Father and Son ($29.98 DVD) What a bummer. Driven by its one-shot gimmick, Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark coasted to a tidy $3 million gross, while his infinitely superior follow-up went practically straight to video, without a theatrical or even festival showing in Philadelphia. Too bad, because unlike Ark's grotty DV, Father and Son's lustrous images deserve the big-screen treatment. Even on Wellspring's DVD, the strength of Sokurov's imagery is heart-stopping. Beginning with a shirtless father-son clinch whose intensity seems to stretch the screen, Sokurov follows Mother and Son, his study in filial piety, with the distinctly more-charged relationship between man and boy. Although Sokurov denounced any intimation of homoeroticism as the product of "sick European minds," there's no getting around the movie's dreamy, postcoital glow. The autumnal colors of Sokurov's narrow palette, the voices which seem disembodied even in conversation, the discussions alternately abstract and tangible, all contribute to the sense of a pre-rational, semiconscious world somewhere between dream and wakefulness. The way Sokurov stages a conversation between a boy and a girl through a narrow, obstructed window slit, it's a gap between worlds, constantly shifting position as if conversation, to say nothing of communication, takes constant effort. (Several key scenes are staged on a slanted roof whose edges seem to fall away to nothing.)

Sokurov's cryptic tone makes the movie something of a Rorschach blot, though I'll go out on a limb long enough to suggest that the son's fixation with his departed mother reflects the weight of Russia's past, his attachment to his father an inability to move forward. Interpretation aside, though, Father and Son is indisputably one of the most visually ravishing movies to come down the pike in many months, although its inherent seriousness and lack of pop-cultural cred are poison pills to today's audiences and exhibitors. What a shame that the only way to see it is to stay home.

Misc. Picks Reelblack celebrates its one-year anniversary with a pair of screenings at the Sedgwick Cultural Center: the wide-ranging Black Shorts II (Sat., 7 p.m.) and the romantic comedy All About You (Sun., 3 p.m.). The Jewish Film Festival continues with The Fight, Barak Goodman's history of the 1938 bout which pitted African-American hero Joe Louis against "good German" Max Schmeling (Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; Mon., 7 p.m. at the Gershman Y). Just as the holidays are getting everyone good and depressed, The Bridge rolls out Harold and Maude (Tue., 1 p.m.).