All That Show Must Go On

In interviews, Charlie Kaufman has floated the idea of building a scale-model Las Vegas in Las Vegas—which would entail building a scale-model scale-model Las Vegas, and within it a . . . well, you get the picture. That’s probably the easiest way to describe Kaufman’s dizzily ambitious directorial debut, a non-musical All That Jazz devoted to a terminal case (Philip Seymour Hoffman) riddled with the affliction of the age: impermeable layers of self-awareness, surveillance, and scrutiny that filter the living out of life. On one viewing, there’s much in it I neither understand completely nor love, yet if any film resists the demotion of movies to one-time consumables, it’s this one: a puzzlebox that only starts to unfold after it’s already been opened.
Jan. 15-28, 9:15 p.m.; Saturdays, Sundays, 4:30 p.m. Starts: Jan. 15. Continues through Jan. 28, 2009