The New York Times-20080125-Film in Review- -Movies- Performing Arts-Weekend Desk-

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Film in Review; [Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk]

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ORTHODOX STANCE

Opens on Friday in Manhattan

Directed by Jason Hutt

In English, Russian, Hebrew and Spanish, with English subtitles

1 hour 22 minutes; not rated

In the intriguingly layered documentary Orthodox Stance, a determined young boxer strives to prove that the laws of God and the laws of the ring need not be at odds.

When Dmitriy Salita, an immigrant from Ukraine, first discovered his talent for boxing in 1995, he saw the sport as an escape from the poverty of his Brooklyn childhood. Now 25, Mr. Salita is a professional junior welterweight; he is also a strictly observant Orthodox Jew.

Over a turbulent three-year period, Orthodox Stance quietly documents the challenges and rewards of integrating faith and career. Following his subject from Las Vegas to Puerto Rico to the Poconos, the director, Jason Hutt, observes a hectic schedule of training, promotional bouts and contract negotiations. Aided by a loyal support staff, Mr. Salita studies the Torah in hotel rooms and refuses to fight on the Sabbath; a press conference sponsored by Budweiser, however, requires more delicate handling.

Throughout, Mr. Salita's focus and striking self-possession never waver. As he attends a White House Hanukkah celebration and enters the ring serenaded by the Hasidic reggae star Matisyahu, we see a fighter who understands that showmanship is as important as talent. I believe that I, to a certain extent, have found God through boxing, he says. What's clear is that he has found his identity -- and his fan base -- through both. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

ALICE'S HOUSE

Opens on Friday in Manhattan

Directed by Chico Teixeira

In Portuguese, with English subtitles

1 hour 30 minutes; not rated

Chico Teixeira's languid, libidinous Alice's House is the best argument against marriage and motherhood to appear in many a year.

The house in question is a messy Sao Paulo apartment bursting at the seams with male entitlement. With an ailing mother (Berta Zemel), three teenage sons who do little but lounge and thieve, and a husband (Zecarlos Machado) whose cabdriving job offers plenty of opportunities to stray, Alice (the wonderful Carla Ribas) has few distractions from her menial work at a nail salon. So when a lover from her past reappears, bearing gifts and compliments, she is more than ready to fall.

Mr. Teixeira began his career making documentaries, and it shows in the way he insinuates his camera into the minutiae of daily life. Focusing on observation over declaration, he simply allows the film's overabundance of hormones to seep into almost every exchange. When one brother asks another, Why do you let Mum grab you all the time?, the jealousy in the question hangs in the air, unexplored but contributing to the general atmosphere of sexual and emotional dysfunction.

Simultaneously delicate and earthy, Alice's House anchors its soap-opera plotlines -- adultery, avarice and incipient blindness -- in the tired body and vaguely ruined features of its dreamy heroine. In this house of men, women are expected only to wait and witness. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

TRAILER PARK BOYS

The Movie

Opens on Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Detroit and Burlington, Vt.

Directed by Mike Clattenburg

1 hour 37 minutes

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is like a feature-length version of the television sitcom My Name Is Earl, only Canadian -- and not funny.

Set in the fictional Sunnyvale trailer park and based on an award-winning cable television show, the movie follows the exploits of three aging bottom feeders and their small circle of enablers. There's Ricky (Robb Wells), a fast-talking fabulist with Elvis hair and a sticky-fingered daughter, Trinity (Lydia Lawson-Baird); Julian (John Paul Tremblay), a stoic drunk fixated on stealing large amounts of loose change; and the myopic Bubbles (Mike Smith), a helpless man-child whose kitten-infested shack is facing much-needed demolition.

Populated by characters whose lives revolve around doping, boozing and cutting into one another's lap dances, Trailer Park Boys: The Movie flirts with the mockumentary format without buying it a ring. The script (by Mr. Wells and Mike Clattenburg, who also directed) is more creative with profanity than plot, though Ricky's post-incarceration attempts to reclaim his lady love (Lucy DeCoutere) are handled with unexpected sweetness. Let's face it, though: what woman wouldn't choose new breasts, a lesbian lover and a job at a gentleman's club over a suitor who lives in a car? JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has public urination, private lap dancing and universal bad taste.

[Illustration]PHOTOS: How Dmitriy Salita, a professional boxer, balances his career and religion is the subject of Jason Hutt's Orthodox Stance. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEX TEHRANI/OXBOW LAKE FILMS); Carla Ribas in the Brazilian film Alice's House, directed by Chico Teixeira. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LUCAS BARRETO/FIGA FILMS)