<strong><span class="subhead">The Messenger</span></strong></p><p>The festival&rsquo;s closing-night selection is this drama about a soldier (Ben Foster) who falls in love with the wife (Samantha Morton) of a recently fallen friend. I haven&rsquo;t seen this one yet, but the reviews out of this year&rsquo;s Sundance Film Festival were uniformly stellar. Woody Harrelson has a supporting role that is being buzzed about for an Oscar nomination. </p><p><strong>Screens</strong>: 6:30 p.m. Saturday, AMC Palace 8</p><p>The best approach to any film festival is to dive in blind; more often than not, you end up making a major discovery. But for those who need a little more guidance, here&rsquo;s a look at the higher-profile screenings at this year&rsquo;s Lone Star fest. </p><p><strong><span class="subhead">The Scenesters</span></strong></p><p>The festival organizers show admirable daring in programming this offbeat indie comedy set in east Los Angeles as the opening-night attraction. It&rsquo;s a hall-of-mirrors story about a hipster filmmaker who begins filming crime scenes, only to end up in the middle of a real-life serial-killer thriller. You&rsquo;ll either find it ingenious or grating. (I fell into the latter camp.) </p><p><strong>Screens</strong>: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, AMC Palace 8</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Serious Moonlight</span></strong></p><p>Perhaps the most mainstream of the festival&rsquo;s offerings, this dark comedy &mdash; directed by <em>Curb Your Enthusiasm </em>star Cheryl Hines and based on the final screenplay by the late writer-director Adrienne Shelly (<em>Waitress</em>) &mdash; is about a wife (Meg Ryan) who imprisons her cheating husband (Timothy Hutton) inside their country house, which is promptly besieged by a pair of quirky robbers (Kristen Bell and Justin Long). Despite a nice supporting performance by Bell, the jokes never hit and the movie pales in comparison to the similar <em>The Ref</em>. </p><p><strong>Screens</strong>: 7:15 p.m. Thursday, AMC Palace 1</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Spooner</span></strong></p><p>Imagine a more-accessible, less-ambitious version of Paul Thomas Anderson&rsquo;s <em>Punch-Drunk Love, </em>and you&rsquo;ll get a sense of this appealing romantic comedy about a used-car salesman (Matthew Lillard) on the cusp of his 30th birthday and still living at home with his parents, who thinks he has finally met the girl of his dreams (Nora Zehetner). The story is decidedly predictable, but the perennially underrated Lillard lends real sweetness to the proceedings. </p><p><strong>Screens:</strong> 9:30 p.m. Thursday, AMC Palace 2</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Tenure</span></strong></p><p>An English professor (Luke Wilson) finds himself competing for tenure with an attractive new hire (Gretchen Mol) in this romantic comedy by first-timer Mike Million. Keep your expectations low, and you&rsquo;ll likely be charmed, in a <em>Smart People </em>sort of way. </p><p><strong>Screens</strong>: 7 p.m. Friday, AMC Palace 2</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">The Eclipse</span></strong></p><p>Arguably the strongest film in this year&rsquo;s festival is this exquisitely slow-burning ghost story, written and directed by playwright Conor McPherson (<em>The Weir</em>, <em>The Seafarer</em>). Set during a literary festival in Ireland, the story circles around a frustrated widower (Ciar&aacute;n Hinds) who begins seeing the ghost of his still-living father-in-law, a beautiful writer of paranormal subjects (Iben Hjejle) and a cocky novelist (Aidan Quinn). Like the best scary stories, this one is more about its complex, tortured characters than ghouls that go bump in the night. </p><p><strong>Screens</strong>: 4 p.m. Saturday, AMC Palace 1</p><p>&mdash; Christopher Kelly