Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. The film intern is Ryan Prendiville. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide at www.sfbg.com. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.
OPENING
The Blue Tower Smita Bhide’s debut film, The Blue Tower, part of the 3rd I South Asian International Film Fest, begins with Mohan (Abhin Galeya) in the sort of loveless marriage that has become a standard cliché. It’s unnecessary to give any reason why the relationship is failing; as a viewer I accept it just as easily as I realize that with the introduction of Judy (Alice O’Connell), a young white nurse working for Mohan’s overbearing Auntie, Mohan will have an affair. However, this predictable fare, like a straight version of My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), takes a dark turn about halfway through, as every character and plot point emerges as more nefarious and twisted than originally imagined, and Mohan finds himself in a situation full of Lynchian perversion and Kafkaesque disorientation. The boldness and speed at which developments occur shifts the deadpan, suburban drama into a black-humored, grotesque ride — the sort you half want to stop, and you half want to see where it’s going. (1:25) Castro. (Prendiville)
*Brutal Beauty: Tales of the Rose City Rollers Focusing on Portland-based league Rose City Rollers, Chip Mabry’s Brutal Beauty offers some insights into the recent roller derby revival. The documentary follows the league travel team’s attempt to make it to Nationals over the course of the 2009 season. Ultimately though, the narrative really isn’t all that exciting (spoiler alert: they don’t make it very far). The real heart of the movie lies in the backgrounds and interviews of the tatted-up, foul-mouthed, dyed-haired derby girls from teams like the Break Neck Betties and Guns ‘N’ Rollers. Their personalities and stories of how derby helped shatter their ideas of self-expression and traditional gender norms helps keep the majority of the film’s 80-minute running time interesting, even when the action is not. (1:20) Red Vic. (Landon Moblad)
Butte, America: The Saga of a Hard Rock Mining Town This documentary follows the life and death of a great American mining town, following Butte, Montana’s rise as a mining town through to its inevitable environmental collapse. Once home to one of the world’s largest (and most dangerous) copper mines, Butte saw an influx of immigrants drawn to “the richest hill on earth.” Its story is definitely rich in terms of subject matter, particularly with the town’s role in the labor struggle; it could easily be the background for great early 20th century stories (as is the case with Atlantic City in HBO’s current Boardwalk Empire). But Butte, America is decidedly not cinematic, despite the voice-over narration by Gabriel Byrne, and is better suited to PBS than the big screen. (1:06) Victoria. (Prendiville)
Carlos Carlos, Olivier Assayas’s biopic of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, begins with a warning, that while the film is the subject of historical and journalistic research, “relations with other characters have been fictionalized.” In other words: there be contradictions ahead. But I suppose that’s the least you can expect when you’re watching a 330 minute theatrical miniseries that gives the rock ‘n’ roll biopic treatment to a terrorist who, under an alias, professes “the pleasure of doing one’s duty in silence.” Much of this is intentional, questioning the convictions of extremists. One particularly well-shot scene involves Carlos (Édgar Ramírez) sexually dominating a cell member, only moments after she admits to being a German feminist. After about four hours, though, the intellectual irony begins to feel more like a filmmaker attempting to cover his bases. Carlos is an idealist, but also a sellout. An egalitarian revolutionary, but also a sexist bigot. (And so vain.) Still, the film, full of actors speaking a bevy of languages and propelled by a international punk rock soundtrack, manages to be engaging. Keep in mind, though, that the miniseries was originally aired in three parts, and viewing Carlos in one sitting should be left to the cinemasochists. (5:30) Sundance Kabuki. (Prendiville)
Due Date Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis star in this Todd Phillips-directed road trip movie. (1:35) Four Star, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.
*Fair Game Doug Liman’s film effectively dramatizes yet another disgraceful chapter from the last Presidential administration: how CIA agent Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), who’d headed the Joint Task Force on Iraq investigating whether Saddam Hussein had WMDs, was identified by name in the Washington Post as a covert agent — thus ending her intelligence career and placing many of her subordinates and sources around the world in danger. This info was leaked to the press, it turned out, by highest-level White House officials as “punishment” for the New York Times editorial former ambassador Joe Wilson (Sean Penn) — Plame’s husband — wrote condemning their insistence on those WMDs to justify the Iraq invasion by then already well in progress. (The CIA task force had also found zero evidence of mass-destruction weapons, but Bush and co. chose to come up with their own bogus “facts” to sway US public opinion.) Purportedly, Karl Rove clucked to CNN’s Chris Matthews that Wilson’s awkwardly-timed dose of sobering truth rendered his spouse “fair game” for exposure. Unfortunately opening here several days after it might theoretically have done some election-day good — not that many Republican voters would likely be queuing up — Fair Game may be a familiar story to many. But its gist and details remain quite enough to make the blood boil. While the political aspects are expertly handled in thriller terms, the personal ones are a tad less successful. That’s partly because we never quite glimpse what brought these two very busy, business-first people together; but largely, alas, because so many of Wilson’s diatribes come off all too much as things that might be said by Sean Penn, Rabble-Rouser and Humanitarian. This is perhaps a case of casting so perfect it becomes a distracting fault. (1:46) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
For Colored Girls Sprinkling many tears and Janet Jackson’s blue steel throughout his high-camp, muy melodramatic adaptation of Ntzoke Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Tyler Perry deserves at least an E for effort in attempting to bring Shange’s choreopoem masterpiece to the screen. The result is a free-floating, somewhat tortured contemporary collection of vignettes centered on a clutch of African American women residing in an Harlem apartment building — a structure that remotely evokes an early Wong Kar-Wai omnibus like Days of Being Wild (1991), sans the narrative ambiguity and sublime cinematography — with its “colored girls,” each representing a hue in Shange’s rainbow, occasionally pouring out the poet’s original verse. Crystal (Kimberly Elise) appears to have it the hardest, burdened with an abusive baby daddy (Michael Ealy), a veteran dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Dance teacher Yasmine (Anika Noni Rose) is the beacon of positivity who finds her trust horribly betrayed. Tangie (Thandie Newton) is the saucy slut, baby sister Nyla (Tessa Thompson) is the good girl with a secret, and their mother Alice (Whoopi Goldberg) is the building’s extremely annoying holy roller. Overseeing all is the apartments’ de facto matriarch Gilda (Phylicia Rashad), safe sex activist Juanita (Loretta Devine), and social worker Kelly (Kerry Washington). Oh, yes, and there’s Miss Jackson, who plays the leather-tough, magazine-editing devil wearing Prada, and spends most of her time looking wrecked about possibly ruining her makeup with an actual facial expression. Yes, they will survive, hey, hey, and though Perry may not have been the best moviemaker to adapt Shange’s groundbreaking work, a few of his players, particularly Newton and Elise, rise above the rainbow with wrenching, scene-stealing performances. (2:00) (Chun)
Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer Everyone of a certain age or with morbid curiosities has heard of R. Budd Dwyer, thanks to the very public way he died — by committing suicide at a televised-live press conference. The 1987 footage, of a portly middle-aged man with anguish in his eyes and a finger on the trigger, has been recycled in a number of contexts; thanks to the internet, it’s now freely viewable for shock value more than anything else (the incident created a controversy as to how much should be shown during news replays — when Dwyer takes out the gun? When he sticks it in his mouth?) Along the way, who Dwyer was, and why he shot himself, have kind of been lost by the general public. However, as director James Dirschberger discovers, the Pennsylvania politician’s widow, children, colleagues, and even the man whose testimony lead to a conviction in Dwyer’s corruption trial have never forgotten him. Honest Man suggests that Dwyer was actually innocent, but decided in despair to end his life before he’d been removed from office, thus allowing his family to collect full benefits. The full story will probably never be known, but Honest Man‘s attempts to show the man behind the gruesome film clip are sincere, if couched in the understanding that he’ll always be first associated with his infamous, well-documented death. (1:16) Red Vic. (Eddy)
*Megamind Be careful what you wish for, especially if you’re a blue meanie with a Conehead noggin and a knack for mispronunciation and mayhem. Holding up hilariously against such animated efforts as The Incredibles (2004) and Monsters, Inc. (2001), Megamind uses that nugget of wisdom as its narrative springboard and takes off where most superhero-vs.-supervillain yarns end: the feud between baddie Megamind (voiced by Will Farrell) and goody-two-shoes Metro Man (Brad Pitt) goes waaay back, to the ankle-biter years. They’ve battled so often over intrepid girl reporter Roxanne Ritchi (Tina Fay) that she’s beyond bored by every nefarious torture device and disco crocodile the Blue Man throws at her. When Mega finally, unexpectedly vanquishes his foe, he finds himself with a bad case of the blues. With the help of his loyal Minion (David Cross), he decides to change the game and create his own worthy opponent, who just happens to be Roxanne’s schlubby cameraman (Jonah Hill). Chortles ensue, thanks to the sarcastic sass emanating from the Will and Tina show, although the 3-D effects seem beside the point. The resemblance to this year’s Despicable Me is more than a little passing, from the bad guy on the moral turnaround to the adorable underlings, but Megamind‘s smart satire of comic hero conventions, its voice actor’s right-on riffs, and the rock and pop licks on the soundtrack make it the nice and nasty winner. (1:36) Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
*Monsters After a NASA space pod bearing samples of extraterrestrial life crashes in northern Mexico, a large swath of the now massively walled-off U.S. border area becomes an “Infected Zone,” with frequent unpleasant contact between humans and giant octopus-like creatures. Photographer Andrew (Scoot McNairy) is reluctantly charged with delivering his publisher’s daughter Sam (Whitney Able) to safety. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. The duo find themselves making a dangerous journey northward straight through the Zone, right at the start of an annual “migration season” that always makes the critters especially ornery. Just as 2009’s District 9 commented obliquely on Apartheid, Gareth Edwards’ feature similarly riffs on our own illegal-alien debate. But there’s no need to look for deep meanings here. Taken as a slow build (sometimes a little too slow) toward the inevitable perils, Monsters is a successfully low-key, lower-budget spin on aspects of The War of the Worlds, Cloverfield (2008), The Mist (2007), etc. Those looking for lots of graphic horror-fantasy content may be frustrated, but on its own terms the film is creepy and credible enough. (1:33) California, Lumiere. (Harvey)
*36 Quai des Orfèvres It’s taken six years for this major French policier to get a proper U.S. release, which is a little strange considering its genre appeal and lack of conflict with an English-language remake (Martin Campbell, director of 2006’s Casino Royal, might make one within the next couple years). Leaving for another post, Paris’ Chief of Police (Andre Dussolier) wants to wrap things up tidily before he goes, and that means nailing the violent gang that’s been robbing armored trucks and killing their guards. Though he’d prefer his post be inherited by the honorable Leo Vrinks (Daniel Auteil) rather than the latter’s ex-friend, shamelessly ambitious and underhanded Denis Klein (Gerard Depardieu), internal politics necessitate he give it to whichever man and his team end this crime spree. When a con (Roschdy Zem) gives Vrinks a tip — albeit under seriously compromising, blackmail-ready circumstances — it seems the murderous gang will be caught under his supervision. Drunk and raging with envy, Klein pulls a stunt that has catastrophic consequences. Yet a chance windfall allows him to turn things to his advantage, and greatly against Vrinks. To a point the story is very loosely inspired by events that actually occurred in the mid-1980s, when director-writer Olivier Marchal was a Parisian cop. His script (penned in collaboration with three others) is intricate and dramatic, with some startling twists of fate; the casting, which includes a number of other leading French actors, is impeccable. 36 has been called a Gallic Heat — though it lacks the visually and thematically epic, larger-than-life qualities Michael Mann provided that film. Which leaves it a very good story competently executed, but not the great movie it could have been. (1:51) Roxie. (Harvey)
Tibet in Song It’s often a bad sign when directors are subjects in their own documentaries. With Tibet in Song, Ngawang Choephel has good cause to disprove this theory. In 1995, he returned to Tibet for the first time since fleeing with his mother as a child. An ethnomusicologist and Fulbright scholar, he wanted to record traditional Tibetan music. Instead he was arrested, lost half his footage, and charged with spying, eventually serving six years in jail. Tibet in Song is the completion of his original project, and although the director does give due attention to the circumstances of his own story, it’s always within the larger context of the music, as a culture is being held captive by Chinese pop and propaganda. As Choephel argues that the traditional Tibetan music has been manipulated to change the country’s identity generation by generation, we don’t just hear the music, but understand what it means. (1:26) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Prendiville)
ONGOING
Cairo Time (1:29) Opera Plaza.
Conviction (1:47) Empire, Piedmont, SF Center.
*Easy A (1:30) Shattuck.
Enter the Void (2:17) Lumiere.
*The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest If you enjoyed the first two films in the Millennium trilogy — 2009’sThe Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire — there’s a good chance you’ll also like The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Based on the final book in Stieg Larsson’s series, the film begins shortly after the violent events at the conclusion of the second movie. There are brief flashes of what happened — the cinematic equivalent of TV’s “previously on&ldots;” — but it’s likely an indecipherable jumble to Girl first-timers. Hornet’s Nest presents the trial of Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), the much-abused, much-misunderstood, entirely kick-ass protagonist of the series. With the help of journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his sister Annika (Annika Hallin) as her lawyer, Lisbeth finally gets her day in court. The conspiracy that drives the story is somewhat convoluted, and while it all comes together in the end, Hornet’s Nest isn’t an easy film to digest. Still, it’s a well-made and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy — as long as you caught the beginning and middle, too. (2:28) Bridge, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)
Hereafter (2:09) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.
Inside Job (2:00) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.
It’s Kind of a Funny Story (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.
*Jackass 3D (1:30) 1000 Van Ness.
*The Kids Are All Right (1:47) Red Vic.
*Leaving Few beauties — French, English, French-English, or otherwise — have managed the transformation Kristin Scott Thomas has, in using her considerable beauty to convey unfathomable hunger. In this romantic thriller with a touch of Madame Bovary and more than a dab of noir, Scott Thomas is Suzanne, the efficient if somewhat taken-for-granted wife of a doctor (Yvan Attal, director of 2001’s My Wife Is an Actress and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s partner), whose marriage resembles a business arrangement more than a love match. The couple enlist Catalan ex-con Ivan (Sergi Lopez) to build an office for her budding physical therapy practice, and after a minor car accident, Ivan falls into Suzanne’s care, and as she grows to care more deeply about him, an affair begins. Director Catherine Corsini’s tough-eyed look at what follows — concerning the economics of marriage and the price of one woman’s individuation and passionate choices — calls to mind women’s melodramas of the ’40s and ’50s, though Corsini renders her oft-told tale of awakening with considerably less heavy-handedness and minimal condescension. That approach and Scott Thomas’ performance — the movie almost turns on the motionless, slowly evolving look in Suzanne’s eyes when she realizes what she must do — makes Leaving a departure from your average coming-of-liberation romance. (1:30) Albany, Clay. (Chun)
Let Me In (1:55) Four Star.
Life as We Know It (1:52) 1000 Van Ness.
*Mademoiselle Chambon (1:41) Opera Plaza.
My Dog Tulip (1:22) Smith Rafael.
Never Let Me Go (1:43) Four Star, Lumiere.
*Nowhere Boy (1:37) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.
Paranormal Activity 2 (1:45) California, 1000 Van Ness.
Red (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.
Saw 3D (1:31) 1000 Van Ness.
*Secretariat (1:56) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.
*The Social Network (2:00) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.
Stone (1:45) Opera Plaza.
The Town (2:10) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck.
*Waiting for “Superman” (1:51) Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2:13) Presidio.
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (1:38) Albany, Opera Plaza, Presidio.