Mexico City’s answer to American Animals imagines a real-life pair of inveterate, thirty-something veterinary students leaving the safety of their parent’s homes just long enough to relieve the National Museum of Anthropology of 140 pre-Hispanic artifacts. Nothing about Juan (Gael García Bernal) and Benjamín (Leonardo Ortizgris) displays even a glimmer of professionalism, making the seamless heist — and the duo’s contempt for the museum’s non-existent security system — all the more pronounced. Juan chalks up his participation in the scheme to a life lived “waiting for something to happen.” He wasn’t the only one in rapt anticipation. Valiant attempts to cast the caper in an analogous light — as a metaphor for the way gringos ransacked Mexico’s history —soon fade, and even with the robbery in the record books, it still takes over an hour for the movie to end. With his characters unable to fence the goods, writer-director Alonso Ruiz Palacios has no place to turn but in the direction of head-scratching surrealism. With: Alfredo Castro as “Dad.” (2017) — Scott Marks
This movie is not currently in theaters.