Splendor on Melrose

Among the features available for preview among the 20 films in the second annual Hollywood Film Festival, which holds screenings Friday through Sunday at Paramount Studios, 5555 Melrose Ave., are several of outstanding quality. Screenings will be in the 280-seat Studio Theater and the 580-seat Paramount Theater.

L. Alan Fraser’s powerful “Next Time” (Studio Theater, Friday at 7 p.m.) chronicles a friendship that grows, slowly but surely, in a South-Central L.A. Laundromat. Christian Campbell plays a nice 19-year-old youth from Indiana with little money and dreams of becoming a painter who rents an apartment in a black neighborhood, never considering that he may be at risk from local gangs. Lonely and sensitive, he becomes determined to befriend an African American woman (Jonelle Allen) twice his age. Weary and wary, she gradually lets down her defenses toward this dreamy, naive white kid, and a friendship starts flowering.

There are no false notes in the stylish, beautifully structured “Jerome” (Studio Theater, Saturday at 6 p.m.), a miracle of economy and psychological validity. A macho-looking but acutely sensitive Bakersfield factory welder (Drew Pillsbury) one day has finally had it after years of grinding routine and a heavy-handed boss and takes off for Jerome, Ariz., where he dreams of becoming a junk sculptor. Pillsbury plays to perfection one of those individuals with an imaginative life beyond the comprehension of family and friends.

Written, directed and produced flawlessly by Thomas Johnston, David Elton and Eric Tignini, “Jerome” suggests that freedom is illusory and that the struggle against fate may be futile.

“Archibald the Rainbow Painter” (Paramount Theater, Saturday at 6 p.m.) plays like a socially conscious TV movie, but writer Laura Landau and director Les Landau bring such depth and range to their individuals that their awkwardly titled film generates a wallop. Dorian Harewood, playing a hard-working house painter gradually becomes drawn into the plight of a Beverly Hills teenager (Amie Carey). She lives in splendor with her hard-as-nails real estate agent mother (Patti D’Arbanville, in an unsparing, vivid portrayal) while sneaking off to Skid Row to visit her alcoholic father (Michael McKean).

As it turns out, Harewood is as haunted by Vietnam as McKean is, and the way these four individuals interact suggests that veterans of that war are still struggling with the past. “Archibald” gets tied together awfully neatly at the finish, but there’s no denying its happy ending is vigorously earned.

“Paradise Falls” (Paramount Theater, Saturday at 8 p.m.) is one of those entirely unexpected pictures that comes along and wipes you out before you know what hits you. It’s 1934 in rural North Carolina, where we meet Henry Bancroft (Sean Bridgers), a God-fearing farmer’s son, and his pal Oshel Hooper (Christopher Berry), disillusioned over the death of his father in World War I and the Depression sweeping over the nation. When Henry learns the local bank may foreclose on his family’s farm, he starts to listen to Oshel’s tales about the exploits of famous outlaws.

What’s surprising is not that a tale of a Robin Hood-like adventure gone wrong ensues but how remarkably well it plays out, thanks to Bridgers, Berry, director Nick Searcy and writers Sean and Sue Ellen Bridgers.

“Rhapsody in Bloom” (Paramount Theater, Sunday at 4 p.m.) is more mainstream than most of the films available for preview and is commercial in the best sense of the word; indeed, the film plays like a quality Hollywood production. The Bloom in question is Lilah (Penelope Ann Miller), a lovely young woman who put her life on hold to help her widowed brother, Mitch (Ron Silver), raise his three small children. Now after five years, Mitch announces he’s at last met a woman (Caroline Goodall) he would like to marry.

All of a sudden Lilah realizes she will have to create an entirely new life for herself. Writer Eric Tuchman and director Craig Saavedra have done a top-notch job in illuminating with humor, seriousness and affection all aspects of Lilah’s predicament and the impact Mitch’s announcement has upon everyone involved. “Rhapsody in Bloom” is a winner, with glowing performances all around, especially from Miller, Silver, Goodall and Craig Sheffer, who plays the exceptional man who could just be right for Lilah.

For full schedule and further information: (310) 288-1882.

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“Preaching to the Perverted” (at the Nuart, Fridays at midnight) poses the question of whether a glamorous American dominatrix-performance artist (Guinevere Turner) and a virginal religious youth (Christien Anholt) can find happiness. Despite its extensive forays into the world of black latex, body-piercing and sadomasochism, the picture is your standard, old-fashioned, naughty English comedy that in this instance wisely leaves much to the imagination. Guinevere Turner, who also co-starred in “Go Fish” and “The Watermelon Woman,” will make a personal appearance opening night. (310) 478-6379.

Luiz Begazo’s “Mano^ushe: A Gypsy Love Story” from Brazil (Sunset 5, Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m.; Monica 4-Plex, Aug. 15-16, at 11 a.m.) is pure enchantment for all ages, a work of such surpassing imagination and charm that surely its run will be extended beyond a mere four screenings. Once Begazo picks out a large white tent in the darkness of a rural night and takes us into the splendors of its interior, he has cast his spell. As the flamenco is danced outside, a lovely-looking elderly woman (Lelia Abramo) gazes upon the corpse of her dashing, silver-haired husband (Candido Pires), soon to be buried. In her reverie, he seems to come alive and is transformed into his youthful self (Breno Moroni).

Now that we are within the woman’s dream, we meet her as a very young woman (Drica Moraes), the daughter of a landowner, while attending a Mass and subsequent banquet outside the church; the excesses of both are straight out of Breughel or Bun~uel.

Sunset 5: (213) 848-3500; Monica 4-Plex: (310) 394-9741.

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Among the many intriguing films in the UCLA Film Archives’ ninth annual Festival of Preservation is “Old San Francisco” (1927), which screens Wednesday in Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater after the 7:30 p.m. presentation of Rowland W. Lee’s “The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu” (1929), unavailable for preview. A lavish Warner Bros. production starring Dolores Costello and directed by Alan Crosland (who directed “The Jazz Singer” the same year), it is lurid silent melodrama that’s as preposterous--and unabashedly racist, too--as it is entertaining. It was written by none other than Darryl F. Zanuck.

Zanuck would have us believe that the San Francisco earthquake occurred because Costello, playing the virginal daughter of a decayed Spanish land grant family, invoked the wrath of God to protect her from a fate worse than death at the hands of a Chinese criminal.

This dastardly turn of events has come about because Costello’s grandfather (Josef Swickard), as proud as he is penniless, refuses to sell the ancestral hacienda coveted by San Francisco’s nefarious “czar of the underworld” (Warner Oland), who passes for white but is actually Chinese. Driven to desperation in his desire to get his hands on both Costello and her property, Oland has kidnapped her and just delivered her into white slavery when the earth begins to tremble.

“Old San Francisco” has much authentic detail and atmosphere. Ben Carre, regarded as the movies’ first art director, did a splendid job of re-creating the Barbary Coast and Chinatown and then reducing them to shambles. Carre also worked with Crosland and top-notch cinematographer Hal Mohr on “The Jazz Singer.” (310) 206-FILM.