Asian Films at Melnitz; Godard, Visconti at LACMA

Screening at the Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival Thursday at 7 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater is Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho’s amazing “Letter for an Angel,” a vivid evocation of the often brutal quality of life in adjoining villages on a small, idyllic island.

As the film moves from one vignette of daily life to the next, punctuated by awesomely beautiful sunsets, it centers on a bright, feisty 9-year-old whose camera, a modern intrusion in a primitive society, precipitates havoc.

Despite subtitles, “Letter for an Angel” can be hard to follow, but it’s clear that Nugroho possesses a stunning mastery of film narrative.

Screening Friday in Melnitz at 7 p.m. is Wong Kar-Wai’s knockout “Chungking Express,” a terrifically stylish and bemused take on two handsome Hong Kong cops--the first (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is taken with a mysterious, tough dame (Brigitte Lin) in a blond wig, dark glasses and trench coat, completely unaware that she is coping with a major drug deal gone bad.

Meanwhile, the second cop (Tony Leung) attracts a spacey fast-food worker (Faye Wang) whose growing obsession with him takes bizarre and comic turns. Garish, teeming Hong Kong--don’t worry about what the film’s title may mean--is the perfect setting for a film with style to burn.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.

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Still ‘Breathless’: This weekend, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art launches retrospectives of the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Luchino Visconti, two of world cinema’s greatest artists; the first as terse and elliptical as the second is classically elegant.

The Godard series begins Friday, at 1 and 8 p.m., with the 21-minute short “All the Boys Are Called Patrick” (1957) and “Breathless” (1959), which remains fresh and startling. Jean-Paul Belmondo is unforgettable as the sexy, romantic, Bogart-worshiping petty thief deceived by Jean Seberg’s practical American.

It is fittingly followed by “Pierrot-Le-Fou” (1965), the culmination of Godard’s use of the Grade B detective thriller to express increasingly profound implications--in this instance an apocalyptic vision of destruction and also a lament for the transitory nature of love: Belmondo and Godard’s soon-to-be ex-wife Anna Karina star.

The Visconti series begins Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with the restored version of “The Leopard,” a sumptuous 1963 film of the Giuseppe di Lampedusa novel.

Set against Italy’s turbulent era of unification in the 1860s, it inevitably brings to mind “Gone With the Wind” as an evocation of a crumbling aristocracy--but is contemplative rather than dynamic. Burt Lancaster had some of the finest moments of his career as a Sicilian nobleman who perceives the inevitability of irrevocable change. With Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale.

Information: (213) 857-6010.

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Bresson Again: Also in revival is the work of another European master, France’s austere Robert Bresson, whose 1977 “The Devil, Probably” will screen Friday through Sunday at the Nuart.

“My sickness is that I can see things too clearly,” says the solemn young hero (Antoine Monnier) of the 12th of Bresson’s 13 films. The filmmaker here is much concerned with humankind’s pollution of the universe and the despair of contemporary youth. Monnier is one of Bresson’s characteristically resolute, isolated heroes in this beautiful, rigorous and most challenging film.

Information: (310) 478-6379.

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To Bond, With ‘Love’: At this late date it doesn’t seem possible to spoof James Bond, yet Lee Lik Tse’s irresistibly wacky “From Beijing With Love” (Monica 4-Plex, Fridays-Saturdays at midnight) is consistently hilarious.

Stephen Chow stars as a Chinese super-agent dispatched on a mission to Hong Kong along with a colleague (Anita Yuen), who has been ordered to assassinate him.

The sight gags and slapstick is nonstop; typical of the wonderful silliness of the film is that among Chow’s arsenal of gadgets is a shaver that’s actually a hair dryer and a hair dryer that’s actually a shaver.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

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‘Pros and Cons’ in Hollywood: Robert Munic’s “Pros and Cons of Breathing” (Sunset 5, Fridays-Saturdays at midnight) is a tedious tale of a bunch of Hollywood wanna-bes that leaves you wondering whether the actors playing them have any more of what it takes to succeed than the characters they’re playing.

Information: (213) 848-3500.