racism

The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on ‘Black Watch’

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The bagpipe squawks for thee: first thoughts on ‘Black Watch’

If you thought the theatricalized story of a jaunty and imperiled Scottish regiment in Iraq in 2004 would come off as a sort of “Trainspotting meets Black Hawk Down,” you wouldn’t be too far off the mark — in a very positive way. I’ll leave the nuts and bolts reviewing of full-force National Theatre of Scotland via American Conservatory Theater’s spectacular “Black Watch,” (through June 16) presented at the huge Mission Armory, to my colleague Robert Avila in next Wednesday’s Guardian. But my first thoughts upon emerging from Sunday night’s opening performance, after I cleaned the constant stream of expletives from my ears (and a bit of something from my eye) is that yae fookin’ coonts moost sae this pish, i.e. the production and performances are well worth the gasp-inducing $100 ticket price.

As is, I guess, a reminder of the — hey, ongoing! — sorry state of our “misadventures” in that part of the world. Ten years later, we have to drop a Benjamin for a complex, moving, and engrossing take on what just happened, or any take whatsoever, pretty much. That it also includes a lot of nifty multimedia effects (a surprisingly malleable pool table basically co-stars), affecting and thrillingly performed choreography, a bit of fascinating history, and some old Scottish ballads — oh yes, there will be bagpipes — is icing on the erroneous Occupation. 

Less plot-driven than situation-oriented (within the framing device of a “researcher” interviewing former squadron-mates at a pub, the story of the 300-year-old Black Watch Scottish fighting force’s dissolution in Iraq is told through clever reenactments), Gregory Burke’s play, first performed in 2007, keeps its ideological cards tucked slightly up its sleeve. But it pulls no punches when it comes to the hella screwy “facts” on the ground. It also toys with the Mametian trope that language is a real sharp double-edged sword, especially the language of power in crisis, when all the misogyny, homophobia, sexphobia, and racism comes howling through the seams of ballsy mens’ speech. One wondered how the more delicate members of A.C.T.’s regular subscription audience was taking all the “fucks,” “cunts,” and every other realistically used expletive, all fenced in by a true yet penetrable thicket of brogue.

One also wondered how many of them knew they were sitting in a giant BDSM porn studio — a famous fact left out of the program’s introduction to the “Armory Community Center,” a.k.a. Kink.com HQ, the timeline of which conveniently ends in the late 1970s, and has the gall to state that “plans to convert the building into a full-time film studio did not come to fruition.” Ahem. Aaanyways. For those of us in the know, it made the porn jokes a lot more funny.

The location also resonates with military history, of course. It was built in the early 1900s to help quell any union strikes or labor demonstrations downtown  … with hundreds of troops armed to the teeth. The wee irony of a play about an occupation staged here isn’t lost. But the genius of the location comes through in other ways. On first hearing ACT was hosting the play here, I immediately thought it would involve dozens of extras and a full orchestra. The play, however takes place in a modest (if very large compared to other locations) draped off part of the armory, and the often-eerie backing music is recorded. It is up to the cast, numbering a mere 10, to bring a full war and its aftershocks to a life big enough to fill the physical and mental space, which they do with aplomb.

They’re aided by a panoply of well-executed mulitmedia efects, culminating in a series of tragic explosions that ripple outward into the Armory’s enormous space. Those explosions can’t help but remind of the recent Boston marathon explosions, permanently televised into our senses. So much blood, so many severed limbs, the media and government weren’t afraid to show us in that bombing earlier this year. And yet 10 years ago, I remember seeing hardly any blood at all, let alone any troops’ bodies, in the long, long, then too-short coverage of the “Iraq War.” How far we’ve come, and haven’t come at all since then, “Black Watch” reminds us.      

T-Third passengers unhappy about train service disruptions

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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66

Around 20 residents from San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood lined up at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board meeting May 7 to voice complaints that all too often, the T-Third light rail transit vehicles leave passengers stranded on train platforms, taking rail cars out of service before the end of the line and leaving riders to wait for the next arrival.

Organized by People Organized to Win Employment Rights, an organization better known as POWER that has campaigned around Muni issues before, the riders asked the SFMTA board to address the T train turnarounds, and called on the transit agency to run all trains through to the end of the line in the city’s Southeast neighborhoods.

Muni service disruptions along the T-Third occur most frequently at 23rd and Third, Armstrong and Third, and Williams and Third, based on SFMTA data. The passengers expressed frustration that even though the T-Third technically runs all the way to Sunnydale, a Visitation Valley housing complex, it often stops short of the final destination and causes delays on an already lengthy commute. The topic of Muni “switchbacks” picked up momentum earlier this year after District 4 Sup. Katy Tang vowed to take up the issue of train turnarounds, which also impact transit passengers in the Sunset. 

Jackie Wysinger, who walks with a cane and resides at a senior center nearby Armstrong and Third streets, told SFMTA board members that she’s no longer able to drive and depends upon the T train to get around.

“We need better transportation,” Wysinger said. “The T train turns around right there, and they do it regularly,” leaving passengers with no choice but to walk or wait in discomfort. “It’s just bad on the senior citizens.”

Claudia Bustamante, a member of POWER who spoke in Spanish through a translator, related a story of traveling back to the Bayview on the T-third on Monday night. “We were on the T-train and there was a person in a wheelchair, and another woman crying,” she said. “But the driver said, ‘sorry, this is the last stop. Everybody has to get off.’ … They kicked us off. This happens not just to me, but to the members of the African American community in Bayview. And this needs to stop.”

Jim Hill, who told SFMTA board members that he’s lived in the Bayview for 51 years, said he’s experienced train service disruption at 23rd Street on a regular basis. “I don’t understand why a man would turn a train around that’s full of people,” he said. “I have experienced 45 minutes to an hour before another train comes.”

Hill added, “I don’t think a person should have to work all day, and have to stand up from the time they get off work, until they get home.”

Gloria Dean, a Bayview resident who penned an editorial in the San Francisco BayView newspaper in March, characterized the frequent disruptions to service in Bayview Hunters Point as “shameful racism” in her opinion piece. She recounted one evening when her commute from Oakland to Third and LaSalle took from 6:45pm until 9:08pm. Since her husband is battling health problems, “it’s important for me to get home” following her evening classes at Mills College in Oakland, Dean wrote.

Juana Teresa Tello, an organizer with POWER, stressed that while switchbacks are known to occur on other lines, Bayview residents tend to have fewer transportation options. “It’s the highest concentration of people in public housing,” Tello pointed out. “It’s people who need the transit system the most.”

There was no SFMTA agenda item on the topic of turnarounds on the T-Third line, so residents aired their grievances about the issue during public comment. Once they had all finished speaking, SFMTA board chair Tom Nolan indicated that the item should be added to the board meeting agenda “sometime in the near future.”

In response to a query submitted several weeks ago, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose sent the Bay Guardian a detailed response to questions about train turnarounds at the 23rd and Third stop.

“Trains going to 23rd Street on the T-Third are typically going to our maintenance yard located near 25th Street and Illinois at the end of their shift,” Rose explained in an email. “These trains are J, K, L, M, and N trains that travel in service as T-Third trains to the yard and accept passengers all the way to the last stop before the yard – 23rd Street. The alternative is to have the trains travel ‘not in service’ to the yard from the subway and accept no passengers.

“The vehicles returning to the yard and traveling from the subway only to 23rd Street add additional frequency between the subway and 23rd Street but are not scheduled full trips to Sunnydale,” Rose acknowledged.

The 23rd Street stop marks the end of a stretch of recently installed condominium complexes in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, an increasingly popular residential area for Silicon Valley commuters who have easy access to the highway to travel south to tech campuses.

Finally, Rose stressed that “We minimize unscheduled train turnarounds as much as possible … Supervision is also told to only perform these turnarounds when there is another train within five minutes or less,” he added, “to minimize passenger inconvenience.”

The right wing and armed revolution

Zelda Bronstein
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The right wing and armed revolution

Man, I’m getting old. When I was growing up, in the 1960s, and even when I was in college in the 1970s, and when I was first in San Francisco in the early 1980s, the only ones talking about “armed revolution” were the commies. The system was coming down, fast; the Black Panthers marched around with rifles. The RCP and the Weather Underground and a bunch of other offshoots and fringe groups talked about fighting in the streets. Mick Jagger once sang “hey, think the time is right for violent revolution,” tho Mick was living in a posh condo in Manhattan and dating supermodels and building the first band ever to gross a billion dollars in sales.

Now nobody on the left talks about revolution much any more; it’s the folks on the far right — and, alarmingly, nearly half of the Republicans in this country — who say that “armed revolution might be necessary in order to protect our liberties.” The poll is a bit scary — 18 percent of Democrats even agree that it’s going to be time to pull out the assault rifles and have at the Gummint.

I wonder how this breaks down by age, and how much of it is (not-so) subtle racism aimed at the first Black president. Probably most of it comes from the gun nuts who think Obama is going to take away their weapons. But Jeez: “Armed revolution?” That’s so 1968.

 

Class act

Andrew Lam
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Class act

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER The screaming, childish fight that suddenly erupts between married professionals Carol (Michele Leavy) and Michael (Lawrence Radecker) comes on with such excess it’s like the release of a geyser. A moment later it just as quickly submerges, disappearing under a layer of domestic bliss, or anyway routine, as adjunct prof Michael and attorney Carol share some cocaine and a glass of hard liquor to celebrate her legal firm’s recent victory in court. They then go on to calmly discuss Carol’s suspicion that their teenage son, Teddy (Josh Schell), is masturbating at school — a theory based on laundry-room evidence pointing to yet another surplus of nervous tension.

Carol and Michael’s comical burst of hysteria is our first hint of the quicksand underneath the floorboards of this seemingly solid family home. Then again, maybe it’s the casual drug use; or the immodest concern with their son’s sex life; or those loose bricks stashed pell-mell beneath the foundation in scenic designer Maya Linke’s set, otherwise subdivided with Ikea-showroom purity into sleek, discrete living compartments.

Either way, it doesn’t take long before a full-blown crisis emerges: Carol finds herself in critical condition after emergency bypass surgery, and the family finds itself without life insurance in the face of the main breadwinner’s demise. It’s Carol who proposes a solution from her hospital bed: Michael will marry Carol’s best friend, Katy (Denmo Ibrahim), to maintain the household financially and emotionally. “This is totally fucked up,” balks Michael. “It is totally fucked up,” agrees Carol, “but that’s reality.”

You could say the same for the comedy at the core of Thomas Bradshaw’s The Bereaved, now enjoying a slick Bay Area premiere courtesy of Crowded Fire and artistic director Marissa Wolf. Even with all its excess, it boils down to a portrait of middle-class sobriety: just a family doing the best it can under the circumstances — it’s the circumstances, in other words, that are key to Bradshaw’s gleefully outrageous send-up of American mores.

In the heroic attempt to maintain its debt-fueled lifestyle, the revamped nuclear family soon launches its own illicit business enterprise — in which 15-years-olds Teddy and pregnant girlfriend Melissa (Olivia Rosaldo) both participate, with the help of their Harlem drug dealer, Jamal (Reggie D. White). Throughout, moral confusion is inextricably and messily bound up with economic disorder — and the specific calamity attending the protagonists with a more general crisis that runs deep and wide. If the play presents in the most casual terms a lightly shocking catalog of sexism, racism, and drug use — all of it played with deadpan precision by an enjoyable cast — it’s ultimately because the play is not about sex or drugs or racism per se, but rather about power and status in a world where the middle-class is being destroyed by forces larger than itself, even as its own moral and material contradictions work to destroy it from within. Moreover, The Bereaved suggests the disintegration of that middle-class may be a necessary extinction — and what a relief it is.

Crowded Fire’s production embraces the material with a ready energy and focus that was contagious with opening night’s packed house, though the comic tone struck here can sometimes overwhelm the play’s quieter, grittier, intentionally realistic dimensions. But this is hardly a reason to avoid seeing the production, especially since The Bereaved is the first of Bradshaw’s dozen or so plays to be produced in the Bay Area. Plainly staging hypocrisy, violence, and the flouted taboo in plays such as Dawn, Strom Thurman Is Not a Racist, or The Bereaved is central to Bradshaw’s satire, a bluntness that suspends moral judgment to look squarely at underlying complexities. Along the way, he’s been honing a distinct theatrical voice that has been widely enjoyed (or not) for years. Crowded Fire’s production is a welcome and long overdue arrival.

THE BEREAVED

Through April 27

Wed-Sat, 8pm, $10-$35

Thick House

1695 18th St, SF

www.crowdedfire.org

 

Good grief

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Good grief

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER “Oh, this stupid war. I don’t know who to blame anymore, do you?”

So asks aging American divorcée Mary-Ellen (Marcia Pizzo), in 1975 Southern California, of Vietnamese war refugee Bao (Jomar Tagatac), who has lost his entire family back home. It’s a fraught question that, maybe fittingly, receives no answer. But it’s made all the more complicated and troubling in the Magic Theatre production of Julie Marie Myatt’s 2009 comedy-drama, The Happy Ones.

That’s because Bao and Mary-Ellen’s precarious perches, at the edges of the so-called American Dream, do not get pride of place. The narrative center goes to Walter Wells (a sure Liam Craig), cheerful business owner and middle-class patriarch who suffers an irreparable loss after his adored wife and two children die in a head-on collision with a car — driven by Bao.

Of course, the causes of suffering, and the consequences of violence, are very different when comparing a road accident with a war of genocidal proportions. But in The Happy Ones the emphasis on grief as universal, the overweening urge to see everybody just get along, obscures reality, substituting easy humor and sentimentality for a serious look at either systemic violence or, for that matter, the nature of happiness. No wonder Mary-Ellen doesn’t know who to blame.

Helmed by California Shakespeare Theater’s Jonathan Moscone, the production stresses the play’s emotional comedy about sorrow, forgiveness, shared pain, and the power of friendship, offering able performances and well-shaped scenes that smoothly unfold a palatable nostalgia trip whose sentiments are rooted in a claim to a certain class-based suburban memory.

Erik Flatmo’s set is a shabby period living room in a white Orange County suburb, complete with a blown-up studio portrait-photo of the happy family hanging over the fireplace with its untouched Duraflame logs. Martinis, audible splashing from a backyard pool, Sundays at the Unitarian Church, hickeys, tuna casseroles with crumpled potato chips on top — it’s the Kodachrome image of the American 1970s as advertising agencies would have us remember it.

Myatt has worked the terrain of war, home front trauma, uneasy solidarity, and vague spiritualism before to more profound effect. Her earlier play, Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter (produced locally by TheatreFIRST in 2011) dealt head-on with the Iraq War and the plight of its American veterans with its titular character, a black female soldier deeply traumatized by her experience on the front lines who finds some respite among a community of misfits on the desert-edge outside Los Angeles. It’s a perhaps looser but also more acute investigation that wrestles with class, gender, and race in a more vigorous way. The distance offered by the nostalgic period setting in The Happy Ones, by contrast, seems to have made it too easy to hold all of that at arm’s length.

“Things change,” the grief-stricken Walter propounds to his concerned friend Gary (Gabriel Marin), a hapless and commitment-phobic Unitarian minister now dating Mary-Ellen who seems to have been in love with pal Walter’s wife and life. Yes and no, the play suggests — somewhat unwittingly — as we’re left at the launch of a buddy movie instead of on the brink of the world we’ve in fact inherited.

Bao turns out to be the only one who can help Walter navigate his grief. As Gary and Mary-Ellen make awkward attempts to cheer up their friend, it’s Bao who actually helps — taking the place of Walter’s late wife as the person who cleans, cooks, buys groceries, keeps house. Having tried to kill himself just after the accident, Bao now literally begs to serve Walter, in terms that imply a kind of living erasure that has a very gendered dimension to it in the patriarchal culture of the ’70s.

“I’m invisible! I promise!” shouts Bao. “Please! I have to help you.”

“You can’t repay me for killing my family,” objects Walter. “It doesn’t work like that.” Reparations, of whatever kind, seem to be running in the wrong direction here. Would this relationship remain as conceivable as it supposedly is here if Bao were an Iraqi refugee in 2013? If the playwright means for the lines to appall us, as they should, the production seems indifferent to this subtext.

So Mary-Ellen’s rhetorical question about the responsibility for the war lingers between two relative outsiders who, with a combination of pity and desire, orbit around a central character whose social position is the normative one — with real-world power and privilege that neither Bao nor Mary-Ellen can match, and the one most directly associated by reason of class, gender, and race with the interests promulgating war abroad.

This should be the basis of a painful awakening in the audience, a scathing critique of the solipsism of power. But it ends up seeming more like the re-inscribing of the same order. The racism, imperialism, and sexism shaping the lives of Bao and Mary-Ellen are gently broached at best, trivialized at worst. Walter’s grief and personal transformation remain paramount. And if Bao and Mary-Ellen seem to have gained some hopeful ground by the end too, it is only because each has, desperately but also willingly, hitched his or her future to a white man. *

THE HAPPY ONES

Through April 21, $22-$62

Magic Theatre

Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D, Third Flr., SF

www.magictheatre.org

 

Live at the Rrazz is closing for good

Tony Robles
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Sadly, another music institution in the city is shuttering. Live at the Rrazz (otherwise known as the Rrazz Room), which went through a series of difficulties and legal issues this past year, including an ill-fated venue change, has announced it will be closing for good.

In an email to its patrons last week (including the Bay Area Reporter’s BARtab, which tipped us off) and now on the front page of its website, Rrazz said, “As many of you know. the last several months have been monumentally challenging for us. It seems like all the forces in the universe have been working against us.”

In any situation, it’s a sad day when a nightclub turns off the lights. Under slightly different monikers and variations, Live at the Rrazz has been presenting shows in San Francisco for 12 years, often focusing on souful crooners, R&B, jazz, funk, and doo-wop acts in performance slots. Performers as diverse as Lil Kim, Pete Escovedo, Paula West, Shirley Jones, Rita Moreno, and Jefferson Starship have all stopped by the Rrazz over the years.

The Rrazz Room was first housed in the Plush Room at the then-York Hotel and moved to the Hotel Nikko from 2007 through the end of ’12. Yet after a dispute with the Hotel Nikko (with Rrazz owners Robert Kotonly and Rory Paull alleging racism by the hotel’s management), it moved to the mezzanine level at 1000 Van Ness. That was open only sporadically, with the Rrazz later posting on its site about permit and noise issues, and canceling performances.

It was supposed to be resolved by April 30 (at the earliest) but now it appears the Rrazz has pulled back, effectively ending operations.

Here’s more from that Rrazz letter: 

“We will miss the loyal audiences (many of which would report back to us on their particular likes and dislikes), dedicated work force (servers, bartenders, tech), super talented musicians, consistent press supporters, and many absolutely phenomenal performers who have been on this journey with us. Without all of you, we would not have been able to realize this dream.

At the end of the day, we are so very proud to have been able to accomplish so much in a relatively short amount of time. We are very humbled and appreciative to the San Francisco Bay Area for its willingness to let us realize our full potential. The experiences and relationships we will walk away with are priceless. “

Our Weekly Picks: March 20-26, 2013

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 20

Mr. Marina Competition

Why would you pay $50 for an hour of hosted Skyy vodka and Peronis? Why, when it’s preceding what may well be the most self-aware (we hope) SF bro moment of the year: the two-year-old Mr. Marina competition. The winner among 10 brah-ly contestants will become VIP at various Marina businesses for 2013 and will be proud that he slapped cancer, as goes the moniker for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society booster club through which this event’s proceeds are donated to fighting disease. Swimwear competition, talent portion, and impromptu question fielded in stereotypically “Marina” outfits will help judges pick a dude-gem. (Caitlin Donohue)

7pm-11pm, $50

Ruby Skye

420 Mason, SF

mrmarina-fb.eventbrite.com

www.slapcancer.org

 

Chelsea Light Moving

Kim Gordon’s new band, Body/Head, was just here for a Noise pop show, so….let’s just get this out of the way: yes, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore is the guitarist-vocalist-songwriter behind Chelsea Light Moving. And no, Sonic Youth does not have plans to reunite. Chelsea Light Moving is now on its first official tour, in support of its self-titled debut album, which came out March 5 on Matador Records, and has the bloggers buzzing. The post-rock foursome, named for an actual moving company run by Philip Glass and Steve Reich, maintains Moore’s jagged guitar work and tendency towards the fuzz, but some tracks hold a quieter calm, and lean more toward pop than Sonic Youth ever did, which is an interesting departure. San Francisco’s harmonious post-punk trio Grass Widow opens. (Emily Savage)

With Grass Widow

8pm, $21

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

www.slimspresents.com


THURSDAY 21

“Growing Pains: Business of Cannabis”

Where have the federal intervention of past years and the more recent steps forward in legalizing marijuana across the country left us in the fair city of San Francisco? At this talk, hear thoughts from long-haired news contributor to fellow SF Newspaper Company-owned publication SF Examiner, Chris Roberts, and ex-marijuana grower Heather Donahue who yes, also starred in the swervy shots of 1999’s Blair Witch Project. More relevant for the purpose of this blurb, Donahue wrote a book about her experience in small town NorCal weed country, and coupled with Roberts’ knowledge of Bay Area weed businesses, their thoughts should make interesting discussion. If you’ve already got a burning question for the duo, send it in advance of the event to growingpains@sfappeal.com. (Donohue)

6:30-7:30pm, free

RSVP recommended at info@ybcd.org

San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR)

645 Mission, SF

www.visityerbabuena.org

 

Shen Wei Dance Arts: “Undivided Divided”

The Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics presented stunning artistic spectacles (minus that whole unfortunate thing with the lip-syncing scandal), and Shen Wei, their choreographer, played a large role. The Ceremonies offers a good example of the artist’s work, which is known for its bridging of cultures and melding of the traditions of dance with innovative contemporary techniques. Shen Wei comes to YBCA with a long list of credentials — including a MacArthur Award and Guggenheim Fellowship — and a spectacular performance, “Undivided Divided,” that involves dancers moving in grids of different mediums such as sculpture and paint. (Laura Kerry)

Through March 24

8pm, $25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2700

www.ybca.org

 

Mohani

“Chillwave” or “chill-vibe” music. Are those terms en vogue or just plain nauseating? Whatever your opinion, there’s no escaping the fact that this Mashi Mashi Presents show will be an evening of electronic, dream-pop, and synth. When Mohani (Oakland’s own Donghoon Han) unleashes his own brand of K-Pop meets Joe Meek’s version of outer space, the soundscape will in fact leave you mellowed out. (This is his album release show.) Deliciously, atmospheric synth blips will rule this night featuring some truly emerging artists, while a good hook for the sake of song structure will not be forgotten. Keep your ears tuned in between acts as the DJ interweaves some carefully selected tracks to keep things moody. (Andre Torrez)

With Li Xi, THEMAYS, DJ Mashi Mashi

9pm, $7 Knockout

3223 Mission, SF

(415) 550-6994

www.theknockoutsf.com


FRIDAY 22

Murs

This ubiquitous LA-based rapper has eight solo albums out, one in the mix, and a hand in half a dozen side projects and collectives, often featuring in three or four different albums per year. Whether he’s going solo, rapping with Atmosphere’s Slug in their duo Felt, or getting indie-licious with Living Legends, Murs’ smart and surefooted rhymes stand out. He recently stirred up some controversy in the hip-hop community for featuring a gay kiss in one of his videos to highlight his support of marriage equality, a bold move both atypical of rappers and extremely fitting of Murs. He seems to have taken his own advice to heart when he raps on “Everything”, “Be original/Be different/Be the one to stand up and shock this system.” (Haley Zaremba)

With Prof, Fashawn, Black Cloud

9pm, $21

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

Ducktails

Ducktails produces summery rock. The band’s third album, The Flower Lane, released this past January, could span a lazy day at the beach; the low-key but bright album opener, “Ivy Covered House,” provides the soundtrack to a short drive with windows down, while the breezy love song, “Letter of Intent,” underscores the last embers of nighttime bonfire. The side project of Real Estate’s Matt Mondanile, what started as a solo act has developed into a tight band that performs upbeat pop songs to full audiences. Ducktails brings to these, along with a bit of premature summer, to the Chapel tonight. (Kerry)

With Mark McGuire

9pm, $15

Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com


SATURDAY 23

The Specials

Let’s begin with pick-it-up, pick-it-up songs “A Message to You, Rudy,” and “Nite Klub,” and upbeat haunter “Ghost Town” — British two-tone legends the Specials released now-classic ska gems early in their career, beginning in ’79 with their self-titled debut. The band inched up through the early ’80s with followup, More Specials and more danceable two-tone tracks like anti-work anthem “Rat Race” and foggy “Stereotype/Stereotypes, Pt. 2.” Over the decades the band has broken up, gotten back together, gained and lost members, experience shiny revival popularity, and remained that of checkerboard legend. See the Specials live now, while you still have the joint strength to skank in the pit. (Savage)

With Little Hurricane, DJ Harry Duncan

Warfield

928 Market, SF

(415) 345-0900

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com

 

Christopher Owens

For most singer-songwriters who break big, life becomes a wild ride. For Christopher Owens, the critical and commercial success of his band Girls was just another event in a lifetime of crazy trips. He’s been, among other things, a cult member, a drug addict, a knife salesman, and a punk rocker. With such experiences, he has enough material for a lifetime of therapeutic songwriting. But Owens only seems to be able to write about one thing — love. While Girls tried their hardest to perfect the indie love song, Owens’ new solo album Lysandre tries harder. The record itself is one huge love story about a girl he met while on tour with Girls in France, and the duo’s subsequent rise and fall. The music and the lyrics are earnest, simple, and heart-achingly relatable. While the loss of Girls is a blow to the San Francisco music scene, one listen to Lysandre certainly eases the pain. (Zaremba)

8pm, $25

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

(415) 567-6642

www.apeconcerts.com


MONDAY 25

Half the Sky

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s best-selling book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide inspired many of its readers to become activists. Its message has been further shared thanks to a four-hour PBS documentary highlighting international women’s rights issues, with a little celebrity help from Diane Lane, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union, and others. In honor of Women’s History Month, the Guardian’s own Caitlin Donohue hosts an abridged screening of this important film, followed by what’s sure to be a lively discussion about San Francisco’s role in advancing women’s rights worldwide. (Cheryl Eddy)

7pm, free

Artists’ Television Access

992 Valencia, SF

www.atasite.org

 

Iceage

This band of young ruffians out of Copenhagen has had a whirlwind adolescence. After two albums and international acclaim, the gents in Iceage are still teenagers at 19-years-old. 2011’s New Brigade and this year’s You’re Nothing add up to one searing hour of punk rock fueled by the sort of unbridled, unfiltered fury that only coming of age can produce. Their particular sound mashes in elements of post-punk, hardcore, and industrial to create a delicious sonic mess. The group recently came under fire after a blogger posted a conspiracy theory-esque article about Iceage’s “chic racism.” Though the claims were unfounded and the research woefully incomplete, the allegations just won’t disappear. But hey, the rage and confusion stemming from this sort of injustice and abuse of modern forms of communication seems like a recipe for a great follow-up album. (Zaremba)

With Merchandise, Wet Hair, DJ Omar

8pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


TUESDAY 26

Caveman

It’s not just that Caveman’s music is dreamy, but it also shares qualities with dreams. The band’s first album, CoCo Beware (2011) simultaneously sounds close and ambiently distant. Caveman’s self-titled second album, released April 2, will build on these effects, which have produced compelling performances and earned the band impressive recognition in the past couple of years. With beautifully pure vocals and beats that are funkier than expected, the band plays folk-pop with a vividness of a daydream or the last images before waking. Get swept up in the momentum of Caveman’s reverie at the Independent. (Kerry)

With Pure Bathing Culture

8pm, $15

Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

(617) 771-1421

www.theindependentsf.com


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Whereabouts of W. Kamau Bell: a Q&A

Sue Vaughan
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Whereabouts of W. Kamau Bell: a Q&A

Q Hey, whatever happened to W. Kamau Bell?
 
A Pretty sure the politically astute Bay Area comedian, writer, and director went on to fame in TV land as host of FX’s Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.*
 
*True, but he’s back this weekend for two late-night sets at Stage Werx.

The shows are benefit performances for the scrappy venue that served as an early home for many a Bell project, including The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour. By request of the performer, most tickets are just $15. But all proceeds from the shows go to Stage Werx, so no one will be turned away for excess of funds.

Sat/23, 10pm; Sun/24, 9:30pm, $15-$25
Stage Werx Theatre
446 Valencia, SF
www.kamau.eventbrite.com

SEIU 1021 employees authorize strike as its clash with the city goes to arbitration

Sasha Cuttler
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SEIU 1021 employees authorize strike as its clash with the city goes to arbitration

[UPDATE: The two sides reportedly reached a tenative agreement over the weekend]. Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents most city employees in San Francisco, continues to fight both internal and external challenges, with its own staff employees overwhelmingly authorizing a strike just as the union battles the city over pay equity issues.

As we reported last month, SEIU Local 1021 organizers, researchers, negotiators, and other professional staff, represented by Communication Workers of America Local 9404, have been without a contract since last fall and they’re resisting concessions to their pensions and health care benefits that President Roxanne Sanchez and her leadership team are seeking.

After several cancelled negotiating sessions between the two sides (which haven’t met since our story was published), CWA last week called for a strike authorization vote that was approved by 94 percent of voting members. CWA Area Director Libby Sayre and Nick Peraino, a CWA shop steward at Local 1021, say the vote repudiates Sanchez’s characterization that it is a small but vocal group that is unhappy with management.

“We’re very much united in our position and our willingness to do what it takes to get a decent contract,” Peraino told us. Sayre told the Guardian, “There is widespread sentiment they’re being low-balled by management.”

The two sides are scheduled to meet tomorrow (Fri/15), and Sayre told us the likelihood of a strike “depends on what management’s attitude is tomorrow.”

Sanchez and her core leadership team, including Vice President of Politics Alysabeth Alexander (both she and Sanchez are on leave from their jobs at Tenderloin Housing Clinic) and Larry Bradshaw, the vice president for the San Francisco region, last week won decisive re-election victories, indicating they have strong support from members.

Sanchez didn’t return a phone call seeking comment, but Local 1021 Political Director Chris Daly told us that he expects the dispute with employees to be resolved without a strike. “We have reason to believe it’s a tactic before they come to settle,” he said. He also questioned how many people voted in the election, and Sayre hasn’t returned our call with that follow-up question.

Meanwhile, Sup. John Avalos last week held a hearing before the Land Use and Economic Development Committee on Local 1021’s dispute with the city over a proposal by the Department of Human Resources to unilaterally lower the salaries on new hires in 43 job categories. Such changes were allowed in hard-won contract that the union negotiated with the city last year.

City officials say the salaries are too high based on a survey of similar positions in other Bay Area cities and counties, but the union has cast it as a pay equity issue, noting that the jobs are disproportionally held by women and minorities and they were deliberately increased in the ’80s and ’90s to offset historical institutional sexism and racism.

But pay equity provisions were removed from the City Charter during its 1997 revision, and Avalos has indicated he may sponsor legislation to address the issue. But in the meantime, Daly said appeals to Mayor Ed Lee to weigh in have been ignored and DHR officially submitted its pay reduction proposal to the arbitrator in the dispute on Monday.

So stay tuned, folks, San Francisco’s biggest labor union has a lot of the table right now and we’ll let you know how it turns out.

Angels in Budapest

Andrew Lam
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Angels in Budapest

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER On two old VHS tapes in the collection of San Francisco’s Museum of Performance and Design you can watch the Eureka Theater’s 1991 world premiere of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, a response to the AIDS epidemic and the reactionary politics of the Reagan era. It’s a low-fi document, with poor sound quality, but it’s completely riveting. Something more than the play’s words and images, as striking as they are, cling to that worn magnetic tape: there’s the electric excitement of a work of art cracking open its historical moment.

A similar frisson passed through the main auditorium of the National Theatre of Budapest last week, where I joined a group of international guests and a local audience for Romanian-born American director Andrei Serban’s production of Angels in America, starring as Prior Walter the National’s celebrated yet politically embattled artistic director, Robert Alföldi, an award-winning international director in his own right and one of the country’s most famous actors.

The production was the capstone of an impressive weeklong festival featuring some of the best work in contemporary Hungarian independent and state-sponsored repertory theater. Presented by the Hungarian Critics Association, in international partnership with Philip Arnoult’s Center for International Theatre Development and the Trust for Mutual Understanding, the Hungarian Showcase (March 2–9) encompassed a revelatory range of styles and talents. It also highlighted a theater actively responding to a rising tide of reactionary politics — reminiscent (especially in its overt anti-Semitism, homophobia, and anti-Roma racism) of the ultra-nationalism of the 1930s — even as the arts in general and theater in particular reel under the economic strain of the conservative government’s neoliberal agenda and attempted curbs on free expression.

The National’s production of Angels is just one instance of theater’s critical role in public dialogue in Hungary today, but in many ways it was the most poignant instance encountered. That’s in large part owed to Alföldi’s powerhouse performance in the lead — a muscular, charismatic performance, extremely witty and wrenching by turns — and simultaneously to his history as artistic director over the last five years. Since Alföldi’s government appointment in 2008, something extraordinary has been underway at the country’s premier stage. Previously, Budapest’s National Theatre had been better known for its kitschy postmodern edifice (opened in 2002 and made to resemble a rather gaudy ship aimed vaguely at the nearby Danube) than for the unexceptional productions on display inside. Under Alföldi’s brilliant and maverick leadership, the theater has come to be widely regarded as one of the best — if not the best — in the country, and attendance has grown dramatically, including among younger audiences.

Alföldi’s attempts to make the theater a place of inclusion and dialogue, meanwhile, as well as his lively and provocative interpretations of classic Hungarian nationalist texts like The Tragedy of Man and John the Valliant, have earned the disfavor of rightwing politicians — including members of the ultra nationalist Jobbik party, who were not above demonstrating noisily outside the theater to demand his ouster, and slandering Alföldi on the floor of the Parliament. Alföldi, popular and unprecedentedly successful in the post, has managed to stay on for his five-year term, but the government denied his application for a second term in favor of a well-known director with conservative political opinions.

In Serban’s considerably pared down version, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika together come in at just under four hours, separated by a short intermission. There are naturally some sacrifices entailed. The subplot involving Roy Cohn (played by the National’s brilliant János Kulka), for example, takes a big hit in terms of stage time. But whatever the faults of the production, the exuberant, ironical tone feels aptly knowing, as does the rotating stage set up like a cross between a dance floor and a merry-go-round.

In just one example of the production’s winking conversation with the audience, an announcement over the PA system at the outset of Part II reminds patrons in this former Soviet bloc country that the play is set in a far off land bearing little resemblance to anything close by — only to be followed by the familiar twang of an electric guitar as the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” creates a musical bridge to a speech by the Oldest Living Bolshevik. Like Prior’s heavenly counselors, the Bolshevik urges a halt to history. The significance of the theme is unlikely to be lost on an audience facing the atavistic return to authoritarian models of the past.

While this isn’t the first time a Hungarian theater has essayed Kushner’s play, enough has changed politically in Hungary in the last few years to make this production, in which Alföldi assumes the role of the play’s cross-dressing openly gay hero, an act of brazen defiance as well as solidarity with all “outsiders” in the right wing’s narrow compass of nationhood.

“The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come,” says Alföldi as Prior. “The great work begins.” In its own call for “more life,” the National’s production captures something of the original life of the play all over again — defining the nation and its theater as a place of empathy and inclusion, of harmony in difference.

Meanwhile, tickets for Angels in America, widely seen as Alföldi’s farewell bow, are completely sold out.

 

Norman Solomon: Dear progressives

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A Letter I Wish Progressive Groups Would Send to Their Members

By Norman Solomon

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He co-chairs the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign organized by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column. b3

Dear Progressives,

With President Obama’s second term underway and huge decisions looming on Capitol Hill, consider this statement from Howard Zinn: “When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.”

With so much at stake, we can’t afford to forget our role. For starters, it must include public clarity.

Let’s face it: despite often nice-sounding rhetoric from the president, this administration has continued with a wide range of policies antithetical to progressive values.

Corporate power, climate change and perpetual war are running amok while civil liberties and economic fairness take a beating. President Obama has even put Social Security and Medicare on the table for cuts.

Last fall, the vast majority of progressives voted for Obama to prevent the presidency from going to a Republican Party replete with racism, misogyny, anti-gay bigotry and xenophobia. Defeating the right wing was cause for celebration. And now is the time to fight for genuine progressive policies.

But let’s be real about our current situation. Obama has led the Democratic Party — including, at the end of the legislative day, almost every Democrat on Capitol Hill — deeper into an abyss of corporate-driven austerity, huge military outlays, normalization of civil-liberties abuses and absence of significant action on climate change. Leverage from the Oval Office is acting as a brake on many — in Congress and in progressive constituency groups — who would prefer to be moving legislation in a progressive direction.

Hopefully we’ve learned by now that progressive oratory is no substitute for progressive policies. The soaring rhetoric in Obama’s inaugural address this week offered inspiring words about a compassionate society where everyone is respected and we look out for each other. Unfortunately and routinely, the president’s lofty words have allowed him to slide by many progressives despite policies that often amount to a modern version of “social liberalism, fiscal conservatism.”

The New York Times headline over its front-page coverage, “Obama Offers a Liberal Vision in Inaugural Address,” served up the current presidential recipe: a spoonful of rhetorical sugar to help the worsening austerity go down. But no amount of verbal sweetness can make up for assorted policies aligned with Wall Street and the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

“At their inaugurals,” independent journalist I.F. Stone noted long ago, our presidents “make us the dupes of our hopes.”

Unlike four years ago, Obama has a presidential record — and its contrasts with Monday’s oratorical performance are stark. A president seeking minimally fair economic policies, for instance, would not compound the disaster of four years of Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury by replacing him with Jack Lew — arguably even more of a corporate flack.

On foreign policy, it was notably disingenuous for Obama to proclaim in his second inaugural speech that “enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war” — minutes after completing a first term when his administration launched more than 20,000 air strikes, sharply escalated the use of weaponized drones and did so much else to make war perpetual.

Meanwhile, the media hype on the inaugural speech’s passage about climate change has lacked any indication that the White House is ready to push for steps commensurate with the magnitude of the real climate crisis.

The founder of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, Daphne Wysham, points out that the inaugural words “will be meaningless unless a) the Obama administration rejects the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline; b) Obama selects a new EPA administrator who is willing to take action under the Clean Air Act to rein in CO2 emissions from all sources; c) he stops pushing for dangerous energy development deep offshore in the Gulf, in the Arctic and via continued fracking for oil and gas; d) he pursues a renewable energy standard for the entire country; and e) he directs our publicly financed development banks and export credit agencies to get out of fossil fuels entirely.”

The leadership we need is certainly not coming from the White House or Congress. “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus,” Martin Luther King Jr. observed. The leadership we need has to come, first and foremost, from us.

Some members of Congress — maybe dozens — have shown commitment to a progressive agenda, and a larger number claim a progressive mantle. In any event, their role is not our role. They adhere to dotted lines that we should cross. They engage in Hill-speak euphemisms that we should bypass. Routinely, they decline to directly confront wrong-headed Obama administration policies. And we must confront those policies.

If certain members of Congress resent being pushed by progressives to challenge the White House, they lack an appreciation for the crucial potential of grassroots social movements. On the other hand, those in Congress who “get” progressive social change will appreciate our efforts to push them and their colleagues to stand progressive ground.

When we’re mere supplicants to members of Congress, the doors that open on Capitol Hill won’t lead very much of anywhere. Superficial “access” has scant impact. The kind of empowered access we need will come from mobilizing grassroots power.

We need to show that we’ll back up members of Congress who are intrepid for our values — and we can defeat others, including self-described “progressives,” who aren’t. Building electoral muscle should be part of building a progressive movement.

We’re in this for the long haul, but we’re not willing to mimic the verbiage or echo the silences from members of Congress who fail to challenge egregious realities of this administration’s policies. As Howard Zinn said, our role is to challenge, not fall in line.

Norman Solomon is co-founder of RootsAction.org and founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.  He co-chairs the Healthcare Not Warfare campaign organized by Progressive Democrats of America. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” He writes the Political Culture 2013 column. b3

 

  

   

 

 
 

  

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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W. Kamau Bell plays the Fillmore, but doesn’t hold back for the home crowd

Andrew Lam
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A word of advice to the person who shouted, “who’s your favorite clothing designer?,” at W. Kamau Bell during his December 9th show at the Fillmore: a guy who wears a “Legalize Arizona” t-shirt during a night he considers one of the biggest moments of his career probably doesn’t give a shit about fashion. (Initially befuddled by the question, Bell eventually responded “Dickies.”) In addition, to the person who asked Bell whether or not he thought was a whore for being on TV, if he is a one … well you paid for your ticket to the show, right?

Glad we could get that out of the way first.

Bell’s Fillmore gig in the city where he resided for 15 years was one of seven on his Kamau Mau Uprising tour – the name an obvious nod to his radical political leanings. But perhaps none of the other venues held as much significance for him as this one. As he told me in our recent Guardian interview, “in some sense that’s bigger than getting a TV show, when they said that I was going to play the Fillmore.”

The comic’s giddiness in reuniting with the people of his adopted homeland (he grew up in Chicago) was evident as his 6’4” frame came lumbering onto the stage, just moments after opener Dave Thomason’s set. Thomason supposedly was going to go off stage and then come back on to introduce Bell, but Bell apparently didn’t get the memo and strolled right into the spotlight sans introduction from Thomason.

You don’t have to be Nate Silver (a.k.a., White Jesus, according to Bell) to predict how a show like this was going to begin. When a local comedian leaves town to get his own TV show in New York – Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell was recently renewed for a second season – it’s pretty much de rigueur that he opens by regaling the crowd with an anecdotal New York show biz story followed by some softball home crowd-pleasers.

And that’s how it happened. Bell told a story about the time he appeared on The View with Taylor Swift and his towncar was swarmed by six or seven deranged teenyboppers. As for the home crowd pleaser, Bell teased the East Bay denizens about their reluctance to cross the bridge for pretty much any reason. Low hanging fruit? Sure. Could he have easily flipped which side of the Bay he was joshing? Sure. Was it necessary? Absolutely! Broad home crowd pleasers are hypeman-stand-ins in the world of live comedy.

Once we got past the “homecoming” novelty (it never fully went away) Bell hit full stride, thwacking the audience with his favorite subject: race! A palpable liberal queasiness was rife in the historic theater when Bell struck his harshest notes, especially those recounting his own experiences with racism — he once got called the n-word twice in one night in the Mission.

And then as kicker, he chucked sexuality in the mix:

“Hey I’ve lived in San Francisco for 15 years, I never had any beef with gay people, I had way more beef with Chinese people than gay people. Way more, not even close and that’s why I don’t think we should let Chinese people get married. If there’s one point I’m making tonight it’s that Chinese people should not be allowed to get married…That’s the funny thing about San Francisco, it has this reputation of being gay but it’s way more Asian than gay and on some level, gay trumps Asian.”

For the record W. Kamau Bell isn’t actually against Chinese marriage.

Bell’s best quality is his ability to derive humor from seemingly humorless racial topics, distributing laughter equally among the crowd. At no point during the show did it seem like a certain joke got more laughs from people of a certain race. No one else can make the Fillmore ignite in uproarious laughter with a joke skewering the supposed notion that black people were responsible for Prop. 8 passing.

Bell’s “I’m glad to be back!” moment played out exactly like it was scripted. It took place in the perfect setting. Nostalgia and a familiar audience drove Bell’s success at the Fillmore. His biggest challenge, of course, lies ahead: replicating those fuzzy feelings in TV land. 

 

Film Listings

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

OPENING

Any Day Now In 1970s West Hollywood, flamboyant drag queen Rudy (Alan Cumming) and closeted, newly divorced lawyer Paul (Garret Dillahunt) meet and become an unlikely but loving couple. Their opposites-attract bond strengthens when they become de facto parents to Marco (Isaac Leyva), a teen with Down syndrome left adrift when his party-girl mother (Jamie Anne Allman) is arrested. Domestic bliss — school for Marco with a caring special-education teacher (Kelli Williams); a fledgling singing career for Rudy (so: lots of crooning, for Cumming superfans) — is threatened by rampant homophobia, so Rudy and Paul must conceal their true relationship from Paul’s overbearing boss and the other parents at Marco’s school. When the secret gets out, the fact that Marco is being well cared-for matters not to the law; he’s immediately shunted into a foster home while Paul and Rudy battle the court for custody. Actor-turned-director and co-writer Travis Fine (2010’s The Space Between) guides a veteran cast through this based-on-true-events tale, with sensitive performances and realistic characterizations balancing out the story’s broader strokes. (1:43) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

The Central Park Five See "The Awful Truth." (1:59) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Peter Jackson returns to Tolkien with the first of three movies about the epic adventures of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman). (2:50) California, Cerrito, Marina, Presidio..

Hyde Park on Hudson See "The Awful Truth." (1:35) Clay, Embarcadero.

The Matchmaker In 2006, amid ongoing conflict with Lebanon, an Israeli novelist learns he’s received an unexpected inheritance from a man he knew in 1968, the summer before he turned 16. Most of Avi Nesher’s The Matchmaker takes place during those golden months in Haifa, when young Arik (Tuval Shafir) — lover of Dashiell Hammett, son of Holocaust survivors — takes a job working for a charismatic but vaguely shady matchmaker (comedian Adir Miller, who won the Israeli equivalent of a Best Actor Oscar), following potential clients to assure their quest for love is on the level. His exciting new gig whisks the budding writer out of middle-class monotony and introduces him to a wealth of colorful "Low Rent district" types; he also nurses a raging crush on his best friend’s free-spirited American cousin. Mostly a gently nostalgic tale, The Matchmaker also offers an unusual take on the Holocaust, viewing it from two decades later and using its looming memory to shape the characters who experienced it firsthand — as well as members of the younger generation, like Arik, who pages through The House of Dolls to learn more, even as he refers to the concentration camp where his father was held as simply "there." (1:52) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

ONGOING

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

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

Chasing Ice Even wild-eyed neocons might reconsider their declarations that global warming is a hoax after seeing the work of photographer James Balog, whose images of shrinking glaciers offer startling proof that our planet is indeed being ravaged by climate change (and it’s getting exponentially worse). Jeff Orlowski’s doc follows Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey team as they brave cruel elements in Iceland, Greenland, and Alaska, using time-lapse cameras to record glacier activity, some of it quite dramatic, over months and years. Balog is an affable subject, doggedly pursuing his work even after multiple knee surgeries make him a less-than-agile hiker, but it’s the photographs — as hauntingly beautiful as they are alarming — that make Chasing Ice so powerful. Could’ve done without Scarlett Johansson crooning over the end credits, though. (1:15) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

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

The Collection As soon as you behold the neon sign "Hotel Argento" shining over the grim warehouse-cum-evil dead trap, you know exactly what you’re in for — a wink, and even a little bit of a horror superfan’s giggle. In other words, to tweak that killer Roach Motel tagline: kids check in, but they don’t check out. No need to see 2009’s The Collector — the previous movie by director-cowriter Marcus Dunstan and writer Patrick Melton (winners of the third season of Project Greenlight, now with the screenplays for multiple Saw films beneath their collective belt) — the giallo fanboy and gorehound hallmarks are there for all to enjoy: tarantulas (straight from 1981’s The Beyond), a factory kitted out as an elaborate murder machine, and end credits that capture characters’ last moments. Plus, plenty of fast-paced shocks and seemingly endless splatter, with a heavy sprinkle of wince-inducing compound fractures. The Collection ups the first film’s ante, as gamine Elena (Emma Fitzpatrick) is lured to go dancing with her pals. Their underground party turns out to be way beyond the fringe, as the killer mows down the dance floor, literally, and gives the phrase "teen crush" a bloody new spin. Stumbling on The Collector‘s antihero thief Arkin (Josh Stewart) locked in a box, Elena releases him but can’t prevent her own capture, so killer-bodyguard Lucello (Oz‘s Lee Tergesen) snatches Arkin from the hospital and forces him to lead his team of toughs through a not-so-funhouse teeming with booby traps as well as victims-turned-insidious-weapons. All of which almost convinces you of nutty-nutball genius of the masked, dilated-pupiled Collector (here stuntman Randall Archer), who takes trendy taxidermy to icky extremes — even when his mechanism is threatened by a way smart last girl and a lock picker who’s adept at cracking building codes. Despite Dunstan’s obvious devotion to horror-movie landmarks, The Collection doesn’t turn out to be particularly original: rather, it attempts to stand on the shoulders — and arms and dismembered body parts — of others, in hopes of finding its place on a nonexistent drive-in bill. (1:23) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

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

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

Hitchcock On the heels of last year’s My Week With Marilyn comes another biopic about an instantly recognizable celebrity viewed through the lens of a specific film shoot. Here, we have Anthony Hopkins (padded and prosthetic’d) playing the Master of Suspense, mulling over which project to pursue after the success of 1959’s North by Northwest. Even if you’re not a Hitch buff, it’s clear from the first scene that Psycho, based on Robert Bloch’s true crime-inspired pulpy thriller, is looming. We open on "Ed Gein’s Farmhouse, 1944;" Gein (Michael Wincott) is seen in his yard, his various heinous crimes — murder, grave-robbing, body-part hoarding, human-skin-mask crafting, etc. — as yet undiscovered. Hitchcock, portrayed by the guy who also played the Gein-inspired Hannibal Lecter, steps into the frame with that familiar droll greeting: "Guhhd eevvveeeening." And we’re off, following the veteran director as he muses "What if somebody really good made a horror picture?" Though his wife and collaborator, Alma (Helen Mirren), cautions him against doing something simply because everyone tells him not to, he plows ahead; the filmmaking scenes are peppered with behind-the-scenes moments detailed in Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the source material for John J. McLaughlin’s script. But as the film’s tagline — "Behind every Psycho is a great woman" — suggests, the relationship between Alma and Hitch is, stubbornly, Hitchcock‘s main focus. While Mirren is effective (and I’m all for seeing a lady who works hard behind the scenes get recognition), the Hitch-at-home subplot exists only to shoehorn more conflict into a tale that’s got plenty already. Elsewhere, however, Hitchcock director Sacha Gervasi — making his narrative debut after hit 2008 doc Anvil: The Story of Anvil — shows stylistic flair, working Hitchcock references into the mise-en-scène. (1:32) California, Metreon, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

In the Family With a running time of just under three hours, writer-director-star Patrick Wang’s In the Family rewards patient viewers with its quietly observed tale of a man battling for custody of his son. Wang’s debut feature has already earned local acclaim, picking up both the Best Narrative Feature Award and the Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 2012 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. It returns in an expanded engagement right when Hollywood is rolling out its flashiest year-end fare, which In the Family neither resembles nor aspires to resemble; its story unfolds via remarkably low-key scenes, most of which are shot using extremely long single takes. Not many films, even self-produced indie dramas, dare allow so much breathing room into each sequence. This technique works, for the most part, because the story is so compelling. Joey (Wang) and Cody (Trevor St. John) are a well-matched couple in small-town Tennessee, busy with jobs — Joey’s a contractor; Cody’s a teacher — and raising six-year-old Chip (Sebastian Brodziak). When tragedy strikes, and Cody is killed, Chip, who is Cody’s biological son, is placed in the care of the late man’s sister, Eileen (Kelly McAndrew). It’s weighty stuff, but Wang avoids typical melodrama clichés to convey the depths of his character’s despair; the film’s sole contrivance is containing most of its last act in a deposition scene, complete with a cartoonishly slick lawyer whose cruel questions make sure the viewer knows that homophobia (and racism) are both themes here. It’s a bottom-heavy ending to a film that otherwise prefers observing at a distance, using its long, wordless scenes to convey delicate, organically-shifting emotions. (2:49) Roxie. (Eddy)

Just 45 Minutes From Broadway (1:59) Roxie.

Killing Them Softly Lowest-level criminal fuckwits Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelsohn) are hired to rob a mob gambling den, a task which miraculously they fail to blow. Nevertheless, the repercussions are swift and harsh, as a middleman suit (Richard Jenkins) to the unseen bosses brings in one hitman (Brad Pitt), who brings in another (James Gandolfini) to figure out who the thieves are and administer extreme justice. Based on a 1970s novel by George V. Higgins, this latest collaboration by Pitt and director-scenarist Andrew Dominik would appear superficially to be a surer commercial bet after the box-office failure of their last, 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford — one of the great films of the last decade. But if you’re looking for action thrills or even Guy Ritchie-style swaggering mantalk (though there is some of that), you’ll be disappointed to find Killing more in the abstracted crime drama arena of Drive (2011) or The American (2010), landing somewhere between the riveting former and the arid latter. This meticulously crafted tale is never less than compelling in imaginative direction and expert performance, but it still carries a certain unshakable air of so-what. Some may be turned off by just how vividly unpleasant Mendelsohn’s junkie and Gandolfini’s alchie are. Others will shrug at the wisdom of re-setting this story in the fall of 2008, with financial-infrastructure collapse and the hollow promise of President-elect Obama’s "Change" providing ironical background noise. It’s all a little too little, too soon. (1:37) Four Star, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

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

Life of Pi Several filmmakers including Alfonso Cuarón, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and M. Night Shyamalan had a crack at Yann Martel’s "unfilmable" novel over the last decade, without success. That turns out to have been a very good thing, since Ang Lee and scenarist David Magee have made probably the best movie possible from the material — arguably even an improvement on it. Framed as the adult protagonist’s (Irrfan Khan) lengthy reminiscence to an interested writer (Rafe Spall) it chronicles his youthful experience accompanying his family and animals from their just shuttered zoo on a cargo ship voyage from India to Canada. But a storm capsizes the vessel, stranding teenaged Pi (Suraj Sharma) on a lifeboat with a mini menagerie — albeit one swiftly reduced by the food chain in action to one Richard Parker, a whimsically named Bengal tiger. This uneasy forced cohabitation between Hindu vegetarian and instinctual carnivore is an object lesson in survival as well as a fable about the existence of God, among other things. Shot in 3D, the movie has plenty of enchanted, original imagery, though its outstanding technical accomplishment may lie more in the application of CGI (rather than stereoscopic photography) to something reasonably intelligent for a change. First-time actor Sharma is a natural, while his costar gives the most remarkable performance by a wild animal this side of Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a charmed, lovely experience. (2:00) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Lincoln Distinguished subject matter and an A+ production team (Steven Spielberg directing, Daniel Day-Lewis starring, Tony Kushner adapting Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Williams scoring every emotion juuust so) mean Lincoln delivers about what you’d expect: a compelling (if verbose), emotionally resonant (and somehow suspenseful) dramatization of President Lincoln’s push to get the 13th amendment passed before the start of his second term. America’s neck-deep in the Civil War, and Congress, though now without Southern representation, is profoundly divided on the issue of abolition. Spielberg recreates 1865 Washington as a vibrant, exciting place, albeit one filled with so many recognizable stars it’s almost distracting wondering who’ll pop up in the next scene: Jared Harris as Ulysses S. Grant! Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Robert Lincoln! Lena Dunham’s shirtless boyfriend on Girls (Adam Driver) as a soldier! Most notable among the huge cast are John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and a daffy James Spader as a trio of lobbyists; Sally Field as the troubled First Lady; and likely Oscar contenders Tommy Lee Jones (as winningly cranky Rep. Thaddeus Stevens) and Day-Lewis, who does a reliably great job of disappearing into his iconic role. (2:30) Cerrito, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

North Sea Texas Growing up is never easy — especially when you know who you are and who you love from a tender young age, and live in a sleepy Belgium coastal hamlet in the early ’70s. Sexual freedom begins at home, as filmmaker Bavo Defurne’s debut feature opens on our beautiful little protagonist, Pim — a melancholy, shy, diligent soul who has a talent for drawing, a responsible nature, and a yen for ritual dress-up in lipstick and lace. He has an over-the-top role model: an accordion-playing, zaftig mother who has a rep as the village floozy. Left alone far too often as his mom parties at a bar named Texas, Pim takes refuge with kindly single-mom neighbor Marcella, her earnest daughter, and her sexy, motorcycle-loving son, Gino, who turns out to be just Pim’s speed. But this childhood idyll is under threat: Gino’s new girlfriend and a handsome new boarder at Pim’s house promise to change everything. Displaying a gentle, empathetic touch for his cast of mildly quirky characters and a genuine knack for conjuring those long, sensual days of youth, Defurne manages to shine a fresh, romantic light on a somewhat familiar bildungsroman, leaving a lingering taste of sea salt and sweat along with the feeling of walking in one young boy’s very specific shoes. (1:36) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

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

Playing For Keeps Not a keeper: the marketing imagery that makes Gerard Butler look like an insufferable creep with bad hair. Dennis Quaid, seen in a small pic toward the base of the Playing For Keeps poster, gets that thankless role instead in this family-oriented rom-com, which is better than some while still being capable of eliciting very audible yawns from an audience supposedly primed for cutesy hijinks. Butler is George Dryer, a onetime pro soccer star now on the decline yet desperately seeking his next opening — a career as a sportscaster. To get there he has to run a networking gauntlet called coaching children’s soccer, which he gets roped into by ex Stacie (Jessica Biel) and spawn Lewis (Noah Lomax). The ankle biters are the least of his problems: more challenging are hot ‘n’ horny soccer moms like TV sports vet Denise (Catherine Zeta-Jones), cry-face Barn (Judy Greer), and desperate trophy housewife Patti (Uma Thurman), who’s saddled with all-American a-hole Carl (Dennis Quaid). The charisma-oozing George has to practically fight them off, while somehow shooting for that family-first goal. With its sex farce tendencies, rom-com DNA, and vaguely sour attitude toward hard-up moms, hot or not, I’m not sure who Playing For Keeps is really making a play for — perhaps married ladies looking for date-night possibilities and some shirtless Butler action? Projecting believability even under the most plausibility-taxing circumstances, Butler manages, as always, to be the best thing in the movie, though it seems like less of an achievement when his projects tend toward mediocrity. (1:46) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck. (Chun)

Red Dawn A remake of a 1984 movie that seemed a pretty nutty ideological throwback even during the Reagan Era’s revived Cold War air conditioning, Red Dawn should have come out a couple years ago, having been shot late 2009. But in the meantime MGM was undergoing yet another seismic financial rupture, and as the film sat around for lack of the means needed for distribution and marketing, it occurred that perhaps it already had a fatal, internal flaw. You see, this update re-cast our invaders from Russkies to People’s Republicans, tapping into the modern fear of China as debtor and international bully. But: China is also a huge fledgling market for Hollywood product. So a tortured makeover of the remake ensued; scenes were added, re-shot, and digitally altered to impose a drastic narrative change. The new villain is absurd it gets acknowledged as such by dialogue: "North Korea? It doesn’t make any sense!" Yup, in the new Red Dawn a coastal Washington state burg is the first attack point in a wholesale invasion of the U.S. (pop. 315 million) by the Democratic People’s Republic (pop. 25 million). It’s football season, so a Spokane suburb’s team — Wolverines!! — lends its name as battle cry and its revved up healthy young flesh as guerilla martyrs to the fight for, ohm yeah, freedom. Do they drink beer? Do they rescue cheerleader girlfriends from concentration camps? Do they kick North Korean ass? Do you really need to ask? (1:34) Metreon. (Harvey)

Rise of the Guardians There’s nothing so camp as "Heat Miser" from The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974) in Rise of the Guardians,, but there’s plenty here to charm all ages. The mystery at its center: we open on Jack Frost (voiced by Chris Pine) being born, pulled from the depths of a frozen pond by the Man on the Moon and destined to spread ice and cold everywhere he goes, invisible to all living creatures. It’s an individualistic yet lonely lot for Jack, who’s styled as an impish snowboarder in a hoodie and armed with an icy scepter, until the Guardians — spirits like North/Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), and the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman) — call on him to join them. Pitch the Boogeyman (Jude Law) is threatening to snuff out all children’s hopes and dreams with fears and nightmares, and it’s up to the Guardians must keep belief in magic alive. But what’s in it for Jack, except the most important thing: namely who is he and what is his origin story? Director Peter Ramsey keeps those fragile dreams aloft with scenes awash with motion and animation that evokes the chubby figures and cozy warm tones of ’70s European storybooks. And though Pine verges on blandness with his vocal performance, Baldwin, Jackman, and Fisher winningly deliver the jokes. (1:38) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

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

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

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

Silver Linings Playbook After guiding two actors to Best Supporting Oscars in 2010’s The Fighter, director David O. Russell returns (adapting his script from Matthew Quick’s novel) with another darkly comedic film about a complicated family that will probably earn some gold of its own. Though he’s obviously not ready to face the outside world, Pat (Bradley Cooper) checks out of the state institution he’s been court-ordered to spend eight months in after displaying some serious anger-management issues. He moves home with his football-obsessed father (Robert De Niro) and worrywart mother (Jacki Weaver of 2010’s Animal Kingdom), where he plunges into a plan to win back his estranged wife. Cooper plays Pat as a man vibrating with troubled energy — always in danger of flying into a rage, even as he pursues his forced-upbeat "silver linings" philosophy. But the movie belongs to Jennifer Lawrence, who proves the chops she showcased (pre-Hunger Games megafame) in 2010’s Winter’s Bone were no fluke. As the damaged-but-determined Tiffany, she’s the left-field element that jolts Pat out of his crazytown funk; she’s also the only reason Playbook‘s dance-competition subplot doesn’t feel eye-rollingly clichéd. The film’s not perfect, but Lawrence’s layered performance — emotional, demanding, bitchy, tough-yet-secretly-tender — damn near is. (2:01) Piedmont, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

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

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 The final installment of the Twilight franchise picks up shortly after the medical-emergency vampirization of last year’s Breaking Dawn – Part 1, giving newly undead Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) just enough time to freshen up after nearly being torn asunder during labor by her hybrid spawn, Renesmee. In a just world, Bella and soul mate Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) would get more of a honeymoon period, given how badly Part 1‘s actual honeymoon turned out. Alas, there’s just enough time for some soft-focus vampire-on-vampire action (a letdown after all the talk of rowdy undead sex), some catamount hunting, some werewolf posturing, a reunion with Jacob (Taylor Lautner), and a few seconds of Cullen family bonding, and then those creepy Volturi are back, convinced that the Cullens have committed a vampire capital crime and ready to exact penance. Director Bill Condon (1998’s Gods and Monsters, 2004’s Kinsey) knows what the Twi-hards want and methodically doles it out, but the overall effect is less sweeping action and shivery romance and more "I have bugs crawling on me — and yet I’m bored." Some of that isn’t his fault — he bears no responsibility for naming Renesmee, for instance, to say nothing of a January-May subplot that we’re asked to wrap our brains around. But the film maintains such a loose emotional grip, shifting clumsily and robotically from comic interludes to unintentionally comic interludes to soaring-music love scenes to attempted pathos to a snowy battlefield where the only moment of any dramatic value occurs. Weighed down by the responsibility of bringing The Twilight Saga to a close, it limps weakly to its anticlimax, leaving one almost — but not quite — wishing for one more installment, a chance for a more stirring farewell. (1:55) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

Waiting for Lightning The first voice you hear in Waiting for Lightning is pro skateboarder Danny Way’s mother: "I said, ‘Are you crazy? What do you think you’re doing?’" Can’t really blame her for worrying: Waiting for Lightning is a bio-doc following the fearless Way’s rise from littlest squirt at the Del Mar skate park to his determined quest to jump over the Great Wall of China in 2005. Growing up, he faced problems (his dad was killed in jail; his mom partied … a lot; his mentor died in a car crash; he suffered a broken neck after a surfing accident), but persevered to find his calling, pursuing what a peer calls "life-and-death stuntman shit." Like all docs about skateboarding — a sport that depends so much on cameras standing by — there’s no shortage of action footage, and big names like Tony Hawk and Christian Hosoi drop by to heap praise on Way’s talents and work ethic. Lightning is aimed mostly at an audience already fond of watching skate footage; it lacks the artistic heft of 2001’s Dogtown and Z-Boys, or the unusually compelling narrative of 2003’s Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, and the whole "Way is a golden god" theme gets a little tiresome. But it must be said: the Great Wall jump — a self-mythologizing publicity stunt that would do Evel Knievel proud — is rather spectacular. (1:32) Metreon. (Eddy)

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

father and law

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father and law

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM With a running time of just under three hours, writer-director-star Patrick Wang’s In the Family rewards patient viewers with its quietly observed tale of a man battling for custody of his son.

Wang’s debut feature has already earned local acclaim, picking up both the Best Narrative Feature Award and the Emerging Filmmaker Award at the 2012 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. It returns in an expanded engagement right when Hollywood is rolling out its flashiest year-end fare, which In the Family neither resembles nor aspires to resemble; its story unfolds via remarkably low-key scenes, most of which are shot using extremely long single takes. Not many films, even self-produced indie dramas, dare allow so much breathing room into each sequence.

This technique works, for the most part, because the story is so compelling. Joey (Wang) and Cody (Trevor St. John) are a well-matched couple in small-town Tennessee, busy with jobs — Joey’s a contractor; Cody’s a teacher — and raising six-year-old Chip (Sebastian Brodziak, who delivers a natural performance that’s thankfully more precocious than precious). Their home life is relaxed and routine, focused on their lively, dragon-obsessed boy. In the Family takes its time revealing their relationship’s origins, with flashbacks so briskly edited they stand out in contrast to the film’s otherwise unhurried pace. Chip’s mother, it turns out, is Cody’s late wife; some time after her death, it’s Cody who initiates a romance with the laconic, truck-driving guy who’s been helping renovate his house.

But even before we learn this, tragedy strikes: a car accident gravely injures Cody. The first sign of In the Family‘s looming drama occurs at the hospital, where Cody’s sister Eileen (Kelly McAndrew), brother-in-law Dave (Peter Hermann), and mother Sally (Park Overall) have gathered. When a nurse insists that “only family members are allowed to visit,” nobody stands up for Joey. When Cody dies, grief washes over everyone. Tempers flare when it’s revealed that Cody’s will is six years old, written before his relationship with Joey. When they were together, Joey admits, “We didn’t talk about the big stuff” — and the legal consequences are devastating. Guardianship of Chip, it seems, goes to Eileen.

“Nothing makes sense,” Cody weeps to Joey during a flashback that takes place right after his wife’s death. It’s a sentiment Joey fully understands, but Wang avoids scenes of tear-stained arguments or other typical melodrama clichés to convey the depths of his character’s despair. A particularly moving flashback recalls the night the two first kissed after bonding over Chip Taylor tunes (the songwriter cameos in the film, and his melancholy music is a recurring motif). In the next scene, set in the film’s present, Joey is wearing the same striped shirt Cody had on that night.

In the Family‘s biggest contrivance is containing most of its last act in a deposition scene, complete with a cartoonishly slick lawyer whose cruel questions make sure the viewer knows that homophobia (and racism) are both themes here. Joey’s response is a lengthy monologue loaded with exposition (and probably more words than the rest of the script’s pages, combined). It’s a bottom-heavy ending to a film that otherwise prefers observing at a distance — shooting Joey from behind rather than showing his face when he learns that Cody has died; allowing important action to occur off screen or behind closed doors; and using its long, wordless scenes to convey delicate, organically-shifting emotions. It’s a “message movie” that prefers subtlety over speechifying, and is all the more powerful for it. *

 

IN THE FAMILY opens Fri/7 in San Francisco.

W. Kamau Bell returns triumphant to the Bay, needs burrito

Andrew Lam
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Attention burrito vendors of the Mission, there is a sale to be made at the arrivals gate of SFO this weekend when newly-minted TV star W. Kamau Bell makes his triumphant return to the city in which he spent 15 years honing his comedic chops. He is aching for a Mission burrito like this city is aching for a more efficient MUNI system.

Culinary yearnings aside, this Sunday Bell headlines a standup show at the Fillmore as part of his “Kamau Mau Uprising” tour. The tour’s moniker should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Bell’s politically progressive, acerbic wit.

These days, that category includes more people than ever. Earlier this year Bell ditched left our lovely 49-square-mile patch for Gotham when he was offered his own TV show on FX (Thursdays at 11:30pm). And it looks like he’ll be spending more time back east — said show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell just got picked up for a second season that will start January 17.

In the inaugural season of Totally Biased, Bell and his crew of writers have covered a lot of ground, exploring the differences between Sikhs and Sheiks, sweet potato and pumpkin pies. They’ve made a fake PSA telling men to stay home and watch porn on Election Day instead of vote, and watched presidential election returns with the Brooklyn Young Republicans (some of whom are not, it turns out, are not so young.)

Now that both he and President Obama will be back in 2013, Bell looks forward to holding our Commander in Chief to task. Right before the Thanksgiving Break, and just hours after finding out his show got renewed, the self-proclaimed “billionth most famous person in the history of New York” took some time to chat with the Guardian about his homecoming, and on what makes a San Francisco comedian different from those from NY, LA, or Boston. Plus, on whether he’ll ever drop a “hella” on Totally Biased.

SFBG: In the past you’ve referred to Totally Biased executive producer Chris Rock as the “foul-mouthed Yoda.” How far along have you come in your Jedi training?

Assuming that this is the original prequel, I would say I’m probably halfway through the first movie. Although Yoda wasn’t in the first movie, so I’m screwing up my nerd status, but I’m at the very beginning of the Jedi training, if it’s Empire Strikes Back, I’m at the point where I lifted the thing out and then I got scared.

SFBG: What’s Mr. Rock’s involvement in the show? Is he more hands-on or hands-off?

WKB: I just talked to him and he literally said, “I’m around if you need me, call me.” He’s as available as we need him and he jokes that’s he’s on sabbatical from show business because he has no projects right now. He comes to all the tapings, but then again he also wants this to be my show so he allows me to use him as much or as little as I want to. Overall, I’ve used him a lot less than people thought I would.

SFBG: Would you say that your show is in competition with The Colbert Report and Daily Show?

WKB: Not really, but I would say that they’re a standard that we’re measuring ourselves against. You know, I’m just the new guy who likes “Hey guys can I hang out!” We’re certainly aiming for a lot of the same people, but I think that by the nature of Totally Biased we’re also reaching a group of way different people.

SFBG: Do you ever plan on saying hella during the show?

WKB: Here’s the thing, by the time I moved to San Francisco, I knew if I started saying hella, people from Chicago would think I had lost my mind. On the back of the set, we have these designs and there are a couple of Bay Area shout-outs and that’s the closest I’ll get to saying hella on air.

SFBG: How did your stand-up show Ending Racism in a Hour prep you for Totally Biased?

WKB: When I wrote that show, the idea behind it was: what kind of show would I write if I was famous? I would have a screen, I would have a computer, I would talk about the world, I would talk about racism all the time, and I would be very topical.

So I did Ending Racism the way I would do it if I had a TV show and through lots of luck and hard work I ended up with Totally Biased. I know for sure that I would not have gotten Totally Biased if I had just done stand up. And by the time Chris saw me at the UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade) Theatre in New York, I had already been doing for about three or four years.

SFBG: Do you have writers from the Bay?

WKB: Janine Brito, Kevin Avery, Kevin Kataoka, and Nato Green.

SFBG: What’s the history of your relationships with them?

WKB: I used to do “Siskel & Negro” with Kevin Avery, who’s from San Jose, on Live 105 back in the day and I met him right when I moved out to San Francisco. We did a lot of shows together, we were writing partners and almost got hired to do a D.L. Hughley show for CNN.

Kevin Kataoka is originally from Oakland and I met him when I first moved to San Francisco, in the SF comedy scene. He actually introduced me to Chuck Scolar who’s an executive producer of the show, and he’s the guy who introduced me to Chris Rock.

I’ve said many times that Janine is my comedy daughter, who’s this little hipster, half Cuban, all lesbian. I met Nato on the scene about six or seven years ago, so I had already been on the scene by the time I had met Nato and Janine.

Myself, Nato, Janine, and at one point Hari Kondabolu (fellow TB writer) had a three-headed standup comedy monster called “Laughter Against the Machine” that we started in the Bay Area and the New Parish in Oakland was the home base for that show. We’re currently working on a documentary about going on the road last year to various political hotspots in America.

SFBG: What’s your take on the SF comedy scene?

WKB: The thing about San Francisco is that it always has had a good reputation as a good comedy city. Ever since Mort Sahl stepped on stage at The Hungry i in the ‘50s San Francisco has had a great reputation as a comedy town. Even though we’re not the biggest city, all the greats come through San Francisco.

I remember seeing [Dave] Chappelle when I moved to town, and he was already packing the club despite not being nationally famous. This is was big because this was before the Internet took hold. He was already a legend and I remember one night when he was stage and he said yeah I just finished filming this movie and it’s all about weed! I saw him go to the next level when he got his own show, and so San Francisco is a great city for developing comedic talent.

If you come up in the San Francisco comedy scene, clubs like The Punchline and Cobb’s are loyal to local talent if you show loyalty to them. You will work with the best in the business. I’ve heard that New York comics say that San Francisco comics know more headliners and have more personal relationships with headliners than New York comics do because San Francisco comics hang out a lot before and after shows, whereas in New York everyone is always running to the next thing. The city is known for having good comedians but there’s not a style called “San Francisco comedian.” You can pick out a Boston, New York, or LA comedian but you can’t really pick out a San Francisco comedian.

SFBG: How does it feel to headline a show at The Fillmore?

WKB: In some sense that’s bigger than getting a TV show [laughs] when they said that I was going to play The Fillmore, I thought “wait a minute! It’s too soon!” And time will tell if it is too soon. It’s just weird to me that it’s happening now. I think a lot of it is because I’ve built up a name in the Bay Area.

SFBG: Will you have time to stop by your old spots?

WKB: I’ll have a chance to visit my old spots and look at the “did that really happen?!” look on people’s faces.

SFBG: What are places and things you miss the most about the Bay Area?

WKB: The one thing overall that both my wife — who’s from Monterrey — and I miss most is that the style of living in Northern California is so easy. When I think about my time in San Francisco, even walking outside my house, it feels like a baby bird being born. When I think about New York, every time I walk out of my house, I feel like a paratrooper jumping out of a plane. And there are definitely five or six Mission burritos in my future because New York does not understand how burritos work.

I also want to go back to The Punchline on a Sunday night where all of it really started for me. That place is my mecca. I just need to go there and walk around the stage seven times and really reflect on all that is happening. And oh! I’ll be probably ride the N-Judah and visit my old block of Ninth and Irving.

SFBG: I know you just found out about the second season but now that the election is over and your boy is back for a second term what direction do you think the show will be taking?

WKB: My career and act has followed Obama’s presidency and a lot of comics say it would have been better if Mitt Romney had won and I’m like noooooo this black president thing has worked out for me nicely. And the great thing about Romney being gone is that now we can actually talk about Obama from a more critical angle. Now we can talk about how Obama is not a great president, we can talk about Guantanamo and immigration. I don’t just want to be a cheerleader.

The Kamau Mau Uprising

Sun/9, 8pm, $29.50

The Fillmore 

1805 Geary, SF

www.thefillmore.com

The comic formally known as ‘The Iron Chink’

Andrew Lam
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The comic formally known as ‘The Iron Chink’

It’s a symbol of the atrocities suffered by Chinese Americans on this continent: a lumbering machine that stripped thousands of their livelihood and was even named for the epithet used against them, the Iron Chink.

For Escape To Gold Mountain graphic novelist and community activist David H.T. Wong, who will read from the book at a Sun/11 event in Berkeley’s Eastwind Books, the 1903 invention of the mechanized fish gutting machine that stole cannery jobs from Asian immigrants — who already had to fight racism to find jobs at all — made the perfect title for his historical graphic novel. 

But, and perhaps this is a sign of the historical progression that Wong converted into panels for us in his graphic novel, things just don’t get named the c-word anymore. 

“Though it’s a historically accurate name of a real artifact, people today will not accept these sorts of racist terms,” writes Wong in the afterword of Gold Mountain. The name was changed before it was officially released.

We don’t get enough Chinese history in the United States. Growing up, even in a Sunset District public elementary school that had 90 percent Asian American students, the only thing I recall learning about the Asian diaspora here was Chinese New Year, Japanese internment camps.

This is a wrong that Wong’s Escape to Gold Mountain corrects, and in comic book form at that. The book follows Chinese laborer Wong Ah Gin to the United States, where he becomes inextricably linked with the capitalists’ quest to build a railroad across the United States.

The task was accomplished using Asian immigrant labor, the cheapest on the market. After the coasts were connected, many communities rejected the workers who made the task possible. We all know this story: use immigrant labor to accomplish previously-impossible tasks, then castigate the same people for stealing jobs.

In the case of Asian communities in the United States and Canada, this xenophobia lead to extreme violence. In 1885, mass killings occured in Wyoming and Washington. Tacoma’s Chinatown was even burned to the ground by bigoted townspeople. After the physical violence came the bureaucratic castigation: elaborate immigration codes that stopped refugees from coming to North America and separated parents from their kids.

Escape to Gold Mountain wends its way through all this injustice via Wong and other characters, ending up at a Chinese restaurant in Victoria, BC. The author’s panel work makes an at-times painful history easily read (my only quibble is small: why must most of the characters’ mouths be frozen in mid-word?) 

Spoiler alert: there’s a hopeful ending. Escape to Gold Mountain ends on a look at the Chinese Americans who have been elected to public office in the 20th and 21st centuries, and a real-life reconciliation story that will make you grateful for your own awkward trips home for the holidays.

The comic is really a jumping-off point for those interested in the subject matter — the epic research that Wong put towards the book made for enough bibliography and reading resources to launch a thousand syllabi, or at least a sense that an important portion of history may have been missing from your childhood textbooks. 

David H.T. Wong reads from Escape From Gold Mountain

Sun/11 7pm, free

Eastwind Books

2066 University, Berk. 

www.asiabookcenter.com

Hi-fidelity weather

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Hi-fidelity weather

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC Shellacked gummy worms, cherubic Ebay’d figurines, one of those ships in a glass bottle usually reserved for nautical-themed offices, a red bike reflector, a holarctic blue copper butterfly, a vintage stenograph. The physical items sit on separate pedestals as part of the release for Michael Zapruder’s newest album, Pink Thunder (www.michaelzapruder.com).

You have through Nov. 18 to visit the Curiosity Shoppe on Valencia in the Mission, stick some headphones on your ears, and press a small red button on a bubblegum-pink square circuit board affixed with a kitschy sculpture of a bear holding an empty pot attached, or that bowl of shellacked gummy worms, or that holarctic blue copper butterfly, and hear the single track encased within. Zapruder dubbed the structures “portmanteaus” after the linguistic term meaning two blended words.

These particular portmanteus are blends of vision and sound, sculpture and music. The objects, and the individual songs that pump out of them — Zapruder’s free-form pop built from poetry — force you, the listener, to think beyond your lazy current manner of music absorption.

“Just generally, I love the idea of a totally unconnected song. This is a song. That feels like an object that’s somewhere closer to the stature of the music, as opposed to a CD. This celebrates music. It dresses it up,” Oakland’s Zapruder says, smiling in the center of his portmanteaus.

Plus, it’s fun to touch the art.

“Imagine if you went into a record store and there weren’t that many things but each thing was really cool, you wanted to pick it up and play with it, and there was only one copy of each thing. Don’t you think that’d be cool?” He laughs after he says it. Could this be the future of the now-shuttered mega record stores? Could downsizing have saved the behemoths?

Of course, it all goes a bit deeper than that, the vision behind this multifaceted, six-year-long project.

“I think it’s good when people listen to stuff in an uncertain state. So many listening experiences are so familiar. You’re working on your computer and you’re listening, or you’re in a club. And it can be amazing. But you know what you’re going to get, you know the structure. [Pink Thunder] songs are all experimental, all free-composed. Hopefully they’re very listenable, but they’re odd, and I thought it’d be good for people to be in a ‘what is this?’ state.”

Though the songs are also being released through a few more traditional venues. Pink Thunder as a whole is the portmanteaus, each with one of 22 songs that are also compiled into CD form and 12-inch vinyl on The Kora Records (known for releasing records such as Philip Glass’ recent Reworked), seven-inches released by Howells Transmitter, which Zapruder helps run, and a bright pink poetry book, put out by Black Ocean.

The whole process took half a decade to create, completed with the Oct. 16 release on The Kora and the installation at Curiosity Shoppe, which opened in mid-October. Though clearly, the wider range of this project, beyond the physical objects, is the relationship between poetry and music.

It all began with a poetry tour organized by Seattle’s Wave Books; Zapruder’s renowned poet brother Matthew helps run the small publishing house. Zapruder jumped on the Green Tortoise poetry bus for a week of the 50-city tour and after a few false starts, he came up with the idea: “I wanted to see if songs could communicate those same kinds of things that these poets’ poems do.”

He gathered up poems by the likes of the Silver Jews’ David Berman, Carrie St. George Comer, Gillian Conoley, Noelle Kocot, Sierra Nelson, Hoa Nguyen, D. A. Powell, Mary Ruefle, James Tate, Joe Wenderoth, and his brother, and turned them into lyrics.

“The poets are such badasses,” Zapruder says, when asked if he sees the project as a way to deliver poetry to the masses. “Most of them are better known than me. The idea that I could give something to them, introduce people to their work, that’s incredible.”

As musician-writer Scott Pinkmountain says in the book’s introduction, “these are poets who understand that the big grabs — Love, Family, Confession, Death — can no longer be approached directly in a convincing way. Today’s audience is too savvy, too wary of manipulation and sentimentality. These poems instead stake their foundation on the minutia of accidental revelation, trusting the details of life to point out the bigger picture.”

We, as the music listener, hear this in the subtlety of a track like “Book of Life,” created from Noelle Kocot’s story about a monk and a phoenix meeting in the woods. At one point, the monk gives the phoenix a squirming worm — hence the shellacked bowl of gummy worms portmanteau at Curiosity Shoppe.

There are slightly more literal interpretations in songs such as the deceptively upbeat string-heavy “Storm Window,” based on the poem by Mary Ruefle, which tells a story of a sedentary couple — “She sat writing little poems of mist/he in his armchair/reading blood-red leather novels/their three-legged white cat wandering between them/24 champagne glasses sparkle on a shelf/never a one to be broken.” It’s about empty domestic harmony, so Zapruder created the portmanteau with that cheery Ebay bear holding an empty bowl. The found object is eerily revealing.

The project’s title came from Zapruder’s brother’s poem “Opera,” which ends with the line,”still riding your bike under pink hi-fidelity thunder.” (The object represented here is a red bicycle reflector.)

One of the more arresting combinations is for the song “John Lomax: I Work With Negroes.” The object is an old voltage meter. The poem, written by award-winning African-American author Tyehimba Jess, and subsequently the song, are about John Lomax, who “discovered” fabled blues musician Lead Belly in the 1930s.

The theme throughout is of the racism of exoticism, the way Lomax exoticized Lead Belly. “Racism that’s couched in admiration, this condescending accolade,” as Zapruder describes it. “So the idea [for the voltage meter] was that he’s constantly measuring and evaluating — but also, Lomax brought all this stuff in his car on tour, hundreds of pounds of equipment, so I thought maybe he had one of those.”

The piano-driven song is brief, just a minute and 35 seconds, but shifts from quiet plea to deep gravelly question mark, and back again, using multiple vocal backing tracks.

The songs often deviate, in tone, and in tempo. As a whole, it’s an impressive, if difficult listen. There are so many layers, so many twists and turns. They don’t have expected pop hooks, there isn’t a whole lot of repetition. Zapruder lets the songs wander, as if he’s creating a melodic new method of storytelling, occasionally dipping into child-like wonder. He builds songs in a Jon Brian-esque style, with Elliot Smith-like sensitivity and raw ache in his vocals, treading ever-so-lightly over tracks of electric guitar, drums, synthesizers, and in some cases, marimba or brass horns.

The actual songwriting process was quick. He wrote half of the them during a solo 10-day residency in a Napa cabin. The recording of said tracks took considerably longer — nearly three years, beginning in December of 2008. The Oakland resident hopped around with the songs in mind, recording some vocals in his own studio, some instruments at Closer Studios in San Francisco, and New, Improved in Oakland (where tUnE-yArDs and her ilk record), and mixed at Tiny Telephone.

He sang and played many of the instruments, but got backup musical help from dozens of fellow musicians, including Nate Brenner (aka Natronix) of tUnE-yArDs, bassist Mark Allen-Piccolo, and multi-instrumentalist Marc Capelle. An aside: Allen-Piccolo and his father are the ones who designed the music player circuit in all the wooden bases of the portmanteaus, as they have a circuit design business.

So Zapruder pieced together recordings from different studios and time periods in a situation he describes as a “free for all.”

“It took years,” Zapruder says with a shrug, “That’s what it’s like when you do something you’ve never done before. You make a lot of mistakes.”

And it is a relatively unique idea — there isn’t much to compare this project with. Zapruder mentions Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony on Bang on a Can Records, an electronic composition in five movements on a microchip in the jewel case. Also, a release from German ambient-experimental label tomlab that featured an album with an object (though the music wasn’t inside the object as with Pink Thunder).

In his own career, Zapruder’s recorded three well-received albums; Spin Magazine once called his work prolific, and described his compositions as “in the mold of Sufjan Stevens or Andrew Bird,” a pretty weighty and favorable comparison in the indie music world. But so far, he’s never done anything quite like Pink Thunder. The stunt for which he’s perhaps most well known is 1999’s 52 Songs, in which he wrote, recorded, and posted one new song a week for a full year; and this was back before the ease of the modern web with ubiquitous sites like Youtube, Bandcamp, or Soundcloud.

So while he’s dabbled in the avant garde, this was certainly the first time he Ebay’d and thrift-shopped physical items (he went to Urban Ore in Berkeley) to display and interlock with his music.

And now he’s back to his other undertakings. The married father of two also works part-time at Pandora (where he was the curator of the music collection for seven years), is in graduate school for music composition at California State University East Bay, and is making another record. He’s a third of the way through recording, and hopes to put it out next year. “I have a lot of songs that didn’t come out because I’ve been working on this,” he explains. He plans to release that in object form as well.

And he’ll be taking Pink Thunder on the road in the next year as well, stopping by the Mission Creek Festival in Iowa City, lecturing at New York University, and making an appearance with Wave Books and Black Ocean at the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) in Boston, which is “the SXSW for writers.” AWP is also where he first premiered Pink Thunder.

As he describes all this, he wonders aloud if he has dark circles around his eyes, worn from the general life trajectory, and perhaps from explaining his vision for the last hour plus while standing in the diminutive Mission store. He doesn’t have raccoon eyes today, munching on a health bar as he first describes the portmanteaus, but I can see why he’d be tired.

On the same day the Curiosity Shoppe installation closes — Nov. 18 — Zapruder will also perform Pink Thunder live at Amnesia. Earlier in the day, there will be a closing party at the store; that will be followed by the live performance down the street.

At Amnesia, it’ll be a duo with backing tracks and audience participation. “Honestly, I think it can be hard to listen to these one after another if you’ve never heard them before,” he explains. “It’s a lot of new information. Without the help of familiar forms, you’re dealing with new sounds but also like, ‘where is this thing going?'” To help with that, there will be samples and audience members will likely be invited to come up and trigger different sounds during the show. A mad scientist approach to live music.

“Even with everything that’s going on, the main thing is that I’m a musician, and that’s why I did this,” says Zapruder. “It’s to clear the way for these songs to get through to people. The music is the center. I want people to hear it and be affected by it. But that probably goes without saying.”

PINK THUNDER

Through Nov. 18

Curiosity Shoppe

855 Valencia, SF

www.michaelzapruder.com

MICHAEL ZAPRUDER CLOSING NIGHT SHOW

Nov. 18, 8pm

Amnesia

853 Valencia, SF

www.amnesiathebar.com

 

This year, Banned Books Week matters more than ever

Andrew Lam
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Have you ever listened to KPFA’s “Flashpoints”? A friend described it to me, as we listened to an episode featuring San Francisco’s newest poet laureate – our first Latino laureate – Alejandro Murgía, as a “very pointed” radio show. The host, poet Dennis Bernstein, asked a very pointed question about Obama and Romney’s reactions to the anti-Muslim video that’s causing uproar in the Middle East. 

But Murgía changed the subject. What about the racism of the Tucson Unified School District, he asked? Why doesn’t its removal of the Mexican American studies program, and with it books like The Tempest and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and other books that “emphasize students’ ethnicity rather than their individuality” get talked about more? The more he talked, the more I became convinced that yes, this was a very big deal. 

Luckily, the country has an opportunity to talk about the issue of free speech repression via next week’s 30th annual national celebration of Banned Books Week, Sun/30-Oct. 6.

Ethnic studies isn’t the only literature with targets on its back. The national Banned Books Week site has a handy list of the top 10 titles banned in 2011. People get riled up about Hunger Games? Whoa, we’re still incensed by To Kill A Mockingbird and Brave New World?

Free speech suppression is real! Here’s where you can go to break the ban next week. You’ll also want to keep your eyes on the City Lights blog, where you’ll see talks by famous authors on their fave banned books – we’re waiting eagerly for them to post the John Waters’ reading of Lady Chatterly. On a national level, check the Banned Books Week website for information on joining the country-wide “virtual read-out” that the group is organizing.

“Cracking the News with Project Censored”

Every year, the Guardian publishes Project Censored’s list of the top most suppressed stories in the news. (Because sometimes banning starts before publishing does.) On Monday, get a sneak peek with Mickey Huff from PC, who will break down the big events of the year that you didn’t get to hear about. 

Mon/1, 7:30pm, free

The Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

www.booksmith.com

“Let’s Talk 50 Shades of Grey”

Perhaps, given the issues we’ve already discussed, the fact that the soccer mom version of a BDSM novel getting restricted in libraries across the country doesn’t seem quite so dire. But sexuality, of course, is still very much a part of us. The library’s conscripted Emily Morse, star of Bravo’s Miss Advised reality show and local self-styled sexpert, to lead a discussion of this bestselling, racy tale of a CEO and his virginal submissive. 

Tue/2, 6pm, free

San Francisco Main Library

100 Larkin, SF

www.sfpl.org

“Out of Print” art reception

The students at City College respond to free speech issues with their art at this Banned Books Week group show.

Tue/2-Wed/5, opening reception Tue/2, 5-8pm, free

Cesar Chavez Student Center gallery, City College of San Francisco 

1650 Holloway, SF

www.ccsf.edu

“Read Banned Books Naked”: Naked Girls Reading 

Ophelia Coeur de Noir, Carol Queen, and members of the Twilight Vixen Revue strip down and start turning pages for you from their favorite piece of restricted literature at the SF edition of this national network of nudie-bookworm readings. 

Tue/2, 8pm, $20-25/$35 for two

Stagewerx Theater

446 Valencia, SF

www.nakedgirlsreading.com

Where is Occupy SF now?

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On the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy San Francisco also celebrated its birthday.

Demonstrations throughout the day Sept. 17, focusing on a variety of topics, converged at 5pm at 555 California, Bank of America’s west coast headquarters. A lively march of about 600 became a street festival down the block. There, protesters stopped for a circus of birthday activities. In one corner, people saddled by debt wrote their debt information on pieces of paper, explained their situations to the crowd, and dropped the papers into a trash can for a symbolic burning. One person also burned cash. “Hell no, we won’t pay,” the crowd chanted.

A few feet over, protesters painted the street with a bright yellow sun declaring “democracy not debt.” Volunteers then fed a free meal to the hundreds in attendance and wheeled in a video screen to watch some recaps of the year’s best moments. Around 8pm, the group left as peacefully as they had come.

In the darkness, a few hundred headed east on Market. When they arrived in Justin Herman Plaza– or Bradley Manning Plaza, as Occupy SF has christened it, in honor of the whistle blowing soldier- a few police stood guard around the perimeter. Undeterred, protesters walked in, and shouts of “happy birthday” gave way to “welcome home.”

The birthday party continued with a night of music. Five tents were pitched, sleeping bags were brought out. Police vehicles carrying truckloads of barricades drove by, but police told protesters they would have to leave the park by 6am, the hour the park opens.

30 or 40 spent the night. In the morning police came back. As ukelele and drums continued to play, tents were dutifully broken down. A few went back to sleep.

Video by Eric Louie

Last fall, Occupy SF could basically be found here. The camp was at Justin Herman Plaza. The ever-expanding list of working groups sometimes met somewhere else, but Occupy was at camp. But after a series of police raids, from Oct. 5 to the raid that finally brought the camp down in December, this camp was no more.

Now, Occupy SF is found all over the place.

As longtime Occupy SF activist Vi Huynh said while celebrating the anniversary: “I think it’s good to honor these milestones because, unlike the mainstream media would have us believe, we haven’t gone away. We’re not dying either. They’re writing our obituaries, but we’re very much alive. And we’re doing things every day.”

Here’s an uncomprehensive list of active groups from Occupy in San Francisco.

101 Market. This is the old camp of Occupy, “re-occupied” in February in response to a national call. At least 30 sleep there every night, and the camp is a veritable fortress of furniture and belongings. They’re mere existence is a refusal to humor the concept of private property. General Assembly meetings occur at 101 Market Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7pm.

Action Council. Action Council is a forum meant to connect Occupy with unions, non-profits, and community groups. They played a big role in planning demonstrations like the Jan. 20 shutdown of the financial district and the May Day solidarity demonstrations. Action Council meets weekly, Sundays at 2pm at Unite Here headquarters, 215 Golden Gate Ave.

All Streets Yoga. Since last winter, All Streets Yoga, formerly known as Decolonize Yoga, has been transforming part of the sidewalk at the 16th and Mission BART station into a yoga studio free for all. Volunteer yoga teachers lay out rugs and lead personalized yoga sessions for anyone who chooses to join. They transform space and creating calm in the busy city landscape. Join them Fridays 5-7pm.

Community Not Commodity. Also known as Bay Occupride, this group formed to protest commercialization of the Pride Parade. On the Sept. 17 anniversary they did a march on the Castro banks and a sit-in to protest sit-lie at Harvey Milk Plaza. CNC describes itself as “a collective assembly of queer/trans-focused community groups with established reputations in the Bay Area that have come together to strengthen and unify our diverse communities. We have come together to confront the 1% within our movement. We work for complete liberation of queer and trans people!” They meet Sundays at noon at Muddy Waters Café, 521 Valencia. See more at www.bayoccupride.com.

Direct Action working group. Direct action is a central tenant of Occupy. It means taking action to prevent something bad or create something good without permission or help of those with political power. In a 1912 essay titled Direct Action, Voltairine de Cleyre cited the Boston Tea Party as an example and wrote that “Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them, was a direct actionist. All co-operative experiments are essentially direct action.” The direct action working group meets Wednesdays, 6pm, at the Redstone Building at 2940 16th Street.

Environmental Justice working group. The environmental justice working group keeps the pressure on the corporations that exploit the planet. They’ve protested hydraulic fracturing and the nuclear industry. They meet Tuesdays at 4pm at 101 Market.

Food bank of America. Occupy SF set up the first Food Bank of America to feed thousands of hungry protesters and passers-by on Jan. 20. A Market Street Bank of America branch locked its doors when volunteers set up a food table and passed out hot meals. Now, Food Bank of America continues in front of the mega-bank’s 23rd and Mission branch, where volunteers pass out produce, mostly donated from farmers’ markets, along with literature on switching to credit unions. They’re usually there Thursdays 5-6pm.

Ideological Liberation working group. This working group has produced pamphlets explaining Occupy, trading cards of especially greedy bankers, and postcards summarizing issues like the foreclosure crisis and the National Defense Authorization Act. They also created the Occupy SF Declaration. Brainstorm and write with them on Tuesdays, 7:30-9pm, at the decidedly ideologically un-liberated meeting spot of the Starbucks at 27 Drumm.

Occupy Bay Area United. Occupy Bay Area United spent the night outside 555 California on the eve of the Occupy SF anniversary, an occupation complete with tents and signs. They are “committed to non-violent direct action.” They meet on Sundays, 5-7pm, and post meeting locations on their website, www.obau.org.

Occupy Bernal. This neighborhood-based group is largely considered one of the most effective and desperately needed parts of the Occupy movement in San Francisco. Occupy Bernal is in the business of stopping foreclosures and evictions. “Since January no one we worked with has had an auction. People we work with who already had auctions, we’re stopping their evictions. We’ve stopped six of them so far. So we’re almost done with all the evictions, and we can go back to just stopping the auctions. We have 60 people in line to get loan modifications from Wells,” said Occupy Bernal organizer Buck Bagot. On the anniversary, Occupy Bernal hosted a rally highlighting the disproportionate effects of the foreclosure crisis and veterans and elderly and disabled people. “There were about 100 of us at the protest and five people, all over 80, veterans who are all at risk of losing their homes because they don’t have very much income,” said Bagot. Occupy Bernal meets 7-9pm on the second and fourth Thursday of each month at the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center at 515 Cortland Ave. See www.occupybernal.org for more information.

Occupy Forum. Occupy Forum started up in early June in the Women’s Building, and has since moved to Justin Herman Plaza. The well-attended forums, usually around 70 people, are a time to discuss issues that concern people in Occupy. From the beginning Occupy has been said to have “no focus”– maybe that’s because those involved saw that everything from greedy banks to income inequality to homelessness to discrimination in loans to healthcare to racism to wars were all connected. The forum is a chance to focus in on a different topic every week. Check them out Mondays at 6pm at Justin Herman Plaza, at Market and Embarcadero.

Occupy the Richmond. A philosophical Occupy. If you’ve ever gotten sick of decrying problems in society and yearned to discuss creative solutions, Occupy the Richmond may be your cup of tea. A philosophical Occupy. Saturdays at 4pm, Occupy the Richmond gets together at 11th Ave. in Mountain Lake Park “to talk about what kind of society we want to organize together,” according to Occupy the Richmond participant Alex Zane. “Occupy opens up the possibility for talking about that. Otherwise, people would be stuck behind their screens freaking out about what kind of society we should organize. We should get together and talk with real, living people about how we’re supposed to reorganize our society,” said Zane.

Outreach working group. A group that spreads the word about Occupy and speaks with people and community organizations about working together. They meet Wednesdays at 7pm at One Rincon Center, also known as 121 Spear.

This article has been corrected. Bradley Manning served as a soldier in the Army, not a marine

Film Listings

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

3RD I

The San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival runs Sept. 19-30 at various Bay Area venues. Tickets and schedule at thirdi.org/festival. For commentary, see "Cinetology."

OPENING

About Cherry See "Sex Things We Love." (1:42) Castro.

Dredd 3D See "Cinetology." (1:38)

End of Watch See "Cinetology." (1:49) Marina.

Hello I Must Be Going Blindsided by her recent divorce, 35-year-old Amy (Melanie Lynskey) flees New York City for quaint Westport, Conn., where she nurses her wounds, mostly by sleeping and watching Marx Brothers movies. Amy’s protracted moping rankles her perfectionist mother (Blythe Danner, bringing nuance to what could have been a clichéd character) and concerns her workaholic father (John Rubenstein). Dad’s trying to land a big client so he can "make back some of the money we lost in the market" — a subtle aside in Sarah Koskoff’s script that suggests Amy’s parents aren’t as well-heeled as they used to be, despite the ongoing renovations to their swanky home, catered dinners, and expensive art purchases. Money woes are just one of Amy’s many concerns, though, and when a distraction presents itself in the form of 19-year-old Jeremy (Girls’ Christopher Abbott), she finds herself sneaking out at night, making out in her mom’s car, smoking weed, and basically behaving like a teenager herself. As directed by indie actor turned director Todd Louiso (2002’s Love Liza), Hello I Must Be Going is a nicely contained, relatable (self-loathing: we’ve all been there) character study — and props for casting the endearing Lynskey, so often seen in supporting roles, as the film’s messy, complex lead. (1:35) SF Center. (Eddy)

House At the End of the Street Oh, Jennifer Lawrence, don’t you know better than to poke around in that creepy house where all those murders happened? (1:43)

How to Survive a Plague David France’s documentary chronicles the unprecedented impact political activism had on the course of AIDS in the U.S. — drastically curtailing its death toll within a few years despite considerable institutional indifference and downright hostility. As the epidemic here first surfaced in, and decimated, the gay male community, much of Reagan America (particularly in religious quarters) figured the death sentence was deserved. The President himself infamously refrained from even saying the word "AIDS" publicly until his final year of office, after thousands had died. Both terrified and outraged, the gay community took it upon themselves to demand treatment, education, and research. Most of this urgent 1980s overview is concerned with the rise of ACT-UP, whose angry young men successfully lobbied and shamed corporate, academic, medical, and pharmaceutical bodies into action, with the result that by the mid-90s new drugs existed that made this dreaded diagnosis no longer a necessarily terminal one. France is a journalist who’s been covering AIDS practically since day one, and his first feature (made with the help of numerous first-rate collaborators) is authoritative and engrossing. Just don’t expect much (or really any) attention paid to the contributions made by S.F. or other activist hotspots — like many a gay documentary, this one hardly notices there’s a world (or gay community) outside Manhattan. (1:49) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

The Master See "Cinetology." (2:17) Embarcadero, Presidio.

Somewhere Between Five years ago, when filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton adopted a baby girl from China, she was inspired to make Somewhere Between, a doc about the experiences of other Chinese adoptees. The film profiles four teenage girls, including Berkeley resident Fang "Jenni" Lee, whose American lives couldn’t be more different (one girl has two moms and attends a fancy prep school; another, raised by devout Christians, dreams of playing her violin at the Grand Ole Opry) but who share similar feelings about their respective adoptions. The film follows the girls on trips to London (as part of an organized meeting of fellow adoptees), Spain (to chat with people interested in adopting Chinese babies, and where the question "What does it feel like to be abandoned?" is handled with astonishing composure), and China (including one teen’s determined quest to track down her birth family). Highly emotional at times, Somewhere Between benefits from its remarkably mature and articulate subjects, all of whom have much to say about identity and personal history. Lee and filmmaker Goldstein Knowlton will appear in person at select opening shows; visit www.landmarktheatres.com for more information. (1:28) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

10 Years Channing Tatum and Rosario Dawson star in this high-school reunion comedy. Which one of them invented Post-its, again? (1:50)

Trouble with the Curve Baseball scout Gus (Clint Eastwood) relies on his senses to sign players to the Atlanta Braves, and his roster of greats is highly regarded by everyone — save a sniveling climber named Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who insists his score-keeping software can replace any scout. Gus’ skill in his field are preternatural, but with his senses dwindling, his longtime-friend Pete (a brilliant John Goodman) begs Gus’ daughter Mickey (Amy Adams) to go with him — to see how bad the situation is and maybe drive him around. Ultimately, the film’s about the rift between career woman Mickey, and distant dad Gus, with some small intrusions from Justin Timberlake as Mickey’s romantic interest. Trouble with the Curve is a phrase used to describe batters who can’t hit a breaking ball and it’s a nuance — if an incontrovertible one — unobservable to the untrained eye. While Mickey and Gus stumble messily toward a better relationship (with a reasonable amount of compromise), Curve begins to look a bit like The Blind Side (2009), trading the church and charity for therapy and baggage. But what it offers is sweet and worthwhile, if you’re tolerant of the sanitized psychology and personality-free aesthetics. But it’s a movie about love and compromise — and if you love baseball you won’t have trouble forgiving some triteness, especially when Timberlake, the erstwhile Boo-Boo, gets to make a Yogi Berra joke. (1:51) Four Star, Marina. (Sara Vizcarrondo)

ONGOING

Arbitrage As Arbitrage opens, its slick protagonist, Robert Miller (Richard Gere), is trying to close the sale of his life, on his 60th birthday: the purchase of his company by a banking goliath. The trick is completing the deal before his fraud, involving hundreds of millions of dollars, is uncovered, though the whip-smart daughter who works for him (Brit Marling) might soon be onto him. Meanwhile, Miller’s gaming his personal affairs as well, juggling time between a model wife (Susan Sarandon) and a Gallic gallerist mistress (Laetitia Casta), when sudden-death circumstances threaten to destroy everything, and the power broker’s livelihood — and very existence — ends up in the hands of a young man (Nate Parker) with ambitions of his own. It’s a realm that filmmaker Nicholas Jarecki is all too familiar with. Though like brothers Andrew (2003’s Capturing the Friedmans) and Eugene (2005’s Why We Fight), Jarecki’s first love is documentaries (his first film, 2006’s The Outsider, covered auteur James Toback), his family is steeped in the business world. Both his parents were commodities traders, and Jarecki once owned his own web development firm and internet access provider, among other ventures. When he started writing Arbitrage‘s script in 2008, he drew some inspiration from Bernard Madoff — but ultimately, the film is about a good man who became corrupted along the way, to the point of believing in his own invincibility. (1:40) Metreon, Smith Rafael, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Bachelorette A movie called Bachelorette is inevitably going to be accused of riding Bridesmaids‘ coattails, even if — as it happens — Bachelorette‘s source-material play was written years before the 2011 comedy hit theaters. (That said, there are inevitable similarities, what with the shared wedding themes and all.) Playwright turned scriptwriter-director Leslye Headland does a good job of portraying women who are repulsive in realistic ways: a decade ago, Regan (Kirsten Dunst), Gena (Lizzy Caplan), Katie (Isla Fisher) were the popular "B-Faces" at their high school and haven’t matured much since. Competitive Regan is a Type A blonde; Gena’s the queen of one-night stands; and Katie’s a self-destructive party girl. All of them are pushing 30, and though Regan’s the most functional among them, she’s the hardest-hit when she learns that Becky (Bridesmaids‘ Rebel Wilson), always treated as a second-tier B-Face by virtue of being plus-sized, is engaged. "I was supposed to be first," Regan wails via three-way cell call to Gena and Katie, who’re sympathetic to this sense of entitlement. The wedding is a fancy New York City affair, so the B-Faces reunite for what they think will be a bachelorette party for the ages. Most of the film takes place during that single night, a madcap, coke-fueled, mean-spirited spiral into chaos. It’s raunchy and funny, but every character is utterly unlikable, which becomes more of a problem and less of an amusement as the movie trundles onward toward the expected happy ending. Bachelorette would’ve been better served by sticking with its rallying cry — "Fuck everyone!" — to the bitter end. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

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

Beauty is Embarrassing You may not recognize the name Wayne White offhand, but you will know his work: he designed and operated many of the puppets on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, including Randy (the blockheaded bully) and Dirty Dog (the canine jazzbo). Neil Berkeley’s Beauty Is Embarrassing — named for a mural White painted on the side of a Miami building for Art Basel 2009 — charts the life of an artist whose motto is both "I want to try everything I can!" and "Fuck you!" The Southern-born oddball, who came of age in the early-1980s East Village scene, is currently styling himself as a visual artist (his métier: painting non-sequitur phrases into landscapes bought from thrift stores), but Beauty offers a complex portrait of creativity balanced between the need to be subversive and the desire to entertain. (1:27) Roxie. (Eddy)

The Bourne Legacy Settle down, Matt Damon fans — the original Bourne appears in The Bourne Legacy only in dialogue ("Jason Bourne is in New York!") and photograph form. Stepping in as lead badass is Jeremy Renner, whose twin powers of strength and intelligence come courtesy of an experimental-drug program overseen by sinister government types (including Edward Norton in an utterly generic role) and administered by lab workers doing it "for the science!," according to Dr. Rachel Weisz. Legacy‘s timeline roughly matches up with the last Damon film, The Bourne Ultimatum, which came out five years ago and is referenced here like we’re supposed to be on a first-name basis with its long-forgotten plot twists. Anyway, thanks to ol’ Jason and a few other factors involving Albert Finney and YouTube, the drug program is shut down, and all guinea-pig agents and high-security-clearance doctors are offed. Except guess which two, who manage to flee across the globe to get more WMDs for Renner’s DNA. Essentially one long chase scene, The Bourne Legacy spends way too much of its time either in Norton’s "crisis suite," watching characters bark orders and stare at computer screens, or trying to explain the genetic tinkering that’s made Renner a super-duper-superspy. Remember when Damon killed that guy with a rolled-up magazine in 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy? Absolutely nothing so rad in this imagination-free enterprise. (2:15) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Branded (1:46) SF Center.

The Bullet Vanishes Veteran Hong Kong actor Lau Ching-wan stars as a Sherlock Holmes type in 1930s Shanghai, bumped up from prison-guard detail to homicide detective by top brass impressed with his talent, if not his unusual methods. Good timing, since there’s been a series of killings at the local munitions factory, an operation run by a Scooby Doo-ish villain — in cahoots with corrupt cops — who’s prone to snappy hats and checkered overcoats. Adding to the mystery: a tragic back story involving Russian roulette and blood-written graffiti promising "The phantom bullets will kill you all!" Helping solve the crimes is Nicholas Tse as "the fastest gun in Tiancheng," no slouch of an investigator himself; together, the sleuths compile evidence and recreate scenes of murders, including one that seemingly transpired in a locked room with only one exit. The Bullet Vanishes contains more plot twists, slightly fewer steampunk flourishes, and way less slo-mo fist action than Guy Ritchie’s recent attempts at Holmes; though it’s no masterpiece, it’s a fun enough whodunit, with a reliably great and quirky performance from Lau. (2:00) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Campaign (1:25) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Cane Toads: The Conquest They’re baaack — and in 3D. Director Mark Lewis returns to the subject that made him famous, or notorious, in Cane Toads: The Conquest. Lewis’ 1988 short doc Cane Toads: An Unnatural History — about the warty critters’ population explosion after being imported to Australia as part of an unsuccessful pest-control experiment, after which they became pests themselves — is by now a cult hit, thanks to its droll tone, quirky interview subjects, and toad’s-eye-view P.O.V. shots. These days, Australia’s toad situation has, predictably, gotten worse — and weirder, thanks in part to the popularity of the first film, as Lewis chats up a mix of scientists, government officials, and everyday folk on the subject. High points: a man whose "traveling toad show" includes dioramas of costumed, taxidermied toads (there’s a wrestling match, a nightclub scene, a highway accident, and an Aussie rules football game); advanced production values, which render our bulging-eyed buddies in lush detail; and fun 3D flourishes, as when a squeezed poison gland splatters the lens. (1:25) Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

Celeste and Jesse Forever Married your best friend, realized you love but can’t be in love with each other, and don’t want to let all those great in-jokes wither away? Such is the premise of Celeste and Jesse Forever, the latest in what a recent wave of meaty, girl-centric comedies penned by actresses — here Rashida Jones working with real-life ex Will McCormack; there, Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks), Zoe Lister Jones (Lola Versus), and Lena Dunham (Girls) — who have gone the DIY route and whipped up their own juicy roles. There’s no mistaking theirs for your average big-screen rom-com: they dare to wallow harder, skew smarter, and in the case of Celeste, tackle the thorny, tough-to-resolve relationship dilemma that stubbornly refuses to conform to your copy-and-paste story arc. Nor do their female protagonists come off as uniformly likable: in this case, Celeste (Jones) is a bit of an aspiring LA powerbitch. Her Achilles heel is artist Jesse (Andy Samberg), the slacker high school sweetheart she wed and separated from because he doesn’t share her goals (e.g., he doesn’t have a car or a job). Yet the two continue to spend all their waking hours together and share an undeniable rapport, extending from Jesse’s encampment in her backyard apartment to their jokey simulated coitus featuring phallic-shaped lip balm. Throwing a wrench in the works: the fact that they’re still kind of in love with each other, which all their pals, like Jesse’s pot-dealer bud Skillz (McCormack), can clearly see. It’s an shaggy, everyday breakup yarn, writ glamorous by its appealing leads, that we too rarely witness, and barring the at-times nausea-inducing shaky-cam under the direction of Lee Toland Krieger, it’s rendered compelling and at times very funny — there’s no neat and tidy way to say good-bye, and Jones and McCormack do their best to capture but not encapsulate the severance and inevitable healing process. It also helps that the chemistry practically vibrates between the boyish if somewhat one-note Samberg and the soulful Jones, who fully, intelligently rises to the occasion, bringing on the heartbreak. (1:31) Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Chicken With Plums Steeped in whimsy — and a longing for love, beauty, and home — this latest effort from brilliant Persian-French cartoonist-filmmaker Marjane Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud flaunts the odd contours of its eccentric narrative, enchants with its imaginative tangents, sprawls like an unincapsulated life, and then takes off on aching, campy romantic reverie—a magical realistic vision of one Iranian artist’s doomed trajectory. Master violinist Nasser Ali Khan (Mathieu Amalric) is seeking the ineffable — a replacement for his destroyed instrument — and otherwise he’s determined to die. We trace the mystery of his passing, backward, with wanders through the life of his family and loved one along the way in this playful, bittersweet feast. Despite Amalric’s glazed-eyed mugging, which almost spoils the dish, Satrapi’s wonderfully arch yet lyrical visual sensibility and resonant characters — embodied by Maria de Medeiros, Jamel Debbouze, Golshifteh Farahani, and Isabella Rossellini, among others — satisfy, serving up so much more than chicken with plums. (1:31) (Chun)

The Cold Light of Day (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Compliance No film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival encountered as much controversy as Craig Zobel’s Compliance. At the first public screening, an all-out shouting match erupted, with an audience member yelling "Sundance can do better!" You can’t buy that kind of publicity. Every screening that followed was jam-packed with people hoping to experience the most shocking film at Sundance, and the film did not disappoint. (Beware: every review I have happened upon has unnecessarily spoiled major plots in the film, which is based on true events.) What is so impressive about Zobel’s film is how it builds up a sense of ever-impending terror. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the film steps into Psycho (1960) terrain, as it boldly aims to confront a society filled with people who are trained to follow rules without questioning them. Magnolia Pictures, which previously collaborated with Zobel on his debut film Great World of Sound (which premiered at Sundance in 2007), picked up the film for theatrical release; if you dare to check it out, prepare to be traumatized as well as intellectualized. You’ll be screaming about one of the most audacious movies of 2012 — and that’s exactly why the film is so brilliant. For an interview with Zobel, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:30) (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

Cosmopolis With end times nigh and the 99 percent battering the gates of the establishment, it’s little wonder David Cronenberg’s rendition of the Don DeLillo novel might rotate, with the stately rhythm of a royal funeral and deliciously tongue-in-cheek humor, around one of the most famed vampire heartthrobs at the cineplex. Sadly, a recent paparazzi scandal threatens to eclipse this latest, enjoyably blighted installment in the NYC urban nightmare genre. Robert Pattinson’s billionaire asset manager Eric Packer takes meetings with his new wife Elise (Sarah Gadon) and staffers like his monetary theorist Vija (Samantha Morton) in his moving office: a white, leather-bound stretch limo that materializes like a sleek, imposing extension of his pale frame. Seriously disassociated from reality on multiple levels, Eric is a 28-year-old boy in a bubble, speaking of himself in third person and willing to spend all day making his way across town to get a haircut at his father’s old barbershop, even though his head of security (Kevin Durand) warns him that at least one "credible threat" has designs on his life. The passing of his favorite Sufi rapper (K’Naan), a possible Rothko for sale, a mad pie-thrower, and an asymmetrical prostate all threaten to capsize those, as it turns out, not-so-humble plans. Warning: the brainier members of Team Edward might plan on finding their minds blown by this thoughtful and mordantly humorous meditation on this country’s cult of money, while Cronenberg watchers will be gratified to pluck out his recurring themes, here dealt with a lighter hand than usual. At this date, rather than telegraphing how one might feel about a scene by way of, say, music, the director is increasingly comfortable with the ambiguity — and the uneasy, pleasing mix of sneaking repulsion and gimlet-eyed humor, of these scenes and their language. Thus the autoerotic-car fetishism of Crash (1996) and hallucinatory culture grazing of Naked Lunch (1991) — and that fascination with how a body intersects sexually or otherwise with a machine or "other" — seems completely natural here. Or perhaps it’s a measure of how much Cronenberg’s preoccupations and cinematic language have made themselves at home in the vernacular. (1:49) (Chun)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises‘ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and "final" installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Expendables 2 (1:43) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot, France, 2012) Opening early on the morning of July 14, 1789, Farewell, My Queen depicts four days at the Palace of Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, as witnessed by a young woman named Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who serves as reader to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Sidonie displays a singular and romantic devotion to the queen, while the latter’s loyalties are split between a heedless amour propre and her grand passion for the Duchess de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen). These domestic matters and other regal whims loom large in the tiny galaxy of the queen’s retinue, so that while elsewhere in the palace, in shadowy, candle-lit corridors, courtiers and their servants mingle to exchange news, rumor, panicky theories, and evacuation plans, in the queen’s quarters the task of embroidering a dahlia for a projected gown at times overshadows the storming of the Bastille and the much larger catastrophe on the horizon. (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Rapoport)

Finding Nemo 3D (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki.

For a Good Time, Call&ldots; Suffering the modern-day dilemmas of elapsed rent control and boyfriend douchebaggery, sworn enemies Katie (Ari Graynor) and Lauren (Lauren Miller) find themselves shacking up in Katie’s highly covetable Manhattan apartment, brought together on a stale cloud of resentment by mutual bestie Jesse (Justin Long, gamely delivering a believable version of your standard-issue young hipster NYC gay boy). The domestic glacier begins to melt somewhere around the time that Lauren discovers Katie is working a phone-sex hotline from her bedroom; equipped with a good head for business, she offers to help her go freelance for a cut of the proceeds. Major profitability ensues, as does a friendship evoking the pair bonding at the center of your garden-variety romantic comedy, as Katie trains Lauren to be a phone-sex operator and the two share everything from pinkie swears and matching pink touch-tone phones to intimate secrets and the occasional hotline threesome. Directed by Jamie Travis and adapted from a screenplay by Miller and Katie Anne Naylon, the film is a welcome response to the bromance genre, and with any luck it may also introduce linguistic felicities like "phone-banging" and "let’s get this fuckshow started" into the larger culture. The raunchy telephonic interludes include cameos by Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen (Miller’s husband) as customers calling from such unfurtive locations as a public bathroom stall and the front seat of a taxicab. But the two roomies supply plenty of dirty as Katie, an abashed wearer of velour and denim pantsuits, helps the more restrained Lauren discover the joys of setting free her inner potty mouth. (1:25) SF Center. (Rapoport)

Girl Model Everyone wants to be special — though of course that only works if other people aren’t. The disturbingly instructive new documentary Girl Model makes a good case for not encouraging such desires in your child, because the likelihood is that someone will come along to exploit that desire, convincingly promise them fame, then leave them worse off than before. "The first secret to a successful modeling career is to start modeling at five or ten years old," says an emcee at a cattle-call showcase early on in David Redmond and Ashley Sabin’s film. It’s Russia, where the relatively new capitalism trickles down even less than here, so the families are even more eager to turn little Svetlana into a moneymaker. But that way lies madness, or at least deceit and disappointment. Plucked from a couple hundred pretty, rail-thin girls, 13-year-old wide-eyed blonde Nadya Vall is yanked from her rural Siberian village and mother and sent to Japan, where she fits a general type sought there. The younger the better, as talent scout Ashley Arbaugh tells us, qualifying that it’s not her taste, but she’s learned to see through the clients’ eyes. An ex-model herself, Ashley gives off disillusioned, compromised vibes. (It takes a while for us to realize that she’s a user and a hypocrite — not a buffer between the girls and harsh reality but a key part of the problem herself.) Needless to say, Nadya ends up owing rather than making money. Meanwhile Ashley lounges around the immaculate, expansive, coldly all-white house her job as middleman has earned; at the end of the film, she’s telling a new group of parents "Every model has success in Japan, unlike other markets where they might go into debt. They never do in Japan." For a longer version of this review, visit sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:17) (Harvey)

The Imposter A family tragedy, an international thriller, a Southern-fried mystery, and a true story: The Imposter is all of these things. This unique documentary reveals the tale of Frédéric Bourdin, dubbed "the Chameleon" for his epic false-identity habit. His ballsiest accomplishment was also his most heinous con: in 1997, he claimed to be Nicholas Barclay, a San Antonio teen missing since 1994. Amazingly, the impersonation worked for a time, though Bourdin (early 20s, brown-eyed, speaks English with a French accent) hardly resembled Nicholas (who would have been 16, and had blue eyes). Using interviews — with Nicholas’ shell-shocked family, government types who unwittingly aided the charade, and Bourdin himself — and ingenious re-enactments that borrow more from crime dramas than America’s Most Wanted, director Bart Layton weaves a multi-layered chronicle of one man’s unbelievable deception. (1:39) (Eddy)

The Inbetweeners The bro-bacchanal never stops being funny in some circles, and those acolytes might want to attempt to penetrate the thick, juicy UK accents in this writ-large version of the English sitcom of the same name. The deliciously awkward teenage boy gang’s all here — with an added dose of ultragross-out humor that one-ups the American Pie gang. Brainy Will (Simon Bird), aggressively gelled Simon (Joe Thomas), super-horndog Jay (James Buckley), and lanky oddity Neil (Blake Harrison) are off on summer break before "uni" on a booze- and sex-swathed Greek isle. The goal: to get soundly laid and eradicate Simon’s heartbreak over recently departed girlfriend Carli (Emily Head). As luck would have it, the bunch even stumble over some nubile, nice cuties — including doll-faced blonde Allison (Laura Haddock) and far-too-accommodating brunette Lucy (Tamla Kari) — in their quest for "fit" slatterns. In between them and a very certain happy ending, in more ways than one, are plenty of excess, barf, poo, blackouts on ant hills — what’s not to love, provided you can overlook the very un-PC rumblings from this dude-a-rama? A self-fellatio interlude even takes on the Jackass posse on their own physically challenging turf. (1:37) Metreon. (Chun)

The Intouchables Cries of "racism" seem a bit out of hand when it comes to this likable albeit far-from-challenging French comedy loosely based on a real-life relationship between a wealthy white quadriplegic and his caretaker of color. The term "cliché" is more accurate. And where were these critics when 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy and 2011’s The Help — movies that seem designed to make nostalgic honkies feel good about those fraught relationships skewed to their advantage—were coming down the pike? (It also might be more interesting to look at how these films about race always hinge on economies in which whites must pay blacks to interact with/educate/enlighten them.) In any case, Omar Sy, portraying Senegalese immigrant Driss, threatens to upset all those pundits’ apple carts with his sheer life force, even when he’s shaking solo on the dance floor to sounds as effortlessly unprovocative, and old-school, as Earth, Wind, and Fire. In fact, everything about The Intouchables is as old school as 1982’s 48 Hrs., spinning off the still laugh-grabbing humor that comes with juxtaposing a hipper, more streetwise black guy with a hapless, moneyed chalky. The wheelchair-bound Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is more vulnerable than most, and he has a hard time getting along with any of his nurses, until he meets Driss, who only wants his signature for his social services papers. It’s not long before the cultured, classical music-loving Philippe’s defenses are broken down by Driss’ flip, somewhat honest take on the follies and pretensions of high culture — a bigger deal in France than in the new world, no doubt. Director-writer Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano aren’t trying to innovate —they seem more set on crafting an effervescent blockbuster that out-blockbusters Hollywood — and the biggest compliment might be that the stateside remake is already rumored to be in the works. (1:52) Lumiere. (Chun)

Keep The Lights On In Ira Sachs’ intensely discomfiting Keep the Lights On, Erik (Thure Lindhardt) is a Danish documentarian in late-1990s New York City, prodding his career along, spending time with friends, having casual sex with strangers. One of the latter is Paul (Zachary Booth), a publishing-house lawyer who first tells him "I have a girlfriend, so don’t get your hopes up." Yet some time later they’ve become a tentative couple, then a live-in one. Erik is patient and easygoing, but Paul has secrets and problems all the more difficult to deal with because he denies, hides, or lies about them. He disappears for days at a time, then turns up wrecked. Crack is just the addiction we see; there are evidently others. Erik tries everything — group interventions, rehab, endless attempts at frank conversation that invariably turn into Paul accusing him of being unreasonable — but nothing sticks. It takes Erik a decade to come to terms with, and extricate himself from, a relationship in which all his best efforts only bring torment, grief, and exasperation. Keep the Lights On is the kind of excellent movie a lot of people don’t like: it’s not just depressing in the sense of having downbeat, difficult subject matter, it actually sets out to be unpleasant and succeeds. There is a point to that. Leaping forward a couple years at a time, leaving us to figure out how things have shifted in the interim, Sachs’ script (co-written with Mauricio Zacharias) induces in the viewer the disoriented helplessness of dealing with a loved one who can’t or won’t tell the full truth — it’s his best defense. (1:42) Lumiere. (Harvey)

Kumaré Just as there was a certain bullying pride of snark that made Bill Maher and Larry Charles’ Religulous (2008) more mean-spirited than necessary, Kumaré leaves a sour, smug aftertaste. Raised in New Jersey by a first-generation immigrant family of Hindus, Vikram Gandhi proclaims himself a skeptic who started out wanting to make a documentary about the opportunistic charlatans one can find passing as spiritually enlightened gurus in both India and around the booming US yoga industry. "I wanted to prove to others looking for answers that no one is more spiritual than anyone, that spiritual leaders are just illusions," he tells us. A noble impulse. Yet somehow this took the form of growing his hair and beard out, wearing saffron robes, and posing as Sri Kumaré, a fresh-off-the-boat guru who arrives in Phoenix, Ariz. to open up shop as a one-stop spiritual guide for the gullible. He asks "Could people find the same peace in a made-up religion that they would in a real one?" But too often the real question here seems to be "How silly can I make these chumps look while starring in my very own nonfiction version of The Love Guru?" The comedy Kumaré has been primarily compared to is 2006’s Borat, another Larry Charles joint. As unhappy as their portraiture in Borat made its duped participants, it was hard to feel sorry for them — given enough rope they gladly hung themselves expressing racism, homophobia, sexism, and sheer Ugly Americanism. But those who fall under Kumaré‘s farcical spell don’t deserve to be exposed and ridiculed; they’re just people with real-world issues — financial struggles, low self-esteem, empty-nest loneliness, etc. — looking for somebody to tell them what to do. (1:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

Lawless Lawless has got to be the most pretentiously humorless movie ever made about moonshiners — a criminal subset whose adventures onscreen have almost always been rambunctious and breezy, even when violent. Not here, bub. Adapting Matt Bondurant’s fact-inspired novel The Wettest County in the World about his family’s very colorful times a couple generations back, director John Hillcoat and scenarist (as well as, natch, composer) Nick Cave have made one of those films in which the characters are presented to you as if already immortalized on Mount Rushmore — monumental, legendary, a bit stony. They’ve got a crackling story about war between hillbilly booze suppliers and corrupt lawmen during Prohibition, and while the results aren’t dull (they’re too bloody for that, anyway), they’d be a whole lot better if the entire enterprise didn’t take itself so gosh darned seriously. The Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Va. are considered "legends" when we meet them in 1931, having defied all and sundry as well as survived a few bullets: mack-truck-built Forrest (Tom Hardy); eldest Howard (Jason Clarke), who tipples and smiles a lot; and "runt of the litter" Jack (Shia LeBeouf), who has a chip on his shoulder. The local law looks the other way so long as their palms are greased, but the Feds send sneering Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), it’s an eye for an eye for an eye, etc. The revenge-laden action in Lawless is engaging, but the filmmakers are trying so hard to make it all resonant and folkloric and meta-cinematic, any fun you have is in spite of their efforts. (1:55) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Little White Lies In the wake of a serious accident that puts magnetic Ludo (Jean Dujardin, just briefly seen) in the hospital, his circle of closest friends go without him on their annual vacation at a beachfront summer home, courtesy of well-off restaurateur Max (Francois Cluzet) and wife Vero (Valerie Bonneton). But this year they’ve all got a lot of drama going on. Marie (Marion Cotillard) is suffering the uncomfortable consequences of all the lovers (male and female) she’s run out on when "commitment" reared its head. Similarly, the roving eye of actor Eric (Gilles Lellouche) threatens the stable relationship he’s finally sorta settled on. Hapless boy-man Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) obsesses over the longtime girlfriend who’s dumping him. And Vincent (Benoit Magimel) endangers his marriage to Isabelle (Pascale Arbillot) by privately proclaiming more-than-platonic love for best friend Max — whose discomfort manifests itself in hostile behaviors that threaten to ruin everyone’s stay. Actor Guillaume Canet’s third film as writer-director (following the 2006 hit thriller Tell No One) has been compared, even by himself, to 1983’s The Big Chill. But while that slick, somewhat glib seriocomedy’s characters had 1960s activist pasts and faded ideals to square with encroaching midlife, this slicker, glibber ensemble piece is about people who’ve never shared much more than good times and mutual self-absorption. Though Canet has worked with most of these actors before, and developed Lies in collaboration with them, the thinly amusing, often contrived results hardly tax anyone’s resources. (Nor are they equal-opportunity: star attraction Cotillard aside, he barely seems interested in the women here.) It takes two and a half hours for this overblown fluff to arrive at a group-hug freeze frame (ugh), aiming for emotional heft it still hasn’t earned. (2:34) (Harvey)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Four Star, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)

The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2:05) SF Center.

ParaNorman (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Possession (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Premium Rush "Fixed gear. Steel frame. No brakes. Can’t stop … don’t want to." Thus goes the gear breakdown and personal philosophy of New York City bike messenger Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an aggro rider who uses his law school-refined brain to make split-second decisions regarding which way to dart through Midtown traffic. Though bike messengers had a pop culture moment in the 1990s, Premium Rush is set in the present day, with one of Wilee’s numerous voice-overs explaining the job’s continued importance even in the digital era. One such example: a certain envelope he’s tasked with ferrying across the city, given to him by the troubled roommate (Jamie Chung) of the pretty fellow messenger (Dania Ramirez) he’s romantically pursuing. The contents of the envelope, and the teeth-gnashingly evil-cop-with-a-gambling-problem (Michael Shannon, adding some weird flair to what’s essentially a stock villain) who would dearly love to get his mitts on it, are less crucial to Premium Rush than the film’s many, many chase scenes featuring Wilee outwitting all comers with his two-wheeled Frogger moves. Silly fun from director David Koepp (2008’s Ghost Town), but not essential unless you’re a fixie fanatic or a JGL completist. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Queen of Versailles Lauren Greenfield’s obscenely entertaining The Queen of Versailles takes a long, turbulent look at the lifestyles lived by David and Jackie Siegel. He is the 70-something undisputed king of timeshares; she is his 40-something (third) wife, a former beauty queen with the requisite blonde locks and major rack, both probably not entirely Mother Nature-made. He’s so compulsive that he’s never saved, instead plowing every buck back into the business. When the recession hits, that means this billionaire is — in ready-cash as opposed to paper terms — suddenly sorta kinda broke, just as an enormous Las Vegas project is opening and the family’s stupefyingly large new "home" (yep, modeled after Versailles) is mid-construction. Plugs must be pulled, corners cut. Never having had to, the Siegels discover (once most of the servants have been let go) they have no idea how to run a household. Worse, they discover that in adversity they have a very hard time pulling together — in particular, David is revealed as a remote, cold, obsessively all-business person who has no use for getting or giving "emotional support;" not even for being a husband or father, much. What ultimately makes Queen poignantly more than a reality-TV style peek at the garishly wealthy is that Jackie, despite her incredibly vulgar veneer (she’s like a Jennifer Coolidge character, forever squeezed into loud animal prints), is at heart just a nice girl from hicksville who really, really wants to make this family work. (1:40) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Red Hook Summer It seems like lifetimes ago that Michelle and Barack found each other beneath the flicker of filmmaker Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), so the director-cowriter’s cameo in his now-graying, still-pizza-delivering Mookie guise, in this hot, bothered return to Brooklyn, reverberates with meaning. Less polemical and now complicated by an acute, confused love and loathing for certain places and faces, Red Hook Summer takes a different tact — the Red Hook projects rather than the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant — and narrows its focus on Flik Royale (Jules Brown), the reluctant young visitor to the humble home of his grandfather, Da Good Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters from Treme and The Wire). A true child of his time and place, the introverted, rebellious Atlanta kid would rather hide behind his favorite screen, a.k.a. the iPad that he’s using to document his world, than engage with reality, even when it’s raging in his face by way of his grandfather’s fiery sermons or threats from the glowering rapper Box (Nate Parker). Only a charismatic girl his age, Chazz Morningstar (Toni Lysaith), seems to get through, despite the Bishop’s passionate efforts to bond with the boy. Alas, Lee himself doesn’t seem to quite get his youthful protagonist — one who’s predisposed to turn inward rather than turn a politicized lens outward — and instead casts about restlessly to the detriment of this supposed coming-of-age narrative. No shock that somehow Red Hook Summer gets caught in the undertow of the magnetic Peters, who will turn heads with his take on a tormented believer, eager to forgive and equally hopeful for forgiveness. (2:01) Roxie. (Chun)

Resident Evil: Retribution (1:35) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Robot and Frank Imagine the all-too-placid deadpan of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) coming out of a home-healthcare worker, and you get just part of the appeal of this very likable comedy debut with a nonrobotic pulse directed by Jake Schreier. Sometime in the indeterminate near future, former jewel thief and second-story man Frank (Frank Langella) can be found quietly deteriorating in his isolated home, increasingly forgettable and unable to care for himself and assemble a decent bowl of Cap’n Crunch (though he can still steal fancy soaps from the village boutique). In an effort to cover his own busy rear, Frank’s distracted son (James Marsden) buys him a highly efficient robotic stand-in (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), much to his father’s grim resistance ("That thing is going to murder me in my sleep") and the dismay of crunchy sibling Madison (Liv Tyler). The robot, however, is smarter than it looks, as it bargains with Frank to eat better, get healthier, and generally reanimate: it’s willing to learn to pick locks, participate in a robbery, and even plan a jewel heist, provided, say, Frank agrees to a low-sodium diet. Frank flourishes, like the garden the robot nurtures in a vain attempt to interest his human charge, and even goes on a date with his librarian crush (Susan Sarandon), though can the self-indulgent idyll last forever? A tale about aging as much as it is about rediscovery, Robot tells an old story, but one that’s wise beyond its years and willing to dress itself up in some of the smooth, sleek surfaces of an iGeneration. (1:30) Opera Plaza, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

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

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

Sleepwalk with Me Every year lots of movies get made by actors and comedians who want to showcase themselves, usually writing and often directing in addition to starring. Most of these are pretty bad, and after a couple of festival appearances disappear, unremembered by anyone save the credit card companies that vastly benefited from its creation. Mike Birbiglia’s first feature is an exception — maybe not an entirely surprising one (since it’s based on his highly praised Off-Broadway solo show and best-seller), but still odds-bucking. Particularly as it’s an autobiographical feeling story about an aspiring stand-up comic (Mike as Matt) who unfortunately doesn’t seem to have much natural talent in that direction, but nonetheless obsessively perseveres. This pursuit of seemingly fore destined failure might be causing his sleep disorder, or it might be a means of avoiding taking the martial next step with long-term girlfriend (Lauren Ambrose, making something special out of a conventional reactive role) everyone else agrees is the best thing in his life. Yep, it’s another commitment-phobic man-boy/funny guy who regularly talks to the camera, trying to find himself while quirky friends and family stand around like trampoline spotters watching a determined clod. If all of these sounds derivative and indulgent, well, it ought to. But Sleepwalk turns a host of familiar, hardly foolproof ideas into astute, deftly performed, consistently amusing comedy with just enough seriousness for ballast. Additional points for "I zinged him" being the unlikely most gut-busting line here. (1:30) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

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) Metreon. (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) (Harvey)

Total Recall Already the source material for Paul Verhoeven’s campy, quotable 1990 film (starring the campy, quotable Arnold Schwarzenegger), Philip K. Dick’s short story gets a Hollywood do-over, with meh results. The story, anyway, is a fine nugget of sci-fi paranoia: to escape his unsatisfying life, Quaid (Colin Farrell) visits a company capable of implanting exciting memories into his brain. When he chooses the "secret agent" option, it’s soon revealed he actually does have secret agent-type memories, suppressed via brain-fuckery by sinister government forces (led by Bryan Cranston) keeping him in the dark about his true identity. Shit immediately gets crazy, with high-flying chases and secret codes and fight scenes all over the place. The woman Quaid thinks is his wife (Kate Beckinsale) is actually a slithery killer; the woman he’s been seeing in his dreams (Jessica Biel) turns out to be his comrade in a secret rebel movement. Len Wiseman (writer and sometimes director of the Underworld films) lenses futuristic urban grime with a certain sleek panache, and Farrell is appealing enough to make highly generic hero Quaid someone worth rooting for — until the movie ends, and the entire enterprise (save perhaps the tri-boobed hooker, a holdover from the original) becomes instantly forgettable, no amnesia trickery required. (1:58) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

2 Days in New York Messy, attention-hungry, random, sweet, pathetic, and even adorable — such is the latest dispatch from Julie Delpy, here with her follow-up to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris. It’s also further proof that the rom-com as a genre can yet be saved by women who start with the autobiographical and spin off from there. Now separated from 2 Days in Paris‘s Jake and raising their son, artist Marion is happily cohabiting with boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock), a radio host and sometime colleague at the Village Voice, and his daughter, while juggling her big, bouncing bundle of neuroses. Exacerbating her issues: a visit by her father Jeannot (Delpy’s real father Albert Delpy), who eschews baths and tries to smuggle an unseemly selection of sausages and cheeses into the country; her provocative sister Rose (Alexia Landeau), who’s given to nipple slips in yoga class and Marion and Mingus’ apartment; and Rose’s boyfriend Manu (Alexandre Nahon), who’s trouble all around. The gang’s in NYC for Marion’s one-woman show, in which she hopes to auction off her soul to the highest, and hopefully most benevolent, bidder. Rock, of course, brings the wisecracks to this charming, shambolic urban chamber comedy, as well as, surprisingly, a dose of gravitas, as Marion’s aggrieved squeeze — he’s uncertain whether these home invaders are intentionally racist, cultural clueless, or simply bonkers but he’s far too polite to blurt out those familiar Rock truths. The key, however, is Delpy — part Woody Allen, if the Woodman were a maturing, ever-metamorphosing French beauty — and part unique creature of her own making, given to questioning her identity, ideas of life and death, and the existence of the soul. 2 Days in New York is just a sliver of life, but buoyed by Delpy’s thoughtful, lightly madcap spirit. You’re drawn in, wanting to see what happens next after the days are done. (1:31) Bridge, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Words We meet novelist Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) as he’s making his way from a posh building to a cab in the rain; it’s important the shot obscures his generally shiny exterior, because we’re meant to believe this guy’s a sincere and struggling novelist. Jeremy Irons, aged with flappy eye makeup, watches him vengefully. Seems Rory fell upon the unpublished novel Irons’ character wrote in sadness and loss — and feeling himself incapable of penning such prose, transcribed the whole thing. When his lady friend (Zoe Saldana) encourages him to sell it, he becomes the next great American writer. He’s living the dream on another man’s sweat. But that’s not the tragedy, exactly, because The Words isn’t so concerned with the work of being a writer — it’s concerned with the look and insecurity of it. Bradley and Irons aren’t "real," they’re characters in a story read by Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) while the opportunistic, suggestive Daniella (Olivia Wilde) comes onto him. She can tell you everything about Clay, yet she hasn’t read the book that’s made him the toast of the town — The Words, which is all about a young plagiarist and the elderly writer he steals from. "I don’t know how things happen!", the slimy, cowering writers each exclaim. So, how do you sell a book? Publish a book? Make a living from a book? How much wine does it take to bed Olivia Wilde? Sure, they don’t know how things happen; they only know what it looks like to finish reading Hemingway at a café or watch the sun rise over a typewriter. Rarely has a movie done such a trite job of depicting the process of what it’s like to be a writer — though if you found nothing suspect about, say, Owen Wilson casually re-editing his 400-page book in one afternoon in last year’s Midnight in Paris, perhaps you won’t be so offended by The Words, either. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Vizcarrondo)

Our Weekly Picks: September 12-18

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 12

Zero1 Biennial

This week, when the weather is right, SF designer Ishky will coordinate a massive 3.14-ecetera to be written by five planes over the Bay’s skyscape. The work heralds the arrival of Zero1 Biennial, sure to be a different look at Silicon Valley. SFMOMA, Headlands Center for the Arts, and Stanford will all be participating in the tech-art fest, but “Seeking Silicon Valley” is a good place to start exploring. Artists from 11 countries have created innovative odes to computerlandia at Zero1 Garage, a specially-designed new permanent art space in San Jose. Expect virtual tunnels connecting cross-Atlantic museums and the first dot com rise and fall, as interpreted through shots of a vertiginous Argentinian mountain. (Caitlin Donohue)

Through Dec. 8, Various times and Bay Area venues

“Seeking Silicon Valley”

Zero1 Garage

439 First St., San Jose

www.zero1biennial.org

 

Chelsea Wolfe

Like a gloomier incarnation of Julia Holter, or PJ Harvey with a stoner-goth edge, Chelsea Wolfe has a knack for sounding like everyone and no-one else, all at once. On last year’s Apokalypsis, her wispy, high-pitched vocals stood in stark opposition to the record’s sonic atmosphere: robust, foreboding drums and guitars a la Slint, wrapped up in lush electronics, layers upon layers of reverb, and the vague ethos of the hypnagogic pop movement. One of those “weird” records whose weirdness is rendered highly palatable by its confident execution, Wolfe’s debut was one of last year’s most compelling rock statements. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Crypts, Dia Dear, DJ S4NtA_MU3rTE, DJ Nako

8pm, $12

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com


THURSDAY 13

Femina Potens’ ASKEW Film and Performance Festival

Should your post-convention feminist outrage still be clouding the edges of your vision, mark your calendars for a weekend of smart, sex-positive female-made films and readings at YBCA. Tonight, take in multimedia memoir presentations by adult industry stars-authors Oriana Small and Lorelei Lee, then a documentary on SF strippers’ fight for justice in the workplace by Hiwa B., an ex-dancer herself. Later this weekend, Madison Young’s doc on her first year as a mama in SF sex culture awaits (Sat/14), and Mollena Williams’ interactive short on the ways racism can emerge in the world of BDSM play (Sun/15). Forget “legitimate rape,” it’s time to start developing our own vision of the way we want the world to work. (Donohue)

Through Sun/15, $10/screening

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

Nommo Ogo

The Bay Area is overloaded with ambient electronic acts inviting you to lose yourself in their Pink Floyd-on-codeine haze, but Nommo Ogo’s attention to detail sets it apart from the pack. Balancing old-school, Cluster-meets-Zelda synth tones with live guitars, field recordings, jittery percussion, and the occasional buried vocal track, its records are unusually dynamic, and compositionally advanced, for “ambient” fare. This Thursday, the Oakland-via-Anchorage outfit will unleash some new material, as it celebrates the release of its forthcoming LP, Endless Dream, at Bottom of the Hill. Will the new album follow the sturdy progression of the back catalogue, or will it present a bold change of direction? (Kaplan)

With Candle Labra, Secret Sidewalk

9pm, $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com


FRIDAY 14

John Cage Celebration: PICO

You have one chance this weekend to wish John Cage a Happy 100th Birthday. With a razor mind, often barely visible behind his affable façade, Cage and Merce Cunningham turned inside out cherished traditions about listening and seeing. A European composer once asked Cage whether it was not difficult for him write music so far away from the Tradition. His reply: “it must be hard for you write music so close to the Tradition.” PICO: Performance Indeterminate Cage Opera, based on Cage’s Fontana Mix — less a score than a manual for proceeding — is a very Cagean enterprise with live and recorded music, three channels of video, 20 plus dancers, and audience participation (should you be so inclined). PICO also pays tribute to kindred spirits Marcel Duchamp and Nam June Paik (Rita Felciano).

7:30pm, $7

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft Way, Berk.

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Rustie

Who needs restraint, or tastefulness, when you’ve got Rustie? Like fellow producers Hudson Mohawke and Lone, the Glasgow-based beatmaker specializes in a high-gloss brand of dubstep-tinged electronica that overwhelms with its kitchen-sink approach. Much like an alternate Sonic the Hedgehog soundtrack, as envisioned by the venerable Warp imprint, his debut LP, Glass Swords, was one of 2011’s most ecstatically go-for-broke records. Garish, fluorescent synths compete relentlessly for the spotlight, anchored (just barely) by grooving, thrashing percussion, on a hugely celebratory record with the irresistible energy of a basketful of puppies. One can only imagine the potential of Rustie’s maximalist approach in a live setting. (Kaplan)

With Kode9, Obey City, Anna Love, Dreams, Dials vs. Bogi, The Slayers Club Crew

10pm, $20

1015 Folsom, SF

(415) 264-1015

www.1015.com/onezerothree

 

Phenomena

Everyone’s heard of 1977’s Suspiria, but Dario Argento’s filmography is full of should-be horror classics — including 1985’s Phenomena, which returns to Suspiria‘s boarding-school milieu but shifts the action to Switzerland, where the new girl in class is the troubled daughter (Jennifer Connelly) of a movie star. She sleepwalks, she communicates with insects, she befriends a local professor (Donald Pleasence, Halloween‘s Dr. Loomis) and his chimpanzee companion, she runs afoul of the local murderer … man, growing up is tough! With lamé’d costumes by Giorgio Armani and songs by Iron Maiden, Motörhead, and Argento faves Goblin, Phenomena is a gloriously ’80s relic. It screens with animated classic The Iron Giant (1999) and young Connelly’s Muppet-tastic breakout film, 1986’s Labyrinth. (Cheryl Eddy)

“Midnites for Maniacs: Trix Are For Kids Triple Bill”

7:30pm, $13

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.midnitesformaniacs.com

 

J.B. Smoove

After starting his career on Russell Simmons’s Def Comedy Jam in the ’90s, J.B. Smoove has since solidified his status as a foolproof secret weapon within the comedy world. Uncredited appearances and writing work on Saturday Night Live, in addition to scene-stealing supporting roles in films such as Pootie Tang, helped land him his current role as Leon (“Pepitone, Pepitone!”), Larry David’s opportunistic house guest/sidekick on recent seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm. As a stand-up performer, Smoove combines physical comedy with hilarious storytelling, courtesy of his unmistakable vocal delivery. (Landon Moblad)

8 and 10:15pm; Sat/15, 7:30 and 9:45pm, $25

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com


SATURDAY 15

Los Straitjackets

Nashville, Tenn.’s Los Straitjackets have been pairing genuine musicianship with over-the-top gimmick for more than 20 years and 11 studio albums. True, quality songwriting and matching costumes sounds oxymoronic, but Los Straitjackets defy common sense. The foursome plays instrumental, surf-inspired rock music, with an extensive list of covers, including “Deck the Halls” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” but their original material is where the band shines. During performances, they dress identically in all black with gold Aztec-inspired medallions, differentiated only by customized luchador masks. Not to worry, they also have synchronized choreography. (Haley Zaremba)

With Daddy-O Grande, Big Sandy and His Fly-Rite Boys

9pm, $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com


SUNDAY 16

Faux Queen Pageant: The Next Generation

Now, San Francisco cherishes an exceptional portion of the world’s most glamorous and inventive faux queens. But in 1995, when Diet Popstitute and Ruby Toosday unleashed the Faux Queen Pageant, there were few outlets for “drag queens trapped in women’s bodies.” The doors FQP helped throw open make its 2012 reincarnation all the more intriguing, as SF’s big and brassy faux queen contest returns under the auspices of Bea Dazzler, Holy McGrail, and the Klubstitute Kollective. With MCs Leigh Crow (as Captain Kirk) and Trixxie Carr at the helm, and a firmament of local star judges (Heklina, Fauxnique, Birdie Bob Watt, Cricket Bardot, Ruby Toosday, L. Ron Hubby and Deena Davenport), Faux Queen Pageant: The Next Generation promises to take you where no woman has gone before. (Robert Avila)

8pm, $15

DNA Lounge

375 Eleventh St., SF

(415) 626-1409

www.fauxqueenpageant.com


TUESDAY 18

Mark Bittman

Veteran New York Times opinion and food columnist Mark Bittman claims he’s not a chef and he’s never been professionally trained. Yet, his How to Cook Everything is recognized as a veritable recipe bible for curious home chefs. Bittman, nicknamed “The Minimalist” for his unfussy approach to cooking, delves even further into the fundamentals with this year’s updated How to Cook Everything: The Basics. The newest edition is an encyclopedia of tips, ranging from how to set up a pantry to how to tell when particular foods are done cooking (always important for those house parties). As if writing for the Times and authoring more than a dozen cookbooks was not enough, The Minimalist debuted his new Cooking Channel show of the same name earlier this fall. (Kevin Lee)

In conversation with Jessica Battilana

7:30pm, $22–$27

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness

(415) 392-4400

www.cityboxoffice.com


TUESDAY 18

Paloma Faith

Thanks to a string of hit singles such as “Do You Want The Truth or Something Beautiful?” along with starring roles in several films, including Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, acting opposite Tom Waits, British singer Paloma Faith is a noted star over in her native UK. Fusing modern pop with sultry ’50s rock sensibilities and a classy, retro-inspired look, the 27-year-old Faith is hitting the United States for her first ever tour, in support of her new album, Fall To Grace. Fans can be sure that next time she comes around, it will be in a much bigger venue. (Sean McCourt)

8pm, $15

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell St., SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

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Film Listings

Andrew Lam
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, and Lynn Rapoport. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. Due to the Labor Day holiday, theater information was incomplete at presstime.

CINE+MAS

The San Francisco Latino Film Festival runs Sept. 13-28 at various Bay Area venues. For tickets (most shows $12) and schedule, visit www.sflatinofilmfestival.com. For commentary, see "Got Movie Fever?"

OPENING

Arbitrage See "All in the Game." (1:40) Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

Bangkok Revenge After witnessing the murder of his parents as a child (and suffering an injury that renders him incapable of feeling emotions), a man (Jon Foo) grows up with one thing on his mind: payback. First he gets insanely good at martial arts, though. (1:20) Metreon.

Beauty is Embarrassing See "Got Movie Fever?" (1:27) Roxie.

Cane Toads: The Conquest See "See Got Movie Fever?" (1:25) Smith Rafael.

Finding Nemo 3D Pixar’s Oscar-winning undersea tale returns, spiffed-up from its 2003 version with 3D. (1:40) Presidio, Shattuck.

Girl Model Everyone wants to be special — though of course that only works if other people aren’t. The disturbingly instructive new documentary Girl Model makes a good case for not encouraging such desires in your child, because the likelihood is that someone will come along to exploit that desire, convincingly promise them fame, then leave them worse off than before. "The first secret to a successful modeling career is to start modeling at five or ten years old," says an emcee at a cattle-call showcase early on in David Redmond and Ashley Sabin’s film. It’s Russia, where the relatively new capitalism trickles down even less than here, so the families are even more eager to turn little Svetlana into a moneymaker. But that way lies madness, or at least deceit and disappointment. Plucked from a couple hundred pretty, rail-thin girls, 13-year-old wide-eyed blonde Nadya Vall is yanked from her rural Siberian village and mother and sent to Japan, where she fits a general type sought there. The younger the better, as talent scout Ashley Arbaugh tells us, qualifying that it’s not her taste, but she’s learned to see through the clients’ eyes. An ex-model herself, Ashley gives off disillusioned, compromised vibes. (It takes a while for us to realize that she’s a user and a hypocrite — not a buffer between the girls and harsh reality but a key part of the problem herself.) Needless to say, Nadya ends up owing rather than making money. Meanwhile Ashley lounges around the immaculate, expansive, coldly all-white house her job as middleman has earned; at the end of the film, she’s telling a new group of parents "Every model has success in Japan, unlike other markets where they might go into debt. They never do in Japan." For a longer version of this review, visit sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:17) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Harvey)

Keep The Lights On See "Dark and Stormy." (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

ONGOING

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Unstoppable force meets immovable object — and indeed gets stopped — in Alison Klayman’s documentary about China’s most famous contemporary artist. A larger than life figure, Ai Weiwei’s bohemian rebel persona was honed during a long (1981-93) stint in the U.S., where he fit right into Manhattan’s avant-garde and gallery scenes. Returning to China when his father’s health went south, he continued to push the envelope with projects in various media, including architecture — he’s best known today for the 2008 Beijing Olympics’ "Bird’s Nest" stadium design. But despite the official approval implicit in such high-profile gigs, his incessant, obdurate criticism of China’s political repressive politics and censorship — a massive installation exposing the government-suppressed names of children killed by collapsing, poorly-built schools during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake being one prominent example — has tread dangerous ground. This scattershot but nonetheless absorbing portrait stretches its view to encompass the point at which the subject’s luck ran out: when the film was already in post-production, he was arrested, then held for two months without official charge before he was accused of alleged tax evasion. (He is now free, albeit barred from leaving China, and "suspected" of additional crimes including pornography and bigamy.) (1:31) Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

The Apparition Does this horror flick stand a ghost of a chance against its predecessors? So many bodies, so many mysteriously slammed doors, so many girl ghouls — they all surface in this obviously low-budget cash-in on the coattails of the Paranormal Activity franchise. Look to the signs: the slow build of zero-CGI/bucks tension-building devices like flung-open doors that are supposed to be locked, scarily grainy, nausea-inducing handheld video footage and spastic editing, and screams in pitch blackness—with a dash of everything from 1979’s Phantasm to Fulci to J-Horror. Prefaced by the story of psychics’ attempts to rouse a spirit, then a flashback to a group of college students’ try at recreating the séance by magnifying their brainwaves, The Apparition opens on the cute, perfectly made-up, and way-too-glamorous-for-suburbia Kelly (Ashley Greene) and her boyfriend Ben (Sebastian Stan), who have just moved into a new faceless development in the middle of nowhere, into a house her family has bought as an investment. Turns out they aren’t the only ones playing house, as the building’s alarm is continually bypassed, mysterious mold appears, and the neighbor’s adorable pup whimpers at thin air and obligingly dies in their laundry room. Matters go from bad to worst, as some invisible force does in Kelly’s cactus, messes up her closet, and blows the lights — all of which also sounds like the antics of a lousy roommate. Add in choppy, continuity-destroying editing; throwaway dialogue; music that sounds like it came from Kelly’s favorite store, Costco; overt appropriations like a slithery, long-haired ghoul girl that slimes her way out of a cardboard box; and that important, indelibly spooky image that comes far too late to count — and you’ll find yourself rooting for the fiend to put these kids out of their misery. (1:22) Metreon. (Chun)

Bachelorette A movie called Bachelorette is inevitably going to be accused of riding Bridesmaids‘ coattails, even if — as it happens — Bachelorette‘s source-material play was written years before the 2011 comedy hit theaters. (That said, there are inevitable similarities, what with the shared wedding themes and all.) Playwright turned scriptwriter-director Leslye Headland does a good job of portraying women who are repulsive in realistic ways: a decade ago, Regan (Kirsten Dunst), Gena (Lizzy Caplan), Katie (Isla Fisher) were the popular "B-Faces" at their high school and haven’t matured much since. Competitive Regan is a Type A blonde; Gena’s the queen of one-night stands; and Katie’s a self-destructive party girl. All of them are pushing 30, and though Regan’s the most functional among them, she’s the hardest-hit when she learns that Becky (Bridesmaids‘ Rebel Wilson), always treated as a second-tier B-Face by virtue of being plus-sized, is engaged. "I was supposed to be first," Regan wails via three-way cell call to Gena and Katie, who’re sympathetic to this sense of entitlement. The wedding is a fancy New York City affair, so the B-Faces reunite for what they think will be a bachelorette party for the ages. Most of the film takes place during that single night, a madcap, coke-fueled, mean-spirited spiral into chaos. It’s raunchy and funny, but every character is utterly unlikable, which becomes more of a problem and less of an amusement as the movie trundles onward toward the expected happy ending. Bachelorette would’ve been better served by sticking with its rallying cry — "Fuck everyone!" — to the bitter end. (1:34) Metreon, Presidio. (Eddy)

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

The Bourne Legacy Settle down, Matt Damon fans — the original Bourne appears in The Bourne Legacy only in dialogue ("Jason Bourne is in New York!") and photograph form. Stepping in as lead badass is Jeremy Renner, whose twin powers of strength and intelligence come courtesy of an experimental-drug program overseen by sinister government types (including Edward Norton in an utterly generic role) and administered by lab workers doing it "for the science!," according to Dr. Rachel Weisz. Legacy‘s timeline roughly matches up with the last Damon film, The Bourne Ultimatum, which came out five years ago and is referenced here like we’re supposed to be on a first-name basis with its long-forgotten plot twists. Anyway, thanks to ol’ Jason and a few other factors involving Albert Finney and YouTube, the drug program is shut down, and all guinea-pig agents and high-security-clearance doctors are offed. Except guess which two, who manage to flee across the globe to get more WMDs for Renner’s DNA. Essentially one long chase scene, The Bourne Legacy spends way too much of its time either in Norton’s "crisis suite," watching characters bark orders and stare at computer screens, or trying to explain the genetic tinkering that’s made Renner a super-duper-superspy. Remember when Damon killed that guy with a rolled-up magazine in 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy? Absolutely nothing so rad in this imagination-free enterprise. (2:15) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Branded (1:46) SF Center.

The Bullet Vanishes Veteran Hong Kong actor Lau Ching-wan stars as a Sherlock Holmes type in 1930s Shanghai, bumped up from prison-guard detail to homicide detective by top brass impressed with his talent, if not his unusual methods. Good timing, since there’s been a series of killings at the local munitions factory, an operation run by a Scooby Doo-ish villain — in cahoots with corrupt cops — who’s prone to snappy hats and checkered overcoats. Adding to the mystery: a tragic back story involving Russian roulette and blood-written graffiti promising "The phantom bullets will kill you all!" Helping solve the crimes is Nicholas Tse as "the fastest gun in Tiancheng," no slouch of an investigator himself; together, the sleuths compile evidence and recreate scenes of murders, including one that seemingly transpired in a locked room with only one exit. The Bullet Vanishes contains more plot twists, slightly fewer steampunk flourishes, and way less slo-mo fist action than Guy Ritchie’s recent attempts at Holmes; though it’s no masterpiece, it’s a fun enough whodunit, with a reliably great and quirky performance from Lau. (2:00) Metreon. (Eddy)

The Campaign (1:25) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Celeste and Jesse Forever Married your best friend, realized you love but can’t be in love with each other, and don’t want to let all those great in-jokes wither away? Such is the premise of Celeste and Jesse Forever, the latest in what a recent wave of meaty, girl-centric comedies penned by actresses — here Rashida Jones working with real-life ex Will McCormack; there, Zoe Kazan (Ruby Sparks), Zoe Lister Jones (Lola Versus), and Lena Dunham (Girls) — who have gone the DIY route and whipped up their own juicy roles. There’s no mistaking theirs for your average big-screen rom-com: they dare to wallow harder, skew smarter, and in the case of Celeste, tackle the thorny, tough-to-resolve relationship dilemma that stubbornly refuses to conform to your copy-and-paste story arc. Nor do their female protagonists come off as uniformly likable: in this case, Celeste (Jones) is a bit of an aspiring LA powerbitch. Her Achilles heel is artist Jesse (Andy Samberg), the slacker high school sweetheart she wed and separated from because he doesn’t share her goals (e.g., he doesn’t have a car or a job). Yet the two continue to spend all their waking hours together and share an undeniable rapport, extending from Jesse’s encampment in her backyard apartment to their jokey simulated coitus featuring phallic-shaped lip balm. Throwing a wrench in the works: the fact that they’re still kind of in love with each other, which all their pals, like Jesse’s pot-dealer bud Skillz (McCormack), can clearly see. It’s an shaggy, everyday breakup yarn, writ glamorous by its appealing leads, that we too rarely witness, and barring the at-times nausea-inducing shaky-cam under the direction of Lee Toland Krieger, it’s rendered compelling and at times very funny — there’s no neat and tidy way to say good-bye, and Jones and McCormack do their best to capture but not encapsulate the severance and inevitable healing process. It also helps that the chemistry practically vibrates between the boyish if somewhat one-note Samberg and the soulful Jones, who fully, intelligently rises to the occasion, bringing on the heartbreak. (1:31) Marina, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Chicken With Plums Steeped in whimsy — and a longing for love, beauty, and home — this latest effort from brilliant Persian-French cartoonist-filmmaker Marjane Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud flaunts the odd contours of its eccentric narrative, enchants with its imaginative tangents, sprawls like an unincapsulated life, and then takes off on aching, campy romantic reverie—a magical realistic vision of one Iranian artist’s doomed trajectory. Master violinist Nasser Ali Khan (Mathieu Amalric) is seeking the ineffable — a replacement for his destroyed instrument — and otherwise he’s determined to die. We trace the mystery of his passing, backward, with wanders through the life of his family and loved one along the way in this playful, bittersweet feast. Despite Amalric’s glazed-eyed mugging, which almost spoils the dish, Satrapi’s wonderfully arch yet lyrical visual sensibility and resonant characters — embodied by Maria de Medeiros, Jamel Debbouze, Golshifteh Farahani, and Isabella Rossellini, among others — satisfy, serving up so much more than chicken with plums. (1:31) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Cold Light of Day (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

Compliance No film at this year’s Sundance Film Festival encountered as much controversy as Craig Zobel’s Compliance. At the first public screening, an all-out shouting match erupted, with an audience member yelling "Sundance can do better!" You can’t buy that kind of publicity. Every screening that followed was jam-packed with people hoping to experience the most shocking film at Sundance, and the film did not disappoint. (Beware: every review I have happened upon has unnecessarily spoiled major plots in the film, which is based on true events.) What is so impressive about Zobel’s film is how it builds up a sense of ever-impending terror. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the film steps into Psycho (1960) terrain, as it boldly aims to confront a society filled with people who are trained to follow rules without questioning them. Magnolia Pictures, which previously collaborated with Zobel on his debut film Great World of Sound (which premiered at Sundance in 2007), picked up the film for theatrical release; if you dare to check it out, prepare to be traumatized as well as intellectualized. You’ll be screaming about one of the most audacious movies of 2012 — and that’s exactly why the film is so brilliant. For an interview with Zobel, visit www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision. (1:30) Lumiere. (Jesse Hawthorne Ficks)

Cosmopolis With end times nigh and the 99 percent battering the gates of the establishment, it’s little wonder David Cronenberg’s rendition of the Don DeLillo novel might rotate, with the stately rhythm of a royal funeral and deliciously tongue-in-cheek humor, around one of the most famed vampire heartthrobs at the cineplex. Sadly, a recent paparazzi scandal threatens to eclipse this latest, enjoyably blighted installment in the NYC urban nightmare genre. Robert Pattinson’s billionaire asset manager Eric Packer takes meetings with his new wife Elise (Sarah Gadon) and staffers like his monetary theorist Vija (Samantha Morton) in his moving office: a white, leather-bound stretch limo that materializes like a sleek, imposing extension of his pale frame. Seriously disassociated from reality on multiple levels, Eric is a 28-year-old boy in a bubble, speaking of himself in third person and willing to spend all day making his way across town to get a haircut at his father’s old barbershop, even though his head of security (Kevin Durand) warns him that at least one "credible threat" has designs on his life. The passing of his favorite Sufi rapper (K’Naan), a possible Rothko for sale, a mad pie-thrower, and an asymmetrical prostate all threaten to capsize those, as it turns out, not-so-humble plans. Warning: the brainier members of Team Edward might plan on finding their minds blown by this thoughtful and mordantly humorous meditation on this country’s cult of money, while Cronenberg watchers will be gratified to pluck out his recurring themes, here dealt with a lighter hand than usual. At this date, rather than telegraphing how one might feel about a scene by way of, say, music, the director is increasingly comfortable with the ambiguity — and the uneasy, pleasing mix of sneaking repulsion and gimlet-eyed humor, of these scenes and their language. Thus the autoerotic-car fetishism of Crash (1996) and hallucinatory culture grazing of Naked Lunch (1991) — and that fascination with how a body intersects sexually or otherwise with a machine or "other" — seems completely natural here. Or perhaps it’s a measure of how much Cronenberg’s preoccupations and cinematic language have made themselves at home in the vernacular. (1:49) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

The Dark Knight Rises Early reviews that called out The Dark Knight Rises‘ flaws were greeted with the kind of vicious rage that only anonymous internet commentators can dish out. And maybe this is yet another critic-proof movie, albeit not one based on a best-selling YA book series. Of course, it is based on a comic book, though Christopher Nolan’s sophisticated filmmaking and Christian Bale’s tortured lead performance tend to make that easy to forget. In this third and "final" installment in Nolan’s trilogy, Bruce Wayne has gone into seclusion, skulking around his mansion and bemoaning his broken body and shattered reputation. He’s lured back into the Batcave after a series of unfortunate events, during which The Dark Knight Rises takes some jabs at contemporary class warfare (with problematic mixed results), introduces a villain with pecs of steel and an at-times distractingly muffled voice (Tom Hardy), and unveils a potentially dangerous device that produces sustainable energy (paging Tony Stark). Make no mistake: this is an exciting, appropriately moody conclusion to a superior superhero series, with some nice turns by supporting players Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. But in trying to cram in so many characters and plot threads and themes (so many prisons in this thing, literal and figural), The Dark Knight Rises is ultimately done in by its sprawl. Without a focal point — like Heath Ledger’s menacing, iconic Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight — the stakes aren’t as high, and the end result feels more like a superior summer blockbuster than one for the ages. (2:44) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Expendables 2 (1:43) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Farewell, My Queen (Benoît Jacquot, France, 2012) Opening early on the morning of July 14, 1789, Farewell, My Queen depicts four days at the Palace of Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, as witnessed by a young woman named Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux) who serves as reader to Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). Sidonie displays a singular and romantic devotion to the queen, while the latter’s loyalties are split between a heedless amour propre and her grand passion for the Duchess de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen). These domestic matters and other regal whims loom large in the tiny galaxy of the queen’s retinue, so that while elsewhere in the palace, in shadowy, candle-lit corridors, courtiers and their servants mingle to exchange news, rumor, panicky theories, and evacuation plans, in the queen’s quarters the task of embroidering a dahlia for a projected gown at times overshadows the storming of the Bastille and the much larger catastrophe on the horizon. (1:39) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Rapoport)

For a Good Time, Call&ldots; Suffering the modern-day dilemmas of elapsed rent control and boyfriend douchebaggery, sworn enemies Katie (Ari Graynor) and Lauren (Lauren Miller) find themselves shacking up in Katie’s highly covetable Manhattan apartment, brought together on a stale cloud of resentment by mutual bestie Jesse (Justin Long, gamely delivering a believable version of your standard-issue young hipster NYC gay boy). The domestic glacier begins to melt somewhere around the time that Lauren discovers Katie is working a phone-sex hotline from her bedroom; equipped with a good head for business, she offers to help her go freelance for a cut of the proceeds. Major profitability ensues, as does a friendship evoking the pair bonding at the center of your garden-variety romantic comedy, as Katie trains Lauren to be a phone-sex operator and the two share everything from pinkie swears and matching pink touch-tone phones to intimate secrets and the occasional hotline threesome. Directed by Jamie Travis and adapted from a screenplay by Miller and Katie Anne Naylon, the film is a welcome response to the bromance genre, and with any luck it may also introduce linguistic felicities like "phone-banging" and "let’s get this fuckshow started" into the larger culture. The raunchy telephonic interludes include cameos by Kevin Smith and Seth Rogen (Miller’s husband) as customers calling from such unfurtive locations as a public bathroom stall and the front seat of a taxicab. But the two roomies supply plenty of dirty as Katie, an abashed wearer of velour and denim pantsuits, helps the more restrained Lauren discover the joys of setting free her inner potty mouth. (1:25) SF Center. (Rapoport)

Hit and Run Annie (Kristen Bell) has a Stanford doctorate but is treading in the academic backwaters until the prospect is raised of an ideal department-heading position at UCLA. She’s thrilled, but also conflicted, because live-in beau Charlie (Dax Shepard) is in the Federal Witness Protection program, and can’t leave the nowhere burg he lives in incognito — particularly for Los Angeles — without risking serious personal harm. However, for love he decides he’ll risk everything so she can take the job. Unfortunately, this fast attracts the attention of various people very much interested in halting this exodus, for various reasons: notably Charlie’s inept U.S. Marshall "protector" (Tom Arnold), Annie’s psycho ex (Smallville’s Michael Rosenbaum), and a guy with an even more serious grudge against Charlie (Bradley Cooper in a dreadlock wig). A whole lot of wacky chases and stunt driving ensues. The second feature Shepard’s co-directed (with David Palmer) and written, this aims for a cross between 1970s drive-in demolition derbies (1977’s Smokey and the Bandit, 1974’s Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, etc.) and envelope-pushing comedy thrillers like 1993’s True Romance. There’s a lot of comic talent here, including some notable cameos, yet Hit and Run is one of those cases where the material is almost there, but not quite. It moves breezily enough but some of the characters are more annoying than funny; the dialogue is an awkward mix of bad taste and PC debates about bad taste; and some ideas that aim to be hilarious and subversive (naked old people, a long discussion about jailhouse rape) just sit there, painfully. Which makes this only the second-best Dax Shepard movie with incarceration rape jokes, after 2006’s Let’s Go to Prison. (1:38) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Harvey)

Hope Springs Heading into her 32nd year of matrimony with aggressively oblivious Arnold (Tommy Lee Jones), desperate housewife Kay (Meryl Streep) sets aside her entrenched passivity in a last-ditch effort to put flesh back on the skeleton of a marriage. Stumbling upon the guidance of one Dr. Bernard Feld (Steve Carell) in the self-help section of a bookstore, Kay (barely) convinces Arnold to accompany her to a weeklong session at Feld’s Center for Intensive Couples Counseling, in Hope Springs, Maine. The scenes from a marriage leading up to their departure, as well as the incremental advances and crippling setbacks of their therapeutic sojourn, are poignant and distressing and possibly familiar. Some slow drift, long ago set in motion, though we don’t know by what, has settled them in concrete in their separate routines — and bedrooms. It’s the kind of thing that, if it were happening in real life — say, to you — might make you weep. But somehow, through the magic of cinema and the uncomfortable power of witnessing frankly depicted failures of intimacy, we laugh. This is by no means a wackiness-ensues sort of sexual comedy, though. Director David Frankel (2006’s The Devil Wears Prada and, unfortunately, 2008’s Marley & Me) and Jones and Streep, through the finely detailed particularities of their performances, won’t let it be, while Carell resists playing the therapeutic scenes for more than the gentlest pulses of humor. More often, his empathetic silences and carefully timed queries provide a place for these two unhappy, inarticulate, isolated people to fall and fumble and eventually make contact. (1:40) Piedmont, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

The Imposter A family tragedy, an international thriller, a Southern-fried mystery, and a true story: The Imposter is all of these things. This unique documentary reveals the tale of Frédéric Bourdin, dubbed "the Chameleon" for his epic false-identity habit. His ballsiest accomplishment was also his most heinous con: in 1997, he claimed to be Nicholas Barclay, a San Antonio teen missing since 1994. Amazingly, the impersonation worked for a time, though Bourdin (early 20s, brown-eyed, speaks English with a French accent) hardly resembled Nicholas (who would have been 16, and had blue eyes). Using interviews — with Nicholas’ shell-shocked family, government types who unwittingly aided the charade, and Bourdin himself — and ingenious re-enactments that borrow more from crime dramas than America’s Most Wanted, director Bart Layton weaves a multi-layered chronicle of one man’s unbelievable deception. (1:39) Lumiere. (Eddy)

The Inbetweeners The bro-bacchanal never stops being funny in some circles, and those acolytes might want to attempt to penetrate the thick, juicy UK accents in this writ-large version of the English sitcom of the same name. The deliciously awkward teenage boy gang’s all here — with an added dose of ultragross-out humor that one-ups the American Pie gang. Brainy Will (Simon Bird), aggressively gelled Simon (Joe Thomas), super-horndog Jay (James Buckley), and lanky oddity Neil (Blake Harrison) are off on summer break before "uni" on a booze- and sex-swathed Greek isle. The goal: to get soundly laid and eradicate Simon’s heartbreak over recently departed girlfriend Carli (Emily Head). As luck would have it, the bunch even stumble over some nubile, nice cuties — including doll-faced blonde Allison (Laura Haddock) and far-too-accommodating brunette Lucy (Tamla Kari) — in their quest for "fit" slatterns. In between them and a very certain happy ending, in more ways than one, are plenty of excess, barf, poo, blackouts on ant hills — what’s not to love, provided you can overlook the very un-PC rumblings from this dude-a-rama? A self-fellatio interlude even takes on the Jackass posse on their own physically challenging turf. (1:37) Metreon. (Chun)

The Intouchables Cries of "racism" seem a bit out of hand when it comes to this likable albeit far-from-challenging French comedy loosely based on a real-life relationship between a wealthy white quadriplegic and his caretaker of color. The term "cliché" is more accurate. And where were these critics when 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy and 2011’s The Help — movies that seem designed to make nostalgic honkies feel good about those fraught relationships skewed to their advantage—were coming down the pike? (It also might be more interesting to look at how these films about race always hinge on economies in which whites must pay blacks to interact with/educate/enlighten them.) In any case, Omar Sy, portraying Senegalese immigrant Driss, threatens to upset all those pundits’ apple carts with his sheer life force, even when he’s shaking solo on the dance floor to sounds as effortlessly unprovocative, and old-school, as Earth, Wind, and Fire. In fact, everything about The Intouchables is as old school as 1982’s 48 Hrs., spinning off the still laugh-grabbing humor that comes with juxtaposing a hipper, more streetwise black guy with a hapless, moneyed chalky. The wheelchair-bound Philippe (Francois Cluzet) is more vulnerable than most, and he has a hard time getting along with any of his nurses, until he meets Driss, who only wants his signature for his social services papers. It’s not long before the cultured, classical music-loving Philippe’s defenses are broken down by Driss’ flip, somewhat honest take on the follies and pretensions of high culture — a bigger deal in France than in the new world, no doubt. Director-writer Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano aren’t trying to innovate —they seem more set on crafting an effervescent blockbuster that out-blockbusters Hollywood — and the biggest compliment might be that the stateside remake is already rumored to be in the works. (1:52) Lumiere. (Chun)

Kumaré Just as there was a certain bullying pride of snark that made Bill Maher and Larry Charles’ Religulous (2008) more mean-spirited than necessary, Kumaré leaves a sour, smug aftertaste. Raised in New Jersey by a first-generation immigrant family of Hindus, Vikram Gandhi proclaims himself a skeptic who started out wanting to make a documentary about the opportunistic charlatans one can find passing as spiritually enlightened gurus in both India and around the booming US yoga industry. "I wanted to prove to others looking for answers that no one is more spiritual than anyone, that spiritual leaders are just illusions," he tells us. A noble impulse. Yet somehow this took the form of growing his hair and beard out, wearing saffron robes, and posing as Sri Kumaré, a fresh-off-the-boat guru who arrives in Phoenix, Ariz. to open up shop as a one-stop spiritual guide for the gullible. He asks "Could people find the same peace in a made-up religion that they would in a real one?" But too often the real question here seems to be "How silly can I make these chumps look while starring in my very own nonfiction version of The Love Guru?" The comedy Kumaré has been primarily compared to is 2006’s Borat, another Larry Charles joint. As unhappy as their portraiture in Borat made its duped participants, it was hard to feel sorry for them — given enough rope they gladly hung themselves expressing racism, homophobia, sexism, and sheer Ugly Americanism. But those who fall under Kumaré‘s farcical spell don’t deserve to be exposed and ridiculed; they’re just people with real-world issues — financial struggles, low self-esteem, empty-nest loneliness, etc. — looking for somebody to tell them what to do. (1:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

Lawless Lawless has got to be the most pretentiously humorless movie ever made about moonshiners — a criminal subset whose adventures onscreen have almost always been rambunctious and breezy, even when violent. Not here, bub. Adapting Matt Bondurant’s fact-inspired novel The Wettest County in the World about his family’s very colorful times a couple generations back, director John Hillcoat and scenarist (as well as, natch, composer) Nick Cave have made one of those films in which the characters are presented to you as if already immortalized on Mount Rushmore — monumental, legendary, a bit stony. They’ve got a crackling story about war between hillbilly booze suppliers and corrupt lawmen during Prohibition, and while the results aren’t dull (they’re too bloody for that, anyway), they’d be a whole lot better if the entire enterprise didn’t take itself so gosh darned seriously. The Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Va. are considered "legends" when we meet them in 1931, having defied all and sundry as well as survived a few bullets: mack-truck-built Forrest (Tom Hardy); eldest Howard (Jason Clarke), who tipples and smiles a lot; and "runt of the litter" Jack (Shia LeBeouf), who has a chip on his shoulder. The local law looks the other way so long as their palms are greased, but the Feds send sneering Special Deputy Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), it’s an eye for an eye for an eye, etc. The revenge-laden action in Lawless is engaging, but the filmmakers are trying so hard to make it all resonant and folkloric and meta-cinematic, any fun you have is in spite of their efforts. (1:55) California, Four Star, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Little White Lies In the wake of a serious accident that puts magnetic Ludo (Jean Dujardin, just briefly seen) in the hospital, his circle of closest friends go without him on their annual vacation at a beachfront summer home, courtesy of well-off restaurateur Max (Francois Cluzet) and wife Vero (Valerie Bonneton). But this year they’ve all got a lot of drama going on. Marie (Marion Cotillard) is suffering the uncomfortable consequences of all the lovers (male and female) she’s run out on when "commitment" reared its head. Similarly, the roving eye of actor Eric (Gilles Lellouche) threatens the stable relationship he’s finally sorta settled on. Hapless boy-man Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) obsesses over the longtime girlfriend who’s dumping him. And Vincent (Benoit Magimel) endangers his marriage to Isabelle (Pascale Arbillot) by privately proclaiming more-than-platonic love for best friend Max — whose discomfort manifests itself in hostile behaviors that threaten to ruin everyone’s stay. Actor Guillaume Canet’s third film as writer-director (following the 2006 hit thriller Tell No One) has been compared, even by himself, to 1983’s The Big Chill. But while that slick, somewhat glib seriocomedy’s characters had 1960s activist pasts and faded ideals to square with encroaching midlife, this slicker, glibber ensemble piece is about people who’ve never shared much more than good times and mutual self-absorption. Though Canet has worked with most of these actors before, and developed Lies in collaboration with them, the thinly amusing, often contrived results hardly tax anyone’s resources. (Nor are they equal-opportunity: star attraction Cotillard aside, he barely seems interested in the women here.) It takes two and a half hours for this overblown fluff to arrive at a group-hug freeze frame (ugh), aiming for emotional heft it still hasn’t earned. (2:34) Albany. (Harvey)

Moonrise Kingdom Does Wes Anderson’s new film mark a live-action return to form after 2007’s disappointingly wan Darjeeling Limited? More or less. Does it tick all the Andersonian style and content boxes? Indubitably. In the most obvious deviation Anderson has taken with Moonrise, he gives us his first period piece, a romance set in 1965 on a fictional island off the New England coast. After a chance encounter at a church play, pre-teen Khaki Scout Sam (newcomer Jared Gilman) instantly falls for the raven-suited, sable-haired Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward, ditto). The two become pen pals, and quickly bond over the shared misery of being misunderstood by both authority figures and fellow kids. The bespectacled Sam is an orphan, ostracized by his foster parents and scout troop (much to the dismay of its straight-arrow leader Edward Norton). Suzy despises her clueless attorney parents, played with gusto by Bill Murray and Frances McDormand in some of the film’s funniest and best scenes. When the two kids run off together, the whole thing begins to resemble a kind of tween version of Godard’s 1965 lovers-on the-lam fantasia Pierrot le Fou. But like most of Anderson’s stuff, it has a gauzy sentimentality more akin to Truffaut than Godard. Imagine if the sequence in 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums where Margot and Richie run away to the Museum of Natural History had been given the feature treatment: it’s a simple yet inspired idea, and it becomes a charming little tale of the perils of growing up and selling out the fantasy. But it doesn’t feel remotely risky. It’s simply too damn tame. (1:37) Four Star, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Michelle Devereaux)

The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2:05) Four Star, SF Center.

ParaNorman (1:32) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

The Possession (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness.

Premium Rush "Fixed gear. Steel frame. No brakes. Can’t stop … don’t want to." Thus goes the gear breakdown and personal philosophy of New York City bike messenger Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an aggro rider who uses his law school-refined brain to make split-second decisions regarding which way to dart through Midtown traffic. Though bike messengers had a pop culture moment in the 1990s, Premium Rush is set in the present day, with one of Wilee’s numerous voice-overs explaining the job’s continued importance even in the digital era. One such example: a certain envelope he’s tasked with ferrying across the city, given to him by the troubled roommate (Jamie Chung) of the pretty fellow messenger (Dania Ramirez) he’s romantically pursuing. The contents of the envelope, and the teeth-gnashingly evil-cop-with-a-gambling-problem (Michael Shannon, adding some weird flair to what’s essentially a stock villain) who would dearly love to get his mitts on it, are less crucial to Premium Rush than the film’s many, many chase scenes featuring Wilee outwitting all comers with his two-wheeled Frogger moves. Silly fun from director David Koepp (2008’s Ghost Town), but not essential unless you’re a fixie fanatic or a JGL completist. (1:31) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

The Queen of Versailles Lauren Greenfield’s obscenely entertaining The Queen of Versailles takes a long, turbulent look at the lifestyles lived by David and Jackie Siegel. He is the 70-something undisputed king of timeshares; she is his 40-something (third) wife, a former beauty queen with the requisite blonde locks and major rack, both probably not entirely Mother Nature-made. He’s so compulsive that he’s never saved, instead plowing every buck back into the business. When the recession hits, that means this billionaire is — in ready-cash as opposed to paper terms — suddenly sorta kinda broke, just as an enormous Las Vegas project is opening and the family’s stupefyingly large new "home" (yep, modeled after Versailles) is mid-construction. Plugs must be pulled, corners cut. Never having had to, the Siegels discover (once most of the servants have been let go) they have no idea how to run a household. Worse, they discover that in adversity they have a very hard time pulling together — in particular, David is revealed as a remote, cold, obsessively all-business person who has no use for getting or giving "emotional support;" not even for being a husband or father, much. What ultimately makes Queen poignantly more than a reality-TV style peek at the garishly wealthy is that Jackie, despite her incredibly vulgar veneer (she’s like a Jennifer Coolidge character, forever squeezed into loud animal prints), is at heart just a nice girl from hicksville who really, really wants to make this family work. (1:40) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Red Hook Summer It seems like lifetimes ago that Michelle and Barack found each other beneath the flicker of filmmaker Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), so the director-cowriter’s cameo in his now-graying, still-pizza-delivering Mookie guise, in this hot, bothered return to Brooklyn, reverberates with meaning. Less polemical and now complicated by an acute, confused love and loathing for certain places and faces, Red Hook Summer takes a different tact — the Red Hook projects rather than the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant — and narrows its focus on Flik Royale (Jules Brown), the reluctant young visitor to the humble home of his grandfather, Da Good Bishop Enoch Rouse (Clarke Peters from Treme and The Wire). A true child of his time and place, the introverted, rebellious Atlanta kid would rather hide behind his favorite screen, a.k.a. the iPad that he’s using to document his world, than engage with reality, even when it’s raging in his face by way of his grandfather’s fiery sermons or threats from the glowering rapper Box (Nate Parker). Only a charismatic girl his age, Chazz Morningstar (Toni Lysaith), seems to get through, despite the Bishop’s passionate efforts to bond with the boy. Alas, Lee himself doesn’t seem to quite get his youthful protagonist — one who’s predisposed to turn inward rather than turn a politicized lens outward — and instead casts about restlessly to the detriment of this supposed coming-of-age narrative. No shock that somehow Red Hook Summer gets caught in the undertow of the magnetic Peters, who will turn heads with his take on a tormented believer, eager to forgive and equally hopeful for forgiveness. (2:01) Roxie. (Chun)

Robot and Frank Imagine the all-too-placid deadpan of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) coming out of a home-healthcare worker, and you get just part of the appeal of this very likable comedy debut with a nonrobotic pulse directed by Jake Schreier. Sometime in the indeterminate near future, former jewel thief and second-story man Frank (Frank Langella) can be found quietly deteriorating in his isolated home, increasingly forgettable and unable to care for himself and assemble a decent bowl of Cap’n Crunch (though he can still steal fancy soaps from the village boutique). In an effort to cover his own busy rear, Frank’s distracted son (James Marsden) buys him a highly efficient robotic stand-in (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), much to his father’s grim resistance ("That thing is going to murder me in my sleep") and the dismay of crunchy sibling Madison (Liv Tyler). The robot, however, is smarter than it looks, as it bargains with Frank to eat better, get healthier, and generally reanimate: it’s willing to learn to pick locks, participate in a robbery, and even plan a jewel heist, provided, say, Frank agrees to a low-sodium diet. Frank flourishes, like the garden the robot nurtures in a vain attempt to interest his human charge, and even goes on a date with his librarian crush (Susan Sarandon), though can the self-indulgent idyll last forever? A tale about aging as much as it is about rediscovery, Robot tells an old story, but one that’s wise beyond its years and willing to dress itself up in some of the smooth, sleek surfaces of an iGeneration. (1:30) Albany, Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

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

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

Sleepwalk with Me Every year lots of movies get made by actors and comedians who want to showcase themselves, usually writing and often directing in addition to starring. Most of these are pretty bad, and after a couple of festival appearances disappear, unremembered by anyone save the credit card companies that vastly benefited from its creation. Mike Birbiglia’s first feature is an exception — maybe not an entirely surprising one (since it’s based on his highly praised Off-Broadway solo show and best-seller), but still odds-bucking. Particularly as it’s an autobiographical feeling story about an aspiring stand-up comic (Mike as Matt) who unfortunately doesn’t seem to have much natural talent in that direction, but nonetheless obsessively perseveres. This pursuit of seemingly fore destined failure might be causing his sleep disorder, or it might be a means of avoiding taking the martial next step with long-term girlfriend (Lauren Ambrose, making something special out of a conventional reactive role) everyone else agrees is the best thing in his life. Yep, it’s another commitment-phobic man-boy/funny guy who regularly talks to the camera, trying to find himself while quirky friends and family stand around like trampoline spotters watching a determined clod. If all of these sounds derivative and indulgent, well, it ought to. But Sleepwalk turns a host of familiar, hardly foolproof ideas into astute, deftly performed, consistently amusing comedy with just enough seriousness for ballast. Additional points for "I zinged him" being the unlikely most gut-busting line here. (1:30) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Harvey)

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) Metreon. (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, Sundance Kabuki. (Harvey)

Total Recall Already the source material for Paul Verhoeven’s campy, quotable 1990 film (starring the campy, quotable Arnold Schwarzenegger), Philip K. Dick’s short story gets a Hollywood do-over, with meh results. The story, anyway, is a fine nugget of sci-fi paranoia: to escape his unsatisfying life, Quaid (Colin Farrell) visits a company capable of implanting exciting memories into his brain. When he chooses the "secret agent" option, it’s soon revealed he actually does have secret agent-type memories, suppressed via brain-fuckery by sinister government forces (led by Bryan Cranston) keeping him in the dark about his true identity. Shit immediately gets crazy, with high-flying chases and secret codes and fight scenes all over the place. The woman Quaid thinks is his wife (Kate Beckinsale) is actually a slithery killer; the woman he’s been seeing in his dreams (Jessica Biel) turns out to be his comrade in a secret rebel movement. Len Wiseman (writer and sometimes director of the Underworld films) lenses futuristic urban grime with a certain sleek panache, and Farrell is appealing enough to make highly generic hero Quaid someone worth rooting for — until the movie ends, and the entire enterprise (save perhaps the tri-boobed hooker, a holdover from the original) becomes instantly forgettable, no amnesia trickery required. (1:58) Metreon, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

2 Days in New York Messy, attention-hungry, random, sweet, pathetic, and even adorable — such is the latest dispatch from Julie Delpy, here with her follow-up to 2007’s 2 Days in Paris. It’s also further proof that the rom-com as a genre can yet be saved by women who start with the autobiographical and spin off from there. Now separated from 2 Days in Paris‘s Jake and raising their son, artist Marion is happily cohabiting with boyfriend Mingus (Chris Rock), a radio host and sometime colleague at the Village Voice, and his daughter, while juggling her big, bouncing bundle of neuroses. Exacerbating her issues: a visit by her father Jeannot (Delpy’s real father Albert Delpy), who eschews baths and tries to smuggle an unseemly selection of sausages and cheeses into the country; her provocative sister Rose (Alexia Landeau), who’s given to nipple slips in yoga class and Marion and Mingus’ apartment; and Rose’s boyfriend Manu (Alexandre Nahon), who’s trouble all around. The gang’s in NYC for Marion’s one-woman show, in which she hopes to auction off her soul to the highest, and hopefully most benevolent, bidder. Rock, of course, brings the wisecracks to this charming, shambolic urban chamber comedy, as well as, surprisingly, a dose of gravitas, as Marion’s aggrieved squeeze — he’s uncertain whether these home invaders are intentionally racist, cultural clueless, or simply bonkers but he’s far too polite to blurt out those familiar Rock truths. The key, however, is Delpy — part Woody Allen, if the Woodman were a maturing, ever-metamorphosing French beauty — and part unique creature of her own making, given to questioning her identity, ideas of life and death, and the existence of the soul. 2 Days in New York is just a sliver of life, but buoyed by Delpy’s thoughtful, lightly madcap spirit. You’re drawn in, wanting to see what happens next after the days are done. (1:31) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Words We meet novelist Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) as he’s making his way from a posh building to a cab in the rain; it’s important the shot obscures his generally shiny exterior, because we’re meant to believe this guy’s a sincere and struggling novelist. Jeremy Irons, aged with flappy eye makeup, watches him vengefully. Seems Rory fell upon the unpublished novel Irons’ character wrote in sadness and loss — and feeling himself incapable of penning such prose, transcribed the whole thing. When his lady friend (Zoe Saldana) encourages him to sell it, he becomes the next great American writer. He’s living the dream on another man’s sweat. But that’s not the tragedy, exactly, because The Words isn’t so concerned with the work of being a writer — it’s concerned with the look and insecurity of it. Bradley and Irons aren’t "real," they’re characters in a story read by Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) while the opportunistic, suggestive Daniella (Olivia Wilde) comes onto him. She can tell you everything about Clay, yet she hasn’t read the book that’s made him the toast of the town — The Words, which is all about a young plagiarist and the elderly writer he steals from. "I don’t know how things happen!", the slimy, cowering writers each exclaim. So, how do you sell a book? Publish a book? Make a living from a book? How much wine does it take to bed Olivia Wilde? Sure, they don’t know how things happen; they only know what it looks like to finish reading Hemingway at a café or watch the sun rise over a typewriter. Rarely has a movie done such a trite job of depicting the process of what it’s like to be a writer — though if you found nothing suspect about, say, Owen Wilson casually re-editing his 400-page book in one afternoon in last year’s Midnight in Paris, perhaps you won’t be so offended by The Words, either. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Sara Vizcarrondo)

Single ladies, fake gurus, ponderous authors, and more: new flicks!

Sue Vaughan
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Single ladies, fake gurus, ponderous authors, and more: new flicks!

Bachelorette A movie called Bachelorette is inevitably going to be accused of riding Bridesmaids‘ coattails, even if — as it happens — Bachelorette‘s source-material play was written years before the 2011 comedy hit theaters. (That said, there are inevitable similarities, what with the shared wedding themes and all.) Playwright turned scriptwriter-director Leslye Headland does a good job of portraying women who are repulsive in realistic ways: a decade ago, Regan (Kirsten Dunst), Gena (Lizzy Caplan), Katie (Isla Fisher) were the popular “B-Faces” at their high school and haven’t matured much since. Competitive Regan is a Type A blonde; Gena’s the queen of one-night stands; and Katie’s a self-destructive party girl.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4U_kt2h-Sc

All of them are pushing 30, and though Regan’s the most functional among them, she’s the hardest-hit when she learns that Becky (Bridesmaids‘ Rebel Wilson), always treated as a second-tier B-Face by virtue of being plus-sized, is engaged. “I was supposed to be first,” Regan wails via three-way cell call to Gena and Katie, who’re sympathetic to this sense of entitlement. The wedding is a fancy New York City affair, so the B-Faces reunite for what they think will be a bachelorette party for the ages. Most of the film takes place during that single night, a madcap, coke-fueled, mean-spirited spiral into chaos. It’s raunchy and funny, but every character is utterly unlikable, which becomes more of a problem and less of an amusement as the movie trundles onward toward the expected happy ending. Bachelorette would’ve been better served by sticking with its rallying cry — “Fuck everyone!” — to the bitter end.  (1:34) (Cheryl Eddy)

Chicken With Plums Steeped in whimsy — and a longing for love, beauty, and home — this latest effort from brilliant Persian-French cartoonist-filmmaker Marjane Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud flaunts the odd contours of its eccentric narrative, enchants with its imaginative tangents, sprawls like an unincapsulated life, and then takes off on aching, campy romantic reverie—a magical realistic vision of one Iranian artist’s doomed trajectory. Master violinist Nasser Ali Khan (Mathieu Amalric) is seeking the ineffable — a replacement for his destroyed instrument — and otherwise he’s determined to die. We trace the mystery of his passing, backward, with wanders through the life of his family and loved one along the way in this playful, bittersweet feast. Despite Amalric’s glazed-eyed mugging, which almost spoils the dish, Satrapi’s wonderfully arch yet lyrical visual sensibility and resonant characters — embodied by Maria de Medeiros, Jamel Debbouze, Golshifteh Farahani, and Isabella Rossellini, among others — satisfy, serving up so much more than chicken with plums. (1:31) (Kimberly Chun)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXUzG6YKuvo

Kumaré Just as there was a certain bullying pride of snark that made Bill Maher and Larry Charles’ Religulous (2008) more mean-spirited than necessary, Kumaré leaves a sour, smug aftertaste. Raised in New Jersey by a first-generation immigrant family of Hindus, Vikram Gandhi proclaims himself a skeptic who started out wanting to make a documentary about the opportunistic charlatans one can find passing as spiritually enlightened gurus in both India and around the booming US yoga industry. “I wanted to prove to others looking for answers that no one is more spiritual than anyone, that spiritual leaders are just illusions,” he tells us. A noble impulse. Yet somehow this took the form of growing his hair and beard out, wearing saffron robes, and posing as Sri Kumaré, a fresh-off-the-boat guru who arrives in Phoenix, Ariz. to open up shop as a one-stop spiritual guide for the gullible. He asks “Could people find the same peace in a made-up religion that they would in a real one?” But too often the real question here seems to be “How silly can I make these chumps look while starring in my very own nonfiction version of The Love Guru?” The comedy Kumaré has been primarily compared to is 2006’s Borat, another Larry Charles joint. As unhappy as their portraiture in Borat made its duped participants, it was hard to feel sorry for them — given enough rope they gladly hung themselves expressing racism, homophobia, sexism, and sheer Ugly Americanism. But those who fall under Kumaré‘s farcical spell don’t deserve to be exposed and ridiculed; they’re just people with real-world issues — financial struggles, low self-esteem, empty-nest loneliness, etc. — looking for somebody to tell them what to do. (1:24) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0xVp3N-M84

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjmrDDD9o_k

The Words We meet novelist Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) as he’s making his way from a posh building to a cab in the rain; it’s important the shot obscures his generally shiny exterior, because we’re meant to believe this guy’s a sincere and struggling novelist. Jeremy Irons, aged with flappy eye makeup, watches him vengefully. Seems Rory fell upon the unpublished novel Irons’ character wrote in sadness and loss — and feeling himself incapable of penning such prose, transcribed the whole thing. When his lady friend (Zoe Saldana) encourages him to sell it, he becomes the next great American writer. He’s living the dream on another man’s sweat. But that’s not the tragedy, exactly, because The Words isn’t so concerned with the work of being a writer — it’s concerned with the look and insecurity of it. Bradley and Irons aren’t “real,” they’re characters in a story read by Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) while the opportunistic, suggestive Daniella (Olivia Wilde) comes onto him. She can tell you everything about Clay, yet she hasn’t read the book that’s made him the toast of the town — The Words, which is all about a young plagiarist and the elderly writer he steals from. “I don’t know how things happen!”, the slimy, cowering writers each exclaim. So, how do you sell a book? Publish a book? Make a living from a book? How much wine does it take to bed Olivia Wilde? Sure, they don’t know how things happen; they only know what it looks like to finish reading Hemingway at a café or watch the sun rise over a typewriter. Rarely has a movie done such a trite job of depicting the process of what it’s like to be a writer — though if you found nothing suspect about, say, Owen Wilson casually re-editing his 400-page book in one afternoon in last year’s Midnight in Paris, perhaps you won’t be so offended by The Words, either. (1:36) (Sara Vizcarrondo)

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