“Buffalo ’66,” directed by Vincent Gallo and Alison Bagnall. Running time: 110 minutes. Rated R (for language and adult content). Nightly at 5, 7:10 and 9:20, Aug. 17-20, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Vincent Gallo — the former Calvin Klein model who embodied heroin chic in the mid-1990s — uses his face in “Buffalo `66” as if it were a formidable weapon that should be feared.

It should. Too long, too thin and too angular, his face has the haunted look of a self-portrait by Warhol, the blues of a painting by van Gogh, the comic drama of a Lichtenstein print, the seediness of a Mapplethorpe nude. None of this is to say that his face is art — it isn’t — but it is surreal enough to suggest more Dali than DNA, more Picasso than living, breathing person.

“Buffalo `66” is precisely the kind of raw, quirky film one would expect from Gallo, whose varied resume includes stints as a composer, a rock musician, a painter and an actor for such directors as Abel Ferrara and Claire Denis. Now, as director, co-writer and star of his own film, he has created a deeply personal work that resembles him in both look and personality: “Buffalo `66” is edgy and unnerving, darkly comic yet strangely human in spite of — or perhaps because of — the rampant dysfunction it explores.

In the film, Gallo is Billy Brown, an ex-con with murder on his mind who shuffles into Buffalo, N.Y., with a full bladder and nowhere to relieve it. Everywhere he goes, from restaurants to parking lots to empty cafes, he is told to go elsewhere, which he does, albeit with a growing rage that underscores his desperation.

At a dance school, he finds a bathroom — and his future: Layla the tap-dancing temptress, whom Billy kidnaps, drags out of the building, and bullies into her car. “I haven’t seen my parents in a long time,” he says to her, and explains that before he went to prison, he lied to his parents, saying that he was married, worked for the government and would be away for a long time. “What I need you to do is to come to my parents’ house with me and pretend to be my wife.”

Curiously pliant, Layla (Christina Ricci) agrees and drives gamely forward, her only question for Billy being whether or not his parents are vegetarians. “I hope so,” she says, “because I don’t eat meat — ever!”

Not that she’ll have much of an appetite once she meets Janet and Jimmy Brown (Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazzara). So consumed are they with their own failures, they can’t remember their son’s childhood and look upon Billy now as if he were a puff of bad gas, one they have always seen through, wrinkled their noses at, but never been able to fan away.

“Buffalo `66” is a good film that will remind some of “Twin Peaks,” but it fails to achieve the psychological weight needed to lift it into a higher realm. While we are offered a glimpse into Billy’s life, Layla’s is never explored. Why does she allow herself to be kidnapped so willingly or fall so easily for a man who several times threatened to kill her?

Layla is a tap-dancing enigma, a dusty moth drawn to a light others would have avoided. There’s a story behind those large, heavily made-up eyes that Gallo should have explored. Grade: B

“The Big Lebowski,” directed by Joel Coen. Written by Joel and Ethan Coen. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated R (for excessive strong language, sexuality and violence).

If Lebowski is Polish for a film that doesn’t entertain, then, yes, by all means, “The Big Lebowski” is a fitting title for Joel and Ethan Coen’s follow-up to “Fargo,” a film that succeeded as spectacularly as “The Big Lebowski” fails.

In spite of strong performances from Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and, to a lesser degree, John Goodman, “Lebowski” is an unfortunate victim to the Coen brothers’ personal style, which culminated in “Fargo” after years of refinement but finds them reaching here.

The film parallels “Fargo” in that it is centered around a staged kidnapping, but fails to capture our interest as a black comedy because of excessive, strong language that dulls the humor and characters that are too thinly drawn to be anything more than type. As bizarre as “Lebowski” wants to be — and at times truly is — one senses bizarre things happening for the sake of being bizarre, and not so much from any extension of character. Grade: C-