Documentary Archives — Page 3 of 58 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

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Michael Redmond

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July 15, 2014

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Time is money, making both things usually in short supply when it comes to moviemaking. Ergo, a movie that takes forever to make is often a novelty — an extreme conceptual luxury. (On the other hand, movies that never actually get finished are probably more common than you’d expect; there’s a whole invisible history of films abandoned mid-production, usually because the money ran out.) This week sees the theatrical release of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, an unusual and by all accounts wonderful experiment shot over a 12-year course, so its actors (particularly Ellar Coltrane’s titular youth) could grow older naturally within the story’s time span.

Unfortunately, the by-all-accounts wonderfulness of Boyhood didn’t screen in time for this particular column — necessitating an attention shift to the Roxie, which just happens to be opening a movie also shot over several years’ course. If Boyhood is obviously about life’s formative early years, Tamar Halpern and Chris Quilty’s Llyn Foulkes One Man Band leaps forward decades to that point where an individual life no longer seems to change very much. Not nearly as much as they’d like, in this case. Foulkes is a veteran of that fabled Los Angeles art scene briefly and famously (albeit mostly in retrospect) centered around the Ferus Gallery. He was such a prodigy he dropped out of the Chouinard Art Institute (now known as CalArts) to go professional, then got kicked out of Ferus for (he says) dissing another, better-entrenched resident “rebel,” Bob Irwin.

Of course, no one since approximately 1900 has ever met a “serious” painter who wasn’t also a “rebel.” After that parting of ways, Foulkes became quite a popular artist for a while via large paintings derived from vintage landscape (in particular, rocks) photography. Such popularity chafed, so he turned toward what he calls his “bloody heads” period, gory portraiture that made his “macabre edge” very plain to anyone who somehow hadn’t sussed it already. Suddenly he was no longer the US artist invited to international biennales and handed prestigious prizes. One Man Band follows him some time later (2004-2012, to be exact), when he passes age 70 with no ebbing of lust — for acclaim, that is, for the sales and exhibitions and critical raves he possibly bypassed in “going out of his way to turn his back on the proprieties of the art world,” as one bemused observer notes.

We see him prepping for shows that force him into the position he most resists: actually finishing a work. At least that’s his problem with two notable pieces. Intense surreal landscape The Lost Frontier was started in 1997. It has grown so thick in places that he’s periodically used saw and hammer to excise a section he wants to rework. It duly includes a representation of Mickey Mouse, the pop culture icon he worshipped early on (in high school he’d aimed at working for Disney), then increasingly used as the perfect symbol of all things corrupt, exploitative, and American. A gallery deadline finally forces him to sign off on it, following a typical final frenzy of tinkering all-nighters.

There’s no similar happy ending for The Bedroom Painting, aka The Awakening, which depicts himself and his second ex-wife (she wasn’t “ex” when he started it) in bed — she in a near-fetal position, alone, the very definition of neglect. “The one thing I’ve failed at in my life is being a good husband. I’m too self-centered. My marriage was falling apart, I was trying to solve it in the painting,” Foulkes says here. We hear from this wife, and the prior one — albeit so briefly and tactfully it’s as if the subject forbade the filmmakers from digging into the psychological truths his art so often bares nakedly. (That second wife mentions realizing he could “not be a nurturing partner,” a terribly polite way of describing what must have been a colossal disappointment.) His grown children also appear, fleetingly. Why does their tone invariably hit the “long-suffering” note? Viewers would like to know.

Foulkes himself is spry, petulant (“If something doesn’t happen with this show, I feel like quitting art”), quite possibly brilliant, admittedly obsessive (“My process is kind of make and destroy and make again”), random (“I think vegetables are overrated”), and self-indulgently juvenile in that way of men who once got away with it by being very handsome. (When we see an archival clip of him clowning on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1974 as part of a joke band, he looks like a delighted prankster passing among actual misfits.)

Foulkes’ proclaimed alternative second career is as a “one-man band” whose bizarre stream-of-consciousness autobiographical lyrics (sum: he’s bad with women) are accompanied by the often delightful racket of his “monkey on my back” — a massive sculptural whatzit composed of myriad cowbells, bicycle horns, and other gizmos. He’s the ultimate Incredibly Strange Music ironicist, goin’ all primitive as an art project. You can exit One Man Band thoroughly intrigued, yet still so puzzling over its subject’s overall personal history or impact on contemporary art. *

LLYN FOULKES ONE MAN BAND opens Fri/18 at the Roxie.

Film Listings: July 9 – 15, 2014

Michael Redmond

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July 8, 2014

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Code Black This documentary by first-time director Ryan McGarry would be impressive enough even without McGarry doing double duty as one of its subjects — which is to say, a stressed-out physician-in-training at LA County Hospital, “the birthplace of emergency medicine in the United States.” Working at a public hospital (much like SF General or Oakland’s Highland Hospital, the latter the subject of another excellent doc, Peter Nicks’ 2012 The Waiting Room), LA County docs struggle to stay on top of the daily chaos, which ironically becomes amplified when earthquake safety regulations demand the operation move to a sparkling new facility. A major concern is the huge volume of patients; the ER waiting room frequently operates under “code black” conditions, where the ill and injured — mostly uninsured working poor who don’t have access to preventative care — wait for 10 or more hours to be treated. Unfortunately, the hospital’s tight budget means woeful understaffing, and strict regulations require physicians who’d rather be seeing the sick to spend time poring over “protocols, policies, rules, checklists, and forms.” The end result is a worrisome look at the state of American health care from the front lines. (1:22) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Direct sequel to 2011’s surprisingly great series reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes, with Andy Serkis reprising his motion-capture role as evolved chimp Caesar, and San Francisco reprising its role as Ape Revolt Central. (2:10) Balboa, Presidio.

The Last Sentence This latest from 85-year-old Swedish master Jan Troell (2008’s Everlasting Moments, 1971’s The Emigrants) is a straightforward biopic about a figure well-remembered on his home turf if rather obscure here. Torgny Segerstedt (played by Jesper Christensen) was the editor in chief of Gothenburg’s liberal newspaper, and from the early 1930s to his death he used that podium to rail against the National Socialist menace to the south. That made him increasingly controversial, even imperiled, as his government made more and more dicey compromises to maintain the nation’s alleged neutral status in the wake of escalating Nazi aggression in Scandinavia and elsewhere. It was an extraordinarily brave stance. But this long slog of a historical drama spends way too much time detailing just how much of a selfish, arrogant prick Segerstedt apparently was in other departments, not least his carrying on a long-term affair with the equally overbearing Maja (Pernilla August), his own publisher’s Jewish wife, to the grief of that spouse (Björn Granath), his own long-suffering wife (Ulla Skoog), and their children. He and Maja are like lovers in an Ayn Rand novel, only with leftist political views and homelier middle-aged looks. Taking place largely in the rooms where power is brokered and marriages are broken, The Last Sentence keeps the big picture almost entirely offscreen, rendering history a very talky affair among disagreeable people. Some balm amidst the well-acted, well-produced boredom is provided by Troell and Mischa Gavjusjov’s handsome black and white photography. (2:04) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Venus in Fur Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) is the writer-director preparing to stage his new adaptation of the titular kinky 1870 novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose work (and name) inspired the term “masochism.” After a long day’s fruitless auditions, he’s about to go home when in barges actress Wanda (Emmanuelle Seigner), very late for an appointment she might not have actually made in the first place. Doffing coat to reveal an “in character” costume of leather bustier and dog collar, while unconvincingly noting “I’m usually demure and shit,” she bullies him into letting her proceed. To his shock, she’s very, very good. With him taking the submissive male role in their reading, text and real life soon blur into one major mindfuck for the alternately bemused, appalled, and bewitched Thomas. Roman Polanski’s French-language version of David Ives’ hit two-character play can hardly escape theatricality (nor should it), but it’s fluidly cinematic within its limits, and maximizes the material’s gimmicky charms. Mostly it’s a worthy showcase for two terrific performances. Amalric, as ever, rings infinite subtle variations on the comedy of exasperation. More surprising is the director’s longtime wife Seigner, whom he hasn’t made much use of onscreen since 1992’s deliciously satirical (though few got the joke) “erotic thriller” Bitter Moon. Blowsy, vulgar, sexy, aristocratic, finally a mocking Gorgon man-eater, she’s having just as much fun here as we have watching her. (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

ONGOING

Belle The child of a British naval officer and a Caribbean slave, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is deposited on the doorstep — well, the estate grounds — of her father’s relatives in 1769 England after her mother dies. Soon she’s entirely orphaned, which makes her a wealthy heiress and aristocratic title holder at the same time that she is something less than human in the eyes of her adopted society. For Belle is black (or more properly, mixed-race), and thus a useless curiosity at best as a well-bred noblewoman of the “wrong” racial makeup. Based on a murky actual historical chapter, Amma Asante’s film is that rare sumptuous costume drama which actually has something on its mind beyond romance and royalty. Not least among its pleasures are a fine supporting cast including Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, and Emily Watson. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Begin Again Begin Again does indeed resemble writer-director John Carney’s Once (2007): It’s another musical tale of a romantically-challenged artist whose life is changed by a chance encounter. One miserable night, very recent dump-ee Greta (Keira Knightley) takes the stage at an open mic night, crooning a song she’s just written about jumping in front of a subway train. (Knightley does her own singing, but careful camerawork ensures we never get a good look at her guitar skills.) Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a down-on-his-luck music-biz professional whose career status is nearly as dismal as his personal life, is drunkenly enthralled by her performance. Clearly, there’s nothing for these two depressed souls to do but record an album together on the streets of NYC; for her, it’s a way to get even with her cheatin’ ex (Adam Levine, playing a rock star not unlike … Adam Levine); for him, it offers hope for creative rebirth. Carney’s point of view is abundantly clear: tailoring one’s music to please the basic-bitch demographic is bad; while penning personally meaningful tunes and recording them on one’s own terms is good … even if those tunes happen to be forgettable folk-pop. Fortunately, Begin Again fares better with its explorations of complicated relationships. Nobody does rumpled and wounded better than Ruffalo, and Knightley is surprisingly likable as a hipster scorned, determined to figure out her next move even as her world crumbles around her. (1:45) California, Embarcadero, Four Star, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Chef Not to take anything away from the superhero crew, but Chef feels like the closest thing to a labor of love from writer, director, and star Jon Favreau in many a day. As a director, he may have been making doughnuts — fun-filled and teeming with CGI eye candy, but doughnuts nevertheless — when it came to effects-driven blockbusters like 2008’s Iron Man, but this well-meaning play for the heart, by way of the stomach, shows you where Favreau’s head is really at. Chef revolves around Carl Casper (Favreau), a onetime food star, now reduced to serving up predictable crowd-pleasers at the behest of his restaurant’s overbearing owner (Dustin Huffman). It takes the barbs of an influential critic (Oliver Platt) — and an ensuing Twitter war — to set Carl off and send him away on his own, at the coaxing of his glam ex Inez (Sofia Vergara). Hooked up with a dilapidated food truck and former kitchen staffer Martin (John Leguizamo), and aided by ably Tweeting son Percy (Emjay Anthony), Carl ties his dreams — and lost passion — to the classic Cuban sandwich. The ensuing road trip from Miami to LA, and Carl’s journey toward self and a renewed relationship with his son, is a fun (if, in the end, a bit too speedily sketched) vault through the joys of eating your way through America’s new culinary heartland. Amid the volley of sign-of-the-times social-media swinging and cameos by the uncostumed Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, and the like, Favreau’s main dish is that a family that eats, cooks, and runs a business together, stays together — child labor laws or no. (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Chun)

Le Chef Before you fire up Twitter to alert Jon Favreau that he’s been ripped off, know that this French comedy came out in 2012. Also, it’s highly unlikely to garner even a quarter-teaspoon of the praise racked up by Favreau’s food-truck tale. Even the formidable presence of Jean Reno can’t save Le Chef; he plays veteran celebrity chef Lagarde, who’s about to have his professional reputation toppled by the money-hungry mogul who owns his signature restaurant. (Yuppie scum wants him to switch to uber-trendy molecular cuisine; traditionalist Legarde ain’t having it.) Enter eager apprentice Jacky (Michael Youn), whose Rain Man-like ability to recall all of Legarde’s recipes makes him a valuable secret weapon in this high-stakes gastronomical battle, which will culminate when a food critic decides whether to dock one of the stars in Legarde’s rating — thus opening a contract loophole that’ll allow his boss to kick him out of the kitchen. BYO food clichés to describe this too-lightweight yet overly hammy affair, which also folds domestic dramas (Jacky’s exasperated, heavily pregnant GF doesn’t understand his cooking dreams! Legarde’s neglected daughter might as well be named Sullen McEyeroll!) into the batter. And if you can’t figure out the ending within the first act, no dessert for you. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Deliver Us From Evil Eric Bana can swelter and flex in the foreground and the Catholic propaganda machine can worry and whirr in the rear, but really Deliver Us From Evil is all about the smokin’ hot priest, as in Édgar Ramírez of Carlos (2010) fame. Styling as a long-tressed Serpico-esque padre, his Father Mendoza glowers, broods, lights up sulkily beside doorways, and then, gloriously, sings the demons out of the afflicted! Get thee to a nunnery, indeed. Evil is nominally based on the real-life journey of Ralph Sarchie (Bana), a good yet overbearing NYC cop and lapsed Catholic who neglects his family (Olivia Munn, Lulu Wilson). Life takes on new paranormal dimensions when Sarchie and his wise-cracking partner Butler (Joel McHale, who looks like he’d rather be roasting than knife-fighting with the devil) encounter a series of inexplicable crimes: a woman tosses her infant into a lion enclosure at the zoo, a painter is found bundled in tarp in a family’s basement beside cryptic tags on a wall. But really Sarchie’s working-dad angst pales a bit beside the charismatic Mendoza, who inevitably sets the officer on the straight and not so narrow. The fallible are forgiven, though lord knows, director Scott Derrickson (2005’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose) shouldn’t be given a pass for failing to deviate from doctrine when it comes to this otherwise uninspired exorcism exercise. And even Ramírez doesn’t get to have as much fun as the possessed, in particular Olivia Horton, who as the baby-hurling Jane, spits, foams, and gnashes her teeth with more fury than a certain Uruguayan soccer star. (1:58) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Chun)

Earth to Echo It’s not easy being a Goonie — or riding the coattails of E.T. even 30-plus years along. But that feeling of discovery and interstellar friendship forged in the face of a formidable establishment still calls out, like the insistent bleep of a long-forgotten intergalactic transmission. That appears to be the MO behind Earth to Echo, a decidedly clunkier outing than the aforementioned, despite its nods to a gadget-happy, geekier generation. This time, developers ostensibly want to drive a freeway through the suburban tract homes of wiseacre Tuck (Brian “Astro” Bradley), sensitive foster kid Alex (Teo Halm), and sweet science nerd Munch (Reese Hartwig). A bout of mysterious cell phone interference leads the kids to spend their last night in the ‘hood following the map that appears on their screens. What might have been another crowd-sourced game leads to a weird little piece of space junk that turns out to be the pod for an adorable, owl-like little brother from another planet. Naturally everything they discover needs to be documented for sharing later, though at first they’re hesitant to disclose their find with a popular classmate (Ella Wahlestedt) and a particularly snoopy engineer (Jason Gray-Stanford). But why bother when it’s all been seen before (with the exception of having an African American kid as the first-person narrator of this kids sci-fi adventure)? Director Dave Green is definitely counting on his audience being born yesterday, though parents who remember the source material will recognize that Green has considerably less finesse than Steven Spielberg. There’s only so much that special effects can accomplish when the initial camerawork looks so blown out and crappy, even if it’s supposed to have been documented on a phone. And Green’s slovenly direction, combined with way-too-roughed-out storytelling — how do a kid and alien managed to slip out of evil-empire governmental control, with zero effort, exactly? — do little to mark Earth as more than a knock-off. (1:29) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Edge of Tomorrow Is it OK to root for Tom Cruise again? (The Oprah thing was almost a decade ago, after all.) The entertaining Edge of Tomorrow, crisply directed by Bourne series vet Doug Liman, takes what’s most irritating about Cruise’s persona (he’s so goddamn earnest) and uses it to great advantage, casting him as military PR guru Cage — repping our armed forces on talk shows amid battles with alien invaders dubbed “Mimics” — whose oiliness masks the fact that he’s terrified of actual combat. When he’s forced to fight by a no-nonsense superior (Brendan Gleeson), he’s gruesomely killed, along with nearly every other human soldier. But wait! Thanks to a particularly close encounter with outer-space pixie dust, he awakens, unharmed, to re-live the day, over and over again (yep, shades of a certain Bill Murray comedy classic). Each “reset” offers Cage a chance to work his way closer to changing the course of the war in humanity’s favor, with key help from a badass (Emily Blunt) whose heroics on the battlefield have earned her the nickname “Full Metal Bitch.” Nothing groundbreaking here — but Edge of Tomorrow manages to make its satisfying plot as important as its 3D explosions, which means it automatically rises above what passes for popcorn fun these days. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Fault in Our Stars I confess: I’m no card-carrying, vlog-flogging Nerdfighter in author John Green’s teen-geek army. But one can admire the passion — and teary romanticism — of the writer, readers, and the breakthrough novel that started it all. Much has been made over the cinematic tweaks to the best-selling YA book, but those seem like small beefs: OK, male romantic lead Gus’s (Ansel Elgort) perhaps-understandable brattiness seems to have been toned down a touch, but we’ll all get the somewhat-subversive push and pull of Green’s love story centered on two cancer-stricken innocents. Sixteen-year-old Hazel (a radiant Shailene Woodley) has been battling cancer almost all her life, fighting back from the brink, and now making her way every day with an oxygen tank and her devoted parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammel) by her side. Her mordant wit, skeptical attitude, and smarts attract Gus, a handsome teen with a prosthetic leg, at a cancer support group, and the two embark on what seems like the most normal thing in the world — sweet, sweet love — albeit cut with the poignancy of almost-certain doom. Would the girl who calls herself a grenade dare to care for someone she will likely hurt? That’s the real question on her mind when the two reach out to the solitary author (Willem Dafoe) of their favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. The journey the two make leaves them both open to more hurt than either ever imagined, and though a good part of Fault‘s denouement boils down to a major puddle cuddle — with solid performances by all, but particularly Dern and Woodley — even a cynic is likely to get a bit misty as the kids endure all the stages of loss. And learning. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Godzilla Bearing the weight of a 1998 American debut so stinky that devotees of the Japanese original dubbed it “GINO” (for “Godzilla in Name Only”), the King of the Monsters returns for a do-over that smells more like generic summer entertainment than anything else. We begin in 1999, when a pair of scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) discover a giant skeleton of sorts in the Philippines — just as a deadly accident (or was it?) devastates a Japanese nuclear power plant. Fifteen years later, the scientists are still on the trail of Whatever That Was, while guilty power-plant survivor Bryan Cranston has become a greasy-haired conspiracy theorist, much to the annoyance of his San Francisco-based Navy officer son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The humans in Gareth Edwards’ film don’t actually matter much; aside from Cranston and to a much lesser extent Watanabe, none of the characters are interesting or memorable, and the plot — which has Big G lumbering after a pair of “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms” who decide to incubate their eggs in downtown SF — is also a low-stakes affair. (If you believe for a second that Taylor-Johnson’s doe-eyed wife and son won’t survive the monster attack, I have a busted-up Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.) But the monster design is plenty satisfying, and really, it’s just fine that Godzilla — who wrinkles his snout in annoyance at those pesky MUTOs — is this film’s one and only charismatic presence; dude’s going on a 70-year career at this point. (2:03) Metreon. (Eddy)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (1:42) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Ida The bomb drops within the first ten minutes: after being gently forced to reconnect with her only living relative before taking her vows, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns that her name is actually Ida, and that she’s Jewish. Her mother’s sister, Wanda (Agneta Kulesza) — a Communist Party judge haunted by a turbulent past she copes with via heavy drinking, among other vices — also crisply relays that Ida’s parents were killed during the Nazi occupation, and after some hesitation agrees to accompany the sheltered young woman to find out how they died, and where their bodies were buried. Drawing great depth from understated storytelling and gorgeous, black-and-white cinematography, Pawel Pawilowski’s well-crafted drama offers a bleak if realistic (and never melodramatic) look at 1960s Poland, with two polar-opposite characters coming to form a bond as their layers of painful loss rise to the surface. (1:20) Albany, Opera Plaza, Piedmont. (Eddy)

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz The current debate over net neutrality’s potential demise makes this a perfect moment for Brian Knappenberger’s documentary, which chronicles a dismal prior instance of government interference in online information access. Chicago native Aaron Swartz was such a programming prodigy that he was known internationally by age 13, though few realized how young he was until they met him at conferences. Years later, increasingly politicized about web freedom, he became a target for post-9/11 federal paranoia. His specific “crime” was mass-downloading academic journal materials that by strict legal terms should be freely available to all — but instead are used as a commercial cash cow without benefiting their actual authors. Seeking to use him as an example to other “hacktivists,” the Justice Dept. threatened Swartz with outrageously high prison sentencing and monetary fines. But in driving the 26-year-old to suicide, they created a martyr, one sacrificed at the altar of dubious, overzealous fears over commercial piracy and classified-intel leakage. Poignant and dramatic, The Internet’s Own Boy doesn’t canonize its subject — like many prodigies, he often seemed high-strung and socially awkward — but conveys his personal tragedy while using it to illuminate complex larger issues as urgent as they are often (as our government hopes) confoundingly difficult to understand. (1:45) Roxie. (Harvey)

Jersey Boys The musical that turned the back story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the 1960s hit making machines behind upbeat doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). Still, the cast — including Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. For an interview with cast members Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits), visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (2:14) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Life Itself Paying back the critic who championed his Hoop Dreams 20 years ago, and then some, Steve James’s documentary about the late Roger Ebert is the kind of tribute that sometimes feels like an authorized biographical video played at a testimonial dinner. If he were alive, and it were about someone else, I suspect Ebert himself would be more polite than enthused. It traces his love of newspaperdom from an early age (he started writing for one at age 15); his semi-accidental falling into being the Chicago Sun-Times’ film reviewer in 1967 (a post he’d hold for 46 years); his Pulitzer win; the huge impact of TV’s Sneak Previews, aka At the Movies; his very rocky relationship with co-host Gene Siskel; and his happy first/last marriage at age 50. Ebert was prolific, gregarious, a friend to rising filmmakers (so long as he liked their work, of course), and someone who saw no conflict in being friends with established ones (like Scorsese and Herzog, both interviewed here). But Life Itself — “the only thing he loved more than the movies,” a statement that might strike you as profound or kinda “duh” — assesses his cultural impact as the most popular-movie-critic-probably-ever without really addressing his taste or style. As a result, it has the slightly pat quality of a movie content to admire its subject without digging very deep into the work that defined him. (Nor do the blown-up-video-quality clips from films do justice to his love of that medium.) Instead, the primary focus is on his later struggles with cancer, which took his lower jaw and speech before claiming his life. That stuff is tough to watch. Most entertaining are insights into his long-running ego war with Siskel, who brought out (often on camera) irritable, petty, competitive, and bullying sides to Ebert the public otherwise seldom saw. (1:58) Albany, Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Maleficent Fairytale revisionism is all the rage these days, what with the unending power of Disney princesses to latch into little girls everywhere and bring parental units (and their wallets) to their knees. Yet princesses almost seem beside the point in this villain’s-side-of-the-story tale — Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), the queen of the fairies in the magical moors, wronged by Stefan (Sharlto Copley), who saws off her wings in order to win a crown. Accompanied by her shape-shifting minion, crow Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent attends the christening of King Stefan’s first-born daughter, Aurora, hot on the heels of three clownish good fairies (Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple), and delivers a curse that will have this future Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning) prick her finger on a spindle and sink into a deathlike coma until her true love’s kiss. Will that critical smooch be delivered by Prince Bieber, er, Phillip (Brenton Thwaites)? Considering the potential for Disney’s trademark, heart-tugging enchantment to get magically tangled up in girl power, it’s tough to suck up the disappointment in the ooey-gooey, gummy-faced troll-doll aesthetics of the art direction and animation, as well as first-time director Robert Stromberg’s choppy, dashed-through storytelling. Part of the problem is that there’s almost zero threat here, despite its antihero’s devilish presence — is there ever any doubt that a healthy resolution will win out, even at the expense of blood ties? Best to find dangerous pleasures where one can — namely in the vivid Jolie, cheekbones honed to a razor edge, who spits biting remarks at her accursed charge, beneath Joan Crawford-esque eyebrows and horns crying out for club-kid Halloween treatments. (1:37) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Neighbors It’s a mystery why Neighbor‘s marketing teams are intent on creating some kind of social media battle between this comedy’s family and frat: The college boys are clearly outclassed when it comes to uninhibited physical comedy daring, thanks to Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. They play young parents Kelly and Mac, who are still basking in their new craftsman home and settled state, trying to figure out sex in front — or is it behind? — baby, and how to get to the rave before bedtime, when a frat, led by oft-shirtless hottie Teddy (Zac Efron) and pal Pete (Dave Franco), moves into the house next door. How do you ask them to “keep it down” yet still be cool? The pretzels Mac and Kelly wrap themselves into, in order to still hang with the kids, are about as hilarious as the inevitable battles that break out over the hearts and minds of college administrators (Lisa Kudrow), pals (the hilarious Ike Barinholtz), and wannabe brothers like the loyal Assjuice (Craig Roberts). Still, despite some memorable gags, Neighbors feels like a bit of a squandered opportunity as one fidgets through many of the frat house scenes. Part of the problem is, why would Kelly, Mac, or anyone want to be in good with such an uninteresting group of Greeks? (1:37) Metreon. (Chun)

Obvious Child We first encounter the protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s funny, original film — a Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething named Donna (Jenny Slate), who works at a lefty secondhand bookstore and makes regular (if unpaid) appearances at a local comedy night — onstage mining such underdiscussed topics as the effects of vaginal discharge on your garden-variety pair of underwear. This proves a natural segue to other hefty nuggets of embarrassment gold concerning her love life, to the dismay of boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), auditing from the back of the club. He pretty much deserves it, however, for what he’s about to do, which is break up with her in a nasty, well-populated unisex bathroom, taking time to repeatedly glance at the texts coming through on his phone from Donna’s good friend, with whom he’s sleeping. So when Donna, mid-drowning of sorrows, meets a nice-looking fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) at the bar, his post-fraternity-presidency aesthetic seems unlikely to deter her from a one-night stand. The ensuing trashed make-out dance-off in Max’s apartment to the Paul Simon song of the title is both comic and adorable. The fractured recap of the evening’s condom-free horizontal events that occurs inside Donna’s brain three weeks later, as she hunkers down with her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), in the bookstore’s bathroom after peeing on a stick, is equally hilarious — and unwanted-pregnancy jokes aren’t that easy to pull off. Robespierre’s treatment of this extended windup and of Donna’s decision to have an abortion is a witty, warmhearted retort to 2007’s Knocked Up, a couple generations’ worth of Hollywood rom-com writers, and an entertainment industry that continues to perform its sweaty contortions of storytelling in the gutless cause of avoiding the A-word. (1:15) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Snowpiercer Eighteen years after an attempt to reverse global warming has gone wildly awry — freezing all life into extinction — the only known survivors are on a one-of-a-kind perpetual-motion train that circles the Earth annually, has its own self-contained ecosystem, and can smash through whatever ice buildup has blocked its tracks since the last go-round. It’s also a microcosm of civilization’s worst class-economic-racial patterns over history, with the much-abused “tail” passengers living in squalor under the thumb of brutal military police. Unseen at the train’s front is its mysterious inventor, Wilford, whose minions enforce “Eternal Order Prescribed by the Sacred Engine.” Curtis (Chris Evans) is default leader of the proletariat’s latest revolt, in which they attempt to force their way forward though the prison section (where they free Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung as the train’s original lock designer and his psychic daughter) on to the wonders of the first class compartments, and beyond. This first (mostly) English-language feature by South Korean Bong Joon-ho (2006’s The Host, 2009’s Mother), based on a 1982 French graphic novel, starts out as a sort of locomotive, claustrophobic Mad Max (1979) variation. But it gets wilder and more satirical as it goes along, goosed by Tilda Swinton’s grotesquely comic Minister Mason, and Alison Pill as a teacher propagandist in a particularly hilarious set piece. In case the metaphor hasn’t already hit you on the head, one character explains “The train is the world, we the humanity.” But Snowpiercer‘s sociopolitical critique is as effective as it is blunt, because Bong handles everything here — visceral action, absurdist humor, narrative left-turns, neatly etched character archetypes, et al. — with style, confidence, and wit. Some of the FX may not be quite as seamless as it would have been in a $200 million Hollywood studio production, and fanboys will no doubt nitpick like nitwits at various “credibility gaps.” (As if this movie ever asks to be taken literally.) But by current, or any, sci-fi action blockbuster standards, this is a giddily unpredictable, risk-taking joy. (2:07) Metreon, Presidio. (Harvey)

Tammy There’s an Easter egg for Thelma and Louise (1991) diehards tucked amid Tammy‘s many jokes at the expense of co-writer and star Melissa McCarthy: when Tammy and her boozy grandmother (a gray-wigged Susan Sarandon) set out on a spontaneous road trip to escape their miserable lives, Grandma flashes a wad of cash. The sum ($6,700) is exactly what Louise brought to the table during that long-ago flight to Mexico. It might not be a coincidence that Tammy also features the star of 1991’s other girl-power drama, Fried Green Tomatoes, with Kathy Bates playing a lesbian family friend who finally talks some sense into the clueless, reckless Tammy — basically standing in for the audience. We wanna cheer for this newly dumped, recently fired, perpetually rumpled heroine, if only she weren’t so willfully lacking in self-awareness, and so frequently obnoxious — traits that are all the more mystifying since McCarthy wrote this character for herself, and because we know what she’s capable of (see: her outrageous, hilarious, Oscar-nominated turn in 2011’s Bridesmaids). Tammy — co-written and directed by McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone — has its moments, but it’s overall an uneven comedy that yields few belly laughs. It also shoehorns in a stilted romantic subplot (with Mark Duplass, of all people) because … why? Why can’t this be a movie about a woman who figures out how to manage her chaotic life, without landing a man as a reward? Even the ol’ Grand Canyon plunge offers more fresh satisfaction, nearly 25 years on. (1:37) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Think Like a Man Too (2:02) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Third Person A screenwriter, Paul Haggis, pens a script in which a novelist (Liam Neeson) sits alone in a smoke-filled hotel room in Paris struggling over a manuscript about a novelist who can only feel emotions through his characters. What that psychic state would actually look like remains unclear — when the woman (Olivia Wilde) he’s left his wife (Kim Basinger) for shows up, their playful, painful, fraught interactions reveal a man with above-average emotional reserves. Meanwhile, in another hotel in another city, Rome, a sleazy fashion industry spy (Adrien Brody) finds his life turned sideways by a seemingly chance encounter in a bar with a beautiful Romanian woman (Moran Atias) in dire need of money. And in a third hotel, in Manhattan, a young woman (Mila Kunis) cleans up the suites she used to stay in when she was married to a renowned painter (James Franco), with whom she has a son she may or may not have harmed in some terrible way. The film broadly hints at connections between these three sets of lives — in each, the loss or endangerment of a child produces an unrelenting ripple effect; speaking of which, objects unnaturally submerged in water present an ominous visual motif. If the movie poster doesn’t give the game away as you’re walking into the theater, the signposts erected by Haggis ensure that you won’t be in the dark for long. Learning how these characters relate to one another, however, puts considerable drag on the fabric of the plot, exposing the threadbare places, and where Haggis offers his tortured characters redemption, it comes at the cost of good storytelling. (2:17) Metreon, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Transformers: Age of Extinction In Michael Bay’s fourth Transformers installment a villainous Black Ops leader (Kelsey Grammer) allies with a snarky Steve-Jobs-alike (Stanley Tucci) to build Transformers de coeur: designer impostor robot-cars they hope will reinvent the face of war. In IMAX 3D, “TransFOURmers” is packed with relentless rock-’em-sock-’em action, spectacular property destruction, and about as much sense as a bucket of worms. After 60 minutes, you think you’re getting more than your money’s worth. At 90 minutes, you’re tired. At two hours, confusion sets in: If Autobots get stronger together how could Optimus be in so much trouble? Who is the bounty hunting Terminator look-alike? HOW MUCH MORE COULD THERE BE? And then … the action shifts to China, Optimus rides a Dinobot, and chaos reigns. I’ve always liked the working-class poetry of the Transformers themselves — the leader is a trucker and the cast is stacked with ambulances, tanks, and the metal workforce that preserves American lives. If that’s not traditional hero worship, I don’t know what is. But Age of Extinction is the soulless designer imposter it lampoons — the whole sequel-snarking ordeal makes you long for Buzz Lightyear, who saw a thousand Buzz Lightyears on a store shelf and survived that existential crisis heroically — while also riding a dinosaur and fighting Frasier. This Transformers movie (sadly, it won’t be the final one) starts with a thesis: Mark Wahlberg walks through an abandoned movie theater and a Wilford Brimley twin (Ron Shedd) bellows: “Movies today! Sequels! Remakes! Crap!” Age of Extinction follows that moment with nearly three hours of evidence that the cause of extinction is redundancy. (2:30) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

22 Jump Street In this TV-inspired sequel, “Previously on 21 Jump Street…” is all the backstory we get. 22 wastes no time sending Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) back to school to solve another case. A few details have changed (they’re in college now, where the drug of choice is “Why Phy”), but the situation is self-consciously boilerplate, which lets the filmmakers cast (ironic) judgment on sequels — and imply the TV show was redundant. College proves hilarious, from the rundown of dorm room essentials to Schmidt’s walk of shame, and the touchstones are sharp and embarrassing. An extended fight between Schmidt and a girl (Jillian Bell, fabulous) twists gender issues and sexual assault into gloriously absurd politics. Best of all is a fairly understated joke in front of the Benjamin Hill School of Film Studies. I laughed as much at 22 as I did at 21, but 22 spends so much time calling out its number-two status that it almost becomes performance art. (1:45) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

X-Men: Days of Future Past Bryan Singer, director of the first two X-Men films (2000’s decent X-Men; 2002’s meh X2) returns to helm this latest franchise entry — the fourth sequel in a series that also includes two movies focusing on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. That fan-favorite character is front and center in both of Days of Future Past‘s time frames: the present, a bleak dystopia in which robot assassins have wiped out nearly every mutant (save Wolverine, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellan’s Magneto, and a few others), and most humans along with them; and the past, a key moment in the polyester-laden 1970s in which mutant avenger Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) inadvertently sets the disastrous future events in motion by killing robot designer Trask (Peter Dinklage). Wolverine time-travels to convince younger versions of the Professor (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to put aside their Himalayan-sized differences to stop her. (Speaking of avengers, there’s a capital-A one here: Quicksilver, a character from both comic-book worlds; he’s portrayed here with giddy mischief by American Horror Story‘s Evan Peters, and is the film’s high point.) Yes, that’s a heady plot, and there are a zillion other characters, but Future Past manages, for the most part, to avoid feeling like an overloaded mess. It’s most entertaining in scenes that show off its characters’ superpowers — clearly, the CG artists had a blast working on this one — which are plentiful enough to make slogging through the ennui-laden moments of downtime worth it.(2:10) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

Yves Saint Laurent Ah, one can only imagine the remnants left on the cutting room floor. Much like the designer’s sumptuous, envelope-pushing fashion, Yves Saint Laurent provides a lot to love, starting with a convincing performance by Pierre Niney, who plays the man as a sensitive-as-a-filament artist who nonetheless succumbs to ’60s excesses and learns to deliver the kind of cruelties one can only level at a spouse who’ll never leave. That partner, in love and business, is Pierre Bergé (Guillaume Gallienne), the commercial brains behind the YSL brand — first shown as the couple’s astonishing collection of artwork, furniture, and objets d’art are carted away to be auctioned off and serving here as witness and voice-over narrator. Director Jalil Lespert focuses primarily on Saint Laurent’s early career at Dior, Saint Laurent and Bergé’s relationship, and then the formidable task of establishing the house, amid a critical, chaotic social circle involving Karl Lagerfeld (Nikolai Kinski) and model muse Victoire (Charlotte Le Bon). What comes next arrives via the loving, amused, albeit calculative lens of Bergé, who has given this film his blessing: he looks on with disapproval at Saint Laurent’s sweetly stoned Moroccan hippie milieu, as he cavorts alongside muses Betty Catroux (Marie de Villepin) and Loulou de la Falaise (Laura Smet) and communes with Bergé’s rival Jacques De Bascher (Xavier Lafitte). You definitely feel the lovers’ pain — and Saint Laurent’s exhaustion on both the party circuit and the taxing treadmill of producing seasonal collections — and you are given snatches of the luxurious, decadent, epoch-defining Saint Laurent looks, like the still-relevant Le Smoking tux and opulent Russian ensembles, the latter an untrammeled triumph that this good-looking biopic abruptly ends with. Fashion lovers, especially, would have appreciated feeling more of the heat that pushed Saint Laurent to create, and to see more of the actual brilliant designs behind that legendary logo. (1:45) Clay, Shattuck. (Chun) *

Turning the tables

Michael Redmond

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July 8, 2014

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arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Between Mugwumpin’s 10th anniversary multi-show celebration and the University of Chichester’s second annual performance-making intensive, the summer has already been a pretty good one for ensemble-driven theater. “Fury Factory” sends it over the top, this week and next, with a festival devoted exclusively to collaborative efforts in live performance from around the Bay Area and across the country. Utilizing the full plate of performance venues in the Mission’s block-sized Project Artaud, the festival (a roughly biennial offering of local theater troupe foolsFURY) offers nine main stage shows and 16 works-in-progress by groups from New York, Chicago, Austin, Atlanta, and from California, San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Oakland, Blue Lake, and Los Angeles.

It all kicked off Sunday night at Z Below with Unfinished Business 2014 (Bay Area Edition), a free works-in-progress showing from the aforementioned performance-making intensive offered by the UK’s University of Chichester and co-presenter the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) — which has come onboard as a local partner and host for the university’s forthcoming MFA program in performance-making (another sign, and a favorable one, that border-blurring devised work is on the rise locally).

As part of its effort to spotlight ensemble work locally as well as put it in a larger geographical context, “Fury Factory”‘s Saturday program includes a midday “convening” on the relationship of Bay Area theater to the wider national and international scenes — a salon whose centerpiece is a public “long table” conversation that this writer, among other folks, was invited to help lead off; followed by a screening of Austin Forbord’s 2011 documentary, Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco, with further input from the film’s lead researcher, Dr. Zack.

And speaking of tables, leading off the main stage productions this year is a work that takes place on and around one long-ass dining room setting called The Party — a weirdly intent performance soirée by the Imaginists, the admirable Santa Rosa company making its San Francisco debut at the Joe Goode Annex this week.

The piece (which I saw in an earlier version several months back) comes across as mischievously esoteric, eschewing a clear storyline for a jumble of narrative fits and starts that inevitably reflect on the power and contingency of story itself. At the same time, there are immediate, real world concerns undergirding the work, lending a sense of purpose and apprehension to its playful surfaces. For the past six years, founders and artistic directors Brent Lindsay and Amy Pinto have grown a flexible and adventurous company deeply rooted in its largely Spanish-speaking, working-class community. The group had been putting together a Christmas show featuring Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden last October when Santa Rosa was rocked by the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy. (The boy had been walking home with a toy gun at the time.) The grief and the ensuing political hailstorm emanating from that event brought the company’s production plans to a standstill. What finally emerged was The Party.

“We all came to it as a collaborative effort,” explains Lindsay, “and then we all just kept trying to clarify what the hell we were doing.” While the shooting and the politics it brutally underscored remain instigating and enduring inspirations, the play has traveled far down its own path of investigation. Its action serves less to advance an overarching storyline or moral than to conjure a substratum of desires and compulsions, a silence that speaks of what is not spoken.

“We really yearn for story, we want that,” says Lindsay. “The chaos of life won’t hand it to us. So we look to storytellers, or theater, to hand us the clean arc or the plot, we all have a desire for that. [The Party],” he laughs, “is really not giving you that at all.”

And speaking of substrata, a family-friendly main stage Bay Area premiere comes courtesy of Under the Table, a Brooklyn-based physical comedic theater ensemble. Its festival offering, The Hunchbacks of Notre Dame, follows a troupe of hunchbacked siblings trying to turn the tables on their hard luck, in something maybe just vaguely resembling the story by Victor Hugo. Yet more subsurface family-friendly comedy comes along in The Submarine Show (an SF Fringe favorite by Oakland-based Slater Penny and former Cirque du Soleil performer Jaron Hollander).

The emphasis on works-in-progress in the festival’s “Raw Materials” series, meanwhile, develops an interest cultivated in two previous iterations of foolsFURY’s separate “Factory Parts” festival, which opens up the creative process to audiences (who see several offerings for the price of a single ticket) and, in the words of co–artistic director Debórah Eliezer, “provides a rare opportunity for new work to gain critical feedback through performance and audience engagement.” “Fury Factory” offerings in this realm include two developing pieces by San Francisco’s Deborah Slater Dance Theater, another by international clown trio the Defenestrators (of Blue Lake, stomping grounds of famed Dell’Arte school of physical theater), LA’s Estela Garcia (with a piece on the Spanish-Mexican surrealist painter and anarchist Remedios Varo), Atlanta’s Danielle Deadwyler (with a “stream of consciousness mixtape listening party” exploring representations of the black female body), and two by foolsFURY (including playwright Steve Haskell’s Baden Powell Wars, about the conflicted Boer War hero and Boy Scouts founder). *

“FURY FACTORY”

Through July 20, $16 (three performances, $39; five performances, $55)

Z Space, 450 Florida, SF

Z Below, 470 Florida, SF

Joe Goode Annex, 401 Alabama, SF

NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa, SF

www.foolsfury.org

Endless Don

Michael Redmond

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July 8, 2014

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arts@sfbg.com

FILM “Introducing Hollywood’s newest hunk-a-man!” crowed the ads for 1956’s Bus Stop, in which Don Murray made his film debut as the cowpoke besotted with Marilyn Monroe’s movie-mad hick — a plum role in a big hit opposite the reigning box-office queen. The actor even got an Oscar nomination for this start at the tippy-top. But he didn’t stay there long.

What happened? With “A Special Weekend With Don Murray … America’s Least-Remembered Movie Star,” the Roxie aims to provide an answer. The event is part of a larger project set to culminate by year’s end with the premiere of Don Malcolm’s feature Unsung Hero, a documentary tribute to “The Extraordinary Times and Exemplary Life” of the aforementioned. Both doc and retrospective feature an ad line, “He went from acclaim to obscurity in the blink of an eye,” that — like many of their subject’s performances — goes a bit hyperbolically overboard with the best intentions. Murray’s descent was gradual, owing mostly to some noble but commercially shaky vehicle choices. Even with better luck, would he have remained on Hollywood’s fickle casting A-list much longer? The “14 provocative performances” the Roxie revives this weekend suggest probably not.

Arriving post-Brando, pre-New Hollywood, he now looks like a transitional figure: Capable, earnest yet effortful, too often trying to overcome his classic leading-man looks via Actor’s Studio-style “intensity” that then passed as being more “real,” but now looks far from natural. The only child of stage veterans, Murray made his Broadway debut in Tennessee Williams’ 1951 The Rose Tattoo at age 21. After several years’ relief work as a Korean War conscientious objector, he’d barely resumed his career before Bus Stop put it in hyperdrive. After that smash, he could have done anything he liked. What he chose, however, was invariably heavier and less populist: Somber, “daring” issue-oriented dramas that required him to flex acting muscles as men torn between one thing (good) and another (bad). They were respectably received, but seldom attracted the rave reviews, awards or audiences hoped for.

Like Oscar-winning Marty (1955) before it, 1957’s The Bachelor Party was a big-screen version of a TV script by Paddy Chayefsky in his pathos-de-la-Average-Joe mode, with Murray as a young office worker panicked by his wife’s unexpected pregnancy. The same year’s A Hatful of Rain had him as a morphine-addicted Korean War vet sweating out another long dark night of the soul. Amid much theatrical hand-wringing, Tony Franciosa’s concerned brother is so hammy he required the balm of his own Oscar nomination. After a couple of ambitious Westerns and prestige TV plays, Murray portrayed an American medical student who winds up fighting for 1920s IRA leader James Cagney in Shake Hands With the Devil (1959). A good movie about another unpleasant subject, it was not a success.

So it was back to the Old West (in 1960’s One Foot in Hell, a title descriptive of all his roles then) before the actor realized a pet project he also produced and co-wrote. The Hoodlum Priest (1961) had him as a Jesuit rehabilitating ex-cons in St. Louis, including pre-2001 Keir Dullea’s surly delinquent. Melodramatic yet reasonably fresh thanks to future Empire Strikes Back (1980) director Irvin Kershner’s vivid location shooting, it was nonetheless poorly received — not least by its real-life inspiration, who found this screen portrait objectionable enough to sue over.

Fortunately 1961 also brought the actor his biggest hit since Bus Stop. He was the idealistic junior Senator who ends up paying the ultimate price for dirty Beltway politics (committing suicide when blackmailed over a past gay fling) in Otto Preminger’s all-star Advise & Consent. Yet apart from 1965 Steve McQueen vehicle Baby the Rain Must Fall (from which much of his part was cut), he didn’t appear in another major release until 1972’s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes — in which his monkey-hating mayor provided a cartoonish metaphor for the actor’s passionate interest in racial equality.

Between routine B movie and television assignments, several projects reflected that personal crusade. Crudely made but interesting 1967 indie Sweet Love, Bitter had him as an alcoholic jazzbo slumming on the Skid Row “wild side” his musician idol (Dick Gregory) can’t escape. Short-lived ABC series The Outcasts paired his former slave owner with Otis Young’s ex-slave as reluctant bounty-hunting partners after the Civil War. The unreleased Call Me By My Rightful Name reunited them as two sides of an interracial triangle, vying for white chick Cathy Lee Crosby.

Murray donned the cloth again to shepherd more little urban toughs (including Erik Estrada) in 1970’s The Cross and the Switchblade, his camp-classic directorial debut. He acted as if his life depended on it — i.e., with a little too much desperation — as a self-destructive rodeo clown in Cotter (1973) and a proto-Bad Lieutenant in Deadly Hero (1975), but hardly anyone noticed. Through nearly all of this he wrangled with The Confessions of Tom Harris, another criminal-redeemed-by-Christ story that was primarily shot (very poorly) by future Bo Derek mentor John Derek in 1966, then reworked and retitled (Childish Things, Tale of the Cock) for years afterward. It, and the even more obscure Call Me, will get rare screenings at the Roxie this weekend, alongside TV episodes and clips as well as most of the above-mentioned features.

There will also be Murray himself, who’ll turn a very hale 85 at month’s end. While he stayed fairly busy with medium-profile roles mostly on TV through millennium’s turn, the latest piece in the Roxie program dates from 33 years ago, and is probably still the movie anyone under 70 would be likeliest to remember him for: The original Endless Love (1981), in which his mean rich dad is the major obstacle between Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt, eventually causing the latter to go pyro. *

“A SPECIAL WEEKEND WITH ACTOR DON MURRAY”

Fri/11-Sun/13, $6.50-$11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St, SF

www.roxie.com

Frameline leftovers: Audience Award-winning Barney Frank doc ‘Compared to What’

Sue Vaughan

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July 3, 2014

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Frameline leftovers: Audience Award-winning Barney Frank doc ‘Compared to What’

Pride’s Pink Saturday offered a dynamic final morning of the massive 38th annual Frameline, the world’s largest film festival devoted to LGBT films. Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank, a doc that gives an intimate look into the private and political life of the recently retired iconic Congressman, screened to a packed and cheering crowd at the Castro Theater.

The film (trailer here) eschews direct chronology for a thematic look at Frank’s development, from his days as a Harvard political wunderkind to his immensely powerful tenure as a US congressman, during which time he headed the House Financial Services Committee and crafted the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The film, while a love letter to the idiosyncratic and clever Frank, does not shy away from his his tortured time as a closeted public figure and his late-80s prostitution scandal.

Co-directors Sheila Canavan and Michael Chandler received thunderous applause before Frank and husband Jim Ready, who also features prominently in the film, took the stage and fielded questions from the audience. Ready told a hilarious story about how 60 Minutes quasi-outed him to his ex-girlfriend while Frank delivered a rousing declaration of support for equal workplace rights.

Compared to What picked up Frameline’s Audience Award for Best Documentary. DVDs can be pre-ordered here.

Inspiring doc ‘Keeper of the Beat: A Woman’s Journey into the Heart of Drumming’ airs on KQED

Sue Vaughan

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July 3, 2014

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Inspiring doc ‘Keeper of the Beat: A Woman’s Journey into the Heart of Drumming’ airs on KQED

“I would get the comment ‘Gosh, you play really good for a girl,’” Barbara Borden admits in the introduction of Keeper of the Beat, which chronicles her lifelong passion for drumming. The documentary, by San Francisco’s David L. Brown, airs Sun/6 on KQED.

The Always brand’s empowering #LikeAGirl ad campaign made the rounds on the internet this week, but Borden’s musical sojourn, discouraged for a female at the time, is decidedly more inspiring (especially since it’s delivered by a badass drummer and not a corporation).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aABBZ1fl7M&feature=kp

Borden is aptly described in the film as a “drumbeat diplomat” — she bypasses the language barrier (cultural, too, as the film highlights the universality of music during the Yugoslavia Civil War and in a remote part of Siberia) between her and people she meets by quickly finding a way to communicate in the language of drums and punchy beats.

Clips from her past performances are cleanly weaved between interviews, showcasing both Borden and director Brown’s strengths: her story and his storytelling. Lavish camerawork and breathtaking shots are noticeably absent from the film; they’d really only detract from the unadulterated music and dialogue. It’s a shame the documentary only clocks in at a little under an hour long, as the poignant montage of vignettes whizzes right by you.

Film Listings: July 2 – 8, 2014

Michael Redmond

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July 2, 2014

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Begin Again See “Key of Twee.” (1:45) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont.

Le Chef Before you fire up Twitter to alert Jon Favreau that he’s been ripped off, know that this French comedy came out in 2012. Also, it’s highly unlikely to garner even a quarter-teaspoon of the praise racked up by Favreau’s food-truck tale. Even the formidable presence of Jean Reno can’t save Le Chef; he plays veteran celebrity chef Lagarde, who’s about to have his professional reputation toppled by the money-hungry mogul who owns his signature restaurant. (Yuppie scum wants him to switch to uber-trendy molecular cuisine; traditionalist Legarde ain’t having it.) Enter eager apprentice Jacky (Michael Youn), whose Rain Man-like ability to recall all of Legarde’s recipes makes him a valuable secret weapon in this high-stakes gastronomical battle, which will culminate when a food critic decides whether to dock one of the stars in Legarde’s rating — thus opening a contract loophole that’ll allow his boss to kick him out of the kitchen. BYO food clichés to describe this too-lightweight yet overly hammy affair, which also folds domestic dramas (Jacky’s exasperated, heavily pregnant GF doesn’t understand his cooking dreams! Legarde’s neglected daughter might as well be named Sullen McEyeroll!) into the batter. And if you can’t figure out the ending within the first act, no dessert for you. (1:24) Elmwood, Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Deliver Us From Evil Eric Bana stars as an NYPD cop who encounters a case that may involve demonic possession. Édgar Ramírez co-stars as the priest who helps him. (1:58) Presidio.

Earth to Echo It’s not easy being a Goonie — or riding the coattails of E.T. even 30-plus years along. But that feeling of discovery and interstellar friendship forged in the face of a formidable establishment still calls out, like the insistent bleep of a long-forgotten intergalactic transmission. That appears to be the MO behind Earth to Echo, a decidedly clunkier outing than the aforementioned, despite its nods to a gadget-happy, geekier generation. This time, developers ostensibly want to drive a freeway through the suburban tract homes of wiseacre Tuck (Brian “Astro” Bradley), sensitive foster kid Alex (Teo Halm), and sweet science nerd Munch (Reese Hartwig). A bout of mysterious cell phone interference leads the kids to spend their last night in the ‘hood following the map that appears on their screens. What might have been another crowd-sourced game leads to a weird little piece of space junk that turns out to be the pod for an adorable, owl-like little brother from another planet. Naturally everything they discover needs to be documented for sharing later, though at first they’re hesitant to disclose their find with a popular classmate (Ella Wahlestedt) and a particularly snoopy engineer (Jason Gray-Stanford). But why bother when it’s all been seen before (with the exception of having an African American kid as the first-person narrator of this kids sci-fi adventure)? Director Dave Green is definitely counting on his audience being born yesterday, though parents who remember the source material will recognize that Green has considerably less finesse than Steven Spielberg. There’s only so much that special effects can accomplish when the initial camerawork looks so blown out and crappy, even if it’s supposed to have been documented on a phone. And Green’s slovenly direction, combined with way-too-roughed-out storytelling — how do a kid and alien managed to slip out of evil-empire governmental control, with zero effort, exactly? — do little to mark Earth as more than a knock-off. (1:29) Shattuck. (Chun)

Hellion Beer drinking and metal tees, shit-talking and shit-kicking, boys and their toys and their broken dreams — the signatures of director-writer Kat Candler are familiar even to those unversed in her 2006 Jumping Off Bridges and the short that this feature is based on. Yet somehow the motocross-fixated Jacob (Josh Wiggins) is finding his own fresh hell amid this testosterone-scape: with the death of his mother, his faded baseball star of a father (Aaron Paul) is struggling to hold the family together and kick his tendency to take refuge at the bottom of a beer can. Meanwhile younger brother Wes (Deke Garner) has been taken away and placed with the boys’ Aunt Pam (Juliette Lewis). Candler makes this hell of hurts fresh with her close attention to detail, relishing the whipped cream sandwiches and sofa bounce-offs of home-alone kids as well as the throttled rage of the Metallica and Slayer soundtrack, and charged performances from all, in particular Paul, also an executive producer here, and Lewis, two small-town castaways just a hair less lost than the kids. (1:33) Roxie. (Chun)

The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz The current debate over net neutrality’s potential demise makes this a perfect moment for Brian Knappenberger’s documentary, which chronicles a dismal prior instance of government interference in online information access. Chicago native Aaron Swartz was such a programming prodigy that he was known internationally by age 13, though few realized how young he was until they met him at conferences. Years later, increasingly politicized about web freedom, he became a target for post-9/11 federal paranoia. His specific “crime” was mass-downloading academic journal materials that by strict legal terms should be freely available to all — but instead are used as a commercial cash cow without benefiting their actual authors. Seeking to use him as an example to other “hacktivists,” the Justice Dept. threatened Swartz with outrageously high prison sentencing and monetary fines. But in driving the 26-year-old to suicide, they created a martyr, one sacrificed at the altar of dubious, overzealous fears over commercial piracy and classified-intel leakage. Poignant and dramatic, The Internet’s Own Boy doesn’t canonize its subject — like many prodigies, he often seemed high-strung and socially awkward — but conveys his personal tragedy while using it to illuminate complex larger issues as urgent as they are often (as our government hopes) confoundingly difficult to understand. (1:45) Roxie. (Harvey)

Life Itself Paying back the critic who championed his Hoop Dreams 20 years ago, and then some, Steve James’s documentary about the late Roger Ebert is the kind of tribute that sometimes feels like an authorized biographical video played at a testimonial dinner. If he were alive, and it were about someone else, I suspect Ebert himself would be more polite than enthused. It traces his love of newspaperdom from an early age (he started writing for one at age 15); his semi-accidental falling into being the Chicago Sun-Times’ film reviewer in 1967 (a post he’d hold for 46 years); his Pulitzer win; the huge impact of TV’s Sneak Previews, aka At the Movies; his very rocky relationship with co-host Gene Siskel; and his happy first/last marriage at age 50. Ebert was prolific, gregarious, a friend to rising filmmakers (so long as he liked their work, of course), and someone who saw no conflict in being friends with established ones (like Scorsese and Herzog, both interviewed here). But Life Itself — “the only thing he loved more than the movies,” a statement that might strike you as profound or kinda “duh” — assesses his cultural impact as the most popular-movie-critic-probably-ever without really addressing his taste or style. As a result, it has the slightly pat quality of a movie content to admire its subject without digging very deep into the work that defined him. (Nor do the blown-up-video-quality clips from films do justice to his love of that medium.) Instead, the primary focus is on his later struggles with cancer, which took his lower jaw and speech before claiming his life. That stuff is tough to watch. Most entertaining are insights into his long-running ego war with Siskel, who brought out (often on camera) irritable, petty, competitive, and bullying sides to Ebert the public otherwise seldom saw. (1:58) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Tammy Melissa McCarthy co-wrote (with husband Dan Falcone, who directs) and stars in this comedy about a women in crisis who hits the road with her boozy grandma (Susan Sarandon). (1:37) Cerrito, Four Star, Marina, Shattuck.

Yves Saint Laurent Biopic exploring the early career of the fashion icon. (1:45) Clay.

ONGOING

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 The best thing about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — the sequel to the 2012 reboot that nobody really wanted in the first place — is the achingly cute chemistry between real-life couple Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) and Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy, whose fate is no spoiler to anyone who is familiar with the Spider-Man canon). Can’t deny it; those two are adorbs. But since Spider-Man is supposed to be an action movie, not a romantic comedy, it spends most of its time setting up foes for the webslinger (Jamie Foxx as a nerd zapped into the power-mad Electro; Dane DeHaan as bratty rich kid Harry Osborn), as well as rehashing the mysterious deaths of Peter’s parents, and underlining for approximately the zillionth time the disconnect between the media’s perception of Spider-Man (he’s a menace! He interferes with police work!) and the ecstatic love the people of New York have for the guy — understandable, since he’s in the business of saving their butts on a regular basis. This isn’t a crappy movie by any means; it’s entertaining enough, and the 3D swooping-between-skyscrapers FX have gotten quite dazzling. But there’s still a heavy air of “This again?” that hangs over the whole thing. Doesn’t Marvel have enough dough from the Avengers movies to let Spidey take an extended vacation? (2:20) Metreon. (Eddy)

Belle The child of a British naval officer and a Caribbean slave, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is deposited on the doorstep — well, the estate grounds — of her father’s relatives in 1769 England after her mother dies. Soon she’s entirely orphaned, which makes her a wealthy heiress and aristocratic title holder at the same time that she is something less than human in the eyes of her adopted society. For Belle is black (or more properly, mixed-race), and thus a useless curiosity at best as a well-bred noblewoman of the “wrong” racial makeup. Based on a murky actual historical chapter, Amma Asante’s film is that rare sumptuous costume drama which actually has something on its mind beyond romance and royalty. Not least among its pleasures are a fine supporting cast including Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, and Emily Watson. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Breathing Earth: Susumu Shingu’s Dream Japanese artist Susumu Shingu has built his career through his concerted engagement with the natural world. The wise and eternally smiling 75-year-old creates angular and often gargantuan mobiles that harness the power of wind and water to gyrate in ever-changing directions. In Breathing Earth, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer crafts a deliberately paced rumination on Shingu’s life philosophy that, while devoid of the frenetic facts, figures, and trite biographical rehashes that punctuate hyper-informative pop-docs, uses a beautifully simplistic narrative arc to illuminates Shingu’s attempt to create a hilly, open-air collection of windmills. The sculptor’s impassioned narration and charming conversations with potential landlords and investors (who usually entirely miss the point of his mission to raise environmental consciousness through aesthetic beauty) make Shingu impossible not to fall in love with — he is laid-back, funny, and astonishingly youthful. Riedelsheimer’s camera is similarly relaxed, gliding sumptuously over the green and wild landscapes on which Shingu installs his works. Despite his meditative tempo, Riedelsheimer manages to explore a remarkably wide scope; Shingu’s late-life marriage to a fellow sculptor, his appeals to both Japanese and German schoolchildren to care for the earth and help to avoid environmental disasters, and his intricate technical processes all receive intimate and inspiring sections. (1:37) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (David Kurlander)

Chef Not to take anything away from the superhero crew, but Chef feels like the closest thing to a labor of love from writer, director, and star Jon Favreau in many a day. As a director, he may have been making doughnuts — fun-filled and teeming with CGI eye candy, but doughnuts nevertheless — when it came to effects-driven blockbusters like 2008’s Iron Man, but this well-meaning play for the heart, by way of the stomach, shows you where Favreau’s head is really at. Chef revolves around Carl Casper (Favreau), a onetime food star, now reduced to serving up predictable crowd-pleasers at the behest of his restaurant’s overbearing owner (Dustin Huffman). It takes the barbs of an influential critic (Oliver Platt) — and an ensuing Twitter war — to set Carl off and send him away on his own, at the coaxing of his glam ex Inez (Sofia Vergara). Hooked up with a dilapidated food truck and former kitchen staffer Martin (John Leguizamo), and aided by ably Tweeting son Percy (Emjay Anthony), Carl ties his dreams — and lost passion — to the classic Cuban sandwich. The ensuing road trip from Miami to LA, and Carl’s journey toward self and a renewed relationship with his son, is a fun (if, in the end, a bit too speedily sketched) vault through the joys of eating your way through America’s new culinary heartland. Amid the volley of sign-of-the-times social-media swinging and cameos by the uncostumed Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, and the like, Favreau’s main dish is that a family that eats, cooks, and runs a business together, stays together — child labor laws or no. (1:55) Balboa, Elmwood, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Chun)

Citizen Koch After quietly influencing conservative ideology, legislation, and elections for decades, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers have found themselves becoming high-profile figures — much to their dismay, no doubt. The relative invisibility they hitherto enjoyed greatly abetted their impact in myriad arenas of public policy and “popular” conservative movements. Look behind any number of recent red-vs.-blue flashpoint issues and you can find their fingerprints: Notably state-level union busting; “smaller government” (i.e. incredible shrinking social services); seeding allegedly grassroots organizations like the Tea Party; furthering the Corporations = People thing (see: Citizens United); and generally helping the rich like themselves get richer while fostering working-class outrage at everybody else. This documentary by Trouble the Water (2008) co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessen touches on all those matters, while also focusing on Wisconsin as a test laboratory for the brothers’ Machiavellian think-tank maneuvers, following a Louisiana GOP candidate on the campaign trail (one he’s marginalized on for opposing corporate influence peddling), and more. Any one of these topics could support a feature of their own (and most already have). Citizen Koch‘s problem is that it tries to encompass too much of its subjects’ long reach, while (despite the title) leaving those subjects themselves underexplored. (It also suffers from being a movie completed at least 18 months ago, a lifetime in current US political terms.) For the reasonably well-informed this documentary will cover a lot of familiar ground—which is not to say that ground isn’t still interesting, or that the added human interest elements don’t compel. But the film covers so much ground it ends up feeling overstuffed and unfocused. (1:26) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

A Coffee in Berlin How do you say “mumblecore” in German? Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature has certain arty pretensions — it’s shot in black-and-white, and scored with peppy jazz — but it’s more or less a rambling day in the life of law school dropout Niko (Tom Schilling). It happens to be the very day Niko’s golf-loving father decides to stop funding his shiftless son’s slacker lifestyle, though that crisis (which, you know, Lena Dunham built an entire HBO comedy around) receives nearly equal heft as a cutesy ongoing gimmick that sees Niko incapable of getting a cup of coffee anywhere in Berlin. Hipster ennui can be compelling if it has some underlying energy and purpose (see: 2013’s Frances Ha, to which this film has been compared), but A Coffee in Berlin comes up short on both. That said, it does offer an intriguing portrayal of Berlin — a city whose modern-chic façade barely contains the history that haunts it — and some of its supporting characters, particularly Friederike Kempter as a former schoolmate of Niko’s who has outgrown him emotionally by about one thousand percent, provide pleasant enough distractions. (1:28) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Edge of Tomorrow Is it OK to root for Tom Cruise again? (The Oprah thing was almost a decade ago, after all.) The entertaining Edge of Tomorrow, crisply directed by Bourne series vet Doug Liman, takes what’s most irritating about Cruise’s persona (he’s so goddamn earnest) and uses it to great advantage, casting him as military PR guru Cage — repping our armed forces on talk shows amid battles with alien invaders dubbed “Mimics” — whose oiliness masks the fact that he’s terrified of actual combat. When he’s forced to fight by a no-nonsense superior (Brendan Gleeson), he’s gruesomely killed, along with nearly every other human soldier. But wait! Thanks to a particularly close encounter with outer-space pixie dust, he awakens, unharmed, to re-live the day, over and over again (yep, shades of a certain Bill Murray comedy classic). Each “reset” offers Cage a chance to work his way closer to changing the course of the war in humanity’s favor, with key help from a badass (Emily Blunt) whose heroics on the battlefield have earned her the nickname “Full Metal Bitch.” Nothing groundbreaking here — but Edge of Tomorrow manages to make its satisfying plot as important as its 3D explosions, which means it automatically rises above what passes for popcorn fun these days. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Fault in Our Stars I confess: I’m no card-carrying, vlog-flogging Nerdfighter in author John Green’s teen-geek army. But one can admire the passion — and teary romanticism — of the writer, readers, and the breakthrough novel that started it all. Much has been made over the cinematic tweaks to the best-selling YA book, but those seem like small beefs: OK, male romantic lead Gus’s (Ansel Elgort) perhaps-understandable brattiness seems to have been toned down a touch, but we’ll all get the somewhat-subversive push and pull of Green’s love story centered on two cancer-stricken innocents. Sixteen-year-old Hazel (a radiant Shailene Woodley) has been battling cancer almost all her life, fighting back from the brink, and now making her way every day with an oxygen tank and her devoted parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammel) by her side. Her mordant wit, skeptical attitude, and smarts attract Gus, a handsome teen with a prosthetic leg, at a cancer support group, and the two embark on what seems like the most normal thing in the world — sweet, sweet love — albeit cut with the poignancy of almost-certain doom. Would the girl who calls herself a grenade dare to care for someone she will likely hurt? That’s the real question on her mind when the two reach out to the solitary author (Willem Dafoe) of their favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. The journey the two make leaves them both open to more hurt than either ever imagined, and though a good part of Fault‘s denouement boils down to a major puddle cuddle — with solid performances by all, but particularly Dern and Woodley — even a cynic is likely to get a bit misty as the kids endure all the stages of loss. And learning. (2:05) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Chun)

Godzilla Bearing the weight of a 1998 American debut so stinky that devotees of the Japanese original dubbed it “GINO” (for “Godzilla in Name Only”), the King of the Monsters returns for a do-over that smells more like generic summer entertainment than anything else. We begin in 1999, when a pair of scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) discover a giant skeleton of sorts in the Philippines — just as a deadly accident (or was it?) devastates a Japanese nuclear power plant. Fifteen years later, the scientists are still on the trail of Whatever That Was, while guilty power-plant survivor Bryan Cranston has become a greasy-haired conspiracy theorist, much to the annoyance of his San Francisco-based Navy officer son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The humans in Gareth Edwards’ film don’t actually matter much; aside from Cranston and to a much lesser extent Watanabe, none of the characters are interesting or memorable, and the plot — which has Big G lumbering after a pair of “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms” who decide to incubate their eggs in downtown SF — is also a low-stakes affair. (If you believe for a second that Taylor-Johnson’s doe-eyed wife and son won’t survive the monster attack, I have a busted-up Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.) But the monster design is plenty satisfying, and really, it’s just fine that Godzilla — who wrinkles his snout in annoyance at those pesky MUTOs — is this film’s one and only charismatic presence; dude’s going on a 70-year career at this point. (2:03) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Grand Seduction Canadian actor-director Don McKellar (1998’s Last Night) remakes 2003 Quebecois comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis, about a depressed community searching for the town doctor they’ll need before a factory will agree to set up shop and bring much-needed jobs to the area. Canada is still the setting here, with the harbor’s name — Tickle Head — telegraphing with zero subtlety that whimsy lies ahead. A series of events involving a Tickle Head-based TSA agent, a bag of cocaine, and a harried young doctor (Taylor Kitsch) trying to avoid jail time signals hope for the hamlet, and de facto town leader Murray (Brendan Gleeson) snaps into action. The seduction of “Dr. Paul,” who agrees to one month of service not knowing the town is desperate to keep him, is part Northern Exposure culture clash, part Jenga-like stack of lies, as the townspeople pretend to love cricket (Paul’s a fanatic) and act like his favorite lamb dish is the specialty at the local café. The wonderfully wry Gleeson is the best thing about this deeply predictable tale, which errs too often on the side of cute (little old ladies at the switchboard listening in on Paul’s phone-sex with his girlfriend!) rather than clever, as when an unsightly structure in the center of town is explained away with a fake “World Heritage House” plaque. Still, the scenery is lovely, and “cute” doesn’t necessarily mean “not entertaining.” (1:52) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (1:42) Cerrito, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Ida The bomb drops within the first ten minutes: after being gently forced to reconnect with her only living relative before taking her vows, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns that her name is actually Ida, and that she’s Jewish. Her mother’s sister, Wanda (Agneta Kulesza) — a Communist Party judge haunted by a turbulent past she copes with via heavy drinking, among other vices — also crisply relays that Ida’s parents were killed during the Nazi occupation, and after some hesitation agrees to accompany the sheltered young woman to find out how they died, and where their bodies were buried. Drawing great depth from understated storytelling and gorgeous, black-and-white cinematography, Pawel Pawilowski’s well-crafted drama offers a bleak if realistic (and never melodramatic) look at 1960s Poland, with two polar-opposite characters coming to form a bond as their layers of painful loss rise to the surface. (1:20) Albany, Opera Plaza, Piedmont. (Eddy)

Jersey Boys The musical that turned the back story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the 1960s hit making machines behind upbeat doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). Still, the cast — including Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. For an interview with cast members Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits), visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (2:14) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy)

Korengal This companion piece to 2010’s Oscar-nominated Restrepo — one of the best docs about modern-day warfare to date, offering unfiltered access to an Army platoon stationed in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley — uses previously unseen footage shot during the year filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington spent shadowing their subjects. Korengal is structured as a more introspective work, with musings on what it feels like to be a soldier in the Korengal, surrounded by rough (yet strikingly beautiful) terrain populated by farmers who may or may not be Taliban sympathizers, not to mention unpredictable, heavily armed opponents referred to simply as “the enemy.” Interviews reveal sadness, boredom, a deep sense of brotherhood, and the frustrating feeling of going from “100 miles an hour to a dead halt” after the surreal exhilaration of a firefight. Korengal also functions as a tribute to Hetherington, who was killed in 2011 while on assignment in Libya. Not only does his death add a layer of poignant subtext, it also suggests why Junger felt moved to revisit this story. That said, though Korengal‘s footage is several years old, its themes remain distressingly timely. (1:24) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Maleficent Fairytale revisionism is all the rage these days, what with the unending power of Disney princesses to latch into little girls everywhere and bring parental units (and their wallets) to their knees. Yet princesses almost seem beside the point in this villain’s-side-of-the-story tale — Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), the queen of the fairies in the magical moors, wronged by Stefan (Sharlto Copley), who saws off her wings in order to win a crown. Accompanied by her shape-shifting minion, crow Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent attends the christening of King Stefan’s first-born daughter, Aurora, hot on the heels of three clownish good fairies (Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple), and delivers a curse that will have this future Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning) prick her finger on a spindle and sink into a deathlike coma until her true love’s kiss. Will that critical smooch be delivered by Prince Bieber, er, Phillip (Brenton Thwaites)? Considering the potential for Disney’s trademark, heart-tugging enchantment to get magically tangled up in girl power, it’s tough to suck up the disappointment in the ooey-gooey, gummy-faced troll-doll aesthetics of the art direction and animation, as well as first-time director Robert Stromberg’s choppy, dashed-through storytelling. Part of the problem is that there’s almost zero threat here, despite its antihero’s devilish presence — is there ever any doubt that a healthy resolution will win out, even at the expense of blood ties? Best to find dangerous pleasures where one can — namely in the vivid Jolie, cheekbones honed to a razor edge, who spits biting remarks at her accursed charge, beneath Joan Crawford-esque eyebrows and horns crying out for club-kid Halloween treatments. (1:37) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Neighbors It’s a mystery why Neighbor‘s marketing teams are intent on creating some kind of social media battle between this comedy’s family and frat: The college boys are clearly outclassed when it comes to uninhibited physical comedy daring, thanks to Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. They play young parents Kelly and Mac, who are still basking in their new craftsman home and settled state, trying to figure out sex in front — or is it behind? — baby, and how to get to the rave before bedtime, when a frat, led by oft-shirtless hottie Teddy (Zac Efron) and pal Pete (Dave Franco), moves into the house next door. How do you ask them to “keep it down” yet still be cool? The pretzels Mac and Kelly wrap themselves into, in order to still hang with the kids, are about as hilarious as the inevitable battles that break out over the hearts and minds of college administrators (Lisa Kudrow), pals (the hilarious Ike Barinholtz), and wannabe brothers like the loyal Assjuice (Craig Roberts). Still, despite some memorable gags, Neighbors feels like a bit of a squandered opportunity as one fidgets through many of the frat house scenes. Part of the problem is, why would Kelly, Mac, or anyone want to be in good with such an uninteresting group of Greeks? (1:37) Metreon. (Chun)

Obvious Child We first encounter the protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s funny, original film — a Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething named Donna (Jenny Slate), who works at a lefty secondhand bookstore and makes regular (if unpaid) appearances at a local comedy night — onstage mining such underdiscussed topics as the effects of vaginal discharge on your garden-variety pair of underwear. This proves a natural segue to other hefty nuggets of embarrassment gold concerning her love life, to the dismay of boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), auditing from the back of the club. He pretty much deserves it, however, for what he’s about to do, which is break up with her in a nasty, well-populated unisex bathroom, taking time to repeatedly glance at the texts coming through on his phone from Donna’s good friend, with whom he’s sleeping. So when Donna, mid-drowning of sorrows, meets a nice-looking fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) at the bar, his post-fraternity-presidency aesthetic seems unlikely to deter her from a one-night stand. The ensuing trashed make-out dance-off in Max’s apartment to the Paul Simon song of the title is both comic and adorable. The fractured recap of the evening’s condom-free horizontal events that occurs inside Donna’s brain three weeks later, as she hunkers down with her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), in the bookstore’s bathroom after peeing on a stick, is equally hilarious — and unwanted-pregnancy jokes aren’t that easy to pull off. Robespierre’s treatment of this extended windup and of Donna’s decision to have an abortion is a witty, warmhearted retort to 2007’s Knocked Up, a couple generations’ worth of Hollywood rom-com writers, and an entertainment industry that continues to perform its sweaty contortions of storytelling in the gutless cause of avoiding the A-word. (1:15) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Rover Future days have never seemed quite so bleak as they are depicted in the wild, wild Aussie west of The Rover — rendered by Animal Kingdom (2010) director David Michod, who co-wrote The Rover with Joel Edgerton. Let’s just say we’re probably not going to see any primo Burner ensembles inspired by this post-apocalyptic yarn: Michod ventures to a plausible future only a decade out, after a global economic collapse, and breaks down the brooding road trip to its hard-boiled bones, setting it in a beauteous, lawless, and unceasingly violent outback. A heist gone wrong leads a small gang of robbers to steal the car belonging to monosyllabic, ruthless mystery man Eric (Guy Pearce). The latter wants his boxy little sedan back, badly, and, in the cat and mouse game that ensues, seems willing to die for the trouble. Meanwhile, one of the gang of thieves — the slow, dreamy Rey (Robert Pattinson), who has been left to die of a gunshot wound in the dirt — turns out to be more of a survivor than anyone imagined when he tracks down the tracker hunting for his brother and cohorts. Michod seems most interested in examining and turning over the ties that bind, in a mean time, an eminently absurdist moment, when everything else has fallen away in the face of sheer survival. Cineastes, however, will appreciate the elemental, existential pleasures of this dog-eat-dog Down Under out-Western, not the least of which include the performances. Pearce’s rework of the Man With No Name exudes intention in the very forward thrust of his stance, and Pattinson breaks his cool — and the confines of typecasting — as a blubbering, babbling, thin-skinned man-child. Clad in the mystic expanses of the South Australia desert, which tip a hat to John Ford Westerns as well as scorched-earth-of-the-mind movies such as El Topo (1970) and Paris, Texas (1984), The Rover is taken to the level of tone poem by the shuddering, moaning cellos of Antony Partos’s impressive, atonal electroacoustic score. (1:42) Metreon. (Chun)

Snowpiercer Eighteen years after an attempt to reverse global warming has gone wildly awry — freezing all life into extinction — the only known survivors are on a one-of-a-kind perpetual-motion train that circles the Earth annually, has its own self-contained ecosystem, and can smash through whatever ice buildup has blocked its tracks since the last go-round. It’s also a microcosm of civilization’s worst class-economic-racial patterns over history, with the much-abused “tail” passengers living in squalor under the thumb of brutal military police. Unseen at the train’s front is its mysterious inventor, Wilford, whose minions enforce “Eternal Order Prescribed by the Sacred Engine.” Curtis (Chris Evans) is default leader of the proletariat’s latest revolt, in which they attempt to force their way forward though the prison section (where they free Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung as the train’s original lock designer and his psychic daughter) on to the wonders of the first class compartments, and beyond. This first (mostly) English-language feature by South Korean Bong Joon-ho (2006’s The Host, 2009’s Mother), based on a 1982 French graphic novel, starts out as a sort of locomotive, claustrophobic Mad Max (1979) variation. But it gets wilder and more satirical as it goes along, goosed by Tilda Swinton’s grotesquely comic Minister Mason, and Alison Pill as a teacher propagandist in a particularly hilarious set piece. In case the metaphor hasn’t already hit you on the head, one character explains “The train is the world, we the humanity.” But Snowpiercer‘s sociopolitical critique is as effective as it is blunt, because Bong handles everything here — visceral action, absurdist humor, narrative left-turns, neatly etched character archetypes, et al. — with style, confidence, and wit. Some of the FX may not be quite as seamless as it would have been in a $200 million Hollywood studio production, and fanboys will no doubt nitpick like nitwits at various “credibility gaps.” (As if this movie ever asks to be taken literally.) But by current, or any, sci-fi action blockbuster standards, this is a giddily unpredictable, risk-taking joy. (2:07) Elmwood, Metreon, Presidio. (Harvey)

Think Like a Man Too (2:02) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck.

Third Person A screenwriter, Paul Haggis, pens a script in which a novelist (Liam Neeson) sits alone in a smoke-filled hotel room in Paris struggling over a manuscript about a novelist who can only feel emotions through his characters. What that psychic state would actually look like remains unclear — when the woman (Olivia Wilde) he’s left his wife (Kim Basinger) for shows up, their playful, painful, fraught interactions reveal a man with above-average emotional reserves. Meanwhile, in another hotel in another city, Rome, a sleazy fashion industry spy (Adrien Brody) finds his life turned sideways by a seemingly chance encounter in a bar with a beautiful Romanian woman (Moran Atias) in dire need of money. And in a third hotel, in Manhattan, a young woman (Mila Kunis) cleans up the suites she used to stay in when she was married to a renowned painter (James Franco), with whom she has a son she may or may not have harmed in some terrible way. The film broadly hints at connections between these three sets of lives — in each, the loss or endangerment of a child produces an unrelenting ripple effect; speaking of which, objects unnaturally submerged in water present an ominous visual motif. If the movie poster doesn’t give the game away as you’re walking into the theater, the signposts erected by Haggis ensure that you won’t be in the dark for long. Learning how these characters relate to one another, however, puts considerable drag on the fabric of the plot, exposing the threadbare places, and where Haggis offers his tortured characters redemption, it comes at the cost of good storytelling. (2:17) Metreon, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Transformers: Age of Extinction In Michael Bay’s fourth Transformers installment a villainous Black Ops leader (Kelsey Grammer) allies with a snarky Steve-Jobs-alike (Stanley Tucci) to build Transformers de coeur: designer impostor robot-cars they hope will reinvent the face of war. In IMAX 3D, “TransFOURmers” is packed with relentless rock-’em-sock-’em action, spectacular property destruction, and about as much sense as a bucket of worms. After 60 minutes, you think you’re getting more than your money’s worth. At 90 minutes, you’re tired. At two hours, confusion sets in: If Autobots get stronger together how could Optimus be in so much trouble? Who is the bounty hunting Terminator look-alike? HOW MUCH MORE COULD THERE BE? And then … the action shifts to China, Optimus rides a Dinobot, and chaos reigns. I’ve always liked the working-class poetry of the Transformers themselves — the leader is a trucker and the cast is stacked with ambulances, tanks, and the metal workforce that preserves American lives. If that’s not traditional hero worship, I don’t know what is. But Age of Extinction is the soulless designer imposter it lampoons — the whole sequel-snarking ordeal makes you long for Buzz Lightyear, who saw a thousand Buzz Lightyears on a store shelf and survived that existential crisis heroically — while also riding a dinosaur and fighting Frasier. This Transformers movie (sadly, it won’t be the final one) starts with a thesis: Mark Wahlberg walks through an abandoned movie theater and a Wilford Brimley twin (Ron Shedd) bellows: “Movies today! Sequels! Remakes! Crap!” Age of Extinction follows that moment with nearly three hours of evidence that the cause of extinction is redundancy. (2:30) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

22 Jump Street In this TV-inspired sequel, “Previously on 21 Jump Street…” is all the backstory we get. 22 wastes no time sending Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) back to school to solve another case. A few details have changed (they’re in college now, where the drug of choice is “Why Phy”), but the situation is self-consciously boilerplate, which lets the filmmakers cast (ironic) judgment on sequels — and imply the TV show was redundant. College proves hilarious, from the rundown of dorm room essentials to Schmidt’s walk of shame, and the touchstones are sharp and embarrassing. An extended fight between Schmidt and a girl (Jillian Bell, fabulous) twists gender issues and sexual assault into gloriously absurd politics. Best of all is a fairly understated joke in front of the Benjamin Hill School of Film Studies. I laughed as much at 22 as I did at 21, but 22 spends so much time calling out its number-two status that it almost becomes performance art. (1:45) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

Violette Taking on another “difficult” woman artist after the excellent 2008 Séraphine (about the folk-art painter), Martin Provost here portrays the unhappy life of Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos), whose fiction and autobiographical writings eventually made her a significant figure in postwar French literature. We first meet her waiting out the war with gay author Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py), one of many unrequited loves, then surviving via the black market trade before she’s “discovered” by such groundbreaking, already-established talents as Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) and Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain). It is the latter, a loyal supporter who nonetheless retains a chilly emotional distance, who becomes bisexual Violette’s principal obsession over the coming 20 years or so. Devos does her best to portray “a neurotic crazy washed-up old bag” with an “ugly mug” — hardly! — who is perpetually broke, depressed, and awkward, thanks no doubt in part to her mean witch of a mother (Catherine Hiegel). “Screaming and sobbing won’t get you anywhere,” Simone at one point tells her, and indeed Leduc is a bit of a pill. For the most part lacking the visual splendors of Séraphine (this character’s environs weren’t so pastoral), Violette is finely acted and crafted but, like its heroine, hard to love. (2:18) Albany, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

X-Men: Days of Future Past Bryan Singer, director of the first two X-Men films (2000’s decent X-Men; 2002’s meh X2) returns to helm this latest franchise entry — the fourth sequel in a series that also includes two movies focusing on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. That fan-favorite character is front and center in both of Days of Future Past‘s time frames: the present, a bleak dystopia in which robot assassins have wiped out nearly every mutant (save Wolverine, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellan’s Magneto, and a few others), and most humans along with them; and the past, a key moment in the polyester-laden 1970s in which mutant avenger Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) inadvertently sets the disastrous future events in motion by killing robot designer Trask (Peter Dinklage). Wolverine time-travels to convince younger versions of the Professor (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to put aside their Himalayan-sized differences to stop her. (Speaking of avengers, there’s a capital-A one here: Quicksilver, a character from both comic-book worlds; he’s portrayed here with giddy mischief by American Horror Story‘s Evan Peters, and is the film’s high point.) Yes, that’s a heady plot, and there are a zillion other characters, but Future Past manages, for the most part, to avoid feeling like an overloaded mess. It’s most entertaining in scenes that show off its characters’ superpowers — clearly, the CG artists had a blast working on this one — which are plentiful enough to make slogging through the ennui-laden moments of downtime worth it.(2:10) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy) *

A great week for (indie) sci-fi and docs: new movies!

Sue Vaughan

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June 27, 2014

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A great week for (indie) sci-fi and docs: new movies!

This week, Frameline continues (our coverage here!), plus offbeat sci-fi winners Coherence and Snowpiercer are well worth seeking out … especially if you’re not in the mood for more giant robot smash-ups from the Michael Bay factory. Plus: new docs and more! Read on.

Breathing Earth: Susumu Shingu’s Dream Japanese artist Susumu Shingu has built his career through his concerted engagement with the natural world. The wise and eternally smiling 75-year-old creates angular and often gargantuan mobiles that harness the power of wind and water to gyrate in ever-changing directions. In Breathing Earth, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer crafts a deliberately paced rumination on Shingu’s life philosophy that, while devoid of the frenetic facts, figures, and trite biographical rehashes that punctuate hyper-informative pop-docs, uses a beautifully simplistic narrative arc to illuminates Shingu’s attempt to create a hilly, open-air collection of windmills. The sculptor’s impassioned narration and charming conversations with potential landlords and investors (who usually entirely miss the point of his mission to raise environmental consciousness through aesthetic beauty) make Shingu impossible not to fall in love with — he is laid-back, funny, and astonishingly youthful. Riedelsheimer’s camera is similarly relaxed, gliding sumptuously over the green and wild landscapes on which Shingu installs his works. Despite his meditative tempo, Riedelsheimer manages to explore a remarkably wide scope; Shingu’s late-life marriage to a fellow sculptor, his appeals to both Japanese and German schoolchildren to care for the earth and help to avoid environmental disasters, and his intricate technical processes all receive intimate and inspiring sections. (1:37) (David Kurlander)

Citizen Koch After quietly influencing conservative ideology, legislation, and elections for decades, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers have found themselves becoming high-profile figures — much to their dismay, no doubt. The relative invisibility they hitherto enjoyed greatly abetted their impact in myriad arenas of public policy and “popular” conservative movements. Look behind any number of recent red-vs.-blue flashpoint issues and you can find their fingerprints: Notably state-level union busting; “smaller government” (i.e. incredible shrinking social services); seeding allegedly grassroots organizations like the Tea Party; furthering the Corporations = People thing (see: Citizens United); and generally helping the rich like themselves get richer while fostering working-class outrage at everybody else. This documentary by Trouble the Water (2008) co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessen touches on all those matters, while also focusing on Wisconsin as a test laboratory for the brothers’ Machiavellian think-tank maneuvers, following a Lousiana GOP candidate on the campaign trail (one he’s marginalized on for opposing corporate influence peddling), and more. Any one of these topics could support a feature of their own (and most already have). Citizen Koch’s problem is that it tries to encompass too much of its subjects’ long reach, while (despite the title) leaving those subjects themselves underexplored. (It also suffers from being a movie completed at least 18 months ago, a lifetime in current US political terms.) For the reasonably well-informed this documentary will cover a lot of familiar ground—which is not to say that ground isn’t still interesting, or that the added human interest elements don’t compel. But the film covers so much ground it ends up feeling overstuffed and unfocused. (1:26) (Dennis Harvey)

Coherence See “Vortex Room.” (1:29)

Korengal This companion piece to 2010’s Oscar-nominated Restrepo — one of the best docs about modern-day warfare to date, offering unfiltered access to an Army platoon stationed in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley — uses previously unseen footage shot during the year filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington spent shadowing their subjects. Korengal is structured as a more introspective work, with musings on what it feels like to be a soldier in the Korengal, surrounded by rough (yet strikingly beautiful) terrain populated by farmers who may or may not be Taliban sympathizers, not to mention unpredictable, heavily armed opponents referred to simply as “the enemy.” Interviews reveal sadness, boredom, a deep sense of brotherhood, and the frustrating feeling of going from “100 miles an hour to a dead halt” after the surreal exhilaration of a firefight. Korengal also functions as a tribute to Hetherington, who was killed in 2011 while on assignment in Libya. Not only does his death add a layer of poignant subtext, it also suggests why Junger felt moved to revisit this story. That said, though Korengal‘s footage is several years old, its themes remain distressingly timely. (1:24) (Cheryl Eddy)

Snowpiercer Eighteen years after an attempt to reverse global warming has gone wildly awry — freezing all life into extinction — the only known survivors are on a one-of-a-kind perpetual-motion train that circles the Earth annually, has its own self-contained ecosystem, and can smash through whatever ice buildup has blocked its tracks since the last go-round. It’s also a microcosm of civilization’s worst class-economic-racial patterns over history, with the much-abused “tail” passengers living in squalor under the thumb of brutal military police. Unseen at the train’s front is its mysterious inventor, Wilford, whose minions enforce “Eternal Order Prescribed by the Sacred Engine.” Curtis (Chris Evans) is default leader of the proletariat’s latest revolt, in which they attempt to force their way forward though the prison section (where they free Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung as the train’s original lock designer and his psychic daughter) on to the wonders of the first class compartments, and beyond. This first (mostly) English-language feature by South Korean Bong Joon-ho (2006’s The Host, 2009’s Mother), based on a 1982 French graphic novel, starts out as a sort of locomotive, claustrophobic Mad Max (1979) variation. But it gets wilder and more satirical as it goes along, goosed by Tilda Swinton’s grotesquely comic Minister Mason, and Alison Pill as a teacher propagandist in a particularly hilarious setpiece. In case the metaphor hasn’t already hit you on the head, one character explains “The train is the world, we the humanity.” But Snowpiercer’s sociopolitical critique is as effective as it is blunt, because Bong handles everything here — visceral action, absurdist humor, narrative left-turns, neatly etched character archetypes, et al. — with style, confidence, and wit. Some of the FX may not be quite as seamless as it would have been in a $200 million Hollywood studio production, and fanboys will no doubt nitpick like nitwits at various “credibility gaps.” (As if this movie ever asks to be taken literally.) But by current, or any, sci-fi action blockbuster standards, this is a giddily unpredictable, risk-taking joy. (2:07) (Dennis Harvey)

Third Person A screenwriter, Paul Haggis, pens a script in which a novelist (Liam Neeson) sits alone in a smoke-filled hotel room in Paris struggling over a manuscript about a novelist who can only feel emotions through his characters. What that psychic state would actually look like remains unclear — when the woman (Olivia Wilde) he’s left his wife (Kim Basinger) for shows up, their playful, painful, fraught interactions reveal a man with above-average emotional reserves. Meanwhile, in another hotel in another city, Rome, a sleazy fashion industry spy (Adrien Brody) finds his life turned sideways by a seemingly chance encounter in a bar with a beautiful Romanian woman (Moran Atias) in dire need of money. And in a third hotel, in Manhattan, a young woman (Mila Kunis) cleans up the suites she used to stay in when she was married to a renowned painter (James Franco), with whom she has a son she may or may not have harmed in some terrible way. The film broadly hints at connections between these three sets of lives — in each, the loss or endangerment of a child produces an unrelenting ripple effect; speaking of which, objects unnaturally submerged in water present an ominous visual motif. If the movie poster doesn’t give the game away as you’re walking into the theater, the signposts erected by Haggis ensure that you won’t be in the dark for long. Learning how these characters relate to one another, however, puts considerable drag on the fabric of the plot, exposing the threadbare places, and where Haggis offers his tortured characters redemption, it comes at the cost of good storytelling. (2:17) (Lynn Rapoport)

Transformers: Age of Extinction In Michael Bay’s fourth Transformers installment a villainous Black Ops leader (Kelsey Grammer) allies with a snarky Steve-Jobs-alike (Stanley Tucci) to build Transformers de coeur: designer impostor robot-cars they hope will reinvent the face of war. In IMAX 3D, “TransFOURmers” is packed with relentless rock-‘em-sock-‘em action, spectacular property destruction, and about as much sense as a bucket of worms. After 60 minutes, you think you’re getting more than your money’s worth. At 90 minutes, you’re tired. At two hours, confusion sets in: If Autobots get stronger together how could Optimus be in so much trouble? Who is the bounty hunting Terminator lookalike? HOW MUCH MORE COULD THERE BE? And then … the action shifts to China, Optimus rides a Dinobot, and chaos reigns. I’ve always liked the working-class poetry of the Transformers themselves — the leader is a trucker and the cast is stacked with ambulances, tanks, and the metal workforce that preserves American lives. If that’s not traditional hero worship, I don’t know what is. But Age of Extinction is the soulless designer imposter it lampoons — the whole sequel-snarking ordeal makes you long for Buzz Lightyear, who saw a thousand Buzz Lightyears on a store shelf and survived that existential crisis heroically — while also riding a dinosaur and fighting Frasier. This Transformers movie (sadly, it won’t be the final one) starts with a thesis: Mark Wahlberg walks through an abandoned movie theater and a Wilford Brimley twin (Ron Shedd) bellows: “Movies today! Sequels! Remakes! Crap!” Age of Extinction follows that moment with nearly three hours of evidence that the cause of extinction is redundancy. (2:30) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)

Under the Electric Sky Hey, raver! This 3D concert film enables you to experience the Electric Daisy Carnival without punching any holes in your brain. Or, y’know, dying. (1:25)

Violette Taking on another “difficult” woman artist after the excellent 2008 Séraphine (about the folk-art painter), Martin Provost here portrays the unhappy life of Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos), whose fiction and autobiographical writings eventually made her a significant figure in postwar French literature. We first meet her waiting out the war with gay author Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py), one of many unrequited loves, then surviving via the black market trade before she’s “discovered” by such groundbreaking, already-established talents as Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) and Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain). It is the latter, a loyal supporter who nonetheless retains a chilly emotional distance, who becomes bisexual Violette’s principal obsession over the coming 20 years or so. Devos does her best to portray “a neurotic crazy washed-up old bag” with an “ugly mug” — hardly! — who is perpetually broke, depressed, and awkward, thanks no doubt in part to her mean witch of a mother (Catherine Hiegel). “Screaming and sobbing won’t get you anywhere,” Simone at one point tells her, and indeed Leduc is a bit of a pill. For the most part lacking the visual splendors of Séraphine (this character’s environs weren’t so pastoral), Violette is finely acted and crafted but, like its heroine, hard to love. (2:18) (Dennis Harvey)

This Week’s Picks: June 25 – July 1, 2014

Michael Redmond

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June 24, 2014

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WEDNESDAY 25

‘Football Under Cover’

Unofficial festivities for World Cup fans whose allegiances lie with Die Mannschaft (rather than with The Yanks) begin the night before the Germany-USA match. Don’t expect the Goethe-Institut San Francisco’s screening of 2008’s Football Under Cover to include any headbutts directed toward German athletes. The documentary follows the first match between the Iranian women’s soccer team and a German women’s club team. In spite of cultural differences, the two teams are united by a universal love for soccer — or in that part of the world, football. In that mindset, it doesn’t matter which team wins Thursday’s match&ldots;right? Thomas Müller will be noticeably absent tonight to convince you otherwise. (Amy Char)

6:30 pm, $5

Goethe-Institut San Francisco

530 Bush, SF

(415) 263-8760

www.goethe.de

‘Yours For Eternity’ with Damien Echols and Lorri Davis

In 1996, Lorri Davis attended a early screening of Paradise Lost, the first in what would become a trilogy of documentaries about the West Memphis Three. Haunted by the film, she dashed off a letter to Damien Echols, who’d been sentenced to death for a brutal crime all evidence suggested he did not commit. They soon became passionate pen pals, and she left her successful career in NYC to devote herself to proving his innocence. Echols penned best-selling memoir Life After Death after the WM3 were released in 2011; now comes the intimate Yours For Eternity, a collection of missives Davis and Echols exchanged over 16 years. The WM3 tale is well-known, but this angle is not, and it makes for one of the most unusual and genuine love stories you’ll ever read. (Cheryl Eddy)

6pm, free

Book Passage

1 Ferry Bldg, SF

www.bookpassage.com

Also Thu/26, 7pm, free

Copperfield’s Books

850 Fourth St, San Rafael

www.copperfieldsbooks.com

Zvuloon Dub System

Despite hailing from Tel Aviv rather than Kingston, Zvuloon Dub System is committed to the sound of classic roots reggae. The band’s two albums, 2012’s Freedom Time and this year’s Anbessa Dub, eschew the tight production sheen of contemporary reggae artists like Rebelution in favor of a spacious sound evoking the classic soundboard wizardry of Lee “Scratch” Perry and King Tubby. Yet Zvuloon is hardly conservative. Anbessa Dub finds the group collaborating with Ethiopian-Jewish artists, wrapping the sounds of modern Ethiopian music in a dense cloak of dub. Though some of the sounds on Anbessa Dub might sound alien to Western ears —particularly set against the more familiar sounds of reggae — the melange of styles and sounds rapidly starts to make a whole lot of sense. (Daniel Bromfield)

9pm, $15

Brick & Mortar

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

THURSDAY 26

Kit Hinrichs

Five years removed from the founding of his independent graphic design outlet, former Pentagram partner Kit Hinrichs is still going strong. His recent work includes crafting new brand identities and aesthetics for the University of San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary, and the Walt Disney Family Museum. Add that to visual consultancy work with the San Francisco Zoo, the California Academy of Sciences, and a bevy of other local institutions, and one begins to understand the extensive cultural influence that Hinrichs wields in the city. He takes to the stage of the Contemporary Jewish Museum to discuss the legacy of Paul Rand, the late Modernist designer responsible for the ABC, IBM, and UPS logos. Hinrich’s lecture, which is part of San Francisco Design Week, will focus on Rand’s uncanny ability to adapt to trends over the course of his half-century career. (David Kurlander)

6:30pm, $10

Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission, SF

(415) 655-7881

www.thecjm.org

FRIDAY 27

Daria Kaufman farewell show

When she graduated from Mills in 2008, Daria Kaufman decided to stick around. The Bay Area seemed a good place for the kind of choreography she had in mind — interdisciplinary, flexibly structured, collaborative, site-specific. Now she is going to another, reportedly hot city for experimental dance on the western edge of another continent, Lisbon. The upcoming concert is summing up and looking forward. The reprise of Product examines the type of job that used to be routinely offered to women grads: marketing assistant. (The other was editorial assistant). She is also taking with her two world premieres, a solo for herself, Restless Myth, and an ensemble piece, In Her Tower, for longtime collaborators and colleagues Bianca Brzezinski, Rebecca Chun, Aura Fischbeck, and Karla Quintero. (Rita Felciano)

Also June 28, both 8pm, $20

Joe Goode Annex

401 Alabama, SF

www.inhertower.brownpapertickets.com

‘What Stays’

Home is where the art is in this site-specific dance-theater piece presented by Right Brain Performancelab and Dance Up-Close/East Bay — a final iteration of Right Brain Performancelab’s What Stays, which explores the subjects of home and the passage of time in a literal and metaphorical treatment that has the audience moving about Berkeley’s Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (once a craftsman house, now a series of spacious studios). Performers include Right Brain’s John Baumann and Jennifer Gwirtz along with Lisa Claybaugh, Laura Marsh, and Jennifer Minore. David Samas accompanies on instruments of his own invention, performing original compositions by Dave Rodgers. (Robert Avila)

Also June 28, both at 8pm, and June 29, 5pm, $20-25

Shawl-Anderson Dance Center

2704 Alcatraz at College, Berk.

www.whatstays.brownpapertickets.com

SATURDAY 28

No Happy Endings

Even without the guarantee of any happy endings, Granny Cart Gangstas’ one-night-only comedy show promises to deliver. Feeling uncertain? The “granny cart” will steer you in the right direction. In fact, the members of this women-of-color comedy troupe have even reclaimed the very notion of strolling in San Francisco’s streets with one of those recognizable carts. It’s commendable —”gangsta,” even — in their eyes. The group will also wheel in other stereotypes, such as glorified consumerism and sexist media depictions, to satirize during tonight’s show, promising a night full of laughs, regardless of your gender. (Amy Char)

8pm, $15

Little Boxes Theater

1661 Tennessee, SF

(415) 603-0061

www.littleboxestheater.wordpress.com

Dave and Phil Alvin

Hailing from the working class town of Downey, California, brothers Dave and Phil Alvin grew up absorbing a host of varied musical influences, among them old-school blues. Forming scorching roots-rockers extraordinaire The Blasters in 1979, the siblings eventually went their separate ways when Dave left the band in 1986 — until now, that is. Following a health scare for Phil two years ago, the duo has gotten back together and returned to one of their first musical loves, paying tribute to bluesman Big Bill Broonzy on their excellent new LP, the aptly titled Common Ground (Yep Roc). This is a family reunion you won’t want to miss. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $22

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

The British Invasion

Dust off your best mod outfit and head over to this Inner Richmond haunt for The British Invasion, a night of tunes and dance from Anglophilic local bands. Topping the bill is Chick Jagger, an energetic, female-fronted Rolling Stones tribute band. Known for an oeuvre-spanning set that includes tracks as disparate as “It’s All Over Now” and “Beast of Burden” — not to mention a delightfully gimmicky “Moves Like Jagger”), the group’s Stones scholarship and appreciation is palpable. Also performing are The Landbirds, who are first and foremost a Beatles cover group but may also offer hits from The Kinks, the Who, and the Yardbirds (from whom they take their name). Dancer Rasa Vitalia offers a choreographed set of additional upbeat British classics. The nostalgia and pastiche will be flowing along with the drinks late into the evening. (David Kurlander)

8:30pm, $10

Neck of the Woods

406 Clement, SF

(415) 857-2725

www.neckofthewoodssf.com

SUNDAY 29

Roxie Kids

By now, even childless people are sick of Frozen and every song that filled last year’s Disney sensation. Take a break from Elsa and company and introduce the kids to Papa Panda and his wee son, stars of Panda! Go, Panda!, an early entry in Hayao Miyazaki’s filmography (he wrote the 1972 film, which came out over 10 years before Studio Ghibli was founded). This gentle adventure — about a young girl who befriends the roly-poly zoo escapees — kicks off the Roxie’s “Reel Kids” Japanese animation summer series, a co-presentation with CAAM. Future entries include Miyazaki’s directorial debut, The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), in July; and four episodes of Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga series Astro Boy in August. (Eddy)

Also July 27 and Aug 24

2pm, free for kids under 12 (adults, $7.50)

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St, SF

www.roxie.com

Sharon Van Etten

Less than a month removed from the release of her acclaimed fourth album Are We There, Sharon Van Etten is already on a summer-long world tour. The new album, on which she is also the lead producer, sounds remarkably live — extended jams and minimal overdubs make the songs feel kinetic and ready for the stage. The Brooklyn-based folk-rocker sticks mostly with her favorite subject, the torture and confusion of love and relationships, but couples her angst with hilarious and confrontational lyrics like “I washed your dishes, then I shit in your bathroom.” Van Etten is looking increasingly consistent and prolific, as the shockwaves from her gorgeous and hyped 2012 album Tramp had barely settled before talk of Are We There began. Add constant touring, including a summer 2013 stint with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Van Etten begins to look almost supernatural in her output. (Kurlander)

8pm, $20

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(415) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com

MONDAY 30

Future

One of modern hip-hop’s greatest eccentrics, Future takes the Auto-Tuned rapper-turned-singer template established by T-Pain and Lil Wayne in the aughts and runs wild with it. While those artists use the oft-derided vocal software to make their voices slippery and smooth, Future wails, growls, and shrieks maniacally, leaving the Auto-Tune to bubble up over his voice like a pie crust. By all logic, such an unhinged artist should be an underground curiosity. But he’s a rising star, with names as prestigious as Pharrell, Kanye, and Andre 3000 gracing his new album Honest. Even if you still blast “Death of Auto-Tune” in your car every day, there’s no denying Future is — and will likely continue to be — one of the most interesting figures in contemporary hip-hop. (Bromfield)

8pm, $30

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(415) 673-5716

www.theregencyballroom.com

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Film Listings: June 25 – July 1, 2014

Michael Redmond

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June 24, 2014

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

FRAMELINE

Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, runs through June 29 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

OPENING

Breathing Earth: Susumu Shingu’s Dream Japanese artist Susumu Shingu has built his career through his concerted engagement with the natural world. The wise and eternally smiling 75-year-old creates angular and often gargantuan mobiles that harness the power of wind and water to gyrate in ever-changing directions. In Breathing Earth, German director Thomas Riedelsheimer crafts a deliberately paced rumination on Shingu’s life philosophy that, while devoid of the frenetic facts, figures, and trite biographical rehashes that punctuate hyper-informative pop-docs, uses a beautifully simplistic narrative arc to illuminates Shingu’s attempt to create a hilly, open-air collection of windmills. The sculptor’s impassioned narration and charming conversations with potential landlords and investors (who usually entirely miss the point of his mission to raise environmental consciousness through aesthetic beauty) make Shingu impossible not to fall in love with — he is laid-back, funny, and astonishingly youthful. Riedelsheimer’s camera is similarly relaxed, gliding sumptuously over the green and wild landscapes on which Shingu installs his works. Despite his meditative tempo, Riedelsheimer manages to explore a remarkably wide scope; Shingu’s late-life marriage to a fellow sculptor, his appeals to both Japanese and German schoolchildren to care for the earth and help to avoid environmental disasters, and his intricate technical processes all receive intimate and inspiring sections. (1:37) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (David Kurlander)

Citizen Koch After quietly influencing conservative ideology, legislation, and elections for decades, the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers have found themselves becoming high-profile figures — much to their dismay, no doubt. The relative invisibility they hitherto enjoyed greatly abetted their impact in myriad arenas of public policy and “popular” conservative movements. Look behind any number of recent red-vs.-blue flashpoint issues and you can find their fingerprints: Notably state-level union busting; “smaller government” (i.e. incredible shrinking social services); seeding allegedly grassroots organizations like the Tea Party; furthering the Corporations = People thing (see: Citizens United); and generally helping the rich like themselves get richer while fostering working-class outrage at everybody else. This documentary by Trouble the Water (2008) co-directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessen touches on all those matters, while also focusing on Wisconsin as a test laboratory for the brothers’ Machiavellian think-tank maneuvers, following a Louisiana GOP candidate on the campaign trail (one he’s marginalized on for opposing corporate influence peddling), and more. Any one of these topics could support a feature of their own (and most already have). Citizen Koch‘s problem is that it tries to encompass too much of its subjects’ long reach, while (despite the title) leaving those subjects themselves underexplored. (It also suffers from being a movie completed at least 18 months ago, a lifetime in current US political terms.) For the reasonably well-informed this documentary will cover a lot of familiar ground—which is not to say that ground isn’t still interesting, or that the added human interest elements don’t compel. But the film covers so much ground it ends up feeling overstuffed and unfocused. (1:26) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Coherence See “Vortex Room.” (1:29) Presidio.

Korengal This companion piece to 2010’s Oscar-nominated Restrepo — one of the best docs about modern-day warfare to date, offering unfiltered access to an Army platoon stationed in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley — uses previously unseen footage shot during the year filmmakers Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington spent shadowing their subjects. Korengal is structured as a more introspective work, with musings on what it feels like to be a soldier in the Korengal, surrounded by rough (yet strikingly beautiful) terrain populated by farmers who may or may not be Taliban sympathizers, not to mention unpredictable, heavily armed opponents referred to simply as “the enemy.” Interviews reveal sadness, boredom, a deep sense of brotherhood, and the frustrating feeling of going from “100 miles an hour to a dead halt” after the surreal exhilaration of a firefight. Korengal also functions as a tribute to Hetherington, who was killed in 2011 while on assignment in Libya. Not only does his death add a layer of poignant subtext, it also suggests why Junger felt moved to revisit this story. That said, though Korengal‘s footage is several years old, its themes remain distressingly timely. (1:24) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Snowpiercer Eighteen years after an attempt to reverse global warming has gone wildly awry — freezing all life into extinction — the only known survivors are on a one-of-a-kind perpetual-motion train that circles the Earth annually, has its own self-contained ecosystem, and can smash through whatever ice buildup has blocked its tracks since the last go-round. It’s also a microcosm of civilization’s worst class-economic-racial patterns over history, with the much-abused “tail” passengers living in squalor under the thumb of brutal military police. Unseen at the train’s front is its mysterious inventor, Wilford, whose minions enforce “Eternal Order Prescribed by the Sacred Engine.” Curtis (Chris Evans) is default leader of the proletariat’s latest revolt, in which they attempt to force their way forward though the prison section (where they free Song Kang-ho and Go Ah-sung as the train’s original lock designer and his psychic daughter) on to the wonders of the first class compartments, and beyond. This first (mostly) English-language feature by South Korean Bong Joon-ho (2006’s The Host, 2009’s Mother), based on a 1982 French graphic novel, starts out as a sort of locomotive, claustrophobic Mad Max (1979) variation. But it gets wilder and more satirical as it goes along, goosed by Tilda Swinton’s grotesquely comic Minister Mason, and Alison Pill as a teacher propagandist in a particularly hilarious set piece. In case the metaphor hasn’t already hit you on the head, one character explains “The train is the world, we the humanity.” But Snowpiercer‘s sociopolitical critique is as effective as it is blunt, because Bong handles everything here — visceral action, absurdist humor, narrative left-turns, neatly etched character archetypes, et al. — with style, confidence, and wit. Some of the FX may not be quite as seamless as it would have been in a $200 million Hollywood studio production, and fanboys will no doubt nitpick like nitwits at various “credibility gaps.” (As if this movie ever asks to be taken literally.) But by current, or any, sci-fi action blockbuster standards, this is a giddily unpredictable, risk-taking joy. (2:07) (Harvey)

Third Person A screenwriter, Paul Haggis, pens a script in which a novelist (Liam Neeson) sits alone in a smoke-filled hotel room in Paris struggling over a manuscript about a novelist who can only feel emotions through his characters. What that psychic state would actually look like remains unclear — when the woman (Olivia Wilde) he’s left his wife (Kim Basinger) for shows up, their playful, painful, fraught interactions reveal a man with above-average emotional reserves. Meanwhile, in another hotel in another city, Rome, a sleazy fashion industry spy (Adrien Brody) finds his life turned sideways by a seemingly chance encounter in a bar with a beautiful Romanian woman (Moran Atias) in dire need of money. And in a third hotel, in Manhattan, a young woman (Mila Kunis) cleans up the suites she used to stay in when she was married to a renowned painter (James Franco), with whom she has a son she may or may not have harmed in some terrible way. The film broadly hints at connections between these three sets of lives — in each, the loss or endangerment of a child produces an unrelenting ripple effect; speaking of which, objects unnaturally submerged in water present an ominous visual motif. If the movie poster doesn’t give the game away as you’re walking into the theater, the signposts erected by Haggis ensure that you won’t be in the dark for long. Learning how these characters relate to one another, however, puts considerable drag on the fabric of the plot, exposing the threadbare places, and where Haggis offers his tortured characters redemption, it comes at the cost of good storytelling. (2:17) Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Transformers: Age of Extinction Mark Wahlberg and the Dinobots star in the latest installment of Michael Bay’s action sci-fi series. (2:30) Presidio.

Under the Electric Sky Hey, raver! This 3D concert film enables you to experience the Electric Daisy Carnival without punching any holes in your brain. (1:25)

Violette Taking on another “difficult” woman artist after the excellent 2008 Séraphine (about the folk-art painter), Martin Provost here portrays the unhappy life of Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos), whose fiction and autobiographical writings eventually made her a significant figure in postwar French literature. We first meet her waiting out the war with gay author Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py), one of many unrequited loves, then surviving via the black market trade before she’s “discovered” by such groundbreaking, already-established talents as Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) and Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain). It is the latter, a loyal supporter who nonetheless retains a chilly emotional distance, who becomes bisexual Violette’s principal obsession over the coming 20 years or so. Devos does her best to portray “a neurotic crazy washed-up old bag” with an “ugly mug” — hardly! — who is perpetually broke, depressed, and awkward, thanks no doubt in part to her mean witch of a mother (Catherine Hiegel). “Screaming and sobbing won’t get you anywhere,” Simone at one point tells her, and indeed Leduc is a bit of a pill. For the most part lacking the visual splendors of Séraphine (this character’s environs weren’t so pastoral), Violette is finely acted and crafted but, like its heroine, hard to love. (2:18) Albany, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

ONGOING

Belle The child of a British naval officer and a Caribbean slave, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is deposited on the doorstep — well, the estate grounds — of her father’s relatives in 1769 England after her mother dies. Soon she’s entirely orphaned, which makes her a wealthy heiress and aristocratic title holder at the same time that she is something less than human in the eyes of her adopted society. For Belle is black (or more properly, mixed-race), and thus a useless curiosity at best as a well-bred noblewoman of the “wrong” racial makeup. Based on a murky actual historical chapter, Amma Asante’s film is that rare sumptuous costume drama which actually has something on its mind beyond romance and royalty. Not least among its pleasures are a fine supporting cast including Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, and Emily Watson. (1:45) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

A Coffee in Berlin How do you say “mumblecore” in German? Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature has certain arty pretensions — it’s shot in black-and-white, and scored with peppy jazz — but it’s more or less a rambling day in the life of law school dropout Niko (Tom Schilling). It happens to be the very day Niko’s golf-loving father decides to stop funding his shiftless son’s slacker lifestyle, though that crisis (which, you know, Lena Dunham built an entire HBO comedy around) receives nearly equal heft as a cutesy ongoing gimmick that sees Niko incapable of getting a cup of coffee anywhere in Berlin. Hipster ennui can be compelling if it has some underlying energy and purpose (see: 2013’s Frances Ha, to which this film has been compared), but A Coffee in Berlin comes up short on both. That said, it does offer an intriguing portrayal of Berlin — a city whose modern-chic façade barely contains the history that haunts it — and some of its supporting characters, particularly Friederike Kempter as a former schoolmate of Niko’s who has outgrown him emotionally by about one thousand percent, provide pleasant enough distractions. (1:28) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Fault in Our Stars I confess: I’m no card-carrying, vlog-flogging Nerdfighter in author John Green’s teen-geek army. But one can admire the passion — and teary romanticism — of the writer, readers, and the breakthrough novel that started it all. Much has been made over the cinematic tweaks to the best-selling YA book, but those seem like small beefs: OK, male romantic lead Gus’s (Ansel Elgort) perhaps-understandable brattiness seems to have been toned down a touch, but we’ll all get the somewhat-subversive push and pull of Green’s love story centered on two cancer-stricken innocents. Sixteen-year-old Hazel (a radiant Shailene Woodley) has been battling cancer almost all her life, fighting back from the brink, and now making her way every day with an oxygen tank and her devoted parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammel) by her side. Her mordant wit, skeptical attitude, and smarts attract Gus, a handsome teen with a prosthetic leg, at a cancer support group, and the two embark on what seems like the most normal thing in the world — sweet, sweet love — albeit cut with the poignancy of almost-certain doom. Would the girl who calls herself a grenade dare to care for someone she will likely hurt? That’s the real question on her mind when the two reach out to the solitary author (Willem Dafoe) of their favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. The journey the two make leaves them both open to more hurt than either ever imagined, and though a good part of Fault‘s denouement boils down to a major puddle cuddle — with solid performances by all, but particularly Dern and Woodley — even a cynic is likely to get a bit misty as the kids endure all the stages of loss. And learning. (2:05) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Chun)

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia Nicholas Wrathall’s highly entertaining documentary pays tribute to one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, original, and cranky thinkers, with extensive input from the man himself before his death in 2012 at age 86. The emphasis here is less on Vidal’s life as a literary lion and often glittering celebrity social life than on his parallel career as a harsh scold of US social injustices and political corruption. (Needless to say, recent history only sharpened his tongue in that department, with George W. Bush dismissed as “a goddamn fool,” and earlier statements such as “This is a country of the rich, for the rich and by the rich” seeming more apt than ever.) He’s a wellspring of wisdoms both blunt and witty, sometimes surprising, as in his hindsight doubts about the virtues of JFK (a personal friend) as a president. We get plenty of colorful archival clips in which he’s seen verbally jousting with such famous foes as William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, invariably reducing them to stammering fury while remaining exasperatingly unruffled. His “out” homosexuality and outré views on sexuality in general (at odds with an increasingly assimilationist gay community) kept him controversial even among many liberals, while conservatives were further irked by his rock-solid family connections to the ruling elite. In our era of scripted political rhetoric and pandering anti-intellectualism, it’s a joy merely to spend an hour and half in the company of someone so brilliantly articulate on seemingly any topic — but particularly on the perpetually self-mythologizing, money-worshipping state of our Union. (1:29) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

The Grand Seduction Canadian actor-director Don McKellar (1998’s Last Night) remakes 2003 Quebecois comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis, about a depressed community searching for the town doctor they’ll need before a factory will agree to set up shop and bring much-needed jobs to the area. Canada is still the setting here, with the harbor’s name — Tickle Head — telegraphing with zero subtlety that whimsy lies ahead. A series of events involving a Tickle Head-based TSA agent, a bag of cocaine, and a harried young doctor (Taylor Kitsch) trying to avoid jail time signals hope for the hamlet, and de facto town leader Murray (Brendan Gleeson) snaps into action. The seduction of “Dr. Paul,” who agrees to one month of service not knowing the town is desperate to keep him, is part Northern Exposure culture clash, part Jenga-like stack of lies, as the townspeople pretend to love cricket (Paul’s a fanatic) and act like his favorite lamb dish is the specialty at the local café. The wonderfully wry Gleeson is the best thing about this deeply predictable tale, which errs too often on the side of cute (little old ladies at the switchboard listening in on Paul’s phone-sex with his girlfriend!) rather than clever, as when an unsightly structure in the center of town is explained away with a fake “World Heritage House” plaque. Still, the scenery is lovely, and “cute” doesn’t necessarily mean “not entertaining.” (1:52) Albany, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Ida The bomb drops within the first ten minutes: after being gently forced to reconnect with her only living relative before taking her vows, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns that her name is actually Ida, and that she’s Jewish. Her mother’s sister, Wanda (Agneta Kulesza) — a Communist Party judge haunted by a turbulent past she copes with via heavy drinking, among other vices — also crisply relays that Ida’s parents were killed during the Nazi occupation, and after some hesitation agrees to accompany the sheltered young woman to find out how they died, and where their bodies were buried. Drawing great depth from understated storytelling and gorgeous, black-and-white cinematography, Pawel Pawilowski’s well-crafted drama offers a bleak if realistic (and never melodramatic) look at 1960s Poland, with two polar-opposite characters coming to form a bond as their layers of painful loss rise to the surface. (1:20) Albany, Clay, Piedmont. (Eddy)

Ivory Tower The latest “issue doc” to come down the pipeline is this very timely and incisive look at the cost of higher education from director Andrew Rossi (2011’s Page One: Inside the New York Times). Rossi is a Yale and Harvard Law grad, and he begins his film in the hallowed halls of the latter to frame the question: In the era of skyrocketing tuition, and with the student loan debt hovering at a trillion bucks, is college still worth it? The answer is left open-ended, though with the very strong suggestion that nontraditional education (including community colleges, online learning, and the Silicon Valley-spawned “uncollege” movement) is certainly something worth exploring, particularly for the non-wealthy. Along the way, we do see some positive tales (a kid from the mean streets of Cleveland gets a full-ride scholarship to Harvard; students at rural Deep Springs College follow philosophy discussions with farm work; African American women at Spelman College thrive in an empowering environment), but there’s a fair amount of cynicism here, too, with a hard look at how certain state schools are wooing deep-pocketed out-of-staters with fancy athletic stadiums, luxurious amenities, and a willingness to embrace, however unofficially, their hard-partying reputations. Segments following a student protest at New York’s Cooper Union, a formerly free school forced to consider collecting tuition after a string of financial troubles, echo Frederick Wiseman’s epic At Berkeley (2013), a thematically similar if stylistically very different work. (1:37) California. (Eddy)

Jersey Boys The musical that turned the back story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the 1960s hit making machines behind upbeat doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). Still, the cast — including Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. For an interview with cast members Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits), visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (2:14) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Eddy)

Obvious Child We first encounter the protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s funny, original film — a Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething named Donna (Jenny Slate), who works at a lefty secondhand bookstore and makes regular (if unpaid) appearances at a local comedy night — onstage mining such underdiscussed topics as the effects of vaginal discharge on your garden-variety pair of underwear. This proves a natural segue to other hefty nuggets of embarrassment gold concerning her love life, to the dismay of boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), auditing from the back of the club. He pretty much deserves it, however, for what he’s about to do, which is break up with her in a nasty, well-populated unisex bathroom, taking time to repeatedly glance at the texts coming through on his phone from Donna’s good friend, with whom he’s sleeping. So when Donna, mid-drowning of sorrows, meets a nice-looking fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) at the bar, his post-fraternity-presidency aesthetic seems unlikely to deter her from a one-night stand. The ensuing trashed make-out dance-off in Max’s apartment to the Paul Simon song of the title is both comic and adorable. The fractured recap of the evening’s condom-free horizontal events that occurs inside Donna’s brain three weeks later, as she hunkers down with her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), in the bookstore’s bathroom after peeing on a stick, is equally hilarious — and unwanted-pregnancy jokes aren’t that easy to pull off. Robespierre’s treatment of this extended windup and of Donna’s decision to have an abortion is a witty, warmhearted retort to 2007’s Knocked Up, a couple generations’ worth of Hollywood rom-com writers, and an entertainment industry that continues to perform its sweaty contortions of storytelling in the gutless cause of avoiding the A-word. (1:15) California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Ping Pong Summer Eighties teen flicks of the My Bodyguard (1980), smart-dweebs-beat-the-bullies ilk are paid homage in Michael Tully’s deadpan satire, which is closer in spirit to the Comedy of Lameness school whose patron saint is Napoleon Dynamite. Radley (Marcello Conte) is an average teen so excited to be spending the summer of 1985 in Ocean City, Md. with his family that he renames himself “Rad Miracle.” He acquires a new best friend in Teddy (Myles Massey), who as the whitest black kid imaginable might make even Rad look cool by comparison. However, they are both dismayed to discover the local center for video gaming and everything else they like is ruled by bigger, older, cuter, and snottier douchebag Lyle Ace (Joseph McCaughtry) and his sidekick. Only kicking Lyle’s ass at ping pong — with some help from a local weirdo (a miscast Susan Sarandon, apparently here because she’s an off screen ping pong enthusiast) — can save Rad’s wounded dignity, and the summer in general. A big step up from Tully’s odd but pointless prior Septien (2011), this has all the right stuff (including a soundtrack packed with the likes of the Fat Boys, Mary Jane Girls, New Edition, Whodini, and Night Ranger) to hilariously parody the era’s inanities. But it’s just mildly amusing — a droll attitude with lots of period detail but not much bite. (1:32) Roxie. (Harvey)

The Rover Future days have never seemed quite so bleak as they are depicted in the wild, wild Aussie west of The Rover — rendered by Animal Kingdom (2010) director David Michod, who co-wrote The Rover with Joel Edgerton. Let’s just say we’re probably not going to see any primo Burner ensembles inspired by this post-apocalyptic yarn: Michod ventures to a plausible future only a decade out, after a global economic collapse, and breaks down the brooding road trip to its hard-boiled bones, setting it in a beauteous, lawless, and unceasingly violent outback. A heist gone wrong leads a small gang of robbers to steal the car belonging to monosyllabic, ruthless mystery man Eric (Guy Pearce). The latter wants his boxy little sedan back, badly, and, in the cat and mouse game that ensues, seems willing to die for the trouble. Meanwhile, one of the gang of thieves — the slow, dreamy Rey (Robert Pattinson), who has been left to die of a gunshot wound in the dirt — turns out to be more of a survivor than anyone imagined when he tracks down the tracker hunting for his brother and cohorts. Michod seems most interested in examining and turning over the ties that bind, in a mean time, an eminently absurdist moment, when everything else has fallen away in the face of sheer survival. Cineastes, however, will appreciate the elemental, existential pleasures of this dog-eat-dog Down Under out-Western, not the least of which include the performances. Pearce’s rework of the Man With No Name exudes intention in the very forward thrust of his stance, and Pattinson breaks his cool — and the confines of typecasting — as a blubbering, babbling, thin-skinned man-child. Clad in the mystic expanses of the South Australia desert, which tip a hat to John Ford Westerns as well as scorched-earth-of-the-mind movies such as El Topo (1970) and Paris, Texas (1984), The Rover is taken to the level of tone poem by the shuddering, moaning cellos of Antony Partos’s impressive, atonal electroacoustic score. (1:42) Metreon, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Signal Sharing its title with a 2007 film — also a thriller about a mysterious transmission that wreaks havoc in the lives of its protagonists — this offbeat feature from co-writer and director William Eubank belies its creator’s deep affection for, and knowledge of, the sci-fi genre. Number one thing The Signal is not is predictable, but its twists feel organic even as the story takes one hairpin turn after another. MIT buddies Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) are driving Nic’s girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke), cross-country to California. Complicating the drama of the young couple’s imminent separation is Nic’s deteriorating physical condition (it’s never explained, but the former runner apparently has MS or some other neurological disease). The road trip turns dark when the trio (who also happen to be hackers) realize an Internet troll they’ve tangled with in the past is stalking them. After a brief detour into found-footage horror — fooled ya, Eubank seems to be saying; this ain’t that kind of movie at all! — the kids find themselves embroiled in ever-more-terrifying realities. To give away more would ruin the fun of being shocked for yourself, but think Twilight Zone meets Area 51 meets a certain futuristic trilogy starring Laurence Fishburne, who turns up here to play a very important role in Nic and company’s waking nightmare. (1:37) Metreon. (Eddy) *

Alerts: June 25 – July 1, 2014

Michael Redmond

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June 24, 2014

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THURSDAY 26

Climate Forum: Confronting Oil, Coal and Gas, Direct Action Movements at the Point of Extraction

The Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia, SF. tinyurl.com/oilcoalforum. 6:45pm, donation requested. The oil and natural gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has become one of the most pressing issues in the Bay Area and California. It is a major cause of water and air pollution and is highly resource-intensive. Nevertheless there is low awareness about its harmful effects, and state policies still allow its proliferation. This panel will discuss fracking and other hazardous resource extraction processes in the U.S. and educate participants in the first steps for taking action.

Plastic Paradise: Film and discussion

Ecology Center, 2530 San Pablo, Berk. (510) 548-2220, tinyurl.com/plasticfreejuly. 7-9pm, free. Plastic Paradise is a new documentary about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This event helps prepare for Plastic-Free July—an annual event originating in Australia—that aims to educate the public about how much plastic we use, and explains how we can eliminate as much as possible from our lives. The film screening will be followed with a discussion led by Beth Terry, author of Plastic-Free: How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too. Sponsored by Green Sangha, the City of Berkley, and My Plastic-Free Life.

FRIDAY 27

Trans March youth and elder brunch

Dolores Park, 19th and Dolores, SF. tinyurl.com/transmarchbrunch. 12-3pm, free. Right before the Trans March, this brunch gives LGBTQ youth and elders the opportunity to learn from each other. There will be food, games, icebreakers, an art station, face painting and more. The sober event is designed for self-identified LGBTQ people, ages 24 and under. Hosted by LYRIC, OpenHouse and Trans March.

Sunday 29

Meeting: Syria — Eyewitness Report

Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakl. http://tinyurl.com/pjkvv5f 10:30-12:30pm, free. Rick Sterling, a founding member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, spent two weeks in Syria as part of a peace and reconciliation delegation, and he returns to discuss the conflict there and why it matters to progressives in the United States. For a firsthand account of the hostilities in the region—at no cost—be sure to stop by the Niebyl-Proctor library early to ensure you get a seat.

Guardian Intelligence: June 25 – July 1, 2014

Michael Redmond

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June 24, 2014

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The Bay Guardian is moving — into the mall. Yeah, we know, it struck us the same way initially. But the space we’ll be sharing with our sister newspapers within San Francisco Media Company, San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly, on the fifth floor of the Westfield Mall is a nice, sprawling sets of offices that previously housed the San Francisco State University extension program. As we make our move on the afternoon of June 27, however, our SFBG.com website will be down for a few hours in the evening while our servers transition to their new digs. And the next time you’re in the mall, you can wave to us from the food court.

ARCHIVES IMPERILED

A sad note during Pride celebrations: The vast and essential GLBT Historical Society this week sent word out that its building’s rent had jumped an unaffordable 30 percent, and that it would have to find a new home within 18 months. The nonprofit society’s historical archives contains more than 80,000 photographs dating from the 1880s, 5,000 posters, 4,000 magazines, and tens of thousands of other artifacts. Anybody got a free basement? For more info and to see how you can help, see www.glbthistory.org.

ALL THE ‘T’

Award-winning documentary What’s the T?, which follows five local transgender women and allows them to tell their own stories, is streaming on Hulu.com as part of the Web TV site’s Pride week. “To understand the ladies of What’s the T? is to love them,” says San Francisco-based filmmaker Cecilio Asuncion of his film’s subjects. Look for all five to be riding in the Pride parade Sun/29.

FREE LUV

The ULUV Music Day Sat/21 saw more than 100 musicians performing in parklets, BART stations, coffee shops, and other public locations in every neighborhood in San Francisco. Culminating in a musician flash mob at Dolores Park and a proclamation from the city, the day was organized by Michael Starita and Robin Applewood of ULUV, a charitable organization designed to build community and financial support for Bay Area musicians (ie, let’s stop them from feeling the need to move to LA). The organization’s next event will be a happy hour on July 16 featuring Nathan Blaz of Georgrapher, location TBA. Check www.uluvmusic.com for more.

SAVE LOST WEEKEND!

Dateline: San Francisco. Chilling news, via Facebook, on the “all the cool shit is in danger” front, with a post by Valencia Street stalwart Lost Weekend Video. “Times are tough at Lost Weekend Video! We’ve seen business suddenly drop by 30 percent just in the last few months, on top of the 60 percent hit we’ve already taken over the last few years. This has thrown us into a pretty immediate crisis.” The post went on to say the video store is hoping to bring in a co-tenant to share costs (similar to the partnership between Le Video and Green Apple Books) and ended on a cautiously optimistic note: “We’re a year away from 20, it’d be nice to see it!” Reached at Lost Weekend Monday afternoon, co-owner David Hawkins said, “We realize that you can’t probably sustain a full-scale video store in the city the way you used to. So it’s just a matter of trying to come up with the right formula.” See www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision for more.

MARTHA DOES THE MISSION

What kind of San Francisco dining establishments are good enough for a notoriously choosy lifestyle guru worth $300 million? The same ones populated by 20-something Missionites, it turns out: After checking out Mission Chinese on her last jaunt through town, Martha Stewart was spotted this past Thursday and Friday at Ichi Sushi and Tartine; she posted a photo of a ham and cheese croissant from the latter, noting it was “worth the wait.” Fifty bucks to anyone who gets her drunk at 500 Club next time.

DAM RIGHT

It’s obvious why the recent eco-activist documentary DamNation has won so many dam(n) awards. Last week, the David Brower Center in Berkeley screened the film, which was released May of this year. The “powerful film odyssey across America” explores how dams affect rivers, fish, the environment and more. The cinematography feels like a Wes Anderson film, and Ben Knight’s witty yet informative narration is laced with sass. And if the politics and beautiful images aren’t enough to draw you in, the interviews, photo montages of activists running naked through pre-dam Glen Canyon, and videos of the crew trespassing to graffiti dams and film explosions will. Go to damnationfilm.com to learn more or to host a screening.

COFFEE SPIES

You love Philz. We love Philz. Everybody loves Philz! Apparently, Phils loves us too, enough to peer deep into customers’ data anytime they connect to its Wi-Fi — and to sell it to the highest bidder. Specifically, news outlets have reported, the hand-pour masters partnered with Euclid Analytics to track and sell the Media Access Control (MAC) address of devices connected to its Wi-Fi. After the news blew up on ABC 7, Philz backed down, and announced it’d sever its icky Big Brother partnership. We’d like that Turkish with no sugar and no spying, please.

GOLDEN NO MORE?

Basketball news site the RealGM is reporting a spicy rumor: that the Golden State Warriors will change their name to the San Francisco Warriors after their move across the Bay. The team’s new Mission Bay stadium might have something to do with the switch. RealGM tweeted the photos, too, with a big SF over a basketball as the new logo.

ILLEGAL MONKEYS

An iPhone app that lets users auction off their parking spots might sound like a novel idea, especially in parking-deprived San Francisco. Unfortunately for Paolo Dobrowolny, co-founder and CEO of the MonkeyParking app that does exactly that, the practice is also illegal. City Attorney Dennis Herrera issued a cease-and-desist demand against MonkeyParking. “Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work — and Monkey Parking is not one of them,” Herrera said in a statement. “It’s illegal, it puts drivers on the hook for $300 fines, and it creates a predatory private market for public parking spaces that San Franciscans will not tolerate.”

Pride on fire! 2014’s must-do Pride events

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June 24, 2014

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Hey gorgeous queer person (and friends)! There is way too much to do this year, as always. Don’t be scared. Dive right into the party and performance bounty that is Pride.

ONGOING

>2014 National Queer Arts Festival: The Queer Cultural Center’s annual LGBT celebration occupies venues across the city — including the African American Art & Culture Complex, Brava Theater, CounterPULSE, Mission Cultural Center, S.F. LGBT Community Center, SOMArts, and many others — in a monthlong multidisciplinary cavalcade of queerness that features films, plays, literary readings, live music, art shows, a comic-con, and much more. Through July 6, www.qcc2.org/national-queer-arts-festival. Multiple SF Locations, Multiple addresses, SF, N/A.
>Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay: In this exhibit honoring the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, more than 75 of the California photographer’s classic snapshots depict the SF and Los Angeles gay scenes in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Tuesdays-Sundays. Continues through Jan. 11. de Young Museum, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, SF, 750-3600, www.deyoungmuseum.org.
>The Bakla Show 3: Part of an ongoing attempt to reclaim the Tagalog term “bakla” from pejorative common use, this third installment in Bindlestiff’s LGBT production series focuses on the specific struggles faced by queer F/Pilipin@ youth. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8pm Continues through June 28, $10-$20, thebaklashow.wordpress.com. Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St., SF, 255-0440, www.bindlestiffstudio.org.
>Body, Body, Bodies…: Nearly 30 artists weigh in on the subject of body politics in this multidisciplinary group show presented by the 2014 National Queer Arts Festival. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Continues through June 28. SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF, 863-1414, www.somarts.org.
>Devil Boys from Beyond: 1950s sci-fi gets campy and queer in this cross-dressing alien invasion comedy written by Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliott. Wednesdays-Sundays. Continues through June 28, $25-$45. New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF, 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org.
>Frameline38: The largest, most widely recognized LGBT film festival in the world kicked off its 38th year with a showing of The Case Against 8, Ben Cotner and Ryan White’s new documentary about the successful fight to overturn California’s ignominious Prop 8. The rest of the fest is fleshed out with queer cinema from all over the world, with screenings at the Roxie, Victoria, and Castro Theatres in S.F., plus select shows at Berkeley’s Rialto Cinemas Elmwood. Through June 29, $8-$35 per film, www.frameline.org.
>The Homosexuals: Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins makes his first foray onto a Bay Area stage with this witty tale about a group of gay friends. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8pm. Continues through June 28, $25-$45. New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF, 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org.
>Pansy: Actor Evan Johnson and director Ben Randle bring their collaborative one-man play — a Peter Pan-inspired portrayal of a gay club kid in ‘90s SF — back to the stage for a brief run at the end of Pride Month. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 8pm Continues through June 28, $15-$20. New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF, 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org.
>Todd Trexler: A Solo Exhibition of His Legendary Posters: A show honoring the late LGBT artist whose 1970s posters for the Cockettes and Nocturnal Dream Shows at the Palace Theater in North Beach have become collectors’ items. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Continues through June 30, www.toddtrexlerposters.com. Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF, 581-1600, www.magnetsf.org.

WEDNESDAY/25

>Bi-B-Q 2014: Bi-Focused: Bisexual potluck picnic and community meetup. Wed., June 25, 4-6:30pm, free, www.facebook.com/BiBQSF. Dolores Park, 566 Dolores, SF, 554-9529, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Park.
>Booty Call: One of the cutest parties in the Castro, with drag goddess Juanita More and very fashionable guests. Wednesdays, 9pm, $3, bootycallwednesdays.com. Q Bar, 456 Castro, SF, 864-2877, www.qbarsf.com.
>BroMance: A Night Out for the Fellas: Wednesdays, 9pm, free. Beaux, 2344 Market, SF, 863-4027, www.beauxsf.com.
>David Boies & Theodore Olson: The Case for Marriage Equality: Wed., June 25, 7pm, $35. SF LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, SF, 865-5555, www.sfcenter.org. In 2009, the pair seemed an unlikely legal team to overturn Caliornia’s ban on same-sex marriage — but now, one year after the elimination of Prop 8, the lawyers discuss their success in “Redeeming the Dream: The Case for Marriage Equality.” Also Thu/26 at Fairmont Hotel (see listing).
>Dazzle: Broadway … Our Way!: The SF Gay Men’s Chorus performs showtunes (from Avenue Q, Dreamgirls, Rent, Oklahoma!, West Side Story, and more) with Tony-winning special guest Laura Benanti. June 25-27, 8pm, $25-$60, sfgmc.org. Nourse Theatre, 275 Hayes, SF, 563-2463, www.cityarts.net/the-nourse.
>The Dream Queens Revue’s Annual Pride Drag Show: Classic drag extravaganza with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, Sheena Rose, Kipper, and Joie de Vivre. Wed., June 25, 9:30pm, free, dreamqueensrevue.com. Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF, 441-2922, www.auntcharlieslounge.com.
>House of Pride Jamboree Fundraiser: Featuring comedy, poetry, drag, and music by Pam Benjamin, S.J. Cruz, Sheena Rose, The Screaming Streisands, and more. Wed., June 25, 6-9pm, $10, www.facebook.com/HOP.RADIO.SF. Mutiny Radio, 2781 21st St., SF, www.mutinyradio.fm.
>Love Is Queer: The Gay American Songbook: Circus, drag, and cabaret combine for this performance (for audiences 18+) with Honey Mahogany, M. Lee, Eli Conley’s Queer Choir, Kim Lembo, and more. June 25-26, 8pm, $15-$25. Theater at the Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Fourth St., SF, 820-3320, www.creativity.org.
>OutLoud SF: StoryCorps launches a new program to record LGBT stories with a West Coast kickoff party featuring Dave Isay, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, Jaime Cortez, Matt Leavitt, Morgan, and live music by Mad Noise. Wed., June 25, 7-10pm, free with RSVP (required), outloud-sf.eventbrite.com. The Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF, 551-5157, www.thechapelsf.com.
>>>Pullin’ Pork for Pride 10th Annual Pride Kickoff: The SF Bay Guardian (that’s us!) presents this always raucous happy hour BBQ benefiting the Transgender Law Center. Free pulled pork sammies — veggie option, too! — from Soulgroove, Hard French soul DJs Carnita and Brown Amy, $15 all the New Belgium beer you can drink. And lots of cool peeps, of course. Wed., June 25, 6-9pm, free. Pilsner Inn, 225 Church, SF, 621-7058, www.pilsnerinn.com.
>What?: Techno fun with resident DJ Tisdale and guests. Wednesdays, 7pm, free. Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF, 703-9751, www.lookoutsf.com.

THURSDAY/26

>22nd Annual Ms. & Mr. Safe Latino Competition: Thu., June 26, 7pm, $10. Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF, 673-6672, www.marineclub.com/theatre.php.
>California Academy of Sciences: Pride NightLife: The gorgeous science museum’s big Pride party hosts a DapperQ fashion show showcasing local queer designers who cater to an “unconvemtionally masculing” demographic. Featuring DJs Carnita, Brown Amy, Rapid Fire, and Juanita More, plus a drag show hosted by Heklina, a presentation by Dr. Carol Queen of the Center for Sex & Culture, planetarium shows, and a lot more. Thu., June 26, 6-10pm, $10-$12. California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse, SF, 379-8000, www.calacademy.org.
>David Boies & Theodore Olson: The Case for Marriage Equality: Thu., June 26, 6pm, $26, www.bit.ly/caseforequality. The Fairmont Hotel, 950 Mason, SF, 866-540-4491, www.fairmont.com/sanfrancisco.
>Fauxgirls!: 13th Anniversary Celebration: The long-running drag revue and supperclub cabaret moves to the fourth Thursday for a special party to kick off S.F. Pride weekend. Thu., June 26, 7pm, free (with $20 minimum food/cocktail purchase), www.fauxgirls.com. Infusion Lounge, 124 Ellis, SF, 421-8700, www.infusionlounge.com.
>Horse Meat Disco: London’s notorious gay disco DJs take over Public Works for the ever-freaky, totally wonderful Odyssey dance party. With local DJs Robin Simmons and Hi, Today. Thu., June 26, 9pm, $10-$15. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF, 932-0955, www.publicsf.com.
>Loft Apartment: Fun tunes for fuzzy dudes with DJs Tuna and Tamale Rinwald. Thu., June 26, 7pm Lone Star Saloon, 1354 Harrison, SF, 863-9999, www.lonestarsf.com.
The Monster Show: Goofy-awesome thematic weekly drag performances with Cookie Dough, DJ MC2, and guests. Thursdays, 10pm, $5, www.cookievision.com. The Edge, 4149 18th St., SF, 863-4027, www.edgesf.com.
>S.F. Gay Pride All Star Comedy Show: Charlie Ballard and Hella Gay Comedy say TTFN with a free, all ages farewell show featuring Karinda Dobbins, Kelly Doyle, Ash Fisher, Justin Lucas, Sampson McCormick, and Zachary Toczynski. Thu., June 26, 8pm, free, www.facebook.com/HellaGayComedyShow. Magnet, 4122 18th St., SF, 581-1600, www.magnetsf.org.
>The Stud’s 48th Anniversary Party: Hey, hey — the oldest gay bar in SF celebrates 48 with a slew of special guests and strong drinks. Thu., June 26, 8pm The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF, 863-6623, www.studsf.com.
>Swagger Like Us: The city’s best queer hip-hop and bounce daytime party hits you with a special Pride edition — expect all the colors of the rainbow getting low. With DJs davO, Boyfriend, and Essex. Thu., June 26, 9pm, $5. Slate Bar, 2925 16th St., SF, 558-8521, www.slate-sf.com.
>#Thirsty!: 18+ gay pride party with hottie NYC rapper Cazwell, Rachele Royale, Kidd Sysko, Philip Grasso, and more. Thu., June 26, 9pm, free before 10pm with RSVP, www.thecribsf.com. Club X, 715 Harrison, SF, 339-8686, www.sfclubs.com.
>Tubesteak Connection: Takin’ it back to the gay bathhouse days, with DJ Bus Station John’s vinyl disco gems and real cute dancefloor. Thursdays, 9pm, $5. Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF, 441-2922, www.auntcharlieslounge.com.
>U-Haul: Pride 2014 Kick-Off Party: Wild lesbian dancing! With DJs China G and Chelsea Starr. Thu., June 26, 9pm, free, www.facebook.com/uhaul.SanFrancisco. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF, 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com.
>XO: Bad Bitches Never Hold Back – Pride Edition: Ladies, start your engiines. With DJs Footy, Yo Yolie, Motive, Ms. Jackson, Olga T, Jai, That Girl, and Jeanine Da Feen. Thu., June 26, 9pm, facebook.com/PartyXO. The Cellar, 685 Sutter, SF, 441-5678, www.cellarsf.com.

FRIDAY/27

>2014 Trans March: Fri., June 27, 6pm, free, www.transmarch.org. Dolores Park, 566 Dolores, SF, 554-9529, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Park.
>2014 Trans March After Party: With DJ Ms. Pop. Fri., June 27, 9pm, free. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF, 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com.
>Bearracuda: Gay Pride 2014: Who doesn’t like a roiling club full of sweaty, half-naked, barrel-chested furballs? With DJs HiFi Sean, Rotten Robbie, and Freddy, King of Pants. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $12 advance, www.bearracuda.com. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF, 932-0955, www.publicsf.com.
>Bibi: Middle-Eastern and North African hotties unite and shake their hips to slinky beats. Alas, this is the final installment of this fantastic long-running, so go grab your bedroom-eyed dream date. Fri., June 27, 9pm-2am, $10-$15. www.bibisf.org. The Pork Store, 3122 16th St., SF.
>Big Gay Birthday: Local blog Bold Italic celebrates SF’s birth and Pride simultaneously. With the fabuous JD Samson (DJ set) of MEN, bounce duo Double Duchess, Peaches Christ, Honey Mahogany, DJ Rapid Fire, and more. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $15-$20. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF, 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com.
>Bustin’ Out 9: Official Trans March Afterparty: TGI Justice Project benefit with OMEDJ and raffle prizes. Fri., June 27, 8pm, $5-$25, tgijp.org. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF, 282-3325, www.elriosf.com..
>Comedy and Pride: Comedy and Pinball for a Cause celebrates LGBT Pride Month with stand-up performances by Karinda Dobbins, Nina G, Loren Kraut, Michael Patton, and Irene Tu. Fri., June 27, 8pm, $15, www.facebook.com/komedyforacause. Pacific Pinball Museum, 1510 Webster, Alameda, 510-769-1349, www.pacificpinball.org.
>Darling Switches: Darling Nikki + Switch S.F. Queer Pride Dance Party: Two darling dyke-oriented parties get up close and personal. With DJs Finn, Durt, Andre, and Jenna Riot. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $7, www.facebook.com/darlingnikkisf. Slate Bar, 2925 16th St., SF, 558-8521, www.slate-sf.com.
>Drag Yourself to Pride: Super Heroes & Sexy Villains: A superhero-themed “prom” party. With DJ Brian Urmanita. Fri., June 27, 9:30pm, $5-$10. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF, 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com.
>Eden: All White Everything: With Aima the Dreamer, Collette Carr, plus DJs Val G, Lady Ryan, Motive, Fusion, Lezlee, Angie Vee, and Dirty Rich Kidd. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $20-$30 advance, edeninthebay.com. The Factory, 525 Harrison, SF, 538-7977.
>Mr.: Seventh Annual Mustache Party & Gay Pride Kick-Off: Energetic and stylish annual dance a ffair is a mustache-ride’s-worth of fun. Get ready to twirl. House grooves with David Harness, Kevin Graves, Manny Ward, Gehno Sanchez Aviance, and Juan Garcia. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $20-$25. Monarch, 101 Sixth St., SF, 284-9774, www.monarchsf.com.
>Original Plumbing: Takeoff: The awesome, steamy transman magazine from Amos Mac and Rocco Katastrophe goes big for Pride. Benefit for CUAV with DJs Chelsea Starr & Average Jo, Rocco Katastrophe, and more. Fri., June 27, 10pm, $10. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF, 552-7788, www.elbo.com.
>Parallelogram: “Fractal/euphoric synaesthesia, surprise performances, and mindblowing beats” — plus a bit of funky techno and fun peeps. With DJs Justime, Doc Sleep, Robert Jeffrey, Robert Yang, and more. Fri., June 27, 9pm-late, $5-$10. Club OMG, 43 Sixth St., SF.
>Pound Puppy: House Trained: Heel! Happy young scruffs hound the dancefloor for this sexy monthly party’s Pride extension. Hard and smart house tunes with With DJs Jackie House (aka P-Play), Aaron Clark of Pittsburgh’s yummy Honcho party, and Chipmint. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $10-$15 advance. BeatBox, 314 11th St., SF, 500-2675, www.beatboxsf.com.
>Pride on the Pier: Academy of Friends benefit party with Colette Carr, DJ Jayplus, and Beach Blanket Babylon cast members. Fri., June 27, 6-9pm, $45-$75. Hornblower Cruises, Pier 3, SF, 788-8866, www.hornblower.com.
>She Said … Get Her Wet: With DJs China G, Olga T, Nicki Butler, and Bia Bia. Fri., June 27, 10pm, $10-$20, www.shesaidsf.com. The Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF, 551-5157, www.thechapelsf.com.
>Society Cabaret: Spicy Gay Comedy: With Shann Carr. June 27-28, 8pm, $25-$45, www.societycabaret.com. Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF, 433-4434.
>Some Thing Gay Freedom Celebration: Weekly art-dragpocalypse always has something grandly weird planned — Pride’s no different. Twelve hours of fun and shows! Fri., June 27, 9pm-9am, $12. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.thestudsf.com.
>Steam does Pride: This is a party during which hot guys walk around in towels and take showers. With DJ Chris Griswold. Fri., Jun 27, 9pm, $10. Powerhouse, 1347 Folsom, SF, www.powerhouse-sf.com
>Take It Back: A Queer Pride Rock & Punk Music Fest: Classic queercore band Limp Wrist headlines this night of punk rock bliss. With The Younger Lovers, Queen Crescent, Daddies Plastik, Lady Bear, Ben McCoy, Alice Cunt, and more. Fri., June 27, 9pm, $7-$10, www.facebook.com/events/1416089975342317. Sub-Mission Art Space (Balazo 18 Gallery), 2183 Mission, SF, 255-7227, www.sf-submission.com.

SATURDAY/28

>2014 Dyke March: Sat., June 28, 6pm, free, www.thedykemarch.org. Dolores Park, 566 Dolores, SF, 554-9529, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Park.
>2014 Dyke March After Party: With DJ Footy. Sat., June 28, 9pm, free. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF, 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com.
>2014 S.F. Pride Celebration: Color Our World with Pride – Saturday: The gathering before Sunday’s big parade shows off entertainment and booths – -without the huge crowds. Sat., June 28, 12-6pm, $5 requested donation, sfpride.org. Civic Center Plaza, Larkin, SF,
>BB3: BeatBox’s Third Anniversary Pride Party: With Matt Alber, Chris Cox, and Russ Rich. Sat., June 28, 10pm, $20-$85. BeatBox, 314 11th St., SF, 500-2675, www.beatboxsf.com.
>Beyond the Prison: WE Party – Prison of Love Afterhours: With DJ Paulo Pachecho (event runs 4-10am Sunday). Sat., June 28; Sun., June 29, $30, www.masterbeat.com. Club X, 715 Harrison, SF, 339-8686, www.sfclubs.com.
>¡Club Papi!: 15th Annual Brown Party: With Belanova. Sat., June 28, 9:30pm, $20 advance, www.clubpapi.com/san-francisco. Space 550, 550 Barneveld, SF, 550-8286, www.space550.com.
>Cockblock: Eighth Annual Dyke March After Party: With DJs Von Kiss, Natalie Nuxx, and Ms. Söfi. Sat., June 28, 9pm, $10-$20, www.cockblocksf.com. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF, 861-2011, www.rickshawstop.com.
>Dark Room: Queer Pink Saturday Pride Party: Dark and lovely electronic body music and goth-tinged drag performances. Special guest porcelain will give you the heebie-jeebies in the right way. With Lady Bear, Lady Hyde, Phatima Rude, DJs Le Perv & Luna Xix, and more. Sat., June 28, 9:30pm, $10, www.facebook.com/DarkRoomSF. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF, 863-6623, www.studsf.com.
>Eden: Fifth Year Anniversary Party: With Goapele, Jessica Clark, Ari Fitz, Rose Garcia, Mona Webb, plus DJs Lady Ryan, Val G, Motive, and Angie Vee. Sat., June 28, 9pm, $25-$35, www.edeninthebay.com. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF, 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com.
>Gary Virginia & Donna Sachet’s 16th Annual Pride Brunch: Benefit for the Positive Resource Center featuring food, cocktails, music, silent auction, and more. Sat., June 28, 11am-4pm, $75+, www.positiveresource.org/pridebrunch. Hotel Whitcomb, 1231 Market, SF, 626-8000, www.hotelwhitcomb.com.
>Hella Saucey: The Saturday Pride Party: Something for the queer soul kids, with incredible queer rapper MicahTron, Aima the Dreamer, DJs Andre & Lady Fingaz, and more. Sat., June 28, 9pm, $10-$15, www.hellasaucey.com. Elbo Room, 647 Valencia, SF, 552-7788, www.elbo.com.
>The House of Babes Dyke March After Party: House of Babes sounds exactly like what it is. A house full of babes. With queer rapper Cakes Da Killa, Junglepussy, Lisa Delux, Rapid Fire, Jenna Riot, davO, and Boyfriend. Lots of bouncing! Sat., June 28, 7pm, $15-$35 advance, www.thehouseofbabes.com. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF, 932-0955, www.publicsf.com.
>Intrigue: The Fashion Crossing: Bigtime S.F. Pride fashion show hosted by B. Scott. Sat., June 28, 5-8pm, $15-$40 advance, sfpridefashion.eventbrite.com. BeatBox, 314 11th St., SF, 500-2675, www.beatboxsf.com.
>Lea DeLaria: Sat., June 28, 7pm, $45-$60. The homegrown comedy favorite is killin’ em in Orange is the New Black. See her live! Feinstein’s at the Nikko, 222 Mason, SF, 394-1111.
>Mango: Salsa-soulful After the Dyke March party with DJs Edaj, Marcella, Olga, and La Coqui. Sat., June 28, 3-8:30pm, $8-$10, www.facebook.com/mangosf. El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF, 282-3325, www.elriosf.com.
>Mars Madness: All-day party at Mars Bar — check out the sweet patio! — as Dj Aurelia the Mixtress lays down the smokin’ tracks. Sat., June 28, all day. Mars Bar, 798 Brannan, SF. www.marsbarsf.com
>Pop Porn: With DJs Chi Chi LaRue and Kevin Graves. Sat., June 28, 8pm Beaux, 2344 Market, SF, 863-4027, www.beauxsf.com.
>Pride at the Armory: WE Party – Prison of Love: Sat., June 28, 9pm, $60-$175, www.freshsf.com. The Armory, 1800 Mission, SF, 677-0456, www.sfarmory.com.
>Sadistic Saturdays: With DJ Mystic Ray. Sat., June 28, 9pm, $5. S.F. Eagle, 398 12th St., SF, 626-0880, www.sf-eagle.com.
>Shangri-La: S.F. Pride Rendezvous Party: A fabulous dance party for gay Asian folk and friends. With DJs Louis V & Byron Bonsall, TinTin V, Miss GAPA Khmera Rouge, and more. Sat., June 28, 10pm, $20 (free before 11pm), www.facebook.com/groups/shangrilasf. The EndUp, 401 Sixth St., SF, 646-0999, www.theendup.com.
>She Said … Hot Mess: 2014 Dyke March After-Party: With DJs Jane Bang and Nicki Butler. Sat., June 28, 8pm, $10-$20, www.shesaidsf.com. Slate Bar, 2925 16th St., SF, 558-8521, www.slate-sf.com.

SUNDAY/29

>2014 S.F. Pride Celebration: Color Our World with Pride – Sunday: With Jesika Von Rabbit, The She’s, Kid Alien, Debby Holiday, Xelle, Midnight Magic, Shake It! Booty Band, Steed Lord, Katdelic, RubberSideDown, and much more. Sun., June 29, 11am-6:30pm, $5 requested donation, www.sfpride.org. Civic Center Plaza, Larkin, SF.
>2014 S.F. Pride Parade: Sun., June 29, 10:30am, free, sfpride.org/parade. Market and Beale sts., Market and Beale sts., SF.
>Candy Crush: 2014 Pride Wrap-Up Party: With DJs Jenna Riot and Andre. Sun., June 29, 9pm, free. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF, 863-2052, www.lexingtonclub.com.
>¡Club Papi!: Official Latin Stage After Party: With DJ Polo. Sun., June 29, 7:30pm, $10 (first 100 people free), www.clubpapi.com/san-francisco. BeatBox, 314 11th St., SF, 500-2675, www.beatboxsf.com.
>Cocktailgate: The celebrated draghole’s theme this week is “Pride .. and other deadly sins.” Hosted by the inimitable Suppositori Spelling. Sundays, 9pm Truck, 1900 Folsom, SF, 252-0306, www.trucksf.com.
>Disco Daddy: Pride Edition: Who knew a leather bar could get this steamy? Dance with wild disco abandon to Bus Station John’s excellent old-school beat. Hotties on the hoof! With DJ Bus Station John. Sun., June 29, 7pm-2am, $5. Facebook invite here. S.F. Eagle, 398 12th St., SF, 626-0880, www.sf-eagle.com.
>GroovNation: S.F. Pride After-Party: A legend returns! Techno hero Doc Martin, house favorite Ruben Mancias, Papa Lu, and Teejay Walton fill the beautiful Audio club with great vibes and perfect post-Pride tunes. Sun., June 29, 6pm, $15 advance, groovnation.eventbrite.com. Audio Discotech, 316 11th St., SF, 310-869-3364, www.audiosf.com.
>Hard French ▼Hearts Los Homos IV: A ginormous block party and indoor celebration of Pride from golden soul crew Hard French. A Pride highlight for queer kids of all stripes. With Midnight Magic, Hi Fashion, DJs Brown Amy & Carnita, and more. Sun., June 29, 3-11pm, $20-$25, www.hardfrench.com. Mezzanine, 444 Jessie, SF, 625-8880, www.mezzaninesf.com.
>Honey Soundsystem Pride 2014: Honey has become a global queer techno sensation, but the fiercsome foursome’s heart beats loudest and deepest at home. With Italy-via-Berlin’s throbbing Discodromo duo (we love them), Jason Kendig, Josh Cheon, Jackie House (aka P-Play), and Robot Hustle. Sun., June 29, 8pm, $15-$20 advance. Mighty, 119 Utah, SF, 762-0151, www.mighty119.com.
>Mighty Real: Poolside Pride Day Party: Sunny, soulful smiles fill the patio of Chambers club and deep and joyful house tunes fill your ears. One of annual favorite things. With DJs Quentin Harris and David Harness. Sun., June 29, 12-8pm, $20 advance. Phoenix Hotel, 601 Eddy, SF, 776-1380, www.jdvhotels.com/phoenix.
>Juanita MORE! Pride Party: One of the most highly anticipated parties of the year — expect a shining crowd of cool kids and happy dancers. With Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters, Lady Bunny, Kim Ann Foxman, Go Bang!, Jason Kendig, and the Cougar Cadet Drum Corps. Sun., June 29, 12-10pm, $30. Jones, 620 Jones, SF. www.juanitamore.com
>Cindy Aquino: Kadena – Queer as Punk: Solo exhibition of photographs depicting the Filipin@ LGBT community. Sundays. Continues through June 29. Paolo Mejia, 4343 Third St., SF, www.paolomejia.com.
>Pride Sunday at the Lookout: With DJs Shawn P, Dirty Kurty, Byron Bonsall, and Luke Allen. Sun., June 29, noon. Lookout, 3600 16th St., SF, 703-9751, www.lookoutsf.com.
>Queerly Beloved: Porn goddess Courtney Love brings all the queers to her yard (El Rio’s back patio) for a Mission-style party like no othere. With MicahTron, The Younger Lovers, Cinnamon Maxxine, Jenna Riot, DJ Durt, Lisa Delux, and more. Sun., June 29, 3pm El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF, 282-3325, www.elriosf.com.
>The Social Life: Eden After Pride Party: With DJs Lady Ryan, Lezlee, and Dirty Rich Kidd. Sun., June 29, 7pm, $10 advance, www.edeninthebay.com. Parliament, 811 Washington, Oakland, 510-251-9911, www.811parliament.com.
>Sunday Mass: Art, Dance, Pride: Energetic special edition of the weekly party. With Ladytron (Reuben Wu DJ set), Lincoln Jesser, Two Dudes in Love, Straight Up in Love (Havoc + Dewey Beats), Richie Panic, Tracer, Blaus, Keith Kraft, Robert Jeffrey, and more. Sun., June 29, 6pm, $20-$30, masssundays.com. The Chapel, 777 Valencia, SF, 551-5157, www.thechapelsf.com.
>U-Haul: Pride 2014 Closing T-Dance: With DJs Von Kiss, Lisa Delux, and Chelsea Starr. Sun., June 29, 5-10pm, $10, www.facebook.com/uhaul.SanFrancisco. Vessel, 85 Campton, SF, 433-8585, www.vesselsf.com.

MONDAY/30

>Ascent: S.F. Pride High-Energy After Hours: With DJ Tristan Jaxx and a whole bunch of wide-eyed lovers (event runs 4-10am Monday morning). Mon., June 30, $20. BeatBox, 314 11th St., SF, 500-2675, www.beatboxsf.com.
>One Night Only Cabaret: Benefit for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation with cast members of Once, plus David Burnham, Sharon McNight, and Spencer Day. Mon., June 30, 7:30pm, $25-$100, www.helpisontheway.org. Club Fugazi, 678 Green, SF, 421-4222, www.beachblanketbabylon.com.

Pride listings were compiler by John Graham, with assistance from Cheryl Eddy and Marke B.

Frameline is underway! Plus: crooners, ping-pong champs, and more, in new movies

Sue Vaughan

-

June 20, 2014

0

Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, kicked off last night and runs through June 29; check out our big list o’ blurbs right here. Elsewhere, Clint Eastwood directs a musical, Guy Pearce prowls the outback, a very good suburban noir emerges from the Netherlands, a documentary takes on the cost of higher education, and more! Read on for the goods (and bads).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-VBgShBKlY

Borgman Popping out from his underground hidey hole, narrowly escaping organized armed vigilantes — indicating an ongoing, possibly global secret battle this movie is content to leave entirely unexplained — the titular figure (Jan Bijvoet) shambles to a nearby home and demands comfort. Refused, he persists, and housewife Marina (Hadewych Minis) acquiesces — at first on the sly, as husband Richard (Jeroen Perceval) has already beaten their paunchy, disheveled, weird would-be guest. But soon Borgman is insinuating himself with the well-off suburban couple’s three children, gradually warping the family dynamic until he has everyone under his power. You’ve seen this kind of “Enigmatic stranger invades complacent bourgeoisie home, wreaks liberating and/or terrifying havoc” thing before, both in thrillers and in artier parables from Teorema (1968) to The King (2005). There is nothing wildly original about Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s seductive, macabre black comedy in outline, not its satire of oblivious upper-middle-class entitlement or even (perhaps especially) when the too-generous hosts and any unlucky interlopers start getting killed off one by one. You can debate Borgman’s precise point, or whether it has one at all. But there’s a tart, bracing quality to this cruel absurdist joke that is as perversely delightful as the film is utterly misanthropic. (1:53) (Dennis Harvey)

A Coffee in Berlin How do you say “mumblecore” in German? Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature has certain arty pretensions — it’s shot in black-and-white, and scored with peppy jazz — but it’s more or less a rambling day in the life of law school dropout Niko (Tom Schilling). It happens to be the very day Niko’s golf-loving father decides to stop funding his shiftless son’s slacker lifestyle, though that crisis (which, you know, Lena Dunham built an entire HBO comedy around) receives nearly equal heft as a cutesy ongoing gimmick that sees Niko incapable of getting a cup of coffee anywhere in Berlin. Hipster ennui can be compelling if it has some underlying energy and purpose (see: 2013’s Frances Ha, to which this film has been compared), but A Coffee in Berlin comes up short on both. That said, it does offer an intriguing portrayal of Berlin — a city whose modern-chic façade barely contains the history that haunts it — and some of its supporting characters, particularly Friederike Kempter as a former schoolmate of Niko’s who has outgrown him emotionally by about one thousand percent, provide pleasant enough distractions. (1:28) (Cheryl Eddy)

Fateful Findings Oh my. With the technical sophistication of Birdemic (2008), Doris Wishman-worthy attention to superfluous detail, and the obliviousness of The Room (2008) toward any semblance of narrative or character continuity, this supernatural drama — or, uh, something like that — is making a bid to be the latest so-bad-it’s-surreal midnight movie hit. Writer-director-producer-editor-star Neil Breen, a man of many hats if no apparent talents, plays Dylan, a writer. As a child, he and friend Leah had found a mushroom that turned into a jewelry box (““Look what I found! A treasure! It’s a magical day!”), and which will come to effect their lives in ways that never make any sense whatsoever. They reunite as re-infatuated adults (Jennifer Autry now playing Leah), which is bad news for the pill-popping wife (Klara Landrat) Dylan is kinda over anyway. Meanwhile, their friends Jim (David Silva) and Amy (Victoria Valene) fight a lot, because he drinks to compensate for their nonexistent sex life, and she’s just incredibly bitchy. Eventually we realize that Dylan is working on a new book that will shockingly expose the rampant global corporate and political corruption that apparently no one has ever noticed before. The climax, which must be seen to be believed, has him triumphantly announcing these (extremely vague) revelations to the cheers of invisible thousands, while disgraced officials are seen committing suicide en masse rather than, you know, retiring to the Canary Islands. There’s a fine line between the hilarious and tortuous that is exactly where Fateful Findings lives. With its flatlined pacing, not-from-this-planet dialogue (Dylan straight facedly tells a dead body “I can’t help you outta this one”), gratuitous nudity, and curious insistence that its characters express emotions by throwing things (laptops, pieces of meat, etc.), this inscrutable vanity project is indeed unique. What it lacks to get you through the (many) boring parts is the compelling personality of a Tommy Wiseau — Breen is (like everyone here) awful, but he’s just a zero onscreen, not a fascinating weirdo. You will want to be drunk for this movie. (1:40) Clay. (Dennis Harvey)

Ivory Tower The latest “issue doc” to come down the pipeline is this very timely and incisive look at the cost of higher education from director Andrew Rossi (2011’s Page One: Inside the New York Times). Rossi is a Yale and Harvard Law grad, and he begins his film in the hallowed halls of the latter to frame the question: In the era of skyrocketing tuition, and with the student loan debt hovering at a trillion bucks, is college still worth it? The answer is left open-ended, though with the very strong suggestion that nontraditional education (including community colleges, online learning, and the Silicon Valley-spawned “uncollege” movement) is certainly something worth exploring, particularly for the non-wealthy. Along the way, we do see some positive tales (a kid from the mean streets of Cleveland gets a full-ride scholarship to Harvard; students at rural Deep Springs College follow philosophy discussions with farm work; African American women at Spelman College thrive in an empowering environment), but there’s a fair amount of cynicism here, too, with a hard look at how certain state schools are wooing deep-pocketed out-of-staters with fancy athletic stadiums, luxurious amenities, and a willingness to embrace, however unofficially, their hard-partying reputations. Segments following a student protest at New York’s Cooper Union, a formerly free school forced to consider collecting tuition after a string of financial troubles, echo Frederick Wiseman’s epic At Berkeley (2013), a thematically similar if stylistically very different work. (1:37) (Cheryl Eddy)

Jersey Boys The musical that turned the back story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the 1960s hit making machines behind upbeat doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). Still, the cast — including Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. Interview with cast members Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits), right here. (2:14) (Cheryl Eddy)

Ping Pong Summer Eighties teen flicks of the My Bodyguard (1980), smart-dweebs-beat-the-bullies ilk are paid homage in Michael Tully’s deadpan satire, which is closer in spirit to the Comedy of Lameness school whose patron saint is Napoleon Dynamite. Radley (Marcello Conte) is an average teen so excited to be spending the summer of 1985 in Ocean City, Md. with his family that he renames himself “Rad Miracle.” He acquires a new best friend in Teddy (Myles Massey), who as the whitest black kid imaginable might make even Rad look cool by comparison. However, they are both dismayed to discover the local center for video gaming and everything else they like is ruled by bigger, older, cuter, and snottier douchebag Lyle Ace (Joseph McCaughtry) and his sidekick. Only kicking Lyle’s ass at ping pong — with some help from a local weirdo (a miscast Susan Sarandon, apparently here because she’s an off screen ping pong enthusiast) — can save Rad’s wounded dignity, and the summer in general. A big step up from Tully’s odd but pointless prior Septien (2011), this has all the right stuff (including a soundtrack packed with the likes of the Fat Boys, Mary Jane Girls, New Edition, Whodini, and Night Ranger) to hilariously parody the era’s inanities. But it’s just mildly amusing — a droll attitude with lots of period detail but not much bite. (1:32) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

The Rover Future days have never seemed quite so bleak as they are depicted in the wild, wild Aussie west of The Rover — rendered by Animal Kingdom (2010) director David Michod, who co-wrote The Rover with Joel Edgerton. Let’s just say we’re probably not going to see any primo Burner ensembles inspired by this post-apocalyptic yarn: Michod ventures to a plausible future only a decade out, after a global economic collapse, and breaks down the brooding road trip to its hard-boiled bones, setting it in a beauteous, lawless, and unceasingly violent outback. A heist gone wrong leads a small gang of robbers to steal the car belonging to monosyllabic, ruthless mystery man Eric (Guy Pearce). The latter wants his boxy little sedan back, badly, and, in the cat and mouse game that ensues, seems willing to die for the trouble. Meanwhile, one of the gang of thieves — the slow, dreamy Rey (Robert Pattinson), who has been left to die of a gunshot wound in the dirt — turns out to be more of a survivor than anyone imagined when he tracks down the tracker hunting for his brother and cohorts. Michod seems most interested in examining and turning over the ties that bind, in a mean time, an eminently absurdist moment, when everything else has fallen away in the face of sheer survival. Cineastes, however, will appreciate the elemental, existential pleasures of this dog-eat-dog Down Under out-Western, not the least of which include the performances. Pearce’s rework of the Man With No Name exudes intention in the very forward thrust of his stance, and Pattinson breaks his cool — and the confines of typecasting — as a blubbering, babbling, thin-skinned man-child. Clad in the mystic expanses of the South Australia desert, which tip a hat to John Ford Westerns as well as scorched-earth-of-the-mind movies such as El Topo (1970) and Paris, Texas (1984), The Rover is taken to the level of tone poem by the shuddering, moaning cellos of Antony Partos’s impressive, atonal electroacoustic score. (1:42) (Kimberly Chun)

Think Like a Man Too Kevin Hart and company head to Vegas in this sequel to the 2012 hit comedy based on Steve Harvey’s best-selling relationship tome. (2:02)

Rep Clock: June 18 – 24, 2014

Michael Redmond

-

June 17, 2014

0

Schedules are for Wed/18-Tue/24 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968), Wed, 7, and The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979), Wed, 9:30. Frameline 38: SF International LGBT Film Festival, June 19-29. For tickets and schedule, visit www.frameline.org.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. “Broadway to Hollywood with Richard Glazier,” Wed, 7:30. This event, $20. Henry IV Part I, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company, Thu, 7; Sun, 1. This event, $18.

COURTHOUSE SQUARE 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Lawrence, 2013), Thu, 8:45.

EXPLORATORIUM Pier 15/17, SF; www.exploratorium.edu. $19-25. “Off the Screen: John Sanborn’s PICO (reMix),” Thu, 7. “Saturday Cinema: Sun Celebrations,” Sat, 1, 2, 3.

MCCLA THEATER 2868 Mission, SF; www.missionculturalcenter.org. $12. Angel Azul (Cravat-Overway, 2013), Fri, 8.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “The Grapes of Wrath at 75:” The Grapes of Wrath (Ford, 1940), Wed, 7. “Kenji Mizoguchi: A Cinema of Totality:” Ugetsu (1953), Thu, 7; Sisters of the Gion (1936), Sat, 6:30; Osaka Elegy (1936), Sat, 8. “Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema:” Eroica (Munk, 1958), Fri, 7; Black Cross (Ford, 1960), Sun, 6:30. “A Theater Near You:” Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961), Fri, 8:50;

PARAMOUNT 2025 Broadway, Oakl; www.ticketmaster.com. $5. Night of the Iguana (Huston, 1964), Fri, 8.

ROCK WALL WINE COMPANY 2301 Monarch, Alameda; facebook.com/LongDayShortFilm. $12. “Long Day Short Film Festival,” Sat, 6.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, through June 19. Complete program details, including additional venues, and tickets (most shows $12) at www.sfindie.com. Ping Pong Summer (Tully, 2014), June 20-26, 6:30, 8:20 (also Sat-Sun, 2:45, 4:30).

TIDES THEATRE 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.cironline.org. $10. Center for Investigative Reporting presents: “UN | PUBLISHED,” a pop-up film festival celebrating documentary journalism, Fri-Sat, 7:30.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “New Filipino Cinema 2014:” Norte, the End of History (Diaz, 2013), Thu-Fri, 7; Sat-Sun, 2. *

Film Listings: June 18 – 24, 2014

Michael Redmond

-

June 17, 2014

0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

FRAMELINE

Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, runs June 19-29 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and schedule, visit www.frameline.org. For commentary, see “Reel Pride.”

OPENING

Borgman Popping out from his underground hidey hole, narrowly escaping organized armed vigilantes — indicating an ongoing, possibly global secret battle this movie is content to leave entirely unexplained — the titular figure (Jan Bijvoet) shambles to a nearby home and demands comfort. Refused, he persists, and housewife Marina (Hadewych Minis) acquiesces — at first on the sly, as husband Richard (Jeroen Perceval) has already beaten their paunchy, disheveled, weird would-be guest. But soon Borgman is insinuating himself with the well-off suburban couple’s three children, gradually warping the family dynamic until he has everyone under his power. You’ve seen this kind of “Enigmatic stranger invades complacent bourgeoisie home, wreaks liberating and/or terrifying havoc” thing before, both in thrillers and in artier parables from Teorema (1968) to The King (2005). There is nothing wildly original about Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s seductive, macabre black comedy in outline, not its satire of oblivious upper-middle-class entitlement or even (perhaps especially) when the too-generous hosts and any unlucky interlopers start getting killed off one by one. You can debate Borgman‘s precise point, or whether it has one at all. But there’s a tart, bracing quality to this cruel absurdist joke that is as perversely delightful as it the film is utterly misanthropic. (1:53) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

A Coffee in Berlin How do you say “mumblecore” in German? Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature has certain arty pretensions — it’s shot in black-and-white, and scored with peppy jazz — but it’s more or less a rambling day in the life of law school dropout Niko (Tom Schilling). It happens to be the very day Niko’s golf-loving father decides to stop funding his shiftless son’s slacker lifestyle, though that crisis (which, you know, Lena Dunham built an entire HBO comedy around) receives nearly equal heft as a cutesy ongoing gimmick that sees Niko incapable of getting a cup of coffee anywhere in Berlin. Hipster ennui can be compelling if it has some underlying energy and purpose (see: 2013’s Frances Ha, to which this film has been compared), but A Coffee in Berlin comes up short on both. That said, it does offer an intriguing portrayal of Berlin — a city whose modern-chic façade barely contains the history that haunts it — and some of its supporting characters, particularly Friederike Kempter as a former schoolmate of Niko’s who has outgrown him emotionally by about one thousand percent, provide pleasant enough distractions. (1:28) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Fateful Findings Oh my. With the technical sophistication of Birdemic (2008), Doris Wishman-worthy attention to superfluous detail, and the obliviousness of The Room (2008) toward any semblance of narrative or character continuity, this supernatural drama — or, uh, something like that — is making a bid to be the latest so-bad-it’s-surreal midnight movie hit. Writer-director-producer-editor-star Neil Breen, a man of many hats if no apparent talents, plays Dylan, a writer. As a child, he and friend Leah had found a mushroom that turned into a jewelry box (“”Look what I found! A treasure! It’s a magical day!”), and which will come to effect their lives in ways that never make any sense whatsoever. They reunite as re-infatuated adults (Jennifer Autry now playing Leah), which is bad news for the pill-popping wife (Klara Landrat) Dylan is kinda over anyway. Meanwhile, their friends Jim (David Silva) and Amy (Victoria Valene) fight a lot, because he drinks to compensate for their nonexistent sex life, and she’s just incredibly bitchy. Eventually we realize that Dylan is working on a new book that will shockingly expose the rampant global corporate and political corruption that apparently no one has ever noticed before. The climax, which must be seen to be believed, has him triumphantly announcing these (extremely vague) revelations to the cheers of invisible thousands, while disgraced officials are seen committing suicide en masse rather than, you know, retiring to the Canary Islands. There’s a fine line between the hilarious and tortuous that is exactly where Fateful Findings lives. With its flatlined pacing, not-from-this-planet dialogue (Dylan straight facedly tells a dead body “I can’t help you outta this one”), gratuitous nudity, and curious insistence that its characters express emotions by throwing things (laptops, pieces of meat, etc.), this inscrutable vanity project is indeed unique. What it lacks to get you through the (many) boring parts is the compelling personality of a Tommy Wiseau — Breen is (like everyone here) awful, but he’s just a zero onscreen, not a fascinating weirdo. You will want to be drunk for this movie. (1:40) Clay. (Harvey)

Ivory Tower The latest “issue doc” to come down the pipeline is this very timely and incisive look at the cost of higher education from director Andrew Rossi (2011’s Page One: Inside the New York Times). Rossi is a Yale and Harvard Law grad, and he begins his film in the hallowed halls of the latter to frame the question: In the era of skyrocketing tuition, and with the student loan debt hovering at a trillion bucks, is college still worth it? The answer is left open-ended, though with the very strong suggestion that nontraditional education (including community colleges, online learning, and the Silicon Valley-spawned “uncollege” movement) is certainly something worth exploring, particularly for the non-wealthy. Along the way, we do see some positive tales (a kid from the mean streets of Cleveland gets a full-ride scholarship to Harvard; students at rural Deep Springs College follow philosophy discussions with farm work; African American women at Spelman College thrive in an empowering environment), but there’s a fair amount of cynicism here, too, with a hard look at how certain state schools are wooing deep-pocketed out-of-staters with fancy athletic stadiums, luxurious amenities, and a willingness to embrace, however unofficially, their hard-partying reputations. Segments following a student protest at New York’s Cooper Union, a formerly free school forced to consider collecting tuition after a string of financial troubles, echo Frederick Wiseman’s epic At Berkeley (2013), a thematically similar if stylistically very different work. (1:37) California, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Jersey Boys The musical that turned the back story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the 1960s hit making machines behind upbeat doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). Still, the cast — including Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. For an interview with cast members Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits), visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (2:14) Four Star, Marina, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Ping Pong Summer Eighties teen flicks of the My Bodyguard (1980), smart-dweebs-beat-the-bullies ilk are paid homage in Michael Tully’s deadpan satire, which is closer in spirit to the Comedy of Lameness school whose patron saint is Napoleon Dynamite. Radley (Marcello Conte) is an average teen so excited to be spending the summer of 1985 in Ocean City, Md. with his family that he renames himself “Rad Miracle.” He acquires a new best friend in Teddy (Myles Massey), who as the whitest black kid imaginable might make even Rad look cool by comparison. However, they are both dismayed to discover the local center for video gaming and everything else they like is ruled by bigger, older, cuter, and snottier douchebag Lyle Ace (Joseph McCaughtry) and his sidekick. Only kicking Lyle’s ass at ping pong — with some help from a local weirdo (a miscast Susan Sarandon, apparently here because she’s an off screen ping pong enthusiast) — can save Rad’s wounded dignity, and the summer in general. A big step up from Tully’s odd but pointless prior Septien (2011), this has all the right stuff (including a soundtrack packed with the likes of the Fat Boys, Mary Jane Girls, New Edition, Whodini, and Night Ranger) to hilariously parody the era’s inanities. But it’s just mildly amusing — a droll attitude with lots of period detail but not much bite. (1:32) Roxie. (Harvey)

The Rover Future days have never seemed quite so bleak as they are depicted in the wild, wild Aussie west of The Rover — rendered by Animal Kingdom (2010) director David Michod, who co-wrote The Rover with Joel Edgerton. Let’s just say we’re probably not going to see any primo Burner ensembles inspired by this post-apocalyptic yarn: Michod ventures to a plausible future only a decade out, after a global economic collapse, and breaks down the brooding road trip to its hard-boiled bones, setting it in a beauteous, lawless, and unceasingly violent outback. A heist gone wrong leads a small gang of robbers to steal the car belonging to monosyllabic, ruthless mystery man Eric (Guy Pearce). The latter wants his boxy little sedan back, badly, and, in the cat and mouse game that ensues, seems willing to die for the trouble. Meanwhile, one of the gang of thieves — the slow, dreamy Rey (Robert Pattinson), who has been left to die of a gunshot wound in the dirt — turns out to be more of a survivor than anyone imagined when he tracks down the tracker hunting for his brother and cohorts. Michod seems most interested in examining and turning over the ties that bind, in a mean time, an eminently absurdist moment, when everything else has fallen away in the face of sheer survival. Cineastes, however, will appreciate the elemental, existential pleasures of this dog-eat-dog Down Under out-Western, not the least of which include the performances. Pearce’s rework of the Man With No Name exudes intention in the very forward thrust of his stance, and Pattinson breaks his cool — and the confines of typecasting — as a blubbering, babbling, thin-skinned man-child. Clad in the mystic expanses of the South Australia desert, which tip a hat to John Ford Westerns as well as scorched-earth-of-the-mind movies such as El Topo (1970) and Paris, Texas (1984), The Rover is taken to the level of tone poem by the shuddering, moaning cellos of Antony Partos’s impressive, atonal electroacoustic score. (1:42) (Chun)

Think Like a Man Too Kevin Hart and company head to Vegas in this sequel to the 2012 hit comedy based on Steve Harvey’s best-selling relationship tome. (2:02) Shattuck.

ONGOING

Belle The child of a British naval officer and a Caribbean slave, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is deposited on the doorstep — well, the estate grounds — of her father’s relatives in 1769 England after her mother dies. Soon she’s entirely orphaned, which makes her a wealthy heiress and aristocratic title holder at the same time that she is something less than human in the eyes of her adopted society. For Belle is black (or more properly, mixed-race), and thus a useless curiosity at best as a well-bred noblewoman of the “wrong” racial makeup. Based on a murky actual historical chapter, Amma Asante’s film is that rare sumptuous costume drama which actually has something on its mind beyond romance and royalty. Not least among its pleasures are a fine supporting cast including Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, and Emily Watson. (1:45) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Chef Not to take anything away from the superhero crew, but Chef feels like the closest thing to a labor of love from writer, director, and star Jon Favreau in many a day. As a director, he may have been making doughnuts — fun-filled and teeming with CGI eye candy, but doughnuts nevertheless — when it came to effects-driven blockbusters like 2008’s Iron Man, but this well-meaning play for the heart, by way of the stomach, shows you where Favreau’s head is really at. Chef revolves around Carl Casper (Favreau), a onetime food star, now reduced to serving up predictable crowd-pleasers at the behest of his restaurant’s overbearing owner (Dustin Huffman). It takes the barbs of an influential critic (Oliver Platt) — and an ensuing Twitter war — to set Carl off and send him away on his own, at the coaxing of his glam ex Inez (Sofia Vergara). Hooked up with a dilapidated food truck and former kitchen staffer Martin (John Leguizamo), and aided by ably Tweeting son Percy (Emjay Anthony), Carl ties his dreams — and lost passion — to the classic Cuban sandwich. The ensuing road trip from Miami to LA, and Carl’s journey toward self and a renewed relationship with his son, is a fun (if, in the end, a bit too speedily sketched) vault through the joys of eating your way through America’s new culinary heartland. Amid the volley of sign-of-the-times social-media swinging and cameos by the uncostumed Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, and the like, Favreau’s main dish is that a family that eats, cooks, and runs a business together, stays together — child labor laws or no. (1:55) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Metreon, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Edge of Tomorrow Is it OK to root for Tom Cruise again? (The Oprah thing was almost a decade ago, after all.) The entertaining Edge of Tomorrow, crisply directed by Bourne series vet Doug Liman, takes what’s most irritating about Cruise’s persona (he’s so goddamn earnest) and uses it to great advantage, casting him as military PR guru Cage — repping our armed forces on talk shows amid battles with alien invaders dubbed “Mimics” — whose oiliness masks the fact that he’s terrified of actual combat. When he’s forced to fight by a no-nonsense superior (Brendan Gleeson), he’s gruesomely killed, along with nearly every other human soldier. But wait! Thanks to a particularly close encounter with outer-space pixie dust, he awakens, unharmed, to re-live the day, over and over again (yep, shades of a certain Bill Murray comedy classic). Each “reset” offers Cage a chance to work his way closer to changing the course of the war in humanity’s favor, with key help from a badass (Emily Blunt) whose heroics on the battlefield have earned her the nickname “Full Metal Bitch.” Nothing groundbreaking here — but Edge of Tomorrow manages to make its satisfying plot as important as its 3D explosions, which means it automatically rises above what passes for popcorn fun these days. (1:53) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Fault in Our Stars I confess: I’m no card-carrying, vlog-flogging Nerdfighter in author John Green’s teen-geek army. But one can admire the passion — and teary romanticism — of the writer, readers, and the breakthrough novel that started it all. Much has been made over the cinematic tweaks to the best-selling YA book, but those seem like small beefs: OK, male romantic lead Gus’s (Ansel Elgort) perhaps-understandable brattiness seems to have been toned down a touch, but we’ll all get the somewhat-subversive push and pull of Green’s love story centered on two cancer-stricken innocents. Sixteen-year-old Hazel (a radiant Shailene Woodley) has been battling cancer almost all her life, fighting back from the brink, and now making her way every day with an oxygen tank and her devoted parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammel) by her side. Her mordant wit, skeptical attitude, and smarts attract Gus, a handsome teen with a prosthetic leg, at a cancer support group, and the two embark on what seems like the most normal thing in the world — sweet, sweet love — albeit cut with the poignancy of almost-certain doom. Would the girl who calls herself a grenade dare to care for someone she will likely hurt? That’s the real question on her mind when the two reach out to the solitary author (Willem Dafoe) of their favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. The journey the two make leaves them both open to more hurt than either ever imagined, and though a good part of Fault‘s denouement boils down to a major puddle cuddle — with solid performances by all, but particularly Dern and Woodley — even a cynic is likely to get a bit misty as the kids endure all the stages of loss. And learning. (2:05) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Fed Up Katie Couric narrates, produces, and brings celebrity heft to Stephanie Soechtig’s well-crafted expose on the alarmingly powerful food industry — specifically, revealing how “nutritional standards” put forth by the government over the past 30 years have actually caused the nation’s current obesity epidemic. Fed Up‘s straightforward combination of simple facts (80 percent of food items have added sugar); talking-head experts (Bill Clinton, UCSF’s Dr. Robert Lustig); historical fact-finding (including a segment that convincingly compares today’s food industry to the tobacco industry of yore); and profiles of dangerously overweight teens (all of whom are trying, and failing, to lose weight) adds up to a film that is poised to have An Inconvenient Truth-style impact on viewers — and will hopefully

open enough eyes to make waves beyond movie theaters. (1:32) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia Nicholas Wrathall’s highly entertaining documentary pays tribute to one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, original, and cranky thinkers, with extensive input from the man himself before his death in 2012 at age 86. The emphasis here is less on Vidal’s life as a literary lion and often glittering celebrity social life than on his parallel career as a harsh scold of US social injustices and political corruption. (Needless to say, recent history only sharpened his tongue in that department, with George W. Bush dismissed as “a goddamn fool,” and earlier statements such as “This is a country of the rich, for the rich and by the rich” seeming more apt than ever.) He’s a wellspring of wisdoms both blunt and witty, sometimes surprising, as in his hindsight doubts about the virtues of JFK (a personal friend) as a president. We get plenty of colorful archival clips in which he’s seen verbally jousting with such famous foes as William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, invariably reducing them to stammering fury while remaining exasperatingly unruffled. His “out” homosexuality and outré views on sexuality in general (at odds with an increasingly assimilationist gay community) kept him controversial even among many liberals, while conservatives were further irked by his rock-solid family connections to the ruling elite. In our era of scripted political rhetoric and pandering anti-intellectualism, it’s a joy merely to spend an hour and half in the company of someone so brilliantly articulate on seemingly any topic — but particularly on the perpetually self-mythologizing, money-worshipping state of our Union. (1:29) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Grand Seduction Canadian actor-director Don McKellar (1998’s Last Night) remakes 2003 Quebecois comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis, about a depressed community searching for the town doctor they’ll need before a factory will agree to set up shop and bring much-needed jobs to the area. Canada is still the setting here, with the harbor’s name — Tickle Head — telegraphing with zero subtlety that whimsy lies ahead. A series of events involving a Tickle Head-based TSA agent, a bag of cocaine, and a harried young doctor (Taylor Kitsch) trying to avoid jail time signals hope for the hamlet, and de facto town leader Murray (Brendan Gleeson) snaps into action. The seduction of “Dr. Paul,” who agrees to one month of service not knowing the town is desperate to keep him, is part Northern Exposure culture clash, part Jenga-like stack of lies, as the townspeople pretend to love cricket (Paul’s a fanatic) and act like his favorite lamb dish is the specialty at the local café. The wonderfully wry Gleeson is the best thing about this deeply predictable tale, which errs too often on the side of cute (little old ladies at the switchboard listening in on Paul’s phone-sex with his girlfriend!) rather than clever, as when an unsightly structure in the center of town is explained away with a fake “World Heritage House” plaque. Still, the scenery is lovely, and “cute” doesn’t necessarily mean “not entertaining.” (1:52) Albany, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Ida The bomb drops within the first ten minutes: after being gently forced to reconnect with her only living relative before taking her vows, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns that her name is actually Ida, and that she’s Jewish. Her mother’s sister, Wanda (Agneta Kulesza) — a Communist Party judge haunted by a turbulent past she copes with via heavy drinking, among other vices — also crisply relays that Ida’s parents were killed during the Nazi occupation, and after some hesitation agrees to accompany the sheltered young woman to find out how they died, and where their bodies were buried. Drawing great depth from understated storytelling and gorgeous, black-and-white cinematography, Pawel Pawilowski’s well-crafted drama offers a bleak if realistic (and never melodramatic) look at 1960s Poland, with two polar-opposite characters coming to form a bond as their layers of painful loss rise to the surface. (1:20) Albany, Clay, Piedmont. (Eddy)

Maleficent Fairytale revisionism is all the rage these days, what with the unending power of Disney princesses to latch into little girls everywhere and bring parental units (and their wallets) to their knees. Yet princesses almost seem beside the point in this villain’s-side-of-the-story tale — Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), the queen of the fairies in the magical moors, wronged by Stefan (Sharlto Copley), who saws off her wings in order to win a crown. Accompanied by her shape-shifting minion, crow Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent attends the christening of King Stefan’s first-born daughter, Aurora, hot on the heels of three clownish good fairies (Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple), and delivers a curse that will have this future Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning) prick her finger on a spindle and sink into a deathlike coma until her true love’s kiss. Will that critical smooch be delivered by Prince Bieber, er, Phillip (Brenton Thwaites)? Considering the potential for Disney’s trademark, heart-tugging enchantment to get magically tangled up in girl power, it’s tough to suck up the disappointment in the ooey-gooey, gummy-faced troll-doll aesthetics of the art direction and animation, as well as first-time director Robert Stromberg’s choppy, dashed-through storytelling. Part of the problem is that there’s almost zero threat here, despite its antihero’s devilish presence — is there ever any doubt that a healthy resolution will win out, even at the expense of blood ties? Best to find dangerous pleasures where one can — namely in the vivid Jolie, cheekbones honed to a razor edge, who spits biting remarks at her accursed charge, beneath Joan Crawford-esque eyebrows and horns crying out for club-kid Halloween treatments. (1:37) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Chun)

Obvious Child We first encounter the protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s funny, original film — a Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething named Donna (Jenny Slate), who works at a lefty secondhand bookstore and makes regular (if unpaid) appearances at a local comedy night — onstage mining such underdiscussed topics as the effects of vaginal discharge on your garden-variety pair of underwear. This proves a natural segue to other hefty nuggets of embarrassment gold concerning her love life, to the dismay of boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), auditing from the back of the club. He pretty much deserves it, however, for what he’s about to do, which is break up with her in a nasty, well-populated unisex bathroom, taking time to repeatedly glance at the texts coming through on his phone from Donna’s good friend, with whom he’s sleeping. So when Donna, mid-drowning of sorrows, meets a nice-looking fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) at the bar, his post-fraternity-presidency aesthetic seems unlikely to deter her from a one-night stand. The ensuing trashed make-out dance-off in Max’s apartment to the Paul Simon song of the title is both comic and adorable. The fractured recap of the evening’s condom-free horizontal events that occurs inside Donna’s brain three weeks later, as she hunkers down with her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), in the bookstore’s bathroom after peeing on a stick, is equally hilarious — and unwanted-pregnancy jokes aren’t that easy to pull off. Robespierre’s treatment of this extended windup and of Donna’s decision to have an abortion is a witty, warmhearted retort to 2007’s Knocked Up, a couple generations’ worth of Hollywood rom-com writers, and an entertainment industry that continues to perform its sweaty contortions of storytelling in the gutless cause of avoiding the A-word. (1:15) California, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Signal Sharing its title with a 2007 film — also a thriller about a mysterious transmission that wreaks havoc in the lives of its protagonists — this offbeat feature from co-writer and director William Eubank belies its creator’s deep affection for, and knowledge of, the sci-fi genre. Number one thing The Signal is not is predictable, but its twists feel organic even as the story takes one hairpin turn after another. MIT buddies Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) are driving Nic’s girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke), cross-country to California. Complicating the drama of the young couple’s imminent separation is Nic’s deteriorating physical condition (it’s never explained, but the former runner apparently has MS or some other neurological disease). The road trip turns dark when the trio (who also happen to be hackers) realize an Internet troll they’ve tangled with in the past is stalking them. After a brief detour into found-footage horror — fooled ya, Eubank seems to be saying; this ain’t that kind of movie at all! — the kids find themselves embroiled in ever-more-terrifying realities. To give away more would ruin the fun of being shocked for yourself, but think Twilight Zone meets Area 51 meets a certain futuristic trilogy starring Laurence Fishburne, who turns up here to play a very important role in Nic and company’s waking nightmare. (1:37) California, Metreon. (Eddy)

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon Clearly a film is a vanity project if its primary intent seems to flatter its maker. But what about when it’s a love letter from one rich, entitled celebrity to another? Then the vanity grows complicated, not least by the fact that we’re expected to pay for the privilege of watching one ass kiss another. Anyone who blinked probably missed Super Duper Alice Cooper, which mostly did just one-night showings across the nation in April. That rockumentary was duly “authorized” but awfully entertaining, with the wit to tell its original shock-rocker’s tale entirely through archival footage plus a running oral history of latter-day interviews. Mike Myers’ directorial bow Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon tells the same story for its first half hour — Gordon being the “Jewish kid from Long Island” who stumbled into being Cooper’s manager, shepherding (har) him to fame with an uncanny knack for promotional stunts and image-shaping. He eventually provided those services and more to a highly eccentric roster of talents; co-founded Alive Films; and had the foresight to create the whole “celebrity chef racket” in which they have reality TV shows and hawk their own supermarket products. Supermensch is a professional funny guy’s documentary, which means it can’t help manipulating things (wacky klezmer soundtrack; campy re-enactments; celebrity testimonials from Tom Arnold, Sammy Hagar, and Sylvester Stallone) in ways that beg for approval. Gordon is no doubt a great host, a good cook, a consummate cocksman, and a social and business genius. But watching this movie is like paying to see a $5,000-per-plate benefit dinner via closed circuit TV — as if it were a humbling honor to witness famous people pat each other on the back. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

22 Jump Street In this TV-inspired sequel, “Previously on 21 Jump Street…” is all the backstory we get. 22 wastes no time sending Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) back to school to solve another case. A few details have changed (they’re in college now, where the drug of choice is “Why Phy”), but the situation is self-consciously boilerplate, which lets the filmmakers cast (ironic) judgment on sequels — and imply the TV show was redundant. College proves hilarious, from the rundown of dorm room essentials to Schmidt’s walk of shame, and the touchstones are sharp and embarrassing. An extended fight between Schmidt and a girl (Jillian Bell, fabulous) twists gender issues and sexual assault into gloriously absurd politics. Best of all is a fairly understated joke in front of the Benjamin Hill School of Film Studies. I laughed as much at 22 as I did at 21, but 22 spends so much time calling out its number-two status that it almost becomes performance art. (1:45) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

X-Men: Days of Future Past Bryan Singer, director of the first two X-Men films (2000’s decent X-Men; 2002’s meh X2) returns to helm this latest franchise entry — the fourth sequel in a series that also includes two movies focusing on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. That fan-favorite character is front and center in both of Days of Future Past‘s time frames: the present, a bleak dystopia in which robot assassins have wiped out nearly every mutant (save Wolverine, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellan’s Magneto, and a few others), and most humans along with them; and the past, a key moment in the polyester-laden 1970s in which mutant avenger Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) inadvertently sets the disastrous future events in motion by killing robot designer Trask (Peter Dinklage). Wolverine time-travels to convince younger versions of the Professor (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to put aside their Himalayan-sized differences to stop her. (Speaking of avengers, there’s a capital-A one here: Quicksilver, a character from both comic-book worlds; he’s portrayed here with giddy mischief by American Horror Story‘s Evan Peters, and is the film’s high point.) Yes, that’s a heady plot, and there are a zillion other characters, but Future Past manages, for the most part, to avoid feeling like an overloaded mess. It’s most entertaining in scenes that show off its characters’ superpowers — clearly, the CG artists had a blast working on this one — which are plentiful enough to make slogging through the ennui-laden moments of downtime worth it.(2:10) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy) *

Reel pride

Michael Redmond

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June 17, 2014

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The Case Against 8 (Ben Cotner and Ryan White, US) This documentary follows the successful fight to have Proposition 8 overturned as unconstitutional and restore legality to gay marriage in California. There’s way too much time spent on the couples chosen as plaintiffs, a Berkeley lesbian pair and two Los Angeles male partners — we get it, they’re nice people — and the decisions to disallow broadcast of the eventual court proceedings means we get laborious recitations of what people have already said on record. Frameline has shown so many documentaries about gay marriage already that festival regulars may find this one covers too much familiar ground at excessive length. (It also doesn’t bother giving much screentime to the anti-gay forces, which might have livened things up a bit.) Still, it’s a duly inspirational tale, with real entertainment value whenever the focus turns to the case’s very unlikely chief lawyers: mild-mannered Ted Olson and boisterous David Boies, the latter a longtime leading conservative attorney who’d argued the other side against Olson in the Bush v. Gore presidential election decision. Nonetheless, he’s all for marriage equality, and these otherwise widely separated figures are great fun to watch as they work, taking considerable pleasure in each other’s company. Thu/19, 7pm, Castro. (Dennis Harvey)

Bad Hair (Mariana Rondón, Venezuela, US) Living in a Caracas tenement, Marta (Samantha Castillo) has no husband, no romance in her life, and now no job after she’s fired from a security company. She turns her frustrations on the older of her two fatherless children, 10-year-old Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano), whose insistence on straightening his hair like the people he sees on TV strikes her as incipiently gay — and that is something she is not willing to tolerate. Mariana Rondón’s prize-winning feature is a small, subtle drama about the poisoning effects of economic pressure and homophobia within the family unit. It’s also quietly devastating about something you don’t often see in movies: The real-world truth that, sometimes, deep down, parents really don’t love their children. Sat/21, 1:30pm, Roxie. (Harvey)

Floating Skyscrapers (Tomasz Wasilewski, Poland, 2013) Competitive swimmer Kuba (Mateusz Banasiuk) has moved girlfriend Sylwia (Marta Nieradkiewicz) into the Warsaw apartment he shares with his possessive divorced mother (Katarzyna Herman), but the two women don’t get along and Kuba doesn’t seem very committed to the relationship anyway. So Sylwia immediately worries her days are numbered when Kuba — who already indulges in the occasional furtive public gay sex — shows unusual interest in out Michal (Bartosz Gelner). As the two young men grow closer, it becomes clear that this is something neither of the women in Kuba’s life will stand for. Tomasz Wasilewski’s Polish drama has a crisp widescreen look and a minimalist air, with little dialogue articulating emotions the characters are wrestling with. Though its protagonist isn’t particularly likable, the film’s simultaneous confidence and ambivalence lends its eventually depressing progress real punch. Sat/21, 9:30pm, Victoria; June 26, 9:30pm, Roxie. (Harvey)

I Am Happiness On Earth (Julián Hernández, Mexico, 2013) When young dancer Octavio is picked up by well-known filmmaker Emiliano, he’s instantly smitten — not realizing yet that the latter is the kind of serial seducer allergic to fidelity. Rich, famous, and gorgeous, he can have anyone he wants, and he does. That’s about it for story in Julián Hernández’s latest, which features some of his characteristically lush camerawork and poetical romanticism. But it’s one of his weaker efforts, basically turning into one sex scene after another with even less attention to character and plot development than usual. This sexy, aesthetically sensual eye candy sports the odd enchanting moment, as when two men after a quickie are suddenly transfixed by the TV and begin singing a pop ballad along with it, to each other. But Hernández (2006’s Broken Sky, 2003’s A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky) is a highly talented filmmaker who here seems to be running out of ideas. Sat/21, 9:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

The Foxy Merkins (Madeleine Olnek, US, 2013) Writer-director Madeleine Olnek of Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (2011) hits a bit of a sophomore slump with this similarly loopy but less inspired absurdist comedy. Lisa Haas returns as Margaret, a sad-sack new arrival to Manhattan who — apparently like most holders of Women’s Studies degrees — ends up homeless and prostituting herself to a large available client base of better bankrolled lesbians. She gets schooled in the ways of the street and kink-for-pay by veteran Jo (Jackie Monahan), who’s a good business partner if also a somewhat unreliable ally. After a hilarious first half hour or so, the movie runs out of steam but keeps plodding on to diminishing returns, despite scattered moments when Olnek and cast hit the comedic bull’s-eye. She’s got a unique sensibility, at once deadpan and utterly nonsensical, but it’s fragile enough to need a stronger narrative structure to sustain than it gets here to sustain feature length. Sun/22, 9:15pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Winter Journey (Sergei Taramaev and Luba Lvova, Russia, 2013) This stylish Russian drama depicts the paths-crossing and eventual unlikely friendship of two extremely different young men in Moscow. Keanu-looking Eric (Aleksey Frandetti) is a bratty, lieder-singing voice student who escapes pressures at home and school by getting drunk and hanging out with a circle of older gay artistic types. Lyokha (Evgeniy Tkachuk) is homeless and unstable, inclined toward picking fights and stealing stuff. Their not-quite-romance — a bit like a below-zero My Own Private Idaho (1991) with lots of Schubert — isn’t particularly credible, but it’s directed with confident panache by Sergei Taramaev and Luba Lvova, to ultimately quite poignant effect. Mon/23, 9:15pm, Victoria. (Harvey)

Violette (Martin Provost, France, 2013) Taking on another “difficult” woman artist after the excellent 2008 Séraphine (about the folk-art painter), Martin Provost here portrays the unhappy life of Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos), whose fiction and autobiographical writings eventually made her a significant figure in postwar French literature. We first meet her waiting out the war with gay author Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py), one of many unrequited loves, then surviving via the black market trade before she’s “discovered” by such groundbreaking, already-established talents as Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) and Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain). It is the latter, a loyal supporter who nonetheless retains a chilly emotional distance, who becomes bisexual Violette’s principal obsession over the coming 20 years or so. Devos does her best to portray “a neurotic crazy washed-up old bag” with an “ugly mug” — hardly! — who is perpetually broke, depressed, and awkward, thanks no doubt in part to her mean witch of a mother (Catherine Hiegel). “Screaming and sobbing won’t get you anywhere,” Simone at one point tells her, and indeed Leduc is a bit of a pill. For the most part lacking the visual splendors of Séraphine (this character’s environs weren’t so pastoral), Violette is finely acted and crafted but, like its heroine, hard to love. Note: Frameline is also showing Violette Leduc: In Pursuit of Love, a documentary on the same subject. Mon/23, 9:15pm, Castro. (Harvey)

To Be Takei (Jennifer Kroot, US) The erstwhile and forever Mr. Sulu’s surprisingly high public profile these days no doubt sparked this documentary portrait by SF’s own Jennifer Kroot (2009’s It Came From Kuchar). But she gives it dramatic heft by highlighting the subject’s formative years in World War II Japanese-American internment camps, and finds plenty of verite humor in the everyday byplay between fairly recently “out” gay celebrity George and his longtime life and business partner Brad Altman — the detail-oriented, pessimistic worrywart to his eternally upbeat (if sometimes tactlessly critical) star personality. We get glimpses of them in the fan nerdsphere, on The Howard Stern Show, at Takei’s frequent speaking engagements (on internment and gay rights), and in his latter-day acting career both as perpetual TV guest and a performer in a hopefully Broadway-bound new musical (about internment). Then of course there’s the Star Trek universe, with all surviving major participants heard from, including ebullient Nichelle Nichols, sad-sack Walter Koenig, thoughtfully distanced Leonard Nimoy, and natch, the Shat (who acts like a total asshat, dismissing Takei as somebody he sorta kinda knew professionally 50 years ago.) We also hear from younger Asian American actors who view the subject as a role model, even if some of his actual roles weren’t so trailblazing (like a couple “funny Chinaman” parts in Jerry Lewis movies, and in John Wayne’s 1968 pro-Vietnam War film The Green Berets). Even if you’ve tired of Takei’s ubiquity online and onscreen, this campy but fond tribute is great fun. Tue/24, 6:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Back on Board: Greg Louganis (Cheryl Furjanic, US) For most Americans, the words “famous diver” conjure up only one name: Greg Louganis, the charismatic, record-breaking Olympian who dominated the sport in the 1980s. But as Cheryl Furjanic’s doc reveals, athletic perfection did not spell easy livin’ for Louganis. Though he hid the fact that he was gay (and HIV positive) from the public for years, his sexuality was an open secret in the diving world, and likely cost him lucrative endorsement deals. Louganis’ tale is not being shared for the first time (see also: the best-selling autobiography, which became a made-for-TV biopic), but Furjanic goes in deep, revealing Louganis’ considerable financial woes even as he finally finds personal happiness — and recharges his sports career when he’s asked to mentor 2012 Olympians. He’s clearly a good-hearted guy, and it’s hard not to root for him, particularly when we’re treated to so much footage of “the consummate diver” in his prime. He made it look easy, when clearly (in so many ways) it was not. June 25, 4pm, Castro. (Cheryl Eddy)

Regarding Susan Sontag (Nancy Kates, US) This excellent documentary by Nancy D. Kates (2003’s Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin) places more emphasis on the subject’s life — particularly her lesbian relationships — than on the ideas expressed in her work as a novelist, essayist, filmmaker, and cultural theorist. But it’s still a fine overview of a fascinating, often divisive figure. Extremely precocious (she began college at 15), she abandoned an early marriage for freedom in late 1950s Paris, then became a charismatic cultural theorist at the center of all 60s avant-gardisms. Her lovers included playwright Maria Irene Fornes, painter Jasper Johns, choreographer Lucinda Childs, and finally photographer Annie Liebovitz. A terrific diversity of archival footage and contemporary interviewees contribute to this portrait of a very complicated, difficult (both personally and as an artist/intellect) woman perpetually “interested in everything.” June 25, 7pm, Victoria; June 26, 7pm, Elmwood. (Harvey)

Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (Sandrine Orabona and Mark Herzog, US) “I don’t do anything halfway,” admits Kristin Beck, a 20-year, highly-decorated veteran of the Navy SEALs. During her time in the military, she was known as Christopher — and she admits now, as a trans woman “trying to be the real person that I always knew I was, and always wished I could be,” that her willingness to embrace danger was a coping mechanism as she struggled to realize her true identity. In this moving, well-crafted doc, we follow along as Kristin travels to visit with family (some more accepting than others, and some, like her aging dad, making a heartfelt effort even as they stumble over pronouns and still call her “Chris”) and former Navy colleagues and fellow veterans, many of whom have put aside their initial confusion and embrace Kristin as she is. And who is she? A badass who survived multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, with a wry sense of humor and an easygoing, thoughtful personality, Beck is also an inspiration — an American hero on multiple levels. June 27, 1:30pm, Castro. (Eddy)

Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan, US) First seen packing her belongings under the malevolent eye of her newly ex–girlfriend, then walking unabashedly down the street with a harness and dildo in hand, Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething Shirin (played by writer-director Desiree Akhavan) doesn’t seem like a person who has trouble owning her sexuality. And indeed, in the parts of her life that don’t require interacting with her close-knit Iranian American family, Shirin is an out, and outspoken, bisexual. Brash, witty, self-involved, and professionally unmoored, she has a streak of poor impulse control that leads her into situations variously hilarious, awkward, painful, and disastrous. Through a series of flashbacks, Akhavan walks us back through the medium highs and major lows of Shirin’s defunct relationship, while tracking her floundering present-day attempts to wobble back to standing. Akhavan’s first feature, Appropriate Behavior has a comic looseness that occasionally verges on shapelessness, but the stray bits are entertaining too. June 27, 7pm, Castro. (Lynn Rapoport)

Of Girls and Horses (Monika Treut, Germany) A semi-delinquent teenager named Alex (Ceci Chuh) is sent away to work on a horse farm as a sort of last-ditch effort to shift her onto a more salutary path. Under the care of thirtysomething Nina (Vanida Karun), who is taking time apart from urban life in Hamburg, where her girlfriend lives, Alex comes to fall under the quiet spell of the horses, and when another young girl, Kathy (Alissa Wilms), shows up to vacation at the farm with her horse, Alex falls for her as well. Director Monika Treut (1999’s Gendernauts) favors long, lyrical shots of horses grazing or gazing soulfully into the lens, of Nina and Kathy cantering over flat green expanses of countryside, and of Alex forking hay into the stalls. A few small dramas take place, but Of Girls and Horses is more of a sketch than a story, and whether it holds your interest may depend on how many Marguerite Henry horse stories you consumed in your youth. June 27, 9:15pm, Roxie. (Rapoport)

Futuro Beach (Karim Ainouz, Brazil) When two German men globe-trotting on their motorcycles go for a dip off the Brazilian coast, they’re pulled under by the current — only Konrad (Clemens Schick) is saved by local lifeguard Donato (Wagner Moura), his companion lost. The two men console one another with sex. Then in the first of several disorienting jumps forward in time here, suddenly Donato has moved to Europe in order to continue their relationship, leaving his old life (including a dependent mother and younger brother) behind. There are further narrative leaps ahead — director Karim Ainouz (2002’s Madame Satã) is all about bold gestures here, but his visual and sonic assertiveness don’t necessarily fill the blanks in narrative and character development. The resulting exercise in style will leave you either dazzled or emotionally untouched. June 27, 9:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Cupcakes (Eytan Fox, Israel, 2013) After a run of politically tinged features, Eytan Fox (2002’s Yossi & Jagger, 2004’s Walk on Water) goes the Almodóvar-lite route with this flyweight comedy about a Eurovision-style song contest. Gay Ofer (Ofer Shechter) and various girlfriends who all live in the same Tel Aviv apartment building decide to enter the Universong competition, becoming Israel’s official entry with improbable ease despite never having performed publicly before. Their mild travails (fighting the creative inference of professional handlers, Ofer’s attempts to drag his boyfriend out of the closet) fill time pleasantly enough before the inevitable triumphant telecast climax. This candy-colored fluff, its mainstreamed camp sensibility predictably reflected in corny vintage hits (“Love Will Keep Us Together,” “You Light Up My Life”), is aptly named — it’s as colorful, easily digested, and about as nutritious as a tray of cupcakes. June 28, 8:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

I Feel Like Disco (Axel Ranisch, Germany, 2013) When housewife Monika (Christina Grobe) suffers a stroke and falls into a coma she may never come out of, her chubby teenage son Flori (Frithjof Gawenda) and junior high swim coach husband Hanno (Heiko Pinkowski) are forced to depend on each other without mom as a buffer. Things tentatively look up when Flori develops an unlikely friendship — and possibly something more — with dad’s star diver, Romanian émigré Radu (Robert Alexander Baer). Axel Ranisch’s gentle seriocomedy doesn’t make much of an impression for a while, springing few surprises (despite occasional deadpan fantasy sequences) along its moderately amusing path. But as father and son struggle to rise to the occasion of their shared crisis, we grow to like them more — and likewise this ultimately quite disarming feature. June 29, 7pm, Castro. (Harvey) *

Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, runs June 19-29 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and schedule, visit www.frameline.org. For even more Frameline 38 short takes, visit www.sfbg.com.

If you even have time to make it to the movies between World Cup matches…

Sue Vaughan

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June 13, 2014

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If you even have time to make it to the movies between World Cup matches…

…read on for our takes on the new flicks of the week. Pssst: lots of good stuff still to come at DocFest, too!

Alone Yet Not Alone Remember that Christian historical drama that was Oscar-nominated for Best Song but then got kicked out of the running because of the songwriter’s sketchy campaign tactics? No? Well, here ’tis. (1:43)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INW6i6K1NmQ&feature=kp

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia Nicholas Wrathall’s highly entertaining documentary pays tribute to one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, original, and cranky thinkers, with extensive input from the man himself before his death in 2012 at age 86. The emphasis here is less on Vidal’s life as a literary lion and often glittering celebrity social life than on his parallel career as a harsh scold of US social injustices and political corruption. (Needless to say, recent history only sharpened his tongue in that department, with George W. Bush dismissed as “a goddam fool,” and earlier statements such as “This is a country of the rich, for the rich and by the rich” seeming more apt than ever.) He’s a wellspring of wisdoms both blunt and witty, sometimes surprising, as in his hindsight doubts about the virtues of JFK (a personal friend) as a president. We get plenty of colorful archival clips in which he’s seen verbally jousting with such famous foes as William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, invariablyreducing them to stammering fury while remaining exasperatingly unruffled. His “out” homosexuality and outré views on sexuality in general (at odds with an increasingly assimilationist gay community) kept him controversial even among many liberals, while conservatives were further irked by his rock-solid family connections to the ruling elite. In our era of scripted political rhetoric and pandering anti-intellectualism, it’s a joy merely to spend an hour and half in the company of someone so brilliantly articulate on seemingly any topic — but particularly on the perpetually self-mythologizing, money-worshipping state of our Union. (1:29) (Dennis Harvey)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Sequel to the 2010 animated hit about Vikings and their dragon buddies, with voices by Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Djimon Honsou, America Ferrera, Kit Harington, Jonah Hill, and others. (1:42)

Obvious Child We first encounter the protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s funny, original film — a Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething named Donna (Jenny Slate), who works at a lefty secondhand bookstore and makes regular (if unpaid) appearances at a local comedy night — onstage mining such underdiscussed topics as the effects of vaginal discharge on your garden-variety pair of underwear. This proves a natural segue to other hefty nuggets of embarrassment gold concerning her love life, to the dismay of boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), auditing from the back of the club. He pretty much deserves it, however, for what he’s about to do, which is break up with her in a nasty, well-populated unisex bathroom, taking time to repeatedly glance at the texts coming through on his phone from Donna’s good friend, with whom he’s sleeping. So when Donna, mid-drowning of sorrows, meets a nice-looking fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) at the bar, his post-fraternity-presidency aesthetic seems unlikely to deter her from a one-night stand. The ensuing trashed make-out dance-off in Max’s apartment to the Paul Simon song of the title is both comic and adorable. The fractured recap of the evening’s condom-free horizontal events that occurs inside Donna’s brain three weeks later, as she hunkers down with her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), in the bookstore’s bathroom after peeing on a stick, is equally hilarious — and unwanted-pregnancy jokes aren’t that easy to pull off. Robespierre’s treatment of this extended windup and of Donna’s decision to have an abortion is a witty, warmhearted retort to 2007’s Knocked Up, a couple generations’ worth of Hollywood rom-com writers, and an entertainment industry that continues to perform its sweaty contortions of storytelling in the gutless cause of avoiding the A-word. (1:15) (Lynn Rapoport)

The Signal Sharing its title with a 2007 film — also a thriller about a mysterious transmission that wreaks havoc in the lives of its protagonists — this offbeat feature from co-writer and director William Eubank belies its creator’s deep affection for, and knowledge of, the sci-fi genre. Number one thing The Signal is not is predictable, but its twists feel organic even as the story takes one hairpin turn after another. MIT buddies Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) are driving Nic’s girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke), cross-country to California. Complicating the drama of the young couple’s imminent separation is Nic’s deteriorating physical condition (it’s never explained, but the former runner apparently has MS or some other neurological disease). The road trip turns dark when the trio (who also happen to be hackers) realize an Internet troll they’ve tangled with in the past is stalking them. After a brief detour into found-footage horror — fooled ya, Eubank seems to be saying; this ain’t that kind of movie at all! — the kids find themselves embroiled in ever-more-terrifying realities. To give away more would ruin the fun of being shocked for yourself, but think Twilight Zone meets Area 51 meets a certain futuristic trilogy starring Laurence Fishburne, who turns up here to play a very important role in Nic and company’s waking nightmare. (1:37) (Cheryl Eddy)

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon See “Puff Piece.” (1:24)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm8UaNdq24c&feature=kp

22 Jump Street In this TV-inspired sequel, “Previously on 21 Jump Street…” is all the backstory we get. 22 wastes no time sending Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) back to school to solve another case. A few details have changed (they’re in college now, where the drug of choice is “Why Phy”), but the situation is self-consciously boilerplate, which lets the filmmakers cast (ironic) judgment on sequels — and imply the TV show was redundant. College proves hilarious, from the rundown of dorm room essentials to Schmidt’s walk of shame, and the touchstones are sharp and embarrassing. An extended fight between Schmidt and a girl (Jillian Bell, fabulous) twists gender issues and sexual assault into gloriously absurd politics. Best of all is a fairly understated joke in front of the Benjamin Hill School of Film Studies. I laughed as much at 22 as I did at 21, but 22 spends so much time calling out its number-two status that it almost becomes performance art. (1:45) (Sara Maria Vizcarrondo)

13TH SAN FRANCISCO DOCUMENTARY FESTIVAL

Natalia Robyns-Kresich

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June 12, 2014

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With over 40 feature films in the official selection, the 13th Annual San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (SF DocFest) once again showcases the best documentaries from around the globe and around the Bay.

Presented by SF IndieFest, the 13th Edition of the SF DocFest will include films, panels, and events. In addition to the Roxie and Brava Theatres in San Francisco, the festival will also include the Oakland School of the Arts’ Marion E. Greene Black Box Theater as their newest venue. For more information on films, parties and panels at the festival visit www.sfindie.com.

Enter to win a pair of tickets by emailing your FIRST and LAST name to rsvp@sfmediaco.com with the “DocFest” in the subject line.

Puff piece

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June 10, 2014

2

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Sometimes a movie can only be called a gift — a gift intended for somebody other than the viewer. Clearly a film is a vanity project if its primary intent seems to flatter its maker. But what about when it’s a love letter from one rich, entitled celebrity to another? Then the vanity grows complicated, not least by the fact that we’re expected to pay for the privilege of watching one ass kiss another.

Anyone who blinked probably missed Super Duper Alice Cooper, which mostly did just one-night showings across the nation in April. That rockumentary was duly “authorized” but awfully entertaining, with the wit to tell its original shock-rocker’s tale entirely through archival footage plus a running oral history of latter-day interviews. Mike Myers’ directorial bow Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon tells the same story for its first half hour — Gordon being the “Jewish kid from Long Island” who stumbled into being Cooper’s manager, shepherding (har) him to fame with an uncanny knack for promotional stunts and image-shaping.

He eventually provided those services and more to a highly eccentric roster of talents including Wonder Bread pop thrush Anne Murray, R&B vibrator Teddy Pendergrass, and (an end-scroll informs) King Sunny Ade, Ben Vereen, Raquel Welch, Michelle Shocked, Rick James, and Frankie Valli. He co-founded Alive Films, which produced and distributed an innovative slate of indie and foreign features. Discovering that the world’s greatest chefs were “treated like shit” (?!), he had the foresight to create the whole “celebrity chef racket” in which they have reality TV shows and hawk their own supermarket products, for which we presumably must be grateful.

In a respite from bedding and occasionally marrying other “tens,” he kept Sharon Stone off the dating market for two years, for which we should probably also be grateful. She introduced him to the Dalai Lama, of whom he says, “Every time His Holiness walks into a room I feel like I’ve taken the greatest shower of my life.” (Apparently, he feels spiritually cleansed.) Dropping more names than a telephone book in a shredder, Gordon shares amusing anecdotes about Cary Grant and Steve Jobs alike. He is a wellspring of generosity who supported an ex-girlfriend’s orphaned grandchildren and secured financial stability for an elderly Groucho Marx. Meeting Myers via Cooper on the set of 1992’s Wayne’s World, he subsequently housed the famously difficult comedian turned (here) documentarian for two months at his Maui compound when the erstwhile Austin Powers was going through a rough stretch.

“He’s the nicest man I’ve ever met, hands down,” Myers gushes onscreen, while some other famous person (Michael Douglas? I forget) calls Gordon “the nexus for everybody who means anything in the entire world.”

Supermensch is a professional funny guy’s documentary, which means it can’t help manipulating things (wacky klezmer soundtrack; campy re-enactments; celebrity testimonials from Tom Arnold, Sammy Hagar, and Sylvester Stallone) in ways that beg for approval. Gordon is no doubt a great host, a good cook, a consummate cocksman, and a social and business genius. But watching this movie is like paying to see a $5,000-per-plate benefit dinner via closed circuit TV — as if it were a humbling honor to witness famous people pat each other on the back.

It’s a given here that the tragedy of Gordon’s life is his not being able to foster a biological family of his own — no matter that he’d out-bachelored many a former lover who might have realized it. “I felt really lonely for him,” says one loyal personal assistant re: the moment he woke up from near fatal surgery (cue Radiohead track “Everything In Its Right Place”) and was disappointed her less-than-gorgeous self was at his bedside. The by-association narcissism Supermensch exudes is exceeded only by the depressingly low self-esteem of she who pities a man who hasn’t yet found his impossible feminine ideal. *

SUPERMENSCH: THE LEGEND OF SHEP GORDON opens Fri/13 in San Francisco.

Film Listings: June 11-17, 2014

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June 10, 2014

0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

DOCFEST

The 13th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival runs through June 19 at the Brava Theater, 2781 York, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; and Oakland School of the Arts Theater, 530 19th St, Oakl. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

Alone Yet Not Alone Remember that Christian historical drama that was Oscar-nominated for Best Song but then got kicked out of the running because of the songwriter’s sketchy campaign tactics? No? Well, here ’tis. (1:43)

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia Nicholas Wrathall’s highly entertaining documentary pays tribute to one of the 20th century’s most brilliant, original, and cranky thinkers, with extensive input from the man himself before his death in 2012 at age 86. The emphasis here is less on Vidal’s life as a literary lion and often glittering celebrity social life than on his parallel career as a harsh scold of US social injustices and political corruption. (Needless to say, recent history only sharpened his tongue in that department, with George W. Bush dismissed as “a goddamn fool,” and earlier statements such as “This is a country of the rich, for the rich and by the rich” seeming more apt than ever.) He’s a wellspring of wisdoms both blunt and witty, sometimes surprising, as in his hindsight doubts about the virtues of JFK (a personal friend) as a president. We get plenty of colorful archival clips in which he’s seen verbally jousting with such famous foes as William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer, invariably reducing them to stammering fury while remaining exasperatingly unruffled. His “out” homosexuality and outré views on sexuality in general (at odds with an increasingly assimilationist gay community) kept him controversial even among many liberals, while conservatives were further irked by his rock-solid family connections to the ruling elite. In our era of scripted political rhetoric and pandering anti-intellectualism, it’s a joy merely to spend an hour and half in the company of someone so brilliantly articulate on seemingly any topic — but particularly on the perpetually self-mythologizing, money-worshipping state of our Union. (1:29) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Sequel to the 2010 animated hit about Vikings and their dragon buddies, with voices by Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Djimon Honsou, America Ferrera, Kit Harington, Jonah Hill, and others. (1:42) Four Star, Presidio.

Obvious Child We first encounter the protagonist of writer-director Gillian Robespierre’s funny, original film — a Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething named Donna (Jenny Slate), who works at a lefty secondhand bookstore and makes regular (if unpaid) appearances at a local comedy night — onstage mining such underdiscussed topics as the effects of vaginal discharge on your garden-variety pair of underwear. This proves a natural segue to other hefty nuggets of embarrassment gold concerning her love life, to the dismay of boyfriend Ryan (Paul Briganti), auditing from the back of the club. He pretty much deserves it, however, for what he’s about to do, which is break up with her in a nasty, well-populated unisex bathroom, taking time to repeatedly glance at the texts coming through on his phone from Donna’s good friend, with whom he’s sleeping. So when Donna, mid-drowning of sorrows, meets a nice-looking fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) at the bar, his post-fraternity-presidency aesthetic seems unlikely to deter her from a one-night stand. The ensuing trashed make-out dance-off in Max’s apartment to the Paul Simon song of the title is both comic and adorable. The fractured recap of the evening’s condom-free horizontal events that occurs inside Donna’s brain three weeks later, as she hunkers down with her best friend, Nellie (Gaby Hoffmann), in the bookstore’s bathroom after peeing on a stick, is equally hilarious — and unwanted-pregnancy jokes aren’t that easy to pull off. Robespierre’s treatment of this extended windup and of Donna’s decision to have an abortion is a witty, warmhearted retort to 2007’s Knocked Up, a couple generations’ worth of Hollywood rom-com writers, and an entertainment industry that continues to perform its sweaty contortions of storytelling in the gutless cause of avoiding the A-word. (1:15) Embarcadero. (Rapoport)

The Signal Sharing its title with a 2007 film — also a thriller about a mysterious transmission that wreaks havoc in the lives of its protagonists — this offbeat feature from co-writer and director William Eubank belies its creator’s deep affection for, and knowledge of, the sci-fi genre. Number one thing The Signal is not is predictable, but its twists feel organic even as the story takes one hairpin turn after another. MIT buddies Nic (Brenton Thwaites) and Jonah (Beau Knapp) are driving Nic’s girlfriend, Haley (Olivia Cooke), cross-country to California. Complicating the drama of the young couple’s imminent separation is Nic’s deteriorating physical condition (it’s never explained, but the former runner apparently has MS or some other neurological disease). The road trip turns dark when the trio (who also happen to be hackers) realize an Internet troll they’ve tangled with in the past is stalking them. After a brief detour into found-footage horror — fooled ya, Eubank seems to be saying; this ain’t that kind of movie at all! — the kids find themselves embroiled in ever-more-terrifying realities. To give away more would ruin the fun of being shocked for yourself, but think Twilight Zone meets Area 51 meets a certain futuristic trilogy starring Laurence Fishburne, who turns up here to play a very important role in Nic and company’s waking nightmare. (1:37) California. (Eddy)

Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon See “Puff Piece.” (1:24) Embarcadero.

22 Jump Street Comedy cops Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum return for more undercover sleuthing in a slightly more age-appropriate milieu: college. (1:45) Marina, Shattuck.

ONGOING

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 The best thing about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 — the sequel to the 2012 reboot that nobody really wanted in the first place — is the achingly cute chemistry between real-life couple Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker/Spider-Man) and Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy, whose fate is no spoiler to anyone who is familiar with the Spider-Man canon). Can’t deny it; those two are adorbs. But since Spider-Man is supposed to be an action movie, not a romantic comedy, it spends most of its time setting up foes for the webslinger (Jamie Foxx as a nerd zapped into the power-mad Electro; Dane DeHaan as bratty rich kid Harry Osborn), as well as rehashing the mysterious deaths of Peter’s parents, and underlining for approximately the zillionth time the disconnect between the media’s perception of Spider-Man (he’s a menace! He interferes with police work!) and the ecstatic love the people of New York have for the guy — understandable, since he’s in the business of saving their butts on a regular basis. This isn’t a crappy movie by any means; it’s entertaining enough, and the 3D swooping-between-skyscrapers FX have gotten quite dazzling. But there’s still a heavy air of “This again?” that hangs over the whole thing. Doesn’t Marvel have enough dough from the Avengers movies to let Spidey take an extended vacation? (2:20) Metreon. (Eddy)

Belle The child of a British naval officer and a Caribbean slave, Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is deposited on the doorstep — well, the estate grounds — of her father’s relatives in 1769 England after her mother dies. Soon she’s entirely orphaned, which makes her a wealthy heiress and aristocratic title holder at the same time that she is something less than human in the eyes of her adopted society. For Belle is black (or more properly, mixed-race), and thus a useless curiosity at best as a well-bred noblewoman of the “wrong” racial makeup. Based on a murky actual historical chapter, Amma Asante’s film is that rare sumptuous costume drama which actually has something on its mind beyond romance and royalty. Not least among its pleasures are a fine supporting cast including Tom Wilkinson, Miranda Richardson, Penelope Wilton, and Emily Watson. (1:45) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Blended (1:57) SF Center.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier Marvel’s most wholesome hero returns in this latest film in the Avengers series, and while it doesn’t deviate from the expected formula (it’s not a spoiler to say that yes, the world is saved yet again), it manages to incorporate a surprisingly timely plot about the dangers of government surveillance. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), hunkiest 95-year-old ever, is still figuring out his place in the 21st century after his post-World War II deep freeze. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has him running random rescue missions with the help of Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), but SHIELD is working on a top-secret project that will allow it to predict crimes before they occur. It isn’t long before Cap’s distrust of the weapon — he may be old-fashioned, but he ain’t stupid — uncovers a sinister plot led by a familiar enemy, with Steve’s former BFF Bucky doing its bidding as the science-experiment-turned-assassin Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan). Anthony Mackie, Robert Redford, and series regular Cobie Smulders are fine in supporting roles, and Johansson finally gets more to do than punch and pose, but the likable Evans ably carries the movie — he may not have the charisma of Robert Downey Jr., but he brings wit and depth to a role that would otherwise be defined mainly by biceps and CG-heavy fights. Oh, and you know the drill by now: superfans will want to stick around for two additional scenes tucked into the end credits. (2:16) Metreon. (Eddy)

Chef Not to take anything away from the superhero crew, but Chef feels like the closest thing to a labor of love from writer, director, and star Jon Favreau in many a day. As a director, he may have been making doughnuts — fun-filled and teeming with CGI eye candy, but doughnuts nevertheless — when it came to effects-driven blockbusters like 2008’s Iron Man, but this well-meaning play for the heart, by way of the stomach, shows you where Favreau’s head is really at. Chef revolves around Carl Casper (Favreau), a onetime food star, now reduced to serving up predictable crowd-pleasers at the behest of his restaurant’s overbearing owner (Dustin Huffman). It takes the barbs of an influential critic (Oliver Platt) — and an ensuing Twitter war — to set Carl off and send him away on his own, at the coaxing of his glam ex Inez (Sofia Vergara). Hooked up with a dilapidated food truck and former kitchen staffer Martin (John Leguizamo), and aided by ably Tweeting son Percy (Emjay Anthony), Carl ties his dreams — and lost passion — to the classic Cuban sandwich. The ensuing road trip from Miami to LA, and Carl’s journey toward self and a renewed relationship with his son, is a fun (if, in the end, a bit too speedily sketched) vault through the joys of eating your way through America’s new culinary heartland. Amid the volley of sign-of-the-times social-media swinging and cameos by the uncostumed Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, and the like, Favreau’s main dish is that a family that eats, cooks, and runs a business together, stays together — child labor laws or no. (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, Metreon, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Dance of Reality His unique vision recently re-introduced to audiences by unmaking-of documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, cinematic fabulist Alejandro Jodorowsky is back with his first film in a quarter-century. This autobiographical fantasia shows all initial signs of being a welcome yet somewhat redundant retread of his cult-famed early work (1970’s El Topo, 1973’s The Holy Mountain), as Santa Sangre was in 1989. It starts with the filmmaker himself fulminating wisdoms about the spiritual emptiness of a money-centric world, then appearing as guardian angel to his child self (Jeremias Herskovits). Little Alejandro is raised by a bullying, hyper macho father (Brontis Jodorowsky) and warm, indulgent mother (soprano Pamela Flores, singing every line of dialogue) who naturally clash at every turn. Jodorowsky’s stunning eye for bizarre imagery (abetted by DP Jean-Marie Dreujou’s handsome compositions) hasn’t faded, so there are delights to be had even in what fans might consider an over-familiar parade of dwarfs, amputees, anti clerical burlesques (like a dress-up dog beauty contest at church), Chaplinesque circus sentimentality, and other simple if surreal illustrations of society’s eternal victims and overlords. At a certain point, however, the misdeeds of father Jaime force his self-exile. The film’s consequent picaresque allegory of epic suffering toward redemption becomes cheerfully goofy, its symbol-strewn path increasingly funny and sweet rather than burdened by import. A large part of that appeal is due to junior Jodorowsky Brontis, who demonstrates considerable farcical esprit while flashing more full-frontal nudity than Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor combined ever dreamed of obliging. Shot in the family’s native Chile on a purported crowd funded budget of $3 million — could Hollywood provide so much original spectacle for 30 times that amount?—The Dance of Reality finds its 84-year-old maker as frisky as a pony, one that provides an endearingly unpredictable ride. (2:10) California, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Edge of Tomorrow Is it OK to root for Tom Cruise again? (The Oprah thing was almost a decade ago, after all.) The entertaining Edge of Tomorrow, crisply directed by Bourne series vet Doug Liman, takes what’s most irritating about Cruise’s persona (he’s so goddamn earnest) and uses it to great advantage, casting him as military PR guru Cage — repping our armed forces on talk shows amid battles with alien invaders dubbed “Mimics” — whose oiliness masks the fact that he’s terrified of actual combat. When he’s forced to fight by a no-nonsense superior (Brendan Gleeson), he’s gruesomely killed, along with nearly every other human soldier. But wait! Thanks to a particularly close encounter with outer-space pixie dust, he awakens, unharmed, to re-live the day, over and over again (yep, shades of a certain Bill Murray comedy classic). Each “reset” offers Cage a chance to work his way closer to changing the course of the war in humanity’s favor, with key help from a badass (Emily Blunt) whose heroics on the battlefield have earned her the nickname “Full Metal Bitch.” Nothing groundbreaking here — but Edge of Tomorrow manages to make its satisfying plot as important as its 3D explosions, which means it automatically rises above what passes for popcorn fun these days. (1:53) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Fading Gigolo Ah, the charm of a well-aged, seasoned perv &ldots; nope, we don’t dare touch the Woody Allen/Dylan Farrow abuse allegations — though those recent headlines flit around the edges of this generally benevolent, almost strangely innocuous charmer, written by and directed John Turturro, who also stars as the curiously blank-faced tabula rasa of a title character. The delights of Mrs. Robinsons have been rhapsodized on film, through the lens of worshipful younger men — less so, their male counterparts, as viewed by other hetero men. The danger of bromance surging into the homoerotic is likely too dire for most, yet somehow bookstore boss Murray (Allen) sees the mysterious, submerged sex appeal in his loyal employee Fioravante (Turturro) and taps him to get involved in a ménage à trois with a society dermatologist (Sharon Stone). The soft-spoken Fioravante turns out to be a smash in the sack with the doc, transforming the opportunistic Murray into a wildly successful pimp as his employee takes on the audacious Selima (Sofia Vergara) and the prim Jewish Orthodox widow Avigal (Vanessa Paradis). The latter character seems to have come straight from another place and time — much like this film, which turns Brooklyn into a something resembling a leaf-strewn European village and recalls odes to revolutionary sexuality in the ’60s. The movie’s lightly absurd comedy is embedded in the fact that Turturro writes himself into the role of the seducer, the pleaser, while wrapped in the skin of pleasant if everyday-looking Joe, although Paradis, a revelation as a deeply repressed devout mother slowly awakening to her body, points to more serious pleasures, lingering below the surface of all of us. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Fault in Our Stars I confess: I’m no card-carrying, vlog-flogging Nerdfighter in author John Green’s teen-geek army. But one can admire the passion — and teary romanticism — of the writer, readers, and the breakthrough novel that started it all. Much has been made over the cinematic tweaks to the best-selling YA book, but those seem like small beefs: OK, male romantic lead Gus’s (Ansel Elgort) perhaps-understandable brattiness seems to have been toned down a touch, but we’ll all get the somewhat-subversive push and pull of Green’s love story centered on two cancer-stricken innocents. Sixteen-year-old Hazel (a radiant Shailene Woodley) has been battling cancer almost all her life, fighting back from the brink, and now making her way every day with an oxygen tank and her devoted parents (Laura Dern, Sam Trammel) by her side. Her mordant wit, skeptical attitude, and smarts attract Gus, a handsome teen with a prosthetic leg, at a cancer support group, and the two embark on what seems like the most normal thing in the world — sweet, sweet love — albeit cut with the poignancy of almost-certain doom. Would the girl who calls herself a grenade dare to care for someone she will likely hurt? That’s the real question on her mind when the two reach out to the solitary author (Willem Dafoe) of their favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. The journey the two make leaves them both open to more hurt than either ever imagined, and though a good part of Fault‘s denouement boils down to a major puddle cuddle — with solid performances by all, but particularly Dern and Woodley — even a cynic is likely to get a bit misty as the kids endure all the stages of loss. And learning. (2:05) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Fed Up Katie Couric narrates, produces, and brings celebrity heft to Stephanie Soechtig’s well-crafted expose on the alarmingly powerful food industry — specifically, revealing how “nutritional standards” put forth by the government over the past 30 years have actually caused the nation’s current obesity epidemic. Fed Up‘s straightforward combination of simple facts (80 percent of food items have added sugar); talking-head experts (Bill Clinton, UCSF’s Dr. Robert Lustig); historical fact-finding (including a segment that convincingly compares today’s food industry to the tobacco industry of yore); and profiles of dangerously overweight teens (all of whom are trying, and failing, to lose weight) adds up to a film that is poised to have An Inconvenient Truth-style impact on viewers — and will hopefully

open enough eyes to make waves beyond movie theaters. (1:32) California, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Godzilla Bearing the weight of a 1998 American debut so stinky that devotees of the Japanese original dubbed it “GINO” (for “Godzilla in Name Only”), the King of the Monsters returns for a do-over that smells more like generic summer entertainment than anything else. We begin in 1999, when a pair of scientists (Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins) discover a giant skeleton of sorts in the Philippines — just as a deadly accident (or was it?) devastates a Japanese nuclear power plant. Fifteen years later, the scientists are still on the trail of Whatever That Was, while guilty power-plant survivor Bryan Cranston has become a greasy-haired conspiracy theorist, much to the annoyance of his San Francisco-based Navy officer son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). The humans in Gareth Edwards’ film don’t actually matter much; aside from Cranston and to a much lesser extent Watanabe, none of the characters are interesting or memorable, and the plot — which has Big G lumbering after a pair of “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms” who decide to incubate their eggs in downtown SF — is also a low-stakes affair. (If you believe for a second that Taylor-Johnson’s doe-eyed wife and son won’t survive the monster attack, I have a busted-up Golden Gate Bridge to sell you.) But the monster design is plenty satisfying, and really, it’s just fine that Godzilla — who wrinkles his snout in annoyance at those pesky MUTOs — is this film’s one and only charismatic presence; dude’s going on a 70-year career at this point. (2:03) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Grand Budapest Hotel Is this the first Wes Anderson movie to feature a shootout? It’s definitely the first Anderson flick to include a severed head. That’s not to say The Grand Budapest Hotel, “inspired by” the works of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig, represents too much of a shift for the director — his intricate approach to art direction is still very much in place, as are the deadpan line deliveries and a cast stuffed with Anderson regulars. But there’s a slightly more serious vibe here, a welcome change from 2012’s tooth-achingly twee Moonrise Kingdom. Thank Ralph Fiennes’ performance as liberally perfumed concierge extraordinaire M. Gustave, which mixes a shot of melancholy into the whimsy, and newcomer Tony Revolori as Zero, his loyal lobby boy, who provides gravitas despite only being a teenager. (Being played by F. Murray Abraham as an older adult probably helps in that department.) Hotel‘s early 20th century Europe setting proves an ideal canvas for Anderson’s love of detail — the titular creation rivals Stanley Kubrick’s rendering of the Overlook Hotel — and his supporting cast, as always, looks to be enjoying the hell out of being a part of Anderson’s universe, with Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Adrien Brody having particularly oversized fun. Is this the best Wes Anderson movie since 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums? Yes. (1:40) California, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Grand Seduction Canadian actor-director Don McKellar (1998’s Last Night) remakes 2003 Quebecois comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis, about a depressed community searching for the town doctor they’ll need before a factory will agree to set up shop and bring much-needed jobs to the area. Canada is still the setting here, with the harbor’s name — Tickle Head — telegraphing with zero subtlety that whimsy lies ahead. A series of events involving a Tickle Head-based TSA agent, a bag of cocaine, and a harried young doctor (Taylor Kitsch) trying to avoid jail time signals hope for the hamlet, and de facto town leader Murray (Brendan Gleeson) snaps into action. The seduction of “Dr. Paul,” who agrees to one month of service not knowing the town is desperate to keep him, is part Northern Exposure culture clash, part Jenga-like stack of lies, as the townspeople pretend to love cricket (Paul’s a fanatic) and act like his favorite lamb dish is the specialty at the local café. The wonderfully wry Gleeson is the best thing about this deeply predictable tale, which errs too often on the side of cute (little old ladies at the switchboard listening in on Paul’s phone-sex with his girlfriend!) rather than clever, as when an unsightly structure in the center of town is explained away with a fake “World Heritage House” plaque. Still, the scenery is lovely, and “cute” doesn’t necessarily mean “not entertaining.” (1:52) Albany, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Ida The bomb drops within the first ten minutes: after being gently forced to reconnect with her only living relative before taking her vows, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns that her name is actually Ida, and that she’s Jewish. Her mother’s sister, Wanda (Agneta Kulesza) — a Communist Party judge haunted by a turbulent past she copes with via heavy drinking, among other vices — also crisply relays that Ida’s parents were killed during the Nazi occupation, and after some hesitation agrees to accompany the sheltered young woman to find out how they died, and where their bodies were buried. Drawing great depth from understated storytelling and gorgeous, black-and-white cinematography, Pawel Pawilowski’s well-crafted drama offers a bleak if realistic (and never melodramatic) look at 1960s Poland, with two polar-opposite characters coming to form a bond as their layers of painful loss rise to the surface. (1:20) Albany, Clay, Piedmont. (Eddy)

The Immigrant Ewa (Marion Cotilliard) is an orphaned Polish émigré who’s separated from her sickly sister at Ellis Island in 1921, and scheduled for deportation as an alleged “woman of low morals.” She’s rescued from that by Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), though he’s not quite the agent of charity he seems — in fact, Ewa doesn’t realize she’s actually been recruited for a prostitution racket he thinly veils as a theatrical troupe. Still, she stays, believing she has no other viable path to freeing her sister from quarantine, she allows her own degradation for money’s sake. This latest collaboration between Phoenix and director-coscenarist James Gray is a handsome period piece that’s done skillfully and tastefully enough to downplay — but not quite hide — the fact that its moral melodrama might as well have been written (as well as set) nearly a century ago. Cotilliard is fine in her best English-language role to date, and Phoenix is compelling as usual; Jeremy Renner is somewhat miscast as a distant-third lead. But whether you find The Immigrant poignant or forced will depend on your tolerance for a script whose every turn is all too predictable. (2:00) Metreon, Piedmont. (Harvey)

The Lunchbox Ila (Nimrat Kaur) is a self-possessed housewife and a great cook, whose husband confuses her for another piece of furniture. She tries to arouse his affections with elaborate lunches she makes and sends through the city’s lunchbox delivery service. Like marriage in India, lunchbox delivery has a failure rate of zero, which is what makes aberrations seem like magical occurrences. So when widow Saajan (Irrfan Khan) receives her adoring food, he humbly receives the magical lunches like a revival of the senses. Once Ila realizes her lunchbox is feeding the wrong man she writes a note and Saajan replies — tersely, like a man who hasn’t held a conversation in a decade — and the impossible circumstances lend their exchanges a romance that challenges her emotional fidelity and his retreat from society. She confides her husband is cheating. He confides his sympathy for men of lower castes. It’s a May/December affair if it’s an affair at all — but the chemistry we expect the actors to have in the same room is what fuels our urge to see it; that’s a rare and haunting dynamic. Newcomer Kaur is perfect as Ila, a beauty unmarked by her rigorous distaff; her soft features and exhausted expression lend a richness to the troubles she can’t share with her similarly stoic mother (Lillete Dubey). Everyone is sacrificing something and poverty seeps into every crack, every life, without exception — their inner lives are their richness. (1:44) Shattuck. (Vizcarrondo)

Maleficent Fairytale revisionism is all the rage these days, what with the unending power of Disney princesses to latch into little girls everywhere and bring parental units (and their wallets) to their knees. Yet princesses almost seem beside the point in this villain’s-side-of-the-story tale — Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), the queen of the fairies in the magical moors, wronged by Stefan (Sharlto Copley), who saws off her wings in order to win a crown. Accompanied by her shape-shifting minion, crow Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent attends the christening of King Stefan’s first-born daughter, Aurora, hot on the heels of three clownish good fairies (Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple), and delivers a curse that will have this future Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning) prick her finger on a spindle and sink into a deathlike coma until her true love’s kiss. Will that critical smooch be delivered by Prince Bieber, er, Phillip (Brenton Thwaites)? Considering the potential for Disney’s trademark, heart-tugging enchantment to get magically tangled up in girl power, it’s tough to suck up the disappointment in the ooey-gooey, gummy-faced troll-doll aesthetics of the art direction and animation, as well as first-time director Robert Stromberg’s choppy, dashed-through storytelling. Part of the problem is that there’s almost zero threat here, despite its antihero’s devilish presence — is there ever any doubt that a healthy resolution will win out, even at the expense of blood ties? Best to find dangerous pleasures where one can — namely in the vivid Jolie, cheekbones honed to a razor edge, who spits biting remarks at her accursed charge, beneath Joan Crawford-esque eyebrows and horns crying out for club-kid Halloween treatments. (1:37) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Million Dollar Arm Jon Hamm has it bad — that dark-around-the-edges Mad Men afterglow can’t help but follow him everywhere, even into the arms of Disney in this solid Cinderella-story baseball tale (possibly the best headlining gig he’s had outside SCDP). Hamm’s J.B. Bernstein would certainly have something to hash over with Don Draper: both are down-on-their-luck charmers with the cracks in their facades clearly showing, yet nonetheless intent on doing it their way. J.B. is striking out when it comes to recruiting talent for his new, rapidly sinking sports agency, when he comes up with a genius idea while he and fellow agent Aash (Aasif Mandvi) are watching random sports at the latter’s home: Why not tap into one of the world’s greatest unexploited baseball markets by staging a talent search for an Indian cricket player with Major League pitching potential? Canvassing the country with the help of sleepy scout Ray (Alan Arkin) and baseball-enthusiast translator Amit (Pitobash), J.B. finds his arms ultimately attached to village truck driver Dinesh (Madhur Mittal) and contorting track-and-field thrower Rinku (Suraj Sharma of 2012’s Life of Pi). But how to turn raw talent into professional careers in just months? And moreover, how can the would-be golden boys overcome cultural barriers that a fly ball couldn’t surmount? It’s a tryout for all concerned — including an MLB that’s still striving to expand its reach in Asia, and Hamm, who can be so good as Draper that he’s in increasing danger of being typecast. In the Disney mold, at least, his character achieves fairly happy results. (2:00) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

A Million Ways to Die in the West One can’t help but feel … mixed about Seth MacFarlane. The funnyman will go there. Few can deny that. But whether he should be starring as a leading man in his own passion projects — even Quentin Tarantino has the sense not to do that — is still in question, even in light of the oft-hilarious A Million Ways to Die in the West. On screen, MacFarlane looks a wee bit too waxily vanilla — like he’s had too much work done or he’s the every-guy counterpart to Johnny Depp’s CGI-swathed Willy Wonka. The director and co-writer’s choice to put himself in front of the camera, rather than an animated or claymated Seth or Ted, is one of few trip-ups in this otherwise generally good-natured and merrily violent outing, lightly reminiscent of Blazing Saddles (1974) in its happy embrace of bad taste, bloody pratfalls, politically incorrect jabs, and scatological yuks, and its mission to mildly demythologize the glory days of the Wild West. MacFarlane’s whiney, geeky sheep herder Albert is a fish out of water in the dicey frontier: It’s too hot, it’s too dangerous, decent hygiene is unavailable, and gunfights are way too frequent, as he grouses to girlfriend Louise (Amanda Seyfried), best friend Edward (Giovanni Ribisi), and hooker buddy Ruth (Sarah Silverman). Still, he doesn’t know how good he has it when mustachioed nemesis Foy (Neil Patrick Harris) sweeps Louise off her feet and a feisty, gun-slinging gal (Charlize Theron) comes to town. MacFarlane’s gross-out jokes will win over the boys, his sentimental heart will get the girls — he just won’t entirely enthrall this reviewer until he comes up with a more original way of disclaiming/explicating his movie’s racial jokes than with the now-obligatory “don’t be racist” call-out at the start. (1:56) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Neighbors It’s a mystery why Neighbor‘s marketing teams are intent on creating some kind of social media battle between this comedy’s family and frat: The college boys are clearly outclassed when it comes to uninhibited physical comedy daring, thanks to Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. They play young parents Kelly and Mac, who are still basking in their new craftsman home and settled state, trying to figure out sex in front — or is it behind? — baby, and how to get to the rave before bedtime, when a frat, led by oft-shirtless hottie Teddy (Zac Efron) and pal Pete (Dave Franco), moves into the house next door. How do you ask them to “keep it down” yet still be cool? The pretzels Mac and Kelly wrap themselves into, in order to still hang with the kids, are about as hilarious as the inevitable battles that break out over the hearts and minds of college administrators (Lisa Kudrow), pals (the hilarious Ike Barinholtz), and wannabe brothers like the loyal Assjuice (Craig Roberts). Still, despite some memorable gags, Neighbors feels like a bit of a squandered opportunity as one fidgets through many of the frat house scenes. Part of the problem is, why would Kelly, Mac, or anyone want to be in good with such an uninteresting group of Greeks? (1:37) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Night Moves Not to be confused with Arthur Penn’s same-named 1975 Gene Hackman thriller, Kelly Reichardt’s latest film nonetheless is also a memorably quiet, unsettling tale of conspiracy and paranoia. It takes us some time to understand what makes temporary allies of jittery Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Portland, Ore.-style alterna-chick Dena (Dakota Fanning) and genial rural recluse Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), beyond it being a mission of considerable danger and secrecy. When things don’t go exactly as planned, however, the three react very differently to the resulting fallout, becoming possibly greater threats to one another than the police or FBI personnel pursuing them. While still spare by mainstream standard, this is easily Reichardt’s most accessible work, carrying the observational strengths of 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, and 2006’s Old Joy over to a genuinely tense story that actually goes somewhere. (1:52) Metreon. (Harvey)

The Other Woman Cameron Diaz gets top billing — and the title role — in The Other Woman, but Leslie Mann is the real stealth weapon here: the other comedian who bravely dares to go into unseemly crazy-bitch, scatological-Bridesmaids territory, with shrill histrionics, whining, and shrieks hitting registers that threaten to make most men’s heads explode. Coming on like Lucille Ball on crystal, Mann teeters out in the limb in kitten heels — and your enjoyment of The Other Woman depends on whether you love that balancing act or loathe it. Diaz and Mann’s reluctant-then-mutual girl crush is at the heart of this proudly chick flick directed by Nick Cassavetes, who tends to beat his own indie path apart from his involvement in one of the biggest lady draws of all time, The Notebook (2004). The chick magnet and cause for so much chaos is Mark (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a sketchy entrepreneur who skims wife Kate’s (Mann) business ideas and toys with power-bitch lawyer Carly (Diaz), as well as his other other woman, perfect-10 Amber (Kate Upton). Coster-Waldau throws himself into the hysteria, as if it were the sole lifeline out of dour King’s Landing, but this is the Mann and Diaz Show, with a smarter-than-average screenplay by Melissa Stack and revenge served up like a self-righteous side dish at a Real Housewives buffet line. And just to show you how far we haven’t come, like those benighted housewives, those assembled aren’t so feminist that they won’t stoop to deliver a bitchy joke at the expense of Upton’s character. (1:49) Metreon. (Chun)

Palo Alto Adapted from the 2010 short story collection by James Franco, first-time director Gia Coppola’s depressive, aimless tale of disaffected youth tracks the ennuis and misadventures of a handful of Palo Alto teenagers: shy, inexperienced April (Emma Roberts), teetering on the edge of an affair with her soccer coach (Franco); naively promiscuous Emily (Zoe Levin); budding head case Fred (Nat Wolff); and his friend Teddy (Jack Kilmer, son of Val, who plays April’s out-to-lunch stepfather), who ambivalently participates in Fred’s mayhem while pining after April. Adult supervision is nearly Peanuts-level sparse — in other Peninsula households, helicopter parents may be fine-tuning the lives of their children down to the last extracurricular; here, the stoned, distracted elders who occasionally wander in front of the camera are more like flaky, absentee roommates. Meanwhile, their young charges fill the empty hours with copious amounts of alcohol consumption, random property destruction, and a round or two of social crucifixion. The protagonists and their cohorts form a fairly distasteful tableau of privileged, floundering adolescence, eliciting an emotional response in which uneasy concern occasionally overcomes bemused disgust. But the individual stories are virtually weightless, and the characters’ lack of investment in anything, even their own problems, makes it difficult to care too much about their fates. (1:38) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)

Rigor Mortis Spooky Chinese folklore (hopping vampires) meets J-horror (female ghouls with long black hair) in this film — directed by Juno Mak, and produced by Grudge series helmer Takashi Shimizu — inspired by Hong Kong’s long-running Mr. Vampire comedy-horror movie series. Homage takes the form of casting, with several of Vampire‘s key players in attendance, rather than tone, since the supernatural goings-on in Rigor Mortis are more somber than slapstick. Washed-up film star Chin Siu-ho (playing an exaggerated version of himself) moves into a gloomy apartment building stuffed with both living and undead tenants; his own living room was the scene of a horrific crime, and anguished spirits still linger. Neighbors include a frustrated former vampire hunter; a traumatized woman and her white-haired imp of a son; a kindly seamstress who goes full-tilt ruthless in her quest to bring her deceased husband back to life; and an ailing shaman whose spell-casting causes more harm than good. Shot in tones so monochromatic the film sometimes appears black-and-white (with splashes of blood red, natch), Rigor Mortis unfortunately favors CG theatrics over genuine scares. That said, its deadpan, world-weary tone can be amusing, as when one old ghost-chaser exclaims to another, “You’re still messing around with that black magic shit?” (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

We Are the Best! Fifteen years after Show Me Love, Lukas Moodysson’s sweet tale of two girls in love in small-town Sweden, the writer-director returns to the subject of adorably poignant teen angst. Set in Stockholm in 1982, and adapted from a graphic novel by Moodysson’s wife, Coco Moodysson, We Are the Best! focuses on an even younger cohort: a trio of 13-year-old girls who form a punk band in the interest of fighting the power and irritating the crap out of their enemies. Best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) spend their time enduring the agonies of parental embarrassment and battling with schoolmates over personal aesthetics (blond and perky versus chopped and spiked), nukes, and whether punk’s dead or not. Wreaking vengeance on a group of churlish older boys by snaking their time slot in the local rec center’s practice space, they find themselves equipped with a wealth of fan enthusiasm, but no instruments of their own and scant functional knowledge of the ones available at the rec center. Undaunted, they recruit a reserved Christian classmate named Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), whose objectionable belief system — which they vow to subvert for her own good — is offset by her prodigious musical talents. Anyone who was tormented by the indignities of high school PE class will appreciate the subject matter of the group’s first number (“Hate the Sport”). And while the film has a slightness to it and an unfinished quality, Moodysson’s heartfelt interest in the three girls’ triumphs and trials as both a band and a posse of friends suffuses the story with warmth and humor. (1:42) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

Words and Pictures Words and Pictures is about as bifurcated as its title, while spinning off a central beef that Hepburn and Tracey might have wrapped their madcap bickering ways around at one time. Which is more powerful: language or images, poetry or painting? The age-old debate starts to feel a little creaky by Words’ close, but you can see and hear why the conceit drew such acting thoroughbreds as Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen, playing two passionate, paint-hurling, bottle-foisting artistic types on either side of a divide overseen by Australian director Fred Schepisi (1987’s Roxanne). Owen’s Jack Marcus is an alcoholic, onetime lit-star of an English teacher whose creatively constipated bad boy routine is starting to wear thin when Binoche’s painter Dina Delsanto arrives at his prep school on the pretext of teaching an honors art class. In actuality, she’s taking time away from the NY art scene to figure out a new way to paint while grappling with rheumatoid arthritis. Sparks fly between the two hard-headed combatants, along with punches delivered by some smartly scripted sparring, as they get the students hot and bothered by their debate concerning words vs. pictures. The master-class lessons learned by watching Binoche work, jaw firmly set and intelligent eyes darting as she maps out her next composition, while Owen falls apart, Hemingway-style, are offset by a facile, cozy ending that feels test-audience driven. (1:51) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

X-Men: Days of Future Past Bryan Singer, director of the first two X-Men films (2000’s decent X-Men; 2002’s meh X2) returns to helm this latest franchise entry — the fourth sequel in a series that also includes two movies focusing on Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. That fan-favorite character is front and center in both of Days of Future Past‘s time frames: the present, a bleak dystopia in which robot assassins have wiped out nearly every mutant (save Wolverine, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X, Ian McKellan’s Magneto, and a few others), and most humans along with them; and the past, a key moment in the polyester-laden 1970s in which mutant avenger Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) inadvertently sets the disastrous future events in motion by killing robot designer Trask (Peter Dinklage). Wolverine time-travels to convince younger versions of the Professor (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to put aside their Himalayan-sized differences to stop her. (Speaking of avengers, there’s a capital-A one here: Quicksilver, a character from both comic-book worlds; he’s portrayed here with giddy mischief by American Horror Story‘s Evan Peters, and is the film’s high point.) Yes, that’s a heady plot, and there are a zillion other characters, but Future Past manages, for the most part, to avoid feeling like an overloaded mess. It’s most entertaining in scenes that show off its characters’ superpowers — clearly, the CG artists had a blast working on this one — which are plentiful enough to make slogging through the ennui-laden moments of downtime worth it.(2:10) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy) *

Rep Clock June 11-17, 2014

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June 10, 2014

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Schedules are for Wed/11-Tue/17 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $10-12. “Cine Mas:” Delusions of Grandeur (Almaraz and Ramos), Thu, 7:30.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $5-10. State of Siege (Costa-Gavras, 1972), Thu, 7.

BRAVA THEATER 2789 24th St, SF; www.qwocmap.org. Free ($5-10 suggested donation). Queer Women of Color Film Festival, four programs of short films (all screening with captions) under the theme “Re-Generation,” Fri-Sun.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. The Wind Rises (Miyazaki, 2013), Wed, 7 (subtitled), 9:30 (dubbed). •Joe (Green, 2013), Thu, 7, and Red Rock West (Dahl, 1993), Thu, 9:15. “Midnites for Maniacs: Bloody Fangs Double Bill:” •Interview with the Vampire (Jordan, 1994), Fri, 7:20, and Vampire’s Kiss (Bierman, 1988), Fri, 9:45. This double bill, $12. Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013), Sat-Sun, 1. Presented sing-along style; advance tickets ($10-16) at www.ticketweb.com. •Lost in America (Brooks, 1985), Sat, 7:15, and Something Wild (Demme, 1986), Sat, 5, 9. Othello (Welles, 1952), Sun, 5, 7, 9. •Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013), Tue, 7, and Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001), Tue, 9:05.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. We Are the Best! (Moodysson, 2013), Wed-Thu, call for times.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Sat, midnight.

COURTHOUSE SQUARE 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Lee Daniels’ The Butler (Daniels, 2013), Thu, 8:45.

JACK LONDON FERRY LAWN Clay and Water, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. “Waterfront Flicks:” Gravity (Cuaron, 2013), Thu, sundown.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “A Theater Near You:” L’avventura (Antonioni, 1960), Fri, 7:30. “Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema:” Saragossa Manuscript (Has, 1964), Sat, 7; Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958), Sun, 6:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, through June 19. Complete program details, including additional venues, and tickets (most shows $12) at www.sfindie.com.

“SAN FRANCISCO BLACK FILM FESTIVAL” Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF; and Buriel Clay Theater, 762 Fulton, SF; www.sfbff.org. Check website for individual ticket prices; festival pass, $50. A celebration of African American cinema and the African cultural Diaspora, with a focus on both local and global filmmakers, Thu-Sat.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “New Filipino Cinema 2014:” How to Disappear Completely (Martin, 2013), Wed, 7:30 (reception, 6:30); Jungle Love (Sanchez, 2012), Thu, 4; Debosyon (Yapan, 2013), Thu, 6; Sana Dati (Tarog, 2013), Thu, 8; Iskalawags (Deligero, 2013), Fri, 2: Woman of the Ruins (Sicat, 2013), Fri, 2; The Bit Player (Jaturian, 2013), Fri, 7; Metro Manila (Ellis, 2013), Fri, 9:15; Oro, Plata, Mata: The Restored Version (Gallaga, 1982/2012), Sat, noon; “Basket Case: Short Films Over the Edge,” Sat, 4; Transit (Espia, 2013), Sat, 7; Anita’s Last Cha-Cha (Bernardo, 2013), Sat, 9:15; No End in Sight (Tabay, 2012), Sun, noon; Pascalina (Miras, 2012), Sun, 2; Rigodon (Matti, 2012), Sun, 4:30; Thy Womb (Mendoza, 2012), Sun, 7 (reception, 6). *

Norman Solomon: Obama escalates his war on journalism

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June 8, 2014

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By Norman Solomon

(Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” Information about the documentary based on the book is at www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.)

In a memoir published this year, the CIA’s former top legal officer John Rizzo says that on the last day of 2005 a panicky White House tried to figure out how to prevent the distribution of a book by New York Times reporter James Risen. Officials were upset because Risen’s book, State of War, exposed what — in his words — “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA.”

The book told of a bungled CIA attempt to set back Iran’s nuclear program in 2000 by supplying the Iranian government with flawed blueprints for nuclear-bomb design. The CIA’s tactic might have actually aided Iranian nuclear development.

When a bootlegged copy of State of War reached the National Security Council, a frantic meeting convened in the Situation Room, according to Rizzo. “As best anyone could tell, the books were printed in bulk and stacked somewhere in warehouses.” The aspiring censors hit a wall. “We arrived at a rueful consensus: game over as far as any realistic possibility to keep the book, and the classified information in it, from getting out.”

But more than eight years later, the Obama White House is seeking a different form of retribution. The people running the current administration don’t want to pulp the book — they want to put its author in jail.

The Obama administration is insisting that Risen name his confidential source — or face imprisonment. Risen says he won’t capitulate.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation calls the government’s effort to force Risen to reveal a source “one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades.”

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says: “The pursuit of Risen is a warning to potential sources that journalists cannot promise them confidentiality for disclosing Executive Branch criminality, recklessness, deception, unconstitutional policies or lying us into war. Without protecting confidentiality, investigative journalism required for accountability and democracy will wither and disappear.”

A recent brief from the Obama administration to the nation’s top court “is unflinchingly hostile to the idea of the Supreme Court creating or finding protections for journalists,” Politico reported. The newspaper added that Risen “might be sent to jail or fined if he refuses to identify his sources or testify about other details of his reporting.”

This threat is truly ominous. As Ellsberg puts it, “We would know less than we do now about government abuses, less than we need to know to hold officials accountable and to influence policy democratically.”

So much is at stake: for whistleblowers, freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. For democracy.

That’s why five organizations — RootsAction.org, The Nation, the Center for Media and Democracy / The Progressive, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and the Freedom of the Press Foundation — have joined together to start a campaign for protecting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources. So far, in May, about 50,000 people have signed a petition telling President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to end legal moves against Risen.

Charging that the administration has launched “an assault on freedom of the press,” the petition tells Obama and Holder: “We urge you in the strongest terms to halt all legal action against Mr. Risen and to safeguard the freedom of journalists to maintain the confidentiality of their sources.”

The online petition — “We Support James Risen Because We Support a Free Press” — includes thousands of personal comments from signers. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:

“Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are the cornerstones of our democracy. Stop trying to restrict them.” Jim T., Colorado Springs, Colorado

“Protected sources are essential to a real democracy. Without whistleblowers, there is no truth.” Jo Ellen K., San Francisco, California

“Enough of the government assault on freedom of the press! Whistleblowers are heroes to the American people.” Paul D., Keaau, Hawaii

“It seems our government is out of control. The premise of deriving power from the people would appear to be a quaint notion to most within the three branches. Instead they now view us as subjects that must bend to their will rather than the other way around.” Gary J., Liberty Township, Ohio

“‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.’ — George Orwell” Todd J., Oxford, Michigan

“As a writer, I support freedom of the press around the world as a vital first step toward regaining control of our compromised democracies.” Patricia R., Whitehorse, YT, Canada

“You promised an open and transparent administration. Please keep that promise.” Willard S., Cary, North Carolina

“Without a free press, we really have nothing.” Robin H., Weehawken, New Jersey

“The Obama administration’s attack on press freedom is an issue of grave concern. Why are we spending billions of dollars going after supposed ‘terrorists’ when the greatest threat to democracy resides right here in Washington, DC.” Karen D., Detroit, Michigan

“Damn you, Obama! You become more like Nixon daily!” Leonard H., Manchester, Michigan

“Congratulations, Mr. Risen!” Marian C., Hollister, California

“The U.S. is becoming an increasingly frightening place to live, more than a little like a police state. President Obama, you have been a huge disappointment. I expected better from you.” Barbara R., Newport, Rhode Island

“Come on, President Obama… you’re a Constitutional scholar. You know better than this. Knock it off.” James S., Burbank, California

“There can be no true freedom of the press unless the confidentiality of sources is protected. Without this, no leads, informants or whistleblowers will be motivated to come forward. Reporters should not be imprisoned for doing their job.” Chris R., North Canton, Ohio

“You took an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ freedom of the press!” Diane S., San Jose, California

“Whatever became of the progressive Obama and the change you promised? Evidently it was a load of campaign bull puckey, making you just another politician who says whatever it takes to get elected. In other words, you and your administration are a complete sham. As for your constitutional scholarship, it would appear to be in the service of undermining the Constitution a la Bush and Cheney.” Barry E., Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvani

“Without a free press, our republic is paper-mache. Remember John Peter Zenger! We must not shoot the messenger — we must raise the bar for conduct and probity!” Lance K., Chelsea, Massachusetts

“A free press is the only counterbalance to crony capitalism, corrupt legislators, and a pitifully partisan Supreme Court, that continues to destroy our Constitutional protections.” Dion B., Cathedral City, California

“I implore you to RESPECT THE FIRST AMENDMENT.” Glen A., Lacey, Washington

“Did you not learn in grade school that freedom of the press is essential to a free country?” Joanne D., Colorado Springs, Colorado

“We’ve been down this road before. What amazes me is that we condemn other countries for stifling freedom of the press, then turn around and do the same thing to advance our own purposes. Are we proponents of democracy and a free press or not?” William M., Whittier, California

“Journalism is a vital component of a democracy, and it is a core function protected by the freedom of expression enshrined in both international and domestic law. You must stop harassing and persecuting journalists and their sources who are providing a vital public service in prying open the activities of governments that are illegitimately concealed from the public. If the public is not informed of state actions executed in their name, they cannot evaluate and render consent to those actions through the vote. This secrecy therefore subverts democracy, and you must stop using police powers to destroy the whistleblowers who enable government accountability to the public.” Jim S., Gatlinburg, Tennessee

“I support freedom of the press, not the attorney general’s vicious abuse of his position!” Bettemae J., Albuquerque, New Mexico

“Compelling reporters to reveal their sources just means that sources will stop talking to reporters. That will cripple the free press. If you think that’s not important, please resign immediately.” Stephen P., Gresham, Oregon

“As an old woman who remembers the lies of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush (especially) and the current administration, I do not trust my own government to tell me the truth anymore. Freedom of the press is my only chance [to] find out what the truth is. Protect reporters’ sources!” Monica O., Lomita, California

“Without freedom of the press, we might as well kiss democracy goodbye!” Melvin M., Vashon, Washington

“I am ashamed of this administration, its policies and its Department of Justice — what a travesty of criminal turpitude and mass media complicity. ‘Transparency’ — hah! Cheap campaign rhetoric.” Mitch L., Los Altos Hills, California

“Walk the walk or stop talking about democracy. Free press is the basis of our constitution.” Carl D., Manassas, Virginia

“No free press, no democracy!” James F., Moab, Utah

“If you force the media to reveal its sources, no one will ever come forth with a news story or lead again. I’m sure this is precisely what the politicians and big business want. Then there’d be absolutely no accountability. We need an effective shield law rather than persecuting journalists and news organizations for reporting the news.” Jim S., Ladera Ranch, California

“Freedom of the Press is the hallmark of a free society. Your administration has done everything in its power to subvert Freedom of the Press by jailing whistleblowers and reporters who uncover wrong doing. This must stop!” Ed A., Queens, New York

“We have very few real journalists left. Let’s not jail them!” Karen H., West Grove, Pennsylvania

“As the press goes, so goes citizens’ rights.” Kathy F., West Bend, Wisconsin

“I have been shocked at how this administration has treated the American people’s right to know, prosecuting reporters, whistleblowers, and others who have had the temerity to cast light into the dark corners of our government. You bring the whole concept of democracy into disrepute and set a bad example for the rest of the world.” Marjorie P., Montpelier, Vermont

“We need our investigative reporters more now than ever in history. Keep our press free.” Joan R., Novato, California

“Investigative reporting is becoming too rare in the U.S., and compelling J. Risen to reveal his sources will only make such reporting even rarer. Is this your deliberate intent?” Elaine L., Elk Grove, California

“I am responding in support of James Risen. Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of our democracy and should never be trampled on by government.” Lois D., San Jacinto, California

“Freedom of the press is more important than some stinking government attempt to find out how bad shenanigans made it into the press. Quit this crap about trying to make a reporter reveal his or her sources. We need good reporting a lot more than lousy stinking politicians trying to shut up the truth.” Ralph M., Bakerstown, Pennsylvania

“Without a free press tyranny will ensue.” Bob P., Holland, Pennsylvania

“I thought Mr. Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional lawyer and swore to uphold it. I thought the Attorney General was supposed to also protect the Constitution. It seems you both have abandoned those duties. Prove you hold the Constitution as the authority from which you derive your own and cease this persecution of a reporter who epitomizes one of the crucial things the Constitution stands for — a truly free press.” Michael S., Tukwila, Washington

“I’ve seen mud more transparent than the Obama admin.” Paul H., Carlton, Oregon

“Wow, this coming from the Obama administration who supposedly is for open govt. Isn’t it a police state when the govt cracks down on reporters for telling the truth? James Risen is a hero who will go to jail before revealing his source and the fact that you want to throw him in jail is the real crime here.” Gayle J., Seattle, Washington

“Shocking.” Peggy K., Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin

“You have way overstepped your authority. I consider myself a moderate, but your aggressive pursuit of journalists and whistleblowers strikes fear in my heart. Your use of intimidation to weaken the press is contributing to the dismantling of our democracy.” Marcia B., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“Quit trying to silence journalists! This is a Vladimir Putin approach to government. Hope and Change? Get Real!” Rich W., Grass Valley, California

“Stop destroying our heroes, the courageous whistleblowers and journalists, including Risen and others who should be thanked, not prosecuted! You know damn well that the People want these people honored!” Nancy G., Palm Desert, California

“Please recognize the need for a journalist to be free of coercion to reveal confidential sources. Bravo to James Risen for having the courage to resist this onerous government intimidation.” Thomas S., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“We are already seeing freedom of the press undermined by consolidation of media ownership. The founding fathers believed that we could only keep this republic if we have free press and an informed public. Stop the suppression of information. Free access to information is not an optional ingredient.” Janelle J., Buffalo, Missouri

“Stop persecuting journalists and whistleblowers. Information is the lifeblood of a democracy.” William C., Sherman Oaks, California

“Our government has become big brother. Journalists must not be forced to name their sources if we are to know the truth.” Carolyn S., Los Angeles, California

“A free press is gone if confidential sources are revealed.” Vincent H., Rutledge, Tennessee

“Frankly, Mr. President, I’m surprised at you, and I have to say, disappointed. This seems like something that happens in totalitarian countries.” Karen B., Felton, California

“Freedom of the press is already under siege because big business controls so much of the message. The Obama administration must respect James Risen’s right to withhold his source.” Patricia B., Marco Island, Florida

“Whistleblowers are vital to keeping our democracy from turning into a police state. And a free press is vital to keeping us informed. Drop this case, and uphold the principles of our Constitution.” Cynthia D., E. Boston, MA

“The press should be free to do its job! How about some of that ‘most transparent administration’ stuff. If an administration has nothing to hide it has nothing to fear.” Mike H., Terre Haute, Indiana

“James Risen is an investigative reporter of high repute who should not be subjected to state harassment and punishment for upholding his pledge of confidentiality to his sources. These encroachments on our Fourth Estate’s watchdog function as a check on the abuse of power must not stand.” Barbara K., Santa Fe, New Mexico

“You both have to stop talking out of both sides of your mouth, i.e. lying. We are fighting for freedom of the press. Stop being enemies to us people.” Judith N., North Bonneville, Washington

“Please don’t trash the Bill of Rights. Protect the freedom and independence of the press. Drop the case against James Risen.” Andrew M., Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania

“Daniel Ellsberg was right. James Risen is right.” Leonore J., Toledo, Ohio

“When the light of free press is no more, darkness prevails and evildoers flourish. I know this is what this corrupt government wants but over our dead bodies.” Felix C., San Antonio, Texas

“What Mr. Risen did in this instance, was not criminal. Rather it was EXACTLY what a free press should do, without fear of reprisal. Stop the strong arm tactics.” John S., Trumbull, Connecticut

“The investigative work of journalists sheds light on the world and what is happening. The increasing punishment of journalists is pushing our world and news into a scary age of non-information. Safeguard the confidentiality of journalists and their sources.” Christin B., Barnegat Light, New Jersey

“Stop persecuting journalists and truth tellers.” Phyllis B., Desert Hot Springs, California

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” Information about the documentary based on the book is at www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the former co-founder and co-publisher with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012.)

James Risen is printing the news and raising hell for a damn good cause in the best jounalistic tradition. He needs our support. B3

Cruise into the weekend (oh yes we did) with new flicks!

Sue Vaughan

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June 6, 2014

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Cruise into the weekend (oh yes we did) with new flicks!

Dudes! The (lucky) 13th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, aka DocFest to those in the know, is underway now, running through June 19 with all kinds of weird and wonderful docs. Check out Dennis Harvey’s recommendations here.

From the spangly tentacles of Hollywood, we’ve got Shailene “I Am Not the Poor Man’s Jennifer Lawrence” Woodley in a certified tearjerker, and Tom “Still a Big Enough Star to Avoid Being Cast in an Expendables Flick Just Yet” Cruise fighting aliens (and, surprisingly, his own ego). Plus: indie picks, including the latest from Kelly Reichardt and Lukas Moodysson. Read on for more.

Edge of Tomorrow Is it OK to root for Tom Cruise again? (The Oprah thing was almost a decade ago, after all.) The entertaining Edge of Tomorrow, crisply directed by Bourne series vet Doug Liman, takes what’s most irritating about Cruise’s persona (he’s so goddamn earnest) and uses it to great advantage, casting him as military PR guru Cage — repping our armed forces on talk shows amid battles with alien invaders dubbed “Mimics” — whose oiliness masks the fact that he’s terrified of actual combat. When he’s forced to fight by a no-nonsense superior (Brendan Gleeson), he’s gruesomely killed, along with nearly every other human soldier. But wait! Thanks to a particularly close encounter with outer-space pixie dust, he awakens, unharmed, to re-live the day, over and over again (yep, shades of a certain Bill Murray comedy classic). Each “reset” offers Cage a chance to work his way closer to changing the course of the war in humanity’s favor, with key help from a badass (Emily Blunt) whose heroics on the battlefield have earned her the nickname “Full Metal Bitch.” Nothing groundbreaking here — but Edge of Tomorrow manages to make its satisfying plot as important as its 3D explosions, which means it automatically rises above what passes for popcorn fun these days. (1:53) (Cheryl Eddy)

The Fault in Our Stars Shailene Woodley stars in this based-on-a-best-seller romance about two teens who meet at a cancer support group. (2:05)

Night Moves Not to be confused with Arthur Penn’s same-named 1975 Gene Hackman thriller, Kelly Reichardt’s latest film nonetheless is also a memorably quiet, unsettling tale of conspiracy and paranoia. It takes us some time to understand what makes temporary allies of jittery Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Portland, Ore.-style alterna-chick Dena (Dakota Fanning) and genial rural recluse Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), beyond it being a mission of considerable danger and secrecy. When things don’t go exactly as planned, however, the three react very differently to the resulting fallout, becoming possibly greater threats to one another than the police or FBI personnel pursuing them. While still spare by mainstream standard, this is easily Reichardt’s most accessible work, carrying the observational strengths of 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, and 2006’s Old Joy over to a genuinely tense story that actually goes somewhere. (1:52) (Dennis Harvey)

Rigor Mortis Spooky Chinese folklore (hopping vampires) meets J-horror (female ghouls with long black hair) in this film — directed by Juno Mak, and produced by Grudge series helmer Takashi Shimizu — inspired by Hong Kong’s long-running Mr. Vampire comedy-horror movie series. Homage takes the form of casting, with several of Vampire’s key players in attendance, rather than tone, since the supernatural goings-on in Rigor Mortis are more somber than slapstick. Washed-up film star Chin Siu-ho (playing an exaggerated version of himself) moves into a gloomy apartment building stuffed with both living and undead tenants; his own living room was the scene of a horrific crime, and anguished spirits still linger. Neighbors include a frustrated former vampire hunter; a traumatized woman and her white-haired imp of a son; a kindly seamstress who goes full-tilt ruthless in her quest to bring her deceased husband back to life; and an ailing shaman whose spell-casting causes more harm than good. Shot in tones so monochromatic the film sometimes appears black-and-white (with splashes of blood red, natch), Rigor Mortis unfortunately favors CG theatrics over genuine scares. That said, its deadpan, world-weary tone can be amusing, as when one old ghost-chaser exclaims to another, “You’re still messing around with that black magic shit?” (1:45) (Cheryl Eddy)

Test Writer-director Chris Mason Johnson sets his film at a particular moment in the early years of the AIDS epidemic — when the first HIV blood test became publicly available, in 1985 — within a milieu, the world of professional modern dance, that rarely makes an appearance in narrative films. Test’s protagonist, Frankie (Scott Marlowe), is a young understudy in a prestigious San Francisco company, and the camera follows him on daily rounds from a rodent-infested Castro apartment, where he lives with his closeted roommate, to the dance studio, where he marks the steps of the other performers and waits anxiously for an opportunity to get onstage. Larger anxieties are hovering, moving in. We get a rehearsal scene in which a female dancer recoils from her male partner’s embrace, lest his sweat contaminate her; conversations about the virus in changing rooms and at parties; a sexual encounter between Frankie and a stranger, after which he stares at the man as if he might be a mortal enemy; a later, aborted encounter in which the man sits up in bed, appalled and depressed, after Frankie hesitantly proffers a condom, remarking, “They say we should use these…” A neighbor watches Frankie examine himself for skin lesions. Rock Hudson dies. Frankie warily embarks on a friendship with a brash, handsome fellow dancer (Matthew Risch) who offers a counterpoint to his cerebral, watchful reserve. And throughout, the company rehearses and performs, in scenes that beautifully evoke the themes of the film, a quiet, thoughtful study of a person, and a community, trying to reorient and find footing amid a cataclysm. (1:29) Elmwood (director in person Sat/7, 7:15pm show), Presidio (director in person Fri/6, 8:30pm; Sat/7, 3:50pm; and Sun/8, 6:15pm shows). (Lynn Rapoport)

We Are the Best! Fifteen years after Show Me Love, Lukas Moodysson’s sweet tale of two girls in love in small-town Sweden, the writer-director returns to the subject of adorably poignant teen angst. Set in Stockholm in 1982, and adapted from a graphic novel by Moodysson’s wife, Coco Moodysson, We Are the Best! focuses on an even younger cohort: a trio of 13-year-old girls who form a punk band in the interest of fighting the power and irritating the crap out of their enemies. Best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) spend their time enduring the agonies of parental embarrassment and battling with schoolmates over personal aesthetics (blond and perky versus chopped and spiked), nukes, and whether punk’s dead or not. Wreaking vengeance on a group of churlish older boys by snaking their time slot in the local rec center’s practice space, they find themselves equipped with a wealth of fan enthusiasm, but no instruments of their own and scant functional knowledge of the ones available at the rec center. Undaunted, they recruit a reserved Christian classmate named Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), whose objectionable belief system — which they vow to subvert for her own good — is offset by her prodigious musical talents. Anyone who was tormented by the indignities of high school PE class will appreciate the subject matter of the group’s first number (“Hate the Sport”). And while the film has a slightness to it and an unfinished quality, Moodysson’s heartfelt interest in the three girls’ triumphs and trials as both a band and a posse of friends suffuses the story with warmth and humor. (1:42) (Lynn Rapoport)