Hooligans

(2 stars)

The world of football (soccer) hooliganism — where "firms" base blood feuds on the sporting rivalries of their local teams — is a foreign one to Americans, where stealing the opposing college team's mascot is about as ugly as things typically get. This feature from Lexi Alexander (a German-born kickboxing champ) aims to show us the horror firsthand, with a Yankee protagonist who is seduced into the hooligan scene.

But Elijah Wood is a too-blank canvas here, bobbing around in the eddies of violence a little more passively than one would expect from a privileged Ivy-Leaguer. The film's moral points have no finesse, and although the film wants to argue against hooligan behavior, it enjoys the fighting a bit too much and gives romantic drama to the loyalties that evidently make firm culture appealing in the first place.

10 p.m. March 18, Alamo South

Old Boy

(4 stars)

The new extreme cinema from Asia — horror films and gory taboo-shattering from filmmakers such as Takashi Miike — is often disappointing, full of provocation with little substance behind it. One of the most compelling films to emerge from this school, Chan-Wook Park's "Old Boy" is chock-full of wrenching cruelty, the kind of exploitative violence that makes mere gunplay look like shuffleboard, but it is artfully crafted and evokes emotional effects that reach beyond shock. Essentially a story of revenge, its main character suffers a years-long imprisonment for unknown reasons, then finds his time as a free man consumed with tortured payback. It isn't pretty, and only the most shock-proof moviegoers should attempt it, but few of "Old Boy's" contemporaries do what it does so well.

9:30 p.m. March 19, Arbor