The juvenile orthography genre chugs along with this shamelessly stirring, and damnably affective, story of an 11-year-old South Central girl (heart-melting Keke Palmer) who takes her skills all the way to nationals. In a Boyz n the Hood rematch, widowed mother Angela Bassett and wounded prof Laurence Fishburne tussle for mentorship rights. An ex-champion himself, Fishburne drops etymological science and introduces the girl to Nelson Mandela and Booker T., but thankfully mom comes around when Fishburne's issues surface, thus skirting a repeat of Boyz's misogyny. Writer-director Doug Atchison has to throw some curves to turn a story of individual achievement into a parable of community uplift, but he pulls it off by an h-a-i-r. (3/30, 6:00 & 8:30, PMT*)

Though it doesn't exhibit the daunting control of his scarifying A Tale of Two Sisters, Kim Ji-woon's gangster follow-up still has style to burn. So does gangland enforcer Lee Byung-heon (J.S.A.), who takes a moment to button his blazer before unleashing his awesome martial arts skills on a pair of unlucky loudmouths. Although the plot kicks into gear when Lee unexpectedly shows mercy to his boss's cello-playing mistress (Kim Min-ah), the movie hides his reasons until the last possible moment, which is a long time to coast on nightclub cool and stoic masochism. (4/1, 9:45 TB; 4/4, 2:15 RE; 4/5, 9:45 R5)

The Davies boys never knew how good they had it. Lost in La Mancha co-directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe give the faux-doc treatment to the rise and fall of a pair of British conjoined twins turned rock stars, putting all of those combative dichotomous duos from rock history into one body. The twins, though onscreen throughout via "archival" footage, are wisely kept at an enigmatic distance, but the glimpsed interactions between the brothers and their hangers-on deal in complicated intimacies artistic, sexual and familial. Their alternatively sensitive and belligerent relationship is equal parts Carpenters and Glimmer Twins, while their self/mutual-destruction plays out like David Cronenberg's Behind the Music. (3/31, 5:30 TB*; 4/1 10:00 R5*)

"What do you do when a baby's on fire — write a letter?" Of such urgency was the Camden 28 born. Spurred on by religious conviction — all but two were Catholic, and five were clergy — they joined a roster of similarly named groups (the Greensville 9, the Baltimore 4) bent on disrupting the Vietnam draft. The plan was to sneak into the draft board office in Camden, N.J., and destroy records without which the draft process could not legally proceed. But the FBI intervened, and the Camden 28 proceeded to trial, acting as their own lawyers and arguing not their innocence but the rightness of their acts. Anthony Giacchino's documentary sometimes goes wide when it ought to go deep, but it's a riveting piece of local and national history. (4/1, 7:00 IH*; 4/2, 12:15 PMT*)

In this moving documentary, filmmaker James Doolittle follows Maureen Mullin, founder of South Philly nonprofit Curtain Call Creations, as she and a team of artists and schoolchildren write and produce a musical play. Building their own sets, writing their own script, designing their own costumes and learning to act clearly builds the students' confidence, and their bonds with one another are strengthened as the year progresses. Meanwhile, we learn of Mullin's struggle to keep Curtain Call going on limited funding. Doolittle's film is a tad overlong, but he makes an effective argument for public arts programming. (4/7, 9:45 PMT*)

A two-and-a-half hour, near real-time depiction of the last night in an elderly intellectual's life, Romanian Cristu Puiu's mordant tragedy might seem like the ultimate bringdown. But the sobering odyssey is leavened with moments of black humor, and its long, hand-held takes establish an astonishing physicality; Lazarescu's first knife-sharp cough sent a spasm through my body as well. Reminiscent of the ultra-vérité documentaries of Frederick Wiseman, Death plunges Lazarescu (Ion Fiscuteanu) into a nightmare purgatory of ambulance rides and emergency rooms, where caring nurses are trumped by ego-tripping doctors. Death never strays from the path promised by its title, but the movie itself is profoundly alive. (4/4, 6:30 R5; 4/5, 2:00 R5)

How's this for a chick flick: Six women, one of whom has recently suffered the loss of her husband and daughter, take off for a weekend in the woods — whereupon they're trapped in an unmapped cavern and hunted by ravenous humanoids. Neil Marshall's taut creeper starts off as the most airtight allegory since What Lies Beneath, with Shauna Macdonald's bereaved mum clawing her way through narrow chimneys as her dead daughter's laugh echoes through the caves. But Marshall falls back on genre staples as the action comes to a head, climaxing with an appalling act the film has by then lost all hope of reconciling. (4/2, 10:00 RE; 4/9, 9:45 RE)

Coming right on the heels of the Paris riots, a French film about civil unrest in walled-off ghettos might seem remarkably prescient. But the only discipline that the Luc Besson-produced District 13 seeks to espouse is that of "Parkour," a French sport founded by star David Belle that apparently involves lots of running up walls and jumping through windows. The kinetic spectacle of the non-CG-enhanced Belle leaping and bounding over buildings is startlingly impressive, but the rudimentary story, cribbed from Escape From New York, can't sustain the film once Parkour loses its novelty and he's reduced to battling giant wrestlers. (3/31, 7:30 RE; 4/1, 5:15 TB)

A street kid who divides his time between a gay street hustler and a beautiful young social worker, 18-year-old Pip (Paul Anthony) is trying to sort out his life after his brother is killed in a car accident. He receives an audiotape from his deceased grandfather (voiced by Ian McKellan) who documents his experiences as a soldier in WWI, when he himself was 18. At its best, Richard Bell's movie is an emotional wallop, as two men from different generations face their demons and struggle for redemption. But often the film devolves into bouts of overacting and worn-out plot points as Bell proves you can't have a film about adolescent angst without an abusive father, an unwanted pregnancy and a smattering of homosexuality. (4/2, 9:30 RE*; 4/3, 2:30 RE*; 4/5, 2:15 RE)

A home movie with broadening implications, Doug Block's documentary begins with the death of his mother and kicks into gear when his father briskly gets remarried to his former secretary. Did they have an affair, and have they kept up their relationship for 35 years? Those are just the first questions that possess Block, inquiries that eventually morph into, How well did I know my parents' marriage? And what about my own? Tracking down the author of Finding Our Fathers, Block picks at generational differences and the cost of male repression, but the net widens to include his late mother, who struggled with denials and compensations of her own. Block can't quite knit his various threads into a unified pattern, but 51 Birch Street easily transcends navel-gazing and closes in on essay-film enlightenment. (4/2, 7:15 CP*; 4/6, 5:00 RE*)

A tense B&W journey into the mind of a paranoid math prodigy on the verge of a major breakthrough, Dimension may sound familiar, but this Philly-lensed indie is drab and dull where Pi was sharp and surprising. Taking the well-worn tack of blending fantasy and reality, directors Tom Mattera and Dave Mazzoni find both equally dreary; the insanity angle has become as rote an escape hatch for uninspired filmmakers as for defense attorneys. Local viewers might want to duck in for the last 10 minutes, when cameras enter the storied halls of Byberry. (4/1, 9:30 IH*; 4/5, 5:00 IH*; 4/9 12:15 IH*)

Making up in breadth what it lacks in depth, Steve Anderson's pro-profanity doc is a raucous, if one-note, celebration of the most dangerous word in show business. It's no surprise that Anderson finds untold numbers of actors, comedians and rappers (Kevin Smith, Alanis Morissette, Bill Maher, Ice-T, Chuck D., et al.) to extol the F-word's fragrancy, or gets cultural conservatives Pat Boone and Alan Keyes to deplore its usage. It's a mild kick to see Sam Donaldson and Ben Bradlee muse (in the abstract) on its utility, and the movie's tribute to George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" routine is heartfelt and well-timed, but as with The Aristocrats, diminishing returns set in quickly once the shock value wears off. (4/4, 9:45 PMT*; 4/7, 10:00 CP*)

A bullet to the head transforms a ditzy prostitute (Emi Kuroda) into an intellectual who mistakenly comes into possession of the cloned finger of George W. Bush, which the North Koreans want to power a doomsday device. With this description, you've now experienced all the fun there is to be had with this crudely made Japanese softcore. Full of goofy, unerotic sex and goofy, unfunny comedy, its satire is limited to name-dropping (i.e., the professor turned on by the mention of Noam Chomsky) and its sex little more than breast-groping, rape fantasies and exaggerated facials. (4/1, 7:30 TB; 4/4, 5:00 TB)

Laurent Cantet's follow-up to his brilliant Time Out is a devastating disappointment. Unfortunately recalling, and only slightly better than, the dreadful Casa de los Babys, the film follows three North American women to 1970s Haiti, where they've come to soak up the sun and tap the local supply of young black flesh. (An apparently real phenomenon, such women were known as "sex tourists," though the term is mercifully never used within.) Cantet can't seem to decide whether he wants to condemn the women, particularly Charlotte Rampling's chilly Boston Brahmin, as tacit exploiters of colonial privilege or probe the psychological wounds that led them to this sorry state, and despite attacking the women for treating Haitians like objects, he does much the same. (3/31, 7:15 R5; 4/2, 2:30 R5)

It sounds like Sundance 101: Blocked-up writer seeks solace in freebase, forges unlikely bond with ghetto history student. But sharp writing, lively camerawork and blockbuster performances from Ryan Gosling and newcomer Shareeka Epps give a well-worn setup a fresh edge. Leavened with references to post-9/11 disillusion, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden's script flirts with portentousness (Gosling's first words are, "What is history?"), but its lived-in settings take the edge off their overwriting. The movie gets an extra crackle every time Anthony Mackie's paternal street dealer walks on the screen; watching him and Gosling square off, you feel as if you're seeing the future of American acting. (4/1, 7:15 RE*; 4/2, 5:30 RE)

The Kyobashi family professes to keep no secrets and its members always tell each other the truth. But despite the unashamed breakfast-table talk of "love hotels" and sexual-awakening parties, it's soon clear that no one in the family adheres to their rule, and each of them is completely aware of it. Toshiaki Toyoda's rootless camera sways above the family like a hanging plant, clinically dissecting the elaborate facade they've collectively constructed. Control-freak mother Eriko (Kyoko Koizumi) is the focus, but each character is vividly painted through the director's keen eye for human behavior. Toyoda maintains a Lynchian tone of menace throughout the soap-opera plotting, and the all-smiles ending resonates deeper than the bloody histrionics. (4/1, 2:30 RE; 4/3, 7:00 R5)

The Belgian comedy team of Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon co-wrote and -directed (with Bruno Romy) this slapstick tragicomedy about a gangly fast-food manager (Gordon) whose life falls apart when she's locked in the freezer at work overnight and neither her husband (Abel) nor child seems to notice. Possessed of Close Encounters-esque visions of an icy pyramid, she seeks out colder climes and the company of a mute, traumatized fisherman (Philippe Martz) whom she hopes will spirit her off to the titular chunk. Told with minimal dialogue, the film deliberately evokes Tati and Vigo, but Abel and Gordon aren't particularly deft performers; their physical comedy seems intellectualized, almost abstracted, although they're smart enough to make their characters' awkwardness part of the joke. The movie's biggest problem is that the characters' unhappiness is too well-realized to be laughed at; the best comedies lift us out of sorrow, but Iceberg is too chilly to warm the heart. (4/4, 7:15 RE; 4/5, 12:15 TB)

Like the freighter-bound community in which it's set, Mohammad Rasoulof's communal allegory is rusty and slow to turn, but carries its hefty cargo securely to the end. Ali Nasirian's captain presides over a group of Iranian Muslims who are literally set adrift, attached to the mainland by memories and cellular phones. A series of melodramatic episodes play out without much conviction, but the movie's rhetorical set pieces go off without a hitch. (3/31, 5:00 RE; 4/2, 2:00 RE)

Following a delivery man in charge of transporting film reels between theaters, Joko Anwar's Indonesian romcom is a charming trifle about the love of film that is itself in love with being a film. The best material is the opening montage detailing the film-obsessed public, the types to be found in a movie audience and the local distribution network that necessitates our hero's gig, dropping countless references to popular films (all Hollywood, natch). More cute than funny, Joni's broadly played exploits move along at too brisk a pace to offend, though gay men are trotted out as punch lines a few too many times. (4/5, 5:00 RE; 4/8, 7:45 RE)

Though he sees Zen tranquility rather than the hurried industrialization of Lost in Translation, Claude Gagnon's view of Japan is no less that of a total outsider. Tatsuya Fuji plays one of those Japanese sages who populate the Western cinema, a man of earthly appetites whose frustratingly vague aphorisms eventually reveal their wisdom. His education of his recently suicidal Canadian nephew (Matthew Smiley) in the ways of stoneware, and thereby life, could have easily succumbed to sentiment and cliche. But Gagnon's determined concentration on the physicality and ritual of the kiln-firing leaves explanations offscreen, resulting in a serenely understated redemption piece that lets its characters, and audience, find their own answers. (4/4, 12:15 TB; 4/10, 9:30 RE*)

In Norwegian director Sara Johnsen's extraordinary debut, Victoria is a doctor who takes up residence in a rural town after tragically losing her son. Blaming herself, Victoria is wracked with guilt that she sublimates by throwing herself into her work. When a local teenager is killed, she is called to the scene and quickly becomes obsessed with figuring out how and why he died. In the meantime she builds a friendship with a local man who may be a suspect. Through beautifully manipulated flashbacks and minimal dialogue, Johnsen tells a powerful story about family and loss. (4/4, 9:30 TB; 4/7, 2:30 R5; 4/10, 7:15 R5)

The most difficult, and most rewarding, entry in Park Chan-Wook's vengeance trilogy starts with a bang, and ends with something close to a confession. Park's meticulous slam-bang style is at its height for the movie's chaotic first half, which details the elaborate (of course) revenge plot laid by the jailed Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) to clear her name and rescue her kidnapped daughter. But then the movie shifts into a different register, or several of them — one minute it's a delicious parody of capital punishment, the next a cathartic exploration of the lust for blood. Park brings much of the previous movies' casts back for repeat engagements, including Oldboy's Choi Min-sik, here victimizer instead of victimized, and ends with a moral that for once feels like more than lip service. (4/4, 9:45 RE)

Chris Deaux (the pitch-fest doc Talk Fast) returns with this dusty picaresque, a small-scale portrait of Pioneertown, Calif., the Western set that became a real town. For a while after Roy Rogers left town, Pioneertown was a thriving den of sin, but now the town's residents look as if they've been pressed too hard between the pages of a scrapbook. The saddest might be Buzz Gamble, a recovering heroin addict who once did time for stealing a truckload of doughnuts at gunpoint (a deed that, perhaps inevitably, became the subject of a Johnny Paycheck song), and now seems bent on playing, and living, the blues. But he gets stiff competition from "Dazzling" Dallas Morley, a would've-been chanteuse who plays the keyboard with shaky hands and mourns opportunities a half century gone. Although Deaux seems to be after something like the eerie placelessness of Errol Morris' Vernon, Florida, he doesn't have Morris' visual sense, and the interjections from an academic Western specialist grasp at metaphoric undertones the movie can't really support. The movie edges close to pitying its subjects rather than empathizing with them, but at its best, it's a touching portrait of people the movies have often forgotten. (4/1, 2:30 IH)

Making The Death of Mr. Lazarescu feel like a walk in the park, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert's two-part, four-hour documentary shadows five children and their families into the cancer ward of Cincinnati Children's Hospital. To be blunt, some of them will die, which means if you're not ready to accept the notion that the struggle for life and the acceptance of death can be equally ennobling, you'd best steer elsewhere. But viewers who stick it out will find themselves profoundly enriched and moved by the experience. The movie's heart is the three children introduced in the first half — 19-year-old Justin, 15-year-old Timothy and 7-year-old Alex, whose spirit remains remarkably undimmed even as leukemia burrows into her bones. The two children introduced at the beginning of Part 2 feel like distractions; just when the movie is at its most intense, it splits its focus, shielding us from the inevitable. But the shift also reminds us that all these stories are connected, and we're connected to them as well. (4/2, 2:00 IH)

This Australian film by Sarah Watt has the classic trappings of indie drama: interrelated plotlines, improbably witty dialogue, an intrusive soundtrack and a dash of magic realism. Meryl, a morbid, neurotic artist, witnesses a man being struck by a train. While talking to the police she meets Nick, a newspaper photographer who has just learned he has cancer. Despite their personal fears and limitations they tentatively start to build a relationship, and Watt gives us a glimpse into these characters' inner workings and fantasies. Clever and well acted, Look Both Ways is entertaining but ultimately predictable in its quirkiness. (4/3, 7:30 RE; 4/5, 12:00 RE)

First-time director Dominic Savage's story of cross-cultural romance in modern-day England is simplistically titled but deeply felt and eloquently drawn. Naseema, a sheltered Pakistani teenager, takes a job in a wallpaper shop where she meets her co-workers, promiscuous Michelle and racist, sullen Adam. Over time, though, Adam and Naseema's mutual attraction grows, and with Michelle's influence she is drawn into a more Western lifestyle against her family's wishes. Meanwhile, Naseema's domineering brother has an interracial relationship of his own. As the inevitable clash nears, Savage expertly builds dramatic tension without ever allowing his characters to lose their believable nuances. (4/1, 7:30 RE; 4/3, 5:00 RE)

Christoph HochhŠusler's dark, disturbing drama explores youth anomie gone unchecked. A recent college graduate, Armin is awkward, unemployed and struggling to find his way. At the urging of his well-meaning parents, he applies for jobs and bombs a series of interviews with uptight management executives. The more he fails, the deeper he slips a taboo secret life that involves long nights at nightclubs, bizarre sexual encounters and eventually a confession to crimes he apparently has not committed. HochhŠusler blurs fantasy and reality, delivering major shock value but little emotional development. (4/2, 7:15 TB; 4/3, 9:30 R5)

A slick, silly thriller from Gangster No. 1's Paul McGuigan, who does his best to dress trash up in a spiffy new suit. A case of mistaken identity thrusts the improbably named Slevin Kalevra (Josh Hartnett, not doing much of anything) into a war between rival gang lords Morgan Freeman and Ben Kingsley. A predictable-in-its-unpredictability game of everybody-fucks-everybody ensues, ensnaring Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci and Lucy Liu, who gives the only remotely credible performance. Much less smart than it thinks it is, Slevin is a brain-twister for the small-brained, easy enough to watch but without a shred of worth. (3/31, 9:45 RE; 4/2, 2:30 TB)

Following a solemn confession of childhood sexual abuse with the female lead's rape by a multitentacled creature doesn't exhibit much investment in one's characters. Hanging relentless gore effects on the bare skeleton of a plot about parasitic aliens on Earth to "do one thing: Eat each other," directors Yudai Yamaguchi and Junichi Yamamoto dump buckets of blood on a rather small-scale alien invasion waged as video-game battles. The filmmakers lift plenty from prior monster-battle and cyberpunk exercises, and the geysers of arterial spray soon grow mind-numbingly repetitive. (4/1, 10:00 PMT; 4/4, 9:30 IH)

Thai funnyman Petchtai Wongkamlao drops his shtick to play the role of Sombat, a gloomy taxi driver who escapes reality by way of his AM radio. When a pretty massage parlor girl (Woranut Wongsawan) hires him as her chauffeur, ex-con Sombat strives to be a model citizen, but soon discovers that although "goodness is eternal," being morally just is a lot harder than it seems. Kongdej Jaturanrasmee's tragic comedy bares an eerie resemblance to Taxi Driver, but Sombat is no Travis Bickle and the film's climax forgoes the compelling route for a melancholy ending. (4/2, 7:15 RE; 4/3, 2:00 TB)

In the first film to be released from Northern Ireland since the cessation of hostilities, 14-year-old kennel worker Donal (Tyrone McKenna) strikes a deal with his surly boss: If his favorite fawn greyhound, The Mighty Celt, wins three races in a row, then the dog belongs to him. Meanwhile Donal's single mother, Kate (Gillian Anderson), must readjust her life once a man from her past (Robert Carlyle) returns to Ireland. The performances in Pearse Elliott's rite-of-passage drama are great and Donal's relationship with The Mighty Celt is heart-warming, but as with most films named after a canine star, don't expect a happy ending. (4/1, 12:30 TB; 4/2, 3:15 RE)

The star of Jerry Greiner, Paul Hunt and Julie Kauffman's documentary is Robert Brock, a middle-aged actor and stage designer who decides to start a puppet theater in his hometown of Lancaster, Pa. The only catch is that means moving back in with his affable but quirky parents, who have a few reservations about the idea. The filmmakers follow Brock as he develops a puppet production of Treasure Island and we see the incredible dedication he has to his craft and to keeping this art form alive in his community. Colorful and histrionic, Brock is a compelling character who, puppets or no, commands center stage. (4/2, 7:00 IH*)

The collateral costs of exporting U.S.-style democracy are at the center of Rachel Boynton's revealing documentary, which gets inside the 2002 race for Bolivia's presidency.The movie's subject is not pro-globalization incumbent Gonzalo S‡nchez de Lozada ("Goni"), a Texas-raised billionaire who speaks Spanish with an American accent, but the flotilla of D.C.-based campaign consultants he's hired to clinch his victory. "Crisis," they advise, should be Goni's brand, playing up the country's problems and positioning him as the only one capable of steering the nation through choppy waters. Sound familiar? It will. At times, Boynton seems unduly starry-eyed, as if she's shocked to find politicking going on during an election; following footage of the riots that followed the election, she breathlessly asks, "So what went wrong?" But her idealistic approach is a reminder that we ought to expect better, not least of ourselves. (4/2, 9:15 IH; 4/6, 2:30 RE)

A lost film exhumed from its cinematographer's basement, Robert Downey's 1970 film still carries a musty scent. Set in a big-city dog pound where all the mutts are played by humans, Downey's barking be-in has its memorably nutsoid moments (most belonging to Lawrence Wolf's bald-headed Mexican hairless), but if it's less trying than his scattershot Putney Swope, it's also less pointed, an allegory without an interpretation. (4/1, 9:30 CP*)

An Aussie psycho-love story about a delusional truck driver, Aiden (Bernard Curry), who kidnaps Liz (Nadia Townsend), a suicidal blonde he mistakes for his errant wife. The longer she's held captive, the more the two begin to bond: He needs a nurturing soul while she needs a place to crash after being booted from her sister's flat. Unfortunately, Kieran Galvin's plot is as loopy as Aiden without his meds, but Townsend's performance, as delicate as it is facetious, holds up the film's emotional structure. A twisted take on the traditional love story: Think Misery with all the self-affirmation of Buffalo 66. (3/31, 5:00 CP; 4/4, 9:30 CP)

More an overview than a documentary, this look at contemporary Icelandic music is full of performance footage but frustratingly short on context. Over half an hour passes before any attempt is made to fill in historical details — via footage from the 1981 doc Rock I Reykjavik and the intriguing idea that the current scene owes its roots to '80s teens' dual interest in punk rock and surrealism. Ultimately it feels like being plopped into the center of a strange country without a map, despite the occasional recognizable landmark (Bjšrk, Sigur R—s). All the aimless wandering could have been easily eliminated with a few well-placed signposts. (4/2, 9:30 TB; 4/4, 9:30 R5)

The beyond-risible directing debut of Philly-based producer Lee Daniels is a gauzy, lurid potboiler so contrived it seems like an elaborate joke. Get this: Helen Mirren plays an assassin for hire whose assistant is also her stepson, and her lover. Did I mention he's played by Cuba Gooding Jr.? Or that she's got terminal cancer? The hits just keep coming, the most gut-busting being when Stephen Dorff's comically overdrawn gangster, who keeps a zebra on the grounds to demonstrate his decadence, stops ass-fucking his moll just long enough to dispatch a rival. Daniels obviously wants to hit Scarface-like levels of pulp opera, but he's too manifestly incompetent to get in the ballpark. (4/1, 7:30 PMT*; 4/2, 5:00 PMT*)

Given its eminent topicality, it's a shame David Zeiger's portrait of Vietnam veteran anti-war protesters doesn't pack more of a punch. Attempting to debunk the myth of returning soldiers being spat on by unsympathetic hippies, Zeiger bypasses all sense of mixed emotions, in part because his subjects are by now reconciled to whatever conflicts they might have felt. Footage from the vintage Winter Soldier fills in some gaps but only highlights the movie's shortcomings. Also clipped is the hard-to-find F.T.A., a document of the anti-USO tour which Jane Fonda appears to put in context. (Her son, Troy Garity, serves as the new film's narrator.) Historically intriguing but dramatically inert, Sir! No Sir! is impossible to dismiss but hard to recommend. (4/1, 4:45 IH*; 4/2, 2:30 CP)

Comparatively upbeat for British documentarian Kim Longinotto, whose previous subjects include female genital mutilation and Iranian runaways, Sisters (co-directed with Florence Ayisi) camps out with Cameroonian prosecutor Vera Ngassa. The justice system overwhelmingly favors men (the country has gone 17 years without a single domestic-violence conviction) but the prevalence of female prosecutors, judges and investigators makes change seem inevitable. A little too feel-good for its own good, Sisters in Law still has moments of revelation, especially for Western viewers who take legalized justice for granted. (4/5, 9:30 CP; 4/8, 4:45 CP)

Starting with a Felliniesque circus show and full of disturbingly gory turns ˆ la Takashi Miike, Sion Sono's reality/fantasy blend lacks the imaginative leaps that permit those directors their audacious excesses. The story of a young girl forced by her father to hide in a cello case and watch her parents have sex (a striking image, but that's all; the cello has no other narrative function) turns out to be simply a reclusive writer's new novel — or is it? Sono attempts to drown the predictable answer by steadily ratcheting the volume until the laughably hyperbolic finale. (4/2, 2:30 PMT; 4/3, 9:45 TB)

Stephen Woolley's recounting of Brian Jones' final days suffers from the usual biopic malaise, stressing its subject's downfall to the point where it's hard to understand why anyone would be interested enough in this prick to warrant a film in the first place. This sense isn't aided by the complete absence of the Stones' music, the only licensed period music being the ubiquitous "White Rabbit" for an atrociously cliched LSD sequence. As Frank Thorogood, who confessed to Jones' killing in 1993, Paddy Considine is alone among the cast in layering any depth into his character, leaving Stoned in the perverse (and unintentional) position of generating sympathy for its subject's murderer. (4/4, 7:30 PMT; 4/10, 9:30 CP)

Following portraits of Lenin and Hitler, Russia's Alexander Sokurov shifts his gaze to the land of the rising sun, where bunker-bound Emperor Hirohito (Issey Ogata) is waiting out the end of the Pacific war. Shooting in candlelit half-dark so extreme the subtitles often cast the brightest glow, Sokurov zooms in on Hirohito's U.S.-mandated de-deification, the key to breaking the will of Japan's notoriously tenacious troops. Intriguingly, Sokurov takes Hirohito's renunciation of divine status at face value; ceaselessly twitching his upper lip and running his fingers over the lacy roughness of a brocade tablecloth, the virtuosic Ogata assumes his humanity bit by bit, connecting us in turn with ours. (4/1, 5:00 R5; 4/2, 12:00 R5)

Sprawling but rarely self-conscious, Ali Selim's assured debut winds its way (via interlocking flashbacks) to the post-WWI Midwest, where a German emigre named Inge (Elizabeth Reaser) arrives in a mainly Norwegian farm community expecting to marry a man she's never met (Tom Guinee). Anti-German sentiment runs high, however, and Inge is forced to negotiate her way through a mini-society trying to assess its own rapidly changing face. Told with flavorful pungency and just-this-side-of-outsize performances (hello, Alan Cumming!), Sweet Land has moments of borderline corn, but only because this kind of big-canvas storytelling has gone so out of fashion. Anyone who might appreciate Heaven's Gate if it were half the length will find much to enjoy. (4/5, 7:15 TB*; 4/7, 12:00 TB)

Doug Sadler's lyrical second feature fills its lungs with the salt air of Maryland's coastal fishing towns. Eleven-year-old Emma (Tara Devon Gallagher), the precocious daughter of a hard-drinking fisherman (Robert Knott), is struck with degenerative hearing loss that requires immediate surgery, but the financial burden is more than her strung-thin family can bear. Long-submerged quarrels start to break the surface, and Emma turns to a friendly but unstable young woman (Sarah Paulson) for companionship. Finely tooled performances (particularly Cherry Jones as Emma's mom) keep Swimmers from drowning in melodrama, and it earns its final moments of small but genuine catharsis. (4/5, 5:00 R5; 4/9, 7:15 TB)

It's fun to guess why on earth the big names that pepper this 1930s backstage drama's cast (Terence Stamp, Anjelica Huston, Lauren Bacall) agreed to lend their talent for pointless cameos. Diana Shaw (Zoe Tapper) is an aspiring actress who wishes to follow in the footsteps of her famous mother, who dies a laughable death at the film's opening. The story is thick with Cinderella-like cliches and at times its dialogue is downright embarrassing. All in all it's a period piece with all the quality of a made-for-TV movie. (4/1, 9:30 RE*; 4/4, 4:00 R5)

Kirby Dick's skewering of the MPAA's ratings board ought to be a home run, but Dick settles for stealing third, rehashing old arguments while finessing the central question: Is it better for the industry to censor itself so government doesn't have to? (First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus puts forth the heretical suggestion that government censorship would at least be accountable, but no one runs with the ball.) Dick's main gotcha is ferreting out the identities of the MPAA's top-secret raters, but apart from disclosing that not all have the young children the MPPA claims they do, Dick doesn't deliver much more than names and faces. The movie's most revealing moment is an opening montage that jumps through three decades of news coverage, depicting a gradual softening toward the ratings board's existence. But Dick hardly makes the case that ratings should be abolished, and only feints at suggesting an alternative. (3/31, 7:30 PMT; 4/3, 5:00 PMT; 4/6, 7:15 CP)

"We're all unlucky: We're in jazz," laments Newport Festival impresario George Wein. Filmmaker and musician Raymond De Felitta takes the Stone Reader approach in seeking out obscure jazz vocalist Jackie Paris, whose friends and family gradually paint a picture of a violent-tempered egotist who often created his own bad luck. While the 79-year-old crooner attempts to mount a comeback, out of touch with enough trends to hope that Buick may license his rendition of "Skylark" for a commercial, the ghosts De Felitta raises from his past reveal a man whose relentless optimism masks great regrets regarding a life spent in the single-minded pursuit of a glory that remained elusive. (3/31, 7:15 CP; 4/1, 2:30 CP)

Born into a family of hoodlums, morose Vincent, aka DJ Spyder (Russell G. Jones), just wants to spin his beats and be left alone. But when his brothers rob some ruthless drug dealers, Vincent is forced into their world of violence, money and revenge. Set to a bombastic soundtrack, Robert Patton-Spruill's noirish urban thriller plays out like a violent video game, but who wants to watch it when you can pop in 50 Cent: Bulletproof and play for yourself? (3/31, 9:30 CP; 4/1, 5:15 PMT*)

A marginal improvement on his DOA L.I.E., Michael Cuesta's second film manifests a similarly cartoonish interest in pre-teen dysfunction, splitting its interest three ways: There's the girl (Zoe Weizenbaum) who compensates for her absent father by developing a crush on a dreamy construction worker (Jeremy Renner); the twin (Conor Donovan) who processes his brother's accidental death by tormenting, and eventually bonding with, his killer; and the fat kid (Jesse Camacho) whose tubby parents are horrified by his decision to lose weight. The former is the most plausible, the latter, the most insulting, but it's all cluelessly contrived and haphazardly sensationalistic, exploiting grotesquerie while feigning empathy. (4/4, 7:30 RE; 4/6, 2:30 RE)

Naturalism and opera are typically at odds, but dropping Bizet's warhorse into the slums of Capetown and shooting with a gritty, hand-held camera seems to reduce the lofty grandeur of the arias to a more human scale. Director Mark Dornford-May stages his relatively faithful adaptation inventively, keeping the background chatter audible throughout the musical sequences (sung with the clicking tongues of the Xhosa language) and broadcasting the Toreador aria on a B&W TV. Pauline Malefane is fierce as a full-figured Carmen in denim and Chucks, while added backstory transforms Don Jose/Jongi from malleable mama's boy to homicidal hothead. (4/1, 12:30 R5; 4/6, 9:30 RE)

Rickety but revealing, this Palestinian black comedy follows a would-be émigré film director (Mahmoud Massad) on his last trip through refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, ostensibly to audition actors for a proposed national theater in Gaza. But, of course, nothing goes off as planned, and before long the videotaped auditions become a précis of displacement and dislocation. Director Rashid Masharawi (Ticket to Jerusalem) seesaws between naturalistic drama and theatrical parable, but Waiting still gets under the skin. (4/4, 12:00 RE; 4/5, 7:15 RE)

The "Larry Clark is a pervert" crowd will have a field day with his latest entry, which lingers fulsomely on 15-year-old flesh. Drifting lazily through the lives of a Latin Angeleno skateboard crew (often, though inaccurately, referred to as "Mexicans"), the near-plotless movie balloons to bewildering length, particularly when the kids step onto their boards. (A leisurely crash montage drags on for what seems like hours.) A series of apparently unscripted confrontations bring awkward teenage lusts and cross-cultural confusions to the surface, particularly the boudoir t�te-ˆ-t�te between one skater boy and a curious Bev Hills tween, but the movie then shifts into a succession of grotesque gags in which the skaters confront a rogues gallery of upper-crust caricatures (swishy photographer, ravenous supermodel, gun-toting actor, et al.). Perhaps an attempt to duplicate the style of Clark's landmark photo essay Tulsa, Wassup Rockers is the most formless of his films, and the least satisfying. (4/5, 9:30 PMT*; 4/7, 5:00 TB)