City Notes: San Francisco will never counsel you to try the chowder bowl at Fisherman’s Wharf. Nor will it prove useful in finding the best way to walk between Chinatown and the Ferry Building. It won’t give you directions at all, for that matter. The artful wood-bound guidebook, put together by a team of Wesleyan alumni headed by Jesse Coburn, is comprised of quiet shots and histories behind 25 little-known sites in San Francisco, such as the Columbarium, Molinari-Mana Park, Mount Davidson, and the Swedenborgian Church. City Notes doesn’t spill the address beans, making it the perfect treasure hunt for the urban explorer-wanderer. The book’s covers are hand-bound to the velvety sheets within; its producers had so much fun making the finely crafted object, in fact, that they plan on putting together similar guides for other cities around the world.
Guides
Best of the Bay 2012: BEST TOME TRADE
Interested in perpetuating a bibliophilic mythos among your houseguests? Turned on by the image of sitting quietly by a roaring fireplace, sipping a brandy, and reading Kafka amid towers of dusty tomes? Well, the Bay Area Free Book Exchange has those tomes for you to own. Since its opening in 2009, the Exchange has given away more than 245,000 free books for the sole joy of making knowledge accessible in book form. The nonprofit is run by a collection of book-lovers in El Cerrito who sell some of the donated volumes on eBay in order to pay rent, electricity, and other expenses. The rest of the stories, however, make their way to the Exchange’s storefront, where every weekend customers are invited to take up to 200 titles at once. Stock your bathroom with freaky medical guides? Actually read the books you snap up? We’ll let you work out the ethics on your own.
10520 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 705-1200, www.bayareafreebookexchange.com
Best of the Bay 2012 Editors Picks: Shopping
Best of the Bay 2011 Editors Picks: Shopping
BEST CHARGE AHEAD
Though electric bikes far outnumber cars in communities from China‘s crowded cities to mountainous towns in the Swiss Alps, they have yet to catch on here in the States. Regardless of the reason, and despite SF’s hilly terrain — quite possibly the perfect venue for the bikes’ charms — the owners of New Wheel make this list for sheer entrepreneurial derring-do. Karen and Brett Thurber went ahead and opened the city’s first e-bike-focused store, where they also do repair, hawk sleek Euro-designed accessories, and host the neighborhood’s first e-bike charging station. The station, designed as a gas pump from that not-so-distant era when we needed to drive cars to work (we are writing you from the future), also charges cell phones, digital cameras, and more — quite the charge for the Bernal Heights community.
420 Cortland, SF. (415) 524-7362, www.newwheel.net
BEST FRESH PREP
Guardian photo by Brittany M. Powell
Holy Vampire Weekend, Kanye — no need to waste your time drooling over the archives of Street Etiquette, the sharpest neo-preppy style blog of our time. Fulfill your up-to-the-minute Ivy League-ish yearnings (with a dash of street-level snazz) at Asmbly Hall, the Fillmore men’s and women’s clothing shop for the sophisticated prepster. The natty clothes aren’t priced too outrageously (button-down shirts are around $80), and familiar classics are tweaked with unique elements like scalloped collars and stripy inseams. Husband-wife owners Ron and Tricia Benitez have reworked an old mattress store into an absolutely lovely space with brick walls and blond wood floors. Here’s where you’ll score that funky two-tone cardigan, irreplaceable Macarthur shirt, or dreamy summer beach dress. You’ll have to supply your own air of undergrad gravitas.
1850 Fillmore, SF. (415) 567-5953, www.asmblyhall.com
BEST SHUTTERBUG SECRET
Hidden in a corner of the beloved Rooky Ricardo’s Records store is the domain of Glass Key Photo owner and photography enthusiast Matt Osborne. From a funky wedge of floor space, Osborne offers a top-notch, well-edited, and cheap selection of cameras, film, and darkroom gear. Much of his treasure is stored in an old-school refrigerator case, making for an appealingly bizarre shopping experience. Customers thirsty for hard-to-find photographic gear should check out Glass Key before the bigger-name stores — even if the refrigerator doesn’t hold the key to your photographic fantasies, Osborne is happy to special order what he doesn’t have. He also earns rave reviews for his camera repair skills, and sells root beer to thirsty shutterbugs.
448 Haight, SF. (415) 829-9946, www.glasskeyphoto.com
BEST VINTAGE MEGAVAULT
It is no secret that San Francisco has thrifting issues. Due to the admirable commitment to cheaply bought fashion (and high incidence of broke, under-employed drag queens), most of our used clothing stores are heavily picked over — or well-curated, with ghastly price tags to match. Those sick of fighting could do worse than steer their Zipcars north. In Sebastopol sits Aubergine, a high-ceilinged mega-vault stuffed with vintage slips, half-bustiers — clearly geared toward the Burning Man strumpet — menswear, and the occasional accessibly priced Insane Clown Posse T-shirt. Racks on racks on racks on racks — and if you need a break from bargain browsing, you’re in luck. The shop has its own cafe and full bar, where many nights you’ll find live music from gypsy dance to jazz drumming.
755 Petaluma, Sebastopol. (707) 827-3460, www.aubergineafterdark.com
BEST BLEMISH-VANISHING BOTANICS
The charming, chatty cashiers at the Benedetta Skin Care kiosk in the Ferry Building have clear, shiny skin, but it’s not due to the local produce from the farmers market outside. Based in the Petaluma, Benedetta offers organic, botanics-based, sustainably packaged products that actually work. Take a tip from your freshly scrubbed lotion sellers: rather than loofah-ing your skin to a pulp with packaged peroxides that — let’s face it — sound kind of scary when you actually read the fine print, refresh with the line’s perfectly moist Crème Cleanser that leaves skin smelling like a mixture of rosemary and geranium. From anti-aging creams to deodorants and moisturizing mist sprays, this small company offers treats for all skin types — perfect for popping in next to your small-producer cheese wheels and grass-fed charcuterie.
1 Ferry Building, SF. (415) 263-8910, www.benedetta.com
BEST TOME TRADE
Interested in perpetuating a bibliophilic mythos among your houseguests? Turned on by the image of sitting quietly by a roaring fireplace, sipping a brandy, and reading Kafka amid towers of dusty tomes? Well, the Bay Area Free Book Exchange has those tomes for you to own. Since its opening in 2009, the Exchange has given away more than 245,000 free books for the sole joy of making knowledge accessible in book form. The nonprofit is run by a collection of book-lovers in El Cerrito who sell some of the donated volumes on eBay in order to pay rent, electricity, and other expenses. The rest of the stories, however, make their way to the Exchange’s storefront, where every weekend customers are invited to take up to 200 titles at once. Stock your bathroom with freaky medical guides? Actually read the books you snap up? We’ll let you work out the ethics on your own.
10520 San Pablo, El Cerrito. (510) 705-1200, www.bayareafreebookexchange.com
BEST INDIE KITCHEN MENAGERIE
Guardian photo by Godofredo Vasquez/SF Newspaper Co.
It can be hard to beat the sheer variety offered by your Ikeas and Bed Bath & Beyonds when it comes to fresh new flatware or an upgrade on your trusty college-era rice cooker. Lucky for local business fans (which we assume you are if you’re this deep into our Best of the Bay issue), there’s a little-guy alternative: Clement Street’s Kamei Restaurant Supply. Kamei has dishes for every occasion: light blue earthenware plates with fetching designs of cherry blossom trees, coffee mugs shaped like barn owls and kitty cats, tea sets, sake sets, and every cooking utensil a chef could desire — plus paper umbrellas with koi fish prints and flip-flops. Maybe ‘cuz with all the savings you’ll spot in Kamei, you’ll be able to afford more beach trips.
525 Clement, SF. (415) 666-3699
BEST CUMMUNITY CENTER
Guardian photo by Amber Schadewald
Nenna Joiner’s done a number on us. In a Bay Area full of superlative sex shops, her Feelmore510 — which opened a year and a half ago — has run away with our sex-positive souls. What makes her business stand out? It could be her rainbow of pornos (Joiner herself makes skin flicks that have an emphasis on racial, sexual, and body-type diversity) or, it could be the pretty store design, with erotic art displayed in the shop’s plate-glass windows. You’ll often find Joiner at her store as late as 1:30am: besides outfitting her customers with stimulating gear, she hosts in-store sex ed lectures and movie screenings. “Sex is a basic need for survival,” she told the Guardian in an interview earlier this year. We agree, and that’s why Feelmore510’s a new East Bay necessity.
1703 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 891-0199, www.feelmore510.com
BEST AU NATUREL FOR OENOPHILES
Much of the wine we drink is stuffed full of chemical preservatives. Purists like wine critic Alice Feiring have raised a hue and cry over the industry’s reluctance to force producers to label these ingredients. We have to give it up to a little shop off of Polk Street for supporting the so-called “natural wine” movement which encourages additive-free imbibement. Biondivino is charming enough in its own right: library-style shelves full of luscious Italian pours, among which proprietor Ceri Smith has made sure to include many natural wines. And because these bottles tend to be produced by small scale vineyards, Biodivino helps support the little guys, too. Sure, sometimes all you can spring for is a bottle of three-buck Chuck (natural wines can be pricey) — but props to Smith for giving consumers the choice.
1415 Green, SF. (415) 673-2320, www.biondivino.com
BEST DIY PANDA BAIT
“If just owning a bamboo bike was the end goal, we’d just build them for you,” said Justin Aguinaldo in a Guardian interview back in February. “For us, it’s about empowering more people and providing them with the value of creating your own thing.” Aguinaldo’s Tenderloin DIY cycling hub Bamboo Bike Studio doesn’t just produce two-wheeled steeds whose frames are made of easily-regenerated natural materials — it teaches you useful bike-making skills so that you can be the master of your own self-powered transportation destiny. Buy your bike parts (kits start at $459), and then get yourself to tinkering. After a weekend-long session with Bamboo Bike Studio’s expert bike makers, you’ll have a ride that’s ready for the hurly-burly city streets.
982 Post, SF. www.bamboobikestudio.com
BEST LITERARY VALHALLA
For lovers of esoteric literature, 2141 Mission is a dream come true. The unassuming storefront (the building’s ground floor is occupied by the standard hodgepodge of Mission District discount stores) belies a cluster of alternative bookstores on its upper levels. Valhalla Books is flush with titles in their debut printing; Libros Latinos holds exactly that; lovers of law history will find their joy in the aisles of Meyer Boswell; and the building’s largest shop, Bolerium Books, holds records of radical history — volumes and magazines that together form a fascinating look at the gay rights, civil rights, labor, and feminist movements (and more!). Most visitors make the pilgrimage with something specific in mind, but walk-ins are welcome as long as they have a love of the printed page.
Bolerium Books, No. 300. (415) 863-6353, www.bolerium.com; Libros Latinos, No. 301. (415) 793-8423, www.libroslatinos.com; Meyer Boswell, No. 302. (415) 255-6400, www.meyerbos.com; Valhalla Books, No. 202. (415) 863-9250
BEST EXQUISITE ADZES
Some chefs drool over the copper pots at posh cooking stores. Artists lovingly caress the sable brushes in painting shops. But what aspirational retail options exist for the you, the craftsman? Home Despot? Perish the thought! Luckily, your days of retail resentment are over. At the Japan Woodworker, you can fondle high-end power tools to deplete your paycheck, plus tools hand-made in traditional Japanese style — like pull saws, chisels, and adzes — which are not only beautiful, but quite affordable. If you’re the type of person who savors doing things the slow way, the tools found here will do much to imbue your projects with love and care. And if you’re not, perhaps it’s time you paid a little more attention to detail — a very Japanese value, indeed.
1731 Clement, Alameda. (510) 521-1810, www.japanwoodworker.com
BEST BUSHELS OF BUDS
Ever rolled your eyes at the endless articles on flower arranging found in home magazines — as if you had the money or the time? Then you might be due for a visit to the San Francisco Flower Mart. The SoMa gem sells cut flowers of every description at wholesale prices, making it the perfect playground for those looking to get plenty of practice, per-penny, poking stems into vases. And if your Martha Stewart moment doesn’t seem imminent, there are plenty of other fixin’s — giant glass balls, decorative podiums, fish tanks, driftwood, grosgrain ribbons, flamingo-themed party supplies — to rifle through. It’s the perfect place to while away your lunch break: it smells great, and it even has a perky little cafe to caffeinate your midday visit.
640 Brannan, SF. (415) 392-7944, www.sfflmart.com
BEST NEIGHBORHOOD FIXTURES
Photo by Godofredo Vasquez/SF Newspaper Co.
Hey, you with the dreams of a better bathroom! There’s no need to put up any longer with that cracked toilet bowl, that faulty faucet, that perma-grody bathtub, or that shower head that suddenly switches into “destroy” mode at the worst possible moment (i.e. right in the middle of herbal-rinsing your long, lustrous hair). Head down — or direct your responsible landlord down — to the cluster of independent home supply stores at the intersection of Bayshore Avenue and Industrial Street in Bayview-Hunter’s Point. There you’ll find K H Plumbing Supplies, a huge family-owned and operated bathroom and kitchen store with everything you need to fulfill your new fixture fantasies. The staff is extra-friendly and can gently guide you toward affordable options in better-known name brands. Even if you have only a vague idea as to which of the thousand bath spouts will reflect your unique personality, they’ll find something for you to gush over.
2272 Shafter, SF. (415) 970-9718
BEST GET LIT
Back in college, you probably had that friend who dressed up as a Christmas tree on Halloween and had to dance near a wall outlet all night so he could stay plugged in. Or … maybe you didn’t. Either way, costumes that light up are no longer just for burner freaks and shortsighted frat bays. With a little help from Cool Neon, anyone can get lit in an affordable el-wire wrapped masterpiece of their own creation. Wanna cover your car with LEDs? This place can do it. Creative signage for your business? No problem for these neon gods. And even if you’re just missing the sparkly, lit-up streets of the holiday season, Cool Neon can oblige: its Mandela Parkway façade is a light show in itself.
1433 Mandela, Oakl. (510) 547-5878, www.coolneon.com
BEST ART SQUAWK
Sure, on any given Sunday the Rare Bird is flush with vintage duds for guys and gals, antique cameras, birdhouses, jewelry, and trinkets. But for all you birds looking to truly find your flock, fly in to this fresh store on third Thursdays during the Piedmont Avenue Art Walk. Rare Bird proprietress Erica Skone-Reese hatched the event a year ago, and has chaired the art walk committee ever since, giving all those art-walk lovers who Murmur, Stroll, and Hop (all names of Bay Area art walks, for the uninitiated) a place to home in between first Fridays. Can’t make it when the Ave.’s abuzz? No worries. Rare Bird curates an always-changing list of featured artisans — like Featherluxe, who’ll fulfill your vegan feather-extension needs should you have them — and recently began offering classes in all art forms trendy and hipster, from terrarium making to silhouette portraiture.
3883 Piedmont, Oakl. (510) 653-2473, www.therarebird.com
BEST PLACE TO STASH YOUR NERDS
Got nerdy friends you just can’t understand? Feel bad asking them to explain, for the tenth time, the difference between RPG, GMT, MMP, and D&D? WOW them with a trip to Endgame. Not only will they find others who speak their language, but — because they can spend hours browsing board games, card games, toys, and trinkets — you’ll have them out of your hair … at least until you can look up what the heck they’re talking about on Urban Dictionary. Add an always-open game room, plus swapmeets, mini-cons, and an online forum, to equal more nerd-free hours than you can shake a pack of Magic Cards at. Just be careful you don’t find yourself lonely, having lost your dweeby mates to Endgame’s undeniable charms. Or worse: venture in to drag them out and risk being won over, yourself.
921 Washington, Oakl. (510) 465-3637, www.endgameoakland.com
BEST KNOBS OF GLAMOUR
In addition to being part of a string of friendly neighborhood hardware stores, Belmont Hardware‘s Potrero Hill showroom brims unexpectedly with rooms of fancy doorknobs, created by the companies who design modern-day fittings for the likes of the White House and the Smithsonian. A gold-plated door handle with an engraving of the Sun King? A faucet set featuring two crystal birds with out-stretched wings, vigilantly regulating your hot and cold streams of water? It’s all at Belmont Hardware. With a broad range of prices (you can still go to them for $10 quick-fix drawer knobs and locks, don’t worry) and an even broader scope of products, Belmont represents a world where hardware can inspire — check out the local chain’s four other locations for more ways to bring the glory home.
Various Bay Area locations. www.belmonthardware.com
BEST ONE-UP ON INSTAGRAM
The square aspect ratio and grainy filters of everyone’s favorite $1 billion photography app turn perfectly good shots crappy-cool with the swipe of a finger, allowing smart phone users everywhere to take photos way back. But to take photos way, way back, you have to be in the Mission for a tintype portrait at Photobooth. These old-timey sheet-steel images were once popular at carnivals and fairs; even after wet plate photography became obsolete, tintypes were deemed charmingly nostalgic — a sort of prescient irony that pre-dated hipsterism yet neatly anticipated it. Perhaps that same appreciative irony applied to the tintype’s tendency — due to long exposure time — to make subjects look vaguely, yet somehow quaintly, sociopathic. Or, as the Photobooth website delicately puts it, “Traditionally, tintypes recorded the intensity of the individual personality.”
1193 Valencia, SF. (415) 824-1248, www.photoboothsf.com
BEST REALITY TV-STYLE SCORES
Gold Rush Alaska? Deadliest Roads? Swamp Life? Though you love ’em, it’s hard to apply what you’ve learned during those late-night trashy-television-and-junk-food binges. But fans of Storage Wars and American Pickers, rejoice! At the Santa Cruz Flea Market, you’ll meet folks who locker for a living and travel hours to sell their scores — everything from fur coats to antique fuel tanks. Pick through yourself to see what invaluable treasures turn up: belt-driven two-seater motorcycle? Check. Handmade blown glass, Civil War memorabilia, bootlegger’s copper still? Check, check, check. Come for the farm-fresh produce, aisles of leather boots, plastic whosee-whatsits and electronics of dubious provenance, or, if Man Versus Food is more your style, challenge a massive stuffed baked potato or shrimp ceviche tostada.
Fridays, 7am; Saturdays, 6am; Sundays, 5:30am; $1-$2.50. 2260 Soquel, Santa Cruz. (831) 462-4442, www.scgoodwill.org
BEST HOGWARTS GREENHOUSE FOR MUGGLES
They may not scream when you uproot them or ensnare you with insidious vineage, but the exceptional succulents, epiphytes, and bromeliads at Crimson Horticultural Rarities will certainly tickle your fancy — in a perfectly harmless way. Find everything necessary to cook up an enchanted garden or adorn your dorm room (four-poster bed not included) in singular style. Proprietresses Leigh Oakies and Allison Futeral indulge your desires with oddities ranging from the elegant to the spectacular to the slightly creepy, and will even apply their botanical wherewithal to help you create a whimsical wedding. Or, if your potions kit needs restocking, Crimson can supply sufficient dried butterflies and taxidermied bird wings to oblige you. (Collected, cruelty-free, from California Academy of Sciences.)
470 49th St., Oakl. (510) 992-3519, www.crimsonhort.com
BEST POLKA PURVEYOR
Though Skylar Fell fell in love with the squeezebox via a happy exposure to the punks of the East Bay’s Accordion Plague back in the 1990s, she knows to pay homage to the masters. Fell apprenticed with master repairman Vincent J. Cirelli at his workshop in Brisbane (in business since 1946!) and at Berkeley’s now-defunct Boaz Accordions before opening Accordion Apocalypse in SoMa. The shop, which both sells and repairs, also stocks new and antique instruments in well-known brands (to accordionists, that is) Scandalli, Horner, Roland, and Gabanelli. Fell will fix you up if you bust a button on your beloved accordion, and she has made her store into a hub for lovers of the bellows — check out the website for accordion events coming up in or out of the city.
255 10th St., SF. (415) 596-5952, www.accordianapocalypse.com
BEST ILLUMINATI
Situation: You’ve just moved into a new place, only to look up and discover that the previous owner somehow Frankensteined three different desk lamps from the more aesthetically challenged end of the 1990s into a living room light fixture. It must die. Worse: Your aunt just gifted you the most generic Walmart wall sconces ever for your housewarming present, and she is coming to stay next month. Perhaps worst of all: You’ve just discovered a gorgeous 1930s pendant lamp in the basement, but it’s banged up terribly and who the heck knows if it works? Solution to everything: the wizards at Dogfork Lamp Arts, headed by owner Michael Donnelly. Services include restoring and rewiring antique lamps and light fixtures, and even reinventing ugly ones — making glowing swans of your awkward mass-market ducklings. (We discovered Dogfork’s magic at the new Local’s Corner restaurant in the Mission, where a pair of Pottery Barn lamps were transformed into wonderfully intriguing, post-steampunk sconces.) Rip out that gross track lighting and put up something unique.
199 Potrero, SF. (415) 431-6727, www.dogfork.com
BEST STYLE FOR APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL
Triple Aught Designs fills a post-North Face niche almost too-perfectly: the outdoor apparel company is locally based (it’s headquartered in the Dogpatch) and personable (the recently opened outlet in Hayes Valley offers a friendly, intimate shopping experience). It is also light-years ahead in terms of tech and design: hyper-strong micro-thin jackets and hoodies in futuristic battleground colors so styley we’d seriously consider sporting them on the dance floor, plus elbow armor and space pens that zip right past wilderness campouts and into Prometheus territory. We’re particularly enamored of the Triple Aught backpacks — these strappy beauts could have been nabbed from a boutique on Tatooine, a perfect look for riding out the coming apocalypse.
660 22nd St.; 551 Hayes, SF (415) 318-8252, www.tripleaughtdesign.com
BEST SPLASH OF GREEN
Guardian photo by Godofredo Vasquez/SF Newspaper Co.
Need a bit of gentle encouragement before you open your home to an exquisite orchid? Will it take a little nudge before carnivorous pitcher plants share space with your beloved ironic porcelain figurines? Maybe a delicate hand is called for when it comes to developing a chic terrarium habit. Michelle Reed, the owner of indoor plant paradise Roots, has no problem with all that — her gorgeous little boutique is there to help green up your apartment and let the sunshine in. Besides delectable, mood-brightening plants for your inner sanctum, the store also stocks a healthy selection of local art to elevate your interior design aesthetic, as well as a neat array of planters and supplies (we’re in love with the heart-shaped wall planters that look like little light sconces). Let your tight, high-rent space breathe a little easier with help from Roots’ little friends.
425 S. Van Ness, SF. (415) 817-1592
Best of the Bay 2012 Editors Picks: Arts and Entertainment
Best of the Bay 2011 Editors Picks: Arts and Entertainment
BEST HEAVY METAL STITCH WIZARD
Guardian photo by Brittany M. Powell
He’s the mustachioed maniac who wields a sewing machine and an endless array of heavy metal T-shirts, creating quilts depicting claw-bearing beasties, horned skulls, and other images that wouldn’t be out of place on an Iron Maiden stage backdrop. Ben Venom (née Baumgartner), whose MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute definitely didn’t include quilting, is self-taught when it comes to pieces like his massive quilt, “See You On the Other Side,” featured in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ prestigious Bay Area Now 6 exhibition. He also presented work in You Should Be Living, a display of metal-inspired pieces at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery in Birmingham, England (homeland of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, and Napalm Death). Venom has even whipped up a baby quilt for an infant who’ll grow up with a unique appreciation of Metallica and the Scorpions.
BEST OPEN SOURCE UTOPIA
“We’re giving tax breaks to companies that allow people to meet in a virtual space,” Erick Lyle told the Guardian prior to the opening night of Streetopia, a multidisciplinary, utopian community art festival that he, Kal Spelletich, and Chris Johanson curated. “But this event will really show the vibrancy that is right here.” In the battle to keep the second tech bubble from edging everyone else out of the city, Streetopia was proactive, asking its participants not for dire predictions, but to share images of what their utopian SF would look like. For more than a month, there were classes on civilian investigative reporting taught by working journalists, dance performances in the street, shared meals in the Tenderloin National Forest, art in empty storefronts, and much more — proof positive that a San Francisco which doesn’t require stock options of its inhabitants is still very much thinkable and alive.
BEST REASON TO DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ALBUM
In the age of downloadable singles and quick-click clips, UnderCover Presents‘ series of one-whole-album-with-one-live-show pairings values the full record experience. The quarterly event is an inspired mashup comprised almost entirely of Bay Area-based musicians, with each band performing just one reinterpreted song off a classic album. Thus far, there have been shows at Coda (now Brick and Mortar Music Hall), Public Works, the Rickshaw Stop, and the Independent; full nights spent luxuriating in every crevice and groove of the Velvet Underground’s Velvet Underground and Nico, the Pixie’s Doolittle, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. To complete the sparkling tribute experience, a pre-recorded album of all the covers is doled out at each performance, to be played in its entirety beyond those singular shows.
BEST MOVIE THEATER IN WHICH TO LOSE YOUR MIND
“A place beyond time, beyond space to experience movies, drinks, and cosmic reverberations.” We know this is Best of the Bay, but the Vortex Room is a contender for Best of the Galaxy. A website, a lounge, a retro-flavored rip in the space-time continuum? Yep, it is all of the above. Host with the most Scott Moffett draws from in-house Cosmic Hex Archive, which includes an online library of delicious, nearly-forgotten sleaze and genre gems (just a taste: 1976’s Soul Hustler, a.k.a. The Day the Lord Got Busted). Most films cost $3.95 to download, but are even cheaper if you become a member. For maximum magick, get thee to one of the Vortex Room’s cult-film double-features, which start up again, weekly, in August.
1082 Howard, SF. www.cosmichex.com
BEST DANCE DOMINATION
Photo courtesy of Bhangra Empire
You may not know this, but you are living in the shadows of an empire. An empire with an origin spanning three continents and stretching back to 2006. Its ruling class is composed of fierce athletes and dedicated artists who preserve a lively tradition with the concentration of tigers on the prowl — but who aren’t afraid to dress up in outrageous costumes and re-enact hilarious Bollywood movie sequences. Behold, Bhangra Empire, a dazzling entity of interlocking steps and poised limbs that performs contemporary variations on bhangra, the Punjabi harvest dance that was transformed in underground clubs in 1980s London into a vital global art form. The Bay Area, with its huge Indian population and many fans of all things subcontinental, has embraced bhangra wholeheartedly, and the Bhangra Empire troupe — our hometown representative at national bhangra dance competitions (and even at the White House) — helps keeps us all on our toes.
BEST FEMINIST RECORDING STUDIO
Ladies in the music biz deserve to be heard — weirdly, that still needs to be reiterated in 2012 — and Women’s Audio Mission is helping them get loud. The nonprofit is staunchly dedicated to “the advancement of women in music production and the recording arts.” As it notes, this is a field where women are chronically under-represented. WAM hires teachers for recording classes and has its own in-house studio, which means affordable recording time for budding female artists. Last year, the truly exciting local all-girl teenage rock ‘n’ roll band the She’s recorded their debut album at WAM, and this year the band is gaining some serious traction with radio spots. Ever grateful, the quartet behind the She’s credits WAM with realizing their dream (aww). Other clients include Kronos Quartet, Making Dinner, and Brazil’s Constantina. Here’s to a female future of recorded sound.
1890 Bryant, Suite 312, SF. (415) 558-9200. www.womensaudiomission.org
BEST AMATEUR WRESTLING HOT DAMN
Photo by Gariel Hurley
After a wild first couple of years, Oakland’s premiere way-amateur wrestling night, Hoodslam, is still flexing its muscles once a month — these days at the Oakland Metro Operahouse. Full of soap opera-worthy subplots, grudge matches, awesome costumes, awesome-er characters, a noisy metal house band, burlesque interludes, giant plushy referees, and oh, even some wrestling, Hoodslam’s signature mayhem makes us downright giddy on so many levels. Whether we’re watching a pair of zombie fighters body-slam each other into the ropes, a bondage gear-wearing gimp get tossed over them, a mafia mob throw fedoras into the ring, or a squadron of burly stoners mop it up with whoever their hapless opponents of the moment might be, we’re right there with them, climbing the ladder, and getting higher. Fuck the fans!
Oakland Metro Operahouse, 630 Third St., Oakl. (510) 763-1146, www.birdswillfall.com
BEST YOUNG ADULT HIP-HOP MISCHIEF
It is no small feat to write about suburban kids loving hip-hop without coming across as condescending or a-historic, but somehow a free-styling Minnesota-bred woman managed it. San Francisco-based author Laura Goode triumphed with Sister Mischief (Candlewick, $16.99, 367pp), a young adult novel about a gang of outsider girl friends who take on the powers of conformity at their whitebread, fundamentalist-controlled high school by forming a queer-straight hip-hop alliance (and performing their feminist lyrics for unwitting audiences). The book is hardly preachy, but does include teenage conversations about race, cultural co-optation, and sexuality — along with a scene that pretty well teaches you how to smoke weed — and is flush with curiosity, radicalism, and outright guffaws.
BEST GRAPHIC OCCUPATION
Graphic journalism isn’t really new, though given the reluctance some people have in acknowledging its legitimacy, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a more fringe concept than it actually is. Bay Areans are blessed with a wealth of these non-traditional journos, who document everything from a day in the life of a Mission District bartender to the gritty realities of an afternoon on Sixth Street. Susie Cagle‘s in-depth coverage of Occupy, for instance, has kept our eyeballs glued to our computer screens and Twitter feeds pretty much since the movement’s inception. Sharp, savvy, unsentimental, and blessed with an expressive pen and a keen ear, Cagle illustrates her eyewitness accounts of encampments, raids, building occupations, marches, and more with images that cut straight to the human core of the stories she gathers.
BEST GRAND DAME MAKEOVER
Culminating in a grand reopening in 2009 after 43 years of dereliction, the revitalization of Fox Theatre should serve as a model for all of the Bay Area’s beautiful rundown old movie houses. As befitting a building owned by the City of Oakland and listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, the $73 million renovation was done with an eye for detail. Myriad are the Fox’s charms: its grand old marquee; its cross-legged statues flanking the stage, regarding the audience with glowing green eyes; the ornately-molded ceiling, mosaic walls, and exceptional acoustics. The A-list talent on stage can’t help but notice the grandeur of its surroundings, and awestruck shout-outs to the theater between songs, in front of 2,800 rapt audience members, are common. Whoever’s headlining is almost beside the point when one is surrounded by such architectural beauty.
1807 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 302-2250, www.thefoxoakland.com
BEST EDIBLE PLAYLIST
We’ve heard the phrase “chefs are the new rock stars” enough to make us (s)cream. Turntable Kitchen both embodies this sentiment and finely chops it to pieces. Husband and wife duo Kasey and Matthew put together the website, with occasional help from a drop-by musician or chef. A typical visitor might stop by the Turntable Kitchen to hear “three belly-burning covers of the Clash’s ‘Guns of Brixton'” in the Served Three Ways feature, or to get the ingredients for the perfect asparagus frittata in the recipe index — musically paired to Field Music, thanks to the dishes’ festive and delicate notes. Or maybe they’ll sign up for the popular Pairings Box, which arrives each month with recipes, dry ingredients, and a limited-edition vinyl seven-inch single meant to match the mood of the meal inside.
BEST ART PARKING
On an otherwise nondescript block in SOMA, there is a door painted come-hither red. Don’t be shy, grab that knob! Inside you’ll find God knows what: dance, theater, performance art — it’s something different almost every night. And as bonus, if you come away confused or disgusted from this churning artists’ incubator, you’re only out a few bucks. The Garage has been around since Joe Landini opened shop in a storefront around the corner from his current location. Landini’s mission was to create a safe house for artists, a place to try anything. It has made the venue, with its programming, residencies, and workshop performances, appealing to local art-makers and adventurous audiences alike.
715 Bryant, SF. (415) 518-1517, www.975howard.com
BEST FRESH TROUT
Recent SFSU Theatre Arts grad Megan Trout might be relatively new to the Bay theater scene, but we’ve had our eyes on this rising young star since she burst out with the 11th Hour Ensemble’s first devised-theater piece Alice in 2010. Fearless, versatile, and dynamic, endowed with crack comic timing and equally enviable dramatic chops, Trout has swum in the weird and wonderful waters of the Aurora Theatre’s Metamorphosis, Symmetry Theatre Company’s Patience Worth, Megan Cohen’s A Three Little Dumplings Adventure parts one and two, Boxcar Theatre’s Buried Child, and A Lie of the Mind (to name but a few), while continuing to create new intensely physical theater works with the 11th Hour Ensemble, of which she is a co-founder. We honestly have no idea what play or theater space she’ll turn up in next — but we’re definitely looking forward to it. You should be too.
BEST MARIACHISTAS
Photo courtesy of Mariachi Femenil Orgullo Mexicano
Those of you who are familiar with such things will know one rarely sees a female mariachi musician. Rarely, but not never: introducing Mariachi Feminil Orgullo Mexicano. The 10-person troupe boasts full string, brass, and rhythm sections, and every member is a woman. Feminine force like this — wrapped in electric blue, floor-length skirted uniforms edged in stunning silver trim — isn’t something you see every day at your favorite restaurante. Established in 2007, the education-minded troupe was the first XX-chromosomed group of its kind in the Bay Area. Since then, it’s been winning over audiences with its plaintive, powerful renditions of Mexican classics and new favorites.
BEST USE OF CLASSIC FILM FOOTAGE IN A RAP MUSIC VIDEO
Car chases don’t get much better than the scenes of Steve McQueen speeding through San Francisco in Bullitt (1968). Given the driving, heart-pounding beat and casual-cool flow of San Jose rapper Antwon’s “Helicopter” music video — the track’s off the Fantasy Beds mixtape — it made perfect cinematic sense for director Brandon Tauszik to match the song with quick vintage clips of the classic flick. The resulting three-minute video dips between those intense McQueen thousand-yard stares as cars lunge over notoriously steep hills in a washed out Technicolor haze, spliced with modern next-big-thing Bay Area hip-hop producers (Antwon, MondreMAN, and Squadda B of Main Attrakionz) and their undeniably attractive pals, wandering their neighborhoods, chilling on porches, and pouring spicy Sriracha over hearty breakfasts. “Fuck ’em all/that’s my new motto” Antwon raps as the beat steadies and scenes flash by — a thrilling compliment to the classic footage, given the film’s original jazz score.
BEST PUNK PUSHERS
Shop, record label, small concert purveyor — Oakland’s 1-2-3-4 Go! Records is a multi-use punk haven, selling rare and highly desirable underground vinyl, releasing albums by noisy locals, and hosting roaming growlers in an intimate setting. Like its down-south contemporary, indie-music haven Burger Records, 1-2-3-4 Go! harks back to the days of dusty record shops acting as all-purpose hangouts, and doing it well. The site has hosted all-ages shows by Australia’s Royal Headache, Audacity (a Burger Records favorite), and locals Uzi Rash, Apache, and Street Eaters. The label has released vinyl by East Bay garage messiahs Shannon & the Clams, King Lollipop, and the Sandwitches, among others. And the cozy store has welcomed scads of eager rock ‘n’ roll fans from throughout the Bay, with open denim jacket-clad arms.
423 40th St., Oakl. (510) 985-0325, www.1234gorecords.com
BEST JEDI MASTERS
A long time ago (actually every Sunday, noon-3pm) in a galaxy far, far away (in fact, Studio Gracia in SoMa) … there came a troupe of heroes to teach and uphold a masterful tradition of movement, grace, control, and oneness with a universal force. No, not yoga — think Yoda, and picture Force with a capital F. Then envision a choreography class filled with lightsaber-wielding Jedi aspirants eager to keep the Star Wars legacy alive IRL. Not that there’s any danger of that boundless franchise running out of nerd fuel, but the Golden Gate Knights, organized by Alain Bloch, certainly have a stellar thing going. Who wouldn’t want to learn the “fancy flourishes and spins, including forward and reverse spins, inverted grips, and figure eights” of lightsaber brandishment in an atmosphere so respectful of its Jedi legacy that each class begins with five minutes of meditation? You get a little exercise out of it, too — in no time, it’ll bye-bye Jabba, hello Leia.
BEST DECEPTIVELY EPHEMERAL FILM FEST
Really though, Disposable Film Festival is a misnomer. Founded in 2007, with an inaugural event at Artists’ Television Access in early 2008, DFF has since evolved into a traveling-fest juggernaut with screenings in Paris, Beijing, Brazil, Macedonia, Argentina — basically, anywhere with open-minded audiences hungering for unique short films. Here’s where the “disposable” part comes in: the films are made DIY-style, using technology of the hand-held, pocket-sized, and easily-accessible-to-everyone variety, like cell phones and webcams. And though its festival screenings are a global phenomenon, DFF also hosts workshops, panel discussions, and other events (bike-in movies!) aimed at inspiring artists — especially young folks who are just discovering the wide world of creative filmmaking beyond those 3D superheroes at the multiplex.
BEST FAIRY EXPLOSION
Once every year, right around Pride time in June, a fantastical fey Imaginarium of uninhibited queer art, dance, theater, ecology, lube-wrestling, puppy piles, porn debuts, and fearlessly naked fabulosity pops up in the old Tower Records building in the Castro. This is the fag-ulous Faetopia festival which, for one delirious week, complements the corporate-sponsored and slickly marketed Pride happenings with a burst of summer solstice fairy dust. The event comes courtesy of the Radical Faeries, those scruffy pan-sexual Pagan sprites whose naturist movement has a long history in the Bay Area, where they spread their gay-gay wings from untamed redwood groves to notorious Burning Man camps. More than 50 artists join forces to create programs — like Gay Hist-Orgy (performer Ian McKinnon’s “cruise of gay historical figures”) and Flaming Queens on Fire! (fire-dancing lessons) — that stuff some good ol’ polymorphous perversity into Pride’s polished corners. And at the very center? Faetopia’s there too, with the hippie-chill Fairy Freedom Village area within the Civic Center festival itself.
BEST TECHNO OUR WAY
In response to the onslaught of mass-produced, sugar-rush electronic sounds ruling the pop charts these days, many finer San Francisco dance floors have returned to a more underground aesthetic. This renaissance of sophisticated techno plugs into a global movement — unabashedly intelligent, yet still madly danceable. And while many fantastic local party promoters have emerged, the As You Like It crew has been on a massive tear like no other. In just two years, they have risen from a nomadic underground existence to pack larger legal venues with dozens of parties that feature uncompromising local and international talent, yet never lose that singular, slightly extra-legal vibe and attention to detail. Some of the most exciting names in dance music have passed through the Bay Area thanks to As You Like It’s dedication, helping to make our party scene an essential destination for dance fanatics. To fittingly repurpose one of the crew’s favorite adjectives: quality.
BEST YOU BETTA WORK
Photo by Anastacia Powers
Voguing — that drop-dead fabulous and seriously competitive gay African American dance-battle art form — has recently come back into the spotlight, with a new generation of club kids and art queens taking to the floor to chop, mop, drop, drag, gag, and get “cunty.” San Francisco, of course, has put its own spin on the high-attitude, limb-flinging style that originated in the ’70s in underground ballrooms on the East Coast, transforming the dance into a way to get in shape. You may not have come from the streets, but you’re going to leave Vogue and Tone with amazing thighs, honey. The wiggy workout class — Tuesdays, 7-8:30pm, at Dance Mission Theater and Thursdays, 8:30-9:45pm, at ODC Commons — is led by kicky, spinny showman Sir JoQ, a.k.a. Jocquese Whitfield. The dance has also hit the club circuit, leaping on a recent trend of retro-style dance-floor workout sessions, so be on the lookout and don’t throw shade. If all you know of vogue is that old Madonna track, it’s time to get in-shape and up-to-date.
BEST ESOTERIC GUIDEBOOK
City Notes: San Francisco will never counsel you to try the chowder bowl at Fisherman’s Wharf. Nor will it prove useful in finding the best way to walk between Chinatown and the Ferry Building. It won’t give you directions at all, for that matter. The artful wood-bound guidebook, put together by a team of Wesleyan alumni headed by Jesse Coburn, is comprised of quiet shots and histories behind 25 little-known sites in San Francisco, such as the Columbarium, Molinari-Mana Park, Mount Davidson, and the Swedenborgian Church. City Notes doesn’t spill the address beans, making it the perfect treasure hunt for the urban explorer-wanderer. The book’s covers are hand-bound to the velvety sheets within; its producers had so much fun making the finely crafted object, in fact, that they plan on putting together similar guides for other cities around the world.
BEST SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR CIRCUS FREAKS, ACOUSTIC GEEKS, AND SOLO EXHIBITIONISTS
How does Stagewerx proprietress Ty McKenzie do it? She always finds the way to a “yes” where others might jump to a “no.” In both its old location on Sutter Street and its brand-new digs on Valencia, Stagewerx has created a supportive environment par excellence for performers of every discipline, amateurs and seasoned pros alike. From ongoing performance series such as Solo Sundays and Previously Secret Information to the raucous hi-jinks of Picklewater Clown Cabaret and Circus Finelli; from Tom Sway’s low-key, lo-fi music series Underground Sound to ambitious runs of new works by companies such as PianoFight, Wily West Productions, and Foul Play, Stagewerx’s focus on helping quirky and emerging artists find a “yes” of their own is more than refreshing — it’s essential.
446 Valencia, SF. www.stagewerx.org
BEST ROCK ON SIXTH
For all the underworld grittiness ascribed to the storied block of Sixth Street between Market and Mission, you’d think the guttural yowl of punk — or at least the soothing howl of good ol’ rock and roll — would be an integral part of the roiling Sixth mix. And yet, can you believe it, there was nary a hole-in-the-wall live rock club there (or anywhere else in the mid-Market or downtown area for that matter) until RKRL, our very own CBGB, opened last year. The result of a collaboration between Club Six and the wild LowSF crew, RKRL has already hosted an onslaught of local and extra-local rabble-rousers, including the Devil’s Own, Ruleta Rusa, the Mutilators, and Animal Games. Are we back in a world where down-and-dirty downtown rock clubs still exist? Hell yes.
52 Sixth St., SF. (415) 658-5506, www.facebook.com/RKRLSF
BEST FOGOLYSTICS
Since 1989, when the troupe was founded by community leader Carlos Aceituno, Fogo Na Roupa has been taking to the streets, the stages, and the dance studios with its rhythmic, Latin-African-hip-hop fusion beats. Where might you have seen them perform? Perhaps during its be-feathered, be-dazzled promenades through SF Carnival — with as many as 200 performers in a single appearance, the group is hard to miss. If you’re feeling the fogolystics — the term the troupe has coined to describe its powerful mix of musical genres — you can add your sparkle to the mix. On Tuesdays and Saturdays they hold an open practice at Mission Cultural Center that you can jump in for just $10. Seriously, everyone is invited — the group prides itself on performers ranging from kids to senior citizens.
(510) 286-7926, www.gofogo.com
BEST ALL-AROUND GRRRL POWER
Basic bar moves and halting hip-hop steps may be what stuck with you from the dance classes of your youth, but (thankfully) today there’s a new kind of movement program that’s all about teaching confidence and power, in addition to how to rule a dancefloor. We’re talking about Grrrl Brigade. Dance Mission Theatre hosts this series of classes in hip-hop, jazz, modern, and taiko (that’s Japanese drum dancing) for nine to 18-year-old females. As they rock the courses, their leadership develops along with their dance skills. Grrrl Brigade students roar with self-esteem, thrive on collaboration, and have been known to pound away on gigantic drums, taking the stage each year in a young person’s version of The Nutcracker, and in a springtime show focusing on real-life issues the performers deal with when they’re not in the spotlight.
Dance Mission Theater, 3316 Mission, SF. www.dancemission.com
BEST BAR TO TATTOO ON YOUR BICEP
Guardian photo by Brittany M. Powell
Some may have seen the deserted stretch of Harrison Street as a business liability, but Jay Beaman and Oliver Piazza of Thieves Tavern and Dirty Thieves didn’t let the low walk-up potential dissuade them from opening Dear Mom. We’re glad. Because if they had, we’d be bereft of their expansive boozery (once the salsa club El Rincon) flush with affordable booze, a photobooth, beckoning seating areas, and a kitchen that hosts pop-up eateries hawking sushi, fried green tomato hamburgers, and everything in between. The one thing Mom needs to be an SF standard is cheapo local icon Broke Ass Stuart hawking picklebacks (whiskey shots with pickle juice chaser, duh) on Wednesday nights in his never-ending quest to pay rent. Oh wait, that actually happens.
2700 16th St., SF. (415) 625-3362
BEST ROBOT DUNGEON
Guardian photo by Brittany M. Powell
From the outside, it’s an unassuming Mission District storefront, infrequently open to the public. But inside, Area 2881 reveals a rare glimpse into the private lives of robots. Perched on miniature foot-lit pedestals, two robot slaves dance for roving audiences, their slightly jerky motions belying the complexity of their 41 meticulously designed joints. The slaves appear both vulnerable yet indestructible, humanoid yet alien, and the weird spectacle of their forced entertaining is both unsettling and strangely affecting. The rest of the room is a whirring, spinning, buzzing paroxysm of light and kinetic sculpture, ushered into this world from a parallel plane by the human hands of mild-mannered applications engineer by day, mad scientist by night, Carl Pisaturo.
2881 23rd St., SF. www.carlpisaturo.com
BEST NIGHT IN THE MUSEUM
Afterhours museum parties full of bright young things witnessing cool artistic happenings are anything but a rarity in our forward-thinking area. And really, we wouldn’t have it any other way. May we especially highlight the amazing series that is L@TE: Friday Nights at BAM/PFA? This is — probably — the only such affair at which an “electric orchestra of pickle jars accompanied by abstract lighting machines” and the occasional pop-in by Devendra Banhart are a given. The wonderfully heady and innovative social gatherings fill the Berkeley Art Museum with experiential art and music (construct rainbow prisms, listen to Negativland, deconstruct Scritti Politti records, join an avant-cabaret) and light up the Pacific Film Archives with glorious 16mm and 35mm prints of rare and recently restored films. Also: dancing! If you’ve ever dreamt of meeting a soul mate while watching 3-D animation, participating in interactive dance performances, and peeping the latest emerging local artists, you need to get L@TE.
Occasional Fridays, 5:30-9pm, $7. Berkeley Art Museum, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berk. (510) 642-0808, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
BEST ARTS HIGH NOTE
Whether it’s the free yoga classes, creative summer art camp, or Saturday afternoon alfresco concerts, the Bayview Opera House‘s offerings are as vibrant and active as they were when the building was built in 1888 (maybe more so? The Guardian wasn’t around back then). The historic landmark community center supports the still-diverse neighborhood of Bayview-Hunters Point, hosting awesome fundraisers like Black Men Can Cook and Mendell Plaza Presents, a 12-week concert series that transforms a little triangle of pavement into a full-on dance floor featuring local neighborhood musicians — not to mention domino tables and BBQ — alongside a community garden filled with vibrant veggies. Kids from the 100% College Prep Club make up much of the musical talent. Here’s to 125 more amazing years.
4705 Third St., SF. (415) 824-0386, www.bvoh.org
Guardian Voices: My San Francisco
I’ve spent the last 12 years learning to love and sometimes hate San Francisco, and I’ve made it my home. A few months after my 31st birthday, I drove out here from the midwest to contribute to social change in a place where I could be Black, LGBT, and a community organizer – and not be forced to have my dyke identity matter quite so much. (More on that history somewhere else…) While doing grassroots community work in this city, I found love, made life-long friends, started a family and developed an incredible multi-ethnic community that has deeply enriched my life. Over the years, we’ve shared moments of tragedy and the sweetness of victory, and all of it together has defined a “San Francisco experience” quite different from what I expected. And quite different from what the tour guides sell.
Over these years, I developed an analysis of the political, economic and cultural life of this incredibly contradictory city. I’ve come to understand the structural roots of gentrification, the nature of corporate elite rule in a supposedly progressive town, and the challenges white activists face dealing with the complexities of politics in a “majority minority” city. But most of all, it’s the people in my particular San Francisco who I’ve come to love, and I’m now carrying all of their stories with me as I move in new directions.
My San Francisco is the people rarely quoted in the local media and most often mentioned only in the context of one social problem or another. They are the mostly poor and working-class families of color I’ve been learning from all these years, people whose daily suffering goes mostly unnoticed, whose political leadership is rarely respected, and whose view of San Francisco is rarely taken into account. This is the San Francisco largely off the political and geographic map, where neither tour buses nor politicians tend to go.
My San Francisco has been in the southeast quarter, the Frisco where people work hard and do whatever is necessary to feed their families, have loud family BBQs in the park, and rock their Giants gear as much and as often as possible. The folks getting evicted, foreclosed on, and displaced by being priced out. They are Black and Latino folks who’ve joined grassroots organizations — mostly women — who make incredible daily sacrifices to change the world. They are volunteer community organizers, who might go to school or take care of other people’s children during the day, and organize for change one meeting at a time, at night. They face the threat of deportations, police harassment, and stressful low-wage work. When they join a membership-based organization, they get a community with shared values and support, but they don’t get money, status or personal power. The Frisco families I know and love don’t identify as “moderate” or “progressive,” but they know that rich people don’t have the right to rule the world, that public education and decent housing should be basic human rights, and that it makes no sense, in the middle of such deep unemployment, to raise bus fares and make it more expensive to take the bus to work. They have compassion, common-sense, critical thinking, and courage. They should be running the city.
The grassroots leaders, activists and organizers who’ve become such an intimate part of my life and whose stories now make up “my San Francisco” don’t align nicely with most dominant ideas about this place. They are not cool, cosmopolitan and carefree. But neither are they simply victims of downtown’s political power. Their leadership is the only hope for this city that I have.
It’s the young Black women with heartbreaking stories of brothers and cousins lost through gun violence, and with less public but equally horrifying private horrors of sexual violence and abuse that have traumatized them to their core. But they are proud to be born and raised in this city and are leading community meetings, developing campaign strategies, educating their peers about Prop. 13 and their right to quality education. I have their tears, their youthful giggles, and their dreams for the future, all here in my head.
I have the stories of undocumented Latina immigrant women, who too suffered sexual abuse when crossing the border, but now here in the US take incredible risks and do practically everything in their power to ensure their children have a better life than their own. I have the sound of their laughter together, often in Spanish — of these mamas, as they make plans to call 100 people for the next meeting, and the shaking in their voice when they rise to speak out in public against the racism they witness in our public schools. These women in my San Francisco have knocked on thousands of doors, talked to tens of thousands of people about the pressing issues of our times. But they are ignored on the streets of our city and in the halls of power, invisible to so many middle class, often white, professionals and activists who just don’t know, understand, or appreciate this ‘other’ San Francisco.
I love this San Francisco, and my hope is that this column can lift up these stories in coming weeks and months. San Francisco will never, ever, become the city of our dreams until the people doing the hard, often invisible work of grassroots organizing in the communities most impacted by city’s contradictions, play a more central role in defining the city’s politics. There is new leadership emerging in communities of color, and the future of San Francisco lies in their power.
On the Cheap Listings
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WEDNESDAY 4
Fourth of July on the Waterfront, Pier 39, Beach and Embarcadero, SF.www.pier39.com. Noon-9pm, free. Fireworks and festivities, live music in other words fun for the whole, red-white-and-blue family. Make a game of spotting the explosions through the fog, if there’s fog (crossing our fingers for no.)
8 free guided walking tours, Various locations, SF. www.sfcityguides.org. Beginning between 9:30am and 2pm, free. Want something to do before the fireworks light up the sky? Local volunteers from San Francisco City Guides offers these free guided walking tours of their favorite features of the City by the Bay from the Coit Tower murals to the hidden history of Fisherman’s Wharf.
Fourth of July Dog Parade of Westies and Scotties Park and Highland, Piedmont, Oakl. www.ci.piedmont.ca.us. 11am, free. Celebrate Independence Day with cuddly pups that will prance down the street with their people as part of this 47th annual parade. They’ll sashay their way to Piedmont Park where the parade ends with a community picnic.
July 4th Festival of Family Fun, Jack London Square, Oakl. Bring the kids, young and old to meet goats and sheep at a petting zoo. Work up an appetite in bounce houses, arts and craft booths, and rented kayaks or bicycles. Then, munch on the food and beverages from various local vendors. Stilt walkers, magicians, and circus creatures of all variety will entertain. Here’s hoping you’ll be cool with the face-painting clowns.
SF Zoo free admission day San Francisco Zoo, 1 Zoo Rd., SF. www.sfzoo.org. First Wednesdays, 10am-5pm, free. Celebrate Fourth of July with the animals at Northern California’s largest zoological park and conservation center.
Fourth of July at the Berkeley Marina Cesar Chavez Park, 201 University, Berk. www.anotherbullwinkleshow.com. Noon-10pm, fireworks at 9:30pm, free. Live entertainment, arts and crafts, fried food, and fireworks abound at this Independence Day celebration. Pick up a "passport to fun" at the event’s headquarters and get it stamped at four sites around the Marina to win prizes like yacht cruises for two and Hilton Hotel overnight stays.
THURSDAY 5
Lower Polk Art Walk Polk and Larkin, SF. www.thelowerpolkartwalk.com. 6pm-10pm, free. Wander through eight galleries featuring local artwork, peruse the neighborhood murals, and feast at designated food trucks along the way.
Art opening: Space Craft CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, SF. www.spacecraftonline.com. 7pm-11pm, free. This visual arts and experimental music show celebrates emerging and established artists from the Bay and beyond. Participating artists curate and execute the show in proper SF do-it-yourself style.
FRIDAY 6
First Friday Follies burlesque and creepy puppet show Stork Club, 2330 Telegraph, Oakl. Facebook: First Friday Follies at Stork Club. 9pm, free. As Oakland Art Murmur (www.oaklandartmurmur.org) winds down, find your way to this strange after-party. It will feature scantily clad dancing women, a creepy puppet show by the Shadow Circus Theater, and various guest performances.
Wild Child art exhibit Paxton Gate’s Curiosities for Kids, 766 Valencia, SF. www.paxtongate.com. 6pm-8pm, free. Courtney Cerruti has repurposed books, candy wrappers, and toilet paper tubes to create the new art pieces that dot the gallery walls tonight. The depictions of flower petals, wild animals, and children’s faces explore that combination of sweet and wild that is childhood.
SATURDAY 7
Fillmore Street Jazz Festival, Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF. (800) 310-6563, www.fillmorejazzfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. The largest free jazz festival on the Left Coast, this celebration draws enormous crowds for innovative Latin, fusion, and other performers on multiple stages.
Gardening workshop Garden for the Environment, Seventh Ave. at Lawton, SF. www.gardenfortheenvrinoment.org. 10am-noon, free. Get your fingernails dirty and turn your thumbs green at this hands-on summer gardening class. Learn gardening and composting techniques to encourage flowers and veggies to blossom in your yard without adding organic waste to the landfill.
Amazing Spider Pig comedy show 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF. www.50masonsocialhouse.com. 7pm, free. The Bay’s best self-proclaimed "nerd comics" are in the house tonight, spreading laughter and awkwardness to spread.
"Occupy Bay Area" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF. www.ybca.org. Through Oct. 14. Opening night: 6pm-10pm, free. Radical protest, from the rest Occupy movement to previous incarnations of civil unrest are immortalized here in poster art. Check out works from the famed Chuck Sperry to the deceased, much-loved Alcatraz occupier "Indian Joe" Morris. Opening night festivities include a performance by Oakland hip-hopper Do D.A.T.
SUNDAY 8
San Francisco Symphony at Stern Grove Festival Sigmund Stern Grove Park, 19th Ave. and Sloat, SF. www.sterngrove.org. 2pm, free. Voices from SF’s Symphony Chorus will chime over the iconic sounds of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, conducted by musical director Michael Tilson Thomas. Copland’s Billy the Kid Suite will also float over the crowds at the symphony’s annual appearance at the beloved free summer concert series.
Cartoonist-in-Residence: Tyler Cohen Cartoon Art Museum, 665 Mission, SF. www.cartoonart.org. 1pm-3pm, free. Cohen published the first book of her work Primahood in 2011, and another, Primahood: The Second Album, this June. Come in and ask View completed artwork of this Bay Area female cartoonist. Ask her questions as you watch her work on in-progress pieces.
TUESDAY 10
FoodWise farmers’ market tour and tasting Ferry Building, Embarcadero and Ferry Plaza, SF. www.cuesa.org. Noon, free. CUESA’s market chef Elianna Friedman will give you a chef’s eye view of the season’s best food offerings, and share pointers for prepping the spoils of the harvest in your kitchen. The event’s end will bring you dish samples, and a recipe to take home.
San Jose Blues Week Various venues, San Jose. www.sjbluesweek.com. Through July 15. This week celebrates the importance of musicians to the community by featuring some of the best local artists. Join the opening night party, which will feature foot-stomping blues band Tip of the Top.
I Love This City’s tasteful use of confetti, fog, and lighting
When I first heard that the inaugural I Love This City festival was moved from AT&T Park to Mountain View’s Shoreline Amphitheater, I thought fate (or Live Nation) was twisting my arm.
The last time I visited Shoreline was a decade ago, when Moby headlined a nationwide tour and invited top electronic DJs to spin. One of the side stage’s top acts was a Dutch mixer taking Europe by storm: Tiësto. It was the first electronic music show I ever attended.
More than 10 years later at I Love This City, Tiësto was one of the main stage headliners and I’m pushing the age when attending an event that allows high school sophomores is questionable at best. But I was actually eager to attend ILTC. For one thing, the event promised, at the very least, a lineup chock full of well-known talent, ranging from Steve Aoki to DFA co-founder James Murphy to Man-of-the-Moment David Guetta, voted number one in DJ Magazine’s annual Top 100 List in 2011.
In full disclosure, my sentimental side was pulling for success for this inaugural event, just to soak in my trance-filled Tiësto nostalgia. Venue change and all, Live Nation did a pretty good job of holding things together. Here’s a rundown:
The Good
David Guetta: The man knows how to work a crowd, and he had to. He had to follow Tiësto, an unenviable task given the Dutch DJ’s enduring popularity. But Guetta won over listeners with his infectious grin and antics, which included dancing on the DJ equipment table and gesturing to the crowd like a conductor guides a symphony.
Crystal Method: On the Bass Stage, Los Angeles duo Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan threw down a storming set of big beats that was only derailed by technical glitches at the very end. Kirkland was jamming buttons and strumming strings on an original and fascinating contraption, a CD turntable and a mini-keyborard fused to two guitar necks.
The Visuals: Whoever handled visuals for the main stage DJs did a tremendous job. In fact, the graphics were so stunning, I couldn’t help but wonder if the headliners had their playlists prepared in order to sync up with the montages. Regardless, the production crews should be lauded for tasteful use of confetti, fog, and lighting to lend some extra oomph to the shows. The side stages also had elaborate lighting and visual setups.
The Swaps: Transitions between sets were grab-a-beer-go-to-the-bathroom short. The production teams were well-oiled machines, setting up gear and visuals.
Shoreline was a success: The amphitheater ended up being a fantastic scene for the headliners. The effect gave a truly condensed focus on the DJ, something that might have been lacking at AT&T Park. The folks on the grass had a view and still has reams of bass blasting from the speakers. And the seats gave a much needed reprieve from concert goers, who wanted to take in music and crowd.
Food Trucks: An extremely welcome addition, though they were placed between the side stages, out of the way of the concession stands flanking the amphitheater. Thankfully, the food trucks didn’t seem too inclined to mark up the prices of their own offerings, and I very much would rather have an $8 Curry Up Now burrito over a $6 meat tube in a bun. But that’s just me.
The Bad
Where was the afterparty? The one big drawback with relocating ILTC to Shoreline was the surrounding neighborhood. Once Guetta finished his set and cooed to the restless crowd that he could not play any more music, Mountain View became Bay Area electronic music limbo just before midnight, caught between San Francisco and San Jose. If only nearby Google headquarters had been open, surely the search engine conglomerate could have thrown a kick-ass shindig.
Three stages: There was an impressive collection of talent to be had at ILTF. The Bass Stage made a lot of sense, a refuge where concert-goers could get their fill of low-end frequencies and throbbing drums. But some very good electronic artists got kind of lost in the fray at the Park Stage, which seemed like it was the everything-but-trance-and-dubstep venue. James Murphy, Holy Fuck, Apparat, and Cut Chemist all got shoehorned into an area that struggled to draw a significant following simply because of the size of the other two stages. A main stage and a strong alternate stage likely would have been sufficient.
The nickle-and-dime: $15 to park. $10 for a beer. $4.50 for bottled water. This after $60 for one-day tickets or $100 for two-days. And that’s without any, shall we say, “extracurricular activities.” Today’s electronic festival-goer seems like they have to be more part of the 1% than the 99%.
Gotye‘s ubiquity: No fewer than three main stage headliners threw in a redo of “Somebody That I Used to Know” and the crowd went absolutely crazy, shouting “You didn’t have to stoop so low” every time. C’mon DJs! You didn’t have to milk the crowd so much.
Headliners referring to the crowd as “San Francisco”. I know Tiesto, Afrojack, and David Guetta are all from Europe, but it was kind of awkward when pretty much everyone kept saying “San Francisco!” when the city was a 40-minute drive away. Then again, if the 49ers move to Santa Clara, I guess anything in between can fall under the San Francisco title.
Our Weekly Picks: May 16-22, 2012
WEDNESDAY 16
>> “Andy Cohen: Bravo’s Man of Moxie”
Without Andy Cohen, there’d be no Bethenny and no NeNe. The world would know nothing of Vicki’s “love tank” or pinot grigio-chugging Ramona. In addition to unleashing the Real Housewives series, Bravo’s Executive Vice President of Development and Talent (or “talent,” as the case may be) also exec-produces Top Chef and hosts his own talk show, the gleefully goofy Watch What Happens Live. Now, Cohen’s an author, with Most Talkative: Stories from the Front Lines of Pop Culture, a breezy autobiography detailing his life in showbiz, from early run-ins with the Bakkers and the Buttafuocos to the many, many Housewives. The book’s stuffed with dish — expect even more when Cohen takes the Castro stage. (Cheryl Eddy)
7:30pm, $25–$80
Castro Theatre
429 Castro, SF
>> The Dandy Warhols
On “Enjoy Yourself” off 2012’s This Machine, a posturing singer looks back enviously: “I used to be cool/used to be a fool/Too cool for rules man/too cool for school.” Call it a rockers lament. But once the rest of the band drowns the whiner out for a shout along chorus — “So look at yourself/Enjoy your health/Let everybody else be everybody else/and really enjoy yourself now” — it becomes something else: the pull-your-head-out-your-ass and feel good song of the summer. The eighth studio album in eighteen years for Portland, Oreg.’s the Dandy Warhols, This Machine finds the band learning from the past and aging gracefully. (Ryan Prendiville)
8pm, $25 Fillmore 1850 Geary, SF (415) 346-6000 www.thefillmore.com
THURSDAY 17
>> “Low Down”
Alex Ketley and Ben Levy: two choreographers, both ambitious, fiercely talented, and willing to go where ever ideas take them. So where are they going? Ketley, in addition to darting all over the country doing commissions, has a flair for the far-out. A few years ago he choreographed the California landscape; he has also created a work in which he danced the syntax of a Carol Snow essay. Levy, whose company celebrates its first decade this weekend, has created edgy dances from the disarmingly comedic to the lurking nightmares. Bringing together these so very different guys is a desire to challenge their own craft by subjecting it to a collaborative process neither of them has tried previously. That just may be enough for a piece they call “Low Down.” (Rita Felciano)
Thu/17-Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/20, 2pm, $18–$50
Z Space
450 Florida, SF
(800) 838-3006
>> “Broke & Classy: Broke-Ass Stuart’s 10 Year Anniversary of Living in SF”
I doubt Stuart Schuffman is so broke-ass anymore. The man has written frugal culture guides for San Francisco and New York City, he’s got a popular blog chock full of fun things to do for penny-pinchers, and he has trotted around the country profiling artists and musicians on his own IFC show. Surely that qualifies as a media empire, right? But I can’t begrudge B-AS. He opened my eyes to the tasty treats of the Tamale Lady and created that pick-me-up mantra: “You are young, broke and beautiful.” Local musical acts usher in 10 years of Stuart’s low-money living in San Francisco. (Kevin Lee)
With Judgement Day, Birds & Batteries, Rach W and DJ Carnita 8pm, $3, Must RSVP Public Works 161 Erie (415) 932-0955 www.publicsf.com
>> Ane Brun
Norway’s Ane Brun is perhaps best known in the U.S. to Peter Gabriel fans, having opened for his recent New Blood Tour. But an award-winning songwriter in Europe with four studio and two live albums so far, Brun deserves attention here for all her work, including most recent release, It All Starts With One. Not only a showcase for her majestically touching voice set against gently pulsing rhythms and sparse orchestration, the album also features guests Jose Gonzalez on the entrancing “Worship” and First Aid Kit adding backup vocals to the rolling percussion “Do You Remember.” (Prendiville)
With Gemma Ray, Elin Ruth Sigvardssun
8:30pm, $14-16
Great American Music Hall
859 O’Farrell, SF
(415) 885-0750
FRIDAY 18
>> Sleepy Sun
Sleepy Sun emerged in 2009 after creating an LP laden with distorted guitar lines, fuzzy vocals, and compositional head nods to Led Zeppelin best taken with psychedelics and ’70s nostalgia. While Spine Hits (2012) features some serious reverb, the album the group released three years later calls to mind ’90s alt rock and the open road; with tracks that feel like epic love ballads after odes to outdoorsy adventure. Lead vocalist Bret Constantino has called his band’s changing sound its “natural evolution.” And judging by the genuine, passionate voice and catchy, seamlessly constructed melodies Spine Hits purveys, I don’t doubt him. (Mia Sullivan)
With Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound, Some Ember, DJ Britt Govea
9pm, $15
Independent
628 Divisadero, SF
(415) 771-1421
>> UK with Terry Bozzio
Bay Area-born and raised drummer extraordinaire Terry Bozzio has performed with Frank Zappa, Missing Persons, Jeff Beck, Fantomas, and a host of other musicians over the years. Recognized as one of the best drummers in modern times, he has recorded a variety of instructional videos, been honored by Guitar Center’s RockWalk in Hollywood, and has created some of the most insane custom drum sets ever seen on stage. Be sure to see Bozzio’s amazing talents on display live tonight as he performs with the reunited prog rock supergroup UK, which also features John Wetton (King Crimson, Asia) and Eddie Jobson (Frank Zappa, Roxy Music). (Sean McCourt)
8pm, $65–$99
Regency Ballroom
1290 Sutter, SF
(415) 673-5716
>> The Sahara Tent Party ft. Switch and Sinden
Producer-DJ Switch is best known for his work alongside Diplo in Major Lazer and for producing the pulsating dynamic music behind Sri Lankan singer M.I.A. As Major Lazer, the British duo has brought a Jamaican dance flavor to Beyonce, Santigold, and Christina Aguilera and are apparently collaborating with No Doubt on a release slated for September. Producing in studios as far and wide as Jamaica and India, Switch has blended dancehall infused beats with slick rhymes from a wide net of vocalists. Co-headliner and fellow Brit Sinden brings a soulful, multi-genre vibe rooted in house music. (Lee)
With 5kinandBone5, Vin Sol, Them Jeans, and more 10pm, $10–$20 1015 Folsom (415) 431-1200 www.1015.com
>> Plants and Animals
If Plants and Animals were a person, writes the band, their albums would metaphorically mirror said person’s journey through life. Parc Avenue (2008) represents the Montreal-based indie rock trio as a child, La La Land (2010) as an angsty teenager, and The End of That, released this February, exudes “unmasked” early 20s confidence. Warren Spicer, Matthew Woodley, and Nicholas Basque began playing together and experimenting with instrumental music in 2002. Now, 10 years later, they’ve evolved into post-classic rockers and bearers of soft, ambient harmonization as well as fiery, nostalgic jams like recent hit single “Lightshow.” (Sullivan)
With Cannons and Clouds, Owl Paws
10pm, $12
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17 St., SF
(415) 621-4455
SATURDAY 19
>> Saturday Night Soul Party
Always wanted to check out one of San Francisco’s longest running soul events but stayed away because of potential throngs in the Mission on the weekend? Well here’s your chance for an easy introduction to the Saturday Night Soul Party. Crowds are likely to be sparse in the neighborhood thanks to the lemmings planning to get up early the next morning to make their annual pilgrimage to the breakers, so dance the night away carefree to Disc Jockeys Lucky, Paul Paul, and Phengren Oswald, spinning ’60s soul all night, exclusively on good old vinyl ’45s. Show up wearing a suit and tie or skirt or dress and get half off the cover charge. (McCourt)
10pm, $5–$10
Elbo Room
647 Valencia, SF
(415) 552-7788
>> SUNDAY 20
Pansy Division
One of San Francisco’s favorite early ’90s queercore pop punk acts is back, and on tonight of all nights. The steaming pile of hot mess that will rise up post-B2B is enough to make any local puke, but keep it in (or clean it off) and go out anyways. It’ll make you feel much better and brighter catching melodic pop punk, than hiding from the masses on the couch with a cheap wine hangover and a blanket pulled up tight. And perhaps it’ll refresh your memories of the crustier old days in the city before so many bubbles burst and barely clothed, underage dubsteppers swarmed the post-race streets seeking Four Loko and warm blood. Don’t be a Bad Boyfriend, show the gent a good time. (Emily Savage)
With Swann Danger
8:30pm, $12
Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
MONDAY 21
>> “Neuroscience of Zen”
What exactly happens to your mind when you undergo meditation? Turns out that meditating Buddhist monks tend to elongate the time they exhale, which calms the mind. Stanford University researcher Phillippe Goldin has studied the effects of mindfulness meditation and stress reduction on brain function. San Francisco Zen Center Abbot Ryushin Paul Haller has taught Buddhist practices for two decades in San Francisco and has led programs to assist with depression and recovery. Together, Goldin and Haller blend academic studies and their own worldly experiences to discuss the intersection of the mind and the spirit. (Lee)
8pm, $22–$26
Herbst Theatre
401 Van Ness, SF
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Big trouble in old China
cheryl@sfbg.com
LIT It was a cold, windy January morning in 1937 when a horrifically mutilated body was found sprawled at the base of a rumored-to-be-haunted watchtower in what was then called Peking.
Intrigued yet? Paul French’s Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China (Penguin Books, 260 pp., $26) reads like a mystery thriller, with its dramatic cast of characters (a Chinese-British detective team, a cranky old father with something to prove, a budding beauty filled with secrets, and multiple sinister figures with shadowy pasts) and exotic setting (Peking’s fusty, foreigners-only Legation Quarter — and utterly lawless Badlands district — on the eve of China’s occupation by Japan).
As he wrote Midnight, the Shanghai-based Brit was able to solve the long-cold case — or at least present a rather convincing theory about who killed 19-year-old Pamela Werner. Satisfying closure in a true-crime book about an unsolved murder? Read it and weep, Black Dahlia obsessives. I caught up with French amid his tour to promote Midnight‘s American release.
San Francisco Bay Guardian How did you research what it would have been like to live in 1937 Peking?
Paul French There are quite a lot of both Chinese and foreign memoirs — all of the diplomats, and a lot of the journalists, scholars, and missionaries wrote them. People wrote travel guides. There’s a lot of Chinese literature from that time, too.
SFBG Was the story of Pamela’s murder mentioned in one of the memoirs?
PF I was reading a biography of [journalist] Edgar Snow, which was very dry and boring. The first time I saw the Pamela story was in a little footnote: “and then this girl was murdered, and there was a British detective who worked with a Chinese detective.” There was a whiff of opium, and a bit of sex floating around it, and scandal, and I just thought, “Wow! That sounds really interesting.”
SFBG Was it difficult to dig up more information?
PF At first, I was able to dive in and get all the newspaper reports and the autopsy. I was doing quite well. Then I sort of hit a wall, and thought, “This is all I’m gonna get. I’m going to write a book, but it’s not really going to have an ending. It’ll just be lots of atmosphere, hopefully, and at the end I’ll just say, murders don’t always get solved.” Right on the brink of this collapse of civilization to barbarism, this one girl briefly becomes a kind of symbol of the horrors that China’s about to go into.
So I thought I’d get away with that. But I was in the National Archives in London, and that’s when I completely stumbled across these 150 pages of evidence that Pamela’s father [a former diplomat named E.T.C. Werner] had put together for his own investigation. It had been filed and forgotten for 75 years.
At that moment, the project moved to a whole other level. I looked through everything, and — of course the official line is that I solved the crime, but the truth is, her father really solved it. I compared [his findings] with what the police knew at the time, what the newspapers reported at the time, and the autopsy, and I managed to find four or five people still alive who knew Pamela.
When you cross-reference all of that, I think that it stacks up, which is why I footnoted the back of the book. If people want to have a look at the documents themselves, they’re more than welcome to. And since the book came out — it came out in Australia and Asia first — I have had a few people come to me with new bits of information that sort of confirm what Pamela’s father discovered. Werner was cold, unemotional, and wrapped up in his scholarship; he didn’t pay enough attention to Pamela [while she was alive]. But in the end, he dedicated his whole life, all of his money, and all of his health, to try and track down some kind of justice for her. I came to admire him in the end. *
PAUL FRENCH
May 9, 7 pm, free
Books Inc.
1760 Fourth St., Berk.
(510) 525-7777
May 10, 7pm, free
Book Passage
51 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera
(415) 927-0960
Dancing in the deep
DANCE Jodi Lomask has always been comfortable with both science and art. Perhaps that’s not surprising for someone who grew up with a physicist father and a visual artist mother — hanging around with his friends who would came to visit in Connecticut, and going with her to galleries and openings. Still, it’s not every child who, when trying to make sense of the world, was also “making dances” in her mind.
For the last 15 years, Lomask and her Capacitor collaborators (whose new work Okeanoswill be performed this weekend) have translated the dances in her head onto the stage. It’s a rather unusual way to establish an intimate human connection with the big world out there. Within Outer Spaces looked at our planet in context of the other heavenly bodies; Digging in the Dark examined Earth’s layers down to the molten core; futurespecies investigated reproduction in the past and the future.
For biome Lomask and her collaborators went to Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest to study symbiotic relationships. For the upcoming premiere Okeanos, Lomask had herself certified as a diver and went to Bali to study marine protectorates and coral restoration projects.
Debunking the clichés of free-and-wild artists and right-brain-only scientists, she calls on the latter as essential collaborators and advisors.
“My personal theory is that art and science are at the bottom of a circle. As [their practitioners] get better, they separate for a while, but when they are very good they meet again,” she says. “The most successful scientists I know are also the most creative people I know. The most successful artists I know are the people who are very precise and rigorous in their craft; they have a lot of factual information that goes into their work.” It’s this kind of thinking that has made Lomask and Capacitor a regular participant at TED conferences.
In order to ground each work in “fact rather than fantasy,” in 2000 Lomask started a formal process consisting of six months of meetings between scientists and her creative team.
“A scientist makes a 20 minute presentation, then someone from our team — a designer, a musician — does the same,” she explains. “Then we have a show-and-tell about the specifics about what we are working on.” This way of working guides but also liberates the art-making because “we then can take off from factual information.”
At a late-stage rehearsal at Zaccho Dance Theatre’s whitewashed, concrete-walled studio, Okeanos‘ art and science elements were very much in evidence. Against the starkness of that environment, periodically punctuated by the rattling of a passing CalTrain, the stunning underwater videos by Australian cinematographer David Hannan suggested an unearthly yet innate beauty. Seahorses gave birth, an octopus explored its environment, schools of tiny fishes surrounded floating whales, and sharks shot by like torpedoes. Throughout, you got the sense that these creatures communicate with each other.
In addition to choreographing the movement vocabulary for the four dancers and five circus artists, Lomask also designed interactive physical structures that echo the natural world. One set calls up vortexes; another is an earth-like globe with many points of entry; yet another suggests a curtain of kelp. Lead science advisors Sylvia Earle and Tierney Thys provided taped narration. While helpful for its information, it’s most moving for the awe and love that is apparent in their voices.
As mentioned above, like many of Lomask’s works, Okeanos commingles circus artists and dancers. “It doesn’t make any difference to me whether a body is a trained dancer’s or a contortionist’s,” she says. “I am really interested in how the human body acts with the [sculptural] forms I have created. A contortionist can interact in a way a dancer cannot, but a dancer can embody an emotion or a concept that circus artists don’t have the training to do.”
Each Okeanos performance will be preceded by a different set of (separately ticketed) panel discussions surrounding issues of human interaction with the deep. The post-performance “Ocean Solutions Cafés” offer opportunities for continuing the conversation.
CAPACITOR: OKEANOS
Thu/12-Sun/15
Pre-show talks, 6:30pm, $20 (with show ticket); performances, 8pm, $25-$35
Herbst Pavilion
Fort Mason Center
Marina at Laguna, SF
Green shopping guide: 6 earth-conscious fashion outposts
We’ve been shopping green for a week now — check out our previous guides to housewares, kid’s stuff, gardening resources, and local beauty
Let’s face it. Finding an oversized sweater in your mom’s closet that looks good on you tends to make you feel better than purchasing one at a corporate retail store because (a) you hate homogeneity, (b) you like saving money, (c) you’re rocking something straight out of the 80s, and (d) you’re relieved of the guilt associated with buying an item produced overseas. Here are a few suggestions on where to shop locally for you tree-hugging, fashion-conscious souls.
Static
Static showcases an extensive collection of vintage clothing, shoes, and accessories from the 1920s to today. We’ve never seen so many fur-lined jeans jackets, wearable pieces of grandma jewelry, and rad, antiquated boots in one spot.
Sunday-Thursday 12pm-7pm; Friday-Saturday noon-8pm. 1764 Haight, SF. (415) 422-0046, www.staticvintage.com
No
If you’re looking for a vintage sweater that says, “I just threw this on haphazardly because I don’t really care how I look” (but you actually look awesome in a mysteriously sexy, I’m post-showing cleavage way) look no further than No. This is one of those places where you take 15 things into the dressing room and, annoyingly, like most of them.
Monday-Sunday 11am-7pm. 389 Valencia, SF. (415) 252-9982
Foggy Notion
Alissa Anderson of mittenmaker opened the doors of her Inner Richmond shop last month. She sells her own eco-conscious creations as well as green products from other, mostly Western United States-based designers and craftspeople — like Captain Blankenship fragrances made with local biodynamic grape alcohol and Daughter of the Sun recycled leather crystal pendants.
Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday 11am-6pm; Friday-Saturday 11am-7pm. 275 Sixth Ave No. 101, SF. (415) 683-5654, www.foggy-notion.com
Mystery Mister
The apparel and accessories at this Haight Street gem span the eras between Victorian and ’80s. You may feel the urge to buy a lace-trimmed bonnet. Indulge it.
Monday-Sunday 11am-7pm. 1506 Haight, SF. (415) 552-4226, www.mysterymister.com
Retro Fit Vintage
An ideal place to piece together a costume for Halloween, Bay to Breakers, or your average Friday night in San Francisco.
Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday 12pm-7pm; Friday-Saturday noon-9 pm. 910 Valencia, SF. (415) 550-1530, www.retrofityourworld.com
General Store
A carefully curated clothing and handmade craft shop located in the Outer Sunset. Locally made items include Tellason denim, Joshu+Vela backpacks, and Tanya Maydoff natural fiber wool caps and hand warmers.
Monday-Friday 11am-7pm; Saturday-Sunday 10am-7pm. 4035 Judah, SF. (415) 682-0600, www.visitgeneralstore.com
Green shopping guide: 8 sources of weekend-ready, enviro-friendly beauty
Beauty is said to only be skin-deep — but the businesses that use holistic, organic, and plant-based ingredients want to demolish this age-old idiom. You can simultaneously rejuvenate yourself and the planet by ditching those toxic, harmful products once and for all. Think of it! With their products and services, self-care is no longer akin to being vain or selfish. These eight local spas, soapmakers, and producers of flower-based essences align nature, commerce, and beauty so that the world can sustain that perfect summer glow. Check out the rest of this week’s guides to local sustainable shopping, in honor of our Green Issue.
Illuminata Skin Care
Rather than using harsh chemicals to camouflage damages, Illuminata believes in a holistic approach to clarifying the skin so that you don’t have to hide anything. Natural botanical products are used in an array of services like extractions, enzyme exfoliations, waxing, and purifying masks to create effective treatments for even the most sensitive skin types. The warm staff, and the even-warmer space, will have you relishing your own dewy radiance.
Office hours Mon. and Thurs. 12:30pm-8pm; Tue. 1pm-8pm; Wed. 10am-8pm; Fri. 11am-6:30pm; Sat.-Sun. 10am-6pm 977 Valencia, SF. (415) 971-3943, www.illuminataskincare.com
Nectar Essences natural stress relief
Flowers can light up a room but flower essences can uplift your mind. Nectar Essences is a local company making floral remedies made with flowers from the Atacama desert in Chile, wildflowers of North America, and the Amazon rainforest. They are concocted by trained practitioners and crafted to address sleeplessness, mental alertness, and stress.
Phone customer service hours Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. (415) 617-5589, www.nectaressences.com
Grateful Body food for the skin
Grateful Body’s no-fuss online store provides organic, vegan, natural, chemical-free, and synthetic-free skin care treatments for virtually all skin types and issues. Products are made with nutrient-rich elements like fresh fruits, mushrooms, herbs, seaweeds, and botanical oils to nourish the glummest under-eye circles, salvage the most parched skin, and remedy even the nastiest of toenail infections.
Phone customer service hours Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (510) 848-9292, www.gratefulbody.com
The Joys of Life organic shea butters
This Oakland-based beauty product online store specializes in unrefined, organic shea butters and fine organic oils. Their handcrafted products are made with natural ingredients from Uganda and Ghana, and help detoxify, hydrate, and naturally enhance your skin.
(510) 465-5065, www.thejoysoflife.com
Epic Center MedSpa
MedSpa intertwines nature and science together through effective organic, light-based, non-toxic, crystal-free skin rejuvenation approaches to skin tightening, laser hair removal, and skin resurfacing treatments. Their space itself is a sustainable green-phenomenon made of eco-paints, recycled fabrics and wood, water conserving plumbing fixtures, and energy-reducing lighting.
Spa hours Mon. and Sat. 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.; Tues., Wed., Fri. 9:30 a.m.-7 p.m.; Thurs. 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m. 450 Sutter, Suite 800, SF. (415) 362-4754, www.skinrejuv.com
Apotheca
This teeny wellness practice will surprise you with how many holistic approaches and services they can pack into their space. Personalized to meet each individual’s needs, Apotheca will have you in a therapeutic massage one minute, practicing Ayurveda yoga the next, and botanically waxing your brows before you leave their rustic-chic downtown space.
Spa hours Mon.-Sun. 9 a.m.-9 p.m. 582 Market, Suite 612, SF. (415) 573-9077, www.apothecasf.com
Transcendentist
That usual cloying odor of chemicals that accompanies the dentist disappears in this calm, eco-friendly practice. More so a wellness spa than a traditional dentist office, they will treat your pearly whites with biocompatible materials while giving you a healing foot massage to the relaxing beat of meditative tunes.
Office hours Mon.-Fri. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. 3030 Ashby, Suite 101, (510) 841-3040, www.transcedentist.com
River Soap Company
Dad is in charge of retail orders, mom is the national sales rep, and two sisters deal with daily operations in this natural soap shop. Their soaps are all vegetable based, biodegradable, cruelty-free, and are triple French-milled for a long-lasting, extra-lathering, non-gooey, velvety hand-washing experience.
(800) 694-7627, www.riversoap.com
Sea, here
arts@sfbg.com
>>See more astounding images from Beneath Cold Seas here.
THE GREEN ISSUE Most people associate underwater photography with the tropics, but the beautiful shots that appear in Beneath Cold Seas (University of Washington, $45, 160pp) were shot in the Pacific Northwest. What’s most striking about the book is the color and vibrance that photographer David Hall was able to capture. It’s a bit mind-blowing to imagine that the hooded nudibranches and grasping octopi found in the book live in the inky depths abutting our very own rocky shores. The next time you take a dip at Baker or Muir Beach don’t forget that you’re frolicking with some seriously stunning fauna.
SFBG: Where did you shoot Beneath Cold Seas?
DAVID HALL: I shot Beneath Cold Seas in British Columbia. The water tends to be more clear and there’s less pollution because of the small population density. But the same animals in the book are found in Northern California, they don’t recognize international borders. Technically biologists say the ecosystem extends from Southern Alaska down to Point Conception (north of Santa Barbara). That entire area is referred to as the Pacific Northwest.
SFBG: What environmental issues are facing the Pacific Northwest?
DH: One problem is the introduction of alien species. For instance farm-raised salmon taken from New England genetic stock occasionally escape and interbreed with the five or six Pacific species. So you’re getting a genetic mixture which endangers the original Pacific species. But the environmental issues that most people are worried about are overfishing and pollution, like oil spills. As more Canadian oil is being developed and exported to places like China, it will have to be shipped across these waters. So that becomes a concern, especially after what happened in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
SFBG: When did you start taking photos underwater?
DH: Many years ago I took a trip to the Virgin Islands. I’d never seen a coral reef before and was completely overwhelmed by what I saw while snorkeling. I felt that I had to photograph it because I’m not so good at describing things. I went out and bought the best camera I could afford which was a Kodak Instamatic in a plastic housing with flashbulbs. That was how it all started. In those days the bar was very low, if you got an underwater photograph that was somewhat recognizable you could get it published.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgDfA61OpFI
SFBG: What would you say inspired this project?
DH: At first I started going because I loved the diving, I enjoyed being there and getting photographs. But after the first half dozen trips I realized that the material I was getting was good enough for a book. I got the idea for the book about five years ago, but all in all it took about 15 years.
SFBG: What was a typical shoot like?
DH: I was living on a small boat for a couple of weeks at a time, doing three dives a day, and then reviewing photos at night. The days would be consumed with getting ready for the dive, getting all the equipment on, waiting until the current was just right, getting into the water, diving for an hour, getting back to the boat, getting warm — which takes another hour or two — and then getting ready to dive again. Altogether I made about 500 dives from 1995 to 2010.
Photographing underwater is much more difficult than photographing in air, and photographing in cold water is that much more difficult than photographing in warm water. No one had ever published a good book on underwater photography from a cold water destination in North America before. There are plenty of field guides, and fish ID books for fisherman, but no one had ever published a photographic book that tried to show the character of the ecosystem in an artistic way.
The book required getting a lot of wide angle shots to include the scenery as well as the animals. Getting good clear, colorful photographs in cold water is difficult because of visibility issues. Also cold water filters out all of the warm colors in the spectrum (red, orange, yellow) so to see the colors you have to add light back. So I dive with a pair of powerful flash units that attach to the camera by way of articulated arms that keep my hands free.
SFBG: So there wasn’t someone handling lighting for you?
DH: If I were a National Geographic contract photographer I’d probably have had a few assistants holding lights for me, but I wasn’t so lucky. I had to do everything myself. And in most cases I was diving completely alone.
SFBG: People don’t associate such colorful and exotic creatures with our coast. It’s really wonderful that your book is changing that perception.
DH: I certainly hope that’s what’s happening. The book has been very well received, largely because nobody was aware of what was down there. I mean marine biologists and divers were, but ordinary people had no idea.
People tend to protect what they know and value. Most Americans and Canadians are familiar with the aquatic species that we eat, but there’s a whole ecosystem there that the great majority of us are completely unfamiliar with. I hope my book will make people aware that these things exist and want to feel more protective toward that whole environment.
Down Dog break down
culture@sfbg.com
YOGA For a sizeable sector of our population, yoga is as much a part of the culture as burritos and biking to work. With more than 50 studios in San Francisco’s 49 square miles alone — and even a brand-new yoga room in SFO, which claims to be an airport first — the Bay Area isn’t short on options for a Saturday morning sweat sesh or Sunday night candlelight.
But which teacher is best for you? For three exhaustive weeks I pretzeled it up from Berkeley to Bernal, sampling classes with some of our most famous and intriguing yogis. Below are my experiences with each, along with a one-to-five “sweat factor” intensity rating . Hopefully, this will help you choose the right teacher to help you lighten up, ground down, or just plain bliss out. (Perhaps you might be inspired to follow one of our dozens of other local yogis’ paths.)
Me? I’ll be soaking in a hot bath. Can you hand me that ice pack?
PETE GUINOSSO: GOOFY AND LOOSE
If you’re the kind of person who thinks the Black Eyed Peas and Beyoncé — let alone House of Pain — don’t belong in the yoga studio, then Pete’s Friday night Happy Hour Yoga at Yoga Tree on Valencia (www.yogatreesf.com) isn’t for you.
Guinosso breaks it down, both musically and with frequent stops to explain a new inversion or variation on an arm balance. With plenty of “play time” to work at your own pace, plus friendly gossip and occasionally flirty energy in the female-heavy room, the class can sometimes feel more like a very sweaty cocktail party. But it’s a great way to stay loose, learn new tricks, and cultivate what Pete calls the “inner teacher.” The smiley, Forrest-trained yogi also guides more traditional vinyasa and candlelight flow classes — no Top 40 here — but his liberating sense of humor remains.
Sweat Factor: 3
The Takeaway: Fun and funky, but probably not best if verses from “Afternoon Delight” aren’t among your favored mantras.
LES LEVENTHAL: FRESH AND AFFIRMING
Imagine taking a rubber band ball and chucking it down some hard wooden stairs: that’s what Les was like, bouncing around during Saturday morning vinyasa while his students were still waking up.
But that’s all right. As my neighbor one mat over put it, Les is “really good at letting you know that where you are is fine, while at the same time pushing you to move forward.”
Leventhal’s quirky style, coupled with live beats by Sac-town sacred sound messenger Nate Spross (Les has also brought the likes of Buddha Bar’s Daniel Masson from Paris to spin), kept class sparkling; even when he got down among the mats to demonstrate a Foot-Behind-Head pose which morphed into a series of arm balances that had students’ eyes bulging, his sense of humor soothed the spirits of those of us who were in pain just watching — let alone trying to replicate the seamless flow.
“Why do we let our heads tell us what’s good enough?” he asked, putting a hand at neck level to show a separation between head and body. “Even if you’re in the simplest expression of this pose, it feels good from here down!”
Sweat Factor: 4
The Takeaway: Down-to-earth, despite chanting in a reverberating baritone that brings me shuddering back to the rabbis of my Sunday school days.
JANET STONE: FAST AND UNFETTERED
With barely two inches between mats on a Saturday morning, it’s easy to see that Janet is a Bay Area favorite. She’s no slave to typical maneuvers like the Sun Salutation, though, and while her fast flows kept class interesting, all the unfamiliar iterations seemed a bit frantic — and made the class more about momentum (and not getting lost) than about muscle and alignment.
But of course, that’s the yoga. And though her students may love her because they come to learn her style, she might say the real work is in getting better at not knowing what’s next. Or, in Janet’s wording: “In this practice we pause and disarm our myriad of defenses, and experience the pure luminous light that is there.”
Sweat Factor: 3
The Takeaway: Good if you like spontaneous Hare Krishna-themed dance fevers and Lulu-clad students eager to show off their handstands — even when that means toppling onto others’ mats.
RUSTY WELLS: DEVOTED AND UNDONE
Only a few years after beginning his journey as a yogi in early 1990s Atlanta, Rusty started to sense something missing.
“A teacher of mine told me after class one day, ‘it looks like you’re praying when you practice,'” Rusty says, “and my reply was, ‘What, am I not supposed to be?'”
Now he knows that something is bhakti, Sanskrit for “devotion to the wonder of life,” and it’s for sale (well, actually, for donation) at Rusty’s vinyasa-inspired studio near the Mission, Urban Flow (www.urbanflowyoga.com).
Taking class with Rusty is a bit like having your own personal cheerleader, albeit an extremely calm one, urging you to “undo a lifetime of doing.” His classes reflect the intention to be a beginner each time you return to the mat. But despite a slightly slower pace and emphasis on fundamentals, Bhakti Flow is by no means a soft option. In fact, everyone I saw there (including a smattering of other Bay Area teachers) was pretty much a hardbody.
Not that I should have noticed, my teacher told me.
“When I first started practicing,” Rusty said, “I used to look around and admire the people who were really strong, really stretchy.”
“After a while, I learned to look around and admire the people who were finding great joy in their practice. And a while after that,” the yogi concluded “I learned to just stop looking.”
Sweat Factor: 3
The Takeaway: Like Chicken Soup for the Ass(ana). Part workout, part therapy.
STEPH SNYDER: COMFY AND UNASSUMING
I was a little intimidated, walking into the crowd assembled for Steph’s class on Super Bowl Sunday — my first with her, and her first upon returning to teaching after having a healthy baby boy. Excitement was as thick as the steam wafting through the air, streaking the windows with condensation. Friends squealed and greeted each other, mats moved over and over again to make more space, and shouts that had nothing to do with pigskin could be heard all around.
But once we started, it was like slipping into a favorite pair of old jeans. Her flows have great rhythm and plenty of variety. Plus something intuitive, as though my body knew what to do even before her cue. She’s humble, and you can tell that she honestly loves what she’s doing.
Part of her appeal is her belief in the practice, one she says has gotten her through dark times, and her commitment to making the same hold true for others.
“Whatever you need, the practice is there for you. If you need to be saved, it will literally save you,” she promises. Add to that a great workout, beautiful chanting, and some awesome harmonium playing (Steph says she accompanies herself every day) and you can’t go wrong.
Sweat Factor: 4
The Takeaway: Delicious in every way.
PRADEEP TEOTI: SONGFUL AND BOLD
Born in a small village outside of New Delhi, Pradeep brings with him an international yoga certification in the Sivananda tradition, a deep personal practice that stretches way beyond asana, and an amazing unique voice that pitches and rolls all throughout class with nary an audible breath, making him sound something like a spiritual auctioneer trying to sell peace of mind and six-pack abs; the only pause in singsong accompaniment raising warrior ones to warrior twos is his distinctive intonation of exhaaayle, inhaaayle.
Pradeep’s classes, including this one at Oakland’s Flying Yoga Shala (www.flyingyogashala.com) are fast and packed with plenty of push-ups and core work, definitely best when you’re feeling bold. But his compassion is also undeniable.
“Yoga is not saying you put your leg behind your head,” he told me when I was feeling sick in class. “Yoga is just putting yourself in the moment, paying attention to right now. Maybe someone wants to come to my class and just do child pose for one whole hour. Then my job is to create that space for them.”
Sweat Factor: 5
The Takeaway:Though he said I taught him yoga that day, it’s better to leave the instruction up to Pradeep: he’s one of the best.
DARREN MAIN: SPIRITUAL AND SINCERE
Though he’s definitely made a student or two sweat, Darren truly shines when teaching restorative sessions — especially his donation-based Tuesday night practices in the cavernous Grace Cathedral, coupled with live music like Sam Jackson’s exquisite chorus of a dozen Tibetan singing bowls.
The temptation may be not to take Darren seriously: sometimes he slips into that same ethereal quality of voice he uses to introduce his “Inquire Within” podcasts, and the flowing blond hair and bright blue eyes staring out from the back of his most popular book, Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic, are a bit Cherub-cum-movie-star, come to that.
But his teachings — in the studio and as an author, essayist, and international speaker on spirituality — come from a sincere place: a struggle with issues of sexuality, religion, and identity. Who couldn’t use a teacher with that kind of experience on their quest for personal growth? Plus, his hair’s short now.
Sweat Factor: 1
The Takeaway: Unique restorative classes with a dose of mysticism — and sometimes hot stones.
MARK MORFORD: CALM AND FOCUSED
Straight up: I have to respect a guy who starts class, no apologies, with core work. Mark is that guy. His classes are serious and to-the-point, but without the rush and ego I sometimes associate with other hardcore workout-focused yogis. Of course, he does teach, rather noticeably, with his shirt off. But we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk that up to inspiration. Perhaps because his classes don’t tend toward the super-crowded, they feel both peaceful and purposeful.
And — unlike his columns for the Chronicle, which are all over the place and over-the-top funny — his yoga, both the asana and the anecdotes, have a simple, quiet intensity and calm focus that make them rewarding and accessible for all levels.
Sweat Factor: 4 stars
The Takeaway: Strong, steady yoga with the occasional conversational foray.
JANE AUSTIN: CANDID AND EARTHY
In classes filled with as much laughter and candid advice as yoga, Jane prepares new moms and moms-to-be for the best and worst of mothering. And she does it as much through understanding and open conversation as through asana (poses to strengthen the arms for holding a newborn, to rotate wee ones while they’re still inside, and to stretch, err, whatever might need stretching in preparation for delivery).
A midwife, doula, and mother of two, Jane is funny and warm, and able to come up with plenty for pregnant or healing women to do other than “go sit against the wall and squat.”
Plus, for ladies looking to speed things up, her classes have a history of hastening delivery — as in, right then and there. Pssst, the “water breaking spot” is just one mat to the right of the door at Yoga Tree on Valencia.
Sweat Factor: 2
The Takeaway: Be prepared to discuss everything from the nipples on down. And imagine your cervix melting like butter.
The Performant: Strangers in a strange land
Dan Carbone and Kitka resculpt old terrain
From the dark corner of the stage throbs the low rhythm of a skin-clad, Celtic-style drum and the strum of acoustic guitar, while in the light a man clad in a white dress shirt sways in hypnotic time, eyes shut tight, arms flung wide. “Sleeping, sleeping,” he croons softly, “I’m only sleeping.” Still swaying, he begins to tell the tale from the beginning, about a little baby boy whose “brain is knitting itself in an unusual way.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking in this first moment that the man is speaking of his own infancy, after all, brains don’t come knit much more unusually than that of East Bay-based avant-gardian Dan Carbone. But the infant’s name is not Dan’s, and though his brief and tragic backstory reverberates through much of the rest of the play, the infant soon yields the spotlight to his younger brother, the creator of the piece, “Father Panic,” which made its stage debut at the Garage on Friday.
Although “Father Panic,” is indubitably Carbone’s most autobiographical work, a fretful monologue about a precocious childhood both hideously warped yet strangely innocent, familiarly eccentric, flourishes abound throughout. Puppets, poltergeists, twisted songs that expose the tortured inner monologues of the characters to the surface, a live video installation curated by Philip Bonner (a.k.a. Bulk Foodveyor) of childhood detritus and memory bank fodder.
Catherine Debon takes a turn as television-land language teacher, who translates self-loathing lyrics such as “maybe we can hate ourselves together,” into mellifluous French. And instrumentation is handily provided by swampabilly guitarist Andrew Goldfarb, who comprises, with Carbone, the performative music duo The Wounded Stag. But the unacknowledged star of the show is probably Carbone’s mother, who gradually takes over the piece, a raw bundle of outré obsessions and an embattled nature, the very embodiment of a stranger in a strange land — like a Raëlian without a cause, or an aquatic African frog in a solitary tank.
***
The mountains of Serbia, and a vocal tradition almost unknown this side of the “pond,” lie thousands of miles away from the basements of Connecticut. But an intriguing collaboration between Kitka, Oakland’s premiere ensemble of acapella Eastern European music and Svetlana Spajic, a renowned Serbain folk singer, brought that faraway land to stirring life during a two-part concert staged over the weekend at CounterPULSE.
After a video of venerable vocalist Jandrija Baljak teaching his technique to Spajic’s homeland ensemble, the concert began in earnest when Spajic took the stage. Dressed in Sunday best attire suggesting a peasant en route to Ellis Island circa 1914, Spajic’s passionate ululations did little to dispel the sensation of being transported backwards through time and space. Joined in the second half by Kitka, the remaining songs were characterized by an almost medieval lack of vibrato and elongated interludes of dissonant voice-bending harmonies. Even when comprehension of the lyrics was impossible, the music tapped into a complexity of almost primal emotion—though some slyly inserted San Francisco-centric lines did bring us briefly back to home before we were whisked once more into the territory of the unfamiliar by our fearless musical guides.
Lookin’ good
culture@sfbg.com
BODY If your New Year’s resolution is flagging, here are some budget boosts to kickstart your makeover (or de-stress) ambitions. Never give up! Deals are for February: call ahead for more details or restrictions information.
FITNESS
Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center 1200 Arguello, SF. (415) 681-2731, www.sfyoga.com Find your center at this Inner Sunset nonprofit that’s run by world peace-inspired volunteers. Get your first class for free, and 50 percent off the 10-class ($95-115) or monthly unlimited pass ($110). Individual classes are $10-15 each.
Planet Granite 924 Mason, SF. (415) 692-3434, www.planetgranite.com An indoor climbing gym and yoga studio in the Presidio that boasts of the best views in the Bay Area. A belay lesson for $34 comes with free gear rental and one-day pass.
START Fitness 1625 Bush, SF. (415) 225-5715, www.STARTfitness.com These Pacific Heights bootcamp workout programs are designed by an army fitness trainer. START claims to be the oldest program of its kind in the country. Four-week bootcamp $199, from regular price of $290.
Bianchi Fitness 566 Dolores, SF. (415) 218-7045, www.bianchifitness.com Year-round outdoor fitness training in the Castro that takes advantage of the Bay Area’s natural beauty, offering group and individual classes. Take as many classes as you want during a two-week period for $75.
Body Mechanix Fitness Cooperative 219 Brannan, SF. (877) 658-4757, www.body-mechanix.com An independently-owned fitness cooperative in SoMa offering innovative training programs. $49 for a $120 certificate.
ODC School and Rhythm and Motion Dance Program 351 Shotwell, SF. (415) 863-9830, www.odcschool.org This Mission District mainstay offers classes in all styles of dance, from ballet to hip hop, at every level of ability, from amateur to professional. $14 per dance class, $7 for seniors and teens.
Chestnut Pilates 1877 Chestnut, SF. (415) 673-3280, www.chestnutpilates.com Run by dancer Cathie Caraker, this Cow Hollow studio guides students to toned abs and inner peace through a better understanding of the body. $60 for $80 certificate.
Primal Health and Training 1074 Folsom, SF. (510) 432-9648, www.primalhealthsf.com At his SoMa studio, Khalid Kohgadai teaches how to overcome inertia and unwanted weight gain through the methods that worked for him. $50 for two sessions.
Caitlin Weeks Nutrition and Personal Training 2435 Polk, Suite 8, SF. (415) 624-5121, www.grassfedgirl.com In Russian Hill, Weeks teaches methods for battling obesity gathered from her personal experience of dropping 80 pounds and keeping it off. $75 for a $100 certificate.
Yoga Garden 286 Divisadero, SF. (415) 552-9644, www.yogagardensf.com This tucked-away studio is committed to teaching safe, accessible classes in Iyengar, Asthanga, Vinyasa, Hatha and pre-natal yoga in the Lower Haight. Get a four-week introductory membership for $65. First timers score an hour-long massage for $49. Get a class-a-day membership plus monthly massage for $120/month.
Jamz Trainings 292 4th Street, Oakl. (415) 857-5269, www.jamztraining.com In Oakland, James Robinson customizes personal programs specializing in weight loss, athletic performance, motivation, and strengthening. $50 for $75 certificate.
Bridges Rock Gym 5635 San Diego, El Cerrito. (510) 525-5635, www.bridgesrockgym.com This El Cerrito gym offers indoor “bouldering,” relatively short climbs full of obstacle arrangements designed to test problem-solving skills. $25 for a three-visit pass and climbing gear.
BEAUTY
The Barber Lounge 854 Folsom, SF. (415) 934-0411, www.barberlounge.com This 2012 industrial warehouse approximation of an old-fashioned barbershop caters to men and women in sunny, art-bedecked loft space. $15 brow-shapings, Mon.-Fri. 4 p.m.-8 p.m. Book a cut and color and receive $20 off a facial or massage of at least 60 minutes.
John Francis Spa Martin De Porres Medical Building, 4200 18th St., Suite 101, SF. (415) 861-3000, www.johnfrancisspa.com The staff at this Castro spa offers holistic massage, waxing and skin care, plus mineral makeup, and tension relief foot treatments. Glycolic peels are reduced from $75 to $35 when combined with a facial. Registered clients receive 20 percent off on facials on their birthdays. $20 off when combining facial and massage on the same day.
Shear Bliss Salon 275 Gough, SF. (415) 255-8761, www.shearblisssalon.com These Aveda-trained stylists use eco-friendly styling techniques and products. The salon focuses on straight perms, coloring, extensions, and curly hair. New clients receive $20 off hair coloring.
San Francisco Community Acupuncture 220 Valencia, SF. (415)675-8973, www.missionsfca.com Affordable acupuncture is offered here in a comfortable, calm group setting. Pay $25-50 per treatment, sliding scale. Yelp users can receive a $40 gift certificate for $25.
Love Your Face SF 1075 Pacific, Suite A, SF. (415)529-2368, www.loveyourfacesf.com Curious about semi-permanent eyelash curling or eyelash-eyebrow tinting and ditching the daily regimen? LYF is the place to check out. Also: Ayuvedic ear treatments for wax removal and nourishment of the ear canal and drum. Refer a friend for $5 off your next service. Purchase five services and get one free. Yelp users get $50 worth of treatments for $35.
Earth Body 534 Laguna, SF. (415) 552-7200, www.earthbody.net This organic skin care spa takes a holistic, sustainable approach that draws on ancient traditions of healing. First time clients receive $15 off any treatment Mon.-Fri. Add a supplemental foot therapy, facial massage, or heated neck therapy to your session for free.
Chez Sylva 1310 8th Ave., SF. (415) 242-1100, www.chezsylva.com Salon offers waxing, threading, and a number of signature facials, but is best known for electrolysis and permanent hair removal. New clients receive a 10 percent discount on first treatment. Mention its website and receive an additional 5 percent discount.
Flourish Skin and Wax 1905 Union, SF. (415) 370-6559, www.flourishskinandwax.com Cheerful pastel walls and mellow music here eases the usual pain of waxing. Perfectionist waxers can satisfy even the most sensitive skin types. Book a Flourish facial and receive a complimentary cleanser; book a Brazilian wax and receive a complimentary brow wax.
Rincon Chiropractic Massage and Acupuncture 101 Howard, Suite D, SF. (415) 896-2225, www.rinconchiro.com Rincon focuses on the relationship between the structure and function of your spine. It provides a wide range of services, like rehabilitation therapies, mother-to-be, and stress-relieving massages. $25 off for students who bring in a valid student ID. Yelp users can get a $90 specialty massage for $50.
Tiptoes Nail Spa 300 De Haro, Suite 336, SF. (415) 626-9637, www.tiptoesnailspa.com This swanky Potrero Hill spot uses vegan and DBP, touelene and formaldehyde-free nail polish as well as botanical-based, petrochemical-free products. Go for a relaxing ambiance, cool chairs, and free Red Vines. Early bird special: mani-pedis for $35 before 3 p.m.
Curl Up and Dye Beauty Salon 350 Alabama, SF. (415) 861-2515, www.curlupanddyesf.net Ally likes big hair and monster movies. Jerry likes cheeseburgers and tight fades. Both have trained with Vidal Sassoon, Bumble and bumble, and Kevin Murphy. Both have devoted clients who come back time and time again for bold cuts and sexy styles. Receive $20 off a cut or color with either stylist.
Way out East
THEATER The shows have been as varied and changeable as the weather this January in New York City, where the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) acts as catalyst for, by now, no less than four new-work festivals in the realms of theater, dance, and contemporary performance.
Near the beginning of the month, it got cold enough at night to make your nose hairs chime like little Christmas tree bells. “Every time you sneeze,” a friend explained to me, “a whole shitload of angels get their wings.”
This cheerful seasonal exchange took place in the Lower East Side during a frigid tromp to American Realness, a three-year-old festival offering a vital focus on contemporary dance and performance. Spread across three stages at the Abrons Art Center, American Realness is the brainchild of Ben Pryor, the festival’s 29-year-old curator and producing director, and once again features an eye-catching list of leading and emerging artists.
Indeed, 2012’s 11-day program (Jan. 5-15) is really pulling out the stops. Performances I’ve seen thus far have run a wide gamut, in every way, but have consistently attracted capacity houses to American Realness’s intriguing blend of the known, infamous, and brand new.
In addition to full-blown productions, the festival has added a new free series this year, “Show and Tell,” offering an opportunity to hear artists discuss their work or to glimpse work-in-progress. One recent afternoon was given over to a three-way discussion among songwriter and performance-maker Holcombe Waller, Cynthia Hopkins (at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts recently with The Success of Failure (Or, the Failure of Success)), and Miguel Gutierrez (last seen locally in July at the Garage with his solo, Heavens What Have I Done) about contemporary song-based performance. The Bay Area’s Keith Hennessy was on hand a couple of days earlier to discuss his collaborative project, Turbulence: A Dance About the Economy, which just had a two-night showing in December at CounterPulse. (Hennessy also premiered Almost, a “spontaneous performance action,” during the last week of the festival.)
American Realness opened with an evening lineup that included other San Francisco favorites, namely Laura Arrington Dance and New York–based Big Art Group. Arrington offered the New York premiere of Hot Wings (a piece born of her 2010 CounterPulse residency) to a sold-out house in the Abrons Art Center’s 100-seat Experimental Theater; while Caden Manson/Big Art Group debuted Broke House, a purposefully chaotic, multimedia camp meltdown loosely based on Chekhov’s Three Sisters, which sprawled across the proscenium stage in the 300-seat Playhouse Theater. The 99-seat Underground Theater, meanwhile, a cozy, brutalist semi-circle carved into the concrete basement, saw a U.S. premiere from Eleanor Bauer and Heather Lang (The Heather Lang Show by Eleanor Bauer and Vice Versa).
Those three initial shows together sounded an eclectic key that has been sustained throughout. The cold weather not so much. A few days later it was unseasonably warm. People tried to act concerned about it. Surely this was another sign of impending climactic collapse. But it was just too nice to care very hard about why it might be wrong.
The relaxed mood encouraged by the sudden warming trend was further augmented by an intimate little walking tour called Elastic City. Artists Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith conduct small groups of people around the grounds of the Abrons Art Center, training everyone’s attention, with a gentle and inviting playfulness, on the smallest and most quotidian details imaginable — with low-key but delighting results. A passage down one maintenance hallway, for instance, was an invitation to notice any little detail that caught the eye and stimulated the imagination and to share it with anyone around you, turning the seemingly bare walls into a topography that might have given a 16th-century explorer the chills, or … a woody. At one point, our guides led us outside barefoot onto the wide concrete steps in front of the building, for what was no doubt originally conceived of as a brief but striking encounter with the winter elements. Everyone stood there comfortably, however, thankful for the temperate bath of fresh air. “Yeah, it’s not very cold,” agreed Shalom. “Actually, it’s not cold at all.”
A couple more memorable moments as of this writing: Daniel Linehan spinning in a circle for a very long time, declaiming, “This is not about anything” — and variations on that theme. The young choreographer-performer (who’s worked with Big Art as well as Miguel Gutierrez, among others) delivered these poetically schematic lines at intricate length, in a voice precisely doubled by an offstage “doppelganger” piped through a nearby speaker, demonstrating a fairly wowing memory and focus, while alternating both the speed and shape of his whirling form to create a kinetic sculpture of transfixing beauty.
The stunning solo Not About Everything faltered only momentarily for me, when Linehan, pulling out and “reading” a self-conscious letter about his own art and practice from his pocket, shifted from mathematical-geometric abstraction to the all-too-specific. It was an almost rude awakening from a kind of syntactic ecstasy — the motive, unmooring meaninglessness of the mantra — back into the semantics of worldly and solipsistic concerns. It was saved ultimately by a combination of Linehan’s acuity and alacrity as a thinker and performer, however, and it was as fine, moving, and memorable a solo as any seen thus far.
Ann Liv Young presented a desultory piece called Sleeping Beauty Part I that held few surprises for anyone remotely familiar with her work. But the audience was caught off guard at one point at least, as Sleeping Beauty, having completed a Showgirls-style dance of seduction, pleads for understanding from her Prince Charming (a blowup doll sitting in the first row of the packed Experimental Theater). At that moment a soap machine above the stage suddenly erupted with a noisy rush of air and fluff, casting a snow-like arc of fine goo down onto the heads of maybe a third of the house, producing amusement and irritation in more or less equal measure. Only one patron actually got up and left. The rest sat stoically, trying to stifle coughs and sneezes for the next 20 minutes as the finer, mistier particles of whatever is in that stuff began lining breathing passages.
The remainder of the show was given over to an invitation to have your Polaroid portrait taken with the Sleeping Beauty (two bucks a pop). There were enough takers to drag this process out about half an hour. Then the performers left the stage. More ALY concessions were on sale as you exited.
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Film Listings
Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. Due to the New Year holiday, theater information was incomplete at presstime.
OPENING
The Conquest Yet another entry in the relatively new, burgeoning genre of mostly comic biopics portraying political figures still or at least recently in office, Xavier Durringer’s film chronicles conservative Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to the French presidency. As cannily impersonated by Denis Podalydès, Sarkozy (a.k.a. the Midget, to his detractors) is a Napoleon complex-afflicted shark whose need for perpetual careerist motion cancels out enjoyment even for his triumphs — save, perhaps, a momentary gloat over enemies left trampled. At the start he’s already neared the top of the government ladder, albeit not nearly near enough. Several years’ further upward scrambling are framed by flash-forwards to 2007, when he’s on the verge of finally becoming president, albeit at the cost of “top advisor” and long-suffering first wife Cécilia (Florence Pernel) jumping ship. Her earlier lament “Our life has become a TV show” has been ignored by a spouse quite happy living an almost entirely public, media-hounded life. (Although as his popularity continues to sink, Sarkozy almost certainly doesn’t feel that way now.) Without depiction of or insight into the main figure’s background, The Conquest becomes an entertaining but superficial, near-farcical enterprise providing little insight into what makes him tick. But then, that’s the problem with instant biographies — it’s a lot easier to grasp a significant figure’s complexities when enough time has passed for hindsight to clear the immediate fog of scandal, spectacle, and grotesquerie. (1:45) (Harvey) The Devil Inside Another year, another CG-heavy exorcism movie. (1:27)
*Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone This doc offers a lively, revealing look at SoCal ska-punk rockers Fishbone, a band that formed circa 1979 in a San Fernando Valley junior high newly filled with bussed-in South Central kids. In its heyday, Fishbone enjoyed cult success with hits like “Party at Ground Zero” and the tune that gives the film its title; Everyday Sunshine speaks to Fishbone’s broad appeal, as famous faces chime in to reminisce (and longtime fan Laurence Fishburne narrates), but it also illuminates some of the reasons its members never became megastars. Codirectors Chris Metzler (a San Francisco resident best-known for 2004’s Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea) and Lev Anderson spent months on the road with the band, capturing the infectious energy of its live shows in addition to behind-the-scenes tension. Past members add their voices, but the main protagonists are bassist-vocalist Norwood Fisher and lead vocalist-saxophone player Angelo Moore. Their intertwining stories offer a poignant portrait of creative soulmates who’ve weathered many storms (personality conflicts, legal and money troubles, an industry that didn’t know how to categorize them) without once giving up on their music. In addition to its compelling story, the film’s quirkier stylistic choices, including animation, lift Everyday Sunshine above the crowded field of traditional music docs. The filmmakers will be on hand for Q&As on opening weekend, with the band in person (and performing short sets) at Fri/6 shows. (1:47) Roxie. (Eddy)
In the Land of Blood and Honey See “Lights, Jolie, Action.” (2:07)
It Came from Detroit See Trash. (1:27) Roxie.
King of Devil’s Island When teenaged Erling (Benjamin Helstad) arrives at Bastøy Prison — more labor camp than reform school — he’s more worldly than many of the other boys there, especially Olav (Trond Nilssen), though the newcomer and long-time inmate bond over a shared fascination with seafaring life. That’s about the only happy thing that happens in Bastøy; set in 1915, King of Devil’s Island is based on the Norwegian island prison’s troubled past, and a rebellion that erupts when the boys reach the breaking point. Surprisingly, it’s not the exhausting work (hauling rocks and trees as rain and snow whip across gloomy fjords) that leads to unrest — it’s the failure of the camp’s strict-but-not-sadistic overseer (go-to stern Scandinavian Stellan Skarsgård) to remove a “housefather” with rapey tendencies. An overlong running time enables a few too many climaxes (though the big uprising is well-earned, and cathartic), but director Marius Holst avoids melodrama, and powerful performances, particularly by the glowering Helstad, elevate the grim King above typical hell-is-for-children fare. (1:54) SFFS New People Cinema. (Eddy)
ONGOING
*The Adventures of Tintin Producer Peter Jackson and director Steven Spielberg join forces to adapt the work of Belgian comic creator Hergé, using performance-capture 3D animation (and featuring that new technology’s most prominent performer, Andy Serkis, in a key role). Hergé wrote over 20 volumes following the globe-trotting exploits of intrepid young reporter Tintin (Jamie Bell) and his canine companion, Snowy; The Adventures of Tintin draws from a trio of books dating from the early 1940s, tweaking the tales a bit but retaining the series’ ebullient energy and sharp humor. After he impulsively buys a model ship, Tintin is sucked into a mystery involving a long-lost pirate treasure sought by the sinister Sakharine (Daniel Craig) and, eventually, newfound Tintin ally Captain Haddock (Serkis). Fan favorites Thompson and Thomson (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost — frequent compadre Edgar Wright co-wrote the script) and a certain “Milanese Nightingale” make appearances in a story that careens between exotic locales and high-seas battles, and is packed with epic chase scenes that would leave Indiana Jones breathless. And in case you were worried, Tintin boasts the least creepy, least “uncanny valley” performance-capture animation I’ve seen to date. (1:47) (Eddy)
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-wrecked (1:27)
*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) (Chun)
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey (1:25)
A Dangerous Method Cool and chatty (unsurprisingly, given its subject matter and the fact that it’s based on a play and a novel), David Cronenberg’s latest begins in 1904 Zurich as a shrieking patient (Keira Knightley) is escorted into the care of psychiatrist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Dr. Jung, an admirer of Sigmund Freud, tests the “talking cure” on the woman, who turns out to be the fiercely intelligent and conveniently beautiful Sabina Spielrein. An attraction, both intellectual and sexual, soon develops, no matter that Jung is Sabina’s doctor, or that he happens to be married to a prim wife whose family wealth keeps him in boats and lake houses. Meanwhile, Jung and Freud (an excellent Viggo Mortensen) begin corresponding, eventually meeting and forming a friendship that’s tested first when Sabina comes between them, and later when Jung expresses a growing interest in fringe pursuits like parapsychology. The scenes between Freud and Jung are A Dangerous Method‘s most intriguing — save those brief few involving Vincent Cassel as a doctor-turned-patient who advises Jung to “never repress anything” — but the film is mostly concerned with Jung’s various Sabina-related dramas. Pity that this is a tightly-wound Fassbender’s least dynamic performance of the year, and that Knightley, way over the top in Sabina’s hysterical scenes, telegraphs “casting mistake” from the get-go. (1:39) (Eddy)
The Darkest Hour (1:29)
*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed “not enough” for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) (Harvey)
*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) (Chun)
The Flowers of War (2:21)
*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo The meeting of Stieg Larsson’s first “Millennium” book and David Fincher promised fireworks, as he’s a director who can be equally vivid and exacting with just the elements key to the series: procedural detail, obsession, violence, tweaked genre conventions, mind games, haunted protagonists, and expansive story arcs. But perhaps because this possible franchise launch had to be rushed into production to ride the Larsson wave, what should have been a terrific matchup turns out to be just a good one — superior in some stylistic departments (notably Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pulsing score), but overall neither an improvement nor a disappointment in comparison to the uninspired but effective 2009 Swedish film version. Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, the muckraking Stockholm journalist whose public disgrace after a failed expose of a suspect corporate tycoon makes him the perfect candidate for an unexpected assignment: staying sequestered in the wealthy, warring Vanger clan’s island home to secretly investigate a teenage girl’s disappearance and presumed murder 40 years ago. His testy helpmate is the singular Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), antisocial hacker, researcher, and ex-mental patient par excellence. Nearly three hours long, the compressed, slightly altered (get over it) storyline nonetheless feels rushed at times; Fincher manages the rare feat of making mostly internet research exciting in filmic terms, yet oddly the book’s more shocking episodes of sex and/or mayhem don’t have the memorable impact one might expect from him. The leads are fine, as is the big support cast of recognizable faces (Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, etc.) But the knockout suspense, atmosphere, and urgency one hoped for isn’t present in this intelligent, not entirely satisfying treatment. On the other hand, maybe those who’ve already read the books and seen the prior films have already had so much exposure to this material that a revelatory experience is no longer possible. (2:38) (Harvey)
Le Havre Aki Kaurismäki’s second French-language film (following 1992’s La Vie de Boheme) offers commentary on modern immigration issues wrapped in the gauze of a feel good fairy tale and cozy French provincialism a la Marcel Pagnol. Worried about the health of his hospitalized wife (Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen), veteran layabout and sometime shoe shiner Marcel (Andre Wilms) gets some welcome distraction in coming to the aid of Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), a young African illegally trying to make way to his mother in London while eluding the gendarmes. Marcel’s whole neighborhood of port-town busybodies and industrious émigrés eventually join in the cause, turning Le Havre into a sort of old-folks caper comedy with an incongruously sunny take on a rising European multiculturalism in which there are no real racist xenophobes, just grumps deserving comeuppance. Incongruous because Kaurismäki is, of course, the king of sardonically funny Finnish miserabilism — and while it’s charmed many on the festival circuit, this combination of his usual poker-faced style and feel-good storytelling formula may strike others as an oil-and-water mismatch. (1:43) (Harvey)
Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) (Chun)
I Melt With You A lamentation frequently heard is that men don’t know how to express their feelings. At least not the theoretically less “manly” ones of vulnerability, self-doubt, weepiness, affection, “do these board shorts make me look fat?,” etc. Every once in a while, however, there comes an entertainment that makes you think: better to keep those feelings unexpressed, bud. “Entertainment” is a term pretty loosely applied to I Melt With You, which careens drunkenly between the obnoxious, embarrassing, and unintentionally hilarious before really jumping off a cliff of unearned, fatal self importance. Richard (Thomas Jane) is a once-promising novelist whose printed output stalled short of the sophomore slump, and who’s now reduced to teaching actual sophomores. Jonathan (Rob Lowe) has blown his marriage, child custody, and Hippocratic Oath playing Dr. Feelgood to prescription-addicted socialites. Ron (Jeremy Piven) is a symptom of high-flying Wall Street corruption whose lush life is about to collapse under a hailstorm of federal fraud investigation. Tim (Christian McKay) is depressed — hey, somebody has to be fourth-billed and most expendable plot-wise. They’re gathering at shared age 44 — the horror — for their annual week long bacchanal at an impressive cliffside Monterey manse. Faced with the unbearable triteness of their being, these quixotically arrogant self-loathers implode in terms just as meaningful as you’d expect from four reasonably privileged grown white men whose primary source of angst is the fact that life didn’t turn out to be as easy or fun as imagined in their freshman dorm. Credit is due to director Mark Pellington (1999’s Arlington Road) and first-time (possibly last-time) scenarist Glenn Porter for their resolute belief that such crybaby bathos merits tragic grandeur. They take the term “epic fail” seriously, making I Melt the Götterdämmerung of male menopause movies. (1:47) (Harvey)
J. Edgar The usual polished, sober understatement of Clint Eastwood’s directing style and the highlights-compiling CliffsNotes nature of Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay turn out to be interestingly wrong choices for this biopic about one of the last American century’s most divisive figures. Interesting in that they’re perhaps among the very few who would now dare viewing the late, longtime FBI chief with so much admiration tempered by awareness of his faults — rather than the other way around. After all, Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) strengthened his bureau in ways that, yes, often protected citizens and state, but at what cost? The D.C. native eventually took to frequently “bending” the law, witch-hunting dubious national enemies (he thought the Civil Rights movement our worst threat since the bomb-planting Bolshevik anarchists of half a century earlier), blackmailing personal ones, weakening individual rights against surveillance, hoarding power (he resented the White House’s superior authority), lying publicly, and doing just about anything to heighten his own fame. A movie that internalized and communicated his rising paranoid megalomania (ironically Hoover died during the presidency of Nixon, his equal in that regard) might have stood some chance of making us understand this contradiction-riddled cipher. But J. Edgar is doggedly neutral, almost colorless (literally so, in near-monochrome visual presentation), its weird appreciation of the subject’s perfectionism and stick-to-it-iveness shutting out almost any penetrating insight. (Plus there’s Eastwood’s own by-now-de rigueur soundtrack of quasi-jazz noodling to make what is vivid here seem more dull and polite.) The love that dare not speak its name — or, evidently, risk more than a rare peck on the cheek — between Hoover and right-hand-man/life companion Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, very good if poorly served by his old-age makeup) becomes both the most compelling and borderline-silly thing here, fueled by a nervous discretion that seems equal parts Black’s interest and Eastwood’s discomfort. While you might think the directors polar opposites in many ways, the movie J. Edgar ultimately recalls most is Oliver Stone’s 1995 Nixon: both ambitiously, rather sympathetically grapple with still-warm dead gorgons and lose, filmmaker and lead performance alike laboring admirably to intelligent yet curiously stilted effect. (2:17) (Harvey)
*Melancholia Lars von Trier is a filmmaker so fond of courting controversy it’s like he does it in spite of himself — his rambling comments about Hitler (“I’m a Nazi”) were enough to get him banned from the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where Melancholia had its debut (and star Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress). Oops. Maybe after the (here’s that word again) controversy that accompanied 2009’s Antichrist, von Trier felt like he needed a shocking context for his more mellow latest. Pity that, for Melancholia is one of his strongest, most thoughtful works to date. Split into two parts, the film follows first the opulent, disastrous, never-ending wedding reception of Justine (Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), held at a lavish estate owned by John (Kiefer Sutherland), the tweedy husband of Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Amid the turmoil of arguments (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling as Justine and Claire’s divorced parents), pushy guests (Stellan Skarsgard as Justine’s boss), livid wedding planner (Udo Kier, amazing), and hurt feelings (Michael is the least-wanted groom since Kris Humphries), it’s clear that something is wrong with Justine beyond just marital jitters. The film’s second half begins an unspecified amount of time later, as Claire talks her severely depressed, near-catatonic sister into moving into John’s mansion. As Justine mopes, it’s revealed that a small planet, Melancholia — glimpsed in Melancholia‘s Wagner-scored opening overture — is set to pass perilously close to Earth. John, an amateur astronomer, is thrilled; Claire, fearful for her young son’s future and goaded into high anxiety by internet doomsayers, is convinced the planets will collide, no matter what John says. Since Justine (apparently von Trier’s stand-in for himself) is convinced that the world’s an irredeemably evil place, she takes the news with a shrug. Von Trier’s vision of the apocalypse is somber and surprisingly poetic; Dunst and Gainsbourg do outstanding work as polar-opposite sisters whose very different reactions to impending disaster are equally extreme. (2:15) (Eddy)
Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) (Harvey)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol No world landmark (the Kremlin, the Burj Khalifia) is too iconic and/or freaking tall for uber-adrenalized Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his team (Jeremy Renner, Paula Patton, Simon “Comic Relief” Pegg) to infiltrate, climb, assume false identities in, use as a home base for unleashing futuristic spy technology that seems almost plausible (with the help of lots of iPads), race a BMW through, etc. One kind of gets the sense that Cruise and company sat down with a piece of paper and were like, “What stunts haven’t we done before, and how many of them can I do with my shirt off?” Celebrated animation director Brad Bird (2004’s The Incredibles) is right at home with Ghost Protocol as his first live-action effort — the film’s plot (set in the present day, it involves a positively vintage blend of Russians and nukes) and even its unmemorable villain take a back seat to Cruise’s secret-agent shenanigans, most of which take the form of a crazy plan that must be altered at the last minute, resulting in an even crazier plan, which must be implemented despite the sudden appearance of yet another ludicrously daunting obstacle, like, say, a howling sandstorm. For maximum big dumb fun, make sure you catch the IMAX version. A warning, though: any time the movie screeches to a halt to explore emotions or attempt characterization … zzz. (2:13) (Eddy)
The Muppets Of course The Muppets is a movie appropriate for small fry, with a furry cast (supplemented by human co-stars Jason Segel and Amy Adams) cracking wise and conveying broad themes about the importance of friendship, self-confidence, and keeping dreams alive despite sabotage attempts by sleazy oil tycoons (Chris Cooper, comically evil in the grand Muppet-villain tradition). But the true target seems to be adults who grew up watching The Muppet Show and the earliest Muppet movies (1999’s Muppets from Space doesn’t count); the “getting the gang back together” sequence takes up much of the film’s first half, followed by a familiar rendition of “let’s put on a show” in the second. Interwoven are constant reminders of how the Muppets’ brand of humor — including Fozzie Bear’s corny stand-up bits — is a comforting throwback to simpler times, even with a barrage of celeb cameos and contemporary gags (chickens clucking a Cee-Lo Green tune — I think you can guess which one). Co-writer Segal pays appropriate homage to the late Jim Henson’s merry creations, but it remains to be seen if The Muppets will usher in a new generation of fans, or simply serve as nostalgia fodder for grown-ups like, uh, me, who may or may not totally still own a copy of Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life. (1:38) (Eddy)
My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is “well-rounded” in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and “magical” Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) (Harvey)
New Year’s Eve (1:58)
*Pariah A teenage girl stands stock-still in a dark nightclub, gazing with desire and fear at the half-naked female dancers on the stage. Later, riding home on the bus, she slowly removes the layers of butch that held her together in the club, stripping down to some version of the person her parents need to see when she walks in the door. Nearly wordlessly, the opening scenes of Dee Rees’s Pariah poignantly depict the embattled internal life of Alike (Adepero Oduye), a 17-year-old African American girl living in Brooklyn with her family and struggling both to be seen as she is and to determine what that might look like. The battles are being waged externally, too, between Alike’s adoring father (Charles Parnell), living in willful ignorance, and angry, rigid mother (Kim Wayans), desperately enforcing a feminine dress code and steering Alike away from openly butch friend Laura (Pernell Walker). Rees’ script beautifully conveys a household of landmines and chasms, which widen as husband and wife and daughter struggle and fail to communicate, asking the wrong questions, fearfully skirting the truth about Alike’s sexuality and her parents’ crumbling marriage. And the world outside proves full of romantic pitfalls and the tensions of longtime friendship and peer pressure. The poems in which the talented Alike takes solace and makes her way toward a more truthful existence are beautiful, but at a certain point the lyricism overtakes the film, forcing an ending that is tidy but less than satisfying. (1:26) (Rapoport)
*Shame It’s been a big 2011 for Michael Fassbender, with Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and A Dangerous Method raising his profile from art-house standout to legit movie star (of the “movie stars who can also act” variety). Shame may only reach one-zillionth of X-Men‘s audience due to its NC-17 rating, but this re-teaming with Hunger (2008) director Steve McQueen is Fassbender’s highest achievement to date. He plays Brandon, a New Yorker whose life is tightly calibrated to enable a raging sex addiction within an otherwise sterile existence, including an undefined corporate job and a spartan (yet expensive-looking) apartment. When brash, needy, messy younger sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan, speaking of actors having banner years) shows up, yakking her life all over his, chaos results. Shame is a movie that unfolds in subtle details and oversized actions, with artful direction despite its oft-salacious content. If scattered moments seem forced (loopy Cissy’s sudden transformation, for one scene, into a classy jazz singer), the emotions — particularly the titular one — never feel less than real and raw. (1:39) (Eddy)
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows Maybe Guy Ritchie should’ve quit while he was ahead. Thanks to strong performances from Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, the British director’s first Holmes flick proved surprisingly fun. Two years later, it’s clear that Ritchie’s well of creatitivity has run dry. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is cliched and overlong, burying a few good ideas under an avalanche of tired action movie stalwarts gone steampunk. To be fair, the set design and art direction are still sumptuous, creating a hyperbolic, detailed vision of Victorian Europe. New cast additions Jared Harris (as Moriarty, maliciously polite) and Stephen Fry (as Mycroft, eccentric and nude) do well with limited material. Noomi Rapace, playing a helpful gypsy, is superfluous. Downey Jr. and Law are still game for some amusing PG-13 homoeroticism, but it’s the former’s disinterested performance that ensures the movie’s downfall. Forced to make do without witty quips or interesting deductions, the Holmes of A Game of Shadows is part bruiser, part buffoon. The game’s a flop, Watson. (2:09) (Ben Richardson)
The Sitter Which lovable schlub do you identify with more — Zach Galifianakis or Jonah Hill? Galiafiankias was already a full-blown standup-of-sorts talent before he broke into the cineplexes, but Hill — son of Richard Feldstein, account to rockers such as Metallica — seems like a natural talent of the kind that wasn’t buffed and bruised onstage, but embodies a kind of Apatow-like organic funniness untied to one-liners and conventional shtick. In a way that musicians like his father’s clients might appreciate, he riffs well, and that talent serves him pretty well in The Sitter, which the actor has described as a mash-up of Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and After Hours (1985), only more punk rock. It’s actually more hip-hop pop, as filtered through a hapless but smartypants college drop-out and pitched to his 20-something peer group rather than the rug rats, but who’s sweatin’? As our tale opens, Noah (Hill) is not-so-busy failing to launch, living with his lovelorn mom, when he gets roped into sitting her pal’s kids as a good deed. The little monsters (Max Records, Landry Bender, and Kevin Hernandez) need a dose of harsh reality, and surprise, Noah is prepared to give it to them, when he goes on a drug run for his bad girlfriend (Ari Graynor). Hill does well with what he’s got to work with, as do such sketched-out figures like Sam Rockwell’s oddball gay dealer, who seems clearly derived from Alfred Molina’s character in Boogie Nights (1997), and though this effort never quite transcends its obvious sound-bite inspirations (and makes sure everyone feels far too good at the end), it delivers some cute-crass pleasure for just a brief sitting. (1:21) (Chun)
The Skin I Live In I’d like to think that Pedro Almodóvar is too far along in his frequently-celebrated career to be having a midlife crisis, but all the classic signs are on display in his flashy, disjointed new thriller. Still mourning the death of his burn victim wife and removed from his psychologically disturbed daughter, brilliant-but-ethically compromised plastic surgeon Robert (played with smoldering creepiness by former Almodóvar heartthrob Antonio Banderas) throws himself into developing a new injury-resistant form of prosthetic skin, testing it on his mysterious live-in guinea pig, Vera (the gorgeous Elena Anaya, whose every curve is on view thanks to an après-ski-ready body suit). Eventually, all hell breaks loose, as does Vera, whose back story, as we find out, owes equally to 1960’s Eyes Without a Face and perhaps one of the Saw films. And that’s not even the half of it — to fully recount every sharp turn, digression and MacGuffin thrown at us would take the entirety of this review. That’s not news for Almodóvar, though. Much like Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him, Almodóvar’s métier is melodrama, as refracted through a gay cinephile’s recuperative affections. His strength as a filmmaker is to keep us emotionally tethered to the story he’s telling, amidst all the allusions, sex changes and plot twists torn straight from a telenovela. The real shame of The Skin I Live In is that so much happens that you don’t actually have time to care much about any of it. Although its many surfaces are beautiful to behold (thanks largely to cinematographer José Luis Alcaine), The Skin I Live In ultimately lacks a key muscle: a heart. (1:57) (Sussman)
*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomas Alfredson (2008’s Let the Right One In) directs from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan’s sterling adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy vs. spy tale, with Gary Oldman making the role of George Smiley (famously embodied by Alec Guinness in the 1979 miniseries) completely his own. Your complete attention is demanded, and deserved, by this tale of a Cold War-era, recently retired MI6 agent (Oldman) pressed back into service at “the Circus” to ferret out a Soviet mole. Building off Oldman’s masterful, understated performance, Alfredson layers intrigue and an attention to weird details (a fly buzzing around a car, the sound of toast being scraped with butter) that heighten the film’s deceptively beige 1970s palette. With espionage-movie trappings galore (safe houses, code machines), a returned-to flashback to a surreal office Christmas party, and bang-on supporting performances by John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and the suddenly ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, Tinker Tailor epitomizes rule one of filmmaking: show me, don’t tell me. A movie that assumes its audience isn’t completely brain-dead is cause for celebration and multiple viewings — not to mention a place among the year’s best. (2:07) (Eddy)
*Tomboy In her second feature, French filmmaker Céline Sciamma (2007’s Water Lilies) depicts the brave and possibly perilous gender experimentations of a 10-year-old girl. Laure (Zoé Héran) moves with her family to a new town, falls in with the neighborhood gang during the summer vacation, and takes the stranger-comes-to-town opportunity to adopt a new, male persona, Mikael, a leap of faith we see her consider for a moment before jumping, eyes open. Watching Mikael quietly observe and then pick up the rough mannerisms and posturing of his new peers, while negotiating a shy romance with Lisa (Jeanne Disson), the sole female member of the gang, is to shift from amazement to amusement to anxiety and back again. As the children play games in the woods and roughhouse on a raft in the water and use a round of Truth or Dare to inspect their relationships to one another, all far from the eyes of the adults on the film’s periphery, Mikael takes greater and greater risks to inhabit an identity that he is constructing as he goes, and that is doomed to be demolished sooner, via accidental discovery, or later, when fall comes and the children march off to school together. All of this is superbly handled by Sciamma, who gently guides her largely nonprofessional young cast through the material without forcing them into a single precocious situation or speech. The result is a sweet, delicate story with a steady undercurrent of dread, as we wait for summer’s end and hope for the best and imagine the worst. (1:22) (Rapoport)
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part One Some may have found Robert Pattinson’s stalker-suitor Edward Cullen sufficiently creepy (fits of overprotective rage, flirtatious comments about his new girlfriend’s lip-smackingly narcotic blood) in 2008’s first installment of the Twilight franchise. And nothing much in 2009’s New Moon (suicide attempt) or 2010’s Eclipse (jealous fits, poor communication) strongly suggested he was LTR material, to say nothing of marriage for all eternity. But Twilight 3.5 is where things in the land of near-constant cloud cover and perpetually shirtless adolescent werewolves go seriously off the rails — starting with the post-graduation teen nuptials of bloodsucker Edward and his tasty-smelling human bride, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), and ramping up considerably when it turns out that Edward’s undead sperm are, inexplicably, still viable for baby-making. One of the film’s only sensible lines is uttered at the wedding by high school frenemy Jessica (Anna Kendrick), who snidely wonders whether Bella is starting to show. Of course not, in this Mormon-made tale, directed by Bill Condon (1998’s Gods and Monsters, 2004’s Kinsey). And while Bella’s dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), seems slightly more disgruntled than usual, no one other than lovesick werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) seems to question the wisdom of this shotgun-free leap from high school to honeymoon. The latter, however, after a few awkward allusions to rough sex, is soon over, and Bella does indeed start showing. Suffice it to say, it’s not one of those pregnancies that make your skin glow and your hair more lustrous. What follows is like a PSA warning against vampire-bleeder cohabitation, and one wonders if even the staunchest members of Team Edward will flinch, or adjust their stance of dewy-eyed appreciation. (1:57) (Rapoport)
*War Horse If the idea of watching heroic horses getting slaughtered amid the brutal trench warfare of World War I fills your heart with disgust, then you might want to applaud Steven Spielberg and his relatively sensitive touch with that material in the heartrending War Horse. The PG-13 rating also gives you some idea that the director will be hewing to the movie’s origins as a children’s book. Spielberg paints this tale about loss of innocence, be it in the fields of the farm or the battle, in broad strokes, but here, you might feel a bit less manipulated by his prowess as a crowd-pleasing storyteller, less conscious about the legacy he draws on, and more immersed in a story that stays as close as it can to its animal protagonist’s point of view, short of pulling a Mr. Ed. War Horse opens with Joey’s birth and follows him as he’s sold to a struggling English farm run by traumatized war veteran Ted (Peter Mullan), his spunky wife Rose (Emily Watson), and his animal-loving son Albert (Jeremy Irvine). Circumstance — and an unyielding landlord (David Thewlis) — sends Joey off to the so-called Great War, first into the care of an honorable captain (Tom Hiddleston), later a French girl (Celine Buckens), and worst, into the arms of the German enemy, where he toils as a disposable beast of burden charged with hauling the literal machines of war uphill. Spielberg shields viewers both young and old from the more explicit horrors, though gracefully imparts war’s terrors, sending fresh chills through a viewer when, for instance, a child riding a horse disappears over a ridge and fails to return. No one’s immune from tears, and you have to wonder how much healing is actually possible at War Horse‘s conclusion, despite its stylized, symbolism-laden beauty. Nonetheless cinephiles will glean a certain pleasure from images that clearly nod to the blood-red skies of Gone With the Wind (1939), the ominous deep focus of Orson Wells, and the too-bright Technicolor clarity-slash-artifice of National Velvet (1944). (2:26) (Chun)
We Bought A Zoo “If you could choose between animals or humans or animals, which would you choose?” is a standard question among passionate critter lovers, and Cameron Crowe and company go out of their way to outline which side of the divide they stand on. The result won’t please animal-centric fans of, say, Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Reporter Benjamin Mee (Matt Damon) has just lost his beloved wife and is so overwhelmed by all the solo dad time he’s had with his two cute kids, Dylan (Colin Ford) and Rosie (Maggie Elizabeth Jones), that he’s ready to do something rash. Despite the advice of his brother (Thomas Haden Church), he quits his newspaper job and throws his lot in with the ultimate child’s amusement: he buys a ramshackle zoo in the boonies and tries his darnedest to fix it. Coming with the property is the fetching if brusque zookeeper Kelly (Scarlett Johansson, slightly bushier of eyebrow — read: homelier — than usual) and a mixed bag of kooky workers (including Elle Fanning and Crowe fave Patrick Fugit). The challenge for Ben is to get the zoo up to speed, with zero previous experience and limited lucre. Unfortunately Crowe takes the human vs. animal choice to heart and errs on the side of the humanoids: there’s way too few animals here and far too little about the zoo itself. Much like an overbearing zookeeper, the filmmaker protects us from this semi-tame kingdom, when really a viewer wants to know is, when are we going to get more stories about the animals? Can we have a real tour of the grounds? Even the comic efforts of Haden Church and J.B. Smoove as Ben’s realtor aren’t enough to whisk away one’s impatience (or the unsettling feeling that Ben’s affinity for a elderly ailing tiger will end with an SF Zoo-style arm removal) with all these damn people standing between us and the creatures, like a crowd of gawkers hogging the view of the lions. (2:03) (Chun)
*Young Adult We first meet Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) passed out next to last night’s bar pickup, whose name she won’t remember upon waking. You get the feeling this scenario happens a lot to Mavis — she’s the aging Manhattan model who seems like a trophy until the guy realizes she’s an even bigger asshole than he is. Plus, she’s in Minneapolis, on a house-grade scotch budget, where the denizens of the Midwestern home town she’s long abandoned assume she’s living a relatively glittering existence as swinging single and published author (albeit ghost author, of a petering-out tween fiction franchise). But no, her life is empty. Save your sympathy, however — Mavis might feel she’s missing something, but her consumerist values and incredible selfishness aren’t going to be sacrificed in finding it. After getting a courtesy baby announcement from old boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson), she makes a determination as arbitrary as it is adamant: they were always meant to be together, and she needs to reclaim him so they can re-live their glory as King Jock and Queen Bitch of high school. Never mind that Buddy is quite happy where he is — let alone that new baby, and a wife (Elizabeth Reaser) less glam but cooler than Mavis will ever be. Acting as her confidant on this kamikaze mission is ex-classmate Matt (Patton Oswalt), who wants to reverse time about two decades for very different reasons. This reunion for the Juno (2007) duo of director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody puts the latter’s facile wit to more complex, mature, organic use — though this ruthless yet quiet black character comedy is no uptempo crowd-pleaser. Rather, it’s an insidious, incisive commentary on such entertainments, as well as on juvie fiction like Sweet Valley High, whose adaptation is what Cody was developing before this tangent trumped it. It’s a surprisingly nervy movie, more like a 20-years-later sequel to Heathers (1988) than to Juno. (1:34) (Harvey)
Film Listings
Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.
OPENING
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-wrecked Yep, another one. (1:27)
Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey Documentary about puppeteer Kevin Clash, currently living his lifelong dream as the man behind one of the most popular Sesame Street characters. (1:25) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.
A Dangerous Method Cool and chatty (unsurprisingly, given its subject matter and the fact that it’s based on a play and a novel), David Cronenberg’s latest begins in 1904 Zurich as a shrieking patient (Keira Knightley) is escorted into the care of psychiatrist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Dr. Jung, an admirer of Sigmund Freud, tests the “talking cure” on the woman, who turns out to be the fiercely intelligent and conveniently beautiful Sabina Spielrein. An attraction, both intellectual and sexual, soon develops, no matter that Jung is Sabina’s doctor, or that he happens to be married to a prim wife whose family wealth keeps him in boats and lake houses. Meanwhile, Jung and Freud (an excellent Viggo Mortensen) begin corresponding, eventually meeting and forming a friendship that’s tested first when Sabina comes between them, and later when Jung expresses a growing interest in fringe pursuits like parapsychology. The scenes between Freud and Jung are A Dangerous Method‘s most intriguing — save those brief few involving Vincent Cassel as a doctor-turned-patient who advises Jung to “never repress anything” — but the film is mostly concerned with Jung’s various Sabina-related dramas. Pity that this is a tightly-wound Fassbender’s least dynamic performance of the year, and that Knightley, way over the top in Sabina’s hysterical scenes, telegraphs “casting mistake” from the get-go. (1:39) Embarcadero. (Eddy)
Footprints The title of this low-budget show biz fable refers to the imprints (aren’t they mostly hand prints, though?) left in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre by stars past, present, and sometimes forgotten. Daisy (Sybil Temtchine) wakes up on Doris Day’s piece of sidewalk, unsure of who she is or how she got there. A cast of Hollywood Boulevard denizens, all of whom are suspiciously friendly and non-creepy, pitch in to help the plaintive gal remember her identity: the chick who plays Catwoman for photo-snapping tourists, the Scientology recruiter (really!), the kindly old gentleman who directs her to a memorabilia shop (where yet another nice guy works), a pair of wisecracking tour guides, the helpful real-estate broker, the sweet former B-movie goddess. The only sinister presence is a stern-looking guy who appears at random to, uh, look stern; his role in this Twilight Zone-lite tale, as well as Daisy’s purpose, is cleared up by the end of the film’s slender 80 minutes. Distinguished by the attention it pays to old Hollywood landmarks that still lurk beneath the Boulevard’s newly shiny exterior — and a WTF scene where Daisy is mistaken for Mira Sorvino — Footprints is otherwise forgettable. Mulholland Drive (2001) this is not. (1:20) Roxie. (Eddy)
Paul McCartney: The Love We Make It’s easy to dismiss this fairly mundane Albert Maysles documentary following Paul McCartney as he organizes his all-star post-9/11 benefit, the Concert for New York City, in October 2001 — on one level, it comes off as a cheesy glad-hander aspiring to a kind of historic, old-school razzle-dazzle. Just how many celebs and famous faces can pass through the scene, grip and grin, then tug their forelocks in the direction of the king of all rock stars? You might want to make a drinking game of it. But if you stave off the eyeball-glazing boredom that sets in watching McCartney make the rounds at Howard Stern, 60 Minutes, etc., you might find the telling little character nuances that come out in Maysles’ edit intriguing and appreciate the weird balancing act McCartney undertakes — as both the “nice Beatle” and a musician trying put across his music — even as he’s besieged by teary-eyed aging Beatlemaniacs and crazed street folk alike. There’s an edge, a been-there, seen-it-all flicker in those wide, sloping eyes, much as there is in our own peepers, as McCartney makes baseball small talk with his driver, waits on a tardy Dan Rather, and even must listen to Bill Clinton deliver the same self-servicing wisecrack twice, in this mildly interesting glimpse into the continuing, blandly surreal journey of a rock ‘n’ roll survivor. (1:34) Roxie. (Chun)
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows The game is afoot (again) when Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) face arch nemesis Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris). (2:09) Four Star, Marina.
*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomas Alfredson (2008’s Let the Right One In) directs from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan’s sterling adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy vs. spy tale, with Gary Oldman making the role of George Smiley (famously embodied by Alec Guinness in the 1979 miniseries) completely his own. Your complete attention is demanded, and deserved, by this tale of a Cold War-era, recently retired MI6 agent (Oldman) pressed back into service at “the Circus” to ferret out a Soviet mole. Building off Oldman’s masterful, understated performance, Alfredson layers intrigue and an attention to weird details (a fly buzzing around a car, the sound of toast being scraped with butter) that heighten the film’s deceptively beige 1970s palette. With espionage-movie trappings galore (safe houses, code machines), a returned-to flashback to a surreal office Christmas party, and bang-on supporting performances by John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and the suddenly ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, Tinker Tailor epitomizes rule one of filmmaking: show me, don’t tell me. A movie that assumes its audience isn’t completely brain-dead is cause for celebration and multiple viewings — not to mention a place among the year’s best. (2:07) (Eddy)
ONGOING
Arthur Christmas (1:37) 1000 Van Ness.
*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed “not enough” for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) California, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Lumiere. (Chun)
*Eames: The Architect and the Painter Mad Men would boast considerably fewer sublime lines without the design impact of postwar masters Charles and Ray Eames. Touching on only the edges of the wide net cast by the couple and the talented designers at their Venice, Calif., studio, Eames attempts to sum up the genius behind the mid-century modern objets that brought a sophisticated new breed of beauty and glamour to an American middle class. Narrated by James Franco and chock-full of interviews with everyone from grandson Eames Demetrios to director Paul Schrader, this debut feature documentary by Jason Cohn opens on the then-married would-be architect Charles and sidetracked painter Ray meeting and swooning at the Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan, all while working with Eero Saarinen on a prize-winning molded-wood chair for a MOMA competition. Their personal and design lives would remain intertwined forever more — through their landmark furniture designs (who doesn’t drool for that iconic Eames lounge and ottoman, one of many pieces still in production today); their whimsical, curious, and at-times-brilliant films; their exuberant propaganda for the US government and assorted corporations; and even those Mad Men-like indiscretions by the handsome Charles (Cohn drops one bombshell of an interview with a girlfriend). Throughout, in a way that faintly reflects the industrial design work at Apple today, the Eameses made selling out look good — even fun. One only wishes Cohn, who seems to get lost in the output, delved further into the specific furniture designs and films themselves (only 1968’s Powers of Ten is given adequate play), but perhaps that’s all fated to be sketched out for a sequel on the powers of two. (1:24) Balboa. (Chun)
Golf in the Kingdom Golfers, apparently, worship Michael Murphy’s 1971 best-seller Golf in the Kingdom for its explorations of the sport’s more mystical qualities (for context, Murphy also co-founded Big Sur’s Esalen Institute). It’s unlikely there’ll be any new converts via director Susan Streitfeld’s low-budget attempt to translate the cult novel to the big screen — supply your own “sand trap” joke here, but this movie is a mess: murky night scenes, strange editing choices, and pretentious new age dialogue (“Keep asking questions. The best ones don’t have answers!”) that might’ve felt deep on the page, but is hilariously woo woo when spoken aloud. In fact, if you pretend Golf in the Kingdom — the tale of a young American golfer who encounters a meditating, is-it-wisdom-or-is-it-bullshit-spouting teacher during a stopover in Scotland — is a comedy, you’ll be better off. Not as well off as if you just watched Caddyshack (1980) instead, though. (1:26) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)
Le Havre Aki Kaurismäki’s second French-language film (following 1992’s La Vie de Boheme) offers commentary on modern immigration issues wrapped in the gauze of a feel good fairy tale and cozy French provincialism a la Marcel Pagnol. Worried about the health of his hospitalized wife (Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen), veteran layabout and sometime shoe shiner Marcel (Andre Wilms) gets some welcome distraction in coming to the aid of Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), a young African illegally trying to make way to his mother in London while eluding the gendarmes. Marcel’s whole neighborhood of port-town busybodies and industrious émigrés eventually join in the cause, turning Le Havre into a sort of old-folks caper comedy with an incongruously sunny take on a rising European multiculturalism in which there are no real racist xenophobes, just grumps deserving comeuppance. Incongruous because Kaurismäki is, of course, the king of sardonically funny Finnish miserabilism — and while it’s charmed many on the festival circuit, this combination of his usual poker-faced style and feel-good storytelling formula may strike others as an oil-and-water mismatch. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)
Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
The Ides of March Battling it out in the Ohio primaries are two leading Democratic presidential candidates. Filling the role of idealistic upstart new to the national stage — even his poster looks like you-know-who’s Hope one — is Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), who’s running neck-and-neck in the polls with his rival thanks to veteran campaign manager (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and ambitious young press secretary Steven (Ryan Gosling). The latter is so tipped for success that he’s wooed to switch teams by a rival politico’s campaign chief (Paul Giamatti). While he declines, even meeting with a representative from the opposing camp is a dangerous move for Steven, who’s already juggling complex loyalties to various folk including New York Times reporter Ida (Marisa Tomei) and campaign intern Molly (Evan Rachel Wood), who happens to be the daughter of the Democratic National Party chairman. Adapted from Beau Willimon’s acclaimed play Farragut North, Clooney’s fourth directorial feature is assured, expertly played, and full of sharp insider dialogue. (Willimon worked on Howard Dean’s 2004 run for the White House.) It’s all thoroughly engaging — yet what evolves into a thriller of sorts involving blackmail and revenge ultimately seems rather beside the point, as it turns upon an old-school personal morals quandary rather than diving seriously into the corporate, religious, and other special interests that really determine (or at least spin) the issues in today’s political landscape. Though stuffed with up-to-the-moment references, Ides already feels curiously dated. (1:51) SF Center. (Harvey)
Immortals Arrow time (comin’ at ya, in 3D), blood lust, fascinating fascinators, and endless seemingly-CGI-chiseled chests mark this rework of the Theseus myth. Tarsem Singh flattens out the original tale of crazy-busy hero who founded Athens yet seems determined to outdo the Lord of the Rings series with his striking art direction (so chic that at times you feel like you’re in a perfume ad rather than King Hyperion’s torture chamber). As you might expect from the man who made the dreamy, horse-slicing Cell (2000), Immortals is all sensation rather than sense. The proto-superhero here is a peasant (Henry Cavill), trained in secret by Zeus (John Hurt and Luke Evans) and toting a titanic chip on his shoulder when he runs into the power-mad Cretan King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke, struggling to gnash the sleek scenery beneath fleshy bulk and Red Lobster headgear). Hyperion aims to obtain the Epirus Bow — a bit like a magical, preindustrial rocket launcher — to free the Titans, set off a war between the gods, and destroy humanity (contrary to mythology, Hyperion is not a Titan — just another heavyweight grudge holder). To capture the bow, he must find the virgin oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto), massacring his way through Theseus’ village and setting his worst weapon, the Beast, a.k.a. the Minotaur, on the hero. Saving graces amid the gory bluster, which still pays clear tribute to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts, is the vein-bulging passion that Singh invests in the ordinarily perfunctory kill scenes, the avant-garde headdresses and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and the occasional edits that turn on visual rhymes, such as the moment when the intricate mask of a felled minion melts into a seagoing vessel, which are liable to make the audience gasp, or laugh, out loud. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)
In Time Justin Timberlake moves from romantic comedy to social commentary to play Will Salas, a young man from the ghetto living one day at a time. Many 12-steppers may make this claim, but Salas literally is, because in his world, time actually is money and people pay, say, four minutes for a cup of coffee, a couple hours for a bus ride home from work, and years to travel into a time zone where people don’t run from place to place to stay ahead of death. In writer-director Andrew Niccol’s latest piece of speculative cinema, humans are born with a digitized timepiece installed in their forearm and a default sell-by date of 25 years, with one to grow on — though most end up selling theirs off fairly quickly while struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. Time zones have replaced area codes in defining social stature and signaling material wealth, alongside those pesky devices that give the phrase “internal clock” an ominous literality. Niccol also wrote and directed Gattaca (1997) and wrote The Truman Show (1998), two other films in which technological advances have facilitated a merciless, menacing brand of social engineering. In all three, what is most alarming is the through line between a dystopian society and our own, and what is most hopeful is the embattled protagonist’s promises that we don’t have to go down that road. Amanda Seyfried proves convincible as a bored heiress to eons, her father (Vincent Kartheiser) less amenable to Robin Hood-style time banditry. (1:55) Four Star. (Rapoport)
*Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life How remarkable is it that, some 50-plus features along, filmmaker Werner Herzog would become the closest thing to a cinema’s conscience? This time the abyss is much closer to home than the Amazon rainforest or the Kuwaiti oil fields — it lies in the heart of Rick Perry country. What begins as an examination of capital punishment, introduced with an interview with Reverend Richard Lopez, who has accompanied Texas death row inmates to their end, becomes a seeming labyrinth of human tragedy. Coming into focus is the execution of Michael Perry, convicted as a teenager of the murder of a Conroe, Tex., woman, her son, and his friend — all for sake of a red Camaro. Herzog obtains an insightful interview with the inmate, just days before his execution, as well as his cohort Jason Burkett, police, an executioner, and the victims’ family members, in this haunting examination of crime, punishment, and a small town in Texas where so many appear to have gone wrong. So wrong that one might see Into the Abyss as more related to 1977’s Stroszek and its critical albeit compassionate take on American life, than Herzog’s last tone poem about the mysterious artists of 2010’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (and it’s also obviously directly connected to next year’s TV documentary, Death Row). The layered tragedies and the strata of destroyed lives stays with you, as do the documentary’s difficult questions, Herzog’s gentle humanity as an interviewer, and the fascinating characters that don’t quite fit into a more traditional narrative — the Conroe bystander once stabbed with a screwdriver who learned to read in prison, and the dreamy woman impregnated by a killer whose entire doomed family appears to be incarcerated. (1:46) Opera Plaza. (Chun)
J. Edgar The usual polished, sober understatement of Clint Eastwood’s directing style and the highlights-compiling CliffsNotes nature of Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay turn out to be interestingly wrong choices for this biopic about one of the last American century’s most divisive figures. Interesting in that they’re perhaps among the very few who would now dare viewing the late, longtime FBI chief with so much admiration tempered by awareness of his faults — rather than the other way around. After all, Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) strengthened his bureau in ways that, yes, often protected citizens and state, but at what cost? The D.C. native eventually took to frequently “bending” the law, witch-hunting dubious national enemies (he thought the Civil Rights movement our worst threat since the bomb-planting Bolshevik anarchists of half a century earlier), blackmailing personal ones, weakening individual rights against surveillance, hoarding power (he resented the White House’s superior authority), lying publicly, and doing just about anything to heighten his own fame. A movie that internalized and communicated his rising paranoid megalomania (ironically Hoover died during the presidency of Nixon, his equal in that regard) might have stood some chance of making us understand this contradiction-riddled cipher. But J. Edgar is doggedly neutral, almost colorless (literally so, in near-monochrome visual presentation), its weird appreciation of the subject’s perfectionism and stick-to-it-iveness shutting out almost any penetrating insight. (Plus there’s Eastwood’s own by-now-de rigueur soundtrack of quasi-jazz noodling to make what is vivid here seem more dull and polite.) The love that dare not speak its name — or, evidently, risk more than a rare peck on the cheek — between Hoover and right-hand-man/life companion Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, very good if poorly served by his old-age makeup) becomes both the most compelling and borderline-silly thing here, fueled by a nervous discretion that seems equal parts Black’s interest and Eastwood’s discomfort. While you might think the directors polar opposites in many ways, the movie J. Edgar ultimately recalls most is Oliver Stone’s 1995 Nixon: both ambitiously, rather sympathetically grapple with still-warm dead gorgons and lose, filmmaker and lead performance alike laboring admirably to intelligent yet curiously stilted effect. (2:17) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
*Like Crazy Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones) meet near the end of college; after a magical date, they’re ferociously hooked on each other. Trouble is, she’s in Los Angeles on a soon-to-expire student visa — and when she impulsively overstays, then jets home to London for a visit months later, her re-entry to America is stopped cold at LAX. (True love’s no match for homeland security.) An on-and-off long-distance romance ensues, and becomes increasingly strained, even as their respective careers (he makes furniture, she’s a magazine staffer) flourish. Director and co-writer Drake Doremus (2010’s Douchebag) achieves a rare midpoint between gritty mumblecore and shiny Hollywood romance; the characters feel very real and the script ably captures the frustration that settles in when idealized fantasies give way to the messy workings of everyday life. There are some contrivances here — Anna’s love-token gift from Jacob, a bracelet engraved “Patience,” breaks when she’s with another guy — but for the most part, Like Crazy offers an honest portrait of heartbreak. (1:29) Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Four Star. (Harvey)
*Margin Call Think of Margin Call as a Mamet-like, fictitious insider jab at the financial crisis, a novelistic rejoinder to Oscar-winning doc Inside Job (2010). First-time feature director and writer J.C. Chandor shows a deft hand with complex, writerly material, creating a darting dance of smart dialogue and well-etched characters as he sidesteps the hazards of overtheatricality, a.k.a. the crushing, overbearing proscenium. The film opens on a familiar Great Recession scene: lay-off day at an investment bank, marked by HR functionaries calling workers one by one into fishbowl conference rooms. The first victim is the most critical — Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a risk-management staffer who has stumbled on an investment miscalculation that could potentially trigger a Wall Street collapse. On his way out, he passes a drive with his findings to one of his young protégés, Peter (Zachary Quinto), setting off a flash storm over the next 24 hours that will entangle his boss Sam (Kevin Spacey), who’s agonizing over his dying dog while putting up a go-big-or-go-home front; cynical trading manager Will (Paul Bettany); and the firm’s intimidating head (Jeremy Irons), who gets to utter the lines, “Explain to me as you would to a child. Or a Golden Retriever.” Such top-notch players get to really flex their skills here, equipped with Chandor’s spot-on script, which manages to convey the big issues, infuse the numbers with drama and the money managers with humanity, and never talk down to the audience. (1:45) Four Star, Presidio. (Chun)
*Melancholia Lars von Trier is a filmmaker so fond of courting controversy it’s like he does it in spite of himself — his rambling comments about Hitler (“I’m a Nazi”) were enough to get him banned from the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where Melancholia had its debut (and star Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress). Oops. Maybe after the (here’s that word again) controversy that accompanied 2009’s Antichrist, von Trier felt like he needed a shocking context for his more mellow latest. Pity that, for Melancholia is one of his strongest, most thoughtful works to date. Split into two parts, the film follows first the opulent, disastrous, never-ending wedding reception of Justine (Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), held at a lavish estate owned by John (Kiefer Sutherland), the tweedy husband of Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Amid the turmoil of arguments (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling as Justine and Claire’s divorced parents), pushy guests (Stellan Skarsgard as Justine’s boss), livid wedding planner (Udo Kier, amazing), and hurt feelings (Michael is the least-wanted groom since Kris Humphries), it’s clear that something is wrong with Justine beyond just marital jitters. The film’s second half begins an unspecified amount of time later, as Claire talks her severely depressed, near-catatonic sister into moving into John’s mansion. As Justine mopes, it’s revealed that a small planet, Melancholia — glimpsed in Melancholia‘s Wagner-scored opening overture — is set to pass perilously close to Earth. John, an amateur astronomer, is thrilled; Claire, fearful for her young son’s future and goaded into high anxiety by internet doomsayers, is convinced the planets will collide, no matter what John says. Since Justine (apparently von Trier’s stand-in for himself) is convinced that the world’s an irredeemably evil place, she takes the news with a shrug. Von Trier’s vision of the apocalypse is somber and surprisingly poetic; Dunst and Gainsbourg do outstanding work as polar-opposite sisters whose very different reactions to impending disaster are equally extreme. (2:15) Albany, Bridge. (Eddy)
Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Opera Plaza, SF Center, Shattuck. (Harvey)
Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) SF Center. (Chun)
The Muppets Of course The Muppets is a movie appropriate for small fry, with a furry cast (supplemented by human co-stars Jason Segel and Amy Adams) cracking wise and conveying broad themes about the importance of friendship, self-confidence, and keeping dreams alive despite sabotage attempts by sleazy oil tycoons (Chris Cooper, comically evil in the grand Muppet-villain tradition). But the true target seems to be adults who grew up watching The Muppet Show and the earliest Muppet movies (1999’s Muppets from Space doesn’t count); the “getting the gang back together” sequence takes up much of the film’s first half, followed by a familiar rendition of “let’s put on a show” in the second. Interwoven are constant reminders of how the Muppets’ brand of humor — including Fozzie Bear’s corny stand-up bits — is a comforting throwback to simpler times, even with a barrage of celeb cameos and contemporary gags (chickens clucking a Cee-Lo Green tune — I think you can guess which one). Co-writer Segal pays appropriate homage to the late Jim Henson’s merry creations, but it remains to be seen if The Muppets will usher in a new generation of fans, or simply serve as nostalgia fodder for grown-ups like, uh, me, who may or may not totally still own a copy of Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life. (1:38) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)
My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is “well-rounded” in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and “magical” Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) Albany, Clay, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Harvey)
New Year’s Eve (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki.
*Outrage The title definitely works: not only is this the most violent Takeshi Kitano film in a stretch, but the shameless, strangely off-key caricatures, especially that of a corrupt African diplomat, veer into offensiveness. Then again, what isn’t offensive, broadly sketched-out, and nasty about this yakuza crime drama-cum-jet-black comedy concerning a particularly code-less, amoral band of modern-day ronin? Chaos reigns, sucking even the beautiful and the charismatic into its quicksand. Kitano here is stony-faced Otomo, the chief bully for boss Kato (Miura Tomokazu) and underboss Ikemoto (Kunimura Jun). Kato is being screwed with by his own godfather, and must distance himself from ex-con brethren, or “brother,” Murase (Renji Ishibashi), then offend him, and finally do much worse. Otomo and his own crew of tough guys, headed up by the wickedly handsome Mizuno (Kippei Shiina) are charged with enacting the twisted plan, which is nihilistically comical in its Byzantine politics and back-stabbing switchbacks — the U.S. Congress will see much that’s familiar in Outrage‘s gaming of an already-decaying system. The shameless caricature of the mob’s African gambling cohort, which succeeds in making him the only vaguely sympathetic character of the lot, only demonstrates how irredeemable and decadent the so-called system — one filled with criminals obsessed with hierarchy and equally preoccupied with wrecking disorder within a very rotten order — has become, especially in the context of the interracial crime-brethren bonding of Kitano’s Brother (2000), the director’s last yakuza flick. Using Japan’s mafia as a cruel funhouse mirror through which to peer at his culture, Kitano finds much wanting with this, his 15th film, and much like Takashi Miike and his recent 13 Assassins, the filmmaker questions the core Japanese notions of duty, conformity, and loyalty and finds that, much like trickle-down economics, power corrupts from the top down. (1:49) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)
Puss in Boots (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.
*Shame It’s been a big 2011 for Michael Fassbender, with Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and A Dangerous Method raising his profile from art-house standout to legit movie star (of the “movie stars who can also act” variety). Shame may only reach one-zillionth of X-Men‘s audience due to its NC-17 rating, but this re-teaming with Hunger (2008) director Steve McQueen is Fassbender’s highest achievement to date. He plays Brandon, a New Yorker whose life is tightly calibrated to enable a raging sex addiction within an otherwise sterile existence, including an undefined corporate job and a spartan (yet expensive-looking) apartment. When brash, needy, messy younger sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan, speaking of actors having banner years) shows up, yakking her life all over his, chaos results. Shame is a movie that unfolds in subtle details and oversized actions, with artful direction despite its oft-salacious content. If scattered moments seem forced (loopy Cissy’s sudden transformation, for one scene, into a classy jazz singer), the emotions — particularly the titular one — never feel less than real and raw. (1:39) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
The Sitter Which lovable schlub do you identify with more — Zach Galifianakis or Jonah Hill? Galiafiankias was already a full-blown standup-of-sorts talent before he broke into the cineplexes, but Hill — son of Richard Feldstein, account to rockers such as Metallica — seems like a natural talent of the kind that wasn’t buffed and bruised onstage, but embodies a kind of Apatow-like organic funniness untied to one-liners and conventional shtick. In a way that musicians like his father’s clients might appreciate, he riffs well, and that talent serves him pretty well in The Sitter, which the actor has described as a mash-up of Adventures in Babysitting (1987) and After Hours (1985), only more punk rock. It’s actually more hip-hop pop, as filtered through a hapless but smartypants college drop-out and pitched to his 20-something peer group rather than the rug rats, but who’s sweatin’? As our tale opens, Noah (Hill) is not-so-busy failing to launch, living with his lovelorn mom, when he gets roped into sitting her pal’s kids as a good deed. The little monsters (Max Records, Landry Bender, and Kevin Hernandez) need a dose of harsh reality, and surprise, Noah is prepared to give it to them, when he goes on a drug run for his bad girlfriend (Ari Graynor). Hill does well with what he’s got to work with, as do such sketched-out figures like Sam Rockwell’s oddball gay dealer, who seems clearly derived from Alfred Molina’s character in Boogie Nights (1997), and though this effort never quite transcends its obvious sound-bite inspirations (and makes sure everyone feels far too good at the end), it delivers some cute-crass pleasure for just a brief sitting. (1:21) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)
The Skin I Live In I’d like to think that Pedro Almodóvar is too far along in his frequently-celebrated career to be having a midlife crisis, but all the classic signs are on display in his flashy, disjointed new thriller. Still mourning the death of his burn victim wife and removed from his psychologically disturbed daughter, brilliant-but-ethically compromised plastic surgeon Robert (played with smoldering creepiness by former Almodóvar heartthrob Antonio Banderas) throws himself into developing a new injury-resistant form of prosthetic skin, testing it on his mysterious live-in guinea pig, Vera (the gorgeous Elena Anaya, whose every curve is on view thanks to an après-ski-ready body suit). Eventually, all hell breaks loose, as does Vera, whose back story, as we find out, owes equally to 1960’s Eyes Without a Face and perhaps one of the Saw films. And that’s not even the half of it — to fully recount every sharp turn, digression and MacGuffin thrown at us would take the entirety of this review. That’s not news for Almodóvar, though. Much like Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him, Almodóvar’s métier is melodrama, as refracted through a gay cinephile’s recuperative affections. His strength as a filmmaker is to keep us emotionally tethered to the story he’s telling, amidst all the allusions, sex changes and plot twists torn straight from a telenovela. The real shame of The Skin I Live In is that so much happens that you don’t actually have time to care much about any of it. Although its many surfaces are beautiful to behold (thanks largely to cinematographer José Luis Alcaine), The Skin I Live In ultimately lacks a key muscle: a heart. (1:57) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Sussman)
*Sutro’s: The Palace at Land’s End Filmmaker Tom Wyrsch (2008’s Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong and 2009’s Remembering Playland) explores the unique and fascinating history behind San Francisco’s Sutro Baths in his latest project, an enjoyable documentary that covers the stories behind Adolph Sutro, the construction of his swimming pools, and the amazingly diverse, and somewhat strange collection of other attractions that entertained generations of locals that came to Land’s End for amusement. Told through interviews with local historians and residents, the narrative is illustrated with a host of rarely-seen historic photographs, archival film footage, contemporary video, and images of old documents, advertisements and newspapers. The film should appeal not only to older viewers who fondly remember going to Sutro’s as children, and sadly recall it burning down in 1966, but also younger audiences who have wandered through the ruins below the Cliff House and wondered what once stood there. (1:24) Balboa. (Sean McCourt)
*Tomboy In her second feature, French filmmaker Céline Sciamma (2007’s Water Lilies) depicts the brave and possibly perilous gender experimentations of a 10-year-old girl. Laure (Zoé Héran) moves with her family to a new town, falls in with the neighborhood gang during the summer vacation, and takes the stranger-comes-to-town opportunity to adopt a new, male persona, Mikael, a leap of faith we see her consider for a moment before jumping, eyes open. Watching Mikael quietly observe and then pick up the rough mannerisms and posturing of his new peers, while negotiating a shy romance with Lisa (Jeanne Disson), the sole female member of the gang, is to shift from amazement to amusement to anxiety and back again. As the children play games in the woods and roughhouse on a raft in the water and use a round of Truth or Dare to inspect their relationships to one another, all far from the eyes of the adults on the film’s periphery, Mikael takes greater and greater risks to inhabit an identity that he is constructing as he goes, and that is doomed to be demolished sooner, via accidental discovery, or later, when fall comes and the children march off to school together. All of this is superbly handled by Sciamma, who gently guides her largely nonprofessional young cast through the material without forcing them into a single precocious situation or speech. The result is a sweet, delicate story with a steady undercurrent of dread, as we wait for summer’s end and hope for the best and imagine the worst. (1:22) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Rapoport)
Tower Heist The mildest of mysteries drift around the edges of Tower Heist — like, how plausible is Ben Stiller as the blue-collar manager of a tony uptown NYC residence? How is that Eddie Murphy’s face has grown smoother and more seamless with age? And how much heavy lifting goes into an audience member’s suspension of disbelief concerning a certain key theft, dangling umpteen floors above Thanksgiving parade, in the finale? Yet those questions might not to deter those eager to escape into this determinedly undemanding, faintly entertaining Robin Hood-style comedy-thriller. Josh Kovacs (Stiller) is the wildly competent manager of an upscale residence — toadying smoothly and making life run perfectly for his entitled employers — till Bernie Madoff-like penthouse dweller Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is arrested for big-time financial fraud, catching the pension fund of Josh’s staffers in his vortex. After a showy standoff gets the upstanding Josh fired, he assembles a crew of ex-employees Enrique (Michael Peña) and Charlie (Casey Affleck), maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), and foreclosed former resident Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), as well as childhood friend, neighbor, and thief Slide (Murphy). Murphy gets to slink effortlessly through supposed comeback role — is he vital here? Not really. Nevertheless, a few twists and a good-hearted feel for the working-class 99 percent who got screwed by the financial sector make this likely the most likable movie Brett Ratner has made since 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand — provided you can get over those dangles over the yawning gaps in logic. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)
The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) Balboa. (Harvey)
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part One Some may have found Robert Pattinson’s stalker-suitor Edward Cullen sufficiently creepy (fits of overprotective rage, flirtatious comments about his new girlfriend’s lip-smackingly narcotic blood) in 2008’s first installment of the Twilight franchise. And nothing much in 2009’s New Moon (suicide attempt) or 2010’s Eclipse (jealous fits, poor communication) strongly suggested he was LTR material, to say nothing of marriage for all eternity. But Twilight 3.5 is where things in the land of near-constant cloud cover and perpetually shirtless adolescent werewolves go seriously off the rails — starting with the post-graduation teen nuptials of bloodsucker Edward and his tasty-smelling human bride, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), and ramping up considerably when it turns out that Edward’s undead sperm are, inexplicably, still viable for baby-making. One of the film’s only sensible lines is uttered at the wedding by high school frenemy Jessica (Anna Kendrick), who snidely wonders whether Bella is starting to show. Of course not, in this Mormon-made tale, directed by Bill Condon (1998’s Gods and Monsters, 2004’s Kinsey). And while Bella’s dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), seems slightly more disgruntled than usual, no one other than lovesick werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) seems to question the wisdom of this shotgun-free leap from high school to honeymoon. The latter, however, after a few awkward allusions to rough sex, is soon over, and Bella does indeed start showing. Suffice it to say, it’s not one of those pregnancies that make your skin glow and your hair more lustrous. What follows is like a PSA warning against vampire-bleeder cohabitation, and one wonders if even the staunchest members of Team Edward will flinch, or adjust their stance of dewy-eyed appreciation. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)
*Young Adult We first meet Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) passed out next to last night’s bar pickup, whose name she won’t remember upon waking. You get the feeling this scenario happens a lot to Mavis — she’s the aging Manhattan model who seems like a trophy until the guy realizes she’s an even bigger asshole than he is. Plus, she’s in Minneapolis, on a house-grade scotch budget, where the denizens of the Midwestern home town she’s long abandoned assume she’s living a relatively glittering existence as swinging single and published author (albeit ghost author, of a petering-out tween fiction franchise). But no, her life is empty. Save your sympathy, however — Mavis might feel she’s missing something, but her consumerist values and incredible selfishness aren’t going to be sacrificed in finding it. After getting a courtesy baby announcement from old boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson), she makes a determination as arbitrary as it is adamant: they were always meant to be together, and she needs to reclaim him so they can re-live their glory as King Jock and Queen Bitch of high school. Never mind that Buddy is quite happy where he is — let alone that new baby, and a wife (Elizabeth Reaser) less glam but cooler than Mavis will ever be. Acting as her confidant on this kamikaze mission is ex-classmate Matt (Patton Oswalt), who wants to reverse time about two decades for very different reasons. This reunion for the Juno (2007) duo of director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody puts the latter’s facile wit to more complex, mature, organic use — though this ruthless yet quiet black character comedy is no uptempo crowd-pleaser. Rather, it’s an insidious, incisive commentary on such entertainments, as well as on juvie fiction like Sweet Valley High, whose adaptation is what Cody was developing before this tangent trumped it. It’s a surprisingly nervy movie, more like a 20-years-later sequel to Heathers (1988) than to Juno. (1:34) California, Metreon. (Harvey)
Film Listings
Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.
OPENING
Another Happy Day You’d think that if your entire extended family treated you like a waste of space, you’d avoid all unnecessary contact. Seems this strategy never occurred to Lynn (Ellen Barkin), who shows up a few extra days early for her son’s wedding to stay with her aging parents (Ellen Burstyn, George Kennedy) and spend time with her obnoxious sisters (Diana Scarwid, Siobhan Fallon). Furthering the unpleasantries are Lynn’s ex-husband (Thomas Haden Church) and his wife (Demi Moore, in catty Real Housewives mode) and Lynn’s other children, a troubled bunch that includes Kate Bosworth as a self-mutilating waif and Ezra Miller as a depressed, jerky outcast (basically, a milder version of the character he plays, to much greater effect, in the upcoming We Need to Talk About Kevin). No wonder Lynn is a screechy, hysterically-crying mess — “toxic” barely begins to describe the situation. Writer-director Sam Levinson won a Sundance Film Festival award for his script, a fine example of indie-film misery at its most unbearable. (1:55) Balboa. (Eddy)
Golf in the Kingdom Golfers, apparently, worship Michael Murphy’s 1971 best-seller Golf in the Kingdom for its explorations of the sport’s more mystical qualities (for context, Murphy also co-founded Big Sur’s Esalen Institute). It’s unlikely there’ll be any new converts via director Susan Streitfeld’s low-budget attempt to translate the cult novel to the big screen — supply your own “sand trap” joke here, but this movie is a mess: murky night scenes, strange editing choices, and pretentious new age dialogue (“Keep asking questions. The best ones don’t have answers!”) that might’ve felt deep on the page, but is hilariously woo woo when spoken aloud. In fact, if you pretend Golf in the Kingdom — the tale of a young American golfer who encounters a meditating, is-it-wisdom-or-is-it-bullshit-spouting teacher during a stopover in Scotland — is a comedy, you’ll be better off. Not as well off as if you just watched Caddyshack (1980) instead, though. (1:26) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)
Magic to Win The latest from Wilson Yip (2008’s Ip Man) is a fantasy about dueling magicians starring Louis Koo and Raymond Wong. (runtime not available) Metreon.
New Year’s Eve Remember when movies named after holidays were slasher flicks, not cheesy, star-studded rom-coms? (1:58) Presidio.
*Outrage The title definitely works: not only is this the most violent Takeshi Kitano film in a stretch, but the shameless, strangely off-key caricatures, especially that of a corrupt African diplomat, veer into offensiveness. Then again, what isn’t offensive, broadly sketched-out, and nasty about this yakuza crime drama-cum-jet-black comedy concerning a particularly code-less, amoral band of modern-day ronin? Chaos reigns, sucking even the beautiful and the charismatic into its quicksand. Kitano here is stony-faced Otomo, the chief bully for boss Kato (Miura Tomokazu) and underboss Ikemoto (Kunimura Jun). Kato is being screwed with by his own godfather, and must distance himself from ex-con brethren, or “brother,” Murase (Renji Ishibashi), then offend him, and finally do much worse. Otomo and his own crew of tough guys, headed up by the wickedly handsome Mizuno (Kippei Shiina) are charged with enacting the twisted plan, which is nihilistically comical in its Byzantine politics and back-stabbing switchbacks — the U.S. Congress will see much that’s familiar in Outrage‘s gaming of an already-decaying system. The shameless caricature of the mob’s African gambling cohort, which succeeds in making him the only vaguely sympathetic character of the lot, only demonstrates how irredeemable and decadent the so-called system — one filled with criminals obsessed with hierarchy and equally preoccupied with wrecking disorder within a very rotten order — has become, especially in the context of the interracial crime-brethren bonding of Kitano’s Brother (2000), the director’s last yakuza flick. Using Japan’s mafia as a cruel funhouse mirror through which to peer at his culture, Kitano finds much wanting with this, his 15th film, and much like Takashi Miike and his recent 13 Assassins, the filmmaker questions the core Japanese notions of duty, conformity, and loyalty and finds that, much like trickle-down economics, power corrupts from the top down. (1:49) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)
*Saxon: Heavy Metal Thunder — The Movie At last, the gritty NWOBHM band gets its Behind the Music — except two hours long and created, tellingly, with fan-raised funding. What Craig Hooper’s doc lacks in technical slickness (for U.S. audiences, subtitles might’ve been a good idea) it more than makes up for in enthusiasm, not to mention thoroughness; though the band has gone through countless members in its 30-plus years, nearly all are interviewed at length, especially singer Biff Byford, who’s still part of the band, and bassist Steve “Dobby” Dawson, who is not. Though Saxon never quite conquered America — despite its best efforts, some of which are kind of regrettable in hindsight — the band enjoyed considerable success in Europe and was on the front lines for some of metal’s most exciting years, storming stages with Motörhead on the Bomber tour and mixing it up with a very young Metallica. Though the band’s overall story arc is a familiar one, anecdotes and asides (and the addressing of those “We inspired Spinal Tap” rumors!) make Saxon essential viewing for any metalhead. (2:00) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Eddy)
The Sitter Indie darling-turned-stoner auteur David Gordon Green (Your Highness) directs Jonah Hill in this R-rated babysitting comedy. (1:21) Shattuck.
A Warrior’s Heart This movie stars secondary Twilight dreamboats Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene, and its tagline is “In the twilight of their youth … her love gave him the courage to win.” Ah, I see what you did there, A Warrior’s Heart. Very subtle. An improbably buff, infuriatingly cocky lacrosse player (Lutz, who is 26 and in no way resembles a high schooler) wreaks havoc on and off the field, with anger management issues that go totally Krakatoa after his father is killed in Iraq. (Not a spoiler. Like I said, this movie is hardly subtle.) Dad’s gruff-yet-kind military buddy (Adam Beach) takes the troubled lad under his wing, spiriting him from jail to a work camp run by Native Americans. Did you know, as A Warrior’s Heart explains earnestly and often, that Native Americans invented lacrosse? Lessons are learned, the comely daughter (Greene) of the distrustful lacrosse coach (William Mapother) is wooed, and … well, I’ll let you figure out who scores the deciding goal in the national championship game. (1:38) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)
*Young Adult We first meet Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) passed out next to last night’s bar pickup, whose name she won’t remember upon waking. You get the feeling this scenario happens a lot to Mavis — she’s the aging Manhattan model who seems like a trophy until the guy realizes she’s an even bigger asshole than he is. Plus, she’s in Minneapolis, on a house-grade scotch budget, where the denizens of the Midwestern home town she’s long abandoned assume she’s living a relatively glittering existence as swinging single and published author (albeit ghost author, of a petering-out tween fiction franchise). But no, her life is empty. Save your sympathy, however — Mavis might feel she’s missing something, but her consumerist values and incredible selfishness aren’t going to be sacrificed in finding it. After getting a courtesy baby announcement from old boyfriend Buddy (Patrick Wilson), she makes a determination as arbitrary as it is adamant: they were always meant to be together, and she needs to reclaim him so they can re-live their glory as King Jock and Queen Bitch of high school. Never mind that Buddy is quite happy where he is — let alone that new baby, and a wife (Elizabeth Reaser) less glam but cooler than Mavis will ever be. Acting as her confidant on this kamikaze mission is ex-classmate Matt (Patton Oswalt), who wants to reverse time about two decades for very different reasons. This reunion for the Juno (2007) duo of director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody puts the latter’s facile wit to more complex, mature, organic use — though this ruthless yet quiet black character comedy is no uptempo crowd-pleaser. Rather, it’s an insidious, incisive commentary on such entertainments, as well as on juvie fiction like Sweet Valley High, whose adaptation is what Cody was developing before this tangent trumped it. It’s a surprisingly nervy movie, more like a 20-years-later sequel to Heathers (1988) than to Juno. (1:34) (Harvey)
ONGOING
Answers to Nothing The first scene is of Dane Cook getting a blow job. If you don’t run screaming from the room after that, you’ll be mildly rewarded by this ensemble drama tracing the lives of several Los Angeles residents trapped in various states of quiet desperation. At least director and co-writer Matthew Leutwyler (2010’s The River Why) has the sense to cast Cook (2007’s Good Luck Chuck) as a character you’re supposed to hate; he’s a therapist who’s cheating on his trying-to-get-pregnant wife (Elizabeth Mitchell) with a hipster singer (Aja Volkman) inexplicably hung up on a married dude who treats her like an afterthought. Barbara Hershey has a few understated scenes as Cook’s lonely mother; Julie Benz plays his sister-in-law, a no-nonsense detective investigating the disappearance of a young girl. Probably the most unexpected plot thread — in a film that remains more or less identical to all others cast in the Crash (2004) mode — follows a guilt-ridden woman (Miranda Bailey) determined to help her paralyzed brother complete a marathon. These characters could’ve been the whole movie, no blow job required. (2:03) Metreon. (Eddy)
Arthur Christmas (1:37) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.
*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed “not enough” for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) California, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Lumiere. (Chun)
*Eames: The Architect and the Painter Mad Men would boast considerably fewer sublime lines without the design impact of postwar masters Charles and Ray Eames. Touching on only the edges of the wide net cast by the couple and the talented designers at their Venice, Calif., studio, Eames attempts to sum up the genius behind the mid-century modern objets that brought a sophisticated new breed of beauty and glamour to an American middle class. Narrated by James Franco and chock-full of interviews with everyone from grandson Eames Demetrios to director Paul Schrader, this debut feature documentary by Jason Cohn opens on the then-married would-be architect Charles and sidetracked painter Ray meeting and swooning at the Cranbook Academy of Art in Michigan, all while working with Eero Saarinen on a prize-winning molded-wood chair for a MOMA competition. Their personal and design lives would remain intertwined forever more — through their landmark furniture designs (who doesn’t drool for that iconic Eames lounge and ottoman, one of many pieces still in production today); their whimsical, curious, and at-times-brilliant films; their exuberant propaganda for the US government and assorted corporations; and even those Mad Men-like indiscretions by the handsome Charles (Cohn drops one bombshell of an interview with a girlfriend). Throughout, in a way that faintly reflects the industrial design work at Apple today, the Eameses made selling out look good — even fun. One only wishes Cohn, who seems to get lost in the output, delved further into the specific furniture designs and films themselves (only 1968’s Powers of Ten is given adequate play), but perhaps that’s all fated to be sketched out for a sequel on the powers of two. (1:24) Smith Rafael. (Chun)
Happy Feet Two (1:40) 1000 Van Ness.
Le Havre Aki Kaurismäki’s second French-language film (following 1992’s La Vie de Boheme) offers commentary on modern immigration issues wrapped in the gauze of a feel good fairy tale and cozy French provincialism a la Marcel Pagnol. Worried about the health of his hospitalized wife (Kaurismäki regular Kati Outinen), veteran layabout and sometime shoe shiner Marcel (Andre Wilms) gets some welcome distraction in coming to the aid of Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), a young African illegally trying to make way to his mother in London while eluding the gendarmes. Marcel’s whole neighborhood of port-town busybodies and industrious émigrés eventually join in the cause, turning Le Havre into a sort of old-folks caper comedy with an incongruously sunny take on a rising European multiculturalism in which there are no real racist xenophobes, just grumps deserving comeuppance. Incongruous because Kaurismäki is, of course, the king of sardonically funny Finnish miserabilism — and while it’s charmed many on the festival circuit, this combination of his usual poker-faced style and feel-good storytelling formula may strike others as an oil-and-water mismatch. (1:43) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)
House of Boys Amsterdam, 1984: a hot young thing named Frank (Layke Anderson) stumbles out of a rainstorm and into the House of Boys, an only-in-the-movies establishment with a cabaret stage downstairs and a boarding house of sorts for taut-torso’d dancers upstairs. At its helm are Cher … er, Madame (Udo Kier, dazzling in drag), who tut-tuts and dispenses world-weary advice, and earthy mother figure Emma (Eleanor David). As Frank finds himself onstage and off — he’s run away from a middle-class home with a father who insists he remove the “I Heart Boys” bumper sticker from his car — he falls in love with go-go star Jake (Benn Northover). But by the film’s third act, House of Boys’ dance-club melodrama has given way to a far less glitter-infused look at the frightening early days of the AIDS epidemic, with Stephen Fry playing a kindly doctor who snarls when he sees Ronald Reagan on TV. Director and co-writer Jean-Claude Schlim’s film shifts wildly in tone, dips its toes in narrative cheese, and contains lines like “You didn’t have sex — you made love” and “Don’t dream your life, live your dreams!”, but it’s vividly atmospheric throughout, and unexpectedly heartfelt at the finish. (1:53) Roxie. (Eddy)
Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
Immortals Arrow time (comin’ at ya, in 3D), blood lust, fascinating fascinators, and endless seemingly-CGI-chiseled chests mark this rework of the Theseus myth. Tarsem Singh flattens out the original tale of crazy-busy hero who founded Athens yet seems determined to outdo the Lord of the Rings series with his striking art direction (so chic that at times you feel like you’re in a perfume ad rather than King Hyperion’s torture chamber). As you might expect from the man who made the dreamy, horse-slicing Cell (2000), Immortals is all sensation rather than sense. The proto-superhero here is a peasant (Henry Cavill), trained in secret by Zeus (John Hurt and Luke Evans) and toting a titanic chip on his shoulder when he runs into the power-mad Cretan King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke, struggling to gnash the sleek scenery beneath fleshy bulk and Red Lobster headgear). Hyperion aims to obtain the Epirus Bow — a bit like a magical, preindustrial rocket launcher — to free the Titans, set off a war between the gods, and destroy humanity (contrary to mythology, Hyperion is not a Titan — just another heavyweight grudge holder). To capture the bow, he must find the virgin oracle Phaedra (Freida Pinto), massacring his way through Theseus’ village and setting his worst weapon, the Beast, a.k.a. the Minotaur, on the hero. Saving graces amid the gory bluster, which still pays clear tribute to 1963’s Jason and the Argonauts, is the vein-bulging passion that Singh invests in the ordinarily perfunctory kill scenes, the avant-garde headdresses and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and the occasional edits that turn on visual rhymes, such as the moment when the intricate mask of a felled minion melts into a seagoing vessel, which are liable to make the audience gasp, or laugh, out loud. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)
In Time Justin Timberlake moves from romantic comedy to social commentary to play Will Salas, a young man from the ghetto living one day at a time. Many 12-steppers may make this claim, but Salas literally is, because in his world, time actually is money and people pay, say, four minutes for a cup of coffee, a couple hours for a bus ride home from work, and years to travel into a time zone where people don’t run from place to place to stay ahead of death. In writer-director Andrew Niccol’s latest piece of speculative cinema, humans are born with a digitized timepiece installed in their forearm and a default sell-by date of 25 years, with one to grow on — though most end up selling theirs off fairly quickly while struggling to pay rent and put food on the table. Time zones have replaced area codes in defining social stature and signaling material wealth, alongside those pesky devices that give the phrase “internal clock” an ominous literality. Niccol also wrote and directed Gattaca (1997) and wrote The Truman Show (1998), two other films in which technological advances have facilitated a merciless, menacing brand of social engineering. In all three, what is most alarming is the through line between a dystopian society and our own, and what is most hopeful is the embattled protagonist’s promises that we don’t have to go down that road. Amanda Seyfried proves convincible as a bored heiress to eons, her father (Vincent Kartheiser) less amenable to Robin Hood-style time banditry. (1:55) Four Star, Shattuck. (Rapoport)
*Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, a Tale of Life How remarkable is it that, some 50-plus features along, filmmaker Werner Herzog would become the closest thing to a cinema’s conscience? This time the abyss is much closer to home than the Amazon rainforest or the Kuwaiti oil fields — it lies in the heart of Rick Perry country. What begins as an examination of capital punishment, introduced with an interview with Reverend Richard Lopez, who has accompanied Texas death row inmates to their end, becomes a seeming labyrinth of human tragedy. Coming into focus is the execution of Michael Perry, convicted as a teenager of the murder of a Conroe, Tex., woman, her son, and his friend — all for sake of a red Camaro. Herzog obtains an insightful interview with the inmate, just days before his execution, as well as his cohort Jason Burkett, police, an executioner, and the victims’ family members, in this haunting examination of crime, punishment, and a small town in Texas where so many appear to have gone wrong. So wrong that one might see Into the Abyss as more related to 1977’s Stroszek and its critical albeit compassionate take on American life, than Herzog’s last tone poem about the mysterious artists of 2010’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (and it’s also obviously directly connected to next year’s TV documentary, Death Row). The layered tragedies and the strata of destroyed lives stays with you, as do the documentary’s difficult questions, Herzog’s gentle humanity as an interviewer, and the fascinating characters that don’t quite fit into a more traditional narrative — the Conroe bystander once stabbed with a screwdriver who learned to read in prison, and the dreamy woman impregnated by a killer whose entire doomed family appears to be incarcerated. (1:46) Opera Plaza. (Chun)
J. Edgar The usual polished, sober understatement of Clint Eastwood’s directing style and the highlights-compiling CliffsNotes nature of Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay turn out to be interestingly wrong choices for this biopic about one of the last American century’s most divisive figures. Interesting in that they’re perhaps among the very few who would now dare viewing the late, longtime FBI chief with so much admiration tempered by awareness of his faults — rather than the other way around. After all, Hoover (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) strengthened his bureau in ways that, yes, often protected citizens and state, but at what cost? The D.C. native eventually took to frequently “bending” the law, witch-hunting dubious national enemies (he thought the Civil Rights movement our worst threat since the bomb-planting Bolshevik anarchists of half a century earlier), blackmailing personal ones, weakening individual rights against surveillance, hoarding power (he resented the White House’s superior authority), lying publicly, and doing just about anything to heighten his own fame. A movie that internalized and communicated his rising paranoid megalomania (ironically Hoover died during the presidency of Nixon, his equal in that regard) might have stood some chance of making us understand this contradiction-riddled cipher. But J. Edgar is doggedly neutral, almost colorless (literally so, in near-monochrome visual presentation), its weird appreciation of the subject’s perfectionism and stick-to-it-iveness shutting out almost any penetrating insight. (Plus there’s Eastwood’s own by-now-de rigueur soundtrack of quasi-jazz noodling to make what is vivid here seem more dull and polite.) The love that dare not speak its name — or, evidently, risk more than a rare peck on the cheek — between Hoover and right-hand-man/life companion Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer, very good if poorly served by his old-age makeup) becomes both the most compelling and borderline-silly thing here, fueled by a nervous discretion that seems equal parts Black’s interest and Eastwood’s discomfort. While you might think the directors polar opposites in many ways, the movie J. Edgar ultimately recalls most is Oliver Stone’s 1995 Nixon: both ambitiously, rather sympathetically grapple with still-warm dead gorgons and lose, filmmaker and lead performance alike laboring admirably to intelligent yet curiously stilted effect. (2:17) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)
*Like Crazy Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones) meet near the end of college; after a magical date, they’re ferociously hooked on each other. Trouble is, she’s in Los Angeles on a soon-to-expire student visa — and when she impulsively overstays, then jets home to London for a visit months later, her re-entry to America is stopped cold at LAX. (True love’s no match for homeland security.) An on-and-off long-distance romance ensues, and becomes increasingly strained, even as their respective careers (he makes furniture, she’s a magazine staffer) flourish. Director and co-writer Drake Doremus (2010’s Douchebag) achieves a rare midpoint between gritty mumblecore and shiny Hollywood romance; the characters feel very real and the script ably captures the frustration that settles in when idealized fantasies give way to the messy workings of everyday life. There are some contrivances here — Anna’s love-token gift from Jacob, a bracelet engraved “Patience,” breaks when she’s with another guy — but for the most part, Like Crazy offers an honest portrait of heartbreak. (1:29) California, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Four Star. (Harvey)
*The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby A man who dove straight from college into intelligence work — joining the CIA after World War II, and working against communism in Italy (successfully) and Vietnam (not so much) — William Colby became head of the CIA amid the organization’s most tumultuous years; he was called before an angry Congress multiple times in the mid-1970s to answer questions about the agency’s top-secret “Family Jewels” documents, among other cover-ups. This documentary, made by his son, Carl, combines archival footage with contemporary insights from politicians (Donald Rumsfeld, James Schlesinger) and journalists (Bob Woodward, Seymour Hersh), as well as Colby’s first wife (and Carl’s mother) Barbara Heinzen. The Man Nobody Knew is an apt title; in the beginning, at least, William Colby was perfectly suited for covert work — able to square his Roman Catholic beliefs with the shifty moral ground that comes with, say, allegedly ordering assassinations. But he was so closed-off in other aspects that his own son remembers him as a total enigma. Colby’s mysterious death, officially due to a boating accident, adds one more unknowable layer to the film, which intriguingly frames a controversial segment of American history through a very personal lens. (1:44) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)
*Margin Call Think of Margin Call as a Mamet-like, fictitious insider jab at the financial crisis, a novelistic rejoinder to Oscar-winning doc Inside Job (2010). First-time feature director and writer J.C. Chandor shows a deft hand with complex, writerly material, creating a darting dance of smart dialogue and well-etched characters as he sidesteps the hazards of overtheatricality, a.k.a. the crushing, overbearing proscenium. The film opens on a familiar Great Recession scene: lay-off day at an investment bank, marked by HR functionaries calling workers one by one into fishbowl conference rooms. The first victim is the most critical — Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), a risk-management staffer who has stumbled on an investment miscalculation that could potentially trigger a Wall Street collapse. On his way out, he passes a drive with his findings to one of his young protégés, Peter (Zachary Quinto), setting off a flash storm over the next 24 hours that will entangle his boss Sam (Kevin Spacey), who’s agonizing over his dying dog while putting up a go-big-or-go-home front; cynical trading manager Will (Paul Bettany); and the firm’s intimidating head (Jeremy Irons), who gets to utter the lines, “Explain to me as you would to a child. Or a Golden Retriever.” Such top-notch players get to really flex their skills here, equipped with Chandor’s spot-on script, which manages to convey the big issues, infuse the numbers with drama and the money managers with humanity, and never talk down to the audience. (1:45) Four Star, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)
*Melancholia Lars von Trier is a filmmaker so fond of courting controversy it’s like he does it in spite of himself — his rambling comments about Hitler (“I’m a Nazi”) were enough to get him banned from the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, where Melancholia had its debut (and star Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress). Oops. Maybe after the (here’s that word again) controversy that accompanied 2009’s Antichrist, von Trier felt like he needed a shocking context for his more mellow latest. Pity that, for Melancholia is one of his strongest, most thoughtful works to date. Split into two parts, the film follows first the opulent, disastrous, never-ending wedding reception of Justine (Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard), held at a lavish estate owned by John (Kiefer Sutherland), the tweedy husband of Justine’s sister, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Amid the turmoil of arguments (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling as Justine and Claire’s divorced parents), pushy guests (Stellan Skarsgard as Justine’s boss), livid wedding planner (Udo Kier, amazing), and hurt feelings (Michael is the least-wanted groom since Kris Humphries), it’s clear that something is wrong with Justine beyond just marital jitters. The film’s second half begins an unspecified amount of time later, as Claire talks her severely depressed, near-catatonic sister into moving into John’s mansion. As Justine mopes, it’s revealed that a small planet, Melancholia — glimpsed in Melancholia‘s Wagner-scored opening overture — is set to pass perilously close to Earth. John, an amateur astronomer, is thrilled; Claire, fearful for her young son’s future and goaded into high anxiety by internet doomsayers, is convinced the planets will collide, no matter what John says. Since Justine (apparently von Trier’s stand-in for himself) is convinced that the world’s an irredeemably evil place, she takes the news with a shrug. Von Trier’s vision of the apocalypse is somber and surprisingly poetic; Dunst and Gainsbourg do outstanding work as polar-opposite sisters whose very different reactions to impending disaster are equally extreme. (2:15) Albany, Bridge. (Eddy)
Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)
The Muppets Of course The Muppets is a movie appropriate for small fry, with a furry cast (supplemented by human co-stars Jason Segel and Amy Adams) cracking wise and conveying broad themes about the importance of friendship, self-confidence, and keeping dreams alive despite sabotage attempts by sleazy oil tycoons (Chris Cooper, comically evil in the grand Muppet-villain tradition). But the true target seems to be adults who grew up watching The Muppet Show and the earliest Muppet movies (1999’s Muppets from Space doesn’t count); the “getting the gang back together” sequence takes up much of the film’s first half, followed by a familiar rendition of “let’s put on a show” in the second. Interwoven are constant reminders of how the Muppets’ brand of humor — including Fozzie Bear’s corny stand-up bits — is a comforting throwback to simpler times, even with a barrage of celeb cameos and contemporary gags (chickens clucking a Cee-Lo Green tune — I think you can guess which one). Co-writer Segal pays appropriate homage to the late Jim Henson’s merry creations, but it remains to be seen if The Muppets will usher in a new generation of fans, or simply serve as nostalgia fodder for grown-ups like, uh, me, who may or may not totally still own a copy of Miss Piggy’s Guide to Life. (1:38) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)
My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is “well-rounded” in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and “magical” Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) Albany, Clay, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Harvey)
Puss in Boots (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.
*Shame It’s been a big 2011 for Michael Fassbender, with Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and the upcoming A Dangerous Method raising his profile from art-house standout to legit movie star (of the “movie stars who can also act” variety). Shame may only reach one-zillionth of X-Men‘s audience due to its NC-17 rating, but this re-teaming with Hunger (2008) director Steve McQueen is Fassbender’s highest achievement to date. He plays Brandon, a New Yorker whose life is tightly calibrated to enable a raging sex addiction within an otherwise sterile existence, including an undefined corporate job and a spartan (yet expensive-looking) apartment. When brash, needy, messy younger sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan, speaking of actors having banner years) shows up, yakking her life all over his, chaos results. Shame is a movie that unfolds in subtle details and oversized actions, with artful direction despite its oft-salacious content. If scattered moments seem forced (loopy Cissy’s sudden transformation, for one scene, into a classy jazz singer), the emotions — particularly the titular one — never feel less than real and raw. (1:39) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)
The Skin I Live In I’d like to think that Pedro Almodóvar is too far along in his frequently-celebrated career to be having a midlife crisis, but all the classic signs are on display in his flashy, disjointed new thriller. Still mourning the death of his burn victim wife and removed from his psychologically disturbed daughter, brilliant-but-ethically compromised plastic surgeon Robert (played with smoldering creepiness by former Almodóvar heartthrob Antonio Banderas) throws himself into developing a new injury-resistant form of prosthetic skin, testing it on his mysterious live-in guinea pig, Vera (the gorgeous Elena Anaya, whose every curve is on view thanks to an après-ski-ready body suit). Eventually, all hell breaks loose, as does Vera, whose back story, as we find out, owes equally to 1960’s Eyes Without a Face and perhaps one of the Saw films. And that’s not even the half of it — to fully recount every sharp turn, digression and MacGuffin thrown at us would take the entirety of this review. That’s not news for Almodóvar, though. Much like Rainer Werner Fassbinder before him, Almodóvar’s métier is melodrama, as refracted through a gay cinephile’s recuperative affections. His strength as a filmmaker is to keep us emotionally tethered to the story he’s telling, amidst all the allusions, sex changes and plot twists torn straight from a telenovela. The real shame of The Skin I Live In is that so much happens that you don’t actually have time to care much about any of it. Although its many surfaces are beautiful to behold (thanks largely to cinematographer José Luis Alcaine), The Skin I Live In ultimately lacks a key muscle: a heart. (1:57) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Sussman)
*Sutro’s: The Palace at Land’s End Filmmaker Tom Wyrsch (2008’s Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong and 2009’s Remembering Playland) explores the unique and fascinating history behind San Francisco’s Sutro Baths in his latest project, an enjoyable documentary that covers the stories behind Adolph Sutro, the construction of his swimming pools, and the amazingly diverse, and somewhat strange collection of other attractions that entertained generations of locals that came to Land’s End for amusement. Told through interviews with local historians and residents, the narrative is illustrated with a host of rarely-seen historic photographs, archival film footage, contemporary video, and images of old documents, advertisements and newspapers. The film should appeal not only to older viewers who fondly remember going to Sutro’s as children, and sadly recall it burning down in 1966, but also younger audiences who have wandered through the ruins below the Cliff House and wondered what once stood there. (1:24) Balboa, Smith Rafael. (Sean McCourt)
*Tomboy In her second feature, French filmmaker Céline Sciamma (2007’s Water Lilies) depicts the brave and possibly perilous gender experimentations of a 10-year-old girl. Laure (Zoé Héran) moves with her family to a new town, falls in with the neighborhood gang during the summer vacation, and takes the stranger-comes-to-town opportunity to adopt a new, male persona, Mikael, a leap of faith we see her consider for a moment before jumping, eyes open. Watching Mikael quietly observe and then pick up the rough mannerisms and posturing of his new peers, while negotiating a shy romance with Lisa (Jeanne Disson), the sole female member of the gang, is to shift from amazement to amusement to anxiety and back again. As the children play games in the woods and roughhouse on a raft in the water and use a round of Truth or Dare to inspect their relationships to one another, all far from the eyes of the adults on the film’s periphery, Mikael takes greater and greater risks to inhabit an identity that he is constructing as he goes, and that is doomed to be demolished sooner, via accidental discovery, or later, when fall comes and the children march off to school together. All of this is superbly handled by Sciamma, who gently guides her largely nonprofessional young cast through the material without forcing them into a single precocious situation or speech. The result is a sweet, delicate story with a steady undercurrent of dread, as we wait for summer’s end and hope for the best and imagine the worst. (1:22) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Rapoport)
Tower Heist The mildest of mysteries drift around the edges of Tower Heist — like, how plausible is Ben Stiller as the blue-collar manager of a tony uptown NYC residence? How is that Eddie Murphy’s face has grown smoother and more seamless with age? And how much heavy lifting goes into an audience member’s suspension of disbelief concerning a certain key theft, dangling umpteen floors above Thanksgiving parade, in the finale? Yet those questions might not to deter those eager to escape into this determinedly undemanding, faintly entertaining Robin Hood-style comedy-thriller. Josh Kovacs (Stiller) is the wildly competent manager of an upscale residence — toadying smoothly and making life run perfectly for his entitled employers — till Bernie Madoff-like penthouse dweller Arthur Shaw (Alan Alda) is arrested for big-time financial fraud, catching the pension fund of Josh’s staffers in his vortex. After a showy standoff gets the upstanding Josh fired, he assembles a crew of ex-employees Enrique (Michael Peña) and Charlie (Casey Affleck), maid Odessa (Gabourey Sidibe), and foreclosed former resident Mr. Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick), as well as childhood friend, neighbor, and thief Slide (Murphy). Murphy gets to slink effortlessly through supposed comeback role — is he vital here? Not really. Nevertheless, a few twists and a good-hearted feel for the working-class 99 percent who got screwed by the financial sector make this likely the most likable movie Brett Ratner has made since 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand — provided you can get over those dangles over the yawning gaps in logic. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)
Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part One Some may have found Robert Pattinson’s stalker-suitor Edward Cullen sufficiently creepy (fits of overprotective rage, flirtatious comments about his new girlfriend’s lip-smackingly narcotic blood) in 2008’s first installment of the Twilight franchise. And nothing much in 2009’s New Moon (suicide attempt) or 2010’s Eclipse (jealous fits, poor communication) strongly suggested he was LTR material, to say nothing of marriage for all eternity. But Twilight 3.5 is where things in the land of near-constant cloud cover and perpetually shirtless adolescent werewolves go seriously off the rails — starting with the post-graduation teen nuptials of bloodsucker Edward and his tasty-smelling human bride, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), and ramping up considerably when it turns out that Edward’s undead sperm are, inexplicably, still viable for baby-making. One of the film’s only sensible lines is uttered at the wedding by high school frenemy Jessica (Anna Kendrick), who snidely wonders whether Bella is starting to show. Of course not, in this Mormon-made tale, directed by Bill Condon (1998’s Gods and Monsters, 2004’s Kinsey). And while Bella’s dad, Charlie (Billy Burke), seems slightly more disgruntled than usual, no one other than lovesick werewolf Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner) seems to question the wisdom of this shotgun-free leap from high school to honeymoon. The latter, however, after a few awkward allusions to rough sex, is soon over, and Bella does indeed start showing. Suffice it to say, it’s not one of those pregnancies that make your skin glow and your hair more lustrous. What follows is like a PSA warning against vampire-bleeder cohabitation, and one wonders if even the staunchest members of Team Edward will flinch, or adjust their stance of dewy-eyed appreciation. (1:57) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)