Republicans

Everybody likes Jerry; now what?

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For the first time in many years, Californians seem to like their governor. Jerry Brown’s approval rating is now above 50 percent; actually, it’s closer to 60 percent. And the Legislature is more popular, too. (Although ratings of the state Leg, like ratings of Congress, are pretty bogus — I may think the Legislature as a whole is doing a crappy job, because there are too many conservatives, but I think my own Assemblymember, Tom Ammiano, and my own state Senator, Mark Leno, are excellent. Republicans feel the opposite way. Nobody likes the body as a whole, because the body as a whole will never be liberal enough for me or conservative enough for Orange County.)

So here’s the question:

In politics, one of the things you do is build capital. You build it with your reputation, by doing things well (or at least things that make some group of constituents happy). You can’t keep it in the bank forever, or it gets stale and eventually starts to fade away; at some point, you have to use it.

The typical younger politician builds capital for future races — you get high marks as a city council member or county supervisor and you cash in some of that to get elected to the state Leg, then maybe to statewide office or Congress. But our guv isn’t typical in any way, and he’s not young; he might have one more term in office, which at this point he would win easily if he seeks it. But that’s almost certainly the end of the line. For better or for worse, I just don’t see a President Jerry Brown in our future.

So what’s he going to do with his political capital? What are the Democrats in the state Leg, who finally have the confidence of the voters, going to do?

If Jer thinks he’s going to build a couple of giant tunnels under the Delta to move more water south, he’s even battier that we think; that’s never going to happen. The entire environmental world is against it, it’s way too expensive, it will wind up getting delayed by lawsuits until long after Brown is out of office, and there’s no guarantee a future governor will keep Jerry’s Big Dig alive.

He’s got high-speed rail, a much better use of money that has widespread support, but that’s also a long-term project.

So what about reforming Prop. 13? He knows it’s a policy disaster. It’s not going to be repealed, but with the governor’s support, a split-role measure or some other credible reforms could transform local government and do more for the public schools than any pointed-headed “education reform” plan will ever do.

Or single-payer health care. Everyone knows that California’s getting screwed by the insurance industry. We have to write new rules for implementing Obamacare anyway. Twice, the state Leg has passed single-payer bills that were vetoed by the governor (not this governor).

It’s actually possible to lead the way to some changes that people will remember for decades. Jerry: You won’t get this chance again.

 

 

 

 

Can Obama really unravel Reagan?

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I like Robert Reich; he’s one of the smartest economic thinkers in the country and can explain everything that’s wrong with the economy in two minutes. And I really want to believe that he’s correct in his latest essay, and that President Obama really is poised to under the Reagan Revolution (or at least, the Reagan Republican Coalition).

I get it: The GOP is a fractured collection of groups that often have little in common (although the Democratic Party has some of the same problems). And the Reich message is hopeful:

Obama’s focus in his second inaugural — and, by inference, in his second term — on equal opportunity is hardly a radical agenda. But it aggravates all the tensions inside the GOP. And it leaves the GOP without an overriding target to maintain its fragile coalition. In hammering home the need for the rich to contribute a fair share in order to ensure equal opportunity, and for anyone in America — be they poor, black, gay, immigrant, women, or average working person — to be able to make the most of themselves, Obama advances the founding ideals of America in such way that the Republican Party is incapable of opposing yet also incapable of uniting behind.

All of that may be true — but it’s hard to understate the damage that Reagan did to America — and the amount of work and leadership it’s going to take to get us back to where we were as a nation before he and his ilk declared war on social programs, cities, and non-military government spending.

Before the Reagan Era, even Republicans accepted the concept that the very rich should be taxed at high rates; the marginal rates under Richard Nixon were at 70 percent. In the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government spent huge sums of money on cities. Before Reagan, economic equality was a value in this country. Now it’s not even on the agenda.

Obama’s second inaugural touched all the right notes. But he needs to do more than tinker around the edges of policy if he wants to have a Reagan-style impact on the country. And I don’t know if he’s up for it.

Democratic Party tries to block non-Democrats

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Once again, the San Francisco Democratic Party is considering ousting local Democratic clubs that endorse non-Democrats in nonpartisan races. It’s crazy, and it goes back to the Matt Gonzalez era, and I don’t understand why somebody keeps bringing it up. But there it is.

The local party operation, run by the Democratic County Central Committee, has to rewrite parts of its bylaws this year anyway, thanks to changes in state election law. (For one thing, terms on the DCCC will now run four years, not two, and elections will coincide only with presidential primaries.)

And among the proposed changes is an item to ban chartered Democratic clubs from endorsing, say, a candidate for San Francisco supervisor or school board who isn’t a registered Democrat.

Now: It’s always been pretty clear that if you’re a part of the Democratic Party, and your club has official party sanction, you shouldn’t be endorsing Republicans (or even Greens) over Democrats. So Dem clubs have to support Dems for president, Congress, etc. (Of course, with our top-two primaries it’s possible, if highly unlikely, that a race for state Assembly could now feature a pair of candidates neither of whom is a Democrat, which would make things sticky. And under the proposed bylaws, a Democratic Club could still chose one of them.)

But never mind that — the real issue is local government. Local races, by state law, are nonpartisan, and there ahve been plenty of progressive candidates who weren’t registered Dems. In fact, this all goes back to the anger the establishment ginned up after Matt Gonzalez, a Green, very nearly toppled Gavin Newsom for mayor — with the support of a lot of progressive Democrats. The Harvey Milk Club went with Gonzalez and some Newsomite tried to make an issue of the Club’s charter.

Jane Kim was a Green when she was first elected to the School Board. Ross Mirkarimi was elected supervisor as a Green. And while the Green Party is in something of a state of disarray right now, it could make a comeback. And perhaps more important, the fastest-growing group of voters is decline-to-state — and it’s pretty likely that we’ll see someone who isn’t a member of any party run for office in the next few years.

There’s a reason the state Constitution made local races nonpartisan — and there’s no reason Democrats can’t endorse the candidates they think are the best in those races, without regard to party affiliation. The Milk Club, not surprisingly, is strongly against this, and so am I. It comes up Dec. 23; let’s shoot it back down.

 

Overturning Citizens United

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Sen. Al Franken, who is wonderful, has moved beyond seeking more disclosure (which the Republicans won’t accept) and is now moving toward a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. He’s moving his petition everywhere, and it will get a lot of traction.

But as I’ve mentioned, overturning Citizens United isn’t that easy. It’s fine to say we want to do it, and an entirely different task to write the legislation and deal with all of the First Amendment ramifications. And it still won’t stop rich people from spending their own money in unlimited ways.

I don’t know; maybe we have to figure out some more creative solutions. Mandate that all candidates for president and US Senate accept only public financing and match all independent expenditure spending with more public money. And then go back to the “original intent” of the US Constitution: In 1800, each member of Congress represented about 12,000 people. That would work fine today — expand the size of the House of Representatives to guarantee that at no point does any member have to seek election from a district with more than, say, 50,000 people. That’s a number you can reach without big money (see: SF district elections). Do the same for every state Legislature. Yes, more money on government — but less money in politics. I’ll take the tradeoff.

The downside of Jerry Brown’s budget

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The guv is quite proud of his new budget: He’s eliminated the chronic deficits, he’s giving some more money to the schools, and he’s vowing that the state will live “within its means.” Which sounds like no more taxes. And gee, just about everyone in Sacramento is singing Kumbaya; the praise is coming not just from Democrats but from Republicans.

But there’s a downside to the Brown budget: He has, to his credit, stopped the red ink, and he’s presenting things in a brilliant way that makes him look like the grownup the state has needed for many years — but he’s doing very little to replace the the money that services for the poor have lost in the past five years.

“At first blush, it has some good things,” Assemblymember Tom Ammiano told me. “But I don’t see restoration of the cuts for the disenfranchised.”

Ammiano is calling for closing Prop. 13 loopholes and passing an oil severance tax as part of the budget process. And with Democrats holding a two-thirds majority in both houses, those kinds of changes are possible. At the very least, it seems, the progressives ought to demand from Brown a plan to backfill what social service providers have lost. If it can’t all happen this year, it ought to be part of the future budget process.

State Sen. Mark Leno, who chairs the Senate Budget Commitee, was a bit more politic than Ammiano, but he also is concerned that the budget move the state forward:

“With the improvement of our fiscal outlook comes the opportunity to continue our work to restore California. While our recent efforts have focused largely on making cuts in the least harmful manner possible, we will now have more capacity to refine our work to improve essential programs and analyze the role of government and its effectiveness. I look forward to working with Governor Brown and my colleagues in the Legislature to evaluate this year’s budget to help ensure it is the best possible plan for a state on the mend.”

On the mend is right — because the state of California is in way worse shape than it was when Arnold Schwarzenegger took over and screwed things up, and the goal shoudn’t be to keep at a steady state that’s unacceptable. It ought to be returning California to its role as a leader in progressive policy. Sorry, Jerry: A balanced budget alone isn’t good enough.

Oh, and Californians United for a Reponsible Budget, which seeks to cut prison spending, points out that this budget is hardly tough on the bloated corrections budget:

The administration has deserted plans to shrink California’s over-sized prison population, ignoring clear messages from voters. The proposed budget increases prison spending $250 million including a $52 million General Fund increase, bringing the total Corrections budget over $11 billion. Despite the passage of Prop. 36 and continuing realignment,  It also projects an increase in the prison population by 2,262 people over the 2012 Budget Act projections. ”If the Governor believes that ‘we can’t pour more and more dollars down the rat hole of incarceration’ then why is he increasing spending on Corrections, planning for more prisoners rather than fewer and defying the demands of the Federal Court and the voters to further shrink the prison system?” asked Diana Zuñiga, Field Organizer for Californians United for a Responsible Budget.

It’s no surprise that the prison guards’ union is happy.

UPDATE: An analysis by Ammiano’s office shows a few other lowlights of the budget: It reduced AIDS Drug Assistance Program money by $16.9 million. It doesn’t restore any of the deep cuts to the state’s Welfare to Work Program. It cuts community college funding by tying state money to student completion, not student enrollment. It offers no additional funding for child care programs. It caps the number of courses students are allowed to take if they want to receive Cal Grants.

The Leg needs to take a hard look at this before it signs off on all these cuts.

Hacking the US debt

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OPINION The so-called Fiscal Cliff has been averted. But the country actually has a much bigger issue — the debt ceiling.

For the uninitiated, the debt ceiling is exactly what it sounds like, an artificial limit imposed by Congress the keep the president from borrowing money. The ceiling was originally passed back in 1917 to prevent the government from excess spending during the First World War. Besides its constitutionality being questionable, it’s also useless and dangerous.

The far right goes bananas about the national debt, and points to the ceiling as a way to keep it from growing. But the debt growth in question is simply to pay back bills on products and services that Congress already used. So to impose a ceiling now is not to cut growth, but to default on US creditors.

The Republicans are refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless they get huge cuts in social programs — and if current spending hits the ceiling, the United States would be unable to pay its bills.

But there’s a solution, a way President Obama could get around the GOP and its threats altogether. It’s a unorthodox — but legal. Call it debt hacking.

Obama could simply direct the Treasury to print a series of platinum coins in denominations of at least $1 trillion. It’s not perfect, and it’s not without potential cost — but compared to defaulting on debt or cutting Social Security and Medicare, it’s not a bad option.

The president is legally barred from asking the US Mint to print more money — gold coins or paper bills — without the permission of Congress. But under an obscure 1996 law, there’s an exception for platinum.

So upon realizing that the GOP leaders in Congress will push the republic into default, President Obama could direct the Mint to produce, say, three coins — each with the face value of $1 trillion. The coins would be deposited into the general treasury account at the Federal Reserve. This would then be converted into credit to buy back and retire enough debt to give Obama, and the country, some breathing space.

In fact, Obama could do something even bolder and create more coins, to go beyond breathing space and pay off almost all the national debt except for that held by Social Security. But that sort of action — the government just printing new money — can, many economists warn, create hyperinflation.

Still, the Federal Reserve magically produced about $30 trillion to help bail out banks not long ago, and there was little discernible inflation. The government wouldn’t actually be creating new money — it would simply be replacing debt that the country pays interest on with paper (or digital accounting) that it doesn’t. And right now, inflation is the least of our national worries; a little inflation might even help homeowners and those with heavy credit-card debt pay off what they owe with cheaper money in the future.

Of course, no government can do this on a regular basis. The US Dollar could lose its reserve status if investors start to fear the potential of future platinum coins appearing. But what are the alternatives? US dollars and US debt are, and will remain, trusted investments. China may not purchase as many bonds in the future, but the money we save on interest payments could be well worth it.

It’s a crazy idea, but these are crazy times — and if the GOP continues to threaten to destroy the economy, Obama might want to consider something bold.

Johnny Venom is an economist and commodities trader.

Why the GOP gets away with obstructing Congress

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There’s an interesting piece on Calitics talking about what California can teach the nation in terms of ending Republican obstructionism. Robert Cruickshank, as usual, is right on target — and he points to the real problem in Washington. Republicans in the House no longer worry about losing their seats to Democrats; the GOP has been so good about gerrymandering that only maybe 30 or 40 seats in the entire nation are still competitive. What these increasingly right-wing loonies worry about is a primary challenge from an even loonier, even right-wingier candidate — so they refuse to vote for any taxes and they’re willing to bring down the entire economy if that’s what it takes.

The problem is it’s not as easy to fix nationally as it was in California. We’re talking long-term efforts to change governors and state Legislatures so they can rewrite Congressional districts (or create California-style independent redistricting, which I initially opposed but hasn’t turned out so bad). The Constitution mandages redistricting every ten years, but I don’t think there’s any rule saying you can’t draw new districts more often, or that you can’t create a new way of drawing them and put that in place right away. But again, that’s not immediate.

Meanwhile, Obama’s going to have to force as much as he can through a reluctant Congress and do as much as he can with executive orders.

Lamebows 2013

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marke@sfbg.com

POODLES ON PARADE Marriage, the military, nudity bans, Bravo TV: queople, why must we torture ourselves! It’s true that we are everywhere, lurking even in the aeries of stupid-headedness. But queen, please, put down that can of mentally challenged and back slowly away in your new cha-cha heels. Here I am once again to call my people out for their foibles of faggotry with the annual Lamebow Awards. Even in a banner year for LGBT wins, we still clutched a Gucci full of dumb.

The cliches write themselves: My Dearest Scott Wiener, I write this not as someone who disagrees profoundly with your “moderate” politics or your collection of Banana Republic v-neck sweaters. I write this because, this year, a supervisor named Wiener, representing the Castro, got so obsessed with a few naked guys that he rammed through a nudity ban (oh, and a bunch of other awful stuff, too) that made national news. I have to talk to my relatives back East about all this. My great-aunt-in-law almost choked to death on her turkey from laughter. Please stop.

Not helping: Mountain-out-of-molehill blogger Michael Petrelis in turn became obsessed with Wiener’s penis, attempting to snap a pic of the Supes’ member at a City Hall urinal. Not making this up. Nor this: it took too long for Petrelis’ camera from the ’90s to warm up, so he only managed a shot of Wiener brushing his teeth, post-pee. Petrelis is being sued by Wiener.

Seriously not helping though: In August, 28-year-old Floyd Corkins II, a former LGBT center volunteer, attempted to storm the Washington, DC headquarters of the Family Research Council (recently and correctly categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center), shooting a security guard.

You just helped, actually: We never knew we should be boycotting Sodastream products because they are manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. But thanks to a widely viewed YouTube video — in which it appears a peaceful Code Pink protest inside Sodastream-carrying Cliff’s Variety in the Castro is violently broken up by hysterically screaming Cliff’s employees — we know! Troll is successful.

The fact is, you’re late: “The fact is, I’m gay,” Anderson Cooper wrote to blogger Andrew Sullivan by way of coming out. Anderson Cooper is the Clay Aiken of our generation.

The fact is you’re veeery late: As her 50th birthday approached, Kristy McNichol came out. “She hopes that coming out can help kids who need support,” said her publicist. There are no kids who know who Kristy McNichol is.

And you’re just trapped in a closet full of spray-on hair forever now: Many, many of John Travolta‘s male masseurs “opened up” about his happy endings. His response? A horrifying Christmas album reunion with Olivia Newton John full of the most awkward sexual metaphors ever. Greased lightning!

Freedom to fly, to fail: Director Lena Wachowski came out beautifully, vocally, and powerfully as a transgender person with deep thoughts about the nature of sexual identity. Too bad Cloud Atlas had me rolling my eyes to the high heavens.

Hide your buns, hide your wings: Reviving his meme career somewhat, Antoine Dodson said she was gonna eat Chik-fil-A anyway. Well-played.

I’m sorry: Castigating Log Cabin Republicans is easier than finding Anderson Cooper on Grindr, but watching them bend over backwards to justify supporting the Tea Party party when even our president had “evolved” on gay marriage was a real hoot. Especially because they had to say “fiscal” so many times.

All of us: While we were all arguing over gay shit (as usual), a young musical genius named Frank Ocean quietly erased the goalposts and went public with his generation’s sublime, amorphous “meh” about sexual labels. Let’s catch up.

 

White men behaving (very) badly

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Could it be — the worst year ever?

I keep asking. And every time the Offies come around, I find myself boggled yet again. Our awards for the very worst — the dumbest, the most tasteless, the most truly offensive acts of the year past — keep sinking lower and lower.

But what can we do? There are still Republicans, and this year a lot of them ran for high office, and every single one made a fool of himself. There are still politicians who think you can run for San Francisco supervisor even if you live in Walnut Creek, and elected leaders who find the courage deep in themselves to prevent a bunch of old men from walking around with their sagging asses and limp dicks out.

There are still entertainers who punch psychics, and gun nuts who blame mass murder on TV sex, and … well, a whole lot of people who have made this a banner year for the Offies.

 

SUPPORT OUR BRAVE, HEROIC TROOPS! (EXCEPT THE MEN WHO FUCK MEN)

The audience at a Republican presidential primary debate booed a gay solider who called in from Iraq with a question about don’t ask, don’t tell.

 

FROM A GUY WHO HAD TO BUY OXYCONTINS AND VIAGRA ON THE STREET, THIS SORT OF THING IS AN OBVIOUS CONCERN

Rush Limbaugh attacked law student Sandra Fluke, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she testified that health-care plans should cover contraceptives.

 

THERE ARE MEN SO BRILLIANT THAT WE STAND IN AWE OF THEIR INTELLECT

Mitt Romney said he really liked Michigan because the trees were all the right height.

 

GIVING NEW MEANING TO THE 1 PERCENT

Herman Cain proclaimed that for every woman who claimed he sexually harassed her, there were a thousand others who didn’t.

 

IF WE WANTED A DRESS CODE ON AIRLINES, WE’D START WITH THOSE DREARY PILOT UNIFORMS

An American Airlines pilot kicked a woman off a flight for wearing a shirt that said “if I wanted the government in my womb I’d fuck a senator.”

 

PROBLEM IS, BUSH MADE THAT ONE A CABINET-LEVEL POSITION

Rick Perry proclaimed in a debate that he was going to do away with three agencies of the federal government, but after listing Commerce and Education, he couldn’t remember what the third one was, identifying it only as “oops.”

 

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE NAME MEANS ASS-CUM JUICE, THAT’S A REALLY PRETTY PICTURE

Rick Santorum said that he’d listened to John F. Kennedy’s speech on the separation of church and state and it made him want to throw up.

 

LOOK! UP AT THE RAMPARTS! THE MAN WITH THE HAIR!

Donald Trump, mistakenly believing Romney won the popular vote but lost the election, called the election “a sham and travesty” and called for “revolution.”

 

BUT HE COULD HELP THEM OUT WITH A FEW BINDERS FULL OF WOMEN

Romney insulted the British by saying the nation didn’t appear ready to host the Olympics.

 

FINE, JUST TAKE RICK PERRY WITH YOU

More than 50 thousand people signed a White House petition asking for permission for Texas to secede.

 

GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, ATHEISM AND OVERSTIMULATED GLANDS DO. HAPPY FRIDAY, SHOOTERS!

On the same day that a gunman opened fire at a showing of the Dark Knight movie in Colorado, the National Rifle Association’s magazine sent out a tweet that read: “Good morning, shooters! Happy Friday.”

A Congressman from Texas, Louie Gohmert, argued that the Dark Knight shootings happened because of “ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs.”

Mike Huckabee blamed the massacre in Newtown, CT on atheism. “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said on Fox News. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Timothy Bordnow at Tea Party nation said the shooting was caused by too much sexual stimulation in the media . “There is a reason why young people commit these sorts of crimes, and sex plays no small part. Their passions are eternally inflamed, and they wander the Earth with no outlet for their overstimulated glands.”

Megan McArdle, the Daily Beast writer, urged the victims of mass shootings to gang-rush the shooter so he wouldn’t kill as many people.

The head of the National Rifle Association said the only way to stop mass murders of school children is to post armed guards in every school.

 

WOW — THE DISTRICT 8 SUPERVISOR HAS BEEN OVERWHELMED BY A COUPLE OF OLD MEN’S FLACCID DICKS

Sup. Scott Wiener promoted a ban on public nudity in San Francisco.

 

WHEN YOU’RE A MAJOR LOSER, EVEN MONEY CAN’T BUY YOU LOVE

Michael Breyer, who has never been elected to anything, spent roughly $1 million trying to win a state Assembly seat as the candidate of “traditional San Francisco values,” and lost badly.

 

AND THESE PEOPLE ARE COOPERATING WITH HOMELAND SECURITY?

Confetti thrown in the Giants parade turned out to be lightly shredded internal police documents that included home addresses and social security numbers of officers.

 

GUESS IT’S OKAY TO PERJURE YOURSELF IF YOU’RE THE MAYOR

Mayor Ed Lee testified under oath that he’d never discussed the Ross Mirkarimi case with members of the board of Supervisors, although friends of Sup. Christina Olague said she’d been open about her talks with the mayor on the topic.

 

NOW, WHICH ONES ARE THE IRON MONSTERS OF DEATH?

A San Francisco bicyclist who was allegedly trying to beat a speed record crashed into and killed a 71-year-old man in the Castro.

 

UNFORTUNATELY, THERE’S NO MALPRACTICE STATUTE GOVERNING THAT AUGUST PROFESSION

Political consultant Enrique Pearce oversaw perhaps the worst district election campaign in history, helping Olague become the first incumbent ever to lose in ranked-choice voting in SF.

 

SOMEHOW, REPRESENTING WALNUT CREEK AT CITY HALL DIDN’T SEEM LIKE SUCH A GOOD IDEA

Union official Leon Chow dropped his challenge to Sup. John Avalos when the SF Appeal revealed that he didn’t live in District 11, or even in San Francisco.

 

 

WHEN MEN ARE JUST TOTAL DICKS: THE GOP REDEFINES RAPE

1. Divine providence rape (Rick Santorum): “The right approach is to accept this horribly created .. gift of life, accept what God is giving to you.”

2. Honest Rape (Ron Paul): “If it was an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room.”

3. Forcible Rape (Paul Ryan): Federal law should prevent abortion except in the case of “forcible rape.”

4. Emergency Rape (Linda McMahon): “It was really an issue about a Catholic Church being forced to issue those pills if a person came in with an emergency rape.”

5. Legitimate Rape: (Todd Akin): “If it was a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

 

CALL IT BIEBER RAGE; IT’S DANGEROUS SHIT

After a Justin Bieber concert, Lindsay Lohan punched a psychic in the face at a New York nightclub, then threw her personal assistant out of the car.

 

YEP, AND IT DOESN’T LOOK ANY BETTER THE SECOND TIME

Romney’s campaign manager said that his candidate would change his right-wing positions for the fall campaign: “It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again.”

 

AND IF HE GOES WITH THEM, IT WILL ALL BE WORTH WHILE

Newt Gingrich proposed sending 13,000 Americans to the Moon and creating a new state there.

 

AND WE ALL WONDER WHY THE MEDIA IS DOING SO SMASHINGLY WELL THESE DAYS

After Gabby Douglas became the first black woman to win the Olympic gold medal in all-around gymnastics, the news media reported on problems with her hair.

 

AND YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD IS OVER, OVER, OVER, OVER

Justice Antonin Scalia, in defending his argument that sodomy is legally equivalent to murder, told law students at Princeton that the Constitution is not a living document, it’s “dead, dead, dead, dead.”

 

MAKES YOU WONDER ABOUT THE POOR SOUL WHO CAME IN AT 99

Kim Kardashian fell 90 places, to 98, on AskMen Magazine’s list of the worlds 100 most desirable women.

 

SADLY, “GOTTA CATCH ‘EM ALL” DOESN’T MAKE SUCH A GREAT CAMPAIGN SLOGAN

Herman Cain said his life’s philosophy came from a Pokemon song.

 

WE’RE GLAD THAT HIS FAITH HAS GIVEN HIM SUCH AN UPLIFTING ATTITUDE

Romney said he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”

 

HE WAS PROBABLY SHITFACED, TOO, BUT SINCE HE DOESN’T DRINK HE CAN’T REMEMBER THAT EITHER

Romney said he didn’t remember beating up a gay student at his prep school and cutting off his long hair.

 

IT’S A GOOD THING MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL ISN’T LOOKING FOR ANOTHER JOHN MADDEN

A full 78 percent of Americans thought Ryan Seacrest was doing a good job broadcasting from the Olympics, although most of them couldn’t figure out what he was actually doing.

 

HE ALSO TOLD US THAT TAX CUTS AND DEREGULATION WOULD IMPROVE THE ECONOMY, SO HE’S GOT A WINNING RECORD HERE

Karl Rove on election night kept insisting the Romney still had a chance to win.

 

TALK ABOUT A BLOWN COVER

David Petraus resigned as CIA director after an affair with a woman who was threatening another woman who might have had a thing for him.

 

TOO BAD — HE MIGHT HAVE HAD TO SEEK ASYLUM IN THE NEW REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

A petition to allow every American to punch Grover Norquist in the dick was removed from the White House website.

 

WE’RE WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF BELIZE; THIS MAN IS “BONKERS”

One-time software mogul John McAfee fled Belize claiming the cops would persecute him after he was sought for questioning in the shooting death of his neighbor — using a body double, faking a heart attack, pretending he was crazy, and winding up in Miami.

 

IT SUCKS TO BE STINKING RICH AND OWN FOUR HOUSES AND HAVE TO LIVE WITH REJECTION

Ann Romney was deeply depressed that her husband didn’t win the election, telling friends she though it was their fate to move into the White House.

 

AND WHEN ASKED IF SOMEONE THAT MORONIC COULD ACTUALLY RUN FOR PRESIDENT, HE SAID “I’M A REPUBLICAN, MAN”

Marco Rubio, when asked about the age of the Earth, said “I’m not a scientist, man.”

 

EASY — THE ONES WHO ARE GETTING PAID ARE THE ONES PRETENDING TO BE INTERESTED IN NASTY OLD FRENCHMEN

After Dominique Strauss-Kahn was held overnight in Lille to be questioned about possible connections between a prostitution ring and orgies he attended in Paris and Washington, his lawyer said: “I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other woman.”

 

DUDE — THAT’S THE TERRITORY OF SERIOUS LOSERS

Vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan lied about his time in the marathon.

 

GO AHEAD, CLINT — MAKE OUR DAY

Surprise guest speaker Clint Eastwood addressed GOP convention delegates for 12 minutes, during which he carried on an imagined dialogue with an empty chair he identified as President Obama.

 

AND YES, HE DID GET A FAIR AMOUNT OF THE STUPIDITY VOTE

Santorum told a gathering of conservatives in Washington, “We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.”

Film Listings

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

OPENING

Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away The fanciful, high-flying circus troupe hits the big screen in 3D. (1:31)

Citadel See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (1:24) Roxie.

Deadfall See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (1:35) Opera Plaza.

Django Unchained See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (2:45) Four Star, Presidio.

Five and Six Hundred and Sixty-Six The Vortex’s apocalyptic December continues with two offbeat end-of-the-world dramas, one obscure and the other really, really, really obscure. Five (1951) was one of the few features written and directed by Arch Oboler, whose next (1952’s Bwana Devil) would have the (sole) distinction of kicking off that decade’s short-lived 3D craze. This black and white tale is less historically important but a lot more interesting thematically and otherwise. The title refers to the number of survivors whose paths cross after nuclear war presumably wipes out the rest of humanity (they’d each happened to be in lead encased surroundings when it the bomb hit). Beardo Michael (William Phipps) says good riddance: “I’m glad it’s dead, cheap honkytonk of a world.” However, his attitude turns around once pregnant Rosanne (Susan Douglas Rubes) shows up, then others. Unfortunately, their modest attempts to restart civilization are threatened by the fact that arrival number five (James Anderson) has a German accent and a Nazi attitude to go with it. Sans FX, this psychodrama uses sci-fi to ask some basic questions about existence and humanity; it may not be wildly sophisticated, but it’s surprisingly void of cliché and progressive in ideas (notably racial ones, as the villain’s most loathsome quality is his attitude toward Charles Lampkin’s genial African American ex-soldier). Five is one of the first and also best of its era’s many films about man’s potential self-destruction. Co-feature Six Hundred and Sixty-Six, by contrast, is pretty torturous — an endless talkfest among male staffers (and one female-voiced master computer) in a government installation deep underground that they can’t leave when total war extinguishes all life on the surface above. As they slowly suffocate to death, there is much debate about Biblical prophecies and Satan (who regrettably does not put in an appearance). While the combination of sci-fi suspense and religious proselytizing might sound irresistible, this extremely rare production from the “Evangelical Christian Research Foundation” is perhaps the dullest of all early ’70s dystopian indies. Vortex Room. (Harvey)

The Guilt Trip Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand play a mother and son driving across the country. (1:35) Marina, Presidio.

The Impossible See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (1:54)

Jack Reacher Tom Cruise: kickin’ ass, taking names, doing Tom Cruise things. (2:10)

Les Misérables See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (2:37) Balboa, Marina.

Monsters, Inc. 3D Pixar’s 2001 hit about good-natured monsters returns in 3D form. (1:35)

The New Jerusalem Will Oldham stars as an Evangelical Christian in Rick Alverson’s drama. (1:34) Roxie.

Parental Guidance Billy Crystal and Bette Midler star as babysitting grandparents in this family comedy. (1:36)

Rust and Bone See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (2:00) Embarcadero.

This is 40 See “Holiday Movie Massacre.” (2:14) Four Star, Marina.

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)

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, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Eddy)

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) Embarcadero, Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Central Park Five Acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns takes on the 1989 rape case that shocked and divided a New York City already overwhelmed by racially-charged violence. The initial crime was horrible enough — a female jogger was brutally assaulted in Central Park — but what happened after was also awful: cops and prosecutors, none of whom agreed to appear in the film, swooped in on a group of African American and Latino teenagers who had been making mischief in the vicinity (NYC’s hysterical media dubbed the acts “wilding,” a term that became forever associated with the event). Just 14 to 16 years old, the boys were questioned for hours and intimidated into giving false, damning confessions. Already guilty in the court of public opinion, the accused were convicted in trials — only to see their convictions vacated years after they’d served their time, when the real assailant was finally identified. Using archival news footage (in one clip, Gov. Mario Cuomo calls the crime “the ultimate shriek of alarm that says none of us are safe”) and contemporary, emotional interviews with the Five, Burns crafts a fascinating study of a crime that ran away with itself, in an environment that encouraged it, leaving lives beyond just the jogger’s devastated in the process. (1:59) Shattuck. (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) Elmwood, 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. (Chun)

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. (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, Embarcadero, Metreon, Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Make no mistake: the Lord of the Rings trilogy represented an incredible filmmaking achievement, with well-deserved Oscars handed down after the third installment in 2003. If director Peter Jackson wanted to go one more round with J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved characters for a Hobbit movie, who was gonna stop him? Not so fast. This return to Middle-earth (in 3D this time) represents not one but three films — which would be self-indulgent enough even if part one didn’t unspool at just under three hours, and even if Jackson hadn’t decided to shoot at 48 frames per second. (I can’t even begin to explain what that means from a technical standpoint, but suffice to say there’s a certain amount of cinematic lushness lost when everything is rendered in insanely crystal-clear hi-def.) Journey begins as Bilbo Baggins (a game, funny Martin Freeman) reluctantly joins Gandalf (a weary-seeming Ian McKellan) and a gang of dwarves on their quest to reclaim their stolen homeland and treasure, batting Orcs, goblins, Gollum (Andy Serkis), and other beasties along the way. Fan-pandering happens (with characters like Cate Blanchett’s icy Galadriel popping in to remind you how much you loved LOTR), and the story moves at a brisk enough pace, but Journey never transcends what came before — or in the chronology of the story, what comes after. I’m not quite ready to declare this Jackson’s Phantom Menace (1999), but it’s not an unfair comparison to make, either. (2:50) Balboa, California, Cerrito, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

Hyde Park on Hudson Weeks after the release of Lincoln, Hyde Park on Hudson arrives with a lighthearted (-ish) take on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1939 meeting with King George VI (of stuttering fame) and Queen Elizabeth at FDR’s rural New York estate. Casting Bill Murray as FDR is Hyde Park‘s main attraction, though Olivia Williams makes for a surprisingly effective Eleanor. But the thrust of the film concerns FDR’s relationship with his cousin, Daisy — played by Laura Linney, who’s relegated to a series of dowdy outfits, pouting reaction shots, and far too many voice-overs. The affair has zero heat, and the film is disappointingly shallow — how many times can one be urged to giggle at someone saying “Hot dogs!” in an English accent? — not to mention a waste of a perfectly fine Bill Murray performance. As that sideburned Democrat bellows in Lincoln, “Howwww dare you!” (1:35) Clay, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

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) Elmwood, 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) Balboa, 1000 Van Ness, 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)

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

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, Shattuck. (Eddy)

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)

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) Elmwood. (Chun)

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

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, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck. (Eddy)

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

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

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

 

Film Listings

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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)

Same-sex marriage: What they’re saying

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Lots of statements getting issued on the Supreme Court’s decision, reflecting both the desire of many elected officials to weigh in on this momentus event and some interesting differences in tone.

Assembly Member Tom Ammiano:

 

“This doesn’t decide anything on its own, but it opens the door for the U.S. Supreme Court to acknowledge that people in every state of this union should be able to form marriage unions with the partner of their choosing and not be limited by outdated customs and laws.”

“It’s a bit disappointing that the Supreme Court isn’t already kicking Prop. 8 to the curb, but I’m hopeful that they will do that after hearing arguments. We can also hope that this court decides that it’s time to say, once and for all, that denying this right to same-sex couples is just as unconstitutional as denying marriage to mixed-race couples – a decision made decades ago.”

State Sen. Mark Leno:

“I am hopeful and encouraged about today’s decision from the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Proposition 8 case, which is one of the most significant equal rights issues to come before the court in many decades,” said Senator Leno. “For the past four years we have argued that Proposition 8 is not only unconstitutional, but that it also violates the basic principles of respect, dignity and validation that every American deserves. I am confident that the Supreme Court will reaffirm these fundamental freedoms and uphold that a person’s right to be treated equally does not vanish simply because of who they are or whom they love.

 

“The momentum for marriage equality has never been stronger in our country. We have support from President Obama, recent victories at the ballot box, and polls that show a majority of Americans are with us. In addition, federal courts continue to strike down laws that discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. I am convinced our triumphs will continue.”

 

Mayor Ed Lee:

 

“I am optimistic that the Supreme Court will reaffirm, as the Ninth Circuit Court did, that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

“We remain as deeply committed today as we were nearly eight years ago when then Mayor Gavin Newsom jumpstarted one of the most important civil rights movements of our generation. I would like to thank City Attorney Dennis Herrera for his work on this important issue and bringing us to this point. I thank the legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies and the American Foundation for Equal Rights for defending equality in this legal pursuit. 

Same-sex marriage is legal, or will soon be, in nine states — Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Washington — and the District of Columbia. I look forward to the day when California joins this well-respected list.”

 

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom:

 

Today marks the beginning of the end for a California journey that started eight years ago when San Francisco issued same-sex marriage licenses. By agreeing to hear the Proposition 8  case the U.S. Supreme Court could end, once and for all, marriage inequity in California.

Forty-five years after the Supreme Court ruled that marriages between interracial couples were constitutional in Loving vs. Virginia, Justices can once again reaffirm the basic American principal of equality for all.

The singling out a class of Californians for discrimination violates the basic principles of who we are as a nation. It is important at this moment in time to recognize that individuals can be mightier together than apart, that there is strength in our diversity, power when we unite around our shared values and success when we advance together.

 Today’s announcement starts the clock towards the final decision for California. History will one day be divided into the time before marriage equality and the period that follows. And thankfully, we will be on the side of history worthy of being proud of.

 

 

Assembly Speaker John Perez:

“Today’s announcement that the Supreme Court will take up Hollingsworth v. Perry and the challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act is a reminder that the pathway to justice is long and difficult. The plaintiffs in the initial challenge to Proposition 8, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, presented a powerful and compelling argument that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, which was eloquently recognized in Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in that case. I am very confident that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of our community in Hollingsworth v. Perry, as it is now known, and affirm that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. But until that outcome is secured, our community must continue to fight for justice on every front, from working to secure the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to addressing the issues of homelessness among LGBT Youth.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi:

 

 

 

With the Supreme Court’s decision, marriage equality will finally have its day in the highest court in the land. Americans will hear whether inequality and discrimination are consistent with the high standards and deepest values of our Constitution. We remain confident that the justices’ ruling will fall on the side of civil rights and discard DOMA and Prop 8 in the dustbin of history.

“From the start, Republicans have known that DOMA is unconstitutional, and that’s why Republicans have tried to pass legislation to prohibit judicial review of this disgraceful law. Speaker Boehner’s legal team repeatedly failed to convince the courts to keep denying basic rights to American families, all while wasting nearly $1.5 million in taxpayer funds. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether Edie Windsor deserved to face a penalty of hundreds of thousands of dollars after her partner of four decades passed away. We believe Ms. Windsor and couples like hers will see justice done in this case.

“By taking up the Prop 8 case, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to make a strong statement that laws, in California and nationwide, must not target the LGBT community unfairly and that families across our state and our country deserve fair and equal treatment under the law.

“We have now reached a landmark moment in the history of civil rights in our nation. Let’s end discrimination and ensure equality for all of America’s families. Let’s get this over with and on to the future!”

UPDATE:

Bay Guardian Controller Sandy Lange:

“Well, at least I don’t have to get married this weekend.”

 

 

Could we really fix Prop. 13?

17

Is it really possible? Could California be on the path to repair the damage of Prop. 13? Would Jerry go along?

You wouldn’t think so — it’s been talked about for so long and so little has happened. But it’s an all new year in Sacramento, and the era of Republican dominancy-by-minority is over (in fact, the era when Republicans will have any role at all in state government is pretty much over), and already, some changes are in the works.

Assemblymember Tom Ammiano notes:

 “Prop. 13 is not the untouchable third-rail anymore. It’s more like the bad guy with the mustache who has tied California to the rails with the fiscal train wreck coming.”

Ammiano is introducing legislation to change the way Prop. 13 is interpreted — to stop corporations for using loopholes to get around paying higher taxes after commercial property changes hands. But the polls now suggest the voters might be willing to do more — the Public Policy Institute suggests that a sizable majority of Californians would like to see a split-role measure approved. That alone would provide billions of dollars in revenue for public schools.

By a 57-36% margin, voters responded positively when asked this question: Under Proposition 13, residential and commercial property taxes are both strictly limited. What do you think about having commercial properties taxed according to their current market value? Do you favor or oppose this proposal? Democrats favor the idea 66-26% and independents like the prospect 58-36%. Even Republicans are evenly divided 47-48%. Voters aged 18-34, who represent the future, favor the idea 65-28% but the idea is also popular among the most reliable voters, those 55 and older, by 56-39%. Splitting the tax roll is a popular idea in every region of the state, among men and women equally and especially among Asians (65-26%) and Latinos (58-36%) but also among whites (56-38%).

Now: That’s before the commercial property industry and every major landowning corporation in the state pours about $50 million into a campaign to defeat any whisper of a split-roll. But we all know that big-money campaigns don’t always win in California — and right now, the guv is a pretty popular guy. So if he got behind a split-roll measure, and every progressive and labor group in the state (and most local elected officials) did, too, it would be at the very least a level playing field.

That, alone, would change California more than anything else the Legislature or the governor could do. It’s out there; it’s possible. I wouldn’t try in 2013, but 2014 is looking pretty good.

 

Film Listings

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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

Generation P When Babylen Tatarsky (Vladimir Epifantsev) meets an old friend by chance, he’s plucked from penny-ante street level entrepeneurship into the much higher stakes of advertising in early 1990s Russia — a brave new world of post-Communist consumerist capitalism bent on outperforming the West’s, in which new corrupt orders replace the old ones with dizzying speed. His rise from humble copy writer to a "living god" controlling mass reality one commercial at a time is accompanied by a whole lot of recreational drug use, mafia-style violence, and references to Mesopotamian mythology. Adapted from Victor Pelevin’s 1999 novel (published in the US as Homo Zapiens), Victor Ginzburg’s film preserves its heady, gonzo mix of Pynchon, cyberpunk, and Putney Swope (1969) as a satirical conspiracy fantasia in which excess is both the style and the subject. No doubt at least half the in-jokes are lost on non-Russian audiences, but Generation P is so dense and hyperactive you’ll be entertained by its fabulist sociopolitical onslaught regardless. (1:52) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

In the Family See "Father and Law." (2:49) Opera Plaza.

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, Shattuck. (Chun)

Playing For Keeps Gerard Butler plays a former sports star who aims to redeem himself by coaching his kid’s soccer team. (1:46)

"The Vortex Apocalypse, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Thursday Film Cult" With a respectful nod to the Mayans, the Vortex sees off 2012 with four weeks of movies depicting end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios. First up is an interesting duo from 1974. In Chosen Survivors, 11 strangers selected for their particular knowledge and skills are taken to an elaborate government bunker deep beneath the desert. They’re told they’re among several such groups in different secret locations chosen to preserve the human race in the immediate aftermath of total thermonuclear war. This is pretty hard to take, along with the notion that they’ll be spending at least the next five years in this very 1970s silver discotheque-spaceship environ. But soon the chosen few have an even more jarring crisis to deal with: the scientists who devised this sunken fortress neglected to note it is surrounded by caves filled with hungry vampire bats. There’s a very big twist at the one-hour point, but just when this rare theatrical feature by TV director Sutton Roley (The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Airwolf, etc.) should kick into high gear, it actually seems to slow down. Still, there are a couple very tense sequences, and some interesting character fillips. The co-feature is The Last Days of Planet Earth a.k.a. Prophecies of Nostradamus, a Japanese superproduction that aimed to top both the then-prominent disaster movie genre and the strain of eco-horror dominating much of 1970s fantasy cinema. In addition to the expected earthquakes, tsunamis, and such, Earth’s meltdown triggers such phenomena as pterodactyl-sized vampire bats (again!) and bird-eating flowers. Toshio Masuda’s special effects spectacular also features a really weird modern dance performance, and — in the editorially butchered, atrociously dubbed US release version — dialogue like "But by not allowing them to live, you’re … killing them!" Vortex Room. (Harvey)

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)

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) Metreon, 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)

Back to 1942 Multiple storylines wend through Feng Xiaogang’s historical epic about a devastating drought that brought famine to China’s Henan province. Abandoned by their government, millions of refugees would eventually die in a situation compounded by corrupt officials, the Chinese army’s demands on the region’s nonexistent grain stores, and looming Japanese troops. The scenes from the road are grim, on both small (a desperate family tries to trade their child for grain) and larger (Japanese bombing raids, cannibalism) scales — though there are moments of hope, as when rival families put aside their differences to help a pregnant daughter. (Hope doesn’t last, though: when the baby is born, the half-dead mother mutters, "Kill it.") Meanwhile, an American journalist (Adrien Brody) chases the story with the help of a priest (Tim Robbins, working a distracting accent); after witnessing horrors in Henan, his reporting helps nudge the government into action, however slightly. It would take an exceptionally even hand to prevent this heavily tragic material from sliding face first into melodrama, something Back to 1942 doesn’t even attempt to do. Whether you feel moved or manipulated is up to you. (2:26) Presidio. (Eddy)

The Big Picture Trading places, especially under sinister circumstances, seems unnervingly easy to do — if you’re the talented Mr. Ripley or The Big Picture‘s adorably scruffy bourgeois-on-the-run Paul (Romain Duris of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Coming from wealth and amiably going through the motions of upper-middle-class lawyerly life with his wife (Marina Fois) and kids, Paul is accustomed to relegating his love of photography to the sidelines as a hobby. So when photojournalist neighbor Gregoire (Eric Ruf) has a freakish accident, Paul throws himself down the rabbit hole of another man’s identity. Is it possible to completely start over — and is there a kind of freedom in death? Working from Douglas Kennedy’s novel, director and co-writer Eric Lartigau keeps his camera firmly fixed on his camera-wielding, metamorphosing lead, sidestepping the meta and going for the clearly Hitchcockian (though Hitch would probably reject the occasional cheesy slow-motion effect and reach for something more visually or technically audacious). To his credit, Lartigau keeps the audience guessing even beyond the credits, making this noir something of an artist’s parable, while Duris makes you root for his haunted, puppy-dog-ish Paul as he falls, finds his métier, and tumbles once more. (1:50) Embarcadero. (Chun)

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. (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)

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

(1:37) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

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

Holy Motors Holy moly. Offbeat auteur Leos Carax (1999’s Pola X) and frequent star Denis Lavant (1991’s Lovers on the Bridge) collaborate on one of the most bizarrely wonderful films of the year, or any year. Oscar (Lavant) spends every day riding around Paris in a white limo driven by Céline (Edith Scob, whose eerie role in 1960’s Eyes Without a Face is freely referenced here). After making use of the car’s full complement of wigs, theatrical make-up, and costumes, he emerges for "appointments" with unseen "clients," who apparently observe each vignette as it happens. And don’t even try to predict what’s coming next, or decipher what it all means, beyond an investigation of identity so original you won’t believe your eyes. This wickedly humorous trip through motion-capture suits, graveyard photo shoots, teen angst, back-alley gangsters, old age, and more (yep, that’s the theme from 1954’s Godzilla you hear; oh, and yep, that’s pop star Kylie Minogue) is equal parts disturbing and delightful. Movies don’t get more original or memorable than this. (1:56) Embarcadero. (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, Marina, 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) 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) Balboa, 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) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower Move over, Diary of a Wimpy Kid series — there’s a new shrinking-violet social outcast in town. These days, life might not suck quite so hard for 90-pound weaklings in every age category, what with so many films and TV shows exposing, and sometimes even celebrating, the many miseries of childhood and adolescence for all to see. In this case, Perks author Stephen Chbosky takes on the directorial duties — both a good and bad thing, much like the teen years. Smart, shy Charlie is starting high school with a host of issues: he’s painfully awkward and very alone in the brutal throng, his only friend just committed suicide, and his only simpatico family member was killed in a car accident. Charlie’s English teacher Mr. Andersen (Paul Rudd) appears to be his only connection, until the freshman strikes up a conversation with feline, charismatic, shop-class jester Patrick (Ezra Miller) and his magnetic, music- and fun-loving stepsister Sam (Emma Watson). Who needs the popular kids? The witty duo head up their gang of coolly uncool outcasts their own, the Wallflowers (not to be confused with the deeply uncool Jakob Dylan combo), and with them, Charlie appears to have found his tribe. Only a few small secrets put a damper on matters: Patrick happens to be gay and involved with football player Brad (Johnny Simmons), who’s saddled with a violently conservative father, and Charlie is in love with the already-hooked-up Sam and is frightened that his fragile equilibrium will be destroyed when his new besties graduate and slip out of his life. Displaying empathy and a devotion to emotional truth, Chbosky takes good care of his characters, preserving the complexity and ungainly quirks of their not-so-cartoonish suburbia, though his limitations as a director come to the fore in the murkiness and choppily handled climax that reveals how damaged Charlie truly is. (1:43) Bridge, Embarcadero. (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, 1000 Van Ness. (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) Balboa, 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) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

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

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

Starlet Fresh off the bus from Florida, Jane (Dree Hemingway, daughter of the perennially undervalued Mariel) is living an indolent existence in the San Fernando Valley — it takes a while for us to realize she even has a job, albeit a pretty irregular and undemanding one. (Hint: What movie industry is largely based in the Valley? Second hint: It’s not the non-porn one.) Most of the time she just hangs about with her equally immature, similarly employed housemates, tanning and playing with her little dog. When a chance find at a yard sale yields a stash of hidden cash, Jane goes on a brief spending spree, then guiltily tries to return the remaining cash to Sadie (Besedka Johnson). The latter is an extra-cranky elderly woman who has no idea she’s missing any money and slams the door in Jane’s face before she can explain. Undaunted, perhaps needing some semblance of family in her vapid new life, Jane basically forces her friendship on the old lady, with eventual success albeit a few speed bumps. Sean Baker’s film is often an uncomfortable watch, because the dynamic between lead characters is so frequently awkward and discordant. (And also because the other major figures, Jane’s housemates played by Stella Maeve and James Ransome, are so completely obnoxious.) But its resistance to easy odd-couple sentimentality ultimately works to Starlet‘s favor, making the low key (like everything else here) close unexpectedly poignant. Real-life adult entertainment stars Manuel Ferrara and Asa Akira appear as themselves. (1:59) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

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)

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)

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

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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

Film Listings and Reviews

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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

Back to 1942 Multiple storylines wend through Feng Xiaogang’s historical epic about a devastating drought that brought famine to China’s Henan province. Abandoned by their government, millions of refugees would eventually die in a situation compounded by corrupt officials, the Chinese army’s demands on the region’s nonexistent grain stores, and looming Japanese troops. The scenes from the road are grim, on both small (a desperate family tries to trade their child for grain) and larger (Japanese bombing raids, cannibalism) scales — though there are moments of hope, as when rival families put aside their differences to help a pregnant daughter. (Hope doesn’t last, though: when the baby is born, the half-dead mother mutters, “Kill it.”) Meanwhile, an American journalist (Adrien Brody) chases the story with the help of a priest (Tim Robbins, working a distracting accent); after witnessing horrors in Henan, his reporting helps nudge the government into action, however slightly. It would take an exceptionally even hand to prevent this heavily tragic material from sliding face first into melodrama, something Back to 1942 doesn’t even attempt to do. Whether you feel moved or manipulated is up to you. (2:26) Presidio. (Eddy)

The Collection A young woman is kidnapped by a torture-happy killer. (1:23)

Dragon Donnie Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro star in this detective-meets-wuxia film set in 1917 China. (1:51)

Just 45 Minutes From Broadway Henry Jaglom’s latest is about a struggling actor who heads to upstate New York for a her eclectic family’s Passover Seder. (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, Marina. (Harvey)

Starlet Fresh off the bus from Florida, Jane (Dree Hemingway, daughter of the perennially undervalued Mariel) is living an indolent existence in the San Fernando Valley — it takes a while for us to realize she even has a job, albeit a pretty irregular and undemanding one. (Hint: What movie industry is largely based in the Valley? Second hint: It’s not the non-porn one.) Most of the time she just hangs about with her equally immature, similarly employed housemates, tanning and playing with her little dog. When a chance find at a yard sale yields a stash of hidden cash, Jane goes on a brief spending spree, then guiltily tries to return the remaining cash to Sadie (Besedka Johnson). The latter is an extra-cranky elderly woman who has no idea she’s missing any money and slams the door in Jane’s face before she can explain. Undaunted, perhaps needing some semblance of family in her vapid new life, Jane basically forces her friendship on the old lady, with eventual success albeit a few speed bumps. Sean Baker’s film is often an uncomfortable watch, because the dynamic between lead characters is so frequently awkward and discordant. (And also because the other major figures, Jane’s housemates played by Stella Maeve and James Ransome, are so completely obnoxious.) But its resistance to easy odd-couple sentimentality ultimately works to Starlet‘s favor, making the low key (like everything else here) close unexpectedly poignant. Real-life adult entertainment stars Manuel Ferrara and Asa Akira appear as themselves. (1:59) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

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, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

The Big Picture Trading places, especially under sinister circumstances, seems unnervingly easy to do — if you’re the talented Mr. Ripley or The Big Picture‘s adorably scruffy bourgeois-on-the-run Paul (Romain Duris of 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Coming from wealth and amiably going through the motions of upper-middle-class lawyerly life with his wife (Marina Fois) and kids, Paul is accustomed to relegating his love of photography to the sidelines as a hobby. So when photojournalist neighbor Gregoire (Eric Ruf) has a freakish accident, Paul throws himself down the rabbit hole of another man’s identity. Is it possible to completely start over — and is there a kind of freedom in death? Working from Douglas Kennedy’s novel, director and co-writer Eric Lartigau keeps his camera firmly fixed on his camera-wielding, metamorphosing lead, sidestepping the meta and going for the clearly Hitchcockian (though Hitch would probably reject the occasional cheesy slow-motion effect and reach for something more visually or technically audacious). To his credit, Lartigau keeps the audience guessing even beyond the credits, making this noir something of an artist’s parable, while Duris makes you root for his haunted, puppy-dog-ish Paul as he falls, finds his métier, and tumbles once more. (1:50) Embarcadero. (Chun)

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) California, Embarcadero. (Eddy)

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

The Comedy Though it stars Adult Swim personalities Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, and has a seemingly obvious title, The Comedy is not what you think it is. Prepare to cringe, be outraged, or (worst of all) be bored, as Heidecker’s character — a 35-year-old hipster whose schlubby appearance belies the fact that he’s swimming in inherited wealth — drifts around New York, provoking unsuspecting victims with his awkward, obnoxious behavior. He’s sarcastic, entitled, and appears to have no actual emotions. It’s possible that The Comedy (directed by Rick Alverson, who’s also credited as a co-writer, though I’d guess some of the film is improvised) is aiming to make a larger statement (generational malaise?), but the film is most notable for its sustained mood of who-gives-a-fuck-ness. Tight close-ups further underscore how self-centered the characters are, a choice designed to heighten the audience’s discomfort. You can’t engage with anyone in The Comedy, but neither can you look away. (1:34) Roxie. (Eddy)

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

(1:37) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

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

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

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, Opera Plaza, 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) Balboa, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, 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) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

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

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

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

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, 1000 Van Ness. (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) Balboa, 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) Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

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

The Sessions Polio has long since paralyzed the body of Berkeley poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) from the neck down. Of course his mind is free to roam — but it often roams south of the personal equator, where he hasn’t had the same opportunities as able-bodied people. Thus he enlists the services of Cheryl (Helen Hunt), a professional sex surrogate, to lose his virginity at last. Based on the real-life figures’ experiences, this drama by Australian polio survivor Ben Lewin was a big hit at Sundance this year (then titled The Surrogate), and it’s not hard to see why: this is one of those rare inspirational feel-good stories that doesn’t pander and earns its tears with honest emotional toil. Hawkes is always arresting, but Hunt hasn’t been this good in a long time, and William H. Macy is pure pleasure as a sympathetic priest put in numerous awkward positions with the Lord by Mark’s very down-to-earth questions and confessions. (1:35) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (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) Four Star, Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Ben Richardson)

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

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, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Rapoport)

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

A hello to arms

0

arts@sfbg.com

FILM The results of the wee election that happened a couple weeks ago were generally a good thing, needless to say, but just as light also causes shadow, so the light bulb that went off for a majority of voters cast into deeper darkness a certain minority. Oh, you’ve heard the wailings and lamentations: the death of “traditional” America (read: white people, “they” are coming to take your women and steal your home entertainment center), brutal new taxations designed to funnel your hard-earned money to whole communities of professional freeloaders, the national anthem to be translated into Communist (it’s a language, like speaking in demonic tongues), etc.

Some patriots, no longer loving it, are leaving it — mostly to inexpensive warmer retirement magnets whose natives aren’t too uppity yet to avoid calling you “Sir” or “Boss.” Others are planning to secede, one state at a time. (Yes, definitely including the ones you were already hoping would somehow cut ties. Can they take Fox News with them?) Mentally and politically, they seceded a while ago. But now it is on — Elvis is leaving the building, because he didn’t get his way so fuck y’all.

What’s bad about this is that, as with any psychotic break, bystanders may suffer for not sharing or getting in the way of the sufferer’s particular symptoms — in this case likely to primarily consist of depression, violent outbursts, substance abuse, weapons stockpiling, paranoid delusions, paranoid delusions, and reckless home schooling. How many basement man caves have been fertilizing plans for what we might term “assassination,” “domestic terrorism” or “going postal” since November 6, imaging personal heroism and national salvation their eventual reward? It’s like a significant section of the populace has turned into our crazy uncle, off his meds, muttering apocalyptically in the corner and sure to remember where we live sooner or later.

So it is with mixed emotions, to say the least, that one greets the alarmingly timely arrival of 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 (and even alongside such crazy Satan-is-Soviet competition as 1985’s Rambo: First Blood Part II and Rocky IV), it is a movie that 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, despite censorship, import quotas, and whatnot. China heard about Red Dawn and was not happy, endangering the foreign profit margins for future MGM product.

So a tortured makeover of the remake ensued; scenes were added, re-shot, and digitally altered to impose a drastic narrative change. China now goes unmentioned, replaced as villain by the country which is nobody’s film market, even if that choice is so absurd it gets acknowledged as such by dialogue: “North Korea? It doesn’t make any sense!” someone says here. It’s a query that goes unanswered.

Yup, in the new Red Dawn a coastal Washington state burg — mom, apple pie and flag figuring large in the opening montage — 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?

Of course this Red Dawn is ridiculous, though as a pulp action fantasy it’s actually fairly entertainingly well-crafted by veteran stunt coordinator-second unit director Dan Bradley. The actors maintain straight faces with variable degrees of success — on the upside pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth, (whose other 2009-shot MGM film The Cabin in the Woods also got released this year) as ex-Marine alpha male, on the downside an irksome Josh Peck as his little bro and an inexplicable Connor Cruise as a teammate. The adopted son of a certain really famous Scientologist, the latter surely got this role on merit alone; otherwise we’d be forced to believe he made up in nepotism what he amply lacks in looks, voice, and presence.

So what does this silly movie have to do with the election, you ask? Just this: its production travails mean this rah-rah, just-credibly-gritty-enough (but still mostly video-game-like) tale of fighting the power has arrived just in time to become a training manual (or at least recruitment video) for revolutionist reactionary rednecks. It’s ready-made for an audience so deprived of air, irony, and other key elements to reality that they’re probably in a hundred or more basements right now, plotting the overthrow of our Socialist Islamophilic oligarchy. 

RED DAWN opens Wed/21 in Bay Area theaters.

District surprises

1

tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITOR’S NOTES The Wall Street Journal, which ought to focus on stellar reporting and skip the political analysis, stuck its haughty little nose into California last week, announcing that the Democratic supermajorities in the state Legislature spell doom for us all.

“Liberals,” the paper noted, “will pick up enough seats to secure a supermajority. Governor Jerry Brown then will be the only chaperone for the Liberals Gone Wild video that is Sacramento.”

I guess I go to the wrong parties, but I’ve never seen that movie. In fact, a lot of the Dems in Sacramento would have to cough and gasp a bit to call themselves “liberals,” and that’s on a good day. Frankly, the majority party in the Assembly and Senate tends to be relatively conservative, with many of its members afraid to so much as talk about, say, amending Prop. 13 or legalizing marijuana.

The bigger danger is that the Democrats from the more moderate districts will so fear that loss of their seats that they’ll want to be even more cautious about raising taxes than the Republicans.

See, I don’t think either party quite realizes what happened Nov. 6 in California, and what it means for the future.

This election wasn’t an anomaly. It wasn’t a miraculous twist of fate driven by high Obama turnout or by labor’s GOTV efforts to defeat Prop. 32. It was the inevitable result of two forces — the demographic changes in the electoral map of this state, and the utter, complete collapse of the California Republican Party. Neither one is about to change any time soon.

For decades, the GOP has focused on older, white, suburban voters, and there was a time when that strategy worked. But the future of the state is younger, non-white urban voters who are less frightened by crime, less xenophobic about immigration, less likely to have kids in private schools, and largely uninterested in the traditional Republican social issues.

Brian Leubitz, the insightful blogger at Calitics.com, notes that almost 30 percent of the people who went to the polls Nov. 6 were between 18 and 29 years old. “The California GOP, like the greater national party, has lost young voters,” he writes. “If it hopes to return to a semblance of a statewide party, it will need to moderate itself back into a party that accurately represents some portion of California’s electorate.”

How likely is that? Anyone want to bet that the GOP is going to reject the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association the right-wing radio guys in Los Angeles and start promoting immigration reform and an overhaul of Prop. 13? You’ll have to give me pretty long odds.

No: The era of Democratic supermajorities in the California Legislature is here to stay for a while, and the Dems might as well use it. No need to be afraid of a backlash; there’s nothing out there to lash back with. The only real danger is that Democrats and independents will be so disappointed in the Legislature’s failure to act on the huge issues facing the state that they’ll stay home in two years.

Why not talk about a split-role property tax program? Why not an oil-severance tax? Why not let local government raise local taxes without a two-thirds majority? The Wall Street Journal can whine all it wants, but it can’t change reality — right now, the Democrats are the only game in town.

 

Editor’s notes

0

tredmond@sfbg.com

EDITOR’S NOTES The Wall Street Journal, which ought to focus on stellar reporting and skip the political analysis, stuck its haughty little nose into California last week, announcing that the Democratic supermajorities in the state Legislature spell doom for us all.

“Liberals,” the paper noted, “will pick up enough seats to secure a supermajority. Governor Jerry Brown then will be the only chaperone for the Liberals Gone Wild video that is Sacramento.”

I guess I go to the wrong parties, but I’ve never seen that movie. In fact, a lot of the Dems in Sacramento would have to cough and gasp a bit to call themselves “liberals,” and that’s on a good day. Frankly, the majority party in the Assembly and Senate tends to be relatively conservative, with many of its members afraid to so much as talk about, say, amending Prop. 13 or legalizing marijuana.

The bigger danger is that the Democrats from the more moderate districts will so fear that loss of their seats that they’ll want to be even more cautious about raising taxes than the Republicans.

See, I don’t think either party quite realizes what happened Nov. 6 in California, and what it means for the future.

This election wasn’t an anomaly. It wasn’t a miraculous twist of fate driven by high Obama turnout or by labor’s GOTV efforts to defeat Prop. 32. It was the inevitable result of two forces — the demographic changes in the electoral map of this state, and the utter, complete collapse of the California Republican Party. Neither one is about to change any time soon.

For decades, the GOP has focused on older, white, suburban voters, and there was a time when that strategy worked. But the future of the state is younger, non-white urban voters who are less frightened by crime, less xenophobic about immigration, less likely to have kids in private schools, and largely uninterested in the traditional Republican social issues.

Brian Leubitz, the insightful blogger at Calitics.com, notes that almost 30 percent of the people who went to the polls Nov. 6 were between 18 and 29 years old. “The California GOP, like the greater national party, has lost young voters,” he writes. “If it hopes to return to a semblance of a statewide party, it will need to moderate itself back into a party that accurately represents some portion of California’s electorate.”

How likely is that? Anyone want to bet that the GOP is going to reject the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association the right-wing radio guys in Los Angeles and start promoting immigration reform and an overhaul of Prop. 13? You’ll have to give me pretty long odds.

No: The era of Democratic supermajorities in the California Legislature is here to stay for a while, and the Dems might as well use it. No need to be afraid of a backlash; there’s nothing out there to lash back with. The only real danger is that Democrats and independents will be so disappointed in the Legislature’s failure to act on the huge issues facing the state that they’ll stay home in two years.

Why not talk about a split-role property tax program? Why not an oil-severance tax? Why not let local government raise local taxes without a two-thirds majority? The Wall Street Journal can whine all it wants, but it can’t change reality — right now, the Democrats are the only game in town.

 

Demos control Sacramento. Completely.

51

The sleeper in this election is the apparent supermajority for the Democrats in both houses of the Legislature. This is huge news, if it holds; for the first time since the passage of Prop. 13 in 1978, which mandated a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, it’s actually possible to govern and set fiscal policy without the no-taxes-ever-no-way Republicans being obstructionist.

In fact, as the Chron points out, Republicans would be essentially irrelevant in Sacramento.

That doesn’t mean everything’s just fine and dandy in the Legislature — the moderate-to-conservative Dems are sometimes as bad as the Republicans. But it means that if the Democratic leadership can craft a sane budget plan that raises some taxes (beyond what Gov. Brown did with Prop. 30), there’s a chance it could actually pass and the state could get back on track.

Of course, that assumes the governor will be on board, and he may not. Brown promised that he would never raise taxes without a vote of the people, and he got his vote, and it was close, and I bet he says: no more. Which is a problem, because Prop. 30, while absolutely necessary to keep California from falling off a cliff, only stabilizes the state’s revenue situation. It does nothing to restore the billions in cuts that have been made in the past decade and doesn’t even begin to put the state in a position to invest in, say, new education initiatives.

This could be a profound moment, a chance to make the state great again (and in the process, prove what can happen if you get rid of the minority-rule that’s crippled the Legislature for decades). It’s too great an opportunity to miss.

This much is true

0

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival returns for its 11th year with a typically strong program — whether you like your docs quirky, political, musical, experimental, or just plain strange, DocFest has you covered. Plus, there’s an “80s New Wave Sing-a-Long,” because who doesn’t love screaming Spandau Ballet with a few hundred pals? Read on for more recommendations.

Sorry, recent San Francisco transplants, but you’ll never get to experience the Jejune Institute, an alternate reality game that started attracting players in 2008 and closed up shop in 2011. Participants, lured by flyers or word-of-mouth, began by visiting an office on California Street, where they’d watch a video imparting new age philosophy; they’d then be given instructions for a sort of scavenger hunt in nearby Chinatown. They learned of a missing girl named Eva, and of new meanings for the words “elsewhere” and “nonchalance.”

Was it real? Was it fake? Whatever the truth, it was definitely fun for dedicated players, for whom the narrative continued and got more complicated; there were spontaneous dance parties, a subterranean rescue mission, and a culminating seminar on “socio-reengineering.” The genius of Spencer McCall’s The Institute  is its tone. Some interviewees are clearly in character, while others — including creator Jeff Hull, who cites Oakland’s Children’s Fairyland as an inspiration — proffer both straight talk and ambiguity, keeping some of the mystery of this fake-cult-that-earned-a-cult-following alive.

Another locally-made film, Sam Banning’s thoughtful Cruel and Unusual, takes a look at the negative effects of California’s Three Strikes Law (and by the time DocFest starts, you’ll know if Proposition 36, aimed at reforming the law, has passed). The film charts several cases, including the ordeal of Kelly Turner, sentenced to life for the decidedly non-violent crime of forging a check. Her story has a happy ending, but as the film shows, she’s one among thousands who’ve received similarly harsh sentences for proportionally minor crimes.

Broadway stardom has always been an elusive prize, but it’s become an even tougher pursuit now that many musicals compete for ticket buyers by casting high-profile film and TV actors. Stephanie Riggs’ The Standbys  goes behind the scenes with three professional understudies. Even if you’re not a musical-theater fan, it’s not hard to sympathize with these folks — “Gotta dance!” types who suffer the psychological strain of always being ready to not perform. (And on the rare occasion they get to step in, they inevitably face a cranky, disappointed audience: “Who’s this clown? Where’s Nathan Lane?”) The lifestyle fosters more offstage drama than on, as when the affable Ben Crawford finally ascends to leading-man status in Shrek the Musical — a triumph after all those hours spent sitting backstage in elaborate greenface — only to be set adrift when the show closes.

As careers go, show biz is brutal, but politics may be worse, and Ann Richards’ Texas is probably the most inspiring yet depressing film in DocFest. That’s not the fault of filmmakers Keith Patterson and Jack Lofton, but rather history itself: the feisty, big-haired Texas liberal was knocked out of office by George W. Bush, her opponent in the 1995 gubernatorial race. But just because Texas has gone the way of Bush and (ugh) Rick Perry shouldn’t take away from Richards’ considerable accomplishments — like her prison-reform work, among the good turns detailed here — or diminish her personality, which was as towering as her coiffure.

Though numerous famous friends and admirers (Dolly Parton, Bill Clinton) chime in with words of praise, the footage of Richards just being Richards (at press conferences, on talk shows, and giving speeches — particularly her instantly legendary appearance at the 1988 Democratic National Convention) speaks for itself. If only Richards, who died in 2006, was still around; there’d be no one better suited to rip into the current crop of women-hating Republicans.

Shot like a thriller, Thymaya Payne’s Stolen Seas is an eye-opening exploration of Somali piracy, with re-enactments (using actual audio recordings) of tense ransom negotiations between a Danish shipping company executive and a man retained by pirates to act as their translator. The film also delves into Somalia’s troubled history and recent past, exposing the origins of the piracy epidemic — surprise, surprise: the United States has a hand in it — and the purely business reasons why it will likely continue more or less unchecked.

Though it’s an East Coast tale, Bay Area activists may spot kindred spirits in the subjects of Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky’s Battle for Brooklyn, about community members and business owners who organized against a fat-cat developer’s plan to construct the Brooklyn Nets’ new arena in their neighborhood. The central figure is Daniel Goldstein, a graphic designer turned rabble-rouser whose home is located within the project’s footprint. Filmed over seven years, Battle for Brooklyn offers a well-articulated takedown of the shady politics surrounding the deal, with the happy added bonus of seeing Goldstein marry a fellow activist and father a daughter as the fight progresses.

Two more to add to your list: Eating Alabama, filmmaker Andrew Beck Grace’s chronicle of his year-long quest to dine only on food grown by Alabama farmers (yeah, it sounds like a blog instead of a doc, but Grace’s adventures in local foodie-ism, which give way to broader insights, are thought-provoking); and Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her (also a recent selection at the 3rd I South Asian Film Festival), which reveals some startling contrasts and similarities between Miss India pageant contestants and girls who are being indoctrinated into the country’s Hindu fundamentalist movement.

SAN FRANCISCO DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL

Nov 8-21, most films $10-$12

Brava Theater

2781 24th St., SF

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

Shattuck Cinema

2230 Shattuck, Berk.

www.sfindie.com

 

Extra! Extra! Gov. Rick Scott welcomes you to the State of Florida on election suppression day

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And so, thanks to Republican Governor Rick Scott and his Republican allies, the lines of voters were once again impossibly long at Florida voting places and many voters started chanting dramatically on national television, “Let us vote, let us vote, let us vote.” It was a chant that rang throughout many battleground states where Republicans had the power to reduce early voting and implement other policies designed to keep the lines long and to make it as difficult as possible for prospective Democrats to exercise their constitutional right to vote. 

Guardian cartoonist Louis Dunn sizes up the situation. And I ask the Impertinent Question: Are Florida and other such places becoming third world countrIes? This kind of voter suppression and repression is an update of the old poll tax policy used in the South for generations to keep blacks from voting–and used eight years ago to put Bush into office over Gore, who won by more than 500,000 votes.  It has no place anywhere in the U.S. in 2012. The first thing Obama and the Democrats need to do is to move to investigate, prosecute, and criminalize this behavior.

Obama, let me predict, is going to win and he needs to aggressively assert himself and his presidency at the outset. This is a good place to start. b3

P.S. Thomas R.Julin, a noted Miami First Amendment attorney,  told me this afternoon that the election suppression in Miami  is “unbelievably awful.” http://www.sfbg.com/bruce/2012/11/06/miami-first-amendment-attorney-election-suppression-unbelievably-awful  B3