San Francisco Black Film Festival

The sixth annual San Francisco Black Film Festival runs June 9-13. Venues are the Brava Theater Center, 2789 24th St, SF; African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; and Bayview Opera House, 4705 Third St, SF. For more information, call (415) 771-9271 or go to www.sfbff.org; for tickets ($9-45) go to www.ticketweb.com. For commentary, see "Rose outta Concrete." All times p.m. unless otherwise noted.

Wed/9

Brava Love, Sex and Eating the Bones 7.

Thurs/10

Brava Qula Kwedini: A Rite of Passage with "The Death of Tarzan" 1. Tide Marks: Legacies of Apartheid with "I Promise Africa" 1. "1-800-Rent a White Folk," "U Street Blue," "Andre Royo's Big Scene," and "The Legacy of Adam Francis Plummer" 3. Divided City 3. Jesse's Closet 5. Soldiers of the Rock 6:45. Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell 9.

Fri/11

Brava Redemption 10am (free screening). "Allergic to Nuts," "Dog Eat Dog," "Out-of-Body Experience," "Sarah's Secret," and "Chameleon" noon. The Pen and Cuzin Sista noon. Besouro Preto and Hip-Hop Resurrection: From NY to NZ 1:45. Black Israel with "Comeuppance" 2. African Women in the Cinema 3:45. "Melvin Van Peebles Awards Ceremony": Baadasssss Cinema 7.

Sat/12

African American Art and Culture Complex "Urban Kidz Film Festival" 10am.

Bayview Opera House Girl Trouble 2.

Brava Beah: A Black Woman Speaks with "Strike!" 11a. The Color of Funny and Not Just Yet noon. A Place of Our Own with "Shooter" and "Stone Mansion" 1:15. Silence: In Search of Black Female Sexuality in America with "A Spoonful of Sugar" and "The Slowdown" 2:30. Hip Hop Immortals We Got Your Kids with "Red Eye" 3. Rap Dreams with "Within the Wall" 5:15. Love in Harlem with "Time Out," "Hope's Choice," "Left," and "Man Made" 6. Hot Fudge and Zemad's Journey 7:45. Strange as Angels with "Unspoken" and "Mean Jadine" 8.

Sun/13

Brava The Cuban Hip Hop All-Stars with "The Sunday Morning Stripper" and "White Sheets Don't Stain" 11am. The Healing Passage with "After Jonestown" and "Joey" noon. The Anti-Vigilante with "Silas Lunch" and "The Sacrifice" 12:45. 3 Girls I Know with "Freedom Flight" 2:30. Conakry Kas 2:30. Koumandi with "African American" 3:45. One Love and Ras Cuba 6.

Opening

The Chronicles of Riddick Vin Diesel returns as the silver-eyed antihero in this sequel to Pitch Black. (1:59) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London.

*Control Room See "Room with a View." (1:24) Act I and II, Bridge, Piedmont, Smith Rafael.

Garfield: The Movie Apocalypse: now. (1:25) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Orinda.

*Imelda Director Ramona S. Diaz attempts to go beyond the shoes in this doc about the former first lady of the Phillipines. And while the end result is a fascinating film, it's entirely possible nobody will ever understand exactly what makes Imelda Marcos tick (witness: the scene in which she literally draws out her bizarre philosophy of life, which revolves around "seven portals to peace and order"). Through interviews with the enigmatic Imelda herself, plus friends, family members, former employees, Marcos opposition leaders, and others with vivid memories of the former dictator's highly corrupt reign (1966 through 1986), Imelda maps out the life of a powerful woman – a politician driven by an array of self-indulgent interests that benefited precious few in the country she supposedly served. (1:43) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

People I Know Anyone who thinks "filmmaker" is a cush job should probably consult Dan Algren, who presumably has some tales to tell – it took him eight years to make People I Know, his second feature (his first was 1994's Naked in New York), and then even the name value of Al Pacino and Kim Basinger couldn't keep Miramax execs from essentially abandoning the result. Their cold feet is sorta understandable: this is the kind of not-quite-populist, not-quite-art house movie that never makes money. Pacino plays Eli Wurman, a Georgia-born NYC publicist whose glory days were a long time ago. Still he keeps rattling on, fueled by coffee, pills, and desperation. His last major client is movie star Cary Launer (Ryan O'Neal, once again excellent as a genial sleaze), whose latest plaything is model, actress, and drugged-out mess Jilli Hopper (Tea Leoni). Eli has to bail her out when bad behavior leads to a downtown jailhouse cell. She then drags him through a long night of excess that ends with one party never waking up again. Related political conspiracies, Eli's crappy health, a make-or-break A-list benefit, warring African American and Jewish leaders, gratuitous Basinger scenes, and the avid pursuit of Regis Philbin all crowd playwright Jon Robin Baitz's seriocomic script. The whole thing comes off as an ambitious, crafty, somewhat misfiring mix of Bulworth, The Sweet Smell of Success, and 1970's paranoia thrillers (there's a Parallax View poster on Eli's office wall). It's always watchable, however, with Pacino embodying the project's messy intelligence – even if his stab at a Southern accent sounds awfully like a 60-plus male actor from Noo Yawk auditioning in all earnestness for the role of Blanche DuBois. (1:40) Roxie. (Harvey)

Since Otar Left The Otar of the title is an only son whose absence is keenly felt – there's been no man in the house since he left native Georgian capital Tbilisi for Paris, where more money could be made working construction than staying home and working as a physician. Shambling octogenarian mother Eka (Esther Gorintin) lives for his occasional phone calls, taking out her frustration on divorced daughter Marina (Nino Khomassouridze), who's too cynical to care. The peacemaker between them is granddaughter Ada (Dinara Droukarova), whose own life has yet to get started, and might never do so in this depressed, just-hanging-on era of post-Soviet capitalism for a lucky few. When word suddenly arrives that Otar has been killed in an accident, the second and third generation women begin a program of lies to protect fragile (if turtle-snappy) Grandma. French writer-director Julie Bertucelli's debut narrative feature is quietly effective, with astute seriocomic attention to detail in both the performances and general mise-en-scène. But despite its copping the Critics' Week Grand Prize at Cannes last year, there's an essential familiarity to the story (not helped by its similarity to Good Bye, Lenin!), as well as its general bittersweet art house-iness. It's a nice film – just how nice you find it may depend on how exhausted by loud CGI-filled Hollywood crapola you've felt of late. (1:42) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Stepford Wives Nicole Kidman takes on an army of freakishly grinning housewives in this dark-comedy spin on the 1975 original. (1:33) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Shattuck.

*Strayed See Movie Clock. (1:35) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

Ongoing

Baadasssss! After achieving some success with European features and one mainstream Hollywood film (Watermelon Man), writer-director Melvin Van Peebles scraped together enough cash to make Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, a 1971 tale "Starring the Black Community" (and himself, in that billing order) that proved a runaway success and – not unlike Do the Right Thing years later – was accused by some critics of inciting black-on-white racial violence. Since then, the film has been attributed with everything from kick-starting the blaxploitation movement (it certainly did provide a model, though it was hardly conceived in crass commercial terms) to originating American independent cinema (a stretch). Sweetback remains by turns crude, outrageous, avant-garde, dull, and politically radical – a great social artifact if not necessarily a great movie. Mario Van Peebles's Baadasssss! reconstructs the seat-of-pants creation of the original film, with dad (played by the second-generation writer-director) portrayed as equal parts visionary, driven, vulnerable, and egomaniacal – as well as an indifferent father to the son who's now made this tribute. Baadasssss! isn't a great movie either, for the different reason that Van Peebles Jr. has always been a journeyman rather than an inspired artist (New Jack City, Posse, Panther). Yet despite its unevenness and overlength, this dramatized family portrait is worth seeing, because the story behind Sweetback's making really is a striking instance of how much madness, self-sacrifice, and hard business goes into making filmic art. (1:48) California, Galaxy, Kabuki. (Harvey)

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) Balboa, Opera Plaza. (Kim)

*Bukowski: Born into This Some people seem overexposed even (or especially) when the only thing about them that's become ubiquitous is their name -- and maybe some vague idea that's become associated with them enough to become adjectival (e.g., Kafkaesque). When Charles Bukowski finally became sorta famous after many years' slogging in the trenches of mimeographed "little magazines," well into middle age, his personality got read as much as (or more than) his books. Hipster cachet made him a fairly rich man by the time of his death in 1994, boosted by surprisingly large fan pockets in Germany, New Zealand, and other places he may never have bothered to visit. One thing that's great about John Dullaghan's Bukowski: Born into This is how firmly it is about the man as a writer, rather than as a man, or a sometime train wreck, or whatever. Their frequently tortured nature aside, writers make boring movie subjects – really, what medium and its creative process could be less exciting or photogenic? A first-time feature director schooled in commercials (following UC Berkeley), Dullaghan has done a rare job in conveying the subject's art, not just his admittedly fascinating life and times. (2:10) Lumiere. (Harvey)

The Butterfly A three-tier generation gap merges in this delicate French film, as an unlikely pair of naturists comb the mountains for an elusive insect. Cranky entomologist Julien (Michel Serrault) reluctantly takes eight-year-old Elsa (Claire Bouanich) on a countryside hike, hoping to nab a rare butterfly called the Isabella. Along the way, life lessons emerge from the duo's random discussions, while Elsa's mother, who's pretty much clueless till the very end, freaks out when she realizes her kid's missing. Trouble brews when Elsa attempts a phone call home, cueing Mom to send out a search party. A classic story of old dogs learning new tricks, The Butterfly spruces up this familiar archetype with spontaneous and subtle humor. The film does lose some of its momentum near the end, flagged by a few anticlimactic resolution scenes with the histrionic mother. But intricate character nuances (Serrault's perturbed glances are killer) and a script that doesn't overplay its wittiness make this film a rare find. (1:20) 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, Shattuck. (Huston)

*The Corporation Everything catchy and simple about despising George W. Bush doesn't apply to the incredibly complicated and kinda boring real stuff behind his smirking barn door. The genius of new Canadian documentary The Corporation is that it puts a sort of identifiable human-esque face on the infinitely tentacled green, white, and cyber-paper trail beast we ought really to be voting, legislating, protesting, and counter-investing to its knees. In a just world, every ticket to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 – destined now to become the one political documentary normally apolitical people will see, by the millions – would come with free admission to this invaluable primer, which measures the self-perpetuating system ultimately responsible for most of our international imbroglios. Drawing its basic thesis from Joel Bakan's crisp if dry tome The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, Achbar and Jennifer Abbott channel their message through a bold organizational scheme that lets the focus jump around in interconnective, humorous, hit-and-run fashion. (2:25) Act I and II, Castro, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Day after Tomorrow Some impressive special effects aside, this environmental disaster flick from director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) is about as exciting as watching water freeze. Which is what takes up a lot of screen time, along with a tedious story line about a climatologist (Dennis Quaid) hell-bent on reuniting with his oft-neglected son (Jake Gyllenhaal), who's stranded in snowed-under New York City as a new ice age rapidly engulfs the planet. Kudos to whoever decided the devastating effects of global warming deserved this kind of large-scale cinematic treatment, and especially to the folks twiddling the C.G. knobs. Ultimately, though, the cornball Day after Tomorrow proves once again that technical prowess can't make up the difference when all other elements – boring characters, a predictable plot, a thuddingly earnest script – remain subpar. (2:03) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

A Day Without a Mexican (1:40) Century Plaza, Century 20, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness.

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) Four Star. (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) Empire, Galaxy, Shattuck. (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) Balboa, California, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban The first two films adapted from J.K. Rowling's hugely popular series got the job done under the steady hand of director Chris Columbus. Here, director Alfonso Cuarón (Y tu mama también) takes a moodier, less whimsical approach perfectly suited to Prisoner of Azkaban's darker story line, which involves an escaped killer with connections to Harry's troubled past, sinister supernatural prison guards, nighttime chase scenes, creepy omens, and the like. As before, the adults are played by a who's who of British all-stars (new this go-round: Michael Gambon, subbing for the late Richard Harris as Dumbledore; Gary Oldman in a brief but memorable turn as the titular prisoner; and Emma Thompson and David Thewlis, both spot-on as additions to the Hogwarts faculty). More important, though, the younger cast – especially Daniel Radcliffe as Harry – all nail it, proving there's room even in the biggest blockbuster for believability and heart. (2:30) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Eddy)

*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) Opera Plaza. (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) Four Star. (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) Balboa, Empire, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

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) Galaxy. (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 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Koh)

The Mother Those who associate director Roger Michell with period pieces (Persuasion) or pithy comedies (Notting Hill) may be in for a shock with 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. (1:51) Albany, Embarcadero. (Fear)

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)

Raising Helen Raising Helen doesn't suck royally – rather, it blows in a listless way. My hopes weren't high for a Kate Hudson vehicle, but I thought director Garry Marshall, the czar of romantic comedies (Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride), might be able to prod a little zing out of the bland formula. Nope. Hudson plays Helen Harris, a New York City career girl who inherits her sister's children, to the horror of her other, über-domestic sister, Jenny (Joan Cusack). Helen's glamorous life falls apart, but a pasty pastor (John Corbett) is waiting to catch her and her brood. What a nice, much older man. In recent years, Hudson's je ne sais quoi has gone on hiatus as she's moved from sprite to leading lady, and she has yet to channel a mature replacement through her golden locks. Cusack's talent is simply wasted on this script. Mmm, this film tastes like dry toast. (2:00) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (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)

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) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Huston)

*Saved! Somewhere in suburban America, in a sector of the world where a woman might find pleasure in being named her community's "number-one Christian interior decorator," school is in session and the students are all praying for your immortal soul. Especially if you're gay. Or pregnant. Or Jewish. Welcome to American Eagle Christian High School and welcome to Saved!, Brian Dannelly's sweet-natured social satire about the kids of Christian America. The film revolves around the spiritual, physical, and emotional turmoil of a popular girl named, yup, Mary (Jena Malone) who eventually finds herself cast out by her peers when she ends up in a family way. The film's message isn't so much a call to burn down the evangelist churches and rehabilitate the youth group leaders as it is a down-to-earth plea for tolerance among those of the faith. School principal Pastor Skip (Martin Donovan) pushes the notion that where certain transgressions are concerned, there's "no room for moral ambiguity." And yet Saved! seems quietly certain there's plenty. (1:32) Century 20, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

*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) Four Star. (Eddy)

*Shrek 2 Newlyweds Shrek the ogre (voiced by Mike Myers) and Fiona the princess turned ogre (Cameron Diaz), along with sidekick Donkey (Eddie Murphy, who gets less screen time this go-round and is therefore, thankfully, less annoying), head to meet Fiona's folks in the suspiciously Hollywood-esque Kingdom of Far, Far Away. Naturally, the Queen (Julie Andrews) and the King (John Cleese) are shocked when they first see their transformed daughter and new son-in-law; equally flummoxed are Fiona's one-time intended, the snooty Prince Charming (Rupert Everett), and his mummy, the Fairy Godmother (Jennifer Saunders). AbFab vet Saunders and Antonio Banderas (as lethal cat-sassin Puss in Boots) are the standout supporting players in Shrek 2, which zooms along at breakneck speed incorporating as many eye-blink spoofs, sight gags, and winks to the audience as an entire season of The Simpsons. A soundtrack filled with unexpected selections is a welcome carry-over from the first film, as is the intricate animation, which somehow makes even a hulking, green ogre capable of facial expressions layered with different emotions. (1:33) Century Plaza, Century 20, Four Star, Grand Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, Oaks, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda. (Eddy)

Soul Plane No stereotype or opportunity for a tasteless gag goes unexploited in this Airplane!-style comedy about Nashawn Wade (Chris Tucker-ish newcomer Kevin Hart), a disgruntled passenger who founds the world's first airline aimed at the "urban traveler." Clever set design imagines a carrier worthy of Pimp My Ride, with a cockpit equipped with an Xbox and a stylish hip-hop club in first class – as well as a coach section so crappy the overhead bins are coin-operated lockers. A breakneck pace and a game cast (including Snoop Dogg as a prison-trained pilot, Tom Arnold as the only white man aboard, and Method Man as Nashawn's hyper cousin) ensure there are no lulls here. Deliberately offensive, and excessively broad, Soul Plane goes way over the top for laughs, hitting the mark as often as it misses. (1:30) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)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)

*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)

*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, Grand Lake, Jack London, 1000 Van Ness. (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) Balboa. (Kim)

Valentin It's become de rigueur 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) Empire. (Fear)

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) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Word Wars Haunting the park benches, bachelor pads, and hotel convention centers where Scrabble freaks vie for supremacy, Word Wars focuses on a quartet with their eyes on the prize: Matt Graham, a sloppy stand-up comedian with a penchant for gambling; "G.I." Joel Sherman, a spindly New Yorker with major gastrointestinal maladies; Joe Edley, a Zen obsessive who studies flash cards while he drives; and Marlon Hill, a dreadlocked pot smoker who refers to himself as a "pre-Mecca Malcolm playing motherfucking Scrabble!" Some tangential asides contrast the pro tournament circuit to New York City's Washington Square Park board hustlers and explore the social ramifications of removing "offensive" words from Scrabble dictionaries, but directors Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo wisely concentrate their kino-eyes on personalizing the Fab Four of 15-letter-word fluency, offering up a funny, fresh view of "the game" as both an alpha male chest-beating and a refuge for brainiacs obsessed with mastering morphemes. (1:26) Little Roxie. (Fear)

*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

*Hickey and Boggs See Critic's Choice. (1:51) PFA.

*Impulse Whether through secret genius or a titanic lack of discrimination, William Shatner has had several career moments in that realm where just one might make you question whether there's any order or mercy in the universe. To wit: starring in Esperanto opus Incubus; recording his version of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"; lending iconic heft to Iron Chef USA: Holiday Showdown, American Psycho 2, and the Miss USA pageant; acting as good-bad half-breed twin brothers in spaghetti western White Comanche; plus other world-beater instances of explosive ham. But this obscurity may be the very pièce de résistance, with Shat's actorly prosciutto sitting pretty atop the tackiest of 1970's cinematic snack crackers. He plays a gigolo cum fake businessman in flaming Me Decade country club-pimpster duds – believe me, you will smell the wideness of yellow polyester sports coat lapel – who's warped cuz his mom was a tramp. Oh, plus junior once protected her by running a samurai sword (you know, the one over the mantelpiece) through one sleazy john. Now he hustles lonely women, several at a time, murdering them when conflicts of interest arise. Hella ready to narc on him is latest squeeze Jennifer Bishop's eight-year-old daughter Kim Nicholas, an infuriatingly smart little cookie. By the last reel or so, Shatner is ready to wring her little neck, which results in a mouth-frothing Cap'n Kirk chasing the terrified blond pre-nymphet. Amazingly twisted and lurid, Impulse (which was also called I Love to Kill and Want a Ride, Little Girl?, though dang few 1974 audiences saw it under any title) is rendered all the more pervy by its believe-it-or-not GP rating. Director William Grefe's other accomplishments include Death Curse of Tartu and The Naked Zoo, so you know you can expect quality. (1:22) Parkway. (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) Opera Plaza. (Fear)

*'Rick Prelinger's "Panorama Ephemera" ' Archivist, collector, and "media archaeologist" Rick Prelinger has long been a frequent visitor to the Bay Area, always bringing treasures from his trove of discarded industrial, educational, advertising, and amateur movies. These "ephemeral" films – conceived for utilitarian rather than artistic or entertainment purposes – have occasionally been parodied or excerpted for camp value (especially vintage social instruction reels like the Coronet instructional classic "Dating Do's and Don'ts"). But they were largely considered disposable, time-expired, unworthy of serious study or institutional notice. Prelinger has had a big role in turning that around: two years ago the Library of Congress acquired the 48,000 titles (!) in his collection to catalogue and preserve. Perhaps that previously unthinkable turn of events, which takes the pressure off Prelinger as this material's primary preservationist, triggered Panorama Ephemera – a collage rather than a mere presentation of archaic celluloid esoterica, whose 90 minutes of subliminal suggestions of narrative edge toward the realm of Craig Baldwin's radically reinterpretive appropriation features. These bits of black-and-white, color, silent, sound, documentary, animation, etc., culled from variably obscure works between 1923 (an unrecognizable Berkeley burns in newsreel footage) and 1977 (fairy "Guardiana" gives kids safety tips) reveal the evolving contours of a mainstream American consciousness. The work is shaped equally by commerce, Big Brotherdom ('50s viewers are assured an "atomic flash" can't hurt them if their house is freshly painted!), Freud via Dr. Spock, revisionist colonial history, and "love pouring out of the land" we call our own. Like a guided free-association game, this commentary-free assemblage reveals a great deal about psychology (yours, and the nation's) while being fun to play. It's presented by the San Francisco Cinematheque. (1:30) California College of the Arts. (Harvey)

Zeitgeist International Film Festival See 8 Days a Week. Zeitgeist.