Ty's picks for Friday the 13th

As expected, I'm already starting to get irate emails from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" fans. (Who knew they got out of bed this early?) What can I tell you? The new movie is exactly why slacker disassociative comedy works brilliantly in 12-minute installments and falls flat over the course of a feature film. Imagine one of those Robert Smigel "SNL" cartoons simply not knowing when to quit: That's what watching shake, fries, and meatball (and Carl) for 86 minutes feels like. Only the "South Park" guys seem to have cracked this particular nut; even Mike Judge had to go live-action.

UPDATE: If you want one of my favorite critics (and people) lavishing 4-star praise on "ATHF," please go here. For myself, I cannot go there.

If, on the other hand, you want an entertainment that pokes you hard in the bourgeois sensitivies, Paul Verhoeven's your man and "Black Book" is your movie. (I still say "Starship Troopers" is the most underrated and subversive mainstream film of the last ten years.)

Bunch of other new movies this week, too, but the only one you want to walk five miles to avoid is the Halle Berry thriller. Yes, even when it shows up on cable. "Wild Tigers I Have Known" at the Brattle looks good.

Also at the Brattle is a return engagement of Jean-Pierre Melville's great WWII Resistance drama "Army of Shadows," perfect for rinsing the acrid taste of "Black Book" out of your mouth.

Cannibal burlesque at the Coolidge tonight at midnight. Sounds very cool and "Grindhouse"-ready, but considering the theater hosted Martin Scorsese last night, this must be what they call a chaser.

The films of Hara Kazuo are playing at the Harvard Film Archive this weekend, for those wanting explore radical Japanese documentary cinema.

At the MFA is "The Yatra Trilogy," three documentaries by John Bush focusing on Buddhism in Bali, Cambodia, and Thailand ("Prajna Earth"), Laos, Thailand, and Bruma ("Dharma River"), and Tibet ("Vajra: Sky Over Tibet"). Bush's work is eye-opening and essential if you have an interest in Eastern spirituality; I've only seen "Vajra" (my review's here) but I was impressed by the way the film side-stepped New Age noodling to capture a lived religion that's on the verge of being snuffed out.