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Film Picks By Richard von Busack Columbia Pictures' 76th Anniversary Plays at the Castro Theater. Featuring new 35mm prints from the hardscrabble studio that became a major player--through the hard work, unmitigated gall and unanswerable instincts of its founder, the philistine's philistine, Harry Cohn. Highlights: a double bill (March 6) of the rarely revived shot-at-Candlestick Park 1962 Blake Edwards thriller, Experiment in Terror, and The Lineup (1958), directed by Don Siegel, also set in San Francisco; a double bill (March 10) of The King of Marvin Gardens (1970), Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson's angst-in-the-pants duet, and Five Easy Pieces (1972), in which we learn why God gives dimples to babies he doesn't like; and a double bill of The Big Heat (1953) and Human Desire (1954), for Fritz Lang lovers, and, like, aren't we all? A Moment of Innocence/ The Silence Opens March 10 at the Lumiere. Two recent films by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the one really world-class director to come out of Iran. I haven't seen The Silence, but A Moment of Innocence is a knockout, the best thing I saw at the 1996 San Francisco Film Festival. It's a sort of documentary. Makhmalbaf, who spent five years in the Shah's dungeons for his revolutionary activity, was casting a film about the crime that got him put away. By sheer coincidence, the actual policeman Makhmalbaf stabbed turned up to answer the casting call. The cop, hulking as Frankenstein, but with a pleading, gentle voice, had his life and career ruined by the director's knife. In his re-creation of the moment that nearly destroyed two lives, Makhmalbaf shows the immense challenge facing a filmmaker: trying to create order out of chance, ignorance and the sick comedy of happenstance. Orphans Opens March 10 at the UA Galaxy. Peter Mullan's film about four Glaswegian brothers who hold an impromptu floating wake for their mother. It shows as part of the 12-week-long Shooting Gallery Film Series, which tries to bring to theaters films that fell through the distributors' nets. If Orphans has some of the quality of Judy Berlin, the series' stunning opener, it'll be worth a look. [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]