AFI FILM FEST: THE FINAL WEEK

T he following are capsule reviews of this week’s screenings at the AFI Film Festival of Los Angeles. Screenings take place at the Los Feliz Theater, 1822 N. Vermont Ave., Hollywood, except where noted. Tickets and information: (213) 520-2000 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. THURSDAY

“The Realm of Fortune” (Mexico, 1986, 12:30 p.m.). This film has the inevitability of a nightmare. Director Arturo Ripstein’s tale (from a Juan Rulfo story) shows a truly horrifying rise, decline and fall: a sentimental, bumbling, childishly selfish town crier becomes a swaggering cockfighter, seducer and high-stakes gambler. But his wealth proves more squalid than his poverty; Ripstein, with corrosive cunning, traps his protagonist in a quagmire of fetid success, a no-exit of splendid misery. The movie has a hypnotic rhythm, wonderfully seedy decor and a crazy fairy-tale inevitability; some of Ripstein’s jokes are as savage as Bunuel’s. Recommended.