AFI FILM FESTIVAL : ‘Eric Dolphy,’ ‘Jules and Jim’ Top Today’s Lineup

These are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute International Film Festival, with commentary by Michael Wilmington and Kevin Thomas. All screenings are at Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica. Information: (213) 466-1767.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED:

“LAST DATE: ERIC DOLPHY”(Netherlands; director Hans Hylkema; 1 and 6:15 p.m.). An engaging, moving and comprehensive documentary on the late L.A.-born jazz musician-composer, a virtuoso on bass clarinet, flute or alto sax. He emerges as a man dedicated to and consumed by his work . . . whose talent was only fully appreciated in Europe and whose death, at 36 in Berlin, from undiagnosed diabetes, had a bitter irony. (Kevin Thomas)

“JULES AND JIM”(France, 1961; Francois Truffaut; 1:30 & 6:45 p.m.). One of Truffaut’s best-loved films, with Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre as a triangle of WWI-era artist-Bohemians whose youthful rebellion and joy slides into conflict, bitterness and regret. Based on Henri Rochard’s semi-autobiographical novel, shot with exhilarating freedom and lyricism, it was one of the quintessential ‘60s romances; Moreau’s Catherine almost an era touchstone. (Michael Wilmington). (Kevin Thomas concurs: “A must . . . a landmark.”)

“ZENTROPA”(Denmark; Lars Von Trier; 4 & 9:15 p.m.). The film begins with narrator Max Von Sydow trying to hypnotize us, as train tracks hurl us through the night; then this noir fable of corrupt postwar Germany starts pumping up the deadpan doom and irony. Focusing on a Kafkaesque target, an American sleeping-car porter trapped in a maze of tyranny and terrorism, it’s about the insane logistics of destiny, the seductions of fascism and the terrors of conscience. Von Trier--who draws on Welles, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Lang and many others--has a style as impishly inventive and virtuosic as Michael Powell’s in the ‘40s. He’s made a film full of demonic jests, bleak poetry, black-and-white magic. (M.W.)

RECOMMENDED:

“THE VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS”(Armenia; Vigen Chaldranian; 1:45 & 7 p.m.) One of AFIFEST ‘92’s most visually spectacular films: a medieval Armenian odyssey, with a Candide-like monk traveling through a Brueghelesque landscape in search of spiritual truth, and instead finding Rabelaisian sin and excess everywhere. Director-actor Vigen Chaldranian paints a broad, lusty canvas, teeming with life and grotesquerie; his talent is rich, but his “Voice” gets muffled at the end. Overcutting? (M.W.).

“HELLO, HEMINGWAY”(Cuba; Fernando Perez; 3:30 & 8:45 p.m.). A small, modest character study. In pre-Castro Cuba, a working-class next-door neighbor of Papa Hemingway--who’s rarely home--has troubles and heartaches galore while reading “The Old Man and the Sea” and trying to win a scholarship to America. The story is obvious, even hackneyed, but the humane handling of actors and background keeps it likable. (M.W.)

Others: “The Good Fascist” (South Africa; Helen Noguiera; 1:15 & 6:30 p.m.). Noguiera unconvincingly weaves the fates of white fascist terrorist and black rebels in a Soweto that victimizes them both. “Fit” (United States; Laurie Block; 3:45 & 9 p.m.) A thoughtful study of America’s century-long obsession with physical fitness . . . but it stops too soon (the ‘60s) and blunts its points. “Electric Shock” (Armenia; Suren Babyan; 4:15 & 9:30 p.m.). Ponderous allegory, weighed down with Freudian/political implications, about a man’s nightmarish attempt to get a key to a locked room. (K. T.) Oscar Short Fiction Nominees (United States; 7 p.m. at AFI Warner). Unscreened: This year’s winner, “Session Man,” with two runners-up. Discovery Program-Shorts (United States; 9 p.m. at AFI Warner). Mark Krenzien’s “The Letters From Moab” is poignant; the others just decent student exercises. (K.T.)