IMAX Format Proves a Splendid Match for ‘Yellowstone’ Mountains

More an educational short than a travelogue, Kieth Merrill’s 32-minute “Yellowstone” (opening Friday at the IMAX Theater in Exposition Park) combines a history of its exploration and a survey of its extraordinary geological features along with its fabled scenic wonders.

Erupting geysers, vast snow-covered mountain ranges, great forests and much more are all the more majestic on the five-story-high IMAX screen. We could, however, use a few more dates in the discovery and development of Yellowstone as a national park --and a few less cute bear sequences.

The theater will continue to show “Titanica,” “Destiny in Space,” and “Africa: The Serengeti,” all of which are outstanding and more venturesome and entertaining than the worthy rather than exciting “Yellowstone.”

Information: (213) 744-2014.

Hong Kong Action: The Monica 4-Plex’s Summer ’95 Hong Kong Premiere Showcase commences Friday with a one-week run of Ringo Lam’s ultra-hard-action thriller “Full Contact,” starring John Woo favorite and major Hong Kong star Chow Yun-Fat. Dressed atypically in leather and Levi’s and sporting a buzz haircut, Chow plays Jeff, a bouncer in a Bangkok nightclub--and sometime robber.

His buddy Sam (Anthony Wong) runs afoul of a local loan shark, who demands that he participate in a hijack of a truck loaded with smuggled ammunition in order to pay off his debt.

Since loyalty among comrades is as important in this picture as it is in Chow’s Woo movies, Jeff agrees to become involved. The hitch is that they’ll have to join forces with some volatile off-the-wall types led by Judge (Simon Yam), an icy, ruthless gay man whose moll is as an exuberant, uninhibited nymphomaniac (Bonnie Fu). Not surprisingly, the heist backfires, with Jeff winding up in hiding and Sam and Jeff’s girl friend (Anne Park) returning to Hong Kong.

Diehard fans of Hong Kong martial arts movies won’t be disappointed by the high-energy “Full Contact,” but the high body-count and the near-nonstop brutality can become a turnoff for the rest of us.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

Silent Flyboys: “The Flying Fleet” (1928), which screens Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Silent Movie, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., might be described as at the “Top Gun” of its day, but possesses a much lighter touch.

Breezy, yet at times surprisingly tender, it stars Ramon Novarro and Ralph Graves as a pair of naval cadets and best friends who compete to become the first man to fly a new seaplane from Coronado to Hawaii--and also for the affections of pretty, vivacious Anita Page.

There’s lots of terrific aerial footage, and the film benefits from extensive use of San Diego-area locales. All three stars, crisply directed by George Hill, are thoroughly appealing.

Information: (213) 653-2389.

Kafkaesque ‘Faust’: Veteran Czech animator Jan Svankmajer’s eerie “Faust” (Friday at 7:30 p.m. in UCLA’s Melnitz Theater) imagines that a perfectly ordinary middle-aged man (Petr Cepek), living in a seedy Prague apartment, follows a strange-looking map that leads him to a theater dressing room, where he ends up as Faust in a puppet-show production of the Gounod opera.

Like Polish animator Walerian Borowczyk, Svankmajer, whose film is a Kafkaesque nightmare, seems to see the world as a whimsical Rube Goldberg mechanism that--with remorse but not with-out bleak humor--grinds humanity down. Steeped in folklore, Svankmajer is prodigiously imaginative, blending the quaint and the macabre in unsettling jaunty ways, but his “Faust” film itself tends to be mechanical, impressing us rather than involving us emotionally.

Yet there’s no question that he is an important and highly original artist.

Information: (310) 206-FILM.