A hit in Hungary makes a return trip

Louis PETRO, who represented last month’s Hungarian Film Festival at the Music Hall, was so confident that Gabor Herendi’s “A Kind of America” would be selected as Hungary’s official Oscar entry he decided to bring back the film for a one-week Academy Award-qualifying run at the same theater starting Friday. As it turned out, Gyorgy Palfi’s exceedingly venturesome and original “Hukkle,” which also was screened in the recent festival, was chosen to represent Hungary.

On artistic grounds, “Hukkle,” an elusive murder mystery in the form of a droll ethnographic study of life in a sleepy rural village, was by far the more appropriate choice, although “A Kind of America” was the most popular picture in the festival, echoing its box office triumph on home ground.

“A Kind of America” is an amusing and sexy comedy with a capable cast. It offers a rare opportunity to see mainstream entertainment from Eastern Europe, which is almost invariably represented by art films, often bleak or at best tragicomic, given the tumultuous history of the region.

Csaba Pindroch stars as Tamas, a young Budapest commercials director who has written a script that has attracted the attention of London producer Alex Brubeck (Tibor Szervet), who’s willing to make a deal -- provided that Tamas is able to raise $220,000 himself. The film turns upon Tamas enlisting his brothers for help in both raising the funds and keeping Brubeck entertained while visiting Budapest to close the deal.

Much of the film’s humor derives from the fact that the brothers don’t know that Brubeck, with whom they speak English, understands every word they utter in their native language. The drawback in this premise is that one is left to wonder why the brothers don’t consider from the start that Brubeck can understand their asides given that he speaks with a mild but decided accent?

The American Cinematheque presents the six-film “Devil or Angel: A Tribute to Christopher Walken” Friday through Sunday at the Egyptian. It opens with a sneak preview of Steven Spielberg’s “Catch Me if You Can,” a true-life cat-and-mouse thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, with Walken cast as DiCaprio’s father.

Of special interest is the Saturday-night double feature, which teams David Cronenberg’s 1983 Stephen King adaptation, “The Dead Zone,” an amazingly persuasive tale of the supernatural that emerges as a Christ parable, and Abel Ferrara’s “King of New York” (1990), in which Walken takes on the mob to gain control of the cocaine trade.

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Screenings

What: “A Kind of America”

Where: Laemmle Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills.

When: Opens Friday, shown at 2:45 p.m. on weekdays and at 10 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Closes next Thursday.

Info: (310) 274-6869.

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What: “Devil or Angel: A Tribute to Christopher Walken,” a six-film retrospective.

Where: American Cinematheque, Egyptian, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

When: Friday through Sunday, various times.

Info: (323) 466-FILM.