"I can tell you know I'm hard of hearing," the octogenarian told The Transom, "because you speak so loudly and clearly."

It was the evening of Friday, May 20, and fashionable V.I.P.'s swirled about the room, creating a deafening din. The room was also blindingly white-white floor, white ceiling, white walls, white tulips.

Mr. Wexler went on to explain that while many filmmakers "figure out who to take advantage of as quickly as possible and then say, 'Adios, Mother,'" Mr. Sayles and Ms. Renzi are different. The couple, who received the Frederick Douglass Award that evening from the North Star Fund, a foundation which supports New York–based grassroots activists, knows that the "doing of art is as important as the art itself."

And Mr. Wexler ought to know, after collaborating on four films with the couple: Matewan, Limbo, The Secret of Roan Inish and their most recent (and least successful) film, the Bush-bashing Silver City.

Mr. Sayles, an aging Marlboro Man, was asked if after all these years, his collaborator, Mr. Wexler, still "had it."

"Of course!" responded Mr. Sayles. Distractingly, a thick shock of salt-and-pepper chest hair burst forth from the unbuttoned collar of his blue shirt.

Mr. Sayles, who is 6-foot-4, assumed a wide balletic second position to converse with The Transom eye to eye.

"He doesn't hear very well-but he's not a sound man, he's a cinematographer!" Mr. Sayles said. He started writing when he was 14 years old, on a typewriter he purchased with money earned shoveling snow in Schenectady, N.Y. He said that he chose to write fiction in his pubescent years in the upstate factory town because "you can write without any money."

Today, Mr. Sayles makes money writing the scripts for blockbusters like his current project, the pending multiplex feature Jurassic IV (although production is on hold at the moment).

Mr. Sayles told The Transom that an early version of the script was intercepted online by an audacious hacker, who also offered his opinion of it.

"It amazes me that people are that obsessed with reading Steven Spielberg's mail," he said. (The online review describes the script as the "single most bugfuck crazy franchise sequel" the reviewer had ever read.)

After the cocktail hour, a mini-documentary on the filmmaking team, Mr. Sayles and Ms. Renzi, was followed by a tearful testimonial from the mini-actress Vanessa Martinez.

She is best known from her role in Mr. Sayles' Casa de los Babys, for which the towering Mr. Sayles must have dropped to a split to direct the petite actress. Wild-eyed actor Chris Cooper, his wife, Marianne Leone (Christopher Moltisanti's Mama from The Sopranos), and character actor David Strathairn also voiced in enough niceties to prompt Ms. Renzi, a former Catholic, to thank everyone for turning this evening into "the bat mitzvah she never had."

Although Ms. Renzi was delighted to receive the Frederick Douglass Award with her husband-who has also received the Ian McKellan Hunter Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the John Steinbeck Award on his own-she made it clear that she was still sore that no one saw their most recent film, Silver City.

Undaunted by their first flop in political moviemaking, the indefatigable Mr. Wexler proceeded to give a rousing, rambling political speech.

As he became more impassioned, fuming about the Newsweek scandal and the "nuclear option," he looked like an aging, angry Christopher Walken.

"If I am an artist, I am going to do something about this turn to fascism!" he said, and brought the house down.

-Raquel Hecker

Toys of Summer

Toss a hibachi on the fire escape: Barbecue season is nigh. As Memorial Day draws closer, the siren song of charcoal has already seduced the folks over at H&M and Cosmopolitan, who invited assorted fashionistas to the Hotel Gansevoort last Thursday for a colossal rooftop cookout.

This was a cookout in the most literal sense: The cooks were out, grilling on the deck, while the guests stayed in. Sheltered from the cool night air, they helped themselves to hamburgers and hot dogs from indoor buffet tables and plucked morsels of skewered swordfish from circulating trays.

"I'm not cold; I had three glasses of wine," laughed 21-year-old Kelly Briter, a bikini-clad H&M model who stood by the buffet. She chatted enthusiastically with her male-model brethren, who also wore swimwear, and twisted a wide scarf in her hands flirtatiously. Yes, we're all in H&M, down to our flip-flops, they concurred. And isn't the Gansevoort great?

"When you look at the Soho House roof from here," Ms. Briter said breathlessly, "it looks really pitiful."

Easy to spot in the crowd was the shaven, sunglass-crowned head of stylist Robert Verdi, the top brass on E!'s Fashion Police. Fully dressed in a dapper, somewhat daffy floral blazer, the tall Mr. Verdi had a good vantage point from which to soak up the clothes-and lack thereof-around him. "I like to see other people in bathing suits, because I look so bad in them," Mr. Verdi said pointedly. "I don't do nude or bathing suits. I'm rich, so I don't have to be naked anymore."

Though he was eager to heap praise on H&M, Mr. Verdi had one bone to pick: boys in board shorts. "I always think board shorts look particularly abnormal in an urban environment," he said, rolling his eyes. "Why are you wearing board shorts?" he demanded to no one in particular. "There's no wave to be seen on Seventh Avenue. Catch the fashion wave!" He waved his own hand in a fluid example.

Keen-eyed culture vultures spotted a few other television transients nosing through the crowd. Siberia Federico, who played Tony's mistress on The Sopranos before the role was passed on to Oksana Babiy, was around, and so was Willie Hernandez from MTV's The Real World: Philadelphia.

Though the party was a kickoff for H&Mpire's newest territory, a "poolside" line for summer, no one was quite prepared to test the waters-or the swimsuits-with a few laps in the Gansevoort's heated pool. A bunch of plastic mannequins, scantily dressed in their beachy best, was arranged "poolside." From a distance, it was possible to mistake their stiffness for hypothermia. Or maybe just ennui. Either way, they sat, stood and gawked frozenly at one of their colleagues, a long-haired Lothario who drifted around the pool on an equally plastic raft, sporting board shorts and a blind stare.

For the most part, the only live people near the pool were drunken couples. "No, Hamish, don't!" squealed one woman, as her boyfriend lifted her toward the edge. A guy dropped his cocktail glass into the water and grinned. As he walked away, another fellow took a digital picture of the floating vessel with mischievous glee.

Also enjoying the pool deck were a pair of goody-bag pilferers who-one per person!-came to compress their spoils of war. The two women, toting three bags each, struggled fruitlessly to cram them all into a giant black tote. "You've got to consolidate!" one of them advised.

Leaning over the railing, we could see a projector sending a beam through the night, aimed at a blank brick façade across the street. A hazy sequence of catalog images played across the distant wall: models having fun, bright summer sun, board shorts. Below and to the right, we could also spot the roof of Soho House, where the pool deck glowed like an empty oasis, surrounded with shrubbery and all but deserted. We clicked our heels together three times-four, even!-but our luck had run out. However "pitiful," paradise felt far away, and summer further still.

-Jessica Bruder

Oylem Goylem

"I think she looks tired. She needs a little R and R," said the voice of Cheryl Stoever, a senior at Marymount Manhattan College, during an alternate audio tour that her class developed for MoMA.

Ms. Stoever was discussing Cindy Sherman's Film Still 92.

"But, I mean, nobody even discussed … we haven't even discussed, like, her hair being … I mean, is it wet because she just got out of the shower? I mean, she's in clothes. Is she, like … did she just go for a run? Is it sweaty?"

Finally, she and her co-commentators reached agreement: In this particular self-portrait, Ms. Sherman looked like she'd just returned from field-hockey practice.

Ms. Stoever, her professor, Dr. David Gilbert, and two other students descended on MoMA Tuesday morning to field-test their handiwork. Wrapping up a semester in Organizational Communication, they'd developed audio commentaries for nine different pieces in MoMA's collection and posted their work as a podcast on the Internet. Visitors to their Web site (http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs) are invited to download the unofficial guide, which includes commentary-"more sardonic than saccharine" and strangely kinky, to boot-original music and a dramatic reinterpretation of Max Pechstein's Pair of Dancers, which stars a professor in the role of an absinthe-addled accountant.

"We don't have to be passive consumers of art," explained Dr. Gilbert, extolling the virtues of digital democracy. "We're inviting anybody on the Web who can do it-and there are a lot of people that can now-to produce their own guide to some little corner of MoMA and to send it to us, e-mail it to us."

In the fall, he noted, a group of students from Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey would be signing on to help "remix" MoMA, adding their own alternatives to the list of unauthorized tours.

"Most of the walking tours that you get-you know, with the headsets-are pretty informational and don't really tell you a lot about the art," explained Ms. Stoever. "I was really inspired by The Daily Show, when they spoke about The Gates. It was kind of a parody on an art historian discussing them and making fun of the simplicity of them and, you know, the minimalist aspects and whatever. And meanwhile, while they're making fun of them, they were still making complete, like, art-historical sense. Everything they said was true and factual."

As they roamed the museum, Dr. Gilbert and his entourage scouted potential prey, seeking someone ripe for an audio fix. Just around the corner from Jackson Pollock's Echo Number 25, they found Bernard Rubin, a 61-year-old dentist who was visiting from Toronto. As his wife-"second wife, of 10 and a half years," he clarified-looked on, Mr. Rubin donned a pair of iPod headphones and settled, shifting from foot to foot, in front of the Pollock.

Had Mr. Rubin been listening to the official tour, this is what he would have heard:

"Perhaps the painting captures the nervous intensity of the modern city; or perhaps it recalls the primal rhythms of nature."

This is what he heard instead: "I think that you could even go so far as to say Pollock was acting as the libido for 1950's Americana as a whole. He was a big, drunken phallus, and he was good at it … and his paintings are big."

The audio track concluded with an aside about horses, which morphed into the banged-together coconut hoofbeats from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

When Dr. Rubin removed the headphones 10 minutes later, he looked a bit bewildered. "There's an expression in Yiddish that's called Oylem goylem: 'The world is a fool.' So he laughs all the way to the bank," said Dr. Rubin of Jackson Pollock. But did the audio guide broaden his vision? "Well, you have to stretch 'Oh, this is erotic-maybe I see a bunch of lines over there,'" he said derisively. "My 4-year-old granddaughter could do that."

Perhaps the iPodders should have picked another painter?

"I think," Dr. Gilbert concluded, "that he would have been better with the Chagall."

-J.B.

The frequently heard rap on Mr. Sayles then and ever since was that his heart was in the right place, but his mise en scène was just wrong. And though the intelligently articulate dialogue he wrote for his characters should've been more appreciated, it was instead damned with faint praise as proof that Mr. Sayles was too glib to bother being "cinematic"-which nowadays means visual illiteracy embellished with expensive special effects.

Nonetheless, Silver City does seem more like the work of a nuanced novelist than of a dynamic visual and dramatic talent. Instead, there is a familiar sobriety to the film that attests to Mr. Sayles' deep respect for all his characters; the good, the shady and the poor wretches caught in between. Throughout his career, Mr. Sayles has displayed a special concern for losers in a market that pays top dollar for fantasies about winners.

Silver City 's Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston) is a case in point. Caught in a setup, poor Danny is fired not once but twice; first in his job as a crusading reporter against official corruption, and then as an establishment investigator hired by the Karl Rove–like Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss). Mr. Raven is the campaign manager for Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dickie Pilager (Chris Cooper), a George W. Bush–like dim bulb and son of Senator Judson Pilager (Michael Murphy). The Pilager dynasty, we learn, has pillaged the Colorado environment for generations. So when a lakeside campaign commercial for Dickie Pilager backfires-he hooks a human corpse during a fly-fishing trip-Chuck Raven suspects dirty tricks by the opposition, and hires Danny O'Brien to check up on some anti-Pilager hotheads and warn them that they're being watched. But during the course of his assignment, Danny stumbles across a bothersome murder mystery implicating the powers-that-be in a tangled web of corporate malfeasance and police corruption.

Of course, when using allegorical names like "Pilager" and "Raven" (and "Dickie"), one is already on the verge of cartoonish caricature of one's political adversaries. But Mr. Sayles possesses too subtle a sensibility to make the enemy completely ridiculous. Hence, Dickie may be a little slow on the uptake and a little maladroit in his unrehearsed comments to the press and the public, but he is never a complete nitwit, any more than is our own George W. Bush. In fact, Silver City ends with Raven and his candidate about to emerge triumphant with the help of crooked law enforcement, ruthless corporate behavior and a public gullible enough to swallow Dickie Pilager's poison-pill cure for all our social ills with the magic word, "privatization"-which here is concerned with "liberating" the natural wilderness from the hobbling regulations of pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington.

I must express some strong reservations about Mr. Sayles' treatment of the neo-noir elements in his film. These involve the somewhat confusing discoveries of human-rights violations against illegal Mexican immigrants, and the violation of obscure environmental and worker-safety standards in mining the silver that gives the film its title. Mr. Sayles indulges in too many cryptic conversations of a paranoid nature-people talking about selling out or not selling out to some unseen and seemingly invincible force. The sci-fi elements are not surprising, considering that Mr. Sayles has dabbled in the subject both as a screenwriter and writer-director. It's not a surprise either that Mr. Sayles doesn't take the other side-political activists-at face value; indeed, he leaves open the possibility that the slick, smooth evildoers are driving men and women of conscience stark raving mad.

In many ways, Silver City is Mr. Sayles' most pessimistic film since Limbo (1999), which had a dangerously unresolved and utterly depressing ending. This time around, I'm already depressed by the direction political campaigning has taken, using the Big Lie as a campaign tactic for a susceptible public and a compliant press that has ignored its mission of truth-seeking investigative journalism. (Thank God for Michael Moore, Jon Stewart and several comic strips, not including the pernicious and fallacious Fillmore .) In this context, Mr. Sayles seems to have intended Silver City as a wake-up call to all us potentially complacent anti-Bushites. He needn't have gone to all the trouble of alerting us, since everything I read and hear from our side is full of doom and gloom. As it happens, the grotesque spectacle provided by both Chris Cooper's Dickie Pilager and George W. Bush's George W. Bush is painful to watch in light of its apparent success at mass persuasion.

In the realm of nuance, Mr. Sayles is capable of making distinctions between various shadings of right-wing ideology. Thus, one of Dickie's and Chuck's most bothersome antagonists is an even nuttier, ultra-conservative radio motormouth, Cliff Castleton (Miguel Ferrer), who finds Dickie too "liberal" for his taste. Another thorn in Chuck's side is Dickie's flaky sister, Maddy Pilager (Daryl Hannah), who is on the outs with her whole family and everything it stands for, though her behavior is much too erratic and drug-induced to do anything damaging. Except, that is, to our foolish protagonist, Danny, who allows himself to be seduced by the irresponsible Maddy, and who then gets fired by Chuck after Maddy boasts of her conquest to him. I frankly didn't know what to make of this turn of events: Is Mr. Sayles suggesting that the opposition to the predators is so fragmented and eccentric that there is no hope of stopping them? If so, why bother raising a stink on-screen over the inevitable? Yet that is precisely what Mr. Sayles does with his final, apocalyptic image of dead fish floating on a corporation-polluted lake. Dickie is seemingly on his way to the governor's mansion, and all is well with the predatory Pilagers. I can only hope that Mr. Sayles is being unduly pessimistic, but hope is fading with every turn of the news cycle. There is nothing to do but pray for some last-minute redemption of our land from the better-organized kleptocrats in our midst, be they the stooges at Harken Energy or Halliburton or the hordes of overcompensated C.E.O.'s across the length and breadth of our ravaged landscape.

Czech Mate

Ondrej Trojan's Zelary , from a screenplay by Petr Jarchovsky (written in Czech with English subtitles), based on the autobiographical novella Josova Hanule by Kveta Legátová, was one of the five Academy Award nominees this year for Best Foreign-Language Film. The film goes back more than 60 years to the wartime occupation of Czechoslovakia, first by the Germans and later by the victorious Soviet Army. In the first scenes, Eliska (Anna Geislerová) is introduced abruptly, without any expository dialogue, engaged in an urbane sex scene with her lover. We are later told that her lover is a surgeon named Richard, with whom Eliska works as a nurse, her own medical education having been interrupted by the Nazi occupation. Richard, Eliska and their friend, Dr. Chiasek, all belong to the same resistance group. One night, Richard and Eliska are interrupted in their lovemaking by an emergency call from the hospital: A farmer named Joza (György Cserhalmi) has been badly injured and is near death. When Richard determines that Joza requires an immediate blood transfusion to survive, Eliska is the only person on hand with a matching blood type.

Shortly thereafter, Dr. Chiasek rushes to Eliska with terrible news. The Gestapo has arrested two members of their resistance group. Richard has fled the country and Eliska must take a new identity as Hana and meld into rural existence with Joza the farmer as her husband in Zelary. The rest of the film is devoted to her eventual adaptation to a new life that initially repels her with its primitive ways and lack of cultural amenities. At first she is cold toward Joza, but when confronted with the alternative-the Gestapo and its wide network of informers-she buckles down to her new life. For his part, Joza is so grateful to Eliska for saving his life that he has no problem being patient with her.

Life in Zelary turns out to be less than idyllic. The natives are violently hot-blooded even when they're not being harassed by the Germans and, later, the Russians; ultimately, the consequences are tragic for both Eliska/Hana and the courageous Joza. Among the melodramatic incidents are rapes, murders and miscarriages-and that's not counting the depredations of the Nazis ahead of the oncoming drunken hordes of Russians, who see Germans everywhere, even killing the harmless villagers.

Zelary ends up as a bittersweet epic of survival in a desperate period in Czech history. The slow-building love story between the city mouse Eliska and the country mouse Joza provides the mythological heart of the narrative. It's made more convincing by the fact that the actress playing Eliska was Czech and the actor playing Joza Hungarian, and neither spoke the other's language except when reading lines in the script. In fact, the Czech actress insisted that the Hungarian actor not converse with her in any language except when they were in character for a scene.

This radical search for realism seems to confirm the director's own methods, as reflected in his Director's Statement: "Our film is cruel, beautiful, moving, raw, but above all else, true and honest. I tried to shoot it simply, unpretentious[ly], without using crutches but also providing the actors with space so individual scenes could be filmed in real time. The actors could then play themselves and be emotionally natural."

I would say that Mr. Trojan has succeeded in his objective by surmounting the horrors of a real-life time and place with a romantic dramatization of great love flowering on dangerous soil.

Non-Linear Love

Christoffer Boe's Reconstruction , from a screenplay by Mr. Boe and Mogens Rukov, reflects the influence of such recent experiments with so-called "fractured narrative" as Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000) and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001). The situation is this: Two people meet for the first time in Copenhagen. Having spent one perfect night together, they decide to cut loose from the complacency of their existing lives and risk everything to be together. At least, that's the beginning as described in the production notes. But it's not exactly the way the story is told on-screen. We're first introduced to the story by a deus ex machina narrator who explains that the film is engaged in the processes of construction and reconstruction in piecing together its narrative. The story, as described in the synopsis, actually begins with an initially unidentified man picking up an initially unidentified woman in a bar, as if they'd never seen each other before. One thing leads to another, and they end up together in her bedroom.

Only gradually do we realize that the man is a Danish photographer named Alex David (Nikolaj Lie Kass) and the woman is named Aimee Holm (Maria Bonnevie). While waiting for his girlfriend Simone (also played by Maria Bonneville), Alex catches his first glimpse of Aimee and they exchange meaningful eye contact with each other. When Simone joins him and gets on a train with him, he keeps looking back at Aimee, and when she gets off at the next stop, Alex makes his excuses to Simone and runs after Aimee. They end up in the same bar where we originally assumed the first pick-up occurred.

To shuffle the narrative cards a little further, Aimee is roaming the streets of Copenhagen because she feels neglected by her writer-husband August Holm, who is too busy finishing a love story very similar to the one we're watching on the screen. He and his wife have come to Copenhagen from Sweden for his book tour. August is clearly obsessed with his writing, but he is also emotionally needy with respect to his wife, and he dreads the prospect of ever losing her to another man.

Meanwhile, Alex blithely returns to his apartment after his night with Aimee and discovers that his room has been boarded up, the door with a new lock in place. When he confronts his landlady downstairs, she denies that she ever rented the room to him. Suddenly, his whole prior existence begins to unravel as, in turn, Simone, his best friend and even his own father deny ever having known him.

From then on, his only recourse is to be reunited with Aimee, and even here he miscalculates-with disastrous consequences. Ultimately, the narrative becomes too hypothetical for its good, but it succeeds in holding one's attention with its romantic intensity and sheer old-fashioned glamour. The fact that the same actress plays two rivals in the game of love by using different hairdos and coloring automatically softens the sting of Alex's multiple betrayals and hesitations: It's as if he's caught in a maze not of his own construction. The three actors for four parts perform with uncommon insight and conviction to make even the film's most labored ambiguities seem intermittently plausible.

We've learned some valuable lessons this week : The city can survive the constant threat of terrorism , sudden electrical blackouts, the G.O.P. and 100,000 hippies, but can be brought to its knees by rain ; that no matter how many times we read Real Simple , our closet is still a disaster; and that Fashion Week schwag is only fun for five minutes, before it turns into just more junk to pile up on our desk. Today another Fashion Week draws to a close (ker- plunk !), and there's no doubt an underweight portion of the city is feeling the aftereffects of the blitzkrieg of too much champagne, bright lights and Moby music. Closing it down is bastion of classic prep Ralph Lauren , no doubt showing something elegant and vaguely tweedy. Ciao , Fashion Week! Sundown marks the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana. For those hip young Jewish guys out there who either think the High Holy Days involves a bong and Channel 35 or only vaguely remember something to do with itchy woolen clothes, temple and some apples with honey, the Jewish Enrichment Center presents "Curb Your Judiasm." Matt Mindell , former actor (he played Guy on Saved by the Bell ) turned rebbe , explained: "I think a lot of people have a misconstrued vision of Judaism, and we want people to curb their perceptions. Besides, I think Larry David is a comic genius." The J.E.C. offers a two-hour service and meal. It's also a great time to drop that WASP-y, repressed, good-for-nothing drinker and find yourself a fellow tribesman: "The people that come to us are mainly in their 20's and 30's, and 95 percent of them are single," Mr. Mindell yenta'd out on us. "Believe it or not, we've had 11 or 12 marriages come out of the last five years." If nothing else, it will make your mother happy-which, by the way, is a mitzvah .

[Ralph Lauren spring 2005 collection, the Annex, 545 West 22nd Street, 10 a.m., by invitation only; Rosh Hashana service, Shelburne Murray Hill Hotel, 202 Lexington Avenue, dinner to follow at the Jewish Enrichment Center, 176 Madison Ave,

6 p.m., www.jeconline.com.]

Thursday 16th

Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold …. The press-shy S.E. Hinton , best-selling author of teen favorites like The Outsiders , Rumblefish and That Was Then, This is Now , makes a rare appearance in New York today to discuss her new novel, Hawkes Harbor . Speaking from her Oklahoma home, Ms. Hinton explained why she ventured into adult-fiction territory for the first time. "I wanted to start writing again and to move on to something different," she said. "Also, I was living with a teenager, which makes it awfully hard to drum up sympathy for one." The novel, which she describes as "when the worst thing that can happen to you turns out to be the best," tells the story of an orphan suffering from partial amnesia, depression and fear of the dark (the last bit we can totally relate to). "I felt a lot of freedom writing for adults this time," Ms. Hinton said, adding, "I even got to write a racy scene, which I've been wanting to try for some time." At the Columbus Circle Borders inside the Time Warner mothership, Ms. Hinton will give a short talk and participate in a Q&A session, preparing herself for the inevitable questions about The Outsiders , a book she wrote when she was 16 years old. "It's always going to be my most popular book," she said. "I find it rewarding that generation after generation loves it." Meanwhile, the Corner Bookstore presents readings from a new book about William Maxwell , the late writer and longtime New Yorker fiction editor (his era predated the magazine's young-braless-women-in-Vaseline-lensed-photos-accompanying-their-stories trend). Expect writers such as Ben Cheever , Paula Fox , Alec Wilkinson and Donna Tartt -hey, is she back ?-to read from A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations .

[S.E. Hinton bookstore signing, Borders, 10 Columbus Circle, 7 p.m., www.tor.com/hinton; readings from A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations , the Corner Bookstore, 1313 Madison Avenue, 6 p.m., 212-831-3554.]

Friday 17th

Just like the absence of outdoor seating and the introduction of butternut squash onto our local diner's menu, here's another sign that summer's over : benefits for serious events. To wit, the Second Annual New York AIDS Film Festival (which runs till the 23rd, when Meryl "I *Heart* Accents" Streep presents Angels in America 's Mike Nichols with the festival's highest honor) kicks off tonight with "The Red Ball" at the usually wanked-out Hudson hotel . Women are required to wear red ball gowns-not as an homage to creepy feminist favorite The Handmaid's Tale like we initially thought, but, according to its flack, "because besides being visually striking and fun, it reminds people they are there for a cause." Due to perform are the ladies of Broadway, among them: Hairspray 's Laura Bell Bundy, Mama Mia! 's Karen Mason, Cabaret 's Kate Shindle and The Boy From Oz 's Isabel Keating . Further south, Downtown for Democracy -a group whose press release states its goal "to invigorate progressive politics by mobilizing Americans who share our liberal values but don't usually participate in politics" (meaning just about everyone we know)-presents John Sayles' new film, Silver City . The movie, which stars the increasingly pickled-looking Richard Dreyfuss , Chris ( American Beauty ) Cooper, Thora (also American Beauty ) Birch and Kris ( A Star Is Born ) Kristofferson, is described as "a scathing political satire about a grammatically challenged, born-again candidate from a wealthy right-wing political dynasty who fumbles his way toward elected office." Nope, don't sound like any President we know! For a $25 donation (read: ticket ), you can see Mr. Sayles himself introduce the screening and attend a drinks thing at Soho bar the Dove, with complimentary Brooklyn Lager ( burp !). But $125 buys you into a catered reception with something called "Potocki cocktails" (no relation to the Governor, we think) and a late-night screening on 19th Street (which has much better seats, we presume). If this isn't democracy in action, we don't know what is.

[Second Annual New York AIDS Festival's the Red Ball, the Hudson Hotel, 356 West 58th Street, 7 to 11 p.m., 212-592-1950; Downtown for Democracy's evening with John Sayles, screenings at B.A.M.,

30 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, 6:30 p.m.; Loews Village VII, 66 Third Avenue at 11th Street, 7 p.m.; and Loews 19th Street East, 890 Broadway, 10:30 p.m.;

www.downtownfordemocracy.org.]

Saturday 18th

A- ha ! A conflicting sign that, while summer is almost over, winter is not quite here yet: the street fair. The Kitchen , a center for "artists whose art influences its medium and culture" (we were completely thrown by the misnomer, too), celebrates its fall 2004 season with a fair that "celebrates the diversity of the West Chelsea community." Uhhh, isn't that community really just a stampede of dudes in tight shirts with ripped abs who sorta look like the "grooming" guy on Queer Eye ? Expect artist booths, street performers ( meep! ), the Slavic band Zlatne Uste, a.k.a. Golden Lips (we're not kidding), puppets, stilt-walking and food from local eateries. Whatever-it's free. Further north and east (both geographically and spiritually) at the Leo Castelli gallery, flag immortalizer Jasper Johns' Prints from the Low Road Studio starts its six-week run. More art with flags, this time in Southampton (which was, like, so two weeks ago): The Southampton Historical Museum presents The Red, White and Blue in Black and White: 9/11 , which consists of photographs of flags taken by John Jonas Gruen in the aftermath of Sept. 11. If you're uninterested in flags and willing to give be barraged by some "ethnic humor," ride your show pony to Joe's Pub for "What I Like About Jew." Hosted by singer Sean Altman and writer/singer Rob Tannenbaum and featuring stand-up Todd Berry , former Screw publisher Al Goldstein and singer/actress/writer Cynthia Kaplan , the organizers promise "an unorthodox night of songs and comedy." Remember the good old days when Jews just sat quietly around hating themselves?

[Kitchen Neighborhood Street Fair, 19th Street between 10th and 11th avenues,

2 to 5 p.m., 212-255-5793, ext. 10; Jasper Johns, Prints from the Low Road Studio , Leo Castelli, 18 East 77th Street,

www.leocastelli.com; The Red, White and Blue in Black and White: 9/11 , the Southampton Historical Museum,

Rogers Mansion, 17 Meeting House Lane, Southampton, 5 to 7 p.m., 631-283-2494; "What I Like About Jew," Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette Street, 7:30 p.m., 212-539-8778.]

Sunday 19th

Give your regards to Broadway at the 18th Annual Broadway Flea Market, an event that benefits the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a nonprofit fund-raising organization. Not a flea market in the traditional sense (read: no cracked teacups, vintage coats or mirrors from the 70's), one has the opportunity to buy that hard-to-find Jesus Christ Superstar record or pose at the Celebrity Autograph Table with stars such as Hairspray' s Peter Scolari (ask him about his Bosom Buddies co-star, Tom Hanks , and see if his head will explode!), Wicked 's Carole Shelley , Annie Get Your Gun 's Larry Storch or Christopher Guest favorite Michael McKean. Speaking of which, it's not often that drag-show performers make a name for themselves north of 14th Street. However, Kiki & Herb have been (as their press release reads) "blowing minds and breaking hearts around the world since 1985." The duo features Kiki, a brash, boozy vocalist, and Herb, her shy accompanist, belting out songs by artists ranging from Britney Spears to Eminem, all while delivering crippling one-liners. Their Carnegie Hall gig tonight is their farewell New York City performance, as star Justin Bond (Kiki) will be moving to London a mere four days after the show. "You wouldn't believe how crazy it's been," said Mr. Bond, who will be pursing his M.A. in scenography at Central Saint Martins College in England. "I think, since we're playing Carnegie Hall, every single person I know is planning to be in New York that weekend." Is Mr. Bond made apprehensive by the 2,800 seats that will be filled that evening? "Oh, please-it's fantastic !" he drawled, Kiki-style. "The bigger, the better."

[Broadway Flea Market & Grand Auction, Shubert Alley and West 44th Street, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., www.broadwaycares.org;

Kiki & Herb Will Die For You , Carnegie Hall, 154 West 57th Street, 8 p.m., www.carnegiehall.org.]

Monday 20th

Unbelievably enough, it's Monday again , but there's plenty to do, so grab a double latte, push your hip fat back into your jeans, ladies, and follow the smell of girl power to Avery Fisher Hall for the Seventh Annual "Mothers & Shakers" Awards Luncheon, with keynote speaker and rumored Presidential candidate John Kerry. " Redbook is a magazine that's dedicated to the young married woman who has to balance it all-being a wife, mother, professional, etc.," explained editor in chief Stacy Morrison. "We're celebrating that incredible spirit." Expected 2004 honorees include multilinguist Teresa Heinz Kerry , the always-lovely Uma Thurman , vampire-slaying Sarah Michelle Gellar and she-looked-better-when-she-was-pudgy Sopranos gal Jamie-Lynn DiScala . September 'tis the season of the book-release party, it seems, and tonight New York magazine's saucy porno columnist Amy Sohn celebrates the publication of her second novel, My Old Man . "It's about a May-December affair from the perspective of the young woman," explained Ms. Sohn. "But it also deals with her relationship with her father, who is the other old man." Ms. Sohn was looking forward to her party at Lotus , which will have themed drinks called "My Old Man" and "My Young Girl" ("I'm not sure what's going to be in them yet," admitted Ms. Sohn) and a buttload of well-wishers, estimated at anywhere between 100 and 500. "I sort of just whipped out the old Rolodex," said Ms. Sohn, "and may have even invited a few ex-boyfriends, but I won't tell my husband which ones."

[ Redbook 's Mothers & Shakers Awards, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, Broadway at 65th Street, 11:30 a.m., by invitation only; My Old Man book party, Lotus,

409 West 14th Street, 6:30 to 9 p.m.,

by invitation only.]

Tuesday 21st

"Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day" is today, and if we've learned anything from Bubba's recent medical scare, it's a) that you sometimes have to pipe up when something's wrong, and b) don't cheat on your wife ! ( Kidding, sir!) In that spirit, the North General Hospital on Madison Avenue offers free confidential screenings, perfect for the paranoid and hypochondriac in all of us. Off island , Mike Loew and Joe Garden of the humor magazine The Onion , along with co-writer Randy Ostrow , read and sign copies of their new book, Citizen You: Helping Your Government Help Itself , in Park Slope. As one might expect, Citizen You is a satirical "Patriotic Handbook" that includes such helpful instructions as how to tell if your neighbors are in Al Qaeda , how to say no to terror sex and how to convince yourself we are winning the war in Iraq. "It's really one of those situations where you have to laugh to keep from crying, " said Mr. Loew, a soft-spoken transplant who moved from Wisconsin with the rest of The Onion 's staff four years ago. "We wanted to be honest about how we felt about the state of the nation today." Mr. Loew, who worried the Republican convention was a sign of things to come, said that the Brooklyn reading would be more of a presentation, starting with the authors' own prayer to open the event. "Last week we did a prayer for all the Republican delegates to go back to their peaceably rectangular states," said Mr. Loew. If you haven't enough benefit in your diet for this week, check out former Talking Heads singer and wild bicycle rider David Byrne, who performs tonight with Brazilian pop star Gilberto Gil at Town Hall. Presented by Wired magazine- who knew they still published? -the concert benefits Creative Commons, the nonprofit organization whose goal is to challenge the expanded limit for federal copyrights. Watch for lots of bald guys in square glasses in the audience. And if you're playing the Tuesday-is-the-new-Thursday game, kiss summer's sweet ass goodbye at El Rey del Sol's end of summer party. For $25 a person (the invite instructs you to write "margarita party" in the memo section of your check), you can have said margarita, eat some Mexican food, stare at the sky and wonder what you the hell you did with the last three months of your life.

["Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day," North General Hospital, 1879 Madison

Avenue, 8:30 a.m. to noon, 212-423-4905; Citizen You: Helping Your Government Help Itself reading, Park Slope Barnes & Noble, 267 Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn,

7 p.m., www.citizenyou.com; David Byrne and Gilberto Gil benefit for Creative Commons, the Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, 8 p.m., www.ticketmaster.com; End of Summer Party, El Ray del Sol, 232 West 14th Street, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., 212-838-9410.]

Wednesday 22nd

Happy first day of autumn, suckers! The air is fresher, the leaves are brighter, the drop in humidity makes our hair look better, and there's less sticky knees to rub against on the subway. But anyway, today Seventeen magazine (the magazine you read back in the day when you wished to be older) celebrates its 60th anniversary with a screening of First Daughter , starring former Creeker Katie Holmes . Or skip it and try to crash the after-party at Marquee. If you have curly hair, just tell them your name is Atoosa.

[ Seventeen 's 60th-anniversary First Daughter screening, Clearview Chelsea West Theater, 333 West 23rd Street, 7 p.m.; Marquee after-party, 289 Tenth Avenue, 10 p.m., by invitation only.]

Quiet Car of the Acela Regional Express as it rolled out of Boston's South

Station on Friday, July 30, when a slightly rumpled guy boarded the train, a

Democratic National Convention credential still slung around his neck.

The man began talking-quite loudly-about Senator John Kerry's

speech the night before, and how great he thought Barack Obama's speech had

been earlier in the week. Did he have fun? someone asked him. Yeah, "but I

worked my ass off!" he shouted. It soon became clear that the one loud man in

the otherwise quiet Quiet Car was none other than Al Franken: comedian,

Bush-basher and all-around loudmouth.

The train announcer-and the other passengers-were not impressed.

A little bell rang, and a heavily Boston-accented voice boomed through the

loudspeaker: "THIS IS THE QUIET CAR! If you're sitting in THE QUIET CAR, you

can't use cell phones and conversation must be kept to a minimum!" When the

announcer stopped, the passengers started in on Mr. Franken. One walked up to

him and made it clear that the announcement was meant for him. "O.K., O.K.,"

Mr. Franken said. "SHHHH!" said another man, sitting a few rows behind the

comedian. Then the announcer came on again, just as loudly, reminding

passengers to live up to the Quiet Car's name.

Asked about it later by The Transom, Mr. Franken seemed rather

humbled. "I didn't know it was a Quiet Car," he replied. "I was stupid. But

when I got shushed, I shut up. For the next three hours and 27 minutes, I

didn't make any loud noises. I went in between the cars to make a phone call."

-Rachel Donadio

Dubya's Double

John Sayles, join the club. With his newest film, Silver City -a sardonic account of a

fictional Colorado gubernatorial candidate from a prominent political dynasty

caught in an election-year scandal-the writer/director is the latest filmmaker

hoping to unseat the Bush administration.

"What you hope is that some of these documentaries, as they're

coming out now, and a fiction film like Silver

City don't have to be post-mortem," Mr. Sayles said over the phone from his

New York office about the timing of the film's release. "That they can help

people, through getting into the conversation, make decisions that will stop

things that are negative, that will turn things in a better direction."

The film is a political thriller with the tone of Barry

Levinson's 1997 political lampoon Wag the

Dog . Since it will be released on Sept. 17, as the election really begins

to heat up, Mr. Sayles hopes that the subject matter will draw a large and

varied audience. He also hopes to attract more than just the liberal choir with

a well-known cast: Chris Cooper, Richard Dreyfuss, Daryl Hannah, Tim Roth,

Maria Bello, Kris Kristofferson and Billy Zane. Mr. Cooper plays the bumbling,

verbally challenged Richard (Dickie) Pilager, a reformed political neophyte who

was modeled, in part, after the current President.

"The lexicon is closer to Bush than other politicians I could

name, but it's not really an impression," said Mr. Sayles. However, he added,

"They're unavoidable parallels."

But like a character in his breakthrough film Return of the Secaucus 7 , Mr. Sayles

remains an aged idealist with no illusions regarding the impact of his work.

"You don't expect a single movie to change the conversation

totally," he said. "But you do want it to be part of the conversation and get

people asking questions."

According to Mr. Sayles, not only is the American population at

large ignorant of the corruptive influence of big-money lobbyists, but the

media does very little to "connect the dots" and inform the public. The film,

which is a dark comedy, is meant to motivate the audience to question the

actions of elected officials.

"What you hope is that people can extrapolate a little bit," he

said. "Shit doesn't just happen. It happened because someone made it happen."

-Jake Brooks

Shark Bait

At a time when computer-generated effects are turning action

movies into high-budget video games, director Chris Kentis was striving for

realism in his shockumentary film Open

Water .

He succeeded all too well.

On the first day of filming, lead actress Blanchard Ryan was

bitten by a barracuda. "I was horrified!" said Mr. Kentis. "Here I'd spent

months assuring her that she'd be completely safe swimming with sharks, and

then I look over and there's blood in the water." Luckily Ms. Ryan was the

consummate professional. "All she cared about was whether we'd gotten it on

camera or not. I'd missed the shot."

When the film bobbed into a Chelsea cinema for its premiere on

Monday night, there was no missing the similarities to another terrifying indie

production, The Blair Witch Project .

It's a parallel that producer Laura Lau, who is married to Mr. Kentis, is eager

to dispel. "We understand why the comparisons to Blair Witch have come up-both Sundance movies, video camera, scary,

unknown-but we were trying to do something very different. Blair Witch was pretty much a horror movie. We were not setting out

to make a horror movie."

Nevertheless, Blair Witch co-director

Eduardo Sanchez considers himself a fan of the fin-slasher, and drove up from

his home in Washington, D.C., to attend the premiere. "I e-mailed Laura [Lau]

after Sundance congratulating her, and we became online friends," he explained.

He joined the cast for the

after-party at Coral Room, where an Asian "mermaid" writhed in a tank behind

the bar while waiters with scuba masks perched on their heads scurried about

delivering canapés to the ravenous crowd.

The Transom asked actor Daniel Travis whether he'd suffered any

lingering physical effects post-production. "Shrinkage issues!" he laughed.

"Yeah, we intended initially to shoot interiors after we'd finished the water

sequence, but we were so beaten-up-looking that Chris took one look at us and

said, 'We gotta go home and chill out.' It took about a week to recover my

horizon line and get my fingers to plump back out again."

"These brown patches on my forehead will probably never go away,"

said his co-star, Blanchard Ryan, her fingers anxiously wiping the area above

her eyebrows. "And I still have dreams about the water. It's not even

nightmares, it's not even the sharks-I just feel like I'm still in the water.

It's that point of view of seeing the water around you for day after day after

day for all those hours. It's haunting."

Ms. Ryan, who admits that she still doesn't venture over her

knees in the water ("I'm very apprehensive about the animals in the ocean!"),

has no trouble suspending her disbelief.

"During the screening at the Maui Film Festival, this shark came

out of nowhere and I jumped out of my skin. My boyfriend was like, 'How can you

jump? You were there!'"

How did she endure all those hours bobbing around in the cold

ocean?

"I would always say to myself, 'Look how lucky I am. I'm in the

middle of this beautiful Caribbean paradise, I'm not stuck in an office

somewhere in midtown, I'm the luckiest girl on earth!' And then I'd be like, 'I

don't care! I'm cold and I'm scared and I want to get in the boat!'"

-Noelle Hancock

Still, it's become increasingly difficult for most people to avoid all the information gushing out of media outlets that give away the who, why and what of upcoming films. It's pretty rare, therefore, for a trick plot to creep up on a viewer without any prior warning. But that's what happened to me with Matchstick Men (and I'm loath to cheat my readers of this uncommon pleasure). But in order to explain why this film works as well as it does, I have to give away some of the twists in the narrative. Consequently, dear reader, I ask you to skip not only the rest of this review if you intend to see this film, but also to avoid any advance buzz related to Matchstick Men .

So what happens when a con artist is himself conned in a seemingly cruel and heartless manner? Even I was shocked, at first, at the lightning-fast shifts of perspective by the twist-within-a-twist plotline. Certainly, Matchstick Men soared in my estimation not only for these surprise turns, but for the accomplished ingenuity and incisiveness of the acting, writing, direction and cinematography throughout. Nicolas Cage especially gives the performance of his career as Roy Waller, a convoluted con man who uses bureaucratic impersonations to hoodwink his victims. He himself is afflicted with an obsessive-compulsive disorder similar to the Tourette's syndrome convincingly illustrated by Rob Morrow in Maze (2000), combined with Tony Shaloub's cleanliness mania in the television crime series Monk . What is even more oppressive about Roy's disorder is that it has left him completely isolated emotionally from other human beings, including a wife he abandoned years before. Roy does manage to function on "jobs" with his junior partner, Frank (Sam Rockwell), who presents a jaunty contrast to the solemnly preoccupied Roy.

Roy and Frank seem to be marking time in the early stages of their operation; their exploits are not nearly as engrossing as those in Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990). But sure enough, the plot thickens when Roy begins to go to pieces after his doctor, who supplies him with illegal drugs to combat his malady, suddenly disappears. Frank puts Roy in touch with Dr. Klein (Bruce Altman), a psychiatrist who supplies drugs with the necessary prescriptions, but insists on treating Roy's emotional problems as well. Roy is sure he has a 14-year-old child, because his wife was pregnant when he left her. Roy, however, cannot handle the trauma of calling her himself. He gives her number to Frank, who subsequently informs Roy that he has a daughter named Angela (Alison Lohman) who is dying to see him, and who soon comes over, riding a skateboard, from her mother's home.

At this point, we are led to believe that the movie is moving into overfamiliar territory. How will father and daughter get along after all these years? Will Roy accept his responsibility to keep his daughter on the straight and narrow, especially after she expresses an unsettling eagerness to participate with him and Frank in all their illegal activities? Frank seems skeptical about allowing Angela into a world requiring split-second timing and intuitive awareness of the perils of exposure. At least that's what we're led to believe. Yet Roy and Angela are so affecting and sympathetic together that we hope against hope that they will find a way to stay together.

Then, suddenly, the rug is swept out from under us when a greedy "mark" named Chuck Frechette (Bruce McGill) bites back from a scam. He confronts Roy, Angela and Frank in Roy's home with a gun and threatens to get young Angela sent to prison.

Somehow, Angela finds a gun in Roy's house and apparently shoots Chuck to death. Roy manfully agrees to take the rap for Angela, and asks Frank to return her to her mother. He walks them out to the car and sees them off. But when he returns to the house, he finds Chuck gone, and everything suddenly goes black. He regains consciousness in a hospital being interrogated by two plainclothes detectives. He asks for his psychiatrist, Dr. Klein, and is granted his wish. Still thinking of Angela above all else, he whispers his safety-box number to Dr. Klein so that Angela can have his money. The next morning, he wakes up to discover that everyone is gone, and that he is not in a hospital at all, but in an empty loft apartment.

Roy gradually discovers that he's been duped, as Frank reveals in a taunting letter. Angela was not his daughter. Dr. Klein was not a real psychiatrist. Chuck Frechette was never killed. There were no police in the case. And there is no way for Roy to get even. After all the vicarious emotion we have invested in Roy's relationship with Angela, we can be forgiven for feeling cheated. How cynical can you be? A year later, as the film tells us, Roy is working legit in a secondhand-carpet store. A slacker type walks in looking for a bargain, and he is followed by Angela, this time with different hair and looking much, much older than 14. Roy looks at her very intently but does not expose or upbraid her. But we notice that all his tics are gone. Angela cheerfully confesses her part in the scam, adding that Frank eventually cheated her as well. Roy is not surprised by this bit of news, but he doesn't seem bitter. We next see him going home to his wife for his nightly dinner. He sits next to her to lean down with his head to her swollen stomach, denoting a new life that soon will enter his. He has rejoined the human race.

Somehow, I bought it, though this film runs counter to every feel-good fantasy in the movies, even those designed for the vestigially larcenous impulses of the most law-abiding moviegoers. In this context, there is something heroic in Roy's embrace of an honest life. Even if you disagree with my rationalization, you should find Matchstick Men worthy of your time.

Who's My Baby?

John Sayles' Casa de los Babys is the 14th film in his nearly quarter-century career of ultra-independent and socially conscious filmmaking, which was launched in 1980 with provocative bravado in Return of the Secaucus 7 . Casa was shot entirely in Mexico, where Mr. Sayles previously filmed Men with Guns (1998), but the action takes place in an undisclosed South American country where Americans have been adopting infant orphans, a trend that has pricked national sensitivities recently. Casa revolves around six American women brought together in a local motel near the orphanage. There they wait for all the red tape to unravel so that each can go back with a foreign-born baby. They wait, they wait and they wait, and that's about all the action there is. The camera moves but little else changes, even as the characters contemplate the intercultural friction between the American adopting mothers and their Latin-American hosts.

Why did Mr. Sayles undertake this difficult challenge? As he explains in the program notes: "The debate over nature vs. nurture is central to many of our most vital scientific, social and literary movements. Nowhere does it get to a more personal airing than in the phenomenon of adoption and nowhere within that phenomenon than in adoption between cultures. Though the statistical genetic possibilities inherent in 'normal childbirth' and child rearing are staggering, our belief systems still repeat to the 'otherness' of children adopted into non-birth families and cultures. The mix I tried for in Casa de los Babys was to have a range of personal histories and attitudes among the adoptive mothers, a range of reactions to the fact of 'foreign' adoption among the people we meet in the local host culture, and some of the hard practical tragedy of what kids who remain unclaimed and uncared for face."

I must confess at this point that I spent most of the 95-minute running time of Casa trying to distinguish between some of the actresses from my previous image of them. A major distraction was that all the players were made up (or not made up) to look like "real people" instead of glamorous movie stars. Another problem was the tendency of Mr. Sayles to photograph the various child-seekers in middle or long shot, generally as part of a group. The sheer number of photogenic faces was still another distraction-the usual practice in moviegoing is to focus on one or two beautiful faces, often in expressive close-ups. Even more perplexing, Mr. Sayles labors manfully to be fair to all his performers, and since there are no easy contrasts between good and bad characters, the viewers' eyes are continually confounded by visual conflicts of interest.

For the record, the six characters in search of el bebé are Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Nan (Marcia Gay Harden), Skipper (Daryl Hannah), Leslie (Lili Taylor), Eileen (Susan Lynch) and Gayle (Mary Steenburgen). Jennifer stands out somewhat as the youngest of the six. The other five seem to illustrate the post-feminist backlash-that women in their 30's and 40's cannot so easily have it all (i.e., a consuming career and a child from their own womb).

Rita Moreno as the easily enraged motel owner heads a Spanish-speaking cast of variously aggrieved local inhabitants who attack America for being richer than even we over here know it to be. But Mr. Sayles' refined sensibility and first-rate polemical intellect keeps him from descending into caricatures and stereotypes on either side of the political divide. It also inhibits him from plunging into the rapids of melodrama, which spell entertainment for most people.

In Sunshine State , American Beach is renamed Lincoln Beach, and the complex narratives are divided between white and black protagonists. Marly Temple (Edie Falco) has abandoned her brief fling with show business as a "Weeki Wachee Mermaid" to run her father's decrepit motel. Furman Temple (Ralph Waite) is too sick to operate the place any more, but he is ornery enough and stubborn enough to refuse the many offers to sell the motel, and thus enable Marly to leave a place where she has suffered through a messy divorce from the shiftless Steve (Richard Edson), who is now stalking her. Marly has also been betrayed by her golf-pro boyfriend, Scotty Duval (Marc Blucas). Her mother, Delia (Jane Alexander), lives in a world of her own at the community theater; she's also devoted to a variety of more or less hopeless environmental causes. The island is besieged by an army of would-be developers, including a landscape architect named Jack Meadows (Timothy Hutton), who is immediately attracted to Marly, and vice versa.

On the other side of the island, Desiree Perry (Angela Bassett) is returning home for the first time in 25 years (her parents sent her away in disgrace when she became pregnant as a teenager). Now she is proudly and newly married to an anesthesiologist, Reggie Perry (James McDaniel), and is enjoying a modest success in "show business," though she has appeared only in industrial films and infomercials. The parallel with Marly's "career" links the two women in an ironic futility that Mr. Sayles has used over the years as a corrective to what he considers the delusional American Dream. Desiree's domineering mother, Eunice Stokes (Mary Alice), has not lost any of her power to intimidate her daughter, and Desiree vainly tries to exorcise this power with her newfound self-confidence. She too discovers that developers are overwhelming the area; they're trying to persuade her mother to sell the house and property. Flash Phillips (Tom Wright), the former football star who abandoned Desiree when she needed him most, pretends that he's been hired by an African-American company dedicated to helping blacks. When she discovers that Flash is trying to con her-he's actually working for the same white syndicate that's seeking to buy out Marly's motel and the rest of the island -Desiree finally comes to terms with her past, and with her mother.

There is a farcical subplot with booster Francine Pinckney (Mary Steenburgen) cheering on the island's second annual Buccaneer Day with much ridiculous hoopla. Here Mr. Sayles drifts into Carl Hiaasen territory, with too much strain and not enough humor. This is my one quibble with a film that is otherwise very well-written and very well-acted, and that also reveals once more Mr. Sayles' deep concern for his characters. But come to think of it, I am also disturbed that the film leaves Desiree in better psychic shape than Marly, who is left out to dry. I had somewhat the same problem with the dark ending of Limbo (1999): In both instances, Mr. Sayles creates too much sympathy for his characters to cast them adrift at the end. It leaves a sour taste in one's mouth. If this be realism, I say long live romance.

Welcome to Climax, Nev.

Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), from a screenplay by I.A.L. Diamond and Wilder, based on the Italian play L'Ora Della Fantasia by Anna Bonacci, will be shown at Film Forum (209 West Houston Street, 727-8110, from June 21 to 27) in a newly rediscovered European version, including one climactic (so to speak) scene deemed unduly obscene for American audiences. But, of course, that was in 1964, just a few years before the Production Code began to crumble. Nowadays, the uncensored Kiss Me, Stupid would get at most a PG-13. There's no nudity, no four-letter words. So what's all the excitement about? Since I have come around to being one of the film's few staunch defenders against an army of detractors, I can play devil's advocate for a bit and explain why most people-including most of my students (though I've tried to brainwash them)-genuinely dislike the film, and consider it one of Wilder's biggest failures.

The film seemed jinxed from the beginning. The first setback was the heart attack suffered by Peter Sellers, who was meant to play the role eventually given to Ray Walston. Perhaps Mr. Walston lends to the film a harsher quality than the comparatively childlike Sellers would have-this is, after all, a sex farce. (The harshness stems also from Wilder's insistence that the film be shot in black and white at a time when color films were the norm.) I have no idea what Kiss Me, Stupid would have been with Sellers and his inspired silliness. He certainly would have been funnier than Mr. Walston-if, that is, the script-worshipping Wilder had allowed Sellers to improvise to his heart's content, which seems unlikely. Sooner or later, something would've had to give, and that probably wouldn't have been Wilder. But let's limit ourselves to the film that is, and not the film that might have been.

It begins with a Dean Martin nightclub act in Vegas that establishes "Dino's" womanizing ways. As he drives back to Los Angeles, his car breaks down in Climax, Nev., where a Beethoven-sweatshirted piano teacher and songwriter named Orville J. Spooner (Mr. Walston) allows himself to be persuaded by his garage-mechanic lyricist, Barney (Cliff Osmond), to let Dino stay at his home while Barney tinkers with Dino's car. Along the way, it's established that Orville is insanely jealous of his pretty wife's appeal to every man on the planet. And now Dino is lodged in the same house with Zelda Spooner (Felicia Farr-or "Lambchop," as Orville fondly calls her. Barney's plan is for Orville to play all the team's songs for Dino while he is being entranced by Zelda. Dino never gets to see Zelda, however, because Orville drives her out of the house on some pretext-and so Barney recruits Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak) from the Belly Button Café, and Orville pretends that Polly is his wife.

Here the film shifts gears, as Polly and Zelda switch roles for one night, with Polly becoming warmly domestic with Orville and Zelda becoming challengingly sassy with Dino. All ends well for Dino and Orville and Zelda and Polly and Barney, but Orville and Polly and Zelda have been transformed by their experience. Wilder places no onus on sex and none on success, and does not penalize characters for any misstep with either.

There are other flaws I should mention. Mr. Osmond is somewhat too broad as Barney, and other than Polly, the "waitresses" at the Belly Button are unappealing caricatures, which calls to mind the old charge of Wilder's misogyny. Yet what audiences can't forgive in Kiss Me, Stupid are the passages in which characters display affectionate feelings toward each other in the midst of farcical chaos. Polly and Zelda are lovely creations in this regard, and I recommend Kiss Me, Stupid to the skeptical with no reservations whatsoever.

Double Crossing

Alan Taylor's The Emperor's New Clothes , from a screenplay by Kevin Molony, Alan Taylor and Herbie Wave, based on the novel The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys, tells the fanciful story of a plot to plant a double of Napoleon on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, off the African coast, where Napoleon in fact died in exile in 1821. This fictional revision of history in the movie enables the real Napoleon to leave St. Helena as a crewman on a ship while a Napoleon impersonator stays behind on the island. The double agrees to expose himself as an impostor once the real Napoleon has had time to reach Paris and rally his old supporters. The plan goes awry when the fake Napoleon becomes attached to his role and refuses to give up his new imperial identity.

Ian Holm plays both Napoleons to the hilt, and I can't think of another great actor of short stature who could bring off this very fragile conceit with such wit, humor, conviction, gravity and deep vulnerability. It's said, perhaps too glibly, that Mr. Holm disappears into his roles so completely that he's unrecognizable from one character to the next. In all my encounters with Mr. Holm, both on the screen and on the stage, I have never failed to recognize him in a part. Too many critics confuse great acting with the art of disguise. Mr. Holm does not have to disguise himself to inhabit a role: He simply plays his part as it's written, without too much fuss about less being more or more being less. In The Emperor's New Clothes , he rises to great heights when he finds himself in a sanitarium garden packed with insane Napoleons in full costume, striking the familiar Napoleonic pose. He realizes that he can never reclaim his true identity, especially after his gluttonous double eats himself into an early grave-and into all the world's headlines.

He assumes the former identity of Eugene, the fake Napoleon, and finds happiness with Pumpkin (Iben Hjejle), an impoverished melon-seller whose husband died before Napoleon could reach him with the pre-arranged password that would signal the regrouping of the Grand Army. It soon becomes clear even to Napoleon himself that his time has passed, that there's no one in Paris or anywhere in France ready to rise up once again and restore the emperor to his throne and make all of Europe quake anew. At one point, Pumpkin declares that she always hated Napoleon for causing the death of so many Frenchmen, and for conscripting her husband (though he died peacefully in his bed). Mr. Holm's expression is one of marvelous subtlety, mingling guilt and a long-delayed awakening to the lives of ordinary people. This is a good yarn, successful and insightful, well-told and well-acted.

The trailers for Instinct are misleading. They give the impression that this lurid, bizarre film about nature versus the most violent "instinct" of man is another Silence of the Lambs , with Anthony Hopkins as a savage, lunging Hannibal Lecter on the loose and Cuba Gooding Jr. as the man who tries to tame him. That's only part of the sham.

Instinct incorporates clichés from several other superior movie favorites, pasting together bits and pieces of everything from Gorillas in the Mist to Shawshank Redemption and coming up with nothing new in the cutting-room carnage. It's an allegedly inspiring tale on the Tarzan theme (man living in harmony with the apes) that clumsily masquerades as a prison thriller. In this screwy pudding, style buries substance and two Oscar-winning co-stars are left with bananas on their faces.

Looking like a cross between a grunting cave man and Moses, Mr. Hopkins is first seen growling like a pit bull in the dark cell of an African jail, where he's been locked up for murdering two park rangers in the jungles of Rwanda. Once a world-famous primatologist at the University of Miami, he dropped out of civilization to live with the mountain gorillas and obviously went mad. Before this loopy movie ends, you may think you are heading in the same direction. Arrested, incarcerated and now extradited back to the psychiatric ward of a Florida prison so primitive, brutal and overcrowded it makes the old Alcatraz look like a Beverly Hills country club, the mute and mysterious Gorilla Man is assigned to the evaluation of a cocky, ambitious shrink (Cuba Gooding Jr.) who must prepare the prisoner for a sanity hearing.

The ambitious young psychiatrist sees a chance for career advancement and maybe even a best seller when he delves into the clouded mirrors of Mr. Hopkins' deranged mind, but he has no idea what he's up against. When the compassionate smiling, too-good-to-be-true shrink finally breaks the ice, Mr. Hopkins starts talking a blue streak, converting the naïve doctor through "gorillaspeak" and flashbacks calculated to convince doubting skeptics that monkeys are good and man is vile, we must learn to exist harmoniously with nature, and imprisoning animals in zoos is a big no-no.

Meanwhile, the filmmakers, who include director Jon Turteltaub and screenwriter Gerald DiPego, seem to realize they don't have enough convincing material for a two-hour movie, so they inflate the plot with subthemes borrowed from other movies to pad the running time. Get ready for an entire asylum filled with seriously insane but strangely likable patients, sadistic guards, a fatuous warden and a mind-control game in which one man is allowed 30 minutes of sunlight per day if he draws the ace of diamonds from a deck of playing cards ( The Manchurian Candidate ). While Mr. Hopkins contemplates the foundation of humanity, the other inmates question the inhumanity of their persecution, and shades of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest descend, sabotaging the film even more.

It's difficult to swallow this much spiritual redemption when it's accompanied by turgid music and contrived close-ups of faces in the rain uplifted toward heaven. I won't even go into the references to Alien , replete with inside jokes about Sigourney Weaver (who also played a monkey-obsessed anthropologist in Gorillas in the Mist , thus providing two inside jokes for the price of one).

Instinct tries to be both a standard race-against-the-clock psychological thriller and a laconic character study, and loses its footing between the two. By the time it clunks to a ludicrous close, Mr. Hopkins escapes from his maximum-security chains and is machete-hopping his way through the mountains of Rwanda again. Mr. Gooding's shrink's life will never be the same, and after a lot of painful histrionics and theological double-talk about the call of the wild, one can imagine them both in the sequel, foraging for coconuts in loincloths like Tarzan and Boy, and singing a fast chorus of "Way down in the Congo land lived a happy chimpanzee …"

Calloused Alaskans With Soft Centers

In Limbo , written, directed and edited by John Sayles, the landscape is Alaska, America's "last frontier," where the roads dead end and the people are all in need of a map. Heading a diverse group of life's castaways are a local handyman named Joe (the excellent David Strathairn), once a basketball player until he smashed his knee and then a fisherman until he was responsible for the deaths of his two best friends, and a stranded nightclub singer named Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) whose career has bottomed out in the middle of nowhere.

Donna has had a string of unsuccessful love affairs to the dismay of her sullen, miserable and suicidal teenage daughter Noelle (Vanessa Martinez). In a desolate town full of pioneers and drifters eking out a bleak living in canneries, real estate, lumber and tourism, Joe and Donna begin a relationship that is interrupted by the arrival of Joe's half-brother Bobby (Casey Siemaszko), who talks Joe into crewing on his boat on a "business trip" that turns out to be a dangerous drug deal.

Up to this point, it's a typical John Sayles movie overpopulated with dense characters trying to find tranquillity in the midst of social and environmental upheaval. But then the film throws us a curve. Joe, Donna and Noelle find themselves marooned on an isolated island without food or shelter, their lives hanging in the balance, to be rescued by a shady bush pilot (Kris Kristofferson) whose cargo plane will bring them salvation or death.

Living on algae and sea lettuce, their survival skills are tested in ways they never imagined, and they find the centers of their souls in the process. In a daunting geographic and emotional limbo, they wait to be saved, and Mr. Sayles plunges the audience into nail-biting suspense. Then he slam-dunks us into a vat of ice water. The plane is on its way. They gather on the beach. But what awaits them? Killers, or saviors? We will never know. Meanwhile, viewers may be as infuriated as they are exhausted. Maybe the outcome is not important. Through desperate circumstances three people have discovered what they're made of already.

John Sayles films always seem to drag on for days, but Limbo has riveting situations and cohesive dialogue that links one scene to the next with honesty and intelligence. His hard-luck characters may be calloused but they are also capable of revealing soft emotional centers. You can never be sure what will happen next and the plot treks off into the wilderness along with the three central characters, but following the dark journey into limbo with them, you are mesmerized every step of the way.

Claiborne Cary: Ms. Right

On the cabaret scene, rush to Danny's Skylight Room any weekend in June and treat yourself to some musical allspice in the company of the multitalented Claiborne Cary. In the old days, she would have been one of the trenchant, sophisticated headliners in those soigné gulches like the Blue Angel or the Upstairs at the Downstairs. Now, with a dearth of good singers and swanky rooms, a stellar off-the-beaten-path talent like this is lucky to find a monthlong gig at a place in the heart of Restaurant Row like Danny's, and a joint like Danny's is lucky to have her .

Blessed with a bawdy sense of humor and a malleable voice comfortable with jazz, show tunes and comedy material, she can breathe out notes like soft air from a cooling vent, then heat things up with punchy, intricate rhythmic lines that make the pulse race. Add a savvy, been-around look that is just right for a dramatic song like "Something Cool" and an uncanny acting technique that masks the darkness of a song like "Lush Life" with sweetness, optimism and humor, and you have a unique approach to selling lyrics that is rarely matched by generic cabaret singers who make up most of today's menu fare.

An evening with Claiborne Cary can consist of many staples (smooth interpretations of standards like "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" and "Honeysuckle Rose"), wild swinging on Benny Carter's jazz evergreen "Rock Me to Sleep," comedy gems such as "Couch Potato Patootie," and hilariously improvised bits that come right off the top of her pretty head like dandelion pollen. "Now I'd like to introduce my band," she says, then turns around and proceeds to introduce each member of her quartet to each other.

Digressing momentarily for an anecdote about growing up in Iowa, she names every book in the New Testament she learned in school, then adds, "Why don't they teach you something useful, like how to file for a divorce?" Moving back into the emotional subtexts of a stunningly phrased "Lush Life," she displays every mood-altering personality trait of a barfly while perfectly enunciating every syllable of Billy Strayhorn's lyrics.

So many dopey singers sing "distant gay traces," but this gal knows the lyric is "distingué traces" and she gets it right. In fact, she gets everything right, and breaks your heart in the process. When she sings "I'm Too Old to Die Young," a saloon favorite by Moe Bandy, she means it, but you get so much pleasure out of the way she sings it that you wouldn't mind if she took you along with her. At any age, she's a lovely way to go.

For much of its running time Limbo seems to be soaring to a new peak of artistice xpression, then it suddenly gets bogged down in an irritating melodrama that seems designed to punish us for becoming attached to the characters and the milieu. As the movie peters out with an audience-bashing lady-or-the-tiger fadeout, I can't help wondering what point, if any, Mr. Sayles is trying to make. On the other hand, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn and Vanessa Martinez would be hard to beat for acting awards-here or there.

I begin with the dumbfounding ending, partly because it is unlike anything I've ever seen before from this generously humanistic storyteller whom I have long admired, and partly because, as an Aristotelian and a Christian, I believe too strongly in redemption, at least as it pertains to the protagonists of dramatic narratives, to tolerate the sin of despair to which Mr. Sayles has succumbed. A tragic flaw is one thing, but unwanted destruction by another's malfeasance is simply lousy luck, and is an unworthy fate for the compelling characters Mr. Sayles has created with the invaluable help of his marvelous cast.

The setting is present-day Alaska, in which the hard-eyed natives mingle uneasily with the wide-eyed tourists. At first, the satiric tone is reminiscent of the old television series Northern Exposure , but with a harder edge. Mr. Sayles is too class-conscious to let the notion of Alaska as a theme park slip by without a derisive guffaw. Ms. Mastrantonio sings up a storm as Donna De Angelo, a much-traveled tavern singer who never quite made it either career-wise or multiple-husbands-wise. She is too old now even to hope for a big break, but she doesn't want to give up the feeling she gets from putting a song over for an audience. Her daughter Noelle (Vanessa Martinez) doesn't make life any easier, with her sarcastic putdowns of her mother for messing up both their lives.

David Strathairn's Joe Gastineau enters Donna's life with a big monkey on his own back in the form of a nightmarish memory of a freak fishing boat accident in which two of his passengers drowned. One feels that Joe and Donna have actually met in the last chance saloon of life, and the odds are very much against them. Yet they proceed to give us unreasonable hope that they may overcome all their difficulties and misfortunes. But the past in the guise of two eventual nemeses named Smilin' Jack (Kris Kristofferson) and Bobby Gastineau (Casey Siemaszko), Joe's free-wheeling half-brother, comes back to haunt Joe as well as the unsuspecting Donna and Noelle.

As we get deeper and deeper into everyone's character, the plight of Joe, Donna and Noelle becomes terminally desperate. I cannot remember another such movie in which such lovingly accomplished character development was poisoned by the writer-director's despondent fatalism. Why? I ask because I do not know.

Dramatically Nonexistent Is Not a Genre

Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged , from a screenplay by Mr. Bertolucci and Clare Peploe, based on a story by James Lasdun, demonstrates the limitations of stylistic virtuosity in the service of a disarticulated narrative that is more affected than affecting. Mr. Bertolucci and his co-scenarist, Ms. Peploe, have attempted to cause two worlds to collide and coalesce by a series of undramatic nonconfrontations.

The protagonist Shandurai (Thandie Newton), the closest thing to a point-of-view character, is an African medical student in Rome who fled from her oppressed homeland after her husband was locked up in a military prison. To help pay her tuition, she works as a housekeeper in the home of an eccentric British concert pianist named Jason Kinsky (David Thewlis). This would be the stuff of Gothic romance if the ugly political realism of disheartening African-over-African tyranny did not intrude with what since Casablanca (1942) has been designated as the "hill of beans" mantra. In the past, Mr. Bertolucci has dabbled deviously and deliciously in the witch's brew of politics and eroticism, but Besieged is singularly chaste, cold and cerebral in the context of the Bertoluccian oeuvre even before Last Tango in Paris (1972) pushed the envelope of simulated sexual provocation.

Besieged suffers from the malady of many recent marginally English-speaking international co-productions that replace character-building dialogue with a dazzling multiplicity of portentous camera angles. Unfortunately, though there is a degree of resolution in what little plot unfolds, there is very little action with which to test the strong, silent and strange characterizations. Ms. Newton is an appealing and sympathetic actress even when she is not loaded down with enough political correctness to carry a halo from one continent to another. How can there be any suspense with a character so cheerfully martyred? The only question is whether she will be canonized in this life or the next. As for Mr. Thewlis, he has little to do but look strange and slightly mysterious, which with his interestingly insolent and self-sufficient range of expressions he can manage without half-trying.

Still, Besieged is to be commended for the understated nobility of its characters, and for its unshaken belief in the viability of civilized behavior in the face of the world's disorder. Shandurai and Kinsky take a long time getting to the point where they can let their defenses down long enough to utter the sweet words of love and commitment. Unfortunately, the reluctant lovers have long since drowned in an ocean of obliqueness. What ultimately washes up on the shore of the moviegoing architectural experience is a partial return to the angst associated with Michelangelo Antonioni long, long ago. The point is that a dry-as-dust endeavor like Besieged doesn't get any points for being emotionally repressed and dramatically nonexistent. There is very little juicy mainstream left in moviemaking, only an assortment of tiny tributaries flowing into hit-or-miss, boom-or-bust outlets that attest to the end of both the studio system-despite an updated logo here and there-and the disappearance of a contented and complacent habit-forming audience. What, then, is Mr. Bertolucci trying to prove?

Defending Your Life in Japan

Hirokazu Kore-eda's After Life is a Japanese low-tech rendering of an intermediate step in the processing of the dearly departed. It seems that when we die we are marched into an architecturally nondescript facility, half low-grade hotel and half-primitive movie studio, where we are asked by a courteous and compassionate staff to select one memory from our past life to remember through all eternity to the exclusion of every other memory.

As I was watching the playing out of this conceit with my significant other, we both wracked our brains to no avail. One memory that supersedes all others? There is no such thing for us. As Sara Fishko, my ever skeptical hostess on my weekly radio ruminations about movies on WNYC and NPR, suggested, what the guardians at the gate of After Life are seeking is an endless array of Rosebuds to accompany Charles Foster Kane's childhood sled into the Sweet Hereafter.

Still, After Life is not without a certain degree of stoical humor as it prepares to reproduce the chosen memories of its 22 applicants on videotape with the threadbare technical resources of a Japanese Ed Wood. As one memory after another is crudely simulated a merry metaphor for low-budget moviemaking is set into motion. Many of the chosen memories are heartbreakingly trivial as if many if not most lives are singularly unpleasant or unrewarding. Great emphasis is based on the details of touch and smell with each chosen remembrance. The remarkable patience and politeness of the Japanese national character is highlighted in this dire context. At times, I was reminded of a French Nazi concentration camp movie I saw long ago in which a Jewish prisoner politely allows a woman prisoner to precede him in entering the truck destined to take them both to the death camp. Some civilities never die. Perhaps, some spark of humanity persists through all eternity.

After Life ups the ante somewhat when halfway through the movie we learn that the afterlife hotel-studio staff itself is composed of earlier applicants who were unable or unwilling to supply their own personal Rosebuds. The writer-director reportedly interviewed many screenplay people throughout Japan in preparing After Life and in this way managed to sketch a hazy, ghostly portrait of recent Japanese history. He even contrives an ultraspiritual romance at the facility between a staff member and an initially recalcitrant applicant seemingly destined to become a staff member himself. But when he discovers to his amazement that he was deeply loved by a previous applicant he barely remembers, he chooses to venture into the Great Beyond with that one revelatory moment in his mind.

From Robert Milton and Sutton Vane's Outward Bound (1930) onward, Western treatments of this theme have seldom resisted the temptation to score easy allegorical points with bloated capitalist characters confounded by their sudden loss of power to influence events and other people with their money. There is no such facile comeuppance in After Life . There is instead an appreciative awareness of a people who instinctively understand the limits of life and death.

To begin with, the Coen brothers have managed, in their seventh manic movie, to escape the trap into which Jim Jarmusch has fallen since his sparkling debut with Stranger Than Paradise (1984), and that is the trap of the perpetual put-on, with its legacy of diminishing returns. Yet, from its opening credits, The Big Lebowski certainly looks and sounds like a put-on, with its tumbling-tumbleweeds narration by Sam Elliott in a voice that sounds like Death Valley Days on Quaaludes. A sudden flash of wit in the form of an acknowledgment of absent-mindedness on the part of the laid-back narrator alerts us to the presence of script writers who know what they are doing every step of the way, and who will never hesitate to pull the rug out from under us even after it has been peed on by a shaggy-dog-story character we may or may not ever see again in this topsy-turvy narrative.

To go back a bit, as if it were not hard enough to imagine one Jeff Lebowski in Los Angeles, we learn very early on that there are at least two. The first Jeff Lebowski is nicknamed the Dude, and is played with glassy-eyed, grassy-eyed ex-late-60's-and-early-70's languor by Jeff Bridges. Two thugs smash into Jeff's apartment to demand payment for his wife's debts to their boss, a mysterious Mr. Treehorn. Unfortunately for the unmarried Jeff, the two "collectors" push the wrong Lebowski's head into the toilet, and when they belatedly discover their error, instead of apologizing they compound their mistake by pissing on Jeff's rug and verbally abusing him as a loser as they depart. Jeff discovers in the course of his ordeal that the "other" Jeff Lebowski is a Pasadena millionaire with a curvaceous trophy wife fittingly named Bunny (Tara Reid), who has caused all the trouble by spending beyond her meager allowance from her stingy husband.

When the first Jeff Lebowski joins his bowling buddies, John Goodman's loudmouthed Walter Sobchak and Steve Buscemi's conversational retard Donny, the movie settles into the groove through which most of the comic and emotional strikes will be scored by this wacky trio. One would think that Peter and Bobby Farrelly's Kingpin (1996), with its grossness and gruesomeness, had exhausted bowling as a screen subject for all time. The Big Lebowski is even wilder and funnier than its genuinely tasteless predecessor, but it never becomes mawkish and maudlin as Kingpin does in the dramatic crunch. Instead, the Coen brothers demolish the "sport" with the help of an over-the-top John Turturro as Jesus Quintana, former child molester turned bowling virtuoso with a tongue-licking flair for making bowling look like a pornographic spectacle. Yet, explosive as he is in his well-timed appearances, Mr. Turturro never causes the camaraderie-driven vehicle of The Big Lebowski to crash into a wall of silliness. Fargo garnered more than a few easy and condescending laughs with caricatures of the Scandinavian-English intonations of the upper Midwest. Every laugh in The Big Lebowski is thoroughly earned, with witty and inventive variations on the uncensored smartass expressions of 90's Americans who have heard it all, and then some, without believing most of it.

That is why the familiar story line of a fake kidnapping complete with double-crosses and triple-crosses is only superficially banal. Whodunit and why are not the issues here. What counts and what matters is how resilient the two or three characters we care most about are in the face of the adversities created by their own clumsiness. The Big Lebowski is not a cozy morality tale by which good vanquishes evil. It is rather a hilarious commentary on the way we are today, or at least were during the Gulf War when the action is set. There are echoes in some of the more exotic villains of Mike Myers' creepy Kraut unisex parodies on his "Sprockets" segment of the old Saturday Night Live and Bette Midler's derisive designation of once magnetic continental lovers as "Eurotrash" in Big Business (1988). What finally put the movie over for me was its two conked-on-the-head Busby Berkeley fantasies, which displayed a new and more assured command of the medium by the Coen brothers. To go so far out on a limb stylistically, and not fall flat on your face, is a rare feat nowadays.

Julianne Moore as a dilettantish sex goddess doesn't have nearly enough to do, but she fills the gaps in her part with the same winsomely intelligent sensuality that made her such a knockout in last year's Boogie Nights . But top honors must go to the inspired multiple-marriage of Jeff Bridges, John Goodman and Steve Buscemi with the Coen brothers to produce a cubist collage of an old genre with a new frankness. The result is a lot of laughs and a feeling of awe toward the craftsmanship involved. I doubt that there'll be anything else like it the rest of this year.

Men in White Meet Men With Guns

John Sayles wrote, directed and edited Men With Guns , his 11th film in 20 years, and he remains, now more than ever, on the side of the angels in the endless struggle for social and economic justice in a world of dictators, plutocrats, so-called "free" markets, jungle ethics, bottom-line morality and an allegedly complacent middle class. Mr. Sayles can be described as the American Ken Loach ( Land and Freedom, Riff-Raff ), just as Mr. Loach can be described as the British John Sayles. Both filmmakers have kept the faith without descending to the boring hell of good intentions, where most socially conscious projects go to die at the box office. Their secret is creating compelling characters in surprisingly complex narratives instead of merely preaching to the converted with cardboard representations of good and evil, of right or, rather, left and wrong. One would think that their egalitarian passion would have fallen with the Berlin Wall, but Mr. Sayles and Mr. Loach are still waiting for Lefty at the Finland Station, and the cinema is all the richer for their quixotic persistence.

At a time when foreign-language directors around the world are jostling shamelessly to make their films in English, Mr. Sayles has reversed the process by having his actors speak mostly Spanish, with the most eloquent and articulate English subtitles you are ever likely to encounter in a foreign-language film. Though Men With Guns was shot in Mexico, the setting is an allegorically nameless country in Latin America with an oppressed Indian population in the jungle and on the mountainsides, and an indifferent bourgeoisie in the skyscraping "capital." Men With Guns could be dismissed as an ego-driven tour de force attesting to Mr. Sayles' self-taught proficiency in Spanish were it not for the breathtaking metaphysical design of the film, evoking magic realism, Dante's Divine Comedy and the Stations of the Cross. A hellish slum is named Los Perdidos (the Lost), and the film's ultimate destination is a tree-covered mountaintop named Cerca del Cielo (Close to the Sky). In between is a quest for what Mr. Sayles considers to be a universal truth crossing national boundaries.

Mr. Sayles tells us in the production notes that the screenplay is derived from stories he has heard from friends, particularly one told by the novelist Francisco Goldman about a Guatemalan doctor who had sent his students to tend to the medical needs of the rural poor, only to have most of these barefoot volunteers murdered by the very government supposedly supporting the program. Mr. Sayles' Dr. Fuentes (Federico Luppi), an aging, recently widowed physician living and practicing in the capital, decides to visit his students in the various villages they set out to serve. He finds nothing but the signs of massacres, and in the process he discovers something about himself.

Men With Guns is an ennobling experience but not a particularly seductive one. As an aging American with a long laundry list of things to feel guilty about, I felt frustrated by the sheer enormity of evil in the film, particularly when Mr. Sayles took a cheap shot at two American tourists, played for condescending laughs by the impish Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody. Even so, Mr. Sayles ends Men With Guns on a mystically hopeful note that redeems him as a true artist and humanist far above and beyond the mere agitprop propagandist this sort of material usually attracts.

Martin Scorsese's Cheat Sheet to American Film

A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies , written and directed by Mr. Scorsese and Michael Henry Wilson, produced by Florence Dauman and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, is a must-see cultural landmark for all lovers and students of the cinema. Mr. Scorsese introduces clips and interviews directors of the films that influenced him the most. The director would have been qualified by the originality of his insights and the depth of his immersion in the subject to have been a first-rate film historian if he had not chosen instead to become a trailblazing film director. I have never always agreed with him, and he has never always agreed with me, but as someone once said, you can only argue with someone with whom you are in fundamental agreement. Mr. Scorsese's exhilarating journey will be shown at Crown Gotham Cinema, on Third Avenue between 57th and 58th streets, for one week beginning March 6.