Best indie films of the week: 'Art Bastard,' 'How Love Won,' 'The Fits,' 'Neon Demon'

What stands out in this comic biographical documentary? New York art rebel Robert Cenedella's irrepressible sense of mischief, his paintings of in-your-face anti-establishment satire, or the sometimes sad slice of life realism of his personal story? I'd say the secret sauce of this delicious romp is the joy of hanging out with a delightfully unruly rebel with a paintbrush. Cenedella learned his craft from German painter George Grosz, whose caricatures of the power elite's politicians, profiteers and prostitutes had a rare talent for combining fury and hilarity. But the public taste for such dada portraits passed when Cenedella's contemporary Andy Warhol turned the 1960s cool. Still, Cenedella stayed on his own course, creating energetic lampoons of everyday life and famous nincompoops. Never trendy, he hasn't cared for a single day that his vision has been unpopular. "I decided not to be a tragic figure," he says. "Money and art have nothing to do with each other." It's impossible to see this film without instantly falling in love with him.

Colin Covert

In 2012, Minnesota became the first state to defeat an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. It's easy to forget how unlikely that would have seemed only a year earlier, before "Vote No" activists took the conversation straight to voters. Michael McIntee's doc shows how the hard work of volunteers, brilliant use of empathy and an emphasis on love over politics produced a historic shift in public opinion. It's an entirely one-sided account, but its individual stories are heartfelt. Don't plan on having dry eyes for much of these 81 minutes.

SIMON PETER GROEBNER

"The Fits," a coming-of-age poem that magically comes to cinematic life, turns an 11-year-old's drab world — a sterile rec center, a dreary housing project, a bleak freeway overpass — into a dream. And like most dreams, it's almost impossible to describe. Promising new director Anna Rose Holmer isn't interested in giving us an inspirational tale about inner-city kids or a meditative critique on urban ills. Her film focuses on the awkward transition from girlhood to womanhood, taking a familiar theme and giving it an unfamiliar blend of charm, horror, mystery and communal spirit. The film also benefits from a pitch-perfect performance by Royal Hightower as the young girl. Her character spends much of her time studying these bubble-like realms, and like her, we feel oddly disconnected, not quite able to fit in, yet still unmistakably drawn in. It's a strange sensation, like a dream, and it's no small feat that "The Fits" takes us to such an otherworldly place.

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle

The latest mind-bender from out-there director Nicolas Winding Refn is a two-hour fever dream about backstabbing models with paper-thin bodies — and personalities. Sometimes it's bizarre in a good, David Lynch kind of way; other times, it's bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. Refn (who made the acclaimed "Drive") gets off to a promising start with a story about an aspiring model (Elle Fanning) who dives into the bloody world of Los Angeles fashion. But as "Neon Demon" plods on, we figure out that we're slowly going nowhere, that we're witnessing a series of visually arresting set pieces that are nothing more than visually arresting set pieces. There's a nagging problem: We don't care an iota about any of these vapid models, who are props instead of characters. And the narratively challenged film seems conflicted: It critiques our obsession with models and beauty and style, even as it obsesses about those very same things. There is a lot of flash, but little substance.

David Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle