Here’s what’s not perfect about Inside Man, the bank heist thriller directed by Spike Lee: The key to the robbery lies in a memento that in all probability would have been destroyed by its owner rather than stored; and it wasn’t entirely clear to me precisely how the crime paid off.

One of the more depressing things I’ve seen in this parts in recent years, right up there with a drive down Genesee Street through the East Side of Buffalo, came during a curiosity visit a few years ago to the then-new casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

It’s easy to believe that Robert Towne’s new movie, Ask the Dust, has meant a lot to him. As he tells it, he spent at least eight years trying to get it made. And he may have wanted to do it for a lot longer: he was a friend of John Fante, the author of the same-named novel he’s adapted for this movie, and Fante died almost twenty-three years ago.