`Aimee and Jaguar’ a powerful, gripping love story

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In theaters

AIMEE AND JAGUAR. 125 minutes; not rated, though would be R; directed by Max Farberbock, written by Farberbock and Rona Munro. Based on the book by Erica Fischer, in German with English subtitles. Starts Friday, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Max Farberbock’s powerful film “Aimee and Jaguar” is a love story set against the chaos of Berlin in 1943-1944.

For film buffs, that period of time and setting might make the story’s romance seem cliche, even rote – especially since it uses war and an ugly political environment to help shape the unbreakable bond of love shared between its two central characters – but the film isn’t cliche. It isn’t rote. Not by far.

“Aimee and Jaguar” isn’t concerned with just any love affair. It’s about a love affair between two lesbians, one of whom is a Jew posing as a Nazi, the other of whom is a pro-Hitler, anti-Semite mother of four blond sons whose husband is a German officer periodically away at war.

Couple this with the fact that the film is based on a true story – and that it hails from Germany – and you’re left with a movie that intrigues on many levels.

Beautifully shot and gorgeously told, the film follows Lilly Wust (Juliane Kohler), a sweet yet woefully naive wife of a brutal German officer (Detlev Buck) who is not prepared for the sudden change her life will take when she meets Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader) one evening at the symphony.

As bombs begin exploding around them and the patrons flee the theater in the midst of Beethoven’s Ninth, Farberbock’s foreshadowing is hardly subtle, but the event does allow Lilly and Felice to share a chaste conversation that will ultimately change their lives.

With remarkable, Academy Award-worthy performances from Kohler and Schrader, “Aimee and Jaguar” derives its title from the code names Lilly and Felice used first in their passionate correspondences, and then in the bedroom. Just how they dared to come together won’t be revealed here, but know this – it’s as gripping and as moving as Lilly’s sexual and political reawakening.

Grade: A

On video

AFTER THE BEEP … . 45 minutes, Not rated, though would be R, directed by Lucas Knight. Written by Knight and Frank Welch.

Fans of Lucas Knight’s “Dark Currents” and “Frostbite” will be pleased to find the writer and director showing real growth in his latest film, “After the Beep …,” a straight-to-video production filmed mostly around the greater Bangor area.

The film follows Angela Wood (Lynda Gordon), a tabloid reporter for The National Inquisitor who’s struggling with personal demons – the incestuous relationship she endured with her father (Bub McCarthy) – and with a real demon, a serial killer known as The Twilight Slasher (Tim Pugliese). During the course of the movie, Angela must deal with both.

Shot on a minuscule budget, “After the Beep …” can’t be held to the same production standards as a film backed by a Hollywood studio, so the bare-bones sets can – and should – be overlooked.

What one notices throughout is a writer and director learning how to stack the elements of a story to form a cohesive whole. Knight does a good job of that. He’s enormously resourceful and his film is an admirable effort in spite of its few shortcomings.

The subplot about Angela’s incestuous relationship, for instance, seems forced – Knight does little with it and one senses he included it to be sensational and to help shape and soften Angela’s abrasive character.

It does neither. The addition only serves as a peculiar sidebar, a distraction in a film whose running time is so brief, focus on the central story – that of The Twilight Slasher – becomes even more crucial, leaving little room for indulgence.

Still, as rough as the production sometimes is and as poor as the performances are – Knight needs to remind his cast that less is more – there are glimpses of what’s to come. Knight is getting a very public education – he’s learning the art of filmmaking through trial and error mixed with skill and determination. Those qualities – coupled with his clear love of the medium – will ultimately serve him well.

ANY GIVEN SUNDAY. 170 minutes. Rated R, directed by Oliver Stone, written by Stone, John Logan and Daniel Pyne.

Oliver Stone’s “Any Given Sunday” is a loud, showy, bone-crunching examination of the world of pro football – fans of the game should love it.

Others, those hoping for something more substantial from Stone, will be disappointed that the Academy Award-winning director has nothing new to say about the game or the values that drive it.

Steeped in a wealth of sports movie cliches, the film finds Stone trading the battlefield for the playing field, bombs for footballs, guns for testosterone, bulletproof vests for heavily padded gear.

The director, who once delighted in taking risks, is now content to only refine the latest trend – he cuts his film like a music video, a style that may spark this particular effort with a huge supply of chest-beating energy, but it’s a gimmicky, false sense of energy not created through sustained tension, but through a blitz of rapid jump cuts.

The film does have its triumphs. Stone seamlessly brings together the most unlikely of casts – Al Pacino, James Woods, Cameron Diaz, Ann-Margret, LL Cool J, Jim Brown, Dennis Quaid, Dick Butkus and Charlton Heston as the league commissioner – and he does get a breakout performance from Jamie Foxx as a young quarterback who challenges Pacino’s grimacing coach, a man fighting for his career as he tries to turn around the fictional Miami Sharks.

But with Pacino once again playing Pacino, Diaz stretched to her limits as the team’s owner, “Any Given Sunday” exhausts itself as it goes deep into its second hour. The film is sometimes so drawn-out, it feels like a month of Mondays, particularly near the end, when Stone takes the final nine seconds of a game and stretches them into a never-ending ending.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Monday and Thursday in the NEWS, and Tuesday and Thursday on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” and “NEWS CENTER at 11.”