Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Erik Morse, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.
OPENING
*Everyone Else See "Nobody But You." (1:59) Lumiere, Shattuck.
The Last Airbender Millions of people out of work, and M. Night Shyamalan is still making movies. (1:34) Presidio.
Love Ranch See "Madam Majesty." (1:57) Embarcadero.
*Restrepo Starting mid-’07, journalists-filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger spent some 15 months off and on embedded with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a Taliban stronghold with steep, mountainous terrain that could hardly be more advantageous for snipers. Particularly once a second, even more isolated outpost is built, the soldiers’ days are fraught with tension, whether they’re ordered out into the open on a mission or staying put under frequent fire. Strictly vérité, with no political commentary overt or otherwise, the documentary could be (and has been) faulted for not having enough of a "narrative arc" — as if life often does, particularly under such extreme circumstances. But it’s harrowingly immediate (the filmmakers themselves often have to dive for cover) and revelatory as a glimpse not just of active warfare, but of the near-impossible challenges particular to foreign armed forces trying to make any kind of "progress" in Afghanistan. (1:33) Bridge. (Harvey)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse Another one already? Jeez. (2:04) California, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.
ONGOING
The A-Team Why was the original A-Team the most popular band of mercenaries on TV? The estimable chemistry and comedic skills of Mr. T; legit Breakfast at Tiffany‘s star George Peppard; conservative commentator Dwight Schultz; and Dirk Benedict, fresh from his role as the original Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, played a major part, as did the quasi-anti-authoritarian, boyish, blow-’em-up-real-good tone, making it more of a cartoonishly violent kin to MASH than First Blood (1982). The cheeky humor and snappy writing were the real key to The A-Team‘s popularity — the reason impressionable protein units like yours truly tuned in. Director Joe Carnahan (2006’s Smokin’ Aces) and cast seem to have sussed out a bit of that magic, especially when the sun-roasted Bradley Cooper as Faceman and Sharlto Copley as Murdock roll with the what-the-hell non-sequiturs (less sure is the star of last year’s District 9‘s grip on exactly what accent he’s been charged with). But the cinematic version won’t be rehabbing the public’s view of guns-for-hire like Blackwater anytime soon. Liam Neeson lacks the cigar-chomping paternal bravado of Peppard, Quinton "Rampage" Jackson is tasked with the unenviable job of following T time, and the script, complete with the ludicrously elaborate plans and a spark-challenged romance between Cooper and Jessica Biel, is just a rough excuse to watch boys and their toys. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)
*Babies Thomas Balmes’ camera records the first year in the lives of four infants in vastly different circumstances. They’re respectively born to hip young couple in Tokyo’s high-tech clutter; familiar moderately alterna-types (the father is director Frazer Bradshaw of last year’s excellent indie drama Everything Strange and New) in SF’s Mission District; a yurt-dwelling family isolated in the vast Mongolian tundra; and a Namibian village so maternally focused that adult menfolk seem to have been banished. Yes, on one level this is the cutest li’l documentary you ever saw. But if you were planning to avoid thinking that is all (or most) of what Babies would be like, you will miss out big time. Void of explanatory titles, voice-over narration, or subtitle translations, this is a purely observatory piece that reveals just how fascinating the business of being a baby is. There’s very little predictable pooping, wailing, or coddling. Instead, Balmes’ wonderful eye captures absorbing moments of sussing things out, decision-making, and skill learning. While the First World tykes firstborns both — are hauled off to (way) pre-school classes, the much less day planned Third Worlders have more complex, unmediated dealings with community. Those range from fending off devilish older siblings to Mongol Bayarjargal’s startlingly casual consorting with large furry livestock. (Imagine the horror of parents you know were their baby found surrounded by massive cows — a situation that here causes no concern whatsoever for adults, children, or bovines.) So accustomed to the camera that it doesn’t influence their behavior, the subjects here are viewed with an intimacy that continually surprises. Babies is getting a wider-than-usual release for a documentary, one cannily timed to coincide with Mother’s Day. But don’t be fooled: this movie is actually very cool. (1:19) Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
*Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky Revered for the innovative fashion house that set the bar for style and was always knocked off but never cut prices for the real deal (and still sniffs at online clothing sales), Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel gets her second biopic, as an artist on par with composer Igor Stravinsky in this rhapsodically sensuous love letter to an unlikely romance. It opens with the designer and future branding legend (depicted with burning eyes and pantherine mystery by Anna Mouglalis) attending the controversial, riot-starting 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Paris. Recognizing Stravinsky (a viral avant-garde stud-muffin in the hands of Mads Mikkelsen, last in deadlocks and warrior face in Clash of the Titans) as a simpatico radical spirit, Chanel lends her house to the composer. He comes with considerable baggage: a slew of children and a consumptive wife, Katarina (Elena Morozova). Morozova’s performance as the angel-faced earth mother scorned, so blatantly disrespected by the rad lovers madly getting down on the music-room carpet, almost steals the show, but then the house-porn fabulosity of the recreated Chanel villa in Garches — a symbol of their hermetic attraction and shot like a seductive, claustrophobic, black-and-white deco womb — takes over, and we’re back in the thick of CoGor’s somewhat inexplicable affair once again. (1:55) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
Cyrus It’s tempting to label Mark and Jay Duplass’ Cyrus as "mumblecore goes mainstream." Yes, the mumblecore elements are all there: plentiful moments of awkward humiliation, characters fumbling verbally and sometimes physically in desperate attempts to establish emotional connections, and a meandering, character-driven plot, in the sense that the characters themselves possess precious little drive. The addition of bona fide indie movie stars John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, and Marisa Tomei — not to mention Hollywood’s chubby-funny guy du jour, Jonah Hill — could lead some to believe that the DIY-loving Duplass brothers (2005’s The Puffy Chair, 2008’s Baghead) have gone from slacker disciples of John Cassavetes (informally known as "Slackavetes") to worshippers at the slickly profane (with a heart) altar of Judd Apatow. But despite the presence of Apatow protégé Hill (2007’s Superbad) in the title role, Cyrus steers clear of crowd-pleasing bombast, instead favoring small, relatively naturalistic moments. That is to say, not much actually happens. Mumblecore? More or less. Mainstream? Not exactly. Despite playing a character with some serious psychological issues, Hill comes off as likeable. Unfortunately the movie is neither as broadly comic nor as emotionally poignant as it needs to be — the two opposing forces seem to cancel each other out like acids and bases. (1:32) California, Metreon. (Devereaux)
8: The Mormon Proposition (1:30) Elmwood, Sundance Kabuki.
*Exit Through the Gift Shop Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a film about the elusive graffiti-cum-conceptual artist and merry prankster known as Banksy, even though he takes up a good chunk of this sly and by-no-means impartial documentary and is listed as its director. Rather, as he informs us — voice electronically altered, face hidden in shadow — in the film’s opening minutes, the film’s real subject is one Thierry Guetta, a French expat living in LA whose hangdog eyes, squat stature, and propensity for mutton chops and polyester could pass him off as Ron Jeremy’s long lost twin. Unlike Jeremy, Guetta is not blessed with any prodigious natural talent to propel him to stardom, save for a compulsion to videotape every waking minute of his life (roughly 80 percent of the footage in Exit is Guetta’s) and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When Guetta is introduced by his tagger cousin to a pre-Obamatized Shepard Fairey in 2007, he realizes his true calling: to make a documentary about the street art scene that was then only starting to get mainstream attention. Enter Banksy, who, at first, is Guetta’s ultimate quarry. Eventually, the two become chummy, with Guetta acting as lookout and documenter for the artist just as the art market starts clambering for its piece of, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of street art," as one headline dubs him. When, at about three quarters of the way in, Guetta, following Banksy’s casual suggestion, drops his camcorder and tries his hand at making street art, Exit becomes a very different beast. Guetta’s flashy debut as Mr. Brainwash is as obscenely successful as his "art" is terribly unimaginative — much to the chagrin of his former documentary subjects. But Guetta is no Eve Harrington and Banksy, who has the last laugh here, gives him plenty of rope with which to truss himself. Is Mr. Brainwash really the ridiculous and inevitable terminus of street art’s runaway mainstream success (which, it must be said, Banksy has handsomely profited from)? That question begs another: with friends like Banksy, who needs enemies? (1:27) Lumiere. (Sussman)
Get Him to the Greek At this point movie execs can throw producer Judd Apatow’s name on the marquee of a film and it’s a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s hard to say whether this Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) spin-off benefits from the Apatow sign of approval or if it would be better off standing on its own, but it definitely doesn’t benefit from comparisons to its predecessor. Russell Brand returns as the British rock star Aldous Snow, and Jonah Hill, playing a different character this time, is given the task of chaperoning the uncooperative Snow from London to LA in 48 hours. Despite a great cast, including a surprisingly animated P. Diddy, the story is pretty bland and can’t match the blend of drama and comedy that Marshall achieved. Of course, none of that matters because the movie execs are right: if you like Apatow’s brand of humor, you’re going to have a good time anyway. (1:49) Empire, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peter Galvin)
*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Clay, Four Star, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
Grown Ups In order of star power, Grown Ups casts Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade as five fortysomething friends who reunite to attend the funeral of their high school basketball coach, and play catch-up over a long weekend together at a cabin by the lake. If you’re expecting five of America’s biggest comedy stars to form like Voltron and make the most hilarious movie of the year, you’ve got a sad day coming. Grown Ups is never the sum of its parts, it’s about on par with Sandler’s other producing/starring affairs, and probably features a lot of the same jokes. People fall in poop and little kids say cute things designed to make audiences awww, but history has shown that’s exactly what a popcorn viewer is looking for. By these standards, Grown Ups is a perfectly summer-y movie. (1:42) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Peter Galvin)
Have You Heard from Johannesburg? The best word to describe Connie Field’s Have You Heard From Johannesburg? is "impressive." At eight-and-a-half hours, the seven-part documentary series spans nearly five decades of the South African anti-apartheid movement. The individual films are well-researched and thought-provoking. The stories are compelling — that is, until you put them all together. The complete series is just too long for those without a strong, vested interest in South African history. It’s simply not approachable for the mainstream, and the approximately three-hour chunks it’s meant to be consumed in are daunting. These films are better suited to a televised series, where viewers could appreciate hearing about anti-apartheid pioneers like Oliver Tambo and Desmond Tutu in smaller, digestible bites. As it stands, Field’s documentary is not likely to find a wide audience — a real pity, given the 10 years of effort she put into it, and the importance of sharing the South African struggle for equality with the rest of the world. (8:30) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)
*I Am Love I Am Love opens in a chilly, Christmastime Milan and deliberately warms in tandem with its characters. Members of the blue-blood Recchi family are content hosting lavish parties and gossiping about one another, none more than the matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton). But when prodigal son Edoardo befriends a local chef, Emma finds herself taken by both the chef’s food and his everyman personality, and is reminded of her poor Soviet upbringing. The courtship that follows is familiar on paper, but director Luca Guadagnino lenses with a strong style and small scenes acquire a distinct energy through careful editing and John Adams’ unpredictable score. Swinton portrays Emma’s unraveling with the same gritty gusto she brought to Julia (2008), and her commitment to the role recognizes few boundaries. You’ve probably seen this story before, but it has rarely been this powerful. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)
*Iron Man 2 Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) returns, just as rich and self-involved as before, though his ego his inflated to unimaginable heights due to his superheroic fame. Pretty much, he’s put the whole "with great power comes great responsibility" thing on the back burner, exasperating everyone from Girl Friday Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow); to BFF military man Rhodey (Don Cheadle, replacing the first installment’s Terrence Howard); to certain mysterious Marvels played by Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson; to a doofus-y rival defense contractor (Sam Rockwell); to a sanctimonius Senator (Garry Shandling). Frankly, the fact that a vengeful Russian scientist (Mickey Rourke) is plotting Tony’s imminent death is a secondary threat here — for much of the film, Tony’s biggest enemy is himself. Fortunately, this is conveyed with enjoyable action (props to director Jon Favreau, who also has a small role), a witty script (actor Justin Theroux — who knew? He also co-wrote 2008’s Tropic Thunder, by the way), and gusto-going performances by everyone, from Downey on down. Stay for the whole credits or miss out on the geek-gasm. (2:05) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)
*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Whether you’re a fan of its subject or not, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s documentary is an absorbing look at the business of entertainment, a demanding treadmill that fame doesn’t really make any easier. At 75, comedian Rivers has four decades in the spotlight behind her. Yet despite a high Q rating she finds it difficult to get the top-ranked gigs, no matter that as a workaholic who’ll take anything she could scarcely be more available. Funny onstage (and a lot ruder than on TV), she’s very, very focused off-, dismissive of being called a "trailblazer" when she’s still actively competing with those whose women comics trail she blazed for today’s hot TV guest spot or whatever. Anyone seeking a thorough career overview will have to look elsewhere; this vérité year-in-the-life portrait is, like the lady herself, entertainingly and quite fiercely focused on the here-and-now. (1:24) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
Jonah Hex Based on DC’s dark western comics, Jonah Hex is a jumbled mess of mishandled superhero tropes and obligatory attempts at badass-ery. The title character, a grizzled gunfighter with a distinctive facial scar, could be an engaging outsider antihero, but as portrayed by Josh Brolin, he feels neither as cool nor as tortured as we’re clearly expected to believe. The film has a decidedly ’90s feel to it — think overbudgeted, underthought masterpieces like Wild Wild West (1999) — with its farcically fantastical take on post-Civil War supervillainy. Its ridiculous cast of character actors is almost completely squandered, including archvillain John Malkovich, Aidan Quinn as Ulysses S. Grant, and Will Arnett in an inexplicably serious role. Megan Fox is trying the hardest out of the whole cast, but in a rather sleazy move, her character always seems to appear in soft focus. Oh, and there are a few explosions. (1:81) 1000 Van Ness. (Sam Stander)
The Karate Kid The most baffling thing about The Karate Kid is its title: little Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) never actually learns karate. He practices kung-fu, an entirely different form of martial arts — you know, from a different country. There’s something obnoxious and absurd about the misnomer: the film seems to suggest that if you’ve seen one Asian culture, you’ve seen them all. That aside, it’s not a bad movie. Smith is mostly pretty likeable, and there’s a definite satisfaction to seeing him grow from bullied weakling to kung-fu star. And Jackie Chan gets to exercise his dramatic chops — he even gets a crying scene! But Karate Kid is a "reboot," the preferred term for the endless stream of unnecessary remakes Hollywood keeps churning out. You can’t help but think about the superior 1984 version. Jaden Smith is no Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan is no Pat Morita, and kung-fu is no karate. Don’t even get me started on the "jacket on, jacket off" crap. Which, if you say it quickly, sounds a little adult for a PG movie. (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)
*The Killer Inside Me This January a Sundance controversy broke. The movie in question was eclectic English director Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me, the latest screen version of a beloved and spectacularly nasty noir tale by literary pulp hero Jim Thompson. The protest was that the onscreen violence against women was viciously excessive. The accusation is true: in Winterbottom’s film, violence is horribly immediate, sadistic yet matter-of-fact, almost unendurable — everything movie violence almost never is. There’s nothing remotely comfortable about the highly personal, unnecessary cruelty our antihero wreaks. Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a good ol’ boy in his dusty, back-slappy west Texas hometown of the late 1950s, is a world-class sociopath who depends on lazy small-town gullibility and rote suspicion toward outsiders to literally get away with murder. Lou is shagging local Amy (Kate Hudson) — but gets distracted by Joyce (Jessica Alba), a probable prostitute he’s asked to bum rush outta town. Leading ladies Alba and Hudson are widely perceived as spoiled hotties of little talent — hence perfect battering-rams for pulp-machismo movie violence. What’s cool about Winterbottom’s Killer is that it refuses to let you enjoy the abuse they endure, which is viscerally unpleasant as a fist to the gut. It’s abrupt, grueling, and horrific. At once folksy-nostalgic and vicious, The Killer Inside Me is unabashedly about men who hate women. It successfully translates Thompson’s gambit of insinuating us into the seemingly pleasant, reasonable viewpoint of a protagonist we are then surprised to discover is psychotic and without a conscience. Offended Sundance attendees should’ve gotten a clue: deliberately misleading in its pulp-nostalgia trappings, this is one movie that upsets not gratuitously, but exactly as it should. (1:48) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
Killers (1:40) 1000 Van Ness.
*Knight and Day A Bourne-again Vanilla Sky (2001)? Considerably better than that embarrassingly silly stateside remake, though not quite as fulfilling as director James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) rework, this action caper played for yuks still isn’t the most original article in the cineplex. But coasting on the dazzling Cheshire grins of its stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reunited for the first time since Sky, you can just make out the birth of a beautiful new franchise. Everygirl June Havens (Diaz) is on her way to her sister’s wedding when she collides-cute at the airport with Roy Miller (Cruise). After killing the passengers and pilots on their plane, he literally sweeps her off her feet — thanks to some potent drugs. Picture a would-be Bond girl dragged against a spy-vs.-spy thriller semi-against-her-will — grappling with the subtextual anxiety rushing beneath all brief romantic encounters as well as some very justifiable survival fears. Can June overcome her trust issues? Is Roy the man of her dreams — or nightmares? Mangold and company miss a few opportunities to have more fun with those barely teased out ideas, and the polished, adult-yet-far-from-knowing charisma of the leads doesn’t quite live up to sophisticated interplay of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or even the down-home fun of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, but it’s substantial enough for Knight and Day to coast on, for about 90 minutes tops. (2:10) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Chun)
Lovers of Hate Living out of his car after being dumped by Diana (Heather Kafka), perpetually dour Rudy (Chris Doubek) can hardly find a place to take a shower. In stark contrast to his desperate situation, Rudy’s brother Paul (Alex Karpovsky) is a successful children’s fantasy writer, holed up in a borrowed mansion in Utah to work on his next book. Rudy decides to pay his bro an unwelcome surprise visit, but he arrives just behind Diana, who has come to have a serious chat (and also some sex) with Paul. Still in love with Diana, Rudy skulks unnoticed through the tremendous house, playing vengeful voyeur to the new couple’s already rather weird relationship. Lovers of Hate‘s central trinity are not especially nice people, but neither are any of them evil; writer-director Bryan Poyser balances pity and disgust at their painfully human actions, without necessarily making a case for why we care. (1:33) Roxie. (Stander)
Micmacs An urge to baby-talk at the screen underlines what is wrong with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film: it is like a precocious child all too aware how to work a room, reprising adorable past behaviors with pushy determination and no remaining spontaneity whatsoever. There will be cooing. There will be clucking. But there will also a few viewers rolling their eyes, thinking "This kid rides my last nerve." It’s easy to understand why Jeunet’s movies (including 2001’s Amélie) are so beloved, doubtless by many previously allergic to subtitles. (Of course, few filmmakers need dialogue less.) They are eye-candy, and brain-candy too: fantastical, hyper, exotic, appealing to the child within but with dark streaks, byzantine of plot yet requiring no close narrative attention at all. The artistry and craftsmanship are unmissable, no ingenious design or whimsical detail left unemphasized. In Micmacs, hero Bazil (Dany Boon) is a lovable misfit who lost his father to an Algerian landmine, then loses his own job and home when he’s brain-injured by a stray bullet. He falls in with a crazy coterie of lovable misfits who live underground, make wacky contraptions from junk, and each have their own special, not-quite-super "power." They help him wreak elaborate, fanciful revenge on the greedy arms manufacturers (André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié) behind his misfortunes, as well as various human rights-y global ones. So there’s a message here, couched in fun. But the effect is rather like a birthday clown begging funds for Darfur — or Robert Benigni’s dreaded Life is Beautiful (1997), good intentions coming off a bit hubristic, even distasteful. (1:44) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
La Mission A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, fortysomething 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. (1:57) Opera Plaza, Roxie. (Harvey)
*Ondine You want to believe in mermaids, leprechauns, tooth fairies, and Father Christmas — and director Neil Jordan plays with those hopes, and fears, in this unabashedly romantic fable set in a Irish fishing village. Mullet-ed fisherman Syracuse (Colin Farrell), dubbed "Circus," thanks to his days as a drinking fool, is the butt of everyone’s jokes till he happens to catch a mysterious girl (Alicja Bachleda) in his net. She calls herself Ondine, shies away from people, and sings in an unknown tongue to the sea, drawing salmon, lobster, and fortune to the fisherman otherwise down on his luck. His precocious daughter, Annie (Alison Barry), is in need of a kidney transplant — and a measure of hope — and she grows convinced that her father’s hidden-away water baby is a selkie, a mythical Celtic sea creature that can shed its seal skin, bond with humans, and make wishes come true. Unfortunately believing in magic doesn’t always make it so, though Ondine gracefully limns that space between belief and reality, squeezing small moments of pleasure and humor from its rough, albeit attractive, characters and absolutely stunning landscapes in scenes beautifully lensed by onetime Wong Kar Wai cinematographer Christopher Doyle. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Chun)
*Please Give Manhattan couple Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt) are the proprietors of an up-market vintage furniture store — they troll the apartments of the recently deceased, redistributing the contents at an astonishing markup — and they’ve purchased the entire apartment of their elderly next-door neighbor (Ann Guilbert). As they wait for her to expire so they can knock down a wall, they try not to loom in anticipation in front of her granddaughters, the softly melancholic Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and the brittle pragmatist Mary (Amanda Peet). Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener has entered this territory before, examining the interpersonal pressures that a sizable income gap can exert in 2006’s Friends with Money. Here she turns to the pangs and blunderings of the liberal existence burdened with the discomforts of being comfortable and the desire to do some good in the world. The film capably explores the unexamined impulses of liberal guilt, though the conclusion it reaches is unsatisfying. Like Holofcener’s other work, Please Give is constructed from the episodic material of mundane, intimate encounters between characters whose complexity forces us to take them seriously, whether or not we like them. Here, though, it offers these private connections as the best one can hope for, a sort of domestic grace accrued by doing right, authentically, instinctively, by the people in your immediate orbit, leaving the larger world to muddle along on its axis as best it can. (1:30) Elmwood. (Rapoport)
The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Albany, Lumiere.
Sex and the City 2 Sex and the City 2 couldn’t be anymore brazenly shameless, dizzyingly shallow, or patently offensive if it tried. This is aspiration porn, pure and simple, kitted out in the Orientalist trappings of a Vogue spread and with all the emotional intelligence of a 12 year-old brat. As the first SATC film nearly made short work of any shred of nuance or humanity that Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda carried over from their televised selves, SATC 2 fully embraces the bad pun-spewing, couture-clad clichés the girls have hardened into. Sure they have kids, husbands, career changes, and menopause to deal with, but who cares about those tired signposts of middle age when there is more shit to buy, more champagne to swill, private airlines to fly on, $22,000-a-night luxury suites to inhabit, Helen Reddy songs to butcher, and whole other peoples — specifically, the people of Abu Dhabi, who speak funny, dress funnier, and have craaazy notions about what it means to be "one of the girls" — to alternately boss around, offend, and pity? (Fun SATC2 fact: did you know that in the "new Middle East" women secretly wear designer duds underneath their abayas?) Oh, that one tiny pang of sympathy you feel during the tipsy confessional between Charlotte and Miranda in which they bond over how being a mother and giving up one’s life ambition is difficult? A mirage. Because really, the greater concern is flying back to JFK first class or bust. And let’s not even get into the few bones the film tosses to the homos, such as the opening set piece: a gay wedding only a straight man could’ve thought up, replete with a shopworn Liza Minnelli having her Gene Kelly-in-Xanadu moment. But seriously, Michael Patrick King, don’t get it twisted: Stanford may call it such, but it’s not "cheating" if you’re already in an open relationship. Then again, if being a foil for your straight BFF’s insecurities about the luxe confines of monogamy gets you a gift registry at Bergdorf’s, why not? The laughs are cheaper this time around, but SATC 2‘s fuckery is strictly price-upon-request. (2:24) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Sussman)
Solitary Man Consider this another chapter in a larger recession-era cinematic narrative: a kind of corollary to Up in the Air and another dispatch from the flip side of the American dream — namely, American failure. Wheeling, dealing, disgusting, and charming in turns, Michael Douglas manages the dubious achievement of making a hungry and lecherous BMW dealership honcho compelling, even as we roll our eyeballs in disgust. His Ben Kalmen was once at the top of the world, a fairy-tale self-made star whose luxury auto commercials were all over TV, a sharp-tongued wife (Susan Sarandon) and tenderly tolerant daughter (Jenna Fischer) by his side. After his career lands in the crapper, Ben begins a long climb up, trading favors with his girlfriend Jordan (Mary-Louise Parker) and taking her daughter Allyson (Imogen Poots) to his alma mater for her college interview. During this trip down memory lane he renews his ties with old pal Jimmy (Danny DeVito) and befriends budding schlub Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg), all while making some very bad, reflexively womanizing choices. If you can stomach its morally bereft, perpetually backsliding yet endearingly honest protagonist, you’ll be rewarded with on-point dialogue and a clear-eyed yet empathetic character study concerning the free fall of a self-sabotaging, old-enough-to-know-better prick, individualistic to the core and even more. Is Ben as worthy of a bailout, or a second chance, as the American auto industry? The answer remains up in the air. (1:30) Elmwood, Opera Plaza, Piedmont. (Chun)
*Splice "If we don’t use human DNA now, someone else will," declares Elsa (Sarah Polley), the brash young genetic scientist bent on defying the orders of her benign corporate benefactors in Vincenzo Natali’s pseudo-cautionary hybrid love child, Splice. From that moment on, it’s pretty clear that any ethical conundrums the movie raises aren’t really worthy of debate: what Elsa wants to do in the name of scientific progress — splice human DNA into gooey muscle masses to provide said corporation with proteins for gene therapy — is, you know, deranged. Elsa bucks both corporate policy and sound moral judgment and does it anyway, much to the horror of her husband and fellow hotshot research scientist, Clive (Adrien Brody). Her genetic tinkering soon results in the dramatic birth of something akin to a homicidal fetal chick crossed with a skinned bunny. It grows at an alarming rate, and when human characteristics become apparent, Elsa clings to it with the instinctual vigor of a tigress protecting her cub. When Elsa and Clive are forced to hide their creation at Elsa’s abandoned family farmhouse to escape detection from prying corporate eyes, Splice evolves into another kind of hybrid: a genetically engineered Scenes from a Marriage (1973) crossed with the DNA of The Omen (1976) and grafted onto the most very special My So-Called Life episode ever. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Splice may be a ludicrous, cut-rate exercise in Brood-era David Cronenberg — but it’s a damned entertaining one. (1:45) SF Center. (Devereaux)
Touching Home Hometown boys (Logan and Noah Miller) make good in this based-on-a-true-story tale of identical twins who must divide their time at home between training for major league baseball and looking after their alcoholic father. The brothers, who also wrote and directed the film, aim for David Gordon Green by way of Marin, but fall short of mastering that director’s knack for natural dialogue. Ed Harris is, unsurprisingly, compelling as the alcoholic father, but the actors in the film who are not named Ed Harris tend to contribute to the script’s distracting histrionics. Touching Home has some amazing NorCal cinematography, and I could see how family audiences might enjoy its "feel bad, then feel good" style of melodrama. But while it’s awkward to say that someone’s real-life experiences come off as trite, there are moments here that feel as clichéd as a Lifetime movie. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Galvin)
*Toy Story 3 You’ve got a friend in Pixar. We all do. The animation studio just can’t seem to make a bad movie — even at its relative worst, a Pixar film is still worlds better than most of what Hollywood churns out. Luckily, Toy Story 3 is far from the worst: it’s actually one of Pixar’s most enjoyable and poignant films yet. Waiting 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2 was, in fact, a stroke of genius, in that it amplifies the nostalgia that runs through so many of the studio’s releases. The kids who were raised on Toy Story and its first sequel have now grown up, gone to college, and, presumably, abandoned their toys. For these twentysomethings, myself included, Toy Story 3 is a uniquely satisfying and heartbreaking experience. While the film itself may not be the instant classic that WALL-E (2008) was, it’s near flawless regardless of a viewer’s age. Warm, funny, and emotionally devastating—it’s Pixar as it should be. (1:49) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)
*Winter’s Bone Winter’s Bone has already won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s the kind of downbeat, low-key, quiet film that may elude larger audiences (and, as these things go, Oscar voters). Like Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank, it tells the story of a teenage girl who draws on unlikely reserves of toughness to navigate an unstable family life amid less-than-ideal economic circumstances. And it’s also directed by a woman: Debra Granik, whose previous feature, 2004’s Down to the Bone, starred Vera Farmiga (2009’s Up in the Air) as a checkout clerk trying to balance two kids and a secret coke habit.
Drugs also figure into the plot of the harrowing Winter’s Bone, though its protagonist, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), is faced with a different set of circumstances: her meth head father has jumped bail, leaving the family’s humble mountain home as collateral; the two kids at stake are her younger siblings. With no resources other than her own tenacity, Ree strikes out into her rural Missouri community, seeking information from relatives who clearly know where her father is — but ain’t sayin’ a word. It’s a journey fraught with menace, shot with an eye for near-documentary realism and an appreciation for slow-burn suspense; Lawrence anchors a solid cast with her own powerful performance. Who says American independent film is dead? (1:40) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)
