Philadelphia Film Festival Shorts

Week One Reviews (M-Z)

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Published: Apr 4, 2007

Click for movies titled A-L.

Following are reviews of movies titled M-Z (click for A-L) premiering in the first week of the Philadelphia Film Festival, April 5-11. Up to the day of the show, tickets may be purchased in person at TLA Video locations (11 a.m.-10 p.m.), by phone at 267-765-9700, ext. 701 (10 a.m.-9 p.m.), and online at www.phillyfests.org (up to 24 hours in advance). Same-day tickets are available only at the screening venue. Single ticket prices are $9-$10, $7-$8 for matinees until 4 p.m., and $7 for children 12 and under. Service fees may apply.

Denotes a movie recommended by City Paper critics.
Denotes a highly recommended movie.

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Mojave Phone Booth

It's magnetic tape everywhere but not a strand to watch in Mojave Phone Booth, a molar-grinding stab at neo-philosophy from journeyman actor/director John Putch. The script is centered on a handful of Vegas mopeyfaces with any number of problems: Mary (Tinarie Van Wyk-Loots) is a cash-strapped secretary reluctantly dabbling in high-end hooking; Alex (Christine Elise) has a girlfriend who believes she's infected with alien parasites; and alcoholic casino dealer Richard (Robert Romanus) is struggling with a shattered marriage. The titular device, an Internet-touted outpost for people looking to chat with complete strangers, is meant to build six-degrees-esque bonds between the leads, but each vignette is so detached from the overlying thrust that Putch relies on hapless daily intersections to justify how they're all, like, "connected." The inexplicable casting of Steve Guttenberg as a creepy john (with a heart of gold) only makes matters more frightening. —D.L. (Tue., April 10, 5 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St.; Sun., April 15, 9:30 p.m., National Constitution Center, Kirby Auditorium, Sixth and Arch sts.)

Monkey Warfare

Like a low-rent version of The Weather Underground, Don McKellar and Tracy Wright's washed-up revolutionaries buck the system, but not so you'd notice. Supported by a fellow-traveling landlord, they sell trash-picked antiques on eBay and keep a low profile, fearing the fallout of a long-past protest action gone wrong. In essence, they're dropouts with an agenda, one that comes surging back when McKellar's new drug dealer (Nadia Litz) takes interest in his conspiratorial rants and Fugs records. Determined to turn her client's armchair posturing into direct action, Litz awakens long-dormant feelings in his breast and elsewhere, since his comradely cohabitation has long since turned platonic. Reginald Harkema's bare-bones comedy falls somewhere between a slacker Running on Empty and a politicized Twitch City, ferreting out the point at which ideology becomes lifestyle. (When McKellar lends out a book on the Baader-Meinhof, he's horrified to see it come back with a damaged dust jacket.) At times, the movie is little more than a recommended-reading list, its pseudo-Godardian provocations veering dangerously close to a very counterrevolutionary nostalgia. But there's a dark truth to its portrait of self-rationalizing anarchists who are so far underground no one even knows they exist. —S.A. (Fri., April 6, 7:30 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Sun., April 8, 3 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

Nero Bifamiliare

Federico Zampaglione's class-wars farce pits fine-life aspirers Marina (Claudia Gerini) and Vittorio (Luca Lionello) against loud and sloppy neighbors. Hoping to please his sexy wife, Lionello steps up his insurance scams in order to afford a condo in "Valle Serena," whereupon they discover their neighbors are "dodgy," aggressive, even downright scary. Told they "don't want to know" how the gruff Romanian Slatko (Emilio De Marchi) and his stringy-haired wife (Anna Marcello) can afford their home, the newcomers decide to fight back when they suspect their neighbors of robbing them. As their fears and dreams (including some sexual fantasies) are increasingly intertwined, their initial social distinctions blur into similar base desires — for revenge, possession and dominance. While these themes are obvious, the visual compositions — focused on the battleground of conspicuous consumption — are often witty. —C.F. (Wed., April 11, 4:45 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St.; Thu., April 12, 4:30 p.m., Bryn Mawr Film Institute, 824 Lancaster Ave.; Thu., April 19, 8:30 p.m., Ambler Theater, 108 E. Butler Ave.)

Once

A genuine grassroots hit at this year's Sundance, John Carney's shoestring semi-musical is a modest but utterly winning success. Starring real-life musicians Glen Hansard (The Frames) and Markéta Irglová, the story of not-quite-requited love between a Dublin busker and an unemployed Czech pianist advances the plot through song without falling back on song-and-dance numbers. A haunting duet performed in the back of a piano showroom is a perfect metonym for the process of falling in love; as the two performers fall into sync, wordlessly cueing chord changes and spontaneously harmonizing, you can feel their bond click into place. Carney's sparse theatrics hit a high point as Irglová shuffles back from a convenience store in her slippers, listening to one of Hansard's demos on a portable CD player. As her onscreen voice joins with his offscreen one, the moment is at once tangible and transcendent, magical and utterly real. —S.A. (Tue., April 10, 7:15 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.; Thu., April 12, 5:15 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

Orangelove

Rule No. 1: Never agree to play a "game" with a stranger, especially one that involves holing yourself up in his apartment until the man dies, at which point you will receive the apartment and all of the man's money. Ukrainian director Alan Badoyev's drama begins with the glossy colors, longing glances and puzzlingly nonlinear edits of a perfume commercial. But once the principals, the seemingly perfect young couple Roman (Aleksei Chadov) and Katya (Olga Makeyeva), are caught up in the "game," the film's flashy flair gives way to bleak, claustrophobic melodrama. —E.L. (Mon., April 9, 7:15 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St.; Wed., April 11, 5 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St.)

The Paper

Following students at Penn State's school paper, The Daily Collegian, for a year, Aaron Matthews' doc seems to make some of the same rookie mistakes as its subjects. Overeager to cover the whole of the experience, Paper becomes diluted to an episodic portrait that brings up too many points to ever be cogent about any of them. There's enough material in the paper's sagging circulation and courting of controversy to draw parallels to the mainstream media, but Matthews could use a good editor to focus his arguments. —S.B. (Sat., April 7, 7 p.m., International House, 3701 Chestnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Sun., April 8, 2:30 p.m., National Constitution Center, Kirby Auditorium, Sixth and Arch sts., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Tue., April 19, 6:15 p.m., Ambler Theater, 108 E. Butler Ave.)

The Philadelphia Story

A year after being labeled "box-office poison," Katherine Hepburn rebounded by giving audiences what they wanted: namely, to see her taken down a peg. As a stuffy Main Line heiress ping-ponged between her ex-husband (Cary Grant) and a nosy tabloid reporter (Jimmy Stewart), Hepburn gets scuffed up something good, never more so than in the movie's wordless scene where Grant places a hand over her face and throws her to the ground. But unlike Woman of the Year, which clips Hepburn's wings in a vicious coda, The Philadelphia Story is too in love with Hepburn's charm to give her more than a swat on the fanny. She's back on her feet by film's end, triumphing in a justly regarded screwball classic. Hepburn had the last laugh offscreen, as well; having secured the film rights to Philip Barry's play before a successful yearlong tour, she made a mint. —S.A. (Tue., April 10, 6:45 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Princess

"She's a very grown-up 5-year-old," a leathery old prostitute tells August, whose porn star sister's death leaves him responsible for her daughter Mia. The revelation of what that means soon has August, a priest, going all Rambo in Danish animator Anders Morgenthaler's disturbing, technically and thematically ambitious denunciation of the pornography industry. The almost poetically rendered scenes between August and poor damaged Mia pair up oddly with outsized explosions as August's crusade turns into a bloodbath. What he can't kill, though, is his guilt and complicity in his sister's fate, made clear by live-action scenes from their past. The ending pulls out all the emotional stops but somehow remains quietly, tremendously moving. —R.F. (Tue., April 10, 5 p.m., Ritz East; Wed., April 11, 9:45 p.m., Ritz East)

Red Road

A surveillance camera operator whose past holds a mysterious hurt, Jackie (Kate Dickie) is drawn out of her control room when she spots an ex-con (Tony Curran) moving into a nearby housing project. Stalking him from afar and then from up close, she circles in on him quietly, the camera watching the lines etched by grief and anger in her face while the soundtrack fills with ominous whooshes. Short-film director Andrea Arnold, making her feature debut, ably builds a mood of real-life horror with near-night shooting (captured on HD), but the movie's style doesn't always mesh with its story. Arnold commendably fights the cliche that onscreen cameras are always de facto critiques of voyeurism, but Jackie's quasi-omniscient vocation doesn't quite scan as an analogue for her emotionally cocooned state, nor does it mesh with the dark secret inevitably revealed in the movie's closing act. (The revelation's force is further blunted by its predictability; I had it guessed right down to the details.) Arnold makes great use of Glasgow's creepily genuine City Eye facility, an outgrowth of the UK's mania for CCounty Theater, 20 E. State St., DoylestownV, and Dickie's largely wordless performance is a model of taut economy. —S.A. (Fri., April 6, 7 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Sun., April 8, 4:45 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

Rocket Science

A near-flawless entry in a bankrupt genre, Jeffrey Blitz's fiction follow-up to his smash hit Spellbound is a coming-of-age movie so glibly ironized it feels as if it's been double-glazed. Reece Thompson plays Hal Hefner, a fumbling high-schooler whose awkwardness belies his suave surname. (Clever.) An incurable stutterer, he's improbably drafted to the school debate team, even more improbably by a pretty older girl (Anna Kendrick) who's also the team's star. Despite a few departures from formula which only make the movie feel more contrived, you could write the rest from there. Blitz has a sure hand with a disdainful setup and draws precocious turns from his juvenile leads, but the movie might as well have rolled off the quirky-indie assembly line. —S.A. (Sat., April 7, 7 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Mon., April 9, 4:30 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

S&MAN

Inspired by the case of a local voyeur, horror director J.T. Petty (Soft for Digging) delves into the world of snuff films — or rather, the lovingly staged underground entertainments that pass themselves off as such. Working with low budgets and plenty of stage blood, the film's subjects create elaborate simulations of torture and death, one of which is advertised as "the personal home video of a serial killer — ultra-snuff stuff." In the post-Saw era, the appeal of such is no surprise, although even horror-film expert Carol Clover can't do much to explain it. Petty does better sussing out the psyches of the self-styled sleazeballs who make and distribute it, from August Underground's Fred Vogel to the snuff auteur known as Bill Zebub, who admits, "I don't shoot it to be a piece of cinema. I shoot it so perverts give me money." Petty tries to give the movie an investigative edge by shadowing Eric Rost, creator of the stalk-n-slash series S&MAN (i.e. "sandman"), whose vérité views of impending female victims lead Petty to wonder if the films might be real, or at least doubly fake. Verisimilitude is the holy grail of snuff, inevitably prompting is-it-or-isn't-it speculation, but Petty makes far too much of Eric's potential culpability, especially given that the character's too-convenient encapsulation of the movie's themes raises its own credibility issues. —S.A. (Mon., April 9, 9:45 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Thu., April 12, 9:45 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.)

Severance

Christopher Smith's horror comedy begins with a clever premise — a group of defense contractors on a trust-building retreat fall prey to a well-armed stalker — and then roundly fails to exploit it. From the untapped titular pun on down, the movie makes next to nothing of its kill-or-be-killed milieu: The retreat is just a way to land half a dozen English-speakers in the Eastern European woods. After 40 minutes of spinning its wheels, Severance kicks mildly into gear when the killing starts, beginning with a gory running gag involving a tenacious bear trap. But Smith's flat-footed timing is deadly to horror and comedy alike, and the vague ending just seems like a copout. —S.A. (Sun., April 8, 10 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Fri., April 13, 5 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St.)

Sisters

Nothing is so frightening in this schlocky remake of Brian DePalma's 1973 psychological thriller as the sheer waste of talent. Chlöe Sevigny adopts Margot Kidder's role as Grace Collier, an enterprising reporter. While investigating a creepy but nebbishy doctor named — hold the phone — Philip Lacan (Stephen Rea), Grace witnesses a murder committed by one-half of a set of separated Siamese twin sisters. First-time director Douglas Buck clutters the proceedings with stilted dialogue, improbable plot points and extra-extra-sharp knitting needles. —E.L. (Sat., April 7, 10 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Tue., April 10, 9:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Sounds of Sand

Slurping a soft drink in the theater while watching this mood killer will only add to the guilt. An intense portrayal of an African family turned nomadic in search of water, Sounds of Sand doesn't even pretend to attempt to examine the causes of their plight — neither meteorological, political nor otherwise — but does offer an unwavering look at the effects of water shortage by following one family's struggle and collapse for something we not only take for granted, but waste foolishly. If after leaving the theater and relieving your body of the aforementioned high-fructose cocktail doesn't release the guilt and anxiety of abundance, just remember — if it's yellow, please, for the sake of humanity, let it mellow. —S.T. (Wed., April 11, 9:30 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St.; Mon., April 16, 5 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

Suffering Man's Charity

Alan Cumming is totally insane, and that's why we like him. Suffering Man's Charity, however, may well be the result of popping one too many crazy pills. Cumming plays a tyrannical and meticulous music teacher/wannabe opera composer. His weakness for Puccini is matched only by a penchant for taking in young men, particularly hustlers like the way-too-beefy David Boreanaz. When Boreanaz, an "aspiring writer," turns out to be banging everybody except for his patron, both Cumming and the film lose their shit. A dark, campy and twisted comedy/horror filled with spurting blood, anal sex and melodramatic monologues, Suffering Man is what happens when John Waters almost, sort of, has an idea. —E.H. (Sat., April 7, 9:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Mon., April 9, 5:15 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Superheroes

"Why would they give someone like me an M-16 and drop me off in a place like Iraq?" Baffled by the turn his life took, Iraq war veteran Ben (Dash Mihok) struggles to overcome dreadful memories, physical wounds (shrapnel that periodically pushes up through his skin and must be tweezed out), and loads of guilt. When he meets aspiring documentary-maker Nick (Spencer Treat Clark), the two embark on a project. As Nick is also working on a film of his ex-girlfriend's dancing, linking that sort of heartbreak and political awakening (they broke up over the 2004 presidential election), with Nick's own search for form and meaning. Alan Brown's film cuts back and forth between Ben's stressful group therapy sessions and Nick and Ben's brief retreat at a cabin in the Catskills, making plain the war's effects for your surrogate worrier, young Nick. Occasionally corny, but inevitably devastating. —C.F. (Fri., April 6, 5 p.m., National Constitution Center, Kirby Auditorium, Sixth and Arch sts., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Wed., April 11, 9:30 p.m., The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Swedish Auto

Carter (Lukas Haas) is a reliable yet brooding mechanic with no apparent friends or family. He spends his nights gazing into the dorm-room window of Ann (Brianne Davis), whose tragic violin rehearsals hold him spellbound. His isolation seems hopeless, until he discovers he has a stalker of his own. Local diner waitress Darla (January Jones) has built her own fantasy around the troubled protagonist. An offbeat romance ensues, and Carter learns that our ideals aren't always what they're cracked up to be. While the transitions between private and voyeuristic viewpoints are excellent, the plot suffers from predictability. Darla's inability to leave her sexually abusive stepfather isn't very believable, especially when all it ultimately takes to convince her is a cute guy with a vintage Volvo. That said, Haas makes an adorable mechanic. —M.W. (Fri., April 6, 7:15 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Sun., April 8, 12:15 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Sweet Mud

Israeli director Dror Shaul's second feature, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, is an excoriating look at kibbutz life in the 1970s, when pilgrims of sorts still came from all over the world to join what were seen as utopian communes. Adolescent Dvir (Tomer Steinhof) struggles to take care of his severely depressed mother (the story may be a personal one; the credits include an epitaph for Shaul's mom) in a culture where people with mental problems are viewed as a liability for a well-functioning system. This is an angry movie and, unfortunately, some of the supporting characters are broad stereotypes. However, Steinhof and Ronet Yudkovitz, who plays his mother, are superb, and their relationship is portrayed with wonderful, painful realism. —R.F. (Sat., April 7, 7:15 p.m., Ritz East; Tue., April 10, 4:30 p.m., Ritz East)

Taxidermia

One-upping Hukkle's temporal synchronicity, György Pálfi's followup spins variations on a generational theme. A soldier consumed with lust for inanimate objects (his congress with a candle yields flaming ejaculate) spawns a competitive speed-eater, who in turn gives birth to a cadaverous taxidermist. From knothole-fucking to projectile-vomiting, the movie, based on stories by Lajos Parti Nagy, aims both barrels at the audience's gag reflex, but its bold execution isn't matched by conceptual depth. Apart from a vague notion that we pursue physical pleasure to distract us from mortality, there's not much to justify the visceral assault, which in any case does more to excite the stomach than the brain. —S.A. (Tue., April 10, 5 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.; Fri., April 13, 10 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

Tazza

High-stakes in milieu and execution, Dong-hun Choi's furiously paced yarn follows a novice gambler into the world of high rollers (known in Korea as "tazza"). Like Oldboy, Tazza takes its story and style from a popular comic book, using a flurry of inset panels to liven up the card games. Deliberately disorienting at first, the movie settles into a steady back-and-forth rhythm, flipping between the past and "present day" (1996). With its bold blocks of color and self-aware performance, Tazza channels Godard without passing through Tarantino. It's fiendishly entertaining if a little exhausting. —S.A. (Fri., April 6, 4:15 p.m.

Triad Election

Danger After Dark regular Johnny To returns with this sequel to his 2005 gangland melodrama Election. The first film, originally part of the festival, was pulled due to print availability issues, and it's a shame audiences won't have its gleefully cynical climax ringing in their ears as they start on No. 2. But don't worry about getting caught up on the plot; Triad Election is more of a remake than a continuation. It's the Evil Dead 2 of Hong Kong gangster movies. Having won the first film's battle for control of a venerable Triad clan, Lok (Simon Yam) finds his authority challenged by the business-minded Jimmy (Louis Koo). A cold, concise killer who literally puts his enemies through the meat grinder, Jimmy is a cutthroat capitalist par excellence, meshing with the movie's view of the Triad as an only slightly more violent version of more legitimate businesses. (Their war councils are deliberately staged to resemble board meetings.) Hong Kong film has fallen on hard times since the handover, and if To's Miike-like production level allows him to stay afloat, it also gives his films a rough-hewn quality that doesn't mesh with the Election films' moody milieu. But their wicked sense of humor outweighs their unfinished qualities, and To fans will certainly have nothing to complain about. —S.A. (Mon., April 9, 9:45 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Wed., April 11, 9:30 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.)

12:08 East of Bucharest

The canard says that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but Corneliu Porumboiu's wry comedy adds a corollary: Those who spend too much time trying to remember will be swallowed by the past. Living in a small Romanian town 16 years after the fall of communism, the movie's characters are gearing up for the anniversary of their liberation, with just one small hitch: No one can seem to agree whether the town's residents took part in their own liberation or merely had freedom thrust upon them. (The movie's original title translates as Was There a Revolution, or Wasn't There?) Much of the first half concerns a TV host's desperate search for guests to fill his afternoon show on the subject; the second is taken up almost entirely by the broadcast itself, a delirious comic set piece of booze-soaked self-aggrandizement and phoned-in recriminations. A winning mixture of bumbling slapstick and gallows humor, Porumboiu's feature debut is a knockabout farce on serious themes, and further evidence of a resurgence in Romanian cinema. —S.A. (Sat., April 7, 5 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St.; Sun., April 8, 9:30 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St.)

The Untouchable

Benoît Jacquot's 2006 film follows Jeanne (pale, self-contained Isild Le Besco, a Jacquot favorite who was also in 2004's A Tout de Suite), a young actress who travels to India in search of a man her mother claims is her father. What could have been either a character study or a road trip movie ends up both empty and arty. If you ignore its intrusive symbols (Jeanne as Joan of Arc, the meanings of "untouchable"), it's short enough that its low-key aimlessness isn't that bad. —R.F. (Wed., April 11, 5 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Sat., April 14, 2:45 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

VHS - Kahloucha

Proving that auteurs can spring up in the unlikeliest of places, Nejib Belkadhi's doc profiles Moncef Kahloucha, a full-time house painter and some-time film director from Tunisia. Inspired by American and French genre pics (he constantly models himself after Alain Delon), Kahloucha drafts his unemployed friend to play gangsters in oddball exploitation fare like "Misery to Get Rid of the Booze" and "Tarzan of the Arabs." Watching him set his sister's rental house on fire or slice his own arm to provide blood for a scene is goofball fun, but Belkadhi also, without getting preachy, depicts the difference between Kahloucha's impoverished village and the neighboring resort town that it hides behind. —S.B. (Mon., April 9, 7 p.m., International House, 3701 Chestnut St.; Sat., April 14, 2 p.m., National Constitution Center, Kirby Auditorium, Sixth and Arch sts.)

War/Dance

The heartwarming story of a trio of Ugandan refugee children tapped to compete in a nationwide musical competition, Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine's glossy documentary sacrifices authenticity in the name of inspiration, cramming the children's experiences into a pre-fab framework. Presuming their audience's alienation, the Fines work overtime to illustrate the ways Africans are just like us, an effort that becomes trying and eventually insulting. The movie wants to draw attention to the underreported genocide in Uganda, but it couches its little-known story in such familiar terms it feels like we've heard it a million times before. —S.A. (Fri., April 6, 4:15 p.m., Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St.; Sun., April 8, 12:15 p.m., National Constitution Center, Kirby Auditorium, Sixth and Arch sts.)

Whispering Of The Gods

Set on a seminary farm where confession must take far more time than chores, Tatsushi Omori's debut might seem anti-Catholic if it ever managed to seem pro-anything. Barely able to end a single scene without the outbreak of some act of abuse, Omori piles on the misery to the point of overload, maintaining a stifling clinical distance that doesn't allow for the runaway train madness of a Miike or the wicked humor of a Buñuel. Instead he achieves a deadpan nihilism; the formal beauty of each shot may hold viewers for a time, but eventually the rigid framing becomes a visual novocaine, numbing the senses for the relentless barrage of calculated shocks. —S.B. (Sun., April 8, 9:30 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Mon., April 9, 2:30 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Thu., April 12, 5 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St.)

White Palms

Based on his brother's experience as a gymnast, Szabolcs Hajdu's movie is at once taut, arty and moving. Cutting back and forth in time, the film links young Hungarian gymnastics student Miklós Dongó's abuses by coach and parents, and his current efforts to train an arrogant Canadian. As the adult Dongó (Zoltán Miklós Hajdu) struggles with his painful memories and lingering aspirations to be a world champion, the film makes intelligent use of psychic and physical intersections, such that time becomes fluid and the gymnast's corporeal experience strangely transcendent. Such tensions reach a disturbing, wondrous apotheosis when young Dongó (Orion Radies) joins the circus as a trapeze artist, his combined fear and rebellion revealed in quick bits of sound, light and stunts. —C.F. (Fri., April 6, 2 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.; Sun., April 8, 7:15 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St.)

Who Loves the Sun

After disappearing for five years, 31 year-old Will Morrison (Lukas Haas) mysteriously shows up at his ex-best friend's parents' lake house. The combination of ex-best friend Daniel (Adam Scott), Will's former wife, Maggie (Molly Parker), and one hot summer night five years ago helps to explain Will's absence. Over the course of the film, a series of past events and well-crafted secrets are revealed as Will and Daniel learn that their lives are perpetually intertwined. All cast members give highly nuanced, witty and sympathetic performances in this life dramedy about getting what you want and finding what you need. —E.H. (Sun., April 8, 5:15 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Tue., April 10, 7:15 p.m., Ritz East, 125 S. Second St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Wholetrain

Spray cans in hand, four delinquents from Munich's KSB crew paint the town (and its commuter trains) red, green, yellow and myriad other colors in Florian Gaag's doc about the German graffiti scene. Viewers expecting a ghettoized graf-arts take on 8 Mile will be thrown for a loop; the characters spend more of the flick running from the cops than scooting along the storyline. Watch instead for the rare instances where the artists are in action, their hissing spray paints and breakdance moves transforming the titular train (plus several walls) into a defiant and colorful statement on graffiti's place in the urban environment. —M.J. (Fri., April 6, 9:30 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Sun., April 8, noon, The Bridge: Cinema DeLuxe, 4012 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest; Mon., April 9, 5 p.m., Ritz Five, 214 Walnut St., scheduled appearance by director or other guest)

Zoo

Amazingly, the most perverse thing about Robinson Devor's documentary isn't its subject matter — no small feat considering that its point of origin was a Seattle man who died of a ruptured colon after getting reamed by a horse. Devor and his Police Beat co-writer Charles Mudede (a staff writer for the alt-weekly The Stranger) stage their inquiry into the dead man's circle of fellow zoophiles as a poetic variation on a theme. Identifying its subjects by their online nicknames (the dead man is "Mr. Hands"), the movie relies on artfully lit re-enactments, turning the fact that two of the three zoophiles interviewed would not appear on camera into an artistic statement rather than a limitation. (Even the one, known as Coyote, who does appear as himself is never seen speaking: His words appear in voiceover as he silently recreates his own life.) By the time Mr. Hands is walking naked through the branches of a vividly flowering bush, you're either watching one of the boldest movies you've ever seen, or one of the silliest. Zoo's attempt to see things from its subjects' point of view is intriguing, but it works so hard to counter the knee-jerk revulsion of the mainstream media that it overcorrects; surely including one person who thinks having sex with humans might not be so great for a horse wouldn't be too much to ask. The closest the film comes is an interview with a self-proclaimed "horse rescuer" who took in some of the animals after the fact, and even she concludes she's "right at the edge of being able to understand" their attraction. The zoos insist they love their animals, and maybe they do, but Devor does them no favors by coddling them. Even vanilla love hurts sometimes. —S.A. (Sun., April 8, 9:30 p.m., National Constitution Center, Kirby Auditorium, Sixth and Arch sts.; Fri., April 13, 4:45 p.m., International House, 3701 Chestnut St.)

Click for movies titled A-L.

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