In the SIFF Spotlight

The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros

An incongruous vision of lipsticked, hip-swiveling fabulousness, 12-year-old Maximo (Nathan Lopez) flounces through his Manila shantytown, a beacon of beatific flamboyance in the gritty (but mostly tolerant) hood as well as a doting mother hen to his petty-criminal father and brothers. All is improbably well, until Maxi's undisguised attraction to a strapping policeman sparks tensions at home. Even more so than Gregg Araki's Mysterious Skin, Auraeus Solito's feature debut confronts the taboo of preteen sexuality with extraordinary openness. No less than its precocious protagonist, the film is alarming, endearing, and utterly unflappable. (NR) DENNIS LIM Broadway Performance Hall: 9:15 p.m. Fri., June 2; 11 a.m. Sun., June 4.

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu

If there's a tougher sell than a Romanian movie by a hitherto unknown director, it's a Romanian movie by an unknown director that takes two and one-half hours to tell the tale of a 62-year-old pensioner's final trip to the hospital. Living alone with his cats and the bottle, Mr. Lazarescu wakes with an unfamiliar headache and a bad stomach and, after a day of futile self-medication, calls the local equivalent of 911. After 45 minutes (film time), the ambulance arrives, and from the limbo of his squalid flat, our Dante enters the first circle of hell. For the remainder of the movie, he will be transported from hospital to hospital, to be variously diagnosed, ignored, browbeaten, humiliated, and finally processed by a harried succession of brilliantly acted doctors and nurses. Lazarescu is highly scripted but shot like a documentary. As filmmaking, it's a tour de force, with director Cristi Puiu successfully simulating—or rather, orchestrating—the institutional texture of a Frederick Wiseman vérité. (R) J. HOBERMAN Harvard Exit: 11 a.m. Sat., May 27. Pacific Place: 9:15 p.m. Tues., May 30.

Half Nelson

Ryan Gosling, all is forgiven! We'll forget about Stay. We'll excuse the treacly SIFF '04 opener, The Notebook. His turn as an idealistic yet crack-addicted young schoolteacher in New York is the best performance we've seen this year. And it's closely matched by that of Shareeka Epps as the 13-year-old who discovers her teacher's secret. She could bust him, but he's the friendliest, most earnest, most awkwardly committed instructor at school. In class he spouts Hegel and Martin Luther King, gets the kids reading Che and making presentations on Attica. Then he goes home to indulge in the pipe, and other drugs, fully aware that he's ruining his life. The young actor refuses to inject any junkie clichés into his performance, and the younger actress, reaching out to help him, is equally undeluded about separating his best and worst qualities (she's seen the same within her own family). Half Nelson isn't perfect, but it doesn't oversimplify matters of race, addiction, or education. (R) BRIAN MILLER Egyptian: 7 p.m. Thurs., June 1; 1:15 p.m. Sat., June 3.

The Heart of the Game

An astonishing homegrown saga, Heart began seven years ago when director Ward Serrill became fascinated by the winning techniques of Bill Resler, a UW tax professor moonlighting as head coach for the Roosevelt High School girls basketball team. Resler, who tutored his own three daughters at the game, is charismatic, wide-eyed, and wryly exasperated as his teen players do the opposite of what he orders. Heart gets its real focus with the arrival of Darnellia Russell, a ninth-grade basketball prodigy made shy by the nearly all-white Roosevelt environment. Blazing on the court, she finds her footing, along with the camaraderie of teamwork, by her sophomore season. We in the audience find a complicated, tenacious, extraordinary young woman to pull for, on the court and eventually in the courtroom—through her next three tumultuous years. Having watched Heart from its SIFF '05 work-in-progress beginnings to Toronto that fall and now to this burnished, professional state (helped hugely by Chris "Ludacris" Bridges' new narration), I am still blown away by how powerfully Heart works, especially as it considers the far-from-level playing field of life. SHEILA BENSON

Host & Guest

SIFF

What do you do with a hostile main character whose days are full of porn, prostitutes, and public peeing? Why, choreograph him into an odd-couple pas de deux with an earnest evangelist, of course. Thus we have the implausible rescue of cynical college professor Hojun from the prison of his own malfunctioning bathroom lock by quiet missionary Kye-Sang. Hojun's attempts at gratitude are, understatedly, rusty. He coerces the chaste lad to see a movie, but then behaves so badly they get kicked out. He socks a Bush-supporter in a cab, farts with aplomb, and renders some truly unforgivable karaoke. An unlikely friendship develops when Kye-Sang suddenly finds himself in need of rescue from government prosecution for refusing compulsory military service. Becoming his passionate defender spins Hojun's wretched life sweetly if improbably on its head. (NR) MARGARET FRIEDMAN Pacific Place: 7 p.m. Wed., May 31; 2 p.m. Thurs., June 1.

Jack Smith & the Destruction of Atlantis

This documentary entertainingly profiles the late Jack Smith (1932–1989), prominent underground filmmaker of N.Y.C.'s avant-garde heyday. Staunchly anticapitalist, he rejected the bohemian glamour of the '60s downtown scene, despite being credited with Warhol's superstar system. After Flaming Creatures (1963) was banned in 22 states, his career went into decline. He spent the rest of his life mostly reshaping his old work, making it ever more hermetic and personal—and also incorporating his devotion to '40s B-movie star Maria Montez. (His exquisite pansexual fantasy worlds were eclipsed until John Waters and others helped restore him to the public eye in the '70s.) Here, director Mary Jordan expertly assembles archival footage from Smith's many incomplete works. She pairs them with informative contemporary interviews from key artists of Smith's era. The result is a kind of bruised affection for a man that everyone admired but no one understood. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Northwest Film Forum: 9 p.m. Mon., May 29; 7 p.m. Thurs., June 1.