High-Powered German Exports

The Goethe Institute tonight at 7 launches its second annual “Blockbuster” series of recent German hit films with Hans Christian Schmid’s dark, swift “23--Nothing Is as It Seems” (1998). This relentlessly terse and compelling account, set in the ‘80s, is based on an actual incident in which a brilliant computer hacker (August Diehl) becomes so caught up in Robert Anton Wilson’s cult book “Illuminatus!”--which proposes the world is really governed by a secret global conspiracy--that he allows himself to be persuaded to sell some information he and a pal (Fabian Busch) have accessed to the Soviets in East Germany. The hacker’s paranoia, fueled by a cocaine habit, then begins spiraling in earnest. The result is a smart, disturbing and ever-more-timely thriller.

Fatih Akin’s “Short Sharp Shock” (Tuesday at 7 p.m.) is more familiar in content and traditional in style but is terrific entertainment. Set in Hamburg’s multicultural Altona district, it stars Mehmet Kurtulus as Gabriel, a young Turk just out of prison and eager to go straight. He’s pressured to resume a life of crime by staunch pals Bobby (Aleksandar Jovanovic), a nervy, good-looking Serb, and Costa (Adam Bousdoukos), a shaggy-haired, unshaven and volatile Greek in love with Gabriel’s sister (Idil Uner), who wants to break away from him. As Bobby, eager to cast his lot with an Albanian mobster, observes candidly to Costa: “Gabriel wants to grow up, but we’re holding him back.” This debut film of the 24-year-old Turkish-born Akin proves a crackling melodrama. The Goethe Institute is located at 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 100. Information: (323) 525-3388.

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Brien Burroughs’ “Suckerfish,” which screens Saturday and Sunday at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5 as part of the ongoing “American Independents” series, rips the lid off the wholesale pet store supplies racket. Pet store supplies? This hilarious low-budget comedy, filmed in San Francisco neighborhoods and in Peninsula towns, finds crass pet store supplies salesman Dick Goodman (Tim Orr) convincing one of his competitors, Alan Walker (Dan Donovan), to join forces with him to destroy by vicious gossip the fresh-from-the-Midwest Ken Preston (Kurt Bodden). Preston has arrived to take over for yet another rival, Whitey, a revered salesman who has just retired and who had commanded 54% of the Bay Area business. Alas, the handsome Alan has just allowed himself to be seduced by Elizabeth (Gerri Lawlor), Dick’s sexually aggressive wife. After seven years of marriage, the wife has lost interest in her husband but wants a discreet affair, not a divorce. This peccadillo is scarcely a good development in the light of Dick and Alan’s agreement to commit skulduggery at the expense of Ken, whom they may have underestimated.

“Suckerfish” does get decidedly talky and bogs down a bit in the middle, but on the whole it’s a sly treat in a widely varying series. It will repeat June 10 and 11 at 11 a.m. at the Monica 4-Plex (1332 2nd St., Santa Monica). Information: (310) 394-9741; Sunset 5: (323) 848-3500.

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The UCLA Film Archive’s “Korean War: The Last 50 Years” continues at Melnitz Hall’s James Bridges Theater Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with the U.S. premiere of Park Kwang-su’s “The Uprising,” about a 1901 rebellion of Cheju Island peasants against local Catholics and French priests, an event that would foreshadow the complex and harrowing later history of the country.

Playing with it is Park’s “To the Starry Island” (1994), which seems indubitably a masterpiece, a beautifully wrought tale of betrayal and reconciliation. A middle-aged businessman and his lifelong friend, a poet, return to their native island to bury the businessman’s father, only to be confronted with the islanders’ fierce opposition. Flashbacks catch us up in a harsh but healthy and largely happy existence destroyed by the Korean War and reveal why the man’s burial is so vehemently opposed four decades after his departure.

Screening at UC Irvine Sunday at 4 p.m. at the UC Irvine Film and Video Center is Yi Chang-ho’s 1987 “The Man With Three Coffins,” in which a rich, dying old man’s wish to return to his hometown is an impossibility, no matter how wealthy he is, because it lies on the other side of the Korean demilitarized zone. It will be followed by a screening of “To the Starry Island.”

Yu Hyon-mok’s “The Stray Bullet” (1961) screens Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at UCLA. It deals with anxiety and pessimism in the immediate post-World War II era, centering on a family in desperate economic circumstances. It will be followed by Lee Kwang-mo’s “Spring in My Hometown” (1998), an understated masterwork that traces a year of life in a beautiful village as the Korean War ends and life under armistice begins. It centers on two boys: Sung Min (Sung Ki Ahn), whose family prospers as that of his best friend, Chang Hee (Ok Sook Song), disintegrates. While the war causes divisiveness, the key issue is an unseen American military base that has a pervasive corrupting influence on some of the villagers.

It has been Lee’s inspired decision to have his superb cinematographer, Hyungkoo Kim, keep his camera stationary, placing it almost entirely for mid-length and long shots. Such distancing charges the film’s images with compassion, and the physical and moral landscapes become one during the unfolding of a complex tale. Information UCLA: (310) 206-FILM; UC Irvine: (949) 824-7418.

The Laemmle Theaters’ “Cine Cubano” series continues with Tomaas Gutierrez Alea’s “Death of a Bureaucrat” (1966), a sharp satire on the nightmare of bureaucratic red tape--capitalist as well as communist. It screens at the Monica 4-Plex Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m., repeating June 10 and 11 at 10 a.m. at the Sunset 5 and June 17 and 18 at 11 a.m. at the Playhouse 7, Pasadena, (626) 844-6500.