Ty's movie picks for Friday, August 8

If "Monsieur Verdoux" were released today, it would still cause gasps of dismay at the unstinting darkness of its vision. It's safe to say that irony was not a moviegoing pre-requisite in 1947 the way it is in the 21st century, and for all intents and purposes, Charlie Chaplin flipped his adoring worldwide audience the bird when he took on the title role of a dapper serial wife-killer. Yes, it's a comedy, sidesplitting whenever the unsinkable Martha Raye (above, with Chaplin) is onscreen. And, yes, it's as far from the beloved Tramp as can be imagined and as close as Charlie came to admitting he really didn't like other people all that much. Especially women. You can catch this remarkable work of career suicide in a new 35mm print at the Brattle this weekend.

If you'd rather catch a sublimely entertaining, even profound documentary about the guy who wirewalked from one World Trade Center tower to another in 1974, by all means seek out "Man on Wire." One of the best I've seen this year.

"Pineapple Express" looks cool on paper -- Kings o' raunch Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen join forces with indie auteur David Gordon Green ("George Washington") and a ton of pot jokes for a goofball take on 80s action buddy comedies. But, you're right, that's one too many pigs on the pile (at least), and the things never wholly clears the runway. There are still plenty of bonehead laughs, though, and I liked Danny McBride a lot better here than in his own "The Foot Fist Way." And James Franco effectively destroys his clean-cut psycho image in the "Spider-Man" movies. About time.

For girls who read, we have "The Sisterhoood of the Traveling Pants 2." For wine snobs, there's the fond "Bottle Shock" -- a table wine but a good one. There's some smart, nihilistic Hong Kong mayhem in Johnnie To's "Mad Detective," which is about exactly what the title says: a paranoid schizophrenic police detective who solves crimes better than you or I. It's at the MFA for a week or so, and probably causing heart fibrillations in casual moviegoers wandering in from the museum's bookstore.

Wesley has some things to say about "Boy A," which I haven't seen and thus cannot weigh in on. And there's a weird little come-on being offered by the Harvard Film Archive in the form of "I, Pierre Riviere" and "Back to Normandy", the first a mid-70s documentary/re-enactment of a notorious 1830s multiple murder, the second a 2007 return to the scene of the first film by one of its crewmembers, now an established filmmaker himself. That's a hall of mirrors to get lost in.

Six examples of the New Japanese Cinema at the MFA, including 2007 Cannes Grand Jury Prize winner "The Mourning Forest".

And maybe buy your plane fare now for Nairn, a village in the northeast of Scotland, where Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton has rented a ballroom called the Ballerina and, come August 15, is hosting a little film festival. The first day they're showing the rare and mysterious 1935 Hollywood spectral romance "Peter Ibbetson." From there they go to Kurosawa, Michael Powell, Ozu, Fellini, Polanski, and many more, some curated by Joel Coen, half of you-know-who. Sure, you could rent most of these movies on DVD. But then you wouldn't be in Scotland.