Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Kimberly Chun, David Fear, Dina Gachman, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Laurie Koh, Patrick Macias, and Chuck Stephens. The film intern is Melissa McCartney. See Rep Clock and Movie Clock for theater information.

Opening

The Barbarian Invasions Remy (Remy Girard) is terminally ill; an irascible personality, divorce, and endless flings suggest he's the sort who might die alone. However, his ex-wife Louise (Dorothee Berryman) dutifully guilt-trips their son Sebastien (Stephane Rousseau) into returning to Montreal from London for the sake of a father he's scarcely on speaking terms with. Dad views son as a crass capitalist; son views unrepentant "sensual socialist" dad as, well, an asshole – which he is, among other things. Their gradual reconciliation is foregrounded in the cluttered canvas of Denys Arcand's new film, a belated sequel to 1987's Decline of the American Empire that replaces that film's sexual politics seriocomedy with a thematically sprawling meditation on post-9/11 life. A collapsing Canadian health care system, aging baby boomers queasily entering late middle age, callous and/or lost younger generations, threats to the social order both external (e.g., terrorism) and internal (drug addiction) – these are just a few of the myriad issues Arcand touches on here. He balances them all cleverly, even building up to a close many viewers will find genuinely tear-jerking. This film is winning prizes all over. I found it just as glib, misanthropic, and sentimentally manipulative at times as it is undeniably skillful overall. (2:03) Embarcadero, Empire, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Calendar Girls In a small English town, weekly meetings of the Women's Institute give the local ladies a chance to meet and socialize. Mostly they celebrate the virtues of pressing flowers and making jam – and it all seems fairly staid and harmless. However, when John (John Alderton) passes away from leukemia, his widow, Annie (Julie Walters), and her close friend Chris (Helen Mirren) decide to try and raise money for a memorial at the local hospital. Chris gets the idea that they should do a very tasteful nude calendar – so, inspired by John's idea that women (like flowers) in the final stages of their lives are the most glorious, Chris and Annie convince a number of other W.I. members to join them. As it turns out, the calendar of beautiful mature women baring it all for charity becomes an international sensation. Enjoyable, feisty, and incredibly funny, Calendar Girls – based on a true tale – is a film about women, friendship, and how easy it can be to defy expectations. (1:48) Metreon. (Cindy Emch)

The Cooler William H. Macy is a sadder-sack Bogart, and Maria Bello an updated Gloria Grahame, in this slick indie gloss on retro-Hollywood "B" conventions. He's a former gambler so pathetically ill-starred that he's employed as a "cooler" at a fading-out Vegas casino – a man whose luck is so bad he can be counted on to end winning streaks simply by passing the tables. She's a much younger cocktail waitress with (what else?) a "past." When they fall in love, love redeems them – and their luck, which unfortunately earns the wrath of a casino boss (Alec Baldwin) who can't endure such status quo shifts in the face of his own imminent corporate-management phaseout. The acting is very good, of course – how could Macy disappoint in yet another "lovable loser" role? – and director and coscenarist (with Frank Hannah) Wayne Kramer's story is crafty and flavorful enough in an MGM-circa-1955 way. But even then the story wasn't very fresh or especially interesting, save as a showcase for actors who deserved better. Which they still do. The final reel springs some decent surprises, yet the scent of reheated genre formula is still the strongest smell to emerge from The Cooler. (1:41) Act I and II. (Harvey)

*The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King See "O Lord." (3:21) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Metreon, Orinda.

Mona Lisa Smile See Movie Clock. (1:59) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Shattuck.

What Alice Found So crappy-looking it appears as if transferred to 35mm from Pixelvision, this first feature by A. Dean Bell is cheap in other ways as well. It's a sort of Skeezer Madness, a crude morality fable coached in low-fi cinematic "naturalism." Not that Judith Ivey as Sandra is remotely akin to real life – her Fannie Flagg-esque caricature of a Southern "trash" vamp only needs musical fanfare to become more overtly farcical. Sandra and creepy-vague partner Bill (Bill Raymond) are R.V. sojourners who pick up Maine teenage runaway Alice (Emily Grace) when the latter is rendered carless and helpless – but did they help make her so? As she rides with them toward Florida, Sandra "makes over" Alice in teenage-tart terms, then finally draws her into the trade of truckstop prostitution. Ivey is too theatrical a performer for the film's ersatz Ken Loach docudrama ugliness. "Introduced" here, Grace is just too amateurish (especially in her quasi-Nawth Eastawn accent) to make the illusion of sympathetic brute reality seem any less phony. The ending provides a small degree of moral ambiguity that What Alice Found does not merit in the least. It's strictly in the sex-scare, road-to-criminal ruin tradition of 1930s exploitation flicks until then. (1:35) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Ongoing

*Bad Santa At this point, can any attack on Kris Kringle's public image generate shock? That's one of the chief dilemmas faced by Terry Zwigoff's Bad Santa, which casts Billy Bob Thornton as Willie T. Stokes, a self-described "eating, drinking, shitting, fucking Santa Claus." He's also a crook, robbing stores on Christmas Eve with his elfin partner in crime, Marcus (Tony Cox). Emptying the safes of U.S. consumerist palaces, Stokes is certainly a criminal, but this is a Terry Zwigoff movie: such thievery doesn't make him a villain. Whether documentary or fictive, Zwigoff's films usually sympathize with a malcontented male outcast, and it isn't a stretch to suggest that an ornery shopping-mart Santa makes an apt mouthpiece for the director while he's positioned in the heart of Hollywood. Still, Bad Santa is also a crossover bid; a hilarious shot heralding Stokes and Marcus's annual return to work also signals that Zwigoff wants to raise hell in Arizona, much like his executive producers Ethan and Joel Coen once did. It all ends with a Bing (Crosby's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas") and a bang as Santa sentimentalists bite the bullet and the whole audience gets the finger. (1:30) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Huston)

Brother Bear (1:25) Orinda.

*City of God City of God is a Rio de Janeiro housing project, but rather than simply present it as a setting, director Fernando Meirelles views it as a character – perhaps the dominant one – in the film. In one vivid segment a single fixed point of view witnesses the deterioration of an apartment as it's passed down from one drug dealer to another. The stronger and younger the kingpin, the trashier his kingdom. But static points of view aren't Meirelles's specialty. Working with codirector Kátia Lund, he's stylistically giddy in the face of much adolescent and preadolescent violence, running circles around the surface linearity of the plot's chapter structure and uncorking an array of techniques: God's-eye aerial shots that suggest the almighty has a finger on the fast-forward button, freeze-frame character intros that revive blaxploitation swank, and camera movements that follow the paths of ricocheting bullets or circle around the violence with the speed of a meth-addled figure skater. (2:10) Lumiere. (Huston)

*Die Mommie Die! Charles Busch plays Angela Arden, a onetime Hit Parade song thrush long since retired to the no less up-and-down charts of late-1960s Beverly Hills domesticity. Her marriage to socially conscious but privately loutish film producer Sol Sussman (Philip Baker Hall) having long since soured, Angela channels bank-flooding eddies of theatrical emotion toward her children, her drop-dead wardrobe, her immaculate rose garden, and on occasion her libido – the latest fertilizer being no less than erstwhile Beverly Hills, 90210 hottie Jason Priestley as massively equipped tennis instructor-failed actor-all purpose gigolo Tony Parker. Sol's premature demise sets off a chain reaction of intrigue and backstabbing in which the one stable element is versatile Tony, whose talents really do get around. Adapted from Busch's stage play, director Mark Rucker's first feature does for the cheesier Ross Hunter-style big-screen soaps of the early to mid '60s what Far from Heaven did for the plush Douglas Sirk melodramas made a decade earlier – albeit with tongue planted much farther in cheek – with a star turn just as immaculately realized. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Dirty Pretty Things (1:49) Lumiere.

Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat (1:22) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness.

*Elephant A football jock enters the frame. The mist coming out of his mouth is a visual record of his breath as he crosses the chalk line of the athletic field where he rules and heads toward the blue door of the school where he'll soon die. When the jock greets his girlfriend with a kiss, their names appear on a black intertitle. Nathan and Carrie are 2 of 10 kids named in Gus Van Sant's Elephant – characters who mostly share the same first names of the actors playing them. A Wiseman named Frederick once made High School, a stagy documentary about an institution for teenagers. In comparison, Van Sant's execution is flawless, but his aim isn't so true; he's made a high school film about Columbine. The key word in that last sentence is about: Elephant turns cause-and-effect responses to the high school shooting phenomenon into a mug's game. Many of the rumored, spurious motives and influences behind Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's actions are present here, but not as evidence or proof – they're as disconnected as everything and everybody else in Elephant. If the film were simply an improv-based portrait of an institutional system, it wouldn't be so loaded; the nuances of Van Sant's fascination with teenagers wouldn't be semi-obscured by a mammoth issue. (1:21) Opera Plaza. (Huston)

*Elf Anyone who has appreciated Will Ferrell's manic male cheerleader has long known he resides in the land of lost toys, which may be why this film was literally built around him. With custom-made minisets that call up the magical sarcasm of Being John Malkovich's floor seven and a half, Ferrell, as six-foot-plus Buddy the Elf, stumbles and trips his way into the knowledge that he doesn't belong in the North Pole. He travels to New York City to find his human father (James Caan) and help make naughty into nice. The film shoehorns in the expected plays on Christmas specials past, with the sashaying snowman, the ice-block boat, and a Rudolph climax, but director Jon Favreau freshens the Chex Party Mix with better-than-usual comic touches. (1:37) Balboa, Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness. (Gerhard)

*Gloomy Sunday Though steeped in melodrama, Nick Barkow's novel of overlapping love affairs amid war-torn 1930s Budapest translates stunningly to the big screen. Director Rolf Schübel recaptures all the magic of an old-school drama as his charismatic actors bring the romantic script to life. Very much in love, Laszlo (Joachim Krol) and Ilona (Erika Maroszán) run a restaurant and hire Andras (Stefano Dionisi) to play piano. Andras is quickly pulled in by Ilona's charms, and the three develop an understanding relationship, rather than suffering one man to live without her affection. The film takes its name from the stirring yet depressing song Andras writes for Ilona (in real life, the so-called suicide song, made popular by Billie Holliday, was written in 1935 by Hungarians Rezsö Seress and Laszlo Javor). A return to real movie making, where all the elements blend in a harmony seldom seen in Hollywood these days, Gloomy Sunday cleverly deals with threats to perfect love: the "other man," manipulation, war, and even death. (1:54) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (McCartney)

Gothika (1:35) Century 20, Kabuki.

The Haunted Mansion (1:38) Century Plaza, Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness.

Honey Perky Bronx gal Honey (Jessica Alba, who's easy on the eyes but miscast as a streetwise homegirl) makes ends meet by working at a record store, bartending, and teaching hip-hop dancing at the local community center. After she's discovered by a sleazy music video director, she finds success as a choreographer – which, naturally, jeopardizes her relationships with her best friend (Joy Bryant), budding boyfriend (Mekhi Phifer), the neighborhood kid (Lil' Romeo) she's trying to save from a life of crime, etc. Will Honey maintain her integrity in the world of showbiz? Will she be able to turn that abandoned storefront into the dance studio of her dreams? Duh. Director Bille Woodruff, a video vet, ladles on the celeb cameos (Tweet, Missy Elliott, Ginuwine, Jadakiss) and uses plenty of flashy camera tricks. Unfortunately, the feature-length Honey has no more depth than a three-minute MTV clip; an average episode of Making the Video boasts more unpredictability and emotional range, with considerably less cheesy dialogue. (1:34) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

In America It's tough to put a magical sheen on living in a drug-addled tenement, but writer and director Jim Sheridan (In the Name of the Father) gives it a shot with In America, a modern Irish immigration story based on his own experience. Attempting to escape the memory of their lost son, Johnny (Paddy Considine) and Sarah (Samantha Morton) move to New York City with their two young girls. Dirt poor but determined, wannabe actor Johnny struggles almost inhumanely to make his family's life bearable, but he can't connect to them given his refusal to grieve. Sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger give amazingly natural performances as the daughters who take the ghetto in stride, expressing genuine delight at the flock of pigeons hogging their new digs. Still, Sheridan's gritty New York is too tangible for the ethereal touch to work beyond the eyes of the sisters, and the film's reliance on cosmic intervention at key moments actually injects predictability into an otherwise engaging story. (1:43) Albany, Embarcadero. (Koh)

In the Cut (1:58) Four Star.

*Kill Bill: Volume One Violent? Sure. Derivative? Oh yeah. But Quentin Tarantino's latest effort is pure fun for movie maniacs who enjoy watching a beautifully choreographed fight scene (props to Yuen Wo-ping), the return of a beloved cult star (yo, Sonny Chiba!), and the charms of Uma Thurman, here as deadpan as she is deadly. To be sure, this ain't no Pulp Fiction – that patented, quotable "royale with cheese" chitchat is sorely missed, as is any semblance of a plot beyond revenge, revenge, revenge. Here's hoping Volume Two, due early next year, fills in some of Volume One's more gaping story holes; in the meantime, Tarantino fans can play spot-the-homage and cackle at naysayers who dub this gleeful, deliberate B-movie too gory for words. (1:33) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Last Samurai After James Clavell's Shogun and Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves, noble savage clichés just aren't what they used to be. Yet here's Tom Cruise as Captain Nathan Algren, a Civil War veteran who travels to Meiji-era Japan to become a player in the samurai rebellion, a conflict that pits the ancient ways against a rapidly modernizing world. Falling under the influence of his captor, outlaw Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe), Algren discovers an "intriguing people" whose devotion to "honor" and "loyalty" inspires him to strap on armor that makes him look about as dramatic as an ice hockey player. To be fair, there's some decent action scenes, but they're not enough to compensate for the film's deadly dramatic failings. The big problem with The Last Samurai is director and co-screenwriter Edward Zwick (Glory) and producer Cruise have constructed a warped Akira Kurosawa fantasy without a single plot twist or surprise that isn't glaringly obvious from frame one. (2:24) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Empire, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Macias)

*Lost Boys of Sudan War in Sudan has so far left an estimated two million dead and four million displaced. Dinka tribes of the south have been particularly hard hit. This documentary's protagonists are among some 20,000 cattle-tending "lost boys" who escaped village massacres in which their fathers were killed and their mothers and sisters taken as slaves. Those who survived the trek (including frequent lion attacks) ended up in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps. Filmmakers Megan Mylan and John Shenk follow seven of these teens who are finally cleared for U.S. emigration, sponsored by various church and social service organizations. Their rough landing encompasses everything from the sheer initial joy of having plentiful food to dismay at limited educational opportunities and dead-end factory jobs. "Now it's clear, there is no heaven on earth," one refugee sighs after several months. The outsider's perspective on our "land of opportunity" is quite fascinating, with community-minded Sudanese exhibiting practical values considerably loftier than those around them. The all-American notion that anyone can "get ahead" here by dint of "hard work" proves wobbly: as industrious and eager to learn as the boys are, they nonetheless soon discover cold cash ultimately determines most life paths hereabouts. High on narrative human interest, sobering yet ultimately inspirational, this is a great nonfiction film that you'll end up loving, no matter how tediously worthy it might sound. (1:30) Oaks. (Harvey)

Lost in Translation Halfway through Lost in Translation, it's clear director Sofia Coppola misplaced something other than language somewhere in the air between LAX and Narita. She obviously lost the plot (what glassine, paper-thin bits of it existed, by all accounts) and decided instead to just leave the camera running on her assembled beautiful or amusing characters-slash-objets – a preppily lush Scarlett Johansson, the sleek playground of Tokyo's Park Hyatt, and a resigned Bill Murray – hoping they'd provide the in-flight impromptu entertainment. Maybe in a perfectly art-directed world, they would suffice to fill the pretty vacant spaces of this barely outlined tale. But that's assuming we're as easily amused by Lost in Translation's 105 minutes of good-looking images and vacuous chitchat as we are by sound bites about celebrity cribs. That's assuming we've never glimpsed the sci-fi Tokyo skyline, tried our hand at karaoke, or followed Murray as he navigated a real, meaty part. Instead, Coppola succumbs to the same mistake made by pop stars who get lazy, believe their own hype, and decide everyone can relate to songs about their distorted experiences. (1:45) Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

Love Actually Screenwriter Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones's Diary) is the man who practically invented the modern-day "Britsy-cutesy" template: attractive losers display near toxic amounts of dry wit, tell themselves to shut up whenever they've said something idiotic, and generally court humiliation in quixotic quests for true love (think Hugh Grant's entire career). Curtis's directorial debut tells not one but nine stories involving various degrees of smitten-ness, swollen with an all-star cast (Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, etc.) and a patented brand of English rose-thorn humor – even the title seeps self-deprecating whimsy. Love Actually purports to be paying tribute to the idea of Cupidian bliss, but its real objet d'amour is the notion of movie love, where strings swell and goo-goo eyes meet – so much so that it's stacked its deck with nothing but those cinematic moments and is minus the dramatic build that gives those scenes emotional heft. (2:12) Century Plaza, Four Star, Grand Lake, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Love Don't Cost a Thing Proof that the '80s are back comes via this remake of Can't Buy Me Love. Updated with urban flair for postmillennial teens, the film combines the talents of emerging hip-hop singer Christina Milian, Drumline star Nick Cannon, and the hilarious Steve Harvey (as the smooth-operator father of the school geek) for an enjoyable story about finding love in unexpected places. Car whiz and brainiac Alvin (Cannon) is in his last semester of his senior year and has never had a date, a kiss, or much else in the way of romance, aside from a from-afar crush on Paris (Milian), the most popular girl in school. When Paris crashes the car while her mom is out of town, Al steps in to try and help. He hatches a plan for her to pretend to be his girlfriend for two weeks, giving him access to popularity in exchange for him fixing her car. Predictably the two fall for each other during the two weeks and have to recover from some miscommunications to eventually make it work. The film is played with charm and affability and works well for a rainy day treat. (1:45) Century 20, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness. (Emch)

*Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World Peter Weir's first film since The Truman Show bears little resemblance to any other action behemoth in recent memory. For the most part, that is a very good thing. Welding together chunks from the lengthy historical fiction series by Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World isn't so much episodic in the usual brief-pauses-between-escalating-climaxes sense as it is picaresque in, well, a 19th-century sense. Like O'Brian, Weir is more interested in the workings and the character of HMS Surprise and its crew (led by Russell Crowe's authoritatively low-key Captain Jack Aubrey) than in battles per se. Which is not to say the face-offs against "old Boney's" (Napoleon Bonaparte's) frigates aren't highly visceral, nor are the surgeries performed by resident doctor-naturalist Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany) lacking in gruesome impact. But the movie bears Weir's trademark spectral qualities: the images are spectacular yet fallible, obscured by darkness and the elements; an offhand, lyric humanism makes this probably the least macho film of its type ever made. (2:08) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Harvey)

*My Life Without Me (1:46) Balboa, Opera Plaza.

Mystic River After a poorly executed prologue – and before the plot goes to hell in the last reel – this adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel plays ideally to Clint Eastwood's strengths as a levelheaded, respectful director of both talented actors and meat-and-potatoes drama. A childhood incident in which 11-year-old Dave was kidnapped by pedophiles before the eyes of playmates Jimmy and Sean still hangs over their adult lives. All remained in their original rough, Boston neighborhood, though the three have maintained an awkward distance from each other ever since. That ends when the daughter of corner store owner Jimmy (Sean Penn) is murdered after a night of barhopping – a night when Dave (Tim Robbins) comes home at 3 a.m. to wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) bloodied by what he claims at first is an altercation with a mugger. Guess who's the homicide detective assigned to the case? Sean (Kevin Bacon), of course, alongside his partner, Whitey (Laurence Fishburne). Underplaying the material's potentially clichéd tough-guy milieu and pulp-thriller aspects, Eastwood and scenarist Brian Helgeland orchestrate an engrossing drama. Just the kind of starry, serious, conventional project sure to be remembered at awards time, Mystic River is nonetheless seriously compromised – in my book at least – by a last act that throws away the credible resolution we've been led toward, instead springing a left-field one wildly dependent on coincidence and contrivance. (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Pieces of April The fact that Pieces of April was a buzz film at the Sundance fest this year attests to the sorry state of American indie cinema, which has essentially become a minor-league Hollywood. A secondhand "original" soundtrack of corrosive Stephin Merritt lullabies sets the tone of Peter Hedges's digital-video comic drama. The screenplay's tired Guess Who's Coming to Dinner-meets-Daytrippers scenario traps viewers in a car with a miserable cauca-zombie family as they journey toward a Thanksgiving feast that's been thoroughly botched by black sheep April (Katie Holmes, in art-damaged attire that's very early '90s) and her (gasp!) black boyfriend, Derek Luke. Hedges's presentation of working-class urban life is even more stereotypical than a Wayans comedy, but at least the Wayans clan bring parody to the table. Pieces of April's moth-eaten liberal idea of just desserts requires that the sarcasm eventually gives way to a multicult sweetness – though not before Patricia Clarkson, as April's mother, provides a few potent glimpses of a dying woman's solitude. (1:20) Albany, Embarcadero, Empire. (Huston)

*The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain's documentary, touted as a look at "the world's first media coup," might as well double as a California recall-hangover cure. In April 2002 the people of Venezuela foiled a TV revolt by taking to the streets of Caracas and storming the presidential palace to return briefly ousted president Hugo Chavez to power. Bartley and O'Briain, who initially conceived Revolution as an analytical profile of Chavez, largely bypass a cogent analysis of the differences between Chavez's populist promises and his actual accomplishments. The film's strength and originality stem from its eye-of-the-storm proximity to April 2002's political unrest and the perspective it has regarding televised distortions: as the attempted coup unfolds, international news reports claim Chavez supporters have resorted to sniper-style attacks on protesters; Bartley and O'Briain land footage that exposes those claims as lies. (1:14) Clay, Shattuck. (Huston)

*School of Rock (1:40) Balboa.

*Shattered Glass A drama starring Hayden Christensen might sound like a movie inherently doomed by a stiff, clonelike lead performance, but Christensen redeems himself playing disgraced New Republic journalist-fabulist Stephen Glass – while not the best actor here, he brings ample phony charms to the part. Screenwriter turned director Billy Ray fashions an intelligent, crisp narrative; Glass's rise and fall gradually turn into the story of Chuck Lane (Peter Sarsgaard), the man who uncovered the full scope of Glass's falsehoods. When Ray contrasts bad-boy Glass's sexual ambivalence with Lane's family man "normality," the conservative morality of the dichotomy is annoying, but Shattered Glass's screenplay nails the covert power plays lurking beneath newsroom banter, and Sarsgaard is excellent. Keep an eye out for Heavenly Creatures alum Melanie Lynskey in a bit part. (1:34) Embarcadero. (Huston)

Shelter Dogs Director Cynthia Wade goes behind the scenes at Rondout Valley Kennels in upstate New York, following the staff and owner Sue Sternberg. The resulting doc makes a very compelling argument in favor of euthanasia. While the consensus these days seems to be adamantly in favor of "no-kill" shelters, Sternberg's philosophy is that death is sometimes the most humane option for unadoptable animals – and that the pups' quality of life should be the focus of the animal-welfare debate. As the film points out, worldwide there are millions of unwanted dogs, many of whom are aggressive and unfit to ever be re-homed. In no-kill shelters, these dogs may end up tortured by a life of confinement, languishing in concrete and chain-link cells (Sternberg and the filmmakers visit such a shelter, offering grim proof of the dogs' sustained misery). Shelter Dogs focuses on both the Rondout Valley Kennels' high success rate in placing dogs as well as staffers' dedication to doomed canines, proving that even an organization that supports euthanasia can be a pet's best friend. (1:13) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (McCartney)

Something's Gotta Give An aging Casanova (Jack Nicholson) locks horns with the uptight playwright mother (Diane Keaton) of his younger girlfriend when the two are forced to share the scribe's Hampton household. Neither can stand the other, but guess who surprisingly falls for each other, go their separate ways, were meant to be together, etc.? The notion that two treasures of American acting get to make sexagenarians sexy and trade barbed ripostes seems like a dream come true. Unless, of course, the duo's dialogue seems cribbed from The View, the film is shot like a Pottery Barn catalogue, and the indiscreet smarm of the bourgeoisie is somehow supposed to pass for knowledgeable carnality ... then, well, any potential dissipates posthaste. Writer-director Nancy Meyers (What Women Want) seems convinced that cutesy charm and reel-life charisma can substitute for real wit or Mars-versus-Venus insight; the only thing that ends up "giving" is one's tolerance for saccharine (cocooned in smug self-love) trying to masquerade as romantic comedy. (2:03) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

The Station Agent Along with Pieces of April, this was part of Patricia Clarkson's one-two punch at the Sundance Film Festival; actually, Clarkson was in four films there, but the other two weren't award winners. In The Station Agent she plays a divorcée grieving her son's death, and the movie's strongest scenes involve her cold-shoulder response when people misguidedly reach out to offer comfort. Tom McCarthy's film is choreographed so that a triad of misfits – two loners (Clarkson and Peter Dinklage) and one extrovert (Bobby Cannavale) – meet up on the train tracks of small-town life, only to break apart again. Dinklage's dwarf protagonist alternately faces and escapes a patronizing world, but it's his rejection by Clarkson's character that truly stings. If all this sounds depressing, rest assured The Station Agent doesn't forget to add moments of hope and whimsy; they just aren't as interesting as its dark side. (1:28) Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Huston)

Stuck on You A pair of conjoined siblings ("We're not Siamese twins," one of them exclaims. "We're American!" – and that's the smart one) run a burger stand near the Massachusetts coastline. One of them (Greg Kinnear) harbors thespian dreams, so he decides to hightail it to Hollywood. His brother (Matt Damon), unsurprisingly, decides he'll go along for the ride. The latest Farrelly brothers (There's Something about Mary) opus never pretends to be anything other than a one-joke wonder, preferring to let the details – the gosh-all cluelessness of Damon, Kinnear's smarmapalooza timing, Eva Mendes's enthusiastically dizty routine, Cher-on-Cher mockery – carry the story and the humor on its dual backs. The filmmakers' usual sweet-sour combo of asinine gags and affectionate ribbing seems near absent here, however, with toothless goofs and a pacemaker's pulse substituting for their patented bite and cuddle. The result plays like an impostor's average version of Farrelly lite, leaving an aftertaste that feels less like comedy squared than like doubled trouble. (2:00) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Sylvia (2:02) Balboa.

*Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion Many people unfortunately think of the Free Tibet movement as little more than a cause perfect for good celebrity P.R., but if this documentary proves nothing else, it's that Tibet is in serious need of progressive international aid. Following the history of the country as an occupied territory, filmmaker Tom Peosay's look at the atrocities and injustices perpetrated on the Tibetan people – even owning a picture of their Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, will get you arrested – has a tendency to flip between a picturesque travelogue (Martin Sheen's narration seems lifted from a Discovery Channel special at times) and a catalogue of horrors. But neither the tonal inconsistencies nor the A-list movie star readings of victim testimonies make the occupier's sins any less painful, and with talking-head footage ranging from an in-denial Chinese diplomat to the Dalai Lama himself, it's an invaluable first step toward understanding Tibet's tragedy. (1:40) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Fear)

*21 Grams 21 Grams is a good movie hobbled most by its certainty of greatness; its entire construction, nonstop emotional urgency, and near complete lack of humor signal as much throughout. It's better than most "prestige" efforts – certainly the concurrent Sean Penn vehicle Mystic River, which similarly orchestrates several personal tragedies into contrived sentimental-existential narrative symphonies – due to the makers having one foot in art-house cred and another in starry Hollywood uplift. Amores perros director Alejandro González Iñárritu and scenarist Guillermo Arriaga should be congratulated for making a film that was first conceived for Mexico City seem not at all awkward in the English-language U.S. milieu; what's more, there's a grittiness of tenor and texture that's brave for a commercial film. 21 Grams is so frequently so good on a scene-by-scene basis that one wishes only it hadn't gotten some very big ideas. It's bleak, inventive, and heartfelt to degrees that feel right until they don't. (2:18) Bridge, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Yossi and Jagger "Based on a true story" (yeah, whatever), Yossi and Jagger, originally made for Israeli TV, takes place during the Lebanon War in 1982. Its characters are Israeli army personnel on a remote border base, housed in an underground bunker during snowy wintertime. Yossi (Ohad Knoller) is the small unit's shaven-headed commander, "Jagger" (Yehuda Levi) his deputy – the nickname bestowed because he "looks like a rock star." Early on the two go off to "check coordinates" in the "drill zone." This is a ruse; in fact they've left camp to have some alone time, a hillside fuck, and a post-boff snowball fight. In their absence, however, Yossi's superior (Sharon Regniano) arrives and announces the unit will stage an ambush. Following this bad news, the titular figures have a private fight, mandatory-service soldier Jagger demanding some public (if nonmilitary) acknowledgment of their love while probable army careerist Yossi refuses. This tiff lends poignancy later when the ordered stakeout takes a very bad turn. At barely more than an hour, Yossi and Jagger ends memorably yet too soon – you'll wish director Eytan Fox, scenarist Avner Bernheimer, and their collaborators had anticipated the feature's international success, enabling them to deepen the exceptional but terse story by a half hour or more. (1:11) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Rep picks

*Citizen Kane See 8 Days a Week. (1:59) Castro.

*I Vitelloni The years have been exceedingly kind to Federico Fellini's third film, the first of his works to signal that he wasn't just the new neorealist on the cobblestoned block. His 1953 elegy to a band of arrested adolescents – loosely translated as either "the young bulls" or "the veal calves," depending on how generous one wants to be to these wastrels – still elicits chokes of recognition amid the chuckles. You can see elements of the director's signature style being worked out for future runs; the mocha swirl of minor realism with metaphorical elements, the highly personal voice, the papier-mâché carnival heads, and the predatory older actor all seem like zygote versions of later Fellini grotesqueries. Detailing the aimless days and occasionally amorous evenings of five friends rapidly approaching 30, the story initially seems as restless and rootless as its protagonists. But the affectionate send-up of stock Italian male archetypes – the low-rent Casanova, the budding intellectual, the mamaluche – captures the society that raises these boychicks by the flock, and Fellini's own ambivalence about his past, to a T. (1:43) Castro. (Fear)

*Rivers and Tides Building elaborate installation pieces out of Mother Nature's flotsam and jetsam in its own "natural" habitat (open fields, seashores, riverbanks), artist Andy Goldsworthy spends hours altering the landscape or working his elemental materials into man-made paths and patterns of harmonious grace. A finished work can last for as long as a few days or as short as a minute before a light breeze or an eddying tide picks it apart like carrion; in Goldsworthy's art, deconstruction is as much a part of his vision as construction. German documentarian Thomas Riedelshiemer's affectionate, awestruck look at the man and his mission to tap into a frequency of symmetrical order in terra firma's chaos is as hypnotically dazzling as his subject's abstract expressionist products. Fluently gliding around Goldsworthy's struggle to complete a fragile twig leitmotiv before it collapses under its own weight or pulling far back to reveal a sidewinder pattern snaking around a forest glen, Riedelshiemer's camera becomes the subject's partner, capturing the artist's attempts to channel the ebb and flow of organic life for posterity in a gorgeous, wide-screen, 35mm time capsule. (1:30) Roxie. (Fear)

*'Sergio Leone Retrospective' See 8 Days a Week. Act I and II.