Speaking again about the armchair incident at the Vienna Airport mentioned below, the situation it evokes of being in a strange place with strange things going on and with no one speaking your language recurs as a theme in just about every film I've seen so far among those in competition.

For example, in the aforementioned "Folge Mir," the heroine finds herself totally estranged from the absurd bourgeois world in which she's forced to live, but no more so than the viewer is from the movie.

After a lengthy flight involving several delays to Vienna, where I was serving on the International Critics Jury for the Vienna Film Festival, we were greeted at the baggage claim by a large armchair that moved about and spoke to people. It would sneak up on passengers from behind, saying things that I could not make out despite having taken two years of German in grad school, at times pursuing people who fled, alarmed or irritated.

If Clint Eastwood's Hereafter has you looking to chat up the spirit world, head for the Coolidge Corner Theatre's Halloween Horror Movie Marathon. In addition to its movie twin bill - the Japanese horror film that defies description, Nobuhiko Obayashi's House (1977), and Stuart Gordon's raucous and terrifying H.

The Brattle's "King of Cult: Sam Raimi" repertory series follows the director's career from his demonic beginnings to, well, his demonic latest, Drag Me to Hell. Funny how things come full circle, right? There's also Darkman and Spider-Man in between, and it all builds up to the theater's annual Halloween screening of the excellent Evil Dead 2

Lately, Boston has been a hot spot for Hollywood productions, but it's long been a center for independent documentary filmmakers. Like 2010 Foster Prize finalist Rebecca Meyers (the film-program director at the Paramount Center), who tonight will screen a selection of her work that'll include "blue mantle," a lushly beautiful exploration of the history and ecology of the Massachusetts coast.

Maybe the best documentary about cross dressing on stage since Paris is Burning (1990), Kaitlin Meelia's Play in the Gray takes a look at Boston's all-female drag group All the King's Men and comes up with many laughs and some sharp insights into gender issues. Women in Film & Video New England's "Chicks Make Flicks" program is holding a free screening at MIT, 77 Mass Ave, Room 6-120, Cambridge | October 25 @ 7 pm | free | 413.246.0524 | RSVP to rsvp@womeninfilmvideo.org.

Nearly everyone panned Wes Craven's new My Soul To Take, so if you want to restore your faith in the director, or you just want to get the crap scared out of you, take another look at Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). This is what real dreaming is like, not the glossy set designs of Inception. Doomed to be battered to inanity by recurrent sequels, the original remains a horror classic, and you can see it at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St, Brookline | October 22-23 @ midnight | $9 | 617.

Some of the best films you'll never see anywhere else are being programmed by ArtsEmerson at the Paramount Center. Turkish director Metin Erksan's Dry Summer (1964) is a drama about two brothers whose conflict results in desperate water deprivation for a community. More agricultural hardship is on hand in Agrarian Utopia (2009), Thai director Uruphong Raksasad's documentary about an idyllic and endangered way of life.

There are no dull interviews. Only dull interviewers. And those who blow obvious follow-up questions.

PK: Do you think younger people would be entertained by this movie?

SF: Yes, of course they would be, but they won't go to the cinema.

PK: And that's because...

SF: That's because they're programmed; they like pop culture.

In which we ponder what's wrong with the kids today.

PK: So how did you become a filmmaker?
SF: Sort of by accident. I worked in the theatre and then I met a film director and he said, ‘come and work on my film.'

PK: This is Karel Reisz?

SF: Yes. Karel. I'd never been on a film set before.

PK: So you've been working in film since.

His career in British cinema goes back to the 60s when he worked with Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson (he was an assistant director on one of my favorite movies, Anderson's "If..." ). As a director his films have ranged from "My Beautiful Laundrette" (1985) to "The Grifters" (1990) to "The Queen" (2006).

Next to Blade Runner, Alien (1979) is Ridley Scott's best movie. So it's good news that he's returning to the sci-fi genre with an Alien prequel. In the meantime, you can catch his excruciatingly suspenseful tale of a crew on a shabby interstellar cargo ship picked off one by one by the title intruder.

^{Fair Game}

As we near the midterm election and you feel an enthusiasm gap growing might I recommend seeing "Inside Job," or at least looking at this cogent interview with the director Charles Ferguson conducted by the Phoenix's Chris Faraone.

I would also recommend seeing "Fair Game," Doug Limon's infuriating dramatization of the Valerie Plame affair, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.

This article in "Slate" about why women seem to be so proficient at film editing reminded me of the late Karen Schmeer, who died in a tragic accident last February. Her memory is being honored by the establishment of The Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. Applications will be accepted until December 15 from candidates of both genders.

This is the year women kick ass, and never more so than in adaptations of the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson's thrillers featuring the unstoppable 90-pound warrior Lisbeth Salander. Tonight, the Brattle Theatre presents a sneak preview of the third and last of the series, Daniel Alfredson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, in which Salander, played by feral stunner Noomi Rapace, refights the entire Cold War with a bullet in her head while in an ICU.