10 or Less Film Festival
Formerly known as the PISS (Portland International Short Short) Film Festival, the 2007 10 or Less Film Festival is totally worth your time. With all films running at 10 minutes or less, you don't have to suffer through a lot of crap to get to the good stuff. The festival covers documentary, animation, narrative, experimental, and other genres from around the world. A few standouts: "I Met the Walrus," for its dynamic, creative animation; "Daddy's Little Man," because it's the cutest three minute stop-motion experience; and "Filthy Food," because you'll never look at a nectarine the same way again. SHAUNA MORRIS Hollywood Theatre.

Across the Universe
Across the Universe hits you like a ton of Fab Four bricks, as Liverpudlian Jude (my new boyfriend, Jim Sturgess) sings about "a girl you want so much it makes you sorry"—a girl named Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood). And what follows is a thin love story that spans the '60s. The "plot" centers on Jude traveling to America to find his father, and befriending Max (Joe Anderson) and his sister, Lucy. And as the clean-cut '60s get hairier, the trio moves to New York to enmesh themselves in the psychedelic scene. But the plot is just an end to a means—to set the stage for a full-on bombast of Beatles songs that soundtrack the decade. When Across the Universe is on—boy howdy, is it on. But the good is overwhelmed by the clichéd and the embarrassingly bad—there's the inappropriate bursting into song every two seconds, the psychedelic swirly freakout of riding on Dr. Roberts' (played by the butt-cringing Bono) prankster bus, and the reliance on cutesy in-jokes. COURTNEY FERGUSON Various Theaters.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
See review. Various Theaters.

Brand Upon the Brain!
See review. Cinema 21.

Buddha's Lost Children
Like a modern day kung fu hero, Buddhist monk Khru Bah gathers orphan boys in a dangerous region of northern Thailand. Once a professional Thai boxer, Khru Bah teaches boxing to the boys, and the documentary chronicles their day-to-day life as the group travels between villages fraught with drug trafficking and poverty. Unfortunately, day-to-day life can be a double-edged sword—yes, its realistic, but it's also boring. The pace of the film is methodical, made even slower by a minimalist musical score and the lack of a voice over (instead, lengthy paragraphs of information introduce each new scene). Perhaps this is meant to emphasize the quietude of a monastical life, but by the end of the film, I really did just want to see Khru Bah kick some drug-smuggling ass already. JENNIFER FURNISS Clinton Street Theater.

Burn!
Marlon Brando stars in 1969's "brainy parable about colonial war profiteering." Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

The Darjeeling Limited
See review. Fox Tower 10.

DocuWeek
Through October 18, the International Documentary Association presents a "public theatrical exhibition of outstanding new documentary films" screening at the Hollywood Theatre. This week's films include Chops (genius child musicians!), Nanking (WWII sucked!), and Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone (dirty old man in a wheelchair!). Hollywood Theatre.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age
See review. Various Theaters.

The Final Season
The Final Season is one of those extremely earnest baseball movies where nothing happens but baseball. And emotions. There is no way you won't be bored, unless you're one of those extremely earnest people who are into baseball in a really corny way. Like, maybe you have a vanity plate that says "#1SLUGR." And in your den there's a wooden plaque that reads, "On the eighth day God created baseball," and when you look at it you can't help but chuckle (every time), but then you also give a solemn little nod. Because he totally did, you know? (You like to think of God as the big head coach in the sky.) And you love it when you're sitting on your gramps's porch and he's talking about his old Sarge, and how Sarge used to say things like, "Ya know, those old timers say that baseball's the only game on earth where the object is to get home." And then you start crying, and gramps makes you go inside before the whole fucking neighborhood hears you. Anyway, it's like that. LINDY WEST Various Theaters.

The Grapes of Wrath
Go west, Joads. Go west. Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

The Heartbreak Kid
Like most Ben Stiller movies, The Heartbreak Kid is just a series of unpleasant things happening to Ben Stiller. This time around, though, his torture regimen seems totally phoned in: sprayed in eyes with perfume, hit in head with dinner roll, emasculated by teenage twins, skull cracked by champagne cork, accidentally cuddles with Mexican rat, has chili pepper shoved into brain, stung by venomous jellyfish, peed on by annoying whore, enters building advertising "Ballet Folklorico" to find a donkey raping a woman (viva Mexico!), hoodwinked by many of Carlos Mencia's tricks, beaten by border guards, beaten by drifter, beaten by guy in gay turquoise pants. Ta-daaaah! LINDY WEST Various Theaters.

The Hellstrom Chronicle
A documentary about how insects will inherit the earth. See also: Joe's Apartment. Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

Hot House
Israeli filmmaker Shimon Dotan was given special access to film Palestinian political prisoners, and turned in a moving, painful, dread-filled documentary. Through interviews with failed suicide bombers, junior terrorists, students, and mere activists, Dotan shows the helplessness of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Recommended if you like to cry yourself to sleep. SCOTT MOORE Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

Lust, Caution
A painful, disturbing romance and thriller, and a story of desperation, dependence, and the sometimes brutal consequences of emotion. ERIK HENRIKSEN Fox Tower 10.

Michael Clayton
See review. Various Theaters.

Moby Dick
Gregory Peck vs. a whale. Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

New World Disorder: Smack Down
Mountain bike porn. Clinton Street Theater.

Night of the Living Dead
"They're coming to get you, Barbara..." Laurelhurst.

Portland Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

See review. Cinema 21, Hollywood Theatre, Living Room Theaters.

Prophecy
John Frankenheimer's 1979 monster movie. Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

Red Desert
Antonioni's Red Desert portrays a bleak industrial future: People struggle with claustrophobic fears while trying to keep jobs in the chemical companies that are suffocating humanity. And being Italian, it's everybody's duty to look stylish staring down the apocalypse. Bizarrely, Richard Harris crops up speaking convincing Italian as Zeller, a sensitive yet thuggish middle manager who is drawn to the film's suicidal adulteress, Giuliana (Monica Vitti). There's rich color dripping from every frame, even in the toxic yellow smoke pouring out of factory chimneys, and a striking eroticism prevails, too—all the more powerful for its sophisticated restraint by modern standards. MATT DAVIS Northwest Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium.

Shoot 'Em Up
One of the craziest, funniest, and most badass action movies in recent memory. ERIK HENRIKSEN Academy Theater, Laurelhurst.

Shoot Shoot Shoot
Avant garde films from the members of The London Film-Makers' Co-Operative. More info: cinemaproject.org. Cinema Project at New American Art Union.

Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?
The latest from Tyler Perry, starring Janet Jackson(!). Not screened for critics. Various Theaters.

We Own the Night
See review. Various Theaters.