Kurosawa Close-out (Sat.Tue., Feb. 22-25, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org) Rashomon (Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m.; Tue., 7 p.m.) hardly needs plugging, and I haven't seen Stray Dog (Sun., 4 p.m., Tue., 9 p.m.), so instead, a few thoughts as the Prince's Kurosawa-Mifune retrospective winds down. I still remember the moment when Kurosawa's vision first seared itself into my synapses; it was in college, watching a 16mm print of Ran, as armies red and yellow met like streams of paint pouring into each other. The impressionism of the moment was what struck me then, but as much as it exemplifies Kurosawa's mastery of composition or his much-touted flair for action, it exemplifies what these last few weeks have underlined -- that Kurosawa's true legacy is as one of film's great humanists, the Jean Renoir of his time and place. A movie like Red Beard makes this most clear, of course, with its haunting climactic image of women crouched in the darkness, shouting down a well to call back the soul of a dying boy. But Kurosawa's boundless empathy is just as apparent in a movie like Seven Samurai, a collective-action parable to make a union recruiter weep, or The Hidden Fortress, which though commonly regarded as an antic comedy, has depths of feeling that rival Kurosawa's best. Towards the end, when all seems lost, Mifune's general apologizes to the princess he's apparently failed to save, and she responds, "I had fun! I got to see the good and the bad in people." That seems as fitting an epitaph as any.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ($39.95 DVD) Drown your post-Lost in La Mancha sorrows with the new deluxe edition of Terry Gilliam's coruscating adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's lysergic manifesto. Fear and Loathing seemed to be the Gilliam movie that pleased no one -- not the general public, not Gilliam devotees, and certainly not fans of the book -- but it strikes me as something close to his masterpiece, perhaps the most undiluted blast since Brazil. I can still remember the sheer fear the movie engendered on first viewing, the panic that set in every time Benicio Del Toro's Gonzo brandished his knife. Perhaps it was the discovery of Gilliam's moralistic side -- F&L is one of the most powerful antidrug movies ever made -- or that it questioned fantasy as much as Brazil embraced it (which is to say ambivalently). Even among Gilliam's films, it might qualify as the cult classic.

Women Behind the Camera (Thu.Sat., Feb. 20-22, $6, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org) The Philadelphia premieres in I-House's tribute to distaff filmmakers thankfully elude generalizations about "women's film." Lynne Ramsay's Morvern Callar (Thu., 8 p.m.) follows a young woman who goes out for a night on the town after discovering her lover's dead body under the Christmas tree. (The movie, not available for review, will be back in several weeks for a theatrical run.) Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga (Sat., 8 p.m.) encompasses a plethora of characters sweltering in the Argentinean summer heat, but so fetishizes interconnectedness that you might spend the whole film trying to remember who's related to whom. Martina Kudlacek's In the Mirror of Maya Deren (Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 1 p.m.) profiles the legendary experimental filmmaker, who began as a dancer and whose films consistently relied on rhythm and movement. Featuring interviews with Amos Vogel, Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas, Kudlacek makes a case for Deren as a filmmaker who explored, in Deren's words, "the feminine -- not the female," though it thankfully goes light on film-studies generalizations. The film loses track when Deren did, during a lengthy voyage to Jamaica that produced tons of footage but never a completed film, although Deren did end up a voodoo priestess before she was done. But it provides telling insight into a woman who regularly stepped in front of her own camera, but rarely explained herself. Shown with Deren's At Land and Ritual in Transfigured Time.

Streaming Cinema 3.0 (Fri.-Sun., Feb. 2123, $8-$12, University of the Arts, Hamilton Building, 320 S. Broad St., www.streamingcine.com) Spread over three days, the third Streaming Cinema event includes panels, screenings and a "live interactive web film" to be created by filmmakers working simultaneously in Montreal, Berlin and Philadelphia, and mixed down. (The event begins at 9 p.m. Saturday; you can view online at www.thebitscreen.com, or at WHYY's North Sixth Street studios; admission for the event is $20.) Programs will screen continuously Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and the festival ends with an awards ceremony for "Flash-in-the-Pan," a contest where students are given 24 hours to make a Flash animation film.

Walter Bernstein (Mon., Feb. 24, 6:30 p.m., free, Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, 215-573-9748, www.english.upenn.edu/~whfellow) Screenwriter Walter Bernstein's talk is rescheduled from last week due to snow. Reservations for last week are still good; to add your name to the list, e-mail whfellow@english.upenn.edu.