John Powers

Working with a deliberate approach all her own, she here takes the classic heist story, gives it a few tugs and shrugs, and winds up with a funny, sad movie that gets stronger and more original as it goes along.

Set in 1970s Massachusetts and inspired by an art theft back then, the mastermind centers on James Blaine Mooney, called J.B., a suburban family guy played by Josh O'Connor, who you'll know as the young, awkward, not very likable Prince Charles on The Crown.

Quiet and hard to read behind his scruffy beard, J.B.

is an unemployed cabinetmaker who exudes an air of unearned superiority.

He's distant with his wife, played by Ilana Haim, wheedles money from his indulgent mother, that's the great Hope Davis, and feels disdain for his Philistine father, played by Bill Camp, a judge who hectors his son for not getting ahead.

Pleased with his own cleverness, the movie's title is Scoffing, J.B.

enlists some dumb pals to help him rob the local museum and make off with four paintings by abstract artist Arthur Dove.

Though his plan is simple and rather silly.

Put on your pantyhose masks, fellas.

It's doable in the era before 24-7 high-tech surveillance.

Here, after the cocky JB tells his two buddies how they'll grab the paintings, they express some doubts, and he tries to reassure them.

As you can tell, these aren't exactly the pros who just stole the crown jewels from the Louvre.

Still, they do get away with the paintings.

But once J.B.

has the art in hand, this spoiled man-child finds himself plunged into a real world of cops and gangsters and life on the run.

That includes a visit to his friends, a hippie couple marvelously played by John Magaro and Gabby Hoffman.

That's like a desolately amusing snapshot of an entire era.

Serenaded by Rob Mazurek's jazz score that both heightens and mocks his situation, J.B.

's whole life has become a snafu.

Now, as she's shown in movies as diverse as Old Joy, about two friends going camping, or First Cow, about milk thieves in the Old West, Reichert's granular approach is far calmer and more oblique than her peers'.