WHAT THE BLEEP DO WE KNOW?
unrated, 108 mins.

Quantum physics goes straight over my head. But this movie is interesting enough to make ignorance almost blissful.

An initially boomingly loud prologue gives way to a tale that is half documentary and half narrative fiction – a cocktail of assumingly-accredited scientists interviewed on how quantum physics relates to our existence. Stirred in is a fictitious plot, featuring Marlee Matlin as an overanxious photographer.

The film never feels like science class or faux-entertainment (like something one might find at Epcot Center), though with cheeky animation and a parody of Robert Palmer videos, perhaps it teeters on that edge at times. The trick was finding scientists who have enthusiasm and personality and not patronizing attitudes or a Ben Stein persona.

A particularly compelling section discusses a Japanese experiment that proved water particles changed shapes when emotional words are attached to the bottles that they reside in. This experiment leads to theories batted back and forth; if we ourselves are 90% water, imagine how a little good vibration shapes us. If nothing else, this brings self-fulfilling prophesies to a whole new level.

Yet another theory presented is that the Native Americans couldn’t see the ships that Columbus brought over, even though they were on the horizon for days, because they possessed no knowledge of ships, so they saw right through them. I’m not sure this holds much water, but it sounds groovy.

“What the…” is probably about 20 minutes too long, and much of Ms. Matlin’s screen time could have been excised. There is much discussed here, and it’s difficult to catch it all, but ideas, radical or logical, discussed in an intriguing and entertaining way, almost always make for compelling viewing. If Richard Linklater were a scientist, I imagine he might make a film like this. I’m just happy the ushers don’t hand out tests at the end.

RECONSTRUCTION
unrated , 90 mins.

Is that anonymous illusionist at the beginning of Christoffer Boe’s “Recon struction” also the source of the ominous narration that opens the film? Maybe, maybe not, but that one-two punch of cinematic portent is an early warning-sign that this strange, gloomy film desperately wants some art-house cred. A shame, too, because the story at its heart is deceptively simple, at times even sweet.

Alex (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a Copenhagen photographer, spies beautiful blonde Aimee (Maria Bonnevie) on a subway platform, falls in love, and decides to pursue her, abandoning his girlfriend Simone (also Bonnevie, in a convincing transformation). Aimee, in town for her distracted husband August’s book launch, is charmed by Alex. He asks her to drop everything and run away to Rome with him. Sparks fly, they wind up in bed; life changes. Literally: Returning home, Alex finds that his apartment has vanished, and that his neighbors and friends – including Simone – have no idea who he is. (Listen closely and you will hear someone in Los Angeles pitching an Adam Sandler remake.)

It is an interesting narrative gambit: A character willing to give up everything one night finds himself stripped of everything the following morning. This twist, however, is more engaging than anything coming before or after it. Mr. Boe spends the first half of the film laboring to get Alex and Aimee together, and the second changing the stakes so that flying off to a new life together doesn’t seem so easy. Narrative clarity be damned: Like some dime store Kieslowski, Mr. Boe wants to distance us from the tale, to make us meditate on chance, love, and – most importantly – lost opportunities.

Unfortunately, the simple romantic problem doesn’t merit such cinematic sturm und drang. The intensely grainy cinematography, the elliptical storytelling, and that aforementioned narration quash what otherwise might have been a touching tale. As Alex runs desperately through Copenhagen looking for Aimee, those are the lost opportunities on which most viewers may find themselves meditating.

TESTOSTERONE
unrated , 105 mins.

Dean (David Sutcliffe), a graphic novelist, has a cool job, a great apartment, and a stunning casual-chic wardrobe. Yet his life is suddenly empty because Pablo, his “superfox” Argentinian lover, went out for cigarettes and never came back. Naturally, Dean wants to know why he’s been abandoned, but his curiosity takes an unnatural turn when he flies to Buenos Aires looking for some “closure.” (Apparently, gay men also watch “Oprah.”)

In Buenos Aires, Dean is drawn into a complicated scenario involving Pablo’s witchy mother, a gun or two, and copious amounts of gratuitous male sex. Although many may enjoy the latter, there’s isn’t much else of interest in “Testosterone.” Dean is constantly, irritatingly glib: even a suicide causes only a temporary lapse of irony. And the plot machinations may as well have been announced by bullhorn.

EVERGREEN
PG – 13, 87 mins.

‘Evergreen” is comparable to a teen soap you might find on the WB; it’s a fairly predictable, ho-hum, coming-of-age drama, one of those stories with eccentric supporting characters and complicated family problems that get solved by a hug.

Henri (Addie Land) and her mother Kate (Cara Seymour) have lived their lives without any security, financial or otherwise. Finally retreating to Kate’s Latvian mother’s home, the two try to make a fresh start. Kate holds down a job at a cosmetics factory and befriends Jim (Gary Farmer), a Native American who deals poker at the local casino. Henri, meanwhile tries to find refuge in a boy she meets at school.

The boy, Chat (Noah Fleiss) is a popular rich kid (though he doesn’t seem to have any friends) whose mother, Susan (Mary Kay Place), is an agoraphobic (how she has become one is never dealt with). Her husband Frank (Bruce Davison) is a withdrawn man, who we can assume is knee-deep in affairs, although the only trouble he’s seen getting into is losing a little money at cards. Is this a statement regarding the similarities between people regardless of class? That money doesn’t solve our deepest problems, perhaps? Maybe it’s just stale writing.

More than stale, however, the film is shallow. The characters are not well developed, Henri herself is a bore, and the sense-of-hope upbeat ending seems phoney and contrived. Sometimes, unfortunately, love is not all you need.