Even with a murder investigation subplot and all sorts of sketchily rendered sin, " Shadow Hours " remains a film without dramatic momentum, an involving protagonist or more than a skittishly voyeuristic and superficial approach to its conflict between good and evil.
22.
At San Pablo Reservoir, not far from homes in El Sobrante, a water district scientist taking samples from a reservoir said he had recently spotted a deer up on its hind legs, dancing skittishly, and then suddenly bolting with a mountain lion in tow, the duo disappearing in a flash.
23.
Elsewhere, an Austrian artist, Martin Walde, is displaying pictures with texts, like film storyboards, skittishly drawn, of the sort of brief, freakish encounters that punctuate city life : One of them involved the sudden appearance of a naked man on a subway, mop in hand, scrubbing the floors.
24.
Corey, the all-around good guy with great potential ( Escarpeta ); Smooth, the ladies man, big dreamer and quintessential leader ( Hardrict ); Black, the eager-to-please skinny weed head ( McRae ) and Long Cuz, the skittishly annoying square trying to keep up with everyone else ( Eduardo ) form the group who make up their rules and moves as they go along.
25.
Little kids spout obscenities in voice-over; cinematography ( by the estimable Jean Yves Escoffier, who has worked with Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader ) is skittishly high-speed and hand-held and grainy; talk of a tornado hitting Xenia, Ohio, never manages to be poetically trenchant . ( " I saw a girl flyin'through the sky and I looked up her skirt . " ) It won't be long before Bunny Boy, a character wandering through the film in grimy shorts and pink fluffy rabbit ears, is seen on a trash-strewn bridge, spitting and urinating on the highway below in silent protest.
