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. MadCat Women's International Film Festival

The seventh annual MadCat Women's International Film Festival runs Sept 9-Oct 2. Venues include El Rio, 3158 Mission, S.F.; Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia, S.F.; PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, S.F. For tickets (most shows $7-20) and complete schedule information, call (415) 436-9523 or go to www.madcatfilmfestival.org. All times p.m. For commentary, see last week's Bay Guardian.

Fri/12

ATA "Program Two: Coming From" (short films) 8.

Tues/16

El Rio The Student Nurses 8:30.

Opening

Cabin Fever See Script Doctor, page 44. (1:34) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London.

*Herod's Law Herod's Law, a cynical satire of Mexican politics, knows just where to throw its sharpened knives – it is the first film to directly attack the country's long-standing ruling party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) and was nearly banned by the now-defunct powers that be before sweeping the box office back in 2000. Finally opening here in the midst of a gubernatorial media circus and under the larger shadow of subliminal federal fascism, its timing seems eerily apropos. The small township of San Pedro de los Saguaros has a knack for unpleasantly disposing of mayors, which worries state officials as an election looms near. They need a patsy to temporarily oversee the burg until the votes are cast, so they turn to the most bumbling party member they can find: Juan Vargas (Damián Alcázar), a junkyard attendant with a Zapata mustache and a naively ideological bent; before long, though, he's establishing authority through the time-honored political cocktail of blackmail, intimidation, and empty promises. To say filmmaker-cowriter Luis Estrada's Swiftian vision of society is dark doesn't quite cut it; his film presents a landscape of absolute corruption, where revolutions and religion can be bought and good intentions quickly morph into blind greed. (1:56) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Fear)

Lost in Translation See "Sleepless in Shinjuku," page 48. (1:45) Metreon.

*Matchstick Men See Movie Clock. (2:00) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Orinda, Shattuck.

*Millennium Actress Coming after his unsettling psycho-thriller Perfect Blue, anime director Satoshi Kon's second feature is a sweeping, visionary tapestry of fiction, memory, and history to which the word masterpiece may possibly apply. The premise is deceptively simple, but the technique positively kaleidoscopic, as a documentary crew interviews a famously reclusive actress who mysteriously vanished from the screen some 30 years before. Her reminisces trigger a series of flashbacks to the highlights of her film career and a lifelong search for true love, while Kon deftly shuffles time and space through a series of ingeniously conceived transitions that could only have been realized with animation. The tale of one person's life grows steadily to ultimately become a thousand-year history of Japan, seen though its film industry, punctuated by numerous nods to the works of Kurosawa and Ozu, and Godzilla. Academics, movie buffs, and anyone with a more-than-passing interest in Japanese culture and cinema will be handsomely rewarded, but Millennium Actress also packs a devastating, purely emotional wallop that should be accessible to all. (1:27) Metreon. (Macias)

Once upon a Time in Mexico A corrupt CIA agent (Johnny Depp), a drug lord (Willem Dafoe), a defrocked military general, and several other sundry parties vie for political pole position on the eve of a possible presidential coup. Only one person can restore order to the land: the mythic mariachi-with-no-name (Antonio Banderas) who's hell-bent on revenge. The third in filmmaker Robert (Desperado) Rodriguez's Mexico trilogy re-imagines a Leone-esque showdown as a chipotle western, gleefully tweaking genres galore – dig Depp's third-act Zatoichi gunfighter! – while slyly pinholing decades of Latino cinematic lore (Dafoe's shoe-polish Latin is a dead ringer for Charlton Heston's Touch of Evil southern-border karaoke). The ensuing mayhem alternately hits and misses its mark; few filmmakers capture the giddy fun and reverb-ed ridiculousness of action films as well as Rodriguez does, yet several chase sequences look less like scenes than filmed storyboards, and his attempt to cram a three-hour epic into 98 minutes ends up suffering from a bad case of decompression sickness. (1:38) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London. (Fear)

*Once upon a Time in the Midlands See "The Good, the Bad, the Snuggly," page 44. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck.

September 11 See Critic's Choice. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

*So Close Veteran fight choreographer and Jet Li collaborator Cory Yuen has crafted a big old hunk of grade-A cheese in this female action fantasia. Lynn (Shu Qui) and Sue (Zhao Wei) are sisters with a familial grudge they've turned into a career path, using James Bondian techno-gadgets and Matrix-ian martial arts moves to infiltrate, overpower, and blackmail (or steal from) maximum-security, multinational corrupt corporations. Sure, they shoot lots and lots of extras ... but for a good cause, sorta. Once her onetime boyfriend reenters the picture, however, unflappable Lynn considers retiring the family business entirely. But first she'll have to evade an evil CEO's assassins; elude butch cop Kong (Karen Mok), who's launched a dogged search for the mysterious hit-chick "Angel;" and prevent rebellious little sis from getting into big trouble. The action set pieces are as awesome as they are absurd. Granted a larger budget, Yuen proves bigger isn't quite better, since the film's (relative) good taste renders its connective tissue less giddily sexploitative than such prior Hong Kong babefests as Naked Killer or Sex and Zen. Still, this sure kicks Charlie's Angels' ass. (1:47) California, Lumiere. (Harvey)

Ongoing

*American Splendor Shari Springer Berman and Roger Pulcini's film grafts the documentary portraiture of Terry Zwigoff's Crumb on the fictional narrative of Zwigoff's Daniel Clowes adaptation, Ghost World, and comes up with something less than either of those great films – but still the best U.S. fictive filmmaking in this summer of bummers. American Splendor travels from vignette to vignette, losing and gaining momentum, rarely mimicking the long interior monologues or abrupt endings of Harvey Pekar's comics. It livens up and finds a purpose with the arrival of Hope Davis's Joyce Brabner – the film's chief strong point is its characterization of her marriage to Pekar (Paul Giamatti). Splendor casually addresses the fact that Pekar's comic is drawn by a variety of artists, allowing characters' appearances to shift from one sequence to another (one minute, Drew Freidman's smudgy daytime nightmares; the next, Joe Zabel's crisp nervous energy). An all-animated version might have imaginatively extended this trait, which simultaneously defines Pekar's portraiture and makes it playfully elusive – even free spirited. (1:41) Empire. (Huston)

American Wedding The American Pie films distinguished themselves from the teen flick pack thanks to a recipe of wistful sentimentality and gross-out gags. The third film in the franchise, in which hapless Jim (Jason Biggs) is preparing to marry his flute-playing girlfriend, Michelle (Alison Hannigan), keeps the sap and semen-joke mixture of the first two, then dilutes it to the point of sogginess. Most of the old gang – chiefly, the obnoxious Stifler (Seann William Scott), the urbane Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas), and Jim's well-meaning dad (Eugene Levy) – return for another helping, but with few envelopes left to push, the series' patented comedy of humiliation feels a bit stale by now; even the scatology and cock jokes come off as half-hearted. There's little that director-famous troubadour offspring Jesse Dylan (How High) adds to distinguish this last chapter, either, content to simply reheat once-tasty leftovers ad nauseam until they burn to an inedible crisp. (1:36) Century 20, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

And Now Ladies and Gentlemen Filmmaker Claude Lelouch was a peripheral figure of the French nouvelle vague when he unleashed A Man and a Woman on the world in 1966. The shadow of his most famous film looms large over his latest endeavor, from the inverse in-joke of the title to the trademark bossa nova that plays softly in the background. This go-round is an exhalation of a curdled old Europe, the kind of place where an old-school jewel thief (Jeremy Irons) and a sad-eyed chanteuse (Patricia Kaas) can marinate in a sauce of soul-sick sophistication. Both suffer from sudden blackouts, chronic amnesia, and the ability to tint film stock at will, which eventually leads them to pas de deux into the Moroccan desert searching for magical elixirs and mystical saints. Lelouch toys with the themes of redemption and spiritual enlightenment that poke through the rumpled façade of world-weariness, but seriously, when you're staring at Irons hamming it up in hippie gear, the guffaws begin to drown out any greater notions or higher truths. (2:06) Four Star. (Fear)

Bad Boys II Recipe for Tasteless Blockbuster Casserole: Defrost and reheat congealed main ingredients of Bad Boys, that 1995 action-comedy about two trash-talkin' maverick Miami cops (Will Smith, Martin Lawrence) who refuse to "play by the rules" and have a knack for breaking into allegedly charming shtick, etc. Add creative brain trust of über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director-cinematic Antichrist Michael Bay to insure maximum lowest-common-denominator pandering and plague-of-frogs subtlety. Stir in enough story material for six films; be sure to include romantic interest (Gabrielle Union) in peril, lethal batches of ecstasy, stereotypical villains and over-the-top crime lord (Jordi Mollà, who should be paying Gary Oldman royalties). Spice liberally with gratuitously brutal violence and crass homophobic, racial gags to mask lack of flavor, wit, edge, or basic entertainment value. Cook for an inexplicable two and a half hours. Let simmer; serves millions (excluding critics and those who possess frontal lobes or love movies). Laugh all the way to bank, then scrape burnt mess off bottom of pan into garbage bin. (2:25) Century 20. (Fear)

The Battle of Shaker Heights A misfit teen (Shia LaBeouf) with a serious chip on his shoulder and an obsession with war reenactments tries to negotiate the minefields of adolescence, a beyond fucked-up home life, and a crush on the older sister (Amy Smart) of his preppy best friend (Elden Henson). Those Project Greenlight fans who tuned in every week to watch the behind-the-scenes car wreck of the film's making will find this bland exercise in faux irreverence anticlimactic; there's nothing nearly as interesting in the final product as there was in any given episode of the show. Neophyte directors-contest winners Kyle Rankin and Efram Potelle's modus operandi seems to primarily consist of pointing a camera toward movement, giving the whole endeavor the feeling of an expensive student film project. LaBeouf gamely attempts to inject an angry young man into the smart-ass-by-numbers caricature and give his rebel a cause, but not even his natural charisma can keep this battered battleship afloat.

(1:25) 1000 Van Ness. (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) Galaxy. (B. Ruby Rich)

*Bugs! A distant cousin to the fine-tuned bug ballet of Microcosmos, the IMAX Bugs! – in thrillingly unsubtle 3-D – finds a more Hollywood-style drama in the kingdom of small critters, focusing on the life span of a green mantis nicknamed by his Latin proper name, Hierodula, and the charming Great Mormon butterfly, Papilio. Their parallel lives of eating, shedding, and transforming amount to character development that pays off when adulthood makes them natural enemies (one is the predator of the other). But this children's film has climaxes of all types – even a mantis sex scene so racy the producers conclude it with a leaf screen. The film, narrated by Judi Dench and running through musical styles like an Olympic gymnast going for gold, is presented without irony by Terminix. (:40) Metreon IMAX. (Gerhard)

Camp Camp takes us through a season at Camp Ovation, where all of the most talented drama geeks disappear to each summer, in case anyone was wondering. Michael arrives fresh from getting bashed at his high school prom for showing up in drag. Vlad fights hard to dispel golden-boy impressions (but nonetheless looks and sings like the missing sixth Backstreet Boy) and is somehow, mysteriously straight. Ellen, slightly insecure and friend to all of the fags at Camp Ovation, is glad to hear it. They and the rest of the drama gang eat, drink, and sleep tap routines, Shakespearean monologues, and show tunes, show tunes, show tunes, producing a new play at the grueling rate of every two weeks. While there are some seriously After-School Special moments, it's a sweet film with some good performances and a couple of plot lines it's a pleasure to think a small portion of teenage America may experience. (1:54) Balboa. (Lynn Rapoport)

Confusion of Genders Confusion of Genders, directed by French novelist Ilan Duran Cohen and starring a cast of improbably gorgeous, angsty actors, is a surprisingly sweet meditation on growing older without giving up one's sexual adventurousness. Thirtysomething hero Alain is a neurotic lawyer pursued by several wet dreams' worth of hot young men and women. But as much as he adores bisexual promiscuity, he also wants to settle down, get married to his smart female boss Laurence, and have kids. Although everyone around him seems more or less comfortable with Alain's appetites, he's inexplicably torn between his beautiful male lover Christophe (who says he doesn't care if Alain sleeps around) and his wife (who says she doesn't care if he loves her). Generally French comedies should be avoided, but Confusion of Genders proves that when it comes to treating queerness and nonmonogamy with a light touch, nobody can do it better. (1:34) Galaxy. (Annalee Newitz)

*The Cuckoo In Alexander Rogozhkin's brilliant satire, Veiko (Ville Haapasalo), a Finnish lad recruited by the S.S., has pulled the short straw of duty: he's been "cuckoo'd," or chained (literally) to a rock with a sniper rifle and instructions to kill advancing enemy soldiers. After he eventually Houdinis his way out of the predicament, he runs across a local Lapp lass (Anni-Kristiina Juuso) who's nursing a wounded Russian officer (Viktor Bychkov) back to health. Both the strapping lad and the elder gentleman wield a strong attraction to the earth mother – who's got more than enough libido for all three of them – and a mutual hatred of each other. None of them, however, share a common tongue. Rogozhkin's handling of the trio's skewed three-way conversations is so deadpan it would give Kaurismäki pause, but his central conceit, that even humanity at its worst can eventually fashion a forum and persevere, betrays a pulse behind the smirk. (1:44) Galaxy. (Fear)

Devdas The prodigal son (Sharukh Khan) of a wealthy clan returns home intending to marry his childhood sweetheart (Aishwarya Rai). Family feuding and fate intervene, however, and his beloved is married off to an older man against her will. Our hapless hero then spirals down a bottle, trying to drink away memories of his lost love with typically tragic results. One of the most expensive Indian films ever made, this latest take on the Hindi warhorse gets the full Bollywood treatment (beyond-opulent settings, lush costume changes, several spectacle-on-steroids musical numbers), jacking the Wuthering Heights doomed romance angle up 'til every tear duct overfloweth. Director Sanjay Leela Bhansali knows how to lay on the extravagance, yet this marriage of giddy genre excessiveness and old-school "weepies" seems surprisingly empty; even with a heart lain bare on its sleeve, Devdas is so preoccupied with being epic that it ultimately forgets to give the organ a dramatic pulse. (3:02) Four Star. (Fear)

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star Dickie Roberts (David Spade) is a washed-up former child actor who desperately wants a comeback. His chance appears in the form of a coveted role in Rob Reiner's new film, but the director, playing himself, suggests that the bizarre Dickie could only be "normal" enough for the part if he relived his nonexistent childhood. Thus (go ahead; smack your forehead) Dickie hires a suburban family to retrain him. Spade's sarcastic, bitchy-man-child schtick ("buh-bye") has served him well over the years, and the comic, who does resemble an escapee from Children of the Corn, easily makes it the 'tude of a former child star. But Spade and the film are hot and cold. Some scenes are truly funny, others unbearably cheesy, and the writing skirts some real opportunities for mischief. A poker game between Spade, Leif Garrett, Corey Feldman, Dustin Diamond, Barry Williams, and Danny Bonaduce is bland as the latter's talk show, The Other Half, not the awesome bitch-fest it could have been. Among the film's amusing moments: a "We Are the World"-style chorus featuring dozens of former child stars. (1:39) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Koh)

*Dirty Pretty Things Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, High Fidelity) has returned over and over to smaller British projects between Hollywood assignments, notably two Roddy Doyle adaptations (The Snapper, The Van). Dirty Pretty Things is by a newish writer, Steve Knight, and in its tonally very different way it's almost as fresh a take on polyglot London as My Beautiful Laundrette. Things revolves around Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Nigerian doctor-exile living a hand-to-mouth life in the U.K. He's illegally working as a cab driver and a night clerk at a boutique hotel run by pragmatically slimy Juan (Sergi Lopez). Likewise employed at the hotel as housekeeping staff is Muslim Turkish Senay (Audrey Tautou), a registered refugee awaiting governmental approval of her immigrant status. Before long, Okwe discovers that the hotel profits from on-site organ harvesting that preys on desperate illegal immigrants. Knight's script doesn't always smooth together its various mystery, suspense, caper, and slice-of-life elements. The dialogue is sometimes too pontificating, and the incipient romance between Okwe and Senay is perhaps the least effective aspect here. But Frears handles it all so beautifully that the end result is still near extraordinary. (1:49) Grand Lake, Orinda. (Harvey)

*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 20, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Freaky Friday Thanks to a magic fortune cookie, mom Jamie Lee Curtis and daughter Lindsay Lohan (who also starred in The Parent Trap, another Disney remake) swap bodies and learn to see things through each other's eyes. While the film has its highlights – Curtis on the back of a motorbike, Lohan faking her way Milli Vanilli-style through a garage rock gig – it still feels a bit stale and is less playful and goofy than the original. The new Freaky Friday taps the clichés of the overworked, under-attentive mother and the teen acting out because she needs TLC to the max. The result: an MTV-soundtracked, Hot Topic-clad, formula family flick. Still, not bad for a summer afternoon rife with low expectations and girlish giggles. (1:49) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Sabrina Crawford)

*Freddy vs. Jason If you're not a fan of horror movies (specific subgenre: '80s slasher flicks), if you loathe excess violence, or if your favorite movie of 2002 was The Hours, don't even bother. Freddy vs. Jason is not for you. However, any kid who grew up shrieking with delight over the creative kills of the almighty Krueger and Voorhees is bound to have a good time with this one, which sees the terrible two at first allied (on Elm Street), then locked in an epic, exceptionally blood-drenched clash of the titans (at Camp Crystal Lake). As "cinema," Freddy vs. Jason has some problems – laughable dialogue, plot holes, and a heroine whose figure is the most memorable part of her performance. But to quote the film, "Freddy is fighting Jason! What more do you want?!" (1:32) Century 20, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Girl from Paris A young agricultural student (Mathielde Seigner) buys a gone-to-seed farm in the French countryside from a bitter, retiring widower (Michel Serrault). Her attempts to modernize the estate's business meet with a resounding success until the cold season comes in, wherein the elder gentleman realizes she may need his help. What initially starts out as yet another anti-society/pro-nature trip down spiritual enlightenment lane slowly transforms into an elegiac look at loneliness in both the spring of youth and the winter of the twilight years. The film doesn't avoid the inherent sentimentality of the material so much as come at it sideways, presenting the duo's tentative reaching out towards each other less as a string-laden message than an ambivalent attempt at capturing the toll of emotional isolation. It still suffers from a tone that's more meandering than meditative, but its ability to negotiate prickly poignancy minus the sap gives the story an oddly compelling charm. (1:43) Galaxy, Oaks. (Fear)

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) Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Jeepers Creepers 2 The trench-coated, winged killer – nearing the end of his every-23-years, 23-day feeding cycle, begun in the first film – returns to menace cornfields and bucolic, conveniently deserted country roads. Especially country roads traversed by school buses full of nubile young high school athletes. Logic problems and bad acting are, not surprisingly, in abundance, but the movie really does itself in by violating the "don't show the monster too much" horror movie rule (Hey! It's the Creeper! In close-up! Again!). Also, if you're going to show a headless corpse staggering about, it should at least be gruesome, if you can't manage scary. Even if you don't take into account its controversial writer-director (Victor Salva, a convicted child molester), Jeepers Creepers 2 seldom rises above mediocre, with only a knowingly exaggerated performance by Ray Wise (Laura Palmer's dad on Twin Peaks) worth noting. (1:44) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Magdalene Sisters The Magdalene Laundries were set up as sanctuaries for Ireland's "wayward girls," a broad term that could be applied to young women who'd given birth to a child out of wedlock, such as Rose (Dorothy Duffy), or who'd been raped, like Margaret (Anne Marie Duff). Run by an order of nuns bearing the beyond-ironic moniker Sisters of Mercy, these church-operated institutions preached spiritual penance through hard labor and corporal punishment. Credit goes to the actresses, mostly unknowns and all pitch-perfect in their roles, but it's the director, Peter Mullan, who fuels the film with a harsh, lyrical fury. The Magdalene Sisters has stirred up its share of controversy (it was denounced by the Vatican the same day it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival), but Mullan has his sights set on bigger game than just kitchen-sink melodrama or sensationalism. His refusal to pander to audience expectations ups the ante substantially; what really makes The Magdalene Sisters such an extraordinary experience is that, unlike most cine-fictional drama rooted in fact, the eventual catharsis feels genuinely earned. (1:59) Empire, Four Star. (Fear)

The Medallion Sucking like there's no tomorrow, this Hong Kong-U.S. coproduction purportedly wrapped principal shooting in March 2002. Given the long pause before release, you might reasonably suspect there were, uh, problems. Craptastic results duly bear out that conjecture. Jackie Chan plays an HK cop trying to protect a Dalai Lama-esque golden child (reference to the cruddy old Eddie Murphy movie fully intended) who controls a medallion that's "the Holy Grail of Eastern mythology." (Really? So the "East" has one mythology now?) It's purported to hold the "key to eternal life." Thus generic snotty British bad guy Julian Sands wants boy, jewelry, etc., or else he'll kill everybody. Insufferable comedy-relief from Lee Evans (Mouse Hunt), abysmal romantic relief from Claire Forlani, routine CGI effects, horrible computer-spat-out scripting, nonstop yet underwhelming action, and a hapless slippery grasp on tone/humor/logic – all these make Medallion the worst Chan movie in aeons. At times it seems intended for children. Whether that's simply a matter of pandering stupidity or whatnot, you can rest assured that no one over the age of 13 will be glad they paid admission price. (1:30) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

My Boss's Daughter (1:26) Century 20, Metreon.

Open Range A group of free-range cattlemen, led by the gruff Boss (Robert Duvall) and a former gunslinger (Kevin Costner), graze their herd near the territorial boundaries of a corrupt, controlling Irish rancher (Michael Gambon). An attempt at intimidation leaves one cowboy wounded and another murdered, leading Boss and his sidekick into town to settle a debt with cold stares and hot lead. Costner's latest directorial musing keeps its B-movie revenge narrative simple and its pacing deliciously deliberate, unafraid to take its time gearing up for an impressively brutal, bullet-ridden climax. A reverence for the genre's iconography, however, holds sway over the storytelling; the film is less a rumination on the Old West than a reference catalogue of old westerns, all homages and hat-tippings. A tendency for third-act speechifyin' and pontificatin' eventually smothers the movie's many pleasures, and what starts out as a lean, mean look at frontier justice turns into a horse opera sunk by an overdose of auterist hubris. (2:20) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

The Order (1:42) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Other Side of the Bed Paula (Natalia Verbeke) dumps boyfriend Pedro (Guillermo Toledo) since, unbeknownst to him, she's in love with his caddish best friend, Javier (Ernesto Alterio). Javier keeps promising Paula he'll leave his wife, Sonia (Paz Vega), who, unbeknownst to him, has taken her consoling of the crushed Pedro to a decidedly more carnal level. Did I mention that they all have a tendency to unexpectedly break into Jerome Robbins-style choreography and sing bad Euro-pop tunes? This goofy hybrid of bedroom farce and old-school showstopper numbers has its libidinous musical chairs game down but misses the right mix-and-match of genres by a Castilian kilometer. Veteran Spanish director Emilio Martínez-Lázaro knows how to frame scenes but can't seem to work them into something cohesive, and the cast's ability to make the head games and heartbreaks believable is frittered away by fantasy homages that wear out their welcome in seconds flat. (1:44) Balboa. (Fear)

Party Monster How could a movie that casts Macauley Culkin as Michael Alig (and gives nostalgic CPR to Stacey Q's "Two of Hearts") go wrong? Too many celebrity bit parts, not enough narrative focus, and absolutely no Screaming Rachel are just three of countless accidental answers provided by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato's drama debut. Bailey and Barbato's circus loses it charm long before it becomes an excuse to photograph Culkin and Chloë Sevigny as if they were separated-at-birth twins. The fact that Party Monster is more sympathetic to murderer than to victim would be less annoying if Alig and pal James St. James (Seth Green) were the geniuses the directors seem to think they are. Brattily imaginative? Yes. Brilliantly intelligent? No. Check out Bailey and Barbato's documentary of the same name instead. At least it has Screaming Rachel – if you don't know who that is, your vérité comedy education is incomplete. (1:38) Castro. (Huston)

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl In this seaworthy tale from Ring director Gore Verbinski and action-happy producer Jerry Bruckheimer, offbeat swashbuckler Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) and blacksmith Will Turner (Lord of the Rings elf Orlando Bloom) team up to pursue the snarling buccaneers who've kidnapped Will's beloved Elizabeth (Keira Knightley from Bend It like Beckham). Seems the crew of the Black Pearl (including Geoffrey Rush as their monkey-toting leader) believe she's the key to lifting the nasty curse that plagues them. Pirates taps plenty of familiar motifs – a talking parrot ("Shiver me timbers!"), a cave filled with treasure, cannon fights, people saying, "Arrrr!" – and follows a pretty rote escape-and-capture story line. And yeah, it's based on a Disneyland ride. But thanks in no small part to Depp's oddly endearing performance, the good-natured Pirates aims for fun and largely succeeds. (2:23) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Seabiscuit In the midst of the Great Depression, a second-rate racing nag named Seabiscuit, laden with an oversized jockey (Tobey Maguire), a laconic trainer (Chris Cooper), and a zealous manager (Jeff Bridges), somehow broke track records and captured the public's fancy. Based on Laura Hillenbrand's insanely readable biography, the film adaptation by Gary Ross (Pleasantville) also gets people rooting for the under-horse while imbuing social significance to the sport of kings, though his version seems overflowing with its own sense of stateliness. The movie often seems less a retelling of the legendary equine success story than a catalog of pure Americana, owing as much to Horatio Alger's bootstrap fables or Walker Evans's photography as it does to horse racing and history. Amazing performances, gorgeous autumnal visuals, and elliptical editing provide a wonderful cadence but eventually lose by a nose to Capraesque populist pandering, complete with PBS-friendly narration that equates the martyr mare with New Deal politics quicker than you can say Triple Crown-ed metaphor. (2:21) Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Oaks, Orinda. (Fear)

The Secret Lives of Dentists The erratic Alan Rudolph has always enjoyed, with varying success, diving into self-contained milieus – from the Me Decade mecca in Welcome to L.A. to the famous salons of The Moderns and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. But he's arguably never investigated a scene as familiar yet surprising as the one here: a suburban middle-class marriage, with children. Dentists who share a practice, David (Campbell Scott) and Dana Hurst (Hope Davis) have reached that point in their lives where activity is incessant but actual stimulation is rare; with three very young daughters, a mortgage, and god knows what other ordinary obligations stretching years ahead, their well-plotted future can be seen as either comforting or suffocating. Secret Lives' long climax is nothing more than a family of five getting the flu – and it might be the most engrossing, detailed, nail-biting set piece you'll see all year. (1:44) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

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) Balboa. (Gerhard)

Step into Liquid There's nothing more photogenic than bronzed surfers cutting through sun-dappled waves – and yet there are few things as hard to capture on-screen as the exhilarating rush that makes surfing so addictive and so popular. This paradox has dogged surf-umentaries since their first dip into the cinematic pool, and it's something that Step into Liquid seems to know it can't outpaddle. So filmmaker and pedigreed surf aficionado Dana "Son of Bruce" Brown bypasses capturing lightning in a bottle, concentrating instead on fashioning a cinematic Surf Culture for Dummies that's less an Endless Summer than endless summaries of facts on the modern-day wave-rider lifestyle. The MTV-friendly aesthetics and moondoggy narration (warbly voiced philosophy about harmony, nature, etc.) are a poor substitute for actual adrenaline, however, and even with some gorgeous visuals, it still feels like a simplified tourist version of a second-hand high. (1:28) Smith Rafael. (Fear)

S.W.A.T. As formulaic and predictable as it gets, this assembly-line actioner gets the job done (car chases, gun battles, one-liners, dust-ups with the brass, etc.) but is so, well, so-so it's hardly memorable enough to recommend. Likable stars Samuel L. Jackson (as an "old-school" S.W.A.T. team leader), Colin Farrell (as a gifted officer with something to prove), the perma-snarling Michelle Rodriguez, and the ab-fab L.L. Cool J have their game faces on, but even the vaguely intriguing plot – after he's captured, an internationally notorious fugitive (Olivier Martinez) offers $100 million to whoever busts him out; gangsters of the world soon come calling – plays out utterly by rote. Fine for in-flight entertainment or for Farrell groupies; everyone else, there's still time to catch the truly ostentatious cops-a-go-go flick Bad Boys 2 instead. (1:56) Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Teknolust If ever there were a homegrown movie perfect for smart folks hiding out from summer blockbusters and gubernatorial recall shenanigans, Teknolust is it. Lynn Hershman Leeson wrote the script as a lark when funding failed to materialize for a long-planned female Frankenstein film. Here a different kind of mad scientist, played by Tilda Swinton, downloads herself into her research and creates ... three Tildas. Also in the cast is Karen Black; originally, her character, based on a real-life person, was a rogue FBI agent, a hippie who drops out to become a private eye. But Black wanted to revisit her transsexual research for Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, so Hershman rewrote the agent as a transsexual remade in the image of her favorite actress: Karen Black. Rumor has it the distributor is waiting to see how San Francisco reacts to Teknolust before deciding its fate, so don't sit at home. Besides, given last week's news reports on the latest genetic hybrid (a rabbit crossed with a human), there may not be much time left before the film loses its sci-fi status. (1:22) Four Star. (Rich)

*Thirteen Sure to be regarded as a grrrlish Kids for the '00s thanks to its strong, sharp portrait of prepubescent girls gone wild, Thirteen screams "Pay attention to me!" with a spot-on mixture of adolescent rage and joy. In a debut feature cowritten with then-13-year-old star Nikki Reed, director Catherine Hardwicke manages to catch all the casual cruelty, sex, drugs, and scar tissue of those preteen years with an acuity that'll send a thrill, or chill, of recognition through all you former kids. No doubt the emphasis will be on chills for viewing parents. It doesn't take more than a once-over by seventh grade's hot girl, Evie (Reed), for Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) to go from a poetry-writing nice kid to a furiously acting-out nastee bizkit. Her single mom (Holly Hunter), herself taking it one day at a time, watches in misery as her love story with her baby girl goes horribly wrong. Tracy's "decadence" may ring a tad extreme – sometimes she seems to be trying out every trick in the big book of bad habits. But Thirteen's performances lift it out of the teensploitation camp – there's little that's laughable or kitsch about Wood's and Hunter's bawls-out intensity. (1:40) Empire. (Chun)

*28 Days Later Early in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later, a patient named Jim (Cillian Murphy) awakes from a coma only to find the hospital, the streets, the surrounding buildings, and possibly – probably – the entire world, completely, nightmarishly deserted. The culprit? "Rage," a highly contagious blood virus accidentally unleashed on London by a group of well-intentioned animal rights activists. Symptoms, which manifest in 20 seconds or less, include red eyes, projectile vomiting, and the uncontrollable urge to viciously attack everyone around you. Thanks to the use of digital video, a trembling pop soundtrack, and British slang, 28 Days Later is pretty arty for a genre film. Still, horror is the main event, and like all truly scary movies, this one neatly plays off current events (SARS, for one) to increase the oh-shit-this-might-really-happen vibe. Though this heavily Romero-influenced film isn't overflowing with original ideas, the timing of its release is impeccable. Who isn't afraid of catching a horrible disease, or of waking up to find an entire city wiped out by a scary, unknown event? (1:48) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Uptown Girls Molly Gunn (Brittany Murphy) is the coquettish daughter of a late rock legend. When her inheritance is swindled, Molly is forced to get a job as a nanny to an eerily mature eight-year-old (Dakota Fanning), whose mother is a neglectful record exec (Heather Locklear). The precocious tot is a lot savvier than any real-life third grader on the face of the planet, and the plot never grows beyond predictability: the child must learn to relish her youth, while the adult must ripen into maturity, etc. That said, Uptown Girls isn't as terrible as I expected it to be. My groans were often followed by begrudging chuckles, enabling intermittent suspension of disbelief. (1:33) Century 20, Metreon. (Pham)

*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) Balboa, Metreon IMAX, Smith Rafael. (Amir Baghdachi)

Rep Picks

*'The Animation Show' Animators Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-head, King of the Hill) and Don Hertzfeldt (whose "Billy's Balloon" is a frequent entry in the Spike and Mike fests) join forces with a single mission: to bring the world's best short animated films to the masses. Whether or not this fest represents "the best" is up to the viewer, but there are definately some gems herein: a 1957 Disney product, "Mars and Beyond," which, with sinister space-age music cues, speculates what life might be like on the red planet ("ominous, ultrasonic beings!"); vintage Tim Burton delight "Vincent," the eerie tale of a little boy who idolizes Vincent Price; and "Das Rad," a reflection on human evolution and unchecked industrial growth as seen through the eyes of a pair of stone creatures. Naturally, the programmers (who'll appear in person opening night) also contribute works, highlighted by Hertzfeldt's increasingly hysterical "Rejected" and Judge's early-1990s noodlings (including a peek at what Office Space might have looked like, had it been an animated film). (1:34) Castro. (Eddy)

*The Sniper Billed by the Parkway (as part of its fifth annual Film Noir Fest) as "the first serial killer movie!" – um, what about Fritz Lang's M? – this fairly obscure 1952 programmer is indeed pretty shocking stuff by the standards of the era. Arthur Franz plays a nondescript young man living on the dumpier side of the tracks whose simmering despair, alienation, and neurosis find a relief valve one day in picking off strangers from rooftops with his rifle. Once tasted, it's a hard habit to break. Adolphe Menjou plays Lt. Kafka, a cynical police detective who leads the eventual manhunt. In a last noirish hurrah before his work became increasingly sludgy (The Carpetbaggers, etc.), director Edward Dmytryk largely forsakes the stylish melodrama of his prior thrillers (Murder My Sweet, Crossfire) for a quasi-documentary realism that anticipates such later portraits of all-American meltdom as Peter Bogdanovich's Targets. There's a startling pathos as well as horror to sequences like the one in which Franz tracks a faux-glamorous, touchingly vulnerable working girl (Marie "The Body" Windsor) from bleak one-room apartment to her job as low-rent chanteuse in a cocktail bar – and calmly squeezes the trigger when she pauses for sparse applause at the piano. (1:27) Parkway. (Harvey)