Labor Archives — Page 34 of 70 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Dick Meister: Rebuilding the American Middle Class

Maria Poblet

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April 14, 2011

Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.

Of all the many comments, pro and con, that have been made about the widespread attempts to weaken American unions, none have been clearer or more on the mark than the words of President Bob King of the United Auto Workers Union.

King, of course, is on the union side of the argument. But as King made very clear, that’s the side to be on if you believe working people should have full collective bargaining rights and the decent wages, hours and working conditions that result from fair bargaining.

King’s comments came in an exceptional column in the latest issue of Solidarity, the UAW’s official magazine. The column is titled, simply, “Do Justice.”

To Bob King, “doing justice does not mean trying to reduce the wages, benefits and standard of living of all workers in America,” as far too many Republican politicians at all levels of government are trying to accomplish, with their main target – for now – public employees.

“Doing justice to me,” said King, “means that everyone has an equal opportunity, and if they make the individual decision to work hard and live by the rules, then they will be able to live a middle-class standard of living and retire with dignity and maintain their middle-class standard of living.”

I know, and you know, that can’t happen if working people are denied the essential right to unionization – the essential right to a strong bargaining voice in determining their pay and benefits through their unions. That’s obvious, for unionization is the main reason for the rise of an American middle class, beginning with the granting of union rights to most workers by federal law in the 1930s.

But as Bob King warned, those rights and the middle class they established are under serious attack by anti-union politicians and others who “preach the vision of scarcity, the vision of division and the vision of fear.”

Ours is a country gifted with great abundance, with plenty to give each of us a fair share. But union opponents preaching “the vision of scarcity” deny that. They act as if there’s not enough in this, the world’s richest country, to give a fair share to all.

Yet there is enough to go around, as we should know, and unions are the primary vehicles for guaranteeing that working people get their fair share of our abundance.

Which is why greedy corporate interests and other anti-labor forces that want a larger share at the expense of others argue selfishly against unions and, indeed, against the very concept of collective bargaining.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 250 of his columns.

Outside and inside

Andrew Lam

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April 12, 2011

7

arts@sfbg.com

PERFORMANCE Some dramatic clouds hung darkly over the Headlands Center for the Arts on the last Sunday in March, threatening more than the prickly spray that had started to whip around in the cold and gusty air. By contrast, everything was bright and bustling inside Building 944, the repurposed 1907-era military barracks at the center of the Marin County artists retreat’s secluded, picturesque coastal campus. The first-floor dining hall was still open until 3 p.m. — when the latest edition of SQUART was scheduled to begin upstairs — so arriving audience members gravitated to the long tables lining the unexpectedly beautiful room, revivified from spartan army drabness by artist Ann Hamilton.

Uncle Sam was not anticipating this crowd in 1907, let alone the anarchic spirit of creative community fostered by SQUART (short for spontaneous queer art). Then and now, Uncle Sam wants “you,” but not your yoke-slipping imagination please. The performers running around loopy for lack of sleep — together with the center’s varied flock of international resident-artists and the crowd arriving from the city to watch the results of SQUART’s 24-hour venture in collaborative art-making — formed an alternative community, low-key and self-assured, the majority queer-identified, well-versed in strategies of critical resistance and up for anything. In striking ways, the four performance pieces communally created for that afternoon — and for that history-haunted place — eloquently registered the gaps and links in a century of social chaos.

All told, a moment from the last piece was probably my favorite. In a large first-floor room elegantly and eccentrically composed like something from a Peter Greenaway film, a good chunk of the audience had been pressed to the wall by a relentlessly advancing line of screaming men and women with their arms outstretched. Then a man rushed to the window and (with a vaguely camp bellicosity) ordered a small group of performers out the windows and up the hill. There in the cold drizzle they stood on the access road in shorts and tees, doing exercises, as two of the performers began to wrestle aggressively.

This “fight” inspired an unwitting passerby to come between them with real violence, as the audience gasped loudly in surprise and alarm at the unscheduled event. The good Samaritan, flushed and angry, cocked a confused glance at the audience of maybe 60 people filling the windows, and trudged back to his car and family and drove away, visibly shaken. The performance continued, in fact did not miss a beat, the performer at the window shouting a beautiful broken monologue full of yearning, confusion, and wonder interspersed with loud calls to “Retreat!” that sent the performers scrambling up the slippery hillside in the rain, bare limbs flailing, helpless, comical, and heartbreaking.

SQUART is the initiative of San Francisco–based choreographer Laura Arrington, one of a new generation of mostly queer artists under or around 30 who are making serious waves in the performance scene. Her own bounding, sharp-cornered, mercurial work has been staged at CounterPULSE (where she shared a much acclaimed bill with fellow artist-resident Jesse Hewit in August of 2010), Women on the Way, the National Queer Arts Festival, The Lab, and the Too Much! queer performance marathons. But SQUART is a unique undertaking in which the artist functions as a channel for collaborative expression. As such, it both epitomizes and catalyzes the current queer performance movement as a whole.

SQUART also epitomizes a community and an ethic of DIY art production that is on the rise just now across a range of insider/outsider artists in the Bay Area. It’s a generational movement, but at the same time it’s building on, and building relationships with, earlier generations of artists. It’s predominately queer, but genuinely inclusive; it’s DIY, but skilled and knowing; it’s anti-institutional but includes many with practical and critical training from university programs; and it’s been producing some of the most appealing, challenging, vital work in performance in the last few years. It’s a highly fertile scene that, taken as a whole, amounts to a movement and a rare moment.

Modeled on reality-TV talent contests — but in opposition to the social Darwinism normally on display there — SQUART gives random teams of artists a set of parameters and two hours to come up with an original performance piece. A panel of “celebrity judges” from the wider arts community evaluates the results. The results have been surprising enough to participants and audiences alike to keep SQUART going through several iterations since its 2010 inception, always with the quick and affable Arrington as the host sporting her now trademark bullhorn.

“It began out of a sincere desire to get people working together and to get ideas out,” says Arrington about SQUART’s origins. “I’m suspicious of how isolating working can be — with grants, residencies, artist statements, etc. — how everything is ‘my project,’ ‘my work.’ I think ideas get better the more they are bounced around, and that stripping away the traditional hierarchies is important. It’s dangerous when work becomes precious. [With] SQUART, you just have to create. There’s no time to do anything else. It can be a big mess; often it’s a really beautiful mess.”

Arrington says SQUART started as a side project but has developed into something larger. “The Headlands SQUART was a big step,” she says, crediting program director Brian Karl with open-minded support of the undertaking. “We kind of took over the main building for 24 hours. It was crazy, but in the end some of the work was just staggering. The timing was pretty magical too. We got [choreographer] Meg Stuart [as a celebrity judge] because she was in town doing Auf Den Tisch! at Yerba Buena [Center for the Arts], and Big Art Group [Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson] happened to be up at Headlands while I was. Jess Curtis is back for a few months from Berlin. It was all quite perfect.”

The coincidental calendar-pairing of SQUART and Auf Den Tisch! (which means “to put things on the table”) was a striking alignment of the leading, established international contemporary performance represented by Berlin-based American Stuart and the new but internationally aware local scene. In making her long-overdue Bay Area debut (courtesy of YBCA), Stuart not only brought a project exploring the nature of collective improvisation, but drew performers from a local artistic milieu that included emerging queer performers like Julie Phelps and Jorge De Hoyos.

Keith Hennessy, the renowned interdisciplinary artist and performance maven who was both a performer and organizer for Auf Den Tisch!, says there are similarities between Stuart’s improvisation project and SQUART.

“In some ways, the Auf Den Tisch! project is like a weeklong SQUART, with a much tighter selection of who’s in it. There’s a certain camp in contemporary dance and performance that was born out of really early queer theater, like Theater of the Ridiculous and Jack Smith, and that came to some people through performance art. I see that in both SQUART and Auf Den Tisch!“

But Hennessy adds a key distinction. “Auf Den Tisch! is more about improvisation than SQUART,” he points out. “In SQUART you have to use improvisational strategies to survive, but it’s actually about collective composition, which is really kind of amazing.”

Hennessy — who was among the celebrity judges at the Headlands SQUART — has been a motive power himself in stitching together this younger generation of artists. Dancer/performer Harold Burns says he moved here from the East Coast partly inspired by Hennessy’s work, “the idea of merging queer and radical with powerful performance that really broke boundaries.” Burns joined workshops Hennessy led in November 2009 in the lead-up to Hennessy’s anniversary season (workshops that would inspire the two annual Too Much! queer marathons). Burns calls those workshops an important catalyst in the development of the community and its momentum. “The relationships were already there,” he explains, “but it personalized them more and took them to the next level.” Arrington agrees. “I met a lot of the people I consider close personal friends and colleagues there. After that, Jesse [Hewit] and I (with our friend Hana Erdman) started a little workshop/experiment where we tried to gather collaborators with similar interests.”

For his part, Hennessy got introduced to many of the younger artists through his participation judging earlier SQUARTs. In fact, SQUART and its larger community have been acquiring the regard of older, more established colleagues in a relatively short time.

David Szlasa can concur. “When I judged SQUART in October, there were 50 incredibly talented people making work who I barely knew,” confesses the artist and programming director at Z Space (which, significantly, will be presenting new work by Laura Arrington and Jesse Hewit on its massive stage in December). “I realized the 20-something crew just came to town, and they’re kicking ass.”

Szlasa credits SQUART with opening his eyes to the recent shift in approach as well. “One of the things that distinguished [the new work] was its nonreliance on the institution. SQUART is a hugely successful, hugely popular thing put together through Facebook.” For Szlasa, committed arts presenters like CounterPULSE and Z Space go only so far in explaining the success being enjoyed by artists like Arrington and Hewit or other of their peers.

“It’s artists who are being built up on the support of a community,” Szlasa notes, “rather than artists looking to institutions to find the support in the community for their work, which is a really different thing. It might be a small community that they’re rallying, but it’s significant. Maybe it’s 200 people and they all see everything everybody does, but, you know, that’s a thing. And it appears to be a mindset change also, which I really appreciate. And I think that there’s something for us — I say “us” as a representative of Z Space or that sort of institution — to consider and learn from that.”

CounterPULSE’s Jessica Robinson Love agrees. “These artists are not just interested in getting their own work out there. Most of them are also engaged in curating and producing each other’s work, serving as dramaturge, writing about it, and generally working to support the community and not just themselves. That’s where the strength comes from.”

MAMA’S BIG HOUSE

In any preliminary mapping of the scene, such as the piece you are reading, SQUART is only one point of reference, albeit a prominent one. At the very least, one would need to include now-defunct Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, which for three years, under Dwayne Calizo, consistently supported exceptional work by queer artists, especially queer artists of color, in the old Jon Sims Center for the Arts space.

Just as crucial has been Mama Calizo’s still venue-less but highly active successor organization, THEOFFCENTER, whose director Ernesto Sopprani helped organize and run the SQUART event at the Headlands. In fact, TOC includes a good swath of the community. Says artist and codirector Julie Phelps, “THEOFFCENTER rose from the dust [as] a loose collective of 20 to 30 people who just keep showing up, and keep making things happen.”

You’d also need, for sure, to include Philip Huang’s Home Theater Festival, BJ Dini’s anarchist-inspired QAZ (queer autonomous zones); venues like CounterPULSE and The Garage as well as their residency programs; mentoring and collaborating queer performance elders like Hennessy, Jess Curtis, and Monique Jenkinson; the drag series led by Mica Sigourney; and a broad and often highly political host of outsider warehouse and home-based queer performance, as well as music-based work, across San Francisco and the East Bay.

“The artists in our network are making work without permission or money,” says THEOFFCENTER’s Sopprani. “We support one another and let the work and the questions motivating it speak for themselves. Laura Arrington’s SQUART is the perfect example of that credo. Laura is a genius when it comes to building synergy. We support her work because we feel it supports the larger community. In both SQUART and TOC, artists are autonomous and free. It’s a loose collective with the intention and desire to make something out of the ordinary happen. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about for us.”

HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS

The Dana Street Theater is an inconspicuous venue, serving most of the year as Philip Huang’s bedroom. In the first week of March, prospective patrons were alerted to upcoming performances by a blog site and a piece of yellow notepaper taped to the front door of his Berkeley apartment building, where some hasty red lettering announced, “Home Theater Festival. ‘Eat, Pray, Tron.'”

The audience for the opening show of the festival — and there were about 30 of us the night I went — sat in a tight squeeze on the floor, camped on cushions or blankets. Huang greeted people as they came in. No reservations were necessary. The prices were $7.99 a ticket, or $4.99 if you’re down on your luck. The scheduled curtain time was 8 p.m., though by the time Huang returned from a last-minute beer run it was more like 20 minutes after the hour. No one cared about the time, or that it seemed Huang hadn’t really bothered to pick up his room before the show. Even before the malt liquor and box wine started circulating, the audience was primed.

The monthlong, second annual Home Theater Festival is Huang’s Internet-orchestrated DIY affair. (And newly international: the same day I saw “Eat Pray Tron,” people Down Under attended a program at Rebecca Cunningham’s pad in Brisbane, Australia. In all, five countries and 30 shows are represented.)

Huang began in character as Ellen Fu, a bracingly frank Taiwanese lady in a black sleeveless number and clip-on earrings. Ellen led a seminar on how to pleasure your black lover. There was more: a disabled man making balloon animals, for instance. Huang was sharp but loose, ready to go with the moment. There was a lot of back-and-forth with pal Bryan Dini of the League of Burnt Children and the aforementioned QAZ. Seated sublimely against a wall, Dini interjected commentary as the mood struck him. Later in this carefree, careening, and irresistible evening, Huang paused for a special message to artists: “You have everything you need to do what you do right now,” he told them. “You have everything you need to be happy.”

The DIY spirit of Home Theater Festival, and of the larger movement it’s part of, couldn’t have asked for a more eloquent summation — or one that hinted so neatly at its radical response to a larger context of economic crisis and control. Huang is a charismatic figure, quick-witted and generous, lanky and handsome in thick-framed glasses and a beaming smile. He’s a fearless, unflappable performer and activist (some of his interventions are documented in must-see YouTube videos). He also makes the most outspoken people sound awfully tactful.

“I think most arts institutions, galleries, foundations, and theaters are useless,” he says. “They keep artists in a state of dependency; they encourage a mindset that they hold all opportunities and paths to legitimacy and artists are only ever on the receiving end. That’s why they keep putting out tired workshops and seminars that teach people to do lame shit like write grants and fundraise and network and do marketing and write press releases. All of that shit makes my dick limp, and none of it is necessary.

“I, in particular, believe that queer artists should not be professionals,” Huang explains. “We should burn bright and burn out. We have a responsibility to society as a whole to scare the shit out of people. We should be the monsters they accuse us of being. Every society needs to enact its shadows, and it’s our sacred duty, our sacred function, to do that for the world.”

Huang argues the fulfillment of that function, the fulfillment of a truly subversive art, necessarily takes place outside of institutions. “Institutions, for the most part, are run by fearful, well-meaning people, to apply a phrase by Kirk Read, and to keep their heads above water, they can never really disturb the status quo. So I encourage queers to break away from institutions for their own independence, certainly, but also to restore queer art to its grimy gutter.”

“This is quite a topic at the moment,” acknowledges Arrington when I ask her about the DIY-versus-institution issue. “For myself, I like hybrid situations. I will always have house shows and do the less structured stuff, but I also love rigorously worked art. I love high production value. In my experience, most institutions are made up of incredibly hard-working people sincerely trying to nurture art. SQUART happening at Headlands is a great example. It’s a totally nontraditional format happening in quite a traditional space.” At the same time, she insists, “institutional success is not all there is. I think, actually I know, bigger issues of politics, economics, and environment are going to reshape how art gets made, both inside and outside institutions.”

Jesse Hewit agrees that the issue of institutional support has become a serious dividing line, though he finds positive aspects to the debate as well. “People are really talking about this right now. On the one hand there’s this group of people, myself included, who are working in conjunction with Angela Maddox over at YBCA curatorially to mobilize the community [around] what’s going on in an international scene in terms of contemporary performance. And there are a lot of people who feel at odds with that. There’s this weird tension.” Hewit notes the change has occurred over the last six months: “The big love fest is over. People are getting more critical, which is good. It’s good for the work. The work has been becoming more excellent.”

Hewit suggests the uneven distribution of funding among the larger community plays some part in the increased tension, which seems all but inevitable, but he also cites a resistance to engaging an international context for contemporary performance. “We’re just not a super savvy contemporary performance/dance community,” he admits. At the same time, he appreciates the invention and novelty of the work being done on its own terms: “We’re doing our own thing. We’re kind of creating our own mini canon.”

Hennessy echoes the notion that the work is generally growing stronger, wherever it may stand with respect to funding. On the anti-institutional side, he stresses the shrewdness in something like the Home Theater Festival. “Part of it is an empowerment strategy,” he says, pointing out that Huang’s project grew from Huang’s experiments with private performances, which granted him—despite a lack of formal training or connections—the permission to consider himself an artist. “He took that personal experience and is using it as almost a viral infection,” says Hennessy. “The Home Theater Festival is simultaneously a super sophisticated aesthetic strategy and an amateur hour—anyone can do whatever they want and it’s not precious. It’s just in your house and it’s 20 people and they paid $7.99.”

Hennessy stresses that this is more than just a theoretical move. “There are all these practical things: no middleman, a really accessible door price, money goes directly to the artist.” In a society that easily dismisses artist labor, Hennessy sees the Home Theater Festival “starting to rebuild this broken bond between the artist and society by making everything really transparent, inviting people into your home. I think all the issues around private and public are really fascinating [and] very much inspired by certain feminist issues that have come to be in the foreground of what queer is. There’s all kinds of lineage in that.”

Wherever the contradictions and tensions may ultimately lead, this continues to be an exciting moment across a range of contemporary performance in the Bay Area. For its part, THEOFFCENTER is looking ahead to their second season with a conviction born of early but impressive successes many can rally behind. Sopprani says TOC will be pushing work “that integrates the arts and artists across platforms and communities.” His examples include Killer Queen: The Story of Paco the Pink Pounder, a show about a gay boxer that will be staged in actual boxing rings in San Francisco and Los Angeles; and Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge, in which TOC comes on board as a community partner in the Magic Theatre’s much anticipated Bay Area premiere.

“We are hoping to stick around for the long term,” says Sopprani, marveling at all they’ve accomplished thus far. “It’s amazing what comes out of putting the artist first. Entire houses continue to get filled. People are liking what they see, and I am very proud of us all.”

Special thanks to Mark McBeth (markmcbethprojects.com) for his invaluable “field recordings in performance anthropology,” which gave audiovisual access to some of the performances and artists drawn on for this article.

No cuts-only pension deal

Andrew Lam

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April 12, 2011

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EDITORIAL Mayor Ed Lee has released a draft set of proposals for pension reform, and union leaders continue to meet with financier Warren Hellman to try to craft an alternative. Meanwhile, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is narrowing his options and appears ready to move forward to put his own plan on the ballot.

Everyone involved claims to be interested in a compromise, in some proposal that would reduce the city’s burden of paying $350 million this year (and potentially as much as $790 million in five years) into the employee pension fund. We support that idea, too — there are plenty of necessary, progressive moves to fix the city’s pension system and free up more cash for local programs.

But so far, none of the proposals on the table include any new revenue sources — which means, in effect, that the mayor, Hellman, and Adachi all want city workers to bear the entire brunt of the impact of a Wall Street-driven recession. The message: only city employees should share the pain; the wealthiest San Franciscans and biggest, richest businesses don’t have to contribute at all.

It’s a dangerous part of the tax mythology that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston discusses in his article in the Guardian this week. He notes that the argument in favor of tax cuts for the rich — that lower taxes will lead to more investment and thus more jobs — has been tested in this country for 30 years. And it hasn’t worked.

Most San Franciscans probably realize that. Most city officials vote for Democrats, opposed the Bush-era tax cuts on the rich, and argue for more federal aid to cities. This is a progressive town.

But when it comes to something as fundamental as local economic policy — who pays for city services and who gets the benefits — the story becomes completely different.

The mayor and eight of the 11 supervisors are celebrating a broad-based tax cut as a way to create jobs in the Tenderloin and mid-Market (although the evidence that tax cuts don’t create jobs is overwhelming). The mayor is looking at the equivalent of a cuts-only budget (although everyone at City Hall opposes the notion of a cuts-only budget in Sacramento). And while it’s almost certain that some sort of pension reform will be on the November ballot, none of the players involved in the negotiations have openly taken what seems to us to be the only logical position:

Pension reform has to be linked to tax reform — a commercial rent tax, a progressive gross receipts tax, a city income tax, an increase in the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. franchise fee or something else that hits those who can afford to pay. Otherwise, we can’t support it.

Even the city employee unions are being awfully quiet about the need for a deal that includes new taxes. They ought to be leading the charge here, telling everyone that a cuts-only pension deal isn’t going to be acceptable. (The tax measures could hold until the November 2012 budget, when they’ll be easier to pass — if there’s a firm assurance that the mayor, Hellman, Adachi, the supervisors, and all the other players will support them.)

City employees are being asked to take what amount to pay cuts — which will reduce their purchasing power and have a depressing impact on the local economy. Taxing the wealthy (who spend a much smaller percentage of their income) has no such depressing impact. Those are hard, cold facts. They need to be part of the discussion.

Robert Reich, the former labor secretary who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, has an interesting essay on his blog April 9 that discusses Obama’s budget capitulations. The president, he notes, “is losing the war of ideas because he won’t tell the American public the truth: that we need more government spending now — not less — in order to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. That we got into the Great Recession because Wall Street went bonkers and government failed to do its job at regulating financial markets … That the only ways to deal with the long-term budget problem is to demand that the rich pay their fair share of taxes.

“And that, at a deeper level, the increasingly lopsided distribution of income and wealth has robbed the vast working middle class of the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going at full capacity.”

That’s as true here as it is in Washington. And if city officials want progressive support for pension reform, they need to acknowledge it.

Film Listings

Maria Poblet

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April 12, 2011

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Peter Galvin, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

OPENING

An Affirmative Act A lesbian couple fights for their right to stay married in this narrative courtroom drama. (1:33) Four Star.

*Circo The old notion of “running away with the circus” seldom seemed appealing — conjuring images of following an elephant around with a shovel — and it grows even less so after watching Aaron Schock’s warm, touching documentary. The kids here might one day run away from the circus. They’re born into Grand Circo Mexico, one of four circuses run by the Ponce family, which has been in this business for generations; if they’re old enough to walk, they’re old enough to perform, and help with the endless setup and breakdown chores. (Presumably child labor laws are an innovation still waiting to happen here.) Touring Mexico’s small towns in trucks with a variety of exotic animals, it’s a life of labor, with on-the-job training in place of school — arguably not much of a life for child, as current company leader Tino’s wife Ivonne (who really did run away with the circus, or rather him, at age 15) increasingly insists. Other family members have split for a normal life, and Tino is caught between loyalty to his parents’ ever-struggling business and not wanting to lose the family he’s raised himself. This beautifully shot document, scored by Calexico and edited by Mark Becker (of 2005’s marvelous Romantico), is a disarming look at a lifestyle that feels almost 19th century, and is barely hobbling into the 21st one. (1:15) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Conspirator It may not be your standard legal drama, but The Conspirator is a lot more enjoyable when you think of it as an extended episode of Law & Order. The film chronicles the trial of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It’s a fascinating story, especially for those who don’t know much of the history past John Wilkes Booth. But while the subject matter is compelling, the execution is hit-or-miss. Wright is sympathetic as Surratt, but the usually great James McAvoy is somewhat forgettable in the pivotal role of Frederick Aiken, Surratt’s conflicted lawyer. It’s hard to say what it is that’s missing from The Conspirator: the cast — which also includes Evan Rachel Wood and Tom Wilkinson — is great, and this is a story that’s long overdue to be told. Still, something is lacking. Could it be the presence of everyone’s favorite detective, the late Lennie Briscoe? (2:02) Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Peitzman)

Henry’s Crime See “Breaking Point.” (1:48) California, Embarcadero.

Meet Monica Velour Kim Cattrall stars as an aging porn star in this comedy. (1:37)

Rio Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway lend their voices to this animated bird adventure. (1:32) Presidio.

Scre4m It’s kinda fun to just look at the cast list and wonder which demi-star will suffer the most hideous death at the hands of ol’ Ghostface: Emma Roberts? Adam Brody? Shanae Grimes? (run time not available)

Some Days Are Better Than Others First-time director Matt McCormick doesn’t break any new stylistic or thematic ground with his ensemble drama, but Some Days Are Better Than Others does boast an interesting bit of stunt casting. Indie rock fans will recognize the Shins’ James Mercer as mopey Eli, who drifts between temp jobs trying to earn enough money to go back to school because he hates working so much; fellow musician Carrie Brownstein appears as Katrina, a recently-dumped, reality TV-obsessed dog-shelter worker; her character is the kind of emo thrift-shopper that Portlandia would had no trouble poking fun at. Other points on this sad-sack square are a lonely woman ((Renee Roman Nose) who finds an erstwhile cremation urn, and an elderly man (David Wodehouse) obsessed with the kaleidoscope-like patterns he captures while filming soap bubbles. Moments of wry humor (Katrina checks messages at “mumblemail.net”) and some Ghost World-ish jabs at mainstream go-getters (including a moving-company douchebag who hires Eli to help clean out a recently-deceased woman’s house) keep Some Days from being a total downer, but be warned: this is one melancholy movie. Shins fans will enjoy the scene where Eli, alone in his room, rehearses for a yearned-for karaoke date with a Bonnie Tyler classic. (1:33) Roxie. (Eddy)

ONGOING

The Adjustment Bureau As far as sci-fi romantic thrillers go, The Adjustment Bureau is pretty standard. But since that’s not an altogether common genre mash-up, I guess the film deserves some points for creativity. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Adjustment Bureau takes place in a world where all of our fates are predetermined. Political hotshot David Norris (Matt Damon) is destined for greatness — but not if he lets a romantic dalliance with dancer Elise (Emily Blunt) take precedence. And in order to make sure he stays on track, the titular Adjustment Bureau (including Anthony Mackie and Mad Men‘s John Slattery) are there to push him in the right direction. While the film’s concept is intriguing, the execution is sloppy. The Adjustment Bureau suffers from flaws in internal logic, allowing the story to skip over crucial plot points with heavy exposition and a deus ex machina you’ve got to see to believe. Couldn’t the screenwriter have planned ahead? (1:39) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Arthur (1:45) Empire, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

*Battle: Los Angeles Michael Bay is likely writhing with envy over Battle: Los Angeles; his Transformers flicks take a more, erm, nuanced view of alien-on-human violence. But they’re not all such bad guys after all; these days, as District 9 (2009) demonstrated, alien invasions are more hazardous to the brothers and sisters from another planet than those trigger-happy humanoids ready to defend terra firma. So Battle arrives like an anomaly — a war-is-good action movie aimed at faceless space invaders who resemble the Alien (1979) mother more than the wide-eyed lost souls of District 9. Still reeling from his last tour of duty, Staff Sergeant Nantz (Aaron Eckhart) is ready to retire, until he’s pulled back in by a world invasion, staged by thirsty aliens. In approximating D-Day off the beach of Santa Monica, director Jonathan Liebesman manages to combine the visceral force of Saving Private Ryan (1998) with the what-the-fuck hand-held verite rush of Cloverfield (2008) while crafting tiny portraits of all his Marines, including Michelle Rodriguez, Ne-Yo, and True Blood‘s Jim Parrack. A few moments of requisite flag-waving are your only distractions from the almost nonstop white-knuckle tension fueling Battle: Los Angeles. (1:57) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Bill Cunningham New York To say that Bill Cunningham, the 82-year old New York Times photographer, has made documenting how New Yorkers dress his life’s work would be an understatement. To be sure, Cunningham’s two decades-old Sunday Times columns — “On the Street,” which tracks street-fashion, and “Evening Hours,” which covers the charity gala circuit — are about the clothes. And, my, what clothes they are. But Cunningham is a sartorial anthropologist, and his pictures always tell the bigger story behind the changing hemlines, which socialite wore what designer, or the latest trend in footwear. Whether tracking the near-infinite variations of a particular hue, a sudden bumper-crop of cropped blazers, or the fanciful leaps of well-heeled pedestrians dodging February slush puddles, Cunningham’s talent lies in his ability to recognize fleeting moments of beauty, creativity, humor, and joy. That last quality courses through Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’ captivating and moving portrait of a man whose reticence and personal asceticism are proportional to his total devotion to documenting what Harold Koda, chief curator at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, describes in the film as “ordinary people going about their lives, dressed in fascinating ways.” (1:24) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Sussman)

*Cedar Rapids What if The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) got so Parks and Rec‘d at The Office party that he ended up with a killer Hangover (2009)? Just maybe the morning-after baby would be Cedar Rapids. Director Miguel Arteta (2009’s Youth in Revolt) wrings sweet-natured chuckles from his banal, intensely beige wall-to-wall convention center biosphere, spurring such ponderings as, should John C. Reilly snatch comedy’s real-guy MVP tiara away from Seth Rogen? Consider Tim Lippe (Ed Helms of The Hangover), the polar opposite of George Clooney’s ultracompetent, complacent ax-wielder in Up in the Air (2009). He’s the naive manchild-cum-corporate wannabe who never quite graduated from Timmyville into adulthood. But it’s up to Lippe to hold onto his firm’s coveted two-star rating at an annual convention in Cedar Rapids. Life conspires against him, however, and despite his heartfelt belief in insurance as a heroic profession, Lippe immediately gets sucked into the oh-so-distracting drama, stirred up by the dangerously subversive “Deanzie” Ziegler (John C. Reilly), whom our naif is warned against as a no-good poacher. Temptations lie around every PowerPoint and potato skin; as Deanzie warns Lippe’s Candide, “I’ve got tiger scratches all over my back. If you want to survive in this business, you gotta daaance with the tiger.” How do you do that? Cue lewd, boozy undulations — a potbelly lightly bouncing in the air-conditioned breeze. “You’ve got to show him a little teat.” Fortunately Arteta shows us plenty of that, equipped with a script by Wisconsin native Phil Johnston, written for Helms — and the latter does not disappoint. (1:26) Shattuck. (Chun)

Certified Copy Abbas Kiarostami’s beguiling new feature signals “relationship movie” with every cobblestone step, but it’s manifestly a film of ideas — one in which disillusionment is as much a formal concern as a dramatic one. Typical of Kiarostami’s dialogic narratives, Certified Copy is both the name of the film and an entity within the film: a book written against the ideal of originality in art by James Miller (William Shimell), an English pedant fond of dissembling. After a lecture in Tuscany, he meets an apparent admirer (Juliette Binoche) in her antique shop. We watch them talk for several minutes in an unbroken two-shot. They gauge each other’s values using her sister as a test case — a woman who, according to the Binoche character, is the living embodiment of James’ book. Do their relative opinions of this off-screen cipher constitute characterization? Or are they themselves ciphers of the film’s recursive structure? Kiarostami makes us wonder. They begin to act as if they were married midway through the film, though the switch is not so out of the blue: Kiarostami’s narrative has already turned a few figure-eights. Several critics have already deemed Certified Copy derivative of many other elliptical romances; the strongest case for an “original” comes of Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy (1954). The real difference is that while Rossellini’s masterpiece realizes first-person feelings in a third-person approach, Kiarostami stays in the shadow of doubt to the end. (1:46) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Goldberg)

*Hanna The title character of Hanna falls perfectly into the lately very popular Hit-Girl mold. Add a dash of The Boys from Brazil-style genetic engineering — Hanna has the unfair advantage, you see, when it comes to squashing other kids on the soccer field or maiming thugs with her bare hands — and you have an ethereal killing/survival machine, played with impassive confidence by Atonement (2007) shit-starter Saoirse Ronan. She’s been fine-tuned by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), a spy who went out into the cold and off the grid, disappearing into the wilds of Scandinavia where he home-schooled his charge with an encyclopedia and brutal self-defense and hunting tests. Atonement director Joe Wright plays with a snowy palette associated with innocence, purity, and death — this could be any time or place, though far from the touch of modern childhood stresses: that other Hannah (Montana), consumerism, suburban blight, and academic competition. The 16-year-old Hanna, however, isn’t immune from that desire to succeed. Her game mission: go from a feral, lonely existence into the modern world, run for her life, and avenge the death of her mother by killing Erik’s CIA handler, Marissa (Cate Blanchett). The nagging doubt: was she born free, or Bourne to be a killer? Much like the illustrated Brothers Grimm storybook that she studies, Hanna is caught in an evil death trap of fairytale allegories. One wonders if the super-soldier apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since evil stepmonster Marissa oversaw the program that produced Hanna — the older woman and the young girl have the same cold-blooded talent for destruction and the same steely determination. Yet there’s hope for the young ‘un. After learning that even her beloved father hid some basic truths from her, this natural-born killer seems less likely to go along with the predetermined ending, happy or no, further along in her storybook life. (1:51) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Hop (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck.

I Am File in the dusty back drawer of An Inconvenient Truth (2006) wannabes. The cringe-inducing, pretentious title is a giveaway — though the good intentions are in full effect — in this documentary by and about director Tom Shadyac’s search for answers to life’s big questions. After a catastrophic bike accident, the filmmaker finds his lavish lifestyle as a successful Hollywood director of such opuses as Bruce Almighty (2003) somewhat wanting. Thinkers and spiritual leaders such as Desmond Tutu, Howard Zinn, UC Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, and scientist David Suzuki provide some thought-provoking answers, although Shadyac’s thinking behind seeking out this specific collection of academics, writers, and activists remains somewhat unclear. I Am‘s shambling structure and perpetual return to its true subject — Shadyac, who resembles a wide-eyed Weird Al Yankovic — doesn’t help matters, leaving a viewer with mixed feelings, less about whether one man can work out his quest for meaning on film, than whether Shadyac complements his subjects and their ideas by framing them in such a random, if well-meaning, manner. And sorry, this film doesn’t make up for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994). (1:16) Shattuck. (Chun)

*In a Better World Winner of this year’s Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this latest from Danish director Susanne Bier (2004’s Brothers, 2006’s After the Wedding) and her usual co-scenarist Anders Thomas Jensen (2005’s Adam’s Apples, 2003’s The Green Butchers) is a typically engrossing, complex drama that deals with the kind of rage for “personal justice” that can lead to school and workplace shootings, among other things (like terrorism). Shy, nervous ten-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard) needs a confidence boost, but things are worrying both at home and elsewhere. His parents are estranged, and his doting father (Mikael Persbrandt) is mostly away as a field hospital in Kenya tending victims of local militias. At school, he’s an easy mark for bullies, a fact which gets the attention of charismatic, self-assured new kid Christian (William Jøhnk Nielsen), who appoints himself Elias’ new (and only) friend — then when his slightly awed pal is picked on again, intervenes with such alarming intensity that the police are called. Christian appears a little too prone to violence and harsh judgment in teaching “lessons” to those he considers in the wrong; his own domestic situation is another source of anger, as he simplistically blames his earnest, distracted executive father (Ulrich Thomsen) for his mother’s recent cancer death. Is Christian a budding little psychopath, or just a kid haplessly channeling his profound loss? Regardless, when an adult bully (Kim Bodnia as a loutish mechanic) humiliates Elias’ father in front of the two boys, Christian pulls his reluctant friend into a pursuit of vengeance that surely isn’t going to end well. With their nuanced yet head-on treatment of hot button social and ethical issues, Bier and Jensen’s work can sometimes border on overly-schematic melodrama, meting out its own secular-humanist justice a bit too handily, like 21st-century cinematic Dickenses. But like Dickens, they also have a true mastery of the creating striking characters and intricately propulsive plotlines that illustrate the points at hand in riveting, hugely satisfying fashion. This isn’t their best. But it’s still pretty excellent, and one of those universally accessible movies you can safely recommend even to people who think they don’t like foreign or art house films. (1:53) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Insidious (1:42) 1000 Van Ness.

*Jane Eyre Do we really need another adaptation of Jane Eyre? As long as they’re all as good as Cary Fukunaga’s stirring take on the gothic romance, keep ’em coming. Mia Wasikowska stars in the titular role, with the dreamy Michael Fassbender stepping into the high pants of Edward Rochester. The cast is rounded out by familiar faces like Judi Dench, Jamie Bell, and Sally Hawkins — all of whom breathe new life into the material. It helps that Fukunaga’s sensibilities are perfectly suited to the story: he stays true to the novel while maintaining an aesthetic certain to appeal to a modern audience. Even if you know Jane Eyre’s story — Mr. Rochester’s dark secret, the fate of their romance, etc. — there are still surprises to be had. Everyone tells the classics differently, and this adaptation is a thoroughly unique experience. And here’s hoping it pushes the engaging Wasikowska further in her ascent to stardom. (2:00) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Kill the Irishman If you enjoy 1970s-set Mafia movies featuring characters with luxurious facial hair zooming around in Cadillacs, flossing leather blazers, and outwitting cops and each other — you could do a lot worse than Kill the Irishman, which busts no genre boundaries but delivers enjoyable retro-gangsta cool nonetheless. Adapted from the acclaimed true crime book by a former Cleveland police lieutenant, the film details the rise and fall of Danny Greene, a colorful and notorious Irish-American mobster who both served and ran afoul of the big bosses in his Ohio hometown. During one particularly conflict-ridden period, the city weathered nearly 40 bombings — buildings, mailboxes, and mostly cars, to the point where the number of automobiles going sky-high is almost comical (you’d think these guys would’ve considered taking the bus). The director of the 2004 Punisher, Jonathan Hensleigh, teams up with the star of 2008’s Punisher: War Zone, Ray Stevenson, who turns in a magnetic performance as Greene; it’s easy to see how his combination of book- and street smarts (with a healthy dash of ruthlessness) buoyed him nearly to the top of the underworld. The rest of the cast is equally impressive, with Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, and Linda Cardellini turning in supporting roles, plus a host of dudes who look freshly defrosted from post-Sopranos storage. (1:46) Lumiere. (Eddy)

The King’s Speech Films like The King’s Speech have filled a certain notion of “prestige” cinema since the 1910s: historical themes, fully-clothed romance, high dramatics, star turns, a little political intrigue, sumptuous dress, and a vicarious taste of how the fabulously rich, famous, and powerful once lived. At its best, this so-called Masterpiece Theatre moviemaking can transcend formula — at its less-than-best, however, these movies sell complacency, in both style and content. In The King’s Speech, Colin Firth plays King George VI, forced onto the throne his favored older brother Edward abandoned. This was especially traumatic because George’s severe stammer made public address tortuous. Enter matey Australian émigré Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush, mercifully controlled), a speech therapist whose unconventional methods include insisting his royal client treat him as an equal. This ultimately frees not only the king’s tongue, but his heart — you see, he’s never had anyone before to confide in that daddy (Michael Gambon as George V) didn’t love him enough. Aww. David Seidler’s conventionally inspirational script and BBC miniseries veteran Tom Hooper’s direction deliver the expected goods — dignity on wry, wee orgasms of aesthetic tastefulness, much stiff-upper-lippage — at a stately promenade pace. Firth, so good in the uneven A Single Man last year, is perfect in this rock-steadier vehicle. Yet he never surprises us; role, actor, and movie are on a leash tight enough to limit airflow. (1:58) Empire, Red Vic, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Limitless An open letter to the makers of Limitless: please fire your marketing team because they are making your movie look terrible. The story of a deadbeat writer (Bradley Cooper) who acquires an unregulated drug that allows him to take advantage of 100 percent of his previously under-utilized brain, Limitless is silly, improbable and features a number of distracting comic-book-esque stylistic tics. But consumed with the comic book in mind, Limitless is also unpredictable, thrilling, and darkly funny. The aforementioned style, which includes many instances of the infinite regression effect that you get when you point two mirrors at each other, and a heavy blur to distort depth-of-field, only solidifies the film’s cartoonish intentions. Cooper learns foreign languages in hours, impresses women with his keen attention to detail, and sets his sights on Wall Street, a move that gets him noticed by businessman Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro in a glorified cameo) as well as some rather nasty drug dealers and hired guns looking to cash in on the drug. Limitless is regrettably titled and masquerades in TV spots as a Wall Street series spin-off, but in truth it sports the speedy pacing and tongue-in-cheek humor required of a good popcorn flick. (1:37) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

*The Lincoln Lawyer Outfitted with gym’d-tanned-and-laundered manly blonde bombshells like Matthew McConaughey, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe, this adaptation of Michael Connelly’s LA crime novel almost cries out for an appearance by the Limitless Bradley Cooper — only then will our cabal of flaxen-haired bros-from-other-‘hos be complete. That said, Lincoln Lawyer‘s blast of morally challenged golden boys nearly detracts from the pleasingly gritty mise-en-scène and the snappy, almost-screwball dialogue that makes this movie a genre pleasure akin to a solid Elmore Leonard read. McConaughey’s criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller is accustomed to working all the angles — hence the title, a reference to a client who’s working off his debt by chauffeuring Haller around in his de-facto office: a Lincoln Town Car. Haller’s playa gets truly played when he becomes entangled with Louis Roulet (Phillippe), a pretty-boy old-money realtor accused of brutally attacking a call girl. Loved ones such as Haller’s ex Maggie (Marisa Tomei) and his investigator Frank (William H. Macy) are in jeopardy — and in danger of turning in some delightfully textured cameos — in this enjoyable walk on the sleazy side of the law, the contemporary courtroom counterpart to quick-witted potboilers like Sweet Smell of Success (1957). (1:59) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Max Manus One of Norway’s most expensive films to date, Max Manus follows the rise to infamy of the title character, a charismatic World War II resistance fighter whose specialty was blowing up German ships docked in occupied Oslo harbor. Again, I emphasize: this is a World War II movie about Norway made by Norwegians — though the Brits play a role, there’s nary a mention of the United States. That fact is the single most refreshing part of a movie that’s nonetheless clearly been inspired by stateside war epics, with traumatic flashbacks, male bonding, sadistic Nazis, rousing if familiar-sounding dialogue (“Being a commando takes more than courage!”), etc. Star Aksel Hennie anchors a film that’s painted in pretty broad strokes with a nuanced performance befitting the real-life Manus’ legacy as an everyman who became a hero. (1:58) Balboa. (Eddy)

Miral (1:42) Opera Plaza.

*Of Gods and Men It’s the mid-1990s, and we’re in Tibhirine, a small Algerian village based around a Trappist monastery. There, eight French-born monks pray and work alongside their Muslim neighbors, tending to the sick and tilling the land. An emboldened Islamist rebel movement threatens this delicate peace, and the monks must decide whether to risk the danger of becoming pawns in the Algerian Civil War. On paper, Of Gods and Men sounds like the sort of high-minded exploitation picture the Academy swoons over: based on a true story, with high marks for timeliness and authenticity. What a pleasant surprise then that Xavier Beauvois’s Cannes Grand Prix winner turns out to be such a tightly focused moral drama. Significantly, the film is more concerned with the power vacuum left by colonialism than a “clash of civilizations.” When Brother Christian (Lambert Wilson) turns away an Islamist commander by appealing to their overlapping scriptures, it’s at the cost of the Algerian army’s suspicion. Etienne Comar’s perceptive script does not rush to assign meaning to the monks’ decision to stay in Tibhirine, but rather works to imagine the foundation and struggle for their eventual consensus. Beauvois occasionally lapses into telegraphing the monks’ grave dilemma — there are far too many shots of Christian looking up to the heavens — but at other points he’s brilliant in staging the living complexity of Tibrihine’s collective structure of responsibility. The actors do a fine job too: it’s primarily thanks to them that by the end of the film each of the monks seems a sharply defined conscience. (2:00) Albany, Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

Paul Across the aisle from the alien-shoot-em-up Battle: Los Angeles is its amiable, nerdy opposite: Paul, with its sweet geeks Graeme (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost), off on a post-Comic-Con pilgrimage to all the US sites of alien visitation. Naturally the buddies get a close encounter of their very own, with a very down-to-earth every-dude of a schwa named Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), given to scratching his balls, spreading galactic wisdom, utilizing Christ-like healing powers, and cracking wise when the situation calls for it (as when fear of anal probes escalates). Despite a Pegg-and-Frost-penned script riddled with allusions to Hollywood’s biggest extraterrestrial flicks and much 12-year-old-level humor concerning testicles and farts, the humor onslaught usually attached to the two lead actors — considered Lewis and Martin for pop-smart Anglophiles — seems to have lost some of its steam, and teeth, with the absence of former director and co-writer Edgar Wright (who took last year’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to the next level instead). Call it a “soft R” for language and an alien sans pants. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Poetry Sixtysomething Mija (legendary South Korean actor Yun Jung-hee) impulsively crashes a poetry class, a welcome shake-up in a life shaped by unfulfilling routines. In order to write compelling verse, her instructor says, it is important to open up and really see the world. But Mija’s world holds little beauty beyond her cheerful outfits and beloved flowers; most pressingly, her teenage grandson, a mouth-breathing lump who lives with her, is completely remorseless about his participation in a hideous crime. In addition, she’s just been disgnosed with the early stages of Alzheimer’s, and the elderly stroke victim she housekeeps for has started making inappropriate advances. Somehow writer-director Lee Chang-dong (2007’s Secret Sunshine) manages not to deliver a totally depressing film with all this loaded material; it’s worth noting Poetry won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Yun is unforgettable as a woman trying to find herself after a lifetime of obeying the wishes of everyone around her. Though Poetry is completely different in tone than 2009’s Mother, it shares certain elements — including the impression that South Korean filmmakers have recognized the considerable rewards of showcasing aging (yet still formidable) female performers. (2:19) Balboa, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Potiche When we first meet Catherine Deneuve’s Suzanne — the titular trophy wife (or potiche) of Francois Ozon’s new airspun comedy — she is on her morning jog, barely breaking a sweat as she huffs and puffs in her maroon Adidas tracksuit, her hair still in curlers. It’s 1977 and Suzanne’s life as a bourgeois homemaker in a small provincial French town has played out as smoothly as one of her many poly-blend skirt suits: a devoted mother to two grown children and loving wife who turns a blind eye to the philandering of husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini), Suzanne is on the fast track to comfortable irrelevance. All that changes when the workers at Robert’s umbrella factory strike and take him hostage. Suzanne, with the help of union leader and old flame Babin (Gerard Depardieu, as big as a house), negotiates a peace, and soon turns around the company’s fortunes with her new-found confidence and business savvy. But when Robert wrests back control with the help of a duped Babin, Suzanne does an Elle Woods and takes them both on in a surprise run for political office. True to the film’s light théâtre de boulevard source material, Ozon keeps things brisk and cheeky (Suzanne sings with as much ease as she spouts off Women’s Lib boilerplate) to the point where his cast’s hammy performances start blending into the cheery production design. Satire needs an edge that Potiche, for all its charm, never provides. (1:43) Clay, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Sussman)

*Rubber This starts out just on the right side of self-conscious prank, introducing a droll fourth-wall-breaking framework to a serenely surreal central conceit: An old car tire abandoned in the desert miraculously animates itself to commit widespread mayhem. Credit writer-director-editor-cinematographer-composer Quentin Dupieux for an original concept and terrific execution, as our initially wobby antihero wends its way toward civilization, discovering en route it can explode (or just crush) other entities with its “mind.” Which this rumbling black ring of discontent very much enjoys doing, to the misfortune of various hapless humans and a few small animals. Rubber is an extended Dadaist joke that has adventurous fun with filmic and genre language. Beautifully executed as it is, the concept tires (ahem) after a while, reality-illusion games and comedic flair flagging by degrees. Still, it’s so polished and resourceful a treatment of an utterly peculiar idea that no self-respecting cult film fan will want to say they didn’t see this during its initial theatrical run. (1:25) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Soul Surfer (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Source Code A post-9/11 Groundhog Day (1993) with explosions, Inception (2010) with a heart, or Avatar (2009) taken down a notch or dozen in Chicago —whatever you choose to call it, Source Code manages to stand up on its own wobbly Philip K. Dick-inspired legs, damn the science, and take off on the wings of wish fulfillment. ‘Cause who hasn’t yearned for a do-over — and then a do-over of that do-over, etc. We could all be as lucky — or as cursed — as soldier Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), who gets to tumble down that time-space rabbit hole again and again, his consciousness hitching a ride in another man’s body, while in search of the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. On the upside, he gets to meet the girl of his dreams (Michelle Monaghan) — and see her getting blown to smithereens again and again, all in the service of his country, his commander-cum-link to the outside world (Vera Farmiga), and the scientist masterminding this secret military project (Jeffrey Wright). On the downside, well, he gets to do it over and over again, like a good little test bunny in pinball purgatory. Fortunately, director Duncan Jones (2009’s Moon) makes compelling work out of the potentially ludicrous material, while his cast lends the tale a glossed yet likable humanity, the kind that was all too absent in Inception. (1:33) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Sucker Punch If steampunk and Call of Duty had a baby, would it be called Baby Doll? That seems to be the question posed by director-cowriter Zack Snyder with his latest edge-skating, CGI-laden opus. Neither as saccharine and built-for-kids as last year’s Legend of the Guardians, nor as doomed and gore-besotted as 2006’s 300, Sucker Punch instead reads as a grimy Grimm’s fairy tale built for girls succored on otaku, Wii, and suburban pole dancing lessons. Already caught in a thicket of storybook tropes, complete with a wicked stepfather and vulnerable younger sister, Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is tossed into an asylum for wayward girls, signed up for a lobotomy that’s certain to put her in la-la land for good. Fortunately she has a great imagination — and a flair for disassociating herself from the horrors around her —and the scene suddenly shifts to a bordello-strip club populated by such bad-girls-with-hearts-of-gold as Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish) and sister Rocket (Jena Malone). There Baby Doll discovers yet another layer in the gameplay: like a prospective hoofer in Dancing with the Stars, she must dance her way to the next level or next prize — while deep in her imagination, she sees herself battling giant samurai, robot-zombie Nazis, dragons, and such, assisted by the David Carradine-like, cliché-spouting wise man (Scott Glenn) and accompanied by an inspiring score that includes Björk’s “Army of Me” and covers of the Pixies and Stooges. Things take a turn for the girl gang-y when she recruits Sweet Pea, Rocket, and other random stripper-‘hos (Vanessa Hudgens and Real World starlet Jamie Chung) in her scheme to escape. Why bother, one wonders, since Baby Doll seems to be a genuine escape artist of the mind? The ever-fatalistic Snyder obviously has affection for his charges: when the shadows inevitably close in, he delicately refrains from the arterial spray as the little girls bite the dust in what might be the closest thing to a feature-length anime classic that Baz Luhrmann would give his velvet frock coat to make. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Super Naive, vaguely Christian, and highly suggestible everyman Frank (Rainn Wilson) snaps when his wife (Liv Tyler) is seduced away by sleazy drug dealer Jacques (Kevin Bacon). With a little tutoring from the cute girl at the comic store, Libby (Ellen Page), he throws together a pathetically makeshift superhero costume and equally makeshift persona as the Crimson Bolt. Time to dress up and beat down local dealers, child molesters, and people who cut in line with cracks like, “Shut up, crime!” Frank’s taking stumbling, fumbling baby steps toward rescuing his lady love, but it becomes more than simply his mission when Libby discovers his secret and tries to horn in on his act as his kid sidekick Boltie. Alas, what begins as a charming, intriguing indie about dingy reality meeting up with violent vigilantism goes full-tilt Commando (1985), with all the attendant gore and shocks. In the process director James Gunn (2006’s Slither) completely squanders his chance to peer more deeply into the dark heart of the superhero phenom, topping off this vaguely Old Testament reading of good and evil with an absolutely incoherent ending. (1:36) Lumiere. (Chun)

*Win Win Is Tom McCarthy the most versatile guy in Hollywood? He’s a successful character actor (in big-budget movies like 2009’s 2012; smaller-scale pictures like 2005’s Good Night, and Good Luck; and the final season of The Wire). He’s an Oscar-nominated screenwriter (2009’s Up). And he’s the writer-director of two highly acclaimed indie dramas, The Station Agent (2003) and The Visitor (2007). Clearly, McCarthy must not sleep much. His latest, Win Win, is a comedy set in his hometown of New Providence, N.J. Paul Giamatti stars as Mike Flaherty, a lawyer who’s feeling the economic pinch. Betraying his own basic good-guy-ness, he takes advantage of a senile client, Leo (Burt Young), when he spots the opportunity to pull in some badly-needed extra cash. Matters complicate with the appearance of Leo’s grandson, Kyle (newcomer Alex Shaffer), a runaway from Ohio. Though Mike’s wife, Jackie (Amy Ryan), is suspicious of the taciturn teen, she allows Kyle to crash with the Flaherty family. As luck would have it, Kyle is a superstar wrestler — and Mike happens to coach the local high school team. Things are going well until Kyle’s greedy mother (Melanie Lynskey) turns up and starts sniffing around her father’s finances. Lessons are learned, sure, and there are no big plot twists beyond typical indie-comedy turf. But the script delivers more genuine laughs than you’d expect from a movie that’s essentially about the recession. (1:46) Bridge, California, Piedmont, SF Center. (Eddy)

Winter in Wartime (1:43) Smith Rafael.

Your Highness One of the dangers of reviewing a film like Your Highness is that stoner comedies have a very specific intended audience. A particular altered state is recommended to maximize one’s enjoyment. I tend not to show up for professional gigs with Mary Jane as my plus-one, so I had to view the latest from Pineapple Express (2008) director David Gordon Green through un-bloodshot eyes. While Express was more explicitly ganja-themed, Your Highness is instead a comedy that approximates the experience of getting as high as possible, then going directly to Medieval Times. Never gut-bustingly funny, Your Highness still reaps chuckles from its hard-R dialogue and plenty of CG-assisted sight gags involving genetalia. James Franco and Danny McBride star as princes, one heroic and one ne’er-do-well, who quest to save a maiden kidnapped by an evil wizard (Justin Theroux). Natalie Portman turns up as a thong-wearing warrior, just ’cause it’s that kind of movie. Forget the box office; only time and the tastes of late-night movie watchers will dictate whether Your Highness is a success or a bust. Case in point: nobody thought much of Half Baked (1998) when it was released, but in certain circles, it’s become a bona fide classic. Say it with me now: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, and fuck you. I’m out!” (1:42) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Editorial: Link pension reform to tax reform (Second in a series on pension reform)

Maria Poblet

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April 12, 2011

14

Mayor Ed Lee has released a draft set of proposals for pension reform, and union leaders continue to meet with financier Warren Hellman to try to craft an alternative. Meanwhile, Public Defender Jeff Adachi is narrowing his options and appears ready to move forward to put his own plan on the ballot.

Everyone involved claims to be interested in a compromise, in some proposal that would reduce the city’s burden of paying $350 million this year (and potentially as much as $790 million in five years) into the employee pension fund. We support that idea, too — there are plenty of necessary, progressive moves to fix the city’s pension system and free up more cash for local programs.

But so far, none of the proposals on the table include any new revenue sources — which means, in effect, that the mayor, Hellman, and Adachi all want city workers to bear the entire brunt of the impact of a Wall Street-driven recession. The message: only city employees should share the pain; the wealthiest San Franciscans and biggest, richest businesses don’t have to contribute at all.

It’s a dangerous part of the tax mythology that Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston discusses on page 10. He notes that the argument in favor of tax cuts for the rich — that lower taxes will lead to more investment and thus more jobs — has been tested in this country for 30 years. And it hasn’t worked.