Ty's weekend movie picks for Friday, February 5

The Boston Society of Film Critics is having a party and you're invited. At the Brattle Sunday night (2/8), the BSFC will host a screening of "Man on Wire" -- the group's pick for best documentary of 2008 -- and then welcome the film's producer Maureen Ryan. Other awards will be presented to local heroes and big stars, and I hear the joint video acceptance speech from Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke (they tied for best actor) is hilarious. I'll be there; will you?

Everyone else and their Aunt Tillie will be going to "He's Just Not That Into You" this weekend, and there are worse movies out there -- it's a painless and occasionally observant romantic comedy with a lot of nice-looking people (Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Ginnifer Goodwin, Justin Long, Scarlett Johannson, Jennifer Connolly) fretting attractively about various dilemmas usually reserved for the covers of women's magazines. Too bad about a last half-hour that completely sells the movie's tough-love message out; were you expecting anything different?

If you prefer a change-up, I'd recommend "The Class," Laurent Cantet's terrific, feels-like-a-documentary drama about a French schoolteacher struggling with a classroom full of rowdy, articulate, argumentative teenagers, mostly children of immigrants. "To Sir with Love," "Stand By Me," "Dangerous Minds" -- pick your Hollywood Mr. Chips movie, this ain't it. The teacher gets an education here even as he despairs whether he can give his students one. Yet "The Class" is a bracing experience, alternately depressing and cheering and always thought-provoking for what it says about smart adolescents wondering what exactly they should be learning and exhausted teachers wondering which version of the world they should be presenting. A must-see for teachers, parents, high schoolers and (especially) school administrators, this is Mr. Weatherbee's worst nightmare.

More feral kids are on display in "The Wild Child," the 1970 Francois Truffaut classic being dragged out of mothballs with a new print at the Kendall Square. It's based on the true case of Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, and Truffaut himself plays the child's tutor, an Enlightenment idealist who hopes to civilize his charge. Masterfully shot by Nestor Almendros in crisp black-and-white, this is a moving oddity that neatly balances reason and compassion.

What to do about "Coraline"? Take kids 11 and up to see her; keep sensitive 9-and-unders as far away as possible. The film's a reasonably faithful adaptation of Neil Gaiman's cult novella, which means it's creepy-cool in almost entirely good ways. But it's also "Alice in Wonderland" by way of Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams," and animator Henry Selick takes us down the rabbit hole (rabbit's intestine, really) with dark and feverish imagination. In my review, I erred in calling what Selick does "claymation" -- a reader informs me that the characters in "Coraline" are "puppets constructed of metal skeletons with a variety of body materials and real clothes and not clay." I stand corrected.

Wesley got to see "Push" and "The Pink Panther 2," and has mostly rude things to say about them. I forget where I read it recently but it's true: At this point, movies are the least interesting part of Steve Martin's career. "Push," meanwhile, is a Dakota Fanning big-screen "Heroes" approximation that's not to be confused with the recent Sundance winner "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire," a film whose marketplace prospects were given an interesting going-over in the Times the other day and whose theatrical rights are now being fought over by Lionsgate and Weinstein. See you in court, boys.

That's two Dakota Fanning movies debuting today, by the way; she provides the voice of Coraline, too. If she could have figured out a way to get into "The Class," I bet she would have done it.

You loved him as the distant father in "Momma's Man," and if you saw that 2008 gem you probably already know Ken Jacobs is one of the titans of American experimental film. Jacobs is here and the Harvard Film Archive has him all weekend, along with short films, crazed magic-lantern deconstructions, and the filmmaker's wife Flo (the Momma of "Momma's Man"). Sorry, the 7-hour "Star Spangled to Death" will not be playing. Sunday night, the HFA screens Max Ophuls 1948 "Letter from an Unknown Woman," one of the cruelest, saddest, most delirious melodramas to come out of Hollywood. The pre-eminent film theorist Laura Mulvey will introduce the film. Damn, the HFA has been programming amazing stuff lately; I'm half tempted to duck out of the Brattle event and check this one out.

The Boston African FIlm Festival hits the Museum of Fine Arts starting tonight. Oscar-nominated shorts at the Coolidge and the ICA; check 'em out and handicap your office Oscar pool. Also at the Coolidge tonight (2/6): Legendary schlockmeister Lloyd Kaufman of Troma Films is appearing with his latest drive-in-ready opus, "Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead". It ain't Ken and Flo Jacobs, but it'll do.