Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Kimberly Chun, Sabrina Crawford, Michelle Devereaux, Susan Gerhard, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Laurie Koh, Rachel Odes, Lynn Rapoport, and Chuck Stephens. The film intern is Jonathan L. Knapp. For showtimes see Rep Clock and Movie Clock. Due to the holiday, theater information was incomplete at press time. For complete film listings, go to www.sfbg.com.

BERLIN AND BEYOND FILM FESTIVAL

The 11th annual Berlin and Beyond Film Festival runs through Wed/18 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. Tickets ($7-30) are available by calling (415) 263-8760 or by visiting www.ticketweb.com or www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco. For commentary, see last week's Guardian. All times p.m.

WED/18

Namibia Crossing 12:30. Horst Buchholz ... My Papa 2:30. North Wind 4:30. Barefoot 7:30.

OPENING

*After Innocence See "DNA: Does Not Apologize." (1:35)

*Coachella If there's a bad word to be said about the SoCal music festival that's taken over a polo field one weekend for the last six years, you won't find it spoken (or sung) in Drew Thomas's documentary. The mission here may be partly self-promotion, but Coachella has earned the right to pat itself on the back. As Beck (one among several musicians who show up here as fans rather than performers), says the event does a fair job of bringing together "pretty much everything that's happening in music at the moment" – the good stuff, that is, with an emphasis on adventurous-but-accessible acts ignored by commercial radio and TV. Of course, you can't please all the people all the time; personally, I found Prodigy's number an excellent opportunity to use the bathroom – and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst couldn't be any more deliberately pathetic if he sucked his thumb and clutched a security blanket. On the plentiful plus side there are dynamic segments with Nu Mark and Cut Chemist and the White Stripes; entertainingly theatrical ones from Fischerspooner, Polyphonic Spree, and Flaming Lips; and impressive displays of star magnetism by Bjork, Morrissey, and an on-fire Iggy Pop. Plus, Radiohead, Kool Keith, Arcade Fire, Spearhead, Belle and Sebastian, Chemical Brothers, etc., etc. Momentum occasionally flags during these two hours, with tepid song choices from some worthy acts (Pixies, Red Hot Chili Peppers). But the excellent camerawork and editing allow very few dull moments, and there are some great side bits – like the crosscutting between Saul Williams' activist zeal and eternal spoilsport Noel Gallagher, who smirkingly proclaims that a belief in using music for anything beyond "purely entertainment purposes" is very naive. Well, if Oasis says so, it must be true! (1:55) Roxie. (Harvey) (1:55) Roxie.

End of the Spear See Trash. (1:52)

Gay Sex in the 70s Both entertaining and a tad exasperating, Joseph F. Lovett's documentary chronicles some high-profile gay pioneer days in an outstanding example of "Well, aren't we the center of the universe?" chauvinism. This perspective is why it's not more accurately called Mostly White Gay Male Sex in Manhattan and on Fire Island in the '70s but simply Gay Sex in the 70s – as if other, non-A-list gay life scarcely mattered. Chronicling the orgiastic joys and excesses of post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS NYC, the movie does duly remind younger folk that they missed the really good times – or so our elders do keep reminding. But so much of this material is already familiar from other, better, more balanced chronicles. While the old porn and party clips are always welcome, the world may have reached its quota of documentaries defining Gay Lib as a sandy square bounded by the velvet ropes of a) Studio 54, b) Saint Mark's Baths, c) Fire Island, and d) Larry Kramer bitching, er, scolding, um, I mean talking. The film is of historical interest – especially if you recognize that such immediate histories are almost invariably colored by the narcissicism, nostalgia, and subsequent resentment of whatever generation spent its youth there. (1:07) Castro. (Harvey)

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World Will someone please remind me why Albert Brooks is famous? The soft nebbish (to Woody's more hardcore version) writes, directs, and stars in the tepid Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, and with Albert as our guide, we're going to be looking for a long time. Brooks plays a dim-witted version of himself who accepts an invitation from the US government to research and report on what makes Muslims in India and Pakistan laugh. Completing the 500-page memorandum – something Brooks can't stop kvetching about – is the closest Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World comes to narrative thrust, and it's plainly not enough. All of the film's ineffectual one-liners can be seen in its trailer, and they're not any funnier in context. At one point in the film, Brooks bombs a stand-up performance in front of a large Indian crowd; it's supposed to be so-bad-it's-funny, but, alas, we're not laughing because as bad as the stand-up is, the film is even worse. (1:38) (Goldberg)

*The New World See "Native Son." (2:15)

Underworld: Evolution After the first Underworld and Van Helsing, you'd think Kate Beckinsale would steer clear of vampire movies. (run time not available)

ONGOING

*Ballets Russes Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine's documentary Ballet Russes is fabulously entertaining – a great yarn, well spun. Though Geller and Goldfine have made a film on dance before (1988's Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul), Russes's hook isn't the art form but the people, most of them very old. The film untangles the complicated strands of Sergei Diaghilev's descendants. When Diaghilev, creator of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Monte Carlo, died in 1929, his company died with him. Out of the ashes rose two ensembles: one of the them the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the other the Original Ballet Russe. (Just to make things even more confusing, for a while in the '40s there was also a Grand Ballet de Monte Carlo.) Like members of any family with an inheritance, the two companies fiercely competed for dancers, for choreographers, and for audiences. The interviews Geller and Goldfine conducted gave them access to an extraordinary treasure trove of photos, film, programs, and flyers from a period of nonstop traveling by both companies that brought ballet to the hinterlands of America. Russes' greatest pleasure, however, is meeting so many of these dancers, most of them well into their 80s and still full of sparkle and enthusiasm, ready to do it all over again. (1:48) (Rita Felciano)

*The Best of Youth Italian director Marco Tullio Giordana's epic drama finally reaches American theaters nearly two years after its acclaimed European release. With this generational tale of two brothers, Giordana has crafted what is arguably the best foreign film in recent memory. Beginning in 1966 and reaching the present day, Best of Youth follows the storybook tale of the Caratis, Nicola and Matteo, whose lives and loves mirror the major social and political crises that have marred the picturesque Italian landscape over the past half century. Best of Youth is as much a historical retrospective of Italy's self-destructive past and a critique of the forces that have guided it, as it is a family drama. Not unlike Once upon a Time in America, Best of Youth is an ambitious film whose scope and length offer a complexity and depth rarely achieved in cinema. Even with countless characters and a near six-hour length, the strong performances and powerful story will leave you pining for more. (Part one: 3:02; Part two: 2:56) Balboa. (Matthew Lake)

BloodRayne (1:34)

Breakfast on Pluto Director Neil Jordan and novelist Patrick McCabe last teamed up on a film – 1997's The Butcher Boy – so macabre, delicate, and brilliantly handled that their new collaboration seems almost doomed to disappoint by comparison. Taken strictly on its own terms, however – well, Breakfast on Pluto is still a disappointment, if a diverting one. Cillian Murphy plays the adult Patrick, a.k.a. Kitten, a fluttery, flamboyant foundling who begins crossdressing at an early age, undaunted by near-universal disapproval. (When his adoptive mother shrills "I'll parade you up and down the street in your shame!", ever precocious Kitten mewls "Promise?") While eternally searching for his real mother, Kitten experiences love, platonic and otherwise, with men including glam rocker Billy Rock (Gavin Friday), kindly boozebag Uncle Bulgaria (Brendan Gleeson), magician Bertie (Stephen Rea), and Father Bernard (Liam Neeson), the priest who just might be the secret "da'" of our hero(-ine). Stringing together a slightly surreal series of episodes that encompass IRA violence, prostitution, and employment as a theme-park furry, this is the kind of picaresque narrative that seldom translates well from literature to the screen. And indeed, the transplant never quite takes, largely because Kitten – as written and duly played – is an eccentric yet utterly passive observer whose emotions run not skin-deep but makeup-deep. The result is offbeat, but a tad too twee and never very involving. (2:09) (Harvey)

*Brokeback Mountain Brokeback Mountain's succinct pitch – "the gay cowboy movie" – may be accurate enough, but it's really too simple a tag to hang on Ang Lee's gorgeous film. Adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana from Annie Proulx's short story, Brokeback opens in 1963 Wyoming as two men seek a summer's worth of work tending sheep on an isolated mountain. The pair – garrulous Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and taciturn Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) – soon settle into a routine revolving around coyotes and campfires. Without much warning, after just a few sidelong glances you might notice just because you're waiting for 'em, the friendship becomes something more – something entirely unfamiliar in the world of conventional westerns. When the summer ends, it seems the romance – which breaks nearly every relationship taboo under Wyoming's big, conservative sky – must too. As The Notebook, and Titanic, and a bajillion other movies and stories (starting with the likes of Romeo and Juliet) have taught us, it's much more thrilling and memorable when the happiness of the fated pair is threatened by towering obstacles. Those who'd shun this beautiful movie for its gay content couldn't be missing out more. If you must stick a label on Brokeback, you can call it the year's greatest love story – and hold out hope that soon, you'll be able to call it Best Picture. (2:14) (Eddy)

*Capote Truman Capote's life resists easy summary, so it's appealing that the first Hollywood biopic on the author ignores formula and turns one agonizing chapter of his life into an opportunity for an essay. Though Capote is based on the 1988 Gerard Clarke biography, Bennett Miller's film actually has a lot more in common with Janet Malcolm's 1990 The Journalist and the Murderer (a relationship the filmmakers also acknowledge). It's not so much a story of Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as the illustration of the question Malcolm so artfully dodged: What, really, do journalists owe their subjects? In this case, what did the glittering Capote owe the two killers who lent him their life stories for his nonfiction "novel"? Hints of the hundred separate movies that could be made from Capote's life emerge in key details: The scarf he rattles like a saber in Kansas's cop HQ calls to mind the family warfare that accompanied his growing up gay in the '30s and '40s; the bottle of booze he doesn't seem to leave home without foreshadows a grim decline. This film makes a wonderful habit of entering ensemble scenes midsentence, creating a vérité feel without the sea-sickening camera, and it's hard to find fault with the casting: Catherine Keener, gently butch as the conscience of the film, Harper Lee, nails Capote's alter ego and "research assistant," hired for her ability to steward the writer into Holcomb, Kan.'s housewives' hearts. (1:50) (Gerhard)

Casanova For those who lament that, after Lords of Dogtown and Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger can no longer be looked upon as just another pretty face – fear not, he still can. Delivering the lightweight performance one might have expected from the star of A Knight's Tale – if nothing since – he's merely decorative as the centerpiece of this bonbon. Directed by Lasse Hallström (likewise reverting to the level of Chocolat rather than What's Eating Gilbert Grape or The Cider House Rules), Casanova is the kind of strenuously farcical "romp" that frisks and preens about like an ox under the delusion that it's a show pony. As history's most notorious womanizer, a smirking Ledger hardly seems to have a drop of real licentiousness in him – but then the heavily contrived script by Jeffrey Hatcher (of the identically imitative, faux-witty Stage Beauty) and Kimberly Simi is rigged so he almost immediately wants to reform, for love of a spunky little wouldn't-you-know-it protofeminist (dull Sienna Miller). This is a film more crude than clever, more pandering than pleasing – unless you're really easy. Uh, did you like Chocolat? (1:48) (Harvey)

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 Put a two after any film title and you're entering dangerous waters. Slap a G or PG rating on top of that, and you're pretty much guaranteed a release that's a strictly straight-to-video affair. Thus Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is probably destined for the world of rental shelves and airline screenings (where I saw the first one) soon. In the sequel, the Brady Bunch-style family, spearheaded by Steve Martin, takes on a rival family of overachievers run by Eugene Levy, and general high jinks ensue. But the brood is so thinly drawn it's hard to remember who's who. The only standouts are a disturbingly emaciated Hilary Duff and hunky heartthrob Tom Welling (Superman on TV's Smallville), notable for his Crest-perfect smile rather than his handful of lines. That said, there are genuinely funny moments between Martin and Levy. My advice: Skip this, ditch the kiddies and watch Martin's funnier, more mom-and-dad oriented comic classic Parenthood. (1:39) (Crawford)

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Considering the strong affections – and dreams of magic and power – that children and adults have invested in C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia series, one wishes the makers of this initial installment had more confidence in their material. The thrill of having that somewhat unimaginable imaginary world visualized – and embodied by charming actors like Georgie Henley, as Lucy Pevensie, and James McAvoy, as the faun Tumnus – remains, though director Andrew Adamson's vision is disappointingly tame concerning this most fanciful of stories. Despite the seduction of the narrative and the veritable menagerie of well-animated unicorns, beavers, tigers, lions, and bears darting gracefully through the film – the film's scope, from the initial scenes of the Pevensie children's drab WWII-era British reality to the sunlit, modestly ecstatic backdrop of Narnia, with its evil White Witch (Tilda Swinton) and talking critters (ably voiced by thespians like Liam Neeson, as the lion Aslan), is somewhat dismayingly conservative. Let's just say Disney and Adamson haven't partaken of the truly deep magic of Buñuel, Svankmajer, or Kubrick – or even Jackson, Jeunet, or Lucas. And how else to explain the blatant cribbing from Lord of the Rings and Star Wars? All the hand-wringing about the subtextual Christian content aside (which for some reason doesn't glare when treated as just another mythical communiqué to Aslan's army), the tale still enchants. Just silence the rational mind and don't try to reconcile the presence of a wookiee-like creature and Father Christmas in the same film. (2:05) (Chun)

Duma Just when you thought the year of the wildlife documentary was over, with all those penguins and grizzly bears safely tucked into their DVD cases, along comes Duma, the sweet tale of a boy who journeys across South Africa to return his pet cheetah to the wild. Duma isn't a doc (though it is based on a true story), but it's firmly in the kid-friendly tradition of director Carroll Ballard's previous films The Black Stallion and Fly Away Home. On a more wholesome planet, Ballard's style of animal filmmaking for young audiences would be prevail – not, as reality has it, the method that involves copious CGI, the droll voice of Bill Murray, and tie-in toys tucked into Happy Meals. Smaller tykes who're expecting Madagascar-type shenanigans and song stylings may be less than impressed, but older children (and their parents, as well as anyone without spawn who happens to enjoy a beautifully shot nature yarn) will have no trouble warming to Duma's charms. (1:40) Balboa, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Family Stone Looking for a feel-good Christmas comedy? Well, The Family Stone ain't it. Thomas Bezucha's tale of an uptight woman named Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker) who spends Christmas with the instantly judgemental, improbably large (seriously, there's a pregnant sister in there who has maybe five lines) family of her possible-future-husband, Everett (Dermot Mulroney), aims more for your tear ducts than your funny bone. In other words, previews that make this out to be a holiday spin on Meet the Parents are a tad misleading. One thing the previews get right, however, is the incredibly obvious switcheroo that happens once Meredith meets Everett's brother (Luke Wilson) and Everett meets Meredith's sister (Claire Danes). I'm not sure why such an above-average cast (Diane Keaton plays the hard-to-please matriarch; Rachel McAdams returns to Mean Girls territory as the bitchy sister) signed on for this maudlin, fairly conventional home-for-the-holidays exercise – except Parker, who clearly relishes playing Meredith as the anti-Carrie. (1:42) (Eddy)

*Following Sean In 1966, 26-year-old Ralph Arlyck moved from New York to Haight Ashbury – but as he reveals in the wry, insightful narration for his new doc, he was "more of a watcher than a participant" in the flower-power scene, and his view of San Francisco's late '60s remains unromantic. In need of a subject for a student film, Arlyck turned his camera on his four-year-old upstairs neighbor. The resulting short, Sean, caused a sensation upon its release in 1969, largely due to the tyke's casual bragging about his pot intake: "I eat it and I smoke it." In 1994, Arlyck – a career filmmaker who returned to the East Coast in 1969 – got to wondering himself, so he headed to the Bay Area to reunite with his subject. Following Sean shadows the adult Sean (now a remarkably even-tempered electrician) for 10 more years. As Arlyck explores the unusually pronounced generation gaps in Sean's family (his father is still a work-averse hippie, while his his grandparents were prominent San Francisco communists), he also weaves his own life and family into the film, adding a deeply personal dimension to an already intriguing story. (1:27) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Fun With Dick and Jane With the hindsight the post dot-com era affords, it's downright satisfying to watch megacorporation Globodyne go down in Enron-inspired flames. It feels like hapless vice president Dick Harper (Jim Carrey) deserves to crash and burn, because he commits the sin of believing the corporate myth and his blowhard southern boss (Alec Baldwin). Now his punishment is literally racing other suits to the only job interview in town. As Dick and Jane (Téa Leoni) sink into white-collar poverty (they're stuck in their depreciating suburban house because selling it would put them in debt), they fail at menial jobs (an exceedingly tasteless sequence plays illegal day labor for laughs). Iced mochas and crime it is, then. Leoni is a match for Carrey onscreen, and he manages to restrain his spastic antics to two scenes, which are presumably the studio's money shots. Fun With Dick and Jane works much better toward the beginning, when the duo are just a caricature of empty suburban life. As soon as they turn into real people with morals, the film becomes a snoozer. (1:25) (Koh)

Glory Road University of Kentucky fans may want to give Glory Road a pass. But everyone else who enjoys cheering courtside will have a ball (ahem) with Glory Road, which grafts the glossy trappings of a Jerry Bruckheimer production (including endless pop songs) onto a doozy of a true story. In 1966 the blip-on-the-map Texas Western basketball team made it to the NCAA tournament finals – a circumstance amazing enough to constitute movie fodder, compounded by the fact that the starting lineup was comprised entirely of African Americans, a first at the time. Instead of working the Hoosiers angle (coach in need of redemption, blah blah), Glory Road focuses on the players, embodied by a talented cast (Derek Luke, Mehcad Brooks, and Al Shearer among them) who make the most of their sketched-in individual story lines. More important, all of the teammates – black and white – have an easygoing, natural rapport, which renders the film's civil rights themes particularly heartfelt. Though there are no last-minute twists, à la Friday Night Lights, Glory Road's game scenes are still pretty exciting, especially when Coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas, saddled with quite a bit of cliché-ridden dialogue) lets his players dunk a little. (1:46) (Eddy)

*Good Night, and Good Luck As Good Night, and Good Luck opens, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) rips into an audience that has gathered to honor him at a 1958 Radio and Television News Directors Association gala. George Clooney (who also directs) and Grand Heslov's script stays true to Murrow's real-life speech, a searing indictment of television's shift toward fluffy programming, as well as the networks' increasingly close ties to advertisers. Were he alive today, Murrow would no doubt have additional thoughts about the 21st-century version of "this weapon"; in particular he'd probably take issue with the 24-hour-news culture, which favors sensational nuggets over in-depth stories. Good Night is a Murrow biopic of sorts, but it focuses on the specific events surrounding March 9, 1954, when Murrow's See It Now program dared to take on Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare. Director Clooney takes his cue from this moment in television history, using real film clips and plucking Murrow's on-air dialogue from transcripts. The result is a period-authentic, eerily resonant snapshot of a time when national security issues could trump the rights of individuals, and fear kept most Americans woefully silent. (1:30) (Eddy)

Grandma's Boy (1:29)

*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I was pretty high on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is, without a doubt, the new champ. Its PG-13 rating is well earned, with sinister spookiness and kids-in-peril all but replacing whimsy and wonder (though one of Harry's first lines, after witnessing the TARDIS-like powers of a tent that looks tiny on the outside and spacious on the inside, could be a bumper sticker for the series: "I love magic!") The Hogwarts gang are teenagers now, and director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) wisely keeps author J.K. Rowling's balance of wizardry and growing pains intact. What could be scarier than facing down villain Lord Voldemort (an unrecognizable Ralph Fiennes)? Try asking your crush to the school dance – a task that utterly paralyzes even the great Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe). (2:37) (Eddy)

*A History of Violence Peel away an all-American facade, and you'll find a murderous gangster underneath: This message lurks throughout David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. The doc-like title of Cronenberg's latest (adapting a graphic novel of the same name) is par for a director whose vision has always been coolly antiseptic, and the first "big word" in its title is anathema to contemporary amnesia. Nonetheless, this lean and mean family tale has definite mainstream crossover appeal; Cronenberg's version of national allegory trumps Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, not least because it favors genre (Out of the Past, anyone?) and archetypes over bogus realism. From the Lynch-like diner small-talk about coffee and pie, to the foreboding, shiny black car slowly creeping into sunbathed golden settings, Americana fits the Canadian auteur like a surgical glove. The result is his best movie since Dead Ringers. There's a reason the name of History's protagonist, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), is so plain, so benign, though he's loathe to reveal it to wife Edie (Maria Bello), son Jack (Ashton Holmes), and daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Mortensen's Mt. Rushmore of a face is the film's riddle, allowing a pair of wonderfully outsize Mafia turns by a sarcastic Ed Harris and a hilarious William Hurt to effectively steal scenes, if not lives. (1:35) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Huston)

Hoodwinked One of the first independently made CG cartoon features, this "Little Red Riding Hood" take-off gropes toward the examples of Shrek and Shark Tale, adopting their use of celebrity casts and flip in-jokes for adults. Beginning near the fairy tale's end, with the Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton) waiting for Red (Anne Hathaway) after having tied up Granny (Glenn Close), Hoodwinked deconstructs the familiar story into conflicting Rashomon-style accounts and cleverly integrates them to reveal a mystery tale ending in a Bond-Mission Impossible parody climax. The graphics are mostly smooth – though the human characters resemble perky garden gnomes – but it would be unfair to hold them to the Pixar standard (or budget). As expected from its influences, Hoodwinked's humor is mostly derived from adult self-congratulation at the expense of the fairy tale – and children. (Red, now a karate champ, asks the Wolf, "What do I have to do, get a restraining order?") But kids will be entertained enough to consider the film a second-class Shrek, while adults, despite several gruesome musical interludes, won't squirm too often. (1:21) (Ihsan Amanatullah)

Hostel Some critics thought Wolf Creek distasteful simply because it was unpleasant – a raw horror movie. But that film's sense of palpable humanity imperiled by a compassion-free sadist merits a Nobel Peace Prize alongside this incredibly sleazy and crass second feature from writer-director Eli Roth. More technically polished and tonally consistent than Cabin Fever, it's a rancid vat of xenophobia, misogyny, homophobia, and violence that's enthusiastically gruesome and cruel without demonstrating the slightest knack for atmosphere or suspense. Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson play collegiate Yanks touring the Old World less for cultural education than for a Girls Gone Wild go Euro experience. The noxious yet uncritically viewed frat-boy duo (along with Eythor Gudjonsson as an equally party-hearty Icelander) are lured from Amsterdam to Slovakia by a stranger's promise of "so much pussy, and because of the war (?!?) there are no guys" at a remote, off-guide hostel. Upon arriving they duly enjoy attentions from porn-flick-insatiable babes. Surprise! There's a catch. This movie – at least as seen at 2005's Toronto International Film Festival, where the cut screened seemed way more NC-17 than its current R – is revolting in its smug shock value, its Cold War-style view of "other" nations as inherently sinister, and its view of women as either duplicitous whores or sexless victims. It's a slick, sick fantasy at once paranoid, prurient, puritanical and pathetically pubescent. (1:35) (Harvey)

*King Kong The season's hairiest star has finally arrived, after months of hype and post-Lord of the Rings anticipation, and he does not disappoint. An avowed devotee of the 1933 original (and maybe even the 1976 guilty-pleasure misfire), director Peter Jackson remakes the fantastical Kong story using all of the lavish special effects tools – and seemingly unlimited cash flow – at his fingertips. And it pays off: The titular beast ("played" by Andy Serkis, as effective here as he was as LOTR's CG Gollum) gives off genuine emotion, not to mention all the roaring, chest beating, dino-smashing, and building climbing one giant gorilla can provide. Even though her character spends a fair amount of time screaming (usually while clutched in Kong's giant mitt), Naomi Watts turns in a suprisingly nuanced performance, going from terror to wide-eyed wonder to adoration without slipping into I-am-acting-in-front-of-a-green-screen awkwardness. Other human cast members, including Jack Black (as the Kong-obsessed filmmaker) and Adrien Brody (as a soulful playwright), are fine, but this movie ain't really about them: The only time this three-hour movie drags is during its ape-free first hour. (3:00) (Eddy)

Last Holiday Among the many once-independent filmmakers turned 800-pound Hollywood gorillas, Wayne Wang is an odd case. Never really a major figure in independent film, he still found plenty of admirers for his earlier features (Chan is Missing, Smoke). If his last few films (Maid in Manhattan, Because of Winn-Dixie, and now Last Holiday) are any indication though, Wang has become smitten with happy endings and unrelenting sentimentality as of late – it's as if John Sayles decided his next feature ought to be a remake of Waiting to Exhale. Last Holiday has major shades of Maid in Manhattan, with Queen Latifah bumping Jennifer Lopez as the even-keeled working-class woman who gracefully floats into a world of wealth. This time around the character grants herself a sumptuous European vacation upon learning she only has weeks to live. She practically bursts with goodness, her smile and down-home wisdom redeeming the European hotel's cast of cranky characters. Latifah has a wonderfully controlled face, but the script asks too much in making her character a saint, from New Orleans no less. Last Holiday is meant to be whimsical, but Wang's spotless rendition of the sunken city cuts too close to the bone – fantasy, after all, is meant to heighten reality, not insult it. (1:52) (Goldberg)

*The Matador There's a certain patness to actors we first grow used to via TV. For a quarter-century Pierce Brosnan has been agreeably but uninspirationally handsome, suave, rakish, a romance-novel notion of the leading man. Remington Steele and James Bond both fitted him like tailored suits – beautifully, a bit stuffily – while unrelated roles in various big- and small-screen films did little beyond underline his competence. Despite his recent very public grousing about being dropped from the Bond franchise, it's obvious he delights in upending that image here. Brosnan plays Julian Noble, an international hitman more than a bit fried after decades of first-class accomodations, whoring, drugging, and serious drinking. Stumbling onto the path of this sociopathic mess in Mexico City is über-square Denver businessman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear). Feeling friendly after a good day's capitalist deal-making, Danny opines "Margaritas taste better south of the border" at their hotel bar. "Yes, margaritas – and cock," Julian ripostes. He's only pulling chain, of course (well, probably). The two go on to build an improbable friendship that looks to be (as Julian puts it) "the best cocktail story you ever met" until a second-act reunion that drops unicorn-exotic Julian into the incredibly squaresville environ of Danny and wife Bean (Hope Davis). Styled in sly-brash widescreen homage to earlier spy thrillers, hitherto undistinguished writer-director Richard Shepard's feature doesn't break from buddy-comedy genre conventions overall. But it's the details that matter, and here they're nuanced to a witty fine-point. The major pleasure remains Brosnan, who nails drunk, disorderly, disheveled, and desperate with a panache fully up to his character's admittance: "Look at me – I'm a wreck, I'm a parody." A great one, at that. (1:36) (Harvey)

*Match Point Italian opera is paired with those Windsor-font credits that Woody Allen has made a trademark at the beginning of Match Point – just the first of many ironic instances in which the humane warmth of Verdi is used to frame the cold-blooded, if also tragic, social climbing of ex-tennis pro Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers). Scarcely 10 minutes into the movie, Wilton is already at Covent Garden watching a performance of La Traviata while his meal ticket, a plain girl named Chloe (Emily Mortimer), watches him. But Allen takes his title, the film's signature image of a ball floating back and forth across a net, and his core conceit – that stupid luck outweighs good or evil – from tennis. Ripley Serves might be an alternate title for the story of the Irish Wilton, who sees Chloe as a money mine, and struggling American actress Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson) as his real lust, if not love. Unfortunately, Nola is engaged to Chloe's affable brother, Tom (Matthew Goode), and quicker than you can say – or read – Henry James or Theodore Dreiser, the whole affair becomes dangerous. It might be an overstatement to say that Match Point is his best movie since Crimes and Misdemeanors, its most obvious counterpart in the Allen library. At times, Allen's screenplay is wince-inducing. But by far the most intriguing and effective aspect of Match Point is the bleak, fatalistic ricochet effect created by the rare lack of an obvious Allen surrogate amongst the quartet of young leads. (2:04) (Huston)

*Memoirs of a Geisha If you can get over the first stopper – a blue-eyed non-hapa star geisha Sayuri with otherwise archetypally Asian coloring played by Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang – chances are you might enjoy the old-fashioned Hollywood moviemaking propelling Memoirs of a Geisha. Sayuri is sold by her impoverished, crumbling peasant family into the servitude of an okiya, or geisha house. If she's lucky she'll be trained to be a maiko, or apprentice, then a geisha – who, the script takes pains to point out (though dropping mixed messages), is an artist and entertainer, rather than a prostitute. When Hatsumono, the house's gorgeous money-making geisha (Gong Li, digging into her role like a spitting, tigerlike silent film icon), scuttles Sayuri's career, the girl finds hope in kind eyes of the Chairman (Ken Watanabe), a local captain of industry, and under the wing of Hatsumoto's rival geisha, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh). Considering Japan's longtime racial homogeneity and the fact that the casting reflects Western stereotypes about Asians "all looking alike," the dominance of Chinese actresses amid their Japanese male counterparts like Watanabe and Kiyoshi Kurosawa favorite Koji Yakusho (like Gong, dropping naturalism for operatic gestures) is puzzling, apart from predictable US box-office concerns. Still, Memoirs' Cinderella story should be comfortingly familiar for Western audiences, though the art-house success of Crouching Tiger and genre chops of Jet Li and company should allay any fears of middle America buying a major studio picture set in Japan – after the box office seppuku committed by The Last Samurai. (2:07) (Chun)

*Mrs. Henderson Presents Anglophiles, vaudeville aficionados, and admirers of sassy old ladies everywhere, rejoice: The gods of cinema have brought you a holiday gift. Based on the true story of an uppity, eccentric, wealthy widow who reopened a dilapidated theater in the late 1930s and turned London's West End on its head, Stephen Frears' Mrs. Henderson Presents is a refreshing break from the schmaltzy Christmas flicks and last-minute Oscar wannabes that typically plague movie theaters this time of year. Shining star Dame Judi Dench is phenomenal as Mrs. Henderson – mixing razor-sharp wit, humor, stubborn upper-class arrogance, sensuality, and delicious impropriety into a quirky, laughable, lovable, and thoroughly human portrait of a woman audiences will feel they truly know. It's always a treat to see a leading role written for an actress in her golden years that isn't a woman dying of cancer or Alzheimer's. And in case anyone is wondering, Dench, like Mrs. Henderson, may be getting older, but she's still very much alive and kicking. (1:42) (Crawford)

Munich It's already been a very good year for Steven Spielberg – despite the best efforts of TomKat, War of the Worlds triumphed. But there's no alien storyline to provide any sort of allegory in Munich: here, the message is as up-front as it is mixed. Munich begins as terrorists take the Israeli team hostage at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and the ensuing massacre unfolds via increasingly horrifying flashbacks. The film's main story follows the "officially unofficial" Mossad agents (including Eric Bana as their leader) assigned to hunt down the Palestinians they hold responsible for the tragedy. For a time, the job runs smoothly. The Ocean's Eleven-ish motley crew (the old guy, the nervous guy, the sharp dresser, etc.) plots creative executions that unfold with intense suspense, largely due to the technological limitations of the 1970s (compare, say, Munich's iffy telephone bomb to the 21st-century hit carried out at Syriana's climax). While we're meant to identify with the Israeli characters, Spielberg is careful to show the Palestinian side, most notably through a minor character who gets to deliver a heartfelt speech about how "home is everything." Usually a dedicated crowd-pleaser, the director is stuck in a situation where he really can't designate good guys and bad guys, lest he end up with an offensive, insensitive film. Munich's message is basically this: The cycle of violence is neverending – and it sure makes people feel bad. No news flash, that. (2:40) (Eddy)

Music from the Inside Out A faceless mass of cultured noisemakers in the concert hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra reverts into a band of individuals as David Anker's documentary follows them abroad, offstage, and at home. Away from their tuxedos, the musicians moonlight in jazz, salsa, and bluegrass bands or fulfill themselves running, motorcycling, or painting, as they tell us in talking-head and group interviews. But even the most articulate members (one compares the balancing act of music-making to deciding how far his motorcycle should lean when making a hairpin turn) are most eloquent when their lips are busy with their instruments, especially since they're otherwise saddled with questions like "What is music?" Motoring on the tension between self-immersion in a communal mission and remaining an individual, Music from the Inside Out focuses on parts rather than on a whole, and the commendable approach renders the film centerless; it feels more like a lengthy DVD extra for an absent feature. (1:37) (Amanatullah)

*Naked in Ashes Even in a nation of 1 billion, 13 million is a pretty respectable minority – and that is the estimated number of yogis currently traveling a 5,000-year-old spiritual path in India. Paula Fouce's documentary trains its somewhat loose yet engaging focus on about twenty individuals around the nation. Some practice "austerites" that are downright carnivalesque: There's a guy who1s been standing upright 24/7 for 12 years, and another who attracts attention by pulling a fully loaded jeep with his, er, third arm. (As he helpfully advises, "This penis control trick is not for everyone.") There are also yogis who take regular pilgrimages high into the Himalayas, walking naked in snow, risking death from exposure. But Ashes isn't the Mondo Cane of Hinduism. Its benevolent outlook makes such bizarre behaviors understandable as one person's path of liberation from our current dark age of empty materialism. More often, this diverse survey of yogic gurus and disciples conveys the serenity gained by renunciation of earthly desires via prayer, meditation, charitable works, yoga, and so forth. To Fouce's credit, she's made an entertaining (as well as illuminating) movie about people with no use for "entertainment" whatsoever. (1:58) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Pride and Prejudice Like the 12-bar blues and the facts of life, we all know how it goes, but precisely how do the particulars compare to our own internal Pride and Prejudices as well as, admit it, the definitive BBC miniseries with the wet-shirted Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy? Here, the crucial roles are fairly well filled: As Elizabeth, the bruised-eyed Keira Knightley is impish, girlish, and toothy, yet twinkly smart. Ape-draped MI-5 actor Matthew Macfadyen plays Darcy so low-down and subtle that he runs the risk of resembling a dot-mouthed cartoon, but when the time comes to confess his most ardent affections, he steps up and fills Firth's pantaloons, even if he has to channel Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff and stomp through the moors in what looks to be a bathrobe. Other roles are beautifully filled out by Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander, Judi Dench, and Jena Malone. Director Joe Wright favors a muddy, frizzy-haired, minimal-makeup naturalism, reminiscent of '60s-era reworkings of Penguin Classics, complete with zooming camera, an emphasis on daylight, pigs' testicles, and odd moments of modern-day randiness. Did Elizabeth really check out Wickham's ass in the book? (2:08) (Chun)

*The Producers It's called a moviecal, a movie based on a Broadway musical that was itself based on a movie. Sure, the concept is a skosh crass and cannibalistic, but Mel Brooks's bizarre, hilariously funny 1968 film couldn't have been better suited for the makeover – it's now a movie based on a musical based on a movie about a musical. Reprising their stage roles as Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, schemers bent on bilking little old ladies by mounting the worst stage production of all time, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick have honed their shtick so well after so many live performances, you half expect theaters screening the film to go dark on Mondays so they can have a day off. Some of the songs may be a little lackluster (although the Führer's big number in Springtime for Hitler, "Heil Myself," is a standout), but this is about comic timing, not show tunes. Originally a sharp-witted burlesque of spaced-out hippies, pigeon-cuddling Nazis, and spats-sporting vaudevillians, The Producers is now a tongue-in-cheek nostalgia piece. But, thankfully, it's one with enough sense to ratchet up the fakeness and frivolity as far as it will go. Let's face it, Will Ferrell as a nutso Third Reich dandy in lederhosen may be wunderbar, but it's hardly the stuff of WW II docs. (2:12) (Devereaux)

Rent The Broadway-cinema continuum, which runs both ways (see: Chicago, Hairspray, and the hall of mirrors that is The Producers), has proved to be a highly lucrative alliance. So why does Chris Columbus's big-screen version of Rent – a slickly directed, energetically acted operation – feel kind of unnecessary right about now? For one thing, it's dated. The play's vision of Manhattan, circa 1990, no longer exists. The cast – made up almost entirely of the stars of the 1996 Tony-winning stage production – is also dated, if well-preserved. Had creator Jonathan Larson lived to see Rent flourish, it's possible the big-screen version might have been a little different, a little more innovative; as is, it's an exceptionally faithful interpretation. It doesn't do what Chicago did, reimagining and stylizing the source material for the big screen; neither does it offer the excitement of seeing genuine movie stars (the biggest name here is non-original-cast-member Rosario Dawson) singin' and dancin'. However, there's an upside to Rent keeping it real, beyond just pleasing "Rentheads" near and far. Unlike, say, last year's Phantom of the Opera, Rent's adherence to the Broadway cast insures that Larson's songs will be interpreted with faithful, I-wuz-there-at-the-beginning passion – making for some genuinely emotional moments. (2:08) (Eddy)

The Ringer Executive producers Peter and Bobby Farrelly continue to redefine the term guilty pleasure with their latest affront to good taste – this time surreptitiously, through director Barry W. Blaustein (Beyond the Mat). Johnny Knoxville tones down his Jackass-itude approximately 1000 percent to star as titular loser Steve Barker, whose compulsive-gambler uncle Gary (Brian Cox) hoodwinks him into posing as the mentally challenged "Jeffy Dahmor" in order to fix the Special Olympics. It's clear from the outset that Steve is just, you know, a nice guy, one who's in it for all the right reasons (which we won't go into here). But despite all the pat "they're people too" life lessons learned, it's hard to escape the fact that the people in question remain mostly the butt of the one joke in this admittedly often very funny flick. "Since when is 'tard politically incorrect?" Gary laments incredulously. Um, since always. (1:34) (Devereaux)

Rumor Has It ... The premise of director Rob Reiner's new film is so patently absurd that the film – an ordinary romantic-comedy by any account – can't help but ooze with frivolity. Sarah Huttinger (Jennifer Aniston) has always been the black sheep of her family and is now harboring insecurities about marrying good-guy Jeff Daly (Mark Ruffalo). Her sense of uncertainty explodes upon returning home for her sister's wedding when she discovers that her feisty grandmother (Shirley MacLaine) and deceased mother were the basis for Mrs. Robinson and her daughter Elaine in the book and film The Graduate. All this gets Sarah wondering whether she might be the result of a fling between her mother and Benjamin Braddock prototype Beau Burroughs (Kevin Costner). An hour later, the film limps to its finish. Ruffalo and MacLaine steal some laughs, but it's only because they recognize the film's ridiculousness. Aniston, as usual, is a disaster. Will someone please instruct Hollywood producers not to cast Jen as the odd one out? It only encourages her trademark pout, and we could all do with less of that. (1:37) (Goldberg)

Shopgirl Steve Martin's novella gets the big-screen treatment courtesy of director Anand Tucker (Hilary and Jackie), and the result is a mixed-bag look at modern – i.e., highly complicated – romance. Saks Fifth Avenue clerk Mirabelle (Claire Danes) drifts through her lonely Los Angeles life, filling her spare hours with charcoal drawings and vintage-clothes shopping (the latter is never shown in the film, but her budget wardrobe is 1950s-cool all the way). Very nearly simultaneously, she meets age-appropriate slacker Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman) and older, wealthy commitment-phobe Ray (Martin). Ray takes her to swanky restaurants; Jeremy drags her to Universal CityWalk and asks socially inept questions: "Can I kiss you or what?" As the love triangle shifts and changes, Mirabelle is let down by her own expectations again and again (none-too-subtly telegraphed by Shopgirl's intrusive, often shrill score). This is probably Danes's strongest work since My So-Called Life – let's just forget about Terminator 3, shall we? – but even her performance can't overcome the inherent ickiness of the Mirabelle-Ray pairing. (1:44) (Eddy)

*The Squid and the Whale 'You'd like Kafka – one of my predecessors," onetime literary prodigy Bernard (Jeff Daniels) informs eldest son Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), the perfect reflecting-mirror parrot for all Dad's pretensions. It's Park Slope, Brooklyn, 1986. Joan (Laura Linney) has finally realized that being Bernard's wife – his third – is hard labor no one should have to endure in a free society. Still, their separation hits 16-year-old Walt and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) hard, with joint custody splitting loyalties as well as the week. Frank wisely chooses Mom as a more reliable port in a storm, while Walt, as usual, seeks shelter 'neath professorial Dad's enormous ego; both kids deal with the home-front crisis in variably alcoholic, masturbatory, and plagiarizing ways. Noah Baumbach (Mr. Jealousy) won awards for both writing and directing at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, and his film is X-Acto-knife-sharply observed and acted. Yet one leaves the theater as if leaving a cocktail party where dinner was mistakenly expected. The conversation is brilliant; the hors d'oeuvres are superb. But a slightly dazzled inebriation wears off too soon, leaving the viewer sober and unsated. (1:28) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Syriana Inspired by Robert Baer's See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, Syriana is a genuinely political thriller. It's an elaborate fiction very much in the mode of Traffic, writer-director Stephen Gaghan's last screenplay, but better, with a more self-effacing directorial style and less distracting star personalities. A paunched-out, credibly weary George Clooney plays CIA agent Bob, who facilitates speedy deaths for inconvenient people in the oil-rich Near East. His promised final assignment before desk-job retirement is to eliminate Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), an emir's idealistic heir apparent who dares to give new drilling rights to the highest bidder – a Chinese concern – rather than to a Texas conglomerate. Meanwhile, Washington, DC, attorney Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is expected to provide the Justice Department with enough evidence of corruption to punish the Texas corporation for some past dealings – but not enough to disrupt business as usual. American energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) becomes a close ally of the prince after a tragic accident pushes them together. And way down the economic totem pole, abruptly fired young energy-field grunt workers Wasim (Mazhar Munir) and Farooq (Sonnell Dadral) find moral enlightenment and some dangerous ideological zeal under a fundamentalist recruiter's wing. Apart from an occasional overblown speech, Syriana is engrossing, intelligent, well acted, and relevant enough to be the thinking lefty's movie of choice this holiday season. (2:06) (Harvey)

Transamerica Good things do happen to (some) actors who wait. Felicity Huffman's work in various media was steady but little-noticed until Desperate Housewives caused instant celebrity. Her new status no doubt fanned critical-buzz flames around her very solid if unspectacular performance in this fairly solid but decidedly unspectacular indie drama. She plays Bree, formerly Stanley, Osbourne, a pre-op MTF transsexual who's dowdily Marian the Librarian rather than sexily superfemme. On the brink of final surgery, the LA transplant is improbably told by therapist Elizabeth Peña she won't be truly "ready" unless she deals with one remnant of masculine life unknown until just now: Teenage son Toby (Kevin Zegers). Arrested as a prostitute in NYC, he's somehow tracked down Bree as a bail source, unaware that, well, she's his father. They wind up making a coast-to-coast "transformative journey" that's uneven and anecdotal and funny-sad in fairly pat ways. The movie's earnestness reels off balance in the third act, when its protagonists meet the conservative-Christian parents Bree is estranged from – with Fionnula Flanagan caricaturing the gorgon mother. While Huffman is fine in a role that (especially as cast with a woman) can't help but scream "award bait," Air Bud franchise survivor Zegers is equally impressive. Together they anchor a film that, as written and directed by Duncan Tucker, is pleasant and well-intentioned but somewhat pedestrian. (1:43) (Harvey)

Tristan and Isolde The Dark Ages' own Romeo and Juliet get their big-screen due in this mostly entertaining film, long a pet project of Ridley Scott's. Alas, he takes a producing role as Kevin Reynolds (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves) directs. Swordplay, trap-door intrigue, and back-stabbing (sometimes literally) play out against glamorously grimy backdrops of castles and Roman ruins; of course, there's also a love story, a seriously ill-fated match-up between the dreamiest lass in Ireland (Sophia Myles) and the dreamiest warrior in England (James Franco). Reynolds keeps the sides of the stories pretty evenly balanced; for every fireside tryst, there's at least one beheading or maiming. Tristan and Isolde works for the most part – and, refreshingly enough, refrains from adding any "modern" touches to the ancient story. Overall, though, it's pretty MOR. It never achives the artful brutality of, say, Scott's Gladiator; it also lacks the kinds of elements that made Robin Hood such a memorable, medieval cheesefest. Most egregiously, the villains – who should be the coolest thing going here; it's the Dark Ages, man! – are disappointingly ho-hum. (2:05) (Eddy)

*Waging A Living Roger Weisberg's documentary bypasses the facade of an ownership society to reveal a debtor's society. Here the working poor fruitlessly break their backs and spirits in dead-end jobs, reduced to a cross between Sisyphus and a hamster on a wheel, perpetually trying to roll themselves and their families above the poverty line and inadvertently "hustling backwards" instead. Chronicling three years in the lives of a nursing assistant who must support a terminally ill daughter; a bank security guard living in a single-room-occupancy hotel in the Tenderloin and saving to visit children he hasn't seen in nine years; a single mother of five struggling to earn a degree but stymied by capriciously volatile government benefits; and a waitress with three children forced toward food pantries and financial ruin after a gruesome divorce, Waging a Living is straightforward vérité, unadorned and artless, and anything but predictably grim – the appearance of a "six months later" title can generate wrenching suspense. Rosevelt's America, a sweet short from Weisberg and Tod Lending, supplements the feature and plays like a lost chapter as a refugee, Rosevelt Henderson, slaves away at poignantly menial jobs so he can bring his wife over to America from his native Liberia. Waging a Living will only appear on a few screens for a few weeks but deserves a residency at every theater in the country, where it can reach those who'll recognize aspects of their lives onscreen and haunt those who won't. (1:50) (Amanatullah)

*Walk the Line It's worth mentioning right up front that Walk the Line doesn't really shake up the template set down by Ray, the recent Elvis miniseries, and any number of other true musical tales: Start with a significant childhood event (preferably traumatic) to set the tone, then let that sucker echo throughout the performer's life. Coscripted by director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) and Gill Dennis and based on two Cash autobiographies, Walk the Line leans a bit heavily on Cash's guilt 'n' grief complex. It also relies on lurching transitions that map Cash's creativity in the most literal way possible. There's no doubting Mangold's reverence for Cash – though, seriously, everyone loves Johnny Cash – but thankfully the filmmaker is, at times, able to nudge past hero worship and point out that the man had some gnarly flaws. Cash's legend, especially when packed into the biopic mold, may be a familiar one, but Walk the Line still springs a few surprises. The lead actors are outstanding; both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do their own singing and strumming. With shiny black pompadour lacquered into place, natural born brooder Phoenix eerily mimics Cash's wounded snarl and gravelly voice, while Witherspoon – Walk the Line's stealth weapon – turns in a thoughtful, passionate performance. (2:16) (Eddy)

The White Countess The final Merchant-Ivory collaboration (producer Ismail Merchant died last May) is one of their middling efforts. It's an opulent period piece, beautifully visualized (shot by Christopher Doyle) and astutely cast, but without a great deal of narrative drive or involvement – somewhat surprising since the screenplay is an original by novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, whose adapted Remains of the Day was perhaps the last really good Merch-Ivory feature. Natasha Richardson plays the widowed Countess Sofia Belinsky, whose aristocratic family has fallen far since the Czar's ouster and Bolshevism's triumph rendered them penniless refugees. In 1936 they live in a squalid Shanghai flat, where she supports a young daughter and various relatives by working as a taxi dancer in sleazy nightclubs. Imperious in-laws Olga (Lynn Redgrave) and Greshenka (Madeleine Potter) treat her as a shamefully fallen woman – never mind that Sofia's labors are the only thing keeping them fed and sheltered. More sympathetic, but ineffectual and slightly senile, are Aunt Sara (Vanessa Redgrave) and Uncle Peter (John Wood). A good deed Sofia performs for likewise-widowed, accident-blinded, former American diplomat Jackson (Ralph Fiennes) pays dividends when he raises funds to open his dreamed-of "perfect nightclub," calling it the White Countess and duly hiring her to act as its elegant hostess-slash-figurehead. As they ever-so-slowly (too slowly, in fact) realize their relationship ought be more than professional, obstacles arise, including his escalating alcoholism, her continued family grievances, and the rising threat of a Japanese invasion that may be somehow connected to Jackson's mysterious friend Matsuda (Hiroyuki Sanada of The Last Samurai). Yet despite all these potentially rich complications, The White Countess is a little too bloodlessly white. An overblown cast-of-thousands climax can't erase the nagging sense that this prestige project is part Cabaret without the music or decadence, part Casablanca without the romantic chemistry – parts that don't add up to a successful whole. (2:15) (Harvey)

*Wolf Creek Australian import Wolf Creek finds a perfectly unsettling horror location in the country's vast, sparsely populated outback. This is a place with no cell phone reception, seemingly no law enforcement, beautiful but inhospitable landscapes, and potently unfriendly locals. If that doesn't intrigue you right off the bat, know this: The actual events that inspired writer-director Greg McLean's film were called "the Backpacker Murders," an appellation that somehow manages to be both stark and horribly evocative. Wolf Creek's fictionalized tourists are a pair of Brits, Liz (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy (Kestie Morassi), as well as Aussie Ben (Nathan Phillips), who set off in their newly acquired rust bucket to visit a meteorite crater tucked into the wilderness. Right away the omens begin to pile up: tales of UFO sightings, sleazy yokels making gang-bang jokes, weird weather, and the verbalized observation "There's nothing out here!" Nothing, except jolly bush-dweller Mick (John Jarratt, who – in a nice dovetailing of eerie-Aussie-film history – was also in 1975's Picnic at Hanging Rock). When their car breaks down, the kids are grateful when Mick appears in the darkness; they're less appreciative when he drops the Crocodile Dundee act and bloody mayhem breaks out. So why should you bother taking yet another trip down the highway to hell? (Unlike House of Wax, this one doesn't even afford you the pleasure of a Paris Hilton death scene.) Accents and occasional emu sightings aside, Wolf Creek's skeletal remains aren't all that different from Texas Chainsaw homages past. But it's also relentlessly grim, occasionally jaw-dropping, and lensed with the sort of it-could-happen-to-you urgency that digital cameras so deftly convey. (1:39) (Eddy)

REP PICKS

*Cruising See Picks. (1:46) Castro.

*Gie See Picks. (2:27) Smith Rafael.

*'Neo-Benshi Night: Move Over Silver Screen' See Pick box. San Francisco Cinematheque.

*'Weird America' This third annual PFA series throws a spotlight on recent documentaries about "folks with uncommon occupations, strange pastimes, and curious obsessions." You will not be bored, and your faith in our country as land of the free – i.e., those not walking in zombie-step formation to the latest strain of Jesus-based patriotism – will be ever-so-affirmed. The kickoff is Derailroaded, a compelling portrait of schizophrenic musician and erstwhile Frank Zappa protegee Wild Man Fischer. Next comes La Lucha: The Struggle, about Santo-inspired Mexican wrestling in greater Los Angeles, paired with Jason Blalock's incredible-yet-true Oakland Raider Parking Lot – which turns out to be even weirder and scarier than filmdom's prior looks at heavy metal and Neil Diamond parking lots. In a Nutshell: A Portrait of Elizabeth Tashjian focuses on the 90-something proprietress of a New England "Nut Museum," whose neighbors consider her simply nuts. Okie Noodling is about Oklahoma's peculiar sport of catching yard-long catfish with one's bare hands. Weirdness mixes up the animal kingdom via Born in a Barn, whose tethered and trained fetishists practice "pony-play;" it's teamed with the short Pup, about gay leathermaster Skip and his obedient little doggie Tim. Finally, Pleasures and Plagues on the Salton Sea has John Waters sarcastically narrating a look at the onetime SoCal "Riviera of the West" – a man-made lake turned ecological disaster and haven for the defiantly odd or merely very poor. PFA. (Harvey)