Lean and mean? The 19th annual Boston Film Festival slims down

For its 19th year, the Boston Film Festival, which will run through September 14, will have just 31 features compared with last year’s 38; let’s hope that means the emphasis is on quality. There will be 28 shorts, up from 24 last year, and these shouldn’t be overlooked: last year, Martin Jones’s 10-minute "At Dawning" was one of the best entries in the fest. Among the notable features that played in 2002 were Lee Hirsch’s Amandla!, Neil Burger’s Interview with the Assassin, Joe & Anthony Russo’s Welcome to Collinwood, Peter Kosminsky’s White Oleander, François Ozon’s 8 femmes, Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American, Hilary Birmingham’s Tully, Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus, Paul Justman’s Standing in the Shadow of Motown, and Steven Shainberg’s Secretary. This year’s Film Excellence Award recipient is Ridley Scott, who’ll be honored this Sunday evening, before the screening of Matchstick Men. We’ll also be getting a visit from Lone Scherfig, whose Italian for Beginners was a festival hit in 2001; she’s bringing Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself. And though John Sayles, Robert Altman, and Errol Morris won’t be here, their movies will. Here’s the line-up for week #1; remember that last-minute changes are always a possibility.

— Jeffrey Gantz, Arts Editor

FRIDAY 5

A Phoenix Pick

BOUGHT & SOLD

Feet figure prominently in first-time director Michael Tolajian’s crisp and quirky variation on a familiar story, starting with the ill-smelling pair belonging to a stout customer that convince shoe salesman Ray Ray (Rafael Sardina), a Jersey City kid with ambitions of becoming a DJ, that he needs to seek better employment. So his pal Papo (Frank Harts) introduces him to local mobster "Chunks" Colon. Chunks assigns Ray to keep tabs on a crotchety old Armenian pawnshop owner (David Margulies) who owes him big time, and that leads to a conflict between Ray Ray’s dreams and his decency.

Nothing terribly unexpected happens, a few of the stereotypes remain unredeemed (Ray Ray’s J. Lo wanna-be girlfriend, for example), and some of the sentimentality gets cloying, but Bought’s charm lies in its narrative efficiency and unpretentiousness and in the subtlety and grace of the performances, in particular those by Margulies and Hart. And then there’s that fetish; those feet make a surprise return at the end. (91 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:15 and 4:30 p.m. Michael Tolajian will be present at tonight’s 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

OFF THE MAP

Actor Campbell Scott’s talent for offbeat and edgy performances (Roger Dodger most notably) translates into a sadly precious directorial debut. Blame in part Joan Ackermann’s twee script, which, based on her play, is all over the map in its tone, point of view, narrative line (flashbacks within flashbacks and then some), and characterizations.

Which is a shame given the good performances, among them newcomer Valentina de Angelis’s as Bo, an 11-year-old tomboy living on a desolate ranch in the New Mexico desert and burdened with a depressive dad (Sam Elliott crying in every frame — not a pretty sight) and a faux literary voiceover narrative that sounds intended for the Oprah Book Club ("My mother was weeding naked in the garden . . . when William Gibbs cried out"). Adding to the whimsical ménage is Bo’s earth-mother mom, Arlene (Joan Allen showing remarkable patience), a passing IRS agent who stays on to become a world-famous painter, and a mystical coyote. It’s enough to make Roger Dodger squirm. (111 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 11:45 a.m. and 2:15 and 4:45 p.m. Campbell Scott and Joan Ackermann will be present at tonight’s 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

SECONDHAND LIONS

There’s plenty of Oscar timber in this tearjerker. Robert Duvall and Michael Caine play batty brothers who after a 40-year absence turn up on a run-down Texas ranch with a small fortune. Salesmen swing by and money-hungry relatives try to ingratiate themselves, but the cantankerous coots rebuff all comers with the crack of a shotgun. The most resourceful relative is niece Mae (Kyra Sedgwick), who dumps her adolescent son on the two, instructing him to "find out where the money is hidden." Haley Joel Osment, whose 15 minutes may be drawing to a close, plays the 14-year-old who’s been bounced between orphanages and half-truths. You know how this one plays out: the old codgers open up to the troubled youth and regale him with tales of their past glory. Director Tim McCanlies struggles with the contemporary (circa 1960) melodrama, but in flashbacks he achieves a campiness worthy of The Princess Bride. (107 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:15 and 10 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m. Tim McCanlies will be present at tonight’s 7:15 show.

— Tom Meek

SATURDAY 6

A Phoenix Pick

CABIN FEVER

In most horny-teens-in-the-woods horror films, the watchword is "You can run, but you can’t hide." Here it’s "You can run, but don’t drink the water." Instead of a masked psycho wielding a blade, a flesh-eating virus serves as these wayward youths’ nemesis. And if that doesn’t get them, the rabid dog and the platoon of incensed rednecks will. Much of what these victims-in-waiting do defies common sense — even in the context of the genre — but that doesn’t matter once the carnage begins.

Director (and Boston area native) Eli Roth has cooked up a gorefest that’s so stylish and graphic, even the most jaded will be watching through parted fingers — especially the leg-shaving scene where razor burn is the least of their problems. There’s little from Last House on the Left, Evil Dead, and so on that Roth doesn’t steal, but he supplies enough wit and panache to call it his own. Beyond his make-up artist, Roth’s best asset is Giuseppe Andrews as the happy-go-lucky deputy who likes to party. (94 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 9:45 p.m. Eli Roth will be present.

— Tom Meek

A Phoenix Pick

JAPANESE STORY

Two wandering souls from different cultures bond in the Outback — Australian director Sue Brooks no doubt had Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 Walkabout in mind when making her affecting if occasionally belabored road movie/romance. The nomads in this version are not a city girl and an Aboriginal, however, but Sandy (Toni Collette), a geologist, and Hiromitsu (Gotaro Tsunashima), a Japanese businessman and potential client whom she’s taking on a tour of the Mars-like Pilbara desert. A breakdown helps set the stage for their surmounting of the language, culture, and gender barriers, a dialogue and mating dance eloquently rendered by the exquisite acting and underscored by the stunning landscapes.

Like Roeg in Walkabout, cinematographer Ian Baker contrasts the inhumanities of nature and technology, though with more wit than weirdness: a long shot of the duo’s tiny SUV passing a huge triple trailer truck in the vast nowhere is both funny and terrifying. Collette is terrific, and she undergoes an emotional workout, but even she’s upstaged by a single tear from Yumiko Tanaka as Hiromitsu’s wife. (105 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF

Both buyers and critics at this year’s Berlin Film Festival were, according to Screen magazine, stunned that this film from Danish director Lone Scherfig wasn’t selected to screen in the Competition — Scherfig had brought Italian for Beginners to Berlin in 2001 and walked away with the top award from FIPRESCI’s jury of international film critics. Count this critic among the stunned: I saw most of the Competition films at the Berlinale, and Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself was better than any of them. It’s not the sort of ambitious "great" film that you’d hope for from Bergman or Antonioni or Godard or, these days, Liv Ullmann, but it succeeds by conjuring cinema’s old-fashioned — and timeless — virtues: sensitive writing, sensitive directing, sensitive acting.

For this one you don’t even need to read subtitles. It’s set in dour Glasgow, where despondent Wilbur (Jamie Sives) is determined to kill himself. His younger brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins), is just as determined to keep him alive, and the good news is that Wilbur’s not very adept, so he keeps trying and failing. A girlfriend might help, and indeed head nurse Moira (Julia Davis) at the hospital is interested, but it’s Harbour who finds love with single mother Alice (Shirley Henderson), and soon she and her daughter, Mary (Lisa McKinlay), move into the apartment above the bookshop that the brothers operate. Even Wilbur seems happier — but Death has his own ideas of how to resolve the situation. There’s nothing that original or even surprising here, only the way Scherfig, like Ullmann, makes turning out a good movie look like child’s play. (106 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:15 and 10 p.m. and tomorrow at 11:45 a.m. and 2:15 and 4:45 p.m. Lone Scherfig will be present at tonight’s 7:15 show.

— Jeffrey Gantz

SUNDAY 7

ANGELA

The plight of the mob wife is still novel enough to make for irresistible fiction, from The Sopranos to TV-movie melodramas like La Bella Mafia. In dramatizing a subject with such lurid, even camp, potential, there’s the risk of trivialization and cliché, and writer/director Roberta Torre’s film occasionally lapses into both. This apparently true story — in which the Sicilian Mafia title wife (Donatella Finocchiaro) assists mob kingpin husband Saro (Mario Pupella) in a major drug operation out of their Palermo shoe store, falls for one of his macho underlings, and gets pinched by the police — is interesting if predictable. It helps that Torre directs in faux documentary fashion with some visual style: Angela putting her lips to grimy phone booth glass in acknowledgment of her watching lover; the ancient streets of Palermo rendered as mere backdrop and not as romanticized setting. And Finocchiaro is earthy and fiery as the lady who wants her own slice of the pie. In Italian with English subtitles. (92 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 5:45 and 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 7 and 9:30 p.m.

— Loren King

MAMBO ITALIANO

My Big Fat Greek Wedding goes Italian, gay, and north of the border in this comedy about an immigrant family in Montreal who have to come to grips with son Angelo’s "roommate." Luke Kirby and Paul Sorvino star; Émile Gaudreault directs. (99 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 6:30 and 8:45 p.m.

— Peter Keough

MATCHSTICK MEN

As Good As It Gets, Paper Moon, and The Grifters have all won or been nominated for acting Oscars, so don’t be surprised if Matchstick Men, which borrows from them all, achieves a similar distinction. Needless to say, it’s a mix-and-matchstick affair, an adaptation by Ridley Scott (catch the October 31 re-release of his Alien to be reminded of what he’s capable of) of an Eric Garcia novel that’s derivative of Jim Thompson. Nicolas Cage is as good as an imitation of Jack Nicholson gets as Roy, a con artist with obsessive compulsive disorder. His malady doesn’t stop him from amassing a fortune bilking the dumb and unwary, however, and he keeps it in a ceramic dog and a safety deposit box. When Roy’s symptoms worsen, his partner Frank (Sam Rockwell playing a subdued version of his usual asshole) refers him to a shrink who suggests that Roy reunite with his long-lost teenage daughter (Alison Lohman). You fill in the ending; it can’t be any more inept than the fumbling epilogue they come up with here. Cage is endearing at times, but Matchstick Men is as flimsy as its title. (118 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. Ridley Scott, Nicolas Cage, Alison Lohman, and Sam Rockwell will be present at tonight’s show, and Scott will receive the Boston Film Festival Film Excellence Award.

— Peter Keough

MISSING GUN

Based on a novel by Fan Yipang and set in southwestern China, this quiet thriller from first-time director Lu Chuan finds decorated police officer Ma Shan (Jiang Wen) waking up one morning after getting drunk at his brother’s wedding and discovering that his gun is missing. In China, where guns are rare, this is a serious offense punishable by a three-year prison sentence. As Ma Shan frantically tries to figure out what happened, he runs into a former lover, who is eventually killed by one of his bullets. Determined to prove he was framed, he enlists the help of local shopkeepers and friends, discovering disloyalty where he least suspected it. Working on a minuscule budget (the US equivalent of around $200,000), Lu creates an evocative treatment of a simple story, with moody, gorgeous photography from cinematographer Xie Zhengyu. Some of the final revelations seem a little contrived, but there are also some unforeseen plot twists, and they give this visually adept piece a satisfying resolution. In Mandarin with English subtitles. (90 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight and tomorrow at 7 and 9:30 p.m.

— Peg Aloi

UN SECRETO DE ESPERANZA/BEAUTIFUL SECRET

A Mexican movie about a rebellious teenager who learns about life from an older woman — sounds a little like Y tu mamá también, but Leopoldo Laborde’s clunky homily resembles more a humorless version of Gus Van Sant’s Finding Forrester. Jorge, a man caught in the rain with a bunch of roses, flashes back to when he was 12 and he befriended an 84-year-old woman hidden away in a spooky mansion in his neighborhood. She turns out to have been familiar with many of the great figures from Mexico’s cultural past — Luis Buñuel, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo — and a bit of a writer herself, and she helps Jorge with some of his pressing problems: a single mother who neglects him for her boyfriend; a teacher who nags him for not knowing about the great figures from Mexico’s cultural past; and, in general, the big questions that really bother a guy. Her solutions include platitudes ("Be yourself") and a key to a chest he can’t unlock until he turns 20. To judge from the older Jorge’s cheap suit, none of this helped much, and I suspect Laborde’s inspiration owes less to Buñuel, Rivera, and Kahlo than to L. Ron Hubbard, whom he quotes in the film’s epilogue. In Spanish with English subtitles. (118 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 5:30 and 8:15 p.m. and tomorrow at 6:45 and 9:15 p.m.

— Peter Keough

TUESDAY 9

COLLUSION

Things aren’t always what they seem in this twisty but inert double-crosser from first-time British director Richard Burridge, but mostly they are: it’s slick and glib and soulless on the outside, and on the inside as well. The first scene promises wry wit, with a robbery of an exhibit of stolen art. But then we’re saddled with the dull troubles of art security expert Jack Littlemore (Aden Gillett, with somnolent ennui), whose firm was responsible for protecting the museum where the robbery took place. The sudden appearance of his raffish friend Darren Headway (Daniel Lapaine) and Darren’s girlfriend, Serena (Jessica Brooks), doesn’t help matters, earning him the wrath of Serena’s billionaire father, Herbert Ames (Leslie Phillips), and icy contempt from his own ex-wife, Mary (Ann Coulter look-alike Imogen Stubbs), who’s Ames’s legal adviser. Meanwhile, Jack’s hooker-turned-journalist girlfriend, Sally (Kate Ashfield), is playing all sides of the situation to her advantage. The clues collude nicely in the end, and the sardonic insights into the value and integrity of art have bite, but the film’s lasting impression is of sleek set design and cold cinematography. (90 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 4:30, 7, and 9:30 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

MY LIFE WITHOUT ME

What can you say about a 23-year-old girl who lived? Based on a short story by Nanci Kincaid, Catalonian director Isabel Coixet’s austere tearjerker is the anti–Love Story, avoiding for the most part clichés and mawkish manipulations and focusing on the details of life that the glimpse of mortality makes heartbreaking. Sarah Polley stars as Ann, a working-class Vancouver woman whose life seems drearily set. Married as a teen to her first boyfriend (Scott Speedman), a good-natured but marginally employable knucklehead, mother to two daughters, working at nights as a cleaner and living (à la 8 Mile) in a trailer in the yard of her dyspeptic mother (Deborah Harry) yard, she would seem to have bleak prospects. So why not add a disease to her woes? The bad news, however, opens Ann not to self-pity but to self-examination, and she comes up with a to-do list that includes press-on nails and sleeping with Mark Ruffalo and a series of gritty epiphanies that only occasionally fizzle into Hallmark Card couplets. (106 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m.

— Peter Keough

WEDNESDAY 10

THE COMPANY

Never a strong believer in traditional storytelling, Robert Altman seems to have abandoned narrative (and character and theme) altogether in this celebration of dance and the Joffrey Ballet Company of Chicago. Speaking of Chicago: dance needs some vindication after that Oscar-winning tribute to the magic of editing, and if for no other reason, this film is worth a look because its (mostly) stunning ballet numbers are shown not chopped-up, MTV style, but with the performances and the bodies intact. And ballet-trained Neve Campbell (credited, with screenwriter Barbara Turner, with the "story") as Ry, an aspiring dancer, sure can razzle-dazzle a lot better than Richard Gere.

But aside from the dance sequences (and there are a lot of them), this is a backstage musical with nothing much happening backstage. Ry replaces an injured dancer and becomes a star (a cliché repeated twice to no effect), she dates a cute chef (James Franco), a kid named Justin gets pissed off. The final production, Blue Snake, is even more flamboyant than Malcolm McDowell’s performance as the Joffrey head — it’s like a mystical version of The Lion King as performed by the costumed guys from the Fruit of the Loom commercial. (113 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7 and 10 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m. Neve Campbell will be present at tonight’s 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

THURSDAY 11

BROTHERS . . . ON HOLY GROUND

This short video is how Mike Lennon, a retired New York fireman turned documentarian, responded to September 11 — as he explains, "After two weeks, my wife said, instead of digging, start filming." What Lennon filmed were the valiant stories of his fellow firefighters, those who survived the fall of the twin towers, and the tales of young women whose husbands went off to work that day and never returned. In all, 343 firemen died, 244 women were left widowed, and 606 children lost a parent.

Much of the material is familiar from television and newspapers, but the narratives are still spooky and chilling, especially the first-hand accounts of those who were on the first floors of the Trade Center when the buildings collapsed above them. And Pete Hamill’s voiceover, which sounds like the oratory heard over World War II documentaries, is stirring. But Brothers also recalls the kind of dated American World War II movie in which the whole battalion is Caucasian. Is this really the ethnic make-up of the New York Fire Department? Among the many interviewed, there’s not a black, Hispanic, or Jewish face in sight. (54 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7:15 and 9:15 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:30, and 4:45 p.m.

— Gerald Peary

CHARLIE: THE LIFE AND ART OF CHARLIE CHAPLIN

At two-hours-plus and with a Keystone Kops carload of talking-head experts, Richard Schickel’s determinedly unexciting documentary doesn’t add much knowledge or insight to the lore about Hollywood’s greatest auteur and perhaps the most recognizable icon of the 20th century. Nonetheless, the wealth of snippets from his films, from the first glimpse of the Little Tramp in the 1914 short "Kid Auto Races at Venice" to Chaplin’s "death," on screen, as the over-the-hill ham in Limelight (1952), makes this time well spent. From these images, and not so much from the comments by Martin Scorsese, David Thomson, Woody Allen, Richard Attenborough, Robert Downey Jr., and Johnny Depp (to name a few), one discerns the elegant pathos and smarmy sentiment, the surreal inspiration and corny slapstick, and the sheer charisma and infantile need of this problematic genius. The chatter often diminishes the visual eloquence of the clips, and it doesn’t penetrate much into the darker regions of Chaplin’s life, such as his love for much younger women or his long persecution by the federal government for his leftist views. An exception might be the stories of surviving Chaplin children Geraldine, Michael, and Sydney; Sydney’s memory of being kicked out of Paulette Goddard’s bed by dad at age eight is funny and weirdly revealing. (120 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

GROβE MÄDCHEN WEINEN NICHT/BIG GIRLS DON’T CRY

The two girls in this dark coming-of-age drama don’t cry, they get even. It begins ordinarily enough as the two 16-year-olds pine over boys, hit the nightclub scene, and contemplate losing their virginity, but then writer/director Maria von Heland pulls back to reveal a bigger, more dysfunctional world where sensibilities and loyalties are tested. Matters lurch off track when Steffi (Karoline Herfurth) discovers that her father is having an affair. To exact revenge, she befriends the mistress’s daughter, Tessa (Josefine Domes), and arranges a meeting for her with a "record executive" who turns out to be a porn producer. Steffi’s best friend, Kati (Anna Maria Mühe), gets caught in the middle of this ugly mess; what ensues is an implosion of half-truths and duplicitous maneuverings. The performances by Mühe and Herfurth are superb. In German with English subtitles. (87 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7:30 and 9:45 p.m. and Sunday September 14 at 4:30, 7:15, and 9:30 p.m.

— Tom Meek

19 MONTHS

Nineteen months, according to unnamed experts in first-time director Randall Cole’s mockumentary, is how long it takes for a romantic relationship to deteriorate into boredom. On the verge of that milestone, charmless couple Rob (Benjamin Ratner), a perpetual student living on his dad’s money, and Melanie (Angela Vint), a painter (her canvases are actually the best thing in the movie), have decided to organize their break-up in advance so there’ll be no hard feelings. To record their achievement for the edification of others, they’ve brought in a camera crew.

Nineteen minutes is about how long it takes this premise to deteriorate into boredom, as Rob becomes an insufferably smug idiot and Melanie an insipid whiner and you wish they’d stay together so the rest of us might be spared any contact with them. Total lack of sympathy for the principal characters aside, 19 Months offers a few moments of sour humor, mostly at Rob’s expense, as his airs of deluded superiority collapse into pathetic fecklessness. (78 minutes) Screens at the Copley Place tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:30, 2:45, and 5 p.m.

— Peter Keough

A Phoenix Pick

LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE

Sylvain Chomet’s charming animated film, a hit with audiences at Cannes, stars a clubfooted grandmother and her obese dog whose determination knows no bounds. They set off in pursuit of her grandson, Champion, who disappeared while competing in the Tour de France, kidnapped by mysterious men in black suits. They wind up in the city of Belleville, where they team up with a trio of ancient singing sisters to free Champion, whose apparent inability to do anything other than ride a bike sets the tone for the film. Virtually dialogue free, Les triplettes is full of funny and bizarre images, often in the same frame, like the nefarious henchmen whose enormous square shoulders cause them to merge them into one hulking figure as they walk side by side, or the triplets performing in a nightclub with a refrigerator, a newspaper, and a vacuum cleaner instead of instruments. Like the film, their music, a kind of freestyle jazz, is pretty sweet. In French with English subtitles. (78 minutes) Screens at the Boston Common tonight at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:15, and 4:15 p.m.

— Brooke Holgerson

In brief . . .

This year’s Boston Film Festival has more shorts than in years past (28 in total), and as you might expect, they span the spectrum of style and subject matter. Some entries demonstrate a subtle and satisfying mastery of the genre. Others are as subtle as a slap across the belly with a dead fish.

Package #1 (September 5 at 6:45, and 9:30 p.m. and September 6 at 12:15, 2:30, and 4:45 p.m.; all shorts screen at the Copley Place) sets an earnest tone. In Ellen Gerstein’s tender and humorous "Waiting for Ronald," a developmentally challenged man leaves his institution home for life on his own. Sex and sneakers, love and loss feature in Jennifer Prince’s "Winded," a well-paced and poignant — if overacted — coming-of-age story about a young woman runner. Filmed on Martha’s Vineyard, Taylor Toole’s "Standing Up" is another somber coming-of-age tale about agonizing adolescence, raging hormones, abusive fathers, and the groping confusion of a first kiss.

Two Massachusetts filmmakers, Ben Stambler and Nancy Stein, deal with violence both domestic and international. The former’s gritty "Do Us Part" follows the friendship of three Boston thugs. And if Stein’s "Stealing Innocence," which is about the friendship between two girls, one Israeli, one Palestinian, seems sickeningly saccharine at first, the explosive ending leaves a bitter taste. The standout of the pack, and perhaps of the festival, is Toru Tokikawa’s "Noodle Soup," a David Lynch–like foray into the dark underbelly of a New York City Chinese restaurant, complete with a tuxedo-clad dwarf, butcher knives, and backroom backgammon.

Package #2 (September 5 at 6:30 and 9:15 p.m. and September 6 at 12:30, 2:45, and 5 p.m.) includes the festival’s two documentaries. Massachusetts native Ted Gesing’s brilliant and hilarious "Nutria" looks at how swamp rodents have wreaked havoc on Louisiana wetlands and how scientists, chefs, and school kids are dealing with the bewhiskered beast. Robert Richter’s "The New Patriots" exposes the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, as a US-funded training ground for terrorists; the interviews with military veterans show that it’s possible to love this country and still want to change it. Joel Anderson’s "The Rotting Woman" shows how a skin condition — which doesn’t look that bad — can affect the relationship of a unlikable, sarcastic couple. Also dealing with decaying females is Rosario Garcia-Montero’s bizarre "Are You Feeling Lonely?", which is about a morgue janitor looking for love. Brian Edward Rise’s "Luminous," a plotless, dialogueless carnival dreamscape, recalls Richard Avedon’s portraits. And "Live Bait," Sarah Brown’s odd animation, nods to Homer, with a grizzled Odyssean adventurer landing on an island inhabited by harpies.

The specimens in Package #3 (September 6 at 7:15 p.m. and September 7 at noon and 2:15 and 4:30 p.m.) range the most in quality and content. David Barba’s predictable but semi-stirring "XP" involves a boy who’s allergic to sunlight and has to wear a protective suit that makes him look like an alien. All the more alienating is Rolf Schrader’s science-fiction flop, the annoyingly acted and confusing "A.N.I." Mike Williamson’s "The Silvergleam Whistle" creates mounting suspense with a tale of a haunted train that sucks passengers from a macabre motel.

Paul Gutrecht’s "The Vest" and Erla Skúladóttir’s "Bjargvaettur/Savior" make Package #3 worthwhile. The former has a Wes Anderson pace and way: a feisty third-grade girl (the best actress in the shorts) narrates her story of stabbing a classmate with a pencil for making fun of her homemade vest. In the latter, the severe Icelandic landscape plays backdrop to another brassy protagonist’s odyssey into adulthood. It’s beautiful and flawless but for the cliché’d closing lines.

Package #4 (September 6 at 6:45 and 9:15 p.m. and September 7 at 12:15 and 2:30 p.m.) has mostly films by or about minorities. It gets off to a good start with Sharat Raju’s well-acted "American Made," a moving portrayal of what happens when an Indian family’s Jeep breaks down in post–September 11 America. Faith Pennick’s "Running on Eggshells" also hinges on September 11: in a monologue with flashbacks, an African-American business woman recounts her unraveling. The Sigur Rós soundtrack of Jeremy Rall’s "Keys of Life" accents the sadness of a just-dumped locksmith. Despite some lovely cinematography, Sue-Ling Braun’s opaque "Waiting River" is a dreary bore. And given its subject matter — an Albanian man fleeing Macedonia with his young son and then abandoning the boy in Venice — James Pellerito’s "Maree" is surprisingly un-wrenching.

Package #5 (September 6 at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and September 7 at 12:30 and 2:45 p.m.) is the weakest of the quintet. In Maureen Bradley’s hysterical "Blindspot," an angry father tries to run down his wife in an SUV. In Jaffar Mahmood’s ridiculous "Eastern Son," a woman who can’t have children finds her husband another wife. And in Andrew Lewis’s "Calling Gerry Molloy," harmless head games turn decidedly less playful for a couple expecting a baby.

More graphically violent is Patrick Smith’s animated "Delivery": in this tale of nightmarish rage between friends over a delivered package. Smith proves that cartoons can be scarier than live action. John Conroy depicts the dizzying nightmare of finding your spouse in bed with someone else in "Selfish Minds," where two strangers in various stages of relationship turmoil meet at a hotel. Jeff Strebinger’s "Negative," the festival’s final short, is about what a photographer has to sacrifice for fame. It lives up to its title — not a great way to end things.

— Nina MacLaughlin