Take aim, shoot, just don’t pollute

The Pan African Film & Arts Festival continues through Monday at the Magic Johnson Theatres, offering films of every type from around the world, as well as panel discussions and more.

“Critical Assignment” may well be the only action adventure carrying a message against water pollution. (Happily, it is delivered in pointed but not heavy-handed fashion.) Written by Tunde Babalola and directed by Jason Xenopoulos, it is a sleek film starring Michael Power, who is so well known in Africa as a Guinness beer ad model that the James Bond-like character he plays is called Michael Power.

Power is a real discovery, a confident natural actor with plenty of charisma. A fearless reporter for a CNN-like media giant, Power returns home to an unnamed African country just as the nation’s new president announces an urgently needed Clean Water for All project. But a cadre of powerful villains concocts a phony threat of an armed insurgency to force the president to divert clean-water funds back to the military budget.

Sometimes, but only rarely, filmmakers latch onto material so powerful that their movies not only sustain flaws but also make use of them to produce a work more lifelike in its messy moments. Such is the case with Kyle Schickner’s “Strange Fruit,” in which a young New York attorney (Kent Faulcon), both black and gay, returns to his native rural Mississippi town to investigate the lynching of his best childhood friend, who was also black and gay.

Faulcon’s William Boyals has immediately thrust himself into a hornet’s nest in which racism and homophobia intersect. As a former local denizen, Boyals is surprisingly naive, reckless and even inept as an investigator. Yet he is courageous and persistent while also having to confront himself and acknowledge his roots in ways he never anticipated.

The plot lines grow entangled and murky, yet Schickner suggests that if homophobia and conspiracy can cross color lines, so can human decency.

Back to the future

Fritz Lang’s “Dr. Mabuse” (1922) will screen over two nights at the Silent Movie Theatre. The menacing Rudolf Klein-Rogge, a Lang favorite, has the title role as a master criminal of infinite disguises who is also a hypnotist taking control of the world’s currency. “Dr. Mabuse” was adapted by Lang and his then-wife, Thea von Harbou -- whose former husband was Klein-Rogge -- from a pre-World War I novel by Norbert Jacques.

“Dr. Mabuse” is the most amazing of museum pieces and anticipated Ian Fleming’s “Dr. No.” It is a film rich in exotic decor and has superbly staged sequences, such as a frenzied stock exchange scene similar to the one in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Eclipse.” It has the striking composition, eloquent lighting and masterful climax that characterized Lang’s work during his four decades as a director.

Like most of Lang’s films, it can be appreciated on several levels: as an indictment of Weimar decadence; as a story of a decent, ordinary man challenging an evil genius; or simply as cops-and-robbers entertainment. “Dr. Mabuse” was innovative in many ways, most notably its German Expressionist style and dynamic editing, regarded as an inspiration for Soviet master of montage Sergei Eisenstein.

Women’s stories

“Sublime” is the only word for Kenji Mizoguchi’s “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums” (1939), which launches the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Nine Classics of Japanese Cinema, a series selected by the late Susan Sontag.

Mizoguchi was a great director of actresses, and the nobility of women in the face of oppression and injustice was ever his major preoccupation. “Chrysanthemums” tells of the self-sacrificing love of a servant girl (Kakuko Mori) for a young Kabuki actor (Shotaro Hanayagi), with whom she joins in the rugged life of touring companies. Mizoguchi’s evocation of the past -- the Meiji restoration was his favorite -- is superb and gives scope to his heroine’s tragic fate.

As part of a tribute to cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, LACMA will show “The Gospel According to St. Matthew,” one of eight films he made with Pier Paolo Pasolini. In this 1964 film are portents of the despair that overcame Pasolini, who saw his virile, implacable Jesus (Enrique Irazoqui) as a revolutionary and his miraculous acts as part of his myth. Though the film’s realism offers a welcome contrast to the grandiose Hollywood biblicals, “Gospel” doesn’t work because of its crucial lack of spirituality. Pasolini is above all captivated by Jesus’ final suffering and martyrdom, to the extent that it takes on the aura of a masochistic fantasy.

*

Screenings

Pan African Film & Arts Festival

* “Critical Assignment”: 9:30 tonight; 4:15 p.m. Friday; 11:30 a.m. Monday

* “Strange Fruit”: 9:30 p.m. Friday

Where: Magic Johnson Theatres, 4020 Marlton Ave., L.A.

Contact: (213) 896-8221; www.paff.org

Silent Movie Mondays

“Dr. Mabuse”: Part 1, 8 p.m. Monday; Part 2, 8 p.m. Feb. 28

Where: Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Hollywood

Info: (323) 655-2520; silentmovietheatre.com

LACMA series

* “The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums”: 7:30 p.m. Friday

* “The Gospel According to St. Matthew”: 7:30 tonight

Where: Bing Theater at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.

Info: (323) 857-6010; lacma.org