Agnieszka Holland/Europa Europa (Mon., May 13, 7 p.m., $10, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) Though Polish-born director Agnieszka Holland has made several films in English (Shot in the Heart, The Third Miracle, The Secret Garden), she's never equaled the reception she received with Europa Europa, the 1990 story of a Jewish teenager who escapes Nazi persecution by posing as a Hitler Youth. It's not surprising, since Holland has the kind of mildly clever but workmanlike touch that always looks best with subtitles superimposed on it. Holland's appearance, together with a screening of the film, is perhaps most interesting as a contrast to Henry Bean's The Believer, which will screen at the Prince the following Monday at a benefit screening for Congregation Rodeph Shalom (tickets are $50, $100 with dinner), then open theatrically soon after. Bean's tale of a Torah scholar turned anti-Semitic skinhead is fascinating (if semi-plausible) for its portrait of Jewish intellectualism turned ferociously on itself; Danny (Ryan Gosling) backs up his (self-) hatred with scripture, not propaganda, paradoxically pushing himself in two directions at once. Holland's story, by comparison, is a straightforward biopic which amounts to no more than a coming-of-age yarn -- as a true story, it's an amazing one, but as a work of fiction, it's thin.

Asbury Shorts Festival (Fri., May 10, 6 and 8:30 p.m., $12, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) Calling itself "The Best of the U.S. Festivals," this New York-based traveling short film festival focuses on calling-card films rather than short-form experiments, which is to say that on the whole, the films represented are good for a laugh, but not much more. The program opens and closes with films by Jason Reitman (son of Stripes director Ivan), whose work as well as any illustrates the ups and downs on display. Gulp is the Run Lola Run of suffocating goldfish, wherein an eyebrow-pierced skater dude hotfoots it all over L.A. trying to prevent his saltwater fish from drowning in tap water. Production values are high, including a few Fincheresque wooshes, but in the end, you're left with, you know, a story about a fish. Same goes for Reitman's In God We Trust, which continues the Lola homage by overtly swiping that film's opening shots. A handful of others are too jokey for words, like the gross-out Lunch, the grating Everybody's Pregnant, the endless My Chorus and the cutesy Zen and the Art of Landscaping. At least Charles Call's Peep Show makes the most of its tired-ass premise -- a woman pumps money into a peep show booth, and in return gets to watch men saying stuff like "I love Enchanted April" and "Have you lost weight?" Short films offer some makers the chance to try out new directions or push the boundaries of the art form, but these folks look like they're just waiting for the call from their agent.

Third Antenna: The Radical Nature of Drag (Sun., May 12, 1 p.m., A Space, 4722 Baltimore Ave., $5 suggested donation; Sun., May 12, 8 p.m., Space 1026, 1026 Arch St., $5 suggested donation; Mon., May 13, 6 p.m., LGBTQ Youth Center, 419 S. 15th St., free) With music by Tracy + the Plastics and 1774, this NW-based documentary focuses on "drag outside the boundaries of passing' and entertaining" and will be followed by a Q&A with directors Hellery Homosex, Freddie Fagula and Reno Durham.

Donnie Darko ($29.98 DVD) By most standards, Donnie Darko is a movie no one should have heard of. It would fit the old saw "It wasn't released; it escaped," except it really did neither. Premiering at Sundance despite a $4 million budget, first-time director Richard Kelly's unclassifiable tale met with some buzz and a lot of confusion, and was released in only a handful of cities (not including Philadelphia) before sneaking out on video a few weeks ago. So why do people keep mentioning it? A few appearances on year-end best-of lists (including Cindy Fuchs') might have gotten the ball rolling, but it seems like Donnie is that rare movie whose appreciation spreads by word of mouth -- a phenomenon rendered almost impossible in theatrical release, what with the short-tempered booking practices used in almost every theater, but still a reality on home video.

It's a sad state of affairs, as is the apparent lack of vision in American film so profound that people are willing to get excited about a movie that's as big of a mess as Donnie Darko. Produced by Drew Barrymore and Nancy Juvonen's Flower Films (Barrymore has a small role as an idealistic English teacher), Donnie is more than anything the victim of egregiously sloppy writing, the kind that any competent producer, indie or otherwise, should have fixed in the script stage. There's some genuine originality in the film's approach, but it's swamped by a massively uneven tone and a plot that can generously be called incoherent. Jake Gyllenhall (Bubble Boy) plays Donnie, a standard-issue small-town malcontent who's been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but whose visions of a menacing-looking man-sized rabbit may actually be prophecies of impending doom. Set, for no perceptible reason, in 1988 -- which provides the excuse for several intolerable montages set to the most obvious of '80s pop hits (though most technically date from years before the film is set) -- the film is part supernatural thriller, part a comedy of teen angst and part Christian allegory (a part that the deleted scenes reveal was mercifully reduced in the editing). The fact that Kelly devotes several minutes of screen time to a discussion of the sexual habits of Smurfs should be indication enough of Kelly's unsteady hand. It would be nice to see Kelly as a visionary still honing his craft, but when the vision's this muddled, you have to wonder why you'd bother to keep watching.