Friday, November 20 2009, 7:43 PM | Mostly Cloudy, and 50° F | Tomorrow: High: 61 F Low: 43 F Sunny to partly cloudy

ARCHIVES . Articles

April 7-13, 2005

cover story

Week One Shorts

Following are reviews of movies premiering in the first week of the Philadelphia Film Festival, April 7-13. Up to the day of show, tickets may be purchased in person at TLA Video locations (11 a.m.-10 p.m.), by phone at 267-765-9700, ext. 4 (10 a.m.-9 p.m.) and online at www.phillyfests.org (up to 36 hours in advance). Same-day tickets are available only at the screening venue. Regular prices are $9.50, $7.50 for matinees until 4 p.m., with discounts for Philadelphia Film Society members. Philadelphia Film Festival coverage continues next week.

All times are p.m. An asterisk (*) indicates scheduled appearance by director or other guest.

Venue Codes:
IH International House, 3701 Chestnut St.
PMT Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.
RE Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.
RB Ritz at the Bourse, Fourth and Ranstead sts. (between Chestnut and Market)
TB The Bridge, 4010 Walnut St.

ABOUT BAGHDAD
An opening title says this documentary, credited to InCounter Productions, "reflects the … violent disorder that has engulfed the lives of Iraqis," a warning not to expect much in the way of conclusions. Filmed in 2003, About Baghdad offers valuable insight into Iraqis' reaction to the U.S. invasion: Some pine for the order of Saddam's regime, while one remarks, "Even the air has changed." But the film's unfiltered, let-the-people-speak approach leaves it feeling already dated, and not just because Small Change screened it last fall. --Sam Adams (4/10, 9:15 PMT*; 4/11, 4:45 IH*)

L'AMANT
(Recommended)
The French title of Ryuichi Hiroki's new movie is more revealing than misleading: The story may be set in Japan, but its sparse settings and erotic-rhetorical scenarios could have come from Marguerite Duras or Catherine Breillat. Pledged to fulfill an old man's pornographic dying wish, three men — called simply A, B and C — convince a 17-year-old schoolgirl to sell her body to them for a year. Hiroki (Vibrator) is less interested in their desire than her willingness and her growing sense of her own power. L'Amant loses some of its focus when the scene shifts outside the alphabet trio's den of sin, but Hiroki's grasp of self-destructive impulses is flawless. --S.A. (4/9, 7:30 TB*; 4/10, 12:30 RE*; 4/11, 2:30 RE*)

BEAR CUB
(Recommended)
The first scene of Miguel Albaladejo's drama — two men graphically getting it on while a third urges them to hurry so he can finish cleaning the house — is a deceptively light beginning to what becomes a rather serious affair. Pedro (yes, he's a bear) gets stuck baby-sitting his nephew Bernardo while his hippie mother vacations in India. Lifestyle adjusted appropriately (no more bathhouse visits; no more joint-smoking in the house), Pedro grows attached to his lovable young charge, and when Bernardo's mother is detained on drug charges, Pedro begins to contemplate long-term fatherhood. Complications, of course, ensue, and the film disarmingly shifts in tone. Thankfully, Albaladejo doesn't oversimplify the matter or leave us with a Three Men and a Baby resolution. A reprise from last year's Gay and Lesbian film fest. --Elisa Ludwig (4/12, 12:15 RE; 4/16, 5:15 RE; 4/17, 9:45 RB)

BELOW THE AMERICAN GRAIN
Jeremy Atkins, aka Dr. Nondweller, assembled this "experimental documentary" from recent protest footage. The experimental part is how the images have been manipulated and distorted; the overt implication is that the mainstream media has not accurately represented the dissenting left. While the stream of placards and talking heads eventually grows monotonous, Atkins nevertheless leaves you with the overwhelming feeling that this country is on the brink of change, although whether that change will be catastrophic or revolutionary is anyone's guess. --E.L. (4/10, 7:15 IH*)

The Big Red One: The Reconstruction

THE BIG RED ONE: THE RECONSTRUCTION
(Highly Recommended)
In the most irresistible passage of his autobiography A Third Face, Samuel Fuller wrote that the only way to make audiences experience the nature of war would be to fire at them from the wings. Even with an hour restored to the mutilated version released in 1980, the movie Fuller literally joined the Army to make lacks the visceral punch of his best work, but its depiction of five riflemen making their way from the North African campaign through the end of World War II is often astonishing (and if you've read A Third Face, you know the most outlandish bits are all true). A Great War veteran whose leathery countenance is occasionally cracked by a knowing wink, Lee Marvin's sergeant is a career-capping creation herding his "four horsemen" (including an utterly convincing Mark Hamill) through the world of war, which has seemed more harrowing but rarely so absurdly human. This isn't Fuller's fabled (probably nonexistent) four-hour cut, and the restoration, produced for the upcoming DVD, reportedly looks a bit inconsistent on the big screen. But only a theater is big enough to hold the emotions in Fuller's movies, and this is your sole chance. --S.A. (4/13, 9:15 RE)

BLACK FRIDAY
The title refers to the 1993 bombings in Mumbai that killed 200 people and wounded a thousand others, and the film follows the ensuing investigation. As detectives close in, we see a fragmented society in which one man's ideology is another's oppression. With its hardboiled cops and brassy cinematography, Black Friday at times has the feel of a made-for-TV movie. Yet director Anurag Kashyap also manages to show a pivotal moment in all its complexity, resisting easy answers and honestly investigating the conditions that give rise to terrorism. --E.L. (4/11, 2:15 TB; 4/13, noon RE)

BROTHERS
(Recommended)
The story is a mishmash of war-movie plots. Model soldier Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) becomes a prisoner of war, where his experiences change him radically. His family believes him dead, and Michael's previously irresponsible brother Jannick (Nickolaj Lie Kaas) becomes more protective of Michael's family and emotionally closer to Michael's wife, Sarah (Connie Nielsen). When Michael is rescued and returns, we expect The Deer Hunter at Pearl Harbor; in plot terms that's not far off, although the novelty of a Danish war film — produced by Lars von Trier's Zentropa Entertainment, no less — makes the cliches forgivable. Fortunately, thanks to a sharp screenplay, terrific performances and Susanne Bier's sensitive, expert direction, Brothers surpasses its tropes. --Ryan Godfrey (4/12, 7:15 RE; 4/14, 12:30 RE)

THE CAR
Luis Orjuela's debut begins promisingly, with a teasing voiceover comparing men to strutting peacocks. As if to illustrate, the men of a Colombian family are shown craving a broken-down car they believe will catch the eye of the ladies in their neighborhood. Soon enough, their quest to acquire the vehicle — and then to keep it running — becomes the focus of the family's life. Quiet dramatic moments stand in contrast with the clan's broadly comic obsession, but Orjuela isn't convincing in either mode — he seems more intent on sparking reactions than telling his story. — Keith Harris (4/9 5:00 RE; 4/12, 7:15 RE; 4/17, 12:30 TB)

CELLAR
(Recommended)
Based on a play he wrote at Haverford College, Ben Hickernell's clever debut begins with a man waking up and discovering that he has been inexplicably locked in a basement with an estranged friend, a pantry full of canned goods, and a gun with one bullet. Days pass, and other than baked beans, the two have only their memories and increasingly desperate fantasies to sustain them. Armed with a micro-indie budget, a digital video camera and the talents of local actors Pete Pryor and Lenny Haas, Hickernell has crafted a taut psychological thriller with intriguing philosophical implications. --E.L. (4/8, 7:15 IH*; 4/18, 9:30 PMT*)

CHASED BY DREAMS
(Highly Recommended)
Paresh (Prosenjit) hauls a film projector around the Bengali countryside, screening birth control films to unappreciative villagers while fantasizing about a woman he has only seen onscreen. His driver (Rajesh Sharma) hopes to find a new job in Dubai, if only his forged papers hold up. Along the road they pick up Ameena (Rimi Sen), a pregnant widow attempting to slip back into her home country. After the projector is stolen, they encounter increasingly Kafka-esque obstacles while being misled by a number of self-interested eccentrics. Director Buddhadev Dasgupta employs a floating camera and barren landscapes to create a dreamlike environment to gradually expose, with dry humor, the factionalism of the people that facilitates their violent oppression. --Shaun Brady (4/8, 7:15 RB; 4/9, 2:30 TB)

CHILDREN OF THE DECREE
(Recommended)
Florin Lepan's powerful documentary tackles a little known and disturbing chapter in Romanian history: dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's plan to increase the country's population by outlawing abortion and contraception from the 1960s through the 1980s. The decree, which came at the height of both Ceausescu's rule and the international feminist movement, led to thousands of deaths by back-alley abortions and, ultimately, an entire generation of unwanted children living in poverty. Lepan's tight narrative consists of archival footage of state propaganda reminding women of their childbearing duty, as well as interviews with gynecologists and women who directly observed the decree's devastating social impact. --E.L. (4/14, 5:00 IH; 4/19, 5:00 IH)

CONTINUOUS JOURNEY
Little-known facts about Canada's dark history are brought to light in Ali Kazimi's documentary on the fateful 1914 voyage of the Komagata Maru. Long story short: White people panicked when they heard a boatful of Punjabi immigrants was landing in Vancouver despite attempts to bar the "yellow races" from relocating within the British Empire. The ship was held a mile offshore, its 376 passengers detained for two months in unlivable conditions. The complex story unfolds slowly despite Kazimi's eerie reenactments, but will no doubt leave viewers wondering what restrictive immigration policies abound today. --Ashlea Halpern (4/8, 5:00 IH; 4/14, 5:00 PMT)

CRÓNICAS
John Leguizamo is a reporter for a Miami-based tabloid show, in Ecuador tracking a serial child-killer. Enamored of his hero image with the impoverished but media-savvy locals, he lobbies on-air for a local man's release from prison, only to realize he may be profiling the killer himself. Director Sebastián Cordero abandons suspense for tortured hand-wringing over how far the media will go. The everything-in-close-ups look gives the impression that cable TV wasn't far from anyone's mind; didactic moralizing does nothing to counter that impression. --S.B. (4/8, 7:30 TB; 4/12, 5:00 RE)

DEATH OF A DYNASTY
Roc-a-Fella honcho Damon Dash directs this satirical tale of a wigger wannabe (Ebon Moss-Bachrach, whose performance could make you pity white people) who becomes New York's most celebrated gossipmonger after reporting a rift between Dash (Capone) and Jay-Z (Robert Stapleton). The film's poignant message — rap magazines, industry big shots and Devon Aoki are out to destroy upstanding multimillionaire hip-hop entrepreneurs — will resonate deeply with all you upstanding multimillionaire hip-hop entrepreneurs out there. Anyone else will have to be satisfied with the "twist ending" — hardly a clever twist, but by that point any ending is a relief. --K.H. (4/8, 10:00 TB; 4/10, 3:30 TB*)

DÍAS DE SANTIAGO
(Recommended)
Alternating between impressionistic black and white and vivid, naturalist color, Josué Méndez's debut is the story of a young Peruvian army veteran (sad-eyed Pietro Sibille) who goes from decapitating Ecuadorians to searching for his place in a society where his service, as a loan office coldly tells him, "has no value now." Méndez's stylistic choices can be irksome — why shift stock in the middle of a conversation? — but D'as de Santiago is a remarkably assured debut that earns its similarity to Taxi Driver. --S.A. (4/11, 7:15 RB; 4/14, 12:15 TB)

EVERYONE
Apathetic actors playing unsympathetic characters sharing awkward moments: What's not to like? Ryan (Matt Fentiman) and Grant (Mark Hildreth) have invited family to their slapdash commitment ceremony; it seems that Canada gives out gay marriage licenses only to the non-annoying. For a couple tying the knot, Ryan and Grant sure don't like each other very much. Writer-director Bill Marchant wrings a few laughs from their mutual discomfort, but why put them together in the first place? And why make almost every straight character obsessed with dead babies? Only Katherine Billings as an enthusiastic mother-in-law and Brendan Fletcher as an impish seductor get to have any fun, and their glee is not contagious. --R.G. (4/8, 5:00 PMT*; 4/9, 7:15 PMT*; 4/18, 4:45 PMT)

FERPECT CRIME
(Recommended)
Born in the department store that is now his cathedral, his muse and his prison, Rafael (Guillermo Toledo), manager of women's apparel, is suave, goofy and doomed. His situation gets ugly when a tiff with a co-worker turns comically bloody, and Rafael is stuck with a body he needs to dispose of and a homely witness (a terrific Monica Cervera) whose silence carries an unusual price. Director çlex de la Iglesia, whose previous efforts (The Day of the Beast, Common Wealth) resemble a loopier Guillermo del Toro, is working even more broadly, though just as stylishly, here: Think Eating Raoul directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. A delirious spot of bubbly with which to christen the Festival. --R.G. (4/7, 6:00 and 8:30, PMT*)

FLOWER AND SNAKE
Based on a much-filmed novel, Flower and Snake is a strictly-for-fetishists glimpse into the Japanese sexual psyche. Takashi Ishii (Gonin) is a stylish director, but his images have beauty only so long as you can shut out out their content: an endless succession of rape, degradation and torture witnessed by a group of masked men straight out of Eyes Wide Shut (though Kubrick never shot Tom Cruise being pissed on in an elephant-trunk-dildo mask). There doesn't seem to be much on Ishii's mind except the message that selling your wife into sexual slavery may have repercussions, but it sure is hot. --S.B. (4/8, 10:00 RE; 4/12, 10:00 TB)

FROZEN
It's always good to see Shirley Henderson, even in a movie as uneven and pretentious as Juliet McKoen's debut feature. Our Shirl plays Kath, a fish-cannery drone whose investigation into her sister's disappearance takes on a metaphysical cast when she discovers a mysterious image in security-camera footage of her sister's last walk. The trouble is that everything else takes on a metaphysical cast as well, since McKoen can't resist slathering on symbolism like jam on a buttie. The mysterious finale would be a shocker if the movie hadn't long since taken a turn for the arbitrary. --S.A. (4/9, 5:00 TB; 4/10, 10:00 RE; 4/15, 12:15 RE)

GAMES OF LOVE AND CHANCE
(Recommended)
Set in the housing projects of Paris, Abdel Kechiche's jagged-edge street story seems at first to be one of those well-intentioned movies about inner-city kids discovering the power of theater. But Games, exhibited elsewhere under its original title, L'Esquive, isn't about this group of mainly white and Arab teenagers uncovering the timeless truths in the titular Marivaux play; it's about the way those truths repeat themselves whether the kids realize it or not. The play's class-ordained romances rewrite themselves along racial lines, as nervous Krimo (Osman Elkharraz) dumps his Arab girlfriend for vain, pretty Lydia (Sara Forestier) and bribes her co-star to drop out so he can seize the role of Arlequin. Kechiche's tendency to let inconclusive conversations run long has the ring of bargain-basement Frederick Wiseman, but his feel for France's polyglot youth culture is acute. --S.A. (4/12, 9:30 RB; 4/15, 5:00 RE)

HENRI LANGLOIS: THE PHANTOM OF THE CINÉMATHÈQUE
(Recommended)
At three and a half hours, Jacques Richard's portrait of Cinémathèque Française co-founder Henri Langlois will attract only the faithful, which is as it should be. Romanticized in The Dreamers, the Cinémathèque is here recalled as a rabbit warren full of rabid cinephiles who watched movies in the tiny theater, on the walls, in stairwells — anywhere they could feed the insatiable hunger for film. Initially determined to save only the good stuff, Langlois forever rued the day he passed on a print of the Theda Bara-starring Salome, now classed as a lost film, pledging thenceforth to preserve anything he could get his hands on, even if it meant keeping things he promised to return. Richard devotes ample time to "L'Affaire Langlois," the heady moment when protests against the government's ouster of Langlois mixed with the student uprising of May 1968, although it seems accusations of disorder were not without merit: Langlois was unable to screen Nosferatu for years because it was mislabeled "Le Nôce à Feratu" (Feratu's Wedding). The film drags towards the end, especially in an over-generous segment on Langlois' Musée du Cinéma, and the fact that Richard could find room for no more than a cursory reference to Langlois' homosexuality reeks of the bad old days. But Nouvelle Vague fans who skip out might as well turn in their membership cards. --S.A. (4/13, 5:15 IH)

THE HOLY GIRL
(Recommended)
Argentina's Lucrecia Martel follows La Ciénaga with another small-town coming-of-age story, this one set in a run-down hotel full of conferencing physicians, one of whom takes an (un)natural interest in the owner's daughter. Martel, whose use of wide lenses reflects her own impaired vision, favors precise, restricted compositions cut at odd angles, lending the story a dreamlike aspect (though she's on record calling the idea of magic realism "fascist"). At times, Martel's alienating strategies work too well; the distance between foreground and background seems an unbridgeable gulf. But two features in, she shows a master's confidence, if not understanding. --S.A. (4/10, 7:15 RE; 4/12, 12:15 TB)

HOUSE OF D
David Duchovny, whose acting has just under two speeds, makes an unwelcome debut behind the camera with this miscalculated coming-of-age tale. Anton Yelchin plays a boy in 1970s New York; his father has just died, mother Téa Leoni is a wreck, and the only handy surrogates are Robin Williams' retarded delivery boy and Erykah Badu's worldly inmate:No wonder he grows up to be an artist. (Duchovny plays the role, looking as uncomfortable as he ought.) The film's minor success with teenage discomfort (not the toughest emotion to revive) is overwhelmed by its falseness in all other respects. --S.A. (4/8, 7:15 PMT*; 4/9, 5:15 PMT)

I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!
(Recommended)
The story of a chemical magnate's fiancee (Wendy Hiller) who gets sidelined with a dashing Scottish laird (Roger Livesey) en route to her wedding, this winsome 1945 romance is among the least ornate of the collaborations between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and thus not nearly as much fun as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (or as compellingly overwrought as Black Narcissus). But in the unwilling bond that develops between the money-hungry Hiller and the self-satisfied Livesey, the film finds a perfect analogue for the classically British battle between pragmatism and priggishness, and an allegory of the negative power of tradition every bit the equal of The Quiet Man. --S.A. (4/10, 2:15 PMT*)

IZO
(Recommended)
Even the people in Izo can't agree on the significance of the titular samurai: He's "irrationality," says one; "a meaningless piece of grudge," another. The debate will be recapitulated, in more exasperated terms, as the lights come up on Takashi Miike's latest, and loopiest, opus. The Inferno rewritten by Seijun Suzuki, Izo embodies the Buddhist concept of "eternal hell" (you know, that thing from Infernal Affairs) all too literally: Poor Izo slices his way through obstacle after obstacle, dismembering one foe only to find himself facing another, and another. Tumbling through time and space, speeding down celestial Möbius strips and slaying legions of moaning schoolgirls, Miike's demonic warrior begins on the cross and reemerges after a montage of humanity's horrors that looks like The History Channel seen through a lava lamp. There's something oddly compelling about the movie's determined repetition; once you stop wondering what comes next (since it's more or less what came last), you're free to let your mind wander, although letting your guard down in Miike's presence is never a good idea. --S.A. (4/10, 9:45 PMT; 4/11, 4:30 RE)

Kings and Queen

KINGS AND QUEEN
(Recommended)
"Women live in bubbles, and men live in a straight line," says suicidal violist Ismael (Mathieu Amalric). In Kings and Queen, Arnaud Desplechin has it both ways. The story of a woman (thrilling Emanuelle Devos) coping with the approaching death of her father and her ex-husband Amalric's battles for (and with) sanity, Desplechin's sprawling yet intimate saga has the forward thrust of melodrama but is always skittering off into unexplored corners. Desplechin, whose Esther Kahn and My Sex Life have made him the subject of a small but devoted cult, is a conspicuous omnivore, filling the movie with allusions to Yeats and Vertigo, the soundtrack with klezmer and Randy Newman. It would be easy to think him a genius, especially since he seems to believe it himself. Desplechin can't manage empathetic shifts like Patrice Chéreau, an obvious influence, and some of the movie's revelations are botched by theatrical staging and novelistic dialogue. Still, Desplechin is a wonder with actresses, at least as long as they're with him: Devos' character is close enough to My Sex Life star and former Desplechin paramour Mariane Denicourt that she responded to the movie with a retaliatory roman a clef. --S.A. (4/13, 6:15 RE)

KONTROLL
Nimrod Antal's debut presents as a slick, stylish thriller about a subway controller (Sandor Csanyi) hunting down a hooded figure who's been pushing people in front of oncoming trains. But as the movie rolls on, Antal's flair for deadpan surrealism starts to win out — a pleasing development, though the girl in the bear suit is a bit much. Still, Kontroll's season in purgatory is more accomplished than it is original, and the movie doesn't earn its climactic ascension. --S.A. (4/13, 10:00 RE; 4/18, 9:30 TB)

LAKESIDE MURDER CASE
Shinji Aoyama (Eureka) returns with a guilty thriller about parents who conspire to hide a murder rather than risk their children's entry into a high-powered school. The critique of Japan's pressurized culture is obvious (and so quickly becomes redundant), but Aoyama does wonders with deep space in an unfinished-pine cabin, and Koji Yakusho (Cure, Shall We Dance?) blends indignation and culpability as the parent whose mistress is murdered for propriety's sake. Too bad the plot hinges on a highly predictable twist. --S.A. (4/11, 7:15 RE*; 4/12, 2:30 RE)

LAND OF PLENTY
When a filmmaker says, or even implies, he's about to make his "response to 9/11," run for the hills. Wim Wenders' condescending take on Bush II America makes a feint at equal time, splitting its story between John Diehl's security-mad Vietnam vet and Michelle Williams' emigre returning home after a long African sojourn. But given that Diehl's character suffers from chemical-induced delusions and Williams spends her spare time helping the homeless and IMing her Israeli friend about the prospects for peace, it's tough to feel the balance is anything but a sham. It gets worse when an Arab man is gunned down outside Williams' shelter: Diehl sets off in pursuit of the victim's supposed terrorist comrades while Williams peruses his wedding photographs. Wenders' critique of American paranoia is undercut by his inability to admit that, however extreme, such paranoia might have rational roots, an approach that reaches its nadir when the two look down on Ground Zero and Williams chirps, "Let's just listen." Hey, Wim, can you hear this? Let me turn it up. --S.A. (4/8, 9:45 RE; 4/10, 2:45 RE)

LATE BLOOMER
(Recommended)
The multiply handicapped Sumida-san, who has limited mobility and can only "speak" by typing, has friends and caretakers and a rewarding job. He's also tormented by a lack of physical and emotional intimacy, and his torment has a bizarre outlet. Flouting convention, even primitive at times, writer-director Shibata Go's style is as strange and awkward as his physically impaired star (Sumida Masakiyo, playing a character of the same name). But both are smarter and more devious than they seem at first glance; the combination will leave you reeling. --R.G. (4/9, 9:45 RB*; 4/11, 2:15 RE*)

LBS.
Carmine Famiglietti lost 170 pounds to play Neil, an obese man who painfully kicks his addiction to food only to find that the factors that got him hooked in the first place persist. Unfortunately, no such commitment manifests itself in the rest of Matthew Bonifacio's debut, which relies on lazy ethnic stereotypes and facile parallels like using a junkie to prove that Neal's gluttony is a "real" addiction. Ultimately, there's nothing to lbs. except Famiglietti's transformation and his warm, subtle performance, which would be enough for a better movie. --S.A. (4/9, 9:30 IH*; 4/10, 4:30 PMT*)

MA MÈRE
First The Story of the Eye, now this: Do you think this is the kind of desecration Georges Battaille had in mind? Adapted from Bataille's unfinished novel, Christophe Honoré's dour drama traffics in the sexual extremity that's become so common in French cinema it can hardly be called transgressive. Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) plays a young man who celebrates the death of his unloved father with a sexual spree that culminates in an almost literal return to the womb. Hey, if your mom looked like Isabelle Huppert, who knows? --S.A. (4/10, 9:30 RE; 4/16, 2:15 RE*)

MACHUCA
Every national crisis eventually becomes the backdrop for a tear-jerking coming-of-age film, and Machuca serves as the entry for Chile before Pinochet. Director Andrés Wood packs in all the necessities: kids from opposite socio-economic backgrounds bonding amidst the chaos; strict but loving authority figures who earn the children's respect; sexual tensions echoing the political ones. Sure, the climactic moments reflect actual atrocities, but real-life horrors were never so predictable. --S.B. (4/12, 7:00 PMT)

MACKED, HAMMERED, SLAUGHTERED & SHAFTED
Truth be told, we need another blaxploitation doc like Superfly needed more bitches, but David Walker's competent run-through touches all the bases. Walker returns incessantly to the debate over terminology, when he should have let Antonio Fargas have the last word; "For those who were around at the time, "blaxploitation' meant work!" But he makes a passable case for the genre's lasting significance, even if Baadasssss Cinema did it better. --S.A. (4/13, 5:00 PMT*; 4/17, 5:00 IH*)

MANA--BEYOND BELIEF
Is a grilled cheese sandwich just a grilled cheese sandwich? Not when the Virgin Mary is toasted onto the bread. From a voodoo ceremony in Benin to a tuna auction in Tokyo, documentarian Peter Friedman and anthropologist Roger Manley traveled the world in search of mana — sacred objects believed to hold supernatural powers — and the people who worship them. While Buddha's hair and the Shroud of Turin surely deserve equal screen time, it's the obsessions of Americans (stock market futures, souped-up low riders, Elvis, etc.) that prove most captivating. The filmmakers offer little commentary, allowing their fly-on-the-wall approach to speak for itself. Like flipping through an issue of National Geographic, the images are stunning but ultimately intangible to the uninitiated. Let's face it: What's holy to you is just lunch to me. --A.H. (4/11, 7:15 PMT*; 4/12, 2:30 TB*)

MAREBITO: THE STRANGER FROM AFAR
Those who emerged from The Grudge overwhelmed by logic will thrill to Takashi Shimizu's digi-vid follow-up. A fear-obsessed cameraman (Vital director Shinya Tsukamoto), dissatisfied with snuff films and the deaths he's caught on tape, descends into Tokyo's underground and returns with a naked vampire chick whose soul-sucking presence does a whammy on his mind. Shimizu's style is as haphazard here as it was in Ju-On, but at least the conceptual vaults keep you guessing. Have at it, as long as you can stomach dialogue like, "Do I dare to open the door to the passageway of terror?" --S.A. (4/8, 9:45 PMT; 4/10, 5:00 PMT)

MIDWINTER NIGHT'S DREAM
(Recommended)
Lazar Ristovski, who has the weather-beaten face of a Kieslowski hero, returns to his Serbian home after 10 years in prison to find a mother and her autistic daughter, both refugees from Bosnia, living in his late mother's house. The unlikely relationship that develops is based less on his love for the mother than his determination to "cure" her daughter's autism and his inability to accept his friend's advice: "You can't do something about everything." The child's echolalia serves as a symbol of the country's violent repetitions (paging Susan Sontag), a circle broken only by the movie's abrupt conclusion. --S.A. (4/11, 7:00 RE; 4/12, noon RE)

MURDERBALL
(Highly Recommended)
Whipping the camera around the wheelchair-rugby court, Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro's ESPN-ized documentary begins as extreme sports for the spinal injury set, a searing blast of rage channeled into a game that's as violent as people without most of the use of their limbs can get. (The movie began life as a Maxim article.) But after its roughshod opening, Murderball evolves into a stunning portrait of life after partial paralysis, focusing on the members of the U.S. Paralympic wheelchair rugby team, as well as Joe Soares, a former American champion who was cut from the team and signed up as Team Canada's coach in retaliation. Murderball doesn't spare the gory details, but much of the focus is on continuity: As the friend of one murderballer affectionately puts it, "He was an asshole then, he's an asshole now." --S.A. (4/8 9:30 RB*; 4/10, 4:45 RB*)

MYSTERIOUS SKIN
Given that "audacious" is usually the nicest thing one can say about Gregg Araki's work, it's surprising that his adaptation of Scott Heim's novel about the repercussions of child molestation is so blandly straightforward. All the director's trademarks are here, for better or worse: clumsy editing and verbiage that tumbles awkwardly off the tongue, the occasional vivid burst of color or escape into magic realism. But all seem newly tailored for a bored flirtation with the mainstream. The cast ranges from exceptional (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, treading much the same ground as in Manic) to cartoonish, with the children faring best. Araki's camera can never be accused of flinching from the discomforting material, but neither can it be praised for looking beyond the obvious. --S.B. (4/9, 7:15 PMT; 4/10, 3:00 RE)

Oldboy

OLDBOY
(Highly Recommended)
Park Chan-wook's high-octane revenge epic has already been seen by every Asian cinema fan with a region-free DVD player, but that didn't hurt Hero, did it? The astonishing Choi Min-sik (Chihwaseon) plays Oh Dae-su, whose unexplained 15-year imprisonment is just the beginning of his troubles. His abrupt release (a day shy of his carefully planned escape) comes with a killer catch: He has five days to discover why he was locked up, or his love affair with the comely Mido (Gang Hye-Jung) will end as quickly as it started. Park isn't above lifting from his forebears (one imagines he's seen a few episodes of The Prisoner), but he's got style to burn. Wielding only a claw hammer, Dae-su fights his way through a hallway full of bad guys in an unbroken tracking shot that blends comic strip and moving picture better than all of Sin City. --S.A. (4/12, 9:30 PMT; 4/16, 4:45 TB)

ONE MISSED CALL
Part genre piss-take, part abstract doodle, this straight-ahead haunter from the insanely prolific Takashi Miike plays like the madcap auteur's verse of "Anything you can do, I can do better." The deadly ring that propagates through cell phones, the dessicated child with a fondness for cupboards, the hair: Anyone who's kept up with J-horror, or even its American remakes, knows the score. Miike throws in a few personal touches, like the woman who is twisted to death by unseen hands, but mostly this seems like Miike's way of proving he could be a mainstream success, if he only wanted to. --S.A. (4/11, 9:45 RE; 4/14, 5:00 TB)

OUR NAKED CITY
(Recommended)
The best overall FestIndies program explores landscapes communal and personal. I Choose To Stay Here focuses on North Philadelphia's Community Leadership Institute and their battle to stop the city from claiming occupied houses in the name of eminent domain, while Karen Dee Carpenter's sharp, well-observed My Scarlet Letter is set in the small town her heroine longs to escape but fears she never will. Shelley Barry's Whole: A Trinity of Being lays the poetry on thick, but Barry's mesmerizing close-ups reveal a gripping story: her recovery from a gunshot wound that partially paralyzed her and left her with a permanent hole in her throat. Critical Mass is life through a bike messenger's eyes, told with jocular honesty. --S.A. (4/11, 9:15 IH*)

OVER THE EDGE
(Recommended)
This boundary-pushing FestIndies program kicks off with Stephen Murphy's nervy Psychosis, a brief barrage of animated gore depicting a teenager's darkest desires. Rob Van Alkemade's Preacher With an Unknown God isn't the first documentary on anti-consumer activist Reverend Billy, but it's the least strident and the funniest. Michael Heneghan's Synder and Newton blends puppet animation and live-action footage for an intriguing, if unven, contemplation of life's end whose creaky chess-game metaphor is saved by the Buckaroo Banzai chairs. --S.A. (4/9, 7:00 IH*)

THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENTAL
(Recommended)
Andrew Watson's Imagine grabs captivating shots of a bike messenger navigating carless streets, but the instruction to "Imagine a world where the mind is free" would be more persuasive if the imagery wasn't nicked from a Nike commercial. Rini Keagy's De(ux) Baguettes à Hanoi offers seductive textures, though it's difficult to link its swimming-pool imagery with the purported critique of French colonialism. Nick Ravish's Bossa Nova Scotia is a vacation slide show set to a tropical beat, with a crafty sense of humor, and the program closes with the always welcome work of Termite TV, whose The Terror Show promises cutting commentary on the state of things. --S.A. (4/10, 9:30 IH*)

PINK RIBBON
A distinctly Japanese form of softcore, "pink films" have been around since the 1960s, acting as a training ground for a few mainstream directors (Kiyoshi Kurosawa is good enough to fess up) but mainly creating their own, now dwindling, subculture. Kenjiro Fujii's documentary has its amusing moments — the dubbing session is priceless — but it's strangely blithe about the pinks' sometimes nasty subject matter. (One director's trick of the trade: rape scenes last longer if the woman resists). Made out of an obvious sense of love (or, you know, something), Pink Ribbon doesn't put that love across, drawing on a sense of nostalgic fondness it never bothers to establish. But if titles like Chronic Sex Addict Housewife and Victimized Woman are your bag, knock yourself out. --S.A. (4/9, 4:45 IH; 4/16, 7:00 IH; 4/17, 4:30 PMT)

PIZZA
The pizza dude (Ethan Embry) is the only person who shows up for the 18th birthday party of the unfortunately named Cara-Ethel (Kylie Sparks). Overweight and diffident, her curiosity gets the better of her shyness when pie guy and "leftover communist" Matt invites her to join the night's appointed rounds. Writer-director Mark Christopher has a nice idea in letting these damaged loners on opposite sides of their 20s make a tenuous connection, but he couches their blooming rapport in ponderously quirky scenarios that don't do much but get them out of the car. The real problem: We get to know the two leads pretty well, and they're not as interesting as they think they are. --R.G. (4/8, 9:45 IH*; 4/12, 4:45 PMT)

THE PROMISE
When Carmen Maura's neglected housewife takes a stranger's advice to visit "Affection," his hometown, before she dies, it's obvious no one will have to look too hard for allegories. Director Héctor Carré straddles the line between domestic drama and Sixth Sense-style thriller and comes up with a moderately effective study of madness. Carré takes Bu–uelian pleasure in religious iconography and uses the Spanish countryside's ubiquitous Catholicism to ratchet up the unease, mercifully reducing the sting-in-the-tail revelations to near insignificance. If subtext is barely concealed by surface, there's nuance in Maura's empathetic portrayal of a woman smothered by tradition, religion and hopes unfulfilled. --S.B. (4/13, 7:30 TB; 4/15, 5:00 RE; 4/16, 2:30 RE)

R-POINT
A by-the-numbers Korean ghost story enlivened by a potent subtext, the directing debut of Tell Me Something screenwriter Kong Su-Chang follows South Korean soldiers into the Vietnamese jungle in 1972, where a search for vanished comrades turns up unexpected (though not to us) results. "If you have blood on your hands, you can't go back," reads the unheeded marker on the outskirts of a crumbling temple, a fitting precis of war guilt, though R-Point trivializes anti-war sentiment with its grab-bag plot, aiming to steal so much, so quickly, you'll lose track. Watch for the unintentionally fascinating interlude when the Koreans are visited by a forbidding black G.I. --S.A. (4/9, 9:45 TB; 4/13, 5:15 TB)

RITTENHOUSE SQUARE
Beware the descriptor "love letter," which all but guarantees a toothless tourist brochure. Robert Downey Sr.'s "year in the life" chronicle of the titular quadrangle isn't pledge-drive junk, but it pumps water, not blood. Since Downey is nearing 70, his focus on the park's older habitues, like bowlered bon vivant Stanley Green, is understandable, as are a few of the film's many, many girl-watching montages. Less forgivable are the facile juxtapositions — swanky fundraiser one moment, homeless painter the next — and the amount of time lavished on Neil Stein. --S.A. (4/9, 5:00 and 9:30 PMT*)

SAINT RALPH
Canadian writer-director Michael McGowan gooses a ho-hum "young boy coming of age in a '50s Catholic school" plot by having the kid in question (Adam Butcher) convince himself that winning the Boston Marathon will rouse his mother from a coma. So much can go wrong that the occasional stilted gags and improperly jerked tears are inevitable. But with help from Campbell Scott (a nicely understated turn as a mentor-priest), Butcher's gregarious screen presence keeps the film just this side of cloying, finding the humor in Catholicism and adolescence without reducing either to a punch line. --K.H. (4/11, 9:30 RB; 4/13, 5:15 RE)

SOMERSAULT
(Recommended)
Combining Baby Houseman's naiveté with Kate Hudson's nymphish good looks, actress Abbie Cornish is poised to be Australia's next big thing. Here she plays Heidi, a troubled teen kicked to the curb when Mom catches her canoodling with her live-in boyfriend. Broke and clueless, Heidi sleeps her way across Australia, landing a job at the BP, befriending a bookish co-worker whose father thinks she's a whore, and meeting terrified-of-the-word-girlfriend Joe (Sam Worthington). Everything about Cate Shortland's debut feels trite and predictable, right down to the artfully quick sex and rose-tinted shots filmed through glasses of red wine, and yet it's a total emotional rush. Something in the way Heidi slaps her thighs when she dances or how Joe kisses a grieving widower with the urgency of a dying man: It's life as we know it, magnified. --A.H. (4/8, 7:30 RE ; 4/9, 2:30 RE)

SPIDER FOREST
(Recommended)
The latest in the Korean mind-fuck genre, Song Il-gon's Möbius-strip chiller pales only in comparison to last year's A Tale of Two Sisters. A TV news producer is convinced he witnessed a murder in a deserted cabin, but each attempt to explain only leaves him (and the audience) more confused: The story turns in on itself so many times it's not even surprising when the hero ends up kicking the shit out of himself. On one level, it seems awfully easy to construct a twisty thriller without the need to work things out in the end, but Spider Forest is consistently enthralling, even when it breaks the rules. --S.A. (4/11, 9:30 PMT; 4/15, 2:45 TB)

SURVIVE STYLE 5+
(Recommended)
Gen Sikeguchi's madcap, free-associational pinball machine is a brightly colored pop pastiche with a violent streak a mile wide. From a would-be murderer (Asano Tadanobu) bedeviled by his unkillable and increasingly pugilistic wife to the long-faced salaryman doomed by a hypnotist's death to cluck like a chicken the rest of his days, the disparate characters are thrown together like ice in a cocktail shaker. At bottom, it feels like an inspired exercise, except the parts with Snatch's Vinnie Jones as an existential hit man, which don't count as inspired. But for sheer left-field energy, Survive Style is hard to beat. --S.A. (4/9, 10:00 RE; 4/13, 9:45 TB)

SWEET SIXTIES
Ladies and gentlemen, can we get a round of applause for the risk-takers and rule-breakers in modern Korean cinema? Bolstered by a talented cast of sexagenarians, Sweet Sixties is a zany comedy that best recalls the skirt-chasing, insult-slinging high jinks of Grumpy Old Men. While debut director Lee Su-in gets points for the film's bold confrontation of Korean taboos, including divorce, spinsterhood and homosexuality, the repeated derailment into panty-stealing slapstick ultimately proves self-defeating. --A.H. (4/9, 2:15 RE; 4/14, 5:00 RE)

THE 10TH DISTRICT COURT, MOMENTS OF TRIALS
(Recommended)
It's all in the title, folks: Raymond Depardon's documentary plunks a camera in a French courtroom and keeps rolling as cases grave and trivial come before an exasperated but never flustered judge. A self-styled bohemian caught driving drunk deepens the hole with her inability to give a straight answer, while a jilted lover reveals himself as a possible abuser. The strategy of excerpting defendants at their most discursive effectively puts us in the judge's place, blood pressure rising as we wait for them to get to the point and marvel that justice is ever done. --S.A. (4/9, 12:15 RB; 4/11, 5:00 RB)

UNO
(Highly Recommended)
Writer-director Aksel Hennie plays David, a Norwegian hood tripped up by conflicting loyalties between his family, including his dying father and mentally disabled brother, and friends, mainly his boss's steroid-peddling son, who entangles him with a crew of vicious Pakistani thugs. Hennie the screenwriter's knack for locating absurdity in the midst of pain generally redeems Hennie the director's weakness for melodrama and showboating slo-mo, and Hennie the actor's ability to convey depths of decency with the slightest of facial expressions nails down the film's moral center. --K.H. (4/8, 7:15 RE; 4/14, 2:45 TB; 4/17, 5:15 TB)

VENTO DI TERRA
(Recommended)
Unfolding almost silently in black-out chapters, Vento di Terra is a neo-realist melodrama cataloguing the miseries of a working class Italian family. Though the situations are unrelentingly grim, director Vincenzo Marra keeps a dispassionate tone with elliptical editing and the blank-eyed lead performance of nonprofessional Vincenzo Pacilli. The viewer is never sure how much time has passed between segments; intervening events are sketched in with visual cues and glances between characters. --S.B. (4/13, 5:15 RB; 4/14, 12:15 RE; 4/18, 2:45 TB)

THE VOYAGE HOME
(Recommended)
(Warning for readers unschooled in world history: This review contains a spoiler.) Christians have destroyed the Roman Empire, and pagan Claudio Rutilio Namaziano, at odds with the invading Goths, is trying to return to Gaul. The Voyage Home details his journey by sea as he narrowly escapes brutal centurions, conniving countrymen and harsh gales. Along the way, Claudio becomes ever more determined to preserve his way of life, even as he discovers his allies have mostly sold out. The stunning cinematography, lonely quiet and unsettling violence evokes Herzog's Aguirre: The Wrath of God, as does the film's inevitable end. --E.L. (4/14, 7:15 RE*; 4/18, 2:30 RE)

WARSAW
Another multicharacter, night-in-the-life-of-the-city exercise is about as welcome as Nashville 2, but Poland's Dariusz Gajewski does more than connect the dots. There's the young woman who sardonically notes that she rises each every morning to a view of the Warsaw uprising, the German underworld figure who mysteriously speaks perfect Polish: remnants of the past that intrude into the characters' lives whether they like it or not. Too many cute young people flirting and too much nonsense with guns, but a heart underneath it all. --S.A. (4/10, 1:00 TB; 4/12, 9:30 RE; 4/15, noon RE)

WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN
(Highly Recommended)
Hong Sang-Soo (The Turning Gate) returns with a characteristically bifurcated tale: the story of two men who reflect on their mutual, and nearly overlapping, relationships with the same woman. A master of the uncomfortable sex scene and the alcohol-infused misstep — have any director's characters drunk so much? — Hong's quietly acute films have attracted a small but potent global following. (A hint to the curious: eBay.) Woman, whose elliptical title comes from a Louis Aragon poem, is Hong's most concise, contained work, although its slightness is deceptive: The more you think about it, the more mysterious it becomes. --S.A. (4/13, 7:30 RB; 4/16, 2:45 RB)

The World

THE WORLD
(Highly Recommended)
A highlight of the festival and the year to come, Jia Zhang-ke's first "official" (read "state-approved") film is a visual glory whose stunning HD images put Collateral to shame. Jia's subject is nothing less ambitious than the state of modern China, recreated in the titular theme park, an Epcot-esque arena where the twin towers still stand and nationality is reduced to interchangeable trinkets. Like Jacques Tati, Jia's gift is to find the moments of human exchange in this bloodless global marketplace, whether it's differences in regional dialect or the unlikely friendship between a Chinese dancer and a Russian prostitute. Some fans of Jia's underground films have cried sellout, but The World's social critique is devastating and only barely veiled. --S.A. (4/10, noon RE; 4/12, 4:30 RE)

YUVA
(Highly Recommended)
Clocking in at a bladder-testing 169 minutes, Yuva is a Bollywood extravaganza of epic proportions. A dozen subplots unravel faster than a runaway train, but it's the interlocking lives of a radical student leader, a hired gun and a lovestruck scholar that carry the film from its Iñárritu-inspired opening through a crowd-pleasing closer. Fans of Hindi cinema will love the stylized WWF-like fight scenes and be pleasantly surprised by the serious issues (mob violence, political corruption, abortion, etc.) that push to the fore. Yuva luxuriates in its share of techno-pop numbers and gushy romance; rain-soaked embraces, cartwheels on the beach, and racy tickle fights are a dime a dozen in director Mani Ratnam's world. But overall, it's a sharp and politically astute film. Hilarious in its absurdity and groundbreaking for its genre, Yuva is no less than spectacular, spectacular! --A.H. (4/10, 8:15 TB; 4/14, 3:00 RE)

Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION
Aiming for what critic F.X. Feeney calls the "uncommon denominator," Z Channel pumped a diet of art, cult, unreleased and otherwise under-the-radar movies into the Los Angeles area from 1974 to 1989. Programmer Jerry Harvey sought out the unmutilated Heaven's Gate and Once Upon a Time in America, slotted Sam Fuller marathons, and sparked the imaginations of a young Quentin Tarantino and Alexander Payne. Director Xan Cassavetes doesn't shy away from the dark side that led Harvey to kill his girlfriend and then himself just as Z Channel was losing ground to HBO and cable sports, and she readily admits the channel's weakness for Euro-cheesecake (Laura Antonelli festival, anyone?). Inevitably given its gushing tone, Z Channel runs too long, and the quality of its many clips varies widely (The Passenger looks awful). But if it's not as good as any of the movies it celebrates, Z Channel will send you home with an impressive to-watch list. --S.A. (4/12, 7:30 TB; 4/14, 2:30 RE)