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

American Dream 2.0 The Bay Area is still recovering from the dot-com implosion, so looking back at the crash as a cultural study may be a bit premature. But conjecture and sweeping statements are left out of Jennifer Thompson and Kristin McGinn Straub's short documentary, which follows three American dreamers on their quest for success. Axil is an environment-friendly entrepreneur who sincerely believes in the green products he sells on his Web site. Murali is an immigrant techie who leaves India for the gold-paved streets of Silicon Valley. And Krista, stuck with the shorter end of the silicon stick, is a dancer fighting to keep high-tech businesses from conquering artists' spaces. Documenting the same crash-and-burn dynamic as Startup.com, American Dream 2.0 shows how dreamers don't always find happiness in the unpredictable Bay Area. Although the characters never meet each other on-screen, their clashing aspirations create tensions that, even today, haven't been fully resolved. (:52) Red Vic. (Kim)

*Carandiru See "Jailbreak." (2:28) Embarcadero.*Deadline Illinois governor George Ryan had long been a death penalty advocate. But when Northwestern University journalism students dug up enough evidence to successfully exonerate several prisoners on death row – as an undergraduate class assignment! – he began to question whether the state's criminal justice apparatus could be trusted not to execute the innocent. Should he commute 167 death row inmates' sentences to life imprisonment before leaving office? Primarily focusing on the public, political, and media frenzy surrounding that long decision-making process, Deadline also finds room to consider capital punishment's U.S. legal history, input from other exonerated former inmates, coerced confessions, "tough on crime" stands as a campaign tool, etc. This potent documentary by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson makes a strong case against capital punishment by pointing up the fallibility of our justice system – the scary point is made that if the sober system in Illinois is so imperfect, what are the odds of error in execution-happy Florida or Texas? That harrowing insight is balanced by the inspiring portrait of one politician (a Republican even!) who actually seems guided foremost by conscience. (1:30) Roxie. (Harvey)

The Saddest Music in the World Cinemania is as sinful and maniacal as can be when it comes from the hands and eyes of Guy Maddin, who reveals himself to be a leg man in this wonderful yet wearyingly manic depression-era comedy, set in a snow globe that doubles as his beloved hometown of Winnipeg. "If you're sad and like beer, I'm your lady," declares alcohol heiress Lady Port Huntley (Isabella Rosellini), who sports a pair of booze-filled prosthetic gams as she presides over an international music contest that makes Iron Chef seem tame and the Eurovision Song Contest seem tasteful: a spinning wheel of legs determines which nations battle for the titular honor, and the winner of each round slides into a vat of sudsy brew. Is a Serbian cello more soulful and doleful than a Scottish bagpipe? Will the "it's all showbiz" mentality of ugly America, led by a louse (Kids in the Hall alum Mark McKinney) who cuckolded his father, prevail? What happened to Canada? The answers are moot. Like a witty drunk, Maddin's movie starts out energetic and gradually loses focus. By the end it might be dead or just very, very sad. (1:39) Act I and II, Lumiere, Smith Rafael. (Huston)*Shrek 2 See Movie Clock. (1:33) Four Star, Grand Lake, Jack London, Oaks, Orinda.

*'The Trilogy' See Critic's Choice. Castro.

Valentin It's become de rigeur to dis Miramax for its penchant for procuring foreign films that pander. But this insulin-shot import from Argentine writer-director Alejandro Agresti fits its trademark treacle template to such a T that all defense arguments are instantly rendered moot. Seriously, this tepid tale of a cross-eyed boy (Rodrigo Noya) who dreams of being an astronaut, brightens up the lives of all around him, and seems capable of uttering only precocious platitudes every time he opens his trap could have been made-to-order from a "Miramaximization" cookbook. Add in dollops of sentimentality and toothless pleas for tolerance, plenty of bumper-sticker wisdom from the mouths of babes, a pinch of harmless regional exotica, and soak it all in enough syrup for a short stack. The company's logo on the print seems redundant; Agresti's autobiographical version of "Children Say the Darnedest Things" and his patrons' modus sync up so predictably that after five minutes you'll swear you've seen this same film at least a dozen times. (1:27) Lumiere. (Fear)

Ongoing

*The Agronomist As thousands of international peacekeepers try to settle the unrest in Haiti, filmmaker Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs) aptly releases The Agronomist, a documentary about late Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique. Demme intertwines Dominique's struggle for democracy with a recent political history of Haiti, bringing us up to speed on the unrest, corruption, and violence that have been choking the country for decades. Surviving threats and long periods of exile, Dominique voiced his opinions on the radio waves until his murder in 2000. And as of now, it's still a losing battle. The journalist's wife, Michèle Montas, narrowly escaped assassination in 2002. Dominique's station, Radio Haiti Inter, has remained off the air since last year, when persistent threats forced Montas to shut down all broadcasts. Consequently, Demme's own frustration often surfaces as a weighty us-versus-them tone; if you're looking for objective discourse, The Agronomist isn't your movie. But since the film comes as indigent Haitians prepare for their fifth government in 20 years, remaining neutral is an understandable challenge. (1:30) Shattuck. (Kim)

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, Shattuck. (Kim)

Breakin' All the Rules Frankly, it's a relief to watch a comedic star vehicle that doesn't kiss the headliner's ass the whole way through. Hotshot Jamie Foxx does get his premium screen time, but Breakin' All the Rules also has a plot (albeit a convoluted one), some clever dialogue (mixed in with some crass), and a decent supporting cast (minus a humdrum Morris Chestnut). But I'll stop covering my bases with parentheticals and admit it's a fun flick. Quincy Watson (Foxx) gets the ol' heave-ho from his fiancée, so he writes a handbook on breakups to help him cope. Suddenly, he's a best-selling author who gets caught in some volatile relationship crossfire. There are a few too many sides to this movie's love polygon, which forms when Quincy falls for his cousin's girlfriend (Gabrielle Union), but watching the corners fit together in one climactic scene is worth the confusion. Bring a barf bag, however, for the ending: departing train, romantic hero running and professing his love – yeah, you know the drill. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Kim)

Broken Wings Israeli writer-director Nir Bergman's first fictive feature is a dreary portrait of a Haifa family who have been wading ever deeper into despair since its patriarch died a few months ago. Mother Dafna (Orli Zilberschatz-Banai) drags herself to working a hospital night shift, leaving the burden of parenting her younger children to 17-year-old Maya (Maya Maron), who resents the premature ending of her youth. Teen brother Yair (Nitai Gvirtz) has dropped out of school for a degrading job distributing flyers in a giant mouse costume, when not generally moping around. A still-younger bro hurts himself in a fall, the youngest daughter is withdrawn, and the car keeps conking out. Oy vey indeed. Broken Wings swept the Israeli Oscars and has won awards elsewhere too, but it's the kind of movie so suffused with self-important gloom from the very start that some viewers will feel more numbed than moved. If you're in the mood for 86 minutes of heavy sighs, eyes cast wearily skyward, crying scenes, and so forth – well, go ahead, knock yourself out. (1:26) California, Galaxy, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Carlos Castaneda: Enigma of a Sorcerer Carlos Castaneda's series of books detailing his alleged apprenticeship with a Yaqui sorcerer – a figure many believed the onetime UCLA anthropology major simply made up – turned him into the 1970s' great popularizer of non-Western shamanic concepts among Me Decade heads. And that guru status in turn made Castaneda the orchestrator, or prisoner (depending on whom you talk to) of his own mythology. He was seldom photographed or interviewed, commanding a massive following while dealing directly with only a small "inner circle" that included "a large harem" of women with whom he was sexually involved. "He believed his sperm changed our brains," one former member attests. Made and mostly populated by those onetime "participants," R. Torjan's film provides just enough critical questioning to satisfy as a nontoadying overview of Castaneda's theories, methods, and murky life. Was he a plagiarist? A charlatan? A trickster-shaman whose teachings transcended terms so rooted in the rational, physical world? Presumably due to lack of budget, Torjan incorporates no archival footage here, which means the film exists mostly on its own altered plane of talking heads against psychedelic computer graphics. One could imagine a more fully rounded, technically accomplished documentary about this subject, but whether you approach from a New Age or skeptical viewpoint (the biographical similarities to, say, Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard are plentiful), this current effort does weave a certain enigmatic spell. (1:31) Little Roxie. (Harvey)

The Clay Bird Though banned in its own country on grounds that it would "hurt religious sentiment," Tareque Masud's The Clay Bird rejects any form of religious or political extremism. Masud sets his film in East Pakistan (modern-day Bangladesh) during the 1960s, when the political climate of the country was set to revolution and independence. A strictly religious father sends his son Anu to a madrasa, an Islamic boarding school for lower-class Muslims. Anu has trouble adjusting to the ascetic life of a madrasa student and befriends an eccentric outcast among his classmates. Meanwhile, politics drastically shift in East Pakistan, affecting everyone from Anu's activist uncle to his conservative, orthodox father. While Masud's childhood drama successfully hits the charming humor chord, it's too often breached by political tirades and religious validation. The film's pacing slows to a crawl as the story develops, but Masud's penchant for quiet, everyday beauty makes it a little easier to sit through. (1:38) Smith Rafael. (Kim)

Coffee and Cigarettes If Coffee and Cigarettes feels like little more than a smoke break before the next major Jim Jarmusch project, that's because it's composed of short films made between his past ones. Nicotine and caffeine consumption loosely unites the 10 segments (along with, to a lesser degree, a visual fascination with checkerboard patterns). Some try to get by on little more than name recognition – Jack and Meg White's Tesla coil demonstration, for example, coasts on "aren't we cute and cool" attitude. Other skits (Cate Blanchett as herself and as a resentful punk rock cousin; Alfred Molina fawning over a diffident Steve Coogan) bring an actorly sense of irreverence to the notion of celebrity. Jarmusch saves the best for last. "Delirium" lets Wu-Tang's RZA and GZA lecture a wasted-looking but feisty Bill Murray about the benefits of holistic health. Set in a dive bar on a sunny day, "Champagne" allows Taylor Mead – whose appearance certifies the film's Warhol debt – to show the nascent improvisers exactly how it should be done: with a worldly and weary sense of the absurd and enough imagination to pretend a Styrofoam cup of instant is a flute of Krug. (1:36) Embarcadero. (Huston)

Connie and Carla Writer-star Nia Vardalos' previous effort was a little something called My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which earned about 50 kajillion bucks and is being touted in ads for Connie and Carla as "the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time." It's unlikely that this follow-up will achieve such stratospheric status, though it is intermittently amusing. Lifelong friends and failed cabaret singers Connie (Vardalos) and Carla (Toni Collette) go into hiding as drag queens after they witness a murder; before you can say To Wong Foo (or Sister Act or Some Like it Hot), their new act is causing a sensation in West Hollywood. Complications arise and covers are nearly blown at every turn, including frequent unexpected visits by the next-door neighbors (all drag divas themselves) and the arrival of a hunky straight guy (David Duchovny) who makes Connie feel like a natural woman. A handful of entertaining production numbers highlight what's mostly just silly, forgettable fun. (1:48) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

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) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

*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) Balboa, California, Empire, Galaxy, Piedmont. (Gerhard)

Godsend Maybe it's tough bringing new material to the shocker genre, but this lame sci-fi drama doesn't bother to even try. Director Nick Hamm throws in everything on the thriller-movie checklist: mad scientist, iconic shower curtain, rickety mansion, a disturbed Haley Joel Os – whoops, I mean Cameron Bright – parochial town, cryptic photographs, and of course, spooky schoolhouse. Still, Godsend might have been a good movie, or at least a tolerable one, if it didn't take itself so damn seriously. A hip young couple (Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) lose their well-behaved son, Adam (Bright), meet the world's best geneticist (a devilish Robert De Niro), and agree to have the kid cloned. Things go well until the new Adam's eighth birthday, when a sinister streak cuts through his angelic demeanor. The cloning idea brings a touchy ethical nuance to the gothic, but Godsend veers into clichés when it hops on the whole spooky-kid bandwagon. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Kim)

*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) Balboa, Empire, Lumiere, Orinda, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*I'm Not Scared Despite the film's title, it's impossible not to be frightened by how heinous adult behavior can be, especially when it involves kidnapping and imprisoning a young boy in a muddy hole. Director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) looks back at a politically turbulent 1978 Italy. Racked by poverty, residents of a tiny rural settlement in the Puglia region seek an easy solution, holding for ransom a boy from an affluent home. All goes well until 10-year-old Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) discovers the prisoner, ultimately learning that grown-ups don't always walk the straight and narrow. Salvatores implements horror conventions only to throw us off; the bulk of this stunning work resonates with coming-of-age themes and elegiac visual grace. Paying homage to Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, Salvatores chooses a stark rural backdrop for Michele's exposure to adulthood, and thankfully, doesn't conclude with phony moralism. (1:41) Act I and II, Embarcadero. (Kim)

*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) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Kill Bill: Vol. 2 Twelve years after Reservoir Dogs and a decade after Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino is finally doing what might be considered real work again. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 was, ever so marginally, worth the wait. Sure, it was an exercise in pure style without content. But it gave great eye-ear candy, made Uma Thurman an action heroine at last (no, The Avengers doesn't count), and was funny, beautiful, and surprising enough at times to make expensive cineaste camp seem maybe justifiable after all. But carryover goodwill dies distressingly soon in Vol. 2. While one expects even quirkier ideas and grander set pieces, things instead start off slug-slow, and stay that way. Nothing here is as stylistically bold as the first film's anime episode, and no action choreography approaches the first's restaurant massacre. Instead there's just the Passion of Uma, as her Bride grimly endures one near-death pummeling after another. (2:00) Century 20. (Harvey)

Laws of Attraction Ally McBeal meets Sex in the City in this smug romance, which pairs two unlikely stars in even less likely circumstances. An upper-echelon divorce attorney named Audrey (Julianne Moore, in one of her what-was-I-thinking roles) squares off with the new barrister in town (Pierce Brosnan), meeting her match in both the courtroom and the bed. The hotshot lawyers take opposite sides in a high-profile case, which conveniently sets up the conflict of their ironic, mostly inebriated romance. Boasting one of the most contrived plots in movie history, Laws of Attraction is still good for at least a quick laugh, albeit one prefaced with groans and a slap to the forehead. To enjoy yourself (and it is possible), you'll have to toss your disbelief, overlook Audrey's punk-rocking mother, and pretend you're not already sure what'll happen in the next scene. Hey, it's romantic comedy – thinking hard just makes it worse. (1:39) Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Kim)

Man on Fire Jean-Paul Sartre once declared, "Hell is other people"; I'll posit that a two-and-one-half-hour assault and battery from director Tony Scott (Top Gun and other flash 'n' crash offenders too numerous to mention) might be a close contender for second place. An ex-military man (Denzel Washington) with a heavy conscience takes a bodyguard gig in Mexico City during a rash of corruption and kidnappings. He develops a bond with his ward (Dakota Fanning), who predictably gets snatched; he predictably goes apeshit. What initially seems like a move toward character development via Scott's uncharacteristic first-act restraint – nearly an hour passes before the pyrotechnics start – would be admirable were it not just knee-jerk emotional manipulation set up to justify the third-act brutality. By the time the avenging-angel act reaches red-level proportions, not even Washington's charismatic eye-of-the-storm calmness can temper this prolonged marathon of cheap pathos and pain. (2:26) Century Plaza, Century 20, Kabuki. (Fear)

*Mean Girls Tina Fey, head Saturday Night Live writer and ruler of the snarky universe, pens (and costars in) a hilariously biting teen movie imbued with subtle sympathy. Sixteen-year-old Cady (Lindsay Lohan) enters high school with wide eyes (she was home-schooled in Africa) and is taken in by the ruling trio of perfect bitchy girls. These ladies have killer demolition techniques, pulled straight from Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes, a survival guide to femmelet warfare and inspiration for Fey's screenplay. Cady is supposedly spying on the "plastics" for her real, less-popular friends, but soon she's seduced, and director Mark Waters shows us why. When the evil ones emerge from a convertible to the tune of Kelis's "Milkshake" song, they kinda kick ass. But next Waters ridicules the image, as someone too old (a mom who still thinks she's a teenager) and too young (a little sister who gyrates to Britney videos) obscenely imitates them. Lohan, as Cady, skillfully travels to the dark side and back, bringing her school's girl population with her. Some moral reckoning at the end makes for Mean Girls' only trite notes. (1:37) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki. (Koh)

*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, a.k.a. "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) Balboa, Empire, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (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)

New York Minute Finally, the dual conglomerates known as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have grown up enough to vie for their share of teen moviegoer dollars. As they do in most of their direct-to-video releases, the girls again set out to prove how different they are from one another – but this time they reeeally mean it. Ashley plays prissy Jane Ryan, a straight-A student trying for an Oxford scholarship. Miss Starchy-Pants is constantly embarrassed, however, by her flaky, rocker sister, Roxy (Mary-Kate). Both girls head to the Big Apple – Jane to deliver a speech and Roxy to slip her demo CD to A Simple Plan's music reps – but bumbling crooks lie in wait. Preteens will like the film, but the antics are far beneath the intelligence level of actual 17-year-olds. (1:26) Century Plaza, Century 20, Galaxy, Kabuki. (Koh)

Sacred Planet When watching an Imax film, you're supposed to feel awe – like it's 1896, and you're in the front row watching Lumiere's "Train Entering a Station" – at the sheer wonder of the documentary form. These days it's not the ability to make moving images that creates awe, but, apparently, the size of those images. And bigger is truly better in the Robert Redford-narrated Sacred Planet, which touches down on some of the most pristine areas of Thailand, Borneo, British Columbia, and New Zealand in its attempt to make environmentalists of 10-year-olds. The filmmakers engage a few clichés en route (time-lapse photography, be it sunset-through-sunrise cycle or hyperspeed city traffic, just doesn't cut it), but doesn't old Mother Earth deserve 45 minutes of your time? (:45) Metreon IMAX. (Gerhard)

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring Beauty and brutality mix like oil and water in another gorgeously shot film from Kim Ki-duk. This one follows a man's life in and out of a floating Buddhist monastery through one set of seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter, and another – youthful folly, teen lust, full-grown vengeance, and adult penitence. Like 2000's The Isle, which had its own shocking hook, this film lulls you into a dream state with its water-lapping-up-on-a-shore pace, then lowers the boom – with indelible tragicomic images. (1:43) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Gerhard)

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)

*Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock donated his body to filmmaking – and he almost got the chance to donate it to science as well when his 30-day diet of McDonald's food began destroying his liver. No one has had quite this much fun with the first-person film-crusade format since Michael Moore went searching for Roger. Spurlock has chosen just as wily and dangerous a foe, and he too has the rare qualities of showmanship that make this polemic against junk food in our schools, neighborhoods, and indeed our brains as entertaining as it is informative. Anyone who finds Moore's pedantries a touch patronizing when it comes to the one-on-one interview (and, for the record, I do not include myself in that category) will find nothing to object to in Spurlock's methodology. As generous with the folks behind the counter as he is with the portions, it's Spurlock himself – throwing up out a car window, displaying a hard-won spare tire in patriotic briefs – who suffers for our Mcfastfood sins. (1:38) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

13 Going on 30 "I wanna be 30, flirty, and thriving," 13-year-old Jenna Rink sobs to herself after her birthday bash is ruined by Tom-Tom, the most popular (and meanest) girl in her class. Thanks to some magical wishing dust inadvertently supplied by Jenna's dorky best friend, Matt, the Rick Springfield-loving teen is transformed into a full-grown, Manhattan-dwelling magazine editor, complete with a wardrobe Carrie Bradshaw would envy. Tadpole director Gary Winick's 13 Going on 30 owes a lot to a certain Tom Hanks comedy, though in this telling, kid-adult Jenna (Jennifer Garner) time travels as well, fast-forwarding through her own life from 1987 to 2004. Since she has no memory of those intervening years, Jenna's horrified to realize her 30-year-old self has a reputation as a scorching bitch who terrifies her employees, ignores her family, and – most heartbreakingly – has turned her back on once-devoted Matt (Mark Ruffalo). Fresh-faced Garner, who's best known for playing a superspy on Alias, proves highly likable as the game, goofy Jenna. (1:40) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

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) 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) Balboa, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Troy Many will argue that Troy is held back from greatness by star Brad Pitt and his famous abs, or the Brabs as they like to be called. This isn't true: Troy wouldn't be a great movie anyway, but there are a lot of good reasons to appreciate it. Most of them are for what it manages not to be: too corny, overblown, ponderous, laughable, or garish, for starters. The score, by James Horner, doesn't underline everything and then some. CGI effects are used mostly to heighten real-world ones, creating a rare modern blockbuster that doesn't feel like Space Mountain on endless loop. The cogent script by David Benioff ("inspired by Homer's Iliad" – well, who isn't?) trips on relatively few dialogue howlers. The heavy machinery of spectacle and actual plot (as opposed to those spindly legs top-heavy Gladiator and Braveheart stood on: you killed my woman, now I kill you) move their impressive bulk around without too many gears squeaking. Director Wolfgang Petersen – a man who's never wavered, or embarrassed himself, jumping willy-nilly from Das Boot to Neverending Story to Air Force One – rises to the occasion with slightly impersonal but very accomplished craftsmanship. As for Stark Raving Brad, what can one say? He's trying hard, voice pushed low, chiseled forehead lined from the warrior's woe of doling out life and death. Yet even bulked up for the role, he remains lightweight. (2:45) Century Plaza, Century 20, Empire, Grand Lake, Jack London, Orinda. (Harvey)

*The Twilight Samurai Forget Bill. Tarantino won't be filching much from this movie. Set just before the Meiji Restoration in rural Japan, Yoji Yamada's historical drama omits rampant violence and instead focuses on familial struggles and human perseverance. Seibei (Hiroyuki Sanada), a humble samurai earning a pauper's salary, loses his wife to illness, leaving him to support two young daughters and his senile mother. Though forced into an exhaustingly occupied life, Seibei eventually finds happiness in raising his daughters. But political unrest in feudal Japan spreads, and the dedicated father is unwillingly drawn into the conflict. Yamada's pacing matches the speed of an old Mizoguchi drama, moving from one narrative to the next with patient, undisturbed fluidity. The film's two sword-fight sequences may not be enough to appease die-hard samurai fans, but any more violence in this story would just seem gratuitous. Twilight doesn't try to reinvent The Seven Samurai or a Shakespearean saga, but it finds poignancy in even the most unassuming human conflicts. (2:07) Albany, Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Kim)

Van Helsing You'd think the combined star power of Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's monster, Hugh Jackman (as a creature hunter employed by the Vatican), and director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns) would make Van Helsing a sure thing. But as last year's rather similar League of Extraordinary Gentlemen already proved, mashing a bunch of recognizable characters and CG hoo-ha into one big, loud, self-important movie doesn't automatically spell entertainment. Van Helsing goes through all the expected motions (ghoulies, elaborate weaponry, an evil plan for world domination), but it's lacking a certain something: call it a combination of fun, originality, and a sense of purpose that aims higher than fast-food tie-ins. Those looking for real Universal Monster thrills should stay home and watch Bride of Frankenstein instead. (2:12) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London. (Eddy)

*Young Adam Those looking for Dreamers-style exotica and soft-core thrills are barking up the wrong movie: while this somber study of working-class Glaswegians during the glum 1950s does have sex, it's of the furtive, deglammed, real-people-rutting type you might expect in an updated Angry Young Man flick. Ewan McGregor plays Joe, a young drifter who wanders into working on the coal barge operated by easygoing Les (Peter Mullan), owned by his wife, Ella (Tilda Swinton). Though Joe isn't particularly gregarious, his presence relaxes an atmosphere rather clouded by marital strain. Things have relaxed a little too much, however, when Ella and Joe commence jumping each other's bones. Meanwhile, Joe is haunted by memories of his romance with Cathie (Emily Mortimer), part of the very different life he's recently abandoned – and a sequence of events whose end might well be connected to the drowned woman he and Les pull from the drink at the start. The excellent cast and adapter-director David Mackenzie's deft approach – withdrawn yet intense – to an almost-too-internalized story make Young Adam a generally downbeat film that's nonetheless thoroughly satisfying. (1:38) Galaxy. (Harvey)

Rep Picks

Festival See 8 Days a Week. (1:35) Smith Rafael.

*Godzilla What premiered in 1954 Japan as Gojira was vastly different from the admittedly delightful travesty that would be the only version most Westerners ever saw. At long last, this fully restored print of the Toho classic offers plenty of surprises for casual fans not fanatical enough to have already tracked it down in the import bins. Gojira was a very serious movie, a cautionary allegory about humanity's possible future self-destruction, created by a nation that had entered the atomic age in the worst way possible at World War II's close. Ishiro Honda's 98-minute cut features several emergency military-governmental meetings, a somewhat ponderous young-love triangle, and much discussion of scientific ethics – most of which was, natch, excised from the slimmed-down, souped-up U.S. cut. The latter, billed as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, instead featured laughable English-language dubbing and a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as an American reporter in crudely inserted new scenes. (1:38) Castro, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Life of Brian Those of you who thought Mel Gibson's pornography of pain needed way more whistling up on that cross will be delighted to see the ol' Python passion play is getting another chance to beautifully blaspheme en masse. Sorry, there's no added Aramaic dialogue or extra 20-minute scenes of our hero being flayed here ... it's still just the classic saga of a baby one manger over from the Christ child who grows up to be Brian of Nazareth (Graham Chapman) – member of the Judean People's Front, snack vendor at the Coliseum, erstwhile Chosen One for the anno Domini populace, and the apple of his mother's eye. The irony is that, like its main character's, the parody's "second coming" rerelease currently surfs in on the wake of His story's popularity; yet the fact that Brian's satire doesn't revolve around Jesus per se but how everyone from terrorist groups to scheming politicos use and abuse "divine providence" for their own fermented, fucked-up ends – well, its resurrection as a pop culture piss-take couldn't seem any more eerily prescient. (1:34) Act I and II, Bridge, Smith Rafael. (Fear)

Razor Eaters Very loosely inspired by a real-life band of Australian vandals who – to their eventual chagrin – dutifully recorded their every last misdeed, writer-director Shannon Young's feature has its fictive protagonists aiming for something more ambitious. The movie, too, has its aspirations, but like the titular gang's, they come off kinda fuzzy. Police detective Berdan (Paul Moler) is the chief pursuer of a criminal quintet led by skinheaded Zach (Richard Cawthorne). The latter fancies himself an underground crusader eradicating "scum" from society, and with the group's flair for self-publicizing, some citizens begin to agree. But in their vigilantism Zach and company don't make much distinction between that questionable public service and beating up store clerks, parking ticketers, and anyone else who annoys them. With its surfeit of handheld video footage purportedly taken by the media-savvy thugs, Razor Eaters aims for in-ya-face contemporary psychopathic sociology, à la Man Bites Dog (or the earlier Aussie punk rampage classic Romper Stomper) – as well as conventionally marketable shock value and thriller plot turns. You've seen the like before. Despite pretty high energy, this middling exercise doesn't deliver as much as it hopes in the realms of credibility, excitement, or menace. (1:36) Victoria. (Harvey)

'Re/Callings: An Evening with Nguyen Tan Hoang' See 8 Days a Week. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.