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This weekend's worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:

--In the grand spirit of all the world's truly great directors, Werner Herzog (right) is as likely to captivate as he is to infuriate. On the occasions in which he does it in the same movie, such as in his new documentary Grizzly Man, I just shake my head and thank God that at least I am being challenged. The film recounts the life of eccentric bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell, who spent a dozen or so summers among grizzlies in the Alaskan wilderness before a particularly grumpy bear tore ate him and his girlfriend for lunch. Grizzly Man is perhaps the most anticipated of Herzog's three documentaries this year (with The White Diamond and Wheel of Time), but it also the most bitterly uneven, with Herzog narrating pretentious new footage interwoven with Treadwell's own awe-inspiring video diaries.

The catch of these diaries is that the sound of Treadwell's death was captured on a running camera that had its lenscap on. Anybody familiar with Treadwell's story (and he was kind of an American cult figure, as Herzog shows) going into Grizzly Man knows this, and you will probably recoil in the same disgust I experienced when Herzog not only chooses not to sample audio fragments from the tape, but also encourages its guardian to destroy it right after he listens to it. Yes, Werner, thanks for invoking the one most important document this man left behind, screening it and recommending it be erased from history. Verrrrrry Herzogian. Or maybe not. Anyway, it is a mixed bag, but it is Herzog, and he has a lifetime exemption from The Reeler. So whatever.

--Saturday, the Museum of the Moving Image is busting out a spiffy new 35mm print of Bergman's most overrated (yes, you heard me) picture, Wild Strawberries. But again, we are getting into lifetime-exemption territory here, and Victor Sjostrom's turn as Isak Borg yields a few classic dream sequences and a nicely wrenching scene with his 96-year-old mother that stands alone as one of Bergman's finest. The rest... eh. But what have you got to lose?

--The Pioneer Theater takes its rightful place as the Epicenter of New York Feminism at least for tonight, when David DeFalco's assault, torture and death opus Chaos screens back to back with Gerald Damiano's one and only Deep Throat. This could be the perfect opportunity to ask out that NOW activist you have been wanting to date for a while, but just could not find the right time. If knife-fucking and throat-clitorises won't get a dignified woman to the theater (and back to your place, natch), then what will?