Road hazards ahead

In its second edition, the Other Venice Film Festival, which runs Friday through Sunday at the Electric Lodge and Switch Studios, has an explosive winner in Detdrich McClure’s wrenching and vital “Easy Rider” update “Road Kings.”

In the film (previously titled “Road Dogs”), two young South L.A. friends, Panther (Glenn Plummer) and Ray (Chris Spencer), flee their lethal gangster existence and head out on their motorcycles for a new life in Washington, D.C. Their adventures on the road, however, are filled with as much danger as fun, and it’s not for nothing that a blind Louisiana voodoo man warns them that what they’re running from may also be what they’re running toward. Alternately reckless and reflective, Panther and Ray are deeply involving, and their odyssey packs a wallop.

On a lighter note, the Basco brothers -- Dante, Darion, Derek and Dion -- directed and star in the infectious, rowdy comedy “Naked Brown Men,” playing Filipino American actor brothers who share a house while pursuing their careers, women and good times.

Hungarian Festival

The sixth annual Hungarian Film Festival of Los Angeles, always a satisfying, provocative event, runs Friday through next Thursday at the Music Hall. Veteran director Karoly Makk will be honored with a retrospective of six of his films. They include 1971’s exquisite “Love” and 1997’s sweeping and romantic Dostoevsky adaptation “The Gambler,” for which two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer returned to the screen after a 50-years-plus absence. The four new films available for preview in the festival are all worthy and highly diverse, revealing the continuing vigor of one of the world’s oldest film industries.

Benedek Fliegauf’s stunning “Dealer” is paradoxical on many counts -- that it is marked by lengthy, slow panning shots yet is taut; that it follows a night and day in the life of a drug dealer (Felician Keresztes) as he goes on his rounds as a merchant of death, yet is becoming a man of conscience; and that the film culminates in a sequence that can only be described as devastating, time-worn as the word is. Its ultimate paradox is that “Dealer” offers one of the most unflinching depictions of drug addiction ever committed to film but is too compelling -- even mesmerizing -- in its insights and intuitions ever to be merely depressing or even off-putting. It must be stated, however, that this is very strong fare and far removed from mainstream entertainment.

Robert Koltai’s jaunty bittersweet comedy “Colossal Sensation” has a clever opening sequence that takes a pair of fraternal twins, nicknamed Dodo and Naftalin, from their 1903 birth as the sons of a circus magician clown (Gyula Bodrogi) to their 50th year. Having followed in their father’s footsteps, they are performing in the Budapest Grand Circus before Hungary’s prime minister, Matyas Rakosi, a hard-line Stalinist. The reckless Naftalin (Koltai) attempts a trick that turns out so badly -- and has such political reverberations -- that the more levelheaded Dodo (Sandor Gaspar) selflessly utters a deliberate slur to ensure that he will land in prison in place of his brother. As it turns out, the same spirit of recklessness will allow Naftalin to liberate not only Dodo but also the entire prison at the outbreak of the short-lived Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This sweet-natured, alternately knockabout, tragic and sentimental entertainment is an engaging comedy of survival and love of country deep in the rueful, absurdist Middle European grain.

Attila Janisch’s “After the Day Before” is a spare, rigorous, unsettling and ultimately confounding account of a man’s journey into a remote, impoverished countryside, inhabited sparsely by dour, despairing and volatile individuals. He’s come to locate a piece of property inherited from a distant relative he never met, only to become caught in a brutal murder, which he may -- or may not -- have committed. Janisch evokes a sense of this man (Tibor Gaspar) losing track of time; and that at one time he loses consciousness, apparently after a bike accident, may be key. That the man clearly loses his bearings suggests his vulnerability to what Janisch has called “the psychology of sin.”

Steven Lovy’s “Mix” is an exuberant, bittersweet coming-of-age comedy that begins in L.A. Mitch Banko (Alex Weed), a 17-year-old piano student whose passion is being a club DJ, is only days away from a Juilliard audition when his widowed, domineering father-teacher Peter (Janos Kulka) receives word of the death of his father in Budapest. Mitch and Peter immediately depart for Budapest for the funeral, where Mitch discovers an unexplained bitterness between his grandmother (Olga Koos) and his father, who quickly departs, leaving Mitch to go on a rip-roaring adventure in Budapest’s ultra-seamy night life. Lovy pushes the envelope of credibility with the scrapes Mitch gets in and out of, but his picture’s high spirits and Weed’s appealing personality make “Mix” a winner.

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Screenings

The Other Venice Film Festival

* “Road Kings”: 2 p.m. Sunday, Switch Studios

* “Naked Brown Men”: 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Electric Lodge

Where: Electric Lodge: 1416 Electric Ave.; Switch Studios: 316 S. Venice Blvd., Venice

Info: (310) 306-1854; veniceofilmfest.com

Hungarian Film Festival

* “Dealer”: 7:15 p.m. Tuesday

* “Colossal Sensation”: 7:15 p.m. Friday

* “After the Day Before”: 5 p.m. Saturday

* “Mix”: 9:50 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday

Where: Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills

Info: Music Hall, (310) 274-6869; festival, (818) 848-5902