film

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are David Fear, Dina Gachman, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Patrick Macias, Anhoni Patel, and Chuck Stephens. Film intern is Meryl Cohen. See Rep Clock, page 89, and Movie Clock, page 90, for theater information.

Berlin and Beyond Film Festival

The seventh annual Berlin and Beyond film festival plays Jan. 10-16 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, S.F. Tickets ($7.50-$15 for individual programs, $75 for a festival pass) are available on the Web at www.ticketweb.com or at Café de la Presse, 352 Grant, S.F. For more information see 8 Days a Week, page 56, or go to www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco. All times are p.m.

Thurs/10

Ingredients for Dreams 8.

Fri/11

White Cherries 5. The Experiment 7. Berlin Is in Germany 10.

Sat/12

Emil and the Detectives noon. Black Box Germany 2:30. What to Do in Case of Fire with "Hessi James" 5:30. The Middle of Nowhere 8. Moonlight Tariff 10.

Sun/13

"Short Films: The Best of German Film Schools" 1. Hold-Up 3. The Dream Is Gone 5. The Wound 7:30. A Goddamn Job 10.

Mon/14

Diary of a Lost Girl 7. Lammbock 9:30.

Tues/15

Dear Fidel – Marita's Story 7. Birthday 9:45.

Wed/16

Utopia Blues 1:30. The State I Am In 4. Gripsholm 7.

Opening

Brotherhood of the Wolf One of the strangest fictions ever to be "based on a true story," Brotherhood of the Wolf finds a way to capitalize on martial arts chic even as it sets its story in 18th-century France. A beast roams the countryside killing women and children, and a naturalist and his Native American cohort attempt to find and kill the monster. Their real enemies, however, do not have four legs, and by the end of this strangely sparkling drama, the choreography of Phillip Kwok (Hard-Boiled), the editing of David Wu (The Bride with White Hair), the killer kicks of Mark Dacascos ("The Crow" TV series), and the plot convolutions of France's biggest H.K. film fan and Sam Raimi booster, director Christophe Gans (Crying Freeman), will have your head spinning. (2:20) Metreon. (Gerhard)

Charlotte Gray See "Her Brilliant Career?," page 49. (2:00) Embarcadero.

Dark Blue World This WWII drama from Czech director Jan Sverak (Kolya) shares a few similarities with last year's overblown Pearl Harbor, most notably a plot point that involves two close male friends (and pilots) torn apart when they fall in love with the same woman. Unlike Pearl Harbor, though, Dark Blue World actually has a soul, and some depth, and some interesting characters. After the Nazi invasion of their country, two Czech airmen – Franka (Ondrej Vetchy), a kind soul who has a way with women and dogs, and the young, emotional Karel (Krystof Hadek) – escape to England to fly with the British Royal Air Force. Dark Blue World is at its best when focusing on the men's relationship, which at various times casts the pair in the roles of teacher-student, father-son, romantic rivals, best friends, and war-weary soldiers with realistic complexity. (1:49) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Everything Put Together Of course, everything falls apart in Everything Put Together, and the director of Monster's Ball, Marc Forster, creates an incredibly moody look into the underbelly of the expectant belly. Upwardly mobile suburban housewife Radha Mitchell (in a role similar to the one Julianne Moore played in Safe) attends baby birthday parties and unpacks the accoutrements of her soon-to-be-born child in her frightening upper-middle-class milieu. With the excessive use of scarily oversaturated crepuscular light, surprise booms, and dark dream sequences, one senses doom, a little too clearly. Forster's touch is too heavy here, his actors too wooden, and the terrain a little too familiar. (1:27) Lumiere. (Gerhard)

Little Otik See "Bringing Up Baby," page 48. (2:07) Red Vic.

Made in Japan The sangfroid of the Japanese businessman – previously explored in American comedies like 1986's Gung Ho – is the target of lampoonery in Yojiro Takita's Made in Japan. Uptight, materialistic salaryman Takahashi (Henry Sanada) heads to an unstable, developing Southeast Asian country determined to win a bridge-building contract for his company. Comical culture shock gives way to genuine shock when, shortly before the coveted job is delegated, the corrupt military government dissolves amid a rebel uprising. Takahashi and three other suit-wearing, briefcase-toting Japanese execs take to the jungle, dodging bullets and grenades as they plot their escape. Despite an energetic cast, and some poignant insight into the sacrifices the men have had to make in their personal lives to become "corporate warriors," Made in Japan never hits its stride; the satire is too broad, the pacing too awkward, and the ending, which involves the use of "We are Japanese businessmen!" as a battle cry, too over-the-top. (1:55) Four Star. (Eddy)

Orange County See Movie Clock, page 90. (1:23) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Empire, Galaxy, Jack London, UA Berkeley.

Ongoing

Ali Michael Mann's epic look at the people's pugilistic champ manages to cast jug-eared fresh prince-movie star Will Smith as the shit-talkin' heavyweight and still score more than a few body blows. All of the sports hero's greatest hits, literally and figuratively, are here: the 22-year-old Cassius Clay's victory over Sonny Liston, the renouncement of his "slave name" for an honorable Muslim moniker, the verbal sparring matches with Howard Cosell (an unrecognizable and dead-on Jon Voight), and so on. Mann (The Insider) uses his trademark icy sheen and fastidious attention to let you know immediately who's calling the shots; occasionally, he throws in the odd conspiracy thriller element just to prove that, famous subject or no, it's still a "Mann" movie. But it's Smith's show all the way, and he takes on the fighter's bulky frame and silky smooth monotone with a grace that dares any doubters to step into the ring. (2:27) Alexandria, Colma, Emery Bay, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Fear)

Amélie (1:55) Albany, Clay, Piedmont.

A Beautiful Mind It's a movie about smart people, but A Beautiful Mind treats its audience as anything but, oversimplifying weighty subjects like scientific discovery, romance, and mental illness to fit director Ron Howard's Hollywood formula. The film tells the semi-true life story of John Forbes Nash Jr. (Russell Crowe), a brilliant mathematician and paranoid schizophrenic who won the Nobel Prize in 1994. As in most sweeping biopics, Mind feels like five movies in one, hurrying through 47 years as if edited for television. Though Nash and his wife, Alicia (Jennifer Connelly), are supposed to be brilliant, you wouldn't know it from their often banal dialogue. When Nash asks her how he knows if he's in love, she explains that it's like knowing the universe is infinite: You can't prove it, you just believe. Sappy lines aside, Connelly is notable as Nash's strong and reasonable wife, her heroine nearly upstaging his hero. And despite the film's awkward pacing, Howard does succeed in persuading the viewer that perhaps Nash's paranoia isn't completely unfounded. (2:09) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, UA Berkeley. (Nancy Einhart)

Beauty and the Beast: The Large Format Cinema Special Edition (1:30) Metreon Imax. (Cohen)

Behind Enemy Lines (1:46) Metreon.

*The Business of Strangers Writer-director Patrick Stettner's story about the soulless life of a female business executive begins as Julie Styron (Stockard Channing) pitches to a wooden audience and loses the sale, only to meet her tardy audiovisuals assistant, Paula Murphy (Julia Stiles), on the way out. Wrestling for power with witty Mametisms, the two women graduate to a more WWF level of play when a third party – an oily corporate headhunter (Frederick Weller) – enters the picture. Friendship, even sexual tension, emerges as they play out a class/age/gender war that's more like a chess game, one played over his drunken, perhaps even dead, body in a story whose hall of mirrors recalls Memento's unmerciful plot turns at times and In the Company of Men's misanthropy at others. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Gerhard)

*Bread and Tulips (1:44) Balboa.

The Devil's Backbone Shifting away from the stylish, arty but fairly straight-up genre horror of his Cronos and Mimic, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro's third feature is an ambitious mix of supernatural, Dickensian and historical-political drama that doesn't entirely work. During the final days of the Spanish Civil War, 10-year-old foundling Carlos (Fernando Tielve) is deposited at a remote orphanage whose keepers (Marisa Paredes, Frederico Luppi) have good reason to be terrified – they've been secretly supporting the leftist insurgents now being decimated by Franco's triumphant Fascist forces. The resident children are fearful too, though for different reasons. Ever since a boy "disappeared" one year before, there have been poltergeist-y disturbances in the dilapidated compound. Beyond its often striking, ambered visual design, Backbone contains excellent performances from both adult and juvenile actors, and a compassionate tone that offsets the occasional jolting gore and narrative manipulation. Though the film is never quite as frightening or moving as it means to be, del Toro remains a distinctive enough talent that this genre hybrid's mixed results are still worth a look. (1:46) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Dinner Rush Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant knows how hairy things can get on a full night, and director Bob Giraldi (whose credits include Michael Jackson's Beat It video) is no exception. He didn't just make a movie about the TriBeCa Italian eatery Gigino Tratorria, he owns the place. Firsthand knowledge is apparent from the start of this revealing look at the behind-the-scenes chaos and excitement of a busy Tuesday night dinner shift at the ultra-trendy spot. Add a high maintenance food critic (Sandra Bernhard), a gambling sous chef, two entrepreneur-type thugs, an incestuous staff, a prima donna star chef, and a blackout, and you've got enough drama to call it dinner theater. Giraldi's well-crafted, multidimensional tale is perfectly personified by an ensemble cast, including Danny Aiello, John Corbett, and indie regulars Mike McGlone and Mark Margolis, that brings enough talent and wit to the table to satisfy any appetite. (1:40) Opera Plaza. (Cohen)

*The Endurance (1:33) Four Star, Rafael.

*Fat Girl Catherine Breillat (Romance) punctuates her career with a surprise ending and double-underlining of that career's polemical through-line: the libido is a terrible thing to waste. Under the duress of bourgeois boredom, two sisters seek out trouble. It's mostly skinny Elena, played with haughty, sultry self-consciousness by Roxane Mesquida, initiating the adventures. She has to drag along, as cover, her heavy sister, Anaïs (a difficult role carried off with amazing transparency by 13-year-old Anaïs Reboux). The girls meet Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), and while Elena begins making out with him in a matter of seconds, Anaïs digs into a banana split. It's up to Anaïs to be the voice of reason, and she watches the doomed romance as if it were a tragic melodrama she didn't want to pay to see. Together the sisters are headed for the land of Little Red Riding Hood, but as anyone who's seen a Breillat film can testify, it's the wolf who'd better watch his back. (1:23) Four Star. (Gerhard)

*Ghost World (1:51) Kabuki.

*Gosford Park Robert Altman's best movie in ages negotiates a middle path between his usual catch-all meandering and the scrubbed orderliness of Merchant Ivory terrain, arriving at something greater than either. An English country estate presided over by Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) and his much younger wife, Lady Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), is the destination on a 1932 autumn weekend for a large roster of relatives, in-laws, and hangers-on, most of whom have a considerable, parasitic stake in staying on the wealthy host's good side. An even larger army of servants attends them, their hierarchies and hidden agendas just as complex as those of the "masters." Midway through these 48 hours of tortured politeness, a murder occurs, and indeed, this time the butler might really have done it, though there's hardly a shortage of suspects. Tethered to an exceptionally good screenplay by Julian Fellowes, and hugely benefiting from the expertise of a remarkable cast, the film gets deeper into its archaic milieu than any Altman project since (at least) The Player – with less condescension or performance showboating to boot. (2:17) Albany, Metreon, Metro, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Harvey)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2:32) Century Plaza, Coronet, Emery Bay, Grand Lake, Jack London, Metreon, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Stonestown, UA Berkeley.

How High (1:36) Century Plaza, Jack London, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

Imposter Based on a 1952 short story by late, legendary sci-fi novelist Philip K. Dick (who also supplied plots for Total Recall and Blade Runner), Gary Fleder's irksome thriller, set in the not-so-distant future, hits a little too close to home. Fleder and his crew hoped to create a feasible picture of what Earth might look like in 2079. The result, marked by realistic extensions of existing technologies and humans who retain our own fears and desires, is a chilling answer to many of the ethical questions that contemporary scientists have posed. In this automated world, rocked by interplanetary war, brilliant scientist Spencer Olham (Gary Sinise) and his wife, Maya (Madeleine Stowe), know that there may be scientific truth behind the shocking accusation that the real Spencer has been replaced by an alien clone, complete with all his own memories and a bomb in his heart. As usual, Dick's prophecy is both fascinating and unsettling, but melodramatic performances and dark, dizzying camera work add little to his vision. (1:36) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Galaxy, UA Berkeley. (Cohen)

In the Bedroom Fusing TV movie with art film, Todd Field's debut feature seems to be made with Academy Awards in mind; an ensemble of actors navigate the icy, stormy psychology of its Maine-set screenplay (adapted from a novel by Andre Dubus), which traces the effects of a murder on a select few of the characters. Married couple Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth (Sissy Spacek) Fowler are troubled their college-age son Frank (Nick Stahl of Bully, cementing his position as 2001's top cinematic sitting duck) is in a relationship with Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei, again returning to the courtroom with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in mind): she's older, she has kids, she hasn't gotten a divorce from abusive brewery-brat Richard Strout (William Mapother), and she's clouding Frank's vision of a wealthy future. Actually, Frank's Dad takes a certain vicarious pleasure from his son's new romance; his Mom, however, is unhappy that he might choose lobstering over architecture – and her concern is soon eradicated in the worst possible way. Spacek and Wilkinson are excellent, especially when the script calls on them to deliver Bergman Americana, but In the Bedroom's narrative matches ellipses with heavy-handed symbolism, and the results are too often numbing. (2:26) Act I and II, Colma, Embarcadero, Jack London. (Huston)

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (1:17) Emery Bay, Kabuki, Jack London, Metreon, Stonestown, UA Berkeley.

Joe Somebody (1:39) 1000 Van Ness.

Kandahar It seems somehow appropriate that the film speaking most eloquently to the needs of the hour comes from Iran and not Hollywood. For two decades now, that country has been producing an increasing variety of excellent films by socially committed filmmakers with a pronounced humanist aesthetic. Inspired by the true story of the film's lead actor, Nelofer Pazira, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar tells the story of Nafas, an Afghan journalist living in Canada, who returns to Afghanistan to save her sister from suicide. Kandahar displays many traits – a blurring of documentary and fiction, an emphasis on visual beauty, and a moral focus – that have helped make Iran's cinema one of the world's most vital; it also forces one to ask whether, despite the current mass-media spotlight, Afghanistan might not remain a country without an image if in it we cannot recognize ourselves. (1:25) Act I and II, Lumiere, Rafael. (Robert Avila)

Kate and Leopold (1:48) Century Plaza, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, UA Berkeley.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Boosted by immaculate production design and a cast and crew who glow with respect for J.R.R. Tolkien's source material, the hobbit pipe-weed high should last all the way to the final reel, wherein "The Breaking of the Fellowship" (Book Two, Chapter 10) becomes painfully literal. Faithful to a fault, Fellowship is stuck with the most inconclusive and unsatisfactory conclusion to a big-budget fantasy film since The Empire Strikes Back left audiences wondering, "Is that it?" Such are the dangers of trilogy building. Peter Jackson – though he's secured a three-hour running time and deals to make two more movies – still makes it feel like he's in an awful rush to finish the journey ASAP. There's a hurried quality to Fellowship's pacing, which makes that awkward ending feel even more like hitting a brick wall. Grand events occur, literary characters spring pleasingly to life, but Middle-earth seldom gets a chance to breathe. But to his considerable credit, Jackson knows how to make the film itself come alive, alternating between well-placed subjective shots, epic vistas, and Dead Alive-style action. (3:00) Alexandria, Colma, Emery Bay, Empire, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, UA Berkeley. (Macias)

The Majestic (2:30) Century Plaza, Metreon, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Stonestown.

*The Man Who Wasn't There The Coen brothers' "man" is a laconic barber (Billy Bob Thornton) who's blackmailing his wife's lover (James Gandolfini) to finance a lucrative business deal in 1940s Santa Rosa. A body turns up, and someone's gotta take the fall ... so far, so noir. Soon, however, the film begins veering into darker, more ambiguous territory. Thanks to Thornton's revelatory low-key performance, the character's passivity recasts the traditional genre hero as a gaping existential maw. Clichés are defanged, deadpan voice-overs diffuse possible motivations, and the usual telltale currents of desire are replaced by numbed ennui. (1:56) Bridge, Rafael, Shattuck. (Fear)

*Monsters, Inc. (1:24) Colma, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

*Mulholland Drive David Lynch shifts the Laura Palmer fetishism of Twin Peaks into a matured, interior feminine realm – a space he redecorates in shades of Vertigo and Persona. Laura Elena Harring, at least initially, is Rita, a raven-tressed amnesiac; Naomi Watts, at least initially, is Betty Elms, a starry-eyed blond (Watts's performance, simultaneously satirical and realist, provides Lynch with the deepest emotional undertow of his career.) Lynch tails these women like Vertigo's Scottie before going all the way with both. In a film that also corrects many of his past mistakes, Lynch reforms Hollywood history so that viewers experience it as a déjà vu dream. (2:36) Balboa, Opera Plaza, Rafael. (Huston)

*No Man's Land Most satires tend to cut delicately into their subjects with finely sharpened blades; this absurdist anti-war "comedy" from Bosnia starts slashing with a serrated edge from the get-go and never lets up. Two soldiers, one Serbian (Rene Bitorajac) and one Croatian (Branko Djuric), are stranded together in a trench between their respective armies' strongholds with nothing but hatred, a common homeland, and a booby-trapped comrade to keep them company. What starts out as an accident of combat escalates into a full-blown incident once the military brass, a UN observation patrol, and an English TV reporter (Katrin Cartlidge) began wading into the fray. Director Denis Tanovic's tenure filming war atrocities on the Sarajevo front lends an air of elegiac realism to the film's Beckett-like flak-black humor, painting a portrait of life during wartime that's equal parts horror and ridiculousness. No Man's Land offers no answers to the conflict, only corpses and bureaucracy; its refusal to take sides only makes its battleground burlesque seem all the more tragic. (1:37) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Fear)

Not Another Teen Movie (1:28) Century Plaza, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Ocean's Eleven (1:46) Colma, Emery Bay, Empire, Galaxy, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, Orinda.

The Others (1:38) Opera Plaza.

*Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy Scott Gill's documentary takes a bemused gander at 30-year adult-film-industry veteran Jeremy, who apart from his ever-ready natural "talent" (nine and three-quarter inches when erect) seems an exception to nearly every XXX-biz rule. Just average-looking and short-statured to begin with, he's grown increasingly hirsute, chubby, and slobbish over the years. He's never had drug or drinking problems (unless cake-inhaling counts). He's "crossed over," admittedly in minor ways, to mainstream movies (mostly as Guy Who Gets Killed #3 in direct-to-cable ones), stand-up comedy (though everyone here acknowledges he's atrocious), and even rap-pop (his video "Freak of the Week" featured Joey Buttafuoco, Corey Feldman, and Lynn Redgrave!). Like many a jester-cum-semi-accidental-icon before him, Queens-bred Jeremy has a thirst for public attention that borders on the pathetic, and there's no evidence here that he has any private life or thoughts worth sharing. If he's a shining exception to the "tragic victim" sex-industry stereotype, he's nonetheless just mildly interesting as a believe-it-or-not celebrity footnote – which leaves Porn Star playing like a jokey late-night cable special that's overextended and none too firm. (1:19) Four Star. (Harvey)

*The Royal Tenenbaums Wes Anderson turns New York City into a diorama, multiplying Rushmore's Max by three and shoving the trio of variants into adulthood. A preteen, pre-Tina New Yorker brownstone is the Tenenbaum family's fort within a haunted metropolitan playground, where the sins of their awfully lovable father (Gene Hackman) define the Tenenbaum children – financial ace Chas (Ben Stiller), ex-tennis champ Richie (Luke Wilson), and playwright Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), who've just moved back in with their urban archaeologist mother (Anjelica Huston). Anderson deploys tracking shots and musical montage with the highly irregular constancy of that letter Anderson, P.T. – each comic-strip storyboarded frame, whether exterior or interior, is like the bedroom of a wealthy wunderkind, or, when truly inspired, a self-conscious intellect's imagination. The Royal Tenenbaums has six times the nervous energy of its subjects, who've been losing so long that they're paralyzed in the past. (2:25) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Shattuck. (Huston)

*Sexy Beast (1:31) Balboa.

The Shipping News Beset by tragedy, hydrophobia, and a lifelong affliction with oafishness, a widower named Quoyle (Kevin Spacey in sad-sack mode) is cajoled by his crusty aunt (Judi Dench) to relocate to his ancestral Newfoundland. After getting a job at the local paper covering boating news, he begins exorcising his demons and finds romance in the arms of a mysterious neighbor (Julianne Moore). The big-screen adaptation of Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel isn't a translation so much as another brick in Chocolat director Lasse Hallström's one-man Miramax feel-good division. Laden with his usual signature recipe – a pinch of saccharine mysticism here, a dash of quirky rustic quaintness, plenty of snow and revealed secrets – Hallstrom's film comes off less like a coherent story than a visit to a world where, if you don't like the tragedy of the moment, stick around and a new one will appear in a few minutes. (2:00) Colma, Metreon, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Vogue. (Fear)

Spy Game (2:07) Galaxy.

Vanilla Sky Cameron Crowe's latest cool-soundtracked film is a remake of the 1997 Abre los Ojos, an erotic thriller by Alejandro Amenábar (The Others). While Crowe remains faithful to the source material – a handsome man falls in love with a woman he's just met, only to have his face mangled in a car wreck thanks to a jealous ex-fling; weirdness impossible to explain succinctly follows – he should've pitched the means-nothing title. This movie should be called Tom Cruise, because from the first moment, it's Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom smiling, Tom being cocky, Tom flirting, Tom with a mangled face, Tom lurching around like the Elephant Man, Tom having a mental freak-out in a jail cell, Tom contemplating the meaning of life, the universe, and true love. The story is gripping enough, and costars Jason Lee, Cameron Diaz, and Penélope Cruz (reprising her role from the original) are aptly cast, but if you can't stomach too much of Mr. Cruise in "actor" mode you might want to stay home and rent MI:2 instead. (2:30) Alexandria, Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Vengo When speaking about how Tony Gatlif (Latcho Drom) choreographs one of the most intense images of family feuding in memory, you don't need to use the word "choreograph" metaphorically. No bullet ballets here – these gangsters are dancing. A simple and elegant plot pits two rival Andalusian families – whose primary occupations are eating, drinking, making music, and dancing flamenco – against each other. One family wants retribution for the killing of one of its own, but it will take many all-night parties fueled by amazing mixtures of Egyptian Sufi song and impromptu dance to get there. (1:27) Rafael, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

Rep picks

'Lasse Halström: In America and Sweden' See Critic's Choice. Rafael