AFI Fest, A to W

GO  IN THE ATTIC; OR, WHO HAS A BIRTHDAY TODAY? (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Japan) If Jan Svankmajer were hired to make a Toy Story spinoff, this could be the result. In a neglected attic, a group of toys, including a teddy bear, a doll, a lump of clay and several chess pieces, celebrate each other’s birthdays (determined by a daily roll of the dice) and ride on model trains. But when a human girl discovers the doll, and moves her to a different part of the attic, the good little toy finds itself trapped in a dictatorship of warlike action figures governed by a giant, Kim Jong-Il–esque bust. The narrative is a free-flowing sort that a kid might concoct, but richness abounds, not just in the divided-nation metaphor but also in the movie’s notion that boys do in fact play militaristically, while girls imagine happier, more benevolent days. (Grauman’s Chinese, Sat., Oct. 31, 10 a.m.; Monica 4-Plex, Fri., Nov. 6, 3:15 p.m.) (LYT)

GO  KANIKOSEN (Japan) Originally published in 1929, Takiji Kobayashi’s muckraking, pro-union novel about the deplorable working conditions aboard a Japanese crab canning ship has hardly aged a day in its depiction of honest, assembly line workers exploited by greedy upper management. Which could explain why Kobayashi’s slender volume has undergone a huge cultural revival in recent years, as the Japanese economy has slowly emerged from its “lost decade.” In this manga-stylized, mordantly funny adaptation by the director known as Sabu, Kobayashi’s oppressed proles sport black plastic ponchos and turn giant geared wheels like human hamsters, momentarily contemplating mass suicide until a chance encounter with some passing Russkies shows them the light. Viva la revolution! (Mann Chinese 6, Wed., Nov. 4, 10 p.m.) (SF)

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GO  LONDON RIVER (Algeria/France/UK) Despite its own confluence of First World and Third, black skin and white, Islam and Christianity, London River almost always places its characters ahead of its polemics, making for a small but heartfelt drama about an African man (the excellent Malian actor Sotigui Kouyate) and a British woman (Brenda Blethyn) who meet while searching for their missing children in the aftermath of the 2005 London subway and bus bombings. Directed by the French-Algerian filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb (the Oscar-nominated Indigènes), London River sometimes plays things a bit too broadly in the culture-clash and racial-profiling departments, but still manages to render a nicely understated snapshot of multi-ethnic life in the global city. (Mann Chinese 6, Fri., Oct. 30, 7 p.m.)(SF)

GO  A LAKE (France) There’s no fence-sitting in Philippe Grandrieux’s inscrutable allegory about an epileptic woodcutter, his virginal sister and the mysterious stranger who penetrates their hermetically sealed domain. A dark fable both minimalist and maddeningly baroque, A Lake distills the essence of Grandrieux’s previous La Vie nouvelle while amplifying many of its excesses to the breaking point. Every action practically groans under the weight of its metaphysical charge. Sounds assume a preternatural intensity. Images wobble in and out of focus, sometimes to sublime effect, but often appear so dark or disjointed that they’re nearly indecipherable. Grandrieux’s love-it-or-hate-it proposition demands our active participation, positioning the director more than ever as a button-pushing visionary angling for membership in a club populated by the likes of Andrzej Zulawski, Lars von Trier and Carlos Reygadas. (Mann Chinese 6, Mon., Nov. 2, 10 p.m.) (LG)

GO  LOOKING FOR ERIC (U.K.) An amusing divertissement from director Ken Loach and his regular screenwriter Paul Laverty, Looking For Eric is a Cinderella story in which Cinderella happens to be a dissolute Manchester postal worker (Steve Evets) and the Fairy Godmother is none other than legendary Manchester United forward Eric Cantona. Appearing in spirit form, Cantona (who plays himself and also executive produced) gives nightly pep talks to the postman (also named Eric) on everything from patching things up with his estranged wife to the power of collective organizing (a perennial Loach theme). All told, this is not one of the movies Loach will be remembered for, but whenever the wonderfully self-effacing Cantona is on screen, it scores. (Mann Chinese 6, Thu., Nov. 5, 7 p.m.) (SF)

GO  THE LOVED ONES (Australia) The willingness of a father to make his only daughter happy is the starting point for Australian writer-director Sean Byrne’s pleasurably demented debut feature, in which a high school senior (Xavier Samuel) rebuffs the prom invite of a shrinking-violet classmate (the superb Robin McLeavy), then ends up the hog-tied prisoner of her and her claw-hammer-wielding father. And, well, let’s just say he’s not the first. A juicy piece of Ozploitation, Byrne’s very stylish film pays its respects to Carrie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the late John Hughes while finding in its primary location — a disco-ball accented kitchen with blood-stained linoleum floor — a special vision of Hell on Earth. (SF) (Mann Chinese 6, Sat., Oct. 31, Midnight) (SF)

*CRITIC’S PICK*  THE MILK OF SORROW (Spain/Peru) Giving new meaning to the expression “You are what you eat,” Peruvian director Claudia Llosa’s strikingly assured second feature — winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival — centers on Fausta (the Modigliani-worthy Magaly Solier), a timid and superstitious village girl who believes she has been cursed by her mother’s breast milk and keeps a potato lodged inside her vagina. The potato is at once a self-defense mechanism and a reminder of the 20 years of guerrilla warfare and state-sponsored terrorism during which thousands of Peruvian women were raped and murdered. But the times they are a-changin’, for Peru and for Fausta, who takes a job as a housemaid in order to earn money for her mother’s funeral, whereupon she slowly begins to emerge from her shell. Despite the film’s superficial trappings of Third World miserablism and von Trier–ian female martyrdom, Llosa (whose 2007 debut feature, Madeinusa, showed enormous promise) has her own wholly original, almost unclassifiable style that blends indigenous folklore with a discrete political subtext and sardonic dark humor, all filtered through the ravishing compositions of cinematographer Natasha Braier. (Mann Chinese 6, Sat., Oct. 31, 4 p.m.) (SF)