Following are reviews for the second week of the Philadelphia Film Festival, April 10-16. Tickets, $6.50 for matinees or $8.50 for screenings after 4 p.m., are available at the venue on the day of the show or in advance from the festival box office, 200 Dock St.; all TLA Video locations; by phone at 215-733-0608, ext. 4; and online at www.phillyfests.org. (Online tickets must be purchased 36 hours in advance.) An asterisk (*) after a screening time indicates scheduled director or other guests. All times are p.m. Films recommended by CP critics are preceded by a

AIKI Deeply reminiscent of both Born on the Fourth of July and The Karate Kid, Aiki tells the redemptive story of an arrogant, obnoxious boxer whose life heads straight for the toilet after a motorcycle accident, only to find salvation thanks to martial arts -- in this case, Aiki-Jujutsu. Based on a true story, Aiki chronicles the downfall of Taichi (Haruhiko Kato), who, bitter at being paralyzed from the waist down, cuts off ties with his girlfriend and his family and turns to pills and booze. Taichi sees his life start to turn around, ironically enough, after he is beaten by a gang of toughs. Rescued by the Yakuza, he is introduced to a temple girl, who in turn introduces him to an Aiki master; through the mental discipline of Aiki, he finds that he actually has control over his own life. Though the movie's climax -- a martial arts demonstration for a prince -- is totally predictable and ham-fistedly choreographed, Aiki is still an enjoyable, uplifting ode to human resiliency. --Howard Altman (4/11, 5:00, PMT*; 4/13, 9:30, RE; 4/14, 7:00, TB)

BALSEROS In 1994, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and before the Clinton administration clamped down on illegal immigration, thousands of impoverished Cubans set out for America on rafts. This documentary follows seven hopefuls from their life-threatening journey at sea to their soul-endangering acculturation to life in the United States. Jetting between the States and Cuba over the course of seven years, directors Carles Bosch and José María Doménech use footage from the newly settled emigrants to communicate with their families back at home, and then film them watching it. As a result, their narrative has an emotional immediacy that belies the alienation and eventual cultural disconnection of exile. A gorgeous original score and precise editing expertly carry the film's many stories across space and time. But it's the subjects' frank rapport with the filmmakers that makes Balseros a powerful chronicle of hope and disillusionment. --Elisa Ludwig (4/14, 7:00, RE; 4/15, 4:45, R5)

A CERTAIN KIND OF DEATH The "certain kind" of death that is at the center of this documentary is the loneliest kind: when the deceased has no next of kin. First-time directors Grover Babcock and Blue Hadaegh focus on three separate cases in a Los Angeles mortuary, examining how the government manages the process from identifying the body to getting rid of personal effects. What they've come up with is an existential manual for facing mortality. Seeing it reduced to these terms -- files on a PC, spare change in an envelope and only a few photographs to show for a lifetime of human connections -- is certainly jarring. A Certain Kind of Death is brutally unfiltered, with graphic imagery of blood-soaked carpets and decaying flesh. But its creators allow situational humor to slip in, and with it, enough irony to make the bleakness bearable. A coroner on the job answers her cellular phone thusly: "Oh, just wrapping up a body -- what are you doing?" --E.L. (4/12, 2:30, IH*)

CINEMANIA To say that the subjects of Stephen Kijak and Angela Christlieb's squirm-inducing documentary are film buffs is to say that Norma Desmond liked attention. These five New Yorkers devote their entire existences -- none of them work or have anything resembling a social life -- to watching light shine through celluloid in a dark theater. The filmmakers treat their compulsive cinephiles gently, but if you've ever saved ticket stubs or snuck into a second or third screening at the multiplex, you might find in Cinemania a reason to cautiously reconsider your relationship with the silver screen. --Ryan Godfrey (4/10, 12:30, RE)

THE EDUCATION OF GORE VIDAL This documentary by Deborah Dickson (LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton) ably recounts the history of Vidal, a man who's done a fair amount of history-recounting himself. Education eavesdrops on numerous interviews with Vidal, and features commentary from contemporaries like George Plimpton and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., as well as excerpts from his work read by kindred spirits Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. The trouble is that Vidal, who's spent a lifetime knocking idols off their pedestals -- or at least clambering atop them to look his subjects in the eye -- has developed a cult of his own. Vintage shouting matches with Norman Mailer and William F. Buckley (who offers to sock him in the nose) have no contemporary equivalent; Vidal essentially gets a free pass for the post-Watergate era, which hardly serves such an eager debater well. The film, produced for PBS' American Masters series, is all but certain to turn up on TV eventually, but you can't beat the festival's timing. --Sam Adams (4/13, 7:15, IH*)

THE EXAM Like Ten, shown in the festival last week, Nasser Refaie's debut begins with a simple formal conceit, but the results are gratifyingly complex. Refaie's equivalent of Kiarostami's fixed camera confines the film to the area immediately outside an Iranian university, where women begin arriving early to take the test that will determine if they're able to go to college. The camera moves from group to group, encompassing a dizzying range of circumstances. (One woman is beaten by her husband when he discovers she's sneaked out to take the exam against his will.) The Exam is plain, unvarnished filmmaking, but its clarity is thrilling. --S.A. (4/11, 5:15, TB; 4/14, 5:00, R5)

THE GOOD THIEF Given that Neil Jordan's remake of Bob le Flambeur is obsessed with the relationship between copies and originals, it's almost fitting that festivalgoers who turned up to see it on Sunday were rewarded with a screening of the other festival entry with (nearly) the same name. Chances are, though, ticket holders to the sold-out screening didn't feel that way, so the fest has added additional screenings -- appropriately enough, a pair of 'em. An uncanny companion to The Truth About Charlie, The Good Thief works many of the same back alleys: movie directors in principal roles (Emir Kusturica and twin directors Michael and Mark Polish), African music and French rap to convey polyglot fusion, a palette saturated with neon blues. But Jordan adds layer upon layer, referencing both his stars' real-life personae (Nick Nolte plays a recovering junkie, with mug shots that look not unlike the actor's well-publicized own) and a cultural lineage traced from the U.S. to France and back again. (In conversation, Nolte's Bob mocks the music of Johnny Hallyday, best know as the "French Elvis.") Ultimately, The Good Thief twists itself in too many circles -- The Limey pulled off what The Good Thief tries, but Jordan isn't a stylist of Soderbergh's caliber (though he is canny enough to nick a heist method from Soderbergh's Ocean’s Eleven remake). Still, there's something worth savoring about The Good Thief, an aftertaste more satisfying than the meal itself. --S.A. (4/11, 7:15, RE; 4/16, 7:15, RE)

A HOUSE BUILT ON WATER Bahman Farmanara's follow-up to Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine boasts strong imagery, but its blunt, rigid Islamic allegory quickly grows tiresome. Essentially, House exists as a vehicle to convey the sentiment that modern Iran is a cesspit; the main character, a doctor played by veteran Ezzatolah Entezami, is an impious gynecologist who's perfectly willing to help non-virgin brides-to-be trick their would-be husbands into thinking they're still unsullied -- for a price. At the story's center is a child who's slipped into a coma from exhaustion after his father made him spend every day memorizing the Koran -- perhaps the clunkiest symbolism of its kind since the coma baby in Bright Lights, Big City. The problem isn't the movie's alarmism, or its Koran-thumping, so much as Farmanara's refusal to extend sympathy to any of his characters; their rare moments of soul-searching come too late or come to nothing. After Smell of Camphor's honest self-questioning, this comes as a real letdown. --S.A. (4/10, 7:15, RE; 4/15, noon, RE)

HUKKLE György Pálfi's wordless (if you don't count singing) feature is a wonder, tracing repercussions and the rhythm of life through a small Hungarian town. Moving from place to place in what might be a single moment, or at least a temporal Möbius loop, Hukkle glides between human and animal, natural and mechanical, without a bump, finding elements of each in the other. A few dalliances with digital effects spoil the mood, but the film's openness and bawdy sense of fun (as on a cut from a bocce-like game to a close-up of a boar's hind parts) consistently evokes rapture and delight. Note that the screening scheduled for April 11 has been canceled. --S.A. (4/16, 7:00, RE)

INVISIBLE MOUNTAINS There are few genres more dead-end than the artistic coming-of-age tale, and few arts harder to depict onscreen than painting. (Jackson Pollock aside, it's hard to get excited about watching people pick up a brush.) Luckily, writer/director Richard Power Hoffmann's debut keeps the stakes low, and adopts a pleasantly ambling pace, which eliminates the need for trite "lessons." As a (literally) wounded young painter, Paul Weil seems to have more hair than head, listening quietly while advice, none of it wholly good, comes from every angle. If, like Weil's hair, the movie goes in too many directions, and the rotoscope animation meant to bring his inner visions to light seems haphazardly employed, Invisible Mountains' realism and heart are never in doubt. --S.A. (4/12, 2:30, ISM*)

LAUREL CANYON Performances stand out in Lisa Cholodenko's follow-up to High Art. As a California record producer whose medical resident son (Christian Bale) and his thesis-writing fiancee (Kate Beckinsale) take up temporary residence in her house/studio, Frances McDormand has the earthy naturalism of a woman who's cut her own path in the world. And as the incipient rock star who's cutting an album in her house, Alessandro Nivola is a revelation, incarnating the kind of nascent sex god whose appeal is only increased by his seeming effortlessness. Bale and Beckinsale's squares aren't nearly as compelling; at bottom, you feel like they're just sounding boards for the film's more freewheeling characters. (The squares loosen up, but the free spirits don't get any less free.) Despite its endorsement of the laissez-faire life, Laurel Canyon is as neat as a military bed; it would've been a lot more effective if Cholodenko had left some of the seams showing. --S.A. (4/16, 8:15, PMT*)

MAN WITHOUT A PAST Aki Kaurismäki's wit is as dry as the tundra, and amply on display in this wry, bleak comedy. Markku Peltola plays a man who essentially has his identity beaten out of him; he's set upon by thugs, and awakes with no memory of his life before. Man Without a Past can be a bit rarefied at times, so restrained it almost dries up and blows away, but it leaves a pleasant aftertaste. --S.A. (4/10, 2:45, RE)

MAROONED IN IRAQ Bahman Ghobadi's follow-up to the shattering A Time For Drunken Horses is something of a disappointment, a scattershot film whose disparate threads never knit together. The film begins as something of a broad, bleak comedy, with a Kurdish singer and his two sons setting off to cross the border from Iran to Iraq in search of the father's long-lost ex-wife, who has sent word that she's in danger. The sons are drawn with vaudevillian flair -- one has a broad sash across his waist and a big, bushy moustache; the other is a dandy (maybe even a Kurd hipster) with stylish sunglasses and a profound attachment to his motorbike -- and their frequent bickering often escalates into comic violence. As the three move toward and over the border, the comedy, not surprisingly, drops away, but the transition is rickety, and Ghobadi's near-duplication of some of Horses' most wrenching scenes is almost perverse, a major miscalculation. Ghobadi's attempts at broadening his palette are laudable, and perhaps point the way toward a promising brand of black Middle Eastern comedy. But Marooned in Iraq is a dish that's come out of the oven too soon. --S.A. (4/13, 7:15, R5; 4/15, 7:15, R5)

MONDAYS IN THE SUN Fernando Leon de Aranoa's drama of economic despair may be set in Galicia, Spain, but the postindustrial world it depicts is universally recognizable. When a shipbuilding factory closes its doors, three laid-off dockworkers find themselves, in between fruitless attempts at finding new employment, meeting at a bar run by another ex-dockworker. Through their discussions we find that each of the men confronts his situation differently -- with anger, with desperation, with impotence -- but all three struggle with an eroding sense of manhood. Santa, fiercely portrayed by Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls), holds to his Marxist principles, insisting that the workers should have united against the management and resisting paying for damages he owes his former employer, but even he is dampened by a feeling of futility. De Aranoa has clearly taken a cue from Ken Loach in this talky but immaculately paced look at the indignities a global economy inflicts on its working class. --E.L. (4/11, 2:30, RE)

MY ARCHITECT: A SON’S JOURNEY Directed by Louis Kahn's son Nathaniel, whose existence his father never publicly acknowledged, My Architect works well as a primer on the great works and mysterious, secretive life of one of the foremost structural innovators of the 20th century. The film bogs, however, in conversations with Nathaniel's mother and the members of Louis' other, simultaneous families; it feels like we're being asked to observe the documentarian's therapy. There's a claustrophobia to these scenes that's wholly at odds with the architect's emphasis on open space and expansiveness. --R.G. (4/13, 2:30, R5; 4/16, 7:15, R5)

PING PONG Can this be the last sport to have its own inspirational film? Only if my dream of a championship curling movie never becomes a reality. This huge Japanese hit stars teen idols Yosuke Kubozuka and Arata as Peko and Smile, two lifelong friends who are the stars of their high-school table tennis team. Peko is arrogant, showy and fun-loving, but he has to work much harder at the game than the more talented and resolutely non-smiling Smile. How will they fare against the Karate Kid-style bad guys from the rival high school in the big tournament? CGI whiz Fumihiko Masuri directs the matches with the high-flying, stylish aplomb befitting a story based on a popular manga of the same name. Ping Pong doesn't play into the standard sports movie expectations; for many reasons, we can be grateful about the way this ball bounces. --R.G. (4/12, 9:30, R5; 4/15, 4:45, PMT)

PINOCHET’S CHILDREN Chances are, you don't expect Paula Rodríguez's documentary to be about the literal offspring of the Chilean dictator, but in a sense, its three central characters are as much Pinochet's children as if they'd been fathered by him. Alejandro Goic, Enrique Paris and Carolina Tohá all lost their fathers to Pinochet's reign of terror -- two were executed, one fled into exile -- and each rose up in the eventually successful struggle to unseat him. The film's most fascinating aspect, though, is its portrait of their lives after the revolution: Tohá went into politics and Goic into academia, but Paris became an alcoholic. "You get used to an intense life," he says, almost nostalgic for the constant adrenaline of a life lived in fear. We all know what happens when anti-totalitarian movements fail; Pinochet’s Children ponders the consequences of their success. --S.A. (4/11, 5:15, IH; 4/13, 5:00, IH)

R.T. HERWIG’S THE GOOD THIEF Writer/director R.T. Herwig needs to get his head straight -- literally. Herwig's tale of a onetime B&E man attempting to stick to the straight and narrow has more Dutch angles than an Amsterdam geometry class; the camera cants so much you wonder if he might have been working with a defective tripod. The Good Thief -- not to be confused with the Nick Nolte-starring festival entry of the same name -- is a story of redemption, or so you'd gather from the homeless man shouting about it in the opening minutes. (Would that it were the only time a homeless person delivered the movie's message.) To be fair, Good Thief has the highest production values of any FestIndies movie; tilt your head and Bill Burke's cinematography looks pretty impressive. But Herwig's heavy-handed message-mongering and secondhand TV-movie plot make for some pretty tough going, as does the movie's excessive two-hour running time. --S.A. (4/11, 9:45, R5*; 4/13, 3:00, TB*)

THE QUALITY OF LIGHT Keith Gaby's low-key two-hander is so naturalistic it almost doesn't qualify as drama; as lovers reunited decades after a passionate but brief affair, Blythe Danner and Frederic Forrest loll around his loft for most of the movie's 82 minutes, framed in simple shots placing the emphasis squarely on their performances. Despite the inevitable surging of regret and long-lost feelings, Quality maintains an even tone; it's a major event when the characters switch from red to white wine. Danner, whose screen presence is as comfortable as a flannel shirt, excels as a woman who's put her impulsive past behind her, while Forrest exudes a bearish sadness as a commitment-impaired painter who's found that making your own rules isn't all it's cracked up to be. Gaby's aptly named film has something worth prizing, if intangible and a little bit elusive. --S.A. (4/12, 7:30, ISM*; 4/13, 5:15, ISM*)

THE TRACKER Maybe the most recognizable of Australian aboriginal actors, David Gulpilil (Walkabout, Rabbit-Proof Fence) is once again barefooting it across the outback, this time at the behest of vigilantes, led by a brutal racist hunter known only as The Fanatic, on the trail of a black man accused of killing a white woman. Director Rolf de Heer (Dance Me to My Song) is aiming for something on the order of an Australian The Searchers; it's understandable and forgivable that the film never succeeds in weaving anything close to the rich moral tapestry of John Ford's classic. Although helped by haunting songs sung by Archie Roach and Peter Coad's evocative paintings replacing the film's most violent images, The Tracker comes off a little simplistic, a little smug, a little self-righteous. Gulpilil, canny and serene, escapes the shackles of his captors in the end, but never escapes completely from the film's insistence on his Noble Savagery. --R.G. (4/10, 9:30, PMT; 4/13, 5:00, RE)

2LDK The world premiere of Yukihiko Tsutsumi's one-set girls-gone-violent opus is more guilty fun than a Miller Lite commercial. Nozomi is the small-town ingénue sharing a Tokyo apartment -- and competing for the same film role, and man -- with Lana, the aging glamour queen. Needless to say, they hate each other, and petty arguments about food and shampoo turn into an all-out catfight nonpareil, complete with blunt instruments, chain saws and ice picks. Neither of the characters is particularly likable (Nozomi's anal retentive and naive, Lana's materialistic and mendacious), so it's no skin off our noses when they start pummeling each other about the face. If 2LDK were any more bloodthirsty, cartoonlike and funny, it would have to be called Ichi vs. Sukurachi. --R.G. (4/11, 10:00, RE; 4/12, 10:00, TB)

THE WAR EFFORT Set in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Bob Cesca's pseudo-doc follows a handful of Readingites vying for the title of "America's Most Patriotic American," as awarded by a local radio morning show. Modeled on the Spinal Tap method, the film was built from improvisation, but satire is intolerant of loose ends, and War Effort is nothing but. The dead-end stretches aren't really the cast's fault; give two actors playing Pennsylvania Dutch farmers a chance to show off their collection of onions shaped like the heads of political figures, and they haven't got far to go. (Sample dialogue: "My Colin sure is stinky." "I'm so proud of my Bush.") The film's preference for the one-note joke turns the characters into stereotypes, so much that even the gay couple played by real-life partners still seems like a reductive cliché. (No matter how bad they are, morning DJs don't say "boing" at the end of every sentence.) The film's aim to satirize out-of-control patriotism is laudable enough -- the gay couple's attempt to drape flags over everything they own is one of the few jokes that hits home -- but function doesn't follow form. --S.A. (4/15, 7:15, PMT)

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND Sam Green and Bill Siegel's riveting documentary focuses on the violent splinter group of '60s antiwar activists Students for a Democratic Society. The Weathermen, named for a line in Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," evolved into the Weather Underground when they commenced a campaign of bombing government and corporate targets, always without loss of life, to protest an ever-growing list of offenses, most (but not all) connected to American militarism overseas. Green's documentary includes interviews with many of the surviving members, including charismatic leaders Bernardine Dohrn and Mark Rudd, and its most fascinating aspect is their range of responses; Rudd, one of few to have given up activism altogether, seems like a broken man, consumed with doubt and horror that he could have led such a movement. (Dohrn, like many others, has found a place as an institutional activist; David Gilbert is serving life in prison for murder committed during a robbery affiliated with another radical group after the Weathermen came out of hiding.) The Weather Underground doesn't exactly lionize its subjects, but it certainly declines to condemn them, except by their own words, and so opens the door to a serious discussion of the role of destruction and even violence in political activism. Audiences who don't instinctively shirk from the conversation will find much to talk about. --S.A. (4/11, 7:30, ISM*; 4/13, 2:30, IH*)

A WEDDING IN RAMALLAH Sherine Salama's documentary shuttles between the West Bank and Cleveland, following Bassan, an émigré who's returned home to meet his arranged bride and spirit her back to the U.S.A. All doesn't go as planned, though; the intifadah starts, and passage to the American consulate in Jerusalem becomes impossible. (It could be worse; Bassan's sister has been waiting eight years for her American husband to arrange for her emigration.) Avoiding easy stereotypes, Wedding embraces cross-culturalization in all its complexity, subverting simplistic dreams of American success while still rendering the country's enduring allure. --S.A. (4/10, 9:30, ISM)

THE WEDDING VIDEO Why do the people in this crappy fake-umentary about old friends reuniting and preparing for a marriage look so weirdly familiar? It'll probably hit you about halfway through the crappy film, or actually I guess now since I'm spoiling the surprise. If you've ever seen MTV's The Real World you know these people, or at least their on-screen caricatures. Norm Korpi, i.e., the gay guy from the first season in New York, co-wrote, co-directed and stars as a gay guy named Norm who's getting married (to a man, baby). And he's invited all his old friends (RW alums from various seasons, who all do crappy jobs of pretending to be themselves) to his fabulous house in L.A. to play grabass and bitch about stuff while a wedding videographer tapes them, crappily. Is there actually a need for particularly crude self-parody of a genre that is almost entirely self-parody to begin with? Not really. --R.G. (4/10, 9:30, IH*)

WEST BANK BROOKLYN Inspired by his own experiences, Jordan-born Ghazi Albuliwi’s comedy isn’t long on craft, but resonates with a true depth of feeling, at least sometimes. The film’s portrait of a Palestinian community in Brooklyn’s Borough Park neighborhood is incisive and fascinating, but Albuliwi dresses up the story in too many stock situations, from the successful son bucking his father’s insistence on arranged marriage to a character (played by Albuliwi himself) who starts pretending he’s Puerto Rican in order to feel more accepted. (Plagiarizing both Do the Right Thing and the comedian Bill Hicks doesn’t up the originality quotient.) Strong, honest performances from the leads keep West Bank steady, though, even when it ought to capsize. --S.A. (4/13, 7:30, ISM*)