No one puts on a showcase of the macabre like J. Cannibal, the cult impresario, who works as an undertaker when he isn't busy being a zombie connoisseur. In tonight's FEAST OF FLESH XI he outdoes himself, with music from local metalcore band Acaro, bumps and grinds from horror/stripper ensemble Black Cat Burlesque, and a screening of Demons (1985).

"Dreams and Demons," the most recent installment in the Goethe Institut's series Short & Sweet III: German Animated Films, ventures into the haunted Teutonic terrain familiar to the filmmakers of the Expressionist period and writers like the Brothers Grimm with its program of seven outstanding shorts.

Hip-hop culture was already well established back in 1983 when Charles Ahearn's documentary-style drama Wild Style came out, and even then it was confronting the issues of authenticity and commercialism that it faces today. Here Zoro (Lee Quinones), a Bronx graffiti artist, practices his art on the margins of criminality until lured from the 'hood by tony Manhattan gallery people.

Baltimore has given birth to its share of disparate filmmakers, including Barry Levinson, John Waters, and now Matt Porterfield, who presents his two features this week at the Harvard Film Archive. The first is Putty Hill (2010), which takes place in a working class section of Porterfield's hometown, where a group of disaffected teens gather when a friend dies of an overdose.

The title of Manoel de Oliveira's A Talking Picture (2003) is a bit ironic, considering that the 102-year-old director was making movies when they were still silent. His genius remains undimmed in this witty, provocative, somewhat allegorical tale about globalism, communication, and doom. A mother and daughter on a cruise share the captain's table with three beauties from different countries.

Why "The Lion King?" Why now? Seventeen years after the film entered the ranks of Disney animated classics, its 3D re-release last weekend shot to the top of the box office with a $29.3 million take. You'd think that by now that every parent in the world has seen the DVD a million times already with their kids.

Stained

Traditionally considered the purview of male directors, the horror genre has increasingly been embraced by women. Taking note of this, the All Things Horror people present a program of shorts and features by female filmmakers from the Viscera Film Festival, "a nonprofit organization committed to expanding opportunities for contemporary female horror filmmakers."

A few days have passed since the Toronto International Film Festival ended, giving us a chance to reflect on the highlights of our trip there that were not necessarily film related.

Starting with the hotel we stayed at. Built in 1929, the Fairmont Royal York Hotel boasts 1365 rooms and the largest hotel kitchen in Canada. You might recognize it as the setting for a big scene in the film "Red" (not the conclusion to Kieslowski's "Three Color" trilogy but the one in which Helen Mirren shoots a machine gun).

The title of the HFA's retrospective For My Crushed Right Eye: The Visionary Films Of Toshio Matsumoto suggests a messier version of the infamous razor blade scene in Buñuel's Un chien andalou. The veteran Japanese director's work lives up to the comparison, challenging conventions with his formal experimentation and transgressive subjects as much as Buñuel did with his surrealism.

Me and My Gal (1932)

These days the title of the ArtsEmerson series Movies Matter seems a bit naive. Aren't movies just mindless entertainment whose sole purpose is making money at the box office? Dave Kehr, one of America's best film critics, doesn't think so, and in a recently published collection of his film criticism written between 1974 and 1986, When Movies Mattered, he makes a strong case.

Recent Italian politics have been chaotic and outrageous - so what else is new? As can be seen in the terrific period films in the Harvard Film Archive's series Viva L'italia! The Risorgimento On Screen, that's pretty much the way it's always been. The program opens with Luchino Visconti's masterpiece, Senso (1954; 7 pm), a lushly romantic extravaganza set during the 19th century Italian war for independence in which a patriotic Venetian countess falls in love with an officer of the occupying Austrian army.

Giancarlo Esposito

The Boston Film Festival, now in its 27th year, has seen its ups and downs. But its organizers definitely made a shrewd move when they settled into one of the city's classiest venues, the Stuart Street Playhouse, where it opens its weeklong run of world premieres. They include Peter Askin's Certainty (6:45 pm), the tale of a young couple who undergo Catholic pre-nuptial counseling.

Aside from the glitz and parties and nonstop illusions, sometimes a film festival, and a film, can, in some small way, change the world. The independent distributor Palisades Tartan picked up the latest work by the incarcerated and banned Iranian filmmaker, Jafar Panahi. Back in December the Islamic Republic sentenced Panahi to six years in prison and banned him from making films for 20 years for the obscure crime of “assembly and colluding with the intention to com­mit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.

It’s not just Kevin we need to talk about. There are a lot of bad boys here at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Like Brandon (Michael Fassbender), a 30ish Wall Street in “Shame,” Steve McQueen’s bleak “Last Tango” for the internet porn age. Unlike Kevin, he doesn’t kill anyone. No, that would be more the style of his 80s predecessor Patrick Bateman in Mary Harron’s 2000 adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho” (Fassbender at times bears a resemblance to Bale in that movie).

As a female writer struggling with domestic woes, Margot in Sarah Polley's "Take This Waltz" had it pretty easy. Consider Eva, played by Tilda Swinton, in another film by a non-American, female filmmaker, Scottish director Lynne Ramsay's adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel "We Need to Talk About Kevin."