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.

San Francisco Independent Film Festival

The sixth San Francisco Independent Film Festival – also known as "S.F. IndieFest" – runs Feb 5-15. Venues are the Castro Theater, 429 Castro, S.F.; Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St, S.F.; Women's Building, 3543 18th St, S.F.; and Oakland Metro, 201 Broadway, Oakl. Advance tickets (most shows $7-9) and a complete festival schedule are available at www.sfindie.com. All times are p.m. unless otherwise indicated. For commentary, see last week's Bay Guardian.

Wed/11

Roxie Revengers Tragedy 12:30. Corner of Your Eye 2:45. Nobody Needs to Know 5. Outpatient 7:15. Bettie Page: Dark Angel 9:30.

Thurs/12

Roxie "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (shorts program) 5. Moving Malcolm 7:15. 2LDK 9:30.

Fri/13

Roxie "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" (shorts program) 5. Bomb the System 7:15. Aragami 9:30. Gory Gory Hallelujah 11:45.

Women's Building A Certain Kind of Death 2:45. "Your Warped Mind" (shorts program) 5. Celluloid Horror 7:15. Psychobilly: A Cancer on Rock n' Roll 9:30.

Oakland Metro "The Ongoing Wow" (shorts program) 4:45. Have You Seen Clem 7. Bruce Haack: King of Techno 9:15.

Sat/14

Roxie 2LDK noon. Nobody Needs to Know 2:15. Funny Ha Ha 4:30. Hair High 7. Moving Malcolm 9:15. Love Object 11:45.

Women's Building "The Ongoing Wow" (shorts program) noon. Olive or Twist 2:15. Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson 4:30. Whole 7. The Halfway House 9:15.

Oakland Metro Psychobilly: A Cancer on Rock n' Roll 12:30. Value-Added Cinema 2:30. "Righteous Babes" (shorts program) 4:45. Piggie 7. Celluloid Horror 9:15.

Sun/15

Roxie "Awkward and Lovely" (shorts program) noon. Bomb the System 2:15. Undermind 4:30. interMission 7. Bettie Page: Dark Angel 9:15.

Women's Building Bruce Haack: King of Techno noon. "Righteous Babes" (shorts program) 2:15. Have You Seen Clem 4:30. Corner of Your Eye 7. In Smog and Thunder 9:15.

Oakland Metro "Your Warped Mind" (shorts program) 12:30. Echelon: The Secret Power 2:30. Maybe Logic: The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson 4:45. Gory Gory Hallelujah 7.

Opening

*The Battle of Algiers See "People Had the Power," page 47. (2:03) Castro.

The Dreamers See "Initials B.B.," page 42. (2:01) California, Empire, Lumiere.

50 First Dates Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore aim to repeat their Wedding Singer success with this comedy about a man who falls for a woman with short-term memory loss. (1:36) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London.

*The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra See Movie Clock. (1:29) Act I and II, Lumiere.

The Gospel of John For those who can't wait for The Passion of the Christ, here's a three-hour tide-over, narrated straight from the Good Book by Christopher Plummer. (3:00) Century Plaza.

Ongoing

Along Came Polly (1:30) Century Plaza, Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness.

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) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Barbershop 2: Back in Business Calvin's barbershop is back, and once again this cornerstone of the neighborhood is in trouble. What made the original Barbershop so unique was its quirky and loving look at urban culture as seen through the eyes of a group of coworkers and friends. Calvin (Ice Cube) and his crew of comedic employees (Eve and Cedric the Entertainer most notably) ripped on each other while arguing about politics and love, and it was magic. In the sequel the focus is still on the community, but it's hard to say if Barbershop 2 goes too far – or holds too much back. Often the characters fall short of regaining the banter and relationships that worked so well before. The film guarantees a ton of laughs, but in developing tighter story lines and working with a bigger budget, something got lost. Barbershop 2 lives up, but it hardly surpasses. (1:40) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (McCartney)

The Big Bounce (1:29) Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness.

Big Fish Parenthood can turn almost anybody into a softy, which is good news for the human spirit overall but occasionally very bad news for the artistic one. The fact that he recently had a child with Helena Bonham Carter (who plays several heavily disguised roles here, to no great effect) is the only explanation I can hazard as to why Tim Burton has suddenly started – suck in your breath now – imitating Steven Spielberg's worst instincts. The bedside vigil of semi-estranged son Will (Billy Crudup) over Southern braggart dad Edward Bloom (Albert Finney, better than this crap deserves) is the spur for reprise of the latter's favorite "autobiographical" tall tales, which are like old Twilight Zone episodes with a sugar glaze. This crossbreeding of Forrest Gump and What Dreams May Come is Disney-esque pseudo-folklore whose grasp on "childlike wonder" and maudlin "family is the most important thing!" values feel factory-issued. Never mind that Edward has been a crappy, egomaniacal, hot-air-blowing father – reconciliation here is grimly, cloyingly inevitable. (2:00) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Butterfly Effect (1:53) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness.

Calendar Girls (1:48) Balboa, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont.

Catch That Kid Though marketed like another Spy Kids, Catch That Kid is missing the ultracool gadgets, outlandish villains, and zippy pace that made that series fun. This is Ocean's 11 Years Old – in other words, your average bank-heist flick dumbed down to a boringly digestible degree. Kristen Stewart plays Maddy, a daredevil rock climber whose parents disapprove of her hobby. That's understandable because Dad took a nasty digger on Mt. Everest and now requires emergency surgery. Maddy rashly decides she must rob a bank to pay for his operation and recruits the help of her two dorky sidekicks/admirers. Conveniently, Mom (Jennifer Beals) designed the bank's flimsy security system and the children easily sneak in. The whole thing is slow and run-of-the-mill but harmless enough. Stewart can actually act, which she proved as Patricia Clarkson's tomboy daughter in The Safety of Objects. Let's hope she spies her way back to the art house. (1:34) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Koh)

*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) Jack London, Opera Plaza, Orinda, Shattuck. (Huston)

*Cold Mountain A more reliable literary adapter than Merchant Ivory (at least of late), Anthony Minghella, director of The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley, brings admirable cinematic sweep, intelligence, and detail to Charles Frazier's hugely popular historical novel. Jude Law is astutely cast as Inman, the young laborer turned Confederate soldier who makes a long, dangerous trek back to his rural North Carolina town during the waning days of the Civil War. Egging him onward through various hardships and bounty-hunter perils is the promise of a reunion with Ada (Nicole Kidman), pampered, Charleston-bred daughter of a minister (Donald Sutherland) whose premature death leaves her alone and helpless amid wartime deprivation. The original, tentative romance between principals is flash-backed between scenes from their variously harrowing present: traveling on foot, he's nearly killed several times over; she almost starves to death before spunky hillbilly Ruby (Renée Zellwegger, dynamic if borderline cartoonish) shows up to commandeer cultivation of the late minister's neglected farmland. Starting with a memorably horrific depiction of the era's savage yet impersonal warfare (dramatizing the July 1864 siege of Petersburg, Va.), Cold Mountain is never less than engaging, with passages by turns lyrical, ironic, brutal, and tender. Still, it's not quite as moving as one would like – and actually becomes least so when Ada and Inman are finally reunited in the last act. (2:35) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

*The Company The climactic moment of Robert Altman's The Company takes place 20 minutes into the film, as a pair of dancers perform a soulful, romantic duet on an outdoor stage and the weather turns bad. It's a gorgeously theatrical moment – and a lucky break for one of the dancers, an upcoming member of the company named Ry (Neve Campbell), who was understudying the part when the scheduled soloist sustained an injury. And in another movie altogether – let's say 2000's Center Stage – this windswept scene would have been a shoo-in for grand finale. Instead, we're in Chicago, watching real members (except for Campbell) of a slightly fictionalized Joffrey Ballet, in a film where a surprising, successful performance is, in the shorter term, one good night for one dancer in a season of ups and downs. When director Robert Altman set out to make the film, he clearly believed the real-life dramas of the company's days and nights would be enough to sustain a one-and-a-half-hour movie. But the question remains, will people be transfixed by a series of quiet offstage spectacles, stay to the end waiting for the point to kick in, or leave the theater early in disgust to have irate discussions in the car about the nature of art? (1:52) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Lynn Rapoport)

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) California, Galaxy. (Harvey)

*The Fog of War: 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara Faced with the unspeakable, say, the killing of 100,000 civilians in one night of firebombing in Japan, an artist could be excused for choosing not to speak. You certainly can't blame Errol Morris for offering up Philip Glass's assertive soundtrack as a fig leaf for Robert McNamara as he stands naked in a survey of a half century of horrific war footage he had some part in creating. Morris's primary challenge in The Fog of War, a documentary about the frightening fallibility, the terrible inevitability of the American war machine, is that he doesn't just have images of chemical warfare, missiles dropping, nations destroyed. He also has a speaker, a practiced one, to explain and reflect and second-guess – to, in essence, misdirect. Which may be why Morris gives this former secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson so much room to speak, even when he's evading; it's Glass who gives us the real interpretation. Glass's take comes through loud and clear in wind and strings: be afraid, be very afraid. (1:46) Act I and II, Embarcadero. (Gerhard)

Girl with a Pearl Earring Lost in Translation It girl Scarlett Johansson plays another passive protagonist in Peter Webber's debut film, an accomplished yet oddly distanced translation of Tracy Chevalier's acclaimed novel. She's forced to work as a servant in the household of master painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) when her own family's fortunes take a downturn in 1665 Delft, Holland. Uneducated yet naturally inquisitive, she gains the attention of the master as model and apprentice – both roles scandalous for a lower-class girl of the era. Girl with a Pearl Earring is nothing if not artful: domestic strife, moral hypocrisy, and class consciousness are neatly interwoven with an artistic inspiration that would eventually loom large in art history. It's handsomely done in aesthetic terms, polished in performance terms. Yet for all its intelligence and skill, Girl just kinda sits there, emotionally, and becomes more schematic than moving. (1:39) Clay, Empire, Orinda, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Gloomy Sunday (1:54) Balboa.

House of Sand and Fog Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly) is a recovering addict whose husband left a few months ago and who ekes out a living cleaning other people's houses. She's depressed. Hence she's not very quick to catch a serious bureaucratic error: nonpayment of an (erroneously charged) business tax ends up getting her evicted from her own home, which has been put up for public auction. The house is sold to Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), a former colonel in the Iranian air force who sees it as the lucky fiscal break he's desperately sought since fleeing his native country. As mutual obstinacy, legal snafus, and some very poor tactical decisions heat up resentment on both sides, Kathy and Massoud head toward a tragic showdown. Commercial director Vadim Perelman's debut feature shaves and/or downplays some of the more extreme melodrama in Andre Dubus III's original literary potboiler. But House takes itself awfully seriously, to diminishing results – the last reel goes over the top, with Sir Ben chewing scenery beyond duty's call. (2:06) Balboa, Oaks. (Harvey)

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, Piedmont. (Koh)

Japanese Story Marooned in the Australian outback, an imperious businessman (Gotaro Tsunashima) and a resentful guide (Toni Collette) are forced into intimacy. But just when the desert turns into an Eden, a fall awaits them. Gossip maestro Michael Musto recently decreed that "quirky romances with a rarefied Japanese twist" have replaced Douglas Sirk tributes as the current cinematic trend; the implicit Western bias of that statement applies to Sue Brooks's Japanese Story as much as to Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation, though Brooks's fumbling sincerity differs from Coppola's stylish entitlement. These days the lead actors of award-minded dramas are stronger than the films themselves, and Collette's raw, multifaceted performance here is an Oscar calling card complete with the required vanity-free naked moments. (1:45) Galaxy, Smith Rafael. (Huston)

The Last Samurai (2:24) Century 20.

*The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King The quest to deliver "The Greatest Fantasy Trilogy Ever Made" has been completed. The hype is right. The Return of the King is the best of the three, but only in part. And it all depends on which part you're talking about. In the first act, we're still mucking about with various monarchs, noble families, and peasants as the film unfolds. Our main characters, hobbits Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), are still on their dangerous trek to the volcanic Mount Doom. Gandalf (Ian McKellan) and plucky halfling Pippin (Billy Boyd) have arrived at the kingdom of Gondor – ground zero for the long-awaited War of the Ring – where the tone of Return becomes quiet and hushed. Heroically, director Peter Jackson decides to slow down and take a breath himself. From here on out, Jackson assumes a total mastery of the material, and even the deviations from Tolkien's text start to look like improvements. The long, arduous journey to the credits may not have been perfect, and perilously few of those character subplots ever pay out, but for a hearty share of its 3-hour-and-18-minute running time, there can be no doubt that King rules. (3:21) Century 20, Grand Lake, 1000 Van Ness. (Macias)

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, Orinda, Shattuck. (Chun)

*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, Oaks. (Harvey)

Miracle Miracle dramatizes the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team's victory over the previously unbeatable USSR ice jockeys; any modest pleasures derived from the stock underdog true story come from recognizing the familiar signposts along its well-worn path – the Ditka-esque coach (Kurt Russell) whose methods are eccentric but effective, the tortuous training montages, the kids who need to prove they've got what it takes, the inspirational speeches, and finally the against-the-odds climactic game that plays like tryouts for Valhalla. Director Gavin O'Connor (Tumbleweeds) has a knack for capturing the era's Northeastern blue-collar landscape, giving the story a concrete sense of place and time. But the movie's insistence on treating the event as if it were myth ludicrously pushes the proceedings into the stratosphere, starting with the sucking-in-the-'70s credit sequence and building toward the idea that this match was the only salve for a beleaguered nation. (2:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Fear)

*Monster As de-glamming makeovers go, Charlize Theron's dumpification in this dramatization of the late Aileen Wuornos's 1989-90 serial killing spree sure kicks the bejesus out of Nicole Kidman's Oscar-winning nose cap last year. You can believe it when characters here identify her as indigent and/or crazy by just a glance. Without going into much tortured-childhood backgrounding (a few discreet, disturbing flashbacks under the opening credits suffice), this first feature by writer-director Patty Jenkins effectively conveys the accumulated psychological and physical damage that perhaps inevitably turned Wuornos into a menace. The film charts a span when her life got both better and a whole lot worse: A committed if awkward relationship with a younger woman (Christina Ricci, just so-so) gets her off the streets, determined to improve her circumstances. Without means, education, or any (legal) work experience, however, that goal proves near impossible. And once she crosses a line – killing a brutal roadside-pickup prostitution client in self-defense – financial desperation, suppressed rage, and a faint grip on reality push her to cross it again and again. While the murders are handled bluntly enough, Monster is more depressing than scary or lurid. Its principal aim is as a cautionary character study: used or abandoned by family, institutional help and society in general, Wuornos embodied how extreme human need can warp into "monstrous" toxicity. A worthy movie, driven by a very strong lead performance. (1:51) Embarcadero, California, Century Plaza, Piedmont. (Harvey)

*My Architect Told from the vantage of a son who barely got to know his famous father before his death, bankrupt and unidentified in a men's room at New York City's Penn Station, newcomer Nathaniel Kahn's My Architect is a kind of exploded view of a family melodrama. Kahn, we learn, was Louis's third child, the son of the mysterious architect's second mistress, and officially unacknowledged by Louis's wife at his father's funeral. But what comes into focus over the course of the film isn't just the elder Kahn's unconventional sense of domestic relations but also his equally self-centered devotion to the aesthetic ideals of his work (at the expense of commissions and wealth). Nathaniel's filmmaking doesn't begin to pretend to equal the mastery of Louis's architecture, and indeed there are some fabulously irritating aspects to My Architect. But there's no denying the respect and maturity Kahn the younger displays in the way he photographs his father's buildings: he really gets what it means to stand at some crucial vantage point in one of those astonishing creations, watching light murmur through those mysterious angles and cut-ins. (1:46) Balboa, Castro, Smith Rafael. (Stephens)

Mystic River (2:20) Century 20, Empire, Grand Lake, Lumiere, Shattuck.

The Perfect Score The SAT may be hard to take and harder to steal, but you wouldn't really know it from The Perfect Score, a film about six kids who aren't afraid to draw outside the bubble (or break into an office building to get copies of the test). The alleged message here, explicated at great length, with diagrams, is that standardized testing is sexist, racist, blind to a young person's individual potential, and generally bunk. These are important points, and I for one am grateful to director Brian Robbins (Ready to Rumble, Varsity Blues) for raising them. But The Perfect Score, packed to the gills with high jinks, stoner gags, and shots of Scarlett Johansson's cleavage, doesn't seem that interested in inciting a rage against the machine. Plus which, it's just dumb. The jokes may provoke incredulous laughter, but that doesn't make them funny. The script in general is likely to wear on the nerves of anyone past tweenhood, the film's only hope of a demographic. And Johansson stands out from her colleagues mostly because of her saucy outfits but also because she can act. It almost makes you wonder if standards are good for something after all. (1:33) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Peter Pan (1:45) Orinda.

*The Same River Twice Documentarian Robb Moss shot Riverdogs, a chronicle of his 35-day Grand Canyon rafting trip with 17 (mostly nekkid) best friends, in 1978. A quarter century later he contrasts that footage with the present-day lives of his now middle-aged former fellow travelers, who've nearly all settled into more conventional lifestyles: kids, home ownership, marriage, divorce, health woes. Yet a spark of lingering counterculturalism remains for many; no less than two have earned stints as progressive mayors. The Same River Twice has the built-in fascination of watching real people evolve on camera. If modern life casts a rather wistful shadow on the idyllic views of freespirited youth au naturel amid nature, this is nonetheless one movie that suggests '60s-bred ideals aren't quite dead yet. The only disappointment here is that Moss doesn't seize the opportunity to comment on or analyze the phenomenon of '70s communal lifestyles in general; he's content simply providing a before-and-after snapshot. (1:18) Galaxy, Oaks, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Secret Things (1:55) California.

Something's Gotta Give (2:03) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness.

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) Opera Plaza, Red Vic. (Huston)

*Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion (1:40) Balboa.

*To Be and to Have Veteran French documentarian Nicolas Philibert's To Be and to Have, a huge commercial success in France, unfolds in a series of scenes and scene fragments organized around the lessons given by a single teacher, the soft-spoken, superpatient, and soon-to-retire Georges Lopez, to a single roomful of children ranging in age from 3 to 11. What we witness are children coloring, doing sums, flipping crepes, and generally struggling with learning, their faces passing all the while under cloud covers of emotion ranging through confusion, delight, fear, bewilderment, anger, and sorrow. Those wanting to see To Be and to Have as a strictly bright or nostalgic vision of education may be interested to learn that the film's instructor, Lopez, has gone on to media celebrity in France. It isn't difficult to imagine Lopez (who has twice sued Philibert for further financial compensation in the wake of the film's success) as the suave but inwardly seething center of something like The Discreet Charm of the Blackboard-oisie, just as the film's pervasively placid tone makes it seem perverse not to imagine that some of the pint-size pupils will soon blossom into the dead-end dropouts and no-hope moto-misfits of Bruno Dumont's La vie de Jésus. (1:44) Galaxy. (Stephens)

*Tokyo Godfathers Director Satoshi Kon's previous film, 2001's awesome Millennium Actress, took audiences on a dizzying trek through 2,000 years of Japanese history. His latest work, Tokyo Godfathers, homes in on the tumultuous events of a single Christmas holiday, with equally impressive results. Three homeless friends (a young woman, a transvestite, and an aging drunk) stumble across an abandoned baby and vow to return it to its parents, wherever and whoever they may be. The premise is little more than a redo of John Ford's 3 Godfathers, but Kon takes the material in smart new directions. With extraordinary yet subtle animation, he caricatures an already surreal Japan and gives the stage over to the city's most seldom heard voices. While touchy subjects are on the agenda, Tokyo Godfathers never gets preachy or overly sweet. Instead, there's a dense amount of visual and verbal gags to keep things engaging. Humorous, emotional, and concisely executed, it's the anime film to top in 2004. (1:31) Galaxy. (Macias)

Touching the Void Mountaineering documentaries generally suffer from the fact that you aren't there, while dramatized ones are either physically unconvincing or have jaw-dropping stunts but wooden characters. Hitherto a notable nonfiction director (One Day in September), Kevin Macdonald chose to realize this adaptation of Joe Simpson's classic 1988 bum-adventure memoir as a mix of documentary and reenactment, which brings its own problems but overall works pretty well. Simpson and his hiking partner Simon Yates alternate telling the tale in talking-head style while two actors (Brendan Mackey and Nicholas Aaron) register varying degrees of panic, exhaustion, and horror high in the Alps (standing in for the Andes). Touching the Void defines the subgenre of "armchair near death-experience travel;" the story is an incredible triumph over impossible odds. But as a viewer who actually enjoys grueling, steep hikes but draws the line when falling equals death, I couldn't help thinking, "These dumb suckers were sooooooo lucky!" from the opening titles to the final credit crawl. (1:46) Albany, Bridge, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*The Triplets of Belleville Perhaps the first major animated export from France since René Laloux's sci-fi epics Fantastic Planet (1973) and Light Years (1988), comic book artist Sylvain Chomet's feature debut is a uniquely vinegary comedy that's like a grown-up 101 Dalmatians. A champion Tour de France bicyclist is kidnapped by bad guys and taken to America for ill purposes. His abduction spurs cross-Atlantic pursuit by grandmother Mme Souza and their corpulent, waddling dog Bruno. Their principal helpers are the titular trio, 1930s music-hall stars since fallen into decrepit eccentricity. Dialogue-free Triplets is funny, inventive, and endlessly referential. The only minus is an overpoweringly dour comic tilt that may strike some viewers as a tad too dyspeptic and cranky for full enjoyment. Like Ralph Bakshi's cartoon features of yore – albeit in a much less racy vein – Triplets is dazzling at times yet so misanthropic you might leave the theater feeling a tad soiled. (1:20) Embarcadero, Orinda, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*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) Embarcadero, Orinda, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*The Weather Underground Sam Green and Bill Siegel's new documentary explores '60s revolutionaries the Weathermen, one of the warring factions in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that emerged from campus cocoons advocating urban guerrilla warfare. The typical Weatherman was white, 25, had done three years at Ann Arbor or Columbia, and had a passion for getting down that existed in a direct relationship to his or her parents' financial assets. It was a great story – rich kids, anguished parents, terrorism, and life on the run – and the media covered it like a rug. The Weather Underground gives those who wrote the original story a chance to look back and try it again, confined only by various versions of the original. Green and Siegel (the researcher behind Hoop Dreams) approached a number of ex-members and scored one-on-one conversations with most of the group's former leaders. Ironically, the filmmakers had nothing to do with what's most important about The Weather Underground: the timing of its release. "When I started it," Green told me, "no one was thinking about this stuff. Now, well, I wish it wasn't so, but the world has changed a lot. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have raised many issues, and a lot of the questions that people talked about back then are relevant today." (1:32) Balboa. (J.H. Tompkins)

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (1:36) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness.

You Got Served I can't say for certain what caused the breakup of hip-hoppers B2K; my theory is that after seeing their own dismal performances in You Got Served, they realized a collective lack of talent necessitated a fade from the public eye. If history – and J.Lo – has taught us anything, it's that a (quasi-) talented singer does not an actor make. Perhaps if choreographers Wade J. Robson and Shane Sparks could lend their substantial talents to the script or spend as much time coaching line readings as break dancing, this film would fare better: while the dance sequences are phenomenal, and luckily frequent, the rest of the movie is thoroughly cringe-worthy. You Got Served will find an audience with those fans of hip-hop and dance who enjoy the setting and are less interested in substance. My advice? Scrap the nondancing scenes and convert the rest into an extended music video. In other words: everyone involved should stick with what they know. (1:33) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness. (McCartney)