E Elias Merhige

Director E. Elias Merhige, whose new psychological thriller "Suspect Zero" opens Friday, isn't your everyday Hollywood filmmaker. A former visual artist and poet, he thinks of film as "a collective dream" and of himself as a tribal storyteller targeting "the universal." Frustrated with linear exposition and the limitations of language, the onetime New Yorker is less concerned with dialogue than with allegory, imagery and "the poetic spaces" between characters.

It's 4 a.m. on a rainy night at the All-American Diner, on a deserted road outside Gallup, N.M. A bald, paunchy, amiable-looking restaurant-supplies salesman (Kevin Chamberlin) is seated by a window, having a cup of coffee and reading a fishing magazine. He is jolted by the sudden appearance of an intense, sinister stranger (Ben Kingsley) who sits down opposite him and thrusts at him a clutch of drawings of mutilated corpses.

It's 4 a.m. on a rainy night at the All-American Diner, on a deserted road outside Gallup, N.M. A bald, paunchy, amiable-looking restaurant-supplies salesman (Kevin Chamberlin) is seated by a window, having a cup of coffee and reading a fishing magazine. He is jolted by the sudden appearance of an intense, sinister stranger (Ben Kingsley) who sits down opposite him and thrusts at him a clutch of drawings of mutilated corpses.

Director E. Elias Merhige, whose new psychological thriller "Suspect Zero" opens Friday, isn't your everyday Hollywood filmmaker. A former visual artist and poet, he thinks of film as "a collective dream" and of himself as a tribal storyteller targeting "the universal." Frustrated with linear exposition and the limitations of language, the onetime New Yorker is less concerned with dialogue than with allegory, imagery and "the poetic spaces" between characters.

In response to Jason Alexander Apuzzo's " 'Vampire' Does F.W. Murnau Injustice" (Counterpunch, Feb. 5), I just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this devilish picture and would like to suggest that Apuzzo needs to lighten up a little bit, cut out his long middle name and step off his intellectual high horse when viewing films, and see them for what they are most of the time: simply entertainment. To me, "Shadow of the Vampire" was brilliantly written, and Apuzzo seems to have missed the fact that the film isn't about a method actor, but rather, a method director.

Rare as a crucifixion in Dracula's lair is a film opening for Oscar consideration in the last days of the year that actually has something in it worth considering. Willem Dafoe's performance in "Shadow of the Vampire" is so irresistible it not only breaks that cycle but turns an otherwise just adequate film into something everyone will want to take a look at.

The gripping drug thriller "Traffic" may have won four Oscars--including best director (Steven Soderbergh), adapted screenplay (Stephen Gaghan) and supporting actor (Benicio Del Toro)--but the DVD version (USA, $27) certainly won't be collecting any awards. Perhaps because Soderbergh has been busy making "Ocean's Eleven," he didn't supply an audio commentary for this digital edition. So the DVD is pretty skimpy.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" (1951) will premiere Thursday at the Nuart in its British release version, two minutes longer than the American cut. In either form, it's a suspense classic, capable of making you anxious even if you've seen it several times. This Patricia Highsmith tale turns on an encounter between an insinuating psychopath, Bruno (Robert Walker), and a tennis champion, Guy (Farley Granger).

"Hotel Rwanda" put a face on the horrors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 by chronicling the mass slaughter of Tutsis by tribal Hutus through the heroism of Paul Rusesabagina, and the extras on the digital edition of Terry George's Oscar-nominated drama are gut-wrenching (MGM, $27). A hotel manager at an upper-class establishment in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, Rusesabagina saved some 1,200 "guests" -- Tutsi refugees who found a sanctuary at the hotel.

E. Elias Merhige's "Shadow of the Vampire" is a curious film, indeed. By turns whimsical and pitiful, it dramatizes the making of director F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror" (1922) and in the process becomes a kind of New Age "Sunset Boulevard." "Shadow" explores the exotic, albeit forgotten era of Murnau, actor Max Schreck and the German cinema of the 1920s.

"Nosferatu," F.W. Murnau's unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," is often called the first vampire movie. It is without question the first surviving vampire movie, even though it faced the threat of extinction not long after its 1922 release.

Asylum. Natasha Richardson is a psychiatrist's wife, drawn to patient Marton Csokas at the institution her husband helps run. Ian McKellen also stars. David Mackenzie directs. Paramount Classics, September. The Burial Society. Money laundering and murder drive writer-director Nicholas Racz's twist-filled plot. With Rob LaBelle, David Paymer and Seymour Cassel. Regent Releasing, May. The Butterfly Effect. Emotionally troubled Ashton Kutcher seeks solace in secrets from his childhood.