CITY OF GOD. Brazilian Fernando Meirelles’ high-energy depiction of gang warfare in the titular Rio de Janeiro slum has been met with critical raves and comparisons to the mob pictures of Martin Scorsese. The protagonist, a young photographer named Rocket, succeeds in evading the gang lifestyle; his childhood friend fails to follow suit, instead succumbing to the temptations of crime and power. Dynamic, darkly funny and spitting electricity, City of God presents a strife-ridden world lurching towards destruction. City of God screens at 1, 3:50, 6:35 and 9:35 p.m. (BJS)

GERRY. Gerry, the minimalist buddy drama starring Matt Damon, reflects such a drastic shift in director Gus van Sant’s style and tone that many critics have been tempted to label the film “penitence” for van Sant’s unabashedly commercial recent efforts (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester). But penitence means internal reflection and self-punishment, not suffering imposed on others. Nevertheless, suffering is the primary experience for viewers of this interminable, plot-free bore. Damon and Casey Affleck star as friends, both nicknamed Gerry, lost and wandering somewhere in Death Valley. The film is slow-witted where it should be thoughtful, pretentious when it should be sincere. As the two title characters drift aimlessly under the merciless desert sun, it’s hard not to look forward to the bitter end. Gerry screens at 2:45, 5:10, 7:35 and 10 p.m. (NKB)

LOST IN LA MANCHA. Visionary director Terry Gilliam’s ill-fated recent effort to make a Don Quixote movie is chronicled in this new documentary. After a difficult pre-production period, Gilliam’s film is slapped with a malicious case of Murphy’s Law once it begins shooting. Six days of location work, flash floods, screaming jets and an injured star force the production to shut down, leaving insurance agents to smooth over the chaos and Gilliam fans to ponder what might have been. Jeff Bridges, who starred in Gilliam’s The Fisher King, narrates. Lost in La Mancha screens at 2:35, 5, 7:30 and 10:05 p.m. (BJS)

THE QUIET AMERICAN. Director Philip Noyce’s adaptation of the 1956 Graham Greene novel stars Oscar-nominated Michael Caine as Thomas Fowler, the middle-aged London Times foreign correspondent covering the French-Indochina war in Saigon. Fowler, who lives in Vietnam with a beautiful ex-taxi dancer named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), finds this lifestyle imperiled when a young American doctor, Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), falls in love with Phuong and tries to wrest her away. As the eponymous “quiet American,” Pyle is rather the opposite—his naive idealism and fervent democratic bent wreak havoc in issues apart from the cynical Fowler’s true love. Not only is love at stake, however: Pyle’s presence also leads Fowler to uncover disturbing information about America’s involvement in the war. Though Pyle turns Fowler’s life topsy-turvy, Noyce keeps his film uncomplicated—and the esteemed Caine is also unlikely to disappoint. The Quiet American screens at 2:15, 4:40, 7 and 9:50 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 11:45 a.m. (TIH)

RIVERS AND TIDES. A documentary about erosion may sound as appetizing as a plate piled high with General Wong’s Chicken, but filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer has apparently met the challenge and created an erosion movie worth seeing. Rivers and Tides tracks artist Andy Goldsworthy, a Scottish sculptor of what he dubs “earthworks,” organic creations positioned in a fashion and location that leaves them vulnerable to the elements. Works of stone, ice and wood are placed on land or in the sea in such a way that they are beaten into uselessness or oblivion. Sounds like an Ingmar Bergman PBS documentary. Rivers and Tides screens at 2:25, 4:50, 7:20 and 9:40 p.m. (BJS)

TALK TO HER. With Golden Globes and the Oscars just around the corner, the only recognition that Pedro Almodovar’s pretentious Talk to Her deserves is as the year’s most overrated film. Though beautifully shot and populated with a set of unusually complicated characters, Talk to Her shamelessly and outrageously asks its audience to sympathize with a rapist. The film manages, paradoxically, to be both sloppily edited and deadeningly self-conscious. As it progresses, the audience is slowly but surely ushered into a stupor very closely resembling that of the coma victim at the story’s inane center. Talk to Her screens at 2, 4:30, 7:10 and 10 p.m. (NKB)

—Happening was compiled by Stephen N. Jacobs, Michael S. Hoffman, Tiffany I. Hsieh, Nathan K. Burstein, Benjamin J. Soskin, Clint J. Froehlich, Christopher W. Platts, Emily S. High and Ryan J. Kuo.