Beijing Bicycle, 40 Days and 40 Nights, Last Orders, Second Skin, The Son's Room, We Were Soldiers

The Dark Crystal
You know what this means: time to get stoned and go watch the muppets... again! Egyptian

Depth of Focus
A monthly screening series of short films with free food and a pay-as-you-exit policy, curated by the Puget Sound Cinema Society. For more info: www.scn.org/pscs. University Heights Center

Dragonfly
Kevin Costner makes his long-awaited return (uh...) in this supernatural (?) romance (?) about a widower doctor who won't take "she's dead" for an answer. Co-starring the vivacious Linda Hunt. Varsity

EROTIC TALES
Week two of fancy sex shorts by fancy directors like Rosa von Praunheim, Marcus Fischer, Hal Hartley, Amos Kollek, and others. The series was put together by German producer Regina Ziegler. Little Theatre

HAZEL WOLF FILM FESTIVAL FUNDRAISER
As the title suggests, this evening of short subjects is out to raise money for the annual Hazel Wolf environmental film festival. 911 Media Arts Center

JEWISH FILM NIGHTS
This week: A Tickle in the Heart. JCC, Mercer Island Facility

* A LAUREL & HARDY LAUGHATHON
Their Purple Moment and Should Married Men Go Home? accompanied by Eric Shoemaker on the WurliTzer Theater Pipe Organ, and a full-length talkie, Saps at Sea. Another fine mess courtesy of Hokum W. Jeebs. Hokum Hall

* Life and Debt
Reviewed this issue. Jamaica Kincaid narrates this documentary about economic hardship among Jamaican peasants suffering under the thumb of globalization. The Independent Media Center presents a benefit screening at the Varsity on Thurs Feb 21. Varsity

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: The Third Force. Independent Media Center

Queen of the Damned
At last! The sequel to Interview With the Vampire, starring Stuart Townsend and the late Aaliyah, out of respect for whom there will be no smart-ass remark about what is certain to be a real piece of work. Metro

* Red Sex Planet
See Stranger Suggests. "Is Mars a giant pudendum?" and other questions will be answered at this deconstructive disquisition, presided over by two degenerate academics. Little Theatre

Salt
Warren Etheridge's "Distinguishing Features" series, which exhibits work by local filmmakers, presents this documentary by Lisa Hardmeyer about the annual "time trials" at Bonneville Salt Flats, where hundreds of motorheads gather each year to race and be raced. Seattle Art Museum

Salt of the Earth
This grand old man of political filmmaking (from 1954) takes as its subject a labor strike conducted by the Mexican-American zinc miners in New Mexico. It is impossible to impugn the motives of the filmmakers (McCarthy black listees), who sought to illuminate the eternal strife of the worker. Despite a heavy and righteous stylistic hand, the film compels. Independent Media Center

* Saudade do Futuro
The Northeastern Brazil emigré musician community of Sao Paulo gets the Buena Vista Social Club treatment in this lusty documentary. JBL Theater at EMP

* Scotland, PA
Reviewed this issue. Macbeth gets a campy '70s-style rewrite, and guess what? It isn't terrible. Metro

THE BEST OF BRITAIN
This week: Only Two Can Play. The irrepressible Peter Sellers stars in this adaptation of Kinglsey Amis' novel, That Uncertain Feeling, which concerns the difficulty of infidelity in small Welsh towns. Seattle Art Museum

* TIMING IS EVERYTHING: THE ART OF THE SCREWBALL COMEDY
Reviewed this issue. This week: Howard Hawks's Twentieth Century, with John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, and George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story, featuring the love triangle of Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Katharine Hepburn. (SEAN NELSON) Grand Illusion

* Victrola Movie Night
The best coffee shop on Capitol Hill presents "The Art of the Odd Ad," a program of "short subjects, cartoons, coming attractions & vintage propaganda," hosted by Steven Meyerson. FREE! Victrola

VINTAGE EROTICA
This week: Smoking, Drinking, and Sex. Three great tastes that taste great together are the subject of Dennis Nyback's ongoing retrospective of old-time smut. This program features lascivious beer commercials, industrial shorts, and hardcore stag. Grand Illusion

World Withou t End
Heads up: It's a "Twisted Flick," which means that this 1956 sci-fi nugget (about Mars mission astronauts who warp ahead to a post-apocalyptic Earth) will be narrated by a group of improv performers. Doo dee doo. Paradox Theater

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) Factoria, Majestic Bay, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

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)

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) Lewis & Clark, Metro, Northgate, Pacific Place 11, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Collateral Damage
This isn't your father's Arnold Schwarzenneger-kills-all-the-terrorists movie. This one is all sensitive. Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

Crossroads
This bubblegum pseudo-drama is a cross between Thelma & Louise and To Sir With Love. Unfortunately, the "girl power" early-'90s politics of the former gets short-circuited by Britney Spears' weird Donna Reed-in-lowriders shtick. The latter comparison is harder to explain, but suffice it to say Britney stands in as both Sidney Poitier's moral compass and Lulu's coming-of-age songstress. Not quite as hard-hitting as the tough and topical Afterschool Specials from the '70s this film is modeled after, Crossroads tackles absentee parents, rape, and teenage runaways with a cautious and meaningless hand. There's a palpable nod-and-wink quality to the movie (Britney reads poetry over a campfire!), but the film's irony--fully appreciated by the teen audience on hand at the sneak preview I attended--seemed altogether lost on Britney Spears. (JOSH FEIT) Factoria, Meridian 16, Oak Tree, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

The Fluffer
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). (CHARLES MUDEDE) Aurora Cinema Grill, Grand Alderwood, 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. Elsewhere, this visually energetic picture is encumbered mostly by a lack of focus. Bruce Willis phones in a stiff performance as the complicated colonel, and everyone else is just okay. The whole thing, while not terrible, is a bit more Hogan's Heroes than Stalag 17, I'm afraid. (SEAN NELSON) Factoria, Grand Alderwood, Metro, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Woodinville 12

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) Grand Alderwood, Meridian 16, Metro

* 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
England's greatest woman of 20th-century letters is given a sentimental rubdown by alt-Hollywood. Starring Judi Dench, Kate Winslet, and Jim Broadbent. 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
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. (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. Mostly, yes, it's eye candy, but everyone's eyes should be so lucky. (EMILY HALL) Broadway Market

Monster's Ball
Monstrous Balls is more like it. Hank is a racist prison guard (Thornton, perfect) 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). Hank's dad says "nigger" and "porch monkey," and Hank fires a shotgun at some black kids, so we know that the film is about breaking the cycle of bigotry. A few nice notes are struck, but too many coincidences motorize this melodrama; its morality is tinny and safe. (SEAN NELSON) Guild 45th, Meridian 16

The Mothman Prophecies
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

Return to Neverland
After a dynamic sequence in which a flying pirate ship sails through the bomb-torn skies of WWII London, Return to Neverland settles into bland formula. (BRET FETZER) Factoria, Majestic Bay, Meridian 16, Metro, Woodinville 12

Rollerball
Norman Jewison's 1975 Rollerball is little more than an anti-corporate relic, hysterically bad outside of the rink, tremendously exciting inside the rink. John McTiernan's 2002 Rollerball is horrendously bad both in and out of the rink, which means, yes, it's a colossal piece of shit--perhaps the worst film you will see this year (though it's only February). (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Factoria, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Redmond Town Center, Woodinville 12

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) Broadway Market

Super Troopers
Do you hear that? It's the sound of a thousand frat boys laughing. But for the rest of us--for we who wear shorts only when it's warm--Super Troopers: A Film About Zany Cops will only inspire the occasional chuckle. Which is fine. Frat boys need comedy too. (BRADLEY STEINBACHER) Grand Alderwood, Oak Tree, Pacific Place 11, Varsity, Woodinville 12