November 6, 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, page 93, and Movie Clock, page 94, for theater information.

Cinemayaat Arab Film Festival

The sixth annual Cinemayaat Arab Film Festival takes place through Tues/12. Venues are the Fine Arts Cinema, 2451 Shattuck, Berk; Towne Theater, 1433 the Alameda, San Jose; and the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, S.F. For a complete schedule and tickets go to www.aff.org or call (415) 564-1100. For commentary, see last week's Bay Guardian. All times p.m. unless otherwise indicated.

Thurs/7

Fine Arts Cinema 500 Dunam on the Moon with "Not Going There, Don't Belong Here" 4:45. No One Need Cry and So Near, Yet So Far 6:30. When Maryam Spoke Out 8:30.

Fri/8

Fine Arts Cinema Taxi Service and A Girl's Secret 4. Gaza Strip with "Children of Ibdaa" 5:45. In the Shadows of the City 7:45. Ula Thanawi 9:45.

Sat/9

Fine Arts Cinema The Mute and Shatter Hassan with "Leila's Pictures" 11:15a. This Isn't Living and Suspended Dreams 1:15. "September 11th Program" (shorts program) 3:30. Frontiers of Dreams and Fears and Hanan Ashrawi: A Woman of Her Time 5:15. Olive Harvest with "A Boy ... Called Mohammed" 7:30. Rana's Wedding 9:45.

Towne Melody of Water's Wheel 12:15. Taxi Service and A Girl's Secret 2:15. When Maryam Spoke Out 4:15. In the Shadows of the City 6:15. Ula Thanawi 8:45.

Sun/10

Towne Lili with "Insan" 12:30. "September 11th Program" (shorts program) 2:30. The Mute and Shatter Hassan with "Leila's Pictures" 4:30. Olive Harvest with "A Boy ... Called Mohammed" 6:15. Rana's Wedding 8:30.

Mon/11

Towne No One Need Cry and So Near, Yet So Far 4:30. Frontiers of Dreams and Fears and Hanan Ashrawi: A Woman of Her Time 6:45. Fatma 9.

Tues/12

Castro Divine Intervention: A Chronicle of Love and Pain 8:45.

Latino Film Festival

The sixth annual Latino Film Festival runs through Nov 17. Venues this week are the Delancey Street Theater, 600 Embarcadero, S.F.; Mission Cultural Center for the Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, S.F.; and the Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael. 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 last week's Bay Guardian. All times p.m.

Wed/6

Delancey Street Violet Perfume 8:30.

Thurs/7

Delancey Street Great Day in Havana 6:30. Too Much Love 8:40.

Rafael Honey for Oshún 6:30. Good-bye, Dear Love 9:40.

Fri/8

Rafael Violet Perfume 6:30. Brave New Land 9:10.

Sat/9

Rafael Great Day in Havana 1:30. A House with a View of the Sea 4. Taxi for Three 6:15. The Escape 8:45.

Sun/10

Rafael Invisible Children 1. Loco Fever 3. Herod's Law 5:15. Anita Takes a Chance 8:30.

Opening

*Alias Betty See Movie Clock, page 94. (1:41) Lumiere.

Bundy Ted Bundy (Michael Reilly Burke) gets the biopic treatment in this film by Matthew Bright (Freeway), an exploration of the murderer's life from his years-long killing spree to his eventual date with Ol' Sparky. Less introspective and slow-moving than Dahmer, an earlier 2002 release that also tried to pry into the methods and madness of a notorious serial killer, Bundy dips its toes into the waters of classic exploitation but doesn't quite go all the way, which is especially disappointing considering the participation of gore fx guru Tom Savini. The basics of Bundy 101 are covered (the VW bug, the daring prison escapes, the sorority house slaughter), with some intermittent stabs at black humor (example: Bundy loads a dead woman's body into his car in full view of passersby, who don't even notice) that don't quite mesh with the film's use of real Bundy trial footage. An uneven tone, which makes for an uneven film, is the result. (1:36) Roxie. (Eddy)

8 Mile Slim Shady sets his sights on the silver screen. (1:51) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake.

Femme Fatale This flamboyantly awful France-U.S. coproduction is yet another Brian DePalma "Hitchcockian" contraption recycling the same old split-screen effects, slow-mo, elaborate tracking, et al, to absolutely no purpose; on that level it's even worse and more gratuitous than the director's prior low, Raising Cain. Rebecca Romijin-Stamos plays Laure, a deadlier-than-the-male assassin-thief-seductress-multilinguist who gets away with the jewels during a bloody bungled robbery. Some years she's reinvented herself as a U.S. ambassador's wife, and an unwanted snap by a photographer (Antonio Banderas) puts angry old allies back on her trail. Make that tail. Romijin-Stamos doesn't have a character to play here; she is used, as the performers are called on porn sets, as a "model." There's a scene in which she grinds against a pool table in an alleged Paris biker bar that would almost be beneath Shannon Tweed. (His own presence completely beside the point, Banderas bears a "get me outta here" look throughout.) Femme Fatale is the most embarrassing major release I've seen all year. It's so bad, it's not even good-bad – he pervasive stupidity first gets you gaping, then it leaves you yawning. (2:06) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Food of Love The aptly titled Food of Love oscillates between a Queer as Folk-ian potboiler and a wrenching Freudian melodrama. It has all the staples of both: a young protagonist named Paul (Kevin Bishop), a classical musician who is easy prey for older drifters; a crafty publicity agent (Allan Corduner) who tries to bait striplings with his connections in the music world; an overprotective mother (Juliet Stevenson); and a high-profile concert pianist (Paul Rhys) who seduces all of the aforementioned. For most of the film, we follow Paul's coming out narrative, from his deflowering in Barcelona to his inauguration in the ranks of Julliard. Given his youth and his ennui, Paul's sexual romps are as tense as the phone conversations he has (or avoids) with his increasingly rattled mother; as it turns out, the music in Food of Love – particularly Chopin's romantic piano glissades – is actually sexier than the sex. (2:04) Opera Plaza. (Rachel Swan)

A Grin Without a Cat La Jetée director Chris Marker's 1977 doc about the birth of the New Left opens in a restored, updated version. (Run time not available) Red Vic.

Tully Handsome, corn-fed hunk Tully Coates (Anson Mount) has come to a crossroads: should he keep playing the role of the town heartthrob and tarnish his reputation with the local stripper, or should he settle down with freckled nice girl Ella (Julianne Nicholson) and risk a broken heart? Meanwhile, back at the ranch (literally), a mysterious debt threatens both the foreclosure of his father's farm and to open the door to a closet full of familial skeletons. It's tempting to think that director-screenwriter Hilary Birmingham derived her film from watching overlaid transmissions of Petticoat Junction and Peyton Place as a kid, which would explain the small-town landscape of swimming holes and Tastee Freezes, where soap operatics lurk around every hay-strewn corner. Mount certainly has the looks and homegrown charm to essay such a guileless backwoods gigolo role, but everything else about this indie melodrama can't seem to rise above a feeling of freeze-dried familiarity. (1:42) Oaks. (Fear)

Ongoing

*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) Opera Plaza. (Gachman)

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, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*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) Century 20, Lumiere. (Cohen)

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

Frida Director Julie Taymor (Titus) suffers from Tim Burton-itis: in her films the sumptuous art direction tends to overshadow everything else onscreen. Frida comes to life when Kahlo's colorful, sorrowful paintings are the focus, but the rest of the film – mostly concerned with the rocky relationship between Kahlo (Salma Hayek, who also produced) and husband Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina) – is bogged down in melodrama and distracting cameos (Antonio Banderas, Saffron Burrows, Edward Norton) by Hayek's show biz pals. In her most high-profile role to date, Hayek – dutifully sporting the unibrow – looks gorgeous in Kahlo's elaborate costumes and hairdos. The pleasures of eye candy aside, however, it's too bad a biopic about such a passionate artist comes off feeling like too much decoration, not much soul. (1:58) Albany, Bridge, Century 20. (Eddy)

Ghost Ship Julianna Margulies and Gabriel Byrne star as salvage team leaders whose crew stumbles upon 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's 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)

The Grey Zone (1:48) Galaxy.

*Heaven (1:46) Opera Plaza, Rafael.

I Spy It doesn't take a genius to figure out the song-and-dance I Spy offers a suspecting public: boffo-budget blockbuster adaptation of a vintage TV show, ebony-and-ivory buddy-film bickering, a nonsense plot about a stealth fighter plane falling in the hands of "a who's-who of international bad guys!," product placement, movie star (Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson) shtick, things-go-ka-boom! set pieces, etc. What's surprising, however, is how irredeemably awful the end result actually is, bereft of even the guilty pleasures such comfort-food cinema usually offers. TV actress turned boob-tube recycler Betty Thomas (The Brady Bunch Movie) brings a patented Wonder Bread blandness to the proceedings, and the usual saving grace of Wilson's dumbed-down deadpan is canceled out by Murphy, fast-pattering away like the '90s never happened. Lowest-common-denominator moviemaking for the masses is one thing; putrid, piss-poor crap like this, however, will strain any little eyes spying for traces of entertainment buried beneath the pabulum.

(1:36) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Fear)

*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) Rafael, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

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. (1:25) Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, Shattuck, 1000 Van Ness. (Kimberly Chun)

*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. (Cohen)

*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) 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)

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) 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

The Pinochet Case 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)

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 20, Embarcadero, Shattuck. (J.H. Tompkins)

Red Dragon Anyone who's seen Michael Mann's 1986 Manhunter knows that Red Dragon was made purely to cash in on beloved boogeyman Hannibal Lecter's popularity. Too bad for director Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) and a top-notch cast (besides Anthony Hopkins, the roster includes Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, and Emily Watson; even the smaller roles are filled by respected types like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Mary-Louise Parker) that comparisons to the Mann film are inevitable. If not for that previous, superior take on the same material (a retired FBI agent, played here by Norton, turns to Lecter to help catch a serial killer called the "Tooth Fairy"), it'd be easy enough to toss Dragon off as an adeptly suspenseful thriller -- not as good as Silence of the Lambs, sure, but not a misstep like Hannibal. But where Mann's film was stylish and tense, Dragon is standardized horror for the masses, with talking paintings, exploding houses, and way too much of that sly ol' cannibal, who is by now so hammy his next logical step is a buddy comedy. (2:05) Century 20, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

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, Empire, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Huston)

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

Roger Dodger First-class lout Roger Swanson (Campbell Scott) uses his gift of dizzying gab to become the top copywriter in his advertising firm – and to woo every female who strays into his sight line. But the cruelest joke of all is that this self-proclaimed ladies' man really doesn't know dick about the fairer sex; his one truly intimate relationship is with his own self-loathing. So when his precocious teenage nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg), shows up looking for tips on the art of seduction, you can practically hear the backbone-snap of innocence lost coming like a far-off thunderclap. Words are also first-time director-writer Dylan Kidd's main ace in the hole, as he's constructed a film consisting of one riff of whirling verbiage after another with a self-conscious case of antsy Cassavetes-camera jitters. Mainly, it's the performers' line readings of Kidd's hyperbolic prose that makes Roger Dodger worth a look, giving the budding filmmaker's love of nihilistic patter a life even in a third act of diminishing returns. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Fear)

The Santa Clause 2 (1:45) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, Shattuck.

*Scarlet Diva Most recently, Asia Argento (daughter of Italian horror director Dario) crashed international multiplexes as the vixen least likely to be intimidated by Vin Diesel in XXX. But she's also directed music videos, shorts, and documentaries; published short stories and a novel; and sung lead for Italian rock bands. Now comes the debuting feature writer-director-star's Scarlet Diva. This intentionally perplexing blur of hyperbolized autobio and excitable fiction has taken almost three years to get to a San Francisco movie house. But it arrives at the Four Star Theatre with full berserkitude still flush. Argento plays Anna Battista, a multilingual Rome-based movie star, and Scarlet Diva does somewhat subscribe to the wounded-waif school of celebrity self-evaluation. But if Scarlet Diva indulges the tears of a clown, at least it admits she is a clown. Argento isn't afraid to let herself look foolish, or plain, or wildly Eurotrashy. The movie has no real story arc beyond its vague goal of eventual cathartic change, yet it has a hurtling energy that's just amused enough to skirt standard digitally shot music video flash. (1:30) Four Star. (Harvey)

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

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, Shattuck. (Fear)

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2:22) Metreon IMAX.

*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 Surprisingly, there are at least some things to recommend about this cable-ready time killer about an ex-Army mercenary bagman (Jason Statham) who gets mixed up, romantically and otherwise, with his cargo – a kidnapped gangland moll (Shu Qi). For starters, director Corey Yuen stages scenes of fantastic martial arts and gunplay reminiscent of his films Fong Sai Yuk and High Risk. A scene where Statham battles foes atop an oil slick armed only with bike pedals may be the giddiest thing you'll see all year: a perfect popcorn marriage of Wong Fei Hung and Black Belt Jones. OK, the script (cowritten by, ugh, Luc Kiss of the Dragon Besson) is crap, the gangster rap soundtrack is wildly inappropriate, and Qi is as annoyingly lovable as ever, but at least the comedy-action hits the target. Admittedly this isn't the best of all possible worlds, but it could be worse: without films like The Transporter, nostalgic Hong Kong film nuts would have only the memory of when kicky, silly martial arts movies walked the earth. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Macias)

*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) Balboa, Castro, Rafael. (Harvey)

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, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Tuck Everlasting It took awhile for Natalie Babbitt's 1975 award-winning children's book to make it onto the screen, but Disney finally saw its wholesome potential and nabbed it. A young girl named Winnie (Alexis Bledel) rebels against her stuffy parents and their upper-crust Victorian expectations (like that she should wear corsets, play piano, and attend a posh girls' school), finally running into the woods that surround her very manicured house as a release. Just as she's about to drink from a pool of water, Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson) appears and cryptically warns her not to. Jesse and Winnie fall in love at first sight, and eventually his salt-of-the-earth family takes her in. The freedom Winnie finds with the Tucks, and her love for Jesse, keep her happy in their world, despite a dark secret that eventually threatens her idyllic new life. Sissy Spasek looks spooky as mother Tuck, and father William Hurt's Irish-Scottish-American accent just doesn't cut it. But Tuck isn't aimed at cynical adult viewers; its imaginative world will have no problem charming young audiences. (1:30) Shattuck. (Gachman)

The Tuxedo (1:39) Century 20, Metreon.

*24 Hour Party People Manchester-based label Factory gave the world Joy Division, the Happy Mondays, and the seeds of rave culture via its sister club Hacienda and was renowned as much for its owners' bad business sense and drug-fueled burnout as for its stark, minimalist sound. 24 Hour Party People seems destined to cement the collective's rightful place in the pantheon, but any notion of genuflection or pedestal polishing quickly gets pissed on. Laden with one of the cinema's most unreliable narrators in the form of Factory impresario Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan) and brimming with pop art detritus filmmaking (punky Super 8 comfortably cuddles with druggy D.V.), the film is less concerned with facts than with Factory's mythos as a beautiful supernova failure. Director Michael Winterbottom (Wonderland) incorporates Lester-like giddiness, deconstructive asides, and even actual participants from the era (keep an eye out for Mark E. Smith and Howard DeVoto) to correct the film when it "gets it wrong," still, any glitches are overrun by the film's gleeful willingness to jettison narrative and biopic concerns in order to hook viewers on a feeling. (1:57) Four Star. (Fear)

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) Galaxy. (Harvey)

White Oleander Even if you haven't read Janet Fitch's Oprah-approved novel, the film version of White Oleander is worth taking note of: it's a "women's picture" that centers not on romantic entanglements but on relationships between mothers and daughters, and it eschews the expected healing-power-of-family message. After her controlling, self-absorbed mother (Michelle Pfeiffer) is jailed for murdering an inattentive boyfriend, troubled teen Astrid (Alison Lohman) encounters a string of wildly different foster moms (including Robin Wright Penn and Renée Zellweger) as she gropes her way toward self-reliance. Director Peter Kosminsky, whose previous directing experience includes several made-for-British-television dramas, gives Oleander a realistic, unglamorous quality – though he could've kept a tighter leash on the voice-overs. White Oleander's thick application of Lifetime channel-style drama – the script is by Mary Agnes Donoghue, who also adapted Beaches – is offset by its solid cast, in particular the understated Lohman and the icy Pfeiffer. (1:48) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy) Rep picks

*'Bo-Dacious B-Movies,' 'Kung Fu Kult Klassics,' and 'Saturday Midnights for Maniacs' This week: Alligator and Godzilla vs. Megalon (Wed/6, see 8 Days a Week, page 50); Chang Cheh's 1975 The Five Masters of Death and the 1991 Operation Scorpio (Thurs/7); the early-'80s arcade classic Joysticks, featuring the immortal "King Vidiot" (Sat/9). Four Star.

*'Eyes and Ears: The Other Minds Film Festival' See Critic's Choice. Castro.