Film Festival's Memorial Day Special Is `Regret To Inform'

Both Pacific Place and the Egyptian have begun operating on a daily-matinee festival schedule. They'll be starting at 12:30 p.m. daily, today through the festival's finale Sunday.

Part of Pacific Place's Memorial Day lineup is a 3:30 p.m. showing of Barbara Sonneborn's documentary, "Regret to Inform," which is made up largely of interviews with widows on both sides of the Vietnam War. Sonneborn was 24 when she lost her husband in the war two decades ago. She visited the country recently to shoot this movie, which marks her film debut.

Variety's critic, Glenn Lovell, wrote that "the new voices put American losses in context and add a near-shattering resonance rare in nonfiction accounts. . . Cumulative effect of superbly integrated interviews and archival footage is staggering, easily as terrifying as anything in `Saving Private Ryan'. "

One of the year's most honored documentaries, "Regret to Inform" earned an Academy Award nomination for best nonfiction film, as well as the Sundance Film Festival's awards for documentary director and cinematography (an award it shares with "Rabbit in the Moon," which will be screened tomorrow night at the festival). This is the only screening.

Here's today's schedule:

Egyptian

12:30 p.m. - "Limbo." Writer-director John Sayles' first film to land in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, this well-cast drama focuses on a group of people trying to jump-start their lives in Alaska.

3:30 p.m. - "Speaking in Strings." American documentary about the violinist, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.

6:30 p.m. - "Black Cat, White Cat." Emir Kusturica, the Yugoslavian filmmaker who has twice won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, is back with this Gypsy farce about feuding families who live on the banks of the Danube.

9:15 p.m. - "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole." Tod Williams makes his directing debut with this decidedly different coming-of-age story, starring Adrian Grenier as a bright high-school student trying to adjust to the fact that his beloved stepfather (Clark Gregg) has decided to become a woman. The framing device that opens and ends the film doesn't work, but Gregg and Grenier make a terrific father-son team, the script has plenty of twists, and Williams works hard to avoid the cliches of the genre.

Pacific Place

12:30 p.m. - "Of Freaks and Men." A tart, tasty Russian film about turn-of-the-century St. Petersburg, populated by a postcard pornographer, Siamese twins, casual killers and an assortment of women who passively pose in the nude.

3:30 p.m. - "Regret to Inform." Prize-winning documentary about Vietnam War widows on both sides.

6:30 p.m. - "Tokyo Eyes." Japanese film about a vigilante, directed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Limosin.

9:15 p.m. - "Circus Palestina." Israeli's 1998 entry in the foreign-film Oscar race concerns a Russian circus troupe that turns up in the occupied West Bank.

Harvard Exit

12:30 p.m. - "All the Little Animals." Jeremy Thomas, who produced Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor" and "Little Buddha," makes his directing debut with this British film starring John Hurt as a hermit who buries road kill. Christian Bale is the brain-damaged youth he befriends.

3:30 p.m. - "Santitos." Mexican story of a young widow who can't believe her daughter has died and sees a vision from St. Jude that leads to a Tijuana brothel.

6:30 p.m. - "Only Clouds Move the Stars." Norwegian story of an 11-year-old girl whose family is devastated by the death of her little brother.

9:15 p.m. - "Twin Falls Idaho." Today's other Siamese twins movie, starring Mark and Michael Polish, who are real-life twins - though they're not as close as they appear in the movie, which they wrote (Michael directed). It has its plodding moments, but this is a unique and ultimately moving portrait of two individuals who value the few moments they can feel "alone" each day.

Broadway Performance Hall

12:30 p.m. - "Bingo: The Documentary." This nonfiction movie from local filmmaker John Jeffcoat replaces "Gomez: Heads or Tails," which has been canceled.

3:30 p.m. - "Women in Cinema." Five short films directed by women, including the American premieres of the Swedish "Real Men Eat Meat" and the Australian "Tulip," which was directed by Oscar-nominated actress Rachel Griffiths.

6:30 p.m. - "Conquest." Lothaire Bluteau plays a Saskatchewan dreamer trying to rejuvenate his small town in this British-Canadian production. Tara Fitzgerald is the destitute stranger who gets talked into running the local hardware store.

9:15 p.m. - "Rosie." Belgium's entry in this year's foreign-film Oscar race is the story of a daydreaming 13-year-old who convinces herself that she has a dreamboat boyfriend. What might have worked as a short subject gets stretched awfully thin.