Rogers Park

Cinematographer Drew Xanthopoulos gives the actors very little room to hide, often framing their faces in extreme close-up during bracing moments of emotional nakedness. There are echoes here of Cassavetes’ most agonizing stretches in “A Woman Under the Influence,” as casual pleasantries detonate into a fiery inferno of resentment.

Rogers Park is poetic and lovely and muscular and unforgiving at the same time, much like the area itself and the city as a whole.

The screenwriter, Carlos Treviño, crafts frank dialogue and the director, Kyle Henry, films the scenes with an eye for the intimate, dividend-paying gesture. The superb actors, given opportunities to go for broke, make each one count, and make the movie worth watching.

Rogers Park is populated by real people with real problems, though the dialogue in Carlos Treviño's script doesn't always serve them well. The lines sometimes feel manufactured, but there's real warmth — or frustration or anger, depending on the scene — present in these authentic performances.

It’s an ideal showcase for the four leads, who are given the latitude to create fully human characters.