S.F. International Film Festival

Saturday, April 24, 2 p.m., Kabuki

Silvia Prieto (Argentina, 1999)
Twenty-seven-year-old Silvia Prieto lives in Buenos Aires, is separated from her husband, and cooks lots of chicken. She works at a cafe, wearies of it, and gets a job handing out samples of Brite soap. Her co-worker hooks up with Silvia's husband and fixes Silvia up with her own out-of-work ex. Objects and relationships come and go; people get pregnant and married or they don't. Silvia Prieto has the latte-flavored anomie of a Sundance indie. (It was shown there this year.) Writer/director Martin Rejtman manages moments of quirky charm, but as Silvia comes to feel she doesn't know who she is, it's clear Rejtman doesn't either. (Joe Mader)

Saturday, April 24, 7:15 p.m., Kabuki; Tuesday, April 27, 9:40 p.m., Kabuki; Sunday, May 2, 9:15 p.m., Rafael

SLC Punk! (U.S.A., 1998)
In James Merendino's callow movie, Salt Lake City provides a picturesque backdrop -- full of great swaths of "nothing" -- to the tear-it-down punk shenanigans of the blue-haired Stevo (Matthew Lillard) and the mohawked Heroin Bob (Michael Goorjian). On its frenetic surface, the film offers a burlesque Baedeker of the mid-'80s youth scene in Squaresville, U.S.A.: Brit-inspired punks vs. Yank-inspired punks vs. Nazi punks, as well as mods, rockers, and cowboys. What it offers at its soft core is a view of adolescent rebellion as a goofy, inevitable phase. Stevo's season of protest winds down in the most shamelessly heart-tugging way. Even punks get the blues. (Michael Sragow)

Saturday, April 24, 11 p.m., Kabuki

The Terrorist (India, 1998)
Nineteen-year-old Malli, veteran of 30 successful revolutionary missions, interviews for a job as a "thinking bomb" -- she must blow up an unnamed, never-seen VIP as she garlands him and kneels at his feet (a scenario reminiscent of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination). As she prepares for her own annihilation and martyrdom, she is haunted by the memories and consequences of a mud-spattered interlude with a dying guerrilla. Along the way, strangers claim her as a member of their families in this mesmerizing, nonpolitical, literally breathtaking film that will keep you guessing at the heroine's motives to the end. (Frako Loden)

Thursday, April 22, 9:30 p.m., PFA; Saturday, April 24, 7 p.m., Saturday, April 24, 7 p.m., Kabuki; Tuesday, April 27, 9:20 p.m.,

Kabuki; Sunday, May 2, 3:30 p.m., Rafael

The Winslow Boy (U.S.A., 1999)
It's not surprising that there's less than meets the eye in David Mamet's handsome mounting of Terence Rattigan's oft-produced 1946 play. It is surprising that there's less than meets the ear. Rattigan treated a real Edwardian scandal as the subject of a gimmicky, sentimental crowd-pleaser, in which the royal naval academy expels a cadet for pilfering a postal order -- and the boy's father, believing in his innocence, turns the scandal into a cause. Mamet tries to use Rattigan's words to explore the ambiguity beneath stiff-upper-lip behavior. But unlike the characters in Rattigan's The Browning Version, the Winslow family and its lawyers can't support such scrutiny. Disregard forced comparisons to Bill Clinton's trials: This is nothing more than a dry, deft production of a minor theater piece. (Michael Sragow)

Thursday, April 22, 7 p.m., Castro

Xiao Wu (China/Hong Kong, 1997)
This directorial debut has the exciting, raw grace and semi-improvised feel of a Cassavetes film, and a doomed hero to match. Xiao Wu, a two-bit pickpocket with an insouciant swagger that fits him about as well as his shabby suit, is headed for a fall. He knows it and, of course, he can't quite stop it. This is one of those films that'll sneak up on you, tackling both its big themes (like how the future is rolling over the baffled, alarmingly unprepared rural Chinese) and small subjects (a portrait of the typically dilapidated town of Fenyang) with scruffy offhandedness. (Tod Booth)

Saturday, April 24, 1 p.m., Kabuki; Monday, April 26, 9 p.m., PFA; Sunday, May 2, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki