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. Opening

*Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary See "Blood Symbol" . (1:15) Castro.

*Marooned in Iraq See "Borderline". (1:37) Oaks.

*Sweet Sixteen See Movie Clock. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

2 Fast 2 Furious This sequel to the 2001 hit The Fast and the Furious lacks original headliner Vin Diesel (who wanted 2 much money 2 reprise his role), but the real stars of the show – fast cars, and plenty of them – return. (2:08) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London.

*Wattstax "Let me show you the way," says a hot pink-clad Rufus Thomas, midway through stealing this movie. "It's not too late." He's addressing the audience at a landmark 1972 benefit celebration, but the offer still stands. Thomas's charisma alone makes Mel Stuarts's doc worth visiting. Contrast his cape-crusading gift for getting people onto their feet and his witty way of commanding them to return to their seats with Mick Jagger's fecklessness in the face of Gimme Shelter's murder: the latter may be a superior film, but Wattstax captures a cultural moment worth reviving – a day that ponders two different national anthems, then gets down. A big clock behind the stage keeps time as the likes of the Staple Singers, the Bar-Kays, Luther Ingram, and, somewhat anticlimactically (in this restored version's "new" footage), Isaac Hayes bring the sound of Memphis to L.A. But the crowd is the show as well: zebra stripes for miles, and not a bad trip in sight. Occasionally the camera steps out of the Memorial Coliseum for some fantastic free-formative Richard Pryor routines, church testimony by the Emotions, and conversations presided over by a pre-Love Boat Ted Lange. If you're feeling curious rather than fast and furious, this is the season's real summer jam. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Huston)

Ongoing

L'auberge espagnole A sheltered French youth (Romain Duris) heeds the advice to "go southwest, young man" and becomes an economics exchange student in Barcelona. He ends up in an apartment with six other twentysomething Euro-expatriates and steps into a whole new world of liberating drinking, loving, and touchy-feely dorm room epiphanies. Director Cédric Klapisch (When the Cat's Away...) peppers this Candide-lite comedy with so much postcard photography and "This was the semester that changed my life" narration that any bigger picture musings are buried underneath a cringe-worthy sense of schmaltz. There's a certain naive undergrad charm in the film's view of pan-Europeanism as nothing more than a hostel takeover, where nations of all stripes would get along if they all just chilled out, smoked a doob, and sang along to Bob Marley. After two hours of clichéd soul-searching amongst the college sophomore set, however, the movie's title (slang for "euro pudding") takes the culinary metaphor to the extreme: It goes from slightly delectable to a little too sweet, far too sticky, and hardly worthy of being considered a full meal. (1:56) Act I and II, Embarcadero. (Fear)

*Bend It like Beckham With a witty screenplay, feel-good story, and kick-ass soundtrack, Gurinder Chadha's Bend It like Beckham (named, by the way, for the soccer star who's also known as Mr. Posh Spice) has already broken box-office records in the U.K. and arrives in the United States with a worldwide $50 million gross already under its belt. Jess, Beckham's protagonist, is a reluctant challenger who's driven by her passion for soccer to deviate from the expectations of her old-world family. Beckham pointedly punctures English, Indian, and immigrant foibles despite a few jokes that are broad enough to hit the side of a barn. But its pseudo-lesbian subplot is unlikely to ruffle viewers of any lifestyle. More satisfyingly, the film's climactic wedding scene erupts into high drama with mistaken-identity mischief delicious enough to ensure it won't be mistaken for Monsoon Wedding. (1:42) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (B. Ruby Rich)

Blue Car Blue Car begins promisingly, as a narrative refreshingly focused on the creative process of a young woman who is neither insane nor suffering some other catastrophe. Too bad writer-director Karen Moncrieff lets it all hit the fan later on, in unusually large amounts. Eighteen-year-old Meg (Agnes Bruckner) expresses frustrations about a neglectful mother, absentee father, and unstable younger sister through some not terrible poetry. An English teacher (David Straitharn) steps up to play creative mentor, espousing weak nuggets like "You can go deeper" – which do serve to inspire Meg. However, what starts as an earnest teacher-student relationship is ruined by creepy betrayal; Montcrieff also places enough obstacles in young Meg's life to fuel three other movies. Bruckner's honest and believable performance is Blue Car's highlight. (1:28) Balboa. (Koh)

*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) Balboa. (Gerhard)

Bruce Almighty When the endless why-me whining of frustrated TV fluff-news reporter Bruce Nolan ("I'll never be an anchorman! I have no credibility!") becomes more than even God wants to hear, the deity Himself (Morgan Freeman) decides to shut the crybaby yuppie up by letting him "play God" for a while, to see how he likes it. At first, Bruce really, really does – and this hit-and-miss take on a good fantasy-comedy idea scores at least a few great set pieces as Bruce (Jim Carrey) exults in his newly unlimited power. But eventually he must be taught that individual self-interest is bad for society as a whole (unpleasantly, the movie suggests it directly leads to looting and rioting scenes featuring the lion's-share of the cast's minority actors) and that only God can do God's job. (Needless to say, this not a film inclined to question whether S/He/It is doing a good job.) At that cynical, then mawkish third-act juncture, Bruce Almighty stops being a decent-enough excuse for displays of Carrey's unmanageable genius. Instead, it becomes very recognizable as the latest force-feeding of bogus sentimental slop by the director who gave us Patch Adams. For which God still has some 'splaining to do. (1:41) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Harvey)

*'The Cremaster Cycle' A shoe fetish that dreamed it was an opera, Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle is one of the grandest – well, costliest anyway – acts of artistic folly ever committed to celluloid: a five-part, multihour, phantasmically overdesigned and fabulously well-financed extrapolation on themes variously related to the musculature that controls – based on data from internal emotions and external temperatures – the rising and the falling of the testicles. Who says modern art is afraid to put its balls to the wall? Perversion with a pedigree, the Cremaster films gussy up all of the black-and-white demonology and hunk lusting of Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos's 1950s psychodramas in pink plaids, fuzzy scrotal headgear, and healthy latherings of petroleum jelly – retro avant-gardistry for the age of Agnes B., if you know what I mean. And if you don't, that's probably even better. A gallery installation that dreamed it was a Hollywood blockbuster, The Cremaster Cycle works, despite its plethora of indecipherables, in multiplex terms as well. (3:02) Castro, Lumiere, Smith Rafael. (Stephens)

Daddy Day Care A Mr. Mom for the 21st Century, Eddie Murphy's Daddy Day Care blends slapstick comedy with modern gender role reversal. Two advertising tycoons (Murphy and Jeff Garlin) get laid off and have to come up with new careers to keep their upper-middle-class lifestyles afloat. The solution: day care for their kids (who, since they're home all day, they're stuck with anyway) and their friends. With a formula reminiscent of '80s sitcoms like My Two Dads and Full House, the duo start without a clue but gradually become champions of child care. Together, they tackle the whip-wielding headmistress (Anjelica Huston) of a high-pressure preschool nearby. The cast of kids is adorable, and overall, this is Murphy's funniest film since he switched from R-rated stand-ups to family-style features. It almost makes you remember Beverly Hills Cop and forget flops like Pluto Nash – almost.(1:30) Century Plaza, Century 20, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Sabrina Crawford)

The Dancer Upstairs John Malkovich finally gives directing a whirl with The Dancer Upstairs. Nicholas Shakespeare's screenplay (based on his novel) was inspired by the 1991 arrest of philosophy professor and Maoist Abimal Guzman, leader of Peru's Shining Path revolt – but Shakespeare removes context and dogma from the real life events, placing the story in an unnamed Latin American country. Violent acts are committed in devotion to a mysterious leader called Ezequiel, but where's the revolution? Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls) turns in a solid performance as the weary yet determined Detective Rejas obsessed with finding Ezequiel. Toward the end Malkovich shifts the narrative focus from Rejas's relentless hunt to a far less substantial subplot involving the detective's romance with his daughter's dance instructor. The move deflates an otherwise thoughtful directorial debut. (2:09) Act I and II, Galaxy. (Koh)

*A Decade under the Influence You might think you've already read and heard all you want to about how the 1970s were the last great years for truly maverick filmmaking. But A Decade under the Influence, a new documentary by Richard LaGravanese and the late Ted Demme, pulls together such a felicitous array of interviews, clips, and errata that those already familiar with the period will be fascinated all over again, while those who weren't around to see these movies the first time will want to rent everything they missed. While noting the rise of "imperfect" (by prior glamour standards) stars and the unequal distribution of funded artistic freedom (conspicuously, no female directors are interviewed here), the film stops to regard various seminal titles. There are some conspicuous absences (especially emblematic stars Jane Fonda and Jack Nicholson), but you can't complain much about a film that does include input from Polly Platt, Pam Grier, Jon Voight, and Jerry Schatzberg as well as the more de rigeur Scorsese, Coppola, Robert Altman, and Robert Towne. (1:48) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Down with Love New York, 1962: Sinatra and Esquivel are spinning on the hi-fi, the suits are pure gray flannel, martinis are considered lunch, and all of the Big Apple is bustling over Down with Love, the new book from "It Girl" author Barbara Novak (Renée Zellweger) that tells women how to "liberate" themselves from love through sexual empowerment and massive chocolate consumption. She's the protofeminist bookend to cad supreme Catcher Block (Ewan McGregor), the star journalist of Know magazine who decides to beat Barbara at her own game. Director Peyton Reed (Bring It On) and his cast play the pastiche shell game to the hilt, paying homage to those smutty yet wholesome Hudson-Day sex comedies of yesteryear by replicating their candy-coated color schemes, period-fashion parades, and double entendres. The result is a pretty piece of metafluff that aims to wink knowingly and be as laughably lame as the mediocre originals it adores, a near perfect forgery of a cinematic Big Mac. (1:42) Kabuki, Metreon, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Fear)

*Finding Nemo When his beloved son Nemo is whisked from the ocean by a scuba diver, neurotic clown fish Marlin (Albert Brooks) launches a Great Barrier Reef-sized quest to track him down, running into a huge assortment of oceanic perils (sharks, shipwrecks, weird-looking deep-sea fish, seagulls) and pals (notably a forgetful fish named Dory, who, as voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, gets the film's biggest laughs) along the way. Meanwhile, Nemo hatches elaborate escape plans with the creatures dwelling in his new home – a dentist's office aquarium. Though the search-and-rescue plot of this latest computer-animated adventure from Disney-Pixar (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc.) will play pretty routine to the grown-ups, pint-sized audiences will be in suspense to the end; adult audiences can enjoy the film's more subtle, clever touches (the dental-office scenes are particularly ingenious). (1:41) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Holes Stanley Yelnats IV (Shia LaBeouf), a.k.a. "Caveman," is a Texas kid whose family curse plagues him with rotten luck. So when Stanley gets sent to a surreal juvenile detention center for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he and his eccentric family just blame the curse. The film's title comes from the endless holes that Stanley and the other kids are forced to dig every day by Warden Walker (Sigourney Weaver), who has some dark family secrets of her own. The warden's associates keep the boys in line, with the sheriff-father hen Mr. Sir (a beautifully campy and creepy Jon Voight) and the slimy therapist Mr. Pendanski (Tim Blake Nelson) doling out punishments at will. Holes scriptwriter Louis Sachar (adapting his award-winning children's book) weaves in stories of Eastern European gypsies and Old West ghost stories that add a touch of mystery and make Stanley's story more Goonies than, say, Toy Story 2. (1:51) Shattuck. (Gachman)

Identity The rain-machine operator makes the most significant contribution to this not-boring but ultimately disappointing quasi-horror thriller. On a very stormy Nevada desert night, flooded roads and a series of highway mishaps bring several strangers together at a forlorn little hotel, least welcome among them a murderer (Jake Busey) being transported from one institution to another. But he's not the only character meriting suspicion as others start being offed, more or less in order of descending obnoxiousness. Those ten-little-Indians are chauffeur John Cusack, cop Ray Liotta, prostitute Amanda Peet, movie star Rebecca De Mornay, a badly injured woman, her son, her husband, a creepy clerk, and discordant young newlyweds. James Mangold's movie starts out promisingly, looking to provide a clean, tight 95 minutes of escalating panic. But Michael Cooney's script soon makes the common current mistake of assuming a teetersome pileup of narrative left turns will seem ingenious rather than simply gimmicky. An hour in, that hope is toast. By then you'll probably have guessed the killer's big "identity" secret, anyway. (1:35) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

The In-Laws Jerry Peyser (Albert Brooks) is a fanny pack-toting podiatrist who likes to have everything under control. Steve Tobias (Michael Douglas) is a deep-cover CIA operative with a warehouse full of guns. Brought together by their children's engagement, this odd duo end up entangled in a top-secret international arms deal with the FBI hot on their trail. In remaking Arthur Hiller's 1979 comedy of the same name, director Andrew Flemming closely adhered to Hiller's big-name-stars formula (Alan Arkin and Peter Falk played the mismatched pair in the original) but updated the screenplay to reflect contemporary society. He did so despite the fact that Andrew Bergman, the original screenwriter, is a master of making silly jokes into smart films, as he did on such classics as Fletch and Blazing Saddles. Flemming's modernized script may feature cell phones and laptops, but it's also clichéd and predictable and retains precious little of Bergman's wit. (1:35) Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Cohen)

The Italian Job Audiences who went into 1969's The Italian Job got a silly little caper film breezing past inanity, thanks to its post-mod '60s panache, the novelty of those British Minis racing around Turin, and Michael Caine's cucumberlike coolness. This title-borrowing retread, however, simply reheats a stock revenge plot with Angeleno aesthetic slickness, plenty of advertising for this year's Cooper model, and a Mark Wahlberg who's now officially one lousy remake over the line of good will; suffice to say, today's Cineplex hounds get a much rawer deal. The supporting cast supersizes the usual heist suspects – the computer nerd, the demolition expert, the getaway driver – for maximum background noise while pretty boy Wahlberg and prodigal son Edward Norton mouth a screenwriter's idea of tough-guy-speak over millions worth of gold, car-chase shenanigans, Charlize Theron, etc. Director F. Gary Gray (The Negotiator) does exactly what he's paid to do, tying all the pretty bows tight on a film that's a Hollywood nocturnal emission – efficiently sleek and essentially soulless. (1:43) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Metreon. (Fear)

*Man on the Train A mysterious stranger (Johnny Hallyday) breezes into a small French burg and attracts the attention of a local poetry teacher (Jean Rochefort), who offers the out-of-towner room and board. It turns out that the stranger is a career criminal with his eye on the local bank and that the local is desperately looking for one last chance at excitement to set off a long life of dullness and regrets. It's the duo's gentle, tentative stabs at friendship before tragedy inevitably rears its head that make the latest meditation by director Patrice Leconte (The Hairdresser's Husband) on the melancholia of loners and losers so quietly moving. Thanks to the alchemy of legendary Gallic rocker Hallyday's steel-flint gaze and Rochefort's matronly kindness, what should be a normal iconographic noir essayed in gun-metal shades of blue gray takes the road less traveled, gracefully morphing into an elegy of missed opportunities and misaligned lives. (1:30) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Fear)

*The Man Without a Past In the dark and in the park, a solitary, silent man – the title character – is viciously beaten by strangers. He seems dead, but no, he's just deadpan, and thus at home in the Finland of Aki Kaurismäki, where comedy and poverty are married whether they like it or not, yet are still capable of a fine romance. The Grand Prize winner at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, this film is dramatically expansive and stylistically extroverted by Kaurismäki standards – invoking melodrama in particular – but a Salvation Army-style DIY sensibility is still in effect. Along with cosmic twin Jim Jarmusch, Kaurismäki has a silent-film sensibility: he's fond of sight gags (the anti-antics of an allegedly vicious dog are this movie's comic highlight), and his camera has never met a droll face it didn't want to have a love-laced staring war with. (1:37) Four Star. (Huston)

*Manic Anger management is no joke for suburban teen Lyle (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose latest violent explosion on a baseball diamond lands him in a juvenile lockdown facility. Waking up groggy and furious, he at first disdains communication with the counselors (chief among them Don Cheadle) and fellow patients. Eventually, however, personalities break through his wall: bipolar rich kid Chad (Michael Bacall), 12-year-old child molester Kenny (Cody Lightning), bully Mike (Elden Henson), and self-mutilating shrinking violet Tracy (Zooey Deschanel). While tricked out with a Dogma-like improvisational style and handheld video camera work, Jordan Melamed's feature (written by two of the cast members) leaps clear of stylistic trendiness, let alone angsty-youth-in-trouble clichés. This intense, unsensationalized drama conveys the boredom, volatility, and medicated vagueness of institutional life, always keeping the kids' unvarnished emotions at center stage. The effect isn't always pleasant, but it is riveting. Don't worry: after five minutes you'll forget Gordon-Levitt is the kid from that leading '90s cultural crime, 3rd Rock from the Sun. (1:40) Galaxy. (Harvey)

The Matrix Reloaded The gang in black are back for more bullet time, kung fu, and supposedly deep philosophical musings. Only this time, the adventure is shapeless, overlong, and dangerously incoherent. Now fully strapped with the "superman thing," Neo, a.k.a. "the One" (Keanu Reeves), races through both real and unreal worlds in order to find the Oracle, the Keymaker, and the Architect (presumably, the Butcher and the Baker will pop up in November's Matrix Revolutions), all of whom must be confronted in order to save the last remnant of humanity. Unfortunately, what they've got to say doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense, nor does the relentless exposition qualify as a fun time at the movies. Happily, some of these problems are mitigated by the requisite jaw-on-the-floor action scenes, at least one of which (Neo versus an army of Agent Smiths), has to rank as one of the finest ever filmed. (2:18) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Macias)

*A Mighty Wind The latest from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and his ensemble of comics and character actors is another high-concept parody: when the legendary folk music impresario Irving Steinbloom passes away, his son organizes a tribute show featuring the crème de la crème of the 1960s Bleecker Street scene. The event heralds the return of such seminal acts as the Folksmen (Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) and the reunited Mitch and Mickey (Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara). Wind features the genius comic turns (Levy's shell-shocked Brian Wilson impersonation vies with Fred Willard's unctuous band manager for the show-stealing throne) and deadpan shtick that's become synonymous with the all-star collective. But although Wind is still far funnier and more inventive than most of what passes for yukfests these days, this experiment in without-a-net creative comedy never quite gels; one senses that not even the editing room could turn what's essentially a number of disparate, fragmented laugh-riot ideas into the cohesive tour de force their legacy demands. (1:27) California, Embarcadero, Empire. (Fear)

Nowhere in Africa Fleeing Germany on the eve of Hitler's rise to power, an upper-class Jewish woman (Juliane Köhler) and her five-year-old daughter relocate to Africa. Helping her husband manage a farm in Kenya, she bristles at her new surroundings while the girl must adjust to the confinement of English boarding school rules. But thanks to a kindly cook (Sidede Onyulo) and their new environment's "primitive" charms, the family slowly falls in love with their adopted homeland. The inexplicable winner of this year's Best Foreign Film Oscar, director Caroline Link's melodramatic travelogue seems constructed from spare parts of typical nondomestic favorites: a pinch of historical tragedy made personal here, a dash of inner-journey cliché there, a hefty amount of semipatronizing attitudes toward the "other" (when, really, we're all the same underneath!). It's a familiar enough safari through foreign film-lite landscapes perfect for the toothless section of Blockbuster Video's import shelf, though anyone expecting anything past pretty scenery will find themselves heading nowhere fast. (2:18) Four Star, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Fear)

Owning Mahowny Dan Mahowny (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a mild-mannered bank manager by day and an equally straight-faced gambling fiend by night. He begins skimming from his work to play the tables and pay off his betting debts, but his obsession takes over as his colorless girlfriend (Minnie Driver) tries in vain to coax him from the cards. Though director Richard Kwietniowski applies a nice, austere touch to the true-life material, which is based on Gary Ross's book Stung, Owning Mahowny only seems like the latest portrait in the rogue's gallery of pale, hunched thinking-person's losers in which Hoffman specializes. Like the high-rolling Mahowny, Hoffman is a victim of his own success, riding a wave of these acting showcases. Let's hope this elegant yet ultimately sterile film is the last in that streak – for the actor's sake. (1:47) Galaxy. (Kimberly Chun)

*The Pianist Roman Polanski's The Pianist is a stunning look at one man's journey through the maze of fascism – a detailed map partly drawn from the filmmaker's own memories of his childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland. Pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is separated from his family as they are sent to Dachau, and he takes refuge in apartments that become solitary-confinement cells. When Szpilman finally wanders into the world once again, he finds a seemingly endless street of wreckage. The world has become a landfill, and only now is there a possibility of freedom within it. The same blunt paradoxes that define The Pianist's visual landscape color the film's view of human nature. In particular, the movie emphasizes that Szpilman's talent and reputation as a pianist save him from death. There's a wry incredulity to Polanski's documentation of Szpilman's survival, a quality furthered by the Brody's performance: his face is operatically sorrowful on the surface, yet it's the subtle shifts in his expressions that are truly revealing. (2:28) Four Star. (Huston)

*Raising Victor Vargas Set in the Latino blocks of New York City's Lower East Side one hot summer, Peter Sollett's film at first blush looks like a classic tale of teenage stud-male hubris taken down a few pegs by innate female superiority – the usual lesson in humility ending with the usual conciliatory kiss. Which indeed is part of the agenda here, but only part. Victor (Victor Rasuk) is a 16-or-so-year-old with a smile like melting butter and a body whose muscles he's wont to flex, even if they're not much more than a figment of his overconfident imagination. Caught about to boink "Fat Donna" (Donna Maldonado) upstairs, he seizes on the conquest of model-looking, wildly uninterested Judy (Judy Marte) as the ticket to salvage his temporarily tainted reputation as a high-end ladies' man. Toeing a line between high comedy and near tragedy that's utterly natural throughout, Raising Victor Vargas is a tiny yet well-crafted story. With its warm photography, exceptional nonpro actors, and frequent hilarity, this very small movie is an almost perfectly realized joy. (1:40) Balboa, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Sea The elderly fishing magnate (Gunnar Eyjólfsson) of a small Icelandic town gathers his children together on the eve of publishing his memoirs. Once his clan and their significant others arrive, the "joyous" reunion quickly turns sour as family feuds, childhood wounds, and age-old bitterness reach a boiling point. The second film from filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik) represents a major leap forward in storytelling chops, as the director crafts a family portrait balancing the iciness of a Bergman psychodrama with the hellish irreverence of a Bosch painting. As all of the hallmarks of dysfunctional kin-meltdown narrative (infidelities, incest, rape, betrayal, plain ol' piss-poor parenting) fall into place, Kormákur's long-day journey into night suddenly turns rural Iceland into a nuclear winter of discontent, where the only thing colder than the frozen tundra are the hearts of blood relations. See it with someone you loathe. (1:49) Opera Plaza. (Fear)

Spellbound A frightening, often comedic look into the family lives of the nation's top young spellers, Jeff Blitz's documentary too easily balances the oddities of overachievers: if there's an obsessed speller, there's also a nonchalant one; some families are wealthy, some are poor. There's diversity, love, faith, and most predictably, a fight against the odds. Though the film builds tension as it reaches various humiliating climaxes at the microphone, it suffers the same malady as its subjects: it feels far more stage-managed than earned or lived. (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Gerhard)

Together Why is it that the violin is most often the musical melodrama's weapon of choice? The shapely four-stringed starlet racks up another screen credit in Together, playing second fiddle to a father-son story – 13-year-old wunderkind Xiaochun (Tang Yun) and his pop (Liu Peiqi), a working-class cook – that's as old as the proverbial hills. Dad's a bit dim-witted but kindhearted enough to know that his boy deserves better than a life in the sticks. So he and the prodigy leave the provinces for Beijing, where the boy quickly aces the musical academy's competition yet only places fifth. It's not the last time the two-man family will face an obstacle that tests their resolve or references their past. Director Chen Kaige mutes his jabs at contemporary society within a simple, sappy story of musical aspirations and family pathos. But it's not that Together's lack of discernible political critique, critique that's prevalent in much of the director's other work, is the cause of disappointment so much as the film's rote treatment of its subject. (1:46) Albany, Bridge, Empire, Piedmont. (Fear)

The Trip Alan (Larry Sullivan) is a closeted Republican journalist and Tommy (Steve Braun) a longhaired gay rights activist when they first meet in 1973 Los Angeles. Many pages of sitcomish dialogue later, they become a couple, albeit one undone (as is the movie) by a ridiculous midpoint crisis that manages to put Alan on par with Anita Bryant as a late 70s hero for homophobes. He didn't mean it, really! Next stop, 1984, at which point AIDS provides a convenient opportunity for healing-if-tragic reconciliation between the long-since-estranged duo. As long as it isn't taking itself too seriously, this trite but harmless dramedy gets by on cute leads and a sweet romance. Once the Will and Grace-meets That 70s Show wannabe-ing turns into Philadelphia meets defanged The Living End, however, it's clear that ambition well outstrips ability here. A weak script and a low budget conspire to render writer-director Miles Swain's first feature the kind of all-surface "period piece" defined by retro wigs, thrift shop costumes, a checklist of pop cultural references, familiar archival footage, and the usual compilation-tape oldies. Not helping one bit are punishingly broad comedy relief turns from supporting players Alexis Arquette, Jill St. John, and Sirena Irwin. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Winged Migration Its unassuming title and topic (migratory birds) notwithstanding, Jacques Perrin's documentary Winged Migration is of a feather with the greatest of action movies: the only time the screen is not occupied with ambushes, crash landings, gunshots, daring escapes, murderous crustaceans, and crumbling icebergs, is when it follows the birds in pure, sensational flight. Five crews of more than 450 people, with 17 pilots and 14 cinematographers, were involved in filming these birds in flight, and still the resulting sequences are so close, so immediate, so lacking in artifice, that you would swear they were filmed by another bird. And it's a running theme that while the humans are so ingenious as to bring the film off – traveling across 40 countries in all seven continents, from the Eiffel Tower to Monument Valley, the Arctic to the Amazon – the indefatigable birds themselves are even more astounding. (1:29) Albany, Clay, Empire, Piedmont, Smith Rafael. (Amir Baghdachi)

Wisegirls Leaving a troubled past behind her in the Midwest, med-school dropout Meg Kennedy (Mira Sorvino) heads to Staten Island for a fresh start. She finds a job waiting tables at an upscale Italian restaurant and makes fast friends with the other waiters (Mariah Carey, Melora Walters). Before long, though, things soon become less Mystic Pizza, more The Sopranos, as the eatery's Mafioso owners and pistol-packin' clientele draw the naive Meg deeper into their unseemly world. Though there's nothing particularly original about Wisegirls' gangster moments – the mob characters are stereotypical Corleone knockoffs – it's the heartfelt relationship between the three women that make the film stand out. Sorvino, who's been hit-and-miss since winning her Oscar, does nice work as a wounded good girl who struggles to find her inner toughness. But let's be honest – the only reason anyone's bound to take note of Wisegirls is the presence of Carey. Truth be told, it'd be a shame if Glitter really has sullied her acting career for all time, because she turns in a pretty decent supporting performance here. (1:36) Roxie. (Eddy)

Wrong Turn We haven't had a good psycho country yokels vs. tenderfoot city folk horror flick in awhile, and despite the stamp of fx wizard Stan Winston, Wrong Turn ain't no Pumpkinhead. Or Hills Have Eyes, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or any of the other movies that exist to warn us of the horrible beasties that thrive in wild, undiscovered, no-cell-phone-service corners of America. An ill-timed short cut and a flat tire lead to a dirt-road collision between a medical student (Desmond Harrington) and a group of kids on a camping trip (including Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Eliza Dushku); naturally, they're stranded deep in West Virginia woods patrolled by a family of hideously disfigured, inbred mutants who enjoy a little cannibalism when the opportunity runs squealing into their front yard. Plot holes are numerous, characters are one-note, and genuine scares are minimal. But at least the reasonably gory Wrong Turn offers a little variation on the played-out teen serial killer formula and, though a Deliverance reference is made, refrains from recycling "Dueling Banjos." (1:21) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*X2: X-Men United Everyone's favorite mutants are back, with the same director (Bryan Singer), cast (Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen), and thankfully, a sequel that's far more satisfying and action-packed than the first X-Men installment. Brian Cox joins the fray as the sinister Stryker, an antimutant crusader hellbent on using Professor X (Stewart) as a pawn in his scheme to make Earth a humans-only environment; as the title suggests, X-Men (and women) good and bad must join forces to protect their kind. This go-round, we get plenty of scenes where individuals get to display their awesome powers (including new face Alan Cumming, as the teleporting Nightcrawler) and more attention to character development than you'd expect from a comic book-based movie with a huge ensemble cast – not to mention a meatier plot that's pretty much nonstop action. Good stuff, and an auspicious start to the summer movie season. (2:15) Century 20, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Rep picks

*All the Real Girls The latest slice of poetic ruralism from director-cowriter (with star Paul Schneider) David Gordon Green (George Washington) is the story of a small-town Lothario who falls headfirst into puppy love with his best friend's sister (Zooey Deschanel). After she loses her virginity to another guy, the low-rent Casanova experiences heartbreak for the first time. Starting off at the zero mark of a romance, Girls skirts the cinematic road most traveled – swelling strings, torrid stares – and charts a course for the small, private moments that make up the beginning stages of a relationship. (1:30) Red Vic. (Fear)

*Bus 174 Brazil's immense contradictions between dire poverty and populist rhetoric are on full display in this unusually thoughtful investigation into a notorious bus hijacking that ends, somewhat unpredictably, in a measure of tragedy. Widely videotaped by television news crews at the time, the incident could have easily ended up a simple tabloid story. Instead, gifted documentarians José Padilha and Marcos Prado insist on tossing this pebble of a scandal into the water, so to speak, to allow their own antitabloid camera to trace the ripples it sets off. As they investigate the actual motivations and influences that carried ill-fated hijacker Sandro do Nascimento to his grand showdown, the filmmakers uncover a history of trauma and tragedy so acute that their archival documentary quickly develops a dimension of fictional drama, as though the news had been written by an accomplished classical playwright with a feel for doomed destiny. Padilha and Prado refuse to separate their individual from the violent society that created him, and in so doing have created a documentary masterpiece. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Rich)

*Che! Son of Betty Boop cartoonist Max, director Richard Fleischer had just made box-office hits out of both sci-fi intestinal fantasy Fantastic Voyage and Tony Curtis as The Boston Strangler (but not the overbudgeted musical Dr. Doolittle) when a grateful Twentieth Century Fox assigned him Che! Who better to make a film about the late revolutionist and "now generation" saint? Well – everybody, really. Still, Fleischer's suspiciously "whatever" versatility won out. Thus cinematic history was made in June 1969 with the launch of this famous disaster, an (extremely) pseudo-documentary fictionalization that tried to appeal to both the "radical youth" audience and cold war-paranoiac bourgeoise. It portrays Che Guevara (erstwhile Doctor Zhivago Omar Sharif) as a puppy-eyed idealist drawn "innocently" into the Cuban revolution. Ah, but soon the corruptive nature of evil communism itself turns him into a cold-blooded, unfeeling, mass execution-approving idealogue. He's given ultimate dying-breath comeuppance by a humble Bolivian peasant who might as well be speaking lines written by the CIA. (And who knows?) In a jaw-dropping cartoon of a performance by future one-arm-pushup-king Jack Palance, Fidel Castro is portrayed as a back-stabbing schemer, boozer, womanizer, speech-cribber, and ultimately insecure rube. The scene in which he and Che finally part ways is played awfully like a forlorn lovers' parting, with Castro suppressing needy tears as nobly (and as subtly) as Joan Crawford ever did. Glossy, energetic, and idiotic, Che! has plenty of gringo actors playing fictive figures in the most stereotypical fashion imaginable. It's a camp classic of 1960s Hollywood studio daft conservatism right up there with John Wayne's Green Berets. Note the presence of cult icon Jesus Franco (Succubus, Venus in Furs) in the cast. Extremely little-seen since its release – the major studios tend to maintain obliviousness toward their worst pre-video-age embarrassments – this misinformation classic will be unspooled at the Werepad with 1962's equally infamous featurette Red Nightmare, in which Dragnet's Jack Webb personally leads us on a tour of every red, white, and blue-blooded American's patriotic bad dream. Incredibly, it was originally called The Commies Are Coming, The Commies Are Coming. You might never be able to raise your jaw again. Werepad. (Harvey)

The Day I Will Never Forget Prolific documentarian Kim Longinotto (Divorce Iranian Style, Gaea Girls) takes on a subject completely foreign to most Western folk: female circumcision, as practiced by a Somali community in Kenya. Yep, it's painful to imagine, and it's even more painful to hear a little girl's screams while she's having the "operation" (done with a razor and little or no anesthetic) performed. Intent on not simply condemning a tradition that seems strange to foreigners, Longinotto attempts to explore the reasons behind the procedure, but the "it's our culture" argument seems pretty weak when it's clear girls who are circumcised – most against their will – suffer discomfort and medical problems for years thereafter. Several girls (including a runaway bride) and women (including a nurse who is strongly opposed to the operation) are profiled, and the film ends on a high note as a group of girls taking advantage of Kenya's first anticircumcision law score a groundbreaking legal victory. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Eddy)

Gangs of New York Gangs of New York is a disaster – not even of the colorful kind that might reflect some idiosyncratic glory back on its maker, but a thwarted-epic mediocrity that suggests creative waffling and executive interference from shooting-day one. The first reel manages to overestablish every ham-fisted motif, betray Martin Scorsese's fatally desperate willingness to please, and build a lunatic air the subsequent two-and-a-half hours can never quite live down – all in one awful 20-minute prologue. A scrappy group of mostly Irish immigrants led by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson) makes its final stand against the bullying "natives" of crime boss Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) in the working-class Five Points district of 1846 New York City. They're horribly crushed, with Vallon's only child witnessing his father's death by the knife of the Butcher himself. A moment later Priest's now grown-up son, Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio), is sprung from 15 intervening years in juvie, determined to get revenge. Gangs wants to be so much: critique of this land-of-immigrants' xenophobia, paean to NYC's street-fighting roots, American class-struggle primer, heterosexual love story, father-son love story, buddy pic, bloody goosing of costume drama. Yet it all shows up on screen as awful composite cliché, when anything past faint intention registers at all. (2:57) Red Vic. (Harvey)

*'Midnites for Maniacs' The Four Star's annual series of movies so insane they can be screened only at the stroke of midnight continues with Brian DePalma's 1980 thriller Dressed to Kill. Four Star.