Healthcare

Dick Meister: Martin Luther King Jr. — a working class hero

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Bay Guardian columnist Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com.

 

While celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, let’s remember that extending and guaranteeing the rights of working people was one of Dr. King’s major concerns.

 You’ll recall that King was in fact assassinated in 1968 while campaigning for striking sanitation workers who were demanding that the city of Memphis, Tennessee, formally recognize their union.

King had been with the 1300 African-American strikers from the very beginning of their 65-day struggle. He had come to Memphis to support them despite threats that he might indeed be killed if he did.

King considered the right to unionization one of the most important civil rights. And virtually his last act was in support of that right. For his assassin’s bullet struck King as he was preparing to lead strikers in another of the many demonstrations he had previously led.

King’s assassination brought tremendous public pressure to bear in behalf of the strikers. President Lyndon Johnson dispatched federal troops to protect strikers and assigned the Under Secretary of Labor to mediate the dispute. Within two weeks, an agreement was reached that granted strikers the union rights they had demanded.

For the first time, the workers’ own representatives could negotiate with their bosses on setting their pay and working conditions. They could air their grievances. And they got overtime pay, their first paid holidays and vacations, first pensions, first health care benefits.

They got a substantial raise in pay that had been so low that forty percent of the workers had qualified for welfare payments.

And they won agreement that promotions would be made strictly on the basis of seniority. Which assured the promotion of African Americans to supervisorial positions for the very first time.

The strikers’ victory led quickly to union recognition drives –– and victories ––by   public employees throughout the South and elsewhere.

As a strike leader said, the strikers had won dignity, equity and access to power and responsibility.

Those clearly were the lifelong goals of Martin Luther King Jr., whether he was seeking civil rights for African Americans or labor rights for all Americans, black and white alike.

Bay Guardian columnist Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com.

 

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The inauguration and the economic divide

Zelda Bronstein
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The inauguration and the economic divide

Second inaugration speeches are hard; you have to be political without sounding partisan, inspiring without being divisive — and promise change and progress even if you haven’t accomplished what you wanted in the first term. The Obama address surprised me: He went left, making clear that he wants economic and social equality to be his final legacy. It’s getting rave reviews in the lib-blogosphere, where it’s been described as the speech liberals have been begging him to give for years. You can’t argue with the content — he mentions gay rights, global climate change, equal pay, protecting social security, economic inequality, the need for collective effort … he even talks about reforming the tax code.

So now comes the hard part: The struggle for economic justice has to go beyond a compromise plan that limits higher tax rates to people earning more than $400,000 a year.

In fact, the best thing I read this weekend was a NY Times piece by Nobel-Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who argues forcefully that continued economic inequality is prolonging the recession. It’s also destroying the nation’s future:

Our skyrocketing inequality — so contrary to our meritocratic ideal of America as a place where anyone with hard work and talent can “make it” — means that those who are born to parents of limited means are likely never to live up to their potential. Children in other rich countries like Canada, France, Germany and Sweden have a better chance of doing better than their parents did than American kids have. More than a fifth of our children live in poverty — the second worst of all the advanced economies, putting us behind countries like Bulgaria, Latvia and Greece. Our society is squandering its most valuable resource: our young.

Stiglitz says what few in Washington want to admit: We can’t get the economy going again without rebuilding the middle class, and we can’t do that without higher taxes on the rich and a lot more public investment in education. Oh, and all this talk of how it’s out of our control is bullshit:

There are all kinds of excuses for inequality. Some say it’s beyond our control, pointing to market forces like globalization, trade liberalization, the technological revolution, the “rise of the rest.” Others assert that doing anything about it would make us all worse off, by stifling our already sputtering economic engine. These are self-serving, ignorant falsehoods. Market forces don’t exist in a vacuum — we shape them. Other countries, like fast-growing Brazil, have shaped them in ways that have lowered inequality while creating more opportunity and higher growth. Countries far poorer than ours have decided that all young people should have access to food, education and health care so they can fulfill their aspirations.

Makes me think about some of what I hear out of San Francisco City Hall. Oh, we can’t do anything about economic inequality; that’s a national issue. Or maybe it’s a state issue. I bet there’s not an elected official in town today who woudn’t proclaim complete agreement with everything Obama just said — and there are very few of them who are trying to bring that message back home.

In San Francisco, we give tax breaks for businesses that create high-end jobs that drive poor people out of town. We happily seek development without considering the impact it will have on existing vulnerable populations. We even struggle over free Muni for low-income youth. We do nothing — nothing — to reclaim wealth from the 1 percent and put it into local housing, public education, and job-training that could make a dent in our local economic inequality.

Mr. Mayor: Are you even paying attention?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Norman Solomon: The progressive caucus: Enabling Obama’s rightwing moves?

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By Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He co-chairs the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign organized by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

The failure of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to stand up to President Obama on many vital matters of principle is one of the most important – and least mentioned – political dynamics of this era.

As the largest caucus of Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Progressive Caucus has heavyweight size but flyweight punch.

During the last four years, its decisive footwork has been so submissive to the White House that you can almost hear the laughter from the West Wing when the Progressive Caucus vows to stand firm.

A sad pattern of folding in the final round has continued. When historic votes come to the House floor, party functionaries are able to whip the Progressive Caucus into compliance. The endgame ends with the vast majority of the caucus members doing what Obama wants.

That’s what happened on the first day of this year, when the “bipartisan” fiscal deal came down. Widely denounced by progressive analysts, the bill passed on the House floor by a margin of 44 votes – with the Progressive Caucus providing the margin. Out of 75 caucus members, only seven voted against it.

Over the years, we’ve seen that President Obama is willing – even satisfied – to be rolled by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. But that’s just part of the problem. We should also come to terms with the reality that the Progressive Caucus is routinely rolled by the president.

A two-step prototype hit the ground running in September 2009 when Progressive Caucus co-chairs sent a public letter to Obama on behalf of the caucus – pledging to vote against any healthcare bill “without a robust public option.” Six months later, on the House floor, every member of the Progressive Caucus wilted under pressure and voted for a healthcare bill with no public option at all.

Since then, similar dynamics have persisted, with many Progressive Caucus members making fine statements of vigorous resolve – only to succumb on the House floor under intense pressure from the Obama administration.

We need Progressive Caucus members who are progressives first and loyal Democrats second, not the other way around. When the party hierarchy cracks the whip, they should strive to halt the rightward drift of congressional legislation, not add to it.

In the new session of Congress, the Progressive Caucus – with 72 members – retains major potential. It often puts out solid position papers like the recent Budget for All. And its leadership includes some of the sharpest progressive blades in the House. Congressmen Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva just won re-election as caucus co-chairs, and Congresswoman Barbara Lee just became the caucus whip.

Still, none of the more than half-dozen Progressive Caucus leaders were among the seven caucus members who voted against the New Year’s Day fiscal deal – and more serious capitulation may soon be on the near horizon.

Early this month, right after the fiscal deal, the Progressive Caucus put its best foot forward by issuing a “Progressive Principles for the Next Deal” statement that vowed to “protect” Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. But those programs will be in jeopardy before spring in tandem with votes on “sequestration” and raising the debt ceiling.

The results are likely to be very grim unless members of the Progressive Caucus are truly prepared – this time – to stand their progressive ground. Without an attitude adjustment, they’re on track to help the president betray Social Security and other essential parts of the social compact.

On a vast array of profound issues – ranging from climate change and civil liberties to drone strikes, perpetual war and a huge military budget – some individual progressives in Congress introduce outstanding bills and make excellent statements. But when the chips are down and minority leader Nancy Pelosi offloads presidential weight onto House Democrats, the Progressive Caucus rarely shows backbone with cohesive action.

What we have witnessed so far is surrender in stages – a chronic confluence of conformity and undue party loyalty, with brave talk from caucus members habitually followed by contrary votes on the floor of the House of Representatives. From the grassroots, progressives must mobilize to pressure every member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to let them know we will hold them accountable

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He co-chairs the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign organized by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column.

No Oscar for the guv’s budget

Andrew Lam
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OPINION Given that Gov. Jerry Brown put out his proposed budget the same day that Oscar nominations came out, it’s tempting to make some comparisons.

Brown’s budget, like the nominated musical “Les Misérables,” has plenty of numbers, and will make some people cry.

But I take the new budget seriously, the same as every budget I’ve seen since I got to Sacramento. Unlike most of the recent budgets, this one doesn’t feature a big deficit. Give the Governor some credit for that, but let’s look at how he’s done it. Not all of it is pretty.

To start with, education gets a boost. That’s clearly what California’s voters wanted when they passed Proposition 30 in November. The budget will give more generous increases to the school districts that have more education challenges, and it boosts funding for higher education. We can cheer that.

It also funds the next steps for implementing federal health care reform. That bodes well for efforts to make sure all Americans and all Californians are insured. Under ideal circumstances, of course, we’d be talking about single payer.

There are other, less cheerful things in our future.

There’s an across-the board 20 percent cut to In-home Health Supportive Services beginning in November. This comes from an odd “optimistic” assumption from the governor that the courts that kept him from making those cuts earlier will let him do it now.

Child care funding is flat, which would be tolerable if it weren’t for past cuts. It’s hard to find a better investment in our state than child care. Kids in good child-care programs do better when they get to school. Child care allows more people to work and attend job training. Restoring child-care funding is critical for the state.

Keeping CalWORKS benefits at half of what they used to be is similarly shortsighted, as are cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, reductions in Medi-Cal provider rates and funding changes for students in higher education.

While preaching austerity, Brown keeps pouring money into a prison system that needs more reform. Sentencing and release programs could be altered to reduce the need for overstuffing prisons without risk to Californians. Overcrowding continues, with one women’s prison in the Central Valley at 180 percent of capacity. This is not stewardship that inspires confidence.

Prison programs to help people beat drug addictions and find jobs when they come out are gone. We are missing a chance for long-term reductions based on rehabilitation. Instead we continue to shuffle bodies around.

Spending choices are not the only problem. The governor skipped some ways of boosting revenue. What about the rules surrounding Proposition 13? Local jurisdictions would benefit from closing loopholes that allow corporations to avoid reassessment when property changes ownership.

I also want discussion of an oil severance tax. Here in the Bay Area — in Richmond and San Bruno — we’ve seen and lived with major downsides of the energy industry. I think it’s time that the oil producers who continue to make big profits pay a tax for the oil that’s taken out of California.

You can see that the Governor’s “director’s cut” budget doesn’t deserve a little gold statue — even if it is the best picture (fiscally) we’ve seen in a few years. We’ll look for silver linings when the Legislature starts working on our playbook.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano represents the 13th District.

Herrera takes on restaurants that use bogus healthcare surcharges

Sasha Cuttler
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Herrera takes on restaurants that use bogus healthcare surcharges

City Attorney Dennis Herrera fired a warning shot across the bow of San Francisco restaurants that use a customer surcharge ostensibly to pay for employee health care – while in reality, many restaurateurs simply pocket the money and offer substandard health care options to employees – over the weekend when his office announced a settlement with Patxi’s Chicago Pizza.

The tone of the press release announcing the $320,000 settlement was generally positive, with Patxi’s claiming it was an innocent error and Herrera praising the owner’s cooperation in an agreement that improves the health care coverage of Patxi’s employees, compensates employees for the error, and ensures all surcharges tacked onto customers’ bills go to employee health care. Yet Herrera also included a warning to other restaurants.

“But today’s settlement should send a strong message that San Francisco is serious about making sure that restaurants keep their promises to their customers about health care surcharges. I look forward to announcing a larger, more global effort in the coming days to address this issue, to make sure health care surcharge money goes to the workers rather than being pocketed by business owners,” Herrera said in the release, signaling an effort to resolve with civil enforcement something that the political system has failed to do.

This became a hugely contentious issue in 2011 when the Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce aggressively opposed reform legislation by Sup. David Campos that would have required that all surcharges be spent on health care and prevented employers from raiding health savings accounts at the end of each year. Mayor Ed Lee vetoed that measure but signed a watered down version by Sup. David Chiu – moves that Herrera criticized while running for mayor.

GGRA (whose Executive Director Rob Black didn’t return our call) aggressively fought the city’s Health Care Security Ordinance requirement that employers provide minimal health coverage to their workers, taking it all the way to the US Supreme Court. After losing that battle, many restaurants began adding a 3-5 percent surcharge of customers’ bills, even while offering employees what experts say is the worst form of health coverage, healthcare savings accounts, and often blocking their employees efforts to use them.

An investigative report in the Wall Street Journal showed how many San Francisco restaurants were essentially committing consumer fraud by pocketing the surcharges, elevating the issue, but the District Attorney’s Office has consistently refused to treat this as a criminal matter, despite calls for action by the Civil Grand Jury. So Herrera’s willingness to use civil sanctions, and his warning of more to come, was enthusiastically welcomed by Campos and other advocates.

“I’m very happy with what the City Attorney’s Office is doing,” Campos said. “It’s time for this kind of legal action.”

Campos had already pledged to reevaluate the issue later this year as data comes in about how the compromise regulations by Chiu and Lee are working, threatening to take it to the ballot if necessary and calling it an important issue for all San Franciscans.

“It’s not just about protecting workers and consumers, but also protecting businesses that play by the rules and comply with the law,” said Campos, noting that many restaurants have admirably refused to use the surcharge, shortchange their employees, or support GGRA’s litigation against the city. “It’s about fairness.”

The Chamber of Commerce becomes even more irrelevant

Zelda Bronstein
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The Chamber of Commerce becomes even more irrelevant

It’s been years since anyone really took the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce seriously as a political force. The verdict from the techies came in long ago; they do their own thing with their own money. Small business never got much out of the Chamber, and most of those folks have their own organizations. Even the big-business agenda was taken over for a while by the Commitee on JOBS. Then there’s SFSOS, Plan C and a bunch of other pro-business and anti-regulation groups. Rose Pak and her allies have their own Chamber of Commerce. You rarely hear anyone at City Hall worried about what the Old Chamber says or is doing.

Steve Falk, the current director, has softened the Chamber’s image a bit and tried to be somewhat diplomatic. But now this organization is about to go backwards.

If what Matier and Ross report is accurate, a former City Hall aide, former failed candidate for supervisor, and current director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association may be the new chamber director. Rob Black seems to have a line at the top job after Wade Rose, an executive with Catholic Healthcare West, dropped out of the running:

We’re told some of the chamber’s big dogs – like the brokerage house Charles Schwab and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – weren’t all that enamored of the soft-glove approach that Rose was promising to bring to his dealings with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

That jobes with what I’ve been hearing from local politicos, who’ve been saying that there were two candidates for the job — one very good and one very bad. Looks like the very good candidate (good by Chamber standards, anyway) is gone.

I don’t know Rose, but I do know that even this more moderate board of supes isn’t likely to take direction from what many see as an antidiluvean organization, a moribund old white men’s club with a ridiculous out-of-date agenda. Putting a person in charge who actually sought to build bridges (and who, by the way, might not have gone all-out for the new CPMC hospital) might have edged the Chamber back toward some sort of relevance.

But no: If Black gets the job, prepare for the Chamber to stick to its old ways, whine about everything the board does that’s even remotely progressive, issue report cards that nobody cares about — and waste its members dues. Great move.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind today’s unanimous vote for Chiu

Sasha Cuttler
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Behind today’s unanimous vote for Chiu

For all the high-minded talk about diversity and working together on behalf of the public – and the relentless praising of their political colleagues and supporters – today’s unanimous re-election of David Chiu as president of the Board of Supervisors once again demonstrated that much of the people’s business is done behind closed doors.

As most of the supervisors acknowledged publicly or in comments to the Guardian, in recent days there was a flurry of meetings about the president vote among the supervisors, despite the prohibition in the state’s Brown Act against “seriatim meetings,” in which elected officials have serial meetings with each other until an quorum of supervisors has illegally discussed some topic.

How else could Malia Cohen, Jane Kim, and Scott Wiener – all hopefuls for the president’s seat who withdrew themselves from consideration before a vote was cast – have all known that Chiu had the votes he needed to win an unprecedented third consecutive term? But they did know, as they all told the Guardian.

“The reality was the support wasn’t there,” Cohen told reporters after the vote when asked why she withdrew her nomination just before the supervisors were about to vote, just after Kim had done the same thing, leaving Chiu as the sole nominee.

I asked whether she was promised anything in return for withdrawing from consideration, and Cohen said, “There’s always negotiations involved in everything, from committee assignments to appointment to regional bodies…The full story will come out later.”

Cohen even obliquely suggested that Chiu – who is known to have his sights set on Tom Ammiano’s Assembly seat, which comes open in two years – may not serve his full two years as president and that was part of the backroom discussions. In the more immediate future, Cohen said she wants to serve on the Land Use Committee, so don’t be surprised if Chiu appoints her as chair of that powerful body.

“It may seem like a small setback today, but it sets the stage for greater conversations going forward,” Cohen said of her decision to voluntarily step down.

Kim also told reporters that she knew Chiu had the votes – saying “we know there was broad support for David for another term” – and that the decision that she and Cohen made to nominate one another was mostly symbolic, intended to make a point about the need for women of color to be in leadership positions: “I thought it was important that we put the dialogue out there.”

Kim said she really appreciated the opportunity to speak with more fellow supervisors privately in the last few days than she had before. “All of this was last minute. There were really only discussions in the last three days,” Kim told me. “I got a good sense of people’s policies and priorities.” As for Kim’s priorities, she said she wants to serve on the Budget Committee, so don’t be surprised when Chiu names her as chair.

Wiener also told me that he realized a couple days ago that he didn’t have the votes but that Chiu did. “It would have been an honor to serve as board president, but it wasn’t in the cards,” Wiener said.

Some of what the cards showed was made clear as the nominations for president opened today and new Dist. 7 Sup. Norman Yee spoke first and nominated Chiu, thus making it clear that Kim probably didn’t have the six votes she needed. As former Sup. Chris Daly, a veteran vote counter, told me, “Norman Yee and Eric Mar could have made Jane Kim board president. They were the deciding bloc, but it would taken both of them.”

Yet Mar told us that he was caught off guard by how the voting unfolded today. “I was surprised that people dropped out before the vote,” he told me.

Yet he acknowledged that it was perhaps a smart move by the progressive supervisors, who voted against Chiu two years ago and were punished with bad committee assignments, to instead get behind Chiu now and hand him a unanimous victory.

“I think that was the hope when people dropped out. It would have been hard if they didn’t, but these negotiations [with Chiu over committee assignments] will go on over the next few days,” Mar said, noting that he will push for strong representation by supporters of labor and other progressive constituencies on key committees.

Asked about his negotiations with fellow supervisors, Chiu would only say, “My conversation with everyone was very consistent.” As for his pending decision on committee assignments, he told me, “We have a board that is very diverse and we’ll have committees that reflect that.”

During his speech in Board Chambers, Chiu talked about running the board in a way that would let each supervisor have her/his moments in the spotlight to provide leadership on issues they care about, comparing it to the San Francisco Giants and the contributions that so many players made to their World Series sweep.

“They took turns making the big plays,” Chiu said, going on to tick off the list of how he’ll help his colleagues shine. “Whether it’s Sup. Mar advocating for a healthy environment, Sup. Farrell addressing out looming health care costs, whether it’s Sup. Chu disciplining our budget, Sup. Breed getting the jobs that young people need, Sup. Kim making sure that all our kids graduate, Sup. Yee making sure that small businesses succeed, Sup. Wiener fighting for better transportation options, Sup. Campos fighting against wage theft, or Sup. Cohen curbing gun violence, and Sup. Avalos delivering on local hire, by the end of our season, if we’re going to help each other succeed in getting these things done, we are all going to win.”

Putting transit first

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By Stuart Cohen, Leah Shahum, Rob Boden, and Elizabeth Stampe

OPINION Every day, San Franciscans pay the price of an underfunded transportation system. We have all experienced painfully overcrowded bus rides … or, worse yet, the bus that never shows up. Now, Muni is reducing service during Christmas week, as it is faced with a $7 million deficit this fiscal year.

Today, we are finally facing up to the reality that our declining transportation system hurts us all. It hurts our economy and it hurts people all along the economic spectrum. San Francisco is a world-class city in many ways, but we have a long way to go to have a world-class transportation system.

San Franciscans want better transit options: reliable, fast, comfortable buses, and safe and pleasant streets for walking and biking. San Franciscans support the city’s official transit-first policy, but lacking political will, the city hasn’t delivered on it.

By failing to make the tough decisions to fund our transit system, our leaders have put the burden on those who depend on affordable transportation options most. Transportation is one of the top expenses for people living in the Bay Area, after housing, and an exponentially greater burden for those with lower incomes.

Who will be hurt most by Muni’s skeletal service this holiday week? Working families.

That is why our organizations are proud to have joined together recently to support a proposal to update the Transit-Impact Development Fee (TIDF), which would have ensured that major developments pay their fair share into the city’s transit system. This would have included large nonprofits like Kaiser and the Exploratorium, when they build major new developments that generate thousands of new trips. The fee, probably about 1 percent of costs, would have paralleled the existing development fees for water, sewer, parks, and even art, that nonprofits already pay. It would not have included small nonprofits, and of course most nonprofits never build developments at all.

It would have helped visitors to large institutions have more dependable transit to get there, and helped the whole transportation system work better for everyone.

But it didn’t pass, and last week’s opinion piece (“The Muni vs. housing clash,” 12/18/12) mischaracterized the issue, suggesting a trade-off between basic services and transportation. But good, reliable, safe transportation is a basic service. Just like housing and health care, it’s something everyone should have access to, and something our city has declared a priority with its transit-first policy.

Unsafe streets are inequitable streets; low-income people and people of color are more likely to be hit by cars while walking. Underfunded transit is inequitable; low-income people have fewer options aside from walking or taking the bus, and the stakes are higher when the bus is late or doesn’t arrive.

Funding transit is a core progressive value. Great public transit — and being able to get around the city under your own power, by walking and bicycling — are great equalizers in a city like ours.

We should be investing more and expecting more from our transit system. Our organizations are proud to be doing just that. It’s time to help San Francisco finally live up to its transit-first policy — because that means putting people first.

Stuart Cohen works with TransForm, Leah Shahum with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Rob Boden with the San Francisco Transit Riders Union, and Elizabeth Stampe with Walk San Francisco.

Left-right punch knocks out increased development fees for Muni

Sasha Cuttler
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148

A new and unusual coalition of nonprofit, religious, and corporate interests today killed a legislative effort to get more money for Muni through the Transit Impact Development Fee, which was going through its process of being reauthorized every five years and came to the Board of Supervisors today.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was hoping to get millions of dollars more per year from the fee to help cover the increasing costs of Muni service, so the city last year commissioned a study establishing a nexus between new development projects and their impact on the public transit system as a way to set the fees developers would pay.

Using that study, Sup. Scott Wiener sponsored legislation that increased the cost per square foot of development for some business types – mostly notably hospitals, big retail and entertainment complexes, and Cultural/Institution/Education facilities – and ended the categorical exemption for nonprofit organizations.

Those who could be impacted by the increased fees banded together into an organization calling itself NOTT (Non-profits Opposed to the Transit Tax), a group that included the city’s major health care providers, religious institutions, and influential nonprofits such as Council of Community Housing Organizations and Chinatown Community Development Center.

“We are gravely concerned that elements of the forthcoming Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP), especially elimination of the non-profit fee exemption, have been selectively imbedded in the TIDF update legislation. Elimination of the non-profit exemption has not been considered through a thorough and transparent process and is not good public policy,” SF Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk wrote in Nov. 27 letter to supervisors on behalf of the organization.

In the face of opposition from both downtown and progressive groups, and hoping to get SFMTA more money for its next budget cycle, Wiener appealed for support to sustainable transportation activists, who had mixed feelings on the legislation for reasons ranging from its exemption of parking garages and development in Mission Bay to its inclusion of organizations serving low-income communities.

So Sup. Sean Elsbernd – who spoke on behalf of Catholic schools and churches – was able to amend the legislation back to the status quo on a 9-2 vote, with only Wiener and Sup. Carmen Chu opposed (Sup. Christina Olague, who co-sponsored the measure with Wiener, even failed to support it in the end).

While that ends this effort for now, it is really only the first round of efforts that are just getting underway to find more funding for Muni, which is underfunded and at capacity on many lines, and implement the TSP when it is unveiled next year.

Calvin Trillin: Mitt Romney explains why he lost

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Obama was clever as clever could be;

To targeted groups he gave gifts that were free:

Say, healthcare for free until age 26, 

And free contraceptives (for sex just for kicks).

Debates in the primaries left our team bruised

From harsh accusations the White House then used.

Whatever the reason for losing might be,

Of one thing I’m sure: it could not have been me.

I’m perfect.

Calvin Trillin. Deadline Poet. (12/10/2012 The Nation)

 

 

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

DOCFEST

The 11th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival runs through Nov 21 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; and Shattuck Cinema, 2230 Shattuck, SF. Tickets (most films $10-12) and complete schedule at www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

Anna Karenina Joe Wright broke out of British TV with the 9,000th filmed Pride and Prejudice (2005), unnecessary but quite good. Too bad it immediately went to his head. His increasing showiness as director enlivened the silly teenage-superspy avenger fantasy Hanna (2011), but it started to get in the way of Atonement (2007), a fine book didn’t need camera gymnastics to make a great movie. Now it’s completely sunk a certified literary masterpiece still waiting for a worthy film adaptation. Keira Knightley plays the titular 19th century St. Petersburg aristocrat whose staid, happy-enough existence as a doting mother and dutiful wife (to deglammed Jude Law’s honorable but neglectful Karenin) is upended when she enters a mutually passionate affair with dashing military officer Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson, miscast). Scandal and tragedy ensue. There’s nothing wrong with the screenplay, by Tom Stoppard no less. What’s wrong is Wright’s bright idea of staging the whole shebang as if it were indeed staged — a theatrical production in which nearly everything (even a crucial horse race) takes place on a proscenium stage, in the auditorium, or "backstage" among riggings. Whenever we move into a "real" location, the director makes sure that transition draws attention to its own cleverness as possible. What, you might ask, is the point? That the public social mores and society Anna lives in are a sort of "acting"? Like wow. Add to that another brittle, mannered performance by Wright’s muse Knightley, and there’s no hope of involvement here, let alone empathy — in love with its empty (but very prettily designed) layers of artifice, this movie ends up suffocating all emotion in gilded horseshit. The reversed-fortune romance between Levin (Domhall Gleeson) and Kitty (Alicia Vikander) does work quite well — though since Tolstoy called his novel Anna Karenina, it’s a pretty bad sign when the subsidiary storyline ends up vastly more engaging than hers. (2:10) (Harvey)

Brooklyn Castle Geeks rock — that much we all know in the science- and math-rich Bay Area. That doesn’t lessen the impact of this documentary about Brooklyn I.S. 318’s young chess players, who have won the most junior high chess championships in the country and were the first middle school team to win the US Chess Federation’s national high school championship. With 60-plus percent of the students below the federal poverty level, the players certainly aren’t rolling in privilege, especially during these budget-slashing times. Nonetheless, with the help of caring teachers and an intensive chess class, the school’s players, spanning a spectrum of skills with some surpassing even Einstein’s rating, have managed to bring home state and national championships for the school — and vastly improved their prospects along the way. They range from Rochelle, the shy girl who has the chance to become the first African American female chess master; Alexis, the boy who yearns to get into a good high school and college to care for his immigrant parents; Justus, the sixth-grade chess prodigy who’s already a master and suffers intensely when he loses; and Pobo, the sweet-faced son of Nigerian émigrés who says he probably wouldn’t even be in school if not for chess. Brooklyn Castle is about chess, yes, as director Katie Dellamaggiore takes the time to spell out the rating and tournament point systems, but it’s also just as importantly about the kids, who are smart, strategic, and getting primed to play the game of life. (1:42) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Holy Motors Holy moly. Offbeat auteur Leos Carax (1999’s Pola X) and frequent star Denis Lavant (1991’s Lovers on the Bridge) collaborate on one of the most bizarrely wonderful films of the year, or any year. Oscar (Lavant) spends every day riding around Paris in a white limo driven by Céline (Edith Scob, whose eerie role in 1960’s Eyes Without a Face is freely referenced here). After making use of the car’s full complement of wigs, theatrical make-up, and costumes, he emerges for "appointments" with unseen "clients," who apparently observe each vignette as it happens. And don’t even try to predict what’s coming next, or decipher what it all means, beyond an investigation of identity so original you won’t believe your eyes. This wickedly humorous trip through motion-capture suits, graveyard photo shoots, teen angst, back-alley gangsters, old age, and more (yep, that’s the theme from 1954’s Godzilla you hear; oh, and yep, that’s pop star Kylie Minogue) is equal parts disturbing and delightful. Movies don’t get more original or memorable than this. (1:56) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

A Royal Affair At age 15 in 1766, British princess Caroline (Alicia Vikander) travels abroad to a new life — as queen to the new ruler of Denmark, her cousin. Attractive and accomplished, she is judged a great success by everyone but her husband. King Christian (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard) is just a teenager himself, albeit one whose mental illness makes him behave alternately like a debauched libertine, a rude two year-old, a sulky-rebellious adolescent, and a plain old abusive spouse. Once her principal official duty is fulfilled — bearing a male heir — the two do their best to avoid each other. But on a tour of Europe Christian meets German doctor Johann Friedrich Struenesse (Mads Mikkelsen), a true man of the Enlightenment who not only has advanced notions about calming the monarch’s "eccentricities," but proves a tolerant and agreeable royal companion. Lured back to Denmark as the King’s personal physician, he soon infects the cultured Queen with the fervor of his progressive ideas, while the two find themselves mutually attracted on less intellectual levels as well. When they start manipulating their unstable but malleable ruler to push much-needed public reforms through in the still basically feudal nation, they begin acquiring powerful enemies. This very handsome-looking history lesson highlights a chapter relatively little-known here, and finds in it an interesting juncture in the eternal battle between masters and servants, the piously self-interested and the secular humanists. At the same time, Nikolaj Arcel’s impressively mounted and acted film is also somewhat pedestrian and overlong. It’s a quality costume drama, but not a great one.(2:17) California, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Silver Linings Playbook David O. Russell follows up 2010’s The Fighter with this dark comedy about a troubled man (Bradley Cooper) attempting to piece his life back together. Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro co-star. (2:01)

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 The Twilight series ends. BUT IT WILL NEVER DIE. (1:55)

ONGOING

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Cloud Atlas Cramming the six busy storylines of David Mitchell’s wildly ambitious novel into just three hours — the average reader might have thought at least 12 would be required — this impressive adaptation directed (in separate parts) by Tom Twyker (1998’s Run Lola Run) and Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski has a whole lot of narrative to get through, stretching around the globe and over centuries. In the mid 19th century, Jim Sturgess’ sickly American notory endures a long sea voyage as reluctant protector of a runaway-slave stowaway from the Chatham Islands (David Gyasi). In 1931 Belgium, a talented but criminally minded British musician (Ben Whishaw) wheedles his way into the household of a famous but long-inactive composer (Jim Broadbent). A chance encounter sets 1970s San Francisco journalist Luisa (Halle Berry) on the path of a massive cover-up conspiracy, swiftly putting her life in danger. Circa now, a reprobate London publisher’s (Broadbent) huge windfall turns into bad luck that gets even worse when he seeks help from his brother (Hugh Grant). In the not-so-distant future, a disposable "fabricant" server to the "consumer" classes (Doona Bae) finds herself plucked from her cog-like life for a rebellious higher purpose. Finally, in an indeterminately distant future after "the Fall," an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) forms a highly ambivalent relationship toward a visitor (Berry) from a more advanced but dying civilization. Mitchell’s book was divided into huge novella-sized blocks, with each thread split in two; the film wastes very little time establishing its individual stories before beginning to rapidly intercut between them. That may result in a sense of information (and eventually action) overload, particularly for non-readers, even as it clarifies the connective tissues running throughout. Compression robs some episodes of the cumulative impact they had on the page; the starry multicasting (which in addition to the above mentioned finds many uses for Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Susan Sarandon) can be a distraction; and there’s too much uplift forced on the six tales’ summation. Simply put, not everything here works; like the very different Watchmen, this is a rather brilliant "impossible adaptation" screenplay (by the directors) than nonetheless can’t help but be a bit too much. But so much does work — in alternating currents of satire, melodrama, pulp thriller, dystopian sci-fi, adventure, and so on — that Cloud Atlas must be forgiven for being imperfect. If it were perfect, it couldn’t possibly sprawl as imaginatively and challengingly as it does, and as mainstream movies very seldom do. (2:52) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Dangerous Liaisons John Malkovich and Sarah Michelle Gellar may have already starred in pop culture’s favorite adaptations of this classic French novel, but since pretty people scheming never gets old, here’s a Chinese take on Les Liaisons dangereuses, complete with big-name cast and all the visual allure of 1930s Shanghai. "You are such a cad!" a woman shrieks at Xie Yifan (Jang Dong-gun) in the first scene, and indeed he is — though his heart belongs to "Miss Mo" (Cecilia Cheung). The malicious wager (if you seduce her and then horribly dump her, I’ll let you sleep with me … plus: incidental affairs along the way) is struck and things proceed on schedule, until Yifan finds himself actually falling for virtuous widow Fenyu (Zhang Ziyi). You know how it ends. Gorgeous costumes and mise-en-scène add visual interest to the familiar story, which also adds a little political flair in the form of Chinese students protesting the early days of Japanese occupation. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel The life of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland is colorfully recounted in Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a doc directed by her granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The family connection meant seemingly unlimited access to material featuring the unconventionally glamorous (and highly quotable) Vreeland herself, plus the striking images that remain from her work at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Narrated" from interview transcripts by an actor approximating the late Vreeland’s husky, posh tones, the film allows for some criticism (her employees often trembled at the sight of her; her sons felt neglected; her grasp of historical accuracy while working at the museum was sometimes lacking) among the praise, which is lavish and delivered by A-listers like Anjelica Huston, who remembers "She had a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme," and Manolo Blahnik, who squeals, "She had the vision!" (1:26) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Flat Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat begins as the filmmaker’s family descends upon the Tel Aviv apartment of his recently-deceased grandmother, "a bit of a hoarder" who lived to 95 and seemingly never got rid of anything. This includes, as Goldfinger discovers, copies of the Joseph Goebbels-founded newspaper Der Angriff, containing articles about "the Nazi who visited Palestine." The Nazi was Leopold von Mildenstein, an SS officer with an interest in Zionism. Turns out he made the journey in 1933 with his wife and a Jewish couple named Kurt and Gerda Tuchler — Goldfinger’s grandparents. Understandably intrigued and more than a little baffled, Goldfinger investigates, finding letters and diary entries that reveal the unlikely traveling companions were close friends, even after World War II. His mother, the Tuchler’s daughter, prefers to "keep the past out," but curiosity (and the pursuit of a good documentary) presses Goldfinger forward; he visits von Mildenstein’s elderly daughter in Germany, digs through German archives, and unearths even more suprises about his family tree. Broader themes about guilt and denial emerge — post-traumatic coping mechanisms that echo through generations.

(1:37) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Flight To twist the words of one troubled balladeer, he believes he can fly, he believes he can touch the sky. Unfortunately for Denzel Washington’s Whip Whitaker, another less savory connotation applies: his semi-sketchy airline captain is sailing on the overconfidence that comes with billowing clouds of blow. Beware the quickie TV spot — and Washington’s heroic stance in the poster — that plays this as a quasi-action flick: Flight is really about a man’s efforts to escape responsibility and his flight from facing his own addiction. It also sees Washington once again doing what he does so well: wrestling with the demons of a charismatic yet deeply flawed protagonist. We come upon Whip as he’s rousing himself from yet another bender, balancing himself out with a couple lines with a gorgeous, enabling flight attendant by his side. It’s a checks-and-balances routine we’re led to believe is business as usual, as he slides confidently into the cockpit, gives the passengers a good scare by charging through turbulence, and proceeds to doze off. The plane, however, goes into fail mode and forces the pilot to improvise brilliantly and kick into hero mode, though he can’t fly from his cover, which is slowly blown despite the ministrations of kindred addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly) and dealer Harling (John Goodman at his most ebullient) and the defensive moves of his pilots union cohort (Bruce Greenwood) and the airline’s lawyer (Don Cheadle). How can Whip fly out of the particular jam called his life? Working with what he’s given, Washington summons reserves of humanity, though he’s ultimately failed by John Gatins’ sanctimonious, recovery-by-the-numbers script and the tendency of seasoned director Robert Zemeckis to blithely skip over the personal history and background details that would have more completely filled out our picture of Whip. We’re left grasping for the highs, waiting for the instances that Harling sails into view and Whip tumbles off the wagon. (2:18) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Hotel Transylvania (1:32) Metreon.

A Late Quartet Philip Seymour Hoffman is fed up playing second fiddle — literally. He stars in this grown-up soap opera about the internal dramas of a world-class string quartet. While the group is preparing for its 25th season, the eldest member (Christopher Walken) is diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s. As he’s the base note in the quartet, his retirement challenges the group’s future, not just his own. Hoffman’s second violinist sees the transition as an opportunity to challenge the first violin (Mark Ivanir) for an occasional Alpha role. When his wife, the quartet’s viola player (Catherine Keener), disagrees, it’s a slight ("You think I’m not good enough?") and a betrayal because prior to their marriage, viola and first violin would "duet" if you get my meaning. This becomes a grody aside when Hoffman and Keener’s violin prodigy daughter (Imogen Poots) falls for her mother’s old beau and Hoffman challenges their marriage with a flamenco dancer. These quiet people finds ways to use some loud instruments (a flamenco dancer, really?) and the music as well as the views of Manhattan create a deeply settled feeling of comfort in the cold —insulation can be a dangerous thing. When we see (real world) cellist Nina Lee play, and her full body interacts with a drama as big as vaudeville, we see what tension was left out of the playing and forced into the incestuous "family" conflicts. In A Late Quartet, pleasures are great and atmosphere, heavy. You couldn’t find a better advertisement for this symphonic season; I wanted to buy tickets immediately. And also vowed to stay away from musicians. (1:45) Albany, Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Vizcarrondo)

A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman Blessed with recordings made by Monty Python member Graham Chapman (King Arthur in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Brian in 1979’s Life of Brian) before his death in 1989 from cancer, filmmakers Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson, and Ben Timlett recruited 14 different animation studios to piece together Chapman’s darkly humorous (and often just plain dark) life story. He was gay, he was an alcoholic, he co-wrote (with John Cleese) the legendary "Dead Parrot Sketch." A Liar’s Autobiography starts slowly — even with fellow Monty Python members Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin lending their voices, much of the bone-dry humor falls disappointingly flat. "This is not a Monty Python film," the filmmakers insist, and viewers hoping for such will be disappointed. Stick with it, though, and the film eventually finds its footing as an offbeat biopic, with the pick-a-mix animation gimmick at its most effective when illustrating Chapman’s booze-fueled hallucinations. (1:22) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Looper It’s 2044 and, thanks to a lengthy bout of exposition by our protagonist, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), here’s what we know: Time travel, an invention 30 years away, will be used by criminals to transport their soon-to-be homicide victims backward, where a class of gunmen called loopers, Joe among them, are employed to "do the necessaries." More deftly revealed in Brick writer-director Rian Johnson’s new film is the joylessness of the world in which Joe amorally makes his way, where gangsters from the future control the present (under the supervision of Jeff Daniels), their hit men live large but badly (Joe is addicted to some eyeball-administered narcotic), and the remainder of the urban populace suffers below-subsistence-level poverty. The latest downside for guys like Joe is that a new crime boss has begun sending back a steady stream of aging loopers for termination, or "closing the loop"; soon enough, Joe is staring down a gun barrel at himself plus 30 years. Being played by Bruce Willis, old Joe is not one to peaceably abide by a death warrant, and young Joe must set off in search of himself so that—with the help of a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt) and her creepy-cute son Cid (Pierce Gagnon)—he can blow his own (future) head off. Having seen the evocatively horrific fate of another escaped looper, we can’t totally blame him. Parsing the daft mechanics of time travel as envisioned here is rough going, but the film’s brisk pacing and talented cast distract, and as one Joe tersely explains to another, if they start talking about it, "we’re gonna be here all day making diagrams with straws" —in other words, some loops just weren’t meant to be closed. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Man With The Iron Fists (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

The Other Son The plot of ABC Family’s Switched at Birth gets a politically-minded makeover in Lorraine Lévy’s The Other Son, in which the mixed-up teens represent both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. When mop-topped wannabe rocker Joseph (Jules Sitruk) dutifully signs up for Israeli military duty, the required blood test reveals he’s not the biological son of his parents. Understandably freaked out, his French-Israeli mother (Emmanuelle Devos) finds out that a hospital error during a Gulf War-era evacuation meant she and husband Alon (Pascal Elbé) went home with the wrong infant — and their child, aspiring doctor Yacine (Medhi Dehbi), was raised instead by a Palestinian couple (Areen Omari, Khalifia Natour). It’s a highly-charged situation on many levels ("Am I still Jewish?", a tearful Joseph asks; "Have fun with the occupying forces?", Yacine’s bitter brother inquires after his family visits Joseph in Tel Aviv), and potential for melodrama is sky-high. Fortunately, director and co-writer Levy handles the subject with admirable sensitivity, and the film is further buoyed by strong performances. (1:53) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Paranormal Activity 4 (1:21) Metreon.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Bridge, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Pitch Perfect As an all-female college a cappella group known as the Barden Bellas launches into Ace of Base’s "The Sign" during the prologue of Pitch Perfect, you can hear the Glee-meets-Bring It On elevator pitch. Which is fine, since Bring It On-meets-anything is clearly worth a shot. In this attempt, Anna Kendrick stars as withdrawn and disaffected college freshman Beca, who dreams of producing music in L.A. but is begrudgingly getting a free ride at Barden University via her comp lit professor father. Clearly his goal is not making sure she receives a liberal arts education, as Barden’s academic jungle extends to the edges of the campus’s competitive a cappella scene, and the closest thing to an intellectual challenge occurs during a "riff-off" between a cappella gangs at the bottom of a mysteriously drained swimming pool. When Beca reluctantly joins the Bellas, she finds herself caring enough about the group’s fate to push for an Ace of Base moratorium and radical steps like performing mashups. Much as 2000’s Bring It On coined terms like "cheerocracy" and "having cheer-sex," Pitch Perfect gives us the infinitely applicable prefix "a ca-" and descriptives like "getting Treble-boned," a reference to forbidden sexual relations with the Bellas’ cocky rivals, the Treblemakers. The gags get funnier, dirtier, and weirder, arguably reaching their climax in projectile-vomit snow angels, with Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as grin-panning competition commentators offering a string of loopily inappropriate observations. (1:52) Metreon. (Rapoport)

Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Seven Psychopaths Those nostalgic for 1990s-style chatty assassins will find much to love in the broadly sketched Seven Psychopaths. Director-writer Martin McDonough already dipped a pen into Tarantino’s blood-splattered ink well with his 2008 debut feature, In Bruges, and Seven Psychopaths reads as larkier and more off-the-cuff, as the award-winning Irish playwright continues to try to find his own discomfiting, teasing balance between goofy Grand Guignol yuks and meta-minded storytelling. Structured, sort of, with the certified lucidity of a thrill killer, Seven Psychopaths opens on Boardwalk Empire heavies Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg bantering about the terrors of getting shot in the eyeball, while waiting to "kill a chick." The talky twosome don’t seem capable of harming a fat hen, in the face of the Jack of Spades serial killer, who happens to be Psychopath No. One and a serial destroyer of hired guns. The key to the rest of the psychopathic gang is locked in the noggin of screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell), who’s grappling with a major block and attempting the seeming impossible task of creating a peace-loving, Buddhist killer. Looking on are his girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish) and actor best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), who has a lucrative side gig as a dog kidnapper — and reward snatcher — with the dapper Hans (Christopher Walken). A teensy bit too enthusiastic about Marty’s screenplay, Billy displays a talent for stumbling over psychos, reeling in Zachariah (Tom Waits) and, on his doggie-grabbing adventures, Shih Tzu-loving gangster Charlie (Woody Harrelson). Unrest assured, leitmotifs from McDonough plays — like a preoccupation with fiction-making (The Pillowman) and the coupling of pet-loving sentimentality and primal violence (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) — crop up in Seven Psychopaths, though in rougher, less refined form, and sprinkled with a nervous, bromantic anxiety that barely skirts homophobia. Best to bask in the cute, dumb pleasures of a saucer-eyed lap dog and the considerably more mental joys of this cast, headed up by dear dog hunter Walken, who can still stir terror with just a withering gaze and a voice that can peel the finish off a watch. (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D The husband and adopted daughter of Rosa (Radha Mitchell, star of the 2006 first film and seen briefly here), Harry (Sean Bean) and Heather (Adelaide Clemens) have been on the run from both police and ghouls since mom vanished into the titular nether land some years ago. When dad is abducted, Heather must follow him to you-know-where, accompanied by cute-boy-with-a-secret Vincent (Kit Harington). There she runs screaming from the usual faceless knife-wielding nuns and other nightmare nemeses while attempting to rescue Pa and puzzle out her place in resolving the curse placed on the ghost town. The original 2006 film adaptation of the video game was a mixed bag but, like the game, had splendid visuals; this cut rate sequel lacks even that, despite the addition of 3D (if you’re willing to pay for a premium ticket). It’s pure cheese with no real scares, much-diminished atmosphere, and laughable stretches of mythological mumbo-jumbo recited by embarrassed good actors (Martin Donovan, Deborah Kara Unger, Carrie-Anne Moss, a punishingly hammy Malcolm McDowell). There is one cool monster — a many-faced "tarantula" assembled from mannequin parts — but its couple minutes aren’t worth ponying up for the rest of a movie that severely disappoints already low expectations. (1:34) Metreon. (Harvey)

Sinister True-crime author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) hasn’t had a successful book in a decade. So he uproots wife (Juliet Rylance) and kids (Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) for yet another research project, not telling them that they’re actually moving into the recent scene of a ghastly unsolved murder in which an entire family — save one still-missing child — was hanged from a backyard tree. He finds a box in the attic that somehow escaped police attention, its contents being several reels of Super 8 home movies stretching back decades — all of families similarly wiped out in one cruel act. Smelling best-sellerdom, Ellison keeps this evidence of a serial slayer to himself. It’s disturbing when his son re-commences sleepwalking night terrors. It’s really disturbing when dad begins to spy a demonic looking figure lurking in the background of the films. It’s really, really disturbing when the projector starts turning itself on, in the middle of the night, in his locked office. A considerable bounce-back from his bloated 2008 Day the Earth Stood Still remake, Scott Derrickson’s film takes the opposite tact — it’s very small in both physical scope and narrative focus, almost never leaving the Oswalt’s modest house in fact. He takes the time to let pure creepiness build rather than feeling the need to goose our nads with a false scare or goresplat every five minutes. As a result, Sinister is definitely one of the year’s better horrors, even if (perhaps inevitably) the denouement can’t fully meet the expectations raised by that very long, unsettling buildup. (1:50) Metreon. (Harvey)

Skyfall Top marks to Adele, who delivers a magnificent title song to cap off Skyfall‘s thrilling pre-credits chase scene. Unfortunate, then, that the film that follows squanders its initial promise. After a bomb attack on MI6, the clock is running out for Bond (Daniel Craig) and M (Judi Dench), accused of Cold War irrelevancy in a 21st century full of malevolent, stateless computer hackers. The audience, too, will yearn for a return to simpler times; dialogue about "firewalls" and "obfuscated code" never fails to sound faintly ridiculous, despite the efforts Ben Whishaw as the youthful new head of Q branch. Javier Bardem is creative and creepy as keyboard-tapping villain Raoul Silva, but would have done better with a megalomaniac scheme to take over the world. Instead, a small-potatoes revenge plot limps to a dull conclusion in the middle of nowhere. Skyfall never decides whether it prefers action, bons mots, and in-jokes to ponderous mythologizing and ripped-from-the-headlines speechifying — the result is a unsatisfying, uneven mixture. (2:23) California, Four Star, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Ben Richardson)

Taken 2 Surprise hit Taken (2008) was a soap opera produced by French action master Luc Besson and designed for export. The divorced-dad-saves-daughter-from-sex-slavery plot may have nagged at some universal parenting anxieties, but it was a Movie of the Week melodrama made on a major movie budget. Taken 2 begins immediately after the last, with sweet teen Kim (Maggie Grace) talking about normalizing after she was drugged and bought for booty. Papa Neeson sees Kim’s mom (Famke Janssen) losing her grip on husband number two and invites them both to holiday in Istanbul following one of his high-stakes security gigs. When the assistant with the money slinks him a fat envelope, Neeson chuckles at his haul. This is the point when women in the audience choose which Neeson they’re watching: the understated super-provider or the warrior-dad whose sense of duty can meet no match. For family men, this is the breeziest bit of vicarious living available; Neeson’s character is a tireless daddy duelist, a man as diligent as he is organized. (This is guy who screams "Victory loves preparation!") As head-splitting, disorienting, and generally exhausting as the action direction is, Neeson saves his ex-wife and the show in a stream of unclear shootouts. Taken 2 is best suited for the small screen, but whatever the size, no one can stop an international slave trade (or wolves, or Batman) like 21st century Liam. Swoon. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

The Waiting Room Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. (1:21) Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Wreck-It Ralph Wreck-It Ralph cribs directly from the Toy Story series: when the lights go off in the arcade, video game characters gather to eat, drink, and endure existential crises. John C. Reilly is likable and idiosyncratic as Ralph, the hulking, ham-fisted villain of a game called Fix-It-Felix. Fed up with being the bad guy, Ralph sneaks into gritty combat sim Hero’s Duty under the nose of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a blond space marine who mixes Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard with a PG-rated R. Lee Ermey. Things go quickly awry, and soon Ralph is marooned in cart-racing candyland Sugar Rush, helping Vanellope Von Schweetz (a manic Sarah Silverman), with Calhoun and opposite number Felix (Jack McBrayer) hot on his heels. Though often aggressively childish, the humor will amuse kids, parents, and occasionally gamers, and the Disney-approved message about acceptance is moving without being maudlin. The animation, limber enough to portray 30 years of changing video game graphics, deserves special praise. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Ben Richardson)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

DOCFEST

The 11th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival runs Nov 8-21 at the Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; and Shattuck Cinema, 2230 Shattuck, SF. Tickets (most films $10-12) and complete schedule at www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

Dangerous Liaisons John Malkovich and Sarah Michelle Gellar may have already starred in pop culture’s favorite adaptations of this classic French novel, but since pretty people scheming never gets old, here’s a Chinese take on Les Liaisons dangereuses, complete with big-name cast and all the visual allure of 1930s Shanghai. "You are such a cad!" a woman shrieks at Xie Yifan (Jang Dong-gun) in the first scene, and indeed he is — though his heart belongs to "Miss Mo" (Cecilia Cheung). The malicious wager (if you seduce her and then horribly dump her, I’ll let you sleep with me … plus: incidental affairs along the way) is struck and things proceed on schedule, until Yifan finds himself actually falling for virtuous widow Fenyu (Zhang Ziyi). You know how it ends. Gorgeous costumes and mise-en-scène add visual interest to the familiar story, which also adds a little political flair in the form of Chinese students protesting the early days of Japanese occupation. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Details One of the hardest hurdles to clear in watching Jacob Aaron Estes’s The Details might be the sight of Tobey Maguire, erstwhile boy-man and Spider-Man, inelegantly proposing to Elizabeth Banks (playing his character’s wife) that they put their small child to bed and F-U-C-K. On paper, or perhaps under the right mood lighting, that could work, but it’s not a sexy sight here, and it’s almost a relief when she turns him down. Far less appetizing intimacies lie ahead, though, as Maguire’s gynecologist and family man Jeffrey Lang triggers a sticky, unsalutary domino effect involving marauding raccoons, marital infidelity, enabling friends (Kerry Washington), unstable neighbors (Laura Linney), planning codes, pesticides, and kidney disease. Like Estes’s 2004 film Mean Creek, which he also wrote and directed, The Details shows us what can happen when baser human impulses meet unforeseen circumstances. There, it was children making painfully bad decisions. Here, we squeamishly watch Lang get caught, but the drama has a glossy, dark-comedy finish to it that prevents us from suffering too much as we witness his domestic life imploding. Dennis Haysbert plays a pickup basketball buddy/better human being drawn inexorably into the mess our protagonist has made; Ray Liotta, a husband made irate by Lang’s misjudgments. (1:31) (Rapoport)

Lincoln No vampires in this one. (2:30)

Sister Twelve-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein) looks like any other kid vacationing with a family on the slopes of a Swiss ski resort. That’s a big plus, because he’s not one of them — he’s a local living "downhill" in an anonymous high-rise apartment block, sustaining himself and his pretty but irresponsible older sister Louise (Léa Seydoux) by stealing expensive sports equipment and clothes from the oblivious guests. He has no guilt about what he does, but then why should he? Those people are rich, he’s not, and sis’ short attention span toward jobs and boyfriends isn’t going to pay the rent. Ursula Meier’s French-language second feature isn’t heavily plot-driven, though it doesn’t feel like a second is wasted. The casual, somewhat furtive relationships that develop between Simon and stray adults who glean enough to worry about him — a seasonal restaurant worker (Martin Compston), a maternal resort guest (Gillian Anderson), Louise’s better-than-usual new beau (Yann Tregouet) — come and go but are toeholds on stability for him. It’s the contrast between Simon’s aggressively take-charge premature adulthood and his unaddressed needs as a child that ultimately make Sister rather devastating. It’s been aptly compared to the Dardenne Brothers’ similar dramas, but Meier lets her film’s heart beat a little more in open empathy with its protagonist while aping those Belgians’ brisk surface objectivity. (1:37) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Skyfall Bond is back! (2:23) California, Four Star, Marina, Shattuck.

This Must Be the Place See "Goth-hmm City." (1:58) Bridge, Shattuck.

ONGOING

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Bay Top-quality (i.e., realistically repulsive) special effects highlight this otherwise unremarkable disaster movie that’s yet another "found footage" concoction, albeit maybe the first one from an Oscar-winning director. But it’s been a long time since 1988’s Rain Man, and the Baltimore-adjacent setting is the only Barry Levinson signature you’ll find here. Instead, parasites-gnaw-apart-a-coastal-town drama The Bay — positioned as a collection of suppressed material coming to light on "Govleaks.org" — is a relentlessly familiar affair, further hampered by a narrator (Kether Donohue) with a supremely grating voice. Rising star Christopher Denham (Argo) has a small part as an oceanographer whose warnings about the impending waterborne catastrophe are brushed aside by a mayor who is (spoiler alert!) more concerned with tourist dollars than safety. (1:25) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Chasing Mavericks Sidestepping the potential surf-porn impact of influential docs like The Endless Summer (1966) and Step Into Liquid (2003), Chasing Mavericks directors Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted instead focus on the coming-of-age back story of Santa Cruz surf legend Jay Moriarity, who landed on the cover of Surfer magazine at the very unripe age of 16 while attempting the way-challenging waves at Half Moon Bay’s Mavericks. How did the teenager manage to tackle the mythically massive, highly dangerous 25- to 80-plus-foot waves that have killed far more seasoned surfers? It all started at an early age, a starting point that’s perhaps a nod to Apted’s lifetime-spanning Up documentaries, as Moriarity (Jonny Weston) learned to gauge the size of the waves on his own and grew up idolizing neighbor and surfing kahuna Frosty Hesson (Gerard Butler). After tailing Hesson on a Mavericks surfing jaunt, Moriarity becomes enthralled with the idea of tackling those killer waves — an obsession that could kill the kid, Hesson realizes with the help of his wife Brenda (Abigail Spencer). So the elder puts him through a makeshift big-wave rider academy, developing him physically by having the teen, say, paddle from SC to Monterey and mentally by putting him through a series of discipline-building challenges. The result is a riptide of inspiration that even Moriarity’s damaged mom (Elisabeth Shue) can appreciate, that is if the directors hadn’t succumbed to an all-too-predictable story arc, complete with random bullying and an on-again-off-again love interest (Leven Rambin), plus the depthless performance of a too-cute, cherubic Weston. Too bad Butler, who tasted the ocean’s wrath when he got injured during the production, aged out of the Moriarity role: he brings the fire — and the fury that fuels a drive to do the physically unthinkable — that would have given Moriarity’s story new life. (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Cloud Atlas Cramming the six busy storylines of David Mitchell’s wildly ambitious novel into just three hours — the average reader might have thought at least 12 would be required — this impressive adaptation directed (in separate parts) by Tom Twyker (1998’s Run Lola Run) and Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski has a whole lot of narrative to get through, stretching around the globe and over centuries. In the mid 19th century, Jim Sturgess’ sickly American notory endures a long sea voyage as reluctant protector of a runaway-slave stowaway from the Chatham Islands (David Gyasi). In 1931 Belgium, a talented but criminally minded British musician (Ben Whishaw) wheedles his way into the household of a famous but long-inactive composer (Jim Broadbent). A chance encounter sets 1970s San Francisco journalist Luisa (Halle Berry) on the path of a massive cover-up conspiracy, swiftly putting her life in danger. Circa now, a reprobate London publisher’s (Broadbent) huge windfall turns into bad luck that gets even worse when he seeks help from his brother (Hugh Grant). In the not-so-distant future, a disposable "fabricant" server to the "consumer" classes (Doona Bae) finds herself plucked from her cog-like life for a rebellious higher purpose. Finally, in an indeterminately distant future after "the Fall," an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) forms a highly ambivalent relationship toward a visitor (Berry) from a more advanced but dying civilization. Mitchell’s book was divided into huge novella-sized blocks, with each thread split in two; the film wastes very little time establishing its individual stories before beginning to rapidly intercut between them. That may result in a sense of information (and eventually action) overload, particularly for non-readers, even as it clarifies the connective tissues running throughout. Compression robs some episodes of the cumulative impact they had on the page; the starry multicasting (which in addition to the above mentioned finds many uses for Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Susan Sarandon) can be a distraction; and there’s too much uplift forced on the six tales’ summation. Simply put, not everything here works; like the very different Watchmen, this is a rather brilliant "impossible adaptation" screenplay (by the directors) than nonetheless can’t help but be a bit too much. But so much does work — in alternating currents of satire, melodrama, pulp thriller, dystopian sci-fi, adventure, and so on — that Cloud Atlas must be forgiven for being imperfect. If it were perfect, it couldn’t possibly sprawl as imaginatively and challengingly as it does, and as mainstream movies very seldom do. (2:52) California, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises‘ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and "final" installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Metreon. (Eddy)

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel The life of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland is colorfully recounted in Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a doc directed by her granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The family connection meant seemingly unlimited access to material featuring the unconventionally glamorous (and highly quotable) Vreeland herself, plus the striking images that remain from her work at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Narrated" from interview transcripts by an actor approximating the late Vreeland’s husky, posh tones, the film allows for some criticism (her employees often trembled at the sight of her; her sons felt neglected; her grasp of historical accuracy while working at the museum was sometimes lacking) among the praise, which is lavish and delivered by A-listers like Anjelica Huston, who remembers "She had a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme," and Manolo Blahnik, who squeals, "She had the vision!" (1:26) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Flat Arnon Goldfinger’s The Flat begins as the filmmaker’s family descends upon the Tel Aviv apartment of his recently-deceased grandmother, "a bit of a hoarder" who lived to 95 and seemingly never got rid of anything. This includes, as Goldfinger discovers, copies of the Joseph Goebbels-founded newspaper Der Angriff, containing articles about "the Nazi who visited Palestine." The Nazi was Leopold von Mildenstein, an SS officer with an interest in Zionism. Turns out he made the journey in 1933 with his wife and a Jewish couple named Kurt and Gerda Tuchler — Goldfinger’s grandparents. Understandably intrigued and more than a little baffled, Goldfinger investigates, finding letters and diary entries that reveal the unlikely traveling companions were close friends, even after World War II. His mother, the Tuchler’s daughter, prefers to "keep the past out," but curiosity (and the pursuit of a good documentary) presses Goldfinger forward; he visits von Mildenstein’s elderly daughter in Germany, digs through German archives, and unearths even more suprises about his family tree. Broader themes about guilt and denial emerge — post-traumatic coping mechanisms that echo through generations.

(1:37) Albany, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Flight To twist the words of one troubled balladeer, he believes he can fly, he believes he can touch the sky. Unfortunately for Denzel Washington’s Whip Whitaker, another less savory connotation applies: his semi-sketchy airline captain is sailing on the overconfidence that comes with billowing clouds of blow. Beware the quickie TV spot — and Washington’s heroic stance in the poster — that plays this as a quasi-action flick: Flight is really about a man’s efforts to escape responsibility and his flight from facing his own addiction. It also sees Washington once again doing what he does so well: wrestling with the demons of a charismatic yet deeply flawed protagonist. We come upon Whip as he’s rousing himself from yet another bender, balancing himself out with a couple lines with a gorgeous, enabling flight attendant by his side. It’s a checks-and-balances routine we’re led to believe is business as usual, as he slides confidently into the cockpit, gives the passengers a good scare by charging through turbulence, and proceeds to doze off. The plane, however, goes into fail mode and forces the pilot to improvise brilliantly and kick into hero mode, though he can’t fly from his cover, which is slowly blown despite the ministrations of kindred addict Nicole (Kelly Reilly) and dealer Harling (John Goodman at his most ebullient) and the defensive moves of his pilots union cohort (Bruce Greenwood) and the airline’s lawyer (Don Cheadle). How can Whip fly out of the particular jam called his life? Working with what he’s given, Washington summons reserves of humanity, though he’s ultimately failed by John Gatins’ sanctimonious, recovery-by-the-numbers script and the tendency of seasoned director Robert Zemeckis to blithely skip over the personal history and background details that would have more completely filled out our picture of Whip. We’re left grasping for the highs, waiting for the instances that Harling sails into view and Whip tumbles off the wagon. (2:18) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Frankenweenie Tim Burton’s feature-length Frankenweenie expands his 1984 short of the same name (canned by Disney back in the day for being too scary), and is the first black and white film to receive the 3D IMAX treatment. A stop-motion homage to every monster movie Burton ever loved, Frankenweenie is also a revival of the Frankenstein story cute-ified for kids; it takes the showy elements of Mary Shelley’s novel and morphs them to fit Burton’s hyperbolic aesthetic. Elementary-school science wiz Victor takes his disinterred dog from bull terrier to gentle abomination (when the thirsty Sparky drinks, he shoots water out of the seams holding his body parts together). Victor’s competitor in the school science fair, Edgar E. Gore, finds out about Sparky and ropes in classmates to scrape up their dead pets from the town’s eerily utilized pet cemetery and harness the town’s lightning surplus. The film’s answer to Boris Karloff (lisp intact) resurrects a mummified hamster, while a surrogate for Japanese Godzilla maker Ishiro Honda, revives his pet turtle Shelley (get it?) into Gamera. As these experiments aren’t borne of love, they don’t go as well at Victor’s. If you love Burton, Frankenweenie feels like the at-last presentation of a story he’s been dying to tell for years. If you don’t love him, you might wonder why it took him so long to get it out. When Victor’s science teacher leaves the school, he tells Victor an experiment conducted without love is different from one conducted with it: love, he implies, is a variable. If that’s the variable that separates 2003’s Big Fish (heartbreaking) from 2010’s Alice In Wonderland (atrocious), it’s a large one indeed. The love was there for 29 minutes in 1984, but I can’t say it endures when stretched to 87 minutes 22 years later. (1:27) Metreon. (Vizcarrondo)

Fun Size (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Here Comes the Boom The makers of September’s Won’t Back Down might quibble with this statement, but the rest of us can probably agree that nothing (with the possible exception of Trapper Keepers) says "back to school" like competitive steel-cage mixed martial arts — particularly if the proceeds from the matches go toward saving extracurriculars at a down-at-the-heels public high school. Kevin James plays Scott Voss, a 42-year-old biology teacher at the aforementioned school, whose lack of vocational enthusiasm is manifested by poor attendance and classroom observations about how none of what the students are learning matters. He’s jolted from this criminally subpar performance of his academic duties, however, when budget cuts threaten the school’s arts programs, including the job of an earnest and enthusiastic music teacher (Henry Winkler) whose dedication Scott lazily admires. It seems less than inevitable that this state of affairs would lead to Scott’s donning his college wrestling singlet and trundling into the ring to get pummeled and mauled for cash, but it seems to work better than a bake sale. Less effective and equally unconvincing are Scott’s whiplash arc from bad apple to teacher-of-the-year; a percolating romance between him and the school nurse, played by Salma Hayek; and the script’s tortuous parade of rousing statements celebrating the power of the human spirit, seemingly cribbed from a page-a-day calendar of inspirational quotes. (1:45) SF Center. (Rapoport)

Hotel Transylvania (1:32) Metreon.

A Late Quartet Philip Seymour Hoffman is fed up playing second fiddle — literally. He stars in this grown-up soap opera about the internal dramas of a world-class string quartet. While the group is preparing for its 25th season, the eldest member (Christopher Walken) is diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s. As he’s the base note in the quartet, his retirement challenges the group’s future, not just his own. Hoffman’s second violinist sees the transition as an opportunity to challenge the first violin (Mark Ivanir) for an occasional Alpha role. When his wife, the quartet’s viola player (Catherine Keener), disagrees, it’s a slight ("You think I’m not good enough?") and a betrayal because prior to their marriage, viola and first violin would "duet" if you get my meaning. This becomes a grody aside when Hoffman and Keener’s violin prodigy daughter (Imogen Poots) falls for her mother’s old beau and Hoffman challenges their marriage with a flamenco dancer. These quiet people finds ways to use some loud instruments (a flamenco dancer, really?) and the music as well as the views of Manhattan create a deeply settled feeling of comfort in the cold —insulation can be a dangerous thing. When we see (real world) cellist Nina Lee play, and her full body interacts with a drama as big as vaudeville, we see what tension was left out of the playing and forced into the incestuous "family" conflicts. In A Late Quartet, pleasures are great and atmosphere, heavy. You couldn’t find a better advertisement for this symphonic season; I wanted to buy tickets immediately. And also vowed to stay away from musicians. (1:45) Albany, Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Vizcarrondo)

A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman Blessed with recordings made by Monty Python member Graham Chapman (King Arthur in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Brian in 1979’s Life of Brian) before his death in 1989 from cancer, filmmakers Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson, and Ben Timlett recruited 14 different animation studios to piece together Chapman’s darkly humorous (and often just plain dark) life story. He was gay, he was an alcoholic, he co-wrote (with John Cleese) the legendary "Dead Parrot Sketch." A Liar’s Autobiography starts slowly — even with fellow Monty Python members Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin lending their voices, much of the bone-dry humor falls disappointingly flat. "This is not a Monty Python film," the filmmakers insist, and viewers hoping for such will be disappointed. Stick with it, though, and the film eventually finds its footing as an offbeat biopic, with the pick-a-mix animation gimmick at its most effective when illustrating Chapman’s booze-fueled hallucinations. (1:22) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Loneliest Planet Travel broadens, they say — and has a way of foregrounding anxiety and desire. So the little tells take on a larger, much more loaded significance in The Loneliest Planet when contextualized by the devastatingly beautiful Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. In this film by Russian American director and video artist Julia Loktev, adventuring, engaged Westerners Nica (an ethereal Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal) hire a local guide and war veteran (Bidzina Gujabidze) to lead them on a camping trip through the wilderness. They’re globe-trotting blithe spirits, throwing themselves into new languages and new experiences, though the harsh, hazardous, and glorious Georgian peaks and crevasses have a way of making them seem even smaller while magnifying their weaknesses and naiveté. One small, critical stumble on their journey is all it takes for the pair to question their relationship, their roles, and the solid ground of their love. Working with minimal dialogue (and no handlebar subtitles) from a Tom Bissell short story, Loktev shows a deliberate hand and thoughtful eye in her use of the space, as well as her way of allowing the silences to speak louder than dialogue: she turns the outdoor expanses into a quietly awe-inspiring, albeit frightening mirror for the distances between, and emptiness within, her wanderers, uncertain about how to quite find their way home. (1:53) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Looper It’s 2044 and, thanks to a lengthy bout of exposition by our protagonist, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), here’s what we know: Time travel, an invention 30 years away, will be used by criminals to transport their soon-to-be homicide victims backward, where a class of gunmen called loopers, Joe among them, are employed to "do the necessaries." More deftly revealed in Brick writer-director Rian Johnson’s new film is the joylessness of the world in which Joe amorally makes his way, where gangsters from the future control the present (under the supervision of Jeff Daniels), their hit men live large but badly (Joe is addicted to some eyeball-administered narcotic), and the remainder of the urban populace suffers below-subsistence-level poverty. The latest downside for guys like Joe is that a new crime boss has begun sending back a steady stream of aging loopers for termination, or "closing the loop"; soon enough, Joe is staring down a gun barrel at himself plus 30 years. Being played by Bruce Willis, old Joe is not one to peaceably abide by a death warrant, and young Joe must set off in search of himself so that—with the help of a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt) and her creepy-cute son Cid (Pierce Gagnon)—he can blow his own (future) head off. Having seen the evocatively horrific fate of another escaped looper, we can’t totally blame him. Parsing the daft mechanics of time travel as envisioned here is rough going, but the film’s brisk pacing and talented cast distract, and as one Joe tersely explains to another, if they start talking about it, "we’re gonna be here all day making diagrams with straws" —in other words, some loops just weren’t meant to be closed. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Man With The Iron Fists (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Masquerade (2:11) Metreon.

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-hyped likely Best Picture contender lives up: it’s easily the best film of 2012 so far. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Lancaster Dodd, the L. Ron Hubbard-ish head of a Scientology-esque movement. "The Cause" attracts Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a welcome return from the faux-deep end), less for its pseudo-religious psychobabble and bizarre personal-growth exercises, and more because it supplies the aimless, alcoholic veteran — a drifter in every sense of the word — with a sense of community he yearns for, yet resists submitting to. As with There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson focuses on the tension between the two main characters: an older, established figure and his upstart challenger. But there’s less cut-and-dried antagonism here; while their relationship is complex, and it does lead to dark, troubled places, there are also moments of levity and weird hilarity — which might have something to do with Freddie’s paint-thinner moonshine. (2:17) Shattuck. (Eddy)

The Other Son The plot of ABC Family’s Switched at Birth gets a politically-minded makeover in Lorraine Lévy’s The Other Son, in which the mixed-up teens represent both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. When mop-topped wannabe rocker Joseph (Jules Sitruk) dutifully signs up for Israeli military duty, the required blood test reveals he’s not the biological son of his parents. Understandably freaked out, his French-Israeli mother (Emmanuelle Devos) finds out that a hospital error during a Gulf War-era evacuation meant she and husband Alon (Pascal Elbé) went home with the wrong infant — and their child, aspiring doctor Yacine (Medhi Dehbi), was raised instead by a Palestinian couple (Areen Omari, Khalifia Natour). It’s a highly-charged situation on many levels ("Am I still Jewish?", a tearful Joseph asks; "Have fun with the occupying forces?", Yacine’s bitter brother inquires after his family visits Joseph in Tel Aviv), and potential for melodrama is sky-high. Fortunately, director and co-writer Levy handles the subject with admirable sensitivity, and the film is further buoyed by strong performances. (1:53) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Paranormal Activity 4 (1:21) Metreon.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Pitch Perfect As an all-female college a cappella group known as the Barden Bellas launches into Ace of Base’s "The Sign" during the prologue of Pitch Perfect, you can hear the Glee-meets-Bring It On elevator pitch. Which is fine, since Bring It On-meets-anything is clearly worth a shot. In this attempt, Anna Kendrick stars as withdrawn and disaffected college freshman Beca, who dreams of producing music in L.A. but is begrudgingly getting a free ride at Barden University via her comp lit professor father. Clearly his goal is not making sure she receives a liberal arts education, as Barden’s academic jungle extends to the edges of the campus’s competitive a cappella scene, and the closest thing to an intellectual challenge occurs during a "riff-off" between a cappella gangs at the bottom of a mysteriously drained swimming pool. When Beca reluctantly joins the Bellas, she finds herself caring enough about the group’s fate to push for an Ace of Base moratorium and radical steps like performing mashups. Much as 2000’s Bring It On coined terms like "cheerocracy" and "having cheer-sex," Pitch Perfect gives us the infinitely applicable prefix "a ca-" and descriptives like "getting Treble-boned," a reference to forbidden sexual relations with the Bellas’ cocky rivals, the Treblemakers. The gags get funnier, dirtier, and weirder, arguably reaching their climax in projectile-vomit snow angels, with Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as grin-panning competition commentators offering a string of loopily inappropriate observations. (1:52) Metreon. (Rapoport)

Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Seven Psychopaths Those nostalgic for 1990s-style chatty assassins will find much to love in the broadly sketched Seven Psychopaths. Director-writer Martin McDonough already dipped a pen into Tarantino’s blood-splattered ink well with his 2008 debut feature, In Bruges, and Seven Psychopaths reads as larkier and more off-the-cuff, as the award-winning Irish playwright continues to try to find his own discomfiting, teasing balance between goofy Grand Guignol yuks and meta-minded storytelling. Structured, sort of, with the certified lucidity of a thrill killer, Seven Psychopaths opens on Boardwalk Empire heavies Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg bantering about the terrors of getting shot in the eyeball, while waiting to "kill a chick." The talky twosome don’t seem capable of harming a fat hen, in the face of the Jack of Spades serial killer, who happens to be Psychopath No. One and a serial destroyer of hired guns. The key to the rest of the psychopathic gang is locked in the noggin of screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell), who’s grappling with a major block and attempting the seeming impossible task of creating a peace-loving, Buddhist killer. Looking on are his girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish) and actor best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), who has a lucrative side gig as a dog kidnapper — and reward snatcher — with the dapper Hans (Christopher Walken). A teensy bit too enthusiastic about Marty’s screenplay, Billy displays a talent for stumbling over psychos, reeling in Zachariah (Tom Waits) and, on his doggie-grabbing adventures, Shih Tzu-loving gangster Charlie (Woody Harrelson). Unrest assured, leitmotifs from McDonough plays — like a preoccupation with fiction-making (The Pillowman) and the coupling of pet-loving sentimentality and primal violence (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) — crop up in Seven Psychopaths, though in rougher, less refined form, and sprinkled with a nervous, bromantic anxiety that barely skirts homophobia. Best to bask in the cute, dumb pleasures of a saucer-eyed lap dog and the considerably more mental joys of this cast, headed up by dear dog hunter Walken, who can still stir terror with just a withering gaze and a voice that can peel the finish off a watch. (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D The husband and adopted daughter of Rosa (Radha Mitchell, star of the 2006 first film and seen briefly here), Harry (Sean Bean) and Heather (Adelaide Clemens) have been on the run from both police and ghouls since mom vanished into the titular nether land some years ago. When dad is abducted, Heather must follow him to you-know-where, accompanied by cute-boy-with-a-secret Vincent (Kit Harington). There she runs screaming from the usual faceless knife-wielding nuns and other nightmare nemeses while attempting to rescue Pa and puzzle out her place in resolving the curse placed on the ghost town. The original 2006 film adaptation of the video game was a mixed bag but, like the game, had splendid visuals; this cut rate sequel lacks even that, despite the addition of 3D (if you’re willing to pay for a premium ticket). It’s pure cheese with no real scares, much-diminished atmosphere, and laughable stretches of mythological mumbo-jumbo recited by embarrassed good actors (Martin Donovan, Deborah Kara Unger, Carrie-Anne Moss, a punishingly hammy Malcolm McDowell). There is one cool monster — a many-faced "tarantula" assembled from mannequin parts — but its couple minutes aren’t worth ponying up for the rest of a movie that severely disappoints already low expectations. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Sinister True-crime author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) hasn’t had a successful book in a decade. So he uproots wife (Juliet Rylance) and kids (Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) for yet another research project, not telling them that they’re actually moving into the recent scene of a ghastly unsolved murder in which an entire family — save one still-missing child — was hanged from a backyard tree. He finds a box in the attic that somehow escaped police attention, its contents being several reels of Super 8 home movies stretching back decades — all of families similarly wiped out in one cruel act. Smelling best-sellerdom, Ellison keeps this evidence of a serial slayer to himself. It’s disturbing when his son re-commences sleepwalking night terrors. It’s really disturbing when dad begins to spy a demonic looking figure lurking in the background of the films. It’s really, really disturbing when the projector starts turning itself on, in the middle of the night, in his locked office. A considerable bounce-back from his bloated 2008 Day the Earth Stood Still remake, Scott Derrickson’s film takes the opposite tact — it’s very small in both physical scope and narrative focus, almost never leaving the Oswalt’s modest house in fact. He takes the time to let pure creepiness build rather than feeling the need to goose our nads with a false scare or goresplat every five minutes. As a result, Sinister is definitely one of the year’s better horrors, even if (perhaps inevitably) the denouement can’t fully meet the expectations raised by that very long, unsettling buildup. (1:50) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Taken 2 Surprise hit Taken (2008) was a soap opera produced by French action master Luc Besson and designed for export. The divorced-dad-saves-daughter-from-sex-slavery plot may have nagged at some universal parenting anxieties, but it was a Movie of the Week melodrama made on a major movie budget. Taken 2 begins immediately after the last, with sweet teen Kim (Maggie Grace) talking about normalizing after she was drugged and bought for booty. Papa Neeson sees Kim’s mom (Famke Janssen) losing her grip on husband number two and invites them both to holiday in Istanbul following one of his high-stakes security gigs. When the assistant with the money slinks him a fat envelope, Neeson chuckles at his haul. This is the point when women in the audience choose which Neeson they’re watching: the understated super-provider or the warrior-dad whose sense of duty can meet no match. For family men, this is the breeziest bit of vicarious living available; Neeson’s character is a tireless daddy duelist, a man as diligent as he is organized. (This is guy who screams "Victory loves preparation!") As head-splitting, disorienting, and generally exhausting as the action direction is, Neeson saves his ex-wife and the show in a stream of unclear shootouts. Taken 2 is best suited for the small screen, but whatever the size, no one can stop an international slave trade (or wolves, or Batman) like 21st century Liam. Swoon. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

The Waiting Room Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. (1:21) Roxie, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Wreck-It Ralph Wreck-It Ralph cribs directly from the Toy Story series: when the lights go off in the arcade, video game characters gather to eat, drink, and endure existential crises. John C. Reilly is likable and idiosyncratic as Ralph, the hulking, ham-fisted villain of a game called Fix-It-Felix. Fed up with being the bad guy, Ralph sneaks into gritty combat sim Hero’s Duty under the nose of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a blond space marine who mixes Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard with a PG-rated R. Lee Ermey. Things go quickly awry, and soon Ralph is marooned in cart-racing candyland Sugar Rush, helping Vanellope Von Schweetz (a manic Sarah Silverman), with Calhoun and opposite number Felix (Jack McBrayer) hot on his heels. Though often aggressively childish, the humor will amuse kids, parents, and occasionally gamers, and the Disney-approved message about acceptance is moving without being maudlin. The animation, limber enough to portray 30 years of changing video game graphics, deserves special praise. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Ben Richardson)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Amber Alert An audition tape for The Amazing Race quickly turns into an epic chase in this low-budget "found footage" drama. Arizona BFFs Nate (Chris Hill) and Sam (Summer Bellessa, wife of director Kerry Bellessa) — and Sam’s teenage brother, shaky-cam operator Caleb (Caleb Thompson) — notice they’re driving behind the very Honda that’s being sought by an Amber Alert. "Following at a safe distance," as advised when they call the cops, leads to high-decibel arguments about how to handle the situation — and for the next hour-plus, the viewer is trapped in a car with two people communicating only in nails-on-chalkboard tones. Amber Alert‘s nonstop bickerfest is so tiresome that it’s actually a relief when the child molester character starts taking an active role in the story. Not a good sign. (1:20) Rohnert Park 16. (Eddy)

The Bay Top-quality (i.e., realistically repulsive) special effects highlight this otherwise unremarkable disaster movie that’s yet another "found footage" concoction, albeit maybe the first one from an Oscar-winning director. But it’s been a long time since 1988’s Rain Man, and the Baltimore-adjacent setting is the only Barry Levinson signature you’ll find here. Instead, parasites-gnaw-apart-a-coastal-town drama The Bay — positioned as a collection of suppressed material coming to light on "Govleaks.org" — is a relentlessly familiar affair, further hampered by a narrator (Kether Donohue) with a supremely grating voice. Rising star Christopher Denham (Argo) has a small part as an oceanographer whose warnings about the impending waterborne catastrophe are brushed aside by a mayor who is (spoiler alert!) more concerned with tourist dollars than safety. (1:25) (Eddy)

"Don’t Shoot the Player Piano: The Music of Conlon Nancarrow" The late Texarkana-born composer’s birth centenary is celebrated in this two-part (Fri/2 and Sun/4) program of films examining his unique contribution to 20th century music. Frustrated early on by the inability of standard musicians to play his incredibly complicated scores, he turned to composing for player pianos, with their greatly heightened capacity for producing density of notes and rhythms. A member of the American Communist Party, he returned from fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War to discover the U.S. government had revoked the passports of many citizens with similar political convictions. As a result, in 1940 he moved to Mexico, where he remained until his death 57 years later — his reputation remaining an underground musicologists’ secret until the early 1980s, in large part due to his disinterest in fame and dislike of crowds (he’d always avoided any gathering of over five people). But in his last years he became much more widely known, thanks in large part to fans like fellow composer Gyorgy Ligeti, who in one documentary here calls him "the most important composer of our time," comparing him to Beethoven and saying "his work is completely, totally different from [his contemporaries]." Among the movies screening are Uli Aumuller and Hanne Kaisik’s 1993 German Music for 1,000 Fingers, in which the reclusive, elderly subject allows us into his studio to explain his (still somewhat inexplicable) methodologies. The brand-new, hour-long Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano offers a posthumous appreciation of his life, music and influence. It’s a first film from James Greeson, a professor of music at the University of Arkansas who knew the man himself. Also featured are several international shorts that provide interpretive visual complements to Nancarrow pieces. His widow and daughter, as well as kinetic sculptor Trimpin and composer-former KPFA music director Charles Amirkhanian will appear at both PFA programs. Pacific Film Archive. (Harvey)

The Flat See "Past Lives." (1:37) Albany, Embarcadero.

Flight Robert Zemeckis directs Denzel Washington as an airline pilot whose act of heroism brings to light his secret drinking problem. (2:18) Presidio.

A Late Quartet Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken head up a star-spangled cast in this drama about a famous string quartet. (1:45) Embarcadero.

A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman Blessed with recordings made by Monty Python member Graham Chapman (King Arthur in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail; Brian in 1979’s Life of Brian) before his death in 1989 from cancer, filmmakers Bill Jones, Jeff Simpson, and Ben Timlett recruited 14 different animation studios to piece together Chapman’s darkly humorous (and often just plain dark) life story. He was gay, he was an alcoholic, he co-wrote (with John Cleese) the legendary "Dead Parrot Sketch." A Liar’s Autobiography starts slowly — even with fellow Monty Python members Cleese, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam, and Michael Palin lending their voices, much of the bone-dry humor falls disappointingly flat. "This is not a Monty Python film," the filmmakers insist, and viewers hoping for such will be disappointed. Stick with it, though, and the film eventually finds its footing as an offbeat biopic, with the pick-a-mix animation gimmick at its most effective when illustrating Chapman’s booze-fueled hallucinations. In addition to opening theatrically, the film also debuts Fri/2 on premium cable channel Epix. (1:22) Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Loneliest Planet Travel broadens, they say — and has a way of foregrounding anxiety and desire. So the little tells take on a larger, much more loaded significance in The Loneliest Planet when contextualized by the devastatingly beautiful Caucasus Mountains in Georgia. In this film by Russian American director and video artist Julia Loktev, adventuring, engaged Westerners Nica (an ethereal Hani Furstenberg) and Alex (Gael García Bernal) hire a local guide and war veteran (Bidzina Gujabidze) to lead them on a camping trip through the wilderness. They’re globe-trotting blithe spirits, throwing themselves into new languages and new experiences, though the harsh, hazardous, and glorious Georgian peaks and crevasses have a way of making them seem even smaller while magnifying their weaknesses and naiveté. One small, critical stumble on their journey is all it takes for the pair to question their relationship, their roles, and the solid ground of their love. Working with minimal dialogue (and no handlebar subtitles) from a Tom Bissell short story, Loktev shows a deliberate hand and thoughtful eye in her use of the space, as well as her way of allowing the silences to speak louder than dialogue: she turns the outdoor expanses into a quietly awe-inspiring, albeit frightening mirror for the distances between, and emptiness within, her wanderers, uncertain about how to quite find their way home. (1:53) Clay, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Man With The Iron Fists Erstwhile Wu Tang-er RZA directs (and co-wrote, with Eli Roth) this over-the-top homage to classic martial arts films. (1:36)

Miami Connection See "Black-Belt Sabbath." (1:23) Roxie.

The Other Son The plot of ABC Family’s Switched at Birth gets a politically-minded makeover in Lorraine Lévy’s The Other Son, in which the mixed-up teens represent both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. When mop-topped wannabe rocker Joseph (Jules Sitruk) dutifully signs up for Israeli military duty, the required blood test reveals he’s not the biological son of his parents. Understandably freaked out, his French-Israeli mother (Emmanuelle Devos) finds out that a hospital error during a Gulf War-era evacuation meant she and husband Alon (Pascal Elbé) went home with the wrong infant — and their child, aspiring doctor Yacine (Medhi Dehbi), was raised instead by a Palestinian couple (Areen Omari, Khalifia Natour). It’s a highly-charged situation on many levels ("Am I still Jewish?", a tearful Joseph asks; "Have fun with the occupying forces?", Yacine’s bitter brother inquires after his family visits Joseph in Tel Aviv), and potential for melodrama is sky-high. Fortunately, director and co-writer Levy handles the subject with admirable sensitivity, and the film is further buoyed by strong performances. (1:53) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

A Simple Life When elderly Ah Tao (Deanie Ip), the housekeeper who’s served his family for decades, has a stroke, producer Roger (Andy Lau) pays for her to enter a nursing home. No longer tasked with caring for Roger, Ah Tao faces life in the cramped, often depressing facility with resigned calm, making friends with other residents (some of whom are played by nonprofessional actors) and enjoying Roger’s frequent visits. Based on Roger Lee’s story (inspired by his own life), Ann Hui’s film is well-served by its performances; Ip picked up multiple Best Actress awards for her role, Lau is reliably solid, and Anthony Wong pops up as the nursing home’s eye patch-wearing owner. Wong’s over-the-top cameo doesn’t quite fit in with the movie’s otherwise low-key vibe, but he’s a welcome distraction in a film that can be too quiet at times — a situation not helped by its washed-out palette of gray, beige, and more gray. (1:58) Four Star. (Eddy)

Wreck-It Ralph Wreck-It Ralph cribs directly from the Toy Story series: when the lights go off in the arcade, video game characters gather to eat, drink, and endure existential crises. John C. Reilly is likable and idiosyncratic as Ralph, the hulking, ham-fisted villain of a game called Fix-It-Felix. Fed up with being the bad guy, Ralph sneaks into gritty combat sim Hero’s Duty under the nose of Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), a blond space marine who mixes Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard with a PG-rated R. Lee Ermey. Things go quickly awry, and soon Ralph is marooned in cart-racing candyland Sugar Rush, helping Vanellope Von Schweetz (a manic Sarah Silverman), with Calhoun and opposite number Felix (Jack McBrayer) hot on his heels. Though often aggressively childish, the humor will amuse kids, parents, and occasionally gamers, and the Disney-approved message about acceptance is moving without being maudlin. The animation, limber enough to portray 30 years of changing video game graphics, deserves special praise. (1:34) Balboa, Presidio, Shattuck. (Ben Richardson)

The Zen of Bennett Landing somewhere between a glorified album making-of and a more depthed exploration, this documentary about famed crooner Tony of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" fame shows him recording last year’s all-standards Duets II disc. His vocal collaborators are an eclectic — to say the least — mix of mostly much younger artists including Norah Jones, John Mayer, Carrie Underwood, Willie Nelson, and Andrea Bocelli. Some pairings are clearly a matter of commerce over chemistry, while others surprise — Lady Gaga is better than you might expect, while Aretha Franklin is certainly worse. Most touching as well as disturbing is his session with the late Amy Winehouse, whose nervous, possibly hopped-up appearance occasions his most gentlemanly behavior, as well as genuine admiration for her talent. (Others on the record, including Mariah Carey and k.d. lang, do not appear here.) Unjoo Moon’s rather mannered direction includes little displays of temperament from the octogenarian star, and glimpses of his family life (which extends well into his work life, since they all seem to be on the payroll), but just enough to tease — not enough to provide actual insight. Still, fans will find this less than-definitive portrait quite satisfying enough on its own limited terms. (1:24) Vogue. (Harvey)

ONGOING

Alex Cross (1:41) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls "the best bad idea we have:" the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. ("Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?’" someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Beasts of the Southern Wild Six months after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (and a Cannes Camera d’Or), Beasts of the Southern Wild proves capable of enduring a second or third viewing with its originality and strangeness fully intact. Magical realism is a primarily literary device that isn’t attempted very often in U.S. cinema, and succeeds very rarely. But this intersection between Faulkner and fairy tale, a fable about — improbably — Hurricane Katrina, is mysterious and unruly and enchanting. Benh Zeitlin’s film is wildly cinematic from the outset, as voiceover narration from six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) offers simple commentary on her rather fantastical life. She abides in the Bathtub, an imaginary chunk of bayou country south of New Orleans whose residents live closer to nature, amid the detritus of civilization. Seemingly everything is some alchemical combination of scrap heap, flesh, and soil. But not all is well: when "the storm" floods the land, the holdouts are forced at federal gunpoint to evacuate. With its elements of magic, mythological exodus, and evolutionary biology, Beasts goes way out on a conceptual limb; you could argue it achieves many (if not more) of the same goals Terrence Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life did at a fraction of that film’s cost and length. (1:31) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Chasing Mavericks Sidestepping the potential surf-porn impact of influential docs like The Endless Summer (1966) and Step Into Liquid (2003), Chasing Mavericks directors Curtis Hanson and Michael Apted instead focus on the coming-of-age back story of Santa Cruz surf legend Jay Moriarity, who landed on the cover of Surfer magazine at the very unripe age of 16 while attempting the way-challenging waves at Half Moon Bay’s Mavericks. How did the teenager manage to tackle the mythically massive, highly dangerous 25- to 80-plus-foot waves that have killed far more seasoned surfers? It all started at an early age, a starting point that’s perhaps a nod to Apted’s lifetime-spanning Up documentaries, as Moriarity (Jonny Weston) learned to gauge the size of the waves on his own and grew up idolizing neighbor and surfing kahuna Frosty Hesson (Gerard Butler). After tailing Hesson on a Mavericks surfing jaunt, Moriarity becomes enthralled with the idea of tackling those killer waves — an obsession that could kill the kid, Hesson realizes with the help of his wife Brenda (Abigail Spencer). So the elder puts him through a makeshift big-wave rider academy, developing him physically by having the teen, say, paddle from SC to Monterey and mentally by putting him through a series of discipline-building challenges. The result is a riptide of inspiration that even Moriarity’s damaged mom (Elisabeth Shue) can appreciate, that is if the directors hadn’t succumbed to an all-too-predictable story arc, complete with random bullying and an on-again-off-again love interest (Leven Rambin), plus the depthless performance of a too-cute, cherubic Weston. Too bad Butler, who tasted the ocean’s wrath when he got injured during the production, aged out of the Moriarity role: he brings the fire — and the fury that fuels a drive to do the physically unthinkable — that would have given Moriarity’s story new life. (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Cloud Atlas Cramming the six busy storylines of David Mitchell’s wildly ambitious novel into just three hours — the average reader might have thought at least 12 would be required — this impressive adaptation directed (in separate parts) by Tom Twyker (1998’s Run Lola Run) and Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski has a whole lot of narrative to get through, stretching around the globe and over centuries. In the mid 19th century, Jim Sturgess’ sickly American notory endures a long sea voyage as reluctant protector of a runaway-slave stowaway from the Chatham Islands (David Gyasi). In 1931 Belgium, a talented but criminally minded British musician (Ben Whishaw) wheedles his way into the household of a famous but long-inactive composer (Jim Broadbent). A chance encounter sets 1970s San Francisco journalist Luisa (Halle Berry) on the path of a massive cover-up conspiracy, swiftly putting her life in danger. Circa now, a reprobate London publisher’s (Broadbent) huge windfall turns into bad luck that gets even worse when he seeks help from his brother (Hugh Grant). In the not-so-distant future, a disposable "fabricant" server to the "consumer" classes (Doona Bae) finds herself plucked from her cog-like life for a rebellious higher purpose. Finally, in an indeterminately distant future after "the Fall," an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) forms a highly ambivalent relationship toward a visitor (Berry) from a more advanced but dying civilization. Mitchell’s book was divided into huge novella-sized blocks, with each thread split in two; the film wastes very little time establishing its individual stories before beginning to rapidly intercut between them. That may result in a sense of information (and eventually action) overload, particularly for non-readers, even as it clarifies the connective tissues running throughout. Compression robs some episodes of the cumulative impact they had on the page; the starry multicasting (which in addition to the above mentioned finds many uses for Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Susan Sarandon) can be a distraction; and there’s too much uplift forced on the six tales’ summation. Simply put, not everything here works; like the very different Watchmen, this is a rather brilliant "impossible adaptation" screenplay (by the directors) than nonetheless can’t help but be a bit too much. But so much does work — in alternating currents of satire, melodrama, pulp thriller, dystopian sci-fi, adventure, and so on — that Cloud Atlas must be forgiven for being imperfect. If it were perfect, it couldn’t possibly sprawl as imaginatively and challengingly as it does, and as mainstream movies very seldom do. (2:52) Balboa, California, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises‘ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and "final" installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Metreon. (Eddy)

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel The life of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland is colorfully recounted in Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a doc directed by her granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The family connection meant seemingly unlimited access to material featuring the unconventionally glamorous (and highly quotable) Vreeland herself, plus the striking images that remain from her work at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Narrated" from interview transcripts by an actor approximating the late Vreeland’s husky, posh tones, the film allows for some criticism (her employees often trembled at the sight of her; her sons felt neglected; her grasp of historical accuracy while working at the museum was sometimes lacking) among the praise, which is lavish and delivered by A-listers like Anjelica Huston, who remembers "She had a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme," and Manolo Blahnik, who squeals, "She had the vision!" (1:26) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Frankenweenie Tim Burton’s feature-length Frankenweenie expands his 1984 short of the same name (canned by Disney back in the day for being too scary), and is the first black and white film to receive the 3D IMAX treatment. A stop-motion homage to every monster movie Burton ever loved, Frankenweenie is also a revival of the Frankenstein story cute-ified for kids; it takes the showy elements of Mary Shelley’s novel and morphs them to fit Burton’s hyperbolic aesthetic. Elementary-school science wiz Victor takes his disinterred dog from bull terrier to gentle abomination (when the thirsty Sparky drinks, he shoots water out of the seams holding his body parts together). Victor’s competitor in the school science fair, Edgar E. Gore, finds out about Sparky and ropes in classmates to scrape up their dead pets from the town’s eerily utilized pet cemetery and harness the town’s lightning surplus. The film’s answer to Boris Karloff (lisp intact) resurrects a mummified hamster, while a surrogate for Japanese Godzilla maker Ishiro Honda, revives his pet turtle Shelley (get it?) into Gamera. As these experiments aren’t borne of love, they don’t go as well at Victor’s. If you love Burton, Frankenweenie feels like the at-last presentation of a story he’s been dying to tell for years. If you don’t love him, you might wonder why it took him so long to get it out. When Victor’s science teacher leaves the school, he tells Victor an experiment conducted without love is different from one conducted with it: love, he implies, is a variable. If that’s the variable that separates 2003’s Big Fish (heartbreaking) from 2010’s Alice In Wonderland (atrocious), it’s a large one indeed. The love was there for 29 minutes in 1984, but I can’t say it endures when stretched to 87 minutes 22 years later. (1:27) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

Fun Size (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

Here Comes the Boom The makers of September’s Won’t Back Down might quibble with this statement, but the rest of us can probably agree that nothing (with the possible exception of Trapper Keepers) says "back to school" like competitive steel-cage mixed martial arts — particularly if the proceeds from the matches go toward saving extracurriculars at a down-at-the-heels public high school. Kevin James plays Scott Voss, a 42-year-old biology teacher at the aforementioned school, whose lack of vocational enthusiasm is manifested by poor attendance and classroom observations about how none of what the students are learning matters. He’s jolted from this criminally subpar performance of his academic duties, however, when budget cuts threaten the school’s arts programs, including the job of an earnest and enthusiastic music teacher (Henry Winkler) whose dedication Scott lazily admires. It seems less than inevitable that this state of affairs would lead to Scott’s donning his college wrestling singlet and trundling into the ring to get pummeled and mauled for cash, but it seems to work better than a bake sale. Less effective and equally unconvincing are Scott’s whiplash arc from bad apple to teacher-of-the-year; a percolating romance between him and the school nurse, played by Salma Hayek; and the script’s tortuous parade of rousing statements celebrating the power of the human spirit, seemingly cribbed from a page-a-day calendar of inspirational quotes. (1:45) SF Center. (Rapoport)

Hotel Transylvania (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

The House I Live In Much like he did in 2005’s Why We Fight, filmmaker Eugene Jarecki identifies a Big Issue (in that film, the Iraq War) and strips it down, tracing all of the history leading up to the current crisis point. Here, he takes on America’s "war on drugs," which I put quotes around not just because it was a phrase spoken by Nixon and Reagan, but also because — as The House I Live In ruthlessly exposes — it’s been a failure, a sham, since its origins in the late 1960s. Framing his investigation with the personal story of his family’s housekeeper — whose dedication to the Jarecki family meant that she was absent when her own son turned to drugs — and enfolding a diverse array of interviews (a sympathetic prison guard, addicts and their families, The Wire‘s David Simon) and locations (New York City, Sioux City), Jarecki has created an eye-opening film. Particularly well-explained are segments on how drug laws correlate directly to race and class, and how the prison-industrial complex has played a part in making sure those laws remain as strict as possible. (1:48) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Looper It’s 2044 and, thanks to a lengthy bout of exposition by our protagonist, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), here’s what we know: Time travel, an invention 30 years away, will be used by criminals to transport their soon-to-be homicide victims backward, where a class of gunmen called loopers, Joe among them, are employed to "do the necessaries." More deftly revealed in Brick writer-director Rian Johnson’s new film is the joylessness of the world in which Joe amorally makes his way, where gangsters from the future control the present (under the supervision of Jeff Daniels), their hit men live large but badly (Joe is addicted to some eyeball-administered narcotic), and the remainder of the urban populace suffers below-subsistence-level poverty. The latest downside for guys like Joe is that a new crime boss has begun sending back a steady stream of aging loopers for termination, or "closing the loop"; soon enough, Joe is staring down a gun barrel at himself plus 30 years. Being played by Bruce Willis, old Joe is not one to peaceably abide by a death warrant, and young Joe must set off in search of himself so that—with the help of a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt) and her creepy-cute son Cid (Pierce Gagnon)—he can blow his own (future) head off. Having seen the evocatively horrific fate of another escaped looper, we can’t totally blame him. Parsing the daft mechanics of time travel as envisioned here is rough going, but the film’s brisk pacing and talented cast distract, and as one Joe tersely explains to another, if they start talking about it, "we’re gonna be here all day making diagrams with straws" —in other words, some loops just weren’t meant to be closed. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Masquerade (2:11) Metreon.

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-hyped likely Best Picture contender lives up: it’s easily the best film of 2012 so far. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Lancaster Dodd, the L. Ron Hubbard-ish head of a Scientology-esque movement. "The Cause" attracts Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a welcome return from the faux-deep end), less for its pseudo-religious psychobabble and bizarre personal-growth exercises, and more because it supplies the aimless, alcoholic veteran — a drifter in every sense of the word — with a sense of community he yearns for, yet resists submitting to. As with There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson focuses on the tension between the two main characters: an older, established figure and his upstart challenger. But there’s less cut-and-dried antagonism here; while their relationship is complex, and it does lead to dark, troubled places, there are also moments of levity and weird hilarity — which might have something to do with Freddie’s paint-thinner moonshine. (2:17) Albany, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Middle of Nowhere All the reasons why movie publicist turned filmmaker Ava DuVernay scored the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival are up here on the screen. Taking on the emotionally charged yet rarely attempted challenge of picturing the life of the loved one left behind by the incarcerated, DuVernay furthers the cause of telling African American stories — she founded AaFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement) and made her directorial debut with 2008 LA hip-hop doc This Is The Life — with Middle of Nowhere. Medical student Ruby (the compelling Emayatzy Corinealdi) appears to have a bright future ahead of her, when her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) makes some bad choices and is tossed into maximum security prison for eight long years. She swears she’ll wait for him, putting her dreams aside, making the long bus ride out to visit him regularly, and settling for any nursing shift she can. How will she scrape the money together to pay the lawyer for Derek’s parole hearing, cope with the grinding disapproval of her mother (Lorraine Toussaint), support the increasingly hardened and altered Derek, and most importantly, discover a new path for herself? All are handled with rare empathy and compassion by DuVernay, who is rewarded for her care by her cast’s powerful performances. Our reward might be found amid the everyday poetry of Ruby’s life, while she wraps her hair for bed, watches Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), and fantasizes about love in a life interrupted. (1:41) Stonestown. (Chun)

Paranormal Activity 4 (1:21) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Pitch Perfect As an all-female college a cappella group known as the Barden Bellas launches into Ace of Base’s "The Sign" during the prologue of Pitch Perfect, you can hear the Glee-meets-Bring It On elevator pitch. Which is fine, since Bring It On-meets-anything is clearly worth a shot. In this attempt, Anna Kendrick stars as withdrawn and disaffected college freshman Beca, who dreams of producing music in L.A. but is begrudgingly getting a free ride at Barden University via her comp lit professor father. Clearly his goal is not making sure she receives a liberal arts education, as Barden’s academic jungle extends to the edges of the campus’s competitive a cappella scene, and the closest thing to an intellectual challenge occurs during a "riff-off" between a cappella gangs at the bottom of a mysteriously drained swimming pool. When Beca reluctantly joins the Bellas, she finds herself caring enough about the group’s fate to push for an Ace of Base moratorium and radical steps like performing mashups. Much as 2000’s Bring It On coined terms like "cheerocracy" and "having cheer-sex," Pitch Perfect gives us the infinitely applicable prefix "a ca-" and descriptives like "getting Treble-boned," a reference to forbidden sexual relations with the Bellas’ cocky rivals, the Treblemakers. The gags get funnier, dirtier, and weirder, arguably reaching their climax in projectile-vomit snow angels, with Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as grin-panning competition commentators offering a string of loopily inappropriate observations. (1:52) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Samsara Samsara is the latest sumptuous, wordless offering from director Ron Fricke, who helped develop this style of dialogue- and context-free travelogue with Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Baraka (1992). Spanning five years and shooting on 70mm film to capture glimmers of life in 25 countries on five continents, Samsara, which spins off the Sanskrit word for the "ever-turning wheel of life," is nothing if not good-looking, aspiring to be a kind of visual symphony boosted by music by the Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard and composers Michael Stearns and Marcello De Francisci. Images of natural beauty, baptisms, and an African woman and her babe give way to the madness of modern civilization — from jam-packed subways to the horrors of mechanized factory farming to a bizarre montage of go-go dancers, sex dolls, trash, toxic discarded technology, guns, and at least one gun-shaped coffin. After such dread, the opening and closing scenes of Buddhist spirituality seem almost like afterthoughts. The unmistakable overriding message is: humanity, you dazzle in all your glorious and inglorious dimensions — even at your most inhumane. Sullying this hand wringing, selective meditation is Fricke’s reliance on easy stereotypes: the predictable connections the filmmaker makes between Africa and an innocent, earthy naturalism, and Asia and a vaguely threatening, mechanistic efficiency, come off as facile and naive, while his sonic overlay of robot sounds over, for instance, an Asian woman blinking her eyes comes off as simply offensive. At such points, Fricke’s global leap-frogging begins to eclipse the beauty of his images and foregrounds his own biases. (1:39) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) California, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Seven Psychopaths Those nostalgic for 1990s-style chatty assassins will find much to love in the broadly sketched Seven Psychopaths. Director-writer Martin McDonough already dipped a pen into Tarantino’s blood-splattered ink well with his 2008 debut feature, In Bruges, and Seven Psychopaths reads as larkier and more off-the-cuff, as the award-winning Irish playwright continues to try to find his own discomfiting, teasing balance between goofy Grand Guignol yuks and meta-minded storytelling. Structured, sort of, with the certified lucidity of a thrill killer, Seven Psychopaths opens on Boardwalk Empire heavies Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg bantering about the terrors of getting shot in the eyeball, while waiting to "kill a chick." The talky twosome don’t seem capable of harming a fat hen, in the face of the Jack of Spades serial killer, who happens to be Psychopath No. One and a serial destroyer of hired guns. The key to the rest of the psychopathic gang is locked in the noggin of screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell), who’s grappling with a major block and attempting the seeming impossible task of creating a peace-loving, Buddhist killer. Looking on are his girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish) and actor best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), who has a lucrative side gig as a dog kidnapper — and reward snatcher — with the dapper Hans (Christopher Walken). A teensy bit too enthusiastic about Marty’s screenplay, Billy displays a talent for stumbling over psychos, reeling in Zachariah (Tom Waits) and, on his doggie-grabbing adventures, Shih Tzu-loving gangster Charlie (Woody Harrelson). Unrest assured, leitmotifs from McDonough plays — like a preoccupation with fiction-making (The Pillowman) and the coupling of pet-loving sentimentality and primal violence (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) — crop up in Seven Psychopaths, though in rougher, less refined form, and sprinkled with a nervous, bromantic anxiety that barely skirts homophobia. Best to bask in the cute, dumb pleasures of a saucer-eyed lap dog and the considerably more mental joys of this cast, headed up by dear dog hunter Walken, who can still stir terror with just a withering gaze and a voice that can peel the finish off a watch. (1:45) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D The husband and adopted daughter of Rosa (Radha Mitchell, star of the 2006 first film and seen briefly here), Harry (Sean Bean) and Heather (Adelaide Clemens) have been on the run from both police and ghouls since mom vanished into the titular nether land some years ago. When dad is abducted, Heather must follow him to you-know-where, accompanied by cute-boy-with-a-secret Vincent (Kit Harington). There she runs screaming from the usual faceless knife-wielding nuns and other nightmare nemeses while attempting to rescue Pa and puzzle out her place in resolving the curse placed on the ghost town. The original 2006 film adaptation of the video game was a mixed bag but, like the game, had splendid visuals; this cut rate sequel lacks even that, despite the addition of 3D (if you’re willing to pay for a premium ticket). It’s pure cheese with no real scares, much-diminished atmosphere, and laughable stretches of mythological mumbo-jumbo recited by embarrassed good actors (Martin Donovan, Deborah Kara Unger, Carrie-Anne Moss, a punishingly hammy Malcolm McDowell). There is one cool monster — a many-faced "tarantula" assembled from mannequin parts — but its couple minutes aren’t worth ponying up for the rest of a movie that severely disappoints already low expectations. (1:34) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Sinister True-crime author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) hasn’t had a successful book in a decade. So he uproots wife (Juliet Rylance) and kids (Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) for yet another research project, not telling them that they’re actually moving into the recent scene of a ghastly unsolved murder in which an entire family — save one still-missing child — was hanged from a backyard tree. He finds a box in the attic that somehow escaped police attention, its contents being several reels of Super 8 home movies stretching back decades — all of families similarly wiped out in one cruel act. Smelling best-sellerdom, Ellison keeps this evidence of a serial slayer to himself. It’s disturbing when his son re-commences sleepwalking night terrors. It’s really disturbing when dad begins to spy a demonic looking figure lurking in the background of the films. It’s really, really disturbing when the projector starts turning itself on, in the middle of the night, in his locked office. A considerable bounce-back from his bloated 2008 Day the Earth Stood Still remake, Scott Derrickson’s film takes the opposite tact — it’s very small in both physical scope and narrative focus, almost never leaving the Oswalt’s modest house in fact. He takes the time to let pure creepiness build rather than feeling the need to goose our nads with a false scare or goresplat every five minutes. As a result, Sinister is definitely one of the year’s better horrors, even if (perhaps inevitably) the denouement can’t fully meet the expectations raised by that very long, unsettling buildup. (1:50) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Tai Chi Zero A little boy dubbed "the Freak" for the curious, horn-like growth on his forehead grows up to be Lu Chan (Jaydan Yuan), who becomes a near-supernatural martial arts machine when the horn is punched, panic-button style. But activating the "Three Blossoms of the Crown," as it’s called, takes a toll on the boy’s health, so he’s sent to the isolated Chen Village to learn their signature moves, though he’s repeatedly told "Chen-style kung fu is not taught to outsiders!" Stephen Fung’s lighthearted direction (characters are introduced with bios about the actors who play them, even the split-second cameos: "Andrew Lau, director of the Infernal Affairs trilogy"), affinity for steampunk and whimsy, engagement of Sammo Hung as action director, and embracing of the absurd (the film’s most-repeated line: "What the hell?") all bring interest to this otherwise pretty predictable kung-fu tale, with its old-ways-versus-Western-ways conflict and misfit hero. Still, there’s something to be said for batshit insanity. (Be warned, though: Tai Chi Zero is the first in a series, which means one thing: it ends on a cliffhanger. Argh.) (1:34) Metreon. (Eddy)

Taken 2 Surprise hit Taken (2008) was a soap opera produced by French action master Luc Besson and designed for export. The divorced-dad-saves-daughter-from-sex-slavery plot may have nagged at some universal parenting anxieties, but it was a Movie of the Week melodrama made on a major movie budget. Taken 2 begins immediately after the last, with sweet teen Kim (Maggie Grace) talking about normalizing after she was drugged and bought for booty. Papa Neeson sees Kim’s mom (Famke Janssen) losing her grip on husband number two and invites them both to holiday in Istanbul following one of his high-stakes security gigs. When the assistant with the money slinks him a fat envelope, Neeson chuckles at his haul. This is the point when women in the audience choose which Neeson they’re watching: the understated super-provider or the warrior-dad whose sense of duty can meet no match. For family men, this is the breeziest bit of vicarious living available; Neeson’s character is a tireless daddy duelist, a man as diligent as he is organized. (This is guy who screams "Victory loves preparation!") As head-splitting, disorienting, and generally exhausting as the action direction is, Neeson saves his ex-wife and the show in a stream of unclear shootouts. Taken 2 is best suited for the small screen, but whatever the size, no one can stop an international slave trade (or wolves, or Batman) like 21st century Liam. Swoon. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

The Waiting Room Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. (1:21) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

Opening

Chasing Mavericks The Bay Area’s big-wave spot hits the big screen, with Gerard Butler and Jonny Weston as real-life surfers Rick “Frosty” Hesson and Jay Moriarity. (1:45)

Cloud Atlas Cramming the six busy storylines of David Mitchell’s wildly ambitious novel into just three hours — the average reader might have thought at least 12 would be required — this impressive adaptation directed (in separate parts) by Tom Twyker (1998’s Run Lola Run) and Matrix siblings Lana and Andy Wachowski has a whole lot of narrative to get through, stretching around the globe and over centuries. In the mid 19th century, Jim Sturgess’ sickly American notory endures a long sea voyage as reluctant protector of a runaway-slave stowaway from the Chatham Islands (David Gyasi). In 1931 Belgium, a talented but criminally minded British musician (Ben Whishaw) wheedles his way into the household of a famous but long-inactive composer (Jim Broadbent). A chance encounter sets 1970s San Francisco journalist Luisa (Halle Berry) on the path of a massive cover-up conspiracy, swiftly putting her life in danger. Circa now, a reprobate London publisher’s (Broadbent) huge windfall turns into bad luck that gets even worse when he seeks help from his brother (Hugh Grant). In the not-so-distant future, a disposable “fabricant” server to the “consumer” classes (Doona Bae) finds herself plucked from her cog-like life for a rebellious higher purpose. Finally, in an indeterminately distant future after “the Fall,” an island tribesman (Tom Hanks) forms a highly ambivalent relationship toward a visitor (Berry) from a more advanced but dying civilization. Mitchell’s book was divided into huge novella-sized blocks, with each thread split in two; the film wastes very little time establishing its individual stories before beginning to rapidly intercut between them. That may result in a sense of information (and eventually action) overload, particularly for non-readers, even as it clarifies the connective tissues running throughout. Compression robs some episodes of the cumulative impact they had on the page; the starry multicasting (which in addition to the above mentioned finds many uses for Hugo Weaving, Keith David, James D’Arcy, and Susan Sarandon) can be a distraction; and there’s too much uplift forced on the six tales’ summation. Simply put, not everything here works; like the very different Watchmen, this is a rather brilliant “impossible adaptation” screenplay (by the directors) than nonetheless can’t help but be a bit too much. But so much does work — in alternating currents of satire, melodrama, pulp thriller, dystopian sci-fi, adventure, and so on — that Cloud Atlas must be forgiven for being imperfect. If it were perfect, it couldn’t possibly sprawl as imaginatively and challengingly as it does, and as mainstream movies very seldom do. (2:52) Balboa, California, Presidio. (Harvey)

Fun Size When a teen (Victoria Justice) is forced to baby-sit her brother the night of the social event of the Halloween season, PG-13 chaos ensues. (1:45) Shattuck.

Masquerade A king hires an actor from the local village (both portrayed by Korean megastar Byung-hun Lee) to be his body double in this historical drama. (2:11) Metreon.

Nobody Walks In Ry Russo-Young’s LA-set film, from a screenplay co-written with Lena Dunham, an alluring young woman named Martine (Olivia Thirlby) is welcomed into the Silver Lake home of psychotherapist Julie (Rosemarie DeWitt) and sound engineer Peter (John Krasinski), who has agreed to help Martine with the soundtrack for her film, destined for a gallery installation back in New York. While Martine’s film constructs a fiction around the fevered activities of the insect world, Russo-Young’s drifts quietly through the lives of its human household, offering glimpses of the romantic preoccupations of a teenage daughter (India Ennenga) and Julie’s interactions with one of her patients (Justin Kirk), and revealing a series of relationships hovering tensely on the border of unsanctioned behavior. The uncomfortable centerpiece is the intimacy that develops between Peter and Martine; tracking their progress through the family’s sprawling home as the two collect sounds for her project, the camera zooms in toward the sources, making the spaces the pair inhabit seem ominously small. Their eventual collision is unsurprising, but Peter hardly comes across as a besieged, frustrated family man. He tells Martine that “marriage is complicated,” but against the warm, appealing backdrop of his and Julie’s home life, it sounds like a pretty flimsy excuse for kissing a pretty, proximal 23-year-old. As for Martine, she seems not to need any rationale. But even factoring out the callousness of youth (or at least the genre of youth presented here), the film offhandedly suggests that the tipping point away from domestic happiness is depressingly easy to reach. (1:22) Bridge, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

Pusher A pusher has been pushed to the limit—this time around in a charm-free, deal-driven London. This remake of the Nicolas Winding Refn’s 1996 hit was given the seal of approval by the Drive (2011) auteur, who took a role here as an executive producer, with Luis Prieto in the director’s seat. Prieto does his best to keep the pressure on at all moments, as small-time heroin dealer Frank (Richard Coyle, resembling Dominic West in urban-hustler safari mode) undergoes the worst week of his life. He appears to have a tidy little existence with goofy, floppy-haired cohort Tony (Bronson Webb) by his side and delicately beautiful stripper Flo (Agyness Deyn) providing sexual healing and safe harbor for his dough. He has just hooked up drug mule Danaka (Daisy Lewis) to bring back a batch from Amsterdam when acquaintance Marlon (Neil Maskell) hits him up for a large order. Frank goes to his supplier Milo (Zlatko Buric, reprising his role in the original), an avuncular sort who pushes baklava in space sprinkled with wedding-cake-like gowns. Frank already owe him money and can’t cover the heroin’s cost, but this is a business built on trust, as fragile as it is, and Milo likes him, so he goes along, provided Frank returns the money immediately. Those tenuous ties of understanding are tested when cops bust Frank and Marlon and the former must dump the dope in a park pond. He refuses to give up his connections to the cops but finds that the loyalty of others is being tested when it comes to threats, cash, and even love. Prieto is a more self-consciously lyrical moviemaker than Refn, choosing to a vaguely Trainspotting-style cocktail of lite surrealism and slightly cheesy low-budg effects like vapor-trail headlights to replicate the highs and lows of Frank’s joyless clubland hustle. Still, he makes us feel Frank’s stress, amid the fatalistic undertow of the narrative, and his sense of betrayal when Pusher’s players turn, despite a smalltime pusher’s workman efforts to shore up against the odds. (1:29) Presidio. (Chun)

Question One Question One goes behind the scenes of the 2009 campaign concerning the referendum which reversed legislature granting same-sex couples the right to marry in Maine. The film investigates both sides of the story, including marriage dreams of queer families and confessions of regret from the appointed leader for the Yes on One Campaign, Marc Mutty. Though listening to preachers and activists devalue love between two men or two women might make you cringe, the inclusion of these moments creates an emotionally tense experience that will remind you how important it is to bounce back from defeat. It shows that the next step will have to be more than just rallying voters, it will require a change in ideology — an understanding that gays who wish to marry deserve equal rights, not religious salvation. As Darlene Huntress, the director of field operations for the No on One Campaign says, “I want to sit down and break bread with these people. I want to sit down and say get to know me — open your mind up enough to get to know me.” (1:53) Vogue. (Molly Champlin)

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

Silent Hill: Revelation 3D Game of Thrones reunion! Sean Bean and Kit Harington both star in this video game adaptation, which may be its only bragging point. (1:34)

Wake in Fright See “Points Of No Return.” (1:54) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. 

Ongoing

Alex Cross (1:41) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck.

Argo If you didn’t know the particulars of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, you won’t be an expert after Argo, but the film does a good job of capturing America’s fearful reaction to the events that followed it — particularly the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran. Argo zeroes in on the fate of six embassy staffers who managed to escape the building and flee to the home of the sympathetic Canadian ambassador (Victor Garber). Back in Washington, short-tempered CIA agents (including a top-notch Bryan Cranston) cast about for ways to rescue them. Enter Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directs), exfil specialist and father to a youngster wrapped up in the era’s sci-fi craze. While watching 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with what Cranston’s character calls “the best bad idea we have:” the CIA will fund a phony Canadian movie production (corny, intergalactic, and titled Argo) and pretend the six are part of the crew, visiting Iran for a few days on a location shoot. Tony will sneak in, deliver the necessary fake-ID documents, and escort them out. Neither his superiors, nor the six in hiding, have much faith in the idea. (“Is this the part where we say, ‘It’s so crazy it just might work?'” someone asks, beating the cliché to the punch.) Argo never lets you forget that lives are at stake; every painstakingly forged form, every bluff past a checkpoint official increases the anxiety (to the point of being laid on a bit thick by the end). But though Affleck builds the needed suspense with gusto, Argo comes alive in its Hollywood scenes. As the show-biz veterans who mull over Tony’s plan with a mix of Tinseltown cynicism and patiotic duty, John Goodman and Alan Arkin practically burst with in-joke brio. I could have watched an entire movie just about those two. (2:00) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Beasts of the Southern Wild Six months after winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (and a Cannes Camera d’Or), Beasts of the Southern Wild proves capable of enduring a second or third viewing with its originality and strangeness fully intact. Magical realism is a primarily literary device that isn’t attempted very often in U.S. cinema, and succeeds very rarely. But this intersection between Faulkner and fairy tale, a fable about — improbably — Hurricane Katrina, is mysterious and unruly and enchanting. Benh Zeitlin’s film is wildly cinematic from the outset, as voiceover narration from six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) offers simple commentary on her rather fantastical life. She abides in the Bathtub, an imaginary chunk of bayou country south of New Orleans whose residents live closer to nature, amid the detritus of civilization. Seemingly everything is some alchemical combination of scrap heap, flesh, and soil. But not all is well: when “the storm” floods the land, the holdouts are forced at federal gunpoint to evacuate. With its elements of magic, mythological exodus, and evolutionary biology, Beasts goes way out on a conceptual limb; you could argue it achieves many (if not more) of the same goals Terrence Malick’s 2011 The Tree of Life did at a fraction of that film’s cost and length. (1:31) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Bel Borba Aqui “The People’s Picasso” and “Brazil’s Pied Piper of Street Art” are both apt descriptions of veteran artist Bel Borba, who has spent decades bringing color and imagination to the streets of Salvador — his seaside hometown, and a place already graced with the nickname “Brazil’s Capital of Happiness.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that Borba’s commitment to public art (a giant Christmas tree made of plastic Coke bottles, a rhinoceros sculpture crafted from old boat planks, hundreds of large-scale mosaics, even a painted airplane) has done its share to lift spirits. Bel Borba Aqui isn’t the sort of doc to delve into its mustachioed subject’s history or personal life (despite a few angry cell phone conversations randomly captured along the way); instead, it’s much like Borba himself — freewheeling and spontaneous, and most alive when it’s showing art being created. Great soundtrack, too. (1:34) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises’ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and “final” installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Metreon. (Eddy)

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel The life of legendary fashion editor Diana Vreeland is colorfully recounted in Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, a doc directed by her granddaughter-in-law, Lisa Immordino Vreeland. The family connection meant seemingly unlimited access to material featuring the unconventionally glamorous (and highly quotable) Vreeland herself, plus the striking images that remain from her work at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Narrated” from interview transcripts by an actor approximating the late Vreeland’s husky, posh tones, the film allows for some criticism (her employees often trembled at the sight of her; her sons felt neglected; her grasp of historical accuracy while working at the museum was sometimes lacking) among the praise, which is lavish and delivered by A-listers like Anjelica Huston, who remembers “She had a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme,” and Manolo Blahnik, who squeals, “She had the vision!” (1:26) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

End of Watch Buddy cop movies tend to go one of two ways: the action-comedy route (see: the Rush Hour series) or the action-drama route. End of Watch is firmly in the latter camp, despite some witty shit-talking between partners Taylor (a chrome-domed Jake Gyllenhaal) and Zavala (Michael Peña from 2004’s Crash) as they patrol the mean streets of Los Angeles. Writer-director David Ayer, who wrote 2001’s Training Day, aims for authenticity by piecing together much of (but, incongruously, not all of) the story through dashboard cameras, surveillance footage, and Officer Taylor’s own ever-present camera, which he claims to be carrying for a school project, though we never once see him attending classes or mentioning school otherwise. Gyllenhaal and Peña have an appealing rapport, but End of Watch’s adrenaline-seeking plot stretches credulity at times, with the duo stumbling across the same group of gangsters multiple times in a city of three million people. Natalie Martinez and Anna Kendrick do what they can in underwritten cop-wife roles, but End of Watch is ultimately too familiar (but not lawsuit-material familiar) to leave any lasting impression. Case in point: in the year 2012, do we really need yet another love scene set to Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You”? (1:49) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Eddy)

Fat Kid Rules the World It really does suck to be Troy (Jacob Wysocki from 2011’s Terri). An XXL-sized high schooler, he’s invisible to his peers, derided by his little brother (Dylan Arnold), and has lived in general domestic misery since the death of his beloved mother under the heavy-handed rule of his well-meaning but humorless ex-military dad (Billy Campbell). His only friends are online gamers, his only girlfriends the imaginary kind. But all that begins to change when chance throws him across the path of notorious local hellraiser Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who’s been expelled from school, has left the band he fronts, and is equal parts rebel hero to druggy, lyin’ mess. But he randomly decrees Troy is cool, and his new drummer. Even if he’s just being used, Troy’s world is headed for some big changes. Actor Matthew Lillard’s feature directorial debut, based on K.L. Going’s graphic novel, is familiar stuff in outline but a delight in execution, as it trades the usual teen-comedy crudities (a few gratuitous joke fantasy sequences aside) for something more heartfelt and restrained, while still funny. O’Leary from last year’s overlooked Natural Selection is flamboyantly terrific, while on the opposite end of the acting scale Campbell makes repressed emotion count for a lot — he has one wordless moment at a hospital that just might bring you to the tears his character refuses to spill. (1:38) Metreon, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Frankenweenie Tim Burton’s feature-length Frankenweenie expands his 1984 short of the same name (canned by Disney back in the day for being too scary), and is the first black and white film to receive the 3D IMAX treatment. A stop-motion homage to every monster movie Burton ever loved, Frankenweenie is also a revival of the Frankenstein story cute-ified for kids; it takes the showy elements of Mary Shelley’s novel and morphs them to fit Burton’s hyperbolic aesthetic. Elementary-school science wiz Victor takes his disinterred dog from bull terrier to gentle abomination (when the thirsty Sparky drinks, he shoots water out of the seams holding his body parts together). Victor’s competitor in the school science fair, Edgar E. Gore, finds out about Sparky and ropes in classmates to scrape up their dead pets from the town’s eerily utilized pet cemetery and harness the town’s lightning surplus. The film’s answer to Boris Karloff (lisp intact) resurrects a mummified hamster, while a surrogate for Japanese Godzilla maker Ishiro Honda, revives his pet turtle Shelley (get it?) into Gamera. As these experiments aren’t borne of love, they don’t go as well at Victor’s. If you love Burton, Frankenweenie feels like the at-last presentation of a story he’s been dying to tell for years. If you don’t love him, you might wonder why it took him so long to get it out. When Victor’s science teacher leaves the school, he tells Victor an experiment conducted without love is different from one conducted with it: love, he implies, is a variable. If that’s the variable that separates 2003’s Big Fish (heartbreaking) from 2010’s Alice In Wonderland (atrocious), it’s a large one indeed. The love was there for 29 minutes in 1984, but I can’t say it endures when stretched to 87 minutes 22 years later. (1:27) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

Here Comes the Boom The makers of September’s Won’t Back Down might quibble with this statement, but the rest of us can probably agree that nothing (with the possible exception of Trapper Keepers) says “back to school” like competitive steel-cage mixed martial arts — particularly if the proceeds from the matches go toward saving extracurriculars at a down-at-the-heels public high school. Kevin James plays Scott Voss, a 42-year-old biology teacher at the aforementioned school, whose lack of vocational enthusiasm is manifested by poor attendance and classroom observations about how none of what the students are learning matters. He’s jolted from this criminally subpar performance of his academic duties, however, when budget cuts threaten the school’s arts programs, including the job of an earnest and enthusiastic music teacher (Henry Winkler) whose dedication Scott lazily admires. It seems less than inevitable that this state of affairs would lead to Scott’s donning his college wrestling singlet and trundling into the ring to get pummeled and mauled for cash, but it seems to work better than a bake sale. Less effective and equally unconvincing are Scott’s whiplash arc from bad apple to teacher-of-the-year; a percolating romance between him and the school nurse, played by Salma Hayek; and the script’s tortuous parade of rousing statements celebrating the power of the human spirit, seemingly cribbed from a page-a-day calendar of inspirational quotes. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

Hotel Transylvania (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

The House I Live In Much like he did in 2005’s Why We Fight, filmmaker Eugene Jarecki identifies a Big Issue (in that film, the Iraq War) and strips it down, tracing all of the history leading up to the current crisis point. Here, he takes on America’s “war on drugs,” which I put quotes around not just because it was a phrase spoken by Nixon and Reagan, but also because — as The House I Live In ruthlessly exposes — it’s been a failure, a sham, since its origins in the late 1960s. Framing his investigation with the personal story of his family’s housekeeper — whose dedication to the Jarecki family meant that she was absent when her own son turned to drugs — and enfolding a diverse array of interviews (a sympathetic prison guard, addicts and their families, The Wire’s David Simon) and locations (New York City, Sioux City), Jarecki has created an eye-opening film. Particularly well-explained are segments on how drug laws correlate directly to race and class, and how the prison-industrial complex has played a part in making sure those laws remain as strict as possible. (1:48) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Looper It’s 2044 and, thanks to a lengthy bout of exposition by our protagonist, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), here’s what we know: Time travel, an invention 30 years away, will be used by criminals to transport their soon-to-be homicide victims backward, where a class of gunmen called loopers, Joe among them, are employed to “do the necessaries.” More deftly revealed in Brick writer-director Rian Johnson’s new film is the joylessness of the world in which Joe amorally makes his way, where gangsters from the future control the present (under the supervision of Jeff Daniels), their hit men live large but badly (Joe is addicted to some eyeball-administered narcotic), and the remainder of the urban populace suffers below-subsistence-level poverty. The latest downside for guys like Joe is that a new crime boss has begun sending back a steady stream of aging loopers for termination, or “closing the loop”; soon enough, Joe is staring down a gun barrel at himself plus 30 years. Being played by Bruce Willis, old Joe is not one to peaceably abide by a death warrant, and young Joe must set off in search of himself so that—with the help of a woman named Sara (Emily Blunt) and her creepy-cute son Cid (Pierce Gagnon)—he can blow his own (future) head off. Having seen the evocatively horrific fate of another escaped looper, we can’t totally blame him. Parsing the daft mechanics of time travel as envisioned here is rough going, but the film’s brisk pacing and talented cast distract, and as one Joe tersely explains to another, if they start talking about it, “we’re gonna be here all day making diagrams with straws” —in other words, some loops just weren’t meant to be closed. (1:58) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-hyped likely Best Picture contender lives up: it’s easily the best film of 2012 so far. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Lancaster Dodd, the L. Ron Hubbard-ish head of a Scientology-esque movement. “The Cause” attracts Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in a welcome return from the faux-deep end), less for its pseudo-religious psychobabble and bizarre personal-growth exercises, and more because it supplies the aimless, alcoholic veteran — a drifter in every sense of the word — with a sense of community he yearns for, yet resists submitting to. As with There Will Be Blood (2007), Anderson focuses on the tension between the two main characters: an older, established figure and his upstart challenger. But there’s less cut-and-dried antagonism here; while their relationship is complex, and it does lead to dark, troubled places, there are also moments of levity and weird hilarity — which might have something to do with Freddie’s paint-thinner moonshine. (2:17) Albany, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Middle of Nowhere All the reasons why movie publicist turned filmmaker Ava DuVernay scored the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival are up here on the screen. Taking on the emotionally charged yet rarely attempted challenge of picturing the life of the loved one left behind by the incarcerated, DuVernay furthers the cause of telling African American stories — she founded AaFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement) and made her directorial debut with 2008 LA hip-hop doc This Is The Life — with Middle of Nowhere. Medical student Ruby (the compelling Emayatzy Corinealdi) appears to have a bright future ahead of her, when her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) makes some bad choices and is tossed into maximum security prison for eight long years. She swears she’ll wait for him, putting her dreams aside, making the long bus ride out to visit him regularly, and settling for any nursing shift she can. How will she scrape the money together to pay the lawyer for Derek’s parole hearing, cope with the grinding disapproval of her mother (Lorraine Toussaint), support the increasingly hardened and altered Derek, and most importantly, discover a new path for herself? All are handled with rare empathy and compassion by DuVernay, who is rewarded for her care by her cast’s powerful performances. Our reward might be found amid the everyday poetry of Ruby’s life, while she wraps her hair for bed, watches Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), and fantasizes about love in a life interrupted. (1:41) Shattuck. (Chun)

Paranormal Activity 4 (1:21) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Balboa, California, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Pitch Perfect As an all-female college a cappella group known as the Barden Bellas launches into Ace of Base’s “The Sign” during the prologue of Pitch Perfect, you can hear the Glee-meets-Bring It On elevator pitch. Which is fine, since Bring It On-meets-anything is clearly worth a shot. In this attempt, Anna Kendrick stars as withdrawn and disaffected college freshman Beca, who dreams of producing music in L.A. but is begrudgingly getting a free ride at Barden University via her comp lit professor father. Clearly his goal is not making sure she receives a liberal arts education, as Barden’s academic jungle extends to the edges of the campus’s competitive a cappella scene, and the closest thing to an intellectual challenge occurs during a “riff-off” between a cappella gangs at the bottom of a mysteriously drained swimming pool. When Beca reluctantly joins the Bellas, she finds herself caring enough about the group’s fate to push for an Ace of Base moratorium and radical steps like performing mashups. Much as 2000’s Bring It On coined terms like “cheerocracy” and “having cheer-sex,” Pitch Perfect gives us the infinitely applicable prefix “a ca-” and descriptives like “getting Treble-boned,” a reference to forbidden sexual relations with the Bellas’ cocky rivals, the Treblemakers. The gags get funnier, dirtier, and weirder, arguably reaching their climax in projectile-vomit snow angels, with Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins as grin-panning competition commentators offering a string of loopily inappropriate observations. (1:52) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Samsara Samsara is the latest sumptuous, wordless offering from director Ron Fricke, who helped develop this style of dialogue- and context-free travelogue with Koyaanisqatsi (1982) and Baraka (1992). Spanning five years and shooting on 70mm film to capture glimmers of life in 25 countries on five continents, Samsara, which spins off the Sanskrit word for the “ever-turning wheel of life,” is nothing if not good-looking, aspiring to be a kind of visual symphony boosted by music by the Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard and composers Michael Stearns and Marcello De Francisci. Images of natural beauty, baptisms, and an African woman and her babe give way to the madness of modern civilization — from jam-packed subways to the horrors of mechanized factory farming to a bizarre montage of go-go dancers, sex dolls, trash, toxic discarded technology, guns, and at least one gun-shaped coffin. After such dread, the opening and closing scenes of Buddhist spirituality seem almost like afterthoughts. The unmistakable overriding message is: humanity, you dazzle in all your glorious and inglorious dimensions — even at your most inhumane. Sullying this hand wringing, selective meditation is Fricke’s reliance on easy stereotypes: the predictable connections the filmmaker makes between Africa and an innocent, earthy naturalism, and Asia and a vaguely threatening, mechanistic efficiency, come off as facile and naive, while his sonic overlay of robot sounds over, for instance, an Asian woman blinking her eyes comes off as simply offensive. At such points, Fricke’s global leap-frogging begins to eclipse the beauty of his images and foregrounds his own biases. (1:39) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Searching for Sugar Man The tale of the lost, and increasingly found, artist known as Rodriguez seems to have it all: the mystery and drama of myth, beginning with the singer-songwriter’s stunning 1970 debut, Cold Fact, a neglected folk rock-psychedelic masterwork. (The record never sold in the states, but somehow became a beloved, canonical LP in South Africa.) The story goes on to parse the cold, hard facts of vanished hopes and unpaid royalties, all too familiar in pop tragedies. In Searching for Sugar Man, Swedish documentarian Malik Bendjelloul lays out the ballad of Rodriguez as a rock’n’roll detective story, with two South African music lovers in hot pursuit of the elusive musician — long-rumored to have died onstage by either self-immolation or gunshot, and whose music spoke to a generation of white activists struggling to overturn apartheid. By the time Rodriguez himself enters the narrative, the film has taken on a fairy-tale trajectory; the end result speaks volumes about the power and longevity of great songwriting. (1:25) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Seven Psychopaths Those nostalgic for 1990s-style chatty assassins will find much to love in the broadly sketched Seven Psychopaths. Director-writer Martin McDonough already dipped a pen into Tarantino’s blood-splattered ink well with his 2008 debut feature, In Bruges, and Seven Psychopaths reads as larkier and more off-the-cuff, as the award-winning Irish playwright continues to try to find his own discomfiting, teasing balance between goofy Grand Guignol yuks and meta-minded storytelling. Structured, sort of, with the certified lucidity of a thrill killer, Seven Psychopaths opens on Boardwalk Empire heavies Michael Pitt and Michael Stuhlbarg bantering about the terrors of getting shot in the eyeball, while waiting to “kill a chick.” The talky twosome don’t seem capable of harming a fat hen, in the face of the Jack of Spades serial killer, who happens to be Psychopath No. One and a serial destroyer of hired guns. The key to the rest of the psychopathic gang is locked in the noggin of screenwriter Marty (Colin Farrell), who’s grappling with a major block and attempting the seeming impossible task of creating a peace-loving, Buddhist killer. Looking on are his girlfriend Kaya (Abbie Cornish) and actor best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell), who has a lucrative side gig as a dog kidnapper — and reward snatcher — with the dapper Hans (Christopher Walken). A teensy bit too enthusiastic about Marty’s screenplay, Billy displays a talent for stumbling over psychos, reeling in Zachariah (Tom Waits) and, on his doggie-grabbing adventures, Shih Tzu-loving gangster Charlie (Woody Harrelson). Unrest assured, leitmotifs from McDonough plays — like a preoccupation with fiction-making (The Pillowman) and the coupling of pet-loving sentimentality and primal violence (The Lieutenant of Inishmore) — crop up in Seven Psychopaths, though in rougher, less refined form, and sprinkled with a nervous, bromantic anxiety that barely skirts homophobia. Best to bask in the cute, dumb pleasures of a saucer-eyed lap dog and the considerably more mental joys of this cast, headed up by dear dog hunter Walken, who can still stir terror with just a withering gaze and a voice that can peel the finish off a watch. (1:45) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Simon and the Oaks Despite being gripping or heartwarming at times, Simon and the Oaks, based on the novel by Marianne Fredricksson, fails to cohere, serving as another reminder of the perennial dilemma of converting literature to film. It tells the story of Simon (Bill Skarsgard — son of Stellan, younger brother of Alexander), a boy coming of age in World War II Sweden. He befriends Isak, son of a Jewish bookkeeper who fled Nazi Germany, and their families become close when Isak’s father nurtures Simon’s love of books and Isak begins to heal his emotional scars by diving into carpentry work with Simon’s father. The moments of true human compassion between the two families begin to falter as the story jumps around to follow Simon’s search for love and identity. More missteps: Simon’s discovery of classical music is conveyed via a series of “artsy” montages, and his brief affair with a fiery Auschwitz victim — problematic, to say the least. (2:02) Albany, Clay. (Molly Champlin)

Sinister True-crime author Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) hasn’t had a successful book in a decade. So he uproots wife (Juliet Rylance) and kids (Michael Hall D’Addario, Clare Foley) for yet another research project, not telling them that they’re actually moving into the recent scene of a ghastly unsolved murder in which an entire family — save one still-missing child — was hanged from a backyard tree. He finds a box in the attic that somehow escaped police attention, its contents being several reels of Super 8 home movies stretching back decades — all of families similarly wiped out in one cruel act. Smelling best-sellerdom, Ellison keeps this evidence of a serial slayer to himself. It’s disturbing when his son re-commences sleepwalking night terrors. It’s really disturbing when dad begins to spy a demonic looking figure lurking in the background of the films. It’s really, really disturbing when the projector starts turning itself on, in the middle of the night, in his locked office. A considerable bounce-back from his bloated 2008 Day the Earth Stood Still remake, Scott Derrickson’s film takes the opposite tact — it’s very small in both physical scope and narrative focus, almost never leaving the Oswalt’s modest house in fact. He takes the time to let pure creepiness build rather than feeling the need to goose our nads with a false scare or goresplat every five minutes. As a result, Sinister is definitely one of the year’s better horrors, even if (perhaps inevitably) the denouement can’t fully meet the expectations raised by that very long, unsettling buildup. (1:50) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Smashed A heartbreaking lead performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead drives this tale of a marriage tested when one partner decides to get sober. And it’s time: after an epic night of boozing, first-grade teacher Kate (Winstead) pukes in front of her class, then lies and says she’s pregnant, not anticipating the pushy delight of the school’s principal (Megan Mullally). Plus, Kate’s gotten into the habit of waking up in strange, unsafe places, not really remembering how she stumbled there in the first place. Husband Charlie (Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul) sees no reason to give up partying; he’s a music blogger whose “office” is the home his wealthy parents bought for the couple, and his problem isn’t quite as unmanageable as hers (at least, we never see him peeing in a convenience store). After Kate joins AA, she realizes she’ll have to face her problems rather than drinking them away — a potentially clichéd character arc that’s handled without flashy hysterics by director and co-writer (with Susan Burke) James Ponsoldt, and conveyed with grace and pain by Winstead —an actor probably best-known for playing Ramona Flowers in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but just now revealing the scope of her talent. (1:25) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Tai Chi Zero A little boy dubbed “the Freak” for the curious, horn-like growth on his forehead grows up to be Lu Chan (Jaydan Yuan), who becomes a near-supernatural martial arts machine when the horn is punched, panic-button style. But activating the “Three Blossoms of the Crown,” as it’s called, takes a toll on the boy’s health, so he’s sent to the isolated Chen Village to learn their signature moves, though he’s repeatedly told “Chen-style kung fu is not taught to outsiders!” Stephen Fung’s lighthearted direction (characters are introduced with bios about the actors who play them, even the split-second cameos: “Andrew Lau, director of the Infernal Affairs trilogy”), affinity for steampunk and whimsy, engagement of Sammo Hung as action director, and embracing of the absurd (the film’s most-repeated line: “What the hell?”) all bring interest to this otherwise pretty predictable kung-fu tale, with its old-ways-versus-Western-ways conflict and misfit hero. Still, there’s something to be said for batshit insanity. (Be warned, though: Tai Chi Zero is the first in a series, which means one thing: it ends on a cliffhanger. Argh.) (1:34) Metreon. (Eddy)

Taken 2 Surprise hit Taken (2008) was a soap opera produced by French action master Luc Besson and designed for export. The divorced-dad-saves-daughter-from-sex-slavery plot may have nagged at some universal parenting anxieties, but it was a Movie of the Week melodrama made on a major movie budget. Taken 2 begins immediately after the last, with sweet teen Kim (Maggie Grace) talking about normalizing after she was drugged and bought for booty. Papa Neeson sees Kim’s mom (Famke Janssen) losing her grip on husband number two and invites them both to holiday in Istanbul following one of his high-stakes security gigs. When the assistant with the money slinks him a fat envelope, Neeson chuckles at his haul. This is the point when women in the audience choose which Neeson they’re watching: the understated super-provider or the warrior-dad whose sense of duty can meet no match. For family men, this is the breeziest bit of vicarious living available; Neeson’s character is a tireless daddy duelist, a man as diligent as he is organized. (This is guy who screams “Victory loves preparation!”) As head-splitting, disorienting, and generally exhausting as the action direction is, Neeson saves his ex-wife and the show in a stream of unclear shootouts. Taken 2 is best suited for the small screen, but whatever the size, no one can stop an international slave trade (or wolves, or Batman) like 21st century Liam. Swoon. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

The Waiting Room Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. (1:21) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport) 

 

Drunks, drugs, kung fu, and rock ‘n’ roll: just another week at the movies

Sue Vaughan
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0
Drunks, drugs, kung fu, and rock ‘n’ roll: just another week at the movies

This week, get thee to the Roxie for “Not Necessarily Noir III” (Dennis Harvey’s preview here), or the wind-whipped moors for Andrea Arnold’s brutal new Wuthering Heights (my chat with Arnold here). Other new stuff we haven’t reviewed yet: the not-screened-for-critics-because-let’s-face-it-these-movies-are-critic-proof Paranormal Activity 4, and Tyler Perry’s first Madea-free enterprise in some time, Alex Cross.

Read on for more new reviews!

Bel Borba Aqui “The People’s Picasso” and “Brazil’s Pied Piper of Street Art” are both apt descriptions of veteran artist Bel Borba, who has spent decades bringing color and imagination to the streets of Salvador — his seaside hometown, and a place already graced with the nickname “Brazil’s Capital of Happiness.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that Borba’s commitment to public art (a giant Christmas tree made of plastic Coke bottles, a rhinoceros sculpture crafted from old boat planks, hundreds of large-scale mosaics, even a painted airplane) has done its share to lift spirits. Bel Borba Aqui isn’t the sort of doc to delve into its mustachioed subject’s history or personal life (despite a few angry cell phone conversations randomly captured along the way); instead, it’s much like Borba himself — freewheeling and spontaneous, and most alive when it’s showing art being created. Great soundtrack, too. (1:34) Roxie. (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-SQ0pgjXm0

Fat Kid Rules the World It really does suck to be Troy (Jacob Wysocki from 2011’s Terri). An XXL-sized high schooler, he’s invisible to his peers, derided by his little brother (Dylan Arnold), and has lived in general domestic misery since the death of his beloved mother under the heavy-handed rule of his well-meaning but humorless ex-military dad (Billy Campbell). His only friends are online gamers, his only girlfriends the imaginary kind. But all that begins to change when chance throws him across the path of notorious local hellraiser Marcus (Matt O’Leary), who’s been expelled from school, has left the band he fronts, and is equal parts rebel hero to druggy, lyin’ mess. But he randomly decrees Troy is cool, and his new drummer. Even if he’s just being used, Troy’s world is headed for some big changes. Actor Matthew Lillard’s feature directorial debut, based on K.L. Going’s graphic novel, is familiar stuff in outline but a delight in execution, as it trades the usual teen-comedy crudities (a few gratuitous joke fantasy sequences aside) for something more heartfelt and restrained, while still funny. O’Leary from last year’s overlooked Natural Selection is flamboyantly terrific, while on the opposite end of the acting scale Campbell makes repressed emotion count for a lot — he has one wordless moment at a hospital that just might bring you to the tears his character refuses to spill. (1:38) (Dennis Harvey)

The House I Live In Much like he did in 2005’s Why We Fight, filmmaker Eugene Jarecki identifies a Big Issue (in that film, the Iraq War) and strips it down, tracing all of the history leading up to the current crisis point. Here, he takes on America’s “war on drugs,” which I put quotes around not just because it was a phrase spoken by Nixon and Reagan, but also because — as The House I Live In ruthlessly exposes — it’s been a failure, a sham, since its origins in the late 1960s. Framing his investigation with the personal story of his family’s housekeeper — whose dedication to the Jarecki family meant that she was absent when her own son turned to drugs — and enfolding a diverse array of interviews (a sympathetic prison guard, addicts and their families, The Wire‘s David Simon) and locations (New York City, Sioux City), Jarecki has created an eye-opening film. Particularly well-explained are segments on how drug laws correlate directly to race and class, and how the prison-industrial complex has played a part in making sure those laws remain as strict as possible. (1:48)  (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1vOw9ykpQk

Middle of Nowhere All the reasons why movie publicist turned filmmaker Ava DuVernay scored the best director award at the Sundance Film Festival are up here on the screen. Taking on the emotionally charged yet rarely attempted challenge of picturing the life of the loved one left behind by the incarcerated, DuVernay furthers the cause of telling African American stories — she founded AaFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement) and made her directorial debut with 2008 LA hip-hop doc This Is The Life — with Middle of Nowhere. Medical student Ruby (the compelling Emayatzy Corinealdi) appears to have a bright future ahead of her, when her husband Derek (Omari Hardwick) makes some bad choices and is tossed into maximum security prison for eight long years. She swears she’ll wait for him, putting her dreams aside, making the long bus ride out to visit him regularly, and settling for any nursing shift she can. How will she scrape the money together to pay the lawyer for Derek’s parole hearing, cope with the grinding disapproval of her mother (Lorraine Toussaint), support the increasingly hardened and altered Derek, and most importantly, discover a new path for herself? All are handled with rare empathy and compassion by DuVernay, who is rewarded for her care by her cast’s powerful performances. Our reward might be found amid the everyday poetry of Ruby’s life, while she wraps her hair for bed, watches Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), and fantasizes about love in a life interrupted. (1:41) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80_L_LsOexE

Simon and the Oaks Despite being gripping or heartwarming at times, Simon and the Oaks, based on the novel by Marianne Fredricksson, fails to cohere, serving as another reminder of the perennial dilemma of converting literature to film. It tells the story of Simon (Bill Skarsgard — son of Stellan, younger brother of Alexander), a boy coming of age in World War II Sweden. He befriends Isak, son of a Jewish bookkeeper who fled Nazi Germany, and their families become close when Isak’s father nurtures Simon’s love of books and Isak begins to heal his emotional scars by diving into carpentry work with Simon’s father. The moments of true human compassion between the two families begin to falter as the story jumps around to follow Simon’s search for love and identity. More missteps: Simon’s discovery of classical music is conveyed via a series of “artsy” montages, and his brief affair with a fiery Auschwitz victim — problematic, to say the least. (2:02) (Molly Champlin)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtT1cKo4RX4

Smashed A heartbreaking lead performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead drives this tale of a marriage tested when one partner decides to get sober. And it’s time: after an epic night of boozing, first-grade teacher Kate (Winstead) pukes in front of her class, then lies and says she’s pregnant, not anticipating the pushy delight of the school’s principal (Megan Mullally). Plus, Kate’s gotten into the habit of waking up in strange, unsafe places, not really remembering how she stumbled there in the first place. Husband Charlie (Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul) sees no reason to give up partying; he’s a music blogger whose “office” is the home his wealthy parents bought for the couple, and his problem isn’t quite as unmanageable as hers (at least, we never see him peeing in a convenience store). After Kate joins AA, she realizes she’ll have to face her problems rather than drinking them away — a potentially clichéd character arc that’s handled without flashy hysterics by director and co-writer (with Susan Burke) James Ponsoldt, and conveyed with grace and pain by Winstead —an actor probably best-known for playing Ramona Flowers in 2010’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but just now revealing the scope of her talent. (1:25) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LSX_UH0F9g

Tai Chi Zero A little boy dubbed “the Freak” for the curious, horn-like growth on his forehead grows up to be Lu Chan (Jaydan Yuan), who becomes a near-supernatural martial arts machine when the horn is punched, panic-button style. But activating the “Three Blossoms of the Crown,” as it’s called, takes a toll on the boy’s health, so he’s sent to the isolated Chen Village to learn their signature moves, though he’s repeatedly told “Chen-style kung fu is not taught to outsiders!” Stephen Fung’s lighthearted direction (characters are introduced with bios about the actors who play them, even the split-second cameos: “Andrew Lau, director of the Infernal Affairs trilogy”), affinity for steampunk and whimsy, engagement of Sammo Hung as action director, and embracing of the absurd (the film’s most-repeated line: “What the hell?”) all bring interest to this otherwise pretty predictable kung-fu tale, with its old-ways-versus-Western-ways conflict and misfit hero. Still, there’s something to be said for batshit insanity. (Be warned, though: Tai Chi Zero is the first in a series, which means one thing: it ends on a cliffhanger. Argh.) (1:34) (Cheryl Eddy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWIAjsf9Xq0

The Waiting Room Twenty-four hours in the uneasy limbo of an ER waiting room sounds like a grueling, maddening experience, and that’s certainly a theme in this day-in-the-life film. But local documentarian Peter Nicks has crafted an absorbing portrait of emergency public health care, as experienced by patients and their families at Oakland’s Highland Hospital and as practiced by the staff there. Other themes: no insurance, no primary care physician, and an emergency room being used as a medical facility of first, last, and only resort. Nicks has found a rich array of subjects to tell this complicated story: An anxious, unemployed father sits at his little girl’s bedside. Staffers stare at a computer screen, tracking a flood of admissions and the scarce commodity of available beds. A doctor contemplates the ethics of discharging a homeless addict for the sake of freeing up one of them. And a humorous, ultra-competent triage nurse fields an endless queue of arrivals with humanity and steady nerves. (1:21) (Lynn Rapoport)

Judges consider whether the feds have ignored medical evidence on marijuana

Sasha Cuttler
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4
Judges consider whether the feds have ignored medical evidence on marijuana

Tomorrow (Tues/16), for the first time in more than 20 years, a court will consider whether the federal government has improperly ignored evidence of marijuana’s medical value in continuing to classify it as a Schedule 1 narcotic, the category of dangerous drugs with no medicinal value.

“This is a very big deal,” said David Goldman, a San Francisco representative of Americans for Safe Access, part of the coalition that brought the lawsuit that will be heard by the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC. “I am personally optimistic given the three judges [that will hear the case] are Clinton appointees.”

The federal government has consistently maintained a hardline on marijuana, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, rejecting various efforts to get it rescheduled in the face of a growing body of research that it has a wide range of medical benefits, from simple alleviation of anxiety to treatment for diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma.

In fact, Goldman said federal officials who doubt marijuana’s medical affects should come to “Cannabis in Medicine: A Primer for Health Care Professionals,” a training session for medical professionals that the University of California at San Francisco is hosting Oct. 24-25. It will feature doctors discussing their research on the “endocannabinoid system” and using marijuana to treat cancer and pain, among other sessions.

Tomorrow’s court hearing and subsequent ruling could undermine the Obama Administration’s current crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in California and other states that have legalized it for medical use, giving patients the right to bring a medical necessity defense in federal courts and possibly raising medical marijuana as an issue in the presidential campaign.

As we reported in August, local and state officials have been strongly resisting the federal crackdown, which has shuttered a third of San Francisco’s two dozen licensed clubs. More recently, the city of Oakland has intervened on behalf of Harborside Health Center – one of the country’s biggest and highest profile marijuana dispensaries – which was raided by the feds earlier this year. Among other defenses is Oakland’s citing of a court ruling that the federal government can’t turn a blind eye to something for more than five years and then suddenly swoop in, bust people, and seize assets.

California was the first of 17 states that have legalized marijuana for medical use, allowing localities to set up system for regulating its distribution and giving patients the cite that right in court. But on the federal level, the war on drugs has continued unabated, something that this hearing could begin to change.

PROJECT CENSORED 2012

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PROJECT CENSORED 2012

yael@sfbg.com

People who get their information exclusively from mainstream media sources may be surprised at the lack of enthusiasm on the left for President Barack Obama in this crucial election. But that’s probably because they weren’t exposed to the full online furor sparked by Obama’s continuation of his predecessor’s overreaching approach to national security, such as signing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of those accused of supporting terrorism, even US citizens.

We’ll never know how this year’s election would be different if the corporate media adequately covered the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause and many other recent attacks on civil liberties. What we can do is spread the word and support independent media sources that do cover these stories. That’s where Project Censored comes in.

Project Censored has been documenting inadequate media coverage of crucial stories since it began in 1967 at Sonoma State University. Each year, the group considers hundreds of news stories submitted by readers, evaluating their merits. Students search Lexis Nexis and other databases to see if the stories were underreported, and if so, the stories are fact-checked by professors and experts in relevant fields.

A panel of academics and journalists chooses the Top 25 stories and rates their significance. The project maintains a vast online database of underreported news stories that it has “validated” and publishes them in an annual book. Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution will be released Oct. 30.

For the second year in row, Project Censored has grouped the Top 25 list into topical “clusters.” This year, categories include “Human cost of war and violence” and “Environment and health.” Project Censored director Mickey Huff told us the idea was to show how various undercovered stories fit together into an alternative narrative, not to say that one story was more censored than another.

“The problem when we had just the list was that it did imply a ranking,” Huff said. “It takes away from how there tends to be a pattern to the types of stories they don’t cover or underreport.”

In May, while Project Censored was working on the list, another 2012 list was issued: the Fortune 500 list of the biggest corporations, whose influence peppers the Project Censored list in a variety of ways.

Consider this year’s top Fortune 500 company: ExxonMobil. The oil company pollutes everywhere it goes, yet most stories about its environmental devastation go underreported. Weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin (58 on the Fortune list), General Dynamics (92), and Raytheon (117) are tied into stories about US prisoners in slavery conditions manufacturing parts for their weapons and the underreported war crimes in Afghanistan and Libya.

These powerful corporations work together more than most people think. In the chapter exploring the “Global 1 percent,” writers Peter Phillips and Kimberly Soeiro explain how a small number of well-connected people control the majority of the world’s wealth. In it, they use Censored story number 6, “Small network of corporations run the global economy,” to describe how a network of transnational corporations are deeply interconnected, with 147 of them controlling 40 percent of the global economy’s total wealth.

For example, Philips and Soeiro write that in one such company, BlackRock Inc., “The eighteen members of the board of directors are connected to a significant part of the world’s core financial assets. Their decisions can change empires, destroy currencies, and impoverish millions.”

Another cluster of stories, “Women and Gender, Race and Ethnicity,” notes a pattern of underreporting stories that affect a range of marginalized groups. This broad category includes only three articles, and none are listed in the top 10. The stories reveal mistreatment of Palestinian women in Israeli prisons, including being denied medical care and shackled during childbirth, and the rape and sexual assault of women soldiers in the US military. The third story in the category concerns an Alabama anti-immigration bill, HB56, that caused immigrants to flee Alabama in such numbers that farmers felt a dire need to “help farms fill the gap and find sufficient labor.” So the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries approached the state’s Department of Corrections about making a deal where prisoners would replace the fleeing farm workers.

But with revolutionary unrest around the world, and the rise of a mass movement that connects disparate issues together into a simple, powerful class analysis — the 99 percent versus the 1 percent paradigm popularized by Occupy Wall Street — this year’s Project Censored offers an element of hope.

It’s not easy to succeed at projects that resist corporate dominance, and when it does happen, the corporate media is sometimes reluctant to cover it. Number seven on the Top 25 list is the story of how the United Nations designated 2012 the International Year of the Cooperative, recognizing the rapid growth of co-op businesses, organizations that are part-owned by all members and whose revenue is shared equitably among members. One billion people worldwide now work in co-ops.

The Year of the Cooperative is not the only good-news story discussed by Project Censored this year. In Chapter 4, Yes! Magazine‘s Sarah Van Gelder lists “12 ways the Occupy movement and other major trends have offered a foundation for a transformative future.” They include a renewed sense of “political self-respect” and fervor to organize in the United States, debunking of economic myths such as the “American dream,” and the blossoming of economic alternatives such as community land trusts, time banking, and micro-energy installations.

They also include results achieved from pressure on government, like the delay of the Keystone Pipeline project, widespread efforts to override the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, the removal of dams in Washington state after decades of campaigning by Native American and environmental activists, and the enactment of single-payer healthcare in Vermont.

As Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed writes in the book’s foreword, “The majority of people now hold views about Western governments and the nature of power that would have made them social pariahs 10 or 20 years ago.”

Citing polls from the corporate media, Ahmed writes: “The majority are now skeptical of the Iraq War; the majority want an end to US military involvement in Afghanistan; the majority resent the banks and financial sector, and blame them for the financial crisis; most people are now aware of environmental issues, more than ever before, and despite denialist confusion promulgated by fossil fuel industries, the majority in the United States and Britain are deeply concerned about global warming; most people are wary of conventional party politics and disillusioned with the mainstream parliamentary system.”

“In other words,” he writes, “there has been a massive popular shift in public opinion toward a progressive critique of the current political economic system.”

And ultimately, it’s the public — not the president and not the corporations—that will determine the future. There may be hope after all. Here’s Project Censored’s Top 10 list for 2013:

 

1. SIGNS OF AN EMERGING POLICE STATE

President George W. Bush is remembered largely for his role in curbing civil liberties in the name of his “war on terror.” But it’s President Obama who signed the 2012 NDAA, including its clause allowing for indefinite detention without trial for terrorism suspects. Obama promised that “my Administration will interpret them to avoid the constitutional conflict” — leaving us adrift if and when the next administration chooses to interpret them otherwise. Another law of concern is the National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order that Obama issued in March 2012. That order authorizes the President, “in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements.” The president is to be advised on this course of action by “the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, in conjunction with the National Economic Council.” Journalist Chris Hedges, along with co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg, won a case challenging the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause on Sept. 1, when a federal judge blocked its enforcement, but her ruling was overturned on Oct. 3, so the clause is back.

 

2. OCEANS IN PERIL

Big banks aren’t the only entities that our country has deemed “too big to fail.” But our oceans won’t be getting a bailout anytime soon, and their collapse could compromise life itself. In a haunting article highlighted by Project Censored, Mother Jones reporter Julia Whitty paints a tenuous seascape — overfished, acidified, warming — and describes how the destruction of the ocean’s complex ecosystems jeopardizes the entire planet, not just the 70 percent that is water. Whitty compares ocean acidification, caused by global warming, to acidification that was one of the causes of the “Great Dying,” a mass extinction 252 million years ago. Life on earth took 30 million years to recover. In a more hopeful story, a study of 14 protected and 18 non-protected ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea showed dangerous levels of biomass depletion. But it also showed that the marine reserves were well-enforced, with five to 10 times larger fish populations than in unprotected areas. This encourages establishment and maintenance of more reserves.

 

3. US DEATHS FROM FUKUSHIMA

A plume of toxic fallout floated to the US after Japan’s tragic Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, 2011. The US Environmental Protection Agency found radiation levels in air, water, and milk that were hundreds of times higher than normal across the United States. One month later, the EPA announced that radiation levels had declined, and they would cease testing. But after making a Freedom of Information Act request, journalist Lucas Hixson published emails revealing that on March 24, 2011, the task of collecting nuclear data had been handed off from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear industry lobbying group. And in one study that got little attention, scientists Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman found that in the period following the Fukushima meltdowns, 14,000 more deaths than average were reported in the US, mostly among infants. Later, Mangano and Sherman updated the number to 22,000.

 

4. FBI AGENTS RESPONSIBLE FOR TERRORIST PLOTS

We know that FBI agents go into communities such as mosques, both undercover and in the guise of building relationships, quietly gathering information about individuals. This is part of an approach to finding what the FBI now considers the most likely kind of terrorists, “lone wolves.” Its strategy: “seeking to identify those disgruntled few who might participate in a plot given the means and the opportunity. And then, in case after case, the government provides the plot, the means, and the opportunity,” writes Mother Jones journalist Trevor Aaronson. The publication, along with the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley, examined the results of this strategy, 508 cases classified as terrorism-related that have come before the US Department of Justice since the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. In 243 of these cases, an informant was involved; in 49 cases, an informant actually led the plot. And “with three exceptions, all of the high-profile domestic terror plots of the last decade were actually FBI stings.”

 

5. FEDERAL RESERVE LOANED TRILLIONS TO MAJOR BANKS

The Federal Reserve, the US’s quasi-private central bank, was audited for the first time in its history this year. The audit report states, “From late 2007 through mid-2010, Reserve Banks provided more than a trillion dollars… in emergency loans to the financial sector to address strains in credit markets and to avert failures of individual institutions believed to be a threat to the stability of the financial system.” These loans had significantly less interest and fewer conditions than the high-profile TARP bailouts, and were rife with conflicts of internet. Some examples: the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served as a board member of the New York Federal Reserve at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. William Dudley, who is now the New York Federal Reserve president, was granted a conflict of interest waiver to let him keep investments in AIG and General Electric at the same time the companies were given bailout funds. The audit was restricted to Federal Reserve lending during the financial crisis. On July 25, 2012, a bill to audit the Fed again, with fewer limitations, authored by Rep. Ron Paul, passed the House of Representatives. HR459 expected to die in the Senate, but the movement behind Paul and his calls to hold the Fed accountable, or abolish it altogether, seem to be growing.

 

6. SMALL NETWORK OF CORPORATIONS RUN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Reporting on a study by researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute in Zurich didn’t make the rounds nearly enough, according to Censored 2013. They found that, of 43,060 transnational companies, 147 control 40 percent of total global wealth. The researchers also built a model visually demonstrating how the connections between companies — what it calls the “super entity” — works. Some have criticized the study, saying control of assets doesn’t equate to ownership. True, but as we clearly saw in the 2008 financial collapse, corporations are capable of mismanaging assets in their control to the detriment of their actual owners. And a largely unregulated super entity like this is vulnerable to global collapse.

 

7. THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF COOPERATIVE

Can something really be censored when it’s straight from the United Nations? According to Project Censored evaluators, the corporate media underreported the UN declaring 2012 to be the International Year of the Cooperative, based on the coop business model’s stunning growth. The UN found that, in 2012, one billion people worldwide are coop member-owners, or one in five adults over the age of 15. The largest is Spain’s Mondragon Corporation, with more than 80,000 member-owners. The UN predicts that by 2025, worker-owned coops will be the world’s fastest growing business model. Worker-owned cooperatives provide for equitable distribution of wealth, genuine connection to the workplace, and, just maybe, a brighter future for our planet.

 

8. NATO WAR CRIMES IN LIBYA

In January 2012, the BBC “revealed” how British Special Forces agents joined and “blended in” with rebels in Libya to help topple dictator Muammar Gadaffi, a story that alternative media sources had reported a year earlier. NATO admits to bombing a pipe factory in the Libyan city of Brega that was key to the water supply system that brought tap water to 70 percent of Libyans, saying that Gadaffi was storing weapons in the factory. In Censored 2013, writer James F. Tracy makes the point that historical relations between the US and Libya were left out of mainstream news coverage of the NATO campaign; “background knowledge and historical context confirming Al-Qaeda and Western involvement in the destabilization of the Gadaffi regime are also essential for making sense of corporate news narratives depicting the Libyan operation as a popular ‘uprising.'”

 

9. PRISON SLAVERY IN THE US

On its website, the UNICOR manufacturing corporation proudly proclaims that its products are “made in America.” That’s true, but they’re made in places in the US where labor laws don’t apply, with workers often paid just 23 cents an hour to be exposed to toxic materials with no legal recourse. These places are US prisons. Slavery conditions in prisons aren’t exactly news. It’s literally written into the Constitution; the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, outlaws “ slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” But the article highlighted by Project Censored this year reveal the current state of prison slavery industries, and its ties to war. The majority of products manufactured by inmates are contracted to the Department of Defense. Inmates make complex parts for missile systems, battleship anti-aircraft guns, and landmine sweepers, as well as night-vision goggles, body army, and camouflage uniforms. Of course, this is happening in the context of record high imprisonment in the US, where grossly disproportionate numbers of African Americans and Latinos are imprisoned, and can’t vote even after they’re freed. As psychologist Elliot D. Cohen puts it in this year’s book: “This system of slavery, like that which existed in this country before the Civil War, is also racist, as more than 60 percent of US prisoners are people of color.”

 

10. HR 347 CRIMINALIZES PROTEST

HR 347, sometimes called the “criminalizing protest” or “anti-Occupy” bill, made some headlines. But concerned lawyers and other citizens worry that it could have disastrous effects for the First Amendment right to protest. Officially called the Federal Restricted Grounds Improvement Act, the law makes it a felony to “knowingly” enter a zone restricted under the law, or engage in “disorderly or disruptive” conduct in or near the zones. The restricted zones include anywhere the Secret Service may be — places such as the White House, areas hosting events deemed “National Special Security Events,” or anywhere visited by the president, vice president, and their immediate families; former presidents, vice presidents, and certain family members; certain foreign dignitaries; major presidential and vice presidential candidates (within 120 days of an election); and other individuals as designated by a presidential executive order. These people could be anywhere, and NSSEs have notoriously included the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, Super Bowls, and the Academy Awards. So far, it seems the only time HR 347 has kicked in is with George Clooney’s high-profile arrest outside the Sudanese embassy. Clooney ultimately was not detained without trial — information that would be almost impossible to censor — but what about the rest of us who exist outside of the mainstream media’s spotlight? A book release party will be held at Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph, in Berkeley, on Nov. 3. You can listen to Huff’s radio show Friday morning at 8pm on KPFA.

Panther medicine

Andrew Lam
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Panther medicine

caitlin@sfbg.com

HERBWISE The night before our interview, Elder Freeman spoke alongside Peace and Freedom Party presidential candidate (and beloved sitcom sassmouth) Roseanne Barr, 2008 Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney, and others about the political possibilities of marijuana at a panel discussion held inside Oaksterdam University.

As Black Panther History Month begins, commemorating the 46th anniversary of the party’s founding by Freeman and his peers — see info on events at the end of this article — it seems only fitting that the cannabis movement and the Panthers’ struggle for social justice and the right to control our own communities be connected. For Freeman, the two have become inextricably linked.

The morning of the day we met at West Oakland’s Revolution Cafe, the 67 year old original member of LA’s Black Panther Party had two doctors appointments. Freeman has colon cancer. Three years ago, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He smokes marijuana to improve his appetite — he’s used to eating a single meal a day, but that’s not enough to keep up his strength during treatment. As a long-time 215 card-carrier, the last year’s federal crackdown on cannabis dispensaries threatens to send him back to buying pot on the streets.

Is access to marijuana a Black Panther issue? Freeman thinks so. He tells me why over a cup of coffee (cream, no sugar), and between interruptions by well-wishers — the entire neighborhood knows him, it seems, they all want to pay their respects.

“It’s all connected. The simple fact is that the judicial system is inadequate. The whole idea that they want to keep it in an illegal state is so that they can criminalize people.” He became aware of cannabis, he says, when Bob Marley started talking about its connection to non-violence. “I identified with the Rasta community for awhile,” he tells me.

Freeman’s been told that this current bout of cancer is incurable. But he’s also been told that the Watts uprising in 1965 that was responsible for his political awakening was actually riots and that he deserved to spend those seven years in jail alongside many of his Panther cohorts on a laundry list of mostly trumped-up charges. He didn’t buy those things either.

In fact, at Oaksterdam he shared with the crowd that he plans on going to Cuba for a second opinion on his medical treatment. “There’s something about American medicine that seems to be lacking,” he says.

Last night’s event was actually the first time Freeman spoke as a cannabis activist. He spends most of his time as an advocate these days working for inmate rights — not surprising when you consider he spent the better part of a decade as a political prisoner. He works with All of Us or None (www.allofusornone.org), a national organization that works to “ban the box” — remove questions about past incarceration from employment applications — promote inmate voting rights, and build awareness in the communities most affected by mass incarceration. So although personally, access to cannabis is clearly a health concern, he tends to speak about it with more a law and order focus.

“People are doing a lot of time for something that they shouldn’t even be in jail for.” He wonders out loud to me about why we don’t lock up cigarette producers. “They got it backwards. But that’s capitalism.”

BLACK PANTHER HISTORY MONTH RALLY

Oct. 13, noon

Frank Ogawa Plaza, Oakl.

BLACK PANTHER HISTORY MONTH EXHIBIT

Oct. 13, 2pm, free

Geoffrey’s Inner Circle

410 14th St., Oakl.

www.itsabouttimebpp.com

 

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