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UNITED STATES

All the Real Girls- David Gordon Green
"Green and his trusted collaborators boldly plumb fertile emotional territory: the instinctive, ineffable intoxication of first love and the risk of getting too close. Twenty-two-year-old Paul lives with his beloved mom and works as a grease monkey in a broken down North Carolina mill town. Charming, smart, unambitious, he has a devoted circle of rowdy friends and a reputation as a callous heartbreaker. When he meets his best friend's sister Noel, fresh from boarding school graduation, the two fall into a perfect, real, terrifying love. They share innermost secrets and inhabit a sweet, dreamy bubble of mutual admiration and understanding. But soon the perfection is too weighty, the bubble too delicate. Eschewing love story clichés, All the Real Girls is excruciatingly authentic and tender while intelligently refusing to explain away complex human emotion."-Sundance Film Festival. (105 mins.) Print courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.
Filmography: George Washington (00).
Showtimes: 2/28, 6:30pm and 3/1, 4:30pm BW.

The Dancer Upstairs- John Malkovich
Based on Nicholas Shakespeare's adaptation of his own fact-based novel, The Dancer Upstairs, marks actor John Malkovich's feature directorial debut. As an unspecified Latin American nation nears collapse under a highly organized terrorist movement, idealistic policeman Agustin Rejas (Javier Bardem) faces the greatest challenge of his career-to catch the mysterious guerilla leader Ezequiel, a character loosely based on the real-life Peruvian Shining Path leader Abimael Guzman. The brains behind the bloody revolution that threatens to bring down the government and entire country, Ezequiel is as elusive as Rejas' superiors are corrupt-an irony not lost on Rejas, who left his career as an attorney to try to find "a more honorable way of practicing the law." In the midst of the chaos, Rejas finds respite in Yolanda (Laura Morante), his daughter's soulfully beautiful ballet teacher. By turns an absorbing political thriller and an intriguing character study of the conflicted Rejas, The Dancer Upstairs was filmed in Spain, Ecuador and Colombia, creating both behind and in front of the camera a deliberately multi-national landscape. In Spanish and English. (117 mins.) Print courtesy of Fox Searchlight Films.
First Feature.
Showtimes: 2/28, 9:15pm and 3/1, 7pm GU.

Manito- Eric Eason
In the 1980s the Washington Heights section of New York City was known as the crack-cocaine capital of the world. Today it is one of the largest and most vibrant Spanish-speaking communities in the country. While most of the drug dealers have gone, their violent legacy still casts a shadow over the neighborhood and its residents. Eason's edgy portrayal of this neighborhood tells the story of two brothers and their struggle to transcend their fate in a world that won't let them. After being betrayed by his own father, Junior, an ex-convict, struggles to get his life back on track as a painting contractor. His younger brother, Manny, is the pride and joy of the family and has a scholarship to attend college. On the night of his graduation party, Manny makes a fateful decision that jeopardizes his future and brings old family wounds to the surface as Junior tries to handle the situation in the only way he knows how. Using cinema vérité style, Manito paints an unflinching portrait of a community rich with passion but crippled by a cycle of violence. Emerging Filmmaker Award, Tribeca Film Festival; Best Feature, SXSW. (78 mins.) Print courtesy of Film Movement.
Filmography: Alone Together (98).
Showtimes: 2/25, 8:45pm WH and 2/27, 6pm BW.

New Suit- Francoise Velle
In the tradition of The Player and Swimming with Sharks comes this biting comedy
about Hollywood and the sycophants and schemers that fuel its increasingly vacuous ideas. Kevin Taylor is a young screenwriter with a dream, but his unfortunate reality is fetching coffee (and hookers) for a washed-up producer and listening to his blowhard colleagues mouth off about scripts they've never read. One day he jokingly mentions a "hot" script that doesn't exist; his colleagues, unwilling to admit ignorance, pretend they know all about it. Soon half of Hollywood wants the script, while the other half pretends that they've already gotten, read, loved, optioned and financed it. Deftly satirizing Hollywood's inane ability to embrace only the most (literally) hollow ideas, New Suit slyly exposes the truth: It's not the package but the packaging that counts. Audience Prize Hamptons Film Festival. (94 mins.) Print courtesy of Trillion Entertainment.
First Feature.
Showtime: 2/21, 8pm BW.

Nine Good Teeth- Alex Halpern
Nine Good Teeth unfolds through the stories of director Alex Halpern's 102-year-old Brooklyn-born, Italian-American grandmother, Mary Mirabito ('Nana'). In an intimate and often hilarious portrait, the fiercely independent and outspoken Mary dispenses homespun wisdom in a series
of unflinching conversations with her persistent and equally outspoken grandson. Mobsters, affairs, an encounter with Jack Kerouac, even a possible murder fill the
air with speculation. As she divulges family secrets and rivalries, Mary confronts her own mortality with candor and courage while remaining the rock on which the rest of her family relies. Inspired by Martin Scorsese's 1974 classic family memoir, Italian American, Nine Good Teeth tries to make sense of where we come from and where we go. (80 mins.) Print courtesy
Alex Halpern.
First Feature.
Showtime: 2/25, 6:45 BW and 3/1, 2pm WH.

OT: Our Town- Scott Hamilton Kennedy
Thornton Wilder goes to Compton in this inspired look at the survival of the arts in the heart of the ghetto. With no budget, no stage and a ton of ambition, two teachers and 24 students venture forth to execute the first theatre production attempted at Manuel Dominguez High School in over 20 years and demonstrate that there's more to their school than riots and basketball. But is "Our Town," a 65-year-old play set in a small New England town, really relevant to the hard-edged world these teens inhabit? OT: Our Town closely follows these students through their empowering and conflict-ridden rehearsals and into their homes and hearts. Despite the play's age and cultural distance, its simple themes of daily life, love, marriage and death are universal after all. (90 mins.) Print courtesy of Think Film.
First Feature.
Showtimes: 2/15, 6:45pm and 2/16, 1:30pm BW.

Raising Victor Vargas- Peter Sollett
New York's Lower East side swelters in
the summer heat. 16-year-old Victor (Victor Rasuk), who fancies himself to be quite the man, his lippy sister Vicki and shy little brother Nino are going stir-crazy in their cramped tenement apartment, all under grandma's watchful eye. To ease the heat, Victor frequents the local public swimming pool, as do "Juicy" Judy (Judy Marte) and her friends. Cool and self-possessed, Judy is a beautiful mystery fancied by every boy in the neighborhood. Victor, in need of bolstering his macho image after being busted by his friends for an embarrassing liaison with a girl in his building, has his eye on redeptive conquest. Maybe he's even in love. He hears that Judy just ditched her boyfriend and fixes an introduction through her brother. But Judy's looking for something more than a boyfriend. Something she needs but can't name. Sparkling with authenticity, Sollet's debut film is a funny, emotional tribute to love and family. (88 mins.) Print courtesy of IDP.
First Feature.
Showtimes: 2/28, 7pm BW and 3/1, 4:00pm WH.

Spellbound- Jeff Blitz
Few films on the film festival circuit this year have charmed audiences as much as Jeff Blitz's debut documentary, which gives a knuckle-whitening, nerve-addling, thoroughly entertaining and slightly unsettling account of eight U.S. teenagers from disparate ethnic, class and regional backgrounds who travel to Washington, D.C. to compete in the nationally televised Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee. Blitz followed his subjects for over a year as they prepared and competed to reach the finals, and through their fascinating, sympathetically told stories, these ordinary kids offer a unique window into the soul of America. What it finds there is made up of equal parts yearning for success and a desperate fear of failure. A tour-de-force of editing, Spellbound so effectively conveys the mood of nail-biting suspense surrounding the competition that, by the time the film ends, the viewer's nerves are nearly as frayed as the contestants. (97 mins.) Print courtesy
of Thinkfilm.
First Feature.
Showtimes: 2/22, 7pm and 2/23, 1pm BW.

Stevie- Steve James
Steve James' new film takes a deeply personal turn as he returns to the town where 10 years earlier he was a "big brother" to a troubled young boy named Stevie. As he resumes his connection with this emotionally and socially challenged man after so many years, we get a glimpse into the difficulties Stevie faced as a product of his environment. Abandoned by his mother at a young age, he bounced from foster home to foster home, abused and neglected. He soon found his way into trouble with the law, which complicated his strained relationships with what little family he had. Filmed over a number of years, this compassionate, emotionally powerful film gives us the opportunity to witness firsthand what can happen when the system fails a person. If only someone had really cared for Stevie, things might have turned out differently. Director James wrestles with his own issues of having abandoned Stevie years before when he left the area and lost touch with him. We are left with a sense of sadness, frustration, and-hopefully-a greater understanding of our responsibility for one another. (144 mins.) Print courtesy
of Lions Gate Films.
Filmography: Hoop Dreams (94), Prefontaine (97).
Showtime: 2/19, 7:15pm GU.


PHOTO - LAUREL CANYON