“The Iron Ladies” depicts such testaments to the athletic spirit. Based on
the story of a real-life Thai men’s volleyball team composed of gay,
transvestite and transsexual players, “Iron” is queeny, corny and impossible
to resist.

Barred by prejudice from competing in their up-country village,
transvestites Jung and Mon win spots on a top-flight team in Bangkok. All but
one of the straight players bolt in protest, so Jung and Mon recruit their old
college teammates: a well-built military man who rivals Jung in campiness; an
engaged, closeted gay law student; and a beauty-queen pre-op transsexual.

The players surprise competitors and become media darlings by reaching the
national tournament. But the sheriff tries to keep them out of the tournament,
foes mock them incessantly and tournament officials try to wear them out with
too many matches in a day.

Internal conflict also rocks the team. Jung, for one, seems to lack the eye
of the tiger in a big way, preferring to ogle opponents or blow them kisses
across the net. He and other players pay more mind to their syncopated dance
warm-ups than to returning the ball. All of this irritates more serious-minded
teammates.

By the time team captain and lone straight guy Chai gets fed up with the
distractions, the audience is exasperated, too. As Jung, Chaichan
Nimpoolsawasdi especially goes way over the top.

But a thread of desperation runs through “Iron Ladies,” one that exposes
the haughty ‘tude-throwing as a smoke screen for insecurities. Sadly, there’s
a common theme to the movie’s jokes and put-downs: The transgendered players
belong on the streets, not on the court. “There are no happy endings for gays,
” one says.

Ah, but there might be — one that entails bandaged hands, battered bodies
and powerful spikes over the net. Director Yongyooth Thongkonthun uses some
nifty shots to showcase the physically punishing and nail-biting aspects of
elite volleyball.

“Iron Ladies” suffers from heartfelt but stagy pleas for tolerance that
stop the action flat. They’re easy enough to get past, though, if you embrace
the film’s disarming naivete.

A few in the cast appear to be natural athletes as well as actors. Sahaparp
Virakamintr, as the serious, handsome transvestite Mon, and Jesdaporn Pholdee
as Chai touchingly show how their characters’ shared commitment to the game
sparks a friendship that transcends straight or gay.

But the actors are strictly bush-league compared with the real players,
shown in the closing credits. Just as flouncy but more physically imposing
than their screen counterparts, these guys really tear it up on the court.

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Advisory: This film contains raw language.

– Carla Meyer

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‘AUDITION’

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Horror. Starring Ryo Ishibashi and Eihi Shiina. Directed by Takashi Miike.
(Not rated. 115 minutes. At the Castro.)

It’s hard to imagine a worse time to consider going to a horror movie,
especially one that becomes as hard to take as “Audition” does. However, for
the record: Here’s one that is not schlock but actually is about something.

Japanese shock director Takashi Miike knows what he’s doing — he just
doesn’t let up. His “Dead or Alive” opened last week, and now comes “Audition,
” a horror thriller disguised as sexual politics.

It is about a middle-aged producer who sets up an audition for a movie as a
pretext for “auditioning” a new wife. It turns into a hallucinatory nightmare
of female revenge that will pin back the audience’s eyelids.

This movie can be recommended only to dyed-in-the-wool fans of the genre.
Anyone who goes into one of Miike’s films must be prepared to be put through
the wringer.

“Audition” has a long, carefully paced setup that introduces a lonely
widower (Ryo Ishibashi) who feels ready to remarry. Ishibashi is a warm actor,
and the widower is not at all an unsympathetic figure. There is nonetheless
little doubt that he objectifies the women he auditions — they go by in a
flash of quick shots — and knows exactly what he wants in a wife.

As played by Eihi Shiina, she is in virginal white, deferential with
downcast eyes, and has a voice that remains tiny, soft and accommodating even
when things turn their most macabre.

The first big shock doesn’t occur until well into the movie, when something
in a large, unexplained bag suddenly lurches. Thereafter, in a bizarre time
warp, syringes, acupuncture needles and piano wire all will be put to use.

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Advisory: Contains scenes of torture and extreme violence.

– Bob Graham

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‘Session 9′

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Horror. Starring Peter Mullan and David Caruso. Directed by Brad Anderson.
Written by Anderson and Stephen Gevedon. (R. 100 minutes. At the Roxie.)

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An abandoned mental hospital, full of mold and menace and squishy surfaces,
is the setting for “Session 9,” a horror flick from director Brad Anderson.
It’s a broad genre leap for Anderson, who made his mark with the sweet, modest
relationship comedy “Next Stop Wonderland.”

Scottish actor Peter Mullan (”My Name Is Joe”) plays Gordon, an asbestos-
abatement contractor who wins the bid on the crumbling building and encounters
the ghosts of patients past. Gordon already has problems with a shifty crew
chief (David Caruso) — but that’s nothing next to the terrors found in the
hospital’s vast gothic corridors: Noises pierce the darkness. A worker finds
taped interviews with a woman who suffered from multiple-personality disorder.
And a crew member is haunted by the awakening of repressed family memories.

Anderson creates a strong atmosphere with nimble camera work and ominous,
ear-teasing sound design, and he uses his location, the Danvers Mental
Hospital in Massachusetts, to creepy effect. The enormous structure, built in
the 1880s, actually inspired “Session 9″: Anderson used to drive past the
hospital.

The script, co-written by Anderson and one of his actors, Stephen Gevedon,
is the liability. The story doesn’t quite pay off, characters are underwritten
and the surprise ending is contrived and unconvincing.

There’s no emotional hook: We ought to care about one of the work crew, and
side with him against whatever forces press against him. Anderson doesn’t
achieve that, even though his cast, which includes Josh Lucas (”The Deep End”)
and Brendan Sexton III (”Boys Don’t Cry”), is fine.

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Advisory: This film contains violence and raw language.

– Edward Guthmann

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‘THE GIRL’

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Film noir. Starring Claire Keim, Agathe de la Boulaye. Directed by Sande
Zeig. Written by Zeig and Monique Wittig. (Not rated. 84 minutes. At the
Lumiere).

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For some reason, the French lesbian film noir “The Girl” was filmed in
English. Which means the dialogue is simply cheesy instead of cheesy but
pleasing to the ear.

Numbingly dull and repetitive, “The Girl” is at least pretty to look at for
a time. Actresses Claire Keim and Agathe de la Boulaye make a lovely pair, and
the movie portrays an intimate, enticing Paris of cobblestone streets,
artists’ lofts and smoky nightclubs. De la Boulaye plays the narrator,
referred to only as the Painter — because she apparently aspires to do more
than just smoke incessantly. All the characters have generic names, a conceit
that’s either minimalist or just stupid.

The Painter encounters a sleek, insouciant nightclub singer known as the
Girl, and the couple fall into bed. “The sheets are soaked vivid with our
perfume,” says the panting Painter, in just one of many wince-worthy voice-
over moments.

But the mysterious Girl apparently does a lot of entertaining. Among her
visitors is the Man (Cyril Lecomte, looking desperate for a mustache to twirl),

owner of the club where she sings. The creep sends his henchman to smack
around the singer’s new lover. From there, the movie becomes an endless loop
of the women having sex and the Painter getting her butt kicked by the goon.
She wears the same crumpled linen blazer throughout the picture, which only
heightens the maddening sense of repetition.

As the singer, Keim has a slithery charm and great chemistry with the
gorgeously butch de la Boulaye. They photograph so well together that the
movie would have been better as a series of still shots.

By about the lovers’ 10th time in the sack, though, the thrill has gone, as
has any hint of dramatic tension. Trying to spice things up, director Sande
Zeig shoots a bedroom scene in such extreme close-up that it’s impossible to
discern body parts. An elbow here and a clavicle there don’t add up to sexy.

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Advisory: This film contains sex, nudity, violence and raw language.

– Carla Meyer

Fractured or twisted fairy tales can translate into highly entertaining movies, like “Ever After” or “The Princess Bride.” Mark Palansky’s “Penelope” is a nice try at the genre, but falls short.

It has a good cast and a few funny and affecting moments, but it sets up too many stumbling blocks to succeed. When you find yourself asking plausibility questions about what’s supposed to be a charming variation of “Beauty and the Beast,” something’s gone wrong.

Penelope (Christina Ricci), born to a wealthy family in a fantasy version of London, is a perfectly normal baby girl, except that she has a pig’s snout. This affliction is the result of a family curse from ancient times, and can only be cured when an aristocratic suitor agrees to marry Penelope as she is. To protect the girl, her parents (Catherine O’Hara and Richard E. Grant) fake her death. When Penelope comes of age, Mom and Dad bring in a series of would-be suitors, all of whom proceed to hurl themselves out the nearest window when they see her porcine face.

Here’s the first problem. Penelope looks exactly like Ricci wearing a modest prosthetic snout – not exactly a face to drive aristos to screaming fits.

There’s much ado about keeping Penelope’s face a secret, and the wannabe grooms are required to sign a confidentiality agreement. One especially obnoxious suitor (Simon Woods) hooks up with a tabloid photographer (Peter Dinklage) to snatch a picture of Penelope, whom the Woods character has described as a pig-faced monster.

That’s one plot engine. Another is Penelope’s encounter with a nice-guy gambling addict (a rumpled James McAvoy) who’s obviously her proper match – though there’s an obstacle to their relationship that I can’t reveal.

Eventually, Penelope runs away from home and her overbearing parents and tries to live a normal life in town, hiding her appearance with a scarf. The city is a magical, twinkling version of London with bits of New York and maybe Paris thrown in. Reese Witherspoon, one of the picture’s producers, shows up as a tough-girl bike messenger who befriends Penelope and tries to teach her the ropes.

The ending raises further issues about how we’re supposed to take Penelope’s disfigurement.

Ricci, McAvoy, Grant, Dinklage and Woods are decent. I usually like O’Hara, but her high-pitched performance here belongs in another movie, and Witherspoon’s appearance is not really essential to the proceedings.

Director Palansky and screenwriter Leslie Caveny seem to have many of the right ingredients for creating something beguiling, but the film is, finally, surprisingly pedestrian. What a shame, with all these good performers.

“Penelope” was made in 2006. I’m guessing that’s it’s been pulled off the shelves now to capitalize on McAvoy’s good notices for “Atonement.”

- Walter Addiego

‘City of Men’

Drama. Starring Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha. Directed by Paulo Morelli. In Portuguese, with English subtitles. (R. 110 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

Putting a toddler at peril is one sure way to rivet an audience. It worked so well in “Battleship Potemkin,” where a baby in a carriage rolls down the Odessa Steps, that the makers of “The Untouchables” copied the scene. In “City of Men,” a compelling and visually arresting drama from Brazil, the baby boy at risk belongs to Ace (Douglas Silva), who is barely more than a child himself. When the boy’s mother goes to São Paulo for work, the child stays with his father in Rio. But Ace would rather comb the beaches with his buddy, Wallace (Darlan Cunha), than change diapers. He hands his son over to a group playing ball in the sand as if the child were another plaything. In a heart-stopping scene, the youngster is shown wandering around on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean by himself. A big wave could come at any moment and sweep him up.

The infant is rescued – thank goodness. But the movie is chock-full of other examples of risks faced by children of the slums of Rio. Gangland warfare is likely to break out at any time in Rio’s more than 300 favelas, shantytowns incongruously perched on steep hills, affording breathtaking views of the mountains and bay, if you don’t mind dodging bullets.

The saga of the favelas’ drug dealers and hustlers is scary but perversely captivating, like that of America’s Mafia. A group of Brazilian filmmakers have developed a Hollywood-style franchise on the story of the kids who live there. First came “City of God” in 2002, an Oscar-nominated film starring many actual residents of favelas. This spun into an enormously popular Brazilian TV series, focusing on Ace and Wallace’s struggles to grow up and leave their perilous surroundings for a normal life.

Watching Silva and Cunha play these teens, it’s obvious why the TV show and now a movie were built around them. Their physical closeness when they roam the streets indicates the depth of the boys’ friendship. They bring a sense of restlessness to their roles that is exciting to watch, almost like James Dean in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Cunha projects raw emotion in a scene where he confronts his long-lost father, an ex-con who may not have Wallace’s best interests at heart.

Director Paulo Morelli is a master at creating tension, pumped up by the soundtrack’s pulsating beat. Screenwriter Elena Soarez creates parallel stories. In the more personal one, Ace and Wallace struggle with their new identities as, respectively, someone’s father and someone else’s son. This unfolds against the background of a gang leader attempting to take control of a favela with gunfire.

Soarez’s script borders on soap opera. A secret from Ace and Wallace’s past is so preposterous as to be laughable. The tough guys in the favela overplay their parts. They may have seen too many Hollywood gangster movies.

But the warmth between Ace and Wallace humanizes what might have been just another shoot ‘em up. At nighttime when the favelas are lit up, they’re a cinematographer’s dream. Adriano Goldman captures the city’s iridescent colors, making you wonder how a place of such beauty could be a cesspool of crime. Goldman also shot “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation,” the Brazilian film that opened last week. Two films from Brazil in two weeks indicates the current strength of cinema in that country.

- Ruthe Stein

‘Romulus, My Father’

Drama. Starring Eric Bana, Franka Potente and Marton Csokas. Directed by Richard Roxburgh. (R. 109 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

It’s always nice to see Eric Bana in a movie where he’s not out to stab Brad Pitt or doing battle with giant green Hulk dogs. When the handsome Australian isn’t trying to be a matinee star, he’s a pretty good indie film actor.

Bana is the titular dad in “Romulus, My Father,” and he gets plenty of opportunities to do the Daniel Day-Lewis thing – teaching his son tough life lessons, getting in crippling accidents and occasionally acting like a complete maniac. But the uneven film is stolen from him by Franka Potente, who turns out to be an even better actress when she stops running for five minutes. Kodi Smit-McPhee also contributes one of the better child actor performances of the past year, playing Romulus’ son.

Note that we’re talking about the performances first with this film. They’re the best part of “Romulus, My Father,” which is competently directed by character actor Richard Roxburgh, based on Raimond Gaita’s memoir. Screenwriter Nick Drake packs three or four lifetimes worth of depression into 109 minutes, but not much to think about or learn from once you step outside the theater.

Potente is Christina, Romulus’ always-straying wife, who makes few apologies for her apparent nymphomania. She returns to the lives of Romulus and Rai, two Eastern Europeans who have immigrated to Australia, and quickly throws a hand grenade in their simple lives. What looks like it might become a “Places of the Heart”-style save-the-farm drama becomes a story about love and sexual addiction and its effects on a family.

As Christina, trying to suck Romulus’ best friend, Hora (Marton Csokas), and his brother Mitru (Russell Dykstra) into the love quadrangle, Potente remains convincingly beautiful and wild enough to keep all of these men obsessed with her. The way she uses everyone, including her son, to fill her endless emotional needs is the most interesting part of the film.

But while the matters of the heart in “Romulus” work in a voyeuristic kind of way, it’s not clear what we’re supposed to take away from the film. The triumph of human spirit or important life lesson that seems promised in the build-up never really materializes. Muddying things further is the Romulus character, which Bana plays as a cipher for most of the film. When he does display emotion, his actions are sudden and extreme, and not particularly believable.

- Peter Hartlaub

‘Military Intelligence and You!’

Starring Patrick Muldoon, Elizabeth Bennett, Mackenzie Astin. Directed by Dale Kutzera. (Not rated. 78 minutes. At the Lumiere in San Francisco and the Shattuck in Berkeley.)

Think back, way back, in your memory to a time when there may have been one or two “Saturday Night Live” sketches that you found mildly clever and maybe even sporadically amusing. Got the image? Great. Now imagine that sketch stretched out to 78 minutes. Do you think it would hold up?

If the sketch had to do with the idea of mixing old military training films, even older propaganda disguised as ’40s Hollywood movies, and new footage meant to look old, then the answer would be “No freakin’ way.” But that’s the general idea behind – way behind – “Military Intelligence and You,” written and directed by Dale Kutzera.

This cinematic decoupage is meant to play off the oxymoron of the term “military intelligence.” We get the idea – we may even agree with it: Just don’t make us sit through 78 minutes of empty cleverness.

A voice-over narration announces that this will be a military training film meant to illuminate us raw recruits about the invaluable contribution of military intelligence to the war effort. Since Hollywood was desperate to prove its patriotism during World War II, not to mention desperate, as ever, to make money, the studios churned out a whole lot of really bad movies that serve as fodder for “Military Intelligence.” And since a lot of major actors were afraid of being called unpatriotic for getting out of military service during the war, you’ll see some big names in the pieces of old movies pasted together for Kutzera’s questionable effort.

Meanwhile, there’s an actual story line about Army Major Nick Reed (Patrick Muldoon) who’s trying to find the secret base of the “Ghost Squadron,” Nazi flying aces who come out of nowhere and attack the good guys (that would be us) for no good reason. Lo and behold, Nick shows up in the war room and runs smack into his old flame, Monica Tasty (Elizabeth Bennett) and her current boyfriend, Major Mitch Dunning (Mackenzie Astin). Like the old footage, these scenes are filmed in black and white. The characters are given dialogue meant to spoof the dialogue of the ’40s movies, which was larded with patriotic pronouncements. The problem is that the original is much more humorous, albeit unintentionally so, than the parody dialogue.

- David Wiegand

‘The Overlooked Suspect: O.J. Is Guilty, But Not of Murder’

Documentary. Starring William C. Dear. Directed by Phil Smith. (Not rated. 84 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

The measure of this movie’s success is that it can take something you thought you knew all about and make you wonder. We all know Simpson did it, don’t we? The case is open and shut, right? Well, maybe not. By meticulously piling evidence on top of evidence, “The Overlooked Suspect: O.J. Is Guilty, But Not of Murder” makes a convincing case for another interpretation.

It’s worth noting that “The Overlooked Suspect” was not made by a crank. William C. Dear is a respected private investigator who, over a 35-year career, has solved many high-profile cases. He first approached the Simpson case assuming, like everyone else, that Simpson did it. But his investigation soon took him in another direction.

Just offhand, ask yourself this: If Simpson practically decapitated his ex-wife, how come he had only a microscopic trace of blood in his car and on the white rug in his house. And if O.J. got into a brutal fight with Ron Goldman, a strapping young man whose hands were found blistered from punching his assailant, why did middle-aged Simpson not have a scratch on him?

But this movie goes beyond making the case for why Simpson might not have done it. It makes a full case for another suspect’s guilt, a suspect that the police, according to Dear, barely investigated. It’s a suspect that Simpson might have had an interest in protecting.

As a work of filmmaking, “The Overlooked Suspect” has its flaws. Its biggest is that most of the key witnesses Dear talked to refused to appear on camera.

However, having seen the documentary, I find it hard to imagine anyone coming away from it believing that the police investigation was thorough and conclusive. Rather it seems that the L.A.P.D. had its suspect and looked no further. If “The Overlooked Suspect” doesn’t completely solve, beyond a doubt, the Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman murders, it demonstrates that the police haven’t done so, either.

At the very least, “The Overlooked Suspect” is a convincing call for reopening the case.

By the way, Dear will be at the Roxie for the evening shows tonight and Saturday. He will introduce the movie, poll the audience as to their initial impressions of the case and then take questions after each screening.

- Mick LaSalle

– See complete movie listings and show times, and buy tickets for select theaters, at sfgate.com/movies.

E-mail Walter Addiego at waddiego@sfchronicle.com.