AFI Fest A to Z: Hey Man, Yeah

CARGO Stranded-in-space thrillers need something going on when the suspense isn't cooking, even if it's just doom-chic design like Alien or, more recently, a head-scratcher concept as in Moon. Ivan Engler's calling-card feature about a carrier ship with a mystery load lumbers through bump-in-the-night whodunit for ages without getting its hooks in, and there's little in the filmmaking to tide us over between the plot dumps periodically delivered by a mutually suspicious crew. A virtual-reality complication comes as no surprise, though it might as well have emerged earlier. But our naive proxy, a medic (Anna-Katharina Schwabroh) jobbing for cash to join her sister on a paradise planet, has a certain guileless, bland appeal. (NR) (Nov. 5, 6:45 p.m., Chinese)

CASINO JACK The final film from director George Hickenlooper (Hearts of Darkness, Factory Girl), who passed away suddenly last weekend, Casino Jack is an overslick, telepic-esque telling of the long fall of Jack Abramoff. (Over)played by Kevin Spacey, the once-untouchable "superlobbyist" who played clients and politicians against each other for his own personal gain is given a fairly sympathetic gloss: He may be predatory and delusional, but he's also an American Everyman whose key mistake was staying drunk on Clinton-era economic optimism too long, only to be abandoned by the government officials who he thought had his back. It's fast-paced and stylish, but the performances are flat caricatures, and the script is laughably on-the-nose. "This isn't the '90s anymore," someone actually says. "It's post-9/11!" Spacey's sporadic narration is even worse. (KL) (Nov. 8, 7 p.m., Chinese)

Rubber

Rabbit Hole

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CERTIFIED COPY Abbas Kiarostami's shape-shifter follows Elle (Juliette Binoche) and James (William Shimell) over an afternoon's worth of rural Italian countryside sparring. Initially, Elle just wants to argue with James about his new book, which posits that, in art, fake can be just as good as real. But when a café proprietor mistakes them for a married couple and Elle starts arguing with her new "husband," their debate on truth's value takes on a new dimension of (real?) emotional pain. What's happening here? Is this a married couple playing a game to revitalize their marriage, two bored intellectuals sparring for stakes, or just all-out epistemological allegory? Firm answers are unlikely (as hinted by a cameo from Buñuel screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere), but the film's hypnotic regardless, with two irritably virtuoso performances and gorgeous mise-en-scène elevated way above tourist porn. (VR) (Nov. 7, 6:15 p.m., Chinese)

THE COMPANY MEN In a quietly meta performance nodding at his own career seesaw, Ben Affleck plays Bobby, a cocky young salesman downsized and forced to give up his home/Porsche/pride before returning to the workforce with humbled expectations. Writer-director John Wells' experience shaping ensemble TV hits like ER shows in Men's generous-to-a-fault intertwining of story lines featuring the mid-to-late-life crises of Bobby's former superiors (Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper, both excellent). Men was purchased by the Weinstein Company after Sundance and given a cut and polish to bring all of its latent feel-good potential to the surface. Its sunshiney music cues and sudden happy ending make it tough to take seriously as a portrait of our still-unfolding economic catastrophe, but as an exploration of the relationship between money and masculinity, it's pretty fascinating. (KL) (Nov. 10, 7:30 p.m., Chinese)

FREE RADICALS "I'd like you to meet my friends," begins Pip Chodorov's voice-over to his avant-garde film documentary, which tributes professional collegiality and artistic method without getting too chummy or strident. Radicals sketches the work and driving ethos of a few filmmakers from both sides of the Atlantic: pioneer Hans Richter, dazzling innovator Len Lye and a candid, Methuselean Bob Breer. Also here are the usual suspects: New York avant house Anthology Film Archives and indefatigable godfather Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs (in leaner days eating spareribs from the trash), Peter Kubelka (explaining metric editing) and, in his final interview before his 2003 death, acknowledged master Stan Brakhage. With no intention of comprehensiveness, it's a film of homemade elegance not unlike the personal cinema that is among its subjects. (NR) (Nov. 5, 6:45 p.m., Chinese)

HAHAHA The more superficially entertaining of Hong Sang-soo's two films this year (Oki's Movie also is at AFI; see below), this Cannes Un Certain Regard prizewinner constructs a drunken (natch) ping-pong match between two old friends, who take turns regaling each other with anecdotes about their recent trips to the same city, unaware that their paths nearly crossed multiple times and they're frequently talking about identical incidents as seen from slightly different angles. The idea seems to cry out for farce, but Hong, bless him, sticks stubbornly to his own bemused brand of quasi-comedy, with consistently enjoyable if ultimately weightless results. As usual, the best recurring gag is structural: Each present-day interlude, depicted only in stills and voice-over, concludes with a toast; we hear their glasses clink so many times that it's a wonder the movie's epilogue doesn't take place in an emergency ward. (MD) (Nov. 6, 2 p.m., Chinese)

HEARTBEATS Like most young filmmakers, 21-year-old Xavier Dolan wears his influences on his sleeve, but at least he worships the right people: early Godard, Wong Kar-wai, Woody Allen at his most formally inventive. Heartbeats isn't nearly as personal or heartfelt as Dolan's debut, I Killed My Mother (still unreleased in the U.S.), but it confirms him as a natural-born filmmaker, poised to be the French-Canadian P.T. Anderson once he, too, manages to synthesize a style of his own. From a narrative standpoint, this romantic triangle is a threadbare tale of unrequited love and surly rivalry, but watching Dolan enthusiastically explore the medium's lush, seductive, expressionistic possibilities feels like gulping your fill at a watering hole in the middle of contemporary art cinema's New Austerity. (MD) (Nov. 7, 7 p.m., Chinese)