The following are capsule reviews of selected films playing during the first week of the Silk Screen Film Festival.

Western entertainment is fixated on vice -- Miami and otherwise. Asian films more often celebrate virtue, as two beautiful Silk Screen Festival entries illustrate.

"Amal" is Indian director Richie Mehta's fable of a humble "autorickshaw" driver. An autorickshaw is pretty much what it sounds like: a rickety little cart with a primitive motor -- just barely better than footpower.

Sweet, mild-mannered Amal (Rupinder Nagra) is content with the task of getting tough customers around Delhi as fast as possible -- for pennies. None is tougher than a nasty old vagrant, who turns out to be an eccentric millionaire on his last legs.

Unbeknownst to Amal, the rich guy bequeaths him his entire estate. But there's a deadline to claim it, and Amal can't be located. The deceased's upper-caste friends and mercenary relatives, meanwhile, are all scheming to get their share of his loot.

Nagra as Amal -- with his guileless brown eyes, deeper than the Ganges -- is the Christ-like (appearing and behaving) embodiment of a poor saint. He spends much of his time and money on an injured beggar girl, who's the Indian embodiment of Abigail Breslin: "If I knew hospitals were like this," she says, "I'd have run into traffic long ago."

Roshan Seth as lawyer Suresh and Vik Sahay as the millionaire's son Vivek are excellent villains. Sweet-and-sassy Koel Purie as the love interest is gorgeous.

"Amal" is a totally winsome mix of Guy de Maupassant and morality tale.

-- Barry Paris, Post-Gazette film critic

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Wang Quanan's marvelous title character in "Tuya's Marriage" is the hardworking wife of herdsman Bater, who was crippled in a well-digging accident. Since then, the full burden of caring for their sheep and two kids in the barren Mongolia grasslands has been on her sturdy shoulders -- but she has health issues of her own.

Pragmatic solution: They'll get divorced, so that Tuya can find a healthy new husband -- on the condition that her new hubby agrees to take care of Bater, too.

Tuya has no shortage of suitors, arriving by camel, tractor, motorbike and Mercedes-Benz. But they all back out, reluctant to keep the "ex" around the house, when they hear the deal-breaker clause about Bater. The diamond in this Mongolian rough is Tuya's plucky if unlucky neighbor Senge, whose own wife has run off on him.

Actress Yu Nan is superb as Tuya -- a virtual one-woman show, even riding her own horse like Annie Oakley. All the other performers are Mongolian non-professionals, and equally fine. German cinematographer Lutz Reitemeier's images perfectly capture the fragile nomadic lifestyle.

"Tuya's Marriage" is a rich, picturesque drama as well as a droll romantic comedy, wonderfully fashioned in every way. This unsentimental look into a vanishing nomadic culture begins and ends with the same strange wedding sequence.

In between, the key betrothal scene takes place at the bottom of a well!

-- Paris

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The name Liu Xing means "shooting star" in Chinese, and that is exactly what the grad student is. He blazes brightly and then plummets to Earth amid darkness, changing the landscape when he falls.

Opera innovator Chen Shi-Zheng directs this haunting movie inspired by an actual event in Illinois in 1991. It's a sad commentary that it's already been eclipsed by bigger, more calamitous episodes.

"Dark Matter" slips from past to present in a way that is purposefully jarring as we meet the brilliant Liu Xing (Liu Ye) as he arrives at an American university to pursue a Ph.D. and study the origins of the universe. He immediately becomes the protege of his department head, Jacob Reiser (Aidan Quinn).

Along the way, he and his fellow grad students are taken under the wing of Joanna Silver (Meryl Streep), a patron of Chinese culture at the university. Liu Xing is on the ascent until he threatens the bedrock of Reiser's research and reputation.

Liu Xing is obsessed with dark matter, which he calls "stuff we can't see but we know it's there." In the end, it's the dark matter that envelops him, and we see those tragically caught in the turmoil that spins like a tornado.

Even if you don't know or care about the string theory or field of cosmology, it's the people and not the particulars that matter. "Dark Matter" has an operatic quality to it, soaring on dreams and desires and sinking into tragedy and regret.

-- Barbara Vancheri, Post Gazette movie editor

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It's not about the destination, but the journey. True for life and true for this story about a Chinese man in his 50s who tries to deliver a dead friend to his final resting place thousands of miles away.

But with almost no money, no car, no coffin (or embalming), it's a daunting task. It starts with a bout of hard drinking, which leaves construction worker Liu (Hong Qiwen) dead and his fellow 50-something friend Zhao (Zhao Benshan) trying to fulfill a promise to take him home.

What sounds like "Weekend at Bernie's" is a road-trip picture that mixes comedy with philosophy, social commentary and even a touch of spiritualism. "He always said if a person is not buried near home, he becomes a wandering ghost," Zhao tells a surprisingly sympathetic robber who commandeers the bus he and Liu are riding.

Once the other passengers realize Liu is not just slumped against the window but dead, Zhao literally shoulders his responsibility by carrying his friend's body on his back. As he tries other methods of transport, he encounters strangers who are hard-hearted, lovesick, unloved, determined, reborn, homesick and sympathetic.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step ... and a single friend.

-- Vancheri