October 30, 2002

film

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Meryl Cohen, David Fear, Dina Gachman, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Patrick Macias, and Chuck Stephens. See Rep Clock, and Movie Clock for theater information.

Cinemayaat Arab Film Festival

The sixth annual Cinemayaat Arab Film Festival takes place Nov 1-12. Venue this week is the Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St, S.F. For a complete schedule and tickets go to www.aff.org or call (415) 564-1100. For commentary, see "Script Doctor," page 46. All times p.m.

Fri/1Ula Thanawi 7:30. Rana's Wedding 10.

Sat/2 Lili with "Insan" noon. The Mute and Shatter Hassan with "Leila's Pictures" 1:30. Gaza Strip with "Children of Ibdaa" 3:30. "September 11th Program" (shorts program) 6. Melody of Water's Wheel 7:30. When Maryam Spoke 9:30.

Sun/3 This Isn't Living and Suspended Dreams noon. No One Need Cry and So Near, Yet So Far 2:15. 500 Dunam on the Moon and "Not Going There, Don't Belong Here" 4:15. Taxi Service and A Girl's Secret 6. Olive Harvest with "A Boy ... Called Mohammed" 8:15.

Latino Film Festival

The sixth annual Latino Film Festival runs Nov 1-17. Venues this week are the Delancey Street Theater, 600 Embarcadero, S.F., and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, S.F. For a complete schedule go to www.latinofilmfestival.org; for tickets go to www.ticketweb.com or call 1-866-468-3399. For commentary, see Rep Picks, below. All times p.m.

Fri/1Delancey Street Loco Fever 6:30. Taxi for Three 9:45.

Sat/2 YBC Tales of Survival, Love and War 2. Teruo, A Samurai Flamenco 4:30. Smoking Room 6:15. The Escape 8:15.

Sunn/3 YBC 90 Miles 2. Work in Progress 3:45. If I Saw You, I Wouldn't Remember 6:15. Anita Takes a Chance 8.

Mon/4 YBC Too Much Love 6:30. Streeters 8:45.

Tues/5 YBC Brave New Land 6:30. Return 9.

Opening

*All or Nothing Mike Leigh has a knack for giving his films ironic titles: Life Is Sweet, High Hopes, and now All or Nothing. You'd think he was churning out feel-good fluff, but Leigh's films are far from being syrupy little doses of saccharine (think of watching humanity sink into the depths of hell during Naked). If he had nothing to say, or if his films didn't have share such a deceptively hopeful tone, we'd never sit through them. All or Nothing, which boasts Leigh regulars Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville, jerks you into the desperately lonely lives of a few families living in a decaying housing project in London: Phil (Spall) drives a cab, sleeps all day, has two overweight kids, and a wife (Manville) who can barely look at him. Their neighbors aren't any better off; they're a mix of cruel drunks, deranged stalkers, and nasty teens. Leigh weaves these narratives slowly, letting us sit with the characters' misery and alienation as they hold on to tiny flickers of humanity that seem in danger of slipping away. (2:08) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Gachman)

Catching Out A guy named Lee, sitting on the porch of a freight train that's tearing through the Mojave Desert, talks about "speed rushing" in Sarah George's Catching Out: The Act of Hopping Freight Trains. "I like to think of it as one of those few genuinely American things," he says. "Like jazz, or having sex in cars." And there's a twisted kind of logic to that – in the United States we romanticize trains more than we use them, so train-hopping is bound to appeal to people who were born to be wild. Catching Out documents the lives of people who, for long stretches or brief stints, have evaded the world where the "money system," as one subject calls it, locks most people in, where mortgages and the lure of a regular paycheck and the need for peer approval and a million other things keep most people moving in one place. Characters whose story lines unexpectedly fall by the wayside sometimes give Catching Out a choppy feel; the film is most engaging when it fixes its gaze on a few central figures as they ride the rails, staring from their boxcars at the landscapes most of us will never get a chance to see. (Run time not available) Red Vic. (Lynn Rapoport)

Frida Salma Hayek stars as the provocative artist Frida Kahlo. (1:58) Bridge.

I Spy Eddie Murphy and Owen Wilson, neither of whom are strangers to buddy comedies, team up for yet another. (1:36) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Shattuck.

*I'm Going Home When aging acting legend Gilbert Valence (Michel Piccoli, in perfect pitch) learns shortly after a stage performance that most of his family has been killed in a car accident – except for the six-year-old grandson who's now in his care – life as he knows it comes to a rolling stop. Director Manoel de Oliveira follows the deceleration by filming the man through murky glass, with muted sound, and captures better than any film in memory the mute quality of true sadness. The contrast between what the child needs and what his grandfather can supply is only one heartbreak among many small moments. When Valence's grief is interrupted by career pressure – he's persuaded to take on the role of Buck Mulligan in James Joyce's Ulysses, being filmed by an iconic U.S. film director (John Malkovich) – de Oliveira finally forces the issue, and you feel the impact like a head-on collision. (1:30) Opera Plaza, Rafael, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

The Pinochet Case Playing in tandem with The Trials of Henry Kissinger (see review, below) and sharing themes with this week's episode of Frontline/World (see review in Rep Picks, below), Patricio Guzmán's doc traces the events leading up to, and following, the 1998 arrest in London of a vacationing Gen. Augusto Pinochet, former Chilean dictator and known violator of human rights. Though the case's eventual legal outcome was anticlimactic – Pinochet, now in his late 80s, was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial – the fact that a former head of state could be held accountable for his role in an estimated 3,000 deaths (among other atrocities) had immeasurable international impact (Idi Amin, watch your back). Guzmán (The Battle of Chile) doesn't exactly operate at a breakneck pace, but even if the courtroom wrangling doesn't draw you in, the heartbreaking, brutally real tales shared by torture victims and family members of the "disappeared" are impossible to forget. (1:49) Castro. (Eddy)

Roger Dodger See Movie Clock. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

The Santa Clause 2 He's baaaaack. (1:45) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Orinda, Shattuck.

*Scarlet Diva See "The Story of A," page 46. (1:30) Four Star.

*The Trials of Henry Kissinger History goes easy on winners – at least longer than it does with the losers. However, there may be an expiration date approaching for all the ass-kissing accorded Kissinger, who was regarded as the genius element in several Republican presidencies. This BBC-produced documentary suggests that Kissinger's public persona may well have been sculpted only to distract attention from his lust for power on the international stage at whatever cost, via often secret meetings and negotiations. The film's indictment includes evidence of chicanery in the '68 presidential election; a guiding hand in needlessly prolonging the Vietnam War; urging covert bombing and then the 1970 invasion of Cambodia; orchestrating the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected, anti-U.S.-capitalist Allende and installing Pinochet's dictatorship; and still later turning a blind eye to Indonesia's brutalities in East Timor. Called "brilliant, manipulative, and secretive" even by some ostensible allies, Kissinger has been running scared since elderly Pinochet's arrest-dodging media inquiries, refusing to comment on specific allegations in journalist Christopher Hitchens's exposé book (on which Trials is based). Still, the existing paper trail is already damning enough. Is Kissinger a war criminal? No matter how you've felt about him in the past, your view of this 1973 Nobel Peace Prize winner is sure to be shaken by these terse 80 minutes' scrutiny. (1:20) Castro. (Harvey)

The Weight of Water Finally reaching theaters after two years on the shelf, this unusual stretch for action director Kathryn Bigelow (K-19, Strange Days) might better have been left there. Based on a novel by Anita Shreve, it has interesting aspects that no doubt carried more idiosyncratic nuance on the printed page; here, they come off as alternately clichéd, pretentious, and underdeveloped. Catherine McCormack plays a photographer fascinated by a murky, 130-year-old crime. She travels to the incident's original site with her chain-smoking writer spouse (Sean Penn), his brother (Josh Lucas), and the latter's new bombshell girlfriend (Elizabeth Hurley). Suspicions of an affair between husband and hussy grow as we see played out, in parallel flashbacks, the saga of Maren (Sarah Polley), a Norwegian émigré to a bleak coastal town who rots in a loveless marriage while watching the brother she loves a little too much happily matched with another new arrival. This Hawthorne-like tale of repressive puritanism (with a Lizzie Borden climax) is intriguing enough that it – and in particular Polley, who's terrific despite variable material – should have been the whole film. Instead, we get way too much contrasting modern-day footage in which McCormack's watchful intelligence is unfortunately swamped by ghastly hamming from both Penn and Hurley. The end results are frustrating; there's a good movie lurking in here somewhere, but they lost it somewhere along the way. (1:54) Coronet, Stonestown, UA Berkeley. (Harvey)

Ongoing

Abandon In this well-intentioned but ultimately so-so effort, Katie Holmes plays a brainy beauty (also named Katie) who becomes involved with the detective (Benjamin Bratt) assigned to investigate the two-year-old disappearance of her rich, self-styled-artistic-genius boyfriend (Charlie Hunnam). First-time director Stephen Gaghan (who won an Oscar for writing Traffic and also scripted here) captures the tense, stakes-is-high mood of the last semester of college (exams, overdue papers, job interviews) but keeps every frame overly dark and shadowed in the most obvious, Urban Legends kind of way (especially when Katie's long-lost beau apparently returns to campus in a surly state of mind). Abandon engages early on but soon dissolves into standard thriller-movie territory, complete with a too-tidy "gotcha" ending. Added note: the supporting cast features Zooey Deschanel and Melanie Lynsky, both of whom deserve way more than playing second banana to Joey Potter. (1:39) Century 20, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

All the Queen's Men A mid-'60s-style multinational Euromuddle with Yank and English stars, an expansive budget, and no guiding intelligence whatsoever, this World War II-set "comedy" makes Hogan's Heroes look like La grande illusion. Matt LeBlanc, Eddie Izzard, and James Cosmo play Allied agents assigned to infiltrate a 1944 Nazi munitions factory to discover a secret communications code's key. And oh, here's the funny part: because it's an all-female factory, they have to go undercover as women! Ha-ha! That all three are the ugliest and least convincing female impersonators you'll ever see is typical of the film's all-around haplessness, in which tired slapstick, fairly brutal violence, charmless performances, a perfunctory romance, and an ending that practically screams contempt for the audience. jostle for most-painful-element status. Not even memorably bad enough to qualify as perversely entertaining, this dud from Austrian music video director Stefan Ruzowitzky makes sense only as somebody's colossal tax write-off. You know you're in cinematic no-man's-land when a movie can't even get laughs from Udo Kier as a Nazi general with a streak of boudoir masochism. (1:39) Galaxy. (Harvey)

Apollo 13: The Imax Experience (1:57) Metreon IMAX.

Auto Focus 'I always wanted to make an impression," a jaunty Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear) confides early in Auto Focus, Paul Schrader's biopic about the Hogan's Heroes star. Twenty-four years after his death, it has become clear that Crane's showbiz career made far less of an impression on the public than his still-unsolved brutal murder, which has in turn been eclipsed by his well-documented, rather spectacular appetite for sex and amateur pornography. Though Crane goes through two troubled marriages in the film, his relationship with AV expert John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) is portrayed as the most meaningful. The pals share equally proportioned libidos in overdrive – their motto is "A day without sex is a day wasted!" – as well as a passion for the latest video technology. Both Kinnear and Dafoe have some nice moments, but the film's structure is too tidy to feel like it's telling a true story. Crane's life is boiled down to a cut-and-dried tale of a good man corrupted by Hollywood, fame, and the machinations of his leechlike best friend, and the film ultimately offers no insight into Crane's eventually life-wrecking obsession with having sex and documenting his conquests. (1:47) Embarcadero, Empire, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Barbershop So much can happen in one day on the South Side of Chicago: so many changes, so many lessons learned, so many haircuts. Calvin Palmer (Ice Cube, who deserves meatier material) resents the fact that he had to take over his late father's barbershop, so he keeps dabbling in moneymaking scams and yearning to be free of the family business. When a slimy businessman offers Calvin a wad of cash for the shop, Calvin sells out and takes the bills. While all this is going on, two not-so-smart thugs are trying to pry open an ATM they stole the night before, which of course eventually ties into Calvin's woes and gives the story some momentum. The best scenes are those in which the characters who work and hang out at the barbershop (including Cedric the Entertainer and rapper Eve) sit around and jaw about everything and nothing. But the rest of Barbershop is weighed down by its too-obvious attempts to be deep and meaningful. (1:42) Century 20. (Gachman)

*Bloody Sunday It started out as a "peaceful march against internment;" it ended up with thirteen dead and turned a town in Northern Ireland into ground zero for "the Troubles." That early morning massacre in Derry on January 30, 1972, has been memorialized in books and song, but it's filmmaker Paul Greengrass's gut-wrenching recreation of the day of infamy that truly captures the sheer horror of the tragedy. Focusing on the events leading up to the shooting of Irish demonstrators and its aftermath, Bloody Sunday incorporates the viewpoints of MP-activist Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt), nervous soldiers, one of the victims, and several British army commanding officers to present a multi-sided, fragmented perspective. The film's gritty you-are-there verite camera work begs comparisons to The Battle of Algiers, but it's the sequential fade-outs that reduce everything to elements of a nightmarish waking dream, bypassing sensationalism and sentimentality for a dread-filled march towards the inevitability of history. (1:40) Four Star. (Fear)

*Bowling for Columbine In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore attempts to find out why, exactly, America is so very homicidal. What's so powerful about the film, a truly intelligent departure from the somber stranglehold of the Sept. 11 era on the topic of What's Wrong with America, is what's so powerful about all of Moore's films: his use of location, the comic mise-en-scène that one couldn't dream up in a studio setting, the "reality" of our reality that is truly too strange for words. I mean, after all this time, Who lets this guy in? The camera rolls as Moore makes pit stops that turn into filmmaking coups; by the time the interviews are over, those catch-phrase historic events that had been reduced to very singular meanings – "Columbine," "Oklahoma City," "9/11" – are reinvented as the truly terrible, complex situations they were. Ours is a population easily herded, a fact Moore enjoys as he revisits some of the old ghosts of media frenzy: those "Africanized killer bees" that never arrived, the razored apples poised to kill children on Halloween. Should a country this hyped up on fear be armed? That question is easy. The bigger one – Why are we so afraid? – is largely unanswerable. What's new for Moore is taking on a question so sticky in a time so angry in a country so thought-controlled. (1:59) Act I and II, Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Gerhard)

Brown Sugar (1:48) Jack London, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

*Comedian Two years after Jerry Seinfeld's sitcom went off the air, the acclaimed comedian made an unusual decision to retire every last joke in his well-worn arsenal and build a new stand-up act from scratch. Christian Charles and Gary Streiner, the producers of Seinfeld's American Express commercials, asked permission to document the process when they learned that the performer was actually terrified of taking the stage without the safety net of his old material. With two hand-held digital cameras, they followed Seinfeld around the New York City comedy club circuit, capturing the action, both onstage and off. The resulting film, initially titled Anatomy of a Joke, is a surprising and very funny behind-the-scenes look at the unique world of stand-up comedy. Featuring appearances by Colin Quinn, Chris Rock, Jay Leno, and Bill Cosby, Comedian reveals a community bonded by the daunting task of making people laugh night after night and committed to making it look easy. (1:22) Lumiere. (Cohen)

*Dog Soldiers The moratorium on decent werewolf movies has finally been lifted with this intense and fantastically scary British horror film. A squad of troops on a training mission in the Scottish highlands find themselves stalked by something hairy, hostile, and very hungry for human flesh. Under the light of the full moon, the men take refuge in a remote abandoned house, where the rapidly dwindling crew make their final stand against a clan of wily lycanthropes. Guns and ammo they've got, but there's nary a silver bullet in sight. Writer-director Neil Marshall goes for the throat with lots of breaking glass and "my guts are hanging out" gross-outs, and the end result couldn't be further from the moody-broody horror films making the rounds now (Below, The Ring). Genre devotees will recognize the nods to George Romero's zombie films and Sam Raimi's Evil Dead flicks (one of the soldiers is even named Bruce Campbell), but there's enough invention and wicked reinvention here, from the mix of soccer hooligan brogue and elegant werewolf design, to heartily recommend Dog Soldiers for a Halloween treat. (1:45) Roxie. (Macias)

*8 Women (2:00) Albany, Clay.

Formula 51 The makers of Formula 51 have come up with the perfect recipe for wretched Z-grade comedy: Swirl a soupçon of Samuel L. Jackson's stately criminal diction, à la Pulp Fiction, into a Dumpster's worth of Guy Ritchie's shock-rock, crooked-glam sensibility, then throw in a whole mess of gratuitous gore, vomit, and an exploding Meatloaf. The resulting urinal cake of a film doesn't come anywhere close to the gross hilarity of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The pretense for this gawdawful take on gutbucket-gangster Brit comedy? Elmo McElroy (Jackson) has cooked up the ultimate drug and is looking for someone who will fork over millions in bonds – ah, another sign of the new world economic order – for the formula. Robert Carlyle is entirely wasted here as his football-fetishizing sidekick, and Emily Mortimer has the misfortune of following up her brave, naked performance in Lovely and Amazing with a role as the hired gun sent to stop McElroy. And you know onetime Hong Kong horror talent and Bride with White Hair director Ronny Yu is truly in Hollywood purgatory when the only decent joke of Formula 51's sorry lot revolves around Samuel L. Jackson wearing a kilt. (1:33) Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Kimberly Chun)

Ghost Ship Julianna Margulies and Gabriel Byrne star as salvage team leaders whose crew stumbles on the find of a lifetime: a mysterious luxury ship, laden with an obscene amount of gold, thought lost for 40 years. And naturally, the ship is also populated by a posse of unhappy, undead souls. About the only reason to sit though this extremely derivative, would-be shocker from director Steve Beck (Thirteen Ghosts) is the opening scene, which illuminates with gleeful goriness the terrible fate of the ship's original passengers. Otherwise, anyone who's ever seen a haunted house-boat-hotel-whatever movie may recognize a few too many elements – a beautiful, seductive woman suddenly transforms into a rotting corpse; a meal is discovered, mid-chew, to be crawling with maggots; a creepy little girl appears with a message from beyond the grave – to be truly spooked. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Heaven (1:46) Opera Plaza.

Igby Goes Down (1:38) Galaxy.

This new doc by former United Nations weapons inspector (and ex-Marine intelligence officer) Scott Ritter studies why weapons inspection in Iraq has become an increasingly tense issue since the Gulf War. The United States – which, despite an agreement to the contrary, kept economic sanctions against Iraq in place even after the United Nations special committee declared Iraq more than 95 percent disarmed – comes across as exceedingly sinister, willing to override the wishes of the U.N. for its own selfish purposes. On the other hand, the film notes that Saddam Hussein's refusal to allow inspectors access to certain locations is a clear indication of his priorities – he'd rather keep whatever weapons he might have hidden away, rather than comply with the U.N. and clear the way for the sanctions against his poverty-stricken people to be lifted. Somewhat dry and saddled with its own baggage (though not revealed to the viewer, the film was largely funded by an alleged pro-Saddam Iraqi American), In Shifting Sands isn't quite the open-and-shut excoriation of the U.S. government it would like to be. However, its insider perspective on such timely subject matter makes it well worth a look. (1:32) Roxie. (Eddy)

Jackass: The Movie You can call this coproducer Spike Jonze's antiprestige project – a Bronx cheer to the Spiegel heir and anointed cinematic star's skateboarder roots. But apart from a cameo as one of a makeup-spackled crew of Lark-crashing, shoplifting oldsters, Jonze shouldn't get all the credit: after all, Johnny Knoxville, Chris Pontius, Bam Margera, and crew are the ones accruing the stitches and scar tissue. In any case, if you loved the series, you'll bust a gut at Jackass: The Movie – till you're in as much pain as the MTV pranksters. Basically a lengthy version of the series, complete with short-attention span episodes such as "Off-Road Tattooing," "Yellow Snowcone," and "Bungie Wedgie," a tossed-off, grainy-as-crap, straight-from-video look, and handheld bumbling (including vomiting camerapersons), Jackass: The Movie is the unholy, funny-as-hell spawn of Faces of Death, backyard wrestling, Evel Knieval, and Candid Camera. Here, series cocreator Jeff Tremaine and posse dispense with the narrative and cut straight to the "good parts" – namely plenty of silly dares, wounds, vomit, excrement, head injuries, and testicle-endangerment. For everyone who thought the best part of Wide World of Sports was the scene of the skier eating it on a snowy hillside, for those who appreciate a fella who welcomes getting a good ass-kicking by a girl and a decent, beer-sodden stunt when they see one, this movie's for you. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, Shattuck, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (1:23) Century 20.

Knockaround Guys (1:32) Metreon.

*The Last Kiss Writer-director Gabriele Muccino's The Last Kiss, a tender look at the realities of growing up and settling down, is also a modernized take on the traditional Italian sex comedy. Less about raw lust (though there's no shortage here) than about the restlessness that permeates contemporary relationships, the film ultimately paints love as a state of perpetual confusion and repeatedly asks whether it is ever possible to recognize happiness once you've found it. Muccino accomplishes this through the interwoven stories of a group of college buddies on the verge of hitting 30: Carlo (Stefano Accorsi, also of the Italian import The Son's Room) is secretly petrified of marrying his pregnant girlfriend, Paolo (Claudio Santamaria) can't seem to get over his domineering ex, and Alberto (Mario Cocci) is beginning to question the value of an endless string of one-night stands. Well-structured and well-acted, The Last Kiss deftly canvasses the gamut of human emotions, from the joys of childbirth to the dizzying fear that somehow, somewhere, a better life is passing us by. (1:44) Four Star, Rafael. (Cohen)

Merci pour le chocolat (1:39) Balboa, Opera Plaza.

*Mostly Martha Hamburg-born writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck's sumptuous new film, Mostly Martha, extends the Euro-foodie film genre to Germany with its story of a woman looking for love amid scads of gorgeously shot meat, fish, and pasta. Martha (Martina Gedeck) is a top chef at a fancy Italian restaurant in Hamburg. Martha's fiery, uncompromising spirit comes across in her meticulous control of the kitchen and in her refusal to ever let a customer get away with criticizing her food. Even in her therapy sessions she can't bring herself to express her feelings about love and life but obsessively recites recipes to her shrink. The sudden death of Martha's sister in a car accident is the tragic catalyst that opens her emotional floodgates, the rock-bottom moment that makes her fall apart. When Martha's boss (Sibylle Canonica) brings on a free-spirited Italian sous chef (Sergio Castellitto) to help out in the kitchen, Martha's frustration and anxiety mount. Martha offers an array of sensual and cinematic pleasures, and it ultimately has even more to say to us about grief and longing and about how we must reach out to those around us in both good times and bad. (1:47) Albany, Balboa, Opera Plaza. (Jenni Olson)

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2:01) Galaxy, Metreon, Orinda, Shattuck.

*Naqoyqatsi Following Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi, this third entry in filmmaker Godfrey Reggio's wordless trilogy of laments over man's inhumanity to man (and the planet) is at once the most experimental and the least chilly of the lot. It represents a considerable departure from the visual tactics of the prior two. Where they rested on grandly photographed, sometimes time-lapsed but essentially straightforward views of natural and human landscapes, Naqoyqatsi is almost entirely composed of trick shots: superimposed, solarized, composited, digitally manipulated, split-screen, slo-/fast-motion, anamorphically lensed, digitally altered, tinted, and found-footage images. Yet despite all the flamboyance of technique, Reggio's latest (set to another pounding-dirge Philip Glass score) is actually far more interested in the individual – or our loss of individuality – than his earlier features, which often seemed like pretentious liberal-guilt exercises trying to pass off spectacular travelogue views as a form of evolved spiritualism. Here the thematic focus is on "war as a way of life" (the titular Hopi term's definition), so despite occasional crude or murky thinking, Reggio must deal head-on with politics, nationalism, militarism, and so forth. Thus there's more emotional immediacy to his pictorialism. While you can still accuse Reggio of making very fancy, very expensive art-house eye candy, Naqoyqatsi is an extremely striking package that really does have something inside. (1:41) Lumiere. (Harvey)

One Hour Photo (1:38) Balboa.

Paid in Full Watching the first part of this tale of murder and betrayal among a trio of hood gangsters in Harlem circa '86, one can't help but be impressed by the film's refusal to simply sweat the easy route technique. Being the film was produced by materialistic thug-life music label Roc-A-Fella, it's no surprise the requisite flash-and-cash worshipping shares screen time with the fetishization of period detail (classic threads and vintage smooth rides get mucho close-ups) and gat fondling. But instead of just cribbing Roc's bling-bling video tricks for quick visual highs, director Charles Stone III unexpectedly injects a '70s blaxploitation grit into the glamorization of "the game" that moves the aesthetic and feel closer to Cooley High than your average Cam'ron clip. The second half, alas, goes the generic genre route of shoot-ups and beat-downs, but it's impressive how Paid's attention to building tone smacks less of flashing in the pan than someone thinkin' of a master plan. (1:33) Century 20, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Punch-Drunk Love It seems like it wouldn't be a stretch for Adam Sandler to play Punch-Drunk Love's Barry Egan, an average schlub given to fits of comical fury – unless, of course, you take into account that Punch-Drunk Love isn't the latest output of the Sandler laff factory; it's actually the new film from P.T. Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia). Love is a weird piece of work, displaying vaguely Coen brothers-like tendencies and a stop-go momentum that somehow fits its structure – essentially, it's just a series of very, very carefully plotted self-contained scenes in a world with deliberately stylized art- and sound-direction. Sandler plays Barry as nervous and earnest, and mines new emotional territory in scenes with the sweetly persistent Lena (Emily Watson), a perfectly normal person who somehow falls for the unstable, Healthy Choice pudding-obsessed Barry. By and large, Sandler pulls it off, though it's unclear whether Anderson zeroed in on him because he wanted to provide the comedian with a breakout role, or because convincing audiences to see Sandler as more than a goofy megaplex star is a formidable challenge, or just because. (1:37) California, Century 20, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio. (Eddy)

*Real Women Have Curves If 18-year-old Ana (America Ferrera) had gone to work in her sister's East L.A. garment factory 25 years ago, she and the other workers would be eyeballing the dresses and complaining they'd never be able to afford them. Ana would have given up plans for college and joined the movement, fighting for social and economic justice. But in Real Women Have Curves, set in the present day, the women are concerned about not fitting into the gowns, and Ana's contribution is to let them know their full-figured frames are fine just they way they are. You know from the beginning Ana's going to college despite familial pressure, but it's what happens along the way that matters. Director Patricia Cardoso offers East L.A. as a kaleidoscope of color, sound, and energy, and Ferrara's infectious Ana is impossible to resist. If feel-good flicks bother you, pass this up. But if you're looking for something to smile at – that's going around these days – here's something a little different to make you do just that. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Embarcadero, Empire, Shattuck. (J.H. Tompkins)

Red Dragon (2:05) Century Plaza, Century 20, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Ring This version of Hideo Nakata's 1998 cult hit could have been the mighty exception that proved Hollywood remakes don't always sabotage the originals. There was hope, primarily because the film is Naomi Watts's first appearance after Mulholland Drive. Dismissing The Ring simply because it's a Hollywood product is snotty – many of the current Japanese genre masters whose movies are being optioned for remakes by Miramax and other U.S. companies are in fact strongly influenced by Hollywood genre cinema. The problem is, Nakata, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and others understand classic Hollywood B-movie strengths better than current Hollywood B-movie directors. So while Kurosawa brings the philosophical and emotional dread of Don Siegel and Jacques Tourneur to his own Ring-inspired Kairo, Gore Verbinski brings ad-language facility and vacuousness to The Ring. Nakata's deep well of dark water turns shallow here – there's no tension or character-identification beneath the slick, sometimes effectively creepy imagery. (1:45) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Huston)

*Rivers and Tides (1:30) Balboa, Rafael.

Secretary (1:44) California, Opera Plaza, Rafael.

Spirited Away A little girl and her parents stumble across an "abandoned amusement park!" (No, it's not Euro-Disney.) After her folks eat some magical food and literally turn into pigs, the girl goes through the looking glass into a world of talking animals, hungry ghosts, cute boys who are really dragons, and one pissed-off, gigantic toddler. Like the best fables, grand anime sensei Hayao Miyazaki's (Princess Mononoke) fantasy epic is both charmingly childish and a feverish nightmare. Why Miyazaki's work is getting the red-carpet treatment from the House of Mickey is almost as mystifying as the film's scattershot "plot"; whether Disney is hoping to court a homegrown generation raised in the light of the Sailor Moon or is just altruistically giving a mainstream release to a complete, if barely comprehensible, work of imagination is one for the ages. Regardless of mouse-eared intentions, Spirited Away is one undeniable visual experience that may require viewers to simply give up following the story, sit back, and just enjoy the acidic trip. (2:04) Kabuki, Metreon, Shattuck. (Fear)

*Sweet Home Alabama Up-and-coming fashion designer Melanie Carmichael (Reese Witherspoon) has just accepted a proposal from her high-society beau (Patrick Dempsey, eerily JFK Jr.-like), who happens to be the son of the image-conscious New York City mayor (Candice Bergen). Trouble is, Melanie has a secret, hell-raisin' past – and a good ol' boy husband (Matthew McConaughey clone Josh Lucas) – in backwater Pigeon Creek, Ala. When the former "Felony Melanie" heads south for the first time in seven years determined to finalize her divorce, her stilettos 'n' cell phone persona makes for culture clash with the yokels (including her plain-folks parents, played by Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place). Social faux pas ensue, Civil War jokes abound, the nature of true love is pondered, and – come on, if you've seen the trailer, you know how this cinematic equivalent of lemon chess pie ends. It's a chick flick, sure, but the Witherspoon factor ensures Sweet Home Alabama is a top-notch entry into the genre. (1:49) Century Plaza, Century 20, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Transporter (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Truth about Charlie It'd be hard to find more enjoyable espionage lite than Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant's 1963 mousetrap Charade, a featherweight piece of fluff that was fueled off the fumes of its stars' charms. Trying to craft a remake that's even half as fun as the original seems almost as ludicrous as expecting mere mortals Thandie Newton (Beloved) and Mark Wahlberg (in a beret!) to fill their predecessors' Givenchys and gabardine suits, but somehow director Jonathan Demme mistakenly thought he and his cast could recapture that duo's giddy champagne-bubble chemistry. Even without the burden of comparison, Demme's uneven take on the house-of-cards plot involving a recent widow (Newton), a hidden fortune, a mysterious stranger (Wahlberg), and assorted sundry villains just can't find a speed past sputtering; it works best when it jettisons story altogether and simply pays homage to jittery nouvelle vague fancies and the Paris-when-it-sizzled era of cinema-ago-go. Past those tributary moments, it's little more than a disappointing travelogue cursed with a classic sense of retread déjà vu. (1:44) Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, Metreon, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Tuck Everlasting (1:30) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness.

The Tuxedo (1:39) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

*Welcome to Collinwood A petty thief (Luis Guzman) gets sent to the pen and hears about a dream burglary job from a lifer. His girlfriend starts hunting around skid row for a fall guy, inadvertently assembling a group of down-and-out grifters (Sam Rockwell, William H. Macy, Isaiah Washington, Michael Jeter) who decide to pull off the job themselves. Based on what's inarguably the funniest heist film ever, the Italian classic Big Deal on Madonna Street, filmmakers-siblings Anthony and Joe Russo don't aim for much past paying homage to the source material they obviously adore. Fans of the original will be hard-pressed to shake a pleasant, if nagging, sense of déjà vu, but it's tough not to be taken in by Collinwood's hangdog charm and peculiar criminal vocabulary. The cast, especially Rockwell and Macy, play ineptitude as a giddy state of comic grace, and it's their tongues-in-cheeks that turn the brother's idolatry into a bona fide second-hand pleasure. (1:26) Galaxy. (Fear)

White Oleander (1:48) Century Plaza, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Rep picks

*'Frontline/World' Just in time for Halloween comes this installment of Frontline/World, subtitled "Stories from a Small Planet." The middle of three tales has the most seasonal relevance: Romanian poet Andrei Codrescu returns to his homeland after 20 years to find capitalism and poverty in full effect. His journey includes investigations into a school that trains young women to work in other countries as exotic dancers (cue "Flashdance ... What a Feeling") and Romanian hip hop, as well as anti-gypsy racism and the growing exploitation of "Romania's best-known export," Count Dracula. (Upon viewing a tourist-ready vampire performance, Codrescu muses, "If I don't die of embarrassment now, I think I'll be immortal.") The episode's other segments include a sobering investigation into the whereabouts of Pol Pot's right hand man (now frail and living in rural Cambodia, smilingly dismissive about his role in the Khmer Rouge's bloodthirsty reign); and an uplifting piece about an Indian computer company using innovative methods to teach poor New Delhi kids about the Internet. (1:00) Thurs/31, 9 p.m., KQED Channel 9, www.kqed.org. (Eddy)

'Latino Film Festival' The sixth annual Latino Film Festival boasts seventeen days of films from around the world, exploring and celebrating Latino culture, arts, politics, and people with works like Great Day in Havana, which won the festival's 2002 Jury Award for Best Documentary. Southern California directors Laurie Ann Schag and Casey Stoll formed their company Cinembargo Films to support Havana, which took over nine years to shoot. The doc profiles eleven Cuban artists, including performance artist Tania Bruguera, sculptor Pedro "Pulido" Gonzalez, poet Eloy Machado, music icon Carlos Varela (the "Bob Dylan of Cuba"), and actor Jorge Perugorria, among others. The interviews alternate between inspiring pieces of art and thought-provoking musings (Machado and filmmaker Elio Ruiz ignite their segment with humor and energy) to repetitive moments that might cause some viewers to nod off. It's an interesting look into Cuban culture, but be warned that after about four profiles the novelty wears off. Another highlight of the fest is Flamenco in the Streets of New York, with a live flamenco performance. See schedule, above, for venues and more information. (Gachman)

*'New Asian Special Premieres' No Kung Fu Kult Klassics this week, so head out Wed/30 for 1992's Hong Kong killer kid flick Vendetta and Sleeping with the Dead, a new HK horror film. Four Star.

*Seven Samurai Countless rip-offs and homages later, the plot of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is still beautiful in its simplicity: A village of farmers is under constant attack from bandits. They hire seven ronin to protect them from further pillaging, even though the citizens are almost as petrified of the samurai as they are of the brigands. Harvest time comes, and the thieves return to plunder. All hell breaks loose. The director's legendary use of space and framing transformed the movie from a mere Ford-ian tribute to one of the cinema's major achievements, transposing Western conventions to Eastern ideology and introducing the West to epic Eastern storytelling. (3:23) Castro. (Fear)