SF INDIEFEST
The 13th SF Independent Film Festival runs through Thurs/17 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF. Tickets (most shows $11) available at www.sfindie.com or by calling 1-800-838-3006.
WED/16
The Sentimental Engine Slayer 7. Toumast: Guitars and Kalashnikovs 7. Machotaildrop 9:15. Superstonic: The Rebel Dread 9:15.
THURS/17
The Trashmaster 7. Free Radicals 7. Last Circus 9:15. Nude Nuns With Big Guns 9:15.
OPENING
*And Everything is Going Fine See “Life After Death.” (1:30) Sundance Kabuki.
Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son Tyler Perry be damned, Martin Lawrence is clutching onto his piece of the fat-old-lady-in-drag comedy pie. (1:47)
Even the Rain It feels wrong to criticize an “issues movie” — particularly when the issues addressed are long overdue for discussion. Even the Rain takes on the privatization of water in Bolivia, but it does so in such an obvious, artless way that the ultimate message is muddled. The film follows a crew shooting an on-location movie about Christopher Columbus. The film-within-a-film is a less-than-flattering portrait of the explorer: if you’ve guessed that the exploitation of the native people will play a role in both narratives, you’d be right. The problem here is that Even the Rain rests on our collective outrage, doing little to explain the situation or even develop the characters. Case in point: Sebastian (Gael García Bernal), who shifts allegiances at will throughout the film. There’s an interesting link to be made between the time of Columbus and current injustice, but it’s not properly drawn here, and in the end, the few poignant moments get lost in the shuffle. (1:44) Shattuck. (Peitzman)
*Henry-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno A painstaking craftsman who left nothing to chance, French suspense master Clouzot (1955’s Diabolique, 1953’s The Wages of Fear) decided to push his own envelope a little in 1964. He cast Serge Reggiani as a resort innkeeper who becomes pathologically, paranoically possessive of his gorgeous wife (Romy Schneider). Convincing himself she’s having an affair, he gradually snaps tether — and the film itself would reflect that downward spiral by increasingly illustrating his mental stage in distortive image and sound. Unfortunately, the project also drove Clouzot mad in a way, as his grapplings at a new filmic language ran counter to the kind of creative discipline that normally storyboarded everything within an inch of its life. Shooting endless footage, spending endless money, he finally admitted defeat and abandoned ship. Never completed, the film’s surviving pieces were restored for this absorbing unmaking-of documentary — even if the original clips, daring then but now looking like psychedelic kitsch, suggest Inferno would likely have been no masterpiece but a fascinating, instantly-dated failure. (1:37) Roxie. (Harvey)
I Am Number Four Teen sci-fi drama based on a book co-written by the Oprah-angering (and yet he lives!) James Frey. (1:44) Shattuck.
*Kaboom See “Love Comes in Spurts.” (1:26) Shattuck.
Unknown Liam Neeson stars as a man having a serious identity crisis. (1:49) Presidio.
ONGOING
All’s Well Ends Well 2011 and I Love Hong Kong (1:40) Four Star.
*Another Year Mike Leigh’s latest represents a particularly affecting entry among his many improv-based, lives-of-everyday-Brits films. More loosely structured than 2008’s Happy-Go-Lucky, which featured a clear lead character with a well-defined storyline, the aptly-titled Another Year follows a year in the life of a group of friends and acquaintances, anchored by married couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen). Tom and Gerri are happily settled into middle-class middle age, with a grown son (Oliver Maltman) who adores them. So far, doesn’t really sound like there’ll be much Leigh-style heightened emotion spewing off the screen, traumatizing all in attendance, right? Well, you haven’t met the rest of the ensemble: there’s a sad-sack small-town widower, a sad-sack overweight drunk, a near-suicidal wife and mother (embodied in one perfect, bitter scene by Imelda Staunton), and Gerri’s work colleague Mary, played with a breathtaking lack of vanity by Lesley Manville. At first Mary seems to be a particularly shrill take on the clichéd unlucky-in-love fiftysomething woman — think an unglamorous Sex in the City gal, except with a few more years and far less disposable income. But Manville adds layers of depth to the pitiful, fragile, blundering Mary; she seems real, which makes her hard to watch at times. That said, anyone would be hard-pressed to look away from Manville’s wrenching performance. (2:09) Albany, Embarcadero. (Eddy)
Barney’s Version The charm of this shambling take on Mordecai Richler’s 1997 novel lies almost completely in the hang-dog peepers of star Paul Giamatti. Where would Barney’s Version be without him and his warts-and-all portrayal of lovable, fallible striver Barney Panofsky — son of a cop (Dustin Hoffman), cheesy TV man, romantic prone to falling in love on his wedding day, curmudgeon given to tying on a few at a bar appropriately named Grumpy’s, and friend and benefactor to the hard-partying and pseudo-talented Boogie (Scott Speedman). So much depends on the many nuances of feeling flickering across Giamatti’s pale, moon-like visage. Otherwise Barney’s Version sprawls, carries on, and stumbles over the many cute characters we don’t give a damn about — from Minnie Driver’s borderline-offensive JAP of a Panofsky second wife to Bruce Greenwood’s romantic rival for Barney’s third wife Miriam (Rosamund Pike). A mini-who’s who of Canadian directors surface in cameos — including Denys Arcand, David Cronenberg, and Atom Egoyan — as a testament to the respect Richler commands. Too bad director Richard J. Lewis didn’t get a few tips on dramatic rigor from Cronenberg or intelligent editing from Egoyan — as hard as it tries, Barney’s Version never rises from a mawkish middle ground. (2:12) Embarcadero, Empire, Shattuck. (Chun)
Biutiful Uxbal (Javier Bardem) has problems. To name but a few: he is raising two young children alone in a poor, crime-beset Barcelona hood. He is making occasional attempts to rope back in their bipolar, substance-abusive mother (Maricel Álvarez), a mission without much hope. He is trying to stay afloat by various not-quite legal means while hopefully doing the right thing by the illegals — African street drug dealers and Chinese sweatshop workers — he acts as middleman to, standing between them and much less sympathetically-inclined bossmen. He’s got a ne’er-do-well brother (Eduard Fernandez) to cope with. Needless to say, with all this going on (and more), he isn’t getting much rest. But when he wearily checks in with a doc, the proverbial last straw is stacked on his camelback: surprise, you have terminal cancer. With umpteen odds already stacked against him in everyday life, Uxbal must now put all affairs in order before he is no longer part of the equation. This is Alejandro González Iñárritu’s first feature since an acrimonious creative split with scenarist Guillermo Arriaga. Their films together (2006’s Babel, 2003’s 21 Grams, 2000’s Amores Perros) have been criticized for arbitrarily slamming together separate baleful storylines in an attempt at universal profundity. But they worked better than Biutiful, which takes the opposite tact of trying to fit several stand-alone stories’ worth of hardship into one continuous narrative — worse, onto the bowed shoulders of one character. Bardem is excellent as usual, but for all their assured craftsmanship and intense moments, these two and a half hours collapse from the weight of so much contrived suffering. Rather than making a universal statement about humanity in crisis, Iñárritu has made a high-end soap opera teetering on the verge of empathy porn. (2:18) California, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
*Black Swan “Lose yourself,” ballet company head Thomas (Vincent Cassel) whispers to his leading lady, Nina (Natalie Portman), moments before she takes the stage. But Nina is already consumed with trying to find herself, and rarely has a journey of self-discovery been so unsettling. Set in New York City’s catty, competitive ballet world, Black Swan samples from earlier dance films (notably 1948’s The Red Shoes, but also 1977’s Suspiria, with a smidgen of 1995’s Showgirls), though director Darren Aronofsky is nothing if not his own visionary. Black Swan resembles his 2008 The Wrestler somewhat thematically, with its focus on the anguish of an athlete under ten tons of pressure, but it’s a stylistic 180. Gone is the gritty, stripped-down aesthetic used to depict a sad-sack strongman. Like Dario Argento’s 1977 horror fantasy, the gory, elegantly choreographed Black Swan is set in a hyper-constructed world, with stabbingly obvious color palettes (literally, white = good; black = evil) and dozens of mirrors emphasizing (over and over again) the film’s doppelgänger obsession. As Nina, Portman gives her most dynamic performance to date. In addition to the thespian fireworks required while playing a goin’-batshit character, she also nails the role’s considerable athletic demands. (1:50) Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
*Blue Valentine Sometimes a performance stands out and grabs attention for embodying a particular personality type or emotional state that’s instantly familiar yet infrequently explored in much depth at the movies. What’s most striking about Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is the primary focus it lends Michelle Williams’ role as the more disgruntled half of a marriage that’s on its last legs whether the other half knows that or not. Ryan Gosling has the showier part — his Dean is mercurial, childish, more prone to both anger and delight, a babbler who tries to control situations by motor-mouthing or goofing through them. But Williams’ Cindy has reached the point where all his sound and fury can no longer pass as anything but static that must be tuned out as much as possible so that things get done. Things like parenting, going to work, getting the bills paid, and so forth. It’s taken a few years for Cindy to realize that she’s losing ground in her lifelong battle for self-improvement with every exasperating minute she continues to tolerate him. Williams’ bile-swallowing silences and the involuntary recoil that greets Dean’s attempts to touch Cindy are the film’s central emotional color: that state in which the loyalty, obligation, fear, pity, or whatever has kept you tied to a failing relationship is being whittled away by growing revulsion. Gosling’s excellent stab at an underwritten part is at a disadvantage compared to Williams, who just about burns a hole through the screen. (1:53) Four Star, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) California, Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
Come Undone (2:04) Sundance Kabuki.
The Eagle The mysterious fate of Rome’s Ninth Legion is all the rage lately — well, so sayeth the wee handful of people who caught Neil Marshall’s Centurion last year. For all who missed that flawed if worthy release, The Eagle arrives with a bigger budget and a bigger-name cast to puzzle out exactly what happened when thousands of Roman soldiers marched into what’s now Scotland, circa 120 AD, and never returned. The Eagle‘s Kevin Macdonald (2006’s The Last King of Scotland) bases his film on Rosemary Sutcliff’s popular children’s book, The Eagle of the Ninth, but the theory advanced here resembles Centurion‘s: the army was wiped out by hostile (and occasionally body-painted) natives. Much of The Eagle takes place decades after the disappearance, with the son of a Roman commander (Channing Tatum) scuttling past Hadrian’s Wall to seek truth, clear his family name, and reclaim a highly symbolic bronze eagle. Providing muscle and street smarts (or whatever the equivalent — backwoods smarts?) is slave Jamie Bell. The Eagle is handsomely shot, with some semi-thrilling PG-13 battle scenes, and any spin on Unsolved Mysteries: The Ninth Legion can’t really suck outright. But while Tatum has clearly clocked in the gym time to embody a Roman soldier, he doesn’t possess nearly enough depth (or any interesting qualities whatsoever) to play a character who supposedly has a lot of big emotions to work through. Bell does what he can with his sidekick role, short of performing CPR on his pulse-free costar, but it ain’t enough. Was Vin Diesel unavailable, or what? (1:54) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)
The Fighter Once enough of a contenda to have fought Sugar Ray Leonard — and won, though there are lingering questions about that verdict’s justice — Dicky (Christian Bale) is now a washed-up, crack-addicted mess whose hopes for a comeback seem just another expression of empty braggadocio. Ergo it has fallen to the younger brother he’s supposedly “training,” Micky (Mark Wahlberg), to endure the “managerial” expertise of their smothering-bullying ma (Melissa Leo) and float their large girl gang family of trigger-tempered sisters. That’s made even worse by the fact that they’ve gotten him nothing but chump fights in which he’s matched someone above his weight and skill class in order to boost the other boxer’s ranking. When Micky meets Charlene (Amy Adams), an ambitious type despite her current job as a bartender, this hardboiled new girlfriend insists the only way he can really get ahead is by ditching bad influences — meaning mom and Dicky, who take this shutout as a declaration of war. The fact-based script and David O. Russell’s direction do a good job lending grit and humor to what’s essentially a 1930s Warner Brothers melodrama — the kind that might have had Pat O’Brien as the “good” brother and James Cagney as the ne’er-do-well one who redeems himself by fadeout. Even if things do get increasingly formulaic (less 1980’s Raging Bull and more 1976’s Rocky), the memorable performances by Bale (going skeletal once again), Wahlberg (a limited actor ideally cast) and Leo (excellent as usual in an atypically brassy role) make this more than worthwhile. As for Adams, she’s just fine — but by now it’s hard to forget the too many cutesy parts she’s been typecast in since 2005’s Junebug. (1:54) Presidio, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
Gnomeo and Juliet If you willingly see a movie titled Gnomeo and Juliet, you probably have a keen sense of what you’re in for. And as long as that’s the case, it’s hard not to get sucked into the film’s 3D gnome-infested world. Believe it or not, this is actually a serviceable adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic — minus the whole double-suicide downer ending. But at least the movie is conscious of its source material, throwing in several references to other Shakespeare plays and even having the Bard himself (or, OK, a bronze statue) comment on the proceedings. It helps that the cast is populated by actors who could hold their own in a more traditional Shakespearean context: James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Maggie Smith, and Michael Caine. But Gnomeo and Juliet isn’t perfect — not because of its outlandish concept, but due to a serious overabundance of Elton John. The film’s songwriter and producer couldn’t resist inserting himself into every other scene. Aside from the final “Crocodile Rock” dance number, it’s actually pretty distracting. (1:24) Presidio, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)
*The Green Hornet I still don’t understand why this movie had to be in 3D, or what Cameron Diaz’s character has to do with anything, but I liked The Green Hornet in spite of myself. Only in Hollywood could artsy director Michel Gondry hook up with self-satisfied comedian Seth Rogen, who stars in and co-wrote this surprisingly amusing (if knowingly lightweight) superhero entry. After the death of his father (a megarich newspaper owner — how retro!), Rogen’s party boy Britt Reid decides, either out of boredom or misdirected rebellion, to become an anti-crime vigilante only pretending to be a criminal. (And that’s about as complicated as this movie gets.) Helping him, which is to say creating all of the cool cars and gadgets and single-handedly winning all of the fist fights, is Kato (Taiwanese actor Jay Chou, taking over the role Bruce Lee made famous). As himself, Reid is so obnoxious he pisses off newspaper editor Axford (Edward James Olmos); as the Hornet, he’s so obnoxious he pisses off actual crime boss Chudnofsky, played by movie highlight Christoph Waltz — more or less doing a Eurotrash twist on his Oscar-winning Inglourious Basterds (2009) Nazi. (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)
*The Illusionist Now you see Jacques Tati and now you don’t. With The Illusionist, aficionados yearning for another gem from Tati will get a sweet, satisfying taste of the maestro’s sensibility, inextricably blended with the distinctively hand-drawn animation of Sylvain Chomet (2004’s The Triplets of Belleville). Tati wrote the script between 1956 and 1959 — a loving sendoff from a father to a daughter heading toward selfhood — and after reading it in 2003 Chomet decided to adapt it, bringing the essentially silent film to life with 2D animation that’s as old school as Tati’s ambivalent longing for bygone days. The title character should be familiar to fans of Monsieur Hulot: the illusionist is a bemused artifact of another age, soon to be phased out with the rise of rock ‘n’ rollers. He drags his ornery rabbit and worn bag of tricks from one ragged hall to another, each more far-flung than the last, until he meets a little cleaning girl on a remote Scottish island. Enthralled by his tricks and grateful for his kindness, she follows him to Edinburgh and keeps house while the magician works the local theater and takes on odd jobs in an attempt to keep her in pretty clothes, until she discovers life beyond their small circle of fading vaudevillians. Chomet hews closely to bittersweet tone of Tati’s films — and though some controversy has dogged the production (Tati’s illegitimate, estranged daughter Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel claimed to be the true inspiration for The Illusionist, rather than daughter and cinematic collaborator Sophie Tatischeff) and Chomet neglects to fully detail a few plot turns, the dialogue-free script does add an intriguing ambiguity to the illusionist and his charge’s relationship — are they playing at being father and daughter or husband and wife? — and an otherwise straightforward, albeit poignant tale. (1:20) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
Inside Job Inside Job is director Charles Ferguson’s second investigative documentary after his 2007 analysis of the Iraq War, No End in Sight, but it feels more like the follow-up to Alex Gibney’s Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005). Keeping with the law of sequels, more shit blows up the second time around. As with No End in Sight, Ferguson adeptly packages a broad overview of complex events in two hours, respecting the audience’s intelligence while making sure to explain securities exchanges, derivatives, and leveraging laws in clear English (doubly important when so many Wall Street executives hide behind the intricacy of markets). The revolving door between banks, government, and academia is the key to Inside Job‘s account of financial deregulation. At times borrowing heist-film conventions (it is called Inside Job, after all), Ferguson keeps the primary players in view throughout his history so that the eventual meltdown seems anything but an accident. The filmmaker’s relentless focus on the insiders isn’t foolproof; tarring Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, and Timothy Geithner as “made” guys, for example, isn’t a substitute for evaluating their varied performances over the last two years. Inside Job makes it seem that the entire crisis was caused by the financial sector’s bad behavior, and this too is reductive. Furthermore, Ferguson does not come to terms with the politicized nature of the economic fallout. In Inside Job, there are only two kinds of people: those who get it and those who refuse to. The political reality is considerably more contentious. (2:00) Shattuck. (Goldberg)
Just Go With It Only within the hermetically sealed landscape of the Hollywood romantic comedy can a man’s sociopathic impulse (to lie about being unhappily married to every gullible young woman he sleeps with over the course of two action-filled decades) be smoothed over into a laughable character defect that the right woman will see through or look past and then cure him of. But here we are in Hollywood, or rather, in Beverly Hills, where, as depicted by Just Go With It, the moral continuum seems to range from plastic surgeons who perform good boob jobs to plastic surgeons who perform bad ones. Adam Sandler is one of the good-fake-boob kinds but also the liar liar, and Jennifer Aniston is the long-suffering office assistant and single mom who joins forces with him in the cause of smoothing out a wrinkle in his ersatz romantic life. This involves the construction of an improvisatory tissue of lies so vast that it envelops an entire fake blended family (including not one but two creepily precocious children) and necessitates a trip to Hawaii and nearly two hours of penile-implant, mammary-gland, and alimentary-canal humor to be untangled sufficiently for a happy ending. Sandler and Aniston have a decent comic rapport going, at least until the sappy, sick-making moment of truth, and this reviewer may have snickered at one or two moments, or even periodically throughout the film, but is deeply ashamed of it now. (1:56) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Rapoport)
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never 3D (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.
The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Albany, Embarcadero, Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
The Mechanic Apparently The Mechanic is a remake of 1972 film starring Charles Bronson, but that’s kind of beside the point. This is simply another vehicle for Jason Statham to shoot people, set off big explosions, and make straight men feel sexually confused. And there’s really nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what you’re in for. Statham plays expert assassin Arthur Bishop, who is forced to train Steve McKenna (Ben Foster) in the fine art of killing. There’s really not much more to it than that. The Mechanic does exactly what it needs to, getting louder and bloodier with each passing minute. Statham is really just playing himself at this point — and he’s damn good at it. Foster isn’t bad at stepping into action flick shoes, although he never quite reaches Statham’s testosterone-drenched heights. If you’re looking for any modicum of complexity, The Mechanic is not your best bet. Otherwise, sit back, shut off your brain, and enjoy. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)
No Strings Attached The worst thing about No Strings Attached is its advertising campaign. An eyeroll-worthy tagline — “Can sex friends stay best friends?” distracts from the fact that this is a sharp and satisfying romantic comedy. Perhaps it’s not the most likely follow-up to Black Swan (2010), but Natalie Portman is predictably charming, and Ashton Kutcher proves he’s leading man material after all. They’re aided by an exceptional supporting cast, including indie darlings Greta Gerwig and Olivia Thirlby, and underrated comic actors Lake Bell and Mindy Kaling. No Strings Attached is a welcome return to form from director Ivan Reitman, who gave us classics like Ghostbusters (1984) before tainting his image with Six Days Seven Nights (1998) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006). There are likely going to be many who will dismiss Reitman’s latest out of hand — and with those misleading trailers and posters, it’s hard to blame them. But I advise you to give No Strings Attached a chance: at the very least, it’ll counter the image of Portman tearing at a stubborn hangnail. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Peitzman)
Outside the Law (2:18) Embarcadero.
The Rite There are times when The Rite crosses the threshold from bad-bad to good-bad — bits of overacting and absurdity that almost launch the film into potential cult classic territory. Sadly, those moments only occur after an hour of the bad kind of boring: by the time you get to Anthony Hopkins’ most ludicrous performance to date, you’re kind of just wishing The Rite would exorcise itself. The story is a near carbon copy of The Exorcist (1973), though as is the case with many films in the genre, The Rite feels that by acknowledging the clichés, it can continue to use them. Colin O’Donaghue plays Michael Kovak, a soon-to-be-priest dabbling in atheism. Hopkins is Father Lucas, the seasoned exorcism expert who takes Michael under his wing. You can figure out the rest. The Rite could have been a fun movie — the moment in which Father Lucas answers his cell phone during an exorcism gave me some hope — but ultimately the film takes itself too seriously. It is inspired by true events, after all. (1:47) 1000 Van Ness. (Peitzman)
The Roommate (1:33) 1000 Van Ness.
Sanctum An underwater thriller bankrolled by James Cameron, filmed using techniques developed for Avatar (2009), Sanctum is 3D like that blockbuster, and thoroughly two-dimensional. As a storm approaches, explorers are deep inside Papua New Guinea’s geological anus. Before you can say “What could possible go wrong, diving in caves?” (which a character actually does, in full Cameron-esque wank mode), everything floods and the fight for survival starts. A secondary plot concerns tension between a young diver (Rhys Wakefield) and his overbearing, tough-as-nails pro-explorer father (Richard Roxburgh), but this is a movie to watch to see who lives rather than reconciles. To its credit, the danger is mostly handled with a face smashing, drowning brutality rather than drawn-out melodrama (although Ioan Gruffudd gives a characteristically cheesy performance as a clichéd tycoon). Sanctum is at it’s best when submerged (and no one’s talking) but the atmosphere is generally robbed by David Hirschfelder’s unnecessary orchestra score. (1:43) 1000 Van Ness. (Ryan Prendiville)
*The Social Network David Fincher’s The Social Network is a gripping and entertaining account of how Facebook came to take over the known social-networking universe. In this version of events — scripted by Aaron Sorkin and based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, in turn based substantially on interviews with FB cofounder Eduardo Saverin, with input from Mark Zuckerberg icily absent — a girlfriend’s dumping of Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) on a crisp evening in 2003 is the impetus in his headlong quest for a “big idea.” The film is structured around the conference-room depositions for two separate lawsuits, brought against Zuckerberg by Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and by fellow Harvard entrepreneurs Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella) for crimes involving intellectual property and vast scads of retributive money. Unless Zuckerberg decides to post it on Facebook (which he probably shouldn’t, given the nondisclosure vows that capped off the first round of lawsuits), we’ll never know what truly motivated him and how badly he screwed over his friends and fellow students. But Fincher and Sorkin have crafted a compelling, absorbing, and occasionally poignant tale of how it could have happened. (2:00) Piedmont, Shattuck. (Rapoport)
*True Grit Jeff Bridges fans, resist the urge to see your Dude in computer-trippy 3D and make True Grit your holiday movie of choice. Directors Ethan and Joel Coen revisit (with characteristic oddball touches) the 1968 Charles Portis novel that already spawned a now-classic 1969 film, which earned John Wayne an Oscar for his turn as gruff U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn. (The all-star cast also included Dennis Hopper, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, and Strother Martin.) Into Wayne’s ten-gallon shoes steps an exceptionally crusty Bridges, whose banter with rival bounty hunter La Boeuf (a spot-on Matt Damon) and relationship with young Mattie Ross (poised newcomer Hailee Steinfeld) — who hires him to find the man who killed her father — likely won’t win the recently Oscar’d actor another statuette, but that doesn’t mean True Grit isn’t thoroughly entertaining. Josh Brolin and a barely-recognizable Barry Pepper round out a cast that’s fully committed to honoring two timeless American genres: Western and Coen. (1:50) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
“2011 Academy Award-Nominated Short Films, Live-Action and Animated” (Live-action, 1:50; animated, 1:25). Shattuck.
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. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.
