'The Merry Gentleman'

Rated R for profanity and some violence.

Actor Michael Keaton's directorial debut is a nice little independent film built around Kelly Macdonald's sweet personality and charming Scottish accent as surely as if it were a star vehicle developed for a contract player during the golden age of the Hollywood studio system.

Matt Dinerstein/Samuel Goldwyn Films

Making his directorial debut, Michael Keaton stars as a hit man with Kelly Macdonald in ''The Merry Gentleman.''

Paul Kolnik/Sony Pictures Classics

The documentary ''Every Little Step'' strides into the lives of performers seeking roles in ''A Chorus Line.''

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"Nice" seems like a strange word to apply to a story about the wary semi-courtship that develops between a wife (Macdonald) who's fled from an abusive husband and a veteran assassin (Keaton) plagued with suicidal impulses. But Keaton's hit man is the type of killer who helpfully rights a fallen wise man in a Christmas creche only moments after blowing out a target's brains.

Scripted by Ron Lazzeretti, the film is novelistic in its non-judgmental tone and is leisurely of pace. Keaton favors hushed shots of Catholic icons and snowy Chicago streets; he is perhaps too determined to make a movie that can't be mistaken for a conventional thriller, despite the narrative presence of four murders and a pair of beleaguered detectives, one of whom (Tom Bastounes) develops a crush on Macdonald's character. The ending is more blah than poetic. Even so, this is an effective and quietly moving film.

"The Merry Gentleman" is playing exclusively at Malco's Ridgeway Four.

'Every Little Step'

Rated PG-13 for profanity.

God, I hope I get it! sing the characters auditioning for a dance part in "A Chorus Line." "Every Little Step," a documentary by Adam Del Deo and James D. Stern, puts real-life faces to that sentiment by following several performers as they seek lead roles in a 2006 revival of the landmark 1975 Broadway musical, from an open call that attracts more than 3,000 hopefuls to the end of casting many months later.

The film also functions as a history of "A Chorus Line" and a tribute to the show's creator, dancer and director Michael Bennett, who died from AIDS-related lymphoma at the age of 44 in 1987.

Viewers, inevitably, will think of "American Idol" and other reality shows as they watch the performers here try to impress their "judges" (the play's director, producer and choreographer). The difference, of course, is that these are hardworking, veteran show-business professionals rather than amateurs and unknowns hoping to be struck by the lightning of celebrity.

But if their ambition and energy seem boundless, the movie itself -- with its vintage news clips and handheld-camera backstage interviews -- is modest; it seems made to order for TV, not the big screen.

"Every Little Step" is exclusively at the Ridgeway Four.

-- John Beifuss: 529-2394