Menachem (Avni), the leader of an all-Orthodox Israeli army unit, falls in love with Michal, the daughter of a rabbi (Dayan). Feelings are mutual, but initially complicated because the rabbi fervently hopes that Pini (Alterman), an exceptional student (and Menachem's best friend), will marry Michal. When Menachem is abruptly arrested and charged with sedition, questions of love, loyalty, duty and free will are also called into question. Written and directed by Joseph Cedar, an American-born Israeli, this political thriller skilfully balances mainstream entertainment with something reflective and intimate, while also addressing themes of individual responsibility to a group, generational differences, and the sacrifices of a nation for whom conflict is habitual. Avni, Alterman and Dayan all do justice to the thoughtful script. But the oddly though aptly named Tinkerbell as Michal provides the magic with her combination of distinctive sensual beauty and a questioning disposition. Tune out the Eurovision-style music (the one misstep) and it'll have you hooked.

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Drama. Starring Emily Watson, Tom
Wilkinson and Rupert Everett. Written and directed by Julian Fellowes. (R. 87
minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

In the quietly unsettling "Separate Lies," an ostensibly happy marriage
disintegrates during the preparation of a salad. The wife, Anne, reveals one
hurtful secret while methodically slicing an avocado and dicing parsley:
Artfully arranging the ingredients on a platter, she proceeds to inform her
already distraught husband, James, that he is a cuckold. His upper-crust
breeding shows as he moves swiftly from the kitchen into the garden to throw
up.

Emily Watson and Tom Wilkinson imbue the couple with an intensity more
powerful for being understated. They know when to pause, and these timeouts —
allowing for the sound of a knife against a chopping board or ice clinking in
a glass — are as menacing as the verbal punches Anne and James hit each
other with. Wilkinson's face becomes red and distorted with pain. He and his
lovely co-star are the best sort of actors, capable of disappearing into their
roles. Their believable portrayals of a distressed couple do much to raise
"Separate Lies'' above the "Masterpiece Theatre'' level.

Still, the film often plays like something you would see on PBS — high
quality but not cinematic enough to fill a big screen. In its weakest moments,
it resembles an imported British TV mystery. The whodunit elements, involving
the identity of a hit-and-run driver who causes the death of a bicyclist, never
quite jell, even after the guilty party is exposed.

"Separate Lies'' works best as a searing portrait of an upper-class couple
– the kind who keep a home in London and another in the country. Julian
Fellowes, who wrote the script (based on the novel "A Way Through the Wood'')
and directs for the first time, is on familiar ground. He won a screenwriting
Oscar for "Gosford Park,'' in which he assiduously delineated the various
levels of servants toiling downstairs in British mansions. Fellowes knows that
James, an international lawyer, would dress in impeccably tailored pin-striped
suits and that Anne would spell her name with an "e.''

No Lady Chatterley, she takes a lover from her own class, a bit of a rogue
named Bill, played with assured nonchalance by Rupert Everett. Anne is all too
aware that he doesn't give a fig about her. But she's tired of falling short of
her husband's high standards, and Bill isn't the judgmental sort.

While shrinks might diagnose Anne's behavior as acting out, she seems to
be rather enjoying herself. Watson — for my money the sauciest British
actress since Glenda Jackson took up politics — appears visibly more sensual
once the affair commences. After confessing her infidelity, Anne suggests to
her husband that the three of them get together. "That would be a little too
Jerry Springer for me, I'm afraid,'' James replies — just one of many witty
lines Fellowes has composed for his able cast.

He's much stronger with words than images. "Separate Lies'' often looks
claustrophobic, despite numerous wide-angle shots of the English countryside.

There's a touching subtext about children and their impact on keeping a
marriage vital. Anne and James don't have any, and he wonders out loud if they
were wrong to stop trying. Walking through a park, he tosses a ball to a
youngster, eyeing him longingly as if wondering if things would be different if
he were their son. It's an illuminating moment in a film with a lot to say
about the human condition.

– Advisory: This film contains strong language.
– Ruthe Stein

'Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit'

Animated comedy. Starring Peter
Sallis, Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham Carter. Directed by Steve Box and Nick
Park. (Rated G. 85 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

For those unacquainted with the animation of Aardman Studios, "Wallace
& Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" takes a little getting used to.

The clay characters are often misshapen to make them easier to handle in
the frame-by-frame shooting. All of the characters have huge mouths with bad
teeth that look them look like Julia Roberts after a few months of crystal meth
use. And the humor is extremely English.

But the characters in this G-rated comedy — a bumbling inventor and his
caretaker dog — are so winning that it should take only a few minutes to
adjust. Wallace and Gromit's first feature film is very imaginative and can be
enjoyed by audiences of all ages.

While previous short films starring the duo added one or two other
characters, "Curse of the Were-Rabbit" presents a whole city, with dozens of
sets and even more personalities. The movie borrows heavily from several
werewolf films, "King Kong" and other classics, but still has an original vibe.

Wallace and Gromit run Anti-Pesto, a humane pest control service that
catches bunnies with a giant vacuum. An experiment to get those rabbits off
carrots goes awry, and a giant half-human, half-rabbit (but still kind of cute)
monster starts terrorizing everyone's cherished gardens just hours before the
town's competitive vegetable-growing contest.

The movie's 85 minutes go fast, and all that's left are small complaints.
Like the recent "Fantastic Four" movie, "Curse of the Were-Rabbit" presents the
backward logic of heroes fixing a problem that they were responsible for in the
first place. And there is a bit of a cultural barrier with some of the jokes
– it's kind of disturbing and not all that funny that the main character
likes cheese so much.

Maybe it has something to do with the tedious nature of creating
stop-motion animation — this film took five years to complete — but the
medium appears to spawn an imaginative finished product. "Curse of the
Were-Rabbit" is teeming with activity and clever asides. Even the toupee jokes
aimed at bad guy Victor Quartermaine (voiced by an unrecognizable Ralph
Fiennes) are presented in a way that seems fresh and new.

– Advisory: While this film is rated G, it is definitely a hard G. There
are a few vegetable-related sexual innuendos. And although you can't see his
naughty bits, the dog doesn't wear pants — which is especially strange
because he does wear a hat.
– Peter Hartlaub

Three Dancing Slaves

Drama.
Staring Nicolas Cazale, Stephane Rideau and Thomas Dumerchez. Directed by Gael
Morel. Running time: 90 minutes. In French with English subtitles. (Not rated.
90
minutes. At the Lumiere.)

Director Gael Morel's meditation on male sexuality and fraternal bonds
is easy on the eyes. That doesn't necessarily make it interesting. Told in
three parts, this lovingly crafted film focuses on three brothers in a rural
French town as they struggle to define themselves while coming to terms with
the death of their mother. A deep topic, to be sure, one that's given short
shrift by a director too besotted with his characters' physical beauty to dwell
on the uglier stuff under their skins.

Fresh out of prison, eldest brother Christophe (Stephane Rideau) abandons
youthful indiscretions to take a job in a pork factory; this rankles middle
brother Marc (Nicholas Cazale), whose own life of crime is just getting
started. While Marc spirals through loops of drugs, tranny sex and dog killing,
shy youngest brother Olivier (Thomas Dumerchez) studies capoeira (the martial
art that inspires the film's ungainly title) and falls in love with Marc's best
friend. Their widowed father glowers over it all with clucking, paternal
impotence.

Working from a spartan script co-written with Christophe Honore
(writer-director of last year's "Ma Mere"), Morel has crafted a luscious yet
ultimately empty film that takes a voyeur's approach to the beautiful young men
whose lives seem to center on posing their bodies in provocative tableaus.
Clothed or nude, their physicality is so fetishized in scenes of glistening
sweat and musculature that their inner lives become afterthoughts; for Morel,
the brothers and their friends are little more than animated objects housing
inarticulate longing.

The film's money shot, and its metaphoric core, shows the brothers
sleeping together in a naked tangle of limbs that renders them
indistinguishable from one another. That's the problem with the lovely, but
frustrating "Three Dancing Slaves": The characters are a mass of flesh when
they should be a sea of emotion. The result is just another pretty — and
pretty insubstantial — study in masculine angst.

– Advisory: Contains nudity, strong language and sexual situations.

– Neva Chonin

'Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinémathèque'

Documentary. Directed by Jacques
Richard. In French, with subtitles. (Not rated. 128 minutes. At the Roxie.)

Henri Langlois was the greatest film preservationist the medium has
ever had. Movie buffs who love their Bergman, Stroheim and Truffaut are
indebted to him. For his efforts, Langlois was awarded an honorary Oscar in
1974.

But who knows the full story of the Frenchman who, despite his celebrated
status, died impoverished in an unheated Paris apartment?

"Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinémathèque" is a treat for anyone
who's passionate about films or who's ever wanted to learn more about them.
Through rare archival footage, the documentary profiles a man who
single-handedly saved countless films from destruction and also helped promote
them for an international audience. All this he did out of a pure and deep love
of cinema and without an eye toward making a single sou.

Langlois (1914-1977) started collecting films at a time when few thought
doing so was necessary. The art form wasn't even a half century old, yet
Langlois had the foresight to view it as an endangered species, a precious
window into our past.

In 1935, Langlois formed a film club with Georges Franju; soon after, they
founded the Cinémathèque, where they stored and screened films, often past
midnight. As the documentary makes clear, the French government early on had
little interest in backing what it did not recognize as a crucial part of its
cultural heritage, and Langlois ran the Cinémathèque as a cash-strapped private
institution that got by on donations. He cherished his role as a feisty
underdog.

Forever animated and forever smoking, the portly Langlois, in his baggy
cardigans, was the ideal scruffy ambassador for art films. Holding court at the
Cinémathèque, he helped launch the careers of Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and many
other directors. Filmmakers and actors from around the world would visit Paris
to take part in his programs and tour his pioneering Museum of Cinema. If
visitors showed up without money, he would let them in for free.

Eventually, Langlois' authority was challenged by bureaucrats who thought
they could better manage what Langlois himself had created. (One admirer in the
film defends Langlois' "scientific sense of disorder.") In 1968, Langlois was
fired, and rioting cinephiles famously clashed with police and had their hero
reinstated.

Decades after Langlois' death, there are signs that film preservation is
gaining more respect. Just last week, a new Cinémathèque Française was opened
in an elegant building designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry.
Hopefully, it'll live up to Langlois' legacy.

– John McMurtrie

'24 Hours on Craigslist'

Documentary. Directed by Michael
Ferris Gibson. (Not rated. 82 minutes. At the Red Vic and, on Tuesday, the
Parkway in Oakland.)

"Seeking 270lb woman." For those wondering who posted that personal ad
on Craigslist, he's a middle-aged, weathered and balding smoker who likes to
sit on his suburban front porch and yell at the kids in the neighborhood.

Ladies, still interested?

The would-be lothario is just one of many Bay Area residents whose online
anonymity is unmasked in the documentary "24 Hours on Craigslist." A series of
vignettes that are edited in much the same way one might click from one random
Craigslist posting to the next, the film is a fun and free-form celebration of
the site's communal spirit and only-in-San Francisco ethos.

We encounter a butler for hire, a mother trying to sell six strollers and
a couple who operate a fetish Web site devoted to women who wear glasses. One
of the most entertaining interviewees is a man looking to create a '70s-like
guitar band — with him singing lead as Ethel Merman. All are cleverly
introduced in the film with the same sky-blue font that Craigslist uses on its
simple and gloriously ad-free site.

Limited to the one day of shooting Craigslist proposed — the site likes
to protect users' anonymity — director Michael Ferris Gibson nevertheless
found numerous compelling stories to tell. Some reveal the more depressing and
sleazy aspects of the site, including a woman who seeks a gay man for money,
and a creepy man who's hosting a subterranean "sex party" that no one,
thankfully, attends.

Not all the vignettes make for riveting viewing. And a bit too much
attention is paid to the "mystery" of Craig Newmark, the founder of the site,
who is treated like a wizard and only shown from behind in the film. As Newmark
says of himself in his online bio, "He ain't no big deal."

But others will have their say. How this film fares may well be determined
by what's written about it on the very site it documents.

– Advisory: Adult language.
– John McMurtrie

'The Overture'

Drama. Directed by Itthisoontorn
Vichailak. In Thai with English subtitles.
(Not rated. 104 minutes. At the Balboa)

The ranad is a classical Thai instrument, looking much like a wooden
xylophone. In Itthisoontorn Vichailak's "The Overture," masters of the ranad
work their way into elite favor by facing off in musical duels, as in
"Drumline" or the dueling banjos sequence in "Deliverance." It's pretty fun to
watch, and a fascinating window into Thai culture.

Unfortunately, Vichailak's film, which is "based" on the story of
Thailand's master musician Luang Pradit Phairao (1881-1954), is a
by-the-numbers, simple tale that pulls out all the cliched melodramatic stops
when it should be exploring an obviously fascinating character in Thai history.

Possibly, the problem is that the historical person has been
"fictionalized" — usually a bad sign — and is here called Sorn. As a
younger man, he is played with wide-eyed solemnity by Anuchit Saphanphong, and
he shows an early aptitude for music despite his father's efforts to deny him
the opportunity to play. Thailand is as harmonious as its instruments in these
scenes, in tune with its traditional self.

In his last years, the elderly Sorn is played by the stately Adul
Dulyarat, who stubbornly defies the Japanese imperial rulers' World War II-era
attempts to Westernize by outlawing certain Thai traditions.

There are interesting tidbits in this lushly photographed movie, but the
tide of social change is frustratingly glimpsed at, never explored, and Sorn
seems like an archetype out of a textbook rather than a real person.

If only Vichailak had cut loose, as Sorn does in the final ranad showdown,
this could have been something special.

– Advisory: Some scenes of violence.
– G. Allen Johnson

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Experience the peril and intensity of free-diving, the world's most dangerous sport, in THE BIG BLUE. Jacques (Jean-Marc Barr, Breaking the Waves) and his friendly rival Enzo (Jean Reno, The Professional) are considered masters of free-diving and have made a career out of this one-of-a-kind competition. Jacques' life-long obsession with diving comes from his unusual bond with the sea, while Enzo thrives on the challenges of its inherent danger. In his travels, Jacques meets Johanna (Rosanna Arquette, Pulp Fiction), who is attracted to his innocent qualities and follows him across Europe to share his adventures, triumphs and ultimately tragic bond with Enzo. With breathtaking underwater photography and matching musical support from Eric Serra (The Fifth Element), THE BIG BLUE immerses you in a life and death adventure you'll never forget.