Capsule Reviews

This astonishing documentary portrays an alien abduction right here on Earth. East Bay director Deann Borshay Liem traces her efforts to uncover the truth about her Korean origins after her adoption by Fremont Caucasians wiped out her pre-adoption memory. Plagued by strange dreams and visitations as an adult, she discovers through documents that her Korean family is alive and well and full of misgivings about putting her in an orphanage. Who is her real mother? She won't know until she sees them in the same room together. Liem's investigation also reveals disturbing facts about the phenomenon of international adoption, which thrives today. (Frako Loden)

Thursday, April 27, 1 p.m., AMC Kabuki (showing withOur Silent Traces); Thursday, April 27, 6:45 p.m., AMC Kabuki (showing withOur Silent Traces)

Hamlet (U.S.A., 2000)

Director Michael Almereyda transforms Hamlet into a Bret Easton Ellis novel. At least his film looks better than American Psycho, thanks to cinematographer John de Borman. But the limos, clubs, laptops, and slacker/hip hop duds render Shakespeare ludicrous rather than relevant. Ethan Hawke is good in a tender moment with Ophelia (Julia Stiles), but otherwise mopes or makes like Tom Cruise in full freakout. Liev Schreiber as Laertes is the only actor aware he's doing Shakespeare. Bill Murray brings his idiosyncratic put-ons to the role of Polonius, and the hilarious Steve Zahn as Rosencrantz bellows his Valley Dude cadences over a speakerphone. With Sam Shepard, Kyle MacLachlan, and Diane Venora. (Joe Mader)

Thursday, May 4, 7 p.m., Castro

Journey to the Sun (Turkey/Netherlands/ Germany, 1999)

This boring odyssey by director Yesim Ustaoglu purports to examine the plight of Turkish Kurds. Mehmet (Newroz Baz), whose dark skin causes him to be mistaken for a Kurd, falls in with Berzan (Nazmi Qirix), who is Kurdish. When Berzan dies in a riot, Mehmet decides to take Berzan's body away from Istanbul, back to his birthplace. He arrives there to find nothing left of the town. The movie arrives at nothing as well, although Mizgin Kapazan is very appealing as Mehmet's girlfriend. Their love scene (in which she teaches Mehmet a German phrase: "Ich liebe dich") has a liveliness missing elsewhere. (Joe Mader)

Wednesday, April 26, 9:15 p.m., PFA; Thursday, April 27, 7:10 p.m., AMC Kabuki

Kikujiro (Japan, 1999)

I was pleased to hear reports that director Takeshi Kitano (Hana-bi) was taking a new direction with this film, experimenting with a new persona besides the stone-cold killer he has played so often. To my disappointment, he has reverted to his television personality and previous incarnation as a manzai comic, verbally and physically abusing hapless sidekicks and mugging in front of the morose little boy he's reluctantly agreed to take on a trip to find the kid's mother. The relentlessly poignant music and cutesy-pie visual effects (including Kitano's own artwork) make a potentially heartfelt road movie maudlin instead. (Frako Loden)

Monday, May 1, 7 p.m., AMC Kabuki; Wednesday, May 3, 1 p.m., AMC Kabuki

The Letter (Portugal/France, 1999)

Ennui: The Movie would've been a better title for this lugubrious gabfest in which a married noblewoman burdened with goodness falls in love with Portuguese pop star Pedro Abrunhosa. The trouble is that the plot's fulcrum, Abrunhosa (played by himself in a bit of self-aggrandizement heretofore matched only by that other symbol of Gallic idolatry, Jerry Lewis), is an unlikely object of obsessive affection, given as he is to poetic flights of Neil Diamond-esque soul that have evidently stirred le tout Paris to its very marrow (you know he's a hepcat: He never takes off his goddamn sunglasses). Everyone in this movie talks about his feelings, often and repeatedly, like a Gertrude Stein novel but without the verbal economy -- "despair" and "hopelessness" are favorite buzzwords. (Matthew Stafford)

Wednesday, May 3, 9:30 p.m., AMC Kabuki; Thursday, May 4, 4 p.m., AMC Kabuki

Missing Boy (Sweden, 1999)

The story unfolds like a good detective thriller -- false leads, red herrings, sudden revelations, and all -- as an Indian man raised in Sweden returns to his roots to find his subcontinental family. Tove Torbiörnsson's engrossing documentary follows Jonathan Forsman and his invaluable associate, a bighearted, experience-savvy Bangalore cop, as they make their way across the Indian countryside in search of the past. Fabrics, regional foods, and the smell of native plant life jog the protagonist's memory, while blood tests and the layout of particular train stations offer further enticing clues. The brilliant saris and hypnotic ragas of modern India add further dazzle to this absorbing 27-year-old mystery. (Matthew Stafford)

Saturday, April 29, 7:30 p.m., AMC Kabuki; Monday, May 1, 1 p.m., AMC Kabuki

Moloch (Russia/Germany, 1999)

Hitler's last days have inspired some strange films -- who can forget Jerry Lewis' Which Way to the Front? with its scenes of slapstick in the bunker? -- but art-house fave Aleksandr Sokurov's Moloch has got to be one of the strangest. The film opens with Eva Braun doing naked cartwheels through a hallucinatory landscape, here the fog-drenched battlements of Berchtesgaden. Meanwhile, Adolf, seen frequently in his undershirt and boxers, is a hysterical hypochondriac, prattling mindlessly to his guests about phantom pains, gastric upset, and his impending doom. While probably the most conventional of Sokurov's recent works, the suffocatingly "beautiful" tableaux and grindingly slow pacing will send some viewers screaming for the exit; others will applaud the film's notion that Hitler is the ultimate proof of the "banality of evil." (Gary Morris)