Little Step," a documentary by Adam Del Deo and James D. Stern that opened Friday (June 26) at Malco's Ridgeway Four.

In what the Memphis and Shelby County Film Commission has dubbed "Indie Heaven," filmmakers Mike S. Ryan ("Junebug," "Choke," "Forty Shades of Blue") and Barry Jenkins ("Medicine for Melancholy") are coming to town to screen two of their movies and -- more significantly -- to critique the story treatments of hopeful local screenwriters. And it's all FREE.

Find out more here.

With its artily "amateurish" hand-lettered title and its images of a pregnant heroine and her quirky-looking male companion, the poster for "Away We Go" suggests a "Juno" for grownups, and that's not far off the mark.

Movies generally become big hits when they break down an audience's resistance to any of three involuntary physical reactions. The first is laughing; the second is screaming; and the third is crying.

Judging from the sniffles and even sobs that almost never stopped during a recent packed preview screening, "My Sister's Keeper" -- based on the novel by best-selling child-in-peril author Jodi Picoult -- should be a boon to the manufacturers of facial tissue as well as to movie exhibitors. The audience was rapt; almost never have I been among moviegoers who seemed so intensely focused on the action onscreen.

Actor Michael Keaton's directorial debut, "The Merry Gentleman," is a nice little independent film built around Kelly Macdonald's sweet personality and charming Scottish accent as surely as if it were a star vehicle developed for a contract player during the golden age of the Hollywood studio system.

"Nice" seems like a strange word to apply to a story about the wary semi-courtship that occurs between a wife (Macdonald) who's fled from an abusive husband and a veteran assassin (Keaton) plagued with suicidal impulses. But Keaton's hit man is the type of killer who helpfully rights a fallen wise man in a Christmas creche only moments after blowing out a target's brains.

"Success... Fame and fortune... They're all illusions..."

Like many people, I responded to the death of Michael Jackson by turning to his art: I decided finally to watch "The Wiz," the 1978 movie musical that was one of the more notorious critical and commercial flops of its era, an urbanized "Wizard of Oz" adaptation with an overaged Diana Ross as a wan and neurotic Dorothy and the pre-"King of Pop" Jackson as the sprightly, lovable Scarecrow.

The movie is stubbornly unjoyous and even (intentionally) creepy at times, but it contains a few grace notes and fraught moments. The italicized words quoted above seem particularly meaningful in the wake of Jackson's death Thursday (June 25) at the age of 50. They are spoken by Jackson's Scarecrow near the end of the film, and one can't help but wonder if the lonely and embattled pop star ever thought of them during his many years of near-seclusion at his Neverland Valley Ranch, named with tragic irony for the magical land where little boys never grow up. (The Scarecrow's only solo song, "You Can't Win," also seems sadly prophetic, as Jackson croons: "You can't win/ You can't break even/ And you can't get out of the game... / You get in/ Way over your head/ And you've only got yourself to blame...")

"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is tinnitus with pictures. It's like sticking your face inside an electric can opener and your finger in a wall socket. And those are the good parts.