Paradise (2009)

Michael Almereyda made a big indie stir with his 1994 vampire movie Nadja followed up in 2000 with his post-modern version of Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke. Since then he has kept a low profile making non-fiction films, including Paradise (2009), which is essentially a visual diary recording everyday epiphanies.

Any film with Udo Kier in it is, de facto, a must-see. In the portmanteau horror film The Theater Bizarre (2011) he plays the creepy puppet man - is he a muppet or a man? - who introduces the six tales of terror presented at the title venue. Among the committee of directors is George Romero collaborator Tom Savini, whose episode " Wet Dreams" involves a wronged wife's oneiric revenge, and Canadian filmmaker Karim Hussain's "Vision Stains," which investigates the nature of memory by means of hypodermic needles and eyeballs.

The 37th Boston Science Fiction Film Festival, like past editions, offers a treasure trove of classic, new, and unknown gems, including premieres like Dimensions: A Line, A Loop, A Tangle of Thread, a period flick set in the '20s about a scientist determined to live one moment of time over and over again (director Sloane U'Ren and screenwriter Ant Neely will attend).

Though he died three decades ago at the age of 32, Bruce Lee not only helped establish the martial arts genre, he also opened Western eyes to the accomplishments of Hong Kong and other Asian film industries, and as a result vastly enriched cinema as a whole. Pete McCormack's documentary I Am Bruce Lee profiles and pays tribute to this iconic figure; it includes rare archival footage and interviews with those he inspired, ranging from Kobe Bryant to Gina Carano.

You Are on Indian Land (1969)

The Occupy Boston protest raised a lot of issues regarding haves and have-nots and the nature of democracy. It also touched on the murky subject of public land ownership - who gets to say what happens with a public place like the Rose Kennedy Greenway if not the people? To shed light on that discussion, the cutting-edge Balagan Films people present Whose Land? on Tuesday, February 7, a selection of a half dozen short documentaries ranging from Mort Ransen and Mike Mitchell's You Are on Indian Land (1969) to Josh Gibson's Kudzu Vine (2011).

The Robert Bresson retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive continues with Une Femme Douce (1969), a film which, along with Bresson's Mouchette, Au hasard Balthazar, The Trial of Joan of Arc, and others, demonstrates the great auteur's empathy with the suffering of women and his austere acknowledgment of their dignity and strength.

Many were appalled that Tilda Swinton was snubbed for a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the beleaguered mother of a sociopath in Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin. See what they're talking about at this preview screening of the harrowing, and sometimes hilarious, film at the Harvard Film Archive.

Filmstudie (1926)

Now that you all know how cool silent movies can be after watching the Oscar Best Picture nominee The Artist (if you haven't yet seen it, you must), take it up another notch by experiencing the Alloy Orchestra's "Wild and Weird," a compilation of classic silent shorts accompanied by the legendary ensemble performing their own original soundtracks.

Moneyball

Now in its fifth year, the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards continues to provide a homespun, quirky, surprising, moving, and funny alternative to all those other awards shows. This year they've snagged as a guest their Best Screenplay co-winner, Stan Chervin, co-writer of Moneyball, and will also be screening that terrific more-than-a-baseball movie starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, incidentally also nominated for a Best Picture and other Oscars.

Boston Phoenix film critic Gerald Peary resumes his eclectic, fascinating, intimate - and free - Cinematheque series with An Evening With Jennifer Getzinger, a visit from the talented director whose "The Suitcase" - an episode from the fourth season of the AMC series Mad Men - is considered by some to be the show's best.

The Oscars may have snubbed his performance as Freud (and everybody else) in David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method," but Viggo Mortensen can now claim the perhaps more substantive Coolidge Award, the annual career achievement honor given out by the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

He's in good company.

Swing! (1938)

You can see how far Hollywood has come in its depiction of African Americans by comparing the multiply-Oscar-nominated The Help with Hearts in Dixie (1929 | 6:30 pm), screening as part of the ArtsEmerson Gotta Dance: The American Movie Musical 1929-1953 series. Made by whites and starring an all-black cast, Hearts tells the story of cotton-pickers in the Deep South coping with the deaths of loved ones.

My Spectacular Theatre

Already known for putting on one of the best film events in these parts, the organizers of the Boston Jewish Film Festival are also hosting the first annual REELAbilitiesBoston Film Festival, a series of six films from around the world about the lives of people with disabilities.

We've seen time travel so often in the movies you have to wonder why nobody's figured out how to do it in real life. Certainly if the amiable dunces (Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter) in Stephen Herek's Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989) can visit past luminaries like Napoleon and "So-crates" via George Carlin and a phone booth, some actual scientist should have cracked the puzzle by now.