All About the Benjamins, Monsoon Wedding, Scratch, The Time Machine, Wendigo

40 Days and 40 Nights
Okay, so this high school-guy (Josh Hartnett) makes a bet to give up all sex (including masturbation) for 40 days and 40 nights. What a wuss! When I was in high school, I gave all that stuff up for four years, and no one's making a movie about me! (SEAN NELSON) Meridian 16, Metro, Metro, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

AFRICAN CINEMA NOW
This week: Lumumba. Anywhere else this story would have new life, but in Africa it is a weary story: young, promising leader (Patrice Lumumba) murdered by double-crossing general (Joseph Mobutu); European (Belgium) exploitation of Africa's (Congo) natural resources; tribalism; and so forth. If you don't know anything about Africa then I recommend you watch this informative film, but if you know too much about Africa, and have even spent time on the continent of sorrow, then avoid this film and watch something more uplifting, like Black Hawk Down. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Seattle Art Museum

* Beijing Bicycle
Soft-spoken Guei has landed a job in the city as a bike courier, a plum position that comes with a tricked-out bicycle. The deal is that once he earns 600 yuan, the bike's his. Just before the payment is complete, though, the bike gets lifted; Guei is crestfallen and vows to find it. Jian, meanwhile, is a schoolboy who longs for a bike to prove his suaveness, so he buys Guei's bike at a flea market and suddenly, the ladies love cool Jian. But while ritually combing the city, Guei happens across Jian and the bike, and the two boys spend the next hour violently stealing it back and forth. (MEG VAN HUYGEN) Broadway Market

* BUSTER SHORTS 2
The High Sign, The Scarecrow, My Wife's Relations, and The Blacksmith, all featuring the great Buster Keaton, and live musical accompaniment by Eric Shoemaker on the WurliTzer Organ. Hokum Hall

* The French Connection
See Stranger Suggests. William Friedkin, Gene Hackman, and a shitload of rapid cuts return! Grand Illusion

* Happiness
In Happiness, Todd Solondz's relatively humane portrait of a pedophile may not be that surprising; what is remarkable is that Solondz has made him the heart of his picture. (BRUCE REID) Egyptian

IRISH FILM FESTIVAL
At press time, this four-day festival dedicated to the cinematic glory of old Ireland hadn't quite firmed up its schedule, but do go to www.irishreels.org for the full scoop. The fest begins Wed March 6. Harvard Exit

Last Orders
Reviewed this issue. The talents of six of the finest British actors alive (Tom Courtenay, Bob Hoskins, David Hemmings, Michael Caine, Helen Mirren, and Ray Winstone) are squandered by this moist little movie about a journey to deliver a dead man's ashes to the seaside. (SEAN NELSON) Guild 45th

PALESTINE ON FILM: OCCUPATION, APARTHEID, RESISTANCE
The beginning of a weekly series of film and discussion about Palestine, locus of the biggest moral and political dilemma facing the modern world. Presented by the Palestine Solidarity Committee. This week: Jerusalem 1948: Yoom Ilak, Yoom Aleik, which translates as "one day with you, one day against you," a message the region's inhabitants understand all too well. Independent Media Center

Second Skin
Gentlemen, start your boners. Javier Bardem, the soft-lipped beauty from Before Night Falls, stars as a lusty surgeon who tempts an engineer away from his wife and child and into a life of sin, sodomy, and intimacy. Varsity

* A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake
Poor Nick Drake. This documentary examines the sad life of this great pastoral folk singer who died, as we all will die, alone and afraid. Though his life was obscure and disconsolate, Drake left a legacy of fragile beauty, and an amazingly grim fairy tale for musicians everywhere. Fortunately, his music has survived. Unfortunately, it's now being used to sell Volkswagens. (SEAN NELSON) JBL Theater at EMP

* Sunshine Hotel
This shot across the Bowery documents the rundown flophouse that has graced New York's skid row since the beginning of time, and the Bukowskian tales of its inhabitants' despair and dissolution. 911 Media Arts Center

* THE BEST OF BRITAIN
This week: The Mouse that Roared. After directing and producing Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick said this about working with Peter Sellers: "He's great; with Sellers you get three performances for the price of six!" Well, I don't know how much Sellers got for his three roles in The Mouse That Roared, but I do know that he's worth every pound. The movie is quaint, but Sellers is on fire. (SEAN NELSON) Seattle Art Museum

* The Flaming Lips Have Landed/Okie Noodling
Reviewed this issue. What do the world's most wigged-out rock band and fishing for catfish with your hands have in common? You'll have to see these films to find out.

Turandot Project
This is a documentary about the Florentine Opera's 1998 production of Puccini's Turandot--performed in Beijing. Turandot, of course, is Puccini's spectacular masterpiece about a 14th-century Chinese princess who sentences all of her suitors, with the exception of one mystery man, to death. The Florentine company's gargantuan outdoor production was directed by Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and conducted by Indian master Zubin Mehta. (JOSH FEIT) Little Theatre

We Were Soldiers
Reviewed this issue. Scrawny little bastard Mel Gibson stars in this jingoistic turd of a Vietnam War film. Varsity

Wendigo
One dysfunctional family's serene weekend in the snowy country is derailed when Dad runs over a deer--thus pissing off a gaggle of mouthbreathing hunters who were on its trail--and Junior goes and wakes the vengeful spirit of a long-dead Native American. Uptown

A Beautiful Mind
Stories about the insane are an inherent paradox. Because for a story to be compelling, it has to have rules, and an inner logic, whereas mental illness doesn't have rules, and treats logic as just another way of seeing. In the case of John Nash (Russell Crowe), the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia, there is the added irony that a man of quantitative genius could lose all control of quantitative reality. With a deft directorial touch, the paradox of Nash's world could really come to life. But that would take more of a talent than Ron Howard. (MICHAEL SHILLING) Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, 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.) (SEAN NELSON) Metro, Northgate, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Collateral Damage
The press has focused on how weird it is to release a movie about terrorism so soon after September 11, and there are some moments that have an uncanny overlap with reality. But what makes Collateral Damage truly weird is watching Arnold Schwarzenneger grow completely sick of the bloodlust which used to make him whole. For that spectacle, and all its attendant metaphor, this is a film worth seeing. (MICHAEL SHILLING) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Dragonfly
A "supernatural thriller" that recedes from memory faster than Kevin Costner's hairline. The story (such as it is): After Costner's wife is killed, she begins to haunt him through various "creepy" (and often unintentionally hilarious) means. Why is she trying to contact him him? What secret does he need to unravel? The answer is: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Directed by Tom Shadyac (of Patch Adams fame), Dragonfly commits the biggest sin of all as a major motion picture: It forces you not to care. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Varsity, Woodinville 12

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. 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

* 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, Pacific Place 11, Seven Gables

Hart's War
It wasn't until the court martial scene that I realized how stupid this otherwise attractive, thoroughly modernist WWII flick is. When a black officer is accused of killing a white soldier (they're both in a POW camp) to avenge the death of the only other Tuskeegee airman in the camp, a lying witness is asked if he'd ever made an idle threat before. The response is "Yeah... but I'm not colored. I can control myself." Objection overruled. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, 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. (SEAN NELSON) Metro, Uptown

Iris
The brilliant British writer and philosopher Iris Murdoch (Judi Dench, Kate Winslet), a woman who lives most decidedly in the world of ideas, succumbs to the dementia of Alzheimer's, "sailing into darkness" as she so rightly puts it. What turns this film into something more suited to the small screen is relentless sentimentalization and lack of ambition, in a story about an ambitious woman without a sentimental bone in her body. (EMILY HALL) Broadway Market, Guild 45th

* 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

John Q
John Q is a problem film. Not in the race-conflict sense, but in the class-warfare sense. The movie represents Hollywood's first attempt to address the failure of our country's health care system. Denzel Washington plays the American worker, and Anne Heche plays Enron. Enron, in this instance, takes the form of a health care corporation, with its expensive drugs and operations, and its affluent doctors and administrators. The film, of course, is timely. The layoffs and deepening recession in the real world are expressed by the part-time factory worker's frustration with the system. Though I agree with John Q's politics, it is dull and tendentious. (CHARLES MUDEDE) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

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

* Life and Debt
Jamaica Kincaid narrates this documentary about economic hardship among Jamaican peasants suffering under the thumb of globalization. Broadway Market

Monster's Ball
Monstrous Balls is more like it. Hank is a racist prison guard (Thornton, perfect), son of a retired racist prison guard (Peter Boyle, who doesn't even try an accent), and father of a young, non-racist prison guard (Heath Ledger, who tries his hardest) in a Georgia State Penitentiary death row. Hank falls into a desperate affair with Leticia (Halle Berry, semi-plausible), a black woman, after both of their sons die. Also, Hank executed her husband (Sean Combs, puffy). Via their affair, Hank is cured of racism, and Leticia is cured of grief. She even gets a truck! "I thank we're gone be all right," Hank says at the end. I thank I'm gone puke. (SEAN NELSON) Meridian 16, Neptune

The Mothman Prophecies
John Klein (Richard Gere) is a reporter whose wife dies after a sinister, bat-like creature 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. Meridian 16

Queen of the Damned
Judging by the wardrobe provided for its late co-star Aaliyah, this turgid sequel to the turgid Interview With the Vampire, also starring Stuart Townsend as a vampiric rock star, should've been called Queen of the DAMN!. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Lewis & Clark, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

* Scotland, PA
This movie is going to sound really stupid: Scotland, PA sets Shakespeare's MacBeth in 1975. When Joe "Mac" McBeth (James LeGros) gets passed over as manager of Duncan's Diner, his wife Pat (Maura Tierney) convinces him to kill Duncan and put in a drive-through window. A trio of hippies give Mac advice with a Magic 8-Ball. The investigating officer is Ernie McDuff (Christopher Walken), a vegetarian who dreams of opening a restaurant of his own. Despite all this, I really enjoyed Scotland, PA. My only quibble is: Why, when doing this kind of adaptation, do filmmakers make obvious and distracting references to source material? Why don't they learn from the smartest literary adaptation of our time, Clueless? (BRET FETZER) Metro

Storytelling
So, let's sum up what we've learned about human nature from the films of Todd Solondz: (1) All people are either guileless turds, ruthless hypocrites, or hapless fools. (2) There is humor in the weakness and misery of others. (3) All humor comes at someone's expense. (4) Nothing about you is remotely attractive or redeeming. (5) Even your dreams are pathetic. Here endeth the lesson, and yes, there will be a test. The test is called Storytelling, an 83-minute "fuck you" of a film that represents Solondz's first major disappointment. (SEAN NELSON)