Take two
Get in line – the S.F. International Film Festival continues

The 47th annual San Francisco International Film Festival runs through April 29. Venues are AMC Kabuki 8 Theatres, 1881 Post, S.F.; Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, S.F.; PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.; and Century Cinema 16 Mountain View, 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View. Tickets (most shows are $7.50 to $12) are available by phone at (925) 866-9559, at www.sffs.org, and at the Kabuki box office. For listings and show times, see First Runs, in Film listings.

Wed/21

Manhole (Chen Daming, China, 2002) "Without money, you're nothing": it's a mantra for recently released convict Tang (Jiang Tong) as he tries, and fails, to secure a job in modern-day mainland China. Worried his girlfriend, Xiao (Ning Jing), is succumbing to the cash-lubed charms of a rich old schoolmate, Tang is obsessed with preserving their relationship and with pulling ducats, and this instigates a lucrative criminal caper – stealing her new suitor's Rolex watch. The waters are further muddied when his parole officer (Zhao Baogang) takes a Javert-like interest in Tang's activities, including Tang's girl. The heist-film story line initially seems like a mere starting point for a damning critique of the country's proto-capitalist bent, but director Chen Daming's predominant use of gratuitously flashy angles and imagery eventually undoes the potential for substance over style; what starts off as constructive storytelling ends up as a rather disappointing calling card for Hollywood or Hong Kong industry work. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/24, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/26, 6:45 p.m., Century. (David Fear)

Thurs/22

Doppelganger (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2003) There are doubles of doubles in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's latest, which marks the second time – after Cure's mesmerism – he's drawn on a form of dread that has European origins. Kurosawa's thespian stand-in Yakusho Koji stars as yet another tired and about-to-be-fired protagonist, sullen and socially inept inventor Takashi, whose failed efforts at creating an "Artificial Human Body Chair" turn around once his charismatic evil twin enters the picture. In terms of mise-en-scène, Kurosawa has constructed a doppelgänger of his collected works to date: he uses the video-to-celluloid approach of the recent dandified Bright Future to revisit that film's stairways to purgatory, Pulse's dark hallways, Charisma's roads to nowhere, and the haunted restaurants and window-glimpsed windblown trees of Cure and Seance. The self-parodic plot yields more than one interpretation: just as Takashi's unwieldy robotic chair, designed to "replicate the complexity of human behavior" (for people suffering from paralysis!), could be a physical manifestation of Kurosawa's films, so the inventor's violent protectiveness toward his creation might be Kurosawa's comic response to Hollywood's (and Japanese horror's) recent pillaging of his ideas. An Alban Berg-meets-Bernard Hermann score magnifies the split-screen misadventures and sudden, violent mood swings. Yakusho's angry-funny performance anchors the movie. 7 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/24, 3:45 p.m., Kabuki; April 28, 9:25 p.m., PFA. (Johnny Ray Huston)

In the Company of Men (Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2003) British playwright Edward Bond's saga of a corporate business beset by duplicity, betrayal, and unchecked ambition seems even timelier now than it did back in the early '90s, and its potboiler plot about dying CEOs, adopted sons, and various advisors vying for control of a munitions company simply screams for the thriller treatment. French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (La sentinelle) seems to agree, having crafted a film adaptation that refashions Bond's play into something like an edgy, suspenseful airplane read with a few artsy touches of paranoia for garnish. But his concurrent flirtations with movable metatext feel like a noncommittal afterthought and only serve to confuse rather than add any Brechtian overtones of exploration. What's left is an interesting and slightly messy endeavor, guiltily engaging in spots and curiously alienating in others. 2:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

Fri/23

The Corporation (Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, Canada, 2004) Advance press bills The Corporation as "the next Bowling for Columbine," but don't be misled: The Corporation is smarter. Riffing on complicated economic structures with more than a modicum of wit, Canadian filmmakers Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, along with screenwriter Joel Bakan, have hit upon a very clever device. They take a textbook definition of psychopath (though the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders now prefers the term Antisocial Personality Disorder) and proceed to show how perfectly corporations fit the diagnosis. Hilarious and chilling, The Corporation wrangles international finance to the ground and shows how documentary at its best can let us know more than personality journalism ever can. The pace slows when it lets familiar authorities (Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and even Michael Moore) go on and on, but it also finds new heroes like carpet magnate Ray Anderson. Despite its weakness for oppositional authority figures, The Corporation is brilliant at demonstrating how we've been hoodwinked. 7:30 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/25, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki. (B. Ruby Rich)

Double Dare (Amanda Micheli, USA, 2003) Jeannie Epper was once Wonder Woman. Zoe Bell was once Xena (early on in this doc, she half-jokingly refers to Lucy Lawless as her "acting double"). When New Zealand-based Bell travels to California looking for stunt work, the tough, gruff, and likable Epper becomes her mentor, and the path they take leads to Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman. If Bell's learning process and cultural adjustments (she has her bullshit-detector working when Gary Busey begins to leer) form Double Dare's story arc, the battles against sexism and ageism waged by Epper – whose family, as Steven Spielberg observes, is a veritable stunt-work dynasty – give the movie its matter-of-fact integrity. Forget the past tense: Epper still is Wonder Woman. 6 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/26, 6:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

Koktebel (Boris Khlebnikov and Alexei Popogrebsky, Russia, 2003) Taking a page out of the Tarkovsky textbook of Russian filmmaking, this tale of a father and son traveling across the motherland to reach the titular destination – a small town where the boy's aunt, and a newish life, awaits – is awash in long shots and meaningful silences, courting spirituality with every 10-minute take and slow-zoom close-up. That the debut from filmmakers Boris Khlebnikov and Alexei Popogrebsky manages to borrow this cine-vocabulary so blatantly and still make the material seem fresh and resonant is a testament to their talent; even the stock moments of hardscrabble peasant living and vodka-soaked tragedy feel emotionally alive. Gleb Puskepalis's wide-eyed yet jaded young boy suggests a Slavic Antoine Doinel (he even seeks solace in the sea), privy to wisdom beyond his years yet clinging to the hope of something better on the horizon. A quietly major achievement tuned to a minor key. 3 p.m., Castro. Also Sun/25, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/26, 11 a.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

The Mother (Roger Michell, England, 2003) Those who associate director Roger Michell with period pieces (Persuasion) or pithy comedies (Notting Hill) may be in for a shock stepping into this devastating drama about a widow (Ann Reid) who, after years of playing the dutiful wife and mother, decides to make up for lost time regarding her heart and her loins. Unfortunately, it happens to be with a handyman (Daniel Craig) several decades her junior. He's also her son's best friend and her narcissistic daughter's lover. Michell and legendary Brit scribe Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette) go at the subject sensitively yet refuse to pull any punches, adding layers of psychological complexity to the December-May relationship that could have easily drifted into movie-of-the-week territory. Both actors anchor the film with jaw-droppingly honest performances, with Reid's take on the sexagenarian wounded-bird woman awakening to her dormant corporeal desires providing the veteran TV actress the chance to flex serious muscle. 8:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/24, 1 p.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

Sat/24

Marronnier (Hideyuki Kobayashi, Japan, 2003) What do you get when you take Japanese schoolgirls in peril, a deranged doll-maker with a secret, his obsessive and unhinged assistant, and some creepy-as-fuck porcelain figurines that are a little too lifelike for comfort? Well, what you should have had was a J-horror House of Wax capable of sending copious shivers up spines instead of this sloppy attempt at rustling up scares. The combination of Japan's pop puppeteer extraordinaire, Hideyuki Kobayashi, calling the shots and a premise brimming with potential would seem to be a winner, but the film reads like a catalog of midnight-movie mishaps: the direction is amateurish, the choppy and arrhythmic editing feels as if it were done while fleeing a burning house, the glossy D.V. cinematography resembles a series of karaoke backing videos sprinkled with fleeting moments of gore, etc. An exercise in cult psychotronica gone horribly awry. Midnight, Kabuki. Also Tues/27, 4 p.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

Sun/25

Ana and the Others (Celina Murga, Argentina, 2003) At one point during Celina Murga's debut feature, Ana (Camila Toker) and a male admirer debate the romantic merits of a film that sounds suspiciously like Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg. But if the French new wave seems to be a likely influence on Ana and the Others, it's Eric Rohmer, rather than Demy, who supplies the prototype for Murga's sun-kissed seaside exploration of human nature. The casual wisdom of Rohmer's recent seasonal quartet is echoed in Ana's return to Paraná, Argentina, from economically depressed Buenos Aires; aimless at the outset, her journey back to her hometown is gradually revealed to be a determined search for a lost love. The performances and Murga's direction are alternately contemplative and alert, freely capturing changes in attitude, behavior, and atmosphere; when Ana teaches a young boy how to flirt – in the film's most appealing and amusing sequence – it's a form of payback for the help he's already given her. By the time Murga's film reaches a traditional dramatic narrative's moment of truth, subtler verities – about the restless protagonist and her complacent surroundings – have already been exposed. 8:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/27, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

Tues/27

Grimm (Alex van Warmerdam, Netherlands, 2003) Think about how many kids have been traumatized by Hansel and Gretel. Any story that involves parents ditching their offspring in the forest can't be healthy for child development. Thankfully, Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam (The Northerners) aims his contemporary adaptation at an older crowd, but even deadpan violence and sex don't mask the film's eerie childhood nostalgia. Abandoned in the woods by their father, siblings Jacob and Maria find their way to Spain, where a lavish villa serves as the fabled gingerbread house and the resident witch is a crafty surgeon named Diego (Carmelo Gómez). Ulterior motives surface, so they end up leaving with one less kidney, and – after an abrupt surrealist sequence – hide out in a High Noon-style ghost town. Narrative cohesion is nixed in favor of a picaresque approach, but van Warmerdam's dark and inventive humor effectively compensates for his flightiness. 6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 28, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Dave Kim)

Some Secrets (Alice Nellis, Czech Republic/Slovakia, 2002) Four years after Alice Nellis's Eeny Meeny won the Skyy Award for Best First Feature, the Czech director follows up with another understatedly poignant family drama. A feisty grandmother (Nada Kotrsová) rounds up her less-than-familial progeny for a road trip to Slovakia, determined to bury her dead son's ashes and loosen up some household friction. Her granddaughters, however, are far from excited. Struggling artist Zuzana (Theodora Remundová) and pregnant Ilona (Sabina Remundová) are both in unhappy marriages and can't stand their panicky, old-fashioned mother (Iva Janzurová). Zuzana's endearing husband comes along for the ride, only to find out his wife's been sleeping with a "jam painter" whom he admires. Nellis captures the golden idiosyncrasies of family exchange with biting dialogue and even sharper subtext. But overall Some Secrets is a collection of charming conversations without much to look at, the kind of well-scripted film that would've worked better as a read. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 29, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Kim)