The fine Los Angeles County Museum of Art tribute to Ingmar Bergman is coming to an end with a pair of excellent films showing this Saturday. At 4 p.m. there is a free screening of a new documentary, "And Film Is My Mistress," an evocative memory piece about the director by Stig Bjorkman, who will talk after the film.

And speaking of memory, at 7:30 p.m. LACMA will show the Academy's archive print of the luminous "Fanny and Alexander," 1984's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner and one of the warmest films Bergman ever made.

No one needs an introduction to "Fanny and Alexander," a film once seen never forgotten, but the documentary by Bjorkman, a Bergman authority, has its own quiet charms.

The film mixes thoughts on Bergman by other directors like John Sayles and Olivier Assayas with fascinating behind-the-scenes footage shot on Bergman's sets that highlight his relationship with master cinematographer Sven Nykvist and even show him blocking shots with actors. Bergman looks like he was never happier than when he was on a film set, and its a pleasure to see him that way.

-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

If you care about the great days of Hollywood past — and how could you not — its hard to resist "Something's Gonna Live," a charming new documentary that plays for a week starting Friday at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills.

Directed by Daniel Raim, who was Oscar nominated for his short "The Man on Lincoln's Nose," this film is constructed as a series of conversations and reminiscences among some of the grand old men of the visual side of motion pictures: production designers Robert Boyle, Henry Bumstead and Albert Nozaki, illustrator Harold Michelson and cinematographers Conrad Hall and Haskell Wexler.

There is something of the home movie about this film, but that is overcome by the grace, generosity and wisdom of its participants. It's wonderful, for example, to return to Bodega Bay in Northern California with Boyle and Michelson as they reminiscence about making "The Birds" with Alfred Hitchcock. Except for Wexler, all these men are now gone, and they are missed.

— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: Veteran production designers Henry Bumstead, left, Albert Nozaki and Robert Boyle revisit the Paramount backlot. Credit: Haskell Wexler.

Because it's one of the hardest films to see and will possibly never make it to DVD, it's good that the American Cinematheque seems to be making a habit of showing "Los Angeles Plays Itself" at least once a year.

One of the best films about Los Angeles, Thom Andersen’s exceptional documentary, a 2-hour, 49-minute essay/meditation and labor of love on how this city has been depicted on the screen, is screening this weekend.

Smart, insightful, apologetically idiosyncratic and bristling with provocative ideas, “Los Angeles” serves up segments from more than 200 films, from 1913’s “A Muddy Romance” to 1974's “Chinatown” and beyond.

Brilliantly discursive and filled with intriguing detours, it finally agrees with the narrator in Jacques Demy’s “Model Shop,” who says, “It’s a fabulous city. To think some people claim it’s an ugly city when it’s really pure poetry, it just kills me.”

"Los Angeles Plays Itself" screens at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, with director Andersen appearing Sunday, at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica.

-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: A scene from Thom Andersen's documentary "Los Angeles Plays Itself." Credit: American Cinematheque

If you know Harry Shearer only as a key voice on "The Simpsons," you're missing a lot, especially his work as a fearless and incisive social commentator on his KCRW program "Le Show" and in his excellent muckraking documentary, "The Big Uneasy," playing in theaters nationwide one night only Aug. 30.

A part-time resident of New Orleans, Shearer has put together a gripping, persuasive film that posits that the catastrophic flooding that overwhelmed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was not a natural disaster but the result of years of ruinous decisions and horrific misjudgments by the Army Corps of Engineers, the same people who are in charge of the city's latest flood-control plan.

With the help of lively computer imagery and smart interviews, "The Big Uneasy" shows what went wrong and how both academic investigators and a Corps of Engineers whistle-blower were unceremoniously quashed. Essential viewing. Showing at the Grove, the Americana in Glendale and theaters listed at thebiguneasy.com.

-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

There are films that are satisfying in and of themselves, and there are films that offer the additional pleasure of starting a career that you can feel is going somewhere. It's not that anyone seeing Christopher Nolan's "Following" back in 1998 would necessarily have predicted "Inception," but the sense that this was a director worth watching was inescapable. As it is with Australian writer-director David Michod's impressive debut with "Animal Kingdom."

"Animal Kingdom" is an art house crime saga that will put your heart in your mouth. This moody modern-day film noir, which took the highly competitive world cinema jury prize at Sundance, manages to be both laconic and operatic. Faultlessly acted by top Australian talent including Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn and Jacki Weaver, "Animal Kingdom" marries heightened emotionality with cool contemporary style to illustrate one of the oldest of genre truths: "Crooks always come undone, always, one way or another."

--Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: Ben Mendelsohn, left, and Joel Edgerton in a scene from "Animal Kingdom." Credit: Reuters

Some directors are slow learners, picking up the craft as they go, but others seem to get it from the beginning. Christopher Nolan didn't have "Inception's" budget when he did "Following" in 1998, but his great ability was right there on the screen even then.

The same is true for Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, and the American Cinematheque's Aero Theater in Santa Monica offers an opportunity to see the proof. On Friday at 7:30 p.m. it's screening both Spielberg's 1971 "Duel" and Lucas' 1971 "THX 1138."

"Duel," originally made for TV, stars Dennis Weaver in the suspenseful tale of an ordinary guy hunted by a relentless truck and a malevolent driver whose face we never see. "THX 1138," starring Robert Duvall and Donald Pleasence in a 1984-type look at a futuristic world, is the bleakest film Lucas ever made.

-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: Robert Duvall and Maggie McOmie in George Lucas' 1971 film "THX 1138." Credit: Warner Bros.

Even for a critic, seeing short films is not an easy thing to do, so I jumped at the chance a few years ago to judge a competition that was part of Portland's Northwest Film and Video Festival. That's where I first saw a small film that made a larger than life impression on me.

Heather Harlow's deeply moving "Nous Deux Encore" is a 16-minute documentary short that will screen Aug.10 as part of the 8 p.m. show at the HollyShorts festival at Laemmle's Sunset 5 in West Hollywood. I can't vouch for the rest of the shorts on the program, but if they are as good as this one they will be memorable.

A formidably articulate 80-year-old Frenchwoman tells the voice-over story of the great romantic passion of her life as hundreds of photographs taken by her husband with the aid of an automatic timer fill the screen. Inventively told, powerfully evocative of time and place, this is a love story that is both heartbreaking and exalting.

-- Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: A scene from "Nous Deux Encore." Credit: Yiannis Leoussis

People fall in love in every country, but nowhere is the experience put on film with the consistent style, empathy and emotion the French provide. "Mademoiselle Chambon" is the latest in that line of deeply moving romances, an exquisite chamber piece made with the kind of sensitivity and nuance that's become almost a lost art.

Starring the top-flight acting team of Vincent Landon and Sandrine Kiberlain, actors who were once married to each other but are now divorced, "Mademoiselle Chambon" is about the power of love to disturb as well as elevate, about the profoundly disconcerting experience of falling terribly in love when that's the last thing you want to do.

Impeccably directed by Stephane Brize, "Mademoiselle Chambon" is less concerned with the protagonists' ultimate resolution than with bringing us into the journey, showing us how it came to be that these people fell and how they reacted. This would be a welcome film any time of the year, but to have it during the dog days of summer is something like a miracle.

— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: Sandrine Kiberlain and Vincent Lindon in "Mademoiselle Chambon." Credit: Michaël Crotto.

One of the funniest comedies ever to come out of Hollywood also turns out to be one of the nerviest and most controversial. Rather than something spanking new, it's Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 "To Be or Not to Be," a comedy about Nazis that came out right in the middle of World War II, when no one was in a mood to laugh at the enemy.

The film costars the unlikely duo of Jack Benny and Carole Lombard as Joseph and Maria Tura, a pair of Polish Shakespearean actors who have to impersonate Nazis in order to save lives. Benny used to joke about the quality of his film work, but he is impeccable here, and Lombard, in her last released film, displays the touch that made her loss in a plane crash all the more tragic.

Lubitsch's daring attempt to merge comedy with an anti-Nazi thriller was far from popular at the time. One reason was savage lines like this to the Turas from a Nazi officer: "What you did to Shakespeare, we are now doing to Poland."

"To Be or Not to Be" plays on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Bing Theater, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles.

— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic

Photo: Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, right,  in a scene from Ernst Lubitch's "To Be or Not to Be." Photo courtesy of LACMA.

Billy Wilder liked to tell the story of walking back to his car with fellow director William Wyler after the funeral of their mentor, the great Ernst Lubitsch. "Finally I said, to break the silence, 'No more Lubitsch.' To which Wyler replied, 'Worse than that -- no more Lubitsch films.' "

Acting very much in that spirit, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is running an excellent Lubitsch retrospective at its Bing Theater called "Laughter In Paradise," and Saturday night features one of the best of the lot, 1940's sparkling "The Shop Around The Corner." There may not be a perfect romantic comedy, but this one certainly comes close.

Written by Samson Raphaelson and starring James Stewart and an incandescent Margaret Sullavan as fellow employees in a Budapest shop who have more in common than they imagine, this film, the inspiration for Nora Ephron's "You've Got Mail," can be watched with complete delight no matter how many times you've seen it. With a delightful cast of supporting players, this is the indefinable "Lubitsch touch" at its best.

The screening will be held at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd.

-- Kenneth Turan

Photo: Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart in "The Shop Around the Corner." Credit: LACMA