French animator Michel Ocelot is best known in this country for his film Kirikou and the Sorceress, this Saturday’s Film4Families selection at SIFF Cinema. A lively fantasy based on African folklore, Kirikou is the charming tale of a chatty newborn who takes on the sorceress who has laid a curse on his village, told via Ocelot’s vivid imagery and engaging musical soundtrack. It makes an excellent companion piece to this week’s SIFF Cinema feature selection, Ocelot’s Azur & Asmar Azur & Asmar tells the story of two boys raised as brothers by the woman who is Asmar’s mother and Azur’s nanny but considers both of them her sons, even after Azur’s wealthy and stern father forces her from his household in medieval Europe. The young men are reunited as adults in nanny’s unnamed homeland in the Arabian peninsula but their roles are reversed: now Asmar is the child of wealth and Azur is the penniless stranger. Nanny Jenane welcomes Azur with open arms but Asmar is less forgiving and the two set out on a quest to rescue the legendary Fairy of the Djinns as fierce rivals. Simple enough on a basic level for even a young child to follow, Azur & Asmar uses its plot to thoughtfully examine ithemes of prejudice, respect, and discovery, all skillfully woven with the threads of Ocelot’s brilliant, brightly colored visuals that combine two- and three-dimension animation, both hand drawn and computer created.

Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon cleverly uses creative camera work and an artful narrative structure to examine truth and human nature by having four unique characters relate their own version of the facts, as they see them, in a case of murder and rape. This provocative film is now over 50 years old but has lost none of the stunning impact that has made it a highly respected and often reference work of supreme artistic merit. Opens Friday at the Grand Illusion .

A Japanese film of an entirely different sort also plays at the Grand Illusion, late nights this weekend: tough cop Raku battles genetically altered villians in a brutal future Tokyo in the appropriately titled Tokyo Gore Police. Not for the squeamish.

Northwest Film Forum pays tribute to a transitional year in history and pop culture: 1969, the year that saw the release of both Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and Easy Rider. I’ve never been a big fan of the latter myself, but Easy Rider is an immensely well-regarded film for its no hold barred portrayal of many complicated social issues of the 1960s, many of which continue to resonate today. Produced with an extremely low budget by Peter Fonda and directed by Dennis Hopper, the stars of the film, Easy Rider was a “countercultural” movie that achieved widespread recognition and commercial success for its fresh point of view. Today the movie is an excellent document of an era and definitely worth seeing for its historical value alone. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were genuine outlaws of the American West, active as the 19th century turned into the 20th. Screenwriter William Goldman played with the true facts of their lives to come up with a story more fantastic than factual, but the first on-screening pairing of Paul Newman and Robert Redford, directed by George Roy Hill, isn’t mean to be a serious biography. What it is is an exquisitely entertaining movie with action, adventure, and a great deal of humor that absolutely deserved the four Oscars that it earned. (Read the full series schedule here.)

Romantic comedy fans might want to head to Central Cinema for a screening of Moonstruck where Cher plays a widow all set to marry a safe older guy until she meets his hot younger brother, Nicholas Cage.

Stretch the weekend into Monday with the The Paramount‘s Silent Movie Mondays. Monday, January 12, see the 1926 film The Magician. Based on a story by Somerset Maugham which was in turn inspired by the notorious Aleister Crowley, The Magician centers on a sorceror who discovers an ancient recipe for creating life. Silent films at the Paramount are always very well done; the Paramount is an excellent place to see a movie and the Wurlitzer organ soundtrack makes for an enchanting time. Buy your tickets early and attend the pre-film lecture celebrating silent film.

Midnight at the Egyptian: Wet Hot American Summer.