film

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Meryl Cohen, David Fear, Dina Gachman, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Patrick Macias, and Chuck Stephens. Film intern is Summers Henderson. See Rep Clock, page 87, and Movie Clock, page 88, for theater information.

Opening

Blade 2 Wesley Snipes settles some unfinished business with the world's vampire population in this sequel to the 1998 action-horror hit. (1:48) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Empire, Jack London, Presidio, UA Berkeley.

*E.T. the Extra Terrestrial See "The Wonder Years," page 42. (2:00) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Grand Lake, Orinda, Shattuck.

The Fluffer It's been eight years since director Richard Glatzer made Grief (for The Fluffer he codirects with Wash Westmoreland), and though notions about queer film have changed, his filmmaking hasn't: the cheap L.A. gloss of The Fluffer's tale of porn-inspired delusion is very early '90s in feel. Naive young Sean (Michael Cunio) dives into the porn industry immediately upon arrival in California, after becoming obsessed with Ryan Idol-type Johnny Rebel (Baywatch graduate Scott Gurney); his obsession – which blinds him to reality outside the set – means that he's willing to do a lot more for his favorite gay-for-pay porn star than simply fluff him. By the time Glatzer and Westmoreland use America's Most Wanted-style black-and-white flashbacks to neatly explain Sean's problems, the one interesting actor and character – Roxanne Day as Johnny's stripper girlfriend – has long since left the film. (1:45) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Huston)

Mission This disappointing drama by Loren Marsh tries to capture the allure of the low-rent Mission District but ends up overly romanticizing it. Marvin (Chris Coburn) is a New Yorker who comes to the Mission to write his novel and meets Jay (Joshua Leonard), a slacker who's been living a life of debauchery. They smoke a joint at an all-night party, eat mushrooms on the beach at the Marin Headlands, get drunk at funky little Mission bars, and discuss women. There is a well-told story here about straitlaced Marvin and wild Jay learning something from each other; the visuals are appealing, and the music is great. But Mission is also a portrait of the neighborhood as a haven for the late-20s crowd – slumming it, enjoying their transgressive lifestyles, and then moving on when their IPO goes big. Even if we accept the scene as a few years ago, pre-yuppification, it still plays as a shallow fantasy world that ignores the harsher aspects of reality. (1:28) Four Star. (Henderson)

Pauline and Paulette See Movie Clock, page 91. (1:18) Castro.

Sorority Boys Because sometimes, in order to get free housing at college, playboy chauvinists are willing to masquerade as chicks. (1:34) Colma, Orinda, UA Berkeley.

Ongoing

All about the Benjamins Hip-hop artist turned actor Ice Cube hits the big screen once again (as star, co-screenwriter, and coproducer) for this crime-caper comedy about a Miami bounty hunter looking to strike it big. Though Benjamins falls short of the originality and comedic genius achieved by Cube's 1995 hit Friday, it does boast some serious laughs thanks to the improvisational talent of up-and-coming comedian Mike Epps. Epps, who has Cube to thank for his big-screen debut in the 1999 sequel Next Friday, excels in his role as the comedic fall guy to Cube's now-classic straight man. Cube can also take credit for jump-starting the career of first-time director Kevin Bray, who shows promise as a feature-film helmer, despite the fact that his music video background is clumsily obvious in the dizzying digital effects he tends to overemploy. (1:30) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Cohen)

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) Balboa, Century Plaza, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Nancy Einhart)

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

Big Fat Liar (1:28) 1000 Van Ness.

Black Hawk Down (2:23) 1000 Van Ness.

*The Count of Monte Cristo (1:58) Galaxy, Kabuki, Metreon.

Escaflowne It seems like audiences have two kinds of anime movies to choose from: there are high-quality original works made especially for the cinema (Perfect Blue, Jin-Roh), and then there are less-impressive products made primarily for fans who have already consumed the TV show, the manga comics, the toys, and lord knows what else. A halfhearted retread of a much better 1996 television series, Escaflowne sadly belongs to this "for fans only" camp. A bored high school girl finds herself whisked from her mundane life in Tokyo to a war-torn parallel world called Gaia. Turns out the girl is the fabled Wing Goddess of prophecy and gets to pilot a robotlike giant suit of living armor called Escaflowne. There are some serious talents behind the scenes (creator Shoji Kawamori, composer Yoko Kanno), but the whole thing feels lackluster, and aside from a striking opening action sequence, the animation seldom impresses. Be you a fan or a newbie to the world of anime and Escaflowne, much depends on how you feel about dialogue like "Rise, dragon armor!" (1:36) Galaxy. (Macias)

40 Days and 40 Nights (1:33) Colma, Kabuki, Metreon, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.

*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) Colma, Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Shattuck, Vogue. (Harvey)

Harrison's Flowers Woe, woe to the man with a dangerous job who agrees to hit the field "one last time." So it goes with Pulitzer-winning photographer Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn), renowned for his pictures of the world's war-torn trouble spots. He's just vowed to stop leaving wife Sarah (Andie MacDowell) and their kids behind for long perilous stretches when he disappears amid the erupting civil conflict of 1991 Bosnia. He's presumed dead, but she snaps tether enough to get on a plane and try getting close to the gruesome ethnic-cleansing terrain where he was last seen – a near-impossible quest reluctantly abetted by grizzled photojournos Adrien Brody and Brendan Gleeson, along with Harrison's friend Elias Koteas. The first English-language feature by French writer-director Elie Chouraqui, Harrison's Flowers is at once honorable, reasonably hard-hitting, and fundamentally flawed. It's good in this uncommonly hawkish season (both on-screen and off) to see a firmly nonglorifying civilian's-eye view of war as hell. Yet the impressively mounted production never quite transcends the banal commercial compromise of putting a glam WASP first-worlder at its center. MacDowell is better than usual, but she's still a lightweight, technically undepthed performer, one who can't help coming off a little Susan Hayward-ish in her sufferings and empathy amid so much gritty human disaster. (2:02) Century Plaza, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2:32) Oaks.

I Am Sam (2:13) Balboa, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.

Ice Age The Triassic, Jurassic, and Late Cretaceous have been thoroughly picked over Spielberg and his many descendants, but the last Ice Age – which gave us the woolly mammoth, the saber-toothed tiger, and the giant ground sloth – has enough fossil left in it to fuel a whole new period in movies. This early entry into the genre opens auspiciously, with a determined squirrel setting off the entire continent-shifting chain of events by attempting to bury an acorn in hard-packed ice. Chris Wedge's cool 3-D computer animation style can compare with the latest from Pixar. But his story arc feels almost as old as the 10,000-year-old era that spawned it: a mammoth and his slothful friend (voiced by Ray Romano and John Leguizamo, respectively, in the Shrek and Donkey roles) set off to save a human child from saber-toothed tigers (including one who joins them, voiced by Denis Leary). The laughs are sitcom-ready and the outcome, history. (1:24) Alexandria, Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Stonestown, UA Berkeley. (Gerhard)

In the Bedroom (2:26) Act I and II, Lumiere.

*Iris The late novelist and philosopher Dame Iris Murdoch was regarded as one of the most brilliant women of her generation, and so it was especially tragic when Alzheimer's disease stole her capacity for expression. Richard Eyre's film seeks to depict the uncommon love between Iris and her husband, John Bayley, but it succeeds more in exposing the devastating effects of her disease. The actors who portray Iris, the enchanting Kate Winslet and legendary Judi Dench, deftly convey the vitality and wit that made her so widely loved in her prime. But as her condition worsens, we are subjected to continual cuts between past and present, which are intended to provide a backdrop for John's devotion but feel mostly like an eerie glimpse into Iris's own mental regression. Her deterioration is quite painful to watch, but Eyre does manage to reveal enough of Murdoch's unique philosophy to intrigue those unfamiliar with her work. (1:30) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Cohen)

*Italian for Beginners An ensemble of lonely misfit adults – a pastor being badgered by his bitter predecessor, a beautician who seems to break down frequently during haircuts, a baker who can't help dropping the goods, and a few expected others – flicker around the flame of a night-school Italian class. When the teacher dies of a heart attack early on, one of the students, a brutish soccer fan-failed restaurateur happily takes over in this first Dogme movie by a woman, director Lone Scherfig. The waning movement could use the sweetness and light that this romantic comedy provides. Its cast of characters may be a little cute, but by the time they get together for a well-earned metaphorical big group hug in the form of an Italian-class field trip, you'll forget your fear of handheld camera. (1:39) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

John Q Director Nick Cassavetes clumsily guides a mostly uninvolved cast through this story of one man standing up to the system. John Q. Archibald (Denzel Washington) is the father whose HMO won't cover his son's heart transplant and who has to take the E.R. hostage in order to squeeze a lifesaving operation (by a simpering James Woods) out of the stingy hospital administrator (a bitchy Anne Heche). Outside, the crotchety old police lieutenant (a twitching Robert Duvall) tries to hold back the gun-happy, publicity-seeking police chief (a slavering Ray Liotta), while inside, a roundtable of Hollywood character types somehow find time to discuss national medical policy. John Q wants to be the clarion call to health care reform, but the film is so dominated by exploitation, tearjerking, and good old-fashioned TV-movie-of-the-week melodrama that it's unlikely to lead to political intervention. Still, Denzel Washington is a captivating screen presence, and he brings real heart and soul to the role of the honest, working-class everyman who passionately loves his son. (1:58) Jack London, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Henderson)

*Jung (War): In the Land of the Mujaheddin Even with the United States engaged in an ongoing conflict in the region, Afghanistan is a startlingly unfamiliar place in Jung (War): In the Land of the Mujaheddin. Passionate and artfully constructed, the Italian-made documentary, shot during three trips in 1999 and 2000, is the introduction to the people of Afghanistan still largely missing from post-Sept. 11 news coverage. It is also a sobering commentary on the nature of war at a time when Hollywood seems bent on giving us only paeans to the military. Jung (pronounced "jang," the Dari word for "war") chronicles a European-based effort to open a hospital in the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan, near the front line where mujahideen forces later known as the Northern Alliance battled the Taliban in the latest phase of a 20-year conflict. In a self-consciously cinematic but well-balanced style, filmmakers Fabrizio Lazzaretti, Alberto Vendemmiati, and Giuseppe Petitto use slow motion, montage, multiple camera angles, and a soundtrack incorporating local music and a haunting modern score. The most powerful impressions in the film come from ordinary Afghans, whether in the midst of battle in frontline trenches, in abject poverty and grief, or in makeshift operating rooms where land mine victims, many of them children, are treated before our eyes. (1:54) Roxie. (Avila)

Kissing Jessica Stein Adapted by its leading actors from their stage play, director Charles Herman-Wurmfield's feature is the WASPiest NYC Jewish romantic comedy since Crossing Delancey, and the story's gender-preference-identity-crisis gist is about as full of depth as it would be on an episode of Friends. None of which prevents this breezy movie from being a audience-pleasing experience, but those in search of something more than an indie-flick sitcom won't be among the most pleased. The title character (Jennifer Westfeldt) works at a newspaper and endures the usual parade of loser boy-men dates. Her attention is perked by a personal ad that quotes Rilke – but the problem, ahem, is that it's a woman-seeking-woman ad. She pursues anyway and winds up in a tortuously tentative relationship with art gallery assistant manager Helen (Heather Juergensen), the sticking point being Jessica's reluctance to "go" lesbian and terror of breaking the news to her friends and family. One thing that's nice about Kissing is its last-lap concession that in the Big City, changing partners, remaining friends, and shuttling about the Kinsey Scale can get to be a less than big deal. But a more conventional predictability dominates most of the progress here, with laughter and tears professionally extracted at familiar junctures. (1:47) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Lantana Starting with a view of a body facedown in some dense shrubbery, this Australian drama looks set to become a murder mystery, but Andrew Bovell's sharp screenplay is more interested in the impulses toward infidelity and doubt that trouble several interconnected relationships. Police detective Leon (Anthony LaPaglia) guiltily cheats on a wife (Kerry Armstrong) who senses that the commitment's gone out of their marriage; she sees a psychiatrist (Barbara Hershey) whose own husband (Geoffrey Rush) seems to be drifting away. Several other well-defined characters figure notably in Ray Lawrence's tightly wound film, which builds considerable tension despite some implausible plot connections and a final sequence that strains a bit to deliver its closing flourish. (2:00) Balboa, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

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) Colma, Metreon, Metro, 1000 Van Ness, UA Berkeley. (Macias)

*Monsoon Wedding Director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay!) returns to contemporary India but shifts her focus to the tribulations of upper-middle-class Punjabis. At the center of Monsoon Wedding is a multiday, traditional Indian marriage ceremony that gathers family and friends for feasting, celebration, and rituals. The film's sprawling, multicharacter story adroitly weaves together numerous intersecting lives: the bride, who is really in love with an already married man; the father, who is terrified his son is gay; the cousin, who must confront the childhood trauma of sexual abuse by her uncle; and the wedding planner, who is falling in love with the family maid. By compressing so much drama and conflict into three days, Nair treads dangerously close to soap opera, but she's saved by some intense, honest performances and a style that captures the poetry and lyricism of real life. (1:54) Albany, Embarcadero. (Henderson)

*Monster's Ball (1:48) Act I and II, Bridge, Century Plaza, Empire.

Moulin Rouge (2:06) Balboa, Oaks.

*The Most Fertile Man in Ireland Gangly, ginger-haired Eamon (Kris Marshall) is still a virgin at age 24 – until his acrobatic "first time" with the local bombshell reveals his sperm count to be so far off the charts that a TV trash-talk celebrity doctor (former punk-pop starlet Toyah Willcox) attests, "He could impregnate a stone." The news spreads fast among Belfast's more insemination-desperate females. Needless to say, much embarrassment, duplicity, and naughty humor result. Like its hero, Man has more spunk than it knows what to do with: hyperactive in sight (notably via garish John Waters-worthy couture and decor) and sound (a soundtrack laden with Emerald Isle classic popsters like the Undertones), it's so frenetic that after a while giddy fun turns to exhaustive excess. Still, actor-turned-feature helmer Dudi Appleton's comedy is a giddy delight for long enough that you can forgive its later trespasses. (1:32) Rafael. (Harvey)

*No Man's Land (1:37) Four Star, Rafael.

Piñero (1:35) Rafael.

*Queen of the Damned (1:41) Metreon.

Ram Dass: Fierce Grace In 1997, at age 65, New Age icon and Be Here Now author Dass had a near-fatal stroke that left him partly paralyzed and afflicted by speech-impairing aphasia. His physical recovery was (and continues to be) slow, but what troubled him most was his surprising loss of faith in the secular humanist-cum-Eastern mystic spiritual beliefs he'd espoused for decades. Ultimately, however, these ordeals both humbled and strengthened him, as well as providing a new teaching focus on coping with the body's unpredictable aging processes. This new documentary by Mickey Lemle (Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama) is more an appreciation of Dass's current against-the-odds status as elder statesman of nondenominational soul matters than it is a complete introduction to his life and ideas. That's too bad in certain respects, since some of the present-day material is plodding, while the brisk biographical back chapters – which chronicle the path of Dass (né Richard Alpert) from a prominent Boston Jewish family to a Harvard professorship, his controversial psychedelic research with Timothy Leary, his transforming '67 trip to India and subsequent U.S. makeover as a higher-consciousness guru – are fascinating. If you're looking for a critical perspective on Dass's popular but often derided career, look elsewhere. Nonetheless, within its limitations the film offers suitably engaging, gentle insight into a still-questing visionary mind-set. (1:33) Rafael. (Harvey)

Resident Evil A secret virus housed in the underground lab of an all-powerful corporation is released, causing the death (and subsequent reanimation) of its employees. Damage control is up to a crew of weapon-toting commandos and security experts (top-billed stars Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez are the most interesting components of an otherwise completely bland cast). Aside from a few jolts and the fact that it's always nice to see zombies – even sub-Romero clones that don't perpetrate nearly enough gore for genre enthusiasts – on the big screen, video game-adaptation veteran director Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat) makes do with a ho-hum "thriller" that falls short of its potential for B-movie greatness. (1:40) Alexandria, Colma, Emery Bay, Galaxy, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, UA Berkeley. (Eddy)

*Return to Never Land (1:12) Century Plaza, Galaxy.

*The Royal Tenenbaums (2:25) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

Sex with Strangers Allegedly an evenhanded look at "swingers" culture, Sex with Strangers is disappointing on all fronts: incoherent and hateful, the film offers weirdly asynchronous glimpses into the sex lives of three couples whose nonmonogamous relationships are neither good examples of swinging nor even decent examples of relationships. The recent documentary The Lifestyle offered a more realistic portrait of swingers, who are by and large a rather staid, comfortably married bunch. Sex with Strangers plunges us into a creepy, dysfunctional world of manipulative men and neurotic women whose willingness to bare their bodies and emotions to the cameras initially is a kind of pleasant shock but later becomes shockingly repulsive. While directors Joe and Harry Gantz's well-regarded HBO series Taxicab Confessions offered bizarre but sympathetic glimpses into people's private lives, Sex with Strangers is a classic exploitation documentary, complete with naive, exhibitionistic subjects who clearly don't understand the implications of sharing so much. (1:45) Opera Plaza. (Annalee Newitz)*Scratch It's hard not to like Scratch, a documentary that happily deconstructs the art of hip-hop DJing and scratch music with gregariousness and loving care. Opening with a shot of the Brooklyn Bridge as Gangstarr's "DJ Premier in Deep Concentration" plays in the background, Scratch quickly breaks down into several major categories ("elements," "making beats," "digging," etc.). Director Doug Pray doles out countless shots of San Francisco landmarks like Amoeba Music and Storyville, but his heavy-handed focus on local DJs and events isn't too far off the mark, considering the Bay Area's international reputation as the home of turntablism. With a few exceptions (Philadelphia's Cash Money being the most glaring omission), Scratch features most of the big names, including QBert, DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, the X-ecutioners, and DJ Premier. While Pray's 1996 film Hype!, a look at the Seattle rock scene that spawned Nirvana, achieved an insider's perspective that never quite emerges here, Scratch is still a good primer on a vital subculture. (1:31) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Mosi Reeves)

Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure (:50) Metreon Imax.

Showtime This muddled, mishandled comedy flubs a potentially interesting idea about the media representation of police work. It begins with a parody of Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop "loose cannon" character (played by Murphy himself), and it goes on to skewer reality-TV shows like Cops. All too soon, though, it turns into the kind of brainless, formulaic buddy cop movie it's supposed to be making light of. As the dissimilar duo, Murphy and Robert De Niro chase down a Colombian super-bad guy while TV producer Rene Russo videotapes their every move (car chases, shoot-outs, etc.). The whole concept – that the police would allow a TV show so much control over their investigation – is implausible, the jokes are only intermittently funny, Murphy isn't given any substantial comic material to work with, De Niro is absolutely unlikable, and only William Shatner, of all people, is amusing as he successfully spoofs his T.J. Hooker days. (1:35) Colma, Coronet, Emery Bay, Jack London, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, Stonestown, UA Berkeley. (Henderson)

*The Son's Room Nanni Moretti has made his name as a self-conscious, self-reflexively comic character in films often about himself, but fans of his international hit Caro diario should be warned that the frothy layer has been removed from this ale. Read no further if you don't want the spoiler: Moretti plays Giovanni, the well-adjusted father of a comfortable family whose son unexpectedly dies in a scuba-diving accident. Comparisons to In the Bedroom, frequent as they are, are actually appropriate, but where that film displayed its red-white-and-blues by grafting revenge and violence onto its story, The Son's Room manages to chip away at the icy grieving process without the heavy-handed plot maneuvers. Its metaphors are simple and central: Giovanni is a psychiatrist attending to the kooky, sometimes touching neuroses of his wayward middle-class patients. So the balance – and slightly comic tone – dramatically shifts when Giovanni experiences his own drama. But in true Moretti style, the director can't quite let go of his optimism: Moretti cares enough about the characters to follow them to what might not be a bitter end. (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Gerhard)

State Property (1:28) Galaxy.

The Time Machine H.G. Wells purists may run screaming for the exits within the first 20 minutes, when the original story's "Time Traveller" character is given a name and, worse yet, a hokey romantic reason to create his reason-defying invention. Everyone else will probably make it through this entertaining-enough-while-you're-watching-it sci-fi fantasy, directed by Simon Wells (conveniently, the great-grandson of H.G.). Guy Pearce (Memento) stars as Alexander Hartdegan, an absentminded-professor type who zips from turn-of-the-20th-century New York to the year 800,000-and-something, trying to figure out why, oh why, he can't change his tragic past. Awaiting him in the far-flung future are a peaceful, cliff-dwelling tribe, including the comely Mara (popster Samantha Mumba), and their tormenters, a C.G.'d race of human-munching monsters, led by a prosthetics-covered Jeremy "Villains 'R' Us" Irons. By the end, things are a little too reminiscent of Tim Burton's stinky Planet of the Apes remake, and what remains is yet another example of how all the special effects in the world can't make up for a movie with no soul. (1:36) Century Plaza, Emery Bay, Empire, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, UA Berkeley. (Eddy)

Training Day (2:02) Galaxy.

*Trembling before G-d Religious fundamentalism, regardless of faith, concerns itself with the most unbendable rules. And they are rules that don't often work well in a globalized culture where gray areas abound. The interview subjects of Sandi Simcha DuBowski's handsome, sometimes stirring documentary are all people who have faced a fundamental conflict between their sexual identity as gays and lesbians and their religious affiliation as Orthodox Jews. It's a poignant struggle to be sure, but only as poignant as the person facing down the dilemma of wholesale rejection by family and community and/or creating a workable alternative. In Trembling there's a range – some ultimately address the painful issue with humor, spunk, and creativity, while others truly tremble, repeatedly hurling themselves against a monolithic belief, and hurting themselves every time. Depending on your own perspective, such brave documentary moments generate a sense of annoyance, pity, or empathy. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Glen Helfand)

We Were Soldiers Director Randall Wallace (scripter of Braveheart and Pearl Harbor) reteams with Mel Gibson for this patriotic look at Vietnam, focusing on the heroism and sacrifice of the men of the First Calvary during a three-day battle in 1965, the first major engagement of U.S. ground forces. Gibson leads the charge as Lt. Col. Hal Moore, the kindhearted and devout commander whose leadership style draws from the same well of paternal affection as his flawless parenting (with perfect-wife Madeleine Stowe) of a cherub-faced brood. Apparently, the army itself would be one big happy family if only people weren't shooting at them. Vietnamese soldiers look every bit the worthy adversary, though. All that worthiness on both sides gives one the impression that the cause itself was also worthy, but then, this film, based on the firsthand account by the real-life Moore and journalist Joseph Galloway, never stops to ask. The title alone answers the question "Why were we in Vietnam?" with a resounding "Duh." Formulaic battle sequences make up the greater part of this sentimental flag-waver. (2:29) Century Plaza, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Avila)

Rep picks

*Infra-Man See Critic's Choice. (1:30) Four Star.*'A Radiant Abyss: Early Films by Barbet Schroeder' If Barbet Schroeder has the intelligence to get almost any milieu just about right, his craft nonetheless resists emotional involvement, which can be either a virtue or a source of puzzlement. Belatedly cued by last year's excellent Our Lady of the Assassins, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series rewinds to Schroeder's first features as director, finding no particular answers but a lot of characteristic inquiry. In 1970, Schroeder traipsed to Papua New Guinea for La vallée (The valley). Bulle Ogier plays an uptight French ambassador's wife whiling away privileged time buying native artifacts for boutique resale; she falls in with a group of hippies questing after a remote, possibly mythical valley that may be Paradise itself. Gradually her inhibitions are loosened by psychedelics, sexual experimentation, and the primordial jungle. The series's other remaining film is the notorious 1976 Maîtresse, a study of S-M as coolly detached as the prior year's hit Story of O was swooningly partisan. Gérard Depardieu is a young petty thief transfixed by the contradictions of his new lover (Ogier). We may cringe, but the film never blinks. The spectacle is only interesting, another insider's tour to be absorbed before Schroeder moves on, once again. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Harvey)

'Spike and Mike's Classic Festival of Animation Best of the Fest' The veteran animation fest celebrates 25 years of bringing short films to the masses with a special "best of" collection. There are many proven winners here, both audience pleasers ("Bambi Meets Godzilla") and Oscar nabbers (Pixar's "Tin Toy," Chris Wedge's "Bunny," Nick Park's "Creature Comforts"), as well as odds-on 2002 Oscar fave "For the Birds" (also Pixar, as seen before showings of Monsters Inc.). All delightful stuff for first-timers, though these oft-screened works may be too familiar to attract perennial Spike and Mike fans. 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)