TODAY AT THE AFI

F ollowing are The Times’ recommendations for today’s schedule of the American Film Institute International Film Festival, with commentary by the film reviewing staff. All screenings at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset. Information: (213) 466-1767. Highly Recommended:

“WR: MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM”(Yugoslavia, 1971; director Dusan Makavejev; 1:50 & 7 p.m.). The “outlaw” sexual theories of psychologist-author-orgone box therapist Wilhelm Reich (the “W.R.” of the title) provided the springboard for Dusan Makavejev’s irreverent collage film, a wildly unbuttoned, pyrotechnic display of hippie-era hedonism and attack on government repression in the Vietnam era--by both the U.S. and Soviets. This film got Makavejev, then his country’s most internationally famous filmmaker, exiled; it’s so tied to that period’s psychic landscape, it may look like a near-lunar document today. With Milena Dravic; the American segments feature Reich’s relatives, plus Jackie Curtis and ex-Fug Tuli Kupferberg. (Michael Wilmington)

Recommended:

“PRAYING WITH ANGER”(U.S.; M. Night Shyamalan; 1:40, 4:05, 6:50 & 9:05 p.m.). Wonderfully assured for a first-time 21-year-old writer-director--much less one also producing and starring in his own film--Shyamalan creates a familiar, but stimulating, study of culture clash: an American Indian teen-ager, trying to cope with all the morays and surprises of Indian life. Shyamalan makes two major errors: He makes his protagonist too much a hero, and in the romantic scenes, too much a victim. But those are the age-old follies of youth. His strengths lie in his rich wide-screen pictorialism and his unabashed willingness to probe deep emotions and inner feeling. (M.W.)

“ANGEL OF FIRE”(Mexico; Dana Rotberg; 4:15 & 9:15 p.m.). As in “Freaks” or Chaplin’s “The Circus,” this film finds pathology and universal symbolism within the confines of a threadbare little circus. The focus is on a feisty little fire-eater, who passes from the circus--and an incestuous relationship with her father, the clown--into the hands of a furious evangelist, who believes in scourging the flesh. Rotberg handles this consistently shocking material with discretion and compassion; she creates a perfectly consistent little world, horrific but self-contained, and a little tragedy, mad yet inevitable. (M.W.)

Others: “Shelf Life” (U.S.; Paul Bartel; 1:30 & 6:45 p.m.). This time out, Bartel’s witty, outrageous sensibility cannot save his movie: an uninspired, tedious filmed play, written by its performers, about three adult siblings who have lived in a bomb shelter for more than 30 years with only a TV to connect them with the outside world. Tiresome. (Kevin Thomas). “Rock Hudson’s Home Movies” (U.S.; Mark Rappaport; 4 & 9 p.m.). Rappaport creates a fake documentary from clips of Hudson’s feature films--all chosen to point up the discrepancy between Hudson’s macho screen image and his private gay life--and imagines it narrated by Hudson himself. Overly facetious, over-long; worst of all, Rappaport leaves the impression, intentionally or otherwise, that our now-common knowledge of Hudson’s sexuality makes him less of a man. (K.T.)