Fake Out

Last Party 2000 One of two DEFF entries to feature Philip Seymour Hoffman (see Love Liza, below), this doc from Rebecca Chaiklin and model-actor-son-of-a-singer Donovan Leitch plays like an exercise in nostalgia--in other words, it was made way back before the Democratic Party turned itself into a moot point. It's still fun as hell to watch Hoffman play curious and indignant while acting as narrator and guide through the electoral process; he's aghast at the vehemence and violence at protests outside both the Democratic and Republican conventions and almost bemused when it turns out the old folks in Florida didn't know how to read a ballot. But Hoffman and the filmmakers, who round up the likes of Michael Moore and Bill Maher and Willie Nelson and Eddie Vedder to up the celeb ante, are preaching to the preachers; there ain't nothing more liberal than a film-fest crowd, right? Funny thing is, the filmmakers were worried about screening this movie in a post-9/11 environment; didn't wanna piss off the flag-wavers, I guess, or those supermodels sporting "NYPD" tees on the runways. Can't wait to see how it plays post-11/5/2002. Party? More like a funeral. Side note: On November 5, 2002, Last Party 2000 was picked up for distribution by Film Movement, which will release the film in theaters next summer; see it now, before people forget what a Democrat looks like. November 20, 9:30 p.m., Magnolia. (RW)

Lost in La Mancha "Fuckfuckfuck," mutters Terry Gilliam as pieces of a dream run down a thunderstorm-soaked mountainside; the downpour, sudden and vengeful, will not be his biggest problem during the making (and, finally, unmaking) of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, just another one that hints at the ruin only hours away. Ultimately, it will not be bad weather or shortage of production funds or the damage done to equipment or badly constructed props that will kill Gilliam's movie, but the forced sidelining of star Jean Rochefort, who's sent back to France less than a week into shooting because of a hernia. Yet you can't help but feel that long before this movie was conceived, it was doomed: Anything Gilliam wants this badly, and he has been wanting to make a Quixote movie for decades, is bound to end in devastation. Directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, who were around throughout pre-production and during the abbreviated shooting of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (even the title sounds like an omen), throw back the curtain to reveal a dreamer who too often sees his works become gargantuan nightmares. Gilliam's so haunted by the disastrous shooting of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (and, though he never says so, his aborted efforts to shoot such films as Tale of Two Cities and The Defective Detective, among other unrealized projects) even he seems to know nothing will come of this project. What few glimpses we're given of the project--dailies with Rochefort and Johnny Depp, who was to play a time-traveling Sancho Panza, and animated sequences constructed from Gilliam's storyboards--hint at a remarkable movie, but, alas, all we're allowed is a tiny peek inside the mind of a visionary undone by his own genius. All we're left with is a brilliant film about a broken one. November 7, 4:30 p.m., Magnolia. (RW)

Love Liza Philip Seymour Hoffman, among the handful of Great American Actors, carries his grief in his gut, on his slumped shoulders, behind his dead-to-the-world eyes; his is the limping strut of a man walking to the gallows of his own volition. Such is the performance he brings to Love Liza, written by his brother Gordy and directed by Todd Louiso (Jack Black's pal, or not, in High Fidelity), in which Hoffman plays Wilson Joel, a Web site designer whose wife committed suicide (before the film opens) and left behind a note he refuses to open, either because he doesn't want to know why she permanently parked in the garage or because he knows it will be the last time they'll, you know, communicate. Wilson takes to sleeping on the floor, he ignores his mother-in-law (Kathy Bates), starts huffing gasoline for the dizzying escape and begins tinkering with remote-control planes to mask his addiction; by film's end, he's left with nothing, where once, a bitter Bates reminds, "you had everything!" Louiso wrings all he can from performers and audience alike; your reward for suffering alongside Wilson, affable even in his self-destruction, is complete devastation. The movie doesn't end; it, like Wilson, just gives up, and you're wrecked by the hopelessness. Not a happy ending, just a very real one. November 21, 7 p.m., Magnolia. Director Todd Louiso will attend. (RW)

Manic The unforgiving will dismiss this as Boy, Interrupted, or at the very least a showcase for young actors (among them Almost Famous' Zooey Deschanel and Third Rock From the Sun's Joseph Gordon-Levitt) out to prove themselves worthy of bigger parts in bigger films; if nothing else, playing mental gives you a chance to stretch--and scream and tear shit up. But Jordan Melamed's film, about teens stuck in the nuthouse to overcome their suicidal tendencies and anger-management issues, doesn't glisten with the soft sheen of soap opera; it's nasty, desperate, jittery, pitiless, unconcerned with feel-good finales. Gordon-Levitt plays Lyle, whose mother admits him to the Northwood Mental Institution after he busts open another kid's skull with a baseball bat; he had his reasons, good ones, but Lyle possesses no control over his emotions. He's a shotgun waiting for someone to pick him up and pull his trigger, as are most of the other patients, among them Deschanel as a manic depressive without self-esteem and co-writer Michael Becall as a kid who gruesomely sabotages his own chances at freedom. Don Cheadle's the doc who's going crazy himself, convinced he's done more harm than good; his soft voice and compassionate demeanor mask his own bottled-up rage. November 20, 7 p.m., Magnolia. (RW)