The AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival is now in its 18th year, making it the longest-running broad-spectrum film fest in town. (And that's not even counting more than a decade of Filmex, the festival from which it sprang.) The event runs from November 4 to November 14; as was the case last year, nearly all the screenings are at ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood.

How best to characterize it? Is it (as a particularly hack colleague once described a similar event, utterly without irony) a "tasty cinematic buffet"? Or perhaps a savory screen smorgasbord? A magnificent menu of movie munchies? A filmic fresser's farrago?

Whatever. Please don't eat the films; just watch them.

The basic bullet points are:

H 135 films from 42 countries,

including 92 features;

H 24 world premieres;

H 11 North American premieres;

H 28 U.S. premieres.

There are six Gala Presentations (translation: the tickets are more expensive), a four-film retrospective tribute to Pedro Almodóvar (see article on this page), three competitions (Features, Documentaries, Shorts), and five geographically defined units (U.S., Latin America, Asia, Germany, and the rest of Europe).

All of which means: lots of stuff, about half of which is unlikely to turn up again locally on the big screen.

This being the year that documentaries broke into the mainstream, I checked out a bunch of promising-sounding titles from the fest; in most (but not all) cases, they lived up to the promise. Perhaps the best is Robert Stone's Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (Wed. at 7:15 p.m.; Thur., Nov. 11, at 1 p.m.), a fair-minded look at the Symbionese Liberation Army, their kidnapping of Hearst, and the horrible subsequent events. Stone relies heavily on interview footage with Russell Little, one of the SLA's founders, along with the standard newsreels and insightful info from San Francisco Chronicle reporter Timothy Findley.

Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust (Tue. at 7 p.m.), directed by Daniel Anker, traces the reluctance of Jewish film industry moguls to even make reference to anti-Semitism prior to World War II; the political difficulties with criticizing Hitler just before we entered the war; and treatments of the Holocaust all the way up to Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Numerous film excerpts are intercut with interviews of industry veterans, as well as Steven Spielberg and historian Neal Gabler. Some of the speakers are a bit too self-congratulatory, but it's still hugely informative.

Wash Westmoreland's Gay Republicans (Thur., Nov. 11, at 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 13, at 1 p.m.) proves that blindness and susceptibility to propaganda are not limited to straight white men. We meet four longtime Republicans, whose agreement with the GOP on most issues has outweighed the shabby way the party treats homosexuals ... until this year, at least. Bush's enthusiastic embracing of an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment is the last straw for two of these four. Of the two who stay faithful to the party, one is a name-dropping snob, who seems more concerned with how a president dresses in the Oval Office than with trivial matters like civil liberties; the other trashes one of the defectors for not being careful with facts, then asserts a bunch of long-discredited Swift Boat Vets nonsense himself. (Warning: The festival catalog lists this as 80 minutes, but the tape I was sent was scarcely 47 minutes. The presence of "coming up next" bumpers at regular intervals made it clear that it was actually designed to be a one-hour TV show.)

A few years ago, it became public knowledge that gorgeous Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr had, in her spare time in the 1940s, co-invented frequency hopping, an important encrypting technology that was a longtime military secret and now powers spread-spectrum telephones. There is a fascinating film to be made about Lamarr, but, unfortunately, Georg Misch's Calling Hedy Lamarr (Sat. at 3:30 p.m.; Wed. at 9:45 p.m.) isn't it. Misch structures the film around the attempts of Lamarr's son, telephone salesman Anthony Loder, to produce a biopic about his mom. Way too much Loder ... not nearly enough Lamarr.

There are at least three terrific Asian films on the agenda, two of which may well qualify as masterpieces. House of Flying Daggers (Sat. at 8 p.m.), Zhang Yimou's followup to Hero, lacks its predecessor's epic scale but, as a result, also lacks its coldness and distance. While the story centers on a love triangle involving three particularly gorgeous people - two soldiers (Takeshi Kaneshiro, Andy Lau) and a blind female revolutionary (Zhang Ziyi) - this period martial-arts film has even more dazzling swordplay and action choreography than Hero.

Lau also costars in the Infernal Affairs trilogy (Sat., Nov. 13, at 4:45 p.m.; Sun., Nov. 14, at 1:30 p.m.), from directors Andrew Lau (no relation) and Alan Mak. The first of these - which is being remade in Hollywood and was supposed to be released here, until Miramax decided to dump it to video - has a great hook. Tony Leung Chiu-Wai plays a gangster who is really an undercover cop (similar to his part in John Woo's Hard-Boiled), while Lau is a cop who is really a mole for the gang boss. One of the best HK crime films since Woo's decampment for the States.

The festival includes two entries from the burgeoning Thai film industry. There's not much to say about Rahtree: Flower of the Night (Sun. at 9:30 p.m.; Tue. at 4 p.m.): Yuthlert Sippapak's ghost film careens wildly between horror and very broad comedy; by the end, the plot makes absolutely no sense. The entire thing would have been more effective at two-thirds the length.

The other Thai film, Ong-Bak: Muay Thai Warrior (Fri. at 9:45 p.m.; Sun. at 2 p.m.), has been a sensation all over the festival circuit, and there's no reason L.A. should prove an exception. Director Prachya Pinkaew was clearly inspired by Jackie Chan: the plot is your basic "country boy comes to the big city and teams up with urban hustler to reclaim the religious relic that has been stolen from his village." The filmmaking technique is generally slick, but what powers the movie are numerous brilliantly choreographed chase and fight sequences, and the sheer charisma and acrobatic skill of star Tony Jaa. If you have any taste for HK action, you don't want to miss this. (It's scheduled for general U.S. release next year.)

MORE REVIEWS FROM AFI WEEK ONE

Astronautas

Daniel (Nancho Novo) is a middle-aged heroin junkie determined to kick the habit with a self-prescribed decalogue that includes such steps as maintaining personal hygiene, paying attention to details, and immersing himself in the real world. An unexpected challenge arises when Laura (Teresa Hurtado), a 15-year-old girl, materializes in the hallway of his building, looking for her brother, who used to live next door. This May-December dynamic is a familiar one, but writer-director Santi Amodeo has crafted a nuanced literary film, embellished by pointed animated collages, in which action derives from character. Daniel is the endearing curmudgeonly type whom Laura thinks she can save by loving him enough. What she doesn't understand - and the heart of Amodeo's thesis - is that Daniel can't be saved until he realizes that the model of normalcy he's aspiring to is false. (Annlee Ellingson) (Tue. at 7:15 p.m.; Thur., Nov. 11, at 3 p.m.)

Days and Hours

This rumination on the aftermath of war - Bosnia's 2004 foreign-language Oscar submission - is the sort of shaggy-dog story that Luis Buñuel might have attacked with considerably more gusto and outrage. Filmmaker Pjer Zalica, who previously made the incendiary Fuse, sets his little fable in a quiet neighborhood of Sarajevo on an inauspicious day. Fuke arrives at the home of his uncle and aunt to fix a broken-down water heater. It's an opportunity to gab and catch up, but the conversation invariably drifts toward the civil strife that engulfed the nation and the wound of a cousin's death that remains unhealed. Characters from the area drift in and out, but, when Fuke tries to leave, his car won't start. It's an apt metaphor for this engaging, humanistic yarn that wholeheartedly ´´ believes all obstacles must be overcome. (Leonard Klady) (Tue. at 9:30 p.m.; Thur., Nov. 11, at 12:30 p.m.)

Downtown: A Street Tale

On the mean streets of New York, a group of young runaways and fuck-ups squat in a crumbling tenement, whose interior somehow manages to resemble a well-decorated loft. We have the stripper-cum-hooker (Rachel Vasquez), the friendly guy (screenwriter Joey Dedio), the naive pregnant girl (Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, daughter of you-know-who, unconvincingly playing a teen), the failed would-be musician (James Ransone), the HIV-positive junkie (Chad Allen), the gay hairdresser (Jeremy Alan Richards), and the retarded guy (Johnny Sanchez). It almost sounds like a pitch for a reality show, though in practice it plays like a feature-length P.S.A.

It's been a decade since Screwballs director Rafal Zielinski won a couple of Sundance awards with his Heavenly Creatures-like Fun. Since then, he's obviously been badly in need of a paycheck, having directed such, ahem, notables as National Lampoon's Last Resort and the Christian horror movie Hangman's Curse. With Downtown, he's clearly hoping to regain artistic credibility.

Cinematographer Ken Seng certainly earns points by making New York look as photogenic as can be, and Zielinski has managed to get a nice wide variety of locations. The film itself, however, adds nothing new to the street-kid genre, though Geneviève Bujold gives it her all as the angelic counselor to the hard-luck cases. (Luke Y. Thompson) (Sun. at 7 p.m.; Wed. at 3 p.m.)

Far Side of the Moon

Though best known for his innovative theatrical forays, Quebecois Robert LePage here makes one of his most successful movie crossovers. Expanded from a one-man stage show, the film presents the fortyish Philippe, a hapless everyman obsessed with the arcane and oblivious, and angry when questioned about his pursuits. He is enmeshed in a doctoral thesis about the space race as a narcissistic pursuit, but this is no more than a coat hanger on which the film hangs ideas about family, sibling rivalry, failed relationships, and other dilemmas. LePage, portraying both Philippe and his considerably more balanced and successful brother, proves a capable and endearing screen presence. The film - Canada's submission for the 2004 foreign-language Oscar - is a ragtag collection of thoughts, miraculously unified by the complex, blithely erratic Philippe. It neatly combines the filmmaker's unique theater constructs and a dramatic heritage steeped in magical conundrums. A singular piece with a truly adventurous spirit. (Leonard Klady) (Sun. at 3 p.m.)

Head-On

Swimming in a cocktail of drugs, alcohol, and despair, Cahit (Birol Ünel) drives his car directly into a concrete wall. His suicide attempt fails, and in a psychiatric clinic he meets pretty young Muslim Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), who has faked her own attempt to escape her devout, conservative family. Since that hasn't worked, she moves on to plan B: She asks Cahit, who, like her, is Turkish-German, to marry her so she can live life to the fullest. Of course, love soon shows up. Ünel fully inhabits the brooding Cahit, while Kekilli performs the spirited Sibel with a wicked wink; the two possess a combustible chemistry. Meanwhile, writer-director Fatih Akin's film - characterized by frank sexuality and punctuated by musical interludes of traditional Turkish tunes - taps into the turmoil of a continent whose increasingly porous borders have precipitated issues such as the abolition of Muslim head scarves on schoolchildren. (Annlee Ellingson) (Fri. at 9:30 p.m.; Mon at noon)

Innocent Voices

The title characters of this Oscar submission from Mexico are children caught in the crossfire of El Salvador's 1980 civil war. Told from the perspective of a 12-year-old boy, the film is a harrowing re-creation of a small village where the tedium of daily life can be interrupted at any moment by violent encounters between government and guerrilla forces, with the populace apt to be part of the collateral damage. Its best moments are unsparing and ´´ graphic, but still filmmaker Luis Mandoki sentimentalizes his story, characterizing the warring factions with obvious, clumsy clichés. (Leonard Klady) (Sat. at 7 p.m.; Mon. at 1 p.m.)

Invitation to a Suicide

Itching to escape the fate of taking over his father's bakery, Kaz (Pablo Schreiber) schemes to rob a Russian mobster but ends up owing the guy ten large instead. He has just a couple of days to come up with the dough, or his father gets whacked. To raise the money, he decides to hang himself and sell tickets to the show. The news travels fast through his Polish Brooklyn neighborhood, whose residents, instead of trying to stop him, laud him as a hero. Schreiber (brother of Liev), who displayed demonstrable talent in the last season of HBO's The Wire, possesses an appealing affability. Unfortunately, the material here, although rife with potential, simply doesn't go for the jugular. Along with a constantly shifting and ultimately unclear deadline, which itself mitigates the tension, writer/director/producer Loren Marsh limits the titular event to an intimate affair, missing an opportunity for truly absurdist black comedy. (Annlee Ellingson) (Sat. at 10 p.m.; Mon. at 4 p.m.)

Let's Rock Again

This tight, rockin' documentary from Dick Rude follows Joe Strummer, former lead singer of the Clash, as he returns to the music world with new band the Mescaleros, shortly before his death in 2002 from a congenital heart condition.

Observing that "going from hero to zero is good for the soul," Strummer meets throngs of adoring fans in Japan, hands out fliers for his own show on an Atlantic City boardwalk, shows up for a radio interview (where he is locked out until he mentions the Clash), and opines philosophically about his relative unimportance in the grand scheme of things. He's full of life and extremely upbeat, with no indication that his health will shortly fail him dramatically.

We also get plenty of full-length songs from the Mescaleros, as well as a couple from the Clash for context. Can't say I've ever been much of a fan of the music, but after watching this film, I'm definitely a fan of Joe Strummer the man. (Luke Y. Thompson) (Mon. at 10 p.m.; Wed. at 3:30 p.m.)

My Stepbrother Frankenstein

The horror implied in Valeri Todorovsky's title comes less from the ghoulish appearance of a stitched-together veteran of the Chechen war than to a society still unglued by a bloody misstep. A largely low-key meditation on the forces that make incursions on humdrum lives, its center is Yulij, a scientist and father of two. When he learns that he has a son in his early 20s, he attempts to set things right by inviting the young man, Pavel, into his household. Disfigured during his military service, Pavel is at first a disturbing presence but slowly finds acceptance. Todorovsky's earlier films have a kinetic energy not present here, but My Stepbrother Frankenstein shares with them a facility for putting convention on its ear. It constantly challenges complacency in a manner that drives the narrative forward to frightening conclusions. (Leonard Klady) (Wed. at 10 p.m.; Fri., Nov. 12, at 7 p.m.)