Five Golden Reels

Girls Will Be Girls Coco Peru (Clinton Leupp), Varla Jean Merman (Jeffery Roberson) and Evie Harris (Jack Plotnick) are the "girls" in question in this Hollywood satire that doesn't cross any new cross-dressing boundaries, but manages to be fitfully entertaining, especially in light of its minuscule budget. Evie is a faded alcohol-and-controlled-substance-abusive and former game-show star rather half-heartedly plotting a comeback. As her live-in companion, Coco (who's nursing personal heartbreaks of her own) performs household duties in lieu of the rent. Consequently, a boarder (Roberson) has been taken in to make ends meet. Writer-director Richard Day shows considerable talent, particularly in a climactic drug-hallucination pool-party scene. Still one can't help but wish that these "girls" had something more to do than strike up Valley of the Dolls attitude without any juicy Valley of the Dolls scenes to back them up. October 29, 9:30 p.m., Angelika. (David Ehrenstein)

Manhood It's tempting to deem this the fest's most disappointing offering, but seeing as how it's the sequel to writer-director Bobby Roth's singularly awful Jack the Dog, it pretty much lives up, which is to say lives down, to expectations. Nestor Carbonell, brilliant as The Tick's Batmanuel, returns as pussyhound Jack, now a settled-down and newly single dad surrounded by a family of buffoons, lechers, scammers and scumbags, among them Janeane Garofalo as his sister, John Ritter as his brother-in-law and Nick Roth as their tatted-and-pierced son, whom Jack is forced to take in. The whole endeavor feels a bit icky, as it's run amok by porn freaks and prostitute fetishists; Roth didn't cast Traci Lords for her acting ability. October 25, 7:45 p.m., Angelika. (R.W.)

Melvin Goes to Dinner Over dinner and drinks in L.A., old friends and new acquaintances ponder the meaning of life--check, please! But before you scamper too far from the table, consider it was directed by Bob Odenkirk, one-half of Mr. Show, and written by former Daily Show contributor Michael Blieden, based on his play; and rest assured it doesn't sink in the tar pits from the weight of its heavy discussion, which touches upon all things sexual and spiritual (one of the women at the table even confesses to murder, a nice touch). It often feels like a Richard Linklater talktalktalkie wrapped around Mr. Show sketches, when Jack Black and David Cross and Saturday Night Live's Fred Armisen, among many others, show up in flashback sequences designed to add levity to the gravity of the fat being chewed 'round the dinner table. October 29, 7:30 p.m., Angelika. Michael Blieden and Bob Odenkirk are scheduled to attend. (R.W.)

On the Run (Cavale)

This is the second installment of Lucas Belvaux's trilogy of films, which includes A couple épatant (a comedy) and Après la vie (a drama); this one's the "thriller," more or less. Less, actually, as Belvaux's Bruno, a terrorist committing random acts of violence in the service of "liberating" the "people," spends most of the film scampering from hiding place to hiding place in Grenoble after he escapes from prison; rarely is a film's title intended to be taken so literally. Bruno's not a character with which we can sympathize; his actions are brutal and senseless, and even when he dries out a cop's junkie wife his motives are purely those of self-preservation, and he thinks nothing of involving a former lover and comrade (Catherine Frot) or endangering her young son in his violent escapades. Yet the film's gripping nonetheless, perhaps because rare is the occasion when we root for the demise of a main character; Bruno's more than someone you love to hate, he's someone you'd love to see dead. October 28, 9:30 p.m., Angelika. (R.W.)

Party Monster Macaulay Culkin stars as Michael Alig, the murderous "Club Kid" of New York's Limelight in this emotionally distressing yet compulsively watchable drama by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who made a documentary on the same subject in 1988 with the same title. Interesting as that was, it didn't have what this amusingly rancid jape has, which is not only the star of Home Alone, but Seth Green as his aide de camp (or campy, as it were) James St. James. It's one of the most original pieces of acting in years. Chloë Sevigny, Wilmer Valderrama, Wilson Cruz, Marilyn Manson, Diana Scarwid and Dylan McDermott also figure effectively in the cast. October 27, 7:30 p.m., Angelika. (D.E.)