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Tonight’s HIFF highlights

All showings at Regal Dole Cannery Stadium 18 Theaters in Iwilei:

» "Ocean Heaven" (3:30 p.m., Asian Showcase: New Chinese Cinema): Martial-arts superstar Jet Li flexes his dramatic acting chops in this movie about a single, terminally ill theme park worker who is determined to help his autistic 20-year-old son function independently. (Also screens 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.)

» "Dog Sweat" (5 p.m., American Immigrant Filmmakers on Profile): Iranian director Hossein Keshavarz shot his film clandestinely in Tehran to dramatize the lives of youths who rebel against the strictures of a conservative Islamic society.

» "Clash" (6 p.m., Asian Showcase: Extreme Asia): A box-office hit at home in Vietnam, it’s an indulgent reinvention of the Western action film, complete with martial-arts fights and shoot-outs, as a motley crew of outcasts assembles to steal a hard drive from French mobsters. (Also screens 10 p.m. tomorrow.)

» "Au Revoir Taipei" (6 p.m., AI Filmmakers on Profile): This Berlin Film Festival award winner takes place over the course of one evening. Hoping to find his recently departed girlfriend in Paris, a lovesick man agrees to make a mysterious delivery for a gangster in exchange for a plane ticket. The clandestine mission draws the man into the underworld of nocturnal Taipei, accompanied by his best friend and a bookstore worker who takes an interest in him.

» "The Leopard" (6:30 p.m. at Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Academy of Arts; EuroCinema Hawaii): A restored 35mm print — partly funded by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation — of Luchino Visconti’s sumptuous 1963 epic starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon. An aging prince watches his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation.

» "One Kine Day" (8:30 p.m., Made in Hawaii): Writer/director Chuck Mitsui’s feature-length film captures a day in the life of a slacker-skater as he trudges through one of the most "da kine" days of his life, where anything and everything could happen, particularly when he finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. (Also 9:30 p.m. Saturday)

» "Machete Maidens Unleashed!" (10:15 p.m., After Dark): Festival film programmer Anderson Le calls this "a great documentary about the B-movies made in the Philippines during the 1970s and ’80s. They were mostly exploitation and midnight movies, with Weng Weng prominently featured." The Filipino dwarf became a cult hero "as a badass James Bond type who wears tuxedoes, knows kung fu and beds hot dames."

Call 792-1577 or visit www.hiff.org.

 

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