Nudity

San Francisco’s slippery slope is chafing

Sasha Cuttler
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71
San Francisco’s slippery slope is chafing

By Nato Green

This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a ban on public nudity on a party line vote. By “party line,” I mean the Supes voting against nudity are the ones who never go to parties with lines of coke or conga lines. I’m not saying every single one of the progressive supervisors could be found in the naked suntan lotion massage yurt at Burning Man, just that it’s conceivable.

The ban was proposed by District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, and supported by the “moderates,” who are Very Serious about sensible governance. First of all, anyone who ever made fun of Supervisor Eric Mar’s happy meal ban owes him an apology. Second, obviously all other problems in the City have been solved, which has freed up the Supes to kowtow to the whims of the gayeoisie.

People are worried about the effects of aggressive nudity on children, but fortunately we’ve gentrified all the families out of the City. Now we’ll have to export nudists to Solano County if we want kids subjected to them. At any rate, during a nippy San Francisco winter it’s vitally important for children to learn about shrinkage.

Nudity doesn’t necessarily harm children. I grew up in San Francisco. In the ’70s. Naked people were everywhere, bare and unshaven. I didn’t see a fully-clothed adult until I was nine. I didn’t see nakedness as sexual, so much as simply covered in naked. Partly because then, as now, the specific naked people were not easy on the eyes. Not to promote normative body images, but if Christina Hendricks and Ryan Gosling showed up naked, the ensuing celebration by all sexualities would make the Giants Victory Parade look like a tupperware party.

Worst of all, nudity was banned in the Castro. If there’s one neighborhood that arguably draws its spirit from the brandishing of genitalia, it’s the Castro. Harvey Milk did not march so his grandchildren could sequester the penis. It’s almost as if the City wanted to abolish hippies sitting on the sidewalk in the Haight-Ashbury. (Damn you, sit/lie.)

If we’re going to ban sitting on the sidewalk in the Haight and nudity in the Castro, here are more options for possible legislation to achieve the goal of draining our neighborhoods of their distinguishing features.

We should also ban:

  1. Bernal Heights—dykes with dogs.

  2. Mission—fixed-gear bicycles, ironic mustaches, and salvadoreños.

  3. Marina—entitlement.

  4. Richmond—Irish pubs with actual Irish people.

  5. Noe Valley—strollers and handmade baby food.

  6. Western Addition—Black people. Whoops. Too late.

Comedian Nato Green (writer for “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell” on FX) headlines the San Francisco Punchline December 19 and 20. Tweet him @natogreen

FAIR: The press turns its back on Private Bradley Manning

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FAIR: The press turns its back on Private Bradley Manning

FAIR, the national media watchdog organization, has written an excellent critique of the coverage of the Bradley Manning case, one of the more shameful episodes in U.S.military and journalism history.  KPFA’s “Democracy Now” radio program headed by Amy Goodman  (9-10 weekdays) has also  done regular superlative coverage.  Here is FAIR’s report (B3):

Turning Their Back on Bradley Manning: Whistleblower speaks but press doesn’t listen

As the alleged source of many of the most vital WikiLeaks reports of the past several years, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning shed considerable light on how the United States has prosecuted the Iraq and Afghan wars. Other State Department cables reportedly leaked by Manning conveyed vital information about U.S. foreign policy.

Manning has, in other words, been connected to a lot of news (FAIR Media Advisories, 4/7/10, 12/16/10, 7/30/10): the video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed several civilians (two Reuters journalists died in the attack); the revelation that hundreds of U.S. attacks on civilians in Afghanistan had been recorded by the military– but were unreported elsewhere; the cache of diplomatic cables that uncovered U.S. efforts to stymie legal investigations into torture, U.S. involvement in airstrikes in Yemen; and much more.
But the developments at his trial last week–including the first time Manning has spoken about his treatment–are evidently not newsworthy.

Manning has been held in conditions that have been criticized as psychological torture, including long periods of solitary confinement in a tiny cell, forced nudity and sleep deprivation.

Last week, the military trial at Fort Meade centered on the question of whether these pre-trial conditions were unlawful. Arrested in May 2010, Manning faces 22 counts associated with the leaks of classified material–including the government argument that Manning’s leaks constitute aiding the enemy, apparently because some of the materials he leaked made their way onto the computers of Al-Qaeda figures.

The government maintained that Manning’s treatment was based on a judgment that he was a suicide risk. But the court proceedings included testimony from military psychiatrists who disagreed, and recommended against holding Manning under such “clinically inappropriate” conditions–recommendations that were ignored at the Quantico military facility where Manning was confined (Guardian, 11/28/12).

These dramatic developments, in particular the testimony from Manning (11/29/12), were mostly unreported in corporate media. The New York Times ran a brief Associated Press wire story (11/30/12). Manning’s story was mentioned by just one of the three big network newscasts (CBS Evening News, 11/29/12). There was a brief mention on the PBS NewsHour (11/30/12), mostly about suicide risk.

CNN did regular reporting on the trial throughout the week. According to the Nexis news database, Manning’s trial last week was not mentioned on the liberal MSNBC channel until a discussion on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12). Democracy Now!, which has closely followed the Manning case for the past two years, featured thorough analysis of the trial.

It is not hard, on any level, to see the relevance of the Manning trial. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington argued on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12), the government’s argument in the case will have a chilling effect, which should obviously concern journalists:

You have to bear in mind that the main charge, charge No. 1 against him, is aiding the enemy. Now this is a massively chilling thing. What he’s being accused of is by posting something via WikiLeaks on the Internet, that by doing so he effectively gave it to Osama bin Laden. They don’t have to show–in the prosecution’s mind, the government’s mind–they don’t have to show that he intended to do that. They’re just saying by the sheer act of putting it on the Internet, it was available to Al-Qaeda.

Indeed, the notion that such trials constitute a threat to freedom of the press was part of the reason that the leak investigation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller was so closely followed by corporate media. Many outlets and editorial pages proclaimed the proceedings an attack on journalism itself–even though in that case,  the reporter in question was seeking to protect a government source who was peddling information intended to diminish a government critic (Extra!, 9-10/05).

In the Manning case, the whistleblower apparently responsible for releasing documents that formed the basis for literally thousands of reports of incredible international significance is challenging government mistreatment. The questions about the case have been longstanding. As NPR’s All Things Considered noted (11/26/12), the secrecy around the proceedings has been “so intense that reporters and human rights groups have sued to get access to information.”

All that in mind, the minimal attention to Manning’s trial last week tells us how little corporate media care about the mistreatment of a government whistleblower. The revelations about U.S. foreign policy Manning allegedly made possible were news; the military’s abusive retaliation against him apparently is not.

FAIR,  the national  media watchdog organization, has written an excellent critique of the Bradley Manning case,  one of the more shameful episodes in military and journalism history. Here is its report (B3):
Turning Their Back on Bradley Manning
Whistleblower speaks–but press doesn’t listen

As the alleged source of many of the most vital WikiLeaks reports of the past several years, U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning shed considerable light on how the United States has prosecuted the Iraq and Afghan wars. Other State Department cables reportedly leaked by Manning conveyed vital information about U.S. foreign policy.

Manning has, in other words, been connected to a lot of news (FAIR Media Advisories, 4/7/10, 12/16/10, 7/30/10): the video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed several civilians (two Reuters journalists died in the attack); the revelation that hundreds of U.S. attacks on civilians in Afghanistan had been recorded by the military– but were unreported elsewhere; the cache of diplomatic cables that uncovered U.S. efforts to stymie legal investigations into torture, U.S. involvement in airstrikes in Yemen; and much more.

But the developments at his trial last week–including the first time Manning has spoken about his treatment–are evidently not newsworthy.

Manning has been held in conditions that have been criticized as psychological torture, including long periods of solitary confinement in a tiny cell, forced nudity and sleep deprivation.

Last week, the military trial at Fort Meade centered on the question of whether these pre-trial conditions were unlawful. Arrested in May 2010, Manning faces 22 counts associated with the leaks of classified material–including the government argument that Manning’s leaks constitute aiding the enemy, apparently because some of the materials he leaked made their way onto the computers of Al-Qaeda figures.

The government maintained that Manning’s treatment was based on a judgment that he was a suicide risk. But the court proceedings included testimony from military psychiatrists who disagreed, and recommended against holding Manning under such “clinically inappropriate” conditions–recommendations that were ignored at the Quantico military facility where Manning was confined (Guardian, 11/28/12).

These dramatic developments, in particular the testimony from Manning (11/29/12), were mostly unreported in corporate media. The New York Times ran a brief Associated Press wire story (11/30/12). Manning’s story was mentioned by just one of the three big network newscasts (CBS Evening News, 11/29/12). There was a brief mention on the PBS NewsHour (11/30/12), mostly about suicide risk.

CNN did regular reporting on the trial throughout the week. According to the Nexis news database, Manning’s trial last week was not mentioned on the liberal MSNBC channel until a discussion on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12). Democracy Now!, which has closely followed the Manning case for the past two years, featured thorough analysis of the trial.

It is not hard, on any level, to see the relevance of the Manning trial. As the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington argued on Up With Chris Hayes (12/1/12), the government’s argument in the case will have a chilling effect, which should obviously concern journalists:

You have to bear in mind that the main charge, charge No. 1 against him, is aiding the enemy. Now this is a massively chilling thing. What he’s being accused of is by posting something via WikiLeaks on the Internet, that by doing so he effectively gave it to Osama bin Laden. They don’t have to show–in the prosecution’s mind, the government’s mind–they don’t have to show that he intended to do that. They’re just saying by the sheer act of putting it on the Internet, it was available to Al-Qaeda.

Indeed, the notion that such trials constitute a threat to freedom of the press was part of the reason that the leak investigation of New York Times reporter Judith Miller was so closely followed by corporate media. Many outlets and editorial pages proclaimed the proceedings an attack on journalism itself–even though in that case,  the reporter in question was seeking to protect a government source who was peddling information intended to diminish a government critic (Extra!, 9-10/05).

In the Manning case, the whistleblower apparently responsible for releasing documents that formed the basis for literally thousands of reports of incredible international significance is challenging government mistreatment. The questions about the case have been longstanding. As NPR’s All Things Considered noted (11/26/12), the secrecy around the proceedings has been “so intense that reporters and human rights groups have sued to get access to information.”

All that in mind, the minimal attention to Manning’s trial last week tells us how little corporate media care about the mistreatment of a government whistleblower. The revelations about U.S. foreign policy Manning allegedly made possible were news; the military’s abusive retaliation against him apparently is not.

     

Wiener charges blogger with taking potty photo

Zelda Bronstein
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81
Wiener charges blogger with taking potty photo

I don’t even know what to do with this except report it and tell you some background. Because it’s just strange, all around.

Short story: Sup. Scott Wiener’s pressing criminal charges against a blogger who tried to take a photo of him peeing in the City Hall men’s room.

Michael Petrelis, the mad-man blogger who once called me for several days straight in the middle of the night to scream “your wife has syphillis!” into the phone, was at City Hall Oct. 26 with gay Honduran activist Erick Martinez. At some point, he decided to go into the public restroom on the second floor — and noticed that Sup. Scott Wiener was in there, using the urinal.

Petrelis has been fighting with Wiener over a lot of issues, including the nudity ban and Wiener’s efforts to remove benches from the plaza at 18th and Castro, and on the issues, he’s been right. He has a history of demanding accountability from the LGBT power structure, sometimes in ways that are not exactly polite — but he’s still a valuable gadfly, and I’ve gotten over the insanity of the late-night calls (more on that below).

But in this case, Wiener was just trying to take a piss — and Petrelis lifted his phone and tried to take a picture. Wiener’s wiener, I guess. Supervisor taking a leak. I don’t know exactly what he was going after, but the phone didn’t work right and he couldn’t get the photo until Wiener had buttoned up his pants and moved over to the sink, where he was going to brush his teeth.

Instead, he saw Petrelis and picked up the brush and toothpaste and left — but not before the intrepid blogger snapped a pic, which wound up on the Petrelis Files blog. It’s not a terribly attractive or terribly scandalous photo; guy with a toothbrush. Whatever.
But Wiener was, well, pissed — and I don’t blame him. We were always taught that you can take journalistic photos without the subject’s permission in a place where people have no expectation of privacy; if there’s any place in the world where a reasonable person would expect privacy, the bathroom would seem to quality.

Wiener called the cops — or in this case, the Sheriff’s Office, since that’s who patrols City Hall.

Wiener’s been complaining (for no reason, really) about the way the deputy sheriffs have responded to the protests over his nudity ban (come on — the nudists really aren’t a threat to anyone). But he asked for an investigation, filed a statement, and got the department to take it seriously enough to bring the matter to the district attorney for possible prosecution.

And the DA has filed charges.

Petrelis surrendered and was booked Nov. 29 on suspicion of violating Penal Code Section 647 (j) 1, which is typically used to prosecute peeping Toms: “Any person who looks through a hole or opening, into, or otherwise views, by means of any instrumentality, including, but not limited to, a periscope, telescope, binoculars, camera, motion picture camera, camcorder, or mobile phone, the interior of a bedroom, bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room, or tanning booth, or the interior of any other area in which the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with the intent to invade the privacy of a person or persons inside.”

Bail was initially set at $25,000, which is astonishingly high for this level of crime, but Petrelis and his lawyer, Derek St. Pierre, got it reduced and Petrelis was cited and released on his own recognizance.

Wiener’s not talking; his office sent over a statement detailing the facts of the case and stating that Petrelis … has political disagreements with me, has a history of inappropriate and harassing behavior.” Both of those facts are undeniably true.

St. Pierre, though, thinks this is a huge waste of criminal justice resources. “I’m surprised that the D.A.’s Office decided to charge this case,” he told me. “I don’t see this as illegal conduct.”

In fact, he said, “the most concerning part of the case is that Wiener references that face that they have political disagreements. That suggests to me that political differences are driving the supervisor’s concerns.”

Maybe — or maybe he thinks his privacy really was invaded, and that Petrelis needs to be held accountable, too. As I said, I can’t blame him; Petrelis was acting like a total asshole. You can fight with Wiener, as I often do, and you can make speeches and denounce and interrupt meetings at City Hall and do all manner of impolite protests, but Jesus — the guy deserves the right to take a pee in peace.

That said, I have to wonder: Is this really worth turning into a criminal case? Did Wiener really have to take it that far? Petrelis, who loves attention, isn’t going to back down. “We will be fighting this case,” St. Pierre told me, starting with an arraignment hearing Dec. 5, at which I can pretty much guarantee the plea will be “not guilty.”

So we might have a full-blown trial here, and (as a fan of restorative justice) I’m not so sure that the criminal courts are the best way to resolve this. You’d think they could go to Community Boards. Wiener could agree to personally lower the rainbow flag to half-staff every now and then and Petrelis could agree to clean pigeon shit off some newsracks. Or something.

Because I don’t imagine that even Wiener wants to take the stand in a public trial and face cross-examination by Petrelis. The only winners at that spectacle would be the reporters.

PS: I don’t even remember exactly why Petrelis started the late-night calls to my home phone; it was around the same time he was calling lots of other people. I think he was mad that the Guardian ran (or didn’t run) some kind of ad around the doctor who was in charge of STD control at the Department of Public Health. I think there was some report about syphillis among gay men in SF that Petrelis didn’t like. I just remember that my son was two years old and sick and we were having a hell of time getting him to sleep and just when he would finally nod off the phone would ring and Petrelis would yell at me about syphillis. I’d hang up and he’d call back ten seconds later and yell again. I finally paid the phone company $2 a month to block his calls.

I was not among those who sought a restraining order or went to the police; that’s not my style. I was furious, but I knew it would pass, and eventually it did.

So will this, Scott.

No satisfaction

Andrew Lam
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0
No satisfaction

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE The tenth anniversary concert for Benjamin Levy’s LEVYdance Company should have been an occasion for looking back a little and glancing into the future a lot. The fact that this was a subdued, at-time depressing event was certainly not the dancers’ fault. They were fabulous, crackerjack performers: fierce, fast, and committed, whether in solo passages or in ensemble work. If you watch dance primarily because of its performers, this was your night.

Where the program fell short was in choreography that would stay in your mind beyond its ephemeral existence on stage. Instead of showing a work that would hint at where he might be going in the next decade, Levy chose to present two pieces from the past. Good as they were, they gave the unfortunate impression that he is a one-note choreographer. He is not. One of the reasons this choreographer has been a pleasure to watch over the years is because he tries to find new vehicles for his volatile and fractured vocabulary. Despite their surface appeal, an undercurrent of violence and danger often propels Levy’s choreographies. It’s what keeps you on the edge of your seat.

It’s with the stunningly tight Falling After Too that Levy introduced himself as choreographer in 2003. Performing it himself at the time, he was partnered by a much heftier Christopher Hajin Lee. The up and down of this contest between will and muscle was partly based on the two men’s different physicalities. Reprised as a duet between Yu Reigen and a slender Paul Vickers, it inevitably shifted the focus onto a male-female relationship. It’s a sign of the work’s choreographic strength — and the performance, including Anthony Porter on piano — that it worked as well as it did.

But why did Levy program Physics (2008), which is essentially an elaboration for two couples of that earlier work? The sequential and overlapping duets, including switching partners, didn’t really tell us much about these couples. Still, Levy has an appealing way of including tiny gestures — a pat here, a kick there — in the muscularity of these ever-shifting encounters. They suggested a sense of spontaneity not unlike the grace notes in a piece of music.

And why Levy chose Sidra Bell Dance New York to collaborate on this concert remains a mystery. What on earth did he think his company — such as it is — could learn from Bell’s? Robert Moses’ Kin introduced her last spring when she set a modest quartet on his female dancers. Here the New York-based artist created less for Levy, and Nudity for her own dancers. Bell knows a good thing when she sees it; she sent her dancers behind the screen, up the walls, and into the audience. She took advantage of ODC Theater’s vaunted lighting possibilities, lowering and tilting levels of the grids in less and having a bank of floor lights shine directly into her audience in Nudity. Maybe turn-around is fair play since that’s what performers have to deal with on a daily basis. But there was something offensive about the approach that left my seat neighbor with a fierce headache and a fiercer fury.

Bell is a complete creature of the theater. Interestingly, she takes credit as “director” instead of “choreographer” of her works. One thing is certain: she is big on image making — whether they come from Glamour or “girlie” (and their male counterpart) magazines. And the accoutrement of these two dance theater works looked promising; the dancers in less wore flimsy whites with big, noose-like scarves, and in Nudity they went Goth — mohawks, black outfits, and fright make-up.

Spectacle, in-your-face aggressiveness, a contempt for continuity in favor of the moment, and raw and supposedly unmediated energy seem to be the elements that fascinate Bell. That’s fine and good, but these practices need to arise from ideas that suggest more than clichés. A man crawling on all fours? Throwing people and catching them — sometimes? Retching to some comment on nutrition — in French? Dominatrixes in both pieces?

The ferocious physicality of Bell’s dance making is its most attractive quality, but the imagery — and she uses a lot of it — has to accumulate into something bigger than its constituent parts. Otherwise why do it? Both of Bell’s works fell short that way. They left behind a sense of ennui and déjà vu.

Supervisors approve nudity ban on close vote

Sasha Cuttler
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139
Supervisors approve nudity ban on close vote

Over the objections of progressive supervisors and under threats of a lawsuit from nudists and civil liberties advocates, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors today voted 6-5 to outlaw public nudity in the city. Supervisors voting against the ban were David Campos, Christina Olague, John Avalos, Eric Mar, and Jane Kim.

Sup. Scott Wiener, who sponsored the measure, cast it as a last resort to deal with what has become daily displays of nudity in the Castro district he represents (and most recently around City Hall as his legislation was being considering in committees), noting that, “Public nudity is part of San Francisco and is appropriate in some circumstances.” His legislation makes exceptions for permitted events such as the Folsom Street Fair and Bay-to-Breakers.

But Wiener said that “public nudity can go too far,” as he says it has over the last two years in the Castro’s Jane Warner Plaza, and that “freedom of expression and acceptance does not mean you can do whatever you want.”

Campos echoed some of the legal concerns that critics of the legislation have raised, noting that, “As a lawyer, I do worry about when you ban specific conduct and then you have exceptions to that.” He also questioned whether Wiener has done enough to try to mediate the increasingly divisive conflict he’s been having with the nudist community and whether this was an appropriate use of scarce police resources.

“I don’t believe we’re at the point of saying this becomes a priority over violent crime,” Campos said, noting that he’s been unable to get more police foot patrols to deal with a recent spate of violent crimes in the Mission, which shares a police station with the Castro.

Avalos said it was absurd to focus city resources on this victimless issue when the city is wrestling with far more serious problems, such as poverty and violence, and he played a clip from the film Catch 22 where a soldier goes naked to a ceremony to highlight that absurdity. “I will refuse to put on this fig leaf, I just can’t do it,” Avalos said.

Mar said he sympathized with Wiener’s concerns, but agreed with Campos that Wiener could have done more to mediate this situation before both sides dug in: “I really don’t think we need citywide legislation, particularly overbroad legislation, to deal with a problem isolated to one neighborhood.”

Wiener seemed stung by the comments and said he could cite example of each supervisor pushing resolutions or ordinances that dealt with similarly trivial issues, comparing it to refusing to deal with a constituent’s pothole complaint until that supervisor fixed Muni and solved the city’s housing problem. But Campos pushed back, calling the comparison ridiculous and saying there was no reason for a citywide ban to deal with such an isolated issue.

Nudists at the hearing reacted angrily to the approval and started to disrobe before President David Chiu ordered deputies to intervene and abruptly recessed the hearing. Now, it will likely be up to the courts to decide whether Wiener’s concerns about weiners can withstand legal scrutiny.

The nudists file suit

Zelda Bronstein
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32
The nudists file suit

You all know the joke: What did the unsuccessful lawyer who joined a nudist colony never have? (A suit. LOL. Sort of.)

But a successful lawyer just filed a detailed suit trying to stop San Francisco from enforcing a ban on public nudity, and it makes a lot of interesting points. You can read the filing here (pdf). I’ll get beyond the fact that a legal argument over nudism uses the terms “prong” and “thrust” and “penal” all in a few short paragraphs, and get to the substance:

Attorney Christina DeEduoardo claims that her clients use nudity as a form of free speech and protest — and given who they are, it’s a pretty good argument. You’ve got a guy who ran as the nudist candidate for mayor and a woman who took her clothes off at a Board of Supervisors meeting for political reasons, and they contend that they have the right to appear naked in public.

The claim seeks a restraining order prohibiting the Board of Supervisors from enacting the law, but a federal judge already nixed that, according to City Attorney spokesperson Matt Dorsey. Instead, all parties have to wait unitl the supes approve the law, at which point this will become a motion for an injunction against the law taking effect.

So banning a handful of people, mostly older guys, from hanging out naked on Castro Street is going to become a legal battle that will cost the city a bunch of money. Unless sanity prevails and Sup. Scott Wiener, the city attorney and the nudists can reach a deal, which might be pretty simple:

It’s cool to get all nekkid (although it won’t be happening much in the next few months, way too cold). But maybe the Castro Guys can agree not to wear cockrings that attract attention to their dicks (and seem to be the proximate cause of all the fuss). Just be natural when you go au naturel, and we can all stop fighting over this.

You think?

 

 

Nudists to sue over Wiener law

Zelda Bronstein
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62
Nudists to sue over Wiener law

Sup. Scott Wiener’s ban on public nudity hasn’t even come to a vote at the full board, but the nudists who oppose it are already planning to sue. A group of five plaintiffs, including former mayoral candidate George Davis and Gypsy Taub, who disrobed at a hearing on the issue, are arguing that the city lacks the legal authority to enact the ban, which they call a violation of protected free speech.

Christina DeEduoardo, the group’s attorney, told me she plans to file this week in federal court in San Francisco. “We’re going to ask for a temporary restraining order to prevent the supervisors from enacting this law,” she explained.

It’s not easy to get a court to pre-emptively block a law that hasn’t been approved, but DeEduoardo said she’s going to argue that state law pre-empts San Francisco from taking this type of action. “When a municipality does something at odds with state law, there’s a reason to prevent it,” she said.

California law already regulates lewd behavior, and the state courts have consistently held that mere nudity is not a violation of that statute. “Nothing says the city has to power to regulate dress,” she argued. “It’s the equivalent of the Board of Supervisors saying that in October the only colors you can wear are black and orange.”

Even if the state doesn’t pre-empt San Francisco’s right to ban nudity, DeEduoardo said, there’s a First Amendment issue here: “This purports to ban all nude expression. My clients engage in nudity as speech. The law is way over-broad.” There’s even an equal-protection argument: Wiener’s legislation specifically exempts major city events, like Bay to Breakers and the Folsom Street Fair — but those things cost a lot of money. “So the city’s saying if you have the money for a permit, you can engage in nudity, but if you can’t afford that, and you just want to go au naturel, then you are a criminal.”

Matt Dorsey, spokesperson for the City Attorney’s Office, told me he doesn’t expect any sort of injunction. “State law is very clear that injunctions can’t be granted to prevent a legislative act,” he said.

If a federal judge won’t issue a restraining order, the nudists are going to sue to overturn the law the minute it passes. So there’s likely to be a long, expensive legal battle — and it seems so silly. Particularly since it’s getting chilly out and the rainy season is about to start, and Mother Nature will be dealing with the naked guys pretty quickly.

This week in sex events: Free Internet anti-porn and sex nerd heaven

Andrew Lam
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7

What to do when Halloween rolls around, but you’re already slutty 365 days a year? Up the ante with one of this week’s sex events, because you’re more than just an awkwardly-gender-coded bag of crap from Spirit.

Quickies Indie Erotic Short Film Festival

Once a year, locally-born sex toy behemoth Good Vibrations gives us an opportunity to don a Halloween costume, kick back in a historic theater, and watch ourselves have sex. This would be Good Vibes’ annual erotic short film competition, which welcomes sensual submissions featuring sexualities of all stripes, vanilla and kink alike, and all manner of core, rock-hard to whisper-soft. This year, sexologist-about-town Carol Queen and drag cinenova Peaches Christ host the affair, whose audience-selected winner will take home a cool $1,500.  

Pre-party 7pm, $10; screening 8pm, $10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

Australian animated genitals await you at Quickies

Good Vibrations Sex Summit

And the fun need not end in the Castro. “Sex nerd” is becoming one of those that’s-so-San-Francisco identities, right up there with “proud wearer of cock rings.” Bawdy Storytelling based an entire show ‘n’ tell session around the concept this year, and now you can spend an entire Saturday (bonus if it’s bright and sunny out) getting into the nitty-gritty of desire, lecture style! Good Vibes hosts this day of panels and keynote talks by all kinds of sexperts. Topics up for discussion include “Regulating Pleasure: Sex, Politics and Censorship,” “Outspoken/Unsaid: Sex and Media,” “Pills, Profits and Pleasures: Sexual Health and Pharmaceuticals,” and “Sexual Stargazing: Sex and Pop Culture.” Attendees get in free to Friday night’s erotic film festival at the Castro. Make a weekend of it, nerd!

Sat/27 8:30am-9pm, $69-99

Marriot Marquis Hotel

www.goodvibessexsummit.com

XXX Apocalypse Funhouse 

This Halloween season, hightail to the one haunted house where you don’t have to be embarassed about getting the pants scared off you (and yes, this is the perfect opportunity to look at those photos again.) Kinky Salon hosts a spooky, two-night edition of its vampire kink orgy (all orientations, all the time.) This weekend look for zombie strippers, Satanic rituals gone sexy, and tunes by DJ Fact 50.

Fri/26 Sat/27, 10pm, $25-35

Mission Control

2519 Mission, SF

www.missioncontrolsf.org

Poetry class for sex workers

Poet Zhayra Palma is teaching four sessions (they started Oct. 23) of writing workshops for people in the sex industry, because really who has better stories than them? (Sorry, Muni drivers.) Come if you’d like your poetry demystified, your voice unleashed, your writing workshops taking place in the most amazing library of sex lit in San Francisco. 

Tuesdays through Nov. 13, 4-6pm, free 

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

As this trailer of Somebody’s Daughter clearly shows, when women become sex workers they become mice.

White Ribbon Against Pornography Week

Through some odd vagary in conservative PR-think, I am on the press list for Morality in Media, a batshit crazy anti-porn organization who sends me important tidings like the fact that adult filmmakers are voting for Obama. Thusly, I have been alerted to the fact that next week will be chockful of free livestreams of sure-to-be-hilarious-if-you’re-not-terrified anti-porn flicks (like this documentary of a real-life pastor’s son who “felt a call from God” to marry a sex worker. Lucky her), seminars on how to spy on your child/limit their ability to access information, and psuedo scientific talks on porn addiction. I suggest masturbating to all of it. 

Various online events, Sun/28-Nov.4, free

www.pornharms.com

Protest the Weiner bill

Though public nudity is currenty legal in our fair city, your right to strut like a peacock may be in danger — Supervisor Scott Weiner has submitted an anti-nudity piece of legislation that woud make everyone put their clothes on. Should that rub you the wrong way, join this protest in the middle of the city to show your true colors. Clothing very much optional. After the chanting, head to the Center for Sex and Culture to estatic dance the night away with Seattle DJ Jules O’Keefe. 

Protest: Tue/30, noon, free

City Hall

1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett 

After-party: Tue/30, 7pm, free (all-ages)

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.mynakedtruth.tv


Skipping Bridge School: a happenstance Saturday in San Francisco

Tony Robles
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For me, things usually go better when the unexpected happens, like this past weekend when my half-assed plans to attend Saturday’s installment of Neil Young’s Bridge School Benefit Concert fell through. Instead of seeing Axl, as he reportedly flubbed the lyrics to “Welcome to the Jungle,” I stayed local to witness part of a San Francisco tradition and later, one of the more sensory provoking and delightfully weirdo art performances I’ve seen in a while. This surprise night out-on-the town turned out to be a success.

First, I headed to the 20th Annual Clarion Alley Block Party (much later than I had intended) after taking note that both Swiftumz and Apogee Sound Club had daytime sets. By the time I got there, it was nightfall. Most of the bands had already played and I missed the only acts I was familiar with.

In a rush to catch whatever I could, I whizzed by the famously muraled alley’s perimeter so I could enter from Valencia Street. I was surprised to hear what sounded like 1990s grunge leaking from the crevices between crammed houses; I entered the free event and joined the crowd for what was apparently an unannounced performance by Two Gallants.

People perched on a rooftop, much like the audience below, were treated to songs I recognized from their first album in five years, The Bloom and the Blight. I’ve been told their live shows are really good and after listening to them deliver a heavy, yet melodic set for my first time, I too was convinced. The guy standing next to me said it was cool for the duo to come back and play Clarion for free after blowing up, considering they’re both so symbolic of San Francisco.

This, however, would be a mere snack before the main course that was to come. Sure, I stopped off at Arinell’s for a slice, but that’s not even what I’m talking about. My next stop would be The Lab on 16th  Street for night two of San Diego performance project Cathedral X’s weekend residency. My only frame of reference was that I was in for some eerie frequencies and that there was the potential for nudity.

Since I was already in the Mission, I headed to the art space at 9:30 (that unfashionable time when it’s too early for people to go to a show). Right off the bat, I heard ESG rotating from a chic Lucite turntable stand and took it as a good sign of where the night would go. Next to the DJ was a young woman in what looked like a witches hat giving tarot readings. I had time to kill and the vibe was already awkward, so I figured, why the hell not?

I sat down and trusted that the oracle would have some kind of mystical wisdom for me. I ended up paying a hefty price (I didn’t see her $20 suggested donation sign until halfway through the reading) but definitely got some good feedback on how to look into my past in order to move forward. That may sound generic, but it’s because I’m sparing you the in-depth details of what virtually ended up being a therapy session.

Oakland’s Straight Crimes opened; both the drummer and guitarist did a fine job, but I couldn’t help but notice how out of place the duo seemed in such a sterile environment. They admitted it felt like being an art installment (in a sense they were) and said just the night before they’d played a squat in the East Bay; which I assumed matched their punk aesthetic far better.  But the night’s theme was experimentation and by stepping out of those pre-conceived constructs, the event pushed boundaries – and with Cathedral X, that’s exactly what we got.

The spirit of Yoko Ono records from some 40 years ago were recalled when jarring shrieks coming from a blindfolded woman entered the room. She was joined by her fellow blindfolded performers, a man and another woman, as they stumbled around the room while the audience politely moved out of harm’s way. Meanwhile, an unassuming man dressed quite plainly in jeans played drone synthesizer and aforementioned eerie tones from the sidelines.

It took me a while to get into it and I thought I was in for a night of performance art clichés, but once I noticed there was substance to the music and that the interpreters were more than just props going through the motions and were integral to the group’s overall sound, I started to enjoy myself.

Highlights included the climactic moment when two women emerged bare-chested, faces obscured by hoods, but connected by bondage. Music every bit as moody as Tangerine Dream’s soundtrack to Firestarter played in the background while they attempted to separate from one another silently, but the chains would not relent. Ultimately they failed and collapsed out of exhaustion accepting a fate of sensory deprivation and togetherness for what could be eternity.

If it takes a visit from a San Diego group to help keep San Francisco weird, then I’m all for supporting this. The audience seemed to like it too.

Nudity and tourism

Zelda Bronstein
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Nudity and tourism

KQED’s Forum weighed in on Sup. Scott Wiener’s anti-nudity law Oct. 18, and I particularly enjoyed the attempts by all to avoid the use of the word “cockring.” I taped a show for KPFA’s morning mix (to air 7:30 am Oct. 19) and host John Hamilton told me that “cockring” wasn’t on the FCC list of unacceptable words and it was ok to use it, but that’s KPFA, not KQED. I also laughed at Michael Krasny confessing that he was beeing “lookist” when he said he’d heard that the men at Jane Warner Plaza weren’t all that good-looking.

At any rate, here’s the real story: A friend’s mom was visiting recently from Switzerland, and what did she want to do in San Francisco? She wanted to go to the Castro and see the naked men. Of course.

You see the buses going down Market Street with all the tourists, sticking their cameras out the window to get a shot? It’s a tourist attraction. 

Remember — when the sea lions first arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf about 20 years ago, and hauled themselves up on the docks, the city tried to get them to leave — they were loud and stinky and unappealing. But they wouldn’t go — and after a few weeks, the merchants realized how good they were for business.

I asked the Convention and Visitors Bureau, now known as SF Travel, if banning nudity might be bad for the tourist industry — and the local economy. The folks there haven’t gotten back to me. But I don’t know; maybe the city economist should study this nudity ban.

Much ado about nudity

Zelda Bronstein
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Much ado about nudity

There was no public outcry when Pedro Villamore, a 44-year-old homeless gay man, was found dead in a doorway in the 500 block of Castro Street last December, a couple of weeks before Christmas and across the street from the holiday tree that the Merchants of Upper Market and Castro puts up every year to welcome big spenders into the neighborhood.

MUMC, which in years past opposed three homeless queer youth shelters and a free meals program at a local gay church, did not decry the fact that a member of our community died on the street — and where were the city’s homeless outreach teams? Nor did any of the residents of the neighborhood express any concern that others who have a problem with methamphetamine, the area’s drug of choice, might meet a similar fate — and shouldn’t the community be doing something about it?

Of course, if he had been one of the nudists who hang out naked in the Castro these days Villamore would’ve found himself on the front-page of Bay Area Reporter, the city’s gay weekly, while he was still alive. Not to mention the target of diatribes from the SF Chronicle’s chronically right-wing columnist C.W. Nevius.  

Sadly enough, a neighborhood that once stood for sexual and personal freedom has succumbed to anti-nudism hysteria, even to the point of echoing Anita Bryant’s old rallying cry, “Save the children!”

Hysteria it is, of epic proportions. Some Castro residents and MUMC merchants actually persuaded their elected official, Supervisor Scott Wiener, to introduce anti-nudism legislation because a few naked men prance around the hood au natural, even sometimes sporting (horrors!) cock rings on their dicks. In a neighborhood where there’s no dearth of cock rings or any other sex toy, not to mention every variety of gay porn imaginable, and where guys walk around bars in underwear, residents don’t want public nudity. Huh? The neighborhood’s historic live-and-let-live attitude has obviously gone the way of Halloween and being able to walk into Pink Saturday without being scanned by a metal detector.

Has gay marriage and the freedom to “be all that you can be” in the military afflicted residents of the Castro with assimilation fever? What’s next — fundraising parties for Mitt Romney or a Castro chapter of the Moral Majority?

In a community that, according to a recent Williams Institute study, is rampant with poverty and suffers a serious lack of full-time employment for transgender people (75%, according to a report from this paper and the Transgender Law Center), not to mention a major drug and alcohol problem that makes gay men easy targets for muggings as they leave the bars at night, you’d think that public nudity would the last thing on anyone’s mind.  

People with AIDS continue to be pushed out of apartments in the Castro so that landlords and realtors can make tons of dough and LGBT seniors are forced to live with little economic or social support, regular cuts to services and benefits, and discrimination and isolation in nursing care facilities.

Yet from the volume of letters in the BAR and the number of calls Wiener says he’s received, you’d think that public nudity is the biggest problem in the world.

Pedro Villamore might disagree with that.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca has been a queer activist for the past 42 years, and a Castro resident for 20. He is editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: the early years of gay liberation (City Lights).

Torture, for real

Andrew Lam
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OPINION Last week I walked into my favorite café in SoMa and noticed the barista wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the black and orange word “torture.”

I froze. I knew I was holding up the line but I didn’t care. I had to ask about that shirt.

“Oh, it’s to promote the San Francisco Giants,” he said. He continued speaking, not noticing my umbrage. “So do you want your coffee hot or cold today?”

I wanted to keep talking about that shirt, but I didn’t know what to say. “I will have my coffee cold please,” I told him.

For the past ten years, torture has never been far from me. When I worked at Amnesty International, it was two doors down in the person of my colleague Kumar, who was tortured in Sri Lanka for advocating for Tamil rights. When I was on Capitol Hill as a foreign policy aide in the House of Representatives, I saw lawmakers justify President Obama’s lackadaisical attitude towards US torture.

One of the first things I learned at Amnesty International is the power and the responsibility of words. Human-rights work is about finding and verifying stories and then giving those stories names: war crime, rape, genocide … torture. It’s in the naming that our action begins. When we use the word torture it carries weight—and can heal wounds—because for so many people, their torture is denied, rationalized, or trivialized.

When I see the word torture on a t-shirt I do more than cringe: I mourn how far we are as a nation from a serious discussion of the use of torture by our own government.

Just last week Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department was closing the last two cases examining harsh CIA interrogation tactics during the Bush administration.

According to the ACLU, “(CIA) Interrogators were told they could use, among other tactics, extended sleep deprivation; ‘stress positions’ such as forced-standing, handcuffing in painful crouched positions and shackling people to the ceiling, usually for hours or even days; confining prisoners to small, coffin-like boxes with air and light cut off; extended forced nudity; sensory bombardment; extreme temperatures; hooding; and physical beatings, including slamming prisoners into walls.”

I can understand and I can attest that watching your team blow a lead in the bottom of the ninth is painful, excruciating even. It might cause you to drink or curse or smoke more. But it’s not torture. It doesn’t violate the core of your being. It doesn’t terrorize your nights.

Standing in line at the café that day, I thought of my friend Firoze who was tortured so badly he can no longer have sex. I wonder what he would say if were staring at the Barista with the “torture” t-shirt.

He would probably laugh and say it’s just a game. And then he might say what he told me each time we met: “People have no idea.”

Zahir Janmohamed recently completed a fellowship at the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and is writing a book about Juhapura, the largest ghetto of Muslims in India

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Our Weekly Picks: August 29-September 4

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 5

Daughn Gibson

James Blake goes country? Nicolas Jaar with a bolo tie? Daughn Gibson’s All Hell is one of the most unexpected, quietly subversive records of the year so far, treating lovelorn trucker anthems with the chopped and screwed mentality of the 21st century laptop scene. Though it might not make sense on paper, Gibson’s Scott Walker-meets-Johnny Cash croon meshes intuitively with his loop-based backing productions. Just a week ago, upon signing to Seattle’s Sub Pop Records, he Soundclouded a new track, featuring samples lifted from the label’s own Shabazz Palaces and Tiny Vipers, that somehow remains as country-esque as any of his previous output. A true maverick in a scene overflowing with uninspired, rehashed ideas. (Taylor Kaplan)

With the Reckless Kind, the Emily Anne Band

9pm, $10

Elbo Room

647 Valencia, SF

(415) 552-7788

www.elbo.com

 

Fucked Up

If you’re looking for some blood and possibly a little nudity on a Wednesday night (who isn’t?) Fucked Up has got you covered. Famous for bizarre and unpredictable onstage antics, these Toronto-based punk rockers are all about pushing the boundaries. Whether it’s choosing an unprintable band name, getting moshing banned from MTV Live (Canada) after causing thousands of dollars in damage to the set, or releasing a sprawling rock opera that SPIN Magazine named as the best album of 2011, Fucked Up have proven their fearlessness and artistic ambition with every move they’ve made since they’re formation in 2001. Legendary live shows, intelligent and inventive lyric content, and notable contributions to women’s shelters are just a few of the elements that make Fucked Up one of the most exciting and deeply respected bands on the scene today. (Haley Zaremba)

With Ceremony

9pm, $19

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com


THURSDAY 6

“MADison Avenue Party”

Celebrating the diamond anniversary of the iconic humor publication, the Cartoon Art Museum has been hosting the “What, Me Worry?: 60 Years of MAD Magazine” exhibit this summer, featuring a variety of original, hilarious artwork. Help say goodbye to Alfred E. Neuman and cohorts at a special swingin’ sixties style event tonight, “MADison Avenue Party: Cocktails, Cartoons and Tunes,” which invites fans to dress up in their “Dapper Don” best, sip some “MADhattans,” listen to live music, and pose for a sketch from a local cartoonist. Don’t be a schmuck! This is your chance to join “the usual gang of idiots!” (Sean McCourt)

7-9pm; $5–$500

Cartoon Art Museum

655 Mission, SF

(415) 227-8666

www.cartoonart.org

 

Tallest Man on Earth

Kristian Matsson, a.k.a the Tallest Man on Earth, is not particularly tall, but the name takes on greater meaning when the Swedish folk singer takes the stage. Matsson’s incredible presence and charisma transform him into something larger when he begins to play. Shallow Grave, his debut album, was praised by Pitchfork and featured on NPR. And he continued to garner stateside attention when fellow indie-folker Bon Iver brought him on tour. In his albums, which are both unassuming and enchanting, the influence of Bob Dylan, one of Matsson’s earliest heroes, is clear. His recordings — created in whatever home Matsson is currently living in — possess a warmth and charm so often lacking in the current era of overproduction. (Zaremba)

With Strand of Oaks

8pm, $30

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 302-2250

www.thefoxoakland.com


FRIDAY 7

“Studio Ghibli Animation Retrospective”

It’s a fantasy — filled with forest spirits, girl power, talking animals, imagination, magic charms, enchanted trees, and budding witches — come true: a 14-film restrospective showcasing the visually luscious, thematically complex works of Japan’s Studio Ghibli. Spanning the years 1984-2008, the kid-friendly-but-also-adult-worthy series is heavy on the works of Ghibli co-founder and most-prominent director Hayao Miyazaki, including Princess Mononoke (1997), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), and the Oscar-winning Spirited Away (2001). Even better, each film screens in new, 35mm print form, and all are shown in original Japanese with English subtitles, with a few screenings of Totoro‘s English-dubbed version thrown in for good measure. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sept. 13, $8–$10.50

Bridge Theatre

3010 Geary, SF

Sept. 14-26, $8–$10.50

California Theatre

2113 Kittredge, Berk.

www.landmarktheatres.com

 

Port Out, Starboard Home

Slap a bottle of champagne on its ass, it’s done! Four years in the making, the new play collaboratively wrought by acclaimed New York playwright Sheila Callaghan (That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play) and SF-based foolsFURY finally launches its cruise ship, Crown of the Seas, packed with an oddball set of seekers in sneakers whose spiritual enlightenment comes anchored in a decadent, vaguely sinister bed of ritual. The very brief Bay Area run takes place at co-producers Z Space, before transfer to New York’s La Mama in November for the second half of a bicoastal world premiere. Set a course for adventurous ensemble-driven physical theater. (Robert Avila)

Through Sept. 23, 8pm, $12–$30

Z Space (at Theater Artaud)

450 Florida, SF

www.zspace.org

www.foolsfury.org

 

Defeater

Massachusetts hardcore band Defeater has a way of creating thoughtful, dynamic albums in a genre that often feel formulaic and stagnant. They have ambitiously committed themselves not just to a concept album, but to a concept career, with each record picking up the story arc where the previous one left off. Defeater’s music is set in the broken home of a WWII-era family living on the Jersey Shore. Continuity is only one of the band’s tenets — Defeater is dedicated to an environmentally-friendly lifestyle and music career. It prints all of its merchandise on recycled materials and tours in a Greenvan, a vehicle that runs on vegetable oil and bio-diesel. (Zaremba)

With Rotting Out, Hundredth, Silver Snakes, Broken Ties, Troubled Coast

6:30pm, $12

924 Gilman, Berkeley

(510) 525-9926

www.924gilman.org


SATURDAY 8

Anané and Louie Vega

Anané is a singer hailing from West Africa Cape Verde whose musical style blends dance, reggae, and Caribbean influences. She found her way to New York and teamed up with “Little” Louie Vega, one of New York’s premier DJs and one half of legendary house music production team Masters At Work. Now wife-and-husband, the Vegas make up a dance music power couple and collaborated together on 2010’s ANANÉSWORLD , which clearly displays the vocal and musical range of Anané. They’ve since been trotting the globe, making stops in club-heavy Ibiza in Spain and Miami’s prominent Winter Music Conference. During live sets, the Vegas tag team the decks, switching from soulful, groovy tracks to percussion and horns-heavy Latin house to full on Afro-jack cuts. (Kevin Lee)

With David Harness

10pm, $15–$20

Mighty

119 Utah

(415) 762-0151

www.mighty119.com


SUNDAY 9

KUSF’s Rock-n-Swap

Is there one movie, album (vinyl or CD), poster, or book that you have been looking to buy everywhere, but just haven’t yet had that stroke of luck? KUSF’s Rock-n-Swap may be the place for you — known as a Giant Music Lover’s Fair, the event features vendors selling rare music-related gems. Admission is free for USF students, otherwise $3, which you can feel good about because the money benefits KUSF (who has been undergoing a battle for the airwaves and campus support). This is one of the biggest music swaps in California, going strong for more than 20 years. So hunt for that one rare record you’ve been yearning for, while supporting local, independent broadcasting. (Shauna C. Keddy)

10am-3pm, $3 (free for students)

McLaren Hall at USF

2130 Fulton, SF

(415) 386-KUSF(5873)

kusf.org/rocknswap


MONDAY 10

Swans

Swans, led by Michael Gira, announced their return after a 14-year absence in 2010 with the bleak yet forceful My Father Will Guide Me A Rope To The Sky. Gira and co. use an expansive, cinematic approach with their latest album The Seer, a two-hour long assemblage that flips between meditative drizzle and crashing thunderstorm. Penultimate cut “A Piece of the Sky” blends the spiritual pop feel of the Polyphonic Spree with the studious, methodical post-rock of Tortoise. Following up is “The Apostate,” where Swans build a dreadful and disorderly tone and turn primal with noise and curses and yelping. In a good way. San Jose’s Xiu Xiu, out with new album Always, opens. (Lee)

With Xiu Xiu

8pm,$30–$34

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter

(888) 929-7849

www.theregencyballroom.com


TUESDAY 11

Michael Chabon

Though Chabon was born in DC, the award-winning author found his way to Berkeley in the mid-’90s and has remained in the Bay Area since. The East Bay acts as both setting and muse in his latest work. Telegraph Avenue: A Novel delves into the lives of both a black family and a white family and their relationships within and between each other in modern Oakland. While Chabon typically constructs fantastic fictional worlds, he grounds his novels in social and political realities. Tonight, the author talks with witty special effects designer Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame, with proceeds going toward college scholarships administered through Dave Eggers’ writing school 826 Valencia. (Lee).

With Adam Savage

7:30pm, $22–$27

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness

(415) 392-4400

www.sfwmpac.org

 

NUDE BEACHES 2012

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NUDE BEACHES 2012

Editors Note: Below you’ll find our annual update on the state of nude beaches in the Bay Area, along with detailed guides and directions to several of our favorites. For details on dozens more, please see our complete Nude Beaches Guide, which we are in the process of updating. 

NUDE BEACHES Arrests for being naked on the sand, anti-nudity warning signs going up at previously unthreatened spots, outright threats of beach closures, social activists making their mark on San Francisco’s most well-known clothing-optional beach: this is shaping up to be one of Northern California’s busiest nude beach seasons in recent memory.

Faced with a July 1 deadline, on June 28 Governor Jerry Brown’s administration announced it saved or would stall shutting down all but one of 70 state parks and beaches targeted for closure due to budgetary shortfalls. These include three sites in our annual guide: Montara’s Gray Whale Cove, Carmel’s Garrapata State Park, and Zmudowski State Beach in northern Monterey County.

Officials said they would use $13 million in bond money in the budget to keep the properties running at least through summer. Some 40 parks will remain open for an estimated one to five years, due to temporary funding and support agreements being negotiated with nonprofit foundations and other organizations. More than 25 other properties, including Gray Whale Cove, also known as Devil’s Slide, will keep going while deals are completed.

When asked exactly how long Gray Whale Cove, Garrapata, and Zmudowski would stay open, California State Parks spokesman Dennis Weber told me they could keep going for a month, the entire summer, a year, or even longer. “We don’t know how much time we have,” he said.

Paul Keel, the state parks sector superintendent for the area that includes Gray Whale Cove, was more optimistic. He told me he’s keeping the popular beach open through at least the end of July because while “nothing’s been signed or inked, it’s fair to say we are optimistic” an agreement with a private operator or nonprofit will be finalized before then. Until the state took control, the site was run by a private licensee, San Francisco developer Carl Ernst and his company, Gray Whale Cove Enterprises, Inc.

Ruth Coleman, head of the State Parks and Recreation Department, said the bonds would fund solar power systems, as well as automatic pay machines that take credit and debit cards. And visitors arriving at Devil’s Slide or Garrapata are likely to notice signs that urge them to pay for parking instead of parking outside.

The card machines are likely to be particularly handy at Devil’s Slide after a long-awaited tunnel bypassing rockslide-prone Highway 1, which remains the access point to the beach, is expected to open this fall. Keel suspects the Devil’s Slide Tunnel will bring larger crowds to the beach.

But the news wasn’t all good. Maintenance and garbage pick up operations are likely to remain reduced or eliminated. In late June, Brown partly vetoed a larger, $41 million funding bill that had been OKed by the state legislature. State Senator Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), who coauthored the bigger funding plan, criticized the veto, calling it “a lost opportunity to take action.” Another lost opportunity: in November 2010, California voters rejected a ballot initiative that would have raised about $500 million for state parks.

Meanwhile, while Sacramento was cutting back beach services, activists were making additions to the section of San Francisco’s Baker Beach used by nudists. Naturists have erected driftwood art sculptures and tent-like structures without walls, called “dunies,” at the north end of the beach. And they’ve vowed to keep the site free of gawkers by staring them down in what organizers call a non-confrontational approach to self-policing. “They usually decide to leave pretty soon,” says Santosh, 46, an artist and street fair producer.

Speaking of policing, in the past year cops have raided Garrapata and put up signs about nudity at Bonny Doon Beach and at least two other beaches north of Santa Cruz.

At Garrapata, rangers and lifeguards cited over a dozen persons for public nudity last summer and began patrolling the beach at least two times a day after receiving what lifeguard Eric Sturm told the Carmel Pine Cone were reports of “sex acts on the beach.”

And at Bonny Doon, Laguna Creek, and Panther Beach, “Nudity In The State Park System Is Prohibited” signs have been posted, although naturists there remain defiant and are still visiting the sites. “A 50-year tradition (of clothing-optional use at Bonny Doon) cannot be extinguished by a simple sign,” said Rich Pasco, coordinator of the Bay Area Naturists, after the signs went up. He urged nudists to “be polite and respectful” of rangers and suit up “if requested,” but to engage them in “intelligent conversations.” After two months, the signs at Bonny Doon, though, were taken down because, according to Joe Connors, public safety superintendent for state beaches in the Santa Cruz area, “we don’t get a big volume of complaints there.”

Want to join others in having fun at a clothing-optional spot this summer? The USA’s only naked “Full Moon Hikes” will take place in Castro Valley in late July, August, and September (see our listings online at SFBG.com for Last Trampas in Contra Costa County for details). Another idea to meet and socialize with fellow naturists: drop by Bonny Doon on September 15, when fans of the site will be gathering to keep it pristine by finding and removing trash.

Finally, you can aid the naturist community by sending me your new beach discoveries, trip reports, and improved directions (especially road milepost numbers), along with your phone number to garhan@aol.com or Gary Hanauer, c/o San Francisco Bay Guardian, 71 Stevenson, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105.

Our ratings: [full moon] signifies a beach that is large or well-established and where the crowd is mostly nude; [half moon] indicates places where fewer than half the visitors are nude; and [quarter moon] means small or emerging nude areas.

SAN FRANCISCO

NORTH BAKER BEACH, SAN FRANCISCO

RATING: A

Social activists have begun streaming onto the sand of America’s biggest urban nude beach, creating what visitor Santosh calls “a tone that’s like Burning Man,” with regulars bringing guitars, drums, and Frisbees to the sand, putting up art work best described as eclectic, and occasionally staring down gawkers.” There’s no requirement that you go nude,” says Santosh, an artist, graphic artist, and producer of San Francisco’s How Weird Street Faire, an outdoor street fair held each year in the SoMa neighborhood as a fundraiser for the World Peace Through Technology Organization. “But if a creeper dude plops down next to a (nude) person or if they are staring at someone’s private parts and it’s happening close to where we are, on the far north end (of North Baker), then they will start being the object of ridicule.

Directions: Take the 29 Sunset bus or go north on 25th Avenue to Lincoln Boulevard. Turn right and take the second left onto Bowley Street. Follow Bowley to Gibson Road, turn right, and follow Gibson to the east parking lot. At the beach, head right to the nude area, which starts at the brown and yellow “Hazardous surf, undertow, swim at your own risk” sign. Some motorcycles in the lot have been vandalized, possibly by car owners angered by bikers parking in car spaces; to avoid trouble, motorcyclists should park in the motorcycle area near the cyclone fence.

LAND’S END BEACH

RATING: A

Considered one of the most beautiful places in the Bay Area to doff your togs, Land’s End should really be called Swimsuit’s End. The reason: although it draws more clothed users than nudists, more than a few swim tops and bottoms magically “disappear” on warm spring, summer, and fall days at the little cove off Geary Boulevard. Come early to grab your share of the sand on this semi-rocky shoreline, which is sometimes dotted with rock-lined windbreaks left by previous sunbathers. Bring a light jacket or sweatshirt in case the weather changes.

Directions: Follow Geary Boulevard to the end, then park in the dirt lot up the road from the Cliff House. Take the trail at the far end of the lot. About 100 yards past a bench and some trash cans, the path narrows and bends, then rises and falls, eventually becoming the width of a road. Don’t take the road to the right, which leads to a golf course. Just past another bench, as the trail turns right, go left toward a group of dead trees where you will see a stairway and a “Dogs must be leashed” sign. Descend and head left to another stairway, which leads to a 100-foot walk to the cove. Or, instead, take the service road below the El Camino del Mar parking lot 1/4 mile until you reach a bench, then follow the trail there. It’s eroded in a few places. At the end, you’ll have to scramble over some rocks. Turn left (west) and walk until you find a good place to put down your towel.

GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE BEACH

RATING: A

On the hottest days, Golden Gate Bridge Beach becomes so packed with people that one visitor describes it as a “gay mob scene.” But the rocky shore, which connects three picturesque coves, also gets its share of straight men and women. Prime, non-cruising activities include sunbathing, enjoying breathtaking views of the Bridge, and even taking some dips in the water. “You can sometimes go out over 100 feet during low tide,” a woman tells me.

Directions: from the toll booth area of Highway 101/1, take Lincoln Boulevard west about a half mile to Langdon Court. Turn right (west) on Langdon and look for space in the parking lots, across Lincoln from Fort Winfield Scott. Park and then take the beach trail, starting just west of the end of Langdon, down its more than 200 steps to Golden Gate Bridge Beach, also known as Marshall’s Beach. Despite recent improvements, the trail to the beach can still be slippery, especially in the spring and winter.

FORT FUNSTON BEACH

RATING: C

What’s the only Golden Gate National Recreation Area park where you can walk your dog without a leash, as well as the spot where the world record for the farthest tossed object (a flying ring sent soaring 1,333 feet by Erin Hemmings) was set in 2003? Answer: Fort Funston, which is affectionately called Fort Fun by its fans. Known for its magnetic sand, steady winds (especially in March and October) that make its cliffs popular for hang gliding, and, in particular, its dogs, who appear here with their human escorts by the hundreds, the area even attracts a few naturists from time to time. Mostly hidden away in the sand dunes on the beach, naked sunbathers usually stay away on the weekends, when families swarm the area. To keep the “fun” in Fort Funston, even on weekdays, be sure to use caution before disrobing.

Directions: From San Francisco, go west to Ocean Beach, then south on the Great Highway. After Sloat Boulevard, the road heads uphill. From there, curve right onto Skyline Boulevard, go past one stoplight, and look for signs for Funston on the right. Turn into the public lot and find a space near the west side. At the southwest end, take the sandy steps to the beach, turn right, and walk to the dunes. Find a spot as far as possible from the parking lot.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY

LAS TRAMPAS REGIONAL WILDERNESS, CASTRO VALLEY

RATING: C

Want to go walking around nude at night outside without being hauled off to jail? Imagine hiking naked guided only by your flashlight in the East Bay Hills, with the trail silhouetted by a full moon and small herds of horses coming up to greet you.

“It’s absolutely surreal,” says Jurek Zarzycki. “The horses come within inches of you, so close you can feel their breath. It’s like being on a moonscape with aliens. You may be a little afraid at first, but the horses are very friendly.”

America’s only nude “Full Moon Hikes” have been taking place on summer full moon nights in Castro Valley for more than seven years. The next ones will be held July 29, August 31 (arrive by 6pm), and September 28 (starting at 5:15pm) “We start early so that we have the full moon already risen by the time the sun sets,” says San Leandro’s Dave Smith, who leads most of the hikes. “Then we hike up the trail around sunset.”

Coordinated by a partnership between the Sequoians Naturist Club and the Bay Area Naturists, based in San Jose, walkers leave the property of the Sequoians fully clothed at dusk and walk through meadows and up hills until the moon rises, before heading back down the slopes completely nude, with their clothes folded neatly into their backpacks.

After the walk, most hikers shower at The Sequoians, and, for a fee of $5, take a dip in the 86-degree pool there and enjoy a plunge in the facility’s hot tub. “It was fabulous,” says Zarzycki about an earlier trek. “I pitched my tent right there at The Sequoians and then slept under the sky.”

Directions: Contact The Sequoians (www.sequoians.com) or the Bay Area Naturists (www.bayareanaturists.org) for details on how to join a walk. Meet at The Sequoians. To get there, take Highway 580 east to the Crow Canyon Road exit. Or follow 580 west to the first Castro Valley off-ramp. Take Crow Canyon road toward San Ramon .75 mile to Cull Canyon road. Then follow Cull canyon road around 6.5 miles to the end of the paved road. take the dirt road on the right until the “Y” in the road and keep left. Shortly after, you’ll see The Sequoians sign. Proceed ahead for about another .75 mile to The Sequoians front gate.

SAN MATEO COUNTY

DEVIL’S SLIDE, MONTARA

RATING: A

Although Devil’s Slide, also known as Gray Whale Cove, was scheduled to be closed this month by the state due to budget shortfalls, officials plan to keep it open while they negotiate with what Paul Keel, San Mateo coast state parks sector superintendent, calls a prospective “donor to keep it in operation for the coming year.” At press time, Keel told us that although “nothing’s been signed or inked, it’s fair to say we are optimistic, so hopefully we will know more in the next month.” Access to the site, though, is changing: after a long-awaited, voter-approved Devil’s Slide tunnel is completed this fall, Keel and others expect a possible increase in traffic to the beach, as more pedestrians and bicyclists use a nearby section of Highway 1 that is being closed. Meanwhile, rangers say they will allow a long-standing tradition of nudity to continue on the sand unless visitors complain.

Directions: Driving from San Francisco, take Highway 1 south through Pacifica. Three miles south of the Denny’s restaurant in Linda Mar, turn left (inland or east) on an unmarked road, which takes you to the beach’s parking lot and to a 146-step staircase that leads to the sand. Coming from the south on Highway 1, look for a road on the right (east), 1.2 miles north of the Chart House restaurant in Montara. Starting this fall, from the north, take Highway 1 through the Devil’s Slide tunnel and then turn left onto the road described above. From the south, continue using the above directions. Most naturists use the north end of the beach, which is separated by rocks from the rest of the shore.

SAN GREGORIO NUDE BEACH, SAN GREGORIO

RATING: A

Still the USA’s longest continually used nude beach, San Gregorio even has its own web site and live web cam at www.freewebs.com/sangregoriobeach. The privately run operation, which is located next to San Gregorio State Beach, recently began its 46th year of serving the clothing-optional community.

The beach often draws a large gay crowd, along with some nude and suited straight couples, singles, and families. “It’s a really romantic spot,” says a single woman. However, first-timers are sometimes annoyed (as I was, years ago) by the driftwood structures on the sandy slope leading down to the beach, which are used by some visitors as “sex condos.” However, fans of the beach savor San Gregorio’s stunning scenery. It has “awesome natural beauty,” says regular visitor Bob Wood. Attractions of the 120-acre site include two miles of soft sand and tide pools to explore, as well as a lagoon, lava tube, and, if you look closely enough on the cliffs, the remains of an old railroad line.

Directions: From San Francisco, drive south on Highway 1, past Half Moon Bay, and, between mileposts 18 and 19, look on the right side of the road for telephone call box number SM 001 0195, at the intersection of Highway 1 and Stage Road, and near an iron gate with trees on either side. From there, expect a drive of 1.1 miles to the entrance. At the Junction 84 highway sign, the beach’s driveway is just .1 mile away. Turn into a gravel driveway, passing through the iron gate mentioned above, which says 119429 on the gatepost. Drive past a grassy field to the parking lot, where you’ll be asked to pay an entrance fee. Take the long path from the lot to the sand; everything north of the trail’s end is clothing-optional (families and swimsuit using visitors tend to stay on the south end of the beach). The beach is also accessible from the San Gregorio State Beach parking area to the south; from there, hike about a half-mile north. Take the dirt road past the big white gate with the Toll Road sign to the parking lot.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY

GARDEN OF EDEN, FELTON

RATING: C

Tucked away in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, between Santa Cruz and Felton, the Garden Of Eden is a much-used skinny-dipping hole on the San Lorenzo River, which is also visited by clothed families. Some hikers are surprised when they see people nude there and either use the spot anyway or keep walking. Watch out for poison oak and slippery sections on the trail. Eden is one of three clothing-optional swimming holes on the river. To find them, look for cars pulled over on Highway 9, next to the state park, which bans nudity but seldom sends ranger patrols to the creek.

Directions: From Santa Cruz, drive north on Highway 9 and look for turnouts on the right side of the road, where cars are pulled over. The first, a wide turnout with a tree in the middle, is just north of Santa Cruz. Rincon Fire Trail starts about where the tree is, according to reader Robert Carlsen, of Sacramento. The many forks in the trail all lead to the river, down toward Big Rock Hole and Frisbee Beach; Carlsen says the best area off this turnout can be reached by bearing left until the end of the trail. Farther up the highway, 1.3 miles south of the park entrance, is the second and bigger pullout, called the Ox Trail Turnout, leading to Garden of Eden. Park in the turnout and follow the dirt fire road downhill and across some railroad tracks. Head south, following the tracks, for around .5 miles. Look for a “Pack Your Trash” sign with park rules and hours and then proceed down the Eden Trail.

Ox Trail, which can be slippery, and Eden Trail both wind down steeply to the creek. “The path continues to the left, where there are several spots for wading and sunbathing,” Carlsen says. The main beach is only 75 feet long and 30 feet wide, but fairly sandy. Carlsen’s favorite hole is accessible from a trail that starts at the third turnout, a small one on the right side of the road, about 4.5 miles from Highway 1 and just before Felton. A gate marks the start of the path. The trail bends left. When you come to the road again, go right. At the railroad tracks, go right. From here, look for the river down the hill on your left; many paths lead to it. Says Mike: “Within 10 yards, you can be in the water.”

BONNY DOON NUDE BEACH, BONNY DOON

RATING: A

Despite the temporary erection of anti-nudity warning signs at longtime nudie fan favorite Bonny Doon Beach, north of Santa Cruz, officials have told us they have no immediate plans to issue citations at the north end of the site, which has traditionally been occupied by naturists. In fact, the signs were taken down after just two months.

In fact, in June, Pam, of San Mateo, even found a nudist at the main public, south side of the beach, which is used by suited visitors. A 15-foot long rock on the sand, along with a sloping cliff with rocks that jut out, separate the two sides of the cove that form Bonny Doon.

“In the short term, things at Bonny Doon are destined to continue the way they are,” says Kirk Lingenfelter, sector superintendent for Bonny Doon and nearby state beaches. Lingenfelter says he likes Bonny Doon just the way it is. “It’s one of our pocket beaches,” he explains. “They can really give you the feeling of rugged, untouched majesty. I like standing on those beaches. You can sometimes forget that there’s a highway in the distance. It’s a very important feeling to maintain. “The clothing-optional section usually attracts more women and couples than most nude beaches. “Minuses” include occasional vehicle burglaries and gawkers on the bluffs or in the bushes.

Directions: From San Francisco, go south on Highway 1 to the Bonny Doon parking lot at milepost 27.6 on the west side of the road, 2.4 miles north of Red, White, and Blue Beach, and some 11 miles north of Santa Cruz. From Santa Cruz, head north on Highway 1 until you see Bonny Doon Road, which veers off sharply to the right just south of Davenport. The beach is just off the intersection. Park in the paved lot to the west of Highway 1; don’t park on Bonny Doon Road or the shoulder of Highway 1. If the lot is full, drive north on Highway 1, park at the next beach lot, and walk back to the first lot. Or take Santa Cruz Metro Transit District bus route 40 to the lot; it leaves the Metro Center three times a day on Saturdays and takes about 20 minutes. To get to the beach, climb the berm next to the railroad tracks adjacent to the Bonny Doon lot, cross the tracks, descend, and take a recently improved, sign-marked trail to the sand. Walk north past most of the beach to the nude cove on the north end. Alternately, Dusty suggests parking as far north as possible, taking the northern entrance, and, with good shoes, following a “rocky and steep” walk down to the sand.

2222 BEACH, SANTA CRUZ

RATING: A

In late May, when my girlfriend and I visited a little cliffside park above it and peered down on the aptly named 2222 — it’s the number of the house across the street — we discovered that the pocket-size cove looked as beautiful as ever. In fact, America’s smallest nude beach is so small it could probably fit in your yard. And that’s what makes it a magical place. You won’t find crowds at 2222, which takes scrambling to reach and isn’t recommended for children or anyone who isn’t a good hiker. However, those who are agile enough to make it down a steep cliff and over some concrete blocks on the way down will probably be rewarded with an oasis of calm and a good spot to catch some sunrays.

Directions: The beach is a few blocks west of Natural Bridges State Beach and about 2.5 miles north of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. From either north or south of Santa Cruz, take Highway 1 to Swift Street. Drive .8 miles to the sea, then turn right on West Cliff Drive. 2222 is five blocks away. Past Auburn Avenue, look for 2222 West Cliff on the inland side of the street. Park in the nine-car lot next to the cliff. If it’s full, continue straight and park along Chico Avenue. Bay Area Naturists leader Rich Pasco suggests visitors use care and then follow the path on the side of the beach closest to downtown Santa Cruz and the Municipal Wharf.

PRIVATES BEACH, SANTA CRUZ

RATING: A

“Privates is one of my favorite beaches,” says Brittney Barrios, manager-buyer of Freeline Design Surf Shop, which is located nearby and sells keys to unlock the gate leading to the clean, beautiful cove. “It’s always very peaceful.” Visitors include nudists, surfers, families, and local residents. “Everyone gets along,” adds Barrios. “And it’s never crowded.”

Barrios says many of the naturists, who often visit in groups, like to play Paddle Ball on the sand. As for Barrios, she prefers to “lay out,” as she calls it, in the sun.

There’s almost no litter, wind, noise, or troublemakers — security guards plus a locked gate keep the latter out — and world class surfers, such as those who starred in Endless Summer II, regularly put on a free show for the naked people who share the warm, clean sand with surfers.

“It’s really nice,” says Hunter Young, a former worker at Freeline, which sells up to 600 beach passes a year. “Surfers love it because it has good waves. It’s 100 percent standup surfing, with paddling. Anytime I go to Privates, I can expect a long ride on my longboard.”

“The beach is also very family oriented,” explains Barrios. “And it’s OK for dogs too.”

“There are two different coves on the beach,” says Young. “Clothed families who use the beach know which cove is nude and stay away from it. If you want to play naked Frisbee, at the bottom of the beach stairs you just walk to the left.”

Directions: 1) Some visitors walk north from Capitola Pier in low tide (not a good idea since at least four people have needed to be rescued). 2) Others reach it in low tide via the stairs at the end of 41st Avenue, which lead to a surf spot called the Hook at the south end of a rocky shore known as Pleasure Point. 3) Surfers paddle on boards for a few minutes to Privates from Capitola or the Hook. 4) Most visitors buy a key to the beach gate for $100 a year at Freeline (821 41st Ave., Santa Cruz, 831-476-2950) 1.5 blocks west of the beach. Others go with someone with a key or wait outside the gate until a person with a key goes in, provided a security guard is not present (they often are there). “Most people will gladly hold the gate open for someone behind them whose hands are full,” says Bay Area Naturists leader Rich Pasco. The nude area starts to the left of the bottom of the stairs.

MARIN COUNTY

MUIR NUDE BEACH, MUIR BEACH

RATING: A

Mellow times are continuing at one of the Bay Area’s easiest to reach and most enjoyable nude beaches, the clothing-optional north side of Muir Beach. Also known as Little Beach, it’s separated by the main public beach by a line of large rocks that visitors usually walk over. Says Lucas Valley’s Michael Velkoff, who switched from Red Rock to become a regular at Muir: “This season, there’s plenty of sand. It’s also a great place for women because people leave you alone here. Nobody’s hitting on you. And high tide only comes a third of the way up the beach.” Recent additions include a new bridge over a marshy, lagoon-like area near the parking lot, plus about a half dozen Porta-Potties.

Directions: From San Francisco, take Highway 1 north to Muir Beach, to milepost 5.7. Turn left on Pacific Way and park in the Muir lot (to avoid tickets, don’t park on Pacific). Or park on the long street off Highway 1 across from Pacific and about 100 yards north. From the Muir lot, follow a path and boardwalk to the sand. Then walk north to a pile of rocks between the cliffs and the sea. You’ll need good hiking or walking shoes to cross; in very low tide, try to cross closer to the water. The nude area starts north of it.

RED ROCK BEACH, STINSON BEACH

RATING: B

One of the most popular Bay Area nude beaches, Red Rock has struggled with sand erosion that’s left a smaller site the last few seasons, along with a more crowded feel to it and, perhaps in reaction, fewer overall visitations. Except for being a little overgrown with vegetation in early July and some poison oak on the half nearest the highway, the beach trail, however, is reported in good shape this year. “Just wear shoes with socks, go single file in spots, and you should be okay,” advises Stinson Beach attorney-teacher Fred Jaggi. Rock climbing and various kinds of Frisbee continue to be frequent pastimes at Red Rock — Ultimate Frisbee games there can last as long as three hours. Naked Scrabble and Nude Hearts are among the other games played by sunbathers. “It’s very peaceful at the beach,” says Jaggi. “Nobody ever brings down a large boombox.”

Directions: Go north on Highway 1 from Mill Valley, following the signs to Stinson Beach. At the long line of mailboxes next to the Muir Beach cutoff point, start checking your odometer. Look for a dirt lot full of cars to the left (west) of the highway 5.6 miles north of Muir and a smaller one on east side of the road. The lots are at milepost 11.3, one mile south of Stinson Beach. Limited parking is also available 150 yards to the south on the west side of Highway 1. Or from Mill Valley, take the West Marin/Bolinas Stage toward Stinson Beach and Bolinas. Get off at the intersection of Panoramic Highway and Highway 1. Then walk south .6 mile to the Red Rock lots. Follow the long, steep path to the beach that starts near the Dumpster next to the main parking lot.

BOLINAS, BASS LAKE

After Tracey, of San Anselmo, hiked to what she called “beautiful, clean, sunny” Bass Lake, she went onto a message board in June to urge those who are considering trying the Bolinas attraction to “Go. Go. Go now.” “The trail was a little overgrown. But I had fun swimming nude in the lake,” says regular Dave Smith, of San Leandro, about his adventure last year. “If you want to visit an enchanted lake, Bass is it,” agrees Ryan, also of the East Bay. “Tree branches reach over the water, forming a magical canopy, and huge branches of calla lilies bloom on the shore.” Ryan isn’t kidding: even walking (45-60 minutes from the parking area over 2.8 mostly easy miles) to Bass can be an adventure unlike any other. One time, rangers stopped and cited a clad man with an unleashed dog, but let some passing nudists continue. And Smith, who usually walks naked, has come across bobcats and mountain lions early in the morning. “I came around a corner and there was a mountain lion sitting like Egypt’s Great Sphinx of Giza 50 yards down the path,” he says.

Directions: From Stinson Beach, go north on Highway 1. Just north of Bolinas Lagoon, turn left on the often-unmarked exit to Bolinas. Follow the road as it curves along the lagoon and eventually ends at Olema-Bolinas Road. Continue along Olema-Bolinas Road to the stop sign at Mesa Road. Turn right on Mesa and drive four miles until it becomes a dirt road and ends at a parking lot. On hot days the lot fills quickly. A sign at the trailhead next to the lot will guide you down scenic Palomarin Trail to the lake. For directions to Alamere Falls, 1.5 miles past Bass Lake, please see “Elsewhere In Marin” in our online listings.

RCA BEACH, BOLINAS

RATING: A

Want to recharge your life? A trip to RCA can do just that. And a single stopover at the beautiful beach will probably inspire you to keep coming back. “It hasn’t changed much in 20 years,” says regular visitor Michael Velkoff. “A downside is that it’s very exposed to the wind. The good news is that there are lots of nooks that are sheltered from the wind. And there’s so much driftwood on the sand that many people build windbreaks or even whole forts. You could build a village with all that driftwood. The last time I went, somebody built a 30 foot tall dragon out of it.” Suited and unsuited males and females and families visit the shoreline, which seems even bigger than its one mile length because, adds Velkoff, “we’ll see six people on a beautiful day on a Sunday. Picture [please see next listing] Limantour as far as how people are spread out on the sand. Everybody’s like 100 feet apart. It’s great.”

Directions: From Stinson Beach, take Highway 1 (Shoreline Highway) north toward Calle Del Mar for 4.5 miles. Turn left onto Olema Bolinas Road and follow it 1.8 miles to Mesa Road in Bolinas. Turn right and stay on Mesa until you see cars parked past some old transmission towers. Park and walk .25 miles to the end of the pavement. Go left through the gap in the fence. The trail leads to a gravel road. Follow it until you see a path on your right, leading through a gate. Take it along the cliff top until it veers down to the beach. Or continue along Mesa until you come to a grove of eucalyptus trees. Enter through the gate here, then hike .5 miles through a cow pasture on a path that will also bring you through thick brush. The second route is slippery and eroding, but less steep. “It’s shorter, but toward the end there’s a rope for you to hold onto going down the cliff,” tells Velkoff.

LIMANTOUR BEACH, OLEMA

RATING B

At Limantour, in Point Reyes National Seashore, you can walk a mile wearing nothing but your smile. “I just head away from any people and put my towel down in the dunes or against a wall,” says visitor Michael Velkoff. “Nobody bothers you. Of course, I carry a pair of shorts, just in case I need to put them on. I love it at Limantour. Plus it has tons of nice sand.” You may also want to don a pair of binoculars for watching birds, seals, and other wildlife. This May, Velkoff saw a whale from his vantage point on the sand; he’s also seen porpoises frolicking just offshore. The long shoreline is one of America’s most beautiful beaches, yet few visitors realize the narrow spit of sand is clothing-optional. The site is so big — about 2.5 miles in length — you can wander for hours, checking out ducks and other waterfowl, shorebirds such as snowy plovers, gray whales, and playful harbor seals. Dogs are allowed on six-foot leashes on the south end of the beach. To grab the best parking, arrive by 10:30am.

Directions: Follow Highway 101 north to the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard exit, then follow Sir Francis through San Anselmo and Lagunitas to Olema. At the intersection with Highway 1, turn right onto 1. Just north of Olema, go left on Bear Valley Road. A mile after the turnoff for the Bear Valley Visitor Center, turn left (at the Limantour Beach sign) on Limantour Road and follow it 11 miles to the parking lot at the end. Walk north .5 miles until you see some dunes about 50 yards east of the shore. Nudists usually prefer the valleys between the dunes for sunbathing, which may be nearly devoid of or dotted with users, depending on the day.

 

Beasts of the NorCal movie theaters: new flicks!

Sue Vaughan
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Beasts of the NorCal movie theaters: new flicks!

It’s finally here! And nope, I don’t mean The Amazing Spider-Meh Man, though you can check my unenthused review below the jump. (Seriously, it’s not a bad movie if you can get past the obligatory product placement, but it ain’t amazing, either. New countdown: two weeks ’til The Dark Knight Rises!) Nay, the hotly-anticipated title I’m referring to is Sundance hit with mainstream (and Oscars?) potential, Beasts of the Southern Wild; read Dennis Harvey’s admiring review here.

Another one for indie fans: Sarah Polley’s Take this Waltz, Michelle Williams’ latest why-did-I-get-married-again? weeper. This one has Seth Rogen instead of Ryan Gosling, so proceed accordingly.

Tonight, it’s your civic duty to pack all seats at the Roxie’s kung fu double feature. Seriously, you will have a killer time (what with all the high kicks, insane weaponry, spraying gore, krayzee wigs, and horrific dubbing), and the Roxie will be all, “Hey, kung fu is what the kids want!” and dedicate one of their screens to nightly screenings in Shawscope. DO IT. (But if kung fu isn’t your thing, Midnites for Maniacs is screening a triple-feature of 1995’s Clueless, 2004’s Mean Girls, and my personal favorite, 1994’s Heavenly Creatures, at the Castro. Not a bad alternate.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50P2mxW0-Tc

And the rest of the n00bs: Spidey (out since Tuesday), two docs about artists, a French neo-noir sleeper with Twin Peaks-esque quirks, and Oliver Stone’s new weed caper.

The Amazing Spider-Man A mere five years after Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 3 — forgettable on its own, sure, but 2002’s Spider-Man and especially 2004’s Spider-Man 2 still hold up — Marvel’s angsty web-slinger returns to the big screen, hoping to make its box-office mark before The Dark Knight Rises opens in a few weeks. Director Marc Webb (2009’s 500 Days of Summer) and likable stars Andrew Garfield (as the skateboard-toting hero) and Emma Stone (as his high-school squeeze) offer a competent reboot, but there’s no shaking the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before, with its familiar origin story and with-great-power themes. A little creativity, and I don’t mean in the special effects department, might’ve gone a long way to make moviegoers forget this Spidey do-over is, essentially, little more than a soulless cash grab. Not helping matters: the villain (Rhys Ifans as the Lizard) is a snooze. (2:18) (Cheryl Eddy)

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present Matthew Akers’ sleek and telling doc explores the career and motivations of the legendary Serbian-born, New York-based performance artist on the occasion of 2010’s major retrospective and new work at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Abramović, self-styled the “grandmother of performance art” at an eye-catching 63, steels herself with rare energy — and a determination to gain equal status for performance in the world of fine art — for an incredibly demanding new piece, The Artist Is Present, a quasi-mystical encounter between herself and individual museum patrons that takes the form of a three-month marathon of silent one-on-one gazing. Meanwhile, 30 young artists re-perform pieces from her influential career. Akers gains intimate access throughout, including Abramović’s touching reunion with longtime love and artistic collaborator Ulay, while providing a steady pulse of suspense as the half-grueling, half-ecstatic performance gets underway. A natural charmer, Abramović’s charismatic presence at MoMA is no act but rather a focused state in which audiences are drawn into — and in turn shape — powerful rhythms of consciousness and desire. (1:45) SF Film Society Cinema. (Robert Avila)

Neil Young Journeys Interested in going back further with Neil Young, back beyond 1969’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere? With Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006) and Neil Young Trunk Show (2009) under his belt, Jonathan Demme has clearly earned the trust of the singer-songwriter, who occasionally likes to flex his multi-hyphenate creative muscles as a director himself, working under the name Bernard Shakey. The music-loving filmmaker tails Young as he drives through his hometown of Omemee, Ontario, shares glimpses of his school, named after his newspaper-man father, his small-town streets, and his home, and then takes it back to the stage and performs at Toronto’s Massey Hall. The stories and sights will interest mostly Young fans — you definitely get a feel for Young’s roots, but the place and its tales won’t jump out dramatically; they merely visualize factoids one can cull from sources like James McDonough’s bio Shakey — but performance dominates this concert film. Playing solo on guitar, harmonica, and in at least one memorable instance, pipe organ (for a hammered-home “After the Gold Rush”), the songs range from the still-moving, sprawling “Ohio” to “Love and War” off 2010’s Le Noise. It’s all love here for the Young diehard, though for an insightful, passionate tour doc, one might look to Shakey’s own CSNY/Déjà Vu (2008) or, for the performer’s finest cinematic performances, to Rust Never Sleeps (1979) and The Last Waltz (1978). (1:27) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h74N3cXZH3s

Nobody Else But You The Marilyn Monroe pop-culture resurgence continues with director and co-writer Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s appealingly low-key mystery, which pays homage to the iconic blonde while borrowing liberally from a pair of noir Lauras: Vera Caspary’s back-from-the-dead heroine, and Twin Peaks‘ unfortunate Ms. Palmer. Fortunately, Nobody Else But You is original enough to remain both suspenseful and highly entertaining. David (Jean-Paul Rouve), a detective novelist with writer’s block, travels from Paris to a small village where a Monroe-esque local beauty named Candice (Sophie Quinton) has just been found dead in a snowdrift. The official word is suicide, but David suspects something more sinister. With the help of a local cop (Guillaume Gouix), the newly inspired author investigates, urged onward by Candice’s evocative diary entries. Though it tries a little hard at times (drinking game: keep track of how many times the number five appears onscreen), Nobody Else But You is well worth seeking out; it layers European flair (translation: lots of casual nudity) over a plot that wouldn’t be out of place in an American indie — but relocated, memorably, to “the coldest town in France.” (1:42) (Cheryl Eddy)

Savages If it’s true, as some say, that Oliver Stone had lost his way after 9/11 — when seemingly many of his worst fears (and conspiracy theories) came to pass — then perhaps this toothy noir marks his return: it definitely reads as his most emotionally present exercise in years. Not quite as nihilistic as 1994’s Natural Born Killers, yet much juicier than 2010’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, this pulpy effort turns on a cultural clash between pleasure-seeking, honky Cali hedonists, who appear to believe in whatever feels good, and double-dealing Mexican mafia muscle, whose apparently ironclad moral code is also shifting like drifting SoCal sands. All are draped in the Stone’s favored vernacular of manly war games with a light veneer of Buddhistic higher-mindedness and, natch, at least one notable wig. Happy pot-growing nouveau-hippies Ben (Aaron Johnson), Chon (Taylor Kitsch), and O (Blake Lively) are living the good life beachside, cultivating plants coaxed from seeds hand-imported by seething Afghanistan war vet Chon and refined by botanist and business major Ben. Pretty, privileged sex toy O sleeps with both — she’s the key prize targeted by Baja drug mogul Elena (Salma Hayek) and her minions, the scary Lado (Benicio Del Toro) and the more well-heeled Alex (Demian Bichir), who want to get a piece of Ben and Chon’s high-THC product. Folks lose their heads — in classic Mexican drug cartel style — and even zen-goon do-gooder Ben becomes complicit when Chon brings the war home to a decidedly lawless Southland. The twists and turnarounds obviously tickle Stone, though don’t look much deeper than Savages‘ saturated, sun-swathed façade — the script based on Don Winslow’s novel shares the take-no-prisoners hardboiled bent of Jim Thompson while sidestepping the brainy, postmodernish light-hearted detachment of Quentin Tarantino’s “extreme” ‘90s shenanigans. Our only glimpse at weird, wild depths lie in the fathomless eyes of Hayek’s soulful, castrating matriarch and the quotable interludes (“Gimme my money, gimme my money!”) bounding from Del Toro’s psycho-mulleted, striving maniac. (1:57) (Kimberly Chun)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

OPENING

Beasts of the Southern Wild See "Delta Delight." (1:31) Embarcadero.

Katy Perry: Part of Me The candy-colored pop star makes the logical leap to big-screen 3D. (1:57) Metreon.

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present Matthew Akers’ sleek and telling doc explores the career and motivations of the legendary Serbian-born, New York-based performance artist on the occasion of 2010’s major retrospective and new work at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Abramovic, self-styled the "grandmother of performance art" at an eye-catching 63, steels herself with rare energy — and a determination to gain equal status for performance in the world of fine art — for an incredibly demanding new piece, The Artist Is Present, a quasi-mystical encounter between herself and individual museum patrons that takes the form of a three-month marathon of silent one-on-one gazing. Meanwhile, 30 young artists re-perform pieces from her influential career. Akers gains intimate access throughout, including Abramovic’s touching reunion with longtime love and artistic collaborator Ulay, while providing a steady pulse of suspense as the half-grueling, half-ecstatic performance gets underway. A natural charmer, Abramovic’s charismatic presence at MoMA is no act but rather a focused state in which audiences are drawn into — and in turn shape — powerful rhythms of consciousness and desire. (1:45) SF Film Society Cinema. (Robert Avila)

Nobody Else But You The Marilyn Monroe pop-culture resurgence continues with director and co-writer Gérald Hustache-Mathieu’s appealingly low-key mystery, which pays homage to the iconic blonde while borrowing liberally from a pair of noir Lauras: Vera Caspary’s back-from-the-dead heroine, and Twin Peaks‘ unfortunate Ms. Palmer. Fortunately, Nobody Else But You is original enough to remain both suspenseful and highly entertaining. David (Jean-Paul Rouve), a detective novelist with writer’s block, travels from Paris to a small village where a Monroe-esque local beauty named Candice (Sophie Quinton) has just been found dead in a snowdrift. The official word is suicide, but David suspects something more sinister. With the help of a local cop (Guillaume Gouix), the newly inspired author investigates, urged onward by Candice’s evocative diary entries. Though it tries a little hard at times (drinking game: keep track of how many times the number five appears onscreen), Nobody Else But You is well worth seeking out; it layers European flair (translation: lots of casual nudity) over a plot that wouldn’t be out of place in an American indie — but relocated, memorably, to "the coldest town in France." (1:42) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

Savages Weed dudes (Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch) break bad, bro, by taking on a Mexican cartel in Oliver Stone’s latest. (1:57) Four Star, Marina.

Take this Waltz See "Sad Romance." (1:56) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

ONGOING

The Amazing Spider-Man A mere five years after Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man 3 — forgettable on its own, sure, but 2002’s Spider-Man and especially 2004’s Spider-Man 2 still hold up — Marvel’s angsty web-slinger returns to the big screen, hoping to make its box-office mark before The Dark Knight Rises opens in a few weeks. Director Marc Webb (2009’s 500 Days of Summer) and likable stars Andrew Garfield (as the skateboard-toting hero) and Emma Stone (as his high-school squeeze) offer a competent reboot, but there’s no shaking the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before, with its familiar origin story and with-great-power themes. A little creativity, and I don’t mean in the special effects department, might’ve gone a long way to make moviegoers forget this Spidey do-over is, essentially, little more than a soulless cash grab. Not helping matters: the villain (Rhys Ifans as the Lizard) is a snooze. (2:18) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Eddy)

The Connection The first re-release in a project to restore all of quintessential 1960s American independent director Shirley Clarke’s features, this 1961 vérité-style drama was adapted from a controversial off-Broadway play by Jack Gelber. Set exclusively in a dingy Greenwich Village crash pad, it captures a little time in the lives of several junkies there — many off-duty jazz musicians — listlessly waiting for the return of their dealer, Cowboy. To mimic the stage version’s breaking of the fourth wall between actors and spectators, Clarke added the device of two fictive filmmakers who are trying to record this "shocking" junkie scene, yet grow frustrated at their subjects’ levels of cooperation and resistance. With actors often speaking directly to the camera, and all polished stage language and acting preserved, The Connection offers a curious, artificial realm that is nonetheless finally quite effective and striking. A prize-winner at Cannes, it nonetheless had a very hard time getting around the censors and into theaters back home. Hard-won achievement followed by frustration would be a frequent occurrence for the late Clarke, who would only complete one more feature (a documentary about Ornette Coleman) after 1964’s Cool World and 1967’s Portrait of Jason, before her 1997 demise. She was a pioneering female indie director — and her difficulty finding projects unfortunately
also set a mold for many talented women to come. (1:50) Roxie. (Harvey)

Magic Mike Director Steven Soderbergh pays homage to the 1970s with the opening shot of his male stripper opus: the boxy old Warner Bros. logo, which evokes the gritty, sexualized days of Burt Reynolds and Joe Namath posing in pantyhose. Was that really the last time women, en masse, were welcome to ogle to their heart’s content? That might be the case considering the outburst of applause when a nude Channing Tatum rises after a hard night in a threesome in Magic Mike‘s first five minutes. Ever the savvy film historian, Soderbergh toys with the conventions of the era, from the grimy quasi-redneck realism of vintage Reynolds movies to the hidebound framework of the period’s gay porn, almost for his own amusement, though the viewer might be initially confused about exactly what year they’re in. Veteran star stripper Mike (Tatum) is working construction, stripping to the approval of many raucous ladies and their stuffable dollar bills. He decides to take college-dropout blank-slate hottie Adam (Alex Pettyfer) under his wing and ropes him into the strip club, owned by Dallas (Matthew McConaughey, whose formidable abs look waxily preserved) and show him the ropes of stripping and having a good time, much to the disapproval of Adam’s more straight-laced sister Brooke (Cody Horn). Really, though, all Mike wants to do is become a furniture designer. Boasting Foreigner’s "Feels like the First Time" as its theme of sorts and spot-on, hot choreography by Alison Faulk (who’s worked with Madonna and Britney Spears), Magic Mike takes off and can’t help but please the crowd when it turns to the stage. Unfortunately the chemistry-free budding romance between Mike and Brooke sucks the air out of the proceedings every time it comes into view, which is way too often. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Chun)

Ted Ah, boys and their toys — and the imaginary friends that mirror back a forever-after land of perpetual Peter Pans. That’s the crux of the surprisingly smart, hilarious Ted, aimed at an audience comprising a wide range of classes, races, and cultures with its mix of South Park go-there yuks and rom-commie coming-of-age sentiment. Look at Ted as a pop-culture-obsessed nerd tweak on dream critter-spirit animal buddy efforts from Harvey (1950) to Donnie Darko (2001) to TV’s Wilfred. Of course, we all know that the really untamable creature here wobbles around on two legs, laden with big-time baggage about growing up and moving on from childhood loves. Young John doesn’t have many friends but he is fortunate enough to have his Christmas wish come true: his beloved new teddy bear, Ted (voice by director-writer Seth MacFarlane), begins to talk back and comes to life. With that miracle, too, comes Ted’s marginal existence as a D-list celebrity curiosity — still, he’s the loyal "Thunder Buddy" that’s always there for the now-grown John (Mark Wahlberg), ready with a bong and a broheim-y breed of empathy that involves too much TV, an obsession with bad B-movies, and mock fisticuffs, just the thing when storms move in and mundane reality rolls through. With his tendency to spew whatever profanity-laced thought comes into his head and his talents are a ladies’ bear, Ted is the id of a best friend that enables all of John’s most memorable, un-PC, Hangover-style shenanigans. Alas, John’s cool girlfriend Lori (Mila Kunis) threatens that tidy fantasy setup with her perfectly reasonable relationship demands. Juggling scary emotions and material that seems so specific that it can’t help but charm — you’ve got to love a shot-by-shot re-creation of a key Flash Gordon scene — MacFarlane sails over any resistance you, Lori, or your superego might harbor about this scenario with the ease of a man fully in touch with his inner Ted. (1:46) California, Four Star, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

To Rome with Love Woody Allen’s film legacy is not like anybody else’s. At present, however, he suffers from a sense that he’s been too prolific for too long. It’s been nearly two decades since a new Woody Allen was any kind of "event," and the 19 features since Bullets Over Broadway (1994) have been hit and-miss. Still, there’s the hope that Allen is still capable of really surprising us — or that his audience might, as they did by somewhat inexplicably going nuts for 2011’s Midnight in Paris. It was Allen’s most popular film in eons, if not ever, probably helped by the fact that he wasn’t in it. Unfortunately, he’s up there again in the new To Rome With Love, familiar mannerisms not hiding the fact that Woody Allen the Nebbish has become just another Grumpy Old Man. There’s a doddering quality that isn’t intended, and is no longer within his control. But then To Rome With Love is a doddering picture — a postcard-pretty set of pictures with little more than "Have a nice day" scribbled on the back in script terms. Viewers expecting more of the travelogue pleasantness of Midnight in Paris may be forgiving, especially since it looks like a vacation, with Darius Khondji’s photography laying on the golden Italian light and making all the other colors confectionary as well. But if Paris at least had the kernel of a good idea, Rome has only several inexplicably bad ones; it’s a quartet of interwoven stories that have no substance, point, credibility, or even endearing wackiness. The shiny package can only distract so much from the fact that there’s absolutely nothing inside. (1:52) Albany, Balboa, Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Kids, dogs, and naked people in Dolores Park

Zelda Bronstein
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5
Kids, dogs, and naked people in Dolores Park

The interwebs are all buzzy over the notion that some parents might want a fence around the playground in Dolores Park. Uptown Almanac denounces the Dolores Park Brats. Sfist says it’s all a plot to undermine gay beach. 

Well: I have two kids and a dog, and all of us in some groupings or manifestations use Dolores Park, including the playground, the grass and the dog area, and I hate to see any nudity or semi-nudity go away because then I wouldn’t get to gawk at all the hot young people who otherwise would have no interest in being naked around an old man like me.

And really, it works just fine.

I’ve been going to DP for a couple of decades, first just with a dog then just with a kid and now with the whole pack, and I’ve never seen any problems. Yeah, a dog will wander into the playground every once in a while, but the dogs that get that far away from the (overwhelmingly responsible) owners tend to be friendly and harmless. If a toddler gets knocked over by a dog, that’s sad, but it’s really not all that sad; the playground surface is designed for kids to fall on it and kids get knocked over by other kids all the time. This is a big, crowded city; we coexist in the parks, and I’m amazed at how well the active park users normally get along.

But if you want to talk about fences (and I’m against fences in parks in general, tho the one at Civic Center makes sense) the thing to remember is that you should fence in kids, not fence out dogs.

I know that sounds awful, and I’m not advocating putting children on leashes (tho at the airport I’ve though about it a few times). But little kids need to be contained — that is, parents need to know where they are. If they’re at the DP playground, somebody needs to keep an eye on them because if they’re like my kids, they’ll get into someone’s picnic, the garbage, knock over someone’s wine bottle, step on a sleeping person’s face … you know, the things kids do. And unlike dogs, they rarely come when they’re called.

Once they’re a little older it gets a little better (and then it gets much, much worse), but at the young playground age, I worry less about dogs running in than kids running out.

 

Parra’s world gets a wall at SFMOMA, spun at Mighty

Andrew Lam
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2

How about this: for your first museum piece you can take the entryway wall of the second floor of the SFMOMA. It’s a bigger surface than you’ve ever painted on before. Just do whatever. You usually decorate skateboards and coffee mugs with your work, but putting your bird-faced, omni-stilletoed characters in front of some of the world’s most voracious art fans isn’t a big deal.

Oh, and the passers-by aren’t going to know that you’re the artist, so they’ll probably offer some critique. You’re good with criticism, right? Also, don’t upset the children. And then your band can play a show at Mighty (Thu/29).

Dutch artist Pieter Janssen, artist name simply Parra, laughs at the prospect of his fine arts debut in San Francisco. “I had an interview the other day and they asked me if I was nervous about now being reviewed by art critics. I was like, dude you don’t even know. I already have critics all day!” All week long Parra and his helpers had been carefully filling in the lines of his quirky design: an avian-faced Icarus tumbling through the air, bare-breasted females, and the loopy typography he is known for. Snaking across the length of the wall a sentence can be pieced together that speaks to an early musical love of Parra’s: Kate Bush. The piece, he says, is about taking time for yourself, and terminates in the shape of a woman holding back the chaos of the world. 

Which, since its painted on the well-traversed second floor landing of the SFMOMA, has been something he’s had to deal with during its creation. “You get the real-real,” Parra reflects. Teachers walk by with school groups, unsure whether they should subject the young minds in their care to Parra’s vision. “You have to keep in mind who is your audience here,” he tells me. “There are little kids, they might be offended by something. There’s still a bit of nudity, but I think that is allowed. I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t like it when people don’t like it. I mean, when they have a reason to say ‘that’s vulgar.’”

It is true that a Parra design usually has some bite to it. He demurely counsels me to Google Image search “Rustico the Great,” a T-shirt he made that was rejected by the Paris clothing company he created it fro, as an example of a time when he might possibly have taken things too far. He says that some have called his work “unfriendly to women,” which I found surprising, since his work seems stridently feminist when you compare it to other designers in the skateboard and sportswear oeuvre. 

This Parra woman is unfriendly — but just to non-partiers.

Coupled with a cutting sense of humor and some measure of vulgarity when children are not present, Parra’s work has garnered a worldwide fanbase, who can claim a piece of his bizarre universe for itself via his clothing company Rockwell. I particularly kindled to the artist’s girlfriend Nicole Pedder’s gauzy Rockwell blouse from the brand’s current line, its pattern echoing the figures she was helping to fill in on the SFMOMA wall. Parra has also done coffee mugs, bedding, and sneakers for Nike. He’d like to put out a line of moving boxes, he jokes. Or maybe it’s not a joke (ping, U-Haul!)  

Oh yes, and he’s a musician. Parra’s band Lele will indeed be playing a show at Mighty immediately after the exclusive opening reception for his wall. A die-hard skateboarder, he’s a little bummed that it won’t be all ages, but hey, at least it’s free. During the set he’ll be occupying himself by drawing characters and putting them through some sort of magical machine he has that will animate them and project them on the wall of the club, leaving the world with one less surface that has not had Parra designs on it. 

Lele

Thu/29 9 p.m.-midnight, free

Mighty

119 Utah, SF

www.mighty119.com

 

“Parra: Weirded Out” mural exhibit

Opens Sat/31, through July 29

SFMOMA

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

 

Parra in conversation

With local graphic designer Victor Moscoso

April 3 noon, free museum admission and entry

SFMOMA

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 30th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs through Sun/18 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Camera 3 Cinemas, 288 S. Second St, San Jose. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.caamedia.org.

OPENING

Apart You’re almost waiting for the chorus to kick in: “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride/You’re toxic, I’m slipping under&ldots;” In another world, that might be the theme song for this somber and straight-laced indie horror fantasy-slash-romance by first-time director and writer Aaron Rottinghaus. Josh (Josh Danziger) is trying to piece together a shattered memory — he knows he has a rare form of schizophrenia and must get in touch with Emily (Olesya Rulin), a girl he once shared a scary intense intimacy with. The two are of one delusional, or perhaps oracular, mind: what they picture somehow comes to pass — a state of folie à deux triggered by a childhood school-bus accident. While evoking ’70s psychological horror flicks such as 1978’s The Fury, Apart, said to be based on real case history, takes a much more delicate tact, casting its lot with the fatalistic young romantics who must be together, come what may, and the power of youth scorned and outcast. Frustrating as unconsummated, all-consuming true love: the murkiness at the denouement of this star-crossed romance. (1:25) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Boy Apparent in his 2007 film Eagle vs. Shark and his brief turns writing and directing The Flight of the Conchords, filmmaker Taika Waititi seems to embody a uniquely Polynesian sensibility, positioned at a crossroads that’s informed by his Te-Whanau-a-Apanui heritage and his background in the Raukokore area of New Zealand, as well as an affection of global pop culture and a kind of keeping-it-real, keeping-it-local, down-home indie sensibility. All of which has fed into Boy, which became the highest-grossing New Zealand film of all time when it was released in its homeland in 2010. Its popularity is completely understandable. From the lush green inlands and stunning beaches of Waihau Bay to its intimate, gritty and humorous sketch of its natives, this affectionate, big-hearted bildungsroman is a lot like its 11-year-old eponymous hero — eminently lovable and completely one of a kind. Despite the tragedies and confines of his small-town rural life, Boy has a handle on his world: it’s 1984, and his pals spend their time hanging out at the snack shop and harvesting weed for one deadbeat biker parent. Boy’s brother Rocky (Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu) believes he has superpowers and is scarred by the fact that his birth was responsible for their mother’s death, and Michael Jackson has just been crowned the king of pop. Then, while his grandma’s away, Boy’s own deadbeat dad, Alamein (Waititi) appears on the scene, turning an extended family of small children on its head — and inspiring many a Thriller dance-slash-dream sequence. Waititi finds his way inside Boy’s head with Crayola-colorful animated children’s drawings, flashbacks, and the kind of dreamy fluidity that comes so naturally during long, hot Polynesian days, all while wonderfully depicting a world that far too few people have glimpsed on screen. (1:30) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

Casa de mi Padre See “Where There’s a Will.” (1:25) Shattuck.

Delicacy Without visible effort, Nathalie (Audrey Tautou) charms the hearts of the susceptible males in her vicinity, including François (Pio Marmaï), a young man in a café who is soon proposing marriage, and Charles (Bruno Todeschini), a company director who hires her on the spot, transfixed by her very photograph on a résumé. When François, now her husband, is killed in a car accident, grief overwhelms her and she pours her energies into her professional life — until the day she finds herself unexpectedly making advances toward a frumpy, socially awkward colleague, a Swedish expat named Markus (Belgian comedian François Damiens). Her choice confounds the expectations of coworkers (Charles calls him an “ugly, insignificant guy”) and friends (one tells Nathalie, upon meeting Markus, that she could do better), but while the pairing is rather precipitous, it’s no more difficult to swallow than anything else in a film that feels like a pencil sketch on tracing paper. Events in Delicacy are lightly threaded together, so that a relationship turns into marriage and a three-year emotional tailspin goes by without our sensing the passage of time. We hear Nathalie described as “one of those women who cancels out all others,” but — while Tautou is as lovely as ever — we don’t see this in her. We hear people tell Markus how funny he is, but — though comedy is Damiens’s stock-in-trade — he doesn’t make us laugh. The problem lies largely in the script, even clumsier than Markus; it tells us we’re watching two unlikely people fall in love but doesn’t give us much reason to care. (1:48) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

*Fake It So Real It would have been very easy for someone to make a film about an uber-low-budget posse of indie wrestlers and make fun of the entire enterprise. Robert Greene, whose cousin is among Fake It So Real‘s subjects, chooses a different path: his film is almost earnest in its appraisal of these Lincolnton, North Carolina good ol’ boys, who live for their Saturday-night matches under the fluorescent lights of the local Vietnam Veteran’s Center. For these men, wrestling offers an escape from otherwise glamourless lives (filled with boring jobs, heartbreak, health problems, and the like), and they take it very seriously, plotting out character arcs and sweating through training sessions. Comparisons to Mickey Rourke’s turn in The Wrestler (2008) are inevitable, but remember, Rourke’s character had once been famous. These guys’ definition of success is being approached by a group of kids in Wal-Mart for an autograph. Note for the easily offended: Fake It So Real‘s fly-on-the-wall filming style doesn’t filter out its subjects’ affection for gay jokes, clearly a deeply-enmeshed part of the small-town culture depicted here. (1:31) Roxie. (Eddy)

*The FP The town is real: east-of-Santa-Barbara, south-of-Bakersfield mountain burg Frazier Park, Calif. But this is no bucolic village; nay, the world portrayed in The FP is a dark one, a place without jobs or fashion sense that evolved beyond the 1980s. It’s a world where disputes between warring gangs are settled via Beat Beat Revelation, a video game that bears absolute resemblance to Dance Dance Revolution. A family affair (brothers Jason and Brandon Trost co-directed; Jason wrote and stars; Brandon was the cinematographer; sister Sarah — from Project Runway, season eight! — designed the costumes; and dad Ron did the special effects) and an obvious labor of love, The FP pays adoring homage to John Carpenter and Walter Hill’s classics of the dystopian-future B-movie genre. Angry loner Jtro (Jason Trost), rocking a Snake Plissken-esque eye patch, leaves the FP after the Beat Beat-related death of his older brother; with the help of friend KC/DC (Art Hsu) and mystical guru BLT (Nick Principe), he trains (via ’80s-style montages, natch) for a match with town bully L Dubba E (Lee Valmassy), all the while wooing troubled girl next door Stacey (Caitlyn Folley). Of particular note is The FP‘s riotous dialogue; this is maybe the first (and let’s hope last) film to be written entirely in what sounds like the language of the juggalos. (1:23) Roxie. (Eddy)

Jeff, Who Lives at Home The latest comedy from mumblecore man-child champions Jay and Mark Duplass stars Jason Segal as a 30-year-old still living in his parents’ basement. (1:22) California.

*Kill List “Oh jeebus,” you say. “Another movie about a hit man lured out of retirement for one last score?” Well, yes — and no. British director and co-writer Ben Wheatley (2009’s Down Terrace) manages to reinvent one of cinema’s most tired clichés by injecting a healthy amount of what-the-fuck-just-happened?-ness, as well as a palpable sense of absolute dread. Without spoiling anything, here’s how the story begins: married with a young son, surly Jay (Neil Maskell) and shrill Shel (MyAnna Buring) are struggling to maintain their wine-drinking, middle-class, Jacuzzi-in-the-backyard lifestyle. Their financial troubles are due to the fact that Jay hasn’t worked in eight months, which is to say he hasn’t offed anyone since his last job, a mysterious assignment in Kiev, went awry. When best friend and partner Gal (Michael Smiley) hears about a new, well-paying gig that involves a “kill list” of U.K.-based victims, Jay figures he might as well sign on, if only to get Shel off his back. But as the pill-popping Jay soon learns, his sinister new employer is no ordinary client, and the murders have a special significance — revealed in a twist I guarantee even seen-it-all horror buffs will neither anticipate nor fully comprehend on first viewing. Ergo: what the fuck just happened? (1:36) SF Film Society Cinema. (Eddy)

*21 Jump Street One of the more pleasant surprises on the mainstream comedy landscape has to be this, ugh, “reboot” of the late-’80s TV franchise. I wasn’t a fan of the show — or its dark-eyed, bad-boy star, Johnny Depp — back in the day, but I am of this unexpectedly funny rework overseen by apparent enthusiast, star, co-writer, and co-executive producer Jonah Hill, with a screenplay by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) co-writer Michael Bacall. There’s more than a smidge of Bacall’s other high school fantasy, Project X, in the buddy comedy premise of nerd (Hill’s Schmidt) meets blowhard (Channing Tatum’s Jenko), but 21 Jump Street thankfully leapfrogs the former with its meta-savvy, irreverent script and har-dee-har cameo turns by actors like Ice Cube as Captain Dickson (as well as a few key uncredited players who shall remain under deep cover). High school continues to haunt former classmates Schmidt and Jenko, who have just graduated from the lowly police bike corps to a high school undercover operation — don’t get it twisted, though, Dickson hollers at them; they got this gig solely because they look young. Still, the whole drug-bust enchilada is put in jeopardy when the once-socially toxic Schmidt finds his brand of geekiness in favor with the cool kids and so-called dumb-jock Jenko discovers the pleasures of the mind with the chem lab set. Fortunately for everyone, this crew doesn’t take themselves, or the source material, too seriously. (1:49) Marina, Shattuck. (Chun)

ONGOING

Act of Valor (1:45) 1000 Van Ness.

*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) California, Embarcadero, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye Once dubbed “the wickedest man in the world”, shock artist and cofounder of seminal industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle Genesis Breyer P-Orridge has softened somewhat with time. Her plunge into pandrogyny, an ongoing artistic and personal process embarked upon with the late Jacqueline “Lady Jaye” Breyer P-Orridge, is an attempt to create a perfectly balanced body, incorporating the characteristics of both. As artists, the two were committed to documenting their process, but as marriage partners, much of their footage is sweetly innocuous home video footage: Genesis cooking in the kitchen decked out in a little black dress, Lady Jaye setting out napkins at a backyard bar-b-que or helping to dig through Genesis’ archives of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle “ephemera,” the two wrapped in bandages after getting matching nose jobs. “I just want to be remembered as one of the great love affairs of all time,” Jaye tells Genesis. This whimsical documentary by Marie Losier will go a long way toward making that wish a reality. (1:12) Embarcadero. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Being Flynn There’s an undeniable frisson in seeing Robert De Niro acting paranoid and abusive behind the wheel of an NYC cab again, but Paul Weitz’s drama isn’t exactly Taxi Driver 2. The actor plays Jonathan Flynn, a bellicose loner who abandoned his wife (Julianne Moore in flashbacks) and son to pursue his destiny as a great writer. Years later, the wife is deceased, the son estranged, but Jonathan remains secure in his delusions of genius — despite the publishing industry’s failure to agree. When an assault on noisy neighbors gets him thrown out of his apartment, his gradual descent into homelessness forces a paths-crossing with now-grown only child Nick (Paul Dano), who has taken a job at a shelter in an attempt to do something useful with his own unsettled life. Adapting the real Nick Flynn’s memoir, Weitz resists the temptation to make Pops a lovable old coot — he’s racist, homophobic, ill-tempered and pathetically arrogant — or to overly sentimentalize a father-son relationship that’s never going to have a happy ending. Nonetheless, this competent exercise too often feels like formulaic fiction, the material perhaps demanding a less slick, starry treatment to ring as true as it ought; the fuzzy warm blanket of a song score by Badly Drawn Boy doesn’t help. Still, intentions are good and the performances strong enough, including those by support players Lili Taylor, Wes Studi, and Olivia Thirlby. (1:42) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

*Chico and Rita This Spain-U.K. production is at heart a very old-fashioned musical romance lent novelty by its packaging as a feature cartoon. Chico (voiced by Eman Xor Oña) is a struggling pianist-composer in pre-Castro Havana who’s instantly smitten by the sight and sound of Rita (Limara Meneses, with Idania Valdés providing vocals), a chanteuse similarly ripe for a big break. Their stormy relationship eventually sprawls, along with their careers, to Manhattan, Hollywood, Paris, Las Vegas, and Havana again, spanning decades as well as a few large bodies of water. This perpetually hot, cold, hot, cold love story isn’t very complicated or interesting — it’s pretty much “Boy meets girl, generic complications ensue” — nor is the film’s simple graphics style (reminiscent of 1970s Ralph Bakshi, minus the sleaze) all that arresting, despite the established visual expertise of Fernando Trueba’s two co directors Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando. When a dream sequence briefly pays specific homage to the modernist animation of the ’50s-early ’60s, Chico and Rita delights the eye as it should throughout. Still, it’s pleasant enough to the eye, and considerably more than that to the ear — there’s new music in a retro mode from Bebo Valdes, and plenty of the genuine period article from Monk, Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and more. If you’ve ever jones’d for a jazzbo’s adult Hanna Barbera feature (complete with full-frontal cartoon nudity — female only, of course), your dream has come true. (1:34) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Chronicle A misfit (Dane DeHaan) with an abusive father and an ever-present video camera, his affable cousin (Matt Garretty), and a popular jock (Michael B. Jordan) discover a strange, glowing object in the woods; before long, the boys realize they are newly telekinetic. At first, it’s all a lark, pulling pranks and — in the movie’s most exhilarating scene — learning to fly, but the fun ends when the one with the anger problem (guess which) starts abusing the ol’ with-great-power-comes-great-responsibilities creed. Chronicle is a pleasant surprise in a time when it’s better not to expect much from films aimed at teens; it grounds the superhero story in a (mostly) believable high-school setting, gently intellectualizes the boys’ dilemma (“hubris” is discussed), and also understands how satisfying it is to see superpowers used in the service of pure silliness — like, say, pretending you just happen to be really, really, really, good at magic tricks. First-time feature director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max “son of John” Landis also find creative ways, some more successful than others, to work with the film’s “self-shot” structure. The technique (curse you, Blair Witch) is long past feeling innovative, but Chronicle amply justifies its use in telling its story. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Coriolanus For his film directing debut, Ralph Fiennes has chosen some pretty strong material: a military drama that is among Shakespeare’s least popular works, not that adapting the Bard to the screen has ever been easy. (Look how many times Kenneth Branagh, an even more fabled Shakespearean Brit on stage than Ralph, has managed to fumble that task.) The titular war hero, raised to glory in battle and little else, is undone by political backstabbers and his own contempt for the “common people” when appointed to a governmental role requiring some diplomatic finesse. This turn of events puts him right back in the role he was born for: that of ruthless, furious avenger, no matter that now he aims to conquer the Rome he’d hitherto pledged to defend. The setting of a modern city in crisis (threadbare protesting masses vs. oppressive police state) works just fine, Elizabethan language and all, as does Fiennes’ choice of a gritty contemporary action feel (using cinematographer Barry Ackroyd of 2006’s United 93 and 2008’s The Hurt Locker). He’s got a strong supporting cast — particularly Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus’ hawkish mother Volumnia — and an excellent lead in one Ralph Fiennes, who here becomes so warped by bloodthirst he seems to mutate into Lord Voldemort before our eyes, without need of any prosthetics. His crazy eyes under a razored bald pate are a special effect quite alarmingly inhuman enough. (2:03) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Crazy Horse Does the documentary genre need an injection of sex appeal? Leave it to ground-breaking documentarian Frederick Wiseman to do just that, with this hilarious, keenly-observed look into Paris’s rightfully legendary Crazy Horse Paris cabaret. For 10 weeks, the filmmaker immersed himself in all aspects of preparation going into a new show, Désirs, by choreographer Philippe Decouflé, and uncovers the guts, discipline, organizational entanglements, and genuine artistry that ensues backstage to produce the at-times laugh-out-loud OTT (e.g., the many routines in which the perky, planet-like posterior is highlighted), at-times truly remarkable numbers (the girl-on-girl spaceship fantasia; the subtle, surreal number that bounces peek-a-boo body parts off a mirrored surface) onstage — moments that should inspire burlesque performers and dance aficionados alike with the sheer imaginative possibilities of dancing in the buff, with a side of brain-teasing titillation, of course. Always silently commenting on the action, Wiseman pokes quiet fun (at the dancer vigorously brushing the horse-hair tail attached to her rear, the obsessed art director, and the sound guy who’s a ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Boogie Nights nebbish) while patiently paying respect to the mechanics behind the magic (Decouflé, among others, arguing with management for more time to improve the show, despite the beyond-rigorous seven-days-a-week, twice- to thrice-daily schedule). Crazy Horse provides marvelous proof that the battle of seduction begins with the brain. (2:08) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed “not enough” for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) Castro, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (1:26) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck.

*Friends With Kids Jennifer Westfeldt scans Hollywood’s romantic comedy landscape for signs of intelligent life and, finding it to be a barren place possibly recovering from a nuclear holocaust, writes, directs, and stars in this follow-up to 2001’s Kissing Jessica Stein, which she co-wrote and starred in. Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) are upper-thirtysomething New Yorkers with two decades of friendship behind them. He calls her “doll.” They have whispered phone conversations at four in the morning while their insignificant others lie slumbering beside them on the verge of getting dumped. And after a night spent witnessing the tragic toll that procreation has taken on the marriages of their four closest friends — Bridesmaids (2011) reunion party Leslie (Maya Rudolph), Alex (Chris O’Dowd), Missy (Kristen Wiig), and Ben (Jon Hamm), the latter two, surprisingly and less surprisingly, providing some of the film’s darkest moments — Jason proposes that they raise a child together platonically, thereby giving any external romantic relationships a fighting chance of survival. In no time, they’ve worked out the kinks to their satisfaction, insulted and horrified their friends, and awkwardly made a bouncing baby boy. The arrival of significant others (Edward Burns and Megan Fox) signals the second phase of the experiment. Some viewers will be invested in latent sparks of romance between the central pair, others in the success of an alternative family arrangement; one of these demographics is destined for disappointment. Until then, however, both groups and any viewers unwilling to submit to this reductive binary will be treated to a funny, witty, well crafted depiction of two people’s attempts to preserve life as they know it while redrawing the parameters of parenthood. (1:40) California, Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (1:36) SF Center.

Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*In Darkness Agnieszka Holland is that kind of filmmaker who can become a well known, respectable veteran without anyone being quite sure what those decades have added up to. Her mentor was Andrzej Wadja, the last half-century’s leading Polish director (among those who never left). He helped shape a penchant for heavy historical drama and a sometimes clunky style not far from his own. She commenced her international career with 1985’s Angry Harvest, about the amorous relationship between a Polish man and the Austrian, a Jewish woman, he hides during Nazi occupation. Her one indispensable feature is 1990’s Europa, Europa, an ideal vehicle for her favored mix of the grotesque, sober, and factual — following a Jewish boy who passed as Aryan German. The new In Darkness is her best since then, and it can’t be chance that this too dramatizes a notably bizarre case of real-life peril and survival under the Nazis. Its protagonist is Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), an ordinary family man in Lvov (Poland then, Ukraine now) who’s not above exploiting the disarray of occupation and war to make ends meet. A sewer inspector, he uses his knowledge of underground tunnels to hide Jews who can pay enough when even the fenced-off ghetto is no longer safe. For such a long, oppressive, and literally dark film, this one passes quickly, maintaining tension as well as a palpable physical discomfort that doubtlessly suggests just a fraction what the refugees actually suffered. In Darkness isn’t quite a great movie, but it’s a powerful experience. At the end it’s impossible to be unmoved, not least because the director’s resistance toward Spielbergian exaltation insists on the banal and everyday, even in human triumph. (2:25) Clay. (Harvey)

The Iron Lady Curiously like Clint Eastwood’s 2011 J. Edgar, this biopic from director Phyllida Lloyd and scenarist Abi Morgan takes on a political life of length, breadth and controversy — yet it mostly skims over the politics in favor of a generally admiring take on a famous narrow-minded megalomaniac’s “gumption” as an underdog who drove herself to the top. Looking back on her career from a senile old age spent in the illusory company of dead spouse Denis (Jim Broadbent), Meryl Streep’s ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher steamrolls past hurdles of class and gender while ironically re-enforcing the fustiest Tory values. She’s essentially a spluttering Lord in skirts, absolutist in her belief that money and power rule because they ought to, and any protesting rabble don’t represent the “real England.” That’s a mindset that might well have been explored more fruitfully via less flatly literal-minded portraiture, though Lloyd does make a few late, lame efforts at sub-Ken Russell hallucinatory style. Likely to satisfy no one — anywhere on the ideological scale — seriously interested in the motivations and consequences of a major political life, this skin-deep Lady will mostly appeal to those who just want to see another bravura impersonation added to La Streep’s gallery. Yes, it’s a technically impressive performance, but unlikely to be remembered as one of her more depthed ones, let alone among her better vehicles. (1:45) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

John Carter More or less an adaptation of Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1917 sci-fi classic A Princess of Mars, John Carter is yet another film that lavishes special effects (festooned with CG and 3D) on a rote story filled with characters the viewer couldn’t give two craps about. Angry Civil War veteran John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, more muscleman than thespian) mysteriously zips to Mars, a planet not only populated by multiple members of the cast of HBO’s Rome (Ciarán Hinds, James Purefoy, and the voice of Polly Walker), but also quite a bit of Red Planet unrest. Against his better judgment, and with the encouragement of a comely princess (tragic spray-tan victim Lynn Collins), Carter joins the fight, as red people battle blue people, green four-armed creatures pitch in when needed, and sinister silver people (led by Mark Strong) use zap-tastic powers to manipulate the action for their amusement. If you’re expecting John Carter to be a step up from Conan the Barbarian (2011), Prince of Persia (2010), etc., because it’s directed by Andrew Stanton (the Pixar superstar who helmed 2008’s Finding Nemo and 2010’s WALL*E), eh, think again. There’s nothing memorable or fun about this would-be adventure; despite its extravagant 3D, it’s flatter than a pancake. (2:17) Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

Let the Bullets Fly A huge blockbuster in China, the latest from director Jiang Wan (1998’s Devils on the Doorstep) has received high praise for the zippy wordplay in its script — not such great news for us non-Mandarin speakers stuck reading the not-especially-zippy English subtitles. What’s left is an overlong tale of a notorious bandit (Jiang) who stumbles upon an opportunity to fake his way into a governorship after a train robbery goes awry. He and his henchmen (who wear masks styled after mahjong tiles) have no sooner arrived in town when it’s made clear that wealth and power will not come easy, since the entire burg is controlled by a gold-toothed gangster (a braying, over-the-top Chow Yun-Fat) who doesn’t like to share. Let the bullets fly, indeed, and let the games begin, with occasionally thrilling but often cartoonish results. Tip: if it’s a red-hot, nerve-jangling, balls-to-the-wall Asian action import you seek, wait a few weeks for Indonesia’s The Raid: Redemption. Yowza. (2:12) Four Star. (Eddy)

*Lou Harrison: A World of Music Doing the late Aptos, Calif. composer justice with its depth and breadth, Lou Harrison: A World of Music is the fortunate product of filmmaker Eva Soltes’s relationship with the underappreciated musical genius. Over the course of two decades, she gathered footage of the visionary experimentalist who freely roved the realms of contemporary music and dance, Asian musical traditions, and instrument-making. Her work has borne fruit — here, you get the full, rich scope of Harrison’s achievements — from his time in the woods with partner and instrument-making cohort William Colvig to his toils alongside choreographer Mark Morris to his struggles to stage Young Caesar, his opera on a Roman ruler’s same-sex revels. What Soltes doesn’t get on camera, she manages to trace through still images and interviews with contemporaries and cohorts such as Merce Cunningham, Judith Malina, and Michael Tilson Thomas, filling out Harrison’s beginnings at Mills College, mentored by Henry Cowell and collaborating with John Cage; encapsulating his success as a composer, critic, and arranger in NYC; and touching on his breakdown and retreat to his mountain cabin where he sought to write music in peace, yet nevertheless continued to lend his teeming creativity to points close to home, à la the Cabrillo Music Festival, and abroad. (1:30) Roxie. (Chun)

My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is “well-rounded” in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and “magical” Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) Lumiere. (Harvey)

*Pina Watching Pina Bausch’s choreography on film should not have been as absorbing and deeply affecting of an experience as it was. Dance on film tends to disappoint — the camera flattens the body and distorts perspective, and you either see too many or not enough details. However, improved 3D technology gave Wim Wenders (1999’s Buena Vista Social Club; 1987’s Wings of Desire) the additional tools he needed to accomplish what he and fellow German Bausch had talked about for 20 years: collaborating on a documentary about her work. Instead of making a film about the rebel dance maker, Wenders made it for Bausch, who died in June 2009, two days before the start of filming. Pina is an eloquent tribute to a tiny, soft-spoken, mousy-looking artist who turned the conventions of theatrical dance upside down. She was a great artist and true innovator. Wenders’ biggest accomplishment in this beautifully paced and edited document is its ability to elucidate Bausch’s work in a way that words probably cannot. While it’s good to see dance’s physicality and its multi dimensionality on screen, it’s even better that the camera goes inside the dances to touch tiny details and essential qualities in the performers’ every gesture. No proscenium theater can offer that kind of intimacy. Appropriately, intimacy (the eternal desire for it) and loneliness (an existential state of being) were the two contradictory forces that Bausch kept exploring over and over. And by taking fragments of the dances into the environment — both natural and artificial — of Wuppertal, Germany, Wenders places them inside the emotional lives of ordinary people, subjects of all of Bausch’s work. (1:43) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rita Felciano)

Project X Frat boys nostalgic for Girls Gone Wild — and those who continue to have the sneaking suspicion that much better parties are going on wherever they’re not —appear to be the target audiences for Project X (not be confused with the 1987 film starring Matthew Broderick, star of this movie’s tamer ’80s variant, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). It’s tough to figure out who else would enjoy this otherwise-standard teen party-movie exercise, given a small shot of energy from its handheld/DIY video conceit. Here, mild-mannered teen Thomas (Thomas Mann) is celebrating his 17th birthday: his parents have left town, and his obnoxious pal Costa (Oliver Cooper) is itching to throw a memorable rager for him and even-geekier chum J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown). Multiple text and email blasts, a Craigslist ad, and one viral gossip scene reminiscent of Easy A (2010) later, several thousand party animals are at Thomas’s Pasadena house going nuts, getting nekkid in the pool, gobbling E, doing ollies off the roof, swinging from chandeliers, ad nauseam. The problem is — who cares? The lack of smart writing or even the marginal efforts toward character development makes Ferris Bueller look like outright genius — and this movie about as compelling as your standard-issue party jam clip. Unfortunately it also goes on about 85 minutes longer than the average music video. The blowback the kids experience when they go too far almost inspires you to root for the cops — not the effect first-time feature filmmaker Nima Nourizadeh was going for, I suspect. (1:28) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Rampart Fans of Dexter and a certain dark knight will empathize with this final holdout for rogue law enforcement, LAPD-style, in the waning days of the last century. And Woody Harrelson makes it easy for everyone else to summon a little sympathy for this devil in a blue uniform: he slips so completely behind the sun- and booze-burnt face of David “Date Rape” Brown, an LAPD cop who ridicules young female cops with the same scary, bullying certainty that he applies to interrogations with bad guys. The picture is complicated, however, by the constellation of women that Date Rape has sheltered himself with. Always cruising for other lonely hearts like lawyer Linda (Robin Wright), he still lives with the two sisters he once married (Cynthia Nixon, Anne Heche) and their daughters, including the rebellious Helen (Brie Larson), who seems to see her father for who he is — a flawed, flailing anti-hero suffering from severe testosterone poisoning and given to acting out. Harrelson does an Oscar-worthy job of humanizing that everyday monster, as director Oren Moverman (2009’s The Messenger), who cowrote the screenplay with James Ellroy, takes his time to blur out any residual judgement with bokeh-ish points of light while Brown — a flip, legit side of Travis Bickle — just keeps driving, unable to see his way out of the darkness. (1:48) Lumiere. (Chun)

Safe House Frankly, Denzel Washington watchers are starved for another movie in which he’s playing the smartest guy in the room. Despite being hampered by a determinedly murky opening, Safe House should mostly satisfy. Washington’s Tobin Frost is well-used to dwelling into a grayed-out borderland of black ops and flipped alliances — a onetime CIA star, he now trades secrets while perpetually on the run. Fleeing from killers of indeterminate origin, Tobin collides headlong with eager young agent Matt (Ryan Reynolds), who’s stuck maintaining a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. Tasked with holding onto Tobin’s high-level player by his boss (Brendan Gleeson) and his boss’s boss (Sam Shepard), Matt is determined to prove himself, retain and by extension protect Tobin (even when the ex-superspy is throttling him from behind amid a full-speed car chase), and resist the magnetic pull of those many hazardous gray zones. Surrounded by an array of actorly heavies, including Vera Farmiga, who collectively ratchet up and invest this possibly not-very-interesting narrative — “Bourne” there; done that — with heart-pumping intensity, Washington is magnetic and utterly convincing as the jaded mouse-then-cat-then-mouse toying with and playing off Reynolds go-getter innocent. Safe House‘s narrative doesn’t quite fill in the gaps in Tobin Frost’s whys and wherefores, and the occasional ludicrous breakthroughs aren’t always convincing, but the film’s overall, familiar effect should fly, even when it’s playing it safe (or overly upstanding, especially when it comes to one crucial, climactic scrap of dialogue from “bad guy” Washington, which rings extremely politically incorrect and tone-deaf). (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

*Salmon Fishing in the Yemen In Lasse Hallström’s latest film, a sheikh named Muhammed (Amr Waked) with a large castle in Scotland, an ardent love of fly-fishing, and unlimited funds envisions turning a dry riverbed in the Yemeni desert into an aquifer-fed salmon-run site and the surrounding lands into an agricultural cornucopia. Tasked with realizing this dream are London marketing consultant Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt) and government fisheries scientist Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor), a reluctant participant who refers to the project as “doolally” and signs on under professional duress. Despite numerous feasibility issues (habitat discrepancies, the necessity for a mass exodus of British salmon, two million irate British anglers), Muhammed’s vision is borne forward on a rising swell of cynicism generated within the office of the British prime minister’s press secretary (Kristin Scott Thomas), whose lackeys have been scouring the wires for a shred of U.K.-related good news out of the Middle East. Ecology-minded killjoys may question whether this qualifies. But putting aside, if one can, the possible inadvisability of relocating 10,000 nonnative salmon to a wadi in Yemen — which is to say, putting aside the basic premise — it’s easy and pleasant enough to go with the flow of the film, infected by Jones’s growing enthusiasm for both the project and Ms. Chetwode-Talbot. Adapted from Paul Torday’s novel by Simon Beaufoy (2009’s Slumdog Millionaire), Salmon Fishing is a sweet and funny movie, and while it suffers from the familiar flurried third-act knotting together of loose ends, its storytelling stratagems are entertaining and its characters compellingly textured, and the cast makes the most of the well-polished material. (1:52) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

*A Separation Iran’s first movie to win Berlin’s Golden Bear (as well as all its acting awards), this domestic drama reflecting a larger socio-political backdrop is subtly well-crafted on all levels, but most of all demonstrates the unbeatable virtue of having an intricately balanced, reality-grounded screenplay — director Asghar Farhadi’s own — as bedrock. A sort of confrontational impartiality is introduced immediately, as our protagonists Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) face the camera — or rather the court magistrate — to plead their separate cases in her filing for divorce, which he opposes. We gradually learn that their 14-year wedlock isn’t really irreparable, the feelings between them not entirely hostile. The roadblock is that Simin has finally gotten permission to move abroad, a chance she thinks she must seize for the sake of their daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). But Nader doesn’t want to leave the country, and is not about to let his only child go without him. Farhadi worked in theater before moving into films a decade ago. His close attention to character and performance (developed over several weeks’ pre-production rehearsal) has the acuity sported by contemporary playwrights like Kenneth Lonergan and Theresa Rebeck, fitted to a distinctly cinematic urgency of pace and image. There are moments that risk pushing plot mechanizations too far, by A Separation pulls off something very intricate with deceptive simplicity, offering a sort of integrated Rashomon (1950) in which every participant’s viewpoint as the wronged party is right — yet in conflict with every other. (2:03) Albany, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*The Secret World of Arrietty It’s been far too long between 2008’s Ponyo, the last offering from Studio Ghibli, and this feature-length adaptation of Mary Norton’s children’s classic, The Borrowers, but the sheer beauty of the studio’s hand-drawn animation and the effortless wonder of its tale more than make up for the wait. This U.S. release, under the very apropos auspices of Walt Disney Pictures, comes with an American voice cast (in contrast with the U.K. version), and the transition appears to be seamless — though, of course, the background is subtly emblazoned with kanji, there are details like the dinnertime chopsticks, and the characters’ speech rhythms, down to the “sou ka” affirmative that peppers all Japanese dialogue. Here in this down-low, hybridized realm, the fearless, four-inches-tall Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler) has grown up imaginative yet lonely, believing her petite family is the last of their kind: they’re Borrowers, a race of tiny people who live beneath the floorboards of full-sized human’s dwellings and take what they need to survive. Despite the worries of her mother Homily (Amy Poehler), Arrietty begins to embark on borrowing expeditions with her father Pod (Will Arnett) — there are crimps in her plans, however: their house’s new resident, a sickly boy named Shawn (David Henrie), catches a glimpse of Arrietty in the garden, and caretaker Hara (Carol Burnett) has a bit of an ulterior motive when it comes to rooting out the wee folk. Arrietty might not be for everyone — some kids might churn in their seats with ADD-style impatience at this graceful, gentle throwback to a pre-digital animation age — but in the care of first-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote co-wrote the screenplay, Arrietty will transfix other youngsters (and animation fans of all ages) with the glorious detail of its natural world, all beautifully amplified and suffused with everyday magic when viewed through the eyes of a pocket-sized adventurer. (1:35) Shattuck. (Chun)

*Shame It’s been a big 2011 for Michael Fassbender, with Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and A Dangerous Method raising his profile from art-house standout to legit movie star (of the “movie stars who can also act” variety). Shame may only reach one-zillionth of X-Men‘s audience due to its NC-17 rating, but this re-teaming with Hunger (2008) director Steve McQueen is Fassbender’s highest achievement to date. He plays Brandon, a New Yorker whose life is tightly calibrated to enable a raging sex addiction within an otherwise sterile existence, including an undefined corporate job and a spartan (yet expensive-looking) apartment. When brash, needy, messy younger sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan, speaking of actors having banner years) shows up, yakking her life all over his, chaos results. Shame is a movie that unfolds in subtle details and oversized actions, with artful direction despite its oft-salacious content. If scattered moments seem forced (loopy Cissy’s sudden transformation, for one scene, into a classy jazz singer), the emotions — particularly the titular one — never feel less than real and raw. (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

*Silent House Yep, it’s another remake of a foreign horror movie — but Uruguay’s La casa muda is obscure enough that Silent House, which recycles its plot and filming style, feels like a brand-new experience. Co-directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, last seen bobbing in shark-infested waves for 2003’s similarly bare-bones Open Water, apply another technical gimmick here: Silent House appears to be shot in one continuous take. Though it’s not actually made this way, each shot is extraordinarily long — way longer than you’d expect in a horror film, since the genre often relies on quick edits to build tension. Instead, the film’s aim is “real fear captured in real time” (per its tag line), and there’s no denying this is one shriek-filled experience. The dwelling in question is an isolated, rambling lake house being fixed up to sell by Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), her father (Adam Trese), and uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens). The lights don’t work, the windows are boarded up, most doors are padlocked shut, and there are strange noises coming from rooms that should be empty. Much of the film follows Sarah as she descends into deeper and deeper terror, scrabbling from floor to floor trying to hide from whoever (or whatever) is lurking, while at the same time trying to bust her way out. Though the last-act exposition explosion is a little hard to take, the film’s slow-burn beginning and frantic middle section offer bona fide chills. For an interview with Silent House co-director and writer Lau, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:28) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Straight Outta Hunters Point 2 In 2001, filmmaker Kevin Epps turned a camera on his own neighborhood: Bayview-Hunters Point, the southeastern San Francisco community best-known by outsiders for Candlestick Park, toxic pollution, and gang violence. Straight Outta Hunters Point was an eye-opener not just locally but internationally, as its runaway success opened doors for Epps to travel with the film and establish his career. These days, Epps is no longer an emerging talent — he’s a full-time independent filmmaker with multiple credits (including The Black Rock, a documentary about Alcatraz’s African American inmates, and hip-hop film Rap Dreams), collaborations (with Current TV and others), and an artist fellowship at the de Young Museum under his belt. For his newest project, he returns to the scene of his first work. He no longer resides in Bayview-Hunters Point, but he still lives close by, and he’s never lost touch with the community that inspired the first film and encouraged him to make its follow-up. Described by Epps as a “continuation of the conversation” launched by the first film, SOHP 2 investigates the community as it stands today, with both external (redevelopment) and internal (violence) pressures shaping the lives of those who live there. It’s a raw, real story that unspools with urgency and the unvarnished perspective of an embedded eyewitness. (1:20) Roxie. (Eddy)

This Means War McG (both Charlie’s Angels movies, 2009’s Terminator Salvation) stretches our understanding of the term “romantic comedy” in this tale of two grounded CIA agents (Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) who use their downtime to compete for the love of a perky, workaholic consumer-products tester (Reese Witherspoon). Broadening the usage of “comedy” are scenes in which best bros and partners FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy) spend large portions of their agency’s budget on covert surveillance ops targeting the joint object of their affection, Lauren (Witherspoon). Expanding our notions of the romantic impulse, This Means War jettisons chocolate, roses, final-act sprints through airports, and other such trite gestures in favor of B&E, micro-camera installations, and wiretapping — the PATRIOT Act–style violation of privacy as feverish expression of amour. Without letting slip any spoilers about the eventual lucky winner of the competition, let it simply be said that at no point is the prize afforded the opportunity to comment on the two men’s überstalkery style of courtship, though the movie has to end rather abruptly to accomplish that feat. But hey, in the afterglow of Valentine’s Day, who’s feeling nitpicky? And besides, the real relationship at stake in this unabashedly bromantic film is the love that dare not speak its name, existing as it does between two secret agents. Chelsea Handler supplies the raunch and, as Lauren’s closest (only?) friend, manages to drag her through the dirt a few times. Being played by Witherspoon, however, she climbs out looking like she’s been sprayed down and scrubbed with one of her focus-grouped all-purpose cleansers. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

A Thousand Words (1:31) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomas Alfredson (2008’s Let the Right One In) directs from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan’s sterling adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy vs. spy tale, with Gary Oldman making the role of George Smiley (famously embodied by Alec Guinness in the 1979 miniseries) completely his own. Your complete attention is demanded, and deserved, by this tale of a Cold War-era, recently retired MI6 agent (Oldman) pressed back into service at “the Circus” to ferret out a Soviet mole. Building off Oldman’s masterful, understated performance, Alfredson layers intrigue and an attention to weird details (a fly buzzing around a car, the sound of toast being scraped with butter) that heighten the film’s deceptively beige 1970s palette. With espionage-movie trappings galore (safe houses, code machines), a returned-to flashback to a surreal office Christmas party, and bang-on supporting performances by John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and the suddenly ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, Tinker Tailor epitomizes rule one of filmmaking: show me, don’t tell me. A movie that assumes its audience isn’t completely brain-dead is cause for celebration and multiple viewings — not to mention a place among the year’s best. (2:07) Castro, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

“2011 Oscar-Nominated Short Films, Live Action and Animated” Smith Rafael.

Undefeated Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, who previously teamed up on a 2008 doc about beer pong, have a more serious subject for their latest tale: the unlikely heroics of an inner-city Memphis, Tenn. high school football team. The title refers more to the collective spirit rather than the (still pretty damn good) record of the Manassas Tigers, a team comprised of youths challenged by less-than-ideal home lives and anti-authority attitude problems that stem from troubles running deeper than typical teenage rebellion. Into an environment seemingly tailored to assure the kids’ failure steps coach Bill Courtney. He’s white, they’re all African American; he’s fairly well-off, while most of them live below the poverty line. Still, he’s able to instill confidence in them, both on and off the field, with focus on three players in particular: the athletically-gifted, academically-challenged O.C., who gets a Blind Side-style boost from one of Courtney’s assistant coaches; sensitive brain Money, sidelined by a devastating injury; and hot-tempered wild card Chavis, who eventually learns the importance of teamwork. With the heavy-hitting endorsement of celebrity exec producer Sean Combs, Undefeated is a high-quality entry into the “inspiring sports doc” genre: it offers an undeniably uplifting story and sleek production values. But it’s a little too familiar to be called the best documentary of the year, despite its recent anointing at the Oscars. If it was gonna be a sports flick, why not the superior, far more complex (yet not even nominated) Senna? (1:53) SF Center. (Eddy)

The Vow A rear-ender on a snowy Chicago night tests the nuptial declarations of a recently and blissfully married couple, recording studio owner Leo (Channing Tatum) and accomplished sculptor Paige (Rachel McAdams). When the latter wakes up from a medically induced coma, she has no memory of her husband, their friends, their life together, or anything else from the important developmental stage in which she dropped out of law school, became estranged from her regressively WASP-y family, stopped frosting her hair and wearing sweater sets, and broke off her engagement to preppy power-douchebag Jeremy (Scott Speedman). Watching Paige malign her own wardrobe and “weird” hair and rediscover the healing powers of a high-end shopping spree is disturbing; she reenters her old life nearly seamlessly, and the warm spark of her attraction to Leo, which we witness in a series of gooey flashbacks, feels utterly extinguished. And, despite the slurry monotone of Tatum’s line delivery, one can empathize with a sense of loss that’s not mortal but feels like a kind of death — as when Paige gazes at Leo with an expression blending perplexity, anxiety, irritation, and noninvestment. But The Vow wants to pluck on our heartstrings and inspire a glowing, love-story-for-the-ages sort of mood, and the film struggles to make good on the latter promise. Its vague evocations of romantic destiny mostly spark a sense of inevitability, and Leo’s endeavors to walk his wife through retakes of scenes from their courtship are a little more creepy and a little less Notebook-y than you might imagine. (1:44) SF Center. (Rapoport)

*Wanderlust When committed Manhattanites George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) find themselves in over their heads after George loses his job, the two set off to regroup in Atlanta, with the reluctantly accepted help of George’s repellent brother Rick (Ken Marino). Along the way, they stumble upon Elysium, a patchouli-clouded commune out in the Georgia backcountry whose members include original communard Carvin (Alan Alda), a nudist novelist-winemaker named Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio), a glowingly pregnant hippie chick named Almond (Lauren Ambrose), and smarmy, sanctimonious, charismatic leader Seth (Justin Theroux). After a short, violent struggle to adapt to life under Rick’s roof, the couple find themselves returning to Elysium to give life in an intentional community a shot, a decision that George starts rethinking when Seth makes a play for his wife. Blissed-out alfresco yoga practice, revelatory ayahuasca tea-induced hallucinations, and lectures about the liberating effects of polyamory notwithstanding, the road to enlightenment proves to be paved with sexual jealousy, alienation, placenta-soup-eating rituals, and group bowel movements. Writer-director David Wain (2001’s Wet Hot American Summer, 2008’s Role Models) — who shares writing credits with Marino — embraces the hybrid genre of horror comedy in which audience laughter is laced with agonized embarrassment, and his cast gamely partake in the group hug, particularly Theroux and Rudd, who tackles a terrifyingly lengthy scene of personal debasement with admirable gusto. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Rapoport)

*We Need to Talk About Kevin It’s inevitable — whenever a seemingly preventable tragedy occurs, there’s public outcry to the tune of “How could this happen?” But after the school shooting in We Need to Talk About Kevin, the more apt question is “How could this not happen?” Lynne Ramsay (2002’s Morvern Callar) — directing from the script she co-adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel — uses near-subliminal techniques to stir up atmospheric unease from the very start, with layered sound design and a significant, symbolic use of the color red. While other Columbine-inspired films, including Elephant and Zero Day (both 2003), have focused on their adolescent characters, Kevin revolves almost entirely around Eva Khatchadourian (a potent Tilda Swinton) — grief-stricken, guilt-riddled mother of a very bad seed. The film slides back and forth in time, allowing the tension to build even though we know how the story will end, since it’s where the movie starts: with Eva, alone in a crappy little house, working a crappy little job, moving through life with the knowledge that just about everyone in the world hates her guts. Kevin is very nearly a full-blown horror movie, and the demon-seed stuff does get a bit excessive. But it’s hard to determine if those scenes are “real life” or simply the way Eva remembers them, since Kevin is so tightly aligned with Eva’s point of view. Though she’s miserable in the flashbacks, the post-tragedy scenes are even thicker with terror; the film’s most unsettling sequence unfolds on Halloween, horror’s favorite holiday; Eva drives past a mob of costumed trick-or-treaters as Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” (one of several inspired music choices) chimes on the soundtrack. Masked faces are turn to stare — accusingly? Coincidentally? Do they even know she’s Kevin’s mother? — with nightmarish intensity heightened by slow motion. And indeed, “Everyday” Eva deals with accepting her fate; the film is sympathetic to her even while suggesting that she may actually be responsible. For a longer review of this film, and an interview with director Ramsay, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:52) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN FILM FESTIVAL

The 30th San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs March 8-18 at the Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Sundance Kabuki, 1881 Post, SF; SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk; and Camera 3 Cinemas, 288 S. Second St, San Jose. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.caamedia.org. For commentary, see “Here’s Looking at You, Kids” and “Docs and Shocks.”

OPENING

*The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye See “Together Forever.” (1:12) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

Being Flynn There’s an undeniable frisson in seeing Robert De Niro acting paranoid and abusive behind the wheel of an NYC cab again, but Paul Weitz’s drama isn’t exactly Taxi Driver 2. The actor plays Jonathan Flynn, a bellicose loner who abandoned his wife (Julianne Moore in flashbacks) and son to pursue his destiny as a great writer. Years later, the wife is deceased, the son estranged, but Jonathan remains secure in his delusions of genius — despite the publishing industry’s failure to agree. When an assault on noisy neighbors gets him thrown out of his apartment, his gradual descent into homelessness forces a paths-crossing with now-grown only child Nick (Paul Dano), who has taken a job at a shelter in an attempt to do something useful with his own unsettled life. Adapting the real Nick Flynn’s memoir, Weitz resists the temptation to make Pops a lovable old coot — he’s racist, homophobic, ill-tempered and pathetically arrogant — or to overly sentimentalize a father-son relationship that’s never going to have a happy ending. Nonetheless, this competent exercise too often feels like formulaic fiction, the material perhaps demanding a less slick, starry treatment to ring as true as it ought; the fuzzy warm blanket of a song score by Badly Drawn Boy doesn’t help. Still, intentions are good and the performances strong enough, including those by support players Lili Taylor, Wes Studi, and Olivia Thirlby. (1:42) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*The Forgiveness of Blood Joshua Marston’s follow-up to his 2004 indie hit Maria Full of Grace is a similarly sensitive, heartbreaking look at a culture not often illuminated by the silver screen. Co-written by Marston and Albanian filmmaker Andamion Murataj, The Forgiveness of Blood takes place in an Albanian town caught between traditions of the past — fiercely upheld by the older generation — and youths whose main areas of interest are texting, scooters, and the internet. When a turf war involving whose horse-cart can pass through whose land boils over, the father of teenage siblings Nik (Tristan Halilaj) and Rudina (Sindi Lacej) goes into hiding, intent on evading both the police and the family of the man he’s helped murder. Unfortunately for Nik, the laws of blood feud mean it’s now open season on his head, should he venture from his home; this puts an extreme damper on his wooing of the pretty classmate he’s just exchanged phone numbers with, not to mention his dreams of opening an internet café in the village. Unfortunately for Rudina, her father’s absence means the bright girl must drop out of school and take over his bread-delivery route — a job she excels at, despite her initial reluctance. It’s a no-win situation for everyone (mom’s working double-time at her factory gig; younger siblings are sullen and frightened), and dad’s crime starts to feel more and more like a macho, selfish act as the frustration builds. Though The Forgiveness of Blood was inexplicably passed over for a Best Foreign Language Film nomination (especially considering Marston’s success with Maria), it arrives in local theaters having won the Best Screenplay award at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival. Don’t miss it. (1:49) Bridge, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*Friends With Kids Jennifer Westfeldt scans Hollywood’s romantic comedy landscape for signs of intelligent life and, finding it to be a barren place possibly recovering from a nuclear holocaust, writes, directs, and stars in this follow-up to 2001’s Kissing Jessica Stein, which she co-wrote and starred in. Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) are upper-thirtysomething New Yorkers with two decades of friendship behind them. He calls her “doll.” They have whispered phone conversations at four in the morning while their insignificant others lie slumbering beside them on the verge of getting dumped. And after a night spent witnessing the tragic toll that procreation has taken on the marriages of their four closest friends — Bridesmaids (2011) reunion party Leslie (Maya Rudolph), Alex (Chris O’Dowd), Missy (Kristen Wiig), and Ben (Jon Hamm), the latter two, surprisingly and less surprisingly, providing some of the film’s darkest moments — Jason proposes that they raise a child together platonically, thereby giving any external romantic relationships a fighting chance of survival. In no time, they’ve worked out the kinks to their satisfaction, insulted and horrified their friends, and awkwardly made a bouncing baby boy. The arrival of significant others (Edward Burns and Megan Fox) signals the second phase of the experiment. Some viewers will be invested in latent sparks of romance between the central pair, others in the success of an alternative family arrangement; one of these demographics is destined for disappointment. Until then, however, both groups and any viewers unwilling to submit to this reductive binary will be treated to a funny, witty, well crafted depiction of two people’s attempts to preserve life as they know it while redrawing the parameters of parenthood. (1:40) California, Piedmont. (Rapoport)

John Carter More or less an adaptation of Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1917 sci-fi classic A Princess of Mars, John Carter is yet another film that lavishes special effects (festooned with CG and 3D) on a rote story filled with characters the viewer couldn’t give two craps about. Angry Civil War veteran John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, more muscleman than thespian) mysteriously zips to Mars, a planet not only populated by multiple members of the cast of HBO’s Rome (Ciarán Hinds, James Purefoy, and the voice of Polly Walker), but also quite a bit of Red Planet unrest. Against his better judgment, and with the encouragement of a comely princess (tragic spray-tan victim Lynn Collins), Carter joins the fight, as red people battle blue people, green four-armed creatures pitch in when needed, and sinister silver people (led by Mark Strong) use zap-tastic powers to manipulate the action for their amusement. If you’re expecting John Carter to be a step up from Conan the Barbarian (2011), Prince of Persia (2010), etc., because it’s directed by Andrew Stanton (the Pixar superstar who helmed 2008’s Finding Nemo and 2010’s WALL*E), eh, think again. There’s nothing memorable or fun about this would-be adventure; despite its extravagant 3D, it’s flatter than a pancake. (2:17) Four Star, Marina. (Eddy)

Let the Bullets Fly A huge blockbuster in China, the latest from director Jiang Wan (1998’s Devils on the Doorstep) has received high praise for the zippy wordplay in its script — not such great news for us non-Mandarin speakers stuck reading the not-especially-zippy English subtitles. What’s left is an overlong tale of a notorious bandit (Jiang) who stumbles upon an opportunity to fake his way into a governorship after a train robbery goes awry. He and his henchmen (who wear masks styled after mahjong tiles) have no sooner arrived in town when it’s made clear that wealth and power will not come easy, since the entire burg is controlled by a gold-toothed gangster (a braying, over-the-top Chow Yun-Fat) who doesn’t like to share. Let the bullets fly, indeed, and let the games begin, with occasionally thrilling but often cartoonish results. Tip: if it’s a red-hot, nerve-jangling, balls-to-the-wall Asian action import you seek, wait a few weeks for Indonesia’s The Raid: Redemption. Yowza. (2:12) Four Star. (Eddy)

*Lou Harrison: A World of Music Doing the late Aptos, Calif. composer justice with its depth and breadth, Lou Harrison: A World of Music is the fortunate product of filmmaker Eva Soltes’s relationship with the underappreciated musical genius. Over the course of two decades, she gathered footage of the visionary experimentalist who freely roved the realms of contemporary music and dance, Asian musical traditions, and instrument-making. Her work has borne fruit — here, you get the full, rich scope of Harrison’s achievements — from his time in the woods with partner and instrument-making cohort William Colvig to his toils alongside choreographer Mark Morris to his struggles to stage Young Caesar, his opera on a Roman ruler’s same-sex revels. What Soltes doesn’t get on camera, she manages to trace through still images and interviews with contemporaries and cohorts such as Merce Cunningham, Judith Malina, and Michael Tilson Thomas, filling out Harrison’s beginnings at Mills College, mentored by Henry Cowell and collaborating with John Cage; encapsulating his success as a composer, critic, and arranger in NYC; and touching on his breakdown and retreat to his mountain cabin where he sought to write music in peace, yet nevertheless continued to lend his teeming creativity to points close to home, à la the Cabrillo Music Festival, and abroad. (1:30) Roxie. (Chun)

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen A fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) is tasked by a sheik with bringing fly fishing to the desert in this adaptation of Paul Torday’s acclaimed comic novel. (1:52) Embarcadero.

*Silent House Yep, it’s another remake of a foreign horror movie — but Uruguay’s La casa muda is obscure enough that Silent House, which recycles its plot and filming style, feels like a brand-new experience. Co-directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau, last seen bobbing in shark-infested waves for 2003’s similarly bare-bones Open Water, apply another technical gimmick here: Silent House appears to be shot in one continuous take. Though it’s not actually made this way, each shot is extraordinarily long — way longer than you’d expect in a horror film, since the genre often relies on quick edits to build tension. Instead, the film’s aim is “real fear captured in real time” (per its tag line), and there’s no denying this is one shriek-filled experience. The dwelling in question is an isolated, rambling lake house being fixed up to sell by Sarah (Elizabeth Olsen), her father (Adam Trese), and uncle (Eric Sheffer Stevens). The lights don’t work, the windows are boarded up, most doors are padlocked shut, and there are strange noises coming from rooms that should be empty. Much of the film follows Sarah as she descends into deeper and deeper terror, scrabbling from floor to floor trying to hide from whoever (or whatever) is lurking, while at the same time trying to bust her way out. Though the last-act exposition explosion is a little hard to take, the film’s slow-burn beginning and frantic middle section offer bona fide chills. For an interview with Silent House co-director and writer Lau, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:28) (Eddy)

A Thousand Words Karma proves to be quite the bitch when a literary agent (Eddie Murphy) screws over a spiritual guru. (1:31) Shattuck.

ONGOING

Act of Valor (1:45) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) Balboa, California, Embarcadero, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Chico and Rita This Spain-U.K. production is at heart a very old-fashioned musical romance lent novelty by its packaging as a feature cartoon. Chico (voiced by Eman Xor Oña) is a struggling pianist-composer in pre-Castro Havana who’s instantly smitten by the sight and sound of Rita (Limara Meneses, with Idania Valdés providing vocals), a chanteuse similarly ripe for a big break. Their stormy relationship eventually sprawls, along with their careers, to Manhattan, Hollywood, Paris, Las Vegas, and Havana again, spanning decades as well as a few large bodies of water. This perpetually hot, cold, hot, cold love story isn’t very complicated or interesting — it’s pretty much “Boy meets girl, generic complications ensue” — nor is the film’s simple graphics style (reminiscent of 1970s Ralph Bakshi, minus the sleaze) all that arresting, despite the established visual expertise of Fernando Trueba’s two co directors Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando. When a dream sequence briefly pays specific homage to the modernist animation of the ’50s-early ’60s, Chico and Rita delights the eye as it should throughout. Still, it’s pleasant enough to the eye, and considerably more than that to the ear — there’s new music in a retro mode from Bebo Valdes, and plenty of the genuine period article from Monk, Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and more. If you’ve ever jones’d for a jazzbo’s adult Hanna Barbera feature (complete with full-frontal cartoon nudity — female only, of course), your dream has come true. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Chronicle A misfit (Dane DeHaan) with an abusive father and an ever-present video camera, his affable cousin (Matt Garretty), and a popular jock (Michael B. Jordan) discover a strange, glowing object in the woods; before long, the boys realize they are newly telekinetic. At first, it’s all a lark, pulling pranks and — in the movie’s most exhilarating scene — learning to fly, but the fun ends when the one with the anger problem (guess which) starts abusing the ol’ with-great-power-comes-great-responsibilities creed. Chronicle is a pleasant surprise in a time when it’s better not to expect much from films aimed at teens; it grounds the superhero story in a (mostly) believable high-school setting, gently intellectualizes the boys’ dilemma (“hubris” is discussed), and also understands how satisfying it is to see superpowers used in the service of pure silliness — like, say, pretending you just happen to be really, really, really, good at magic tricks. First-time feature director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max “son of John” Landis also find creative ways, some more successful than others, to work with the film’s “self-shot” structure. The technique (curse you, Blair Witch) is long past feeling innovative, but Chronicle amply justifies its use in telling its story. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Coriolanus For his film directing debut, Ralph Fiennes has chosen some pretty strong material: a military drama that is among Shakespeare’s least popular works, not that adapting the Bard to the screen has ever been easy. (Look how many times Kenneth Branagh, an even more fabled Shakespearean Brit on stage than Ralph, has managed to fumble that task.) The titular war hero, raised to glory in battle and little else, is undone by political backstabbers and his own contempt for the “common people” when appointed to a governmental role requiring some diplomatic finesse. This turn of events puts him right back in the role he was born for: that of ruthless, furious avenger, no matter that now he aims to conquer the Rome he’d hitherto pledged to defend. The setting of a modern city in crisis (threadbare protesting masses vs. oppressive police state) works just fine, Elizabethan language and all, as does Fiennes’ choice of a gritty contemporary action feel (using cinematographer Barry Ackroyd of 2006’s United 93 and 2008’s The Hurt Locker). He’s got a strong supporting cast — particularly Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus’ hawkish mother Volumnia — and an excellent lead in one Ralph Fiennes, who here becomes so warped by bloodthirst he seems to mutate into Lord Voldemort before our eyes, without need of any prosthetics. His crazy eyes under a razored bald pate are a special effect quite alarmingly inhuman enough. (2:03) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*Crazy Horse Does the documentary genre need an injection of sex appeal? Leave it to ground-breaking documentarian Frederick Wiseman to do just that, with this hilarious, keenly-observed look into Paris’s rightfully legendary Crazy Horse Paris cabaret. For 10 weeks, the filmmaker immersed himself in all aspects of preparation going into a new show, Désirs, by choreographer Philippe Decouflé, and uncovers the guts, discipline, organizational entanglements, and genuine artistry that ensues backstage to produce the at-times laugh-out-loud OTT (e.g., the many routines in which the perky, planet-like posterior is highlighted), at-times truly remarkable numbers (the girl-on-girl spaceship fantasia; the subtle, surreal number that bounces peek-a-boo body parts off a mirrored surface) onstage — moments that should inspire burlesque performers and dance aficionados alike with the sheer imaginative possibilities of dancing in the buff, with a side of brain-teasing titillation, of course. Always silently commenting on the action, Wiseman pokes quiet fun (at the dancer vigorously brushing the horse-hair tail attached to her rear, the obsessed art director, and the sound guy who’s a ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Boogie Nights nebbish) while patiently paying respect to the mechanics behind the magic (Decouflé, among others, arguing with management for more time to improve the show, despite the beyond-rigorous seven-days-a-week, twice- to thrice-daily schedule). Crazy Horse provides marvelous proof that the battle of seduction begins with the brain. (2:08) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed “not enough” for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (1:26) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Shattuck.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (1:36) SF Center.

Gone Still-shaky if now highly self-defensive Jill (Amanda Seyfried) was abducted from her bed a year ago, thrown into a deep hole in a forest outside Portland, Ore., and escaped death only by overcoming her barely-glimpsed captor. Or so she insists — the police never found any corroborating evidence, and given Jill’s history of mental instability, wrote off her whole purported adventure as delusional. When sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) goes inexplicably missing the morning of an important exam, however, Jill is convinced the serial kidnapper-killer has struck again, going off on a frantic manhunt of her own with no help from the authorities. There is nothing spectacularly wrong with Gone, but nothing right, either — to justify the ponying up of cash money at a theater these days you have to offer something a little more than the routine execution of a derivative, uninspired script with little suspense but plenty of plot holes. That sort of thing is best experienced at a sleepless 2 a.m. on cable, for free. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)

Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*In Darkness Agnieszka Holland is that kind of filmmaker who can become a well known, respectable veteran without anyone being quite sure what those decades have added up to. Her mentor was Andrzej Wadja, the last half-century’s leading Polish director (among those who never left). He helped shape a penchant for heavy historical drama and a sometimes clunky style not far from his own. She commenced her international career with 1985’s Angry Harvest, about the amorous relationship between a Polish man and the Austrian, a Jewish woman, he hides during Nazi occupation. Her one indispensable feature is 1990’s Europa, Europa, an ideal vehicle for her favored mix of the grotesque, sober, and factual — following a Jewish boy who passed as Aryan German. The new In Darkness is her best since then, and it can’t be chance that this too dramatizes a notably bizarre case of real-life peril and survival under the Nazis. Its protagonist is Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), an ordinary family man in Lvov (Poland then, Ukraine now) who’s not above exploiting the disarray of occupation and war to make ends meet. A sewer inspector, he uses his knowledge of underground tunnels to hide Jews who can pay enough when even the fenced-off ghetto is no longer safe. For such a long, oppressive, and literally dark film, this one passes quickly, maintaining tension as well as a palpable physical discomfort that doubtlessly suggests just a fraction what the refugees actually suffered. In Darkness isn’t quite a great movie, but it’s a powerful experience. At the end it’s impossible to be unmoved, not least because the director’s resistance toward Spielbergian exaltation insists on the banal and everyday, even in human triumph. (2:25) Clay, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Iron Lady Curiously like Clint Eastwood’s 2011 J. Edgar, this biopic from director Phyllida Lloyd and scenarist Abi Morgan takes on a political life of length, breadth and controversy — yet it mostly skims over the politics in favor of a generally admiring take on a famous narrow-minded megalomaniac’s “gumption” as an underdog who drove herself to the top. Looking back on her career from a senile old age spent in the illusory company of dead spouse Denis (Jim Broadbent), Meryl Streep’s ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher steamrolls past hurdles of class and gender while ironically re-enforcing the fustiest Tory values. She’s essentially a spluttering Lord in skirts, absolutist in her belief that money and power rule because they ought to, and any protesting rabble don’t represent the “real England.” That’s a mindset that might well have been explored more fruitfully via less flatly literal-minded portraiture, though Lloyd does make a few late, lame efforts at sub-Ken Russell hallucinatory style. Likely to satisfy no one — anywhere on the ideological scale — seriously interested in the motivations and consequences of a major political life, this skin-deep Lady will mostly appeal to those who just want to see another bravura impersonation added to La Streep’s gallery. Yes, it’s a technically impressive performance, but unlikely to be remembered as one of her more depthed ones, let alone among her better vehicles. (1:45) Albany, Opera Plaza, Presidio. (Harvey)

My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is “well-rounded” in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and “magical” Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) Castro, Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami’s global best-seller — a melancholic, late-1960s love story — hits the big screen thanks to Tran Anh Hung (1993’s The Scent of the Green Papaya). Kenichi Matsuyama (2011’s Gantz, 2005’s Linda Linda Linda) and Rinko Kikuchi (2006’s Babel) play Watanabe and Naoko, a young couple who reconnect in Tokyo after the suicide of his best friend, who was also her childhood sweetheart. There’s love between them, but Naoko is mentally fragile; she flees town suddenly after they sleep together for the first time. Meanwhile, Watanabe meets the vivacious Midori (Kiko Mizuhara) — who is also already involved, though not quite so deeply as he — and they spark, though he’s devoted to Naoko, and visits her at the rural hospital where she’s (sort of) working through her emotional issues. Tran is an elegant filmmaker, and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood contributes an appropriately moody score. But amid all the breathless encounters, the uber-emo Norwegian Wood drags a bit at over two hours, and the film never quite crystallizes what it was about Murakami’s book that inspired such international rapture. (2:13) Four Star. (Eddy)

*Pina Watching Pina Bausch’s choreography on film should not have been as absorbing and deeply affecting of an experience as it was. Dance on film tends to disappoint — the camera flattens the body and distorts perspective, and you either see too many or not enough details. However, improved 3D technology gave Wim Wenders (1999’s Buena Vista Social Club; 1987’s Wings of Desire) the additional tools he needed to accomplish what he and fellow German Bausch had talked about for 20 years: collaborating on a documentary about her work. Instead of making a film about the rebel dance maker, Wenders made it for Bausch, who died in June 2009, two days before the start of filming. Pina is an eloquent tribute to a tiny, soft-spoken, mousy-looking artist who turned the conventions of theatrical dance upside down. She was a great artist and true innovator. Wenders’ biggest accomplishment in this beautifully paced and edited document is its ability to elucidate Bausch’s work in a way that words probably cannot. While it’s good to see dance’s physicality and its multi dimensionality on screen, it’s even better that the camera goes inside the dances to touch tiny details and essential qualities in the performers’ every gesture. No proscenium theater can offer that kind of intimacy. Appropriately, intimacy (the eternal desire for it) and loneliness (an existential state of being) were the two contradictory forces that Bausch kept exploring over and over. And by taking fragments of the dances into the environment — both natural and artificial — of Wuppertal, Germany, Wenders places them inside the emotional lives of ordinary people, subjects of all of Bausch’s work. (1:43) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rita Felciano)

Project X Frat boys nostalgic for Girls Gone Wild — and those who continue to have the sneaking suspicion that much better parties are going on wherever they’re not —appear to be the target audiences for Project X (not be confused with the 1987 film starring Matthew Broderick, star of this movie’s tamer ’80s variant, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off). It’s tough to figure out who else would enjoy this otherwise-standard teen party-movie exercise, given a small shot of energy from its handheld/DIY video conceit. Here, mild-mannered teen Thomas (Thomas Mann) is celebrating his 17th birthday: his parents have left town, and his obnoxious pal Costa (Oliver Cooper) is itching to throw a memorable rager for him and even-geekier chum J.B. (Jonathan Daniel Brown). Multiple text and email blasts, a Craigslist ad, and one viral gossip scene reminiscent of Easy A (2010) later, several thousand party animals are at Thomas’s Pasadena house going nuts, getting nekkid in the pool, gobbling E, doing ollies off the roof, swinging from chandeliers, ad nauseam. The problem is — who cares? The lack of smart writing or even the marginal efforts toward character development makes Ferris Bueller look like outright genius — and this movie about as compelling as your standard-issue party jam clip. Unfortunately it also goes on about 85 minutes longer than the average music video. The blowback the kids experience when they go too far almost inspires you to root for the cops — not the effect first-time feature filmmaker Nima Nourizadeh was going for, I suspect. (1:28) California, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Rampart Fans of Dexter and a certain dark knight will empathize with this final holdout for rogue law enforcement, LAPD-style, in the waning days of the last century. And Woody Harrelson makes it easy for everyone else to summon a little sympathy for this devil in a blue uniform: he slips so completely behind the sun- and booze-burnt face of David “Date Rape” Brown, an LAPD cop who ridicules young female cops with the same scary, bullying certainty that he applies to interrogations with bad guys. The picture is complicated, however, by the constellation of women that Date Rape has sheltered himself with. Always cruising for other lonely hearts like lawyer Linda (Robin Wright), he still lives with the two sisters he once married (Cynthia Nixon, Anne Heche) and their daughters, including the rebellious Helen (Brie Larson), who seems to see her father for who he is — a flawed, flailing anti-hero suffering from severe testosterone poisoning and given to acting out. Harrelson does an Oscar-worthy job of humanizing that everyday monster, as director Oren Moverman (2009’s The Messenger), who cowrote the screenplay with James Ellroy, takes his time to blur out any residual judgement with bokeh-ish points of light while Brown — a flip, legit side of Travis Bickle — just keeps driving, unable to see his way out of the darkness. (1:48) Lumiere. (Chun)

Safe House Frankly, Denzel Washington watchers are starved for another movie in which he’s playing the smartest guy in the room. Despite being hampered by a determinedly murky opening, Safe House should mostly satisfy. Washington’s Tobin Frost is well-used to dwelling into a grayed-out borderland of black ops and flipped alliances — a onetime CIA star, he now trades secrets while perpetually on the run. Fleeing from killers of indeterminate origin, Tobin collides headlong with eager young agent Matt (Ryan Reynolds), who’s stuck maintaining a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. Tasked with holding onto Tobin’s high-level player by his boss (Brendan Gleeson) and his boss’s boss (Sam Shepard), Matt is determined to prove himself, retain and by extension protect Tobin (even when the ex-superspy is throttling him from behind amid a full-speed car chase), and resist the magnetic pull of those many hazardous gray zones. Surrounded by an array of actorly heavies, including Vera Farmiga, who collectively ratchet up and invest this possibly not-very-interesting narrative — “Bourne” there; done that — with heart-pumping intensity, Washington is magnetic and utterly convincing as the jaded mouse-then-cat-then-mouse toying with and playing off Reynolds go-getter innocent. Safe House‘s narrative doesn’t quite fill in the gaps in Tobin Frost’s whys and wherefores, and the occasional ludicrous breakthroughs aren’t always convincing, but the film’s overall, familiar effect should fly, even when it’s playing it safe (or overly upstanding, especially when it comes to one crucial, climactic scrap of dialogue from “bad guy” Washington, which rings extremely politically incorrect and tone-deaf). (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*A Separation Iran’s first movie to win Berlin’s Golden Bear (as well as all its acting awards), this domestic drama reflecting a larger socio-political backdrop is subtly well-crafted on all levels, but most of all demonstrates the unbeatable virtue of having an intricately balanced, reality-grounded screenplay — director Asghar Farhadi’s own — as bedrock. A sort of confrontational impartiality is introduced immediately, as our protagonists Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) face the camera — or rather the court magistrate — to plead their separate cases in her filing for divorce, which he opposes. We gradually learn that their 14-year wedlock isn’t really irreparable, the feelings between them not entirely hostile. The roadblock is that Simin has finally gotten permission to move abroad, a chance she thinks she must seize for the sake of their daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). But Nader doesn’t want to leave the country, and is not about to let his only child go without him. Farhadi worked in theater before moving into films a decade ago. His close attention to character and performance (developed over several weeks’ pre-production rehearsal) has the acuity sported by contemporary playwrights like Kenneth Lonergan and Theresa Rebeck, fitted to a distinctly cinematic urgency of pace and image. There are moments that risk pushing plot mechanizations too far, by A Separation pulls off something very intricate with deceptive simplicity, offering a sort of integrated Rashomon (1950) in which every participant’s viewpoint as the wronged party is right — yet in conflict with every other. (2:03) Albany, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*The Secret World of Arrietty It’s been far too long between 2008’s Ponyo, the last offering from Studio Ghibli, and this feature-length adaptation of Mary Norton’s children’s classic, The Borrowers, but the sheer beauty of the studio’s hand-drawn animation and the effortless wonder of its tale more than make up for the wait. This U.S. release, under the very apropos auspices of Walt Disney Pictures, comes with an American voice cast (in contrast with the U.K. version), and the transition appears to be seamless — though, of course, the background is subtly emblazoned with kanji, there are details like the dinnertime chopsticks, and the characters’ speech rhythms, down to the “sou ka” affirmative that peppers all Japanese dialogue. Here in this down-low, hybridized realm, the fearless, four-inches-tall Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler) has grown up imaginative yet lonely, believing her petite family is the last of their kind: they’re Borrowers, a race of tiny people who live beneath the floorboards of full-sized human’s dwellings and take what they need to survive. Despite the worries of her mother Homily (Amy Poehler), Arrietty begins to embark on borrowing expeditions with her father Pod (Will Arnett) — there are crimps in her plans, however: their house’s new resident, a sickly boy named Shawn (David Henrie), catches a glimpse of Arrietty in the garden, and caretaker Hara (Carol Burnett) has a bit of an ulterior motive when it comes to rooting out the wee folk. Arrietty might not be for everyone — some kids might churn in their seats with ADD-style impatience at this graceful, gentle throwback to a pre-digital animation age — but in the care of first-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote co-wrote the screenplay, Arrietty will transfix other youngsters (and animation fans of all ages) with the glorious detail of its natural world, all beautifully amplified and suffused with everyday magic when viewed through the eyes of a pocket-sized adventurer. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Shame It’s been a big 2011 for Michael Fassbender, with Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and A Dangerous Method raising his profile from art-house standout to legit movie star (of the “movie stars who can also act” variety). Shame may only reach one-zillionth of X-Men‘s audience due to its NC-17 rating, but this re-teaming with Hunger (2008) director Steve McQueen is Fassbender’s highest achievement to date. He plays Brandon, a New Yorker whose life is tightly calibrated to enable a raging sex addiction within an otherwise sterile existence, including an undefined corporate job and a spartan (yet expensive-looking) apartment. When brash, needy, messy younger sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan, speaking of actors having banner years) shows up, yakking her life all over his, chaos results. Shame is a movie that unfolds in subtle details and oversized actions, with artful direction despite its oft-salacious content. If scattered moments seem forced (loopy Cissy’s sudden transformation, for one scene, into a classy jazz singer), the emotions — particularly the titular one — never feel less than real and raw. (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 3D (2:16) SF Center.

*Straight Outta Hunters Point 2 In 2001, filmmaker Kevin Epps turned a camera on his own neighborhood: Bayview-Hunters Point, the southeastern San Francisco community best-known by outsiders for Candlestick Park, toxic pollution, and gang violence. Straight Outta Hunters Point was an eye-opener not just locally but internationally, as its runaway success opened doors for Epps to travel with the film and establish his career. These days, Epps is no longer an emerging talent — he’s a full-time independent filmmaker with multiple credits (including The Black Rock, a documentary about Alcatraz’s African American inmates, and hip-hop film Rap Dreams), collaborations (with Current TV and others), and an artist fellowship at the de Young Museum under his belt. For his newest project, he returns to the scene of his first work. He no longer resides in Bayview-Hunters Point, but he still lives close by, and he’s never lost touch with the community that inspired the first film and encouraged him to make its follow-up. Described by Epps as a “continuation of the conversation” launched by the first film, SOHP 2 investigates the community as it stands today, with both external (redevelopment) and internal (violence) pressures shaping the lives of those who live there. It’s a raw, real story that unspools with urgency and the unvarnished perspective of an embedded eyewitness. (1:20) Roxie. (Eddy)

This Means War McG (both Charlie’s Angels movies, 2009’s Terminator Salvation) stretches our understanding of the term “romantic comedy” in this tale of two grounded CIA agents (Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) who use their downtime to compete for the love of a perky, workaholic consumer-products tester (Reese Witherspoon). Broadening the usage of “comedy” are scenes in which best bros and partners FDR (Pine) and Tuck (Hardy) spend large portions of their agency’s budget on covert surveillance ops targeting the joint object of their affection, Lauren (Witherspoon). Expanding our notions of the romantic impulse, This Means War jettisons chocolate, roses, final-act sprints through airports, and other such trite gestures in favor of B&E, micro-camera installations, and wiretapping — the PATRIOT Act–style violation of privacy as feverish expression of amour. Without letting slip any spoilers about the eventual lucky winner of the competition, let it simply be said that at no point is the prize afforded the opportunity to comment on the two men’s überstalkery style of courtship, though the movie has to end rather abruptly to accomplish that feat. But hey, in the afterglow of Valentine’s Day, who’s feeling nitpicky? And besides, the real relationship at stake in this unabashedly bromantic film is the love that dare not speak its name, existing as it does between two secret agents. Chelsea Handler supplies the raunch and, as Lauren’s closest (only?) friend, manages to drag her through the dirt a few times. Being played by Witherspoon, however, she climbs out looking like she’s been sprayed down and scrubbed with one of her focus-grouped all-purpose cleansers. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

*Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie It’s almost impossible to describe Adult Swim hit Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, but “cable access on acid” comes pretty close. It’s awkward, gross, repetitive, and quotable; it features unsettling characters portrayed by famous comedians and unknowns who may not actually be actors. It all springs from the twisted brains of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, now on the big screen with Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. The premise: Tim and Eric (amplified-to-the-extreme versions of Heidecker and Wareheim) get a billion to make a movie, and the end result is a very short film involving a lot of diamonds and a Johnny Depp impersonator. On the run from their angry investors (including a hilariously spitting-mad Robert Loggia), the pair decides to earn back the money managing a run-down mall filled with deserted stores (and weird ones that sell things like used toilet paper) and haunted by a man-eating wolf. Or something. Anyway, the plot is just an excuse to unfurl the Tim and Eric brand of bizarre across the length of a feature film; if you’re already in the cult, you’ve probably already seen the film (it’s been On Demand for weeks). Adventurous newcomers, take note: Tim and Eric’s comedy is the ultimate love-it-or-hate-it experience. There is no middle ground. There are, however, some righteously juicy poop jokes. (1:32) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomas Alfredson (2008’s Let the Right One In) directs from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan’s sterling adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy vs. spy tale, with Gary Oldman making the role of George Smiley (famously embodied by Alec Guinness in the 1979 miniseries) completely his own. Your complete attention is demanded, and deserved, by this tale of a Cold War-era, recently retired MI6 agent (Oldman) pressed back into service at “the Circus” to ferret out a Soviet mole. Building off Oldman’s masterful, understated performance, Alfredson layers intrigue and an attention to weird details (a fly buzzing around a car, the sound of toast being scraped with butter) that heighten the film’s deceptively beige 1970s palette. With espionage-movie trappings galore (safe houses, code machines), a returned-to flashback to a surreal office Christmas party, and bang-on supporting performances by John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and the suddenly ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, Tinker Tailor epitomizes rule one of filmmaking: show me, don’t tell me. A movie that assumes its audience isn’t completely brain-dead is cause for celebration and multiple viewings — not to mention a place among the year’s best. (2:07) Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds (1:51) 1000 Van Ness.

“2011 Oscar-Nominated Short Films, Live Action and Animated” Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael.

Undefeated Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, who previously teamed up on a 2008 doc about beer pong, have a more serious subject for their latest tale: the unlikely heroics of an inner-city Memphis, Tenn. high school football team. The title refers more to the collective spirit rather than the (still pretty damn good) record of the Manassas Tigers, a team comprised of youths challenged by less-than-ideal home lives and anti-authority attitude problems that stem from troubles running deeper than typical teenage rebellion. Into an environment seemingly tailored to assure the kids’ failure steps coach Bill Courtney. He’s white, they’re all African American; he’s fairly well-off, while most of them live below the poverty line. Still, he’s able to instill confidence in them, both on and off the field, with focus on three players in particular: the athletically-gifted, academically-challenged O.C., who gets a Blind Side-style boost from one of Courtney’s assistant coaches; sensitive brain Money, sidelined by a devastating injury; and hot-tempered wild card Chavis, who eventually learns the importance of teamwork. With the heavy-hitting endorsement of celebrity exec producer Sean Combs, Undefeated is a high-quality entry into the “inspiring sports doc” genre: it offers an undeniably uplifting story and sleek production values. But it’s a little too familiar to be called the best documentary of the year, despite its recent anointing at the Oscars. If it was gonna be a sports flick, why not the superior, far more complex (yet not even nominated) Senna? (1:53) SF Center. (Eddy)

The Vow A rear-ender on a snowy Chicago night tests the nuptial declarations of a recently and blissfully married couple, recording studio owner Leo (Channing Tatum) and accomplished sculptor Paige (Rachel McAdams). When the latter wakes up from a medically induced coma, she has no memory of her husband, their friends, their life together, or anything else from the important developmental stage in which she dropped out of law school, became estranged from her regressively WASP-y family, stopped frosting her hair and wearing sweater sets, and broke off her engagement to preppy power-douchebag Jeremy (Scott Speedman). Watching Paige malign her own wardrobe and “weird” hair and rediscover the healing powers of a high-end shopping spree is disturbing; she reenters her old life nearly seamlessly, and the warm spark of her attraction to Leo, which we witness in a series of gooey flashbacks, feels utterly extinguished. And, despite the slurry monotone of Tatum’s line delivery, one can empathize with a sense of loss that’s not mortal but feels like a kind of death — as when Paige gazes at Leo with an expression blending perplexity, anxiety, irritation, and noninvestment. But The Vow wants to pluck on our heartstrings and inspire a glowing, love-story-for-the-ages sort of mood, and the film struggles to make good on the latter promise. Its vague evocations of romantic destiny mostly spark a sense of inevitability, and Leo’s endeavors to walk his wife through retakes of scenes from their courtship are a little more creepy and a little less Notebook-y than you might imagine. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

*Wanderlust When committed Manhattanites George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) find themselves in over their heads after George loses his job, the two set off to regroup in Atlanta, with the reluctantly accepted help of George’s repellent brother Rick (Ken Marino). Along the way, they stumble upon Elysium, a patchouli-clouded commune out in the Georgia backcountry whose members include original communard Carvin (Alan Alda), a nudist novelist-winemaker named Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio), a glowingly pregnant hippie chick named Almond (Lauren Ambrose), and smarmy, sanctimonious, charismatic leader Seth (Justin Theroux). After a short, violent struggle to adapt to life under Rick’s roof, the couple find themselves returning to Elysium to give life in an intentional community a shot, a decision that George starts rethinking when Seth makes a play for his wife. Blissed-out alfresco yoga practice, revelatory ayahuasca tea-induced hallucinations, and lectures about the liberating effects of polyamory notwithstanding, the road to enlightenment proves to be paved with sexual jealousy, alienation, placenta-soup-eating rituals, and group bowel movements. Writer-director David Wain (2001’s Wet Hot American Summer, 2008’s Role Models) — who shares writing credits with Marino — embraces the hybrid genre of horror comedy in which audience laughter is laced with agonized embarrassment, and his cast gamely partake in the group hug, particularly Theroux and Rudd, who tackles a terrifyingly lengthy scene of personal debasement with admirable gusto. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

*We Need to Talk About Kevin It’s inevitable — whenever a seemingly preventable tragedy occurs, there’s public outcry to the tune of “How could this happen?” But after the school shooting in We Need to Talk About Kevin, the more apt question is “How could this not happen?” Lynne Ramsay (2002’s Morvern Callar) — directing from the script she co-adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel — uses near-subliminal techniques to stir up atmospheric unease from the very start, with layered sound design and a significant, symbolic use of the color red. While other Columbine-inspired films, including Elephant and Zero Day (both 2003), have focused on their adolescent characters, Kevin revolves almost entirely around Eva Khatchadourian (a potent Tilda Swinton) — grief-stricken, guilt-riddled mother of a very bad seed. The film slides back and forth in time, allowing the tension to build even though we know how the story will end, since it’s where the movie starts: with Eva, alone in a crappy little house, working a crappy little job, moving through life with the knowledge that just about everyone in the world hates her guts. Kevin is very nearly a full-blown horror movie, and the demon-seed stuff does get a bit excessive. But it’s hard to determine if those scenes are “real life” or simply the way Eva remembers them, since Kevin is so tightly aligned with Eva’s point of view. Though she’s miserable in the flashbacks, the post-tragedy scenes are even thicker with terror; the film’s most unsettling sequence unfolds on Halloween, horror’s favorite holiday; Eva drives past a mob of costumed trick-or-treaters as Buddy Holly’s “Everyday” (one of several inspired music choices) chimes on the soundtrack. Masked faces are turn to stare — accusingly? Coincidentally? Do they even know she’s Kevin’s mother? — with nightmarish intensity heightened by slow motion. And indeed, “Everyday” Eva deals with accepting her fate; the film is sympathetic to her even while suggesting that she may actually be responsible. For a longer review of this film, and an interview with director Ramsay, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:52) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Dame good fun

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Dame good fun

arts@sfbg.com

FILM What with the internet, the paparazzi, Rupert Murdoch’s CIA-level spy techniques, and the general displacement of actual news by “celebrity news,” it’s pretty hard these days for a star of any sort to keep their debauchery private. Not like the good old days, when Hollywood carefully stage-managed publicity and only those who’d become a real liability risked having their peccadilloes exposed.

Such rare windfalls aside, the public were mostly restricted to watching beautiful people behave badly onscreen — a pastime that took a big blow once the censorious Production Code was instituted in 1934. Elliot Lavine’s latest Roxie retrospective of movies from that golden-shower period of post-silents, pre-Nannywood licentiousness — this time entitled “Hollywood Before the Code: Nasty-Ass Films for a Nasty-Ass World!” — provides plentiful early talkie titillation. Now that the bodies involved are long buried, we also know a few tales of their stars’ off-screen misadventures, too.

The week-long series of double bills sports its share of familiar titles, notably Howard Hawks’ terrific original Scarface (1934); Edgar G. Ulmer’s Karloff vs. Lugosi smackdown The Black Cat (1934); and the first, probably best version of H.G. Welles’ prescient biotech fable Island of Lost Souls (1932). There are women in prison (1931’s Ladies of the Big House), women in Faulkner (1933’s The Story of Temple Drake, a watered-down adaptation of W.F.’s then-notorious Sanctuary), women in everything else (1932’s Three On a Match, whose Depression-era Valley of the Dolls-esque trio includes a very young Bette Davis), and just plain Joan Blondell (1933’s Blondie Johnson).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzxnEDEY2Hs

It’s a few choice dames in lesser-remembered pictures that provide the biggest “nasty-ass” discoveries this go-round, however. March 4 offers a shocking double dose of pure white femininity finding themselves in, ahem, “Yellow Peril” — miscegenation being something Hollywood could only begin to embrace a few decades later. Frank Capra’s atypically erotic The Bitter Tea of General Yen, with Barbara Stanwyck alllllmost surrendering the white flag to a “charismatic Chinese warlord” (Swede Nils Asther, eyes narrowed), has become a minor classic since flopping in 1933.

No such luck for The Cheat (1931), a remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1915 shocker that was part of Paramount’s brief, failed attempt to make stage sensation Tallulah Bankhead a movie star. Her gambling-addicted socialite gets branded (literally) in lieu of repayment not by the original’s Far East businessman (dashing Sessue Hayakawa) but by a mere rich Caucasian perv with Sinophile pretensions (Irving Pichel). The big courtroom climax is a notable howler.

Bankhead remained a Broadway star and a popular “personality,” her throaty voice hinting at a semi-private life that included a great deal of bourbon, a fondness for unexpected nudity, and sexual appetites all along the Kinsey scale. After two decades off screen she arguably found her camp métier as a berserk Bible-clutching hag terrorizing Stefanie Powers in 1965’s Die! Die! My Darling.

Much less of a survivor was poor Clara Bow, who was beloved when she played the wild thing yet unduly punished when it turned out that role had relevance in real life. The quintessential flapper and “It Girl” (“it” meaning sex appeal) was never much of an actress, but an incandescent, live-wire screen presence.

Call Her Savage (1932) is a pre-Code jaw-dropper that was supposedly her personal favorite. Running an A-to-Z gamut of emotions (and hairstyles), her Texas heiress heroine Nasa “Dynamite” Springer is “never two minutes the same” — a nice way of saying she’s nuts. In 88 minutes she rides a horse like it’s something else, plays with her mastiff likewise, is near-raped by an estranged husband, turns streetwalker, causes a brawl in Greenwich Village café catering to “wild poets and anarchists,” gets in two catfights, hits the bottle, and finds peace upon discovering she’s a part Indian “half-breed,” which apparently explains all.

Emotionally unstable, due in part to a pretty horrific upbringing, Bow must have related. At the time she was enduring myriad problems, notably some embarrassing public revelations spilled by a blackmailing secretary. Savage would be her next-to-last film, after which she retired into a deep and troubled seclusion.

Heading thataway as well was Juanita Hansen, a silent star who’d gone down in flames a decade earlier thanks to a “Queen of Thrills” image that unfortunately she enacted a little too enthusiastically in real life. She quit cocaine, got hooked on morphine, quit that, and became an anti-drug crusader — but nothing re-ignited her career. Certainly not lone comeback vehicle Sensation Hunters, a 1933 Poverty Row exploiter in which she was fifth-billed as “Trixie Snell,” manager-slash-madam to a troupe of “Hot-Cha Girls” who kinda dance, kinda sing, but mostly roll customers at Panama City’s “Bull Ring Club.” It was a sad exit. Puffy and peroxided, Hansen is all too convincing as a woman with too many hard miles on her to go anywhere but further downhill.

Waaaay uptown — glittering Broadway via glossy Paramount — 1934’s Murder at the Vanities offered the last hurrah for pre-Code naughtiness. And what a hurrah: chorus girls in pasties and less (at one point they simply clutch boobs as if on a latter-day Vanity Fair cover); production numbers like “The Rape of the Rhapsody” (the “rape” being Duke Ellington’s “colored” jazz musicians and dancers invading a classical orchestra with something called “Ebony Rhapsody” — until a white gangster jokingly machine-guns them all down); plus sexual humor so blunt that Jack Oakie ends the film telling a giggly blonde “Come on, let’s do it,” meaning exactly what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCoj855Vdo8

On the side of the angels — definitely for losers here — there are numerous horrible songs (excepting standard “Cocktails for Two”), gag-inducingly sweet romantic leads, and kitschy-great ideas like having stage impresario Earl Carroll’s patented “Most Beautiful Girls in the World” pose en masse as tropical waves and cosmetics products. Representing Satan and evening gown-wearing pot smokers everywhere is villainous Gertrude Michael, who infamously sings torch song “Sweet Marijuana.” Michael was an elegant stage and radio star whose own recreational taste leaned more toward cocktails for one. Indeed, she was fictionalized as the hard-drinking love object in one-time lover Paul Cain’s 1932 novel Fast One, an early classic of hard boiled American pulp.

Saving the sleaziest for last, the series will truly flabber your gast with its closer. Normally prim MGM found itself reviled in early 1932 with the fleeting release of Tod Browning’s Freaks (playing the Roxie March 3), a much-misunderstood, now celebrated fable starring actual circus sideshow performers. It was considered so grotesque and unsettling that Freaks was banned in many areas — Britain didn’t see it until 1963.

Yet there’s no evidence of any similar backlash to the infinitely scuzzier Kongo, unleashed by Metro a few months later. A remake of Browning’s 1928 Lon Chaney vehicle West of Zanzibar, it stars Walter Huston as wheelchair-bound “Deadlegs” Flint. He’s used cheap magic tricks to appoint himself fearsome white-man “god” amongst spear-carrying tribesmen in a “dunghill” African outpost, all part of an elaborate, insidious plan to wreak vengeance on the rival who stole his wife and health long ago.

What this revenge eventually encompasses reads like a list of nearly everything the Production Code would soon bar from the screen: depicted or suggested drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, rape, sadism, and a convent-bred ingénue (Virginia Bruce) recalling “hot hairy hands pawing and mauling” her unwilling virginal body. Not to mention human sacrifice and a unique substance abuse “cure” using leeches.

One can almost hear the censuring voice of Will Hays, the Code’s original enforcer, when one character tells Deadlegs “The swamp’s wholesome compared to you!” It would arguably be 40 years before MGM distributed another movie so flagrantly perverse — and even then the studio was so ashamed they put it (Paul Bartel’s 1972 Private Parts) out under a fake subsidiary’s auspices.

 

HOLLYWOOD BEFORE THE CODE: NASTY-ASS FILMS FOR A NASTY-ASS WORLD!

March 2-8, $11

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

Film Listings

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

OPENING

*Crazy Horse Does the documentary genre need an injection of sex appeal? Leave it to ground-breaking documentarian Frederick Wiseman to do just that, with this hilarious, keenly-observed look into Paris’s rightfully legendary Crazy Horse Paris cabaret. For 10 weeks, the filmmaker immersed himself in all aspects of preparation going into a new show, Désirs, by choreographer Philippe Decouflé, and uncovers the guts, discipline, organizational entanglements, and genuine artistry that ensues backstage to produce the at-times laugh-out-loud OTT (e.g., the many routines in which the perky, planet-like posterior is highlighted), at-times truly remarkable numbers (the girl-on-girl spaceship fantasia; the subtle, surreal number that bounces peek-a-boo body parts off a mirrored surface) onstage — moments that should inspire burlesque performers and dance aficionados alike with the sheer imaginative possibilities of dancing in the buff, with a side of brain-teasing titillation, of course. Always silently commenting on the action, Wiseman pokes quiet fun (at the dancer vigorously brushing the horse-hair tail attached to her rear, the obsessed art director, and the sound guy who’s a ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Boogie Nights nebbish) while patiently paying respect to the mechanics behind the magic (Decouflé, among others, arguing with management for more time to improve the show, despite the beyond-rigorous seven-days-a-week, twice- to thrice-daily schedule). Crazy Horse provides marvelous proof that the battle of seduction begins with the brain. (2:08) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)
Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax Dr. Seuss’ environmental fable comes to (3D, CG-animated) life, with Danny DeVito voicing the iconic title creature. (1:26) Balboa, Presidio, Shattuck.

Project X Nope, not a remake of the 1987 Matthew-Broderick-befriends-a-chimp flick. This one’s a comedy about a chaotic high school party. (1:28) California.

*Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie See Trash. (1:32) Lumiere, Shattuck.

Undefeated Daniel Lindsay and T.J. Martin, who previously teamed up on a 2008 doc about beer pong, have a more serious subject for their latest tale: the unlikely heroics of an inner-city Memphis, Tenn. high school football team. The title refers more to the collective spirit rather than the (still pretty damn good) record of the Manassas Tigers, a team comprised of youths challenged by less-than-ideal home lives and anti-authority attitude problems that stem from troubles running deeper than typical teenage rebellion. Into an environment seemingly tailored to assure the kids’ failure steps coach Bill Courtney. He’s white, they’re all African American; he’s fairly well-off, while most of them live below the poverty line. Still, he’s able to instill confidence in them, both on and off the field, with focus on three players in particular: the athletically-gifted, academically-challenged O.C., who gets a Blind Side-style boost from one of Courtney’s assistant coaches; sensitive brain Money, sidelined by a devastating injury; and hot-tempered wild card Chavis, who eventually learns the importance of teamwork. With the heavy-hitting endorsement of celebrity exec producer Sean Combs, Undefeated is a high-quality entry into the "inspiring sports doc" genre: it offers an undeniably uplifting story and sleek production values. But it’s a little too familiar to be called the best documentary of the year, despite its recent anointing at the Oscars. If it was gonna be a sports flick, why not the superior, far more complex (yet not even nominated) Senna? (1:53) SF Center. (Eddy)

*We Need to Talk About Kevin It’s inevitable — whenever a seemingly preventable tragedy occurs, there’s public outcry to the tune of "How could this happen?" But after the school shooting in We Need to Talk About Kevin, the more apt question is "How could this not happen?" Lynne Ramsay (2002’s Morvern Callar) — directing from the script she co-adapted from Lionel Shriver’s novel — uses near-subliminal techniques to stir up atmospheric unease from the very start, with layered sound design and a significant, symbolic use of the color red. While other Columbine-inspired films, including Elephant and Zero Day (both 2003), have focused on their adolescent characters, Kevin revolves almost entirely around Eva Khatchadourian (a potent Tilda Swinton) — grief-stricken, guilt-riddled mother of a very bad seed. The film slides back and forth in time, allowing the tension to build even though we know how the story will end, since it’s where the movie starts: with Eva, alone in a crappy little house, working a crappy little job, moving through life with the knowledge that just about everyone in the world hates her guts. Kevin is very nearly a full-blown horror movie, and the demon-seed stuff does get a bit excessive. But it’s hard to determine if those scenes are "real life" or simply the way Eva remembers them, since Kevin is so tightly aligned with Eva’s point of view. Though she’s miserable in the flashbacks, the post-tragedy scenes are even thicker with terror; the film’s most unsettling sequence unfolds on Halloween, horror’s favorite holiday; Eva drives past a mob of costumed trick-or-treaters as Buddy Holly’s "Everyday" (one of several inspired music choices) chimes on the soundtrack. Masked faces are turn to stare — accusingly? Coincidentally? Do they even know she’s Kevin’s mother? — with nightmarish intensity heightened by slow motion. And indeed, "Everyday" Eva deals with accepting her fate; the film is sympathetic to her even while suggesting that she may actually be responsible. For a longer review of this film, and an interview with director Ramsay, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:52) (Eddy)

ONGOING

Act of Valor (1:45) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki.

Albert Nobbs The titular character in Rodrigo Garcia’s film is a butler of ideal bone-stiff propriety and subservience in a Dublin hotel whose well-to-do clients expect no less from the hired help. Even his fellow workers know almost nothing about middle aged Albert, and he’s so dully harmless they don’t even notice that lack. Yet Albert has a big secret: he is a she, played by Glenn Close, having decided this cross dressing disguise was the only way out of a Victorian pauper’s life many years ago. Chance crosses Albert’s path with housepainter Hubert (Janet McTeer), who turns out to be harboring precisely the same secret, albeit more merrily — "he" has even found happy domesticity with an understanding wife. Albert dreams of finding the same with a comely young housemaid (Mia Wasikowska), though she’s already lost her silly head over a loutish but handsome handyman (Aaron Johnson) much closer to her age. This period piece is more interesting in concept rather than in execution, as the characters stay all too true to mostly one-dimensional types, and the story of minor intrigues and muffled tragedies springs very few surprises. It’s an honorable but not especially rewarding affair that clearly exists mostly as a setting for Close’s impeccable performance — and she knows it, having written the screenplay and produced; she’s also played this part on stage before. Yet even that accomplishment has an airless feel; you never forget you’re watching an actor "transform," and for all his luckless pathos, Albert is actually a pretty tedious fellow. (1:53) Opera Plaza, Presidio. (Harvey)

*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, "I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist," and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) Balboa, California, Embarcadero, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Chico and Rita This Spain-U.K. production is at heart a very old-fashioned musical romance lent novelty by its packaging as a feature cartoon. Chico (voiced by Eman Xor Oña) is a struggling pianist-composer in pre-Castro Havana who’s instantly smitten by the sight and sound of Rita (Limara Meneses, with Idania Valdés providing vocals), a chanteuse similarly ripe for a big break. Their stormy relationship eventually sprawls, along with their careers, to Manhattan, Hollywood, Paris, Las Vegas, and Havana again, spanning decades as well as a few large bodies of water. This perpetually hot, cold, hot, cold love story isn’t very complicated or interesting — it’s pretty much "Boy meets girl, generic complications ensue" — nor is the film’s simple graphics style (reminiscent of 1970s Ralph Bakshi, minus the sleaze) all that arresting, despite the established visual expertise of Fernando Trueba’s two co directors Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando. When a dream sequence briefly pays specific homage to the modernist animation of the ’50s-early ’60s, Chico and Rita delights the eye as it should throughout. Still, it’s pleasant enough to the eye, and considerably more than that to the ear — there’s new music in a retro mode from Bebo Valdes, and plenty of the genuine period article from Monk, Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and more. If you’ve ever jones’d for a jazzbo’s adult Hanna Barbera feature (complete with full-frontal cartoon nudity — female only, of course), your dream has come true. (1:34) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*Chronicle A misfit (Dane DeHaan) with an abusive father and an ever-present video camera, his affable cousin (Matt Garretty), and a popular jock (Michael B. Jordan) discover a strange, glowing object in the woods; before long, the boys realize they are newly telekinetic. At first, it’s all a lark, pulling pranks and — in the movie’s most exhilarating scene — learning to fly, but the fun ends when the one with the anger problem (guess which) starts abusing the ol’ with-great-power-comes-great-responsibilities creed. Chronicle is a pleasant surprise in a time when it’s better not to expect much from films aimed at teens; it grounds the superhero story in a (mostly) believable high-school setting, gently intellectualizes the boys’ dilemma ("hubris" is discussed), and also understands how satisfying it is to see superpowers used in the service of pure silliness — like, say, pretending you just happen to be really, really, really, good at magic tricks. First-time feature director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max "son of John" Landis also find creative ways, some more successful than others, to work with the film’s "self-shot" structure. The technique (curse you, Blair Witch) is long past feeling innovative, but Chronicle amply justifies its use in telling its story. (1:23) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Coriolanus For his film directing debut, Ralph Fiennes has chosen some pretty strong material: a military drama that is among Shakespeare’s least popular works, not that adapting the Bard to the screen has ever been easy. (Look how many times Kenneth Branagh, an even more fabled Shakespearean Brit on stage than Ralph, has managed to fumble that task.) The titular war hero, raised to glory in battle and little else, is undone by political backstabbers and his own contempt for the "common people" when appointed to a governmental role requiring some diplomatic finesse. This turn of events puts him right back in the role he was born for: that of ruthless, furious avenger, no matter that now he aims to conquer the Rome he’d hitherto pledged to defend. The setting of a modern city in crisis (threadbare protesting masses vs. oppressive police state) works just fine, Elizabethan language and all, as does Fiennes’ choice of a gritty contemporary action feel (using cinematographer Barry Ackroyd of 2006’s United 93 and 2008’s The Hurt Locker). He’s got a strong supporting cast — particularly Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus’ hawkish mother Volumnia — and an excellent lead in one Ralph Fiennes, who here becomes so warped by bloodthirst he seems to mutate into Lord Voldemort before our eyes, without need of any prosthetics. His crazy eyes under a razored bald pate are a special effect quite alarmingly inhuman enough. (2:03) Bridge. (Harvey)

*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed "not enough" for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) Four Star, Piedmont, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo The meeting of Stieg Larsson’s first "Millennium" book and David Fincher promised fireworks, as he’s a director who can be equally vivid and exacting with just the elements key to the series: procedural detail, obsession, violence, tweaked genre conventions, mind games, haunted protagonists, and expansive story arcs. But perhaps because this possible franchise launch had to be rushed into production to ride the Larsson wave, what should have been a terrific matchup turns out to be just a good one — superior in some stylistic departments (notably Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pulsing score), but overall neither an improvement nor a disappointment in comparison to the uninspired but effective 2009 Swedish film version. Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, the muckraking Stockholm journalist whose public disgrace after a failed expose of a suspect corporate tycoon makes him the perfect candidate for an unexpected assignment: staying sequestered in the wealthy, warring Vanger clan’s island home to secretly investigate a teenage girl’s disappearance and presumed murder 40 years ago. His testy helpmate is the singular Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara), antisocial hacker, researcher, and ex-mental patient par excellence. Nearly three hours long, the compressed, slightly altered (get over it) storyline nonetheless feels rushed at times; Fincher manages the rare feat of making mostly internet research exciting in filmic terms, yet oddly the book’s more shocking episodes of sex and/or mayhem don’t have the memorable impact one might expect from him. The leads are fine, as is the big support cast of recognizable faces (Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgård, Robin Wright, etc.) But the knockout suspense, atmosphere, and urgency one hoped for isn’t present in this intelligent, not entirely satisfying treatment. On the other hand, maybe those who’ve already read the books and seen the prior films have already had so much exposure to this material that a revelatory experience is no longer possible. (2:38) Castro. (Harvey)

Gone Still-shaky if now highly self-defensive Jill (Amanda Seyfried) was abducted from her bed a year ago, thrown into a deep hole in a forest outside Portland, Ore., and escaped death only by overcoming her barely-glimpsed captor. Or so she insists — the police never found any corroborating evidence, and given Jill’s history of mental instability, wrote off her whole purported adventure as delusional. When sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) goes inexplicably missing the morning of an important exam, however, Jill is convinced the serial kidnapper-killer has struck again, going off on a frantic manhunt of her own with no help from the authorities. There is nothing spectacularly wrong with Gone, but nothing right, either — to justify the ponying up of cash money at a theater these days you have to offer something a little more than the routine execution of a derivative, uninspired script with little suspense but plenty of plot holes. That sort of thing is best experienced at a sleepless 2 a.m. on cable, for free. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Harvey)

Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) Four Star, Presidio, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*In Darkness Agnieszka Holland is that kind of filmmaker who can become a well known, respectable veteran without anyone being quite sure what those decades have added up to. Her mentor was Andrzej Wadja, the last half-century’s leading Polish director (among those who never left). He helped shape a penchant for heavy historical drama and a sometimes clunky style not far from his own. She commenced her international career with 1985’s Angry Harvest, about the amorous relationship between a Polish man and the Austrian, a Jewish woman, he hides during Nazi occupation. Her one indispensable feature is 1990’s Europa, Europa, an ideal vehicle for her favored mix of the grotesque, sober, and factual — following a Jewish boy who passed as Aryan German. The new In Darkness is her best since then, and it can’t be chance that this too dramatizes a notably bizarre case of real-life peril and survival under the Nazis. Its protagonist is Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), an ordinary family man in Lvov (Poland then, Ukraine now) who’s not above exploiting the disarray of occupation and war to make ends meet. A sewer inspector, he uses his knowledge of underground tunnels to hide Jews who can pay enough when even the fenced-off ghetto is no longer safe. For such a long, oppressive, and literally dark film, this one passes quickly, maintaining tension as well as a palpable physical discomfort that doubtlessly suggests just a fraction what the refugees actually suffered. In Darkness isn’t quite a great movie, but it’s a powerful experience. At the end it’s impossible to be unmoved, not least because the director’s resistance toward Spielbergian exaltation insists on the banal and everyday, even in human triumph. (2:25) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

The Iron Lady Curiously like Clint Eastwood’s 2011 J. Edgar, this biopic from director Phyllida Lloyd and scenarist Abi Morgan takes on a political life of length, breadth and controversy — yet it mostly skims over the politics in favor of a generally admiring take on a famous narrow-minded megalomaniac’s "gumption" as an underdog who drove herself to the top. Looking back on her career from a senile old age spent in the illusory company of dead spouse Denis (Jim Broadbent), Meryl Streep’s ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher steamrolls past hurdles of class and gender while ironically re-enforcing the fustiest Tory values. She’s essentially a spluttering Lord in skirts, absolutist in her belief that money and power rule because they ought to, and any protesting rabble don’t represent the "real England." That’s a mindset that might well have been explored more fruitfully via less flatly literal-minded portraiture, though Lloyd does make a few late, lame efforts at sub-Ken Russell hallucinatory style. Likely to satisfy no one — anywhere on the ideological scale — seriously interested in the motivations and consequences of a major political life, this skin-deep Lady will mostly appeal to those who just want to see another bravura impersonation added to La Streep’s gallery. Yes, it’s a technically impressive performance, but unlikely to be remembered as one of her more depthed ones, let alone among her better vehicles. (1:45) Albany, Marina, Vogue. (Harvey)

My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is "well-rounded" in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and "magical" Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) Clay, Four Star, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami’s global best-seller — a melancholic, late-1960s love story — hits the big screen thanks to Tran Anh Hung (1993’s The Scent of the Green Papaya). Kenichi Matsuyama (2011’s Gantz, 2005’s Linda Linda Linda) and Rinko Kikuchi (2006’s Babel) play Watanabe and Naoko, a young couple who reconnect in Tokyo after the suicide of his best friend, who was also her childhood sweetheart. There’s love between them, but Naoko is mentally fragile; she flees town suddenly after they sleep together for the first time. Meanwhile, Watanabe meets the vivacious Midori (Kiko Mizuhara) — who is also already involved, though not quite so deeply as he — and they spark, though he’s devoted to Naoko, and visits her at the rural hospital where she’s (sort of) working through her emotional issues. Tran is an elegant filmmaker, and Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood contributes an appropriately moody score. But amid all the breathless encounters, the uber-emo Norwegian Wood drags a bit at over two hours, and the film never quite crystallizes what it was about Murakami’s book that inspired such international rapture. (2:13) Four Star. (Eddy)

*Pina Watching Pina Bausch’s choreography on film should not have been as absorbing and deeply affecting of an experience as it was. Dance on film tends to disappoint — the camera flattens the body and distorts perspective, and you either see too many or not enough details. However, improved 3D technology gave Wim Wenders (1999’s Buena Vista Social Club; 1987’s Wings of Desire) the additional tools he needed to accomplish what he and fellow German Bausch had talked about for 20 years: collaborating on a documentary about her work. Instead of making a film about the rebel dance maker, Wenders made it for Bausch, who died in June 2009, two days before the start of filming. Pina is an eloquent tribute to a tiny, soft-spoken, mousy-looking artist who turned the conventions of theatrical dance upside down. She was a great artist and true innovator. Wenders’ biggest accomplishment in this beautifully paced and edited document is its ability to elucidate Bausch’s work in a way that words probably cannot. While it’s good to see dance’s physicality and its multi dimensionality on screen, it’s even better that the camera goes inside the dances to touch tiny details and essential qualities in the performers’ every gesture. No proscenium theater can offer that kind of intimacy. Appropriately, intimacy (the eternal desire for it) and loneliness (an existential state of being) were the two contradictory forces that Bausch kept exploring over and over. And by taking fragments of the dances into the environment — both natural and artificial — of Wuppertal, Germany, Wenders places them inside the emotional lives of ordinary people, subjects of all of Bausch’s work. (1:43) Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Rita Felciano)

Rampart Fans of Dexter and a certain dark knight will empathize with this final holdout for rogue law enforcement, LAPD-style, in the waning days of the last century. And Woody Harrelson makes it easy for everyone else to summon a little sympathy for this devil in a blue uniform: he slips so completely behind the sun- and booze-burnt face of David "Date Rape" Brown, an LAPD cop who ridicules young female cops with the same scary, bullying certainty that he applies to interrogations with bad guys. The picture is complicated, however, by the constellation of women that Date Rape has sheltered himself with. Always cruising for other lonely hearts like lawyer Linda (Robin Wright), he still lives with the two sisters he once married (Cynthia Nixon, Anne Heche) and their daughters, including the rebellious Helen (Brie Larson), who seems to see her father for who he is — a flawed, flailing anti-hero suffering from severe testosterone poisoning and given to acting out. Harrelson does an Oscar-worthy job of humanizing that everyday monster, as director Oren Moverman (2009’s The Messenger), who cowrote the screenplay with James Ellroy, takes his time to blur out any residual judgement with bokeh-ish points of light while Brown — a flip, legit side of Travis Bickle — just keeps driving, unable to see his way out of the darkness. (1:48) Embarcadero. (Chun)

*Roadie Michael Cuesta’s first film as both director and writer (again co-authoring with brother Gerald) since 2001’s startling debut feature L.I.E. is also his best work since then. After nearly a quarter-centurty spent schlepping equipment for Blue Oyster Cult — the arty metal band ("Don’t Fear the Reaper," i.e. "more cowbell!") that was already sliding from the spotlight when he signed on — Jimmy Testergross (Ron Eldard) is fired, the reasons unknown to us. With nowhere else to go, he lands on the doorstep of his childhood home in Queens, where he hasn’t been seen in at least 20 years. Mom (Lois Smith) is going senile, though somehow her disapproval comes through with perfect clarity (and hasn’t changed in all that time). Seeking a liquid solace at a bar, our hero instead runs into Randy (Bobby Cannavale), who bullied him mercilessly way back when — and is now married to "Jimmy Testicle’s" still-hot former girlfriend Nikki (Jill Hennessey), who has rock-star aspirations of her own. Taking place over less than 24 hours’ span, Roadie is a very small character study, but a well-observed one. "Developmentally stunted by rock ‘n’ roll," as one character puts it (when it emerges 40-something Jimmy has never learned to make coffee for himself), its protagonist is the kind of likable boy-man loser usually found in Fountains of Wayne songs, an aging lifelong air guitarist pining over good old days that probably weren’t even that good. His nostalgia is as touchingly hapless as his dubious future. (1:35) SF Film Society Cinema. (Harvey)

Safe House Frankly, Denzel Washington watchers are starved for another movie in which he’s playing the smartest guy in the room. Despite being hampered by a determinedly murky opening, Safe House should mostly satisfy. Washington’s Tobin Frost is well-used to dwelling into a grayed-out borderland of black ops and flipped alliances — a onetime CIA star, he now trades secrets while perpetually on the run. Fleeing from killers of indeterminate origin, Tobin collides headlong with eager young agent Matt (Ryan Reynolds), who’s stuck maintaining a safe house in Cape Town, South Africa. Tasked with holding onto Tobin’s high-level player by his boss (Brendan Gleeson) and his boss’s boss (Sam Shepard), Matt is determined to prove himself, retain and by extension protect Tobin (even when the ex-superspy is throttling him from behind amid a full-speed car chase), and resist the magnetic pull of those many hazardous gray zones. Surrounded by an array of actorly heavies, including Vera Farmiga, who collectively ratchet up and invest this possibly not-very-interesting narrative — "Bourne" there; done that — with heart-pumping intensity, Washington is magnetic and utterly convincing as the jaded mouse-then-cat-then-mouse toying with and playing off Reynolds go-getter innocent. Safe House‘s narrative doesn’t quite fill in the gaps in Tobin Frost’s whys and wherefores, and the occasional ludicrous breakthroughs aren’t always convincing, but the film’s overall, familiar effect should fly, even when it’s playing it safe (or overly upstanding, especially when it comes to one crucial, climactic scrap of dialogue from "bad guy" Washington, which rings extremely politically incorrect and tone-deaf). (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*A Separation Iran’s first movie to win Berlin’s Golden Bear (as well as all its acting awards), this domestic drama reflecting a larger socio-political backdrop is subtly well-crafted on all levels, but most of all demonstrates the unbeatable virtue of having an intricately balanced, reality-grounded screenplay — director Asghar Farhadi’s own — as bedrock. A sort of confrontational impartiality is introduced immediately, as our protagonists Nader (Peyman Moadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) face the camera — or rather the court magistrate — to plead their separate cases in her filing for divorce, which he opposes. We gradually learn that their 14-year wedlock isn’t really irreparable, the feelings between them not entirely hostile. The roadblock is that Simin has finally gotten permission to move abroad, a chance she thinks she must seize for the sake of their daughter, Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). But Nader doesn’t want to leave the country, and is not about to let his only child go without him. Farhadi worked in theater before moving into films a decade ago. His close attention to character and performance (developed over several weeks’ pre-production rehearsal) has the acuity sported by contemporary playwrights like Kenneth Lonergan and Theresa Rebeck, fitted to a distinctly cinematic urgency of pace and image. There are moments that risk pushing plot mechanizations too far, by A Separation pulls off something very intricate with deceptive simplicity, offering a sort of integrated Rashomon (1950) in which every participant’s viewpoint as the wronged party is right — yet in conflict with every other. (2:03) Albany, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

*The Secret World of Arrietty It’s been far too long between 2008’s Ponyo, the last offering from Studio Ghibli, and this feature-length adaptation of Mary Norton’s children’s classic, The Borrowers, but the sheer beauty of the studio’s hand-drawn animation and the effortless wonder of its tale more than make up for the wait. This U.S. release, under the very apropos auspices of Walt Disney Pictures, comes with an American voice cast (in contrast with the U.K. version), and the transition appears to be seamless — though, of course, the background is subtly emblazoned with kanji, there are details like the dinnertime chopsticks, and the characters’ speech rhythms, down to the "sou ka" affirmative that peppers all Japanese dialogue. Here in this down-low, hybridized realm, the fearless, four-inches-tall Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler) has grown up imaginative yet lonely, believing her petite family is the last of their kind: they’re Borrowers, a race of tiny people who live beneath the floorboards of full-sized human’s dwellings and take what they need to survive. Despite the worries of her mother Homily (Amy Poehler), Arrietty begins to embark on borrowing expeditions with her father Pod (Will Arnett) — there are crimps in her plans, however: their house’s new resident, a sickly boy named Shawn (David Henrie), catches a glimpse of Arrietty in the garden, and caretaker Hara (Carol Burnett) has a bit of an ulterior motive when it comes to rooting out the wee folk. Arrietty might not be for everyone — some kids might churn in their seats with ADD-style impatience at this graceful, gentle throwback to a pre-digital animation age — but in the care of first-time director Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Ghibli mastermind Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote co-wrote the screenplay, Arrietty will transfix other youngsters (and animation fans of all ages) with the glorious detail of its natural world, all beautifully amplified and suffused with everyday magic when viewed through the eyes of a pocket-sized adventurer. (1:35) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Shame It’s been a big 2011 for Michael Fassbender, with Jane Eyre, X-Men: First Class, Shame, and A Dangerous Method raising his profile from art-house standout to legit movie star (of the "movie stars who can also act" variety). Shame may only reach one-zillionth of X-Men‘s audience due to its NC-17 rating, but this re-teaming with Hunger (2008) director Steve McQueen is Fassbender’s highest achievement to date. He plays Brandon, a New Yorker whose life is tightly calibrated to enable a raging sex addiction within an otherwise sterile existence, including an undefined corporate job and a spartan (yet expensive-looking) apartment. When brash, needy, messy younger sister Cissy (Carey Mulligan, speaking of actors having banner years) shows up, yakking her life all over his, chaos results. Shame is a movie that unfolds in subtle details and oversized actions, with artful direction despite its oft-salacious content. If scattered moments seem forced (loopy Cissy’s sudden transformation, for one scene, into a classy jazz singer), the emotions — particularly the titular one — never feel less than real and raw. (1:39) Lumiere. (Eddy)

Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 3D (2:16) SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

*Straight Outta Hunters Point 2 In 2001, filmmaker Kevin Epps turned a camera on his own neighborhood: Bayview-Hunters Point, the southeastern San Francisco community best-known by outsiders for Candlestick Park, toxic pollution, and gang violence. Straight Outta Hunters Point was an eye-opener not just locally but internationally, as its runaway success opened doors for Epps to travel with the film and establish his career. These days, Epps is no longer an emerging talent — he’s a full-time independent filmmaker with multiple credits (including The Black Rock, a documentary about Alcatraz’s African American inmates, and hip-hop film Rap Dreams), collaborations (with Current TV and others), and an artist fellowship at the de Young Museum under his belt. For his newest project, he returns to the scene of his first work. He no longer resides in Bayview-Hunters Point, but he still lives close by, and he’s never lost touch with the community that inspired the first film and encouraged him to make its follow-up. Described by Epps as a "continuation of the conversation" launched by the first film, SOHP 2 investigates the community as it stands today, with both external (redevelopment) and internal (violence) pressures shaping the lives of those who live there. It’s a raw, real story that unspools with urgency and the unvarnished perspective of an embedded eyewitness. (1:20) Roxie. (Eddy)

*Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Tomas Alfredson (2008’s Let the Right One In) directs from Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan’s sterling adaptation of John le Carré’s classic spy vs. spy tale, with Gary Oldman making the role of George Smiley (famously embodied by Alec Guinness in the 1979 miniseries) completely his own. Your complete attention is demanded, and deserved, by this tale of a Cold War-era, recently retired MI6 agent (Oldman) pressed back into service at "the Circus" to ferret out a Soviet mole. Building off Oldman’s masterful, understated performance, Alfredson layers intrigue and an attention to weird details (a fly buzzing around a car, the sound of toast being scraped with butter) that heighten the film’s deceptively beige 1970s palette. With espionage-movie trappings galore (safe houses, code machines), a returned-to flashback to a surreal office Christmas party, and bang-on supporting performances by John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, and the suddenly ubiquitous Benedict Cumberbatch, Tinker Tailor epitomizes rule one of filmmaking: show me, don’t tell me. A movie that assumes its audience isn’t completely brain-dead is cause for celebration and multiple viewings — not to mention a place among the year’s best. (2:07) Piedmont, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds (1:51) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.

"2011 Oscar-Nominated Short Films, Live Action and Animated" Lumiere, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

The Vow A rear-ender on a snowy Chicago night tests the nuptial declarations of a recently and blissfully married couple, recording studio owner Leo (Channing Tatum) and accomplished sculptor Paige (Rachel McAdams). When the latter wakes up from a medically induced coma, she has no memory of her husband, their friends, their life together, or anything else from the important developmental stage in which she dropped out of law school, became estranged from her regressively WASP-y family, stopped frosting her hair and wearing sweater sets, and broke off her engagement to preppy power-douchebag Jeremy (Scott Speedman). Watching Paige malign her own wardrobe and "weird" hair and rediscover the healing powers of a high-end shopping spree is disturbing; she reenters her old life nearly seamlessly, and the warm spark of her attraction to Leo, which we witness in a series of gooey flashbacks, feels utterly extinguished. And, despite the slurry monotone of Tatum’s line delivery, one can empathize with a sense of loss that’s not mortal but feels like a kind of death — as when Paige gazes at Leo with an expression blending perplexity, anxiety, irritation, and noninvestment. But The Vow wants to pluck on our heartstrings and inspire a glowing, love-story-for-the-ages sort of mood, and the film struggles to make good on the latter promise. Its vague evocations of romantic destiny mostly spark a sense of inevitability, and Leo’s endeavors to walk his wife through retakes of scenes from their courtship are a little more creepy and a little less Notebook-y than you might imagine. (1:44) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Rapoport)

*Wanderlust When committed Manhattanites George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) find themselves in over their heads after George loses his job, the two set off to regroup in Atlanta, with the reluctantly accepted help of George’s repellent brother Rick (Ken Marino). Along the way, they stumble upon Elysium, a patchouli-clouded commune out in the Georgia backcountry whose members include original communard Carvin (Alan Alda), a nudist novelist-winemaker named Wayne (Joe Lo Truglio), a glowingly pregnant hippie chick named Almond (Lauren Ambrose), and smarmy, sanctimonious, charismatic leader Seth (Justin Theroux). After a short, violent struggle to adapt to life under Rick’s roof, the couple find themselves returning to Elysium to give life in an intentional community a shot, a decision that George starts rethinking when Seth makes a play for his wife. Blissed-out alfresco yoga practice, revelatory ayahuasca tea-induced hallucinations, and lectures about the liberating effects of polyamory notwithstanding, the road to enlightenment proves to be paved with sexual jealousy, alienation, placenta-soup-eating rituals, and group bowel movements. Writer-director David Wain (2001’s Wet Hot American Summer, 2008’s Role Models) — who shares writing credits with Marino — embraces the hybrid genre of horror comedy in which audience laughter is laced with agonized embarrassment, and his cast gamely partake in the group hug, particularly Theroux and Rudd, who tackles a terrifyingly lengthy scene of personal debasement with admirable gusto. (1:38) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

W.E. Madonna’s first directorial feature, 2008’s Filth and Wisdom, was so atrocious, and the early word on this second effort so vitriolic, that there’s a temptation to give W.E. too much credit simply for not being a disgrace. Co-written by Madge and Alek Keshishian, it’s about two women in gilded cages. One is Wallis Simpson (the impressive Andrea Riseborough), a married American socialite who scandalized the world by divorcing her husband and running about with Edward, Prince of Wales (James D’Arcy), who had to abdicate the English throne in order to marry her in 1936. The other is fictive Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a childless Manhattan socialite in the late 1990s who’s neglected by her probably-unfaithful husband (Richard Coyle). Over-eagerly intertwined despite their trite-at-best overlaps (the main one being Wally’s obsession with Wallis), these two strands hold attention for a while. But eventually they grow turgid. We’re presumably meant to be carried away by their True Love, but the film doesn’t succeed in making Wallis and Edward seem more than two petulant, shallow snobs who were fortunate to find each other, but didn’t necessarily make one another better or more interesting people. (It also alternately denies and glosses over the couple’s fascist-friendly politics, which became an embarrassment as England fought Germany in World War II.) Meanwhile, Wally is a mopey blank too easily belittled by her spouse, and too handily rescued by a Prince Charming, or rather "Russian intellectual slumming as a security guard" (Oscar Isaac) working at Sotheby’s during an auction of the late royal couple’s estate. As is so often the case with Madonna, she seems to be saying something here, but precisely what is murky and probably not worth sussing
out. Likewise, the attention to showy surface aesthetics — in particular Arianne Phillips’ justifiably Oscar-nominated costumes — is fastidious, revealing, and to an extent satisfying in itself. Somewhat ambitious and in several ways quite well crafted, the handsomely appointed W.E. isn’t bad (surely it wouldn’t have attracted such hostility if directed by anyone else), but the flaws that finally suffocate it reach right down to its conceptual gist. There is, however, one lovely moment toward the end: Riseborough’s Wallis, a well-preserved septuagenarian, dancing an incongruous yet supremely self-assured twist on request for her bedridden husband. (1:59) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

The Woman in Black Daniel Radcliffe (a.k.a. Harry Potter) plays a grieving young widower in an old-fashioned ghost story, set in the era of spirit hands and other visitations from beyond the veil. But while Victorian séances were generally aimed at the dearly departed, the titular visitant (Liz White), who haunts the isolated estate of Eel Marsh House and its environs, is a vindictive, mean-spirited creature, avenging the long-ago loss of her child by wreaking havoc and heartbreak among the families of the nearby village, among them a local landowner (Ciarán Hinds) and his wife (Janet McTeer). Radcliffe’s character, a lawyer named Arthur Kipps, has been tasked with settling the affairs of the mansion’s recently deceased owner, an assignment that requires sifting through mounds of dusty, crumpled ephemera in one of the creakiest, squeakiest buildings ever constructed. Set at the end of a narrow spit of land that disappears into the surrounding wetlands when the tide is high, Eel Marsh House is a charming place to be marooned after dark. But no amount of horrified screams from the audience will keep Kipps from his duties, though it’s hard to make much headway amid the unrelenting creepiness. Nearly every moment brings a fresh inexplicable thumping noise from an upper floor; a new room full of dead-eyed dolls that Kipps has no business wandering into; another freakishly screaming face next to his as he gazes out the window. The house is a richly textured set piece; the horror is of the sort that makes you jump and then laugh, both at the filmmakers, for springing the same tricks on you over and over, and at yourself, for falling prey to them every time. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness. (Rapoport)

Film Listings

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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. Due to the Presidents’ Day holiday, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

INDIEFEST

The 14th San Francisco Independent Film Festival runs through Thurs/23 at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF. For tickets (most films $11) and schedule info, visit www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

Act of Valor Action movie starring real-life, active-duty Navy SEALs. (1:45)

*Bullhead Michael R. Roskam’s Belgian import scored an unexpected Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination this year. Unexpected, because it’s daring, disturbing, and a lot of other things that Foreign Language Film nominees usually are not (heartwarming, yes — gasp-inducing, no). The five-second description of this film, which is about a cattle farmer who injects both his livestock and his own body with illegal hormones, doesn’t do it justice. Who knew there was such a thing, for instance, as a “hormone mafia underworld”? While some of Bullhead‘s nuances, which occasionally pivot on culture-clash moments specific to its Belgium setting, will inevitably be lost on American viewers, the most important parts of the movie come through loud and clear, and you won’t soon forget them. (2:04) (Eddy)

*Dizzy Heights: Silent Cinema and Life in the Air The film medium’s first, sound free decades coincided with a sense of hurtling modernization throughout first-world society like nothing before or since — centuries of history had scarcely prepared for the sudden reality of such concepts as “world war” or “skyscraper.” Aviation in particular was such a fascinating wonder its potential seemed limitless, though commercial air travel was as yet many years and dollars from the average citizen’s reach. Curated by Patrick Ellis, this Pacific Film Archive series brings together some of the era’s most fanciful depictions of progress and peril in the skies. It includes 1918’s goofy, ambitious Danish A Trip to Mars, whose intrepid (if in-fighting) Earthlings land to promptly horrify the Red Planet of Peace’s entire vegetarian populace by shooting fowl and throwing a grenade. The influence of Isadora Duncan weighs heavily on the ensuing lessons learned, as wreath-bearing, toga clad peaceniks (“Come with me and look at the dance of chastity”) exhort our heroes to return home and preach pacifism — a very timely message, then. The 1929 British “disaster flick” High Treason more realistically depicts a very Jazz Age near future pushed away from the Charleston towards more catastrophic military conflict by unscrupulous war profiteers. Julien Duvivier, a director at the beginning of a long, sometimes pedestrian career in the French cinematic mainstream, was young and feckless when he made 1927’s Mystery of the Eiffel Tower, a long, antic conspiracy thriller that directly inspired the Tintin comics. This long weekend of rarities also includes a program of shorts encompassing animation from Disney and McKay, trick photography and Mack Sennett slapstick. Pacific Film Archive. (Harvey)

Gone A woman (Amanda Seyfried) who escaped a serial killer fears he has retaliated by kidnapping her sister. (1:34)

*In Darkness See “The War at Home.” (2:25)

*Khodorkovsky Russia today is a so-called “managed democracy.” Flawed a system as democracy is, though, it’s something you either live in or don’t — put a qualifier on the term, and it becomes something else. This particular something else is a nation where a popular, populist leader like Vladimir Putin can maintain an economically successful (at least for many) status quo and his own power by squelching any political opposition via decidedly un-democratic means. One of the most conspicuous such cases in recent years has been the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former owner of oil company Yukos and the most fabulously wealthy “oligarch” to emerge from Russia’s post-Soviet move toward capitalist privatization. Though initially considered as corrupt as any in that privileged class, he realized after a fashion that transparency actually encouraged investment, becoming a noted respecter of oft-abused minority shareholder rights and a sort of poster child for ethical business practice. This transition coincided with increased friction between him and Putin, who had given Khodorkovsky and others like him relatively free rein so long as they “stayed out of politics.” On the day before the latter was arrested in 2003 — returning against all advice from an overseas trip where he’d been expected to become another wealthy “political emigrant” — he continued to align himself with the reformist anti-Putin opposition by telling a TV host “As long as our country isn’t fully a civil society, no one is safe from the people with handcuffs.” Conviction on questionable charges, Stalinesque detention in remote Siberia, and still-ongoing excuses for sentence elongation have ensued. The subject of Cyril Tuschi’s documentary (finally interviewed directly at the end) is certainly not innocent of arrogance, incaution, and possibly more prosecutable crimes; but he has also clearly chosen the hardest path against an intractable, grudge-keeping foe on moral principal. How many billionaires would even consider losing their freedom, comfort, and wealth for such an abstract? Khodorkovsky the movie has its character flaws, too — but you can forgive a filmmaker some of those when he’s working on a subject, and from a perspective, that has gotten more than a couple fellow journalists “mysteriously” poisoned to death. (1:51) (Harvey)

*Roadie Michael Cuesta’s first film as both director and writer (again co-authoring with brother Gerald) since 2001’s startling debut feature L.I.E. is also his best work since then. After nearly a quarter-century spent schlepping equipment for Blue Oyster Cult — the arty metal band (“Don’t Fear the Reaper,” i.e. “more cowbell!”) that was already sliding from the spotlight when he signed on — Jimmy Testergross (Ron Eldard) is fired, the reasons unknown to us. With nowhere else to go, he lands on the doorstep of his childhood home in Queens, where he hasn’t been seen in at least 20 years. Mom (Lois Smith) is going senile, though somehow her disapproval comes through with perfect clarity (and hasn’t changed in all that time). Seeking a liquid solace at a bar, our hero instead runs into Randy (Bobby Cannavale), who bullied him mercilessly way back when — and is now married to “Jimmy Testicle’s” still-hot former girlfriend Nikki (Jill Hennessey), who has rock-star aspirations of her own. Taking place over less than 24 hours’ span, Roadie is a very small character study, but a well-observed one. “Developmentally stunted by rock ‘n’ roll,” as one character puts it (when it emerges 40-something Jimmy has never learned to make coffee for himself), its protagonist is the kind of likable boy-man loser usually found in Fountains of Wayne songs, an aging lifelong air guitarist pining over good old days that probably weren’t even that good. His nostalgia is as touchingly hapless as his dubious future. (1:35) SF Film Society Cinema. (Harvey)

*Straight Outta Hunters Point 2 See “Back to the Point.” (1:20) Roxie.

Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds Director Tyler Perry puts aside the Madea drag to star as a man torn between Gabrielle Union and Thandie Newton. (1:51)

Wanderlust Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston star in this David Wain-directed, Judd Apatow-produced comedy about a New York City couple who move to a commune. (1:38)

ONGOING

*The Artist With the charisma-oozing agility of Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling his way past opponents and the supreme confidence of Rudolph Valentino leaning, mid-swoon, into a maiden, French director-writer Michel Hazanavicius hits a sweet spot, or beauty mark of sorts, with his radiant new film The Artist. In a feat worthy of Fairbanks or Errol Flynn, Hazanavicius juggles a marvelously layered love story between a man and a woman, tensions between the silents and the talkies, and a movie buff’s appreciation of the power of film — embodied in particular by early Hollywood’s union of European artistry and American commerce. Dashing silent film star George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, who channels Fairbanks, Flynn, and William Powell — and won this year’s Cannes best actor prize) is at the height of his career, adorable Jack Russell by his side, until the talkies threaten to relegate him to yesterday’s news. The talent nurtured in the thick of the studio system yearns for real power, telling the newspapers, “I’m not a puppet anymore — I’m an artist,” and finances and directs his own melodrama, while his youthful protégé Peppy Miller (Bérénice Béjo) becomes a yakky flapper age’s new It Girl. Both a crowd-pleasing entertainment and a loving précis on early film history, The Artist never checks its brains at the door, remaining self-aware of its own conceit and its forebears, yet unashamed to touch the audience, without an ounce of cynicism. (1:40) (Chun)

*Chico and Rita This Spain-U.K. production is at heart a very old-fashioned musical romance lent novelty by its packaging as a feature cartoon. Chico (voiced by Eman Xor Oña) is a struggling pianist-composer in pre-Castro Havana who’s instantly smitten by the sight and sound of Rita (Limara Meneses, with Idania Valdés providing vocals), a chanteuse similarly ripe for a big break. Their stormy relationship eventually sprawls, along with their careers, to Manhattan, Hollywood, Paris, Las Vegas, and Havana again, spanning decades as well as a few large bodies of water. This perpetually hot, cold, hot, cold love story isn’t very complicated or interesting — it’s pretty much “Boy meets girl, generic complications ensue” — nor is the film’s simple graphics style (reminiscent of 1970s Ralph Bakshi, minus the sleaze) all that arresting, despite the established visual expertise of Fernando Trueba’s two co directors Javier Mariscal and Tono Errando. When a dream sequence briefly pays specific homage to the modernist animation of the ’50s-early ’60s, Chico and Rita delights the eye as it should throughout. Still, it’s pleasant enough to the eye, and considerably more than that to the ear — there’s new music in a retro mode from Bebo Valdes, and plenty of the genuine period article from Monk, Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo and more. If you’ve ever jones’d for a jazzbo’s adult Hanna Barbera feature (complete with full-frontal cartoon nudity — female only, of course), your dream has come true. (1:34) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*The Descendants Like all of Alexander Payne’s films save 1996 debut Citizen Ruth, The Descendants is an adaptation, this time from Kaui Hart Hemmings’ excellent 2007 novel. Matt King (George Clooney) is a Honolulu lawyer burdened by various things, mostly a) being a haole (i.e. white) person nonetheless descended from Hawaiian royalty, rich in real estate most natives figure his kind stole from them; and b) being father to two children by a wife who’s been in a coma since a boating accident three weeks ago. Already having a hard time transitioning from workaholic to hands-on dad, Matt soon finds out this new role is permanent, like it or not — spouse Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie, just briefly seen animate) will not wake up. The Descendants covers the few days in which Matt has to share this news with Elizabeth’s loved ones, mostly notably Shailene Woodley and Amara Miller as disparately rebellious teen and 10-year-old daughters. Plus there’s the unpleasant discovery that the glam, sporty, demanding wife he’d increasingly seemed “not enough” for had indeed been looking elsewhere. When has George Clooney suggested insecurity enough to play a man afraid he’s too small in character for a larger-than-life spouse? But dressed here in oversized shorts and Hawaiian shirts, the usually suave performer looks shrunken and paunchy; his hooded eyes convey the stung joke’s-on-me viewpoint of someone who figures acknowledging depression would be an undeserved indulgence. Payne’s film can’t translate all the book’s rueful hilarity, fit in much marital backstory, or quite get across the evolving weirdness of Miller’s Scottie — though the young actors are all fine — but the film’s reined-in observations of odd yet relatable adult and family lives are all the more satisfying for lack of grandiose ambition. (1:55) (Harvey)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) (Chun)

Hugo Hugo turns on an obviously genius conceit: Martin Scorsese, working with 3D, CGI, and a host of other gimmicky effects, creates a children’s fable that ultimately concerns one of early film’s pioneering special-effects fantasists. That enthusiasm for moviemaking magic, transferred across more than a century of film history, was catching, judging from Scorsese’s fizzy, exhilarating, almost-nauseating vault through an oh-so-faux Parisian train station and his carefully layered vortex of picture planes as Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an intrepid engineering genius of an urchin, scrambles across catwalk above a buzzing station and a hotheaded station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen). Despite the special effects fireworks going off all around him, Hugo has it rough: after the passing of his beloved father (Jude Law), he has been stuck with an nasty drunk of a caretaker uncle (Ray Winstone), who leaves his duties of clock upkeep at a Paris train station to his charge. Hugo must steal croissants to survive and mechanical toy parts to work on the elaborate, enigmatic automaton he was repairing with his father, until he’s caught by the fierce toy seller (Ben Kingsley) with a mysterious lousy mood and a cute, bright ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz). Although the surprisingly dark-ish Hugo gives Scorsese a chance to dabble a new technological toolbox — and the chance to wax pedantically, if passionately, about the importance of film archival studies — the effort never quite despite transcends its self-conscious dazzle, lagging pacing, diffuse narrative, and simplistic screenplay by John Logan, based on Brian Selznick’s book. Even the actorly heavy lifting provided by assets like Kingsley and Moretz and the backloaded love for the fantastic proponents at the dawn of filmmaking fail to help matters. Scorsese attempts to steal a little of the latters’ zeal, but one can only imagine what those wizards would do with motion-capture animation or a blockbuster-sized server farm. (2:07) (Chun)

The Iron Lady Curiously like Clint Eastwood’s 2011 J. Edgar, this biopic from director Phyllida Lloyd and scenarist Abi Morgan takes on a political life of length, breadth and controversy — yet it mostly skims over the politics in favor of a generally admiring take on a famous narrow-minded megalomaniac’s “gumption” as an underdog who drove herself to the top. Looking back on her career from a senile old age spent in the illusory company of dead spouse Denis (Jim Broadbent), Meryl Streep’s ex-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher steamrolls past hurdles of class and gender while ironically re-enforcing the fustiest Tory values. She’s essentially a spluttering Lord in skirts, absolutist in her belief that money and power rule because they ought to, and any protesting rabble don’t represent the “real England.” That’s a mindset that might well have been explored more fruitfully via less flatly literal-minded portraiture, though Lloyd does make a few late, lame efforts at sub-Ken Russell hallucinatory style. Likely to satisfy no one — anywhere on the ideological scale — seriously interested in the motivations and consequences of a major political life, this skin-deep Lady will mostly appeal to those who just want to see another bravura impersonation added to La Streep’s gallery. Yes, it’s a technically impressive performance, but unlikely to be remembered as one of her more depthed ones, let alone among her better vehicles. (1:45) (Harvey)

Margaret Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) is an Upper West Side teen living with her successful actress mother (J. Smith-Cameron, wife to writer-director Kenneth Lonergan) — dad (Lonergan) lives in Santa Monica with his new spouse — and going through normal teenage stuff. Her propensity for drama, however, is kicked into high gear when she witnesses (and inadvertently causes) the traffic death of a stranger. Initially fibbing a bit to protect both herself and the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) involved, she later has second thoughts, increasingly pursuing a path toward “justice” that variably affects others including the dead woman’s friend (Jeannie Berlin), mom’s new suitor (Jean Reno), teachers at Lisa’s private school Matt Damon and Matthew Broderick), etc. Lonergan is a fine playwright and uneven sometime scenarist who made a terrific screen directorial debut with 2000’s You Can Count On Me (which also featured Ruffalo, Broderick and Smith-Cameron). He appears to have intended Margaret as a pulse-taking of privileged Manhattanites’ comingled rage, panic, confusion, and guilt after 9-11. But if that’s the case, then this convoluted story provides a garbled metaphor at best. It might best be taken as a messy, intermittently potent study of how someone might become the kind of person who’ll spend the rest of their lives barging into other people’s affairs, creating a mess, assuming the moral high ground in a stubborn attempt to “fix” it, then making everything worse while denying any personal responsibility. Certainly that’s the person Lisa appears to be turning into, though it’s unclear whether Lonergan intends her to be seen that way. Indeed, despite some sharply written confrontations and good performances, it’s unclear what Lonergan intended here at all — and since he’s been famously fiddling with Margaret‘s (still-problematic) editing since late 2005, one might guess he never really figured that out himself. (2:30) SF Film Society Cinema. (Harvey)

My Week With Marilyn Statuette-clutching odds are high for Michelle Williams, as her impersonation of a famous dead celebrity is “well-rounded” in the sense that we get to see her drunk, disorderly, depressed, and so forth. Her Marilyn Monroe is a conscientious performance. But when the movie isn’t rolling in the expected pathos, it’s having other characters point out how instinctive and “magical” Monroe is onscreen — and Williams doesn’t have that in her. Who could? Williams is remarkable playing figures so ordinary you might look right through them on the street, in Wendy and Lucy (2008), Blue Valentine (2010), etc. But as Monroe, all she can do is play the little-lost girl behind the sizzle. Without the sizzle. Which is, admittedly, exactly what My Week — based on a dubious true story — asks of her. It is true that in 1956 the Hollywood icon traveled to England to co-star with director Sir Laurence Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) in a fluff romance, The Prince and the Showgirl; and that she drove him crazy with her tardiness, mood swings, and crises. It’s debatable whether she really got so chummy with young production gofer Colin Clark, our wistful guide down memory lane. He’s played with simpering wide-eyed adoration by Eddie Redmayne, and his suitably same-aged secondary romantic interest (Emma Watson) is even duller. This conceit could have made for a sly semi-factual comedy of egos, neurosis, and miscommunication. But in a rare big-screen foray, U.K. TV staples director Simon Curtis and scenarist Adrian Hodges play it all with formulaic earnestness — Marilyn is the wounded angel who turns a starstruck boy into a brokenhearted but wiser man as the inevitable atrocious score orders our eyes to mist over. (1:36) (Harvey)

The Vow A rear-ender on a snowy Chicago night tests the nuptial declarations of a recently and blissfully married couple, recording studio owner Leo (Channing Tatum) and accomplished sculptor Paige (Rachel McAdams). When the latter wakes up from a medically induced coma, she has no memory of her husband, their friends, their life together, or anything else from the important developmental stage in which she dropped out of law school, became estranged from her regressively WASP-y family, stopped frosting her hair and wearing sweater sets, and broke off her engagement to preppy power-douchebag Jeremy (Scott Speedman). Watching Paige malign her own wardrobe and “weird” hair and rediscover the healing powers of a high-end shopping spree is disturbing; she reenters her old life nearly seamlessly, and the warm spark of her attraction to Leo, which we witness in a series of gooey flashbacks, feels utterly extinguished. And, despite the slurry monotone of Tatum’s line delivery, one can empathize with a sense of loss that’s not mortal but feels like a kind of death — as when Paige gazes at Leo with an expression blending perplexity, anxiety, irritation, and noninvestment. But The Vow wants to pluck on our heartstrings and inspire a glowing, love-story-for-the-ages sort of mood, and the film struggles to make good on the latter promise. Its vague evocations of romantic destiny mostly spark a sense of inevitability, and Leo’s endeavors to walk his wife through retakes of scenes from their courtship are a little more creepy and a little less Notebook-y than you might imagine. (1:44) (Rapoport)

W.E. Madonna’s first directorial feature, 2008’s Filth and Wisdom, was so atrocious, and the early word on this second effort so vitriolic, that there’s a temptation to give W.E. too much credit simply for not being a disgrace. Co-written by Madge and Alek Keshishian, it’s about two women in gilded cages. One is Wallis Simpson (the impressive Andrea Riseborough), a married American socialite who scandalized the world by divorcing her husband and running about with Edward, Prince of Wales (James D’Arcy), who had to abdicate the English throne in order to marry her in 1936. The other is fictive Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish), a childless Manhattan socialite in the late 1990s who’s neglected by her probably-unfaithful husband (Richard Coyle). Over-eagerly intertwined despite their trite-at-best overlaps (the main one being Wally’s obsession with Wallis), these two strands hold attention for a while. But eventually they grow turgid. We’re presumably meant to be carried away by their True Love, but the film doesn’t succeed in making Wallis and Edward seem more than two petulant, shallow snobs who were fortunate to find each other, but didn’t necessarily make one another better or more interesting people. (It also alternately denies and glosses over the couple’s fascist-friendly politics, which became an embarrassment as England fought Germany in World War II.) Meanwhile, Wally is a mopey blank too easily belittled by her spouse, and too handily rescued by a Prince Charming, or rather “Russian intellectual slumming as a security guard” (Oscar Isaac) working at Sotheby’s during an auction of the late royal couple’s estate. As is so often the case with Madonna, she seems to be saying something here, but precisely what is murky and probably not worth sussing out. Likewise, the attention to showy surface aesthetics — in particular Arianne Phillips’ justifiably Oscar-nominated costumes — is fastidious, revealing, and to an extent satisfying in itself. Somewhat ambitious and in several ways quite well crafted, the handsomely appointed W.E. isn’t bad (surely it wouldn’t have attracted such hostility if directed by anyone else), but the flaws that finally suffocate it reach right down to its conceptual gist. There is, however, one lovely moment toward the end: Riseborough’s Wallis, a well-preserved septuagenarian, dancing an incongruous yet supremely self-assured twist on request for her bedridden husband. (1:59) (Harvey)

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