AU REVOIR, LE PIFF

[February 21st, 2007] I am an old man now, but still my heart beats with the fire of youth when I remember those final, reckless nights spent with the Portland International Film Festival. How we gamboled about the multiplexes, PIFF and I! How we relished the wildness of Werner Herzog and savored the charm of Aki Kaurismäki! What fun we had with Argentinean torturers and Mexican vampires! Remember how we ran screaming into the night, my PIFF, when we realized how lousy that Cuban movie was? Alas, you do not remember. You are gone, sweet sweet PIFF. But my love for you is immortal.

War/Dance

[USA] Ugandan refugee children advance in a national song-and-dance contest. We're hoping dance beats war. (BW, 5:30 pm Wednesday, Feb. 21.)

Free Floating

[RUSSIA] An absurdist unemployment comedy that somehow involves Chuck Norris. Who really can do anything. (BW, 5:45 pm Wednesday, Feb. 21.)

The Magician

[MEXICO] When a quirky street musician (Erando Gonzalez) faints during one of his performances, he visits a doctor who confirms his worst fears: He has only months to live. Always accompanied by his blind assistant (Gustavo Muñoz, as an unexpected source of comic relief) the musician resolves to die an unburdened, proud man. He starts an interminable journey searching for forgiveness, reunion and solidarity before his looming end. The Magician doesn't inspire much magic. ELIANNA BAR-EL. (BW, 6 pm Wednesday, 9 pm Thursday, Feb. 21-22.)

Obaba

[SPAIN] The plot is obscure, but it involves lizards that eat human brains. As lizards are wont to do. (WH, 6:30 pm Wednesday, Feb. 21.)

The Girl in the Stone

[MEXICO] Despite bravura underwater shots of a red-slippered drowning victim bumping into contact with a sunken sculpture, co-directors Maryse Sistach and José Buil have not dreamed up enough to justify their deliberately paced (God, is it deliberately paced!) and adequately acted study of rural adolescent brutality. The machete-slashed white kitten suspended from a tree provides as valid a reason as any to stay home and read a book. N.P. THOMPSON. (BW, 6:30 pm Wednesday, 5 pm Friday, Feb. 21 & 23.)

Invisible Waves

[THAILAND] An existential thriller/comedy/drama about a Yakuza hit man hiding out in Thailand, pursued by killers and ghosts from his past, has no right to be boring. Yet Invisible Waves, despite its hardboiled genre, cast of kooky characters and overall dreamlike feel, is droll and dull. It's like a watered-down David Lynch film, with a dash of French New Wave and a big dose of Valium. AP KRYZA. (BW, 8:15 pm Wednesday, Feb. 21.)

 Rescue Dawn

[USA] German legend Werner Herzog returns to his favorite theme—man battling man amid heartless wilderness—by remaking one of his finest documentaries, Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Christian Bale steps into the role of Dieter Dengler, a pilot shot down over Vietnam and dragged to a POW camp, where he plots escape. Bale shades his usual charisma with a dash of mania, but it's Steve Zahn who steals the movie as a fellow prisoner. Emaciated and wild-eyed, Zahn descends into horrified insanity—and the madder he gets, the more he resembles Klaus Kinski, Herzog's favorite monster. AARON MESH. (BW, 8:45 pm Wednesday; C21, 5:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 21 & 24.)

The Citrillo's Turn

[MEXICO] Revolution hits Mexico City in 1903, and the affected parties gather at the bar. Viva la cervesa! (BW, 9 pm Wednesday; WH, 12:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 21 & 24.)

Blessed by Fire

[ARGENTINA] It's a war on the Falkland Islands War. (WH, 9 pm Wednesday; BW, 9:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 21-22.)

Madeinusa

[PERU] That's the name of the heroine. Ah, subtlety. (BW, 9:15 pm Wednesday, 6 pm Thursday, Feb. 21-22.)

My Grandmother's House

[SPAIN] Gets torn down. (BW, 5 pm Thursday, Feb. 22.)

Hula Girls

[JAPAN] Coal miners' daughters learn to shimmy when a Hawaiian theme park invades their provincial town, but the trite scenario is as rancid as last year's sesame oil. N.P. THOMPSON. (BW, 5:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 22.)

The Method

[SPAIN/ARGENTINA] Seven job applicants are told their last interview will consist of "the Gronholm method." They marvel—what is this Gronholm method? Turns out it's just the tricks used for years on reality-television shows: Voting one another off the island, playing silly games of agility, and being persuaded to betray loyalties. There's nothing here you didn't see on the first season of The Apprentice. Except Donald Trump didn't think he was making a brave anti-corporate statement. And he had better hair. AARON MESH. (WH, 6 pm Thursday, Feb. 22.)

Sighs from the Heart

[SPAIN]. (BW, 6:30 pm Thursday, 9:30 pm Friday, Feb. 22-23.)

Fay Grim

[USA] Hal Hartley reunites the cast of his 1997 comedy of letters Henry Fool—and turns the story of poetry-writing garbageman Simon (James ), grandiloquent drifter Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) and the woman caught between them (the titular Fay, played by Parker Posey) into an espionage franchise. The coda, featuring Fay globetrotting in search of Henry's notebooks, is unnecessary and often glib. But it's also kind of fun, and Ryan's performance leaves us savoring for one more dose of the diabolical. AARON MESH. (C21, 6:30 pm Thursday, 12 pm Saturday, Feb. 22 & 24.)

Play

[CHILE] A lost suitcase inspires stalking in Santiago. (BW, 7:15 pm Thursday, 12:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 22 & 24.)

Summer Palace

[CHINA] Love, revolution and Tiananmen Square. This should end well. (BW, 8:30 pm Thursday, 7:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 22 & 24.)

Dreaming by the Numbers

[NETHERLANDS] Let's get metaphysical at the lottery. (BW, 8:45 pm Thursday, Feb. 22.)

 The Secret Life of Words

[SPAIN] Sarah Polley nurses Tim Robbins on an oil rig. Strange that a movie with so many missteps can still prove so moving when it reveals how no man is a metal island. AARON MESH. (WH, 8:45 pm Thursday, Feb. 22.)

 Lights in the Dusk

[FINLAND] "What was it like?" a woman asks a friend freshly released from jail. "You couldn't get out," he says. Welcome to the world of Aki Kaurismäki's "loser trilogy," in which taciturn, wry men wander through the circles of Helsinki. This time it's a night-shift security guard (Janne Hyytiäinen), who loses his job and freedom when he falls for the wrong woman. Lights in the Dusk isn't the best introduction to Karuismäki's gentle, deadpan aesthetic (that would be 2002's The Man Without a Past), but it will do nicely. Once you enter this landscape—something like a children's book illustrated by Edward Hopper—you won't want to get out. AARON MESH. (C21, 9:15 pm Thursday, 9:30 pm Friday, Feb. 22-23.)

The Violin

[MEXICO] An affecting, if not entirely satisfying, political fable about an old musician (Don Angel Tavira) who uses his violin as the ultimate tool of passive resistance during the country's peasant revolts in the 1970s. Writer-director Francisco Vargas has clearly done his film-school homework; the film is shot in smart black-and-white and has a distinct—and slightly studied—neorealist vibe to it. But the movie hits its stride with the unlikely face-off between the violinist and an insidious military head honcho (Dagoberto Gama). These scenes allow us to zero in on a wonderful central performance by Tavira, whose exquisitely wrinkled face belies hidden reserves of feistiness and invention. JON FROSCH. (WH, 4:45 pm Friday; BW, 5:30 pm Saturday, Feb. 23-24.)

 Red Road

[GREAT BRITAIN] Disturbing in about 10 different ways, Red Road is set in a Glasgow where everything is observed on closed-circuit cameras and—coincidentally?—everyone is incredibly fastidious about using condoms. Jackie (Kate Dickie) works at the City Eye, a company whose job is to monitor the cameras and alert police at signs of trouble. When she spots a man she never thought she'd see again, she starts acting crazy. But her face is so stony and unreadable that trying to guess the reasons behind her bizarre behavior creates a fascinating kind of suspense. There's not as much depth to the film as the setup could've allowed, but it's compelling anyway. BECKY OHLSEN. (C21, 5 pm Friday; WH, 8 pm Saturday, Feb. 23-24.)

 Chronicle of an Escape

[ARGENTINA] Think Midnight Express without the cheese, lousy acting and forced homoeroticism. Innocent Buenos Aires soccer stud Claudio (Rodrigo De la Serna) is kidnapped by the government, accused of being a revolutionary and forced to endure months of torture. Adrian Caetano's dark and grainy film is full of shadows and overwhelming claustrophobia as the prisoners are blindfolded, beaten and subjugated. The torture scenes—done mostly off-camera—are grating and terrifying. It's almost as if we're strapped naked to a bed beside our wary protagonists. It's a harrowing, true account of governmental abuse, survival and, though it takes considerable stamina to reach it, hope. AP KRYZA. (BW, 7:15 pm Friday; WH, 2:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 23-24.)

Starter for Ten

[GREAT BRITAIN] This Chronicles of Narnia faun plays a university student who dreams of quiz-show glory. Ding! "Who is James McAvoy?" Correct. (C21, 7:30 pm Friday, Feb. 23.)

More than Anything in the World

[MEXICO] A sweet little film about a mother and her young daughter—with a weird side story involving an alleged vampire. Andres Leon Becker and Javier Solar have put together a story that, 50 minutes in, makes you wonder what on earth it's about. By the end it all becomes clear: "Oh, it's all about the mom and her daughter...but wait, what was that crap about the vampire?" NATE SMITH. (WH, 7:15 pm Friday, 5:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 23-24.)

Rough Winds

[SPAIN] This sibling rivalry drama won best film at the Malaga Spanish Film Festival. The other movies were jealous. (WH, 9:30 pm Friday, Feb. 23.)

Trade

[USA] Marco Kreuzpaintner's first movie—about Mexican sex trade leading to New Jersey—caused a stir at Sundance. (C21, 2:45 pm Saturday, Feb. 24.)

Barrio Cuba

[CUBA] In the slums of Havana, life rains shit on a barely connected group of people. Depressing events involving adultery, loss of faith, death, alcoholism, infertility and general sadness permeate nearly every frame of Barrio Cuba. Some of it resonates with emotional devastation—particularly the story of a father's loss and subsequent self-exile. The rest is depressing melodrama—one sob story stacked atop another with sloppy chronology, resulting in a tear-soaked snoozefest. AP KRYZA. (BW, 3 pm Saturday, Feb. 24.)

Private Fears in Public Places

[CLOSING FILM, FRANCE] Alain Resnais, the 84-year-old maker of such pedigreed bores as Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, begins his new film firmly ensconced at the bottom of the trash heap. The low point occurs early—leading lady Sabine Azéma has tomato soup splattered all over her face—then the movie gets less terrible as it goes on. It almost reaches "good" during a late-night conversation between a man and a woman seated across a kitchen table; Resnais uses snow dissolves throughout to transition from one scene to the next, but in this sequence the walls disappear. It snows inside as two strangers bare their souls. N.P. THOMPSON. (C21, 8:15 pm Saturday, Feb. 24. Closing-night screening is followed by a party at the bar of Living Room Theaters, 341 SW 10th Ave. Admission to the party is free.)