RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE)The Grocer's Son: Drama. Directed by Éric Guirado. In French with English subtitles. (Not rated. 96 minutes. At the Embarcadero and the Lark in Larkspur.) At age 30, Antoine has been gone from his hometown in Provence for more than a...

RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) Documentary. Directed by Aaron Rose and Joshua Leonard. (Not rated. 90 minutes. At the Lumiere in San Francisco.) Aaron Rose speaks frequently on camera in his documentary "Beautiful Losers," a fond reminiscence of an art movement...

RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) Ping Pong Playa: Comedy. Starring Jimmy Tsai, Roger Fan and Khary Payton. Co-written and directed by Jessica Yu. (Rated PG-13. 96 minutes. At the Metreon and the Shattuck in Berkeley.) "China produced four great inventions: paper,...

Claude Miller's haunting new movie is called "A Secret." But the gist of this story of repression and family tragedy is that secrets are rarely singular.

"Mister Foe" is infused with enough macabre and comical touches to prevent it from sliding into clinical sensationalism.

This week's Platinum Picks will take you to Sherwood Forest, a Connecticut town and a sleazy nightspot near the Canadian border: ...

Can a nebbish see history? Does a human zero such as the hero of "I Served the King of England" understand when he's living in epochal times and rise to meet its expectations? Or does he just muddle through, making good choices, bad choices, and really bad choices?

Michael Moore plans to release his newest documentary, Slacker Uprising, exclusively on the Internet for free. Can I get a "YAY!"?

There are some jobs that always seem on the verge of obsolescence. My tailor, for instance, is almost 70. He has no apprentice; if he's put any pressure on his children to take over, they're not responding. "The Grocer's Son," a pleasant enough movie from France, is more or less about passing on the family business, and whether a child ...

"The Romance of Astrée and Céladon" is Éric Rohmer's ode to lolling about. The movie is set among the knolls, clearings, and forests of the French hinterlands, and the 88-year-old Rohmer is obviously in love. Yet his enthusiasm for playing outside is more infectious than the amateur troupe of women and men he's assembled for this adaptation of Honoré d'Urfé ...