John Powers

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'.

Seeking to catch moments that flicker with the rising sparks of life, her camera is curious about things that may seem off the point, like a garrulous child yakking happily in the museum, or accentuates something we may not have fully noticed before.

As J.B.

waits for his cronies in the getaway car, we register not just his anxiety, but his boredom.

O'Connor is a compellingly ambiguous actor.

He doesn't insist that we love him, and he commands the screen just thinking.