I WAS A bushy-haired brat on the cusp of '80s teendom. Gena Rowlands was my gun-wielding protector – in my dreams, of course. The trigger behind my childhood fantasy was Gloria, if not John Cassavetes' best film, then certainly one of his most entertaining, and the on-screen part of an Oct. 14 tribute to Rowlands – the gum-chewing, "punk!"-spitting adoptive mother of us all – at this year's Mill Valley Film Festival. Tributes are exciting when the recipients deserve them, and both the Rowlands event and an Albert Maysles appreciation featuring Grey Gardens (Oct. 11) illustrate why the MVFF threatens to eclipse its chief San Francisco counterpart.

This year's fest is crammed with fall prestige pics soon to come to a multiplex near you, including the usual Oscar suspects, such as Finding Neverland and Kinsey. But more impressive is the MVFF's array of heavyweight directors – Godard, Mike Leigh, and two scoops of Abbas Kiarostami – and festival award-winners, such as Fatih Akin's Berlin victor Head-On. Here are short takes on a handful of other highlights. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Control (Nimród Antal, Hungary, 2003) Control is a strange tale with an even stranger setting: the Budapest subway system. Bulcsu (the appealingly angsty Sandor Csanyi) is the reluctant leader of a grungy team of plainclothes ticket inspectors; the job consists mostly of confronting comically unruly passengers to make sure they've paid the fare (usually they haven't). Off hours, Bulcsu stays underground, sleeping at the stations and engaging in pointlessly dangerous foot races through the tunnels. Other distractions include the pretty girl in a bear costume he takes a shine to and the mysterious hooded figure who dresses exactly like Bulcsu – but has a nasty habit of shoving people in front of speeding trains. From start to finish, Control balances perfectly between darkness and light. (Cheryl Eddy)

Mooladé (Ousmane Sembene, Senegal/France, 2004) Back in 1966, Sembene directed the black-and-white La noire de ..., a near silent drama of near perfect composition that counts as one of the most effectively scathing attacks on patriarchy and colonialism in all of filmdom. Close to four decades later, his aim regarding those subjects remains true, even if vivid colors bleed from this homeland picture. As Sembene casts his eye on a Senegalese village, certain visual details – a monumental anthill; the goods belonging to a mercenary man and a prodigal son; the free movement of animals and insects and comparatively constricted paths of women – might initially seem like offhand observations. But they accrue powerful meaning when Mooladé's ferocious climatic standoff arrives. Sembene has a message to deliver about misogyny in general and female circumcision in particular, but this is more than a message movie; it's the work of a wise poet. (Huston)

Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2004) Anxiety about the crumbling family unit permeates recent Japanese cinema, the horror genre in particular. Takashi Shimizu's Ju-on: The Grudge takes this trait to the parody level – the first subtitle labels a soon-doomed "Social Welfare Center" devoted to caring for the neglected. Based on a news story, Kore-eda's latest isn't a horror film, of course, but it mines similar primal fears, carefully observing a quartet of children abandoned by their mother. If Kore-eda's style here isn't as lyrical as that of Akihiko Shiota in the similarly themed (and perhaps influential?) Harmful Insect, this director has always been a master at the kind of detachment that ultimately proves wrenching. Nobody knows indeed – but Kore-eda knows overt sympathy would only yield Truffaut-like small change. (Huston)

SAMT (Rob Nilsson, Jordan/USA, 2004) Blood snakes over sand during the opening moments of local talent Rob Nilsson's Jordan-set drama. That foreboding image lingers as Nilsson charts the discord between taxi driver Jihad (Jihad) and his younger sister Ashtar (Suha Najiar) regarding the latter's involvement in a mixed-gender youth group. By the end, the director and his protagonists have brought an unexpected sense of hope to SAMT's introductory elements. Further proof that Nilsson deserves the kind of budget that would allow him to shoot on film, though perhaps video is ideally suited to his improv-based directorial approach, which works terrifically here. (Huston)

A Tale of Two Sisters (Kim Jee-woon, South Korea, 2003) The Dickens-inspired title here leads into a mostly worst-of-times exploration of what happens when an indifferent dad, a wicked stepmother, and two wide-eyed teen sisters are isolated together in a country house. Though the pace occasionally reaches a slow-motion crawl and some familiar turf is trod (the freaky girl with long black hair and one visible glaring eye is, of course, present and accounted for), director Kim Jee-woon ups the ante with gorgeous photography: dead birds, pools of blood, and supernaturally induced seizures have seldom looked so stunning. Patient viewers will be rewarded by a mind-warping conclusion featuring some of the most hysterically piercing screams ever recorded in the history of cinema. (Eddy)

Mill Valley Film Festival runs Oct. 7-17. Venues this week are the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael; CinéArts Sequoia, 25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley. Tickets (most shows $8-$10) can be ordered by calling (925) 866-9559 or going to www.mvff.com. For more information on this week's screenings, see Film listings.