MacArthur Park
Despite its grim milieu--a Los Angeles park that is home to cocaine addicts, gangsters, and hustlers--MacArthur Parkexplodes with energy and humanity. The ensemble drama's compressed setting is like a small sea in which one denizen's misdeed or scam-gone-wrong creates currents of violence swallowing everyone else. In the 48 hours or so of the story's action, one low-level coke dealer rips off a fading television star, whose revenge involves a would-be rapper, who in turn is trying to escape the park's culture with the help of a cop who was part of a raid during which another dealer stole drugs from a dangerous Latino gang, etc. Trying to stay alive and hopeful in this endless, cyclical mayhem is Cody (an outstanding performance by Thomas Jefferson Byrd), a musician and drug casualty whose abandoned son (Brandon Quintin Adams) is reaching out to him. With Julie Delpy, Ellen Cleghorne, and Balthazar Getty.--Tom Keogh