Crossroads, Hart's War, Iris, John Q, Return to Neverland, Super Troopers, The Town is Quiet

* Best In Show
The latest from the folks who brought you Waiting for Guffman follows several dog owners on their quest for the blue ribbon at the 2000 Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. Dogs are always funny. (JASON PAGANO) Egyptian

Big Fat Liar
Kid has idea. Big fat movie exec steals it. Kid takes revenge. Even the presence of the great Paul Giammati (in the title role) can't excuse this pile of poo. Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark

Collateral Damage
The most gratifying thing about the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger is that probably most teenagers have no idea who he is, and only teenagers are capable of liking Arnold Schwarzenegger films, so his comeback may be not just a failure, but an embarrassing failure. This movie, you may remember, is the most highly publicized film to have been held from release after 9/11, on account of a few measly brown-skinned terrorist characters and one exploded building. Pussies. Varsity

* Everybody's Dying Here
There's no room in Stranger Suggests, but let me make it plain: GO SEE THIS INCREDIBLE DOCUMENTARY ABOUT AN ALL-GIRL MEXICAN GARAGE BAND. It's a fascinating record of a burgeoning chapter of the international pop underground, where female punkers aren't just fighting to be heard, they're railing against "the whole make-up of the Mexican guy" with the last tool still available: rock 'n' roll. The girls are confident, righteous, and alone, which makes Los Ultrasonicas all the more meaningful. It's easy to forget up here in the NW, where there's a stumbly indie-rock band for every blade of grass, that the gesture of indie punk can still be new, dangerous, and in the words of the stars of this film, "so badass!" (SEAN NELSON) 911 Media Arts Center

* Faust
F.W. Murnau's classic silent film, scored live by Texas ensemble the Golden Arm Trio. Little Theatre

The Fluffer
A generic Tiger Beat gay and a sexy female stripper vie for the attention of a hot gay-for-pay porn star in the first dumb gay film about sex ever made. In a nutshell: The stripper tries to save her shallow, pathetic relationship with Johnny Rebel (hot porn star with tainted chocolate thingy), while the Gay (that's the "Fluffer") shoots the videos and sucks Rebel off whenever he can't get it up or can't come (cum). The film purports to be an exploration of narcissism and self-destructive desire, but what it ends up being is gay porn with an average script (by porn standards) and no sex. Not even a boner, girl. (JEFF DeROCHE) Broadway Market

* Jack Johnson
See Stranger Suggests. A long-lost documentary about the controversial black boxer who took the heavyweight belt in 1908, igniting a racial powder keg. Little Theatre

* JAZZ ON FILM
This week: Steamboat Bill, Jr., the Buster Keaton treasure (in which Buster plays a poncey lad who becomes a riverboat captain), accompanied by Austin's Asylum Street Spankers, live and direct. (SEAN NELSON) JBL Theater at EMP

Little Otik
Reviewed this issue. A childless Czech couple adopt a log. Everything goes great till the kid starts teething.... Varsity

Monster's Ball
Reviewed this issue. Sometimes we go to the movies to be entertained. Sometimes we go to be enlightened. But sometimes, we go to the movies because we want to see Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton fuck the pain away. Voila, Monster's Ball, the unconvincing tale of a Southern prison guard (Thornton) who gets cured of racism when he doinks the wife (Berry) of a prisoner he executed. (SEAN NELSON) Guild 45th

* Open Screening
This monthly screening series at 911 is one of the most hit-or-miss events in town: no curators here, merely willing hosts to whoever submits a film. (For only $1, however, it's also one of the best deals.) In a way, the very unevenness of the presentation reflects quite favorably on the best filmmakers, whose works truly stand out as fresh and inspiring after you've sat through three or four duds. And there are few viewing spaces as pleasant as 911, with its series of offices and studios just behind you and to your right as you watch the films. Even quiet and dark, you can tell it's a place where work, much good work, gets done. (BRUCE REID) 911 Media Arts Center

Rollerball
I'll never forget the first time I laid eyes on Chris Klein. I thought to myself, I thought: "As I live and breathe! It's a young Jimmy Caan." Screw all these motherfuckers (John McTiernan, Klein, L.L. Cool J, Jean Reno) for remaking Norman Jewison's 1975 classic. We'll pillage this movie next week when they let us see it. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16

Shiri
This post-Cold War spy thriller is about a deadly and beautiful North Korean spy, code-named Shiri, who consistently eludes and obsesses South Korea's Secret Service. The movie is a Hollywood/Hong Kong film, with lots of explosions, high-tech gadgets, helicopters, and balletic gun battles. "For me, a film is a commercial product," said the director in a recent interview. "We have to make films that appeal to the people." If you want a break from serious and arty stuff, then this is the film to watch. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Varsity

Storytelling
Reviewed this issue. Todd Solondz's new film is vile, venal, and virulent, just like his first two. Unfortunately, unlike his first two films, it isn't funny or brilliant. (SEAN NELSON) Broadway Market

* Super-8 Valentines
This open-screening series turns it focus to l'amour. To get your film shown, bring it to the theater two days before the screening and fill out a submission form. Bam, you're in! Democracy in action. Little Theatre

* TIMING IS EVERYTHING: THE ART OF THE SCREWBALL COMEDY
This week: The Awful Truth and It Happened One Night. Screwball classics don't get much more idealized than these two films, directed by Leo McCarey and Frank Capra, respectively. The former stars Cary Grant and Irene Dunne as a soon-to-be-divorced couple who can't help trying to thwart one another's plans for remarriage. The latter, as you well know, stars Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert as a newspaperman and a princess (well, queen actually) who are thrown together by fate and the god of banter. The 1934 Night is a pleasure to see, but its endurance belies the fact that it's a bit dusty, despite excellent performances. I'll take Truth, in which the supporting cast, including Ralph Bellamy (cinematic prince of chumps) threatens to steal the show from Grant and Dunne, who are as perfect as they can be. (SEAN NELSON) Grand Illusion

VINTAGE EROTICA
This week: The Big Dick Porno Cartoon Show. Ten bits of animated naughtiness from around the world, brought to you by the one and only Dennis Nyback. Titles include "The Iron Dick and Other Quickies," and "The Further Adventures of Superscrew." Grand Illusion

* YOUTHAPALOOZA!
Forgive the name, this is a program compiled by 911 Media Arts Center's Young Producers Project from a host of youth-oriented media, including the Hong Kong Youth Video Showcase, Access orbit, and the Witness Human Rights Campaign. Do you have kids? Do they hate everything? Are they always horsing off? Well, turn off the TV and the damn Nintendo and take them to this. 911 Media Arts Center

Birthday Girl
Nicole Kidman plays every man's fantasy Russian mail order bride: doesn't speak English, is literally perfectly beautiful, and when she finds your porn, she doesn't rip it up, she acts it out. Ben Chaplin plays a schlubby banker who orders her, falls in love, then gets played for a sucker when her Russkie boyfriends come to town. Despite a wobbly tone at the outset, the film perks up into a brisk, nonjudgmentally sexual romantic comedy. (SEAN NELSON) Grand Alderwood, Metro, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

Black Hawk Down
As a filmmaker, Ridley Scott is an ad man forever in search of a product to sell. In Black Hawk Down, there are several competing products, including Military Hypocrisy, Uncommon Valor, and African Savagery, but in the end the bill of goods boils down to the hoariest chestnut of all: War is Hell. (Thanks for clearing that up, old man.) To test this chancy proposition, Scott enlists the true story of a botched U.S. military incursion in Mogadishu, Somalia, 1993, during which a battalion of elite forces was stranded in the "entirely hostile district" of Bakara, and forced to hold its impossible position for 15 hours without supplies or support. To underscore the message, Scott drops us right in the thick of the battle zone, where we see the soldiers get systematically butchered by marauding hordes of faceless African militia, while their comrades in arms struggle against furious resistance and bureaucratic incompetence to bust through and rescue them. Though the real story is fraught with brutal moral complexity, in Scott's hands, it's a slaughterhouse from beginning to end. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Majestic Bay, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

* Gosford Park
Set in 1932, Gosford Park is an exhausted murder mystery. It takes a toxic narrative, the sort that was exploited to death by Agatha Christie, and emphasizes things Christie wouldn't emphasize (like class antagonisms, power structures within sexual relationships), and de-emphasizes things she would emphasize (like the murder, the mystery, and its solution). In a word, Gosford Park is a meta-mystery, meaning the setting, figures, and tropes of a murder mystery form the frame for the real concern (or concerns): class and gender rivalries; the rise of mass entertainment; and the dark history of the industrial revolution and British imperialism. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, Pacific Place 11, Seven Gables

I Am Sam
This Sean Penn-Michelle Pfeiffer bathos fest takes up a premise that only the most steadfastly nice person could fail to smile at: A retarded father fights for custody of his seven-year-old daughter. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Guild 45th, Meridian 16, Woodinville 12

* In the Bedroom
This langorous, beautifully acted film about erotic and familial entanglements in a small Maine fishing town one summer builds up to three moments of utter emotional brutality so severe that the long moments in between them thrum like high tension wires. A college boy (Nick Stahl; never liked him before, but he's great here) having a fling with a townie single mother (Marisa Tomei, back from the dead and in excellent form), the boy's parents (Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, who carry the picture with a realistic melancholy gravitas), and the mistress' ex-husband (William Mapother, who is related to Tom Cruise, but a fine actor nonetheless; he recalls Eric Roberts in Star 80, the creepiest creep in movie history) form the locus of Todd Field's insidiously gripping adaptation of Andre Dubus' deeply moral short story. (SEAN NELSON) Metro, Oak Tree, Uptown

* Italian for Beginners
The characters of Italian for Beginners begin in a state of despair. This being a romantic comedy, their lives begin to intersect through a series of coincidences--coincidences that could feel contrived, but due to the rough integrity of the script, performances, and direction (shaped in part by the monastic rigors of the Dogme 95 ethic), they feel like the organic waywardness of life. (BRET FETZER) Harvard Exit

* Kandahar
This brutal, fascinating film tells the story of Nafas, a female Afghan expatriate, now living in Canada and working as a journalist (so is the non-actress who plays her, Nelofer Pazira). Her sister is still trapped in the title city, maimed by a land mine and unable to tolerate the subhuman conditions for women that are enforced under Taliban rule (as opposed to merely systemic under their predecessors). When the sister writes of her intention to commit suicide, Nafas decides to return to Kandahar and intervene. What follows is actually not even a journey--it's a human smuggling operation. Because women are forbidden by Taliban law from travelling unaccompanied in Afghanistan, Nafas must rely on the mercenary "kindness" of fellow travelers. (SEAN NELSON) Broadway Market

Lantana
A lantana is a pretty pink flower. Lantana the film is a bud that never blooms. The long, slow film opens with a dead body and ends with a couple dancing, and in between are 120 minutes of middle-aged people living miserably. There is a story, sure--something about infidelity and a possible murder--but the bulk of the film is made up of pure misery, both for the characters and the audience. Then again, Australia is a former penal colony, so perhaps such punishment should be expected. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Harvard Exit

Metropolis
Metropolis is a beautiful and stylish hybrid--one of those future worlds imagined from the distant past, where above ground looks like an Ayn Rand dream, below ground is pure Blade Runner, and the characters are retro in the style of Hergé's Tintin. What makes Metropolis--which has a production pedigree that includes much of anime's royalty--feel like something truly new is the animation (combining the most up-to-date CGI with old-fashioned cels and the occasional live-action background), the mood (speakeasy 1920s, complete with Dixieland Jazz and gumshoe detectives), and its refusal to divide the world into absolute good and evil. Mostly, yes, it's eye candy, but everyone's eyes should be so lucky. (EMILY HALL) Broadway Market

The Mothman Prophecies
Handheld cameras, half-open doors, gassy exhalations on the soundtrack--this is one of those films, but more tastefully so than, say, What Lies Beneath. John Klein (Richard Gere) is a reporter whose wife (Debra Messing) dies after a sinister, bat-like creature--seen only by her--steps in front of her car. Confused and despairing, John throws himself into his work until it throws him into the backwoodsy town of Point Pleasant, where numerous residents have received similar visitations. Following his nose for news, John struggles to reconcile these incidents with his wife's death, in the process fleshing out what might be a schlocky, skeletal story in less capable hands than Mark Pellington's (Arlington Road).(SARAH STERNAU) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Northgate, Woodinville 12

Orange County
Directed by the son of the famous Lawrence Kasdan and starring the (utterly charmless) son of the famous Tom Hanks, OC is not the abortion that its pedigree and previews foretold. Though it seemed physically impossible for this film not to be horrendous, it's actually fairly charming and quite frequently funny. All that said, it's rip-roaringly conventional, predictable, and ultimately dumb. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree

Slackers
If only this were a sequel in the tradition of Alien and Aliens! Alas, no. (There already was a sequel to Slacker: Waking Life.) One distinguishing characteristic is that the movie is set not in a high school, but in a college. A nerdy narc busts the three title characters cheating on final exams, then agrees to let them off the hook if they get him laid with a supermodel. Dude! Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

A Walk to Remember
An unforgivably sappy teen romance starring Mandy Moore as a Christian girl who, through her kindness and faith, saves a troubled local hottie (Shane West) from the path of sin and ruin. As a film, AWTR barely passes muster above your average Afterschool Special, and as family-oriented fare it makes the horrendous mistake of assuming the average 13-year-old is a complete dolt, continually dumbing down and even avoiding actual conflict. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro, Woodinville 12