BEST BETS / APRIL 2-8, 2000

MOVIES

When war hero Samuel L. Jackson is put on trial as a scapegoat for a failed mission, he turns to Tommy Lee Jones to defend him in “Rules of Engagement,” directed by William Friedkin. Opens wide Friday.

THEATER

“THWAK,” the off-Broadway 1999 Drama Desk-nominated show starring David Collins and Shane Dundas, the “Umbilical Brothers” from Down Under, has its West Coast premiere. In highly physical New Vaudeville tradition, the Australian duo creates a surreal world of controlled mayhem and “audio-acrobatics.” Opens Saturday at the Tiffany Theater.

MUSEUMS

Vintage photographs, letters, home movies, media clips and other items offer insight into one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers in “Sigmund Freud: Conflict & Culture,” opening Tuesday at the Skirball Cultural Center. More than 60 years after his death, the exhibition will look at the contested legacies of Freud, and how his controversial theories have affected our culture today. Below, a 1924 photo of Freud with his grandson, Stephen Gabriel.

POP MUSIC

Is Lit ready to follow No Doubt, Korn, Sugar Ray and the Offspring as an Orange County gift to pop music? The punk-rooted quartet has a chance, with its album “A Place in the Sun” closing in on the 1 million sales mark and its first headlining tour underway (it hits the Hollywood Palladium on Friday). And if not? Well, at least they got to make a video with Pamela Anderson Lee.

JAZZ

El Camino College welcomes the Nicholas Payton Quintet and quite an all-star group this next Saturday in celebration of the Newport Jazz Festival, including trumpeters Payton and Randy Brecker, saxophonist Red Holloway, trombonist Joel Helleny, guitarist Howard Alden and pianist Cedar Walton.

MUSIC

The Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble plays on the Green Umbrella series, Monday in the Japan America Theatre. Donald Crockett conducts two West Coast premieres--Stephen Hartke’s “Gradus” and Arthur Levering’s “Twenty Ways Upon the Bells”--plus “Labyrinth” by David Dzubay, Crockett’s own “Whistling in the Dark,” “Solstice” by Melissa Hui and Randall Woolf’s “Shakedown.”

DANCE

Paul Gordon, Andy Horowitz, Greg O’Brien and a lot of props acquired secondhand make up Second Hand, which specializes in off-the-wall physical comedy laced with gymnastics. Celebrated for what the New York Times called “superb, even spellbinding physical control,” the group performs Friday at Caltech in Pasadena and Saturday at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

VIDEO

Despite generally mixed reviews, George Lucas’ “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” still brought in more than $400 million domestically. Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson and Jake Lloyd star in this prequel to Lucas’ far superior 1977 classic “Star Wars.” The special effects and action sequences are generally top-notch, but the offensive, computer-generated sidekick Jar-Jar Binks was a bad miscalculation on Lucas’ part. The film soars onto video shelves Tuesday.