A family copes with a brutal killing

Saints walk among us, we learn, via Olivier Meyrou’s “Beyond Hatred,” which may be nonfiction but manages to elude being pegged a documentary. Paced like a drama, imbued with a spellbinding intimacy and impressionistic in its visual portrayal of crime and punishment, it follows the 2002 murder of François Chenu, a gay man beaten by Nazi skinheads and left to drown in a nearby pond in Reims, France.

Although Meyrou pursues the process of the court trial, what he’s really about is the way the young man’s death affected his family and how they all reach, somehow, a miraculous understanding about the men who killed their boy. Meyrou never shows the killers: Although we understand them to be the product of poverty and neglect, he refuses to allow them to share the scene with people like the Chenus, as if to do so would pollute the frame.

It is, after all, a film that breathes. On a couple of occasions, Meyrou keeps the camera static, as one Chenu or another relates François’ story. The effect is like a sigh, an exhalation of breath with which Meyrou tries to cleanse his tale of ugliness. It almost happens.

-- From Newsday

“Beyond Hatred.” Unrated. In French with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes. At Laemmle’s Grande, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. (213) 617-0268.

Korean immigrant comes of age

So Yong Kim’s “In Between Days” offers an intimate, delicately nuanced portrait of a young Korean, Aimie (Jiseon Kim), a recent immigrant to Toronto who hangs out with a laid-back Vietnamese youth (Taegu Andy Kang) but doesn’t quite grasp that he’s not about to return her love -- not that this precludes a sexual overture on his part. A graceful flow of images and Kim’s luminous portrayal express Aimie’s profound sense of dislocation and her longing for her father back in Korea, which in turn intensify her emotional vulnerability. “In Between Days” is a consistently confident first film, and Pusan-born So Yong Kim, who experienced her own coming of age in suburban Los Angeles, is currently preparing her second feature, “Treeless Mountain.”

-- Kevin Thomas

“In Between Days.” Unrated, mature themes. In Korean with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes. Exclusively at the Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 274-6869; and Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, 673 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena (626) 844-6500.

He cultivated skateboard culture

“Steve is a hell of a nice guy, but he doesn’t have much of a conscience,” says one interviewee in “The Man Who Souled the World,” a documentary on skateboarding-culture entrepreneur Steve Rocco. Despite an entire film about him, Rocco remains an elusive figure -- is he an offbeat genius or a total idiot with the Midas touch? His breakthrough was to mirror the anti-establishment mentality of the kids buying the skateboards. His in-your-face style, answering critics with obscene ads, embracing street skating and adorning boards with wildly offensive graphics, helped shift power from corporations to the skaters themselves. He got away with stunts such as publishing a “How to Kill Yourself” guide in a teen-oriented magazine that was the genesis of “Jackass.” How he brought about his near-downfall is unclear, although some fondly -- and vaguely -- recall him as “rotten.” The interviewees’ statures and much of the terminology in this Triumph of the Ill will glide past the uninitiated, (“It was a crazy long nose; you had no choice because it was a double kick, right?”) but some of the tricks will impress even those who wish these dudes would stay off the streets.

-- Michael Ordoa

“The Man Who Souled the World.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes. At Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica, (310) 394-9741; and Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd. (323) 848-3500.

‘Outsourced’ doesn’t do the job

“Outsourced” is a light cross-cultural comedy that takes as its backdrop the story of an American executive sent to India to set up a call center for his employer. Directed by John Jeffcoat and written by Jeffcoat and George Wing, the film has an uneven push-pull between its take on the outsourcing phenomenon and cultural differences and a strangely needy desire to be a likable romance. The American adrift in India is played by Josh Hamilton, and his winning air of slight confusion gives the film much of its kick. Apart from one rather overblown moment in which Hamilton’s character is in essence baptized anew in a river, Jeffcoat and Wing mostly lay off the “India is spiritual” vibe that could easily have overtaken the film. Although “Outsourced” does have an understated charm, in the end it feels as if the film backpedals so much from any of the larger ideas it points to that it simply evaporates into the nothingness of a faux-Hollywood happy ending.

-- Mark Olsen

“Outsourced.” MPAA rating: PG-13 for some sexual content. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes. In selected theaters.

Punished by his own good deed

“Resilience” is an oddly hopeful title for such a downbeat, sluggish film. It’s an ambitiously plotted but unconvincingly rendered morality tale that has ensemble dramas like “Magnolia” and “Crash” in its sights, but rarely rises above its own limits and pretensions. A more adept filmmaker and cast might have squeezed some juice out of this dark story of a corporate drone named Jimmy (Henry LeBlanc) who becomes the victim of his own good deed -- and the vortex that ensues. Unfortunately, writer-director Paul Bojack exhibits a self-conscious streak that undermines his script’s better instincts, and he’s unable to coax consistent performances from his low-wattage actors. Only Amy Arce, playing an obliging call girl, feels real.

-- Gary Goldstein

“Resilience.” Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 36 minutes. At Laemmle’s Grande, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown L.A. (213) 617-0268.