HEAD IN THE CLOUDS
R, 132 mins.

The English-born Australian filmmaker John Duigan can lay claim to some small triumphs – “Flirting,” “Sirens,” and “Lawn Dogs.” But his latest effort is astonishingly inept. What the title refers to is unclear, but befuddlement, or at least ambivalence, is something akin to a state of grace for Guy (Stuart Townsend), a milquetoast Irishman vaguely interested in doing good, and his great love Gilda (Charlize Theron), a slaphappy heiress who parties like it’s 1999.

The fact that it’s the 1930s, and the Continent’s armies are clashing, doesn’t faze the gilded Gilda, who can’t be bothered by the likes of this Mr. Hitler. She sulks something awful when her friend Mia (Penelope Cruz) abandons a life of kinky sex in Paris to become a nurse during the Spanish Civil War. The perfidy is doubled when pliable Guy, too, sets down his cafe au lait to take up arms.

How Ms. Theron could follow her Oscar winning turn in “Monster” with a performance unworthy of community theater is hard to fathom, but she’s not alone. Ms. Cruz has the most thankless task of all, playing ugly duckling to Ms Theron’s swan, and given a grotesque limp to boot! Her dark beauty concealed, Ms. Cruz waits on the sidelines for her moment of glory, a short-lived transformation from sinner to saint.

ZELARY
R , 150 mins.

Sometimes the most stirring films about a subject touch on it only glancingly. In the Czech picture “Zelary,” nominated for the foreign-film Oscar last year, the specter of World War II looms heavily in the background, but personal relationships dominate the action.

Directed by Ondrej Trojan, “Zelary” tells the story of Eliska (Ana Geislerova), a medical student in Prague working as a resistance courier. When the Nazis discover her activities, she is forced to flee. Her cover is one of her patients, a burly peasant named Joza (Gyorgy Cserhalmi), who takes her back to his remote village, Zelary, a place bereft of running water, electricity, and other urban amenities.

What Eliska assumes to be a temporary ruse turns into something akin to the Federal Witness Protection Program. Eliska first changes her name to Hana and then actually marries Joza – how else to keep the neighbors from gossiping and the Nazis at bay? For despite its remote locale, there are more dirty doings going on in Zelary than in Peyton Place.

At two-and-a-half hours, the film feels too short. The scenery is breathtaking (hats off to Asen Sopov), and the production design suggests complete authenticity (kudos to Milan Byeek). But for the verisimilitude of the struggles, and for engaging our compassion as to these characters’ fates, credit Mr. Trojan and his pitch-perfect cast.

– D.M.

MR. 3000
PG – 13,103 mins.

‘Mr. 3000″ takes a swing at a genre that has produced a few foul balls, but comes away with a solid single down the left field line. Coach Charles Stone III (“Drumline”) directs, and comedian Bernie Mac stars as Stan Ross, one of the greatest hitters alive but also one of the biggest jerks.

A self-centered egomaniac, Ross’s only wish is to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and when he joins an elite club, getting his 3,000th hit, he does his best Ricky Williams impersonation, and immediately retires. Confident his feat is enough to get him into Cooperstown, Ross spends the next nine years running a sports ba, and waiting to be voted in.

Only it turns out that Stan doesn’t have 3,000 hits. A scoring error has come to light, and it appears he only has an unimpressive 2,997. So Ross comes out of retirement to play again for the last-place Brewers and reclaim his three hits. As baseball movies go, this film has no particular love for the game. The upside of this is that the film avoids most cliches of the form: The idea of a late run to make it to the playoffs is never entertained.

Mr. Mac is very funny as the Scrooge like athlete who’s a shameless womanizer and who rips balls out of the gloves of children, and the screenplay (by Eric Champnella, Keith Mitchell, and Howard Gould) has plenty of humor. And while foley artistry is rarely, if ever, brought up in a film review, Brian Langman and Bill Sweeny and their team have made each swing of the bat sound as sweet and genuine as if Hideki Matsui himself were batting right next to you.

MERCI DOCTEUR REY
unrated, 96 mins.

One can be forgiven for wondering just what is going on in the campy “Merci Docteur Rey.” Thomas Beaumont (Stanislas Merhar, who has the washed-out beauty of a young Baryshnikov) lives with his opera diva of a mother, Elisabeth (Dianne Wiest), in a sprawling, jewel toned Paris apartment. Their relationship is strained, though they both share a fondness for pot brownies.

His search for a male companion through classified ads (“Good-looking 23-year-old looking for same”) lures him to a mysterious rendezvous. From a closet, he witnesses an erotically charged exchange between two men, which ends in murder. One of the men, he soon discovers, was his father, who his mother had told him died before he was born.

This film is not a mystery, however (and it certainly isn’t a satisfying one). It’s an examination of what happens when narcissistic people are forced to interact and even care for one another. The reason to watch Andrew Litvack’s directorial debut is the menagerie of actresses – their histrionics remain compelling, even when the script and Mr. Merhar are not.

Jane Birkin, as Thomas’s even-more-neurotic friend, Penelope, makes a delightful live-wire, and Vanessa Redgrave and Jerry Hall have entertaining cameos. But the film is owned by Ms. Wiest, a powerful actress in a delicious role. Her face still has a cherub’s roundness, but her smiling eyes can swiftly narrow – the better to shoot daggers with.

INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS
PG – 13, 94 mins.

‘Incident at Loch Ness” is a truly extraordinary and hilarious example of the fake documentary genre. Less creepy than “The Blair Witch Project” and less campy than Christopher Guest’s affectionate mockumentaries, it is a biting satire of the burgeoning genre of low budget films made by Hollywood grandees in search of credibility. The fakes in this movie aren’t the monster but the filmmakers themselves.

Werner Herzog is making a documentary about the Loch Ness monster. At the same time, a camera crew is making a documentary about him. The first scenes we watch unfold are not unlike those in a DVD “making of” special feature (another form the film ably mocks). Things get strange when they reach the Loch. The boat needs to be refitted with a new motor to keep the noise down. The “crypto-zoologist” brought along to look for Nessie turns out to be a curious specimen himself. And the sonar operator is actually a Playboy Playmate.

It is these mundane phenomena, not the supernatural ones, that make the movie worth watching. By keeping its comedy close to the vest, it actually keeps you wondering, for much of its running time, whether or not it might be true.