SFIFF Archives — Page 3 of 4 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

SFIFF 52: Opening night

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April 24, 2009

The scene: the Castro Theatre. The event: opening night of the 52nd annual San Francisco International Film Festival. The crowd: mob-sized.

Benjamin Bratt prefers it slow and low.

Before I say anything else, I know what you’re really wondering: what was in the gift bag? Besides Pop Chips — which seem to be engineering some kind of snack food takeover via film festivals (see also: the Noise Pop Film Festival) — there was a battery-operated sticky-note dispenser, a DVD of Vanaja (when I used to co-host the San Francisco Film Society-affiliated SF 360 Movie Scene on Comcast’s local channel — we got canned in August — that title was the top giggle-attack-getter on the set. You try saying “Vanaja” five times fast), a yo-yo, and a piece of biscotti. I devored the edibles, pocketed the yo-yo, and settled in for La Mission, a locally-made drama from writer-director Peter Bratt; his brother, Benjamin (a Law and Order vet whose career admirably survived 2004’s Catwoman), stars.

SFIFF: Shots in the dark

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April 21, 2009

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THURS/23

La Mission (Peter Bratt, USA, 2009) A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, 46-year-old Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn’t the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it’s clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. That filial bond, however, sustains some serious damage when Che discovers Jes has a secret life — with a boyfriend, in the Castro, just a few blocks away from their Mission walkup but might as well be light-years away as far as old-school dad is concerned. This Bratt family project (Benjamin’s brother Peter writes-directs, his wife Talisa Soto Bratt has a supporting role) has a bit of a predictable TV-movie feel, but its warm heart is very much in the right place, and the affectionate location shooting makes this an ideal SFIFF opening-nighter. (Dennis Harvey) 7 p.m., Castro.

FRI/24

It’s Not Me, I Swear! (Philippe Falardeau, Canada, 2008) Ten-year-old Leon Dore (Antoine L’Écuyer) is a Harold without a Maude, forever staging near-fatal "deadly accidents" that by now no one blinks twice at — whether they’re expressions of warped humor, cries for attention, or actual (yet invariably failed) suicide attempts). Mom and dad are forever at each others’ throats, while their older son pines for a domestic normalcy that ain’t happening anytime soon. One day mom simply announces she’s splitting for Greece to "start a new life," pointedly without husband and children. This event rachets Leon’s misbehaviors — which also encompass theft and vandalism — up a few notches. Set in kitschily-realized late 1960s Quebec suburbia, director Philippe Falardeau’s adaptation of two linked novels by Bruno Hebert is a very deft mix of family dysfunction, preadolescent maladjustment (or maybe budding sociopathy), and anarchic comedy. (Harvey) 5:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also Sat/25, 2:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; Tues/28, 1 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

SAT/25

Adoration (Atom Egoyan, Canada/France, 2008) When orphaned teenager Simon (Devon Bostick) writes a paper for French class in which he imagines himself as the son of real-life terrorists, his teacher (Arsinée Khanjian) tacitly encourages its being taken for fact. The resulting firestorm (largely taking place on the Web) raises questions about the boy’s actual parents, free speech, religio-political martyrdom, and so forth. This is the first Atom Egoyan feature based on his own original story — as opposed to literary sources or historical incidents — in 15 interim years. While his fame has certainly risen in the interim, some of us haven’t liked anything so well since that last one, 1994’s Exotica. Adoration recalls such early efforts in the cool intellectual gamesmanship with which characters and technologies are manipulated toward a hidden truth. Yet provocative as it is, there’s something overly elaborate and ultimately dissatisfying about his gambits that makes Adoration less than the sum of its parts. (Harvey) 6:15 p.m, Sundance Kabuki. Also Mon/27, 6:30 p.m., PFA.

Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy, Kazakhstan/Switzerland/Germany/Russia/Poland, 2008) Possible new genre alert: the docu-comedy. Documenatarian Dvortsevoy turns his camera on his native Kazakhstan, and nothing depicted suggests anything Borat might’ve broadcast. The country’s stark, southern steppes form the backdrop for a family of nomads, including married-with-children Samal and Ondas, and Samal’s brother Asa, who returns from his Russian naval service longing for his own flock of sheep. Alas, he can’t get a flock until he lands a wife — and the only local prospect, Tulpan, rejects him on the basis of his "big ears" (and the small fact that she would like to move out of the sticks, into the city, and maybe even attend college). Traditional ways bump up against more ambitious ones (as when Asa dreams of a satellite dish), just as comedic moments trade screen time with grittier scenarios (including actual footage of a sheep giving birth). The end result is an intimate and somehow totally relatable look at a fascinatingly foreign world. (Cheryl Eddy) 6:15 p.m., PFA. Also Mon/27, 9:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; April 30, 4:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

TUES/28

In the Loop (Armando Iannucci, England, 2009) A typically fumbling remark by U.K. Minister of International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) ignites a media firestorm, as it seems to suggest war is imminent even as both Brit and U.S. governments are downplaying the likelihood of the Iraq invasion they’re simultaneously preparing for. Suddenly cast as an important arbiter of global affairs — a role he’s perhaps less suited for than playing the Easter Bunny — Simon becomes one chess-piece in a cutthroat game whose participants on both sides of the Atlantic include his own subordinates, the prime minister’s rageaholic communications chief, major Pentagon and State Department honchos, crazy constituents, and more. This frenetic comedy of behind-the-scenes backstabbing and its direct influence on the highest-level diplomatic and military policies is scabrously funny in the best tradition of English television, which is (naturally) just where its creators hei from. (Harvey) 9:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 2, 9:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

APRIL 30

California Company Town (Lee Anne Schmitt, USA, 2008) This land isn’t your land, or my land, and it wasn’t made for you and me — such is the insightful and incite-full impression one gets from California Company Town. Schmitt’s beautifully photographed, concisely narrated, and ominously structured look at the Golden State and the state of capitalism is labor of love, shot between 2003 and 2008; it’s a provocative piece of American history. On a semi-buried level, it’s also an extraordinary act of personal filmmaking that subverts various stereotypes of first-person storytelling by women while simultaneously learning from and breaking away from some esteemed directors of the essay film. (Johnny Ray Huston) 8:35 p.m., PFA. Also May 2, 6:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; May 4, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Rudo y Cursi (Carlos Cuarón, Mexico, 2008) A who’s-who of Mexican cinema giants have their cleats in soccer yarn Rudo y Cursi: stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, and producers Alfonso Cuarón (whose brother, Carlos, wrote and directed), Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro. But while Rudo is entertaining, it’s surprisingly lightweight considering the talent involved. Bernal and Luna play Tato and Beto, rural half-brothers discovered by a jovially crooked soccer scout (Guillermo Francella) who gets them gigs playing on Mexico City teams. But athletic achievement seems barely a concern. Of far more importance are Tato’s crooning dreams and high-profile romance with a vapid TV star, and Beto’s left-behind wife and kids — not to mention his raging gambling addiction. Though the drama boils down to one final game (of course), Rudo is really about the bonds and brawls between brothers, not sports teams. Goal? (Eddy) 6:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 1, 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 1

D Tour (Jim Granato, USA, 2008) There’s been many a band-on-the-brink doc about groups torn apart by substance abuse, or creative differences, or just plain nuttiness (see: 2004’s DiG! and Some Kind of Monster, and any number of Behind the Music eps). In D Tour, local indie popsters Rogue Wave face, and are drawn together by, an entirely different brand of crisis: drummer Pat Spurgeon’s urgent need for a kidney transplant. Director Granato is given full access to subjects who are very open about their feelings (and, in Spurgeon’s case, unpleasant medical procedures). The result is a music- and emotion-filled journey that’ll no doubt inspire many to check off the "organ donor" box on their driver’s licenses. A sadly ironic, late-act twist involving a different band member will come as no surprise to Rogue Wave followers, but D Tour incorporates the tragedy into its storyline without ever exploiting it. (Eddy) 9 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 4, 3:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki; May 7, 5:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 2

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (David Russo, USA, 2009) Animator Russo’s first feature is a (mostly) live-action whimsy about rudderless Dory (Marshall Allman from Prison Break) who gets fired from his white-collar job and lands in the much scruffier employ of Spiffy Jiffy Janitorial Services. Its punky artist-type staff clean a high-rise’s offices, including one for a test-marketing trying out "self-warming cookies." When our protagonists develop an addictive liking for these treats, strange things begin to occur — like hallucinations and, eventually, male pregnancies of mystery critters. Depending on mood, this arch quirkfest with an ’80s feel (think of all the similar, mildly surreal indie comedies that rode 1984 release Repo Man‘s coattails) may strike you as delightful or just plain irritating. (Harvey) 11 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 6, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Tyson (James Toback, USA, 2008) Director Toback is picking up this year’s Kanbar Award for "excellence in screenwriting," but his latest film is a doc scripted largely in the mind of its subject. To call Mike Tyson a polarizing figure is an understatement (and raises the question: Does anyone really like him except Toback, whom he’s known for two decades?). This film — narrated by Tyson, the sole interviewee — won’t endear him to a public that’s seen him besmirch his glorious boxing-ring talents with an array of bad behavior, from a rape charge (here, Tyson calls his accuser a "wretched swine of a woman") to the chomping of Evander Holyfield’s ear. Though he chokes up on occasion and admits at one point that he starting taking fights just for the money, he’s still about as unsympathetic as humanly possible. Fun fact: a friend convinced him to go tribal with the face tattoo. Tyson himself wanted hearts. (Eddy) 4 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

MAY 3

Moon (Duncan Jones, England, 2008) The Bay Area’s own Sam Rockwell has quietly racked up a slew of memorable performances in variable films — including 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and 2008’s Choke — so the fact that he’s pretty much the whole show in this British sci-fi tale is reason enough to see it. A one-man space saga à la Silent Running (1972), it has him as Sam Bell, the lone non-mechanical worker (Kevin Spacey voices his principal robot assistant) on a lunar mining station in the not-too-distant future. He’s just about to finish his long, lonely contracted three-year stint and return home to a desperately missed family when strange things begin to occur. First there are hallucinations, then physical disabilities, then finally the impossible — there’s company aboard the station. Debuting feature director Duncan Jones orchestrates atmosphere and intrigue, though despite one major game-changing twist his original story seems a little thin in the long run. Nevertheless, Rockwell commands attention throughout as a character whose exhaustion, disorientation, and eventual panic feel alarmingly vivid. (Harvey) 9 p.m., Castro.

The Reckoning (Pamela Yates, USA/Uganda/Congo/Colombia/Netherlands, 2008) Yates’ latest documentary chronicles the long-delayed launch and bumpy first years of the International Criminal Court, a Hague-based body founded to prosecute (primarily) war crimes that member nations were unwilling or unable to do so themselves. Its authority is not yet recognized by several nations — including the Big Three of U.S.A., Russia, and China — while prosecutions of various military or political leaders who ordered crimes against civilians are often hampered by political minefields. Nonetheless, the still-struggling court is a beacon of hope for peace and justice around the globe. Yates lays out its work so far as an engrossing series of detective stories investigating instances of mass murder, rape, plunder, etc. in Uganda, the Congo, Darfur, and Colombia. (Harvey) 5:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 5, 6 p.m., PFA; May 6, 6:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2008) It’s no joy for Ryota (Hiroshi Abe) to bring his wife and stepson up from Tokyo on an annual visit to his elderly parents. The occasion is to commemorate the passing of an older brother who’s been dead for decades but is still held up as the yardstick by which Ryo will always fall short. Mom (Kiki Kirin) is well intentioned enough, if often insensitively blunt-spoken. But retired dad (Yoshio Harada) is an imperious grump who resents Ryo’s not following him into medical practice, disapproves of his marrying a widow, spurns her son from that prior union as less than a "real" grandchild, and is generally kind of a dick. This latest from Hirokazu Kore-eda (2004’s Nobody Knows, 1998’s After Life) is a quiet seriocomedy with lots of discomfiting moments. Yet it’s suffused with enough humor, warmth and surprising joy to easily qualify as one of SFIFF’s best 2009 picks. (Harvey)

8:45 p.m., Sundance Kabuki. Also May 5, 6:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki.

SFIFF: Tune boon

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April 21, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Before there was Barney or Raffi, the answer to the question, "Who is most responsible for songs most likely to make children sing and push their parents to the very brink of sanity?" was most likely "the Sherman brothers." It might have been enough for Robert and Richard Sherman to write "Supercalifragiliciousexpialidocious," "It’s a Small World," and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," each of which when heard once — let alone a zillion times — became instantly imprinted on the DNA of several juvenile generations. But no, they also had to write indelible songs for the Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967), various Winnie the Pooh species, Charlotte’s Web (1973), and other things you might have escaped only by being born very recently or growing up in rare media isolation.

World premiering at SFIFF this year is The Boys: The Sherman Brothers’ Story, a feature documentary about the Shermans made by two of their sons, Gregory and Jeffrey — partly to figure out just why these fraternal composers of so many cheerful songs have barely been on speaking terms in recent decades. The answer is complicated and, unlike most Disney movies (or documentaries about them), there isn’t a happy ending. But there are a lot of happy memories in these 100 minutes, with people like Julie Andrews, Hayley Mills, Roy Disney, Dick Van Dyke, and John Williams remembering the Shermans as a joy to work with, if not a joy to one another. The brothers themselves, still alive and variably kicking, cannot quite agree on what came between them. But of course, not agreeing is exactly the thing.

Unless you grew up in pre-Khmer Cambodia (or an ex-pat community), odds are the majority repertoire of L.A.-based Dengue Fever were not your childhood’s soundtrack. But the band’s six members know that is really too bad, because Cambodian pop of the 1960s and early ’70s just rocked, with its Farfisa organ riffs, psychedelic flourishes, and incessantly catchy hooks. In an inspired stroke, the festival’s latest silent film-contemporary music match-up was commissioning Dengue Fever to create a live score for The Lost World, a 1925 superproduction that’s a lot more like today’s mall-flick fantasias than just about anything else you could find from that era.

Adapted from Sir Conan Doyle’s story, it follows a British expedition deep into the Amazon, where one cranky suspected quack scientist claims to have discovered a hidden valley of prehistoric creatures. By gum, he’s right. This restored thrill ride, featuring stop-motion dinosaurs, elaborate miniatures, romantic intrigue, a guy in an ape suit and another (alas) in comedy blackface, was an obvious model for 1933’s King Kong (Willis O’Brien designed FX on both) and an admitted one for 1993’s Jurassic Park (whose sequel, you’ll recall, was 1997’s The Lost World). After nearly 85 years, it’s still at least as entertaining as the latter-day comic-book movies that owe it a colossal debt.

THE BOYS: THE SHERMAN BROTHERS’ STORY

Sat/25, 2 p.m., Letterman Digital Arts Center

THE LOST WORLD WITH DENGUE FEVER

May 5, 8 p.m., Castro

SFIFF: Oaktown fugue

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April 21, 2009

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The stillness inhabiting Bay Area director Frazer Bradshaw’s Everything Strange and New is broken periodically by the sounds of familial battle and the bemused, unemotive back-and-forth of a trio of men perplexed by the circumstances they have drifted into. The most dramatic intrusion, though, is instrumental, an occasional frenzied jigging of horns and strings that seems to signal the internal noise experienced by one of these uneasy men, a carpenter and family man named Wayne (Jerry McDaniel), who is trudging through his middle years in a state of unhappy wonder.

Shot in Oakland, the film uses a series of portrait-like scenes of house exteriors to convey the static emptiness in Wayne’s life, which he describes in voiceover monologues, his voice rising and falling just outside the boundaries of monotone. The contrast between these still lifes and the recurring shock of the soundtrack is almost painfully discordant, though the landscape intruded on is far from idyllic. When the camera moves inside one of the houses, the one where Wayne coexists with his wife, Renée (Beth Lisick), and their two sons, it’s filled with signs of residence but seems as empty and still and dead as the outside world, as if the family has just retreated from some personal apocalypse. Later the camera trails through a gutted Victorian as Wayne and Renée are heard quarreling, then processing as modeled by some couples’ counselor in their past — more emptiness and a sense of unending minor tragedy. Wayne presents a marriage sapped by financial exigencies such as the now-familiar house worth less than their debt.

These signs of trouble are plain enough, but emotionally expressive. Occasionally Bradshaw leans a little heavily on the symbolic, as when we see Wayne as he envisions himself, in the getup of a clown, and when the film runs backward through a trafficked street scene. More problematic, though, is the awkward shift in direction and shape that occurs when the resident stillness is interrupted by something more sharply horrific than the characters’ day-to-day suffering.

EVERYTHING STRANGE AND NEW

Sun/26, 8:45 p.m.; Tues/28, 4:15 p.m.; May 2, 6:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

SFIFF: Unhappily ever after

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April 21, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

We’re living in topsy-turvy, fairy tale times: the mighty have fallen, and the once-marginalized have risen. We’re painting the White House black, while Wall Street high-fliers are hitting the skids and the once-mocked scientists who cried "global warming" are embraced by Main and K streets. A hardscrabble era calls for equally toughened-up tales that provide moral instruction and plunge into the heart of the narrative’s contradictions. Do, er, grittily realistic flicks like Dante Lam’s ADD-paced HK cop thriller Beast Stalker (2008), which skirt the periphery of lost-innocent yarns, count? The filmmaker’s empathy for his monstrously disfigured villain is unparalleled in both the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault.

The former receives a clever tweak with Pil-Sung Yim’s Hansel and Gretel (2007), in which the youthful inmates take over the gingerbread-house asylum. Unwilling to face the fact he’s about to become a father, half-grown man-boy Eun-Soo (Jeong-myeong Cheon) flips his car on a lonely stretch of forest freeway where he’s found by a sweet little girl, Soojeong (Yeong-Nam Jang). She wordlessly leads him to a charming cottage deep in the woods, the House of Happy Children, occupied by the girl, her siblings Manbok (Eun Won-jae) and Jung-soon (Ji-hee Jin), and their unsettlingly cheery parents. The witchery here is embedded in the power of a child’s imagination rather than cannibalism, and it finds a new purpose here: preying on adults with a monstrous, unquenchable will to be loved. The culturally specific shocker crouching in this otherwise gentle shiver-thon fertile with rabbit iconography: a finale of children pleading, cajoling, and whining at the camera directly, which goes on many beats longer than expected. Asian parents and wannabe Octomoms might just want to slice open their wrists and offer themselves to the screen to halt the onslaught.

Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard studies the original tale with a more dispassionate, though no less entertaining, eye. She runs it through a postmodernist’s prism by coolly drawing from period artwork, utilizing an archly detached acting style and distancing devices like recycled footage, and framing it all as an imminently malleable yet still dangerous narrative retold by a pair of somewhat-modern-day sisters. A miniature, girlish version of The Last Mistress (2007) star Asia Argento, as feistily portrayed by Lola Creton, Marie-Catherine is less frightened of her hulking, erudite, and exhausted Bluebeard (Dominique Thomas) than fascinated by his alien world, his exoticism, and her own fearlessness. More surprising is how we comfortable grow with the deepening romance between the murderous lord and his child bride. In tackling the most pointed fairy tale about violence against women and in the process foregrounding the horror and glory of womanly will, Breillat continues to build on her now less naked, yet no less resonant feminist oeuvre, one that tests the tangled, hazardous constructs of female desire.

BLUEBEARD

Fri/24, 7:15; Sat/25, 9:30; April 29, 4:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

HANSEL AND GRETEL

Fri/24, 11:15 p.m.; Mon/27, 3:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

April 30, 7 p.m., Roxie

SFIFF: In the realms of the real

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April 21, 2009

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a&eletters@sfbg.com

Michael Moore may have paved the way for documentary gold, but the most structurally adventurous, ethically demanding nonfictions still reside on the festival block, where they frequently outshine their fictional counterparts for formal rigor and breadth of imagination. If the 2009 SFIFF field doesn’t have a marquee attraction like Standard Operating Procedure, all the better — a year later, I still haven’t lost the bad taste of Errol Morris’s hi-def moral confusion.

A corrective to Standard‘s self-serving auteurism might be gleaned from Avi Mograbi’s Z32. In this case the troubling testimony belongs to an Israeli soldier who participated in a senseless revenge killing of Palestinian innocents, but Mograbi handcrafts the layers of remorse that elude Morris’s smug "interrotron." We never see the ex-soldier’s face, though the digital application of masks produces an uncanny effect in tune with the film’s sliding scale of memory and performance, responsibility and displacement. Mograbi’s willingness to bring the war home (much of the film is set in his living room) is unusual for an investigative reporter, but then most investigative reporters do not narrate their mediating role in song.

Cameroonian-French filmmaker Jean-Marie Téno’s documentary Sacred Places seems more conventional in its blend of interview and ethnographic reflections, but the calm manner in which ideas flow from these encounters makes for a first-rate essay-film. Set in a poor district of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, Sacred Places centers on two eloquent men: Jules Cesar Bamouni, a djembe maker who makes some of the same linkages between film and the traditional storytelling forms that first incited griot-auteurs like Ousmane Sembène; and Nanema Boubacar, a hopeful entrepreneur who runs a neighborhood film club. The scenes in which Boubacar rifles through DVD deliveries offer an overlapping portrait of community-oriented cinephilia ("When there are spots on the DVD, it’s not good for the film fans") and the vicissitudes of distribution (even in Burkina Faso, African titles are harder to procure than a Jackie Chan vehicle). Sacred Places is light enough on its feet to pass itself as a slice of life, but Téno’s quiet approach constitutes a major revaluation of the aims of African cinema.

Another illuminating interviewer, Heddy Honigmann, returns with Oblivion, her first film set in Lima since 1994’s mobile portrait Metal and Melancholy. There’s also a double-shot of alternative histories from Lee Anne Schmidt (California Company Town) and Travis Wilkerson (Proving Ground), who are both associated with CalArts, an institutional hotbed for hybridized docs. Wilkerson’s An Injury to One (2003) remains one of the great American political films; his live performance of military footage promises more shots from the avant-garde of documentary. Also on SFIFF’s doc-centric slate: 2009 Persistence of Vision winner Lourdes Portillo, art-historical conspiracy theories courtesy of Peter Greenway (Rembrandt J’Accuse), and reality-bending fictions like John Cassavetes’ still-potent unraveling of the domestic melodrama, A Woman Under the Influence (1974).

SACRED PLACES

Fri/24, 8:40 p.m., PFA

Sun/25, 5 p.m.; April 29, 3:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

Z32

May 3, 9:15 p.m.; May 5, 8:30 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

May 4, 8:30 p.m., PFA

SFIFF: 52 pick-up

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April 21, 2009

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cheryl@sfbg.com

In early April, a long-range rocket blasted off from deepest, darkest North Korea; according to a Reuters.com news report, the communist country claimed that its satellite was "launched into orbit and [is now] circling the Earth transmitting revolutionary songs." Um, yeah. Most folks say the rocket failed — and that its real purpose was to test North Korea’s dropping-warheads-on-our-enemies capabilities. Recent rumors of ill health aside, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il appeared shortly after the incident to mark his re-election as the chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s National Defense Commission.

As scary as it is to imagine the pompadored, isolationist "Great Leader" with his mitts on nukes, to focus on North Korea’s threat to the outside world takes away from the atrocities committed within its borders, against its own citizens. As NC Heikin’s quietly terrifying Kimjongilia reveals, the dictator’s country is a cruel, brutal place. The doc features interviews with North Korean refugees whose tales of escape are as harrowing as their recollections of life back home — a place where simply listening to music from a capitalist country or dropping a newspaper with a photograph of Kim on the floor were infractions that could mean imprisonment for three generations of a single family. Starvation, torture, and constant fear factor into nearly every story; families are separated, and even those who escape struggle, such as a woman whose "freedom" in China translated into years of sex slavery. For these people, WMDs are the least of their concerns.

Peering beyond what’s obvious is a theme at the 52nd San Francisco International Film Festival, with a slate that’s particularly doc-heavy. For every gesture that’s a little debatable (you can spin that Francis Ford Coppola directing award however you want, but Apocalypse Now came out in 1979, and 2007’s Youth Without Youth sucked), there are many that deserves high praise: groundbreaking local documentarian Lourdes Portillo receiving the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award, for example. Read on for the Guardian‘s coverage of this year’s fest, and keep watching the skies.

KIMJONGILIA

May 3, 3:30 p.m.; May 6, 3:15 p.m., Sundance Kabuki

May 4, 6:30 p.m., PFA

THE 52ND SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs April 23–May 7. Main venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF. Satellite venues are Premier Theater, Letterman Digital Arts Center, Bldg. B, One Letterman Drive, Presidio, SF; and Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF. Tickets (most shows $12.50; special programs vary) and additional information at www.sffs.org.

More: Reviews, interviews, and more SFIFF 52 coverage on the Pixel Vision blog as the festival unfolds.

Film Festival 52

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April 15, 2009

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Innovative docs, fractured fairy tales, Disney ditties, dinosaurs, and at least one scene-stealing camel highlight the Fest’s fifty-second year. Our critics take a peek at some of the more buzz-worthy entries below.

THE 52ND SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL runs April 23–May 7. Main venues are the Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF. Satellite venues are Premier Theater, Letterman Digital Arts Center, Bldg. B, One Letterman Drive, Presidio, SF; and Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF. Tickets (most shows $12.50; special programs vary) and additional information at www.sffs.org.

>>52 pick-up
SFIFF rides again, with a quietly terrifying North Korea doc
By Cheryl Eddy

>>In the realms of the real
Sacred Places and Z32 — SFIFF’s unconventional docs
By Max Goldberg

>>Unhappily ever after
The film fest’s fractured, freaky, and feminist fantasies
By Kimberly Chun

>>Oaktown fugue
Everything Strange and New: stillness interrupted
Lynn Rapoport

>>Tune Boom
SFIFF’s catchy ditties and dino-riffs
By Dennis Harvey

>>Shots in the dark
Our short, sharp takes on other SFIFF flicks

SFIFF notebook: Ludivine Sagnier x 2

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May 8, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

That blond firecracker Ludivine Sagnier, 28, turned up at the festival to accompany her new film A Girl Cut in Two, directed by the French new wave filmmaker Claude Chabrol, and she was gracious enough to sit down with me for a chat. Sagnier is happy to talk about her character Gabrielle Deneige (or “Gabrielle Snow” in the English subtitles), a television weather girl who becomes torn between two men, an older, married author and a younger, rich, spoiled brat. But she’s tickled to tell stories about her legendary director.

Ludivine Savignier times two.

“It was amazing,” she says. “I thought I would never work with him because I didn’t have that high society profile. I wasn’t bourgeoisie enough to work with him. I actually felt like I was suddenly printing my name in the history books. Chabrol is such a monument in France. Not even working with him, but only talking with him was amazing. He would talk to me about Alfred Hitchcock: ‘Oh Alfred asked me if I wanted to shoot a sequence in this movie.’ Suddenly he’s speaking about something that’s far away, that belongs to history, but it’s next door. Those were privileged moments to be able to share all those stories with him.”

SFIFF award winners: Up the Yangtze and Ballast

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May 8, 2008

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The SF International Film Festival’s Golden Gate Awards ceremony took place last night. Below, Jeffrey M. Anderson sounds off on two films that nabbed honors: Best Documentary Feature winner Up the Yangtze, by Yung Chang, and FIPRESCI winner Ballast, by Lance Hammer:

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The documentary Up the Yangtze is a perfect companion piece to Jia Zhangke’s Still Life. Both deal in specific ways with China’s humongous Three Gorges project, although neither film ever goes into detail as to what the project — which will displace some 2 million people — is supposed to accomplish.

A trailer for Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze.

SFIFF: A magic act from Claude Chabrol

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May 4, 2008

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Jeffrey M. Anderson looks at the latest sinister magic act from veteran auteur Claude Chabrol:

Claude Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two is about as good as any of his films, which is to say, it is highly skilled and hugely entertaining. Yet it will probably come and go fairly quickly. Chabrol made his fiftieth film a few years back, and when you make your fiftieth film, no one cares. If the Coen Brothers or Paul Thomas Anderson live long enough to make fifty films, just see if anyone notices. If the quality of their films falls, people will complain, but if it stays the same, they’ll be taken for granted, just like Chabrol. I guarantee it. Look at Ingmar Bergman. He cracked fifty films, and when his last, the great Saraband, opened in 2005, people could scarcely be bothered to even yawn.

Since Claude Chabrol has fewer unlicensed YouTube clips than feature films to his name, this still from A Girl Cut in Two will have to do

In any case, Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two tells the story of a love triangle. Beautiful, ambitious television weather girl Gabrielle (Ludivine Sagnier) falls for the much older, but successful, married writer Charles Saint-Denis (François Berléand). At the same time, a snotty, rich younger man, Paul (Benoît Magimel) is swept away by her and is even more intrigued by her utter indifference to him. The strong characters show at least two sides, slyly seducing one another while selfishly scheming. Chabrol moves the story ahead with a deceptively deft combination of humor and suspense. And of course, there’s more. It just wouldn’t be a Chabrol film if there weren’t a murder or something equally sinister.

A Girl Cut in Two screens Tues/6, 9:30 p.m. at the Clay.

SFIFF: The umbrellas of China

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May 4, 2008

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Jennique Mason weighs in on Du Haibin’s Umbrella, also featured in Jeffrey M. Anderson’s ‘SFIFF, day ten’ diary:

Director Du Haibin reveals the gap between labor and commodity in his modern-day documentary odyssey Umbrella. Beginning with the actual construction of mass-produced umbrellas in an urban factory, Du traces the product’s journey as it becomes increasingly divorced from its origins. He juxtaposes the tedium and repetition of factory work with the mindless chatter of umbrella merchants’ wives who shamelessly lust after Audis and BMWs.

Can you stand under an umbrella?

Umbrella complicates these relationships with one beautiful shot after another. As factory workers, students and soldiers all attempt to shed their agricultural heritage, they find there are no guarantees in a consumer-based society. In creating a vast societal portrait through his focus on umbrellas, Du pulls off the rare feat of capturing the ephemeral. Umbrella takes modern life to its logical conclusion, succinctly stated by an auctioneer-type host at a job fair cattle call: “You go to school, so you can get a job, so you can make money, so you can buy a home, so you can start a family and send your children to school.”

Umbrella screens Thurs/8, 8:30 p.m. at the Kabuki

SFIFF, day ten: Cachao and the wow of Still Life

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May 4, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Last night, Maria Bello accepted her Peter J. Owens award and hosted a screening of her new film Yellow Handkerchief. I haven’t seen that film yet, but Bello will always have a place in my heart for her fearless performance in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (2005).

If you saw Buena Vista Social Club at the festival in 1999 and Calle 54 at the festival in 2001, then you may be familiar with the music of Israel ‘Cachao’ Lopez, the great Cuban songwriter and bassist who helped bring the mambo to popularity. The new Cachao: Uno Mas arrives just in time, given that Cachao passed away two months ago at the age of 89. It would be great to report that this 68-minute documentary was a worthy farewell, but it’s far too brief and it breaks the cardinal rule of music films: it interrupts the songs with talking heads.

Cachao: Uno Mas talk at SFIFF

SFIFF, day eight: Bed, bath and beyond the ordinary

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May 1, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

I love the festival’s crazy Late Show selections, but sometimes I miss them. Luckily, Abel Ferrara’s Go Go Tales screened for a third time on Wednesday afternoon. It’s very reminiscent of John Cassavetes’ 1974 The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, but not as focused. (Ferrara’s style is even more rambling.)

Willem Dafoe plays Ray Ruby, a man living his dream by running a strip club. The trouble is that the club is failing, the girls haven’t been paid and Ray loves to blow all his money on lotto tickets. A series of miniature dramas play out over the course of one night. Old friends stop in, new customers come and go, strippers dance and complain, and a man tries to sell organic hot dogs! A tanning booth explodes, nearly burning down the joint. The abrasive landlady (the great Sylvia Miles) shows up, threatening to let Bed, Bath and Beyond move in. A stripper called Monroe (Asia Argento) brings in her dog, which gets in the way. (She uses the dog in her act, and more or less makes out with him on stage.)

Bed, bath and beyond, baby!: The peerless Sylvia Miles with Go Go Tales director Abel Ferrara

SFIFF, day seven: Home, Towne, and Leigh love

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April 30, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Well, I wasn’t able to catch up with Errol Morris this time around, and I’m bummed, but I secured an interview with screenwriter extraordinaire Robert Towne, which I will share with you later in the week.

I did catch up with Touching Home, the feature debut by local twins Logan and Noah Miller, and after watching it I suspect that their future may lie more in the realm of producing than directing or acting; their meetings may be more interesting than their movies.

Touching Home touches upon Christmas

Apparently the Millers accosted Ed Harris outside the Castro Theater in 2006, when the actor received the festival’s Peter J. Owens award. They pitched him their project and even showed him a trailer. The movie itself shows similar marketing smarts. It’s the story of twin brothers, both baseball players, who dream of making the big time. One loses his scholarship and the other is fired from his bush league position, so they slink home, get jobs in the local quarry and hope for a chance in the spring in Arizona. Meanwhile, one brother reconnects with their alcoholic, gambling-addicted father (Harris) and finds a cute new girlfriend, leading to fights between the brothers.

Highway 51

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April 30, 2008

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Pixel Vision blog: Additional SFIFF movie reviews, and daily reports by Jeffrey M. Anderson

WED/30

I Served the King of England (Jirí Menzel, Czech Republic, 2007) The sheer delight of this typically spry, witty film by Czech master Menzel is enough to remove the sting from the fact that it’s been 14 years since his last feature. The story presents the dizzy rise and fall of a resourceful waiter during the Nazi occupation. Only Menzel could make a chronicle of such amoral ambition so funny and charming without trivializing the underlying themes. (Dennis Harvey)

6 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/3, 9 p.m, Kabuki

Vasermil (Mushon Salmona, Israel, 2007) Salmona’s feature debut threads the stories of a few disaffected adolescents — one an Ethiopian Jew, another a recent Russian immigrant. Asshole fathers and cruel, amateur gangsters abound in this dystopia. Salmona’s skilled handling of nonprofessional actors brings across the script’s twin-toned slice of prejudice and menace. (Max Goldberg)

6:30 p.m., PFA; Sun/4, 1 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/5, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 7, 7 p.m., Kabuki

THURS/1

Valse Sentimentale (Constantina Voulgaris, Greece, 2007) With this infuriatingly pessimistic yet haunting film, the daughter of acclaimed filmmaker Pantelis Voulgaris tries her hand at feature filmmaking. The story is set in the Athenian neighborhood Eksarxia. There, misfits Stamatis (Thanos Samaras) and Electra (Loukia Mihalopoulou) struggle to come to terms with each other. (Maria Komodore)

1:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/3, 6:30 p.m., Clay; May 7, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

FRI/2

All Is Forgiven (Mia Hansen-Løve, France, 2007) All Is Forgiven might be compared to Olivier Assayas’ 2004 Clean for its autumnal portrait of one character’s drug abuse, but it avoids that film’s flat reading of an addict’s self-absorption. Unlike most other movies about drugs, it isn’t exclusively about the user. The era-evocative soundtrack selections within Hansen-Løve’s subdued melodrama are emblematic of the film’s assured flow. (Goldberg)

9:30 p.m., Clay. Also Sun/4, 3 p.m., Clay; Tues/6, 9 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 4 p.m., Kabuki

The Art of Negative Thinking (Bård Breien, Norway, 2007) A big fuck you to self-help culture, this amusing black comedy is as coarse, antisocial, and ultimately soft-hearted as its protagonist. A stoner recluse who seeks solace in Johnny Cash records, spliffs, and his gun, he instigates a mutinous program of catharsis through hard partying. By the end credits, though, the Harold Pinter–esque dinner party has given way to Farrelly Brothers comedy. (Matt Sussman)

9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/4, 3:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 8:15 p.m., Clay

Linger (Johnnie To, Hong Kong, 2008) Johnnie To is a one-man HK film industry, and his finely honed skills allow this romantic ghost story to at least occasionally step over puddles of sentimental goop. Li Bingbing stars as a student who loses new boyfriend Vic Zhou in a car accident. The story overstretches, but To’s strikingly clear and vivid compositions — full of nature, architecture, and light — help his film breathe. (Anderson)

8:30 p.m., Kabuki; Sat/3, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/5, 3:15 p.m., Clay

SAT/3

Flower in the Pocket (Liew Seng Tat, Malaysia, 2007) Marred only by a wafer-thin Casio score, Flower in the Pocket is one of those slice-of-life revelations that makes you wonder why there aren’t more promising auteurs. The broken flowers here might well be the film’s two neglected, elementary school–age Chinese brothers — adrift after the disappearance of their mother and barely able to speak Malay. Director-screenwriter Liew has an acute eye for detail and a way of teasing poetry out of throwaway interludes. (Kimberly Chun)

3 p.m., PFA. Also Mon/5, 3:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 8, 6 p.m., Kabuki

The Wackness (Jonathan Levine, US, 2007) The kind of movie people get overexcited about within the Sundance Film Festival’s hype bubble, Jonathan Levine’s feature isn’t that good — but it is good. New high school grad Luke (Josh Peck) is a 1994 loner whose parents are on the verge of being evicted from their Upper East Side apartment. A wired and inspired Ben Kingsley provides this coming-of-age flick’s comic high points. (Harvey)

7:30 p.m., Kabuki

SUN/4

Stay Tooned, Kids! (Various, 2007) This sturdy collection of nine above-average cartoons, totaling 66 minutes, is largely suitable for kids of all ages, though the longest one, France’s Saint Feast Day, may teeter a bit too far into suggested violence and gore. (An ogre prepares to eat a child for an annual holiday, but accidentally knocks out all his teeth.) The amusing Claymation Still Life revisits the Shaun the Sheep character from Nick Park’s 1995 A Close Shave. (Anderson)

10:15 a.m., Kabuki

TUES/6

American Teen (Nanette Burstein, US, 2007) When is a documentary so slick it’s not a documentary? You might ask yourself that while enjoying Nanette Burstein’s portrait of senior year for several high schoolers in an Indiana small town. American Teen seems staged, and the ultraslick packaging — including animated sequences that caricature the subjects’ dreams — feels like an upscale version of reality entertainment. (Harvey)

6 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 8, 3 p.m., Kabuki

SFIFF, day six: Iran further away — and Errol Morris

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April 29, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The SF International Film Festival has always been open to Iranian films. Festival-goers have been able to see Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s 1996 A Moment of Innocence and 1998 The Silence, Jafar Panahi’s 2000 The Circle, Jazireh Ahani’s 2005 Iron Island, and a whole batch of Abbas Kiarostami films (he was given the festival’s “achievement in directing” award in 2000). But lately the output of Iranian films has slowed. The unfriendly Bush-era climate could be responsible for fewer Iranian films being imported to the U.S. Or it could be that the burst of new cinema from the 1990s has run its course.

This year’s SFIFF only has only one Iranian film and it’s a decidedly minor work, though still difficult to pinpoint. Mania Akbari was a painter when Kiarostami cast her as the driver for his experimental digital feature Ten (2002). The filmmaking bug bit her and she embarked on her own directorial debut, 20 Fingers (2004), a solid, if sentimental look at different facets of men/women relationships. Now, with Kiarostami’s blessing, she’s returned with the official sequel to Ten, entitled 10 + 4.

10+4, good buddy

Akbari was diagnosed with cancer and decided to make 10+4 about her disease (and about her chemotherapy and resulting baldness). I don’t like disease-of-the-week pictures anyway, but when the disease is real, forming a critical analysis is doubly hard. And when the filmmaker is prone to overreaching (Akbari is), it’s triply difficult. Perhaps making 10+4 helped Akbari come to terms with her illness, and perhaps it will do the same for someone else who watches it. At the very least, some of the film’s segments have a power of their own, hinting that the Iranian New Wave hasn’t entirely dissipated.

SFIFF, weekend one: city songs and auteur-itis

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April 28, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The first Saturday of the SF International Film Festival is usually loaded. This year, the broad array of movies included some disappointments: the documentary Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts showed that Phil’s a genius with wide-ranging talents and interesting friends, but it lacked drama; Ermanno Olmi’s One Hundred Nails was a letdown from the director of the masterpiece The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978).

The Castro had the day’s best films, starting with Carlos Saura’s magical Fados, so far one of my favorites in the festival. Fado has recently come back in a big way and Saura does little more than stage several music videos back-to-back with no commentary. But each segment overflows with its own narrative and emotional power, aided by Saura’s expert staging and cinematography (the screen fills with huge squares of bold colors).

Carlos Saura’s Fados completes a trilogy by the director

SFIFF, weekend one: Dario, Black Francis, and Roy Andersson

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April 27, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

I found it vaguely irresponsible, and perhaps even cruel, that the festival programmed its two most high-profile horror pictures on the same night at around the same time. Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears and Paul Wegener’s 1920 film The Golem both played Friday night between 9 and 11 p.m. I managed to see the Argento film in advance: Mother of Tears is the third in a trilogy that Argento began with Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), but unlike those two this one is laughably awful. Written and performed in stilted English, it’s filled with continuity gaps, logic holes and otherwise unmotivated behavior. But its use of gratuitous nudity, gratuitous gore (much of it actually done with latex rather than CGI!) and gratuitous random acts of cruelty make it a hilarious, MST3K-style cult classic keeper. Not to mention that Asia Argento, though not exactly deserving of an Oscar, manages to inject enough sheer animal presence into the movie to make it worth sticking around.

Mother of Tears is supposed to get a theatrical release in June, while SFIFF’s particular version of The Golem was a one-time deal. The screening boasted a live score by none other than Black Francis (once again going by his Pixies-era moniker, rather than Frank Black or Charles Thompson). The good news is that it was a great Black Francis show, but the bad news is that I’m not sure the songs actually synced up with or enhanced the movie in any way. For the most part they actually rubbed up against the movie, competed with it for our attention. In 2005, American Music Club’s score for Frank Borzage’s Street Angel (1927), was pure genius, absolutely mesmerizing. Francis’ The Golem played a bit more like syncing up Pink Floyd to The Wizard of Oz (1939); sometimes something magical happened, melding music and film, but other times, you were trapped in some netherworld between the two forms.

SFIFF, day two: A golem on the horizon

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April 25, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Tonight, I’m off to see Roy Andersson‘s You, the Living and then Frank Black‘s live accompaniment to 1920’s The Golem. Three years ago at SFIFF, I saw Frank Borzage’s 1927 Street Angel with a live score by the American Music Club, and it was one of the great movie nights of my life. I hope this one comes close.

Word has it that Roy Andersson’s You, the Living blows — in the best possible sense

The Golem will soon be hit with a wave of Frank Black’s sonic mutilation

SFIFF, day one: The world according to Asia

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April 24, 2008

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By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This year, it’s Asia Argento‘s festival, and we’re all just invited. I’ve heard through the grapevine that Asia will not be in attendance at the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival, but her diva-ness will exude throughout. She’s in no less than three festival films this year, a feat I can’t remember ever having been duplicated (if you were quick enough, a fourth one, Boarding Gate, recently opened and closed in San Francisco).

Asia Argento picnics in The Last Mistress

Asia has always struck me as an unholy fusion of Uma Thurman and Rachel Weisz, but far more daring and alluring. In her father Dario Argento‘s Mother of Tears, she looks unbearably sexy striding through the streets of Rome in a black raincoat. A raincoat! She’s not so much an actress as she is a force of nature; she explodes rather than performs. None of her films can be categorized as trifling, bland or boring, and she sets the bar for guts at this year’s festival. Among the rest of this year’s films one can find elements of psychotronic cinema: dangerous marginal ideas like time-travel, ghosts, murder, martial arts, gore and sex. This is no shoe-gazing, hand-wringing fest. We’ve got some of the strangest films since Harmony Korine’s Gummo turned up in 1998.

Events kick off tonight with Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress — starring Asia — and the big opening night party. I’ll talk more about the film tomorrow. After that, I’ll do my best to prowl around the festival front lines, and report back on what I see. I’ll be here every day, unless I somehow fry my retinal nerves in the meantime…

Five random early picks: Bela Tarr’s The Man from London, Peter Chan’s The Warlords, Jia Zhang-ke’s Still Life, Alexander Sokurov’s Alexandra and Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up on Mu.

Highway 51: The 51st SFIFF, week one

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April 23, 2008

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THURS/24

The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat, France/Italy, 2007) Catherine Breillat steps back from one of her bluntest provocations — 2006’s Anatomy of Hell — to deliver this barbed, intelligent adaptation of Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly’s 1851 novel. Asia Argento is heroic as the titular courtesan, a seething, powerful woman working outside bourgeoisie bounds. On the eve of his marriage to a suitably chaste maiden, the entitled, Mick Jagger-lipped Ryno de Marigny (Fu’ad Aït Aattou) narrates his decade-long affair with the magnetic mistress to his fiancées grandmother (she’s rapt). Locked into place by an attraction at once destructive and indestructible, they’re not star-crossed lovers so much as fatal accomplices. An intriguing cocktail of classical framing and modern malaise, The Last Mistress is Breillat’s best work in years — not least of all because of her clear affection for the material. (Max Goldberg)
7 p.m. Castro
FRI/25

Alexandra (Alexander Sokurov, Russia, 2007) Alexandra’s seventy-something title figure (Galina Vishnevskaya) takes the laborious journey to Chechnya, where the grandson (Vasily Shevtsov) she hasn’t seen in seven years is stationed at a large army base. This latest by Russian master Sokurov isn’t exactly narrative-driven — Alexandra wanders about the vast compound and war-torn nearby town, trying to re-instill a little humanity between weary, wary occupiers and occupied — but it’s one of his least abstract, most emotionally direct works. In her first film role (and a non-singing one), veteran opera singer Vishnevskaya etches a character whose long-suffering indomitableness is Mother Courage as Mother Russia. (Dennis Harvey)
7 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/27, noon, Kabuki; May 4, 4:15 p.m., PFA

Black Belt (Shunichi Nagasaki, Japan, 2007) Hai karate! Ably armed with authentic martial arts aces in lead roles and a stripped and ripped discipline that allows for only one or two evil cackles from warlord villains, auteur Nagasaki transforms his masterful piece of genre filmmaking into a brink-of-WWII parable about the uses of power and the wisdom of passive resistance. The year is 1932 and an imperialist Japan has just invaded Manchuria. The next takeover: a peaceful Kyushu karate dojo where the students — arrogant and aggressive Taikan (Tatsuya Naka), dutiful and gentle Giryu (Akihito Yagi), and peacemaker Choei (Yuji Suzuki) — are not quite ready to go quietly into the armed forces. Black Belt trounces typical CG kung fu: the fact that the actors are karate masters gives the film a texture of authenticity unseen since the days of Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan, lending weight to thoughts and deeds. (Kimberly Chun)
8:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/27, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki

Brick Lane (Sarah Gavron, England, 2007) Adapted from Monica Ali’s novel, Brick Lane — which takes it’s name from a London street on which many immigrants reside — is a clichéd, romantic, finding-one’s-home story. After her mother commits suicide, Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) is forced to leave Bangladesh in order to marry Chanu (Satish Kaushik), who lives in London, England. There, she submits herself to the unexciting life of pre-arranged marriage until she meets Karim (Christopher Simpson), who sweeps her off her feet. One of the most aggravating things about the film is that Nazneen finds the power to take charge of her life through her affair with Karim. Apparently her daughter’s constant plea for Nazneen to start verbalizing her will was of secondary importance. (Maria Komodore)
7:15 p.m., Kabuki

“The Golem with Black Francis” (Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, Germany, 1920) An original score composed and played live by the Pixies’ leader is a mighty enticement, but even without it, this classic 1920 German silent would be worth seeing in a promised beautiful archival print. Drawn from medieval Jewish folklore, it tells of a rabbi’s creation of a clay man to protect the ethnic ghetto from a Christian emperor’s heavy hand. Co-directed by Wegener, one of the masters of cinematic German expressionism (who also plays the Golem), it’s an impressive, strikingly designed mix of horror, history and political commentary. (Harvey)
9:30 p.m., Castro

Area 51

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April 23, 2008

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I agree with my cohort Dennis Harvey — it is always cheering to see 1962’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. There’s something so special about the bodiless head trapped under a glass jar in that movie. As Jan Compton, a.k.a. "Jan in the Pan," actress Virginia Leith seethes and cackles, bringing across pure existential pain more forcefully than any French philosopher with a perma-creased brow. The fact that The Brain That Wouldn’t Die figures in local mad magician Craig Baldwin’s new antic investigation Mock Up on Mu is just one of at least 51 reasons why I’m excited to see it premiere at the 51st SF International Film Festival.

The Guardian‘s deluxe coverage of SFIFF 51 kicks off with a portrait of Baldwin. Elsewhere, Cheryl Eddy discusses blood ties with the sickest father-daughter team around, Dario and Asia Argento. Our stories this week also scope out a pair of life-and-death documentaries; a mod, mod, mod war movie; some new Mexican filmic journeys; the merits of festival awardees; and, last but not least, the eternally fatal allure of the late Gene Tierney. So, before you drown in the dark, before hours of unmapped SFIFF excursions have you feeling like the son or daughter of the brain that wouldn’t die, read all about it here. In the words of José-Luis Guerín, director of In the City of Sylvia, "we should see cinema as a separate continent" — and we should be cheered by what we see. (Johnny Ray Huston)

The 51st San Francisco International Film Festival runs April 24-May 8. Venues are the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF; Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; and Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk. For tickets (most shows $12.50) and information call (925) 866-9559 or visit www.sffs.org.

>>For more reviews, previews, news, and daily coverage of SFIFF 51, check out SFBG’s Pixel Vision blog.

>>Highway 51
A road map to SFIFF 51 — films to ride with (and some speed bumps)

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>>Explosive stuff!
Craig Baldwin turns space junk into magickal treasure with Mock Up on Mu
By Dennis Harvey

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>>Blood ties
Asia and Dario Argento go go for a SFIFF trifecta
By Cheryl Eddy

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>>Ashes to ashes
A dance between Dust and Profit motive and the whispering wind
By Matt Sussman

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>>On tour
Mod auteur Serge Bozon makes the war go pop in La France
By Kimberly Chun

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>>Critic’s choice
In praise of J. Hoberman and In the City of Sylvia
By Max Goldberg

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>>Apolitical animal
Mexico’s SFIFF thrillers aren’t thrilling, but Cochochi turns loss into victory
By Jason Shamai

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>>Fierce perm
Robert Towne still knows how to give an award-winning Shampoo
By Maria Komodore

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>>Color her deadly
Leave Her to Heaven‘s strange allure will pull you under
By Johnny Ray Huston

SFIFF: Highway 51

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April 23, 2008

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THURS/24

• The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat, France/Italy, 2007) Catherine Breillat steps back from one of her bluntest provocations — 2006’s Anatomy of Hell — to deliver this barbed, intelligent adaptation of Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly’s 1851 novel. Asia Argento is heroic as the titular courtesan, a seething, powerful woman working outside bourgeoisie bounds. On the eve of his marriage to a suitably chaste maiden, Mick Jagger–lipped Ryno de Maginy (Fu’ad Aït Aattou) narrates his decades-long affair with the magnetic mistress — telling the tale to his fiancée’s grandmother, who is rapt. An intriguing cocktail of classical framing and modern malaise, The Last Mistress is Breillat’s best work in years — not least of all because of her clear affection for the material. (Max Goldberg)

7 p.m., Castro.

FRI/25

Alexandra (Alexander Sokurov, Russia, 2007) Alexandra‘s 70-something title figure (Galina Vishnevskaya) takes the laborious journey to Chechnya, where the grandson (Vasily Shevtsov) she hasn’t seen in seven years is stationed at a large army base. This latest by Russian master Sokurov isn’t exactly narrative-driven, but it’s one of his least abstract, most emotionally direct works. In her first film role, opera veteran Vishnevskaya doesn’t need to sing to etch a character whose long-suffering indomitableness is Mother Courage as Mother Russia. (Dennis Harvey)

7 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/27, noon, Kabuki; May 4, 4:15 p.m., Pacific Film Archive

• Black Belt (Shunichi Nagasaki, Japan, 2007) Hai karate! Ably armed with authentic martial arts aces in lead roles, auteur Nagasaki transforms his masterful piece of genre filmmaking into a parable, set on the eve of World War II, about the use of power and the wisdom of passive resistance. Black Belt trounces typical CG kung fu: that the actors are karate masters gives the film a texture of authenticity unseen since the days of Bruce Lee, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan, lending weight to thoughts and deeds. (Kimberly Chun)

8:45 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/27, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki

Brick Lane (Sarah Gavron, England, 2007) Adapted from Monica Ali’s 2003 novel, Brick Lane is a clichéd, romantic, finding-one’s-home story. Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) submits herself to the unexciting life of pre-arranged marriage until she meets Karim (Christopher Simpson), who sweeps her off her feet. One of the most aggravating things about the film is that Nazneen finds the power to take charge of her life through her affair alone. Apparently her daughter’s constant plea for Nazneen to start verbalizing her will was of secondary importance. (Maria Komodore)

7:15 p.m., Kabuki.

• The Golem with Black Francis (Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, Germany, 1920) An original score composed and played live by the Pixies’ leader is a mighty enticement, but even without it this classic 1920 German silent would be worth seeing. Drawn from medieval Jewish folklore, it tells of a rabbi’s creation of a clay man to protect the ethnic ghetto from a Christian emperor’s heavy hand. Codirected by Wegener, one of the masters of cinematic German expressionism (who also plays the golem), it’s an impressive, strikingly designed mix of horror, history, and political commentary. (Harvey)

9:30 p.m., Castro.

• Just Like Home (Lone Scherfig, Denmark, 2007) Dogme95 filmmaker Scherfig hones her flair for bittersweet comedy with this goofily enjoyable ensemble piece about a misfit small town that falls into chaos. Much of the film’s story is seen through the eyes of a newcomer who has escaped from a bizarre religious cult; in accordance, Scherfig records the earnest bumbling of town folk through a unique lens, sometimes smeared with streaks of overexposed or double-exposed shapes and colors. The result is only as deep as a standard-issue Hollywood romantic comedy, but it’s deftly handled and slyly endearing. (Jeffrey M. Anderson)

6:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/26, 1 p.m., Kabuki; Sun/27, 4 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 9:15 p.m., Kabuki

• Lady Jane (Robert Guédiguian, France, 2007) Lean and mean as a killer B-movie, Lady Jane shows that the French noir still possesses a powerful measure of chilly fire. Its namesake, played by the 50-ish, formidable, and fierce Ariane Ascaride, perfectly embodies the genre. Roused from bourgeois slumber when her son is suddenly snatched, Lady Jane reconnects with two old partners in crime to raise a ransom. Director Guédiguian is overly fond of his flashbacks but redeems himself with the care he puts into imagery that avoids Bogart-by-way-of-Belmondo clichés. (Chun)

9:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sun/ 27, 9:45 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 4:30 p.m., Kabuki

• You, the Living (Roy Andersson, Sweden/Germany/France/Denmark/Norway, 2007) There is one thing wrong with Swede Roy Andersson’s movies: there aren’t enough of them. His fourth feature in 30 years is another almost indescribable gizmo that strings together absurdist tableaux to increasingly hilarious and elaborate effect. From an incongruous Louisiana brass band to unhappy barflies forever facing last call, the characters here are comic Scandinavian-miserabilist pawns in a cosmic joke told largely through music — and painted a fugly shade of lime green. Bizarre and delightful. (Harvey)

6:15 p.m., Castro. Also Sun/27, 8:30 p.m., PFA; Tues/29, 7 p.m., Kabuki

SAT/26

Fados (Carlos Saura, Portugal/Spain, 2007) Attempting to do for the Portuguese torch song what he once did for Spain’s gypsy blues with Flamenco (1995), Saura soars and stumbles with Fados, presenting wonderful performances and a few unfortunately dated modern-dance treatments. Chico Buarque, Mariza, Lila Downs, and Césaria Évora lend their varied styles and impassioned voices to the form. But one wishes Saura would have stepped aside further for the effervescent, soulful lilt of Caetano Veloso; the plush, liquid tones of Lura; the arch, curled-lip warble of Ana Sofia Varela; and old world narrative grace of Carlos do Carmo. (Chun)

2:45 p.m., Castro. Also Mon/28, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/29, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki

Ice People (Anne Aghion, USA/France, 2007) The movies have long made the Antarctic the terrain of terrifying monsters and cute creatures, but the beings discovered by Anne Aghion in this documentary bare fatigue, not fangs, and they are far more prickly than cuddly. Aghion’s portrait of the inhabitants of the McMurdow Research Station spends most of its time with a satellite group of four geologists looking for 20-million-year-old leaf fossils. There’s more depth in the fantastic landscapes, which Aghion lenses far more flatteringly than she does her human subjects. (Sussman)

6:45 p.m., Kabuki. Mon/28, 3:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 1:15 p.m., Kabuki

Mataharis (Icíar Bollaín, Spain, 2007) Charlie’s Angels this ain’t: these investigators and would-be Mata Haris of an all-female Madrid detective agency have the unwashed hair, sensible shoes, and bad marriages of everyday wage slaves. Actress-director Bollaín’s skillful, empathetic knack for capturing the grubby, low-light details of working women’s lives glimmers through the pale haze of this promising film. But she falters with the application of narrative-flattening sentiment, predictably reassuring story arcs, and the occasional cheesy slo-mo effect. (Chun)

4 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/28, 7:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 9 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 1:15 p.m., Clay

Walt & El Grupo (Theodore Thomas, USA, 2007) In 1941, Walt Disney and a band of animators, writers, and other artists — which came to be known as El Grupo — journeyed to South America on a goodwill tour. This documentary, codirected by the son of one voyager, gathers wonderful photos, home movies, and a dazzling collection of drawings and cartoon clips to re-create the trip. The trouble is that there’s no real drama. The cumulative view is as sharply Eurocentric as Disney’s was when he went on to make cartoons such as 1942’s Saludos Amigos. (Anderson)
1:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/28, 6 p.m., Kabuki; April 30, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki

SUN/27

• Forbidden Lie$ (Anna Broinowksi, Australia, 2007) Norma Khouri made headlines and toured the talk show and lecture circuit as a crusading heroine when her 2003 international bestseller Forbidden Love highlighted the phenomenon of honor killings in pockets of the Muslim world. Trouble was, her heartrending story turned out to be a fabrication. As filmmaker Anna Broinowski grows increasingly exasperated with her subject’s fibbing and evasiveness, this documentary develops from an exposé into a portrait of a serial con artist one would be quite happy to see writing her next book from behind bars. (Harvey)

1:30 p.m., PFA. Also April 30, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki; May 2, 6:30 p.m., Clay; May 4, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki

• Picking Up the Pieces (various, 2007) The most intriguing piece in this shorts program about things lost and found is Death Valley Superstar, Michael Yaroshevsky’s half-hour documentary focusing on Marc Frechette, who was picked off the street to star in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 Zabriskie Point. Taking his role as a student revolutionary into real life, he subsequently tried robbing a bank, was arrested, and died in prison under suspicious circumstances. Also excellent is Radu Jude’s 25-minute Romanian drama Alexandra and John Magary’s The Second Line, a narrative revolving around a FEMA worker in post-Katrina New Orleans. (Harvey)

11:45 a.m., Kabuki. Also April 30, noon, Kabuki.

A Stray Girlfriend (Ana Katz, Argentina, 2007) Writer-director-actress Katz maps out post-breakup transience with a wandering handheld camera and oblique dialog. As her titular character explores a rural township on Argentina’s coast, each scene teeters between bewilderment and menace. Lynne Ramsay covered similar terrain in her minor masterpiece Morvern Callar (2002), though with a dream-inducing soundtrack and enigmatic ellipticism far beyond Katz’s more vanilla approach. (Goldberg)

9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 1, 7:30 p.m., Kabuki; May 4, 6:15 p.m., PFA

MON/28

• Cachao: Uno Más (Dikayl Rimmasch, USA, 2008) Actor, would-be bongo player, and Cuban music fanatic Andy Garcia does right by his idol, the late Cuban musical great Israel "Cachao" Lopez, in this passionate tribute sprinkled with SF sights and centered around a Bimbo’s 365 Club concert. The show was apparently a hot one — it also showcased Bay Area Latin music scholar John Santos, timbalero Orestes Vilato, and vocalist Lazaro Galarraga — and director Rimmasch does it justice by using the performance as a narrative framework for a history that parallels that of contemporary Cuban music. (Chun)

6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also May 2, 1:15 p.m., Kabuki.

TUES/29

Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, USA, 2008) After profiling Robert McNamara in 2003’s The Fog of War, Morris jumps down the chain-of-command to summon US soldiers punished for the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib. Ever the showman, he cuts from burnished interviews and photos to reenactments and slow-motion rumbles — we "see" Saddam’s egg frying, giant prison ants, and an exploding helicopter. Such obsessive visualizations seem misplaced and morally confused. The Abu Ghraib story is, among other things, about the unstable, delicate nature of photographic representation. Yet Morris can’t resist auteur-stamped fireworks — how else to explain the typically nutty (and utterly incongruous) Danny Elfman score? (Goldberg)

Part of "Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award: An Evening With Errol Morris," 7:30 p.m., Kabuki

>SFBG goes to SFIFF 51: our deluxe guide