Also in theaters, 6/26.

By David Hudson on 06/26/2009

Seems pretty safe to say that your best bet this week is "The Hurt Locker." If you have to see "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," let's hope you've gotten it out of way by now. Then, of course, there's "Chéri," "Quiet Chaos" and...

"Afghan Star"

"'Afghan Star' sets out with a delectably postmodern agenda," writes Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant: "Closely following four contestants in the eponymous television program, Afghanistan's burqa-busting answer to 'American Idol,' the documentary compassionately argues that one region's pop detritus is another's ideological maturation."

"[I]f nothing else, 'Afghan Star' offers a reminder of how much has changed in Afghanistan from the late 70s - when Kabul was a secular-oriented city with co-ed universities and a thriving nightclub scene - to the rise of the Taliban," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "Yet even during the country's most repressive era, people would watch TV or listen to music in secret, and today, some are eager to turn back the clock."

"The really depressing news is that the vehement knee-jerk opposition to the women's participation comes not just from the Taliban and the mullahs," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice, "but also from the young men in jeans and T-shirts who say they seek a more enlightened world, yet watch the women's performances all the way through with contempt - and furtive lust - in their eyes."

More from Bob Cashill (Popdose), David Fear (Time Out New York), Stephen Holden (New York Times), Liz Kilduff (L), Anne S Lewis (Austin Chronicle) and Joanne Nucho (Reverse Shot).

Online listening tip. Director Havana Marking is a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with Marking "about the experience of shooting in Afghanistan, her Sundance success, and her memories of watching 'Bambi' and 'Gandhi' as a child." More from indieWIRE.

"The Stoning of Soraya M."

"Say what you will about 'The Stoning of Soraya M.,'" writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club: "Here's a movie that definitely delivers on its title. In fact, the title speaks perfectly to the film's blunt, ham-handed, morally unambiguous treatment of injustice in the wake of the '79 Islamic Revolution in Iran. It takes zero political courage to speak out against the obvious barbarism of public stonings or the oppressive patriarchy of sharia law, but the film whips out the megaphone anyway, eager to extrapolate the martyrdom of an innocent woman into a broader condemnation of the Muslim world. As directed by first-timer Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wrote the leaden script with his wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, 'The Stoning of Soraya M.' has a neocon's sense of good and evil, which could politely be called 'moral clarity,' but is more accurately described as narrow, tone-deaf, and thoroughly banal."

More from Stephen Holden (NYT), Mark Jenkins (NPR), Peter Keough (Boston Phoenix), Louis Peitzman (San Francisco Bay Guardian), Matt Prigge (Philadelphia Weekly), Vadim Rizov (Voice), Nick Schager (Slant) and Keith Uhlich (TONY).

For the Los Angeles Times, Gina Piccalo meets Shohreh Aghdashloo, "who left Iran during the nation's Islamic revolution in the late 1970s, [and] hasn't flinched from roles that portray a less than flattering side of the Muslim world. After earning an Oscar nomination for her role as a pampered Iranian immigrant wife in the 2003 film 'House of Sand and Fog,' Aghdashloo spent a season on Fox's '24' depicting a terrorist and incensing Iranian Americans who believed it perpetuated stereotypes. Last year, she portrayed Saddam Hussein's wife Sajida in the BBC/HBO miniseries 'House of Saddam.'"

"10 Rillington Place"

"More highly regarded these days than when it was released in 1971," writes J Hoberman in the Voice, "Richard Fleischer's '10 Rillington Place' is a grimly efficient treatment of a once-notorious case - the story of London serial killer John Christie and his neighbor, Timothy Evans, the hapless sub-literate who took the fall by confessing to the murder of his own wife and child."

"It's as if the two faces of [Jim] Thompson's psycho sheriff in 'The Killer Inside Me' have literally split in two: the simpleton façade and deviant id are now two separate beings, waiting to be reunited," writes Cullen Gallagher in the L Magazine.

"The inevitable end - the killer's apprehension on the banks of the Thames - sticks troublingly in the mind, as if justice has swaddled nothing more than a heavy-breathing black hole," writes Keith Uhlich in TONY. "It's the perfect, downbeat grace note on which to end this underseen gem."

At Film Forum in New York through Thursday.

"Surveillance"

"In one of the most spectacular flameouts of recent American film, Jennifer Lynch went from hot-shit prodigy to laughingstock with one wacko, lazily maligned movie: 1993's Razzie-approved 'Boxing Helena.'" Eric Hynes at indieWIRE: "It's taken David's daughter 16 years to revive her career, but judging from her follow-up, 'Surveillance,' time has stood still. Closely following a mid-90s playbook of third-hand genre affectations, grab-bag Americana, serial killer chic, deserted highways at magic hour, cameos by marginal celebrities pantomiming against type, and general bad faith, 'Surveillance' is an unwelcome blast from late nights of premium cable's past."

"While her Buñuel-does-'Red Shoe Diaries' debut combined an intriguing concept and an abysmal execution, her sophomore effort is equally abysmal in both areas," writes Fernando F Croce in Slant.

On the other hand, S James Snyder in TONY: "The many devils in 'Surveillance' don't just want money or blood; they take pleasure in seeing you squirm, and that's precisely why this nightmare gets under your skin."

More from Simon Abrams (L), Melissa Anderson (Voice), Manohla Dargis (NYT) and James van Maanen.

Phil Nugent talks with Lynch for Nerve.

"My Sister's Keeper"

"Misery loves company," writes Sukhdev Sandhu in the Telegraph. "That at least is what the makers of 'My Sister's Keeper,' based on Jodi Picoult's 2004 bestseller, are hoping. It's a film about the slow death of a child, a topic that the Victorians loved, but that is a tricky sell to modern-day cinemagoers wondering how best to enjoy themselves on a Friday evening."

"[N]aked bathos-mongering is what people will come to 'My Sister's Keeper' for, and the film mostly delivers," writes Vadim Rizov in Time Out New York. "After Kate ([Sofia] Vassilieva) was diagnosed with leukemia as a child, her parents engineered Anna ([Abigail] Breslin) in vitro to be her perfect genetic match for surplus bone marrow, kidneys, etc. Now the younger kid wants out, and she's willing to sue for 'medical emancipation.' The family rips down the middle, with Anna and Dad (Jason Patric) on one side and the insanely devoted mom, Sara ([Cameron] Diaz), on the other decrying Anna's 'selfishness.'"

More from Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Ann Hornaday (Washington Post), Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle), Peter Martin (Cinematical), Nick McCarthy (L), Julie Miller (Movieline), Nick Pinkerton (Voice), AO Scott (NYT), Ryan Stewart (Slant), Ella Taylor (NPR) and Scott Tobias (AV Club).

And...

"On the eve of her 80th birthday, filmmaker Agnès Varda, frequently referred to as 'the godmother of the French New Wave,' made the autobiographical 'The Beaches of Agnès,'" writes Melissa Anderson, introducing her interview for the Voice. "Guiding us through her extraordinary 55-year career, Varda poignantly reminisces about Jacques Demy, her husband, who died, we learn for the first time, of AIDS in 1990." More on "Beaches," opening July 1 at New York's Film Forum, from David Edelstein (New York) Steve Erickson (Gay City News) and Steve Garden (Lumière Reader).

Here at IFC, Aaron Hillis talks with DJ Spooky about "Rebirth of a Nation." More from Ben Beitler and the Voice. And more on the film from Andrew Chan (Reverse Shot), Eric Henderson (Slant) and Cameron Shaw (Artforum).

Once again, Aaron Hillis, this time in the Voice and on "Local Color": "How is it that a film about the love of art can make art seem so detestable?" More from Stephen Holden (NYT).

In the UK

"Shirin" hasn't exactly been embraced by the British critics. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw: "The Iranian arthouse master Abbas Kiarostami continues his experiments with subjectivity, cinematic portraiture and fixed camera positions in this intriguing if somewhat exasperating new feature: an installation-type work that might work as well, or better, on a blank wall in an art gallery."

"But if 'Shirin' is not a great film, it is a great DIY film," writes Ryan Gilbey in the New Statesman, "an experience where the level of stimulation you get corresponds precisely to the extent of your input."

With "Sunshine Cleaning" opening (reviews: Peter Bradshaw, Guardian; Wendy Ide, Times; Tim Robey, Telegraph; Neil Young, Tribune), Anne Billson looks back on sisters in the movies.

In Germany

Bernd Eichinger's by-the-numbers "Baader Meinhof Complex" may have come and long gone, but German filmmakers are far from through with the material. Connie Walter's "Schattenwelt" ("Long Shadows"), dealing with contemporary repercussions of the Red Army Faction, opened yesterday to generally positive reviews; Cineuropa's got a synopsis in English.

On Monday, the Munich Film Festival screens Stefan Krohmer's made-for-TV "Dutschke," a biopic based on the life of Rudi Dutschke, a leader of Germany's "'68 Movement." In a piece for the Süddeutsche Zeitung that's not online, but which is excerpted in Perlentaucher, Rainer Gansera declares himself impressed.

In Japan

"Movies about impostors and grifters tend to view their roguish heroes with everything from indulgence to outright admiration, but rarely disapproval," writes Mark Schilling in the Japan Times. "Miwa Nishikawa's take on this theme in her new film 'Dear Doctor' departs brilliantly from the usual broad winking and rib poking. Not that she tut-tuts disapprovingly through her story of a fake doctor in a rural middle-of-nowhere, but she takes it seriously. Unlike the grifts that damage only bank balances and egos - phony medicine, she shows us, can kill."

[Photo: "Afghan Star," Zeitgeist Films, 2009]

Tags: Abbas Kiarostami, Afghan Star, Agnès Varda, Cyrus Nowrasteh, Havana Marking, Jennifer Lynch, Miwa Nishikawa, Richard Fleischer, Shohreh Aghdashloo