Nature

Primate urges

Michael Redmond
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1
Primate urges

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Because the Bay Area has a reputation for encouraging artistic exploration, audiences have come to expect the unexpected — including having a monkey wrench thrown at them. Case in point: Erin Mei-Ling Stuart and her cohorts, who for their newest dance theater work, Monkey Gone to Heaven, pulled together some rather odd strings. Still, in the end they managed to say something intriguing about humankind’s connections to our closest relatives below, and our aspirations to whatever is above. The piece, however, is so multifaceted that I found myself overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of references. Were there episodes involving such outcasts as the biblical Ham, Africa’s pre-human Lucy, and Nijinsky in his madness?

Yet Monkey also stands as an evenhanded, lighthearted revue that doesn’t take its subject matter too seriously. It looks honestly at fundamental questions about what makes us human and how to we relate to something beyond us. Whether that is something like an afterlife or just a better life during the here and now is, gratefully, left open.

The work acknowledges and celebrates the close relationship to our animal nature, which too often gets ignored or denigrated. For coherence, the 75-minute, loosely-constructed episodes rely less on logic than on an emotional fabric woven by the wit, charm, and goofiness of its six performers: El Beh, Jennifer Chien, Kat Cole, Michael Mohammed, Rowena Ritchie, and Christopher W. White.

But how do these troopers suggest deep connections between our arboreal neighbors, not to speak of something called the future and us? The piece starts with the performers traipsing onto the stage chanting the refrain of the Pixies’ “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” whose lyrics portray a modest creature’s ascent through environmental morass towards the divine. Cole then recalls how she folded herself against a plate-glass zoo window — behind which a gorilla responded in kind. It became a transcendent experience for the human, and perhaps, the beast. Chien, for her part, lets herself be hogtied and yanked around as a sign of submission to an authority.

White then excitedly bursts onto stage with a scientific discovery that he thinks connects prayers, primates, and humans. Dopamine, which works on primates as well, he says, activates the pleasure center, but the anticipation of dopamine also produces this optimistic response, much the way prayer does. Is this an “a-ha” moment?

The choreography seems to say so, cleverly obliterating distinctions between human and animal movements by creating one fluid stream into which everyone dips: dancers hop, crawl, and walk on all fours; they fold their arms, genuflect, cross themselves, and pick lice off each other. When they sit on their haunches and begin to gently sway you certainly can’t tell which is which. Richie looked particularly in betwixt.

At one point the performers lie on their backs, engaged in a lusty monkey chant. They fight and they screech, and Mohammed explains his way of praying: a robust purging of himself. When all the dancers, except for Beh, knelt facing upstage for a Zen meditation, they quickly began to “ape” each others’ gestures, thus breaking their the trance, leaving Beh on her own.

Prayers — sung and recited — involved being grateful for a father with Alzheimer’s who had died. (I’m pretty sure also I heard one about someone who had bestowed herpes on somebody, and one about a lost cat.) The mundane and the weighty, the rational and goofy received equal consideration. That made for much of Monkey’s charms.

One of Monkey’s dramatically strongest sections involves the humans’ loss of the tail — Sonsheree Giles’ costumes had pinned stubs of them to their costumes. Toward the end, Ritchie and Beh, each on a column on either side of the stage, engaged in a lyrical paean about the tail — so soft, so pliable, so lush, so ever available and so sensuous and sexually alluring. It began to sound uncannily like an ode to a paradise lost. *

MONKEY GONE TO HEAVEN

Thu/19-Sat/21, 8pm; Sun/22, 7pm, $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.counterpulse.org

 

Put ’em in the glass

Michael Redmond
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0
Put ’em in the glass

marke@sfbg.com

BEER + WINE You may be a growler geek, a craft connoisseur, an export expert, a noble hops know-it-all … but are you a real Beer Nerd? A new Trivial Pursuit-like game from local publishing powerhouse Chronicle Books (www.chroniclebooks.com) tests your brew knowledge — “brewledge”? — as you advance around a colorful board. But here’s the delicious twist: players can land on “blind taste test” squares and really show their hops IQ. It’s a drinking game where drinking can actually help you win. Truly, we live in an age of wonders.

 

BRING IT, MAKE IT, RIDE IT

Yes, yes, small-batch urban wineries are still all the rage, but how does one distinguish itself in the great grape landscape? Well, if you’re the folks behind Tank 18 (1345 Howard, SF. www.tank18.com), you make your own wine, yes, but you also open up your beautiful, rustic-modern space for big events and parties (including a cheeky, sexy one during Folsom Street Fair) with a full bar. You also hit a sweet green spot with a BYOB-like event every third Saturday called “Sustainable Bottling” — patrons bring in rinsed-out bottles of wine they’ve already enjoyed at home to exchange for discounted, full Tank 18 bottles. Starting at $7.99 per bottle, that’s an upcycle we’ll gladly uncork.

Then there’s the Dogpatch WineWorks (2455 Third St, SF. www.dogpatchwineworks.com), which opened last year in a huge 15,000-square-foot space, and follows in the footsteps of Potrero Hill fave Crushpad by inviting people to come make their own wine. Budding vintners get to choose their own vineyard and varietal adventure, and the Dogpatch experts guide everyone through the process in a casual environment. This is the kind of team-building corporate exercise we’d like to see replace trust falls and retreats.

Oh, and did you know that you can take a bike tour of SF’s urban wine scene and learn some of the awesome century-old history of local grape cultivation? Gears and Grapes (www.gearsandgrapes.com) offers a breezy $99 day-ride through the city’s hotspots, stopping for tastings along the way. “Over 100 wineries flourished in the places that new tech start-ups now thrive,” G&G informs us. Can we have those wineries back, please?

 

SPEAKEASY SMOKIN’

Speakeasy (1195 Evans, SF. www.goodbeer.com) just celebrated its sweet 16 with a huge block party in the Bayview outside its brewery. But if you missed it, never fear. You can visit Speakeasy’s lovely Tap Room (Tue-Thu, 3-8pm; Fri-Sat, 1-9pm; Sun, 1-6pm) for some primo tastes, possibly including some of the new brews debuted at the block party (Bourbon Barrel-Aged Scarface Imperial Stout, 2009 Old Godfather Barleywine). Here’s an extra tip — Sundays they invite some of the city’s yummiest BBQ in to soak up some of those suds. Upcoming Smokin’ Sundays feature Memphis Minnie’s on Oct. 13 and Baby Blues BBQ on Nov. 10.

 

OH YEAH, THAT THING

Just like the October appearance of seasonal craft beer favorites — Anchor Brewing’s deep, rich Big Leaf Maple, 21st Amendment’s nicely spiced Fireside Chat, and, on a broader scale, Shock Top’s Pumpkin Wheat — so we must tighten our lederhosen in preparation for Oktoberfest by the Bay (Sept. 20-22, Pier 48, SF. www.oktoberfestbythebay.com). In addition to the hordes of revelers, you can catch entertainment from the Chico Bavarian Band accompanied by traditional dancing from the Nature Friends Schuhplattler (despite the name, not a nude oompah-pah association, alas). Plus, of course, a million steins of Spaten bier. Expect an overload of dirndls. *

 

Pumped up

Sasha Cuttler
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3
Pumped up

marke@sfbg.com

ON THE MOVE The epic Pacific Crest Trail winds 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada, through sun-roasted desert expanse and snow-covered mountain pass, past rushing waterfalls and over wildflower-studded Alpine plateau, roughly tracing the Sierras and Cascades, always out of sight of civilization. It takes most hikers roughly half a year to make the whole trip, an isolating, immersive communion with nature that foregrounds self-reliance, endurance, and more than a little ingenuity when it comes to where you’re going to sleep and what you’re going to eat.

On June 21, Alex Falcioni, a massage therapist and teacher, took to the 1,230-mile leg of the trail running from Tuolumne Meadow, Yosemite, to Portland. In high heels.

“I’d always dreamed of doing the trail — but the most I could take off would be three months, so I knew I couldn’t do the whole thing” he told me over a “beat-up” phone from Ashland, hitchhiking his way back to the Bay Area after completing his high-heeled hike on Aug. 31st at Cascade Locks, Ore. “And then I heard that my dear friend Sarah had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was having trouble covering her medical bills, so I decided to make the hike a fundraiser.

“I needed a gimmick, though, to draw attention. And that’s where the pumps came in — it really just came to me one day. I’d start in Yosemite, and wear the pumps to Portland. Mostly for the alliteration, ha ha.”

Falcioni’s project, Pumps 2 Portland, was partly inspired by Hiking26, a 2012 performance art piece by Ron Ulrich, who completed the entire PCT wearing 26 wedding dresses along the way. So far, Falcioni has managed to raise over $2,500. (Interested parties can still donate and read firsthand about Falcioni’s adventures at www.pumps2portland.com.)

The first obvious question: What kind of pumps were they? “Oh, a strappy white pair of size-12 slingbacks from a drag queen shoe store. They’re completely destroyed,” Falcioni said. “My toes look like little Vienna sausages. But my calves are rocks.”

The second obvious question: Come on, did he really wear high heels the whole time?

Falcioni laughs. “No way! There are ascents up to 10,000 feet and sometimes I felt afraid for my life in hiking shoes. Plus, often ‘trail’ is a relative word — it’s not like clicking down a paved sidewalk. But I wore them when I could, and I strapped them on my backpack for all the other hikers to see when I couldn’t.

“They were there to keep me inspired and add a little spark when the trail got so monotonous it was like sensory deprivation — like, ‘if I see another Ponderosa pine I’m going to go insane!'” With the heels it all became a outdoor runway.

“The pumps really opened doors, too,” Falcioni continued. “People I’d encounter on the trail would ask about them and that would help along a conversation. Or when I’d go into town… One of the ways you survive the trail is to mail food ahead for yourself. (You learn little tricks, like mixing spicy ramen with a spoonful of peanut butter equals Thai food!) So I’d have to go down into towns to pick that up, and I hadn’t bathed in a week — same shirt, same pants, covered in dirt and smoke. But showing off these huge pumps.

“That not only got the attention of the Trail Angels — people who dedicate themselves to opening their homes and helping out PCT hikers — but of random strangers, too. I made so many real friendships, had so many actual conversations about real things in these places of enormous beauty. Not to mention some free showers.

“It was an incredible experience to just put yourself out there at the mercy of nature, other people, and even yourself. I’d urge anyone to do it, giant man-heels or no.”

Nevertheless: Hey, Rupaul — I think we have your next location for Drag Race.

Still secret

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22
Still secret

news@sfbg.com
A high-profile local civil rights ordinance passed last year to shine light on the San Francisco Police Department’s joint activities with the FBI has been undermined by the SFPD’s refusal to disclose its surveillance activities. This comes at a time when the public is learning more than ever about the federal government’s intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding US citizens.

In May 2012, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed the Safe San Francisco Civil Rights Ordinance, which Mayor Ed Lee signed in a photo-op ceremony with Police Chief Greg Suhr and the activists who supported it. They claimed the board’s passage of the ordinance ushered in a new era of transparency over the SFPD’s previously secretive work with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“The ordinance basically requires three things,” Nasrina Bargzie, a civil rights attorney at the Asian Law Caucus who worked on the measure, told the Bay Guardian. “The first part requires that the Police Department work with the JTTF has to follow the California constitutional rights of privacy, so they’re not following the lax standards of the [US] Department of Justice. The second part is that they can no longer enter into any secret agreements with the FBI; it has to go before the Police Commission in a public setting. The final part of the ordinance exists to make sure the rules are being followed, so there is a requirement for a yearly report.”

At the time of its passage, activists told the Guardian that the ordinance was only as strong as the SFPD’s willingness to disclose its activities (see “Mayor Lee signs watered-down limits on SFPD spying,” 5/9/12). But the SFPD’s refusal to disclose even minimal, basic information calls into question the ordinance’s value.

After the release of multiple reports earlier this year that activists called inadequate, Suhr is now maintaining silence regarding the JTTF, while claiming the department is in full compliance with the ordinance. According to Bargzie, Suhr told her the FBI is barring him from disclosing the requested information.

Following multiple efforts by the Guardian to get a comment out of SFPD about the ordinance and whether the department was indeed taking a subservient role to the FBI, SFPD Sgt. Dennis Toomer told us, “We’re not talking about that at all.”

LACK OF RESPONSE

Activists have sparred with Chief Suhr over implementation of the ordinance and its required annual report since at least the beginning of 2013.

Deputy Chief John Loftus presented the first report to the Police Commission on Jan. 23, which claimed the SFPD was in “full compliance” with the ordinance without providing any details. Activists and the public quickly demanded a real response.

“The commission presented this short oral report, which was a little short of two minutes long,” Bargzie told us. “There was no data that we were not already aware of. It was just basic statements claiming that they were complying with the ordinance.”

Suhr apologized for the omissions while stating his department was still in compliance with the ordinance’s guidelines, pledging to be more forthcoming. At this time, SFPD Sgt. Michael Andraychak told the Guardian: “The Chief’s Office is in the process of scheduling meetings with Nasrina Bargzie [of the Asian Law Caucus] to develop a report with more detail so those concerned and the public can be as informed as possible. Chief Suhr is committed to remain in compliance with the ordinance.”

The Coalition for Safe San Francisco, an activist group consisting of Muslim Legal Fund of America, Asian Law Caucus, and dozens of other groups, met with Suhr to discuss setting up a template for the reports.

Suhr then released a second report, which contained more relevant information, stating that SFPD officers did not act as informants in 2012 and three full-time SFPD officers were assigned to the JTTF.

But the report still omitted key oversight information, such as whether any prosecutions resulted from JTTF and SFPD investigations, which would allow the Muslim Legal Fund of America and other groups to determine who the SFPD is arresting and why.

Last year, Suhr told a San Francisco Examiner reporter that his officers followed up on 2,000 tips regarding counterterrorism activities. However, this information curiously did not make it into the official report.

“We contacted the chief to let him know we were not okay with this. We had another meeting with him and he said he’d think about it and get back to us and now he is claiming he cannot honor a basic component of the ordinance,” Bargzie told us. “He asserts in writing this is because the FBI will not let him share the basic information.”

WEAKENED LEGISLATION

The weak efforts behind the implementation of the SSFCRO date back to Mayor Lee’s veto of a stronger ordinance in April 2012, which would have codified privacy protections and given the Police Commission more power to stop FBI-SFPD activities that did not comply with Department General Order (DGO) 8.10, the 1990 policy aimed at protecting First Amendment activities. After Lee’s veto, the Board of Supervisors passed a weaker version. Both were sponsored by Sup. Jane Kim.

John Crew, a former police practices expert with the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, raised concerns to the Guardian about the weakened legislation. “It is a step in the right direction, there’s no doubt it’s progress,” Crew told us at the time. “But whether it’s real progress depends on the implementation. Ultimately, it will come down to political will at the Police Commission to enforce privacy protections.”

Much of the ordinance’s failure stems from the apparent lack of real intent to disclose what the activists sought. Critics painted the SSFCRO signing ceremony as a hollow symbolic act, a way for Mayor Lee and Chief Suhr to publicly promote civil rights and progressive ideals with an ordinance they purposefully weakened.

“My sense is that [the SFPD] is not taking this seriously,” Bargzie told us. “I think they probably believe that they are providing as much information as the FBI will let them and Chief Suhr thinks it’s fine that the FBI can tell him to share what they tell him to.”

The lack of transparency regarding the JTTF’s work with the SFPD requires the public to trust the federal government to safeguard civil liberties. But in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leak exposing the expansive surveillance system by the National Security Agency and the SFPD’s notorious history of illegal surveillance and racial profiling, the public has little reason to trust the authorities.

HISTORY OF SPYING
The passage of the SSFCRO is the latest effort to counter a long history of racial profiling, spying on radical political groups, and other constitutional violations, episodes that have been followed by progressive reforms in San Francisco.
Prior to the passage of DGO 8.10 in 1990, the SFPD notoriously participated in the surveillance of non-criminal, pacifist political organizations. During the 1984 Democratic National Convention, the SFPD carried out surveillance on law-abiding organizations and, throughout the 1980s, it created files on civil, labor, and special interest groups in the Bay Area, revelations that led to the adoption of DGO 8.10.
But even after that, disclosures surfaced showing that the SFPD was blatantly violating its own rules. They included then-Police Chief Tony Ribera admitting that files on non-criminal political activity were not destroyed (as required by the ’90s reforms), the selling of confidential intelligence material to foreign governments and private entities, and the actions of SFPD Intelligence Officer Tom Gerad, who informed on local political groups for the FBI.
In the subsequent years following the Gerad scandal, San Francisco sought to strengthen DGO 8.10, requiring more transparency and oversight. But this progress was undercut in 2007 when the SFPD secretly signed a secret JTTF Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) undermining DGO 8.10.
San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission held hearings in which the community voiced concerns over illegal police and federal surveillance. In response, the SFPD said they were unable to discuss arrangements with the JTTF without the permission of the FBI.
In 2011, the previously secret MOU was unearthed by the ACLU (see “Spies in blue,” 4/26/11), prompting Suhr to issue Bureau Order #2011-07, which reinforced that SFPD personnel were under the jurisdiction of local and state privacy protections and did not spy on law-abiding groups. SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza said the order reversed the language of the 2007 memo.
Part of Suhr’s amendment to SFPD policy at the time included the necessity of a predicate offense in all SFPD investigations. Thus, the SFPD could not investigate or spy on those who were not suspected of violating the California Penal Code or federal law.
Activists wanted those protections enshrined in city law, which resulted in last’s vetoed ordinance and passage of the watered down Safe San Francisco Civil Rights Ordinance in 2012, which activists now say they feel duped by.
“We have been extremely disappointed at the lack of information that has been included in the reports,” Summer K. Hararah, Regional Director for the Greater San Francisco Area Muslim Legal Fund of America told us. “If the SFPD is going to violate rights of Arab-Americans, the police chief has a responsibility to stand up to the FBI.”

POST 9/11 WORLD
Lax federal guidelines for counterterrorism have been building since the Bush Administration began implementing emergency measures after 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. In San Francisco’s case, the FBI has subjected local law enforcement to these rules.
Since 9/11, both the ACLU of Northern California and the Human Rights Commission have publicized cases of racial profiling and surveillance of pacifist, non-criminal Muslim and Middle-Eastern groups in San Francisco. A 2007 FBI memorandum illustrated a prominent instance of this profiling in which FBI agents attended Ramadan Iftar dinners in San Francisco purportedly as part of the FBI’s mosque outreach program. Under this guise, the agents collected data on certain attendants, including names, the content of conversations, and other information covered by the First Amendment. According to the FBI Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, the JTTF is permitted to conduct surveillance of this nature, by identifying “locations of concentrated ethnic communities in the Field Office’s domain, if these locations will reasonably aid in the analysis of the potential threats and vulnerabilities, and, overall assist domain awareness for the purpose of performing intelligence analysis.” These policies directly contradict SSFCO, DGO 8.10, and the California Constitution’s privacy protections. In Portland, Ore., the local government successfully fought this issue by bifurcating local law enforcement from the JTTF after the public and the ACLU raised concerns over similar constitutional violations and racial profiling. This Portland model is now a precedent for activist groups nationwide, seeking to end the lack of oversight permeating their local police departments. “Portland has been a great model,” Hararah told us. “When the FBI began to interview Muslim men in mass after 9/11, Portland was one of the few that said ‘absolutely not.'” But in San Francisco, Lee (whose office also didn’t respond to our request for comment) and Suhr’s symbolic promotion of civil rights has diminished into a case of them basically bullshitting the public. “Civil rights is not a symbolic issue,” Hararah told us. “The mayor backed this legislation and we want to see that the commitment is put forth with global insurance. The first step is having info about what the JTTF is doing to be sure it abides by human rights protections and is appropriate.”

Snap Sounds

Michael Redmond
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0
Snap Sounds

 

KING KRULE  

6 FEET BENEATH THE MOON

(TRUE PANTHER/XL, AUG. 26)

Archy “King Krule” Marshall may look like a callow school-kid, dressed up in his father’s suit, but the South Londoner has the soul and voice of a wise, world-weary bluesman three times his senior. 6 Feet Beneath the Moon — his long-awaited debut LP — is an astonishing achievement, displaying Marshall’s nuanced storytelling, exceptional jazz-based guitar work, and versatility. Over the album’s 14 tracks, he weaves affecting tales of urban ennui, malaise, and disaffection, balanced by fleeting moments of ardent love and nostalgic surrender. Though he wears his influences on his ill-fitting sleeve (Drury, Strummer, Morrissey, Dilla), the finished article sounds like nothing else out now — with dark wave, blues, punk, indie, and electro all thrown into the mix. It is all filtered through Marshall’s singular lens and mature perspective, creating a fresh, cohesive sound while painting an engulfing portrait of his London. — Daniel Alvarez

 

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN

THE THIRD EYE CENTRE

(MATADOR RECORDS, AUG. 27)

Belle and Sebastian, ’90s twee sweethearts, are at it again — kind of. This time, the band is serving the general public a tray of audible assorted snacks featuring b-sides from the latter half of its career. Dubbed The Third Eye Centre, no song sounds the same — one track will boast a rockabilly twang (“Last Trip”) and another will be a previously unreleased remix of fan-favorite “Your Cover’s Blown (Miaoux Miaoux Remix).” It’s a solid album, but it’s easy to suss out the dated songs, such as “Suicide Girl,” an anxious love song about the object of singer-guitarist Stuart Murdoch’s affections, an alternative girl that wants him to take nudes of her for the famed early-2000s “punky” soft-core porn site of the same name. But in all, the fun of The Third Eye Centre is getting the chance to hear songs you may have not had the chance to listen to from the back end of Belle and Sebastian’s jam-packed catalog. — Erin Dage

 

KING KHAN & THE SHRINES

IDLE NO MORE

(MERGE, SEPT. 3)

For those who have oft pondered “What if a soul band and a Southern rock group got together and made sweet, beautiful music?” weirdo psychedelic soul band King Khan & the Shrines has the answer with its latest release, Idle No More. Featuring dancey soul numbers like “Luckiest Man,” Stooges-esque songs such as “Thorn in Her Pride,” ditties with ’60s girl group-esque guest spot vocals like “Pray for Lil” — Idle No More combines many genres and musical elements to form a cohesive, well produced album. The album can easily be separated into three acts: dance numbers, slow-ballad interlude, and soul revival resolution. Six years have passed since previous album, What Is!?, and Idle No More has definitely been worth the wait. — Dage

 

CHELSEA WOLFE

PAIN IS BEAUTY

(SARGENT HOUSE, SEPT. 3)

There’s always been this brutal, animalistic thread woven throughout Chelsea Wolfe’s output, and Pain is Beauty is no exception. The LA-via-Sacramento artist’s otherworldly vocals tend often to translate into a wild creature elegantly whipping through a foggy forest. (Indeed, Wolfe described her newest LP as a “love-letter to nature.”) Her powerful soprano hollers are matched to ethereal whispery echoes, maintaining a balance between lightness and darkness, which has become a common theme in her work, as it is in nature. And this vocal balance is a mainstay in Wolfe’s music, no matter what’s backing it instrumentally. Her previous release, 2012’s Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, was, obviously, acoustic, but the sparse record is still deeply unsettling. With Pain is Beauty, the singer-songwriter returns to a darker, grittier sound. And yet, there’s a more electronic twist on her early doomy experimental guitarwork (as with breakout 2011 record Apokalypsis), bursting with both synths and strings this time, without missing the black-hearted emotional core rooted in all living things. — Emily Savage

 

JOANNA GRUESOME

WEIRD SISTER

(SLUMBERLAND, SEPT. 10)

Jangly noisepop cacophony with pro-feminist and anti-homophobia lyrics — this Cardiff band’s debut full-length, Weird Sister, hits all the right hot spots and makes them tingle. Plus there’s the name, Joanna Gruesome, a cheeky play on a gentle fellow musician. But Weird Sister speaks for itself, with standout tracks like opener “Anti Parent Cowboy Killers” matching dissonant guitars and pounding drums with lovely melodious vocals that rise into screams at the hook, akin to the Vaselines in bed with L7. There’s also classic K Records-evoking twee ode “Wussy Void,” and jagged noiseball “Graveyard,” which starts off with what sounds like helium seeping out of a balloon. The record includes songs from a 2011 EP, “Sugarcrush,” “Madison,” and “Candy,” further deepening the getting-to-know-you state of the Welsh quintet, a group to which you do need to start paying attention. —Savage

 

Blah lust

Michael Redmond
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1
Blah lust

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Despite its intensely collaborative, top-heavy, organizationally complex nature, commercial filmmaking can still be primarily instinctual rather than thoughtful, let alone intellectual. This is not necessarily a good thing. We’re accustomed to displays of corporate group-thinking or sheer willful, proud stupidity (hiya, Michael Bay!) in mainstream movies today. But those are exercises of market conformism, whether the makers recognize them as such or not. What about populist filmmakers who go their own way yet grow increasingly dumb and dumber? Should we applaud their auteurist individuality even as all artfulness, taste, and entertainment value rushes toward the drain?

Of course we’re talking about Brian De Palma, who at age 73 should deserve more respect — if he hadn’t spent decades scuttling it so completely. His new movie is called Passion, and one doubts he thinks its lame third-generation lez-ploitation is any less of a passion project than he’s made in the past. That is so, so sad.

It’s important to remember that this guy once looked like a prince, as promising as Scorsese, through at least the mid-1970s: clever shorts, avant garde flirtations, exceptionally edgy, and inventive indie comedies (1968’s Greetings and 1970’s Hi, Mom!), guaranteed future cult classics (1974 rock musical Phantom of the Paradise), and tentative major-studio efforts that misfired yet were stylistically compelling (1972 absurdist Get to Know Your Rabbit, 1976 mystery thriller Obsession). Sisters (1973) — his first explicit Hitchcock homage — was a black-comedy horror knockout undervalued at the time because it was distributed by a minor studio (American International) that didn’t know how to sell it up-market.

Then came Carrie (1976), a brilliantly cast, shot, and scored improvement on Stephen King’s wobbly debut novel. It’s a succubus movie: no matter how many times you’ve seen it, you can’t watch the opening scenes without getting sucked into the whole thing. Its misanthropy could be excused as cunning satire, undercut by the empathy Sissy Spacek’s titular figure evoked. (De Palma never gave a leading female actor such sympathetic free rein before or since.) A commercial success nonetheless considered disappointing due to cheesy publicity better suited to a drive-in horror flick, Carrie boosted De Palma to the A list … where he wanked.

The Fury (1978), Dressed to Kill (1980), Body Double (1984), and Raising Cain (1992) reprised elements of Carrie and Hitchcock to guiltily-pleasurable but increasingly inane, sexist, baldly derivative ends. He was still capable of pulling off the odd big, splashy action picture — notably 1983’s Scarface and 1987’s The Untouchables, with Carlito’s Way (1993) and Mission: Impossible (1996) enjoyable if distant second-placers — while 1989’s Casualties of War was a decent stab at serious-issue cinema, dealing with Vietnam War atrocities.

But, argh: Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) turned Tom Wolfe’s easily-sussed satirical novel into a full-on embarrassment of overt Hollywood stupidity toward anything faintly literary or complex. After the brief, barely redeeming pause for OK style-over-substance exercise Snake Eyes (1998), De Palma delivered the monumentally dull Mission to Mars (2000), shuddersome old-man-salivating Femme Fatale (2002), starry-dreadful noir mystery The Black Dahlia (2006), and 2007’s Redacted — a fictionalized “found footage” reenactment of actual American war crimes that was one of the most inept and offensive movies ever made by a once-important US director. While similarly themed Casualties communicated just-enough horror at its similarly fact derived misdeeds, here De Palma appeared to take far too much pleasure in the loutishness of our soldiers abroad — not to mention their graphically depicted rape-murder of a teenage Iraqi girl.

I’ve left little space left to discuss Passion because it is so depressingly unworthy of discussion. Even at this late, dire point, the notion of DePalma directing a remake of Alain Corneau’s 2010 hit Love Crime suggested camp guilty pleasure at the very least. The original film was a clever if implausible psychological thriller in which a corporate boss (Kristin Scott Thomas) and junior-executive protegee (Ludivine Sagnier) come to fatal comeuppance blows over a particularly cruel abuse of power in the name of love (or heterosexual lust). It was a stereotypical girlfight par excellance, dressed up via reasonably smart treatment.

You’d expect De Palma to ramp up the lurid and tawdry-violent aspects to delightfully tasteless degrees. (Remember, this is the director whose refined sensibility once showcased a killer’s floor-perforating electrical drill thrusting phallically into Janet-Leigh-in-Psycho substitute Deborah Shelton in Body Double.)

But perhaps what’s most depressing about Passion is that the life has gone out even from his love of violence and sexploitation. It’s a tepid movie, and not even a stylish one. In contrast to Scott Thomas’ formidible strength through-negativity (amplified in the recent Only God Forgives), Rachel McAdams’ villain is just another yuppie princess with a snit fit in store. Sagnier might well be the Gallic answer to Chloe Sevigny, yet her waxy inexpressiveness is still better than another horribly awkward English language performance (see: last year’s Prometheus) by Swedish star Noomi Rapace.

Hilariously, De Palma has opined that Passion lacks his trademark excesses because he targeted it primarily toward female viewers who (market research says) dislike graphic sex or violence. As if most women would enjoy his use of primary female characters as bimbos, prostitutes, bitches, rape victims, backstabbers, and climbers … if toned down a bit.

Passion (which notably took a full year to secure any US release after a festival debut) commits a sin he’s seldom attained previously: it is just dull. It promises titillation. Yet real people and real sex are so plastic and cartooned here they seem the last call of an old-school playboy horndog who can’t get it up anymore. *

PASSION

Wed/4-Fri/5, 2:45 and 7pm, $8.50-$11

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.castrotheatre.com

Film Listings: August 28 – September 3, 2013

Michael Redmond
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, Sam Stander, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

OPENING

Closed Circuit British thriller about a pair of lawyers (Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall) drawn into a possible government cover-up while investigating a London explosion. (1:36) Piedmont, Shattuck.

Drinking Buddies Mumblecore grows up in this latest from actor-writer-director Joe Swanberg (currently starring in You’re Next), about brewery co-workers Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson), BFFs who’d obviously be the perfect couple if they weren’t already hooked up with significant others. At least, they are at the start of Drinking Buddies; the tension between them grows ever-more loaded when the messy, chaotic Kate is dumped by older boyfriend Chris (Ron Livingston) — a pairing we know is bound to fail when we spot him chiding her for neglecting to use a coaster. Luke’s long-term coupling with the slightly younger but way-more-mature Jill (Anna Kendrick) is more complicated; all signs indicate how lucky he is to have her. But the fact that they can only meander around marriage talk indicates that Luke isn’t ready to settle down — and though Jill may not realize it, Luke’s feelings for Kate are a big reason why. Working from a script outline but largely improvising all dialogue, Swanberg’s actors rise to the challenge, conveying the intricate shades of modern relationships. Their characters aren’t always likable, but they’re always believable. Also, fair warning: this movie will make you want to drink many, many beers. (1:30) Roxie. (Eddy)

Getaway Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez team up in a high-speed, high-stakes race to save Hawke’s kidnapped wife. Jon Voight co-stars as “Mysterious Voice,” so there’s that. (1:29)

The Grandmaster The Grandmaster is dramatic auteur Wong Kar-Wai’s take on the life of kung-fu legend Ip Man — famously Bruce Lee’s teacher, and already the subject of a series of Donnie Yen actioners. This episodic treatment is punctuated by great fights and great tragedies, depicting Ip’s life and the Second Sino-Japanese War in broad strokes of martial arts tradition and personal conviction. Wong’s angsty, hyper stylized visuals lend an unusual focus to the Yuen Woo-Ping-choreographed fight scenes, but a listless lack of narrative momentum prevents the dramatic segments from being truly engaging. Abrupt editing in this shorter American cut suggests some connective tissue may be missing from certain sequences. Tony Leung’s performance is quietly powerful, but also a familiar caricature from other Wong films; this time, instead of a frustrated writer, he is a frustrated martial artist. Ziyi Zhang’s turn as the driven, devastated child of the Northern Chinese Grandmaster provides a worthy counterpoint. Another Wong cliché: the two end up sadly reminiscing in dark bars, far from the rhythm and poetry of their martial pursuits. (1:48) Four Star. (Stander)

Instructions Not Included Mexican superstar Eugenio Derbez stars in this comedy about a ladies’ man who finds redemption when he’s suddenly tasked with being a single parent to his young daughter. (1:55)

One Direction: This is Us Take them home? The girls shrieking at the opening minutes of One Direction: This Is Us are certainly raring to — though by the closing credits, they might feel as let down as a Zayn Malik fanatic who was convinced that he was definitely future husband material. Purporting to show us the real 1D, in 3D, no less, This Is Us instead vacillates like a boy band in search of critical credibility, playing at an “authorized” look behind the scenes while really preferring the safety of choreographed onstage moves by the self-confessed worst dancers in pop. So we get endless shots of Malik, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson horsing around, hiding in trash bins, punking the road crew, jetting around the world, and accepting the adulation of innumerable screaming girls outside — interspersed with concert footage of the lads pouring their all into the poised and polished pop that has made them the greatest success story to come out of The X Factor. Too bad the music — including “What Makes You Beautiful” and “Live While We’re Young” — will bore anyone who’s not already a fan, while the 1D members’ well-filtered, featureless, and thoroughly innocuous on-screen personalities do little to dispel those yawns. Director Morgan Spurlock (2004’s Super Size Me) adds just a dollop of his own personality, in the way he fixates on the tearful fan response: he trots out an expert to talk about the chemical reaction coursing through the excitable listener’s system, and uses bits of animation to slightly puff up the boy’s live show. But generally as a co-producer, along with 1D mastermind Simon Cowell, Spurlock goes along with the pop whitewashing, sidestepping the touchy, newsy paths this biopic could have sallied down — for instance, Malik’s thoughts on being the only Muslim member of the biggest boy band in the world — and instead doing his best undermine that also-oh-so-hyped 3D format and make One Direction as tidily one dimensional as possible. (1:32) (Chun)

The Patience Stone “You’re the one that’s wounded, yet I’m the one that’s suffering,” complains the good Afghan wife of Patience Stone in this theatrical yet charged adaptation of Atiq Rahimi’s best-selling novel, directed by the Kabul native himself. As The Patience Stone opens, a beautiful, nameless young woman (Golshifteh Farahani) is fighting to not only keep alive her comatose husband, a onetime Jihadist with a bullet lodged in his neck, but also simply survive on her own with little money and two small daughters and a war going off all around her. In a surprising turn, her once-heedless husband becomes her solace — her silent confidante and her so-called patience stone — as she talks about her fears, secrets, memories, and desires, the latter sparked by a meeting with a young soldier. Despite the mostly stagy treatment of the action, mainly isolated to a single room or house (although the guerilla-shot scenes on Kabul streets are rife with a feeling of real jeopardy), The Patience Stone achieves lift-off, thanks to the power of a once-silenced woman’s story and a heart-rending performance by Farahani, once a star and now banned in her native Iran. (1:42) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

Short Term 12 A favorite at multiple 2013 festivals (particularly SXSW, where it won multiple awards), Short Term 12 proves worthy of the hype, offering a gripping look at twentysomethings (led by Brie Larson, in a moving yet unshowy performance) who work with at-risk teens housed in a foster-care facility, where they’re cared for by a system that doesn’t always act with their best interests in mind. Though she’s a master of conflict resolution and tough love when it comes to her young chargers, Grace (Larson) hasn’t overcome her deeply troubled past, to the frustration of her devoted boyfriend and co-worker (John Gallagher, Jr.). The crazy everyday drama — kids mouthing off, attempting escape, etc. — is manageable enough, but two cases cut deep: Marcus (Keith Stanfield), an aspiring musician who grows increasingly anxious as his 18th birthday, when he’ll age out of foster care, approaches; and 16-year-old Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), whose sullen attitude masks a dark home life that echoes Grace’s own experiences. Expanding his acclaimed 2008 short of the same name, writer-director Destin Daniel Cretton’s wrenchingly realistic tale achieves levels of emotional honesty not often captured by narrative cinema. He joins Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler as one of the year’s most exciting indie discoveries. (1:36) California, Metreon. (Eddy)

Thérèse Both Emma Bovary and Simone de Beauvoir would undoubtedly relate to this increasingly bored and twisted French woman of privilege stuck in the sticks in the ’20s, as rendered by novelist Francois Mauriac and compellingly translated to the screen by the late director Claude Miller. Forbiddingly cerebral and bookish yet also strangely passive and affectless, Thérèse (Audrey Tautou) looks like she has it all from a distance — she’s married to her best friend’s coarse, hunting-obsessed brother (Gilles Lellouche) though envious of her chum’s affair with a handsome and free-thinking Jewish student. Turns out she’s as trapped and close to death as the birds her spouse snares in their forest, and the suffocatingly provincial ways of family she’s married into lead her to undertake a dire course of action. Lellouche adds nuance to his rich lunk, but you can’t tear your eyes from Tautou. Turning her pinched frown right side up and hardening those unblinking button eyes, she plays well against type as a well-heeled, sleepwalking, possibly sociopathic sour grape, effectively conveying the mute unhappiness of a too-well-bred woman born too early and too blinkered to understand that she’s desperate for a new century’s freedoms. (1:50) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

ONGOING

The Act of Killing What does Anwar Congo — a man who has brutally strangled hundreds of people with piano wire — dream about? As Joshua Oppenheimer’s Indonesia-set documentary The Act of Killing discovers, there’s a thin line between a guilty conscience and a haunted psyche, especially for an admitted killer who’s never been held accountable for anything. In fact, Congo has lived as a hero in North Sumatra for decades — along with scores of others who participated in the country’s ruthless anti-communist purge in the mid-1960s. In order to capture this surreal state of affairs, Oppenheimer zeroes in on a few subjects — like the cheerful Congo, fond of flashy clothes, and the theatrical Herman Koto — and a method, spelled out by The Act of Killing‘s title card: “The killers proudly told us stories about what they did. To understand why, we asked them to create scenes in whatever ways they wished.” Because Congo and company are huge movie buffs, they chose to recreate their crimes with silver-screen flourish. There are costumes and gory make-up. There are props: a stuffed tiger, a dummy torso with a detachable head. There are dancing girls. Most importantly, however, there are mental consequences, primarily for Congo, whose emotional fragility escalates as the filming continues — resulting in an unforgettable, at-times mind-blowing viewing experience. (1:55) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints “This was in Texas,” reads the hand-lettered opening of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. It’s a fittingly homespun beginning to a film that pays painstaking homage to bygone-era cinema. After its Sundance Film Festival premiere, writer-director David Lowery’s first high-profile release earned frequent comparisons to 1970s works by Robert Altman and Terrence Malick. That’s no accident; Saints openly feasts upon the decade’s intimate, sun-burnished neo-Westerns. Though Saints earned praise on the film-fest circuit for its craftsmanship, its big-name cast — Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as lovers separated by his jail stint; Keith Carradine as a shopkeeper with a dark past; Ben Foster as a cop who pines for Mara’s character — is likely what will pique mainstream interest. But will pre-release hype translate to a Beasts of the Southern Wild-style breakthrough? Saints‘ storytelling keeps to a very deliberate pace, a quality owing to Lowery’s background as a film editor (most notable credit: Upstream Color), and Saints‘ dipped-in-amber, outlaw-chic mise-en-scène — 10-gallon hat tips to cinematographer Bradford Young, production designer Jade Healy, and composer Daniel Hart — is overtly antique-y. But its actors, particularly Affleck and Carradine, ground what could’ve been an overly constructed objet d’cinema in subtle, deep emotions. (1:45) California, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Austenland Jane (Keri Russell) is a Jane Austen fanatic who finds real-life modern romance highly lacking as compared to the fictive Regency Era variety — though having a life-sized cutout of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in her bedroom surely didn’t help recent relationships. After yet another breakup, she decides to live her fantasy by flying to England to vacation at the titular theme park-fantasy role play establishment, where guests and staff meticulously act out Austen-like scenarios of well-dressed upper class leisure and chaste courtship. Upon arriving, however, Jane discovers she’s very much a second-class citizen here, not having been able to afford the “platinum premium” package purchased by fellow guests. Thus cast by imperious proprietor Mrs. Wattlesbrook (Jane Seymour) as the unmarriageable “poor relation,” she gets more flirtatious vibes from the actor cast as sexy stable boy (Bret McKenzie) than the one playing a quasi-Darcy (JJ Feild), at least initially. Adapting Shannon Hale’s novel, Jerusha Hess (making her directorial bow after several collaborations with husband Jared Hess, of 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite) has delightfully kitsch set and costume designs and a generally sweet-natured tone somewhat let down by the very broad, uninspired humor. Even wonderful Jennifer Coolidge can’t much elevate the routine writing as a cheerfully vulgar Yank visitor. The rich potential to cleverly satirize all things Austen is missed. Still, the actors are charming and the progress lively enough to make Austenland harmless if flyweight fun. (1:37) Albany, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Blackfish The 911 call placed from SeaWorld Orlando on February 24, 2010 imparted a uniquely horrific emergency: “A whale has eaten one of the trainers.” That revelation opens Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfish, a powerful doc that offers a compelling argument against keeping orcas in captivity, much less making them do choreographed tricks in front of tourists at Shamu Stadium. Whale experts, former SeaWorld employees, and civilian eyewitnesses step forward to illuminate an industry that seemingly places a higher value on profits than it does on safety — skewed priorities that made headlines after veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by Tilikum, a massive bull who’d been involved in two prior deaths. Though SeaWorld refused to speak with Cowperthwaite on camera, they recently released a statement calling Blackfish “shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate” — read the filmmaker’s response to SeaWorld’s criticisms at film blog Indiewire, or better yet, see this important, eye-opening film yourself and draw your own conclusions. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Clay, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

The Conjuring Irony can be so overrated. Paying tribute to those dead-serious ’70s-era accounts of demonic possession — like 1973’s The Exorcist, which seemed all the scarier because it were based on supposedly real-life events — the sober Conjuring runs the risk of coming off as just more Catholic propaganda, as so many exorcism-is-the-cure creepers can be. But from the sound of the long-coming development of this project — producer Tony DeRosa-Grund had apparently been wanting to make the movie for more than a dozen years — 2004’s Saw and 2010’s Insidious director James Wan was merely applying the same careful dedication to this story’s unfolding as those that came before him, down to setting it in those groovy VW van-borne ’70s that saw more families torn apart by politics and cultural change than those ever-symbolic demonic forces. This time, the narrative framework is built around the paranormal investigators, clairvoyant Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) and demonologist Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), rather than the victims: the sprawling Perron family, which includes five daughters all ripe for possession or haunting, it seems. The tale of two families opens with the Warrens hard at work on looking into creepy dolls and violent possessions, as Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) move into a freezing old Victorian farmhouse. A very eerie basement is revealed, and hide-and-seek games become increasingly creepy, as Carolyn finds unexplained bruises on her body, one girl is tugged by the foot in the night, and another takes on a new invisible pal. The slow, scary build is the achievement here, with Wan admirably handling the flow of the scares, which go from no-budg effects and implied presences that rely on the viewer’s imagination, to turns of the screws that will have audiences jumping in their seats. Even better are the performances by The Conjuring‘s dueling mothers, in the trenches of a genre that so often flirts with misogyny: each battling the specter of maternal filicide, Farmiga and Taylor infuse their parts with an empathetic warmth and wrenching intensity, turning this bewitched horror throwback into a kind of women’s story. (1:52) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Cutie and the Boxer Ushio “Gyu-Chan” Shinohara was a somewhat notorious artist in Japan’s fertile avant-garde scene of the 1960s. In 1969, he decided he needed a bigger stage, so he moved to New York. An early 1970s TV documentary excerpted here calls him perhaps “the most famous of the poor and struggling artists in the city,” noting that while his often outsized work gets a lot of attention, people seldom actually want to buy it. This is a situation that, we soon learn, hasn’t altered much since. Gyu-Chan was 41 when he met wife Noriko, a 19-year-old art student also from Japan. She was swept up in the “purity” of his art and lifestyle; within six months she was pregnant with their only child, Alex (also a talented visual artist). In hindsight, she flatly tells us “I should have married a guy who made a secure living and took responsibility for what he did.” We first meet the protagonists of Zachary Heinzerling’s doc on Gyu-Chan’s 80th birthday. It’s hardly a conventionally comfortable old age — in a tone so weary it can hardly be classified as nagging, Noriko reminds him that they’re late with the rent on their fairly large yet cluttered Brooklyn apartment-studio. It’s a classic dysfunctional-yet-still maintaining marital dynamic: the easygoing, charming, eternal bad boy herded about as successfully as a cat on a leash by the long-suffering wife. Meanwhile Noriko, who one senses has long resented living under the shadow of this larger-than-life figure, feels she’s finally escaped his influence in her own work. A quiet, almost meditative portrait of messy lives, Cutie and the Boxer doesn’t really answer the question of why these two remained together despite all (her) dissatisfaction. But you get the feeling Noriko, while hardly an emotional open book, loves her burdensome, unruly spouse more than she’d admit. Or at least she’s accepted the “struggle” of life with him as her own goading raison d’être. You know the saying: life is short, art is long. (1:22) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Elysium By the year 2154, the one percent will all have left Earth’s polluted surface for Elysium, a luxurious space station where everyone has access to high-tech machines that can heal any wound or illness in a matter of seconds. Among the grimy masses in burned-out Los Angeles, where everyone speaks a mixture of Spanish and English, factory worker Max (Matt Damon) is trying to put his car-thief past behind him — and maybe pursue something with the childhood sweetheart (Alice Braga) he’s recently reconnected with. Meanwhile, up on Elysium, icy Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster, speaking in French and Old Hollywood-accented English) rages against immigration, even planning a government takeover to prevent any more “illegals” from slipping aboard. Naturally, the fates of Max and Delacourt will soon intertwine, with “brain to brain data transfers,” bionic exo-skeletons, futuristic guns, life-or-death needs for Elysium’s medical miracles, and some colorful interference by a sword-wielding creeper of a sleeper agent (Sharlto Copley) along the way. In his first feature since 2009’s apartheid-themed District 9, South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp once again turns to obvious allegory to guide his plot. If Elysium‘s message is a bit heavy-handed, it’s well-intentioned, and doesn’t take away from impressive visuals (mercifully rendered in 2D) or Damon’s committed performance. (2:00) Balboa, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Fruitvale Station By now you’ve heard of Fruitvale Station, the debut feature from Oakland-born filmmaker Ryan Coogler. With a cast that includes Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and rising star Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights), the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, winning both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize en route to being scooped up for distribition by the Weinstein Company. A few months later, Coogler, a USC film school grad who just turned 27, won Best First Film at Cannes. Accolades are nice, especially when paired with a massive PR push from a studio known for bringing home little gold men. But particularly in the Bay Area, the true story behind Fruitvale Station eclipses even the most glowing pre-release hype. The film opens with real footage captured by cell phones the night 22-year-old Oscar Grant was shot in the back by BART police, a tragedy that inspired multiple protests and grabbed national headlines. With its grim ending already revealed, Fruitvale Station backtracks to chart Oscar’s final hours, with a deeper flashback or two fleshing out the troubled past he was trying to overcome. Mostly, though, Fruitvale Station is very much a day in the life, with Oscar (Jordan, in a nuanced performance) dropping off his girlfriend at work, picking up supplies for a birthday party, texting friends about New Year’s Eve plans, and deciding not to follow through on a drug sale. Inevitably, much of what transpires is weighted with extra meaning — Oscar’s mother (Spencer) advising him to “just take the train” to San Francisco that night; Oscar’s tender interactions with his young daughter; the death of a friendly stray dog, hit by a car as BART thunders overhead. It’s a powerful, stripped-down portrait that belies Coogler’s rookie-filmmaker status. (1:24) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Hannah Arendt New German Cinema’s Margarethe von Trotta (1975’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1986’s Rosa Luxemburg) delivers this surprisingly dull biopic about the great German-Jewish political theorist and the heated controversy around her New Yorker article (and subsequent book) about Israel’s 1961 trial of Nazi Adolph Eichmann. Played with dignified, slightly vulnerable countenance by the inimitable Barbara Sukowa, Arendt travels from her teaching job and cozy expat circles in New York to Jerusalem for the trial. There she comes face to face with the “banality of evil” in Eichmann, the petty careerist of the Holocaust, forcing her to “try and reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds.” This led her to further insights into the nature of modern society, and triggered a storm of outrage and vitriol — in particular from the Commentary crowd of future neocons — all of which is clearly of relevance today, and the impetus for von Trotta’s revisiting this famous episode. But the film is too mannered, too slick, too formulaic —burdened by a television-friendly combination of posture and didacticism, and bon mots from famous and about famous figures in intellectual and literary history to avoid being leaden and tedious. A mainstream film, in other words, for a very unconventional personality and dissident intellectual. While not exactly evil, there’s something dispiriting in so much banality. (1:49) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Robert Avila)

The Heat First things first: I hated Bridesmaids (2011). Even the BFF love fest between Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig couldn’t wash away the bad taste of another wolf pack in girl’s clothing. Dragging and dropping women into dude-ly storylines is at best wonky and at worst degrading, but The Heat finds an alternate route. Its women are unlikable; you don’t root for them, and you’re not hoping they become princesses because such horrifying awkwardness can only be redeemed by a prince. In Bridesmaids and Heat director Paul Feig’s universe, friendship saves the day. Sandra Bullock is Murtaugh to Melissa McCarthy’s Riggs, with tidy Bullock angling for a promotion and McCarthy driving a busted hoopty through Boston like she’s in Grand Theft Auto. Circumstances conspire to bring them together on a case, in one of many elements lifted from traditional buddy-cop storylines. But! The jokes are constant, pelting, and whiz by like so much gunfire. In one running gag, a low-rung villain’s worst insult is telling the women they look old — but neither character is bothered by it. It’s refreshing to see embarrassment humor, so beloved by chick flicks, get taken down a peg by female leads who don’t particularly care what anyone thinks of them. (1:57) Castro. (Vizcarrondo)

The Hunt Mads Mikkelsen has the kind of face that is at once strikingly handsome and unconventional enough to get him typecast in villain roles. Like so many great foreign-accented actors, he got his big international break playing a bad guy in a James Bond film — as groin-torturing gambler Le Chiffre in 2006 franchise reviver Casino Royale. Currently, he’s creeping TV viewers out as a young Dr. Lecter on Hannibal. His ability to evoke both sympathy and a suspicion of otherness are particularly well deployed in Thomas Vinterberg’s very Danish The Hunt, which won Mikkelsen the Best Actor prize at Cannes last year. He plays Lucas, a lifelong small-town resident recently divorced from his son’s mother, and who currently works at the local kindergarten. One day one of his charges says something to the principal that suggests Lucas has exposed himself to her. Once the child’s misguided “confession” is made, Lucas’ boss immediately assumes the worst. She announces her assumptions at a parent-teachers meeting even before police can begin their investigation. By the time they have, the viral paranoia and suggestive “questioning” of other potential victims has created a full-on, massive pederasty scandal with no basis in truth whatsoever. The Hunt is a valuable depiction of child-abuse panic, in which there’s a collective jumping to drastic conclusions about one subject where everyone is judged guilty before being proven innocent. Its emotional engine is Lucas’ horror at the speed and extremity with which he’s ostracized by his own community — and its willingness to believe the worst about him on anecdotal evidence. Engrossing, nuanced, and twisty right up to the fade-out, The Hunt deftly questions one of our era’s defining public hysterias. (1:45) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

In a World… (1:33) Sundance Kabuki.

Jobs With the upcoming Aaron Sorkin adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography nipping at its heels, Jobs feels like a quickie — true to Silicon Valley form, someone realized that the first to ship can end up defining the market. But as this independent biopic goes for each easy cliché and facile cinematic device, you can practically hear Steve Jobs himself spinning in the ether somewhere. Ashton Kutcher as Jobs lectures us over and over again about the virtues of quality product, but little seemed to have penetrated director Joshua Michael Stern as he distracts with a schmaltzy score (he should have stuck to Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh, and era-defining AOR), and relies on corny slow-motion to dramatize the passing of a circuit board. The fact that Kutcher might be the best thing here — he clearly throws himself into impersonating the Apple icon, from his intense, upward-glancing glare to his hand gestures — says a bit about the film itself, as it coasts on its self-made man-captain of enterprise narrative arc. Dispensing with much about the man Jobs became outside of Apple, apart from a few nods to his unsavory neglect of friends and offspring, and simply never acknowledging his work at, say, Pixar, Jobs, in the end, comes off as a lengthy infomercial for the Cupertino heavyweight. (2:02) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Kick-Ass 2 Even an ass-kicking subversive take on superherodom runs the risk of getting its rump tested, toasted, roasted — and found wanting. Too bad the exhilaratingly smarty-pants, somewhat mean-spirited Kick-Ass (2010), the brighter spot in a year of superhero-questioning flicks (see also: Super), has gotten sucker-punched in all the most predictable ways in its latest incarnation. Dave, aka Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and Mindy, otherwise known as Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz), are only half-heartedly attempting to live normal lives: they’re training on the sly, mostly because Mindy’s new guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), is determined to restore her childhood. Little does he realize that Mindy only comes alive when she pretends she’s battling ninjas at cheerleader tryouts — or is giving her skills a workout by unhanding, literally and gleefully, a robber. Kick-Ass is a little unnerved by her semi-psychotic enthusiasm for crushing bad guys, but he’s crushing, too, on Mindy, until Marcus catches her in the Hit-Girl act and grounds her in real life, where she has to deal with some really nasty characters: the most popular girls in school. So Kick-Ass hooks up with a motley team of would-be heroes inspired by his example, led Colonel Stars and Stripes (an almost unrecognizable Jim Carrey), while old frenemy Chris, aka Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) begins to find his real calling — as a supervillain he dubs the Motherfucker — and starts to assemble his own gang of baddies. Unlike the first movie, which passed the whip-smart wisecracks around equally, Mintz-Plasse and enabler-bodyguard Javier (John Leguizamo) get most of the choice lines here. Otherwise, the vigilante action gets pretty grimly routine, in a roof-battling, punch-’em-up kind of way. A romance seems to be budding between our two young superfriends, but let’s skip part three — I’d rather read about it in the funny pages. (1:43) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (1:53) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal Or, almost everything you ever wanted to know about the guy who inspired all those “Free Mumia” rallies, though Abu-Jamal’s status as a cause célèbre has become somewhat less urgent since his death sentence — for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 — was commuted to life without parole in 2012. Stephen Vittoria’s doc assembles an array of heavy hitters (Alice Walker, Giancarlo Esposito, Cornel West, Angela Davis, Emory Douglas) to discuss Abu-Jamal’s life, from his childhood in Philly’s housing projects, to his teenage political awakening with the Black Panthers, to his career as a popular radio journalist — aided equally by his passion for reporting and his mellifluous voice. Now, of course, he’s best-known for the influential, eloquent books he’s penned since his 1982 incarceration, and for the worldwide activists who’re either convinced of his innocence or believe he didn’t receive a fair trial (or both). All worthy of further investigation, but Long Distance Revolutionary is overlong, fawning, and relentlessly one-sided — ultimately, a tiresome combination. (2:00) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Adapted from the first volume of Cassandra Clare’s bestselling YA urban fantasy series, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones follows young Clary Fray (Lily Collins) through her mother’s disappearance, the traumatic discovery of her supernatural heritage, and her induction into the violent demon-slaying world of Shadowhunters. This franchise-launching venture is unlikely to win any new converts with its flimsy acting, stilted humor, and clichéd action. It will probably also disappoint diehard fans, since it plays fast and loose with the mythology and plot of the novel, with crucial details and logical progressions left by the wayside for no clear reason. It’s never particularly awful — except for a few plot twists that fall wincingly, hilariously flat — but it’s hard to care about the perfectly coiffed, emotionally clueless protagonists. Fantastic character actors Jared Harris, Lena Headey, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers are all dismally underused, though at least Harris gets to exercise a bit of his vaguely irksome British charm. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Stander)

Pacific Rim The fine print insists this film’s title is actually Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Pacific Rim (no apostrophe, guys?), but that fussy studio demand flies in the face of Pacific Rim‘s pursuit of pure, dumb fun. One is tempted to picture director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro plotting out the battle scenes using action figures — Godzillas vs. Transformers is more or less what’s at play here, and play is the operative word. Sure, the end of the world seems certain, thanks to an invading race of giant “Kaiju” who’ve started to adapt to Earth’s decades-long countermeasures (giant robot suits, piloted by duos whose minds are psychically linked), but there’s far too much goofy glee here for any real panic to accumulate. Charlie Hunnam is agreeable as the wounded hunk who’s humankind’s best hope for salvation, partnered with a rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) who’s eager, for her own reasons, to kick monster butt. Unoriginal yet key supporting roles are filled by Idris Elba (solemn, ass-kicking commander); Charlie Day (goofy science type); and Ron Perlman (flashy-dressing, black-market-dealing Kaiju expert). Pacific Rim may not transcend action-movie clichés or break much new ground (drinking game idea: gulp every time there’s an obvious reference or homage, be it to Toho or Bruckheimer), but damn if it doesn’t pair perfectly with popcorn. (2:11) Metreon. (Eddy)

Paranoia (1:46) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Planes Dane Cook voices a crop duster determined to prove he can do more than he was built for in Planes, the first Disney spin-off from a Pixar property. (Prior to the film’s title we see “From The World of Cars,” an indicator the film is an extension of a known universe — but also not quite from it.) And indeed, Planes resembles one of Pixar’s straight-to-DVD releases as it struggles for liftoff. Dreaming of speed, Dusty Crophopper (Cook) trains for the Wings Around the World race with his fuel-truck friend, Chug (Brad Garrett). A legacy playing Brewster McCloud and Wilbur Wright makes Stacy Keach a pitchy choice for Skipper, Dusty’s reluctant ex-military mentor. Charming cast choices buoy Planes somewhat, but those actors are feathers in a cap that hardly supports them — you watch the film fully aware of its toy potential: the race is a geography game; the planes are hobby sets; the cars will wind up. The story, about overcoming limitations, is in step with high-value parables Pixar proffers, though it feels shallower than usual. Perhaps toys are all Disney wants — although when Ishani (a sultry Priyanka Chopra) regrets an integrity-compromising choice she made in the race, and her pink cockpit lowers its eyes, you can feel Pixar leaning in. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Vizcarrondo)

Red 2 Are blockbusters entitled to senior moments? Even the best can fail the test — and coast along on past glories on their way to picking up their checks — as Red 2 makes the fatal error of skimping on the grunt work of basic storytelling to simply take up where the first installment on these “retired, extremely dangerous” ex-black ops killers left off. Master hitman Frank (Bruce Willis) and his girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) are semi-contentedly nesting in suburbia when acid-damaged cohort Marvin (John Malkovich) warns them that they’re about to get dragged back into the life. Turns out the cold war isn’t quite as iced out as we all thought, and a portable nuclear device, the brainchild of a physicist (Anthony Hopkins) once in Frank and Marvin’s care, just might be in Moscow. Good-old-days-style high jinks ensue, along with the arrival of old chums like Victoria (Helen Mirren), former flames such as Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and new-gen assassins like Han (Byung-hun Lee). Plus, jet-setting, and the deaths of many, many nameless soldiers, goons, and Iranian embassy staffers (almost all played for laughs, as cued by the comic book-y intertitles). A pity that the thrown-together-ish, throwback story line — somewhat reminiscent of those trashy, starry ’60s clusters, like the original 1960 Ocean’s Eleven — lazily relies on the assumption that we care a jot about the Frank and Sarah romance (the latter now an stereotypically whiny quasi-spouse) and that Frank can essentially talk any killer into joining him out of, er, professional courtesy or basic human decency. Wasting the thoroughbred cast on hand, particularly in the form of Mirren and Hopkins, one wishes the makers had only had the professional courtesy not to phone this effort in. (1:56) Metreon. (Chun)

The Smurfs 2 (1:45) Metreon.

The Spectacular Now The title suggests a dreamy, fireworks-inflected celebration of life lived in the present tense, but in this depiction of a stalled-out high school senior’s last months of school, director James Ponsoldt (2012’s Smashed) opts for a more guarded, uneasy treatment. Charming, likable, underachieving, and bright enough to frustrate the adults in his corner, Sutter (Miles Teller, 2012’s Project X) has long since managed to turn aimlessness into a philosophical practice, having chosen the path of least resistance and alcohol-fueled unaccountability. His mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), raising him solo since the departure of a father (Kyle Chandler) whose memories have acquired — for Sutter, at least — a blurry halo effect, describes him as full of both love and possible greatness, but he settles for the blessings of social fluidity and being an adept at the acquisition of beer for fellow underage drinkers. When he meets and becomes romantically involved with Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a sweet, unpolished classmate at the far reaches of his school’s social spectrum, it’s unclear whether the impact of their relationship will push him, or her, or both into a new trajectory, and the film tracks their progress with a watchful, solicitous eye. Adapted for the screen by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (2009’s 500 Days of Summer) from a novel by Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now gives the quirky pop cuteness of Summer a wide berth, steering straight into the heart of awkward adolescent striving and mishap. (1:35) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

20 Feet From Stardom Singing the praises of those otherwise neglected backup vocalists who put the soul into that Wall of Sound, brought heft to “Young Americans,” and lent real fury to “Gimme Shelter,” 20 Feet From Stardom is doing the rock ‘n’ roll true believer’s good work. Director Morgan Neville follows a handful of mainly female, mostly African American backing vocal legends, charts their skewed career trajectories as they rake in major credits and keep working long after one-hit wonders are forgotten (the Waters family) but fail to make their name known to the public (Merry Clayton), grasp Grammy approval yet somehow fail to follow through (Lisa Fischer), and keep narrowly missing the prize (Judith Hill) as label recording budgets shrivel and the tastes, technology, and the industry shift. Neville gives these industry pros and soulful survivors in a rocked-out, sample-heavy, DIY world their due on many levels, covering the low-coverage minis, Concert for Bangladesh high points, gossipy rumors, and sheer love for the blend that those intertwined voices achieve. One wishes the director had done more than simply touch in the backup successes out there, like Luther Vandross, and dug deeper to break down the reasons Fischer succumbed to the sophomore slump. But one can’t deny the passion in the voices he’s chosen to follow — and the righteous belief the Neville clearly has in his subjects, especially when, like Hill, they are ready to pick themselves up and carry on after being told they’re not “the Voice.” (1:30) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

2 Guns Rob a bank of cartel cash, invade a naval base, and then throw down against government heavies — you gotta expect to find a few bullet-hole-sized gaps in the play-by-play of 2 Guns. The action flick is riddled with fun-sized pleasures — usually centered on the playful banter and effortless chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg — and the clever knot of a narrative throws a twist or two in, before director Baltasar Kormákur (last year’s Wahlberg vehicle Contraband) simply surrenders to the tidal pull of action. After visiting Mexican mafia kingpin Papi (Edward James Olmos) and finding the head of their contact in a bag, Bobby (Washington) and Stig (Wahlberg) decide to hit Papi where he’ll feel it: the small border bank where his men have been making drops to safe deposit boxes. Much like Bobby and Stig’s breakfast-time diner gab fest, which seems to pick up where Vincent and Jules left off in Pulp Fiction (1994), as they trade barbs, truisms, and tells, there’s more going on than simply bank robbery foreplay. Both are involved for different reasons: Bobby is an undercover DEA agent, and Stig is a masquerading navy officer. When the payout is 10 times the expected size, not only do Papi, Bobby’s contact Deb (Paula Patton), and Stig’s superior Quince (James Marsden) come calling, but so does mystery man Earl (Bill Paxton), who seems to be obsessed with following the money. We know, sort of, what’s in it for Bobby — all fully identifiable charm, as befits Washington, who makes it rain charisma with the lightest of touches. But Stig? The others? The lure of a major payday is supposed to sweep away all other loyalties, except a little bromantic bonding between two rogue sharp shooters, saddled, unfortunately, with not the sharpest of story lines. (1:49) Metreon. (Chun)

The Way, Way Back Duncan (Liam James) is 14, and if you remember being that age you remember the awkwardness, the ambivalence, and the confusion that went along with it. Duncan’s mother (Toni Collette) takes him along for an “important summer” with her jerky boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell) — and despite being the least important guy at the summer cottage, Duncan’s only marginally sympathetic. Most every actor surrounding him plays against type (Rob Corddry is an unfunny, whipped husband; Allison Janney is a drunk, desperate divorcee), and since the cast is a cattle call for anyone with indie cred, you’ll wonder why they’re grouped for such a dull movie. Writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash previously wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for 2011’s The Descendants, but The Way, Way Back doesn’t match that film’s caliber of intelligent, dry wit. Cast members take turns resuscitating the movie, but only Sam Rockwell saves the day, at least during the scenes he’s in. Playing another lovable loser, Rockwell’s Owen dropped out of life and into a pattern of house painting and water-park management in the fashion of a conscientious objector. Owen is antithetical to Trent’s crappy example of manhood, and raises his water wing to let Duncan in. The short stint Duncan has working at Water Wizz is a blossoming that leads to a minor romance (with AnnaSophia Robb) and a major confrontation with Trent, some of which is affecting, but none of which will help you remember the movie after credits roll. (1:42) Four Star, Metreon, Presidio. (Vizcarrondo)

We’re the Millers After weekly doses on the flat-screen of Family Guy, Modern Family, and the like, it’s about time movieland’s family comedies got a little shot of subversion — the aim, it seems, of We’re the Millers. Scruffy dealer David (Jason Sudeikis) is shambling along — just a little wistful that he didn’t grow up and climb into the Suburban with the wife, two kids, and the steady 9-to-5 because he’s a bit lonely, much like the latchkey nerd Kenny (Will Poulter) who lives in his apartment building, and neighboring stripper Rose (Jennifer Aniston), who bites his head off at the mailbox. When David tries to be upstanding and help out crust punk runaway Casey (Emma Roberts), who’s getting roughed up for her iPhone, he instead falls prey to the robbers and sinks into a world of deep doo-doo with former college bud, and supplier of bud, Brad (Ed Helms). The only solution: play drug mule and transport a “smidge and a half” of weed across the Mexican-US border. David’s supposed cover: do the smuggling in an RV with a hired crew of randoms: Kenny, Casey, and Rose&sdquo; all posing as an ordinary family unit, the Millers. Yes, it’s that much of a stretch, but the smart-ass script is good for a few chortles, and the cast is game to go there with the incest, blow job, and wife-swapping jokes. Of course, no one ever states the obvious fact, all too apparent for Bay Area denizens, undermining the premise of We’re the Millers: who says dealers and strippers can’t be parents, decent or otherwise? We may not be the Millers, but we all know families aren’t what they used to be, if they ever really managed to hit those Leave It to Beaver standards. Fingers crossed for the cineplex — maybe movies are finally catching on. (1:49) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Wolverine James Mangold’s contribution to the X-Men film franchise sidesteps the dizzy ambition of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, opting instead for a sleek, mostly smart genre piece. This movie takes its basics from the 1982 Wolverine series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, a stark dramatic comic, but can’t avoid the convoluted, bad sci-fi plot devices endemic to the X-Men films. The titular mutant with the healing factor and adamantium-laced skeleton travels to Tokyo, to say farewell to a dying man who he rescued at the bombing of Nagasaki. But the dying man’s sinister oncologist has other plans, sapping Wolverine of his healing powers as he faces off against ruthless yakuza and scads of ninjas. The movie’s finest moments come when Mangold pays attention to context, taking superhero or Western movie clichés and revamping them for the modern Tokyo setting, such as a thrilling duel on top of a speeding bullet train. Another highlight: Rila Fukushima’s refreshing turn as badass bodyguard Yukio. Oh, and stay for the credits. (2:06) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Stander)

The World’s End The final film in Edgar Wright’s “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” finally arrives, and the TL:DR version is that while it’s not as good as 2004’s sublime zombie rom-com Shaun of the Dead, it’s better than 2007’s cops vs. serial killers yarn Hot Fuzz. That said, it’s still funnier than anything else in theaters lately. Simon Pegg returns to star and co-write (with Wright); this time, the script’s sinister bugaboo is an invasion of body snatchers — though (as usual) the conflict is really about the perils of refusing to actually become an adult, the even-greater perils of becoming a boring adult, and the importance of male friendships. Pegg plays rumpled fuck-up Gary, determined to reunite with the best friends he’s long since alienated for one more crack at their hometown’s “alcoholic mile,” a pub crawl that ends at the titular beer joint. The easy chemistry between Pegg and the rest of the cast (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan) elevates what’s essentially a predictable “one crazy night” tale, with a killer soundtrack of 1990s tunes, slang you’ll adopt for your own posse (“Let’s Boo-Boo!”), and enough hilarious fight scenes to challenge This is the End to a bro-down of apocalyptic proportions. (1:49) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Vogue. (Eddy)

You’re Next The hit of the 2011 Toronto Film Festival’s midnight section — and one that’s taken its sweet time getting to theaters — indie horror specialist (2010’s A Horrible Way to Die, 2007’s Pop Skull, 2012’s V/H/S) Adam Wingard’s feature isn’t really much more than a gussied-up slasher. But it’s got vigor, and violence, to spare. An already uncomfortable anniversary reunion for the wealthy Davison clan plus their children’s spouses gets a lot more so when dinner is interrupted by an arrow that sails through a window, right into someone’s flesh. Immediately a full on siege commences, with family members reacting with various degrees of panic, selfishness. and ingenuity, while an unknown number of animal-masked assailants prowl outside (and sometimes inside). Clearly fun for its all-star cast and crew of mumblecore-indie horror staples, yet preferring gallows’ humor to wink-wink camp, it’s a (very) bloody good ride. (1:36) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey) *

 

Choose your own adventure

Michael Redmond
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4
Choose your own adventure

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER For fans of experimental performance, there’s nothing quite like the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Now a venerable 22 years old, the Fringe still retains its freewheeling nature, where anything goes and expecting the unexpected is the best approach. It’s also served as a vital incubator for many now-established theater companies — including Cutting Ball, Crowded Fire, Mugwumpin, and Thrillpeddlers — and no other festival prepares theater artists for the business realities of self-producing quite like the Fringe. The fest makes them responsible for every detail of their show’s success, including play creation, technical design, transportation, and audience outreach.

Hosted at the EXIT Theatre, which holds down the edge of the downtown theater district, the SF Fringe is the final stop on the annual Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals circuit (which stretches east to west across the North American continent). Over the years, it has welcomed artists from as nearby as the Mission District and as far away as Mauritius, drawing their names (literally) out of a hat during a public lottery to ensure that all applicants get an equal shot at participating.

This commitment to non-curation is what sets the Fringe apart from other theater festivals, as even the organizers don’t know what to expect from a given show until the curtain goes up. With that caveat in mind, here’s a sampling of shows that look promising for one reason or another — though your best bet, as always, is to see as many shows as possible and discover what stands out for you.

Solo shows are a Fringe staple, since technical considerations are skewed in favor of minimalist productions. With Held offers a glimpse inside the mind and method of a local artist, John Held Jr.; playwright-performer Jeremy Greco (of The Thrilling Adventures of Elvis in Space infamy) spent over a year interviewing Held about his life, and another year creating a show out of the material. Rebecca M. Fisher (2007’s The Magnificence of the Disaster) takes her audiences down south with Memphis on My Mind, while local comedian and circus school alumna Jill Vice brings them to the bar to pour everyone a (metaphorical) round in The Tipped & the Tipsy. Triple threat musician, actor, and improv artist Jeff England promises to combine all of his talents in his solo offering Tale Me Another, while another triple threat (singer-dancer-actor) Movin’ Melvin Brown brings his well-traveled performance piece A Man, A Magic, A Music to SF for the first time.

Shows which topically involve sex are another time-honored Fringe tradition, and this year’s selection seems especially wide-ranging. There’s 52 Letters, by Regina Y. Evans, which delves into the tricky territory of sex-trafficking with a performance poetry format; and The Women of Tu-Na House, a solo show by Nancy Eng, who portrays eight women working the “massage parlor” circuit.

One sexy show that breaks into the territory of the fantastical is Fish-girl, co-created and performed by Siouxsie Q, creator of the popular sex worker podcast and blog the WhoreCast. A mermaid grapples with “the feeling of being half in one world and half in another,” a common sentiment among sex workers, many of whom also “identify strongly with the mermaid myth,” according to Q.

For lovers of the purely experimental there are always a few Fringe shows that are best categorized as impossible-to-categorize, and it’s often these shows that best encapsulate the spirit of what’s possible, theatrically, in and out of the Festival. This year these include the welcome return of Popcorn Anti-Theater’s traveling bus with a whole new lineup of performers (including clowns, comediennes, and shadow puppeteers) and new secret locations on their mysterious itinerary.

Fringe stalwarts Dark Porch Theatre return with what sounds like one of their most ambitious projects to date, StormStressLenz, a fractured remix of the works of J. M. R. Lenz, an 18th century German playwright of the little-referenced sturm und drang movement. Remounted in 30 small vignettes connected to one of six themes — love, tricks, conflict, sorrow, resolution, and reunion — the piece is said to be structured like a concert of chamber music, with director-translator Martin Schwartz as conductor. Davis Shakespeare Ensemble’s Nightingale is a work of devised theater combining medieval and modern text, movement, shadow puppetry, and beat boxing; while performance artist Cara Rose DeFabio brings a follow-up to her 2012 multimedia piece She Was a Computer with After the Tone, a reflection on death, immortality, and technology with an audience participation component (hint: keep your cellphone on).

“This is my first Fringe, and I couldn’t be more excited,” DeFabio confides enthusiastically. “While at times it feels overwhelming, that abundance of choice and excitement is exactly what buoys the whole festival.” *

SAN FRANCISCO FRINGE FESTIVAL

Sept. 6-21, $12.99 or less (passes, $40-75)

EXIT Theatreplex

156 Eddy, SF

www.sffringe.org

 

Fall forward

Michael Redmond
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7
Fall forward

arts@sfbg.com

FALL ARTS Kings and queens, Brits and brats, music and mayhem, puppets and oppressors—the stage brims with them this fall. Talk about holding a mirror up to nature.

The King of Hearts is Off Again  Here’s a rare chance to experience the thrilling precision and stagecraft of a Polish ensemble theater working in the tradition of legendary master Jerzy Grotowski. San Francisco International Arts Festival and Los Angeles–based KulturePlus Productions present the Bay Area debut of Warsaw’s Studium Theatralne and its stage adaptation of Hanna Krall’s internationally acclaimed novel about a young Jewish woman (the real-life Izolda Regenberg) who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust by passing as an Aryan. Oct. 2–4, Joe Goode Annex, SF; Oct. 5, University Theater, CSU East Bay, Hayward; www.sfiaf.org.

Sidewinders Rising American playwright and Louisville, Ky. native Basil Kreimendahl queers the Western while exploring Western queerness in Cutting Ball and director M. Graham Smith’s world premiere. Oct. 18–Nov. 17, Cutting Ball Theater at Exit on Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com.

Forest Fringe SF On the heels of a galvanizing summer intensive with local and UK artists, the love affair between the south of England’s adventurous University of Chichester theater department and the Bay Area continues this fall with an international mini-festival of devised performance co-sponsored by CounterPULSE and featuring the likes of Action Hero and other UK artists, as well as more UK–Bay Area collaborations. Oct. 24–27, CounterPULSE, SF; www.counterpulse.org.

Dogugaeshi  Master puppeteer Basil Twist delves into the titular ancient Japanese theatrical technique in this play whose central staging conceit is an ever-shifting array of screens. Taking the audience on a journey through inner and outer landscapes, with Japanese composer-musician Yumiko Tanaka accompanying live on the three-stringed samisen, the hourlong Bessie Award–winning 2004 production becomes a meditation on the flux and fragility of tradition, life — the world — told with grace, subtlety, and humor. Nov. 6–10, Zellerbach Playhouse, Berk; calperfs.berkeley.edu.

Be Bop Baby: A Musical Memoir  The inimitable Margo Hall (prized Bay Area actor and co-founder of Campo Santo) teams up with formidable Bay Area musician-composer Marcus Shelby and his orchestra for this original, eclectic, song-filled autobiographical account of Hall’s upbringing in the Detroit household of her beloved stepfather, leading jazz musician and Motown composer-arranger Teddy Harris Jr. Nov. 19–23, Z Space, SF; www.zspace.org.

San Francisco Fringe Festival With 36 companies and 158 performances over 16 days — and a per-show ticket price of about 10 bucks or less — the SF Fringe is as cheap and plump and addictive as a ballpark frank, and far easier on your colon. Sept. 6–21, EXIT Theatreplex, SF; www.sffringe.org.

Caught The group show “Fuck Off 2,” under way at Groninger Museum in the Netherlands, updates and celebrates a notorious (and officially quashed) 2000 exhibition in Beijing, which heralded the arrival of an uncompromising generation of Chinese contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei (a contributing artist to the 2000 show and a co-curator of part two). Against the urgent and fascinating backdrop of art and political dissent in contemporary China comes 2by4 Theatre’s world premiere of Caught, a play on the art of subterfuge, or the subterfuge of art, by rising local playwright Christopher Chen (The Hundred Flowers Project) that centers on a major retrospective of work by “legendary” Chinese artist and dissident Lin Bo. Nov. 26–Dec. 21, ACT Costume Shop, SF; www.2by4theatre.com.

Mephistopheles Meph-heads: Your Faustian fix awaits in one of the biggest spectacles to “grace” the stage at the San Francisco Opera this season or any: Arrigo Boito’s 19th century adaptation of Goethe’s Faust, with bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov in the delightfully malign title role and SF Opera’s Nicola Luisotti on the podium. Sept. 6–Oct. 2, War Memorial Opera House, SF; www.sfopera.com.

The Episodes Brontez Purnell Dance Company delivers the next iteration of the intriguing and intelligent work that debuted last March at the Garage, which draws its physical and thematic inspiration from the ritual-like repetitions of the quotidian. Nov. 22–24, CounterPULSE, SF; www.counterpulse.org.

Keith Hennessy, Hana Lee Erdman, Jassem Hindi Among the many things one could say about the tantalizing lineup behind this three-act liquidizer of music, noise, improvisation, and performance, is that the evening reunites three impressive performer-agents from Hennessy’s monumental Turbulence (a dance about the economy). Dec. 6–7, CounterPULSE, SF; www.counterpulse.org. *

 

Just a pipe dream? SF’s Whirr gets ‘Around’

Tony Robles
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8

In the cyclical nature of sonic trends, shoegaze has risen from the grave and out of obscurity again. With old guard bands such as My Bloody Valentine and Mazzy Star releasing new material, acts from this generation are following in their footsteps, reviving what was once out of vogue.

And in the midst of this comes Whirr, a dichotomy of sound, layered and simplistic at the same time, wrapped up in a tight package. Formed in San Francisco in 2011, through what guitarist and founding member Nick Bassett describes as basic boredom, the six-piece outfit decries its shoegaze leanings, searching for a heavier sound.

Bassett cites Whirr’s influences as former SST power trio Dinosaur Jr. and European shoegaze band Nightblooms. Despite these influences, critics have been quick to point out that the band also sounds like My Bloody Valentine. Slowdive, and the like. And why not? Much like those forefathers of sound, Whirr has heavy instrumentals that overpower dreamy female vocals. It’s an easy comparison, but also accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx1D8vwyc9o

And it’s easy to tell that Bassett isn’t exactly thrilled about that comparison. In response, he takes the path of resistance to these accusations.

“We’re louder than them, and I don’t think we really sound like them,” says Bassett.

But the statement that Whirr is louder than MBV is entirely disputable. Known for being the “loudest band on earth” to some, MBV was accused of being criminally negligent by the press while touring to promote Loveless in 1991.

Admittedly, Whirr is also very loud live — and the band has met opposition from venues and crowd goers alike throughout the course of its month-long tour with doom metal band Lycus and shoegaze group Nothing.

“The worst location we played was in Midland, Texas,” says Bassett. “They were blocking their ears and stuff because they thought we were too loud — they probably didn’t get it. Also Washington DC [was bad] because the sound guy wouldn’t let us play loud.”

Formerly of San Francisco black metal band, Deafheaven, Basset is no stranger to playing deafening music. And it seems that references and comparisons to Slowdive are something that have followed Bassett throughout his career as a musician — Deafheaven’s band name came as an homage to the English band.

But in the pursuit of maximum volume, some locations along the way have met Whirr’s arduous expectations. According to Bassett, Tampa, Fla. was the best stop on the road.

Why? “Because we were really loud and got a lot of money,” he says, concisely.

Aside from getting the chance to make lots of noise and get paid, Whirr has had a productive year with the release of a new EP this summer, which was the followup to last year’s LP Pipe Dreams (Tee Pee, 2012). 

Pipe Dreams is an album of many layers, tossing together slow and kicky uptempo tunes. Some of the guitar riffs on the album, found in tracks like “Toss,” are downright pop-punk. But the band’s newest EP, Around (Grave Face), released in July, goes for a decidedly different temperament. There’s a slowed down pace.

Around also steps away from Pipe Dreams with its far longer tracks (not one under five minutes) though maintains a heavy, funeral dirge-like sound.

“These songs sound better when we play them live,” Bassett says.

If you’re interested in seeing if Bassett’s claim is accurate (or you just want to damage your hearing, if only momentarily) you can see Whirr at Bottom of the Hill this week. Oh, and bring earplugs just in case. Things might get loud.

Whirr
With Nothing, Lycus
Wed/28, 9pm, $10
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th Street, SF
(415) 626-4455
www.bottomofthehill.com

 

Film Listings: August 21 – 27, 2013

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

OPENING

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints See “Lone Stars.” (1:45) California, Smith Rafael.

Austenland Jane (Keri Russell) is a Jane Austen fanatic who finds real-life modern romance highly lacking as compared to the fictive Regency Era variety — though having a life-sized cutout of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in her bedroom surely didn’t help recent relationships. After yet another breakup, she decides to live her fantasy by flying to England to vacation at the titular theme park-fantasy role play establishment, where guests and staff meticulously act out Austen-like scenarios of well-dressed upper class leisure and chaste courtship. Upon arriving, however, Jane discovers she’s very much a second-class citizen here, not having been able to afford the “platinum premium” package purchased by fellow guests. Thus cast by imperious proprietor Mrs. Wattlesbrook (Jane Seymour) as the unmarriageable “poor relation,” she gets more flirtatious vibes from the actor cast as sexy stable boy (Bret McKenzie) than the one playing a quasi-Darcy (JJ Feild), at least initially. Adapting Shannon Hale’s novel, Jerusha Hess (making her directorial bow after several collaborations with husband Jared Hess, of 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite) has delightfully kitsch set and costume designs and a generally sweet-natured tone somewhat let down by the very broad, uninspired humor. Even wonderful Jennifer Coolidge can’t much elevate the routine writing as a cheerfully vulgar Yank visitor. The rich potential to cleverly satirize all things Austen is missed. Still, the actors are charming and the progress lively enough to make Austenland harmless if flyweight fun. (1:37) Albany, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Cutie and the Boxer See “Scenes from a Marriage.” (1:22) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal Or, almost everything you ever wanted to know about the guy who inspired all those “Free Mumia” rallies, though Abu-Jamal’s status as a cause célèbre has become somewhat less urgent since his death sentence — for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 — was commuted to life without parole in 2012. Stephen Vittoria’s doc assembles an array of heavy hitters (Alice Walker, Giancarlo Esposito, Cornel West, Angela Davis, Emory Douglas) to discuss Abu-Jamal’s life, from his childhood in Philly’s housing projects, to his teenage political awakening with the Black Panthers, to his career as a popular radio journalist — aided equally by his passion for reporting and his mellifluous voice. Now, of course, he’s best-known for the influential, eloquent books he’s penned since his 1982 incarceration, and for the worldwide activists who’re either convinced of his innocence or believe he didn’t receive a fair trial (or both). All worthy of further investigation, but Long Distance Revolutionary is overlong, fawning, and relentlessly one-sided — ultimately, a tiresome combination. (2:00) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones Lily Collins stars as a teen who discovers her supernatural powers in this adaptation of Cassandra Clare’s YA fantasy novel. (2:00) Shattuck.

The World’s End The final film in Edgar Wright’s “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy” finally arrives, and the TL:DR version is that while it’s not as good as 2004’s sublime zombie rom-com Shaun of the Dead, it’s better than 2007’s cops vs. serial killers yarn Hot Fuzz. That said, it’s still funnier than anything else in theaters lately. Simon Pegg returns to star and co-write (with Wright); this time, the script’s sinister bugaboo is an invasion of body snatchers — though (as usual) the conflict is really about the perils of refusing to actually become an adult, the even-greater perils of becoming a boring adult, and the importance of male friendships. Pegg plays rumpled fuck-up Gary, determined to reunite with the best friends he’s long since alienated for one more crack at their hometown’s “alcoholic mile,” a pub crawl that ends at the titular beer joint. The easy chemistry between Pegg and the rest of the cast (Nick Frost, Paddy Considine, Martin Freeman, and Eddie Marsan) elevates what’s essentially a predictable “one crazy night” tale, with a killer soundtrack of 1990s tunes, slang you’ll adopt for your own posse (“Let’s Boo-Boo!”), and enough hilarious fight scenes to challenge This is the End to a bro-down of apocalyptic proportions. (1:49) (Eddy)

You’re Next The hit of the 2011 Toronto Film Festival’s midnight section — and one that’s taken its sweet time getting to theaters — indie horror specialist (2010’s A Horrible Way to Die, 2007’s Pop Skull, 2012’s V/H/S) Adam Wingard’s feature isn’t really much more than a gussied-up slasher. But it’s got vigor, and violence, to spare. An already uncomfortable anniversary reunion for the wealthy Davison clan plus their children’s spouses gets a lot more so when dinner is interrupted by an arrow that sails through a window, right into someone’s flesh. Immediately a full on siege commences, with family members reacting with various degrees of panic, selfishness. and ingenuity, while an unknown number of animal-masked assailants prowl outside (and sometimes inside). Clearly fun for its all-star cast and crew of mumblecore-indie horror staples, yet preferring gallows’ humor to wink-wink camp, it’s a (very) bloody good ride. (1:36) (Harvey)

ONGOING

The Act of Killing What does Anwar Congo — a man who has brutally strangled hundreds of people with piano wire — dream about? As Joshua Oppenheimer’s Indonesia-set documentary The Act of Killing discovers, there’s a thin line between a guilty conscience and a haunted psyche, especially for an admitted killer who’s never been held accountable for anything. In fact, Congo has lived as a hero in North Sumatra for decades — along with scores of others who participated in the country’s ruthless anti-communist purge in the mid-1960s. In order to capture this surreal state of affairs, Oppenheimer zeroes in on a few subjects — like the cheerful Congo, fond of flashy clothes, and the theatrical Herman Koto — and a method, spelled out by The Act of Killing‘s title card: “The killers proudly told us stories about what they did. To understand why, we asked them to create scenes in whatever ways they wished.” Because Congo and company are huge movie buffs, they chose to recreate their crimes with silver-screen flourish. There are costumes and gory make-up. There are props: a stuffed tiger, a dummy torso with a detachable head. There are dancing girls. Most importantly, however, there are mental consequences, primarily for Congo, whose emotional fragility escalates as the filming continues — resulting in an unforgettable, at-times mind-blowing viewing experience. (1:55) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector Dan M. Kinem and Levi Peretic’s documentary peeks into the tidy lairs of borderline hoarders (all horror and genre fans) who oversee their massive VHS collections with a mixture of pride, good-natured defensiveness, and culty spirit. A few celebrities drop by (Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman admits he prefers DVDs “because of the extras”), but this is mostly regular-dude turf, with a home-video history lesson (“Blockbuster ruined it for everybody”) mixed into the nostalgia. High points include extended discussions of “VHS covers that lie to you,” as in, when box artwork promises wonders that aren’t actually in the film; and of Tales from the Quadead Zone, a (terrible) film so exquisitely rare it sparked an eBay bidding war and inspired at least one tattoo. (1:24) Balboa. (Eddy)

The Artist and the Model The horror of the blank page, the raw sensuality of marble, and the fresh-meat attraction of a new model — just a few of the starting points for this thoughtful narrative about an elderly sculptor finding and shaping his possibly finest and final muse. Bedraggled and homeless beauty Mercè (Aida Folch) washes up in a small French town in the waning days of World War II and is taken in by a kindly woman (Claudia Cardinale), who seems intent on pleasantly pimping her out as a nude model to her artist husband (Jean Rochefort). As his former model, she knows Mercè has the type of body he likes — and that she’s capable of restoring his powers, in more ways than one, if you know what I mean. Yet this film by Fernando Trueba (1992’s Belle Époque) isn’t that kind of movie, with those kinds of models, especially when Mercè turns out to have more on her mind than mere pleasure. Done up in a lustrous, sunlit black and white that recalls 1957’s Wild Strawberries, The Artist and the Model instead offers a steady, respectful, and loving peek into a process, and unique relationship, with just a touch of poetry. (1:41) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Attack After an explosion in Tel Aviv kills 17, respected surgeon Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman of 2005’s Paradise Now) — an Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, who deflects moments like a bleeding man on his operating table gasping, “I want another doctor!” with a certain amount of practiced detachment — is called to ID a body nestled in the morgue of his hospital. It’s his wife, Siham (Reymonde Amsellem, seen in flashbacks) — the apparent suicide bomber. Amin can’t believe it, but Israeli officers sure do, and the doctor is interrogated for hours about his wife’s alleged terrorist leanings and her suspicious behavior in the days leading up to the attack. When Siham’s involvement in the bombing is confirmed, Amin visits family in the West Bank, intent on discovering more about her secret fundamentalism and answering one simple question: “Why?” Emotions and tension run high as he digs into a world that’s been carefully constructed to keep unsympathetic parties from obtaining access. Lebanese-born director Ziad Doueiri, directing from a script he co-wrote from the 2008 novel by Yasmina Khadra (former Algerian army major Mohammed Moulessehoul, who wrote under his wife’s name to evade military censorship), delivers a suspenseful tale that offers new perspective on the Palestine-Israel divide. (1:42) Vogue. (Eddy)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

The Conjuring Irony can be so overrated. Paying tribute to those dead-serious ’70s-era accounts of demonic possession — like 1973’s The Exorcist, which seemed all the scarier because it were based on supposedly real-life events — the sober Conjuring runs the risk of coming off as just more Catholic propaganda, as so many exorcism-is-the-cure creepers can be. But from the sound of the long-coming development of this project — producer Tony DeRosa-Grund had apparently been wanting to make the movie for more than a dozen years — 2004’s Saw and 2010’s Insidious director James Wan was merely applying the same careful dedication to this story’s unfolding as those that came before him, down to setting it in those groovy VW van-borne ’70s that saw more families torn apart by politics and cultural change than those ever-symbolic demonic forces. This time, the narrative framework is built around the paranormal investigators, clairvoyant Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) and demonologist Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), rather than the victims: the sprawling Perron family, which includes five daughters all ripe for possession or haunting, it seems. The tale of two families opens with the Warrens hard at work on looking into creepy dolls and violent possessions, as Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) move into a freezing old Victorian farmhouse. A very eerie basement is revealed, and hide-and-seek games become increasingly creepy, as Carolyn finds unexplained bruises on her body, one girl is tugged by the foot in the night, and another takes on a new invisible pal. The slow, scary build is the achievement here, with Wan admirably handling the flow of the scares, which go from no-budg effects and implied presences that rely on the viewer’s imagination, to turns of the screws that will have audiences jumping in their seats. Even better are the performances by The Conjuring‘s dueling mothers, in the trenches of a genre that so often flirts with misogyny: each battling the specter of maternal filicide, Farmiga and Taylor infuse their parts with an empathetic warmth and wrenching intensity, turning this bewitched horror throwback into a kind of women’s story. (1:52) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Despicable Me 2 The laughs come quick and sweet now that Gru (Steve Carell) has abandoned his super-villainy to become a dad and “legitimate businessman” — though he still applies world-class gravitas to everyday events. (His daughter’s overproduced birthday party is a riot of medieval festoonage.) But like all the best reformed baddies, the Feds, or in this case the Anti-Villain League, recruit him to uncover the next international arch-nemesis. Now a spy, he gets a goofy but highly competent partner (Kristen Wiig) and a cupcake shop at the mall to facilitate sniffing out the criminal. This sequel surpasses the original in charm, cleverness, and general lovability, and it’s not just because they upped the number of minion-related gags, or because Wiig joined the cast; she ultimately gets the short end of the stick as the latecomer love-interest (her spy gadgets are also just so-so). However, Carell kills it as Gru 2 — his faux-Russian accent and awkward timing are more lived-in. Maybe the jokes are about more familiar stuff (like the niggling disappointments of family life) but they’re also sharper and more surprising. And though the minions seemed like one-trick ponies in the first film, those gibberish-talking jellybeans outdo themselves in the sequel’s climax. (1:38) SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Drug War The sleek, gloomy Drug War is the latest from Hong Kong’s Johnnie To — a director who needs no introduction for fans of his prolific output (2001’s Fulltime Killer, 2005’s Election, 2006’s Exiled, 2009’s Vengeance). Unlike To’s previous crime dramas, Drug War was shot in mainland China, where heavy-handed censors rule. According to the film’s press notes, To decided “nobody will disagree with the idea of arresting drug dealers,” particularly in a country fond of imposing death sentences for drug-related offenses. The tactic appears to have worked, since this thing’s dripping with vicious shootouts — even as it subtly points out China’s surveillance-state abundance of CCTV cameras, and examines how just far criminals will go to avoid those draconian punishments. Timmy Choi (Louis Koo), for one, is terrified of execution. Busted for manufacturing meth after his factory explodes, Timmy runs up against Captain Zhang (Sun Honglei), a no-nonsense drug cop who reluctantly takes on a new informant with the goal of busting a kingpin higher up the cartel’s chain of command. Timmy’s a slippery character whose motivations remain murky right up until the last act; it’s all Zhang can do to keep up, which he does for the most part. In one incredible sequence, the cop pretends to be Chang, a taciturn junkie accompanying Timmy for a meeting with the flashy “Haha,” named for his staccato laugh. With a quick wardrobe change and seconds to spare, Zhang then morphs into Haha to meet with the real Chang. In the process, tiny cameras are deployed, drugs are snorted, and loyalties are stretched razor-thin. It’s a tour de force — yet remarkably unforced — moment for both actor and director. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

Elysium By the year 2154, the one percent will all have left Earth’s polluted surface for Elysium, a luxurious space station where everyone has access to high-tech machines that can heal any wound or illness in a matter of seconds. Among the grimy masses in burned-out Los Angeles, where everyone speaks a mixture of Spanish and English, factory worker Max (Matt Damon) is trying to put his car-thief past behind him — and maybe pursue something with the childhood sweetheart (Alice Braga) he’s recently reconnected with. Meanwhile, up on Elysium, icy Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster, speaking in French and Old Hollywood-accented English) rages against immigration, even planning a government takeover to prevent any more “illegals” from slipping aboard. Naturally, the fates of Max and Delacourt will soon intertwine, with “brain to brain data transfers,” bionic exo-skeletons, futuristic guns, life-or-death needs for Elysium’s medical miracles, and some colorful interference by a sword-wielding creeper of a sleeper agent (Sharlto Copley) along the way. In his first feature since 2009’s apartheid-themed District 9, South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp once again turns to obvious allegory to guide his plot. If Elysium‘s message is a bit heavy-handed, it’s well-intentioned, and doesn’t take away from impressive visuals (mercifully rendered in 2D) or Damon’s committed performance. (2:00) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Europa Report Directed by Ecuador’s Sebastián Cordero (2004’s Crónicas), deep-space tale Europa Report benefits from its interesting international cast, including Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist in the Swedish Girl With a Dragon Tattoo series); Romanian Anamaria Marinca (2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days); Bay Area-born Daniel Wu, who’s a megastar in Hong Kong; and South African Sharlto Copley, also in concurrent sci-fi release Elysium. Together, they comprise the bulk of a crew crammed into an elegant ship bound for Europa, a moon of Jupiter that may have water — and therefore, life — beneath its icy surface. These journeys never end well, do they? As we’re told by grim-faced Dr. Unger (Embeth Davidtz), what we’re watching has been pieced together from “recently declassified footage” — and yes, that makes Europa Report yet another “found-footage” movie. At this point, it’s a stale way to tell a story, though it’s mostly plausible in this case; time-stamped scenes are cut together from multiple cameras mounted aboard the spacecraft, plus some astronaut helmet-cam shots. From the start, we know the mission is doomed. But even if its conclusion is a little abrupt and dissatisfying, at least Europa Report heaps on the claustrophobic atmosphere while rocketing toward the inevitable. (1:30) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Fruitvale Station By now you’ve heard of Fruitvale Station, the debut feature from Oakland-born filmmaker Ryan Coogler. With a cast that includes Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and rising star Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights), the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, winning both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize en route to being scooped up for distribition by the Weinstein Company. A few months later, Coogler, a USC film school grad who just turned 27, won Best First Film at Cannes. Accolades are nice, especially when paired with a massive PR push from a studio known for bringing home little gold men. But particularly in the Bay Area, the true story behind Fruitvale Station eclipses even the most glowing pre-release hype. The film opens with real footage captured by cell phones the night 22-year-old Oscar Grant was shot in the back by BART police, a tragedy that inspired multiple protests and grabbed national headlines. With its grim ending already revealed, Fruitvale Station backtracks to chart Oscar’s final hours, with a deeper flashback or two fleshing out the troubled past he was trying to overcome. Mostly, though, Fruitvale Station is very much a day in the life, with Oscar (Jordan, in a nuanced performance) dropping off his girlfriend at work, picking up supplies for a birthday party, texting friends about New Year’s Eve plans, and deciding not to follow through on a drug sale. Inevitably, much of what transpires is weighted with extra meaning — Oscar’s mother (Spencer) advising him to “just take the train” to San Francisco that night; Oscar’s tender interactions with his young daughter; the death of a friendly stray dog, hit by a car as BART thunders overhead. It’s a powerful, stripped-down portrait that belies Coogler’s rookie-filmmaker status. (1:24) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Hannah Arendt New German Cinema’s Margarethe von Trotta (1975’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1986’s Rosa Luxemburg) delivers this surprisingly dull biopic about the great German-Jewish political theorist and the heated controversy around her New Yorker article (and subsequent book) about Israel’s 1961 trial of Nazi Adolph Eichmann. Played with dignified, slightly vulnerable countenance by the inimitable Barbara Sukowa, Arendt travels from her teaching job and cozy expat circles in New York to Jerusalem for the trial. There she comes face to face with the “banality of evil” in Eichmann, the petty careerist of the Holocaust, forcing her to “try and reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds.” This led her to further insights into the nature of modern society, and triggered a storm of outrage and vitriol — in particular from the Commentary crowd of future neocons — all of which is clearly of relevance today, and the impetus for von Trotta’s revisiting this famous episode. But the film is too mannered, too slick, too formulaic —burdened by a television-friendly combination of posture and didacticism, and bon mots from famous and about famous figures in intellectual and literary history to avoid being leaden and tedious. A mainstream film, in other words, for a very unconventional personality and dissident intellectual. While not exactly evil, there’s something dispiriting in so much banality. (1:49) Smith Rafael. (Robert Avila)

The Heat First things first: I hated Bridesmaids (2011). Even the BFF love fest between Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig couldn’t wash away the bad taste of another wolf pack in girl’s clothing. Dragging and dropping women into dude-ly storylines is at best wonky and at worst degrading, but The Heat finds an alternate route. Its women are unlikable; you don’t root for them, and you’re not hoping they become princesses because such horrifying awkwardness can only be redeemed by a prince. In Bridesmaids and Heat director Paul Feig’s universe, friendship saves the day. Sandra Bullock is Murtaugh to Melissa McCarthy’s Riggs, with tidy Bullock angling for a promotion and McCarthy driving a busted hoopty through Boston like she’s in Grand Theft Auto. Circumstances conspire to bring them together on a case, in one of many elements lifted from traditional buddy-cop storylines. But! The jokes are constant, pelting, and whiz by like so much gunfire. In one running gag, a low-rung villain’s worst insult is telling the women they look old — but neither character is bothered by it. It’s refreshing to see embarrassment humor, so beloved by chick flicks, get taken down a peg by female leads who don’t particularly care what anyone thinks of them. (1:57) Castro. (Vizcarrondo)

The Hunt Mads Mikkelsen has the kind of face that is at once strikingly handsome and unconventional enough to get him typecast in villain roles. Like so many great foreign-accented actors, he got his big international break playing a bad guy in a James Bond film — as groin-torturing gambler Le Chiffre in 2006 franchise reviver Casino Royale. Currently, he’s creeping TV viewers out as a young Dr. Lecter on Hannibal. His ability to evoke both sympathy and a suspicion of otherness are particularly well deployed in Thomas Vinterberg’s very Danish The Hunt, which won Mikkelsen the Best Actor prize at Cannes last year. He plays Lucas, a lifelong small-town resident recently divorced from his son’s mother, and who currently works at the local kindergarten. One day one of his charges says something to the principal that suggests Lucas has exposed himself to her. Once the child’s misguided “confession” is made, Lucas’ boss immediately assumes the worst. She announces her assumptions at a parent-teachers meeting even before police can begin their investigation. By the time they have, the viral paranoia and suggestive “questioning” of other potential victims has created a full-on, massive pederasty scandal with no basis in truth whatsoever. The Hunt is a valuable depiction of child-abuse panic, in which there’s a collective jumping to drastic conclusions about one subject where everyone is judged guilty before being proven innocent. Its emotional engine is Lucas’ horror at the speed and extremity with which he’s ostracized by his own community — and its willingness to believe the worst about him on anecdotal evidence. Engrossing, nuanced, and twisty right up to the fade-out, The Hunt deftly questions one of our era’s defining public hysterias. (1:45) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

In a World… (1:33) Sundance Kabuki.

Jobs With the upcoming Aaron Sorkin adaptation of Walter Isaacson’s biography nipping at its heels, Jobs feels like a quickie — true to Silicon Valley form, someone realized that the first to ship can end up defining the market. But as this independent biopic goes for each easy cliché and facile cinematic device, you can practically hear Steve Jobs himself spinning in the ether somewhere. Ashton Kutcher as Jobs lectures us over and over again about the virtues of quality product, but little seemed to have penetrated director Joshua Michael Stern as he distracts with a schmaltzy score (he should have stuck to Bob Dylan, Joe Walsh, and era-defining AOR), and relies on corny slow-motion to dramatize the passing of a circuit board. The fact that Kutcher might be the best thing here — he clearly throws himself into impersonating the Apple icon, from his intense, upward-glancing glare to his hand gestures — says a bit about the film itself, as it coasts on its self-made man-captain of enterprise narrative arc. Dispensing with much about the man Jobs became outside of Apple, apart from a few nods to his unsavory neglect of friends and offspring, and simply never acknowledging his work at, say, Pixar, Jobs, in the end, comes off as a lengthy infomercial for the Cupertino heavyweight. (2:02) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Kick-Ass 2 Even an ass-kicking subversive take on superherodom runs the risk of getting its rump tested, toasted, roasted — and found wanting. Too bad the exhilaratingly smarty-pants, somewhat mean-spirited Kick-Ass (2010), the brighter spot in a year of superhero-questioning flicks (see also: Super), has gotten sucker-punched in all the most predictable ways in its latest incarnation. Dave, aka Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), and Mindy, otherwise known as Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz), are only half-heartedly attempting to live normal lives: they’re training on the sly, mostly because Mindy’s new guardian, Detective Marcus Williams (Morris Chestnut), is determined to restore her childhood. Little does he realize that Mindy only comes alive when she pretends she’s battling ninjas at cheerleader tryouts — or is giving her skills a workout by unhanding, literally and gleefully, a robber. Kick-Ass is a little unnerved by her semi-psychotic enthusiasm for crushing bad guys, but he’s crushing, too, on Mindy, until Marcus catches her in the Hit-Girl act and grounds her in real life, where she has to deal with some really nasty characters: the most popular girls in school. So Kick-Ass hooks up with a motley team of would-be heroes inspired by his example, led Colonel Stars and Stripes (an almost unrecognizable Jim Carrey), while old frenemy Chris, aka Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) begins to find his real calling — as a supervillain he dubs the Motherfucker — and starts to assemble his own gang of baddies. Unlike the first movie, which passed the whip-smart wisecracks around equally, Mintz-Plasse and enabler-bodyguard Javier (John Leguizamo) get most of the choice lines here. Otherwise, the vigilante action gets pretty grimly routine, in a roof-battling, punch-’em-up kind of way. A romance seems to be budding between our two young superfriends, but let’s skip part three — I’d rather read about it in the funny pages. (1:43) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (1:53) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

Pacific Rim The fine print insists this film’s title is actually Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Pacific Rim (no apostrophe, guys?), but that fussy studio demand flies in the face of Pacific Rim‘s pursuit of pure, dumb fun. One is tempted to picture director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro plotting out the battle scenes using action figures — Godzillas vs. Transformers is more or less what’s at play here, and play is the operative word. Sure, the end of the world seems certain, thanks to an invading race of giant “Kaiju” who’ve started to adapt to Earth’s decades-long countermeasures (giant robot suits, piloted by duos whose minds are psychically linked), but there’s far too much goofy glee here for any real panic to accumulate. Charlie Hunnam is agreeable as the wounded hunk who’s humankind’s best hope for salvation, partnered with a rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) who’s eager, for her own reasons, to kick monster butt. Unoriginal yet key supporting roles are filled by Idris Elba (solemn, ass-kicking commander); Charlie Day (goofy science type); and Ron Perlman (flashy-dressing, black-market-dealing Kaiju expert). Pacific Rim may not transcend action-movie clichés or break much new ground (drinking game idea: gulp every time there’s an obvious reference or homage, be it to Toho or Bruckheimer), but damn if it doesn’t pair perfectly with popcorn. (2:11) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Paranoia (1:46) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Planes Dane Cook voices a crop duster determined to prove he can do more than he was built for in Planes, the first Disney spin-off from a Pixar property. (Prior to the film’s title we see “From The World of Cars,” an indicator the film is an extension of a known universe — but also not quite from it.) And indeed, Planes resembles one of Pixar’s straight-to-DVD releases as it struggles for liftoff. Dreaming of speed, Dusty Crophopper (Cook) trains for the Wings Around the World race with his fuel-truck friend, Chug (Brad Garrett). A legacy playing Brewster McCloud and Wilbur Wright makes Stacy Keach a pitchy choice for Skipper, Dusty’s reluctant ex-military mentor. Charming cast choices buoy Planes somewhat, but those actors are feathers in a cap that hardly supports them — you watch the film fully aware of its toy potential: the race is a geography game; the planes are hobby sets; the cars will wind up. The story, about overcoming limitations, is in step with high-value parables Pixar proffers, though it feels shallower than usual. Perhaps toys are all Disney wants — although when Ishani (a sultry Priyanka Chopra) regrets an integrity-compromising choice she made in the race, and her pink cockpit lowers its eyes, you can feel Pixar leaning in. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Vizcarrondo)

Portrait of Jason Nearly half a century ago, Shirley Clarke’s documentary “portrait” of one rather flaming real-life personality — not just gay, but African American, too — seemed unprecedentedly exotic. The latest in Milestone Films’ “Project Shirley” series of restored Clarke re-releases, Portrait of Jason can’t be experienced that way now. Any surviving exoticism is now related to the subject’s defining a certain pre Stonewall camp persona, and the movie’s reflecting a 1960s cinema vérité style of which its director was a major proponent. The setup couldn’t be simpler: we spend 12 hours in the company of Jason Holliday, née Aaron Payne. Or rather, Clarke and her then-partner, actor Carl Lee, spend those hours — from 9 pm to 9 am — with Jason, while we get a 107-minute distillation. Nattily attired, waving a cigarette around while downing an epic lineup of cocktails, Jason is a natural performer who relishes this filmic showcase as “my moment.” No matter what, he says, he will now “have one beautiful something that is my own.” At first Clarke and Lee simply let him riff, prompting him to speak calculated outrages they’ve probably already heard. (“What do you do for a living, Jason?” “I’m a … I’m a stone whore. And I’m not ashamed of it.”) He’s indeed the life of his own party — increasingly smashed as wee hours encroach in Clarke’s Chelsea Hotel room — but there’s a certain desperation to this act that she and particularly Lee eventually pounce on. “Nervous and guilty and simple as I am,” Jason’s braggadocio camouflages a self-loathing he’s just as willing to expose. When actual tears-of-a-clown are shed, the filmmakers seem cruel. Still, the “portrait” is incomplete — Clarke and Lee don’t press their subject to explicate the past spousal abuse, suicide attempt, and “nuthouse” and jail stays he drops into conversation as casually as he mentions a friendship with Miles Davis. (1:47) Roxie. (Harvey)

Prince Avalanche It has been somewhat hard to connect the dots between David Gordon Green the abstract-narrative indie poet (2000’s George Washington, 2003’s All the Real Girls) and DGG the mainstream Hollywood comedy director (2008’s Pineapple Express, yay; 2011’s Your Highness and The Sitter, nay nay nay). But here he brings those seemingly irreconcilable personas together, and they make very sweet music indeed. Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch play two men — one a fussy, married grown-up, another a short-attention-spanned manchild — spending the summer in near-total isolation, painting yellow divider lines on recently fire-damaged Texas roads. Their very different personalities clash, and at first the tone seems more conventionally broad than that of the 2011 Icelandic minimalist-comedy (Either Way) this revamp is derived from. But Green has a great deal up his sleeve — gorgeous widescreen imagery, some inspired wordless montages, and a well-earned eventual warmth — that makes the very rare US remake that improves upon its European predecessor. (1:34) Roxie. (Harvey)

Red 2 Are blockbusters entitled to senior moments? Even the best can fail the test — and coast along on past glories on their way to picking up their checks — as Red 2 makes the fatal error of skimping on the grunt work of basic storytelling to simply take up where the first installment on these “retired, extremely dangerous” ex-black ops killers left off. Master hitman Frank (Bruce Willis) and his girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) are semi-contentedly nesting in suburbia when acid-damaged cohort Marvin (John Malkovich) warns them that they’re about to get dragged back into the life. Turns out the cold war isn’t quite as iced out as we all thought, and a portable nuclear device, the brainchild of a physicist (Anthony Hopkins) once in Frank and Marvin’s care, just might be in Moscow. Good-old-days-style high jinks ensue, along with the arrival of old chums like Victoria (Helen Mirren), former flames such as Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and new-gen assassins like Han (Byung-hun Lee). Plus, jet-setting, and the deaths of many, many nameless soldiers, goons, and Iranian embassy staffers (almost all played for laughs, as cued by the comic book-y intertitles). A pity that the thrown-together-ish, throwback story line — somewhat reminiscent of those trashy, starry ’60s clusters, like the original 1960 Ocean’s Eleven — lazily relies on the assumption that we care a jot about the Frank and Sarah romance (the latter now an stereotypically whiny quasi-spouse) and that Frank can essentially talk any killer into joining him out of, er, professional courtesy or basic human decency. Wasting the thoroughbred cast on hand, particularly in the form of Mirren and Hopkins, one wishes the makers had only had the professional courtesy not to phone this effort in. (1:56) Metreon. (Chun)

The Smurfs 2 (1:45) Metreon.

The Spectacular Now The title suggests a dreamy, fireworks-inflected celebration of life lived in the present tense, but in this depiction of a stalled-out high school senior’s last months of school, director James Ponsoldt (2012’s Smashed) opts for a more guarded, uneasy treatment. Charming, likable, underachieving, and bright enough to frustrate the adults in his corner, Sutter (Miles Teller, 2012’s Project X) has long since managed to turn aimlessness into a philosophical practice, having chosen the path of least resistance and alcohol-fueled unaccountability. His mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), raising him solo since the departure of a father (Kyle Chandler) whose memories have acquired — for Sutter, at least — a blurry halo effect, describes him as full of both love and possible greatness, but he settles for the blessings of social fluidity and being an adept at the acquisition of beer for fellow underage drinkers. When he meets and becomes romantically involved with Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a sweet, unpolished classmate at the far reaches of his school’s social spectrum, it’s unclear whether the impact of their relationship will push him, or her, or both into a new trajectory, and the film tracks their progress with a watchful, solicitous eye. Adapted for the screen by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (2009’s 500 Days of Summer) from a novel by Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now gives the quirky pop cuteness of Summer a wide berth, steering straight into the heart of awkward adolescent striving and mishap. (1:35) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

This Is the End It’s a typical day in Los Angeles for Seth Rogen as This Is the End begins. Playing a version of himself, the comedian picks up pal and frequent co-star Jay Baruchel at the airport. Since Jay hates LA, Seth welcomes him with weed and candy, but all good vibes fizzle when Rogen suggests hitting up a party at James Franco’s new mansion. Wait, ugh, Franco? And Jonah Hill will be there? Nooo! Jay ain’t happy, but the revelry — chockablock with every Judd Apatow-blessed star in Hollywood, plus a few random inclusions (Rihanna?) — is great fun for the audience. And likewise for the actors: world, meet Michael Cera, naughty coke fiend. But stranger things are afoot in This Is the End. First, there’s a giant earthquake and a strange blue light that sucks passers-by into the sky. Then a fiery pit yawns in front of Casa Franco, gobbling up just about everyone in the cast who isn’t on the poster. Dudes! Is this the worst party ever — or the apocalypse? The film — co-written and directed by Rogen and longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg — relies heavily on Christian imagery to illustrate the endtimes; the fact that both men and much of their cast is Jewish, and therefore marked as doomed by Bible-thumpers, is part of the joke. But of course, This Is the End has a lot more to it than religious commentary; there’s also copious drug use, masturbation gags, urine-drinking, bromance, insult comedy, and all of the uber-meta in-jokes fans of its stars will appreciate. (1:46) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

20 Feet From Stardom Singing the praises of those otherwise neglected backup vocalists who put the soul into that Wall of Sound, brought heft to “Young Americans,” and lent real fury to “Gimme Shelter,” 20 Feet From Stardom is doing the rock ‘n’ roll true believer’s good work. Director Morgan Neville follows a handful of mainly female, mostly African American backing vocal legends, charts their skewed career trajectories as they rake in major credits and keep working long after one-hit wonders are forgotten (the Waters family) but fail to make their name known to the public (Merry Clayton), grasp Grammy approval yet somehow fail to follow through (Lisa Fischer), and keep narrowly missing the prize (Judith Hill) as label recording budgets shrivel and the tastes, technology, and the industry shift. Neville gives these industry pros and soulful survivors in a rocked-out, sample-heavy, DIY world their due on many levels, covering the low-coverage minis, Concert for Bangladesh high points, gossipy rumors, and sheer love for the blend that those intertwined voices achieve. One wishes the director had done more than simply touch in the backup successes out there, like Luther Vandross, and dug deeper to break down the reasons Fischer succumbed to the sophomore slump. But one can’t deny the passion in the voices he’s chosen to follow — and the righteous belief the Neville clearly has in his subjects, especially when, like Hill, they are ready to pick themselves up and carry on after being told they’re not “the Voice.” (1:30) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

2 Guns Rob a bank of cartel cash, invade a naval base, and then throw down against government heavies — you gotta expect to find a few bullet-hole-sized gaps in the play-by-play of 2 Guns. The action flick is riddled with fun-sized pleasures — usually centered on the playful banter and effortless chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg — and the clever knot of a narrative throws a twist or two in, before director Baltasar Kormákur (last year’s Wahlberg vehicle Contraband) simply surrenders to the tidal pull of action. After visiting Mexican mafia kingpin Papi (Edward James Olmos) and finding the head of their contact in a bag, Bobby (Washington) and Stig (Wahlberg) decide to hit Papi where he’ll feel it: the small border bank where his men have been making drops to safe deposit boxes. Much like Bobby and Stig’s breakfast-time diner gab fest, which seems to pick up where Vincent and Jules left off in Pulp Fiction (1994), as they trade barbs, truisms, and tells, there’s more going on than simply bank robbery foreplay. Both are involved for different reasons: Bobby is an undercover DEA agent, and Stig is a masquerading navy officer. When the payout is 10 times the expected size, not only do Papi, Bobby’s contact Deb (Paula Patton), and Stig’s superior Quince (James Marsden) come calling, but so does mystery man Earl (Bill Paxton), who seems to be obsessed with following the money. We know, sort of, what’s in it for Bobby — all fully identifiable charm, as befits Washington, who makes it rain charisma with the lightest of touches. But Stig? The others? The lure of a major payday is supposed to sweep away all other loyalties, except a little bromantic bonding between two rogue sharp shooters, saddled, unfortunately, with not the sharpest of story lines. (1:49) Metreon. (Chun)

The Way, Way Back Duncan (Liam James) is 14, and if you remember being that age you remember the awkwardness, the ambivalence, and the confusion that went along with it. Duncan’s mother (Toni Collette) takes him along for an “important summer” with her jerky boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell) — and despite being the least important guy at the summer cottage, Duncan’s only marginally sympathetic. Most every actor surrounding him plays against type (Rob Corddry is an unfunny, whipped husband; Allison Janney is a drunk, desperate divorcee), and since the cast is a cattle call for anyone with indie cred, you’ll wonder why they’re grouped for such a dull movie. Writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash previously wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for 2011’s The Descendants, but The Way, Way Back doesn’t match that film’s caliber of intelligent, dry wit. Cast members take turns resuscitating the movie, but only Sam Rockwell saves the day, at least during the scenes he’s in. Playing another lovable loser, Rockwell’s Owen dropped out of life and into a pattern of house painting and water-park management in the fashion of a conscientious objector. Owen is antithetical to Trent’s crappy example of manhood, and raises his water wing to let Duncan in. The short stint Duncan has working at Water Wizz is a blossoming that leads to a minor romance (with AnnaSophia Robb) and a major confrontation with Trent, some of which is affecting, but none of which will help you remember the movie after credits roll. (1:42) Metreon, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

We’re the Millers After weekly doses on the flat-screen of Family Guy, Modern Family, and the like, it’s about time movieland’s family comedies got a little shot of subversion — the aim, it seems, of We’re the Millers. Scruffy dealer David (Jason Sudeikis) is shambling along — just a little wistful that he didn’t grow up and climb into the Suburban with the wife, two kids, and the steady 9-to-5 because he’s a bit lonely, much like the latchkey nerd Kenny (Will Poulter) who lives in his apartment building, and neighboring stripper Rose (Jennifer Aniston), who bites his head off at the mailbox. When David tries to be upstanding and help out crust punk runaway Casey (Emma Roberts), who’s getting roughed up for her iPhone, he instead falls prey to the robbers and sinks into a world of deep doo-doo with former college bud, and supplier of bud, Brad (Ed Helms). The only solution: play drug mule and transport a “smidge and a half” of weed across the Mexican-US border. David’s supposed cover: do the smuggling in an RV with a hired crew of randoms: Kenny, Casey, and Rose&sdquo; all posing as an ordinary family unit, the Millers. Yes, it’s that much of a stretch, but the smart-ass script is good for a few chortles, and the cast is game to go there with the incest, blow job, and wife-swapping jokes. Of course, no one ever states the obvious fact, all too apparent for Bay Area denizens, undermining the premise of We’re the Millers: who says dealers and strippers can’t be parents, decent or otherwise? We may not be the Millers, but we all know families aren’t what they used to be, if they ever really managed to hit those Leave It to Beaver standards. Fingers crossed for the cineplex — maybe movies are finally catching on. (1:49) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Wolverine James Mangold’s contribution to the X-Men film franchise sidesteps the dizzy ambition of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, opting instead for a sleek, mostly smart genre piece. This movie takes its basics from the 1982 Wolverine series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, a stark dramatic comic, but can’t avoid the convoluted, bad sci-fi plot devices endemic to the X-Men films. The titular mutant with the healing factor and adamantium-laced skeleton travels to Tokyo, to say farewell to a dying man who he rescued at the bombing of Nagasaki. But the dying man’s sinister oncologist has other plans, sapping Wolverine of his healing powers as he faces off against ruthless yakuza and scads of ninjas. The movie’s finest moments come when Mangold pays attention to context, taking superhero or Western movie clichés and revamping them for the modern Tokyo setting, such as a thrilling duel on top of a speeding bullet train. Another highlight: Rila Fukushima’s refreshing turn as badass bodyguard Yukio. Oh, and stay for the credits. (2:06) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Sam Stander) *

 

Elaborating tradition

Michael Redmond
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Elaborating tradition

THEATER The idea of traditional dance as somehow frozen in time or resistant to modernity is a canard that received a thorough going-over at last weekend’s Performing Diaspora Symposium, which kicks off the Performing Diaspora series at CounterPULSE.

Attending to tradition while moving freely beyond it remains a hallmark of the artists gathered in the annual series. Joti Singh is a good example. Dancer-choreographer Singh — whose Red, Saffron and Green premieres this weekend — grew up in the American South with parents who hailed from northern India. One way she absorbed her family’s Indian culture was through training in Punjabi dances that, as an adult, she began blending with West African styles.

Singh’s Red, Saffron and Green is a celebratory accounting of the Gandar party, founded in 1913 San Francisco by Punjabi activists organizing on behalf of Indian independence from Great Britain. Singh’s own great-grandfather served for a time as the party’s president. Her innovative blend of performance styles thus could be considered a natural vehicle for a story that is transnational, local, and familial at once — indeed a historically astute expression of the elaborate nature of diasporic identity and of the personal as political.

The CounterPULSE series expresses an ongoing commitment to ethnic and traditional forms as a vital area of innovation and conversation in the larger world of dance. Its title, meanwhile, flags two overlapping impulses in presenting the broad range of work: the desire to highlight diasporic communities as important producers of performance; and a focus on dance as a channel of expression, investigation, and community-building for diasporic cultures, whether those cultures are borne by first-generation immigrants or their American-reared great-grandchildren.

Animating the daylong symposium (available as a podcast on the CounterPULSE website) were three panels featuring distinguished guests and at least one artist from the series — the absorbing Congolese dance-theater performer and choreographer Byb Chanel Bibene, who spoke to the harrowing experience, and body memory, of civil war that informs his Taboos and Heroes (running this weekend) in the first panel’s exploration of diasporic dance derived from the experience of genocide and war.

On the same panel, Cambodian dancer-choreographer Chey Chankethya spoke to the “silence” confronting the children of genocide survivors, and the physicalizing of that unspoken trauma in the body. Jazz tap dancer and vocal improviser Germaine Ingram spoke as an African American concerned with the legacy of slavery and dispossession, adding that it is the space for expression in even the most oppressive conditions that exercises her creative imagination. “I consider my work not so much about trauma as agency,” she emphasized.

The following two panels covered the challenges of “representing Africa” in the changing heterodox world of Bay Area African dance — which generated some lively and straightforward talk during the audience Q&A — and the presentation of sacred dance as performance for general audiences.

There were also bursts of live performance and music (in particular, from Ingram and master drummer and Bay Area legend CK Ladzekpo, of UC Berkeley and the Ghana National Dance Ensemble, who joined the panel on “Spirit Moves: Sacred Dance Onstage”). Meanwhile, Singh led an interactive “experiential lecture/demonstration” on Punjabi Bhangra dance that had the audience up and on the dancefloor, moving in ecstatic unison for the better part of an hour.

In all, the event generated a lot of productive questions and considerable momentum for the fifth annual Performing Diaspora series (this year curated by Roko Kawai, Lily Kharrazi, and Umi Vaughan), which features work-in-progress showings from six individual artists over two weeks. The varied stories and distinctive aesthetic styles on display amount to a unique tribute to the cultural persistence and improvisation that make up life in the diaspora. *

PERFORMING DIASPORA

Through Aug. 25

Thu-Sun, 8pm, $22-$32

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

counterpulse.org/performing-diaspora

 

Film Listings: August 14 – 20, 2013

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

OPENING

Adjust Your Tracking: The Untold Story of the VHS Collector See “Midsummer Mayhem.” (1:24) Balboa.

The Artist and the Model The horror of the blank page, the raw sensuality of marble, and the fresh-meat attraction of a new model — just a few of the starting points for this thoughtful narrative about an elderly sculptor finding and shaping his possibly finest and final muse. Bedraggled and homeless beauty Mercè (Aida Folch) washes up in a small French town in the waning days of World War II and is taken in by a kindly woman (Claudia Cardinale), who seems intent on pleasantly pimping her out as a nude model to her artist husband (Jean Rochefort). As his former model, she knows Mercè has the type of body he likes — and that she’s capable of restoring his powers, in more ways than one, if you know what I mean. Yet this film by Fernando Trueba (1992’s Belle Époque) isn’t that kind of movie, with those kinds of models, especially when Mercè turns out to have more on her mind than mere pleasure. Done up in a lustrous, sunlit black and white that recalls 1957’s Wild Strawberries, The Artist and the Model instead offers a steady, respectful, and loving peek into a process, and unique relationship, with just a touch of poetry. (1:41) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

Blue Exorcist: The Movie Though it’s spawned from Kazue Kato’s manga-turned-TV-series, familiarity with the source material is not necessary to enjoy Blue Exorcist: The Movie‘s supernatural charms. Set in True Cross Academy Town — named for the Hogwarts-ish school of exorcism at its center — the film opens with a folk tale about an adorable demon that wrecked an entire town by turning all of its inhabitants into lazy slackers. The creature was eventually captured, but nobody knows where it’s been hiding — until boyish exorcist-in-training Rin, half-demon himself, encounters a suspiciously adorable critter while chasing yet another demon, this one huge and prone to damaging city blocks (and cracking open things that should remain sealed in the process). Trouble ahead! Blue Exorcist does contain some yep-this-is-anime moments (there’s a powerful female exorcist … who wears a tiny bikini top that barely contains her enormous bazongas), but it’s mostly fun fantasy, with a sly sense of humor (“Let’s put a beatdown on these Tokyo demons!”) and some endearingly flawed heroes. (1:28) Four Star. (Eddy)

Drug War See “Midsummer Mayhem.” (1:45) Four Star, Metreon.

Europa Report See “Midsummer Mayhem.” (1:30) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

In a World… Lake Bell (Childrens Hospital, How to Make It in America) writes, directs, and stars in this comedy about a women who sets her sights on a career in movie-trailer voiceovers. (1:33) Shattuck.

Jobs Yep, it’s that biopic, in which Ashton Kutcher portrays Apple CEO Steve Jobs. (2:02) Presidio.

Kick-Ass 2 Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moritz) and company return in this sequel to the 2010 superhero hit. (1:43) California.

Lee Daniels’ The Butler Forest Whitaker stars as the White House’s longtime butler in this based-on-a-true-story tale, with the added bonus of some creative POTUS casting (John Cusack as Richard Nixon; Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan; Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower). (1:53) Balboa, Marina, Piedmont.

Paranoia A young go-getter (Liam Hemsworth) gets drawn into the world of corporate espionage thanks to a feud between evil tech billionaires (Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman). (1:46)

Portrait of Jason See “Real to Reel.” (1:47) Roxie.

ONGOING

The Act of Killing What does Anwar Congo — a man who has brutally strangled hundreds of people with piano wire — dream about? As Joshua Oppenheimer’s Indonesia-set documentary The Act of Killing discovers, there’s a thin line between a guilty conscience and a haunted psyche, especially for an admitted killer who’s never been held accountable for anything. In fact, Congo has lived as a hero in North Sumatra for decades — along with scores of others who participated in the country’s ruthless anti-communist purge in the mid-1960s. In order to capture this surreal state of affairs, Oppenheimer zeroes in on a few subjects — like the cheerful Congo, fond of flashy clothes, and the theatrical Herman Koto — and a method, spelled out by The Act of Killing‘s title card: “The killers proudly told us stories about what they did. To understand why, we asked them to create scenes in whatever ways they wished.” Because Congo and company are huge movie buffs, they chose to recreate their crimes with silver-screen flourish. There are costumes and gory make-up. There are props: a stuffed tiger, a dummy torso with a detachable head. There are dancing girls. Most importantly, however, there are mental consequences, primarily for Congo, whose emotional fragility escalates as the filming continues — resulting in an unforgettable, at-times mind-blowing viewing experience. (1:55) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Attack After an explosion in Tel Aviv kills 17, respected surgeon Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman of 2005’s Paradise Now) — an Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, who deflects moments like a bleeding man on his operating table gasping, “I want another doctor!” with a certain amount of practiced detachment — is called to ID a body nestled in the morgue of his hospital. It’s his wife, Siham (Reymonde Amsellem, seen in flashbacks) — the apparent suicide bomber. Amin can’t believe it, but Israeli officers sure do, and the doctor is interrogated for hours about his wife’s alleged terrorist leanings and her suspicious behavior in the days leading up to the attack. When Siham’s involvement in the bombing is confirmed, Amin visits family in the West Bank, intent on discovering more about her secret fundamentalism and answering one simple question: “Why?” Emotions and tension run high as he digs into a world that’s been carefully constructed to keep unsympathetic parties from obtaining access. Lebanese-born director Ziad Doueiri, directing from a script he co-wrote from the 2008 novel by Yasmina Khadra (former Algerian army major Mohammed Moulessehoul, who wrote under his wife’s name to evade military censorship), delivers a suspenseful tale that offers new perspective on the Palestine-Israel divide. (1:42) Shattuck. (Eddy)

Blackfish The 911 call placed from SeaWorld Orlando on February 24, 2010 imparted a uniquely horrific emergency: “A whale has eaten one of the trainers.” That revelation opens Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s Blackfish, a powerful doc that offers a compelling argument against keeping orcas in captivity, much less making them do choreographed tricks in front of tourists at Shamu Stadium. Whale experts, former SeaWorld employees, and civilian eyewitnesses step forward to illuminate an industry that seemingly places a higher value on profits than it does on safety — skewed priorities that made headlines after veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by Tilikum, a massive bull who’d been involved in two prior deaths. Though SeaWorld refused to speak with Cowperthwaite on camera, they recently released a statement calling Blackfish “shamefully dishonest, deliberately misleading, and scientifically inaccurate” — read the filmmaker’s response to SeaWorld’s criticisms at film blog Indiewire, or better yet, see this important, eye-opening film yourself and draw your own conclusions. (1:30) SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Blue Jasmine The good news about Blue Jasmine isn’t that it’s set in San Francisco, but that it’s Woody Allen’s best movie in years. Although some familiar characteristics are duly present, it’s not quite like anything he’s done before, and carries its essentially dramatic weight more effectively than he’s managed in at least a couple decades. Not long ago Jasmine (a fearless Cate Blanchett) was the quintessential Manhattan hostess, but that glittering bubble has burst — exactly how revealed in flashbacks that spring surprises up to the script’s end. She crawls to the West Coast to “start over” in the sole place available where she won’t be mortified by the pity of erstwhile society friends. That would be the SF apartment of Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a fellow adoptive sister who was always looked down on by comparison to pretty, clever Jasmine. Theirs is an uneasy alliance — but Ginger’s too big-hearted to say no. It’s somewhat disappointing that Blue Jasmine doesn’t really do much with San Francisco. Really, the film could take place anywhere — although setting it in a non-picture-postcard SF does bolster the film’s unsettled, unpredictable air. Without being an outright villain, Jasmine is one of the least likable characters to carry a major US film since Noah Baumbach’s underrated Margot at the Wedding (2007); the general plot shell, moreover, is strongly redolent of A Streetcar Named Desire. But whatever inspiration Allen took from prior works, Blue Jasmine is still distinctively his own invention. It’s frequently funny in throwaway performance bits, yet disturbing, even devastating in cumulative impact. (1:38) Albany, Clay, Metreon, Piedmont. (Harvey)

The Canyons Now that “train wreck” is an official celebrity category popular media ignore at their peril, certain people and projects are deemed doomed automatically. Lindsay Lohan can’t redeem herself — she’d lose her entertainment value by regaining any respect. Ergo, The Canyons was earmarked as a disaster from the outset. How could it be otherwise, with the former Disney luminary co-starring opposite porn superstar James Deen in an envelope-pushing screenplay from literary bad boy Bret Eaton Ellis (Less Than Zero, American Psycho)? Lohan’s widely reported difficulty on set only heightened a sense that The Canyons would be a pretentious, full-frontal crapfest. But The Canyons isn’t exactly bad. Instead, it’s a middling exercise in upscale erotic-thrillerdom, beautifully crafted (on a Kickstarter dime), clever yet superficial in terms of psychological depth. Ellis trades on his usual themes of corrosive privilege, sex, and violence to deliver a rather simplistic if sardonic lesson in Hollywood amorality that director Paul Schrader angles toward credibility, turning the film into a stern, chilly, minimalist exercise in psychological suspense. A little underwhelming at first (in part because Lohan’s performance is little wobbly, Deen’s a tad one-note), it actually improves with repeat viewings. (1:40) Roxie. (Harvey)

The Conjuring Irony can be so overrated. Paying tribute to those dead-serious ’70s-era accounts of demonic possession — like 1973’s The Exorcist, which seemed all the scarier because it were based on supposedly real-life events — the sober Conjuring runs the risk of coming off as just more Catholic propaganda, as so many exorcism-is-the-cure creepers can be. But from the sound of the long-coming development of this project — producer Tony DeRosa-Grund had apparently been wanting to make the movie for more than a dozen years — 2004’s Saw and 2010’s Insidious director James Wan was merely applying the same careful dedication to this story’s unfolding as those that came before him, down to setting it in those groovy VW van-borne ’70s that saw more families torn apart by politics and cultural change than those ever-symbolic demonic forces. This time, the narrative framework is built around the paranormal investigators, clairvoyant Lorraine Warren (Vera Farmiga) and demonologist Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson), rather than the victims: the sprawling Perron family, which includes five daughters all ripe for possession or haunting, it seems. The tale of two families opens with the Warrens hard at work on looking into creepy dolls and violent possessions, as Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and Roger Perron (Ron Livingston) move into a freezing old Victorian farmhouse. A very eerie basement is revealed, and hide-and-seek games become increasingly creepy, as Carolyn finds unexplained bruises on her body, one girl is tugged by the foot in the night, and another takes on a new invisible pal. The slow, scary build is the achievement here, with Wan admirably handling the flow of the scares, which go from no-budg effects and implied presences that rely on the viewer’s imagination, to turns of the screws that will have audiences jumping in their seats. Even better are the performances by The Conjuring‘s dueling mothers, in the trenches of a genre that so often flirts with misogyny: each battling the specter of maternal filicide, Farmiga and Taylor infuse their parts with an empathetic warmth and wrenching intensity, turning this bewitched horror throwback into a kind of women’s story. (1:52) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Despicable Me 2 The laughs come quick and sweet now that Gru (Steve Carell) has abandoned his super-villainy to become a dad and “legitimate businessman” — though he still applies world-class gravitas to everyday events. (His daughter’s overproduced birthday party is a riot of medieval festoonage.) But like all the best reformed baddies, the Feds, or in this case the Anti-Villain League, recruit him to uncover the next international arch-nemesis. Now a spy, he gets a goofy but highly competent partner (Kristen Wiig) and a cupcake shop at the mall to facilitate sniffing out the criminal. This sequel surpasses the original in charm, cleverness, and general lovability, and it’s not just because they upped the number of minion-related gags, or because Wiig joined the cast; she ultimately gets the short end of the stick as the latecomer love-interest (her spy gadgets are also just so-so). However, Carell kills it as Gru 2 — his faux-Russian accent and awkward timing are more lived-in. Maybe the jokes are about more familiar stuff (like the niggling disappointments of family life) but they’re also sharper and more surprising. And though the minions seemed like one-trick ponies in the first film, those gibberish-talking jellybeans outdo themselves in the sequel’s climax. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Vizcarrondo)

Elysium By the year 2154, the one percent will all have left Earth’s polluted surface for Elysium, a luxurious space station where everyone has access to high-tech machines that can heal any wound or illness in a matter of seconds. Among the grimy masses in burned-out Los Angeles, where everyone speaks a mixture of Spanish and English, factory worker Max (Matt Damon) is trying to put his car-thief past behind him — and maybe pursue something with the childhood sweetheart (Alice Braga) he’s recently reconnected with. Meanwhile, up on Elysium, icy Secretary of Defense Delacourt (Jodie Foster, speaking in French and Old Hollywood-accented English) rages against immigration, even planning a government takeover to prevent any more “illegals” from slipping aboard. Naturally, the fates of Max and Delacourt will soon intertwine, with “brain to brain data transfers,” bionic exo-skeletons, futuristic guns, life-or-death needs for Elysium’s medical miracles, and some colorful interference by a sword-wielding creeper of a sleeper agent (Sharlto Copley) along the way. In his first feature since 2009’s apartheid-themed District 9, South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp once again turns to obvious allegory to guide his plot. If Elysium‘s message is a bit heavy-handed, it’s well-intentioned, and doesn’t take away from impressive visuals (mercifully rendered in 2D) or Damon’s committed performance. (2:00) Balboa, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Fruitvale Station By now you’ve heard of Fruitvale Station, the debut feature from Oakland-born filmmaker Ryan Coogler. With a cast that includes Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer and rising star Michael B. Jordan (The Wire, Friday Night Lights), the film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, winning both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize en route to being scooped up for distribition by the Weinstein Company. A few months later, Coogler, a USC film school grad who just turned 27, won Best First Film at Cannes. Accolades are nice, especially when paired with a massive PR push from a studio known for bringing home little gold men. But particularly in the Bay Area, the true story behind Fruitvale Station eclipses even the most glowing pre-release hype. The film opens with real footage captured by cell phones the night 22-year-old Oscar Grant was shot in the back by BART police, a tragedy that inspired multiple protests and grabbed national headlines. With its grim ending already revealed, Fruitvale Station backtracks to chart Oscar’s final hours, with a deeper flashback or two fleshing out the troubled past he was trying to overcome. Mostly, though, Fruitvale Station is very much a day in the life, with Oscar (Jordan, in a nuanced performance) dropping off his girlfriend at work, picking up supplies for a birthday party, texting friends about New Year’s Eve plans, and deciding not to follow through on a drug sale. Inevitably, much of what transpires is weighted with extra meaning — Oscar’s mother (Spencer) advising him to “just take the train” to San Francisco that night; Oscar’s tender interactions with his young daughter; the death of a friendly stray dog, hit by a car as BART thunders overhead. It’s a powerful, stripped-down portrait that belies Coogler’s rookie-filmmaker status. (1:24) California, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Hannah Arendt New German Cinema’s Margarethe von Trotta (1975’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1986’s Rosa Luxemburg) delivers this surprisingly dull biopic about the great German-Jewish political theorist and the heated controversy around her New Yorker article (and subsequent book) about Israel’s 1961 trial of Nazi Adolph Eichmann. Played with dignified, slightly vulnerable countenance by the inimitable Barbara Sukowa, Arendt travels from her teaching job and cozy expat circles in New York to Jerusalem for the trial. There she comes face to face with the “banality of evil” in Eichmann, the petty careerist of the Holocaust, forcing her to “try and reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds.” This led her to further insights into the nature of modern society, and triggered a storm of outrage and vitriol — in particular from the Commentary crowd of future neocons — all of which is clearly of relevance today, and the impetus for von Trotta’s revisiting this famous episode. But the film is too mannered, too slick, too formulaic —burdened by a television-friendly combination of posture and didacticism, and bon mots from famous and about famous figures in intellectual and literary history to avoid being leaden and tedious. A mainstream film, in other words, for a very unconventional personality and dissident intellectual. While not exactly evil, there’s something dispiriting in so much banality. (1:49) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Robert Avila)

The Heat First things first: I hated Bridesmaids (2011). Even the BFF love fest between Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig couldn’t wash away the bad taste of another wolf pack in girl’s clothing. Dragging and dropping women into dude-ly storylines is at best wonky and at worst degrading, but The Heat finds an alternate route. Its women are unlikable; you don’t root for them, and you’re not hoping they become princesses because such horrifying awkwardness can only be redeemed by a prince. In Bridesmaids and Heat director Paul Feig’s universe, friendship saves the day. Sandra Bullock is Murtaugh to Melissa McCarthy’s Riggs, with tidy Bullock angling for a promotion and McCarthy driving a busted hoopty through Boston like she’s in Grand Theft Auto. Circumstances conspire to bring them together on a case, in one of many elements lifted from traditional buddy-cop storylines. But! The jokes are constant, pelting, and whiz by like so much gunfire. In one running gag, a low-rung villain’s worst insult is telling the women they look old — but neither character is bothered by it. It’s refreshing to see embarrassment humor, so beloved by chick flicks, get taken down a peg by female leads who don’t particularly care what anyone thinks of them. (1:57) SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

The Hunt Mads Mikkelsen has the kind of face that is at once strikingly handsome and unconventional enough to get him typecast in villain roles. Like so many great foreign-accented actors, he got his big international break playing a bad guy in a James Bond film — as groin-torturing gambler Le Chiffre in 2006 franchise reviver Casino Royale. Currently, he’s creeping TV viewers out as a young Dr. Lecter on Hannibal. His ability to evoke both sympathy and a suspicion of otherness are particularly well deployed in Thomas Vinterberg’s very Danish The Hunt, which won Mikkelsen the Best Actor prize at Cannes last year. He plays Lucas, a lifelong small-town resident recently divorced from his son’s mother, and who currently works at the local kindergarten. One day one of his charges says something to the principal that suggests Lucas has exposed himself to her. Once the child’s misguided “confession” is made, Lucas’ boss immediately assumes the worst. She announces her assumptions at a parent-teachers meeting even before police can begin their investigation. By the time they have, the viral paranoia and suggestive “questioning” of other potential victims has created a full-on, massive pederasty scandal with no basis in truth whatsoever. The Hunt is a valuable depiction of child-abuse panic, in which there’s a collective jumping to drastic conclusions about one subject where everyone is judged guilty before being proven innocent. Its emotional engine is Lucas’ horror at the speed and extremity with which he’s ostracized by his own community — and its willingness to believe the worst about him on anecdotal evidence. Engrossing, nuanced, and twisty right up to the fade-out, The Hunt deftly questions one of our era’s defining public hysterias. (1:45) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Kid-Thing At last year’s Sundance Festival, Beasts of the Southern Wild rode its deserved attention all the way to the Oscars. Yet another, in some ways eerily similar Southern-wild-child tale — this latest by the Zellner Brothers, two things that are actually good about today’s Texas — was almost completely ignored. A pity, because it, too, is rather bizarre and inspired. Ten-year-old Annie (Sydney Aguirre) is a little terror running amok in the backwoods with scant-to-zero supervision by an airhead father (Nathan Zellner) much more interested in hanging with his equally dim sometime-demolition-derby-driver pal Caleb (David Zellner). Furious at a neglect she probably can’t even pinpoint as such, Annie acts out in all kinds of ways — from minor vandalism and crank calls to scaring local kids who don’t want to play with her anyway. Her clashing desire for company and resistance toward any authority reach a crisis when one day she hears a voice crying for help in the woods — an elderly woman (voiced by Susan Tyrell) has apparently fallen in a deep hole can’t get herself out of. The latter’s increasingly desperate pleas that Annie get outside assistance trigger mixed emotions in a child who’s at once sympathetic yet suspicious, because nothing in her own experience has taught her to trust adults making demands. This could have been played for grim tragic realism, but the Zellners still inject a large strain of absurdist humor even as they make Annie’s troubled psychology disturbingly vivid — greatly assisted by one helluva performance from wee Miss Aguirre (who could no doubt bring the wrath of God if circumstances necessitated). Though no one seems to be paying attention in commercial terms, these filmmakers are true originals who keep growing artistically in intriguing ways. Kid-Thing‘s belated week-long booking is one of those times when you just have to thank Zoroaster for a venue like the Roxie that’s willing to go out on a limb because a movie is just so damn interesting without necessarily being pleasant. (1:22) Roxie. (Harvey)

Lovelace We first meet Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) in 1970 as a slightly prudish 21-year-old living under the thumb of her strict Catholic parents (Robert Patrick, Sharon Stone) in suburban Florida. Then she meets Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard), a titty-bar owner and all-around swinging dude who turns her on to all kinds of stuff —including the how-not-to-gag-while-giving-a-b.j. trick that would rocket her to fame two years later. The vehicle for that was Deep Throat, a crudely made XXX feature that arrived at just the right time to ignite the “porn chic” vogue and break down censorship laws. (It grossed as much as $600 million, all of which disappeared into the pockets of mob financiers.) Halfway through Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s film, “Linda Lovelace” is basking in the glow of celebrity at a private screening orchestrated by Hugh Hefner (James Franco). At that point, however, the movie rewinds to present the dark underside of the Traynors’ marriage, in which (according to Linda several years later) she was regularly beaten, pimped, and kept a virtual prisoner. This second narrative feature from the Oscar-winning local documentarians is a much more straightforward biopic than 2010’s Howl. Andy Bellin’s script pretty much hews to the version of events put forward by the subject’s 1980 book Ordeal — an account still disputed in parts by some former associates. After a first section that’s a savvy, lively recreation of the Me Decade’s dawn (with particular attention to the era’s garish fashions and décor), film’s latter half turns into a somewhat one-note, familiar saga of domestic abuse, escape and recovery, albeit with a few very powerful scenes. The directors have assembled a great cast, with Juno Temple, Chris Noth, Hank Azaria, Wes Bentley, Eric Roberts, Bobby Cannavale, and Chloe Sevigny all turning up (sometimes unrecognizably) in supporting roles. For a different, fully contextualized take on a watershed moment in American cultural (and sexual) history, check out Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s excellent 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat. (1:32) Metreon. (Harvey)

Monsters University Seven-year-old Mike Wazowski is even more adorable than grown-up, Billy-Crystal-voiced Mike Wazowski. It’s a pity, then, that one of the big lessons Monsters University teaches is that the essence of monster-identity is how scary one is. What Mike loses in frightfulness he forcefully recovers in spunk, and after a trip to the scare floor that briskly reminds us the premise of 2001’s Monsters, Inc., mini-Mike becomes the first ever career-driven Pixar character. (For this, I love him.) We all know he eventually becomes a superstar in this scare-powered retro-verse, but first he has to overcome frat boy-inflicted embarrassment and flunk out of school. The most noteworthy thing about Pixar’s first prequel is how very massively its characters fail — it’s a lovely tilt that suggest the greatness of tomorrow begins when you overcome the failures of today. The administrators of Monsters University (in particular Helen Mirren’s dragon-lady Dean) require formal perfection in the scares they grade, but in the world of actual scarers, oddness and difference actually become advantages. It’s all theory but no rulebook. And doesn’t that sound like a good lesson from the studio that once proudly said “story is king,” yet now scrambles to meet Disney’s once-a-year feature demands? Such rigidity comes at a price. (1:50) SF Center. (Vizcarrondo)

Pacific Rim The fine print insists this film’s title is actually Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Pacific Rim (no apostrophe, guys?), but that fussy studio demand flies in the face of Pacific Rim‘s pursuit of pure, dumb fun. One is tempted to picture director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro plotting out the battle scenes using action figures — Godzillas vs. Transformers is more or less what’s at play here, and play is the operative word. Sure, the end of the world seems certain, thanks to an invading race of giant “Kaiju” who’ve started to adapt to Earth’s decades-long countermeasures (giant robot suits, piloted by duos whose minds are psychically linked), but there’s far too much goofy glee here for any real panic to accumulate. Charlie Hunnam is agreeable as the wounded hunk who’s humankind’s best hope for salvation, partnered with a rookie (Rinko Kikuchi) who’s eager, for her own reasons, to kick monster butt. Unoriginal yet key supporting roles are filled by Idris Elba (solemn, ass-kicking commander); Charlie Day (goofy science type); and Ron Perlman (flashy-dressing, black-market-dealing Kaiju expert). Pacific Rim may not transcend action-movie clichés or break much new ground (drinking game idea: gulp every time there’s an obvious reference or homage, be it to Toho or Bruckheimer), but damn if it doesn’t pair perfectly with popcorn. (2:11) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Planes Dane Cook voices a crop duster determined to prove he can do more than he was built for in Planes, the first Disney spin-off from a Pixar property. (Prior to the film’s title we see “From The World of Cars,” an indicator the film is an extension of a known universe — but also not quite from it.) And indeed, Planes resembles one of Pixar’s straight-to-DVD releases as it struggles for liftoff. Dreaming of speed, Dusty Crophopper (Cook) trains for the Wings Around the World race with his fuel-truck friend, Chug (Brad Garrett). A legacy playing Brewster McCloud and Wilbur Wright makes Stacy Keach a pitchy choice for Skipper, Dusty’s reluctant ex-military mentor. Charming cast choices buoy Planes somewhat, but those actors are feathers in a cap that hardly supports them — you watch the film fully aware of its toy potential: the race is a geography game; the planes are hobby sets; the cars will wind up. The story, about overcoming limitations, is in step with high-value parables Pixar proffers, though it feels shallower than usual. Perhaps toys are all Disney wants — although when Ishani (a sultry Priyanka Chopra) regrets an integrity-compromising choice she made in the race, and her pink cockpit lowers its eyes, you can feel Pixar leaning in. (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Vizcarrondo)

Prince Avalanche It has been somewhat hard to connect the dots between David Gordon Green the abstract-narrative indie poet (2000’s George Washington, 2003’s All the Real Girls) and DGG the mainstream Hollywood comedy director (2008’s Pineapple Express, yay; 2011’s Your Highness and The Sitter, nay nay nay). But here he brings those seemingly irreconcilable personas together, and they make very sweet music indeed. Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch play two men — one a fussy, married grown-up, another a short-attention-spanned manchild — spending the summer in near-total isolation, painting yellow divider lines on recently fire-damaged Texas roads. Their very different personalities clash, and at first the tone seems more conventionally broad than that of the 2011 Icelandic minimalist-comedy (Either Way) this revamp is derived from. But Green has a great deal up his sleeve — gorgeous widescreen imagery, some inspired wordless montages, and a well-earned eventual warmth — that makes the very rare US remake that improves upon its European predecessor. (1:34) Shattuck. (Harvey)

Red 2 Are blockbusters entitled to senior moments? Even the best can fail the test — and coast along on past glories on their way to picking up their checks — as Red 2 makes the fatal error of skimping on the grunt work of basic storytelling to simply take up where the first installment on these “retired, extremely dangerous” ex-black ops killers left off. Master hitman Frank (Bruce Willis) and his girlfriend Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) are semi-contentedly nesting in suburbia when acid-damaged cohort Marvin (John Malkovich) warns them that they’re about to get dragged back into the life. Turns out the cold war isn’t quite as iced out as we all thought, and a portable nuclear device, the brainchild of a physicist (Anthony Hopkins) once in Frank and Marvin’s care, just might be in Moscow. Good-old-days-style high jinks ensue, along with the arrival of old chums like Victoria (Helen Mirren), former flames such as Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and new-gen assassins like Han (Byung-hun Lee). Plus, jet-setting, and the deaths of many, many nameless soldiers, goons, and Iranian embassy staffers (almost all played for laughs, as cued by the comic book-y intertitles). A pity that the thrown-together-ish, throwback story line — somewhat reminiscent of those trashy, starry ’60s clusters, like the original 1960 Ocean’s Eleven — lazily relies on the assumption that we care a jot about the Frank and Sarah romance (the latter now an stereotypically whiny quasi-spouse) and that Frank can essentially talk any killer into joining him out of, er, professional courtesy or basic human decency. Wasting the thoroughbred cast on hand, particularly in the form of Mirren and Hopkins, one wishes the makers had only had the professional courtesy not to phone this effort in. (1:56) Metreon. (Chun)

The Smurfs 2 (1:45) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

The Spectacular Now The title suggests a dreamy, fireworks-inflected celebration of life lived in the present tense, but in this depiction of a stalled-out high school senior’s last months of school, director James Ponsoldt (2012’s Smashed) opts for a more guarded, uneasy treatment. Charming, likable, underachieving, and bright enough to frustrate the adults in his corner, Sutter (Miles Teller, 2012’s Project X) has long since managed to turn aimlessness into a philosophical practice, having chosen the path of least resistance and alcohol-fueled unaccountability. His mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh), raising him solo since the departure of a father (Kyle Chandler) whose memories have acquired — for Sutter, at least — a blurry halo effect, describes him as full of both love and possible greatness, but he settles for the blessings of social fluidity and being an adept at the acquisition of beer for fellow underage drinkers. When he meets and becomes romantically involved with Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a sweet, unpolished classmate at the far reaches of his school’s social spectrum, it’s unclear whether the impact of their relationship will push him, or her, or both into a new trajectory, and the film tracks their progress with a watchful, solicitous eye. Adapted for the screen by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (2009’s 500 Days of Summer) from a novel by Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now gives the quirky pop cuteness of Summer a wide berth, steering straight into the heart of awkward adolescent striving and mishap. (1:35) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Star Trek Into Darkness Do you remember 1982? There are more than a few echoes of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in J. J. Abrams’ second film retooling the classic sci-fi property’s characters and adventures. Darkness retains the 2009 cast, including standouts Zachary Quinto as Spock and Simon Pegg as comic-relief Scotty, and brings in Benedict “Sherlock” Cumberbatch to play the villain (I think you can guess which one). The plot mostly pinballs between revenge and preventing/circumventing the destruction of the USS Enterprise, with added post-9/11, post-Dark Knight (2008) terrorism connotations that are de rigueur for all superhero or fantasy-type blockbusters these days. But Darkness isn’t totally, uh, dark: there’s quite a bit of fan service at work here (speak Klingon? You’re in luck). Abrams knows what audiences want, and he’s more than happy to give it to ’em, sometimes opening up massive plot holes in the process — but never veering from his own Prime Directive: providing an enjoyable ride. (2:07) Metreon. (Eddy)

This Is the End It’s a typical day in Los Angeles for Seth Rogen as This Is the End begins. Playing a version of himself, the comedian picks up pal and frequent co-star Jay Baruchel at the airport. Since Jay hates LA, Seth welcomes him with weed and candy, but all good vibes fizzle when Rogen suggests hitting up a party at James Franco’s new mansion. Wait, ugh, Franco? And Jonah Hill will be there? Nooo! Jay ain’t happy, but the revelry — chockablock with every Judd Apatow-blessed star in Hollywood, plus a few random inclusions (Rihanna?) — is great fun for the audience. And likewise for the actors: world, meet Michael Cera, naughty coke fiend. But stranger things are afoot in This Is the End. First, there’s a giant earthquake and a strange blue light that sucks passers-by into the sky. Then a fiery pit yawns in front of Casa Franco, gobbling up just about everyone in the cast who isn’t on the poster. Dudes! Is this the worst party ever — or the apocalypse? The film — co-written and directed by Rogen and longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg — relies heavily on Christian imagery to illustrate the endtimes; the fact that both men and much of their cast is Jewish, and therefore marked as doomed by Bible-thumpers, is part of the joke. But of course, This Is the End has a lot more to it than religious commentary; there’s also copious drug use, masturbation gags, urine-drinking, bromance, insult comedy, and all of the uber-meta in-jokes fans of its stars will appreciate. (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Turbo It’s unclear whether the irony of coupling racing — long the purview of white southern NASCAR lovers — with an animated leap into “urban” South Central LA is lost on the makers of Turbo, but even if it is, they’re probably too busy dreaming of getting caught in the drift of Fast and Furious box office success to care much. After all, director David Soren, who came up with the original idea, digs into the main challenge — how does one make a snail’s life, before and after a certain magical makeover, at all visually compelling? — with a gusto that presumes that he’s fully aware of the delicious conundrums he’s set up for himself. Here, Theo (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) is your ordinary garden snail with big, big dreams — he wants to be a race car driver like ace Guy Gagne (Bill Hader). Those reveries threaten to distract him dangerously from his work at the plant, otherwise known as the tomato plant, in the garden where he and brother Chet (Paul Giamatti) live and toil. One day, however, Theo makes his way out of the garden and falls into the guts of a souped-up vehicle in the midst of a street race, gobbles a dose of nitrous oxide, and becomes a miraculous mini version of a high-powered race car. It takes a meeting with another dreamer, taco truck driver Tito (Michael Pena), for Theo, a.k.a. Turbo, to meet up with a crew of streetwise racing snails who overcome their physical limitations to get where they want to go (Samuel L. Jackson, Snoop Dogg, Maya Rudolph, Michael Bell). One viral video, several Snoop tracks, and one “Eye of the Tiger” remix later, the Indianapolis 500 is, amazingly, in Turbo’s headlights — though will Chet ever overcome his doubts and fears to get behind his bro? The hip-hop soundtrack, scrappy strip-mall setting, and voice cast go a long way to revving up and selling this Cinderella tall/small tale about the bottommost feeder in the food chain who dared to go big, and fast; chances are Turbo will cross over in more ways than one. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

20 Feet From Stardom Singing the praises of those otherwise neglected backup vocalists who put the soul into that Wall of Sound, brought heft to “Young Americans,” and lent real fury to “Gimme Shelter,” 20 Feet From Stardom is doing the rock ‘n’ roll true believer’s good work. Director Morgan Neville follows a handful of mainly female, mostly African American backing vocal legends, charts their skewed career trajectories as they rake in major credits and keep working long after one-hit wonders are forgotten (the Waters family) but fail to make their name known to the public (Merry Clayton), grasp Grammy approval yet somehow fail to follow through (Lisa Fischer), and keep narrowly missing the prize (Judith Hill) as label recording budgets shrivel and the tastes, technology, and the industry shift. Neville gives these industry pros and soulful survivors in a rocked-out, sample-heavy, DIY world their due on many levels, covering the low-coverage minis, Concert for Bangladesh high points, gossipy rumors, and sheer love for the blend that those intertwined voices achieve. One wishes the director had done more than simply touch in the backup successes out there, like Luther Vandross, and dug deeper to break down the reasons Fischer succumbed to the sophomore slump. But one can’t deny the passion in the voices he’s chosen to follow — and the righteous belief the Neville clearly has in his subjects, especially when, like Hill, they are ready to pick themselves up and carry on after being told they’re not “the Voice.” (1:30) Shattuck, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

2 Guns Rob a bank of cartel cash, invade a naval base, and then throw down against government heavies — you gotta expect to find a few bullet-hole-sized gaps in the play-by-play of 2 Guns. The action flick is riddled with fun-sized pleasures — usually centered on the playful banter and effortless chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg — and the clever knot of a narrative throws a twist or two in, before director Baltasar Kormákur (last year’s Wahlberg vehicle Contraband) simply surrenders to the tidal pull of action. After visiting Mexican mafia kingpin Papi (Edward James Olmos) and finding the head of their contact in a bag, Bobby (Washington) and Stig (Wahlberg) decide to hit Papi where he’ll feel it: the small border bank where his men have been making drops to safe deposit boxes. Much like Bobby and Stig’s breakfast-time diner gab fest, which seems to pick up where Vincent and Jules left off in Pulp Fiction (1994), as they trade barbs, truisms, and tells, there’s more going on than simply bank robbery foreplay. Both are involved for different reasons: Bobby is an undercover DEA agent, and Stig is a masquerading navy officer. When the payout is 10 times the expected size, not only do Papi, Bobby’s contact Deb (Paula Patton), and Stig’s superior Quince (James Marsden) come calling, but so does mystery man Earl (Bill Paxton), who seems to be obsessed with following the money. We know, sort of, what’s in it for Bobby — all fully identifiable charm, as befits Washington, who makes it rain charisma with the lightest of touches. But Stig? The others? The lure of a major payday is supposed to sweep away all other loyalties, except a little bromantic bonding between two rogue sharp shooters, saddled, unfortunately, with not the sharpest of story lines. (1:49) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Way, Way Back Duncan (Liam James) is 14, and if you remember being that age you remember the awkwardness, the ambivalence, and the confusion that went along with it. Duncan’s mother (Toni Collette) takes him along for an “important summer” with her jerky boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell) — and despite being the least important guy at the summer cottage, Duncan’s only marginally sympathetic. Most every actor surrounding him plays against type (Rob Corddry is an unfunny, whipped husband; Allison Janney is a drunk, desperate divorcee), and since the cast is a cattle call for anyone with indie cred, you’ll wonder why they’re grouped for such a dull movie. Writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash previously wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for 2011’s The Descendants, but The Way, Way Back doesn’t match that film’s caliber of intelligent, dry wit. Cast members take turns resuscitating the movie, but only Sam Rockwell saves the day, at least during the scenes he’s in. Playing another lovable loser, Rockwell’s Owen dropped out of life and into a pattern of house painting and water-park management in the fashion of a conscientious objector. Owen is antithetical to Trent’s crappy example of manhood, and raises his water wing to let Duncan in. The short stint Duncan has working at Water Wizz is a blossoming that leads to a minor romance (with AnnaSophia Robb) and a major confrontation with Trent, some of which is affecting, but none of which will help you remember the movie after credits roll. (1:42) California, Metreon, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

We’re the Millers After weekly doses on the flat-screen of Family Guy, Modern Family, and the like, it’s about time movieland’s family comedies got a little shot of subversion — the aim, it seems, of We’re the Millers. Scruffy dealer David (Jason Sudeikis) is shambling along — just a little wistful that he didn’t grow up and climb into the Suburban with the wife, two kids, and the steady 9-to-5 because he’s a bit lonely, much like the latchkey nerd Kenny (Will Poulter) who lives in his apartment building, and neighboring stripper Rose (Jennifer Aniston), who bites his head off at the mailbox. When David tries to be upstanding and help out crust punk runaway Casey (Emma Roberts), who’s getting roughed up for her iPhone, he instead falls prey to the robbers and sinks into a world of deep doo-doo with former college bud, and supplier of bud, Brad (Ed Helms). The only solution: play drug mule and transport a “smidge and a half” of weed across the Mexican-US border. David’s supposed cover: do the smuggling in an RV with a hired crew of randoms: Kenny, Casey, and Rose&sdquo; all posing as an ordinary family unit, the Millers. Yes, it’s that much of a stretch, but the smart-ass script is good for a few chortles, and the cast is game to go there with the incest, blow job, and wife-swapping jokes. Of course, no one ever states the obvious fact, all too apparent for Bay Area denizens, undermining the premise of We’re the Millers: who says dealers and strippers can’t be parents, decent or otherwise? We may not be the Millers, but we all know families aren’t what they used to be, if they ever really managed to hit those Leave It to Beaver standards. Fingers crossed for the cineplex — maybe movies are finally catching on. (1:49) California, Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Wolverine James Mangold’s contribution to the X-Men film franchise sidesteps the dizzy ambition of 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine and 2011’s X-Men: First Class, opting instead for a sleek, mostly smart genre piece. This movie takes its basics from the 1982 Wolverine series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, a stark dramatic comic, but can’t avoid the convoluted, bad sci-fi plot devices endemic to the X-Men films. The titular mutant with the healing factor and adamantium-laced skeleton travels to Tokyo, to say farewell to a dying man who he rescued at the bombing of Nagasaki. But the dying man’s sinister oncologist has other plans, sapping Wolverine of his healing powers as he faces off against ruthless yakuza and scads of ninjas. The movie’s finest moments come when Mangold pays attention to context, taking superhero or Western movie clichés and revamping them for the modern Tokyo setting, such as a thrilling duel on top of a speeding bullet train. Another highlight: Rila Fukushima’s refreshing turn as badass bodyguard Yukio. Oh, and stay for the credits. (2:06) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

World War Z Or, Brad Pitt saves the world from undead beings with rotted brains but super-sharp hearing. Somehow, Max Brooks’ innovative multi-character book — written in the form of interviews with survivors of a recent zombie outbreak — becomes by-the-numbers action horror in the hands of director Marc Forster (2008’s Quantum of Solace, a.k.a. that Bond movie nobody remembers), complete with credit sequence filled with real news reports of environmental disasters, global unrest, and even a little shout-out to that guy who ate another guy’s face off last year in Florida. No bath-salt jokes here, though; instead, we have Pitt playing a verrrry serious former UN investigator — former, because he quit to spend more time with his family, a promise he actually considers keeping even when the survival of the world hinges, apparently, on his very specific expertise. He jets around the world (South Korea! Israel! Wales?) in search of a cure, but it’s obvious from the beginning — when he escapes immediate death in the initial rampage with his picture-perfect wife (Mireille Enos) and two daughters — that he’ll eventually suss out a planet-saving solution. (Sorry, but if that’s a spoiler you’ve never seen a movie before.) A few nifty setpieces can’t save World War Z from more or less embodying the descriptor “meh,” with its undynamic 3D, uninspiring CG, and cobbled-together script, complete with reassuring final voice-over. And one more thing: for the love of flesh-ripping gore, can we please make this the last PG-13 zombie movie? (1:56) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy) *

 

Reel to real

Michael Redmond
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1
Reel to real

arts@sfbg.com

FILM At a moment when gay people and gay rights have never been more prominent — from the escalating numbers of states and countries permitting gay marriage to the controversy over Olympics-hosting Russia’s murky new anti-gay legislation — it’s hard to imagine the climate in which Portrait of Jason premiered in late 1967. The “new permissiveness” was just beginning to impact American cinema; soon there would be a small vogue of mainstream films addressing homosexuality in one way or another. But they would mostly be condescending, tragic, hostile and/or grotesquely comedic — you could argue there wasn’t a truly sympathetic Hollywood feature about a non-stereotypical gay relationship until 1982’s Making Love. (Which flopped, despite all publicity, and encouraged no imitations.)

Today it’s a common complaint that them perverts are too damn omnipresent in the news, on TV, everywhere — their heightened public profile somehow violating the “rights” of others to ignore or hate on them. But nearly half a century ago, Shirley Clarke’s documentary “portrait” of one rather flaming real-life personality — not just gay, but African American, too — seemed unprecedentedly exotic. No less than then-Supreme God of All Cinema (and supremely heterosexual) Ingmar Bergman called it “the most extraordinary film I’ve ever seen in my life … absolutely fascinating.” He probably found mankind’s first moon landing two years later less startling.

The latest in Milestone Films’ “Project Shirley” series of restored Clarke re-releases, Portrait of Jason can’t be experienced that way now. Any surviving exoticism is now related to the subject’s defining a certain pre-Stonewall camp persona, and the movie’s reflecting a 1960s cinema vérité style of which its director was a major proponent. Perhaps influenced by fellow New Yorker Andy Warhol’s early films, the setup couldn’t be simpler: instead of staring at the Empire State Building or somebody sleeping for X number of hours, we spend 12 hours in the company of Jason Holliday, née Aaron Payne. (He explains someone named Sabu in San Francisco during his “three, four, five years” there “was changing people’s names to suit their personality,” adding “San Francisco is a place to be created, believe me.”)

Or rather Clarke and her then-partner, actor Carl Lee, spend those hours — from 9 pm to 9 am — with Jason, while we get a 107-minute distillation. Nattily attired, waving a cigarette around while downing an epic lineup of cocktails, Jason is a natural performer who relishes this filmic showcase as “my moment.” No matter what, he says, he will now “have one beautiful something that is my own.”

At first Clarke and Lee simply let him riff, prompting him to speak calculated outrages they’ve probably already heard. (“What do you do for a living, Jason?” “I’m a … I’m a stone whore. And I’m not ashamed of it.”) He seems to be trying out material for a nightclub act that’s part Lenny Bruce, part snap diva. “I guess I’m a male bitch, because I have a tendency to go around and unglue people. I’ve spent so much of my time bein’ sexy I haven’t gotten anything else done. I’ve been balling from Maine to Mexico.” He shares anecdotes of working as a “houseboy” for rich white women during his in SF; he dons ladies’ hats and a feather boa to do imitations of Scarlett O’Hara, Miss Prissy, Katharine Hepburn, and Carmen Jones.

He’s indeed the life of his own party — increasingly smashed as wee hours encroach in Clarke’s Chelsea Hotel room — but there’s a certain desperation to this act that she and particularly Lee eventually pounce on. The exact nature of the two men’s relationship intrigues once Lee starts goading Jason to cut the “bullshit” and pony up some truths. “We know you’re a big con artist and you don’t really give a shit about nothin’ and nobody,” the off-camera Lee barks, later referencing some “dirty lies” Jason had allegedly spread about him.

By the time the former is calling the latter a “fuckin’ nasty bitch,” the film has become a queasy mix of exploitation and collusion. “Nervous and guilty and simple as I am,” Jason has a braggadocio that camouflages a self-loathing he’s just as willing to expose. When actual tears-of-a-clown are shed, the filmmakers seem cruel. Still, the “portrait” is incomplete — Clarke and Lee don’t press their subject to explicate the past spousal abuse, suicide attempt, and “nuthouse” and jail stays he drops into conversation as casually as he mentions a friendship with Miles Davis.

Two years later Yoko Ono and John Lennon would film the extremely disturbing Rape — 77 minutes of a camera crew silently, aggressively following an increasingly bewildered and panicked young woman around Manhattan, reducing her to a whimpering wreck. It was a human experiment in the name of art as striking as it was sadistic. While less traumatic, Portrait of Jason also stretches a very 1960s notion of cinema-as-angry-analyst’s-couch to uncomfortable lengths.

Clarke, who died in 1997 — one year before Jason — remains a fascinating, underappreciated figure who suffered all the consequences of being a stubbornly individual filmmaker in an era when women directors were rare and little-respected. (Not that that’s changed greatly since.) Switching from dance to movies in the ’50s, she earned an Oscar nomination for a 1960 short, then won one outright for a 1963 documentary about poet Robert Frost. Yet her career was constantly stymied, finally forcing her into academia. French director Agnès Varda’s 1969 curio Lions Love has her playing herself, a matter-of-fact New Yorker baffled equally by the Hollywood industry she’s trying to enter and by the upscale hippie ménage à trois antics of her hosts, Warhol star Viva and Hair co-creators Gerome Ragni and James Rado.

 

PORTRAIT OF JASON opens Fri/16 at the Roxie.

Walmart fires Bay Area workers after strike

Michael Redmond
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1
Walmart fires Bay Area workers after strike

After working for nearly two years at Walmart in San Leandro, Dominic Ware said he’d witnessed too many co-workers struggle to make ends meet, and had felt disrespected for long enough. A co-worker recruited him to join Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OURWalmart, a national group of Walmart associates organizing for better workplace conditions and pay.

“She couldn’t even pass the pen fast enough,” said Ware. Last October, he participated in the first mass-strike of American workers in Walmart’s history.

In May, Ware joined a hundred others in the longest Walmart workers’ strike yet, lasting from May 29 through June 8, to demand protection for strikes, livable wages, the option for full-time shifts, and respect in the workplace. After two weeks of striking, a legally protected activity for all workers, Ware went back to work. Things were normal at first. But in mid-July, he was fired.

Raymond Bravo, a maintenance associate at the Richmond Walmart, also joined Ware and other OURWalmart members on a caravan of striking workers to demonstrate outside Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas in May.

“I saw the lack of respect and favoritism,” said Bravo. “I wanted to join because I had no voice at Walmart, and I believe we should stand together.” Like Ware, Bravo returned to the job after Arkansas with little fuss.

“My next scheduled day was June 12, and nothing happened,” said Bravo. But two weeks down the line, Walmart began coaching associates for absences, and changing his schedule.

“I knew my days were numbered,” said Bravo. “I had already been disciplined for striking last year, and I’d heard from other associates that their hours were cut. That was kind of fishy.”

Roughly two weeks after returning, Bravo was fired. It appears that Ware and Bravo’s terminations weren’t isolated incidents. Around 60 Walmart associates across the country were disciplined or terminated after participating in the strike, according to OURWalmart. Since termination in retaliation for striking activity is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act, both Ware and Bravo plan to embark in legal battles to get their jobs back.

Walmart may rightfully fire an individual employee after he violates the company’s absence policy by missing work, Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman told the Guardian. In Bravo’s case, “the decision has nothing to do with a specific protest or activity of that nature,” said Fogleman. “We have a strict policy against retaliation.”

Fogelman claims the OURWalmart demonstrations were not legitimate strikes, but “made for TV” publicity stunts for the union that has leant support for OURWalmart, the United Food and Commercial Workers. Walmart made a similar claim in response to the October 2012 strikes. The nation’s largest private employer, Walmart employs roughly 1.4 million American workers, all non-unionized.

“Walmart didn’t want to recognize a strike as a strike,” said Ware. “But they are playing with people’s lives. Those who are working 45 hours a week, that’s not a lot, but that’s all they have, and if you take that away, they’ll lose everything they have.”

Tales from the tracks

Erica Hanna
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83
Tales from the tracks

news@sfbg.com

BART’s trains will keep running, for now, after a San Francisco Superior Court judge ordered the 60-day cooling-off period that Gov. Jerry Brown was angling for last week to address BART’s labor contract impasse. The injunction is in effect until Oct. 10, blocking any strike or lockout until then.

A report by the Bay Area Council said that the four-day strike in early July cost the Bay Area $73 million a day. That estimate was also a conservative one, according to a report put together by a special investigative board convened by Brown to look into the brinkmanship between BART workers and management.

“All parties agree that the major issues of the negotiations remain unresolved, including wages, health benefits, pensions contributions, and workplace safety,” the Aug. 8 report said.

Aside from the nitty gritty of the contracts, the two parties can’t even agree on math. The report found that the “parties do not agree on the magnitude of the gap in their respective economic proposals,” and that they are between $56 and $62 million apart on their forecasts of district finances for the next three years.

Management’s biggest concerns are still capital investments. Last year, BART approved a contract for 410 new cars, at a cost of about $2.2 million per car. The union’s proposals leave little room for capital improvements, BART management said at the Aug. 8 investigatory hearing.

But the unions say that BART is financially healthy and can offer a decent contract to workers. Out of a budget of $1.5 billion, union officials say payroll for their members totals about $200 million.

The unions and management will now have two months to cool off. But will that help along their negotiations? SEIU Local 1021, which represents engineers and custodial workers, doesn’t seem to think so.

“We have bargained unsuccessfully with this employer from May 13 to June 30, 2013 with no true indication from the district that it intended to reach an agreement,” the unions wrote in a letter to the investigative board. “We have no reason to believe that if a 60 day cooling off period were created, we would not be standing then on the precipice of another work stoppage without an agreement.”

Meanwhile, to put a human face on a labor standoff that has provoked sometimes nasty reactions from the public, we ran a couple profiles of BART workers on the SFBG.com Politics blog last week. The response was so passionate and overwhelming, we decided to run them in the paper as well:

 

ROBERT BRIGHT

First we met Robert Earl Bright, a 47-year-old transit vehicle mechanic at the Hayward yards, where he’s been for three years. BART trains seem tame compared to the machines he used to work with, starting out as an Air Force mechanic working on cargo planes.

It’s that experience he draws from when he said BART’s policies are becoming increasingly dangerous.

Bright is tall but soft-spoken, and while we sat at a bench in a courtyard at Lake Merritt BART station, he talked about the shortcuts BART has taken lately, and how overtime and consolidation are bad practices for everyone involved.

There used to be specific workers called Power & Way controllers who looked out for workers on the train tracks and made sure they were safe, he said, but those responsibilities were consolidated into a separate train controller position. Since then, Bright saw the death of a colleague, a mechanic who switched from a graveyard shift to a day shift and was hit by an oncoming train.

Only after the death did BART take steps to ensure parts of the track where there was less clearance safe from trains were marked, he said.

“The problem is BART seems to wait until someone gets killed until they want to do something about it,” he said.

Bright is a new grandfather. He helps support his daughter and her two toddlers, and he supports his older brother who suffers from dementia. Bright has a home that his fiancée bought, but is “upside-down,” as he says, because of a predatory loan.

He’s one of the lucky ones though, as the military pays for his health care, and the negotiations don’t impact him as far as that goes. But he does worry about his pension, and thinks he may have to cut back on supporting his elderly brother and his grandchildren. Even with those cutbacks in his life, he’ll likely have to look for a part-time job as a car mechanic, he said.

While contemplating that future, his four-hour daily commute, and the new expectations BART asked of his crew to repair more cars in less time, he started to develop an ulcer.

“They’re short on people, and it’s cheaper for the managers to pay for overtime than to pay for another person,” he said. The stress pressed on him and one day at work he grew dizzy and collapsed. That’s when he started to be a little more Zen about what BART asked of him. But he still said it’s not right.

“Our shop is a mod [modification] shop, but we got tasked with doing preventive maintenance. Our shop isn’t set up for that,” he said. And that means workers who aren’t trained for that particular job are pushed to fix up cars when normally they’re doing an entirely different job. That can be dangerous, he said.

“We have to make sure that those trains not only run, we also have to make sure they’re safe,” Bright said. “Something could happen, like a panel popping off. It touches the third rail, it could catch on fire. If we could miss something… it could cause a derailment.”

As far as Bright goes, he said he’s seeing more people working overtime at the request of managers, working longer hours that could lead to unsafe conditions — not just for the mechanics, but for the people who ride BART every day.

 

PHYLLIS ALEXANDER

Phyllis Alexander has been with BART for 16 years in systems service, which she said basically means, “cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.”

“Wherever they need me, that’s what I do,” she said.

Alexander often starts her days cleaning the elevators and escalators at Powell Street Station, and if you’ve been reading the news lately, you know what that means.

She doesn’t mince words about it: “I clean the urine and the feces out of the elevators and make sure it’s clean and smelling good for the patrons.”

But Alexander doesn’t hold it against the homeless. When she first started at BART, she had little contact with them. But over the years, she’s made good friends out of some of the homeless at Powell and 16th Street stations, and the latter is where she sat and told her story.

“As the years passed, it got worse. People living in their cars on the streets, in their doorways. I’ve met a lot of wonderful homeless people, wonderful people,” she said. And as the years went by, it got harder for the cleaning crew, too. She’s one of two systems service folk who take care of Powell Street Station at any one time.

“Sometimes it can be tough, it can get hectic, but we get it done. It’s hecka huge, and there’s only two of us, but we have to do the best we can do.”

But she keeps with it for herself and her daughter.

Her daughter just finished medical school and is still living with her. Alexander makes about $52,000 a year, she said, and couldn’t figure out major cuts she’d make in her lifestyle to make room for paying more into her pension or health care.

“It would hurt me,” she said. She said that though people in the Bay Area demonize BART workers for wanting a raise, she feels it’s simply been too long since they’ve had one.

“I think I haven’t gotten a raise in two contracts. It’s been like seven or eight years,” she said.

Devoutly religious, ultimately she keeps faith that the workers will prevail in negotiations.

“(God) is going to bring this through,” she said. “This thing with management, it’s going to be all right.”

 

For the Record: Clearing up misinformation about BART workers

 

HEALTHCARE

BART workers pay only $92 a month into their health care. Right? Wrong. “That doesn’t tell the full story,” said Vincent Harrington, a lawyer representing the unions at the negotiating table. “These workers contributed 1.627 percent of their wages into a fund to cover not only the ongoing health care of active employees, but also the retirees.”

That brings the total to about $180 per person, he said, with a caveat. Some time ago, employer-provided health care was capped. “Additional (healthcare) costs beyond that cap would be on the workers and their families, not on BART,” he said.

 

PENSIONS

It’s true that BART workers don’t contribute to their pensions, but the entity responsible for that is BART management. In 1980, BART made the proposal to pay employee contributions to pensions in exchange for wage concessions from BART workers. The unions recently proposed to contribute 7 percent of their pension benefits, with wage increases of 6.5 percent to offset that. BART management said they’d agree, if the wage increase was lowered to 0.5 percent instead.

 

WAGES VERSUS COST

A database constructed by the San Jose Mercury News lists a BART employee’s full cost to the taxpayer — often at around $100,000. This is their “cost” to BART, not the wages they take home, a common mistake regularly made by angry online commenters. All employees everywhere, private or public sector, have a cost to their employer past their base salary.

According to Intuit.com, a web resource for small businesses, business owners should consider that each employee they hire will cost twice the amount of their wages. This is normal stuff, people. It’s wrong, and not factually significant, to demonize BART workers for costing more than their salaries.

 

OVERTIME

BART employees have also been villainized for working overtime. But these employees don’t necessarily want to work overtime at all, and often do it at the urging of managers who have slashed so many workers in the past decade that the only way the trains will run is if everyone puts in extra work. A worker at the Aug. 7 BART hearing said, “I go to work before my daughter wakes up, and I’m home from work when my daughter goes to sleep.”

Some mechanics we talked to said that working overtime can also lead to more injuries, and a higher possibility of mistakes that could cost riders their lives.

 

SAFETY

Since 2010, 1,099 BART customers reported being physically attacked, and so were 99 BART employees. Those station agents often work alone at night and just before dawn, the only staff in the entire station. They want extra staffing to help meet OSHA recommendations that employees work in pairs. They also want better worker’s compensation coverage. Saul Almanza, a BART representative from SEIU Local 1021 and a 17-year railroader, said “The area where [BART mechanic] Mr. [Robert] Rhodes was killed was very dark, and remains that way today. Look at the picture to the left, and that’s where Mr. Rhodes was standing as the southbound train proceeded through the interlock. It was dark and loud, and that’s where he was struck as he stood there with no place to go.”

 

BATHROOMS

One of the underreported asks at the bargaining table is unlocked bathrooms. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01, many of the bathrooms at most BART’s stations have been locked. This prevents customers and workers alike from doing as nature intended. It’s a matter of respect and dignity to be able to do use a bathroom while at your workplace, said one BART worker, Jon Kozlosky, at the hearing. THE TRAINS DRIVE THEMSELVES One of the accusations we see on our comment board with every article is that since the trains drive themselves, the workers must have little expertise. But the drivers still carry out many functions of the trains. Besides, most BART workers toil behind the scenes: 920 of BART workers are drivers and station agents, but about 1,450 employees are in mechanical maintenance, clerical, and other jobs (like sanitation).

Bay Area Walmart employees say they were fired in retaliation for striking

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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41

After working for nearly two years at Walmart in San Leandro, Dominic Ware said he’d witnessed too many co-workers struggle to make ends meet, and had felt disrespected for long enough. A co-worker recruited him to join Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OURWalmart, a national group of Walmart associates organizing for better workplace conditions and pay.

“She couldn’t even pass the pen fast enough,” said Ware. Last October, he participated in the first mass-strike of American workers in Walmart’s history.

In May, Ware joined a hundred others in the longest Walmart workers’ strike yet, lasting from May 29 through June 8, to demand protection for strikes, livable wages, the option for full-time shifts, and respect in the workplace. After two weeks of striking, a legally protected activity for all workers, Ware went back to work. Things were normal at first. But in mid-July, he was fired.  

Raymond Bravo, a maintenance associate at the Richmond Walmart, also joined Ware and other OURWalmart members on a caravan of striking workers to demonstrate outside Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas in May.

“I saw the lack of respect and favoritism,” said Bravo. “I wanted to join because I had no voice at Walmart, and I believe we should stand together.”

Like Ware, Bravo returned to the job after Arkansas with little fuss. “My next scheduled day was June 12, and nothing happened,” said Bravo. But two weeks down the line, Walmart began coaching associates for absences, and changing his schedule.

“I knew my days were numbered,” said Bravo. “I had already been disciplined for striking last year, and I’d heard from other associates that their hours were cut. That was kind of fishy.” Roughly two weeks after returning, Bravo was fired.

It appears that Ware and Bravo’s terminations weren’t isolated incidents. Around 60 Walmart associates across the country were disciplined or terminated after participating in the strike, according to OURWalmart. Since termination in retaliation for striking activity is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act, both Ware and Bravo plan to embark in legal battles to get their jobs back.

Walmart may rightfully fire an individual employee after he violates the company’s absence policy by missing work, Walmart spokesman Dan Fogleman told the Guardian. In Bravo’s case, “the decision has nothing to do with a specific protest or activity of that nature,” said Fogleman. “We have a strict policy against retaliation.”

Fogelman claims the OURWalmart demonstrations were not legitimate strikes, but “made for TV” publicity stunts for the union that has leant support for OURWalmart, the United Food and Commercial Workers. Walmart made a similar claim in response to the October 2012 strikes. The nation’s largest private employer, Walmart employs roughly 1.4 million American workers, all non-unionized.

“Walmart didn’t want to recognize a strike as strike,” said Ware. “But they are playing with people’s lives. Those who are working 45 hours a week, that’s not a lot, but that’s all they have, and if you take that away, they’ll lose everything they have.”

According to a report issued by American Rights at Work, a nonprofit that advocates for democracy in the workplace, OURWalmart received more than 150 accounts of individual incidents of harassment, threats, changes to shifts and hours, and retaliatory discipline, including termination, from workers who participated in the wave of work stoppages and demonstrations that began last October.

Bravo has filed a wrongful termination affidavit with the National Labor Relations Board. “Walmart is pushing the envelope right now,” said Bravo, “but I know that I’ll get my job back.”

But according to John Logan, professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, the law may protect work stoppage and protests but does not necessarily protect low-wage workers like Ware and Bravo from the damages of retaliation.

“In a very large employer like Walmart, in a non-union environment, protections are very weak and penalties for violations are very ineffectual,” said Logan. “In reality, you are only slightly better off than if you have no legal protections at all.”

When asked about the effectiveness of filing a complaint with the labor board, Logan said that process is long and painful, and may accomplish little for the worker in the end. “These cases often move at a glacial speed at the labor board,” said Logan. “Even if they were to get the original position they are legally entitled, in a lot of instances, workers who go back stay for a very short period of time because the working conditions are intolerable, or made to be intolerable.”

“The obvious point is that clearly, the effect on the worker is the same whether or not they were fired for strike or absentee policy,” said Logan. “They lost their job.”

The Performant: The Stiltwalkers Union

Sue Vaughan
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In an iconic sequence from Winsor McCay’s eccentrically beautiful Little Nemo in Slumberland, Nemo’s bed sprouts elongated legs and strolls through the city as Nemo and his cantankerous friend Flip cling to the bedsheets and try not to fall out. Whenever I see performers on stilts, the exaggerated limbs of that unexpectedly animated furniture are one of the first things that spring to my mind, their death-defying acrobatics furthering the resemblance to an unnerving dream sequence.

Tapping into both the whimsical and the deeply unsettling nature of stiltwalking as art form, San Francisco’s Carpetbag Brigade and Nemcatacoa Teatro from Colombia performed their unique brand of physical theater in tandem over the weekend, along with Tucson, AZ’s VerboBala and Hojarasca Andina from Colombia, as part of their transcontinental “Bi-Cultural Road Show.”

At Dance Mission, Carpetbag Brigade’s Callings featured a quintet of stiltwalkers, suggesting the virtually alien clime of the deep sea with nothing more than a few rowboat paddles and a soundtrack heavy on implication. A trio of overall-clad performers with impossibly long legs moved in and out of the center point of the stage, paddles aloft, menacingly brandished as weapons, then put to more utilitarian purpose as propellers. A single performer clad all in white held another aloft like a seagull skimming the surface of the waves. Performers recreated the motion of rolling waves and tempestuous storms in synchronized group groundwork and intense, contact improv-style duets.

An innocuous wooden swing on a sturdy rope lost all innocence, serving both as life preserver and obstacle to the performers as they grasped for it from the “sea” and became entangled in it, singly and in pairs, as the pre-recorded music shifted from darkly ominous underwater electronica to sprightly accordion tunes to dramatic strings and clattering percussion in the style of Cirque de Soleil.

Meanwhile, outside the 24th Street BART station, Nemcatacoa Teatro was embarking on a site-specific exploration of the area as part of its “Landscape Re-Invention Society” series. Like reanimated Diggers or extraterrestrial visitors, the troupe turned the mundane into occasion for wonder. Painted black-and-white and clad all in fluttering white garments (streaked, perhaps inadvertently, by their body paint), the stiltwalking group towered above the crowd and many of the familiar landmarks of the area: the metal fences surrounding the station entrances, the busses pulling up to the stop outside El Farolito, the looming McDonalds across the street.

Followed by Hojarasca Andina, a trio of enigmatic musicians with pan pipes, the intrepid bunch felt their way boldly from corner to corner, gazing in puzzlement through windows, hugging trees, tumbling across pavement, and lounging along the BART station walls (the latter segment inadvertently bringing to mind the recent tragic breakdown of Colombian acrobat Yeiner Perez though fortunately for all, the mood is strictly playful, not aggressive), until at last they came to rest, posed flat against the vibrantly-painted mural outside Dance Mission.

Sorry you missed the spectacle? Watch all four companies (Carpetbag Brigade, Nemcatacoa Teatro, VerboBala, and Hojarasca Andina) in their collaborative piece Dios de la Adrenalina at Union Square Sun/11 at 2 p.m., and Yerba Buena Gardens on August 17 at 2:30 p.m.

(Don’t panic! The Performant will be on hiatus for one week as she packs her bags for the Canadian Fringe Festival circuit. Check out her tweets for up-to-the-minute dispatches from the Great North @enkohl)

Woody does SF in “Blue Jasmine” … plus more new movies!

Sue Vaughan
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Woody does SF in “Blue Jasmine” … plus more new movies!

Remember that brief, exciting period last year when Woody Allen sightings were being breathlessly reported on ’round town, particularly in the Mission? Here’s your chance to see Allen’s take on San Francisco (it ain’t exactly glossy) in Blue Jasmine, which boasts a stellar performance by likely Oscar nominee Cate Blanchett as someone you would not want to have as a houseguest. Dennis Harvey’s take on the film here.

Also opening today: a doc about Napster, a so-so biopic of political theorist Hannah “Banality of Evil” Arendt, an action flick for Denzel Washington completists, and likely Oscar nominee (um…) Smurfs 2. What can I say…if you’re not a Woody Allen fan, it’s kind of a slower week. Read on for short reviews.

Downloaded The startlingly fast rise and even more abrupt demise of Napster is chronicled in this entertaining documentary by Alex Winter (yes, of Bill & Ted fame). Shawn Fanning dropped out of college in 1999 to work on an idea of greatly improving the then-tortuous downloading and sharing of MP3 files, soon moving to the Bay Area and drawing other friends (including co-founder Sean Parker) to launch Napster for real. When the program launched in mid-1999, it quickly took the world of music fans by storm, allowing any user to post or access any song for free — rapidly building a massive library that won tens of millions of fervent participants. But what the company saw as a “community building” global-record-swapping-party was viewed by an ill-prepared and appalled record industry itself as blatant copyright infringement. Artists themselves were sharply divided, with some (like Seal here) thinking Napster brought “true democracy back into the music business” while others, most notably Metallica and Dr. Dre (who both sued, as did various labels) loudly proclaimed that it was blatant theft of their work. (It’s worth noting that these were among the comparatively few acts who’ve gotten rich rather than screwed by the biz.) The somewhat one-sided thesis in this doc (on which Fanning is an executive producer) supports the founders’ continued plaint that “sharing” wasn’t “piracy” and that they always intended to integrate themselves with the established industry as legitimate fee-charing digital distributors — though each side says the other wouldn’t negotiate. In any case, after little more than two years, Napster was shut down by court decisions — though file sharing continues, and the industry’s poor adjustment to new technologies has seen it in fiscal freefall ever since. Napster staff, musicians, executives, and others offer their two cents here, with DJ Spooky providing an original score. (1:46) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIUbQR9b1P8

Hannah Arendt New German Cinema’s Margarethe von Trotta (1975’s The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1986’s Rosa Luxemburg) delivers this surprisingly dull biopic about the great German-Jewish political theorist and the heated controversy around her New Yorker article (and subsequent book) about Israel’s 1961 trial of Nazi Adolph Eichmann. Played with dignified, slightly vulnerable countenance by the inimitable Barbara Sukowa, Arendt travels from her teaching job and cozy expat circles in New York to Jerusalem for the trial. There she comes face to face with the “banality of evil” in Eichmann, the petty careerist of the Holocaust, forcing her to “try and reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds.” This led her to further insights into the nature of modern society, and triggered a storm of outrage and vitriol — in particular from the Commentary crowd of future neocons — all of which is clearly of relevance today, and the impetus for von Trotta’s revisiting this famous episode. But the film is too mannered, too slick, too formulaic —burdened by a television-friendly combination of posture and didacticism, and bon mots from famous and about famous figures in intellectual and literary history to avoid being leaden and tedious. A mainstream film, in other words, for a very unconventional personality and dissident intellectual. While not exactly evil, there’s something dispiriting in so much banality. (1:49) (Robert Avila)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQbSGLaVJ5c

The Smurfs 2 Look at it this way: any enterprise that employs Neil Patrick Harris can’t be all bad. (1:45)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyruH2JikwM

2 Guns Rob a bank of cartel cash, invade a naval base, and then throw down against government heavies — you gotta expect to find a few bullet-hole-sized gaps in the play-by-play of 2 Guns. The action flick is riddled with fun-sized pleasures — usually centered on the playful banter and effortless chemistry between stars Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg — and the clever knot of a narrative throws a twist or two in, before director Baltasar Kormákur (last year’s Wahlberg vehicle Contraband) simply surrenders to the tidal pull of action. After visiting Mexican mafia kingpin Papi (Edward James Olmos) and finding the head of their contact in a bag, Bobby (Washington) and Stig (Wahlberg) decide to hit Papi where he’ll feel it: the small border bank where his men have been making drops to safe deposit boxes. Much like Bobby and Stig’s breakfast-time diner gab fest, which seems to pick up where Vincent and Jules left off in Pulp Fiction (1994), as they trade barbs, truisms, and tells, there’s more going on than simply bank robbery foreplay. Both involved for different reasons: Bobby is an undercover DEA agent, and Stig is a masquerading navy officer. When the payout is 10 times the expected size, not only do Papi, Bobby’s contact Deb (Paula Patton), and Stig’s superior Quince (James Marsden) come calling, but so does mystery man Earl (Bill Paxton), who seems to be obsessed with following the money. We know, sort of, what’s in it for Bobby — all fully identifiable charm, as befits Washington, who makes it rain charisma with the lightest of touches. But Stig? The others? The lure of a major payday is supposed to sweep away all other loyalties, except a little bromantic bonding between two rogue sharp shooters, saddled, unfortunately, with not the sharpest of story lines. (1:49) (Kimberly Chun)

Counterpoint: an appreciation of ‘The Lone Ranger’

Sue Vaughan
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Counterpoint: an appreciation of ‘The Lone Ranger’

Warning: slight spoilers ahead.

I will say it and I will say it loudly: Gore Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger is perhaps the most subversive Hollywood film since Paul Verhoeven’s still misunderstood sci-fi masterpiece, Starship Troopers (1997).

Not only does this sneaky, revisionist epic attempt to recontextualize the history of Western films, screenwriters Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio — working directly from Zane Grey’s 1915 novel The Lone Star Ranger — have designed an ambitious journey through America’s tainted, tattered history. And like Starship Troopers, the combination of ruthless “all-American” violence, ironic historical references, and off-beat slapstick comedy give The Lone Ranger legs that audiences will get to uncover for decades to come. (Sadly it will have to happen after the film leaves US theaters this week.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myl32ezlRSo

I watched this uniquely uncompromising popcorn-pleaser three times. By my second viewing, I caught even more references to old Westerns, ranging from the countless scenes set in John Ford’s Monument Valley to the ironic singing of the Christian hymn “Shall We Gather at the River” (as in Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 The Wild Bunch). But what surprised me even more than the homages to, say, the beginning of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1966), or the train-chase climax of Buster Keaton’s The General (1926), was the feeling that Verbinski and company were exploring not just the different styles from different decades, but the historical themes of those films.

Consider the nod to Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939): “Willet Creek” — the name of a corrupt government dam project in the Capra film — is hinted at as a conquest by the corrupt railroad boss played by Tom Wilkinson. Or, during a bank-robbing sequence that’s reminscent of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde (1967), the scene suddenly freeze-frames, challenging the morality of the heroes by even having a character in the film stating his own confusion.

Another consistent theme throughout The Lone Ranger‘s big-budget spectacle is “nature is out of balance.”  A spirit horse drinks bottles of alcohol and chooses the “wrong” hero as its master, while innocent fluffy bunnies suddenly sprout fangs and launch attacks on scorpions. While these sudden shifts in tone may feel off-beat or random, I would argue that these screwball comedy moments are in fact motivated allegorical references to the traumatic events that coincided with the building of America’s cross-country railroad.  The film rebounds from an horrific event — as when a very bad dude cuts the heart out of a character we’re rooting for — by leaping right into the Buster Keaton-esque antics of Johnny Depp’s surreally wacked-out Tonto, which are inevitably played for dark comedy laughs.

Consider also the scene in which Tonto and the Lone Ranger (played stupendously stupid by the subtly subdued Armie Hammer) follow a horse, presumably returning to its wanted-outlaw master, through miles of empty desert. At a crucial juncture, the horse suddenly keels over. The cruelty is purposeful, even relentless — and what does Tonto do? He shuffles up to it, gives it a knock (literally, kicking a dead horse), and states to his partner, “He’s dead.”

Another example comes when Tonto and the Lone Ranger have been buried neck-deep in sand. Suddenly, a potential rescuer appears on the horizon. “The US Army! Finally, someone who’ll listen to reason!” our optimistic hero exclaims — only to barely avoid getting his skull hoof-clopped when the military men gallop right over them. The two feel like they are channelling Laurel and Hardy, or perhaps Jack and Wang from John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986).

The film’s unrelenting flair for layered irony regarding “How the West Was (Actually) Won” is solidified with its revisionist narrator in the form of an ancient Tonto, miraculously still alive in Depression-era San Francisco. The true complexity of The Lone Ranger is due to its frame story, in which Old Tonto spins his Wild West yarn for a wide-eyed youngster who represents the audience. Is he sharing truth, or are they all tall tales? Are Tonto’s truth-stretching stories in fact emblematic of how America chooses to interpret its own history?

Often, when the film cuts from the 1860s to 1933, Tonto slips items between the eras: a rock, an arrow, a bag of peanuts. This sort of inconsistency is quite purposeful in its awareness of how often American history is re-written by its storyteller — it’s also a bold attempt of this subversive masterpiece to undo as many of our history’s inaccuracies as possible.

Though a common criticism of The Lone Ranger was its nearly two and a half hour running time, I’m actually curious to know what Verbinski cut from the film. There’s a shocking amount of mindless bloodshed among the film’s innocent bystanders: Chinese railroad workers, American Indians, random townsfolk. This is perfectly punctuated when digging beneath the seemingly irrelevant prostitute played by Helena Bonham Carter (who is cleverly named Red Harrington.) Her ivory leg (which conceals a lascivious leg-gun) is yet another bloodied byproduct of the men who are blazing their train-of-terror across America. Ironically, the train is named The Constitution.

At one point Tonto wonders, “What does the white man kill for?” The Lone Ranger makes it clear: in this case, heartless slaughter is a necessary step in acquiring as much silver as possible. This “gold rush” allegory is perhaps even unpleasant to consider, and even more so to watch on the big screen for 149 minutes. (Remember, The Lone Ranger wasn’t exactly showered with glowing reviews.)

Which brings us to the final shot of this magnus opus of sorts. It arrives — in the fashion of other blockbuster-type movies these days — after the credits have started to roll. Tonto appears, all dressed up in a white-man’s suit and heading back into Monument Valley. This melancholic, even transcendental sequence delivers a different kind of message as opposed to hinting at what characters will appear in the sequel. (Given the film’s disastrous box-office take, Lone Ranger 2 seems nigh impossible, anyway.)

This meditative walk can be interpreted as history (represented by Tonto) slipping back into the past, or perhaps the truth leaving without anyone noticing. For me, it proved how intricately thoughtful The Lone Ranger truly is. Perhaps this film about two old-school heroes (who urge anyone who’d listen never take their own masks off) was a bit too modern for audiences in 2013. Hopefully, eventually, viewers will come to appreciate this inspired, unlikely, uncompromised, maniacal treasure.

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks runs MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS, a series devoted to celebrating dismissed, underrated, and overlooked films. He is also the Film History Coordinator at Academy of Art University.

For further reading, check out Cheryl Eddy’s Guardian review of The Lone Ranger here.

Cave of garage rock dreams: Primitive Hearts, Pinkslime, Lunch, Sweat Lodge

Tony Robles
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I came to an Undisclosed Cavernous Area (let’s call it U.C.A from here out) on Saturday in the greater Bay Area with the promise of two things. First, that I would see an array of garage and surf punk bands for free — and second, that I would be going to something possibly illegal, which is fairly punk, as well.

The setting was, as mentioned, a fairly damp U.C. A. The stage was to be determined by the bands that played. Powered by a generator and dimly lit with a couple of clamp lamps, the show boasted dozens of people gathered close to hear the bands and to (literally) be kept in the light.

The first band up was Primitive Hearts, a garage-pop band from Oakland. Airing on the side of Ramones-worship, the trio cranked through its set playing selections from its latest full length released this year, High and Tight. Throwing a bunch of glow sticks into the audience, Primitive Hearts set the party-like atmosphere of the show.

Up next was Pinkslime, yet another band from Oakland via Portland, Ore. (definitely a trend for this show). The duo served up good and sludgy surf-punk. Some songs were similar to Thee Oh Sees with buckling riffs, and vocals that take a backseat to said riffs. Either way, the audience ate it up, and things got a little rowdy with a few po-goers. Unfortunately, this was Pinkslime’s last show for the next few months.

Lunch, which is a messy garage pop-punk band from Portland, pretty much killed it. The touring group, hot off the release of its newest full length cassette, Quinn Touched The Sun on Resurrection Records, ripped through its set, ending with a cover of “Skulls” by the Misfits.

Last was San Francisco’s Sweat Lodge, self-described “pow wow punk”. With overwhelming bass lines, sleepy vocals, and fits of thrashy-ness, Sweat Lodge draws from psych, punk, and garage rock influences.

The nature of the band, loud and sloppy, was greatly reflected in the U.C.A.  The singer beckoned people to get as close as possible to the group. But this caused problems. The vocalist darted in and out of the audience, every which way, falling and leaning into the crowd-goers pinned against craggy walls.

In a turn of events, he fell and knocked over Lunch’s sound equipment, possibly damaging it irreparably (according to one member from Lunch). Though he apologized, the atmosphere in the U.C.A was tense as Sweat Lodge cranked out its last few songs.

But still, I commend Sweat Lodge for taking the no boundaries approach — it brought everybody closer in an actual and sentimental sense, and ended the show on an interesting note.

All the folks that played that night were solid, and all had one thing in common: they were all people of the punk ilk trying to jam in a U.C.A.

Also of note: On August 3, Sweat Lodge is playing with Nobunny and The Shrills at El Rio in San Francisco for $8. The show starts at 10 p.m. and is 21+.

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