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 Alamo See Movie Clock. (2:17) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London.

Bon Voyage French director Jean-Paul Rappenaeu sets this elaborate genre-blender in occupied Europe, but don't expect The Pianist; Rappeanaeu's caricatures and farcical predicaments treat the Nazi invasion with the gravity of a prom disaster. A besotted writer (Grégori Derangère) becomes a fugitive when he helps a beautiful actress (Isabelle Adjani) get away with murder. All of Paris then relocates to Bordeaux to escape the Germans, and the writer finds himself negotiating with escaped convicts, high-society patricians, and a French minister (Gerard Depardieu) to sort out his life. Add a beautiful scientist handling a top-secret experiment and you've got a plot that involves far too much brain labor to follow. Bursting at its seams, the film often feels as crowded as the town it's set in, but the director's sharp wit and tongue-in-cheek melodrama – along with Derangère's performance as the defeated hero – still make this blue-blooded farce pleasurable to watch. (1:54) Clay. (Kim)

Dogville This movie's bark may be worse than its bite, but that won't keep you from feeling like the fire hydrant that just got pissed on by the time this canine of a film ends. Lars von Trier, the world's greatest torturer of women on film, moves from the melodramatic crucifixions of Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark (which at least offered cathartic relief) to unblinkered mockery with Dogville. If you've never seen live theater, you may be wowed by the austere light effects and staging (the "town" is rendered in chalk outlines; no walls) as von Trier turns a make-believe, Depression-era Rocky Mountain town over the spit and damns us as we watch it sizzle. But I trust if you're reading this, you don't fit into that category. I'm sorry to report the cast – Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Gazzara, and Stellan Skarsgård – perform as if they're taking orders from the military staff at Guantánamo Bay. If the idea of feeling scorn for an unrelenting three hours appeals to you, your film has finally arrived. (2:57) Albany, Bridge, Piedmont. (Gerhard)

Ella Enchanted Granted the gift (or curse) of obedience by her fairy godmother, young Ella of Frell (The Princess Diaries' Anne Hathaway) must carry out every command given to her, including offhand directives and figures of speech. When her snobby stepsisters begin taking advantage of her condition, she sets out to find her snappy godmother (Vivica A. Fox) to rid herself of the curse. While on her quest, Ella also protests the many injustices brought upon nonhuman inhabitants, teaming up with an ambitious elf, a talking book, and a giant (Heidi Klum) to fight Frell's unreasonable king (Cary Elwes). Full of witty anti-Grimm Brothers commentary, this politically correct fairy tale has the same sardonic edge that made Shrek so parent-friendly. The only problems you might have with the film are its glaringly tacky special effects and the random song-and-dance number tacked on at the end. But director Tommy O'Haver manages to steer clear of clichés and wanton chauvinism, passing on a decent moral message to the kids. (1:35) Century 20, Grand Lake, Oaks. (Kim)

The Girl Next Door The hero of this film (suggested alternate title: Risky Business 2.0) is Matthew Kidman, whose last name clankingly says it all. A superachieving high school senior on the verge of entering the wider world, our Matthew (played by Leo DiCaprio look-alike Emile Hirsch) has never really lived life – or had sex. As luck would have it, Danielle (24's Elisha Cuthbert), a young, gorgeous, exceedingly blond porn star attempting to flee the biz, has moved in next door to provide our hero with eye candy and essential life lessons on how to treat women, how to lose them, and most important, how to make good smut. The insinuation of the adult-film industry into the classroom has perhaps never received such gleeful treatment – outside of adult films, that is. The Girl Next Door, whose likely demographic will be teens with good fake IDs (it's rated R), also stars Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Go) as a film producer with a heart of soft metal, if not necessarily gold. (1:50) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London. (Rapoport)

*How to Draw a Bunny See "Celebrity Skim." (1:30) Roxie.

Johnson Family Vacation Road trip movies have it easy. There's no real need for plot development, settings can suddenly change when they get old, and scenes that don't work can be ditched along the highway. So it's surprising when a vacation flick with all the right cards (stars Cedric the Entertainer and Steve Harvey, plus a tricked-out Lincoln Navigator) can end up so incredibly dull. Determined father Nate Johnson (Cedric) takes his wife and kids to Missouri to attend a family reunion, but the three-day journey sees them thrown in jail, encased in cement, cursed by the Antichrist (a hot but completely miscast Shannon Elizabeth), threatened by an alligator – you know, that sort of stuff. A mediocre script curbs Cedric's talent as a side-splitting comic, forcing the portly comedian into a tame family-man role with nothing really interesting to say. Hoping that the episodes and pit stops will get funnier proves to be fruitless, while the genuinely funny gags are like call boxes on the interstate – few and many miles in between. (1:35) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London. (Kim)

*Mayor of the Sunset Strip See "Celebrity Skim." (1:46) Act I and II, Lumiere.

The United States of Leland Budding star Ryan Gosling may have cornered today's market on young, withdrawn men pecking their way out of sociopathic eggshells, but even his thousand-watt intensity can only light up this textbook Sundance-lite drama for so long before the after-school special seams start showing. The son of a reclusive, liquor-soaked author (Kevin Spacey – remember him?), Leland is serving time in a juvenile facility for inexplicably stabbing the mentally challenged brother of his drug-addict girlfriend (Jena Malone). His teacher (Don Cheadle) smells a book deal brewing in the boy's story, but Leland isn't that keen on explaining himself; cue scenes of therapeutic stand-offs that ultimately break down barriers, etc. It's not that the talent involved doesn't commit to their roles or that writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge doesn't aim for peering beneath the characters' psychological surfaces; it's just that the film's choice to adhere to such a well-worn path offers neither illumination nor salvation from the pitfalls of clichéd suburban malaise. (1:44) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Fear)

The Whole Ten Yards Bruce Willis (as a wacky hired gun) and Matthew Perry (as a wacky dentist) return for this sequel to The Whole Nine Yards. (1:50) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Orinda, Shattuck.

Ongoing

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) Balboa. (Harvey)

*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) Four Star, Shattuck. (Huston)

*Crimson Gold Written by Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi's intimate, mesmerizing portrait of a man driven to lash out at an injurious world follows a taciturn pizza delivery person named Hussein (real-life delivery driver Hussein Emadeddin in a compellingly understated performance) as he makes his rounds of Tehran apartments. At one apartment, a man who remembers Hussein as a "saint" from the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War has trouble recognizing the shattered figure before him without considerable prompting; at another, morality police on a stakeout detain him while they snare young couples leaving a party. When Hussein meets his future brother-in-law and fiancée to shop for an engagement ring at a high-end jeweler's shop, the proprietor politely but humiliatingly directs them elsewhere, leaving Hussein seemingly unable to go any further along the same path. Panahi's direction deftly combines a human touch with palpable anger at the ordinary viciousness of a society ridden by devastating inequalities and dogged by the mean, spiritless authority of a theocratic police state. But at the same time his camera places Hussein's life in a consummately urban frame: at once too big and too constricting for a heart unable to shield itself from its own sense of self-worth. (1:37) Galaxy. (Avila)

*Dawn of the Dead First things first: you can't perfect on perfection, so there's no way this remake is gonna best George Romero's classic. Still, it's pretty damn entertaining on its own, boasting a goodly amound of bloodshed and mayhem, not to mention a satisfyingly overwhelming zombie-to-human ratio. As the living dead take over Wisconsin, and presumably the world, a ragtag, oft-infighting group of survivors (chief among them Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Mekhi Phifer, and Jake Weber) barricade themselves in a shopping mall. The 1978 original used this setting to skewer consumerism, but the new Dawn, helmed by first-timer Zack Snyder, is less interested in social commentary than in guns and gore. Which, to tell the truth, means it still pretty much rocks, with a sharply employed sense of humor and a killer soundtrack to boot. (1:40) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Dreamers Romantic, atmospheric, nostalgic, offhandedly stunning, and extremely silly, the first minutes of The Dreamers are a not-quite-straight dose of Bernardo Bertolucci. His unmatched directorial flair for shadows that dart from the corner of the screen functions as a flirty counterpoint to the severe blocks of black in Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor, watched by a rapt crowd at Henri Langlois's famed Cinémathèque Française. The audience includes American in Paris Matthew (Michael Pitt), who is about to meet cute twins Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). It's extraordinary that Bertolucci – the masterful stylist whose filmic flesh caresses famously sent Pauline Kael reeling – hasn't indulged a movie-length ménage à trois so thoroughly before. The Dreamers' turning point occurs when conservative Matthew faints after a shake-it-like-a-Polaroid-picture moment of exposure. Reawakened, he finally enters the twins' childish playland only to discover a sheltered, decaying realm he only half comprehends. The resulting psychological and political insights verge on trite. (2:01) Four Star, Opera Plaza. (Huston)

*Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind A glance at the work of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Human Nature) might lead you to believe he's at war with reality. In his new collaboration with Nature director Michel Gondry, Kaufman gives two characters the chance to erase one another from their love-stung psyches. A morose man (Jim Carrey) is stationed in his bed with electrodes on his head, having the memory of his girlfriend (Kate Winslet) erased, when the technician (Mark Ruffalo) becomes distracted by the receptionist (Kirsten Dunst) who just stopped in to strip in front of her coworker. Oops. The patient's mind has just fallen off the map. Please call the head doctor (Tom Wilkinson), so that more chaos, complexity, frustration, and titillation ensue – while the patient, in his momentarily untrackable mind, is rediscovering the higher meaning of love, which he's now determined not to have erased. The rule with Gondry and Kaufman is that the crazier it first appears, the more believable they can make it feel. By sticking to fundamental emotional truths, these two prove you can deconstruct love while still being drawn to it. (1:48) California, Century 20, Empire, Galaxy, Kabuki, Piedmont. (Gerhard)

*The Fog of War 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) Four Star, Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

*The Fourth World War Big Noise's new film could be considered the antiglobalization movement's Koyaanisqatsi. The media collective has edited together outraged humanity from all points to build a case against globalization and for mass action on every continent where bottles can be thrown and police cars firebombed. The footage – much of it up close and frightening – is not safely culled from outside sources, but shot by the collective itself on the front lines, in grave danger. The scope of the argument may be too big as the film hops from Israeli-Palestinian conflict to anti-WTO protesters in Genoa and Quebec to the activism of post-apartheid South Africa to the Zapatistas of Chiapas, but as protest porn, it can't be beat. Michael Franti helps narrate, and Ozomatli and Manu Chao help give the revolution a powerful soundtrack. (1:14) Victoria Theatre. (Gerhard)

*Games People Play: New York If anyone has earned the right to invent another goofy reality TV series and place himself as the sadistic-circusmaster handling the flaming hoops, it's James Ronald Whitney. Whitney's 2000 film, Just, Melvin: Just Evil, was the rawest confessional doc of its era, a film that revealed his grandfather to be child molester and possible murderer, while looking at the effect Grandpa Melvin had on ensuing generations -- some of whom are just barely getting by, living in trailer parks and succumbing to heavy drinking. Whitney, who did a turn as a Chippendales dancer, put his own campy over-achievements as a teen gymnast and quiz whiz under the microscope as well. He turns the camera outward this time, in a purported pilot for a reality show this time -- offering aspiring actors and actresses the chance to win $10,000 if they out-expose each other in a series of exhibitionist trials which include confessing their most traumatic moments to the camera, collecting urine samples from passersby, and convincing strangers to have sex with them in four minutes or less. Who's playing, and who's getting played, is the real $10,000 question -- and Whitney excellently maneuvers the manipulations to keep you guessing 'til the final credits roll. (1:37) Opera Plaza. (Gerhard)

*Good Bye, Lenin! A huge hit at home in Germany and throughout Europe, Wolfgang Becker's dramedy cocktail is mixed with such crowd-pleasing astuteness you might almost feel guilty – there's nothing very art house going on here past the subtitles. Resistance is futile, however: Good Bye, Lenin! is easily the most satisfying release of the year so far. Fiercely dedicated East German Christiane (Katrin Sass) collapses into a coma after she witnesses the impossible: hordes openly defying the state, marching in the streets for the right to "take walks without a wall getting in the way," as son Alex (Daniel Bruehl) puts it. When she wakes months later, history's course has drastically shifted. But since the doctor urges that her weak heart be protected from any excitement, Alex is determined to hide this news at any cost. Thus the family flat becomes a tenuously sealed bubble of prereunification life – but reality keeps finding new cracks to leak through. Good Bye, Lenin! transcends a gimmicky premise to make the central charade's construction and teardown work on several levels. The ingenious script might be accused of emotional string-pulling – that is, if its characters didn't seem so full-bodied or the cumulative effect weren't so unexpectedly poignant. (1:58) Albany, Embarcadero, Empire, Piedmont. (Harvey)

*Hellboy Entertaining as, well, hell, this comic book-adapted tale from director Guillermo Del Toro (Blade II) is right-on in so many ways: the pacing, the special effects (though CG-heavy, the action rarely looks phony), and the casting, especially Ron Perlman (TV's Beauty and the Beast) as the titular hell-spawned hero. At first, Perlman seemed like an odd choice for the role – he's kinda old, and he's not exactly a big movie star – but he nails it, making Hellboy a sarcastic, takin' care of business type whose softer side emerges whenever his crush, the pyrokinetic Liz (Selma Blair), enters the picture. The plot – a pair of ageless Nazis and a supernatural Rasputin plan to destroy humankind, but they need Hellboy's underworld connections to do it – is ridiculous, but Del Toro, Perlman, and company handily ensure this isn't another superhero stinker (Daredevil, anyone?) (1:52) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Hidalgo Dogs may have a lock on being man's best friend in the animal world, but never underestimate the bond between a gentleman and his horse. Especially if that man is Frank Hopkins (Lord of the Rings' Viggo Mortensen), the stallion is his titular mustang steed, and the two are racing across the bedouin desert against a mare prized by a powerful sheikh (the majestic Omar Sharif). This being a Disney film, the expectation for horsey cutesyness isn't unfounded, but director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer) and company instantly dispel any international velvetine notions by opting for a boys'-adventure-tale gallop rather than a Black Beauty pony-show trot. The former Spielberg-Lucas employee's knack for pacing and ability to highlight a small detail – the chapped lips of a rider, the movement of an old Edison Vitagraph – without fetishizing it fuels the film with both kinetic movement and subtle depth, and Mortensen's naturally range-rugged charisma gives what should have been a B movie lark a surprising amount of Saturday-matinee horsepower. (2:13) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Home on the Range Rumor has it that Disney is planning to phase out traditionally animated features (as opposed to the computer-graphics likes of Toy Story), and this disappointing new film isn't likely to reverse that unfortunate decision. Their owners' debt-coagulated dairy farm threatened with foreclosure, three cows (voiced by Rosanne Barr, Dame Judi Dench, and Jennifer Tilly – together at last!) and a blustery stallion (Cuba Gooding Jr.) venture into the wide open prairie to hopefully capture cattle rustler-land baron Alameda Slim (Randy Quaid) and the reward money that comes with him. Curiously, the movie looks more like old Warner Brothers cartoons than anything from the Mouse House – you almost expect Wile E. Coyote, Foghorn Leghorn, and Yosemite Sam to peek from the sagebrush here. But memorable characters and slapstick vigor are missing from this innocuous baby-sitting creation, which isn't outright bad but falls short of the studio's otherwise high average in recent years. Singers deployed to croon Alan Menken's mock-country songs include k.d. lang, Tim McGraw, and Bonnie Raitt. (1:16) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Harvey)

*Intermission The closest thing to crassness in Intermission is how readily it exploits Colin Farrell's bad-boy image. The very first thing we see is Farrell's Lehiff in jittery, snake oil-selling close-up, chatting up a café waitress whom he suddenly nose-dislocates – the better to rob her cash box. He then dashes off, too crazy to be caught just yet. It's certain he'll trigger more havoc in the next 100 minutes, a bull zigzagging through other people's emotional china shops. Scenarist Mark O'Rowe's hit play Howie the Rookie concerned a mattress full o' scabies. His first screen effort finds equally vivid ways for myriad human interactions to embarrass, confound, and cause amusing pain before healing ointments are applied. In a quintessential contemporary Irish dramaturgical way, O'Rowe's language is gorgeous, gutter-slangy, and hugely enjoyable despite being almost impenetrable to foreign ears. Another significant youngish Irish theater talent, John Crowley, makes his feature-film debut directing. Even if he allows Intermission to look like fook-all (no one with a name as grandiose as Ryszard Lenczewski should be capable of cinematography this ugly), there's so much going on that after 10 minutes you'll forget cinema was supposed to be a visual medium. (1:46) Act I and II, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Jersey Girl Kevin Smith talks the talk, then talks some more. A nonvisual style that was courageous and new with the low-budget black-and-white Clerks now parodies itself in a father-daughter tale that thinks you can build wild hilarity by having a young girl step in on her father and the video-store clerk together in the shower. Or make a funky-fresh punch line out of the changing of a baby's diaper (too much powder! = ouch) – not to mention the discomfort involved in seeing Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck together on-screen. Seriously, having a baby is less painful than watching this movie about raising one. (1:43) Century 20, Four Star, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

*The Ladykillers Subtlety is all but absent from this remake of Alexander Mackendrick's 1955 comedy, but modest cajolery is hardly appropriate when a British classic moves to the sweltering South. An unlikely team of thieves assembles in the basement of Gospel-loving Mrs. Munson (Irma P. Hall), convincing her that they're Rococo-period church musicians. But instead of making holy music, they tunnel their way to the bank reserves of a nearby casino boat and filch several million in cash. All goes according to plan until Mrs. Munson discovers their secret, so the blundering bandits spend the rest of the movie trying to silence her for good. Tom Hanks plays Professor Goldthwait Higginson Dorr, the delightfully prolix ringleader of the group, nailing his first comic role in over a decade with a nebulous Southern/British accent. The Coen brothers' grossly overstated characters provide most of the fun here, and while the writing-directing duo hasn't brought back its "A" game after last year's disappointing Intolerable Cruelty, this farce will have you in stitches nearly throughout. (1:56) Century 20, Empire, Grand Lake, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, Shattuck. (Kim)

Latter Days The timing couldn't be better for a movie about a gay Mormon to open in San Francisco. Religious controversy and gay rights seem to be the topics of the year, and writer-director C. Jay Cox manages to cover both bases with his first feature. A closeted Mormon missionary (Steve Sandvoss) moves to L.A. to proselytize the bacchanalian Hollywooders, only to end up falling for a hunky queen named – ironic metaphor alert – Christian (Wes Ramsey). Drastic life changes and paradigm shifts ensue, but, as a line in a laundry room scene suggests, perhaps the two are like whites and colors: they just don't mix. Segregationist propaganda aside, you'll sob out your tear ducts if you're the type to program the VCR for daytime soaps, but the Mormon-bashing melodrama gets tiresome after a while. Forced monologues punctuate the story with rhythmic predictability, often taking time away from resolving the film's several unsettled conflicts. Cox's project boasts plenty of man-on-man action, but overall it's too much of a standard tearjerker to be controversial. (2:00) Embarcadero. (Kim)

*Monsieur Ibrahim If you only see one cinéaste's dream of Paris in the '60s this year – well, Monsieur Ibrahim doesn't have the fake sex, but in all other respects it's a whole lot better than The Dreamers. Monsieur Ibrahim is a coming-of-age nostalgia flick no edgier than that phrase implies. But its sweetness is genuine, and the showcased performances are very, very good. His mother having died, Momo (Pierre Boulanger) is stuck playing underappreciated housekeeper to a sullen father (Gilbert Melki). But the poor, working girl-dominated environs that depress dad are catnip to Momo's flaring adolescent nostrils. By the time pop has fled in general shame and self-loathing, our young Jewish protagonist has already lost his virginity, earned points toward a respectable first girlfriend, and landed a much better substitute father figure in M. Ibrahim, aka "the Arab" (Omar Sharif), who runs the dusty corner market. Slowly expanding from chamber dramedy as their relationship gradually deepens, François Dupeyron's feature turns into a road movie as soulful as it is picturesque. I could have done without the final turn to melodramatic tragedy, but that's a minor quibble. Sharif's performance suggests he's been waiting a lifetime for this role, which awakens something beautiful behind those famously liquid eyes. (1:35) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*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) Balboa. (Harvey)

*Morning Sun Even folks with limited knowledge of Chinese history will be fascinated by Morning Sun, an eye-opening account of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) as remembered by men and women who experienced it as high schoolers. With straightforward honesty, the interviewees – everyone from the daughter of a "bad family," meaning her parents were viewed suspiciously by high-ups in Chairman Mao's regime, to a founding member of the militant, revolution-obsessed Red Guards – recall a time of paranoia, brutality, conformity, fear, great hope and excitement, and confusion. News footage, family photographs, propaganda movie clips, and a filmed performance of the 1964 pro-Communism stage spectacle The East Is Red are used to illustrate the subjects' stories, illuminating why the time period still resonates so deeply with this particular generation. (1:57) Roxie. (Eddy)

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) Balboa. (Harvey)

NASCAR 3D: The Imax Experience Spectacular car crashes and position jockeying at 200 mph outta be perfect fodder for the pie-in-face immediacy of 3-D Imax. Yet somehow this routine short feature about "America's most popular spectator sport" mysteriously fails to offer much vicarious, visceral excitement. It's also a blandly politic, corporate promo-style look at an inherently trashy sport, with no room for the colorful star drivers or fans to fly their freak flags. There are scattered behind-the-scenes points of interest, and the 3-D technology is the best (i.e., least headache-inducing) I've ever seen, even if it's not used very vividly. But as coproduced by the NASCAR organization itself, this "experience" is as stolidly patriotic, wart free, and unrevealing as an Army recruitment reel. Similarly, it is best appreciated by those who would like to join up, and/or are males between the ages of 7 and 14. (:48) Metreon IMAX. (Harvey)

Never Die Alone Hollywood's formula for urban artistry: sprinkle coarse film grain onto one standard-issue gangsta movie, add skewed camera angles, and blend to a syrupy consistency. Garnish with biblical imagery and serve. Despite claims made by the film's lead actor (rap artist DMX) that this isn't your typical rapper-in-a-movie movie, director Ernest Dickerson's lackluster drug lord story doesn't cover any new territory. A self-righteous heroin dealer named King David (DMX) returns home to pay off his debts and retire, only to be brutally attacked. For some reason, a writer (David Arquette) who happens to be nearby jumps into the dying man's car, drives him to the hospital, and thus becomes the sole heir to King David's fortune. The writer then discovers a set of audiotapes containing the story of King David's life and unlocks a mystery involving missing family members and plenty of violence. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Requiem for a Dream) gives the film a gritty, cinema verité look, but without a decent story, it's simply a well-crafted disguise. (1:30) 1000 Van Ness. (Kim)

*Osama Writer-director Siddiq Barmak's Osama describes the strategies and consequences of a world turned upside down, of a life continually perverted into its opposite. The first Afghan feature film since the rise and fall of the Taliban centers on a 12-year-old Afghan girl (an affecting Marina Golbahari) who lives with her mother and grandmother in Kabul during the reign of the Taliban (1996-2001). Her male relatives were lost earlier to the war with the Soviets and the subsequent civil war, and with her mother unemployed (the hospital she worked at was closed down by the Taliban), the family faces starvation. Mother and grandmother take the desperate step of cutting the girl's hair and dressing her as a boy. In a nearly constant state of fear, the girl shoulders the responsibility of finding work and bringing home food. In the facial expressions and body language of his excellent amateur cast, Barmak, who fled Kabul two weeks after the Taliban invasion, captures the physiognomy of a war-shattered people, physically and mentally exhausted yet necessarily alert. A few of Barmak's directorial choices are heavy-handed, but the film compels the viewer with its aesthetically rich lingering on the details of life, a style obviously influenced by, among other things, Iran's decidedly humanist cinema. (1:22) Galaxy, Shattuck. (Avila)

The Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson has attained the top it's lonely at, where one can only lie down on stinging nettles of depression and paranoia. By his account, making The Passion of the Christ was a cleansing experience – more, it pulled him back from confessed suicidal urges. The clearest (secular) way to view this movie is as an act of penance. But just as Gibson's heroes recently have become humorless champions of family values against barbarian invasion – e.g., Signs, The Patriot, Vietnam apologia We Were Soldiers – so the directorial effort Passion uses sadism to express masochism. It stages the ultimate story of "faith, hope, and love" (Gibson's words) as unending slaughter. If you thought Braveheart almost lunatic in its brutality, welcome to the ninth circle of this mortal coil's hellfire. The rare mainstream film rated R solely for violence, it's not about the higher good but rather the lower bad. Choosing to portray only Jesus's last 12 mortal hours, Gibson has über-mall-flicked the Greatest Story Ever Told: there's nothing left now but jolting climax after climax, the Savior's body here profaned as Los Angeles freeways in yet another Lethal Weapon. (2:07) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Galaxy, Jack London, Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Prince and Me Director Martha Coolidge returns to her Valley Girl roots with a film about worlds colliding and the power of young love to overcome all obstacles, including birth, breeding, and a modern woman's yen for education and a career. The Prince and Me, in which Edvard, a Danish prince (Luke Mably), and Paige, a farm girl from deepest, darkest Wisconsin (Julia Stiles), are brought together, essentially, by a chance viewing of College Girls Gone Wild, initially assumes the identity of a satisfyingly guilty pleasure. The opposites manage to convincingly attract, with Mabry's smooth, quiet courtliness providing a decent foil to Stiles's matter-of-fact delivery, and Ben Miller is excellent as Soren, the prince's stone-faced and sarcastic attendant. Unfortunately the film takes a lurch for the worse as soon as the fairy-tale aspect kicks in. Minor quibbles include the irresolute quality to Mabry's careening accent (is it Danish? is it British?) and a few other lapses of logic and continuity. But the most glaring flaw is the breakneck pacing that hijacks the second half of the film, whose whiplash ending attempts to solve royal-size dilemmas in the space of a two-minute pop song. (2:03) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

*The Return Andrey Zvyagintsev's The Return is the work of a majorly ambitious, and possibly major, new director. Zvyagintsev sets a simple family story – two boys reuniting with a parent who is essentially a stranger – against stark landscapes and a foreboding body of water. Though the patriarchal focus of the narrative is characteristic of current Russian cinema – Boris Khlebnikov and Alexei Popogrebsky's Koktebel and Alexander Sokorov's Father and Son have similar dramatic setups – Zvyagintsev's allegory about the mysterious reappearance of a Father Russia strives for the power of myth. It also has an almost romantic undercurrent (think Roald Dahl's Danny, Champion of the World) until its sense of wonder turns ominous. Mikhail Kritchman's cinematography is one of the film's strong points – as 15-year-old Andrey (Vladimir Garin) and younger mama's boy Vanya (Ivan Dobronravov) venture into the great unknown with an intimidating paternal figure (Konstantin Lavronenko), minute shifts in the gray-blue spectrums of sea and sky seem to articulate the mostly mute characters' emotions: cold but dangerously wild. (1:45) Four Star, Smith Rafael. (Huston)

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed This sequel to the 2002 hit proves the old saying that once you've hit rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up. While still overly shrill, and packed with fart jokes, Burger King product placement, and a pointless musical cameo by American Idol's Ruben Studdard, Scooby-Doo 2 is actually more enjoyable than its revolting predecessor – a film made memorable only by Matthew Lillard's dead-on imitation of Casey Kasem's trademark Shaggy voice. Rubber-faced Lillard returns (along with Freddie Prinze Jr. as Fred, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne, Linda Cardellini as Velma, and director Raja Gosnell) for this new adventure that sees Mystery Inc.'s hometown overrun with monsters from past capers (cartoon buffs will recognize Captain Cutler's Ghost, the 10,000 Volt Ghost, and other familiar faces). Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks, E.R.) is the standout cast member this time round; she's adorable as the lovelorn Velma, and one fervently hopes she's destined for greater things than (shudder) Scooby-Doo 3. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Secret Window Holed up in a rural cabin, best-selling author Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) suffers from writer's block. He also suffers from a painful split from his two-timing wife (Maria Bello). He tends to both afflictions by taking extended couch naps and limiting his diet to Doritos and Mountain Dew. This depressing existence takes an outstanding turn for the worse when a sinister stranger (John Turturro) knocks on the door, drawlin' about how Mort's gone and ripped off one of his stories. And he wants some amends made, or else. Mort freaks out – then starts crackin' up. Working from an adaptation of a Stephen King novella, writer-director David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) does what he can to keep tension running high in what's really a fairly predictable story; the main event here is Depp, who elevates the so-so material with yet another inventive, eccentric performance. (1:45) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Shaolin Soccer Finally – after multiple release-date changes, a dubbing vs. subtitles debate (subtitles won, thank goodness), the excising of some 20 minutes of footage, and a brief period when the title was rumored have been changed to Kung Fu Soccer – the 2001 Hong Kong smash opens stateside. And the wait was worth it: you'd be hard-pressed to find a more entertaining film, especially if you're already a fan of goofy Hong Kong comedies. With its many high-flying special effects, Shaolin Soccer could be dubbed Bend It like the Matrix: director-star Stephen Chow ("the Jim Carrey of the East") plays Sing, a.k.a. "Mighty Steel Leg," who believes Shaolin kung fu is the answer to everything (including tight parking spots). After meeting a disgraced former soccer star known as "Golden Leg," an inspired Sing rounds up his huge array of brothers, all of whom are gifted fighters who've fallen onto hard times (one's fat, one's depressed, one's unemployed, etc.) Under the leadership of Golden Leg, Team Shaolin trains with one goal in mind: to defeat the dreaded Team Evil in the championship match. Along the way, spontaneous dance routines, Bruce Lee homages, awesome on-field antics, and Chow's infectious energy elevate Shaolin Soccer far above the usual underdog sports tale, and into must-see territory. (1:40) Lumiere. (Eddy)

Starsky and Hutch Every superficial thing about this high-concept Cheetoh is so right that I still can't believe the result ended up so profoundly ... feh. Ben Stiller as a pissy little Starsky and Owen Wilson as swinger's-lounge-edition Hutch are well cast. There's also nothing wrong with Snoop Dogg as Huggy Bear (though his Acapulco Gold vibe pales beside original player Antonio Fargas's angel-dust one), or Vince Vaughn reprising his Old School tantrum act as a coke-kingpin villain. David Soul, Paul Michael Glaser, and blaxploitation icon Fred Williamson are on board for good luck. The Me Decade hairdos, threads, wheels, interior decors, and hideous hits (shine on, Barry Manilow!) are perfect. The throwaway gags are funny. But wait – shouldn't there be non-throwaway gags? Hilarious climaxes? Why does the script feel less like a parody of a mediocre second-season episode than the real thing, elongated and slightly camped up? Another step down from the heights of Road Trip for director and coscenarist Todd Phillips, Starsky and Hutch isn't overblown and overbearing à la Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Instead, it's amiable and underwhelming, a clock-punchin' B flick on an A budget. One good thing this movie needed more of (and more things like): Juliette Lewis as Vaughn's deliciously dumb mistress. (1:37) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

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) Balboa. (Huston)

Stupidity This snarky Canadian documentary purports to be a history and analysis of the titular quality that has perhaps influenced the course of humanity more than any other. There are some interesting educational tidbits (the origin for the dunce cap and word moron, etc.), but mostly what we've got here are rote potshots at reality TV, dumbed-down news coverage, George W., and other de-evolutionary signs o' the times. Writer-director Albert Nerenberg treats his subject less as a thesis than as a catchall into which everything from lying politicians, police violence, and interviewed people-on-the-street saying "Um" can be dumped. He decries the short-attention-span pandering of modern media culture, yet Stupidity itself is a perfect example of that approach. It's also padded out with irrelevant footage from Nerenberg's Trailervision Internet trailers for fake Hollywood movies (e.g., Rave Cops, Harry Potter, Hidden Dragon), which kinda blows the whole "documentary" conceit. A few among the 136 Trailervision titles to date will be screened before this thinly amusing, short feature. (1:10) Little Roxie. (Harvey)

Taking Lives Taking Lives is ultimately a vehicle for Angelina Jolie's obscenely stunning face – witness some seriously ponderous head tilts during this blah thriller by director D.J. Caruso. A serial killer assumes his victims' identities, moving from one to the next like a hermit crab, as FBI profiler Agent Scott (Jolie) explains it to Montreal police. The local boys are irked by her kooky intuitive methods – lying on crime scenes and staring intensely – and the audience will be too, since this creepiness is the character's only trait. The film opens like a gruesome and potentially intriguing Catch Me If You Can, but Caruso never delivers, and we get stuck watching a tug-of-war between cliché and nonsense. By the time Jolie is shown dining opposite photos of victims' corpses, all has gone ridiculously wrong, and even Gena Rowlands can't whip out a mediocre performance. At least the viewer gets plenty of close-ups of Jolie as she tries to sense her way through the mess. (1:40) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness. (Koh)

A Thousand Clouds of Peace The debut feature of young Mexican writer-director Julián Hernández, is a sublime meditation on love, heartbreak, sex, and loneliness. The film offers up romantic pleasures that cannot be found in a quickie – and delivers its love bites with the smooth, deliberate tempo of a bolero. The star, on-screen at every moment, is a sexual flaneur named Gerardo (first-time actor Juan Carlos Ortuño) who wanders Mexico City, traversing and transgressing its physical boundaries in search of love and affection but finding only sex for hire. When Gerardo finally falls for a guy, an offer of money breaks his heart – and a Dear John letter from the beloved john fractures it even more. Gerardo wanders the streets in search of his lost love, finding consolation not in the anonymous sex he performs with the mechanical urgency of a heroin addict copping a fix but instead, surprisingly, from the many high-spirited women he encounters. A Thousand Clouds of Peace is a film for anyone who ever went to bed forlorn, comforted only by Frank Sinatra or Billie Holiday on the stereo. As for me, I'm not sad at all: I just filled a slot of my 10-best list for 2004. (1:23) Castro, Shattuck. (B. Ruby Rich)

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) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, 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, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Walking Tall Former Special Ops ranger Chris Vaughn (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) returns home to the Pacific Northwest town he grew up in, only to find that the Norman Rockwell drugstore fountains of his youth have been replaced by drug pushers. After tangling with the local casino kingpin, Vaughn runs for sheriff and vows to clean up the place, armed with only a sidekick (Johnny Knoxville), a sturdy piece of wood, and an artillery arsenal fit for a private army. Kudos to the marketing wizards who thought that a remake of the true-tales-of-redneck-justice classic would make a decent vehicle for the Rock, though personality and charisma naturally take a backseat to sound and fury: the film isn't happy unless it howling loudly and carrying a big stick. It may be part of that budding A-list genre dedicated to resurrecting past drive-in glories – "exploitation-ploitation" – but ultimately it's just another gone-tomorrow piece of pop noise in Hollywood's opening-weekend hit parade. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)

Rep Picks

*'Peep Show' See Critic's Choice. Artists Television Access, PFA Theater.