Just Like Home (Lone Scherfig, Denmark, 2007) While the other Dogme95 filmmakers brooded and pouted, Scherfig established a touch for bittersweet comedy with 2000’s Italian for Beginners, and she hones it with this goofily enjoyable, vaguely similar, ensemble piece. A misfit small town where the town square lies in shambles falls into further chaos when a naked man is seen running around at night. We see much of the resulting action through the eyes of a newcomer who has escaped from a bizarre religious cult. Scherfig records the earnest bumbling through a unique lens, sometimes smeared with streaks of overexposed, or double-exposed, shapes and colors. The result is only as deep as a standard-issue Hollywood romantic comedy, but it's deftly handled and slyly endearing. In keeping with Dogme-style gimmickry, Scherfig reportedly shot chronologically, adding to the script each day. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)
6:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/26, 1 p.m., Kabuki; Sun/27, 4 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29. 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

Lady Jane (Robert Guédiguian, France, 2007) Lean and mean as a killer B-movie -- with a good dose of world-weary Gallic seed -- Lady Jane shows that the French noir still possesses a powerful measure of chilly fire. Its namesake, played by the 50-ish, formidable, and fierce Ariane Ascaride, perfectly embodies the genre. Whether she’s half-naked and sexy or stalking the streets wearing a tough black trench coat, Ascaride’s hard-boiled intensity is compelling. Roused from bourgeois slumber when her son is suddenly snatched, Lady Jane reconnects with two old partners in crime to raise a ransom. Director Guédiguian is overly fond of his flashbacks but redeems himself with the care he puts into imagery that avoids Bogart-by-way-of-Belmondo clichés. (Chun)
9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/ 27, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki

10+4 (Mania Akbari, Iran, 2007) Akbari, the star of Abbas Kiarostami's 2002 Ten, takes the helm for this official sequel, directly presenting her struggle with breast cancer. She starts off with some of Kiarostami’s digital cameras mounted in vehicles, but eventually loosens up with jump cuts and reverse shots, and the film is ultimately less formal or conclusive and more exploratory. However, as in her 2004 directorial debut 20 Fingers, Akbari is susceptible to overt melodrama. Despite moments of beauty, 10+4 is often rough going. At one point Akbari describes how she likes going to parties and dancing to get her away from her disease, which leads one to wonder how she managed to spend so much time scrutinizing it for this film. Amin Maher, the actor who played her son in Ten, also returns. He’s less belligerent. (Anderson)
8:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/28, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 1, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki

You, the Living (Roy Andersson, Sweden/Germany/France/Denmark/Norway, 2007) There is one thing wrong with Roy Andersson’s movies: There aren’t enough of them. The Swede’s fourth feature in thirty years is another almost indescribable gizmo that strings together absurdist tableaux to increasingly hilarious and elaborate effect. From an incongruous Louisiana brass band to unhappy barflies forever facing last call, the characters here are comic Scandinavian-miserabilist pawns in a cosmic joke told largely through music -- and painted a fugly shade of lime green. Bizarre and delightful. (Harvey)
6:15 p.m., Castro. Also Sun/27, 8:30 p.m., PFA; Tues/29, 7 p.m., Kabuki

SAT/26

Fados (Carlos Saura, Portugal/Spain, 2007) Attempting to do for the Portuguese torch song what he once did for Spain’s gypsy blues with Flamenco (1995), Saura soars and stumbles with Fados, presenting some wonderful performances and a few unfortunately dated musical and modern-dance treatments. Chico Buarque, Mariza, Lila Downs, and Cesaria Evora lend their varied styles and impassioned voices to the form. When Saura frames archival footage of fado giants like Amalia Rodrigues against walls and amid scrims, the approach comes off not so much cerebral as weirdly sterile. The dance performances tend to distract when paired with the lyric-centered fado, which is traditionally less associated with movement than flamenco. One wishes Saura would have stepped aside further for the effervescent, soulful lilt of Caetano Veloso; the plush, liquid tones of Lura; the arch, curled-lip warble of Ana Sofia Varela; and old-world narrative grace of Carlos do Carmo. (Chun)
2:45 p.m., Castro. Also Mon/28, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki

Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (Scott Hicks, Australia, 2007)
Shine director Scott Hicks illuminates composer Philip Glass in the course of a dozen disparate chapters, hewing closely to his own evident fascination with artists, their process, and the places and people that touch them. One learns about Glass’s early career strategies (start your own ensemble and perform in lofts and galleries in order to bypass culture’s gatekeepers), family (his marriage seemingly falls apart during the documentary’s creation), spirituality, work habits (he hates to throw anything away -- “I hope we never have a fire in this house,” vows wife Holly), day jobs (”He was a much better musician than a plumber,” says old friend Chuck Close), bad reviews (the object of much mirth) and film scores. In the meantime, the opera Waiting for the Barbarians occupies the background or foreground of this consumed creator’s life. (Chun)
3 p.m., PFA and 8:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 30, 3 p.m., Kabuki

Ice People (Anne Aghion, USA/France, 2007) The movies have long made the Antarctic the terrain of terrifying monsters (think of John Carpenter’s 1982 remake of The Thing) and cute creatures (2005’s March of the Penguins), but the beings discovered by Anne Aghion in this documentary bare fatigue, not fangs, and they are far more prickly than cuddly. Aghion’s portrait of the inhabitants of the McMurdow Research Station moves through its 77 minutes at a glacial pace, spending much of its time with a satellite group of four geologists who are looking for 20-million-year-old leaf fossils. There is grousing about global warming, but the pup tent dynamics between the two professors and their students -- one of whom is openly Christian -- make for much of the film’s muted drama. There’s more depth to the fantastic landscapes, which Aghion lenses far more flatteringly than she does her human subjects. (Sussman)
6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Mon/28, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 1:15 p.m., Kabuki

Mataharis (Iciar Bollain, Spain, 2007) Charlie’s Angels, this ain’t: these investigators and would-be Mata Haris of an all-female Madrid agency have the unwashed hair, sensible shoes, and bad marriages of everyday wage slaves. Actress-director Bollain’s skillful, empathetic knack for capturing the grubby, low-light details of working women’s lives glimmers through the pale haze of this promising film. But she falters with the application of narrative-flattening sentiment, predictably reassuring story arcs, and the occasional cheesy slo-mo effect. She should have trusted her characters: Eva (Najwa Nimri), newly returned to work after maternity leave, who takes her job back home when her husband begins to suspiciously evaporate, and Ines (Maria Vazquez), a spunky redhead used by a multinational corporation to spy on its activist workers. (Chun)
4 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/28, 7:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 9 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 1:15 p.m., Clay

Walt & El Grupo (Theodore Thomas, USA, 2007) In 1941, Walt Disney and a band of animators, writers and other artists -- which came to be known as El Grupo -- journeyed to South America on a goodwill tour. This documentary, co-directed by the son of one voyager, gathers wonderful photos and home movies and a dazzling collection of drawings and cartoon clips to re-create the trip. The trouble is that there's no real drama; Walt is painted as a kind, benevolent soul whose very presence gave a lift to the poor citizens and their dreary lives below the equator. Anything bad that happens -- a strike, the death of his father, etc. -- is beyond his control. The cumulative view is as sharply Eurocentric as Walt's when he went on to make cartoons such as 1942’s Saludos Amigos. (Anderson)
1:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/28, 6 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki

SUN/27

Forbidden Lie$ (Anna Broinowksi, Australia, 2007) Norma Khouri made headlines and toured the talk show and lecture circuit as a crusading heroine when her 2003 international bestseller Forbidden Love highlighted the phenomenon of honor killings in pockets of the Muslim world -- particularly the murder in Jordan of Khouri’s best friend Dalia by her own family after she was discovered to be secretly in love with a Christian man. Trouble was, this heartrending story turned out to be a fabrication, and Khouri herself very far from the person she’d pretended to be. As filmmaker Anna Broinowski grows increasingly exasperated with her subject’s fibbing and evasiveness, this documentary develops from an exposé of a possibly well-intentioned hoax into a portrait of a serial con artist one would be quite happy to see writing her next book from behind bars. (Harvey)
1:30 p.m., PFA. Also April 30, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 6:30 p.m., Clay; May 4, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki

Frozen (Shivajee Chandrabhushan, India, 2007) Director Chandrabhushan’s first feature shows ample signs of his prior pursuits as photographer, sociologist and mountaineer. Strikingly shot in black-and-white, it tells of a desperately scraping-along family in the remote Himalayan Ladakh region. Their woes are complicated by an army regiment that commandeers their house, the crippling debts and the presumed mental illness of pretty daughter Lasya (Gauri), who’s physically mature but has the nature of a hyperactive, destructive toddler. Somewhat distanced in terms of storytelling, the film nonetheless arrests attention through its visually rich capture of a landscape. (Harvey)
6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/28, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 4 p.m., Kabuki

Picking Up the Pieces (various, 2007) The most intriguing piece in this shorts program about things lost and found is Death Valley Superstar, Michael Yaroshevsky’s half-hour documentary focusing on Marc Frechette, who was picked off the street to star in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 Zabriskie Point. Taking his role as a student revolutionary into real life, he subsequently tried robbing a bank, was arrested, and died in prison under suspicious circumstances. Also excellent is Radu Jude’s 25-minute Romanian drama Alexandra, and John Magary’s The Second Line, a narrative revolving around a FEMA worker in post-Katrina New Orleans. (Harvey)
11:45 a.m., Kabuki. Also April 30, noon, Kabuki

A Stray Girlfriend (Ana Katz, Argentina, 2007) This film begins on a bus, uncomfortably close to a bickering couple. Miguel (Daniel Hendler) is seething and silent, Inés (Katz) is unkempt and overbearing. A few brief cuts later, and Inés is on the side-of-the-road, the seduced-and-abandoned castaway of the title. As writer-director-actress, she maps out post-breakup transience with a wandering handheld camera and oblique dialog. Inés explores a rural township on Argentina’s coast, and each scene teeters between bewilderment and menace -- when an overly friendly archer invites her to a favorite spot in the woods, for example, suspicion hovers over the otherwise innocent scenario. Lynne Ramsay covered similar terrain in her minor masterpiece Morvern Callar (2002), though with a dream-inducing soundtrack and enigmatic, elliptic flair that extends beyond Katz’s more vanilla approach. (Goldberg)
9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 1, 7:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 6:15 p.m., PFA

MON/28

Cachao: Uno Más (Dikayl Rimmasch, USA, 2008) Actor, would-be bongo player, and Cuban music fanatic Andy Garcia does right by his idol, the late Cuban musical great Israel “Cachao” Lopez, in this passionate tribute, sprinkled with SF sights and centered around a Bimbo’s 365 Club concert. The show was apparently a hot one – also showcasing Bay Area Latin music scholar John Santos, timbalero Orestes Vilato, and vocalist Lazaro Galarraga -- and director Rimmasch does it justice by using the performance as a framework. Lopez’s history parallels that of contemporary Cuban music, and Rimmasch ably fills in details through multiple interviews with the man himself, as well as other knowledgeable observers. His movie also charts the bassist and composer’s place in musical history, amid the mind-bogglingly complex African music-influenced polyrhythms that metamorphosed the refined danzon into the frenetic mambo. (Chun)
6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 1:15 p.m., Kabuki

TUES/29

Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, USA, 2008) After profiling Robert McNamara in 2003’s The Fog of War, Errol Morris jumps down the chain-of-command to summon the small band of so-called bad apple U.S. soldiers who were punished for the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib. Morris, ever the showman, doggedly cuts away from the burnished interviews and photographs to various reenactments and slow-motion rumbles -- among other things, we “see” Sadam’s egg frying, giant prison ants and an exploding helicopter. Whereas Morris’s obsessive visualizations did wonders with Fog of War’s necessary archival footage, in Standard Operating Procedure they seem not just misplaced, but morally confused. The Abu Ghraib story is, among other things, about the unstable, delicate nature of photographic representation, but Morris can’t resist auteur-stamped fireworks -- how else to explain the typically nutty (and utterly incongruous) Danny Elfman score, which only serves to remind us that Standard Operating Procedure is indeed an Errol Morris film? (Goldberg)
Part of “Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award: An Evening With Errol Morris,” 7:30 p.m., Kabuki