*Doing Time, Doing Vipassana This short, newly rereleased 1997 film by Eilona Ariel and Ayelet Menahemi seems as much a recruitment-advocacy tool as a straightforward documentary, but there's no arguing with the value of its cause. In the mid-'90s a guard recommended that India's inspector general of prisons Kiran Bedi (who looks rather alarmingly like Joan Baez, and has since been appointed civilian police adviser to the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations) experimentally try out the titular meditation discipline at one of the nation's worst penal institutions. Long considered an inhumane hellhole of crime, drugs, violence, and abuse by residents and staff alike, the Tihar facility is crammed with more than 10,000 detainees – 90 percent of whom are merely awaiting trial, a wait that can last years thanks to the slug-slow Indian court system. Vipassana is a centuries-old practice that proves to have a remarkable impact on the first group of prisoners to take its demanding 10-day, vow-of-silence introductory course. Inmates are immediately calmer, less dogged by hostility, cravings, and desires for revenge; a bigger picture than the usual (very narrow, often self-destructive) issues of penitentiary life opens before them. It's quite a surprise to see them sobbing gratefully in the arms of their jailers after completing the program. Similar projects have since been implemented elsewhere in India, as well as abroad – even in the U.S., though, at this point, expecting our prison system to widely deploy something (a) truly rehabilitative and (b) rooted in non-Christian religious practice requires a considerable leap of faith. Doing Time, Doing Vipassana plays with Magdalena Sole's short A Zen Tale. (:52) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Kontroll A Hungarian hit by young Hungarian-American director Nimród Antal, Kontroll is a strange tale with an even stranger setting – the Budapest subway system – that somehow works perfectly from start to finish. 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). In his off-hours, Bulcsu stays underground, sleeping at the stations, hanging with friendly conductor Bela (Lajos Kovacs), and engaging in pointlessly dangerous footraces through the tunnels. Other distractions include the pretty girl in a bear costume he takes a shine to, as well as the mysterious hooded figure who dresses exactly like Bulcsu – but has a nasty habit of shoving people in front of speeding trains. Enjoyable without straying into too-quirky territory, Kontroll's greatest accomplishment is its tone, which manages to balance evenly between darkness and light. (1:46) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Longest Yard Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and Burt Reynolds (who also starred in the original) head up this remake about a prison football game pitting inmates against guards. (1:47) Century Plaza, Century 20, Presidio, Shattuck.

Madagascar See Movie Clock. (1:26) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Oaks, Orinda.

The Man Who Copied Set in working-class Porto Alegre, Brazil, The Man Who Copied begins as a pleasant if slightly overproduced slice-of-life drama. Our protagonist, André (Lázaro Ramos), is a familiar type from the genre: young, with a deadpan sense of humor; given to elaborate fantasies; emotionally inscrutable; etc. He lives at home with his mother, groggily working as a self-dubbed "photocopier operator" and at night retreating to his bedroom to draw and spy on the neighbors. One of the film's main problems is that this night world doesn't come alive; the drawing never amounts to anything more than a stylistic device, and the spying doesn't have the psychological charge of Rear Window. The other problem is one of narrative – limp, uninspired, and frankly unbelievable, the film quickly sours once André's lengthy exposition is in place. Our young protagonist feels he needs money to court the subject of his peeping, so he begins counterfeiting money, then robs an armored car, then wins the lottery, and then ... well, by now you've long stopped caring. What began as a slice of life ends up championing bling-bling, and there's nothing nouvelle vague about that. (2:03) Act I and II, Lumiere. (Goldberg)

*Mysterious Skin See "Under the Surface." (1:39) California, Clay.

A Peck on the Cheek Writer-director Mani Ratman's melodrama about an adopted nine-year-old's search for her birth mother is far from the stereotypical Bollywood frothfest – though, yes, spontaneous song-and-dance numbers do spring forth on occasion. Thanks to a harrowing prologue, the audience already knows what young Amudha (P.S. Keerthana) doesn't: that her mother, a Sri Lankan refugee, abandoned her newborn in India so she could return home and find her husband, missing amid their country's violent civil conflict. Amudha's life with her Indian family is a happy, upper-middle-class one, but she transforms from jolly to sullen once she learns she's not the biological child of her beloved parents. (There's a nice digression to explain how they fell in love – and how baby Amudha had everything to do with it.) An eye-opening journey to war-torn Sri Lanka fills the film's second half. Rampant brattiness compromises Amudha's ability to be an entirely sypathetic character (at one point, a temper tantrum lands her family amid a fierce gun battle), but A Peck on the Cheek still manages to achieve surprising emotional depth. (2:16) Balboa. (Eddy)

*Tell Them Who You Are See "Haskell the Rascal." (1:35) Opera Plaza.

Ongoing

*Born into Brothels Far from your typical travelogue, Born into Brothels traces the profound bond formed between a New York photographer and a group of bubbly children hailing from Calcutta's red-light district. Zana Briski travels to the city intending to document brothel workers but ends up becoming more heavily involved with the prostitutes' children, all of whom are by turns creative, outgoing, jaded, and fiercely intelligent. Rather than simply photographing the kids, Briski gives them cameras of their own and hosts an informal workshop. Besides making for some disarming, raw imagery, this premise allows Briski and co-filmmaker Ross Kauffman to own up to a defining difficulty of making a documentary recording – especially on subjects like poverty and pain – without actually intervening. As Briski struggles to get the children out of the brothels and into boarding schools, the film's narrative structure flirts with being overly formulaic, but the radiant energy bursting forth from the young faces gives more than enough reason to keep watching. (1:37) Galaxy. (Goldberg)

*Brothers The story of Dane Susanne Bier's Brothers might be familiar to those who've seen Oliver Stone's Vietnam trilogy: a soldier returns from war and isn't quite able to put the horrors of torture behind him, so he lashes out violently at his family instead of getting professional help. This version is complicated by the fact that the wife (Gladiator's engaging Connie Nielsen) and brother (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) of the military man – Army Major Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) – found comfort in each other during his absence, and now their mutual attraction is less than concealed. The war in question here is the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, where Denmark has a little over 100 troops stationed as "nation builders." Bier asserts that her film is primarily a love story, which is certainly its strongest component, but she also manages a reworking of the themes of post-Vietnam War films, questioning the human costs of war and occupation, even for what is perceived to be for a liberatory cause. (1:50) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Odes)

Crash Being promoted as the most critically acclaimed film of the year (so far), Paul Haggis's first directorial feature provides a fine opportunity to note which critics you need never take seriously again. Namely, any caught clapping their heads off at this crap-a-palooza, a steaming pile of horseshit spray-painted Oscar gold – though, in fact, Crash takes itself so seriously, it might settle for nothing less than the Nobel Peace Prize. Hewing way too close to the Magnolia model, it throws together umpteen marquee names (including Sandra Bullock, Brendan Frasier, Matt Dillon, and Don Cheadle) as two-dimensional characters who intersect during a fateful 36 hours in that Hollywood veteran's perennial notion of Everytown, L.A. One dimension is that they're all racist – and aren't we all, the movie sorrowfully chides – and the other is that they're still "human," meaning they love their kids or have sick parents or such. With every scene a blunt confrontation, the movie is a Rube Goldberg contraption in which one overamped event sets off another, each obvious irony and tragic misunderstanding highlighted in boldface throughout. (1:40) Empire, Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist His faith shaken by a Sophie's Choice-type trauma in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, Father Merrin (Stellan Skarsgaard) is spending World War II's aftermath as a collarless archaeology consultant in British East Africa. There he (literally) uncovers a historic impossibility: a fifth-century Christian temple built far beyond the known reaches of the Byzantine Empire, so pristine that it appears to have been buried upon completion. It also seems curiously designed to hold some malevolent spirit down, rather than exalt God above. Among those about to suffer Satan's awakening are an idealistic young priest (Gabriel Mann), a stiff-upper Brit (Julian Wadham), a deformed tribal outcast (Billy Crawford), and a lady medico (Clara Bellar). Directed by the very serious Paul Schrader, this is the feature that was shot, then shelved by studio executives who preferred to make a wholly different version (Renny Harlin's cluttered, hysterical Exorcist: The Beginning) that was much more bloody and flashy, yet flopped anyway. Apart from their basic premise, the two films share only a few cast members and very little in the way of dialogue, incident, or tone. There's a strong temptation to assume whatever a major studio won't release must have something very right about it. But the truth about free-at-last Dominion is that if it had been widely released instead of Beginning last year, it would have been received (and ignored) as exactly the somber snooze it is. Slow, unscary, showing signs of a drastically reduced postproduction budget (the FX are quite poor), it's more pretentious than profound. And the reactionary undertow that posits women as weak, androgyny as evil, and the Antichrist as striking Buddha postures (!?!) would be offensive if this dud's pervasive dullness didn't numb all reaction. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

*Downfall An impressive leap forward for director Oliver Hirschbiegel (Das Experiment), Downfall is sort of a flip side to Saving Private Ryan. It's equally visceral on a similar epic scale, but the Spielbergian uplift is notably absent: this being the Axis's tale, acknowledgment that "war is hell" can only be followed by "and then you die, but only after realizing you were wrong all along." Whether it's possible for a German (or any other) historical reenactment to be nonjudgmental about the Reich's last days, Downfall comes close. Russian troops are closing in on Berlin as Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz) denies the war is lost, when not accusing his generals – who appear to suddenly realize he's utterly insane – and the German populace in general for betraying his National Socialist dream. By turns pathetic and stark mad, Ganz's Hitler is a startling study of the sociopathic petty tyrant – and a brutal reminder of how easily whole populations have been (and still are) duped by just such. (2:30) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room When the Enron scandal hit, it grabbed enough headlines to outrage even non-Wall Street types. But if the reasons behind the company's spectacular collapse still seem kinda enigmatic – err, something about the stock market, and, like, shady accounting practices? – Alex Gibney's excellent doc Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room offers clear, damning explanations. With a clever pop soundtrack keeping the pace, Gibney charts Enron's rise by delving into the psyches of charismatic company heads Ken Lay and especially Jeff Skilling; he also expounds on Enron's shady business tactics, which included banking on projected (and ultimately "imaginary") profits, firing analysts who disagreed with Enron brass, stashing debts in offshore companies, masterminding the California energy crisis (and therefore contributing to the election of the Governator), etc. Among the film's many engaging interviewees is Fortune magazine reporter and author Bethany McLean, who dared – during the boom years – to ask how exactly Enron made its billions. The answer – a mixture of hope, misguided faith, and sinister financial magic – turns out to be just as compelling as how exactly Enron lost its billions. (1:49) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Girl Play What possessed acclaimed dyke director Lee Friedlander to take on Girl Play? Did she owe some lesbian Hollywood bigwig a favor? The film is an adaptation of a play (Real Girls) by lead actresses Lacie Harmon and Robin Greenspan, written about their true-life experiences of falling in love – they were friends cast as lovers in a theater production. Sound not-so-suspenseful? Well, beyond a few obstacles in their way, the plot really just asks us to care about the underwhelming fact that they got together, a truth that is hella more boring than fiction. Friedlander is fatally faithful to the theater format, letting the women endlessly process their situation via wooden monologues spoken directly to the camera. The director intercuts the soul-searching, delivered from a bare stage lit like an instructional video, with narrative scenes that approach amusing only when they hit fresh notes on universal themes, an unfortunately rare occurrence. However, Friedlander deserves props for attempting a genre-mixing approach and for continuing to put lesbian narrative films out there. (1:20) Roxie. (Koh)

*Le Grand Voyage A young man named Reda (Nicolas Cazale) must drive his aging Moroccan father (Mohamed Majd) from their home in the South of France to Mecca in Saudi Arabia so that the old man might complete the hajj, the spiritual journey Islam encourages all faithful to make at least once. The secular Reda is not keen on the idea, which tears him from his French girlfriend and his all-important college entrance exams, but he hardly has a choice in the matter. And when the inexperienced youth looks to make the most of it by proposing some sightseeing, the stern and taciturn patriarch explains gruffly that it's not that kind of trip. In fact, it's the kind of trip where the miles clocked on the odometer mark the gradual diminution of the vast cultural and generational distance between father and son, through various adventures and mishaps and across some gorgeous land and cityscapes – all culminating in rare and magnetic footage of Mecca teeming with its roughly two million annual pilgrims. Writer-director Ismaël Ferroukhi's impressive first feature has a predictable aspect to it, but it's engagingly told as well as beautifully acted. (1:48) Roxie. (Avila)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Lackluster and aimless, Garth Jennings's adaptation of Douglas Adams's beloved series about wacky aliens in search of a meaningful existence has a few funny bits but mostly disappoints. Sam Rockwell turns two-headed, interstellar playboy politician Zaphod Beeblebrox into an inexplicable cross between Jerry Lee Lewis and a muppet; Mos Def is uncharacteristically blah as galactic travel writer Ford Prefect; and Martin Freeman's lovelorn human Arthur Dent is droopy and irritating by turns. Trillian (Zooey Deschanel), a geeky spaceship navigator in the novels, becomes in the movie an extraneous girlie girl obsessed with kitchen appliances. Still, there are a few standout moments. Who doesn't want to see Earth destroyed by bureaucratic Vogons building an interstellar freeway? And the film's climactic moments at a factory for building customized planets boasts some cool CGI and manages to evoke the irreverent dark humor that made Adams' books famous. (1:50) Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Annalee Newitz)

*The Holy Girl Anyone lucky enough to see Lucrecia Martel's first feature, La Cienega, knows the Argentine wunderkind has a signature style that combines oblique storytelling, chaotic mise-en-scène, and microscopic camera work to muddle the senses and make us putty in her hands. Seemingly more languid than her frantically chaotic debut, The Holy Girl ratchets up an emotional intensity that slowly builds through an accumulation of details. The wise viewer will keep the subtitle in mind: "The Temptation of Good – and the Evil It Causes." Not since Luis Buñuel's middle period has a filmmaker brought such forensic intelligence to bear on the intersection of religion and desire. Well, one other: note the name of Pedro Almodóvar in the credits as an executive producer. Teenager Amalia (a magnetic María Alché) is obsessed with a metaphysics of virtue and sin. When she's groin-groped by a stranger on the street, she sees an omen – and she scripts a sacred mission to save his soul. If this is Lolita, then Martel has restored the power balance of the original, for the girl holds the cards in this badly flawed deck. In Martel's universe, adolescence is a pipe bomb tossed into a society of weak and flawed adults, with a long fuse of sexuality waiting to be lit. (1:46) Lumiere. (B. Ruby Rich)

House of Wax Some refreshingly gruesome moments aside, House of Wax breaks absolutely no new ground, putting yet another group of good-looking city kids at the mercy of yet another family of backwater lunatics. The first half of the film may drive some viewers to the point of screeching frustration, as the youngsters in peril (24's Elisha Cuthbert and One Tree Hill's Chad Michael Murray among them) make one idiotic move after another – clearly, none among them have ever seen a single horror flick. Otherwise, they wouldn't dare to veer off the main highway, provoke the wild-eyed locals, prowl around in lingerie, or dawdle in the creepy titular museum, which is, incidentally, filled with suspiciously lifelike creations. Some semblance of a sense of humor, à la Cabin Fever or Dawn of the Dead, might've distinguished House of Wax from other similarly themed scarefests (Wrong Turn, anyone?). Instead, this not-really-a-remake is made memorable only by costar Paris Hilton's vicious death scene – which is, it must be said, pretty satisfying. (1:45) Century 20, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Inside Iraq: The Untold Stories On the heels of Gunner Palace, Mission Accomplished, Occupation Dreamland, and Off to War – all of which have screened locally in recent months – comes another man-in-the-trenches doc about Iraq. Is it terrible to say that these films, which reveal so much beyond what Americans are fed by the nightly news, are becoming cliché? Portland, Ore., filmmaker Mike Shiley visited Baghdad in 2003, roaming the streets with a local guide and uncovering a pornography market, a Christmas service celebrated by one of Iraq's few Christian congregations, a land mine-removal team, a roadside stand peddling assault weapons (get your own RPG and launcher for under $100!), and other eye-openers. He also spends time embedded with U.S. troops, observing as local Iraqis are hired to do manual labor on the base and riding along on a "harass and intimidate" operation. Shiley captures quite a lot of intriguing footage – and makes an important point about just how out of control the situation in Iraq has gotten – but Inside Iraq is marred by the filmmaker's narration, which veers toward self-congratulatory at times. (1:24) Galaxy. (Eddy)

The Interpreter The political thriller is a delicate game; for it to work, the filmmaker must deftly maneuver between the personal (hence the thrills) and political without seeming too preachy. The Interpreter is a Democrat's movie (hence Sean Penn), but its party line doesn't keep it from succeeding where last summer's Manchurian Candidate remake fell short. Nicole Kidman plays Silvia Broome, a United Nations interpreter who becomes embroiled in an assassination plot when she overhears threats made on a genocidal African leader's life. As investigator Tobin Keller (Penn) quickly finds out, though, the facts of the case are murky and misleading. While Kidman's flattened chemistry with Penn doesn't afford the film an emotional core, The Interpreter gets enough meat from metaphorical substance (the U.N., diplomacy, etc.) and director Sydney Pollack's taut suspense sequences to mostly plug its holes. And, yes, it's hard not to find an ambiguous popcorn movie refreshing in a time when tunnel vision so dominates political discourse: that our alliances to characters and narrative aren't so clearly demarcated as in a state-of-the-union address seems a good thing indeed. (2:08) Century 20, Empire, Four Star, Grand Lake, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Goldberg)

Kicking and Screaming Will Ferrell is really the only saving grace of this mostly blah underdog story, and even he can't keep it fresh for long. Frank the Tank's overstated performances ("I'm spitting angry! I'm like a tornado of anger ... swirling about!") become redundant about a third of the way through, when the movie starts focusing on dumb things like plot and conflict development. Narrative elements often feel like formalities, hurdles even, for the character-driven Ferrell. Here, he's Phil Weston, coach of the worst team in his son's soccer league, competing against the undefeated Coach Buck (Robert Duvall, sleepwalking) and his Gladiators. Buck also happens to be Phil's father, who never paid much attention to his klutzy son. After Phil recruits two Italian kids and assistant coach Mike Ditka to start winning some games, the taste of victory drives him to maniacal outbursts. Kicking and Screaming is an apt title; Ferrell's performance is suspiciously Adam Sandler-esque at times. (1:27) Century Plaza, Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Kim)

Kingdom of Heaven Set in Christian-controlled Jerusalem between the Second and Third Crusades, Ridley Scott's latest echoes several recent sword-swingin' war flicks, including the director's own Gladiator ("A hero will rise" – again). Further double vision is propagated by the casting of period-movie poster boy Orlando Bloom, whose blacksmith-turned-knight character is hardly commanding enough to anchor such a huge story (see Russell Crowe in Gladiator for the reverse effect). Kingdom hews to political correctness by ensuring the film's baddest bad guys are Christians, avoiding any contemporary-context tension when Jerusalem's citizens eventually find themselves battling Muslim invaders. Director Scott is fully adept at delivering a proper historic epic, but we've all seen that siege-of-the-city scene a few too many times lately (the Lord of the Rings films, Troy, Alexander, etc.); also, there's definitely no "Are you not entertained?" sarcasm coming out of William Monahan's script. Gladiator may have had its corny moments, but Kingdom of Heaven is completely humorless, which suits the subject matter if not the attention span of the average popcorn-chomper. (2:18) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Kung Fu Hustle After all the Miramaxian kerfuffle surrounding Shaolin Soccer (release-date false alarms, dubbing-vs.-subtitling controversy, etc.), Stephen Chow is finally getting proper stateside respect thanks to a new distributor – Sony Pictures Classics – and an aggressive ad campaign talking up Kung Fu Hustle's flashy virtues. Here's hoping American audiences give Chow (sometimes called "the Jim Carrey of Asia," though I don't see Carrey writing and directing his films) a chance; subtitles are involved, but Hustle ain't really the kind of movie built on dialogue. The skimpy plot exists only to provide reason for Hustle's many adrenalized, cartoonish fights, which involve nattily dressed gangsters, secretly skilled residents of "Pig Sty Alley," two elderly assassins who slaughter with sound waves, a crabby landlady whose scream is literally a deadly weapon, a greasy convict who proudly claims the title "world's greatest killer," and Chow himself, as a wannabe bad guy who realizes his own kung fu superpowers. The result is highly ridiculous, and highly, highly enjoyable. (1:39) Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Ladies in Lavender While he's appeared in more than his fair share of Merchant Ivory-type costume pieces, British actor Charles Dance has usually brought them a certain degree of Continental "edge," even villainy. So it's dismaying that this, his first directorial effort, is such a conventional, non-boat-rocking exercise in Masterpiece Theatre-style tea-cozy drama. Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith play elderly spinster sisters living on the Cornwall coast just before World War II. One day something washes into their English Channel cove: nearly dead Andrea (Daniel Brühl), a Polish-speaking sailor. This injection of cute youthful blood into their staid, sexless existence is an excitement that Dench's Ursula, especially, rather OD's on. She turns possessive, trying unsuccessfully to hide Andrea from the attentions of visiting painter Olga (Natascha McElhone), whose curiosity is piqued by overhearing the comely lad's skill as a violinist. The resulting tempest in a teapot – complete with scones and jam (or is that crones in a jam?) – is, of course, acted with old-pro assurance. But Dance overindulges every moment as if it were a precious keepsake (enough with the slo-mo already), and the story's predictability is never challenged. It's inoffensive matinee material for your inner Grandma – or your real one, if she's up for a movie date. (1:43) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Layer Cake I suppose Matthew Vaughn has earned the right to direct his first feature – yet another Guy Ritchie-style British gangster ensemble thingie – because he actually produced those Ritchie movies everyone has been imitating since. To Vaughn's credit, he goes out of his way not to duplicate his colleague's hyperkinetic camera and editing gambits – Layer Cake is just as flashy, albeit in a controlled, weighted mode that will strike Ritchie-phobes as less annoying. Still, the script is cut from exactly the same cloth, emphasizing Tarantino-goes-Cockney character riffs, violent flourishes, and general tough-guy coolness over any emotional involvement or organic tension. I've already forgotten the plot – as if that mattered – except that basically several different factions of underworld society are chasing after a very large quantity of missing ecstasy. This good-looking caper, entertaining enough (if a bit "so what?" in the end), could have used more humor, though it does have one brilliant line. Explaining why a badder-than-bad hetero wiseguy like him would spend so much time buggering male flunkies under less-than-consensual circumstances, a flashback figure says with a shrug, "Fuckin' birds is fer poofs." (1:44) Act I and II, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*Look at Me Look at Me's generic-sounding title crystallizes an unvoiced and unanswered wish 20-year-old Lolita (Marilou Berry) has obsessed over her whole life: that her famous author-publisher father, Étienne Cassard (Jean-Pierre Bacri), might actually notice, approve of, and love her. Fat, uh, chance. Plump and insecure (she looks a lot like a pre-aerobicized Ricki Lake), the cruelly named Lolita is a timorous misfit in dad's glittering world of power, prestige, and much younger women attracted by the same. What's worse, Cassard treats Lolita, an awkward reminder of his failed first marriage, as just that. Searching for approval and a parental substitute, Lolita fixes on her classical voice teacher, Sylvia (Look at Me's writer-director Agnès Jaoui), who doesn't need the burden – but changes her attitude upon discovering the girl's lofty paternal connection. Jaoui (cowriter of Alain Resnais's 1997 Same Old Song) has crafted a drama whose brilliant wit, pathos, and insight all rise organically out of characters and relationships that couldn't be more credible or intriguing. The rest of 2005 will have to spring some mighty big surprises for Look at Me to get elbowed off year-end best lists – or mine, at least. (1:50) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Mad Hot Ballroom Amid the cheers of classmates, 11-year-old Dominican immigrant Wilson leads a rumba so effortlessly smooth it stuns a dance judge into howls of disbelief. Framed as Spellbound-meets-ballroom dancing, director Marylin Agrelo's documentary Mad Hot Ballroom tracks the mandatory ballroom programs at three New York City schools as the classes prep for competition. The film is highly entertaining when it spotlights the contrast between the elegant art form and the age of the kids, who are still squirmy when faced with touching the opposite sex. But no matter how clumsily they spin each other around, by performing a grown-up dance, these children visually embody their elders' inflated hopes that they will become "young ladies and gentlemen," à la a different era. The sentiment is catching for the audience too, in part because the kids are soooo damned adorable. Ballroom captures a range of children's perspectives instead of individual stories – a strategy that weakens the film a bit. But Mad Hot Ballroom is exuberant, fun, and worth it for anyone who loves to dance. (1:50) Bridge, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Koh)

*Major Dundee Many of Sam Peckinpah's films – among them, his early anti-Western epic, Major Dundee – were cursed with a producer's meddling. Now restored with additional footage and a Peckinpah-preferred score, Major Dundee is a fascinating, unbalanced work in progress that certainly constitutes an important entry in the director's oeuvre. The film's sprawling story concerns a military man (a surly Charlton Heston) in an unending pursuit of a pack of massacring Apaches. After recruiting an unlikely, tenuous brigade of former Union and Confederate soldiers, Dundee crosses into Mexico to find his fight. We spend much of the film in the midst of archetypal Western characters and scenes, but none of it has the logic or lift of a John Ford feature. Peckinpah's project is to corrupt the genre from the inside, presenting us with a mythical structure that has curdled – what was once a rich and, above all else, functional genre is rendered an impossible ghost. (2:16) Castro. (Goldberg)

*Millions Duffel bags full of cash seem to be a recurring problem in Danny Boyle's films (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), the cause of broken friendships and untimely exits, some healthy, some deadly. This motif appears again in Boyle's latest, Millions, only its PG rating doesn't allow for the generally unhealthy (yet so deliciously intriguing) mayhem that often ensues in his other works. Instead the director ventures into territory any offbeat gallows humorist worth his or her reputation would write off as cinematic quicksand: a feel-good narrative – with kids. And he still manages to keep the trainspotters and auteur-chasers satisfied, this time with an impressive visual palette. In a quiet northern England town, nine-year-old Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) and his seven-year-old brother, Damian (Alex Etel), are adjusting relatively well despite the recent death of their mother – at least until a bag stuffed with money literally lands on top of Damian and sets off a slew of complications. Oddly, the director's transition from apocalyptic horror to Christmas-special material feels almost natural; the movie's tongue-in-cheek titles and aerial shots strategically placed in dramatic scenes are recognizable fingerprints. It's as if the director were playing parts of a familiar tune – just in a different (PG-rated) key. (1:37) Albany, Empire, Opera Plaza. (Kim)

Monster-in-Law Did anyone ever think we'd see Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda jump the shark hand in hand? Well, actually, Lopez took that leap long ago, but for Fonda, this first onscreen appearance in 15 years must have been a genuine comeback attempt – so it's oh so painful to watch her blow it. She plays laid-off talk show host Viola, who now focuses all her smotherly love on surgeon son Kevin (Michael Vartan). He has fallen for temp-of-all-trades Charlotte (Lopez), and as the title suggests, Viola morphs into a depraved shrew in her attempts to sabotage Charlotte. Everything about Monster-in-Law is sad, sad imitation. Instead of Meet the Fockers, we get Meet My Lunatic Mom; Fonda's embarrassing slapstick is a nauseating version of earlier screwball roles (Nine to Five); Vartan is more boring than lint; and vapid, cutesy Lopez takes another glassy-eyed dump all over the acting potential she showed in Out of Sight and Selena. Thank the humor gods for Wanda Sykes. As Viola's personal assistant, she comments on all with a sly cynicism that seems to skewer this terrible film she got stuck in. (1:35) California, Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, Presidio. (Koh)

*The Other Side of the Street This quiet Brazilian charmer reunites Oscar-nominated Central Station star Fernanda Montenegro with that film's cowriter, Marcos Bernstein, who makes his directorial debut here. Aging, lonely Copacabana resident Regina (Montenegro) spends her days walking her dog on the beach and acting as a tipster for the local police, who begrudgingly indulge her detective tendencies because, well, she's never wrong. One night, as Regina's scanning the windows of the apartment building next door, she zeroes in on a man (Raul Cortez) who may or may not be giving his wife a lethal injection. After a brief inquiry, the cops tell her she's way off base, so Regina launches her own covert investigation. Fortunately, just when The Other Side of the Street is starting to feel like a Rear Window-Murder She Wrote mash-up, the film takes a turn for the melancholy (and the better), as Regina and the suspect (who, as it turns out, is also aging and lonely) forge an unlikely, poignant bond. Street is elevated by exquisite performances – particularly by Montenegro, who infuses the film's simple story with a huge range of emotions. (1:38) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Sin City Rebel auteur Robert Rodriguez (Once upon a Time in Mexico) carbon-copies Sin City from codirector Frank Miller's graphic novels, bringing the author's stylized vision to life using everything-digital-but-the-actors technology. Visually, Sin City is everything last year's similarly engineered Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was not: bold and memorable, with effects that enhance rather than overpower the narrative. "Special guest director" Quentin Tarantino's influence is felt not just in Sin City's enthusiastic bloodshed but also in its Pulp Fiction-style structure, which creates twisted continuity from multiple Miller yarns. But despite an outstanding cast (Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen, and Mickey Rourke are standouts), lovingly rendered violence, and marvelous attention to comic-book detail, Sin City regrettably falls short of perfection. Though most of the characters are clearly, deliberately despicable, some are nearly too loyal to Miller's two-dimensional creations – in particular, Sin City's women are a depressingly unoriginal lot, posing in positions of power (hookers with guns!) but remaining absent from the movie's near constant voice-overs. (2:06) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith Rest assured, Revenge of the Sith makes for a better time at the movies than 1999's Phantom Menace and 2002's Attack of the Clones. Partially, that's because things could not get any worse, but it's also because, after two movies of setting up meaningless characters and subplots, there's nothing left to do but finally get to the meat of the story. Yet the dark side of George Lucas's digital-era filmmaking still looms large throughout; like its kin, Sith unfolds in video game-ready action sequences married to abominable dialogue, with every frame filled with as many childish and distracting CGI creatures as possible. But by the time the much-anticipated lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and bad seed Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), a.k.a. Darth Vader, erupts, Sith has managed to conjure up an air of credible space opera (albeit one totally lacking any suspense). By the time we see the revealed emperor and his new apprentice gazing out into space, simultaneously peering into the past and future of the Star Wars chronology, it's tempting to imagine that their evil Empire will mirror Lucas's own: the rise of the soulless blockbuster, the digital actor, and the move to turn cinema into a home theater demo. (2:19) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Macias)

Unleashed Is the world ready for Jet Li, Serious Actor? Unleashed hopes so. The martial arts legend stars as sad-faced Danny, whose years serving as the captive killing machine for a Glasgow gangster (Bob Hoskins) have left him with a wounded soul, not to mention a stunted, childlike personality (he's basically a more deadly version of Jodie Foster in Nell). The daily grind suddenly becomes unbearable once Danny meets a blind piano tuner named Sam (Morgan Freeman, sage as ever) and is moved by the man's music and kindness. Before long – but, ahem, not before Unleashed pays a de rigueur visit to an underground fight club; no way around that, really – Danny manages to escape his dreadful life. He's quickly adopted into the wholesome, ice-cream-eating and melon-thumping world of Sam and his musician stepdaughter (Kerry Condon). But can a former killing machine really enjoy such virtuous bliss? Writer-producer Luc Besson and director Louis Leterrier never quite overcome the problem of having such a two-tone story (not to mention one that's studded with plot holes and convenient car accidents). Li handles the whole emoting thing just fine, but the ho-hum Unleashed could benefit from a little less acting, a little more action. (1:43) Century Plaza, Century 20, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Watermarks This graceful documentary by Israeli filmmaker Yaron Zilberman offers the best of what historical retrospectives can provide: an intriguing if obscure story from the past that personalizes an important event. Film footage and photographs taken in the 1920s and '30s at the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna are interwoven with current imagery of the surviving members, as Zilberman recounts the tale of the club's champion female swimmers who defied Nazi edicts banning them from competition. After traveling to their homes around the globe, Zilberman brings the women to Vienna for a touching reunion with each other and the pool where they made history 65 years earlier. Meticulously edited and thoughtfully narrated, Watermarks is a surprisingly adept and entertaining film that joins the ranks of countless documentaries that have, in recent years, addressed the myriad tales surrounding the Jewish plight under Nazi rule. When asked how they found the courage to continue competing in the face of mounting hostilities, one of Hakoah's swimmers, now 85 and frail, responded, "We had the choice to sink or swim – we swam." (1:24) Galaxy, Smith Rafael. (Matthew Lake)

*The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill Having moved to San Francisco at the end of the hippie era to become a professional musician, Mark Bittner never realized that goal. Instead, he belatedly found an alternate raison d'être, feeding and studying the colorful tropical parrots – originally abandoned or escaped pets who proved adaptable to this cooler climate – which often roosted on his doorstep in his North Beach neighborhood. Distinguishing all 40-odd birds by markings or behavior, he gave them each a name and ingratiated himself enough to be able to hand-feeding them. When the landlords who've allowed him to live rent-free decide to remodel their property, he must move on. This is no small crisis, since Bittner has never held a "real" job, nor does he have any contingency plans. Veteran local filmmaker Judy Irving's beautifully shot documentary balances surprisingly engrossing aviary insights with rather poignant human ones, arriving at a charming portrait of the kind of mild dropout eccentricity that the world (and even San Francisco) barely tolerates anymore. (1:13) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Rep picks

Yiddle with His Fiddle The first Yiddish-language movie made in Poland, Yiddle with His Fiddle is part documentary, part gender-stereotyping slapstick musical. Director-writer-producer Joseph Green turns the camera on the Jews in his native Poland, hoping to promote his culture and in the process forge a breakthrough for Yiddish filmmaking worldwide. Unfortunately the latter was a pursuit cut short by Nazi censorship shortly after Yiddle's 1936 release. American Yiddish theater star Molly Picon plays the woman-disguised-as-adolescent-boy character, sucking up her yearning for heterosexual validation in order to keep fiddling for change on the streets of Poland along with her frail father. Of course she eventually (literally) stumbles onto the stage, where her talent and femininity are finally revealed. Interesting trivia: Yiddle was one of few Jewish films to make it past Nazi culture minister Joseph Goebbels to play in Berlin, to the delight of German Jews. (1:32) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Odes)