sex Archives — Page 39 of 111 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

New DVDs, old sleaze

Andrew Lam

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October 4, 2011

TRASH When it comes to home viewing, gratuitous violence is always a selling point for genre fans — the censorial gloves that handle most theatrical films are off, “unrated” becomes a plus rather than commercial suicide, “director’s cut” usually means more blood and maybe a little flesh previously removed at the MPAA’s behest. The flood of obscure old exploitation titles now being released to DVD and Blu-ray are duly advertised as high on mayhem, whether that’s actually the case or not. (One mid-70s Swedish sexploitation item just released is billed as a “violent cult classic,” though apart from a bit of fetish whipping there’s nary a violent moment in it.)

Sometimes one even wonders if the writers of back-cover copy even bothered to watch the film itself, a question that recalls the halcyon days of VHS when box descriptions of cheap back-catalog titles often seemed to be about other, perhaps imaginary films entirely.

Nonetheless, you don’t have to look too far to find retro schlock living up to its hype, reminding that in grindhouse days of yore big-screen movies could get away with considerably more crassness than they do now. One such cheerfully nasty oldie is Ruggero Deodato’s 1976 Italian Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man, invitingly labeled as “ULTRA VIOLENCE from the director of Cannibal Holocaust.”

That 1980 milestone in the annals of yecch was still years away when Deodato and scenarist cop-flick specialist Fernando Di Leo delivered this crazy exercise in vigilante justice with a badge. Ray Lovelock and Marc Porel do the Starsky and Hutch thing as a Roman “special squad” police duo who always get their man — though to the exasperation of their superiors, said man always meets an bloody “accidental” death in the process of apprehension. In fact it’s acknowledged that the pair has criminal instincts. They’ve only chosen this side of the law to wreak as much violent havoc for kicks as possible and get away with it.

Swiss Porel and Italian Lovelock were two of the most beautiful men — we’re talking Alain Delon level here — in movies then. Deodato lets them act not just like a flippant thrill-crazed comedy team nonchalantly distributing harm everywhere they go, but like a couple close-knit in other ways. We see that they share the same bedroom (if not bed); the few times they express sexual interest, it’s to “take turns” with a woman in each other’s company. Such interludes clearly do no more than kill time for our prankster-hero psychopaths between the greater visceral rewards of reckless motorcycle chases (reportedly shot without permits in the heart of Rome) plus blowing and shooting stuff up. They’re adorably lethal.

Speaking of vigilantism, few U.S. films ripped off the Death Wish (1974) formula — aside from Death Wish sequels, of course — with more lurid tactlessness than 1980’s The Exterminator, now out in a DVD/Blu-ray pack. Writer-director James Glickenhaus’ magnum opus has Robert Ginty as a Vietnam vet whose avenging of a comrade’s assault by Class of 1984-style “punks” snowballs into a general NYC cleanup campaign utilizing a flame thrower, machine gun, soldering iron, giant meat grinder, electric carving knife, and jazz great Stan Getz — well, he’s featured in a rare non-violent, wholly incongruous scene at a nightclub.

Lest we object to this unlawful justice, the perps pulverized include hoodlums who gut-punch old ladies and pimps who “serve young boys to perverts.” Tea Party logic is affirmed in an ending where FBI operatives, having slain our antihero (or so they think) on government orders because successful vigilantism makes public officials look bad at election time, smirk “Washington will be pleased.” Yeah, they’re all out to fuck ya! NRA 4-ever!

The Exterminator offered a cheap-thrills alternative to the original slasher wave. Gleefully surfing the latter’s blood tide is Alex Pucci’s Frat House Massacre, a belated DVD release that reprises the excesses of that era and then some.

With nary a dull (or tasteful) moment in its 116-minute director’s cut, this 2008 campus flashback has it all: psycho fraternity president, deliberately fatal hazings, rampant cocaine abuse, nasty sex and nastier sexism, boobs, a surprising surplus of well-toned male nudity, ludicrously gory murders, a disco production number, brutal towel-snapping, music by one of the Goblin guys (of 1977’s Suspiria fame), zero narrative continuity, and lines like “Studying always gets me horny.” Frat House Massacre would be a guilty pleasure if it weren’t clearly in on its own joke.

Endorsements 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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October 4, 2011

110

Editor’s Note: These are our full endorsements for the 2011 election on November 8. Our Clean Slate clipout guide to take to the polls is here. Listen and watch our interviews with many of the major candidates here. For information about San Francisco voter registration, early voting, and other city election provisions, click here.

The way the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting it, this city isn’t paying much attention to the Nov. 8 election. An Oct. 2 story cited a rumored poll showing that a third of the voters still think Gavin Newsom is mayor. And “nobody has a really big, attention-grabbing personality.”

And yet, this is a crucial election. The city’s in serious trouble. The budget has a huge structural imbalance, blue-collar jobs are vanishing, affordable housing lags far behind condominiums for millionaires — and planning decisions that are made in the next administration will change the shape of the city for decades to come.

Meanwhile, a discredited political machine run by former Mayor Willie Brown is trying mightily to get its sleazy tentacles back into City Hall.

There are important races for sheriff and district attorney, too. San Francisco has a long history of progressive sheriffs, dating back to Dick Hongisto in the 1970s. Now, after 30 years, Mike Hennessey is retiring — and it’s possible that the city could lose the distinction of having a national leader in alternatives to incarceration, anti-recidivism and humane treatment of prisoners.

San Francisco has another distinction, this one less laudable: This is the first city in modern history to have a police chief become district attorney. And three challengers are trying to change that.

We’ve spent weeks meeting with the candidates. We’ve held a series of forums on the key issues. Our interviews are all on the politics blog.

So don’t sit this one out. Vote early, vote often, and vote as if the future of the city is at stake. Our recommendations follow.

MAYOR

1. John Avalos

2. Dennis Herrera

3. Leland Yee

The first mayoral election in San Francisco to feature ranked-choice voting and public financing has opened the way to a broad field of candidates. There are eight contenders who have served either as supervisors or as citywide elected officials — and if the interim mayor, Ed Lee, had kept his promise and stayed out of the race, this would be perhaps the most competitive field in modern history.

Unfortunately, Lee — who was chosen to replace Gavin Newsom only because he vowed to be a caretaker and not run for a full term — backed down from his promise, and, thanks to a boatload of special interest money, is now the clear favorite.

But Lee still lacks the support of a majority of the voters (polls show him with around 30 percent, meaning 70 percent are either undecided or voting for somebody else), which gives the rest of the field — or at least, a few of the top contenders — a fighting chance.

In some ways, Lee has been refreshing. After years of the arrogant and superficial Gavin Newsom, Lee has brought humility, a sense of humor and a degree of openness to the office that has won him fans across the political spectrum.

But frankly, the entire process that brought us to this position stinks of backroom deals involving some very unsavory characters. Lee, a career bureaucrat, wasn’t even interested in the job (and wasn’t even in the country) when the Board of Supervisors met to choose Newsom’s replacement. At the last minute, Newsom, Chief of Staff Steve Kawa, former Mayor Willie Brown and a few others orchestrated a deal that aced out Sheriff Mike Hennessy — the progressive choice — and put Lee in Room 200. And then, after denying for months that he had any intention of running in the fall, he changed his mind — telling Sup. David Chiu that he was “unable to resist Willie Brown and [Chinatown powerbroker] Rose Pak.”

In a recent interview, Lee said he would give Brown an A+ for his time running the city.

That’s a very bad sign. The years when Brown was mayor were awful. Between 1996 and 2001, some 20,000 people were driven out of San Francisco. Evictions ran as high as 200 a month. It seemed as if every day, another low-income family or senior citizen or artist community was forced out of the Mission to make way for rich dot-comers and illegal live-work lofts. At one point, Brown even said that the city was so expensive that poor people shouldn’t live here.

Developers ran the Planning Department. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (which now has Brown on a juicy legal retainer) ran the Public Utilities Commission. The city was deeply damaged by cronyism and corruption. Anyone who thinks those years were anything other than a disaster has no business in Room 200, City Hall.

Even with all of that, we were willing to give Lee a shot. It’s been tough to find three candidates to endorse, and we were hoping he’d come talk to us, impress us, and leave us the option of putting him on the list. But after taking weeks to schedule an endorsement interview, he didn’t show up.

The Brown-Newsom legacy has been terrible for San Francisco. This is a city where the rich are getting richer, housing prices are out of reach for working-class people, tenants are getting screwed, affordable housing is falling far behind the need — and the Planning Department is talking about building housing for another 40,000 rich people, destroying blue-collar jobs in the process. City Hall badly needs change.

It’s critical to end the 16 years of regressive policies and bring in a mayor who is independent of the old, corrupt political machine. And while we are strong supporters of Sup. John Avalos, with ranked-choice voting, we believe that it’s important to round out the slate with candidates who also have a reasonable chance of winning.

Avalos is by far the best candidate, the strongest on the issues, the one who can be counted on to bring a progressive reform agenda and an age of innovation to City Hall. More than anyone else in the race, he understands the crisis facing the city and the need for dramatic action to protect tenants, poor people and what’s left of the city’s middle class. He realizes that San Francisco can’t continue to allow developers to build million-dollar condos without mandating a more-than equal amount of below-market-rate housing.

He realizes that the public sector is under attack nationwide, and that San Francisco needs to fight back — and that means raising taxes on the rich to preserve and expand public services. He told us he’d like to see the city’s revenue increase by $500 million a year by the end of his mayoral term — enough not only to halt the ongoing budget cuts but to begin to restore essential programs that Newsom gutted. He’s already begun exploring legislation to create a municipal bank to take money that now goes to Wells Fargo and Bank of America and use it to make loans to local small businesses.

He also realizes the danger of secrecy, corruption and cronyism in undermining faith in government. He’s been an excellent supervisor, and the city would be well served by an Avalos administration.

Our second choice is City Attorney Dennis Herrera. We’ve had problems with Herrera in the past — his office disqualified a referendum on redevelopment in Bayview Hunters Point on the basis of a ridiculous interpretation of state law that he could easily have challenged. He’s promoted gang injunctions that are anathema to civil liberties. His office has allowed city departments to keep secret more documents than necessary. He’s weak on housing, declining to call for a moratorium on new market-rate units until affordable housing catches up.

But he, as much as Newsom, was responsible for promoting and defending San Francisco’s landmark same-sex marriage campaign, he’s got a strong record on consumer and environmental protection — and on most issues, he’s a decent progressive. By all accounts, he’s a good manager. He has a solid grasp of public policy issues. He agrees that a big part of the solution to the city’s budget crisis has to be new revenue. He promised not only to introduce and lead a public power campaign but to appoint public-power-friendly commissioners to the Public Utilities Commission.

He would replace the Brown-Newsom hacks on key city commissions and in top administration positions — and we’re convinced that he’s principled enough to put an end to pay-to-play, unregistered lobbyists and the growing tide of sleaze in the Mayor’s Office. He’s a hard worker with strong executive experience, and San Francisco would be well served by a Herrera administration.

Then there’s the third choice — which was, to put it mildly, a challenge.

There are a few decent candidates out there who have good things to say. The Green Party’s Terry Baum, one of only three women in the race, is right on all the issues, but has no electoral experience — and honestly, little chance of winning.

Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting has been great on Prop. 13 and has gone after big business and the Catholic Church on tax issues; his “Reset SF” campaign relies a little too much on the idea that crowd-sourcing policy solutions will save the day, but we like Ting. Unfortunately, he’s barely registering in the major polls and his campaign hasn’t developed the kind of traction it needs to make him a viable challenger.

Supervisor David Chiu was a progressive once, and he claims he still is. He’s personable and accessible and votes the right way more than half the time. But he is single-handedly responsible for giving the conservatives control of the Board of Supervisors. He was a swing vote for Ed Lee for mayor, he supported the Twitter tax break, he’s trying to block Sup. David Campos’ move to close a loophole in the city’s health-care law — and in general, he’s too quick to compromise and move to the center.

Bevan Dufty is the only candidate who shows a consistent sense of humor (“I’m a little Strawberry Shortcake meets Hello Kitty”), and he’s often the star of the candidate forums. He’s the only candidate talking seriously about the crisis in the African American community. He opposed the sit-lie law. He’s got some wonderful wild ideas, like getting Virgin Airlines to decorate the inside of Muni buses to make the ride colorful and exciting. He actually cares about city workers. We appreciate having Dufty in the race.

But he’s been abysmal on tenant issues, and told us that he thinks landlord tenant battles “are too adversarial.” Overall, his voting record on economic issues has been consistently with the conservative wing of the board. We hope the next mayor finds a spot for him in city government; he has a lot to offer. But we just disagree on too many issues.

Jeff Adachi has been an excellent public defender and talks passionately about social justice. He has strong roots in the progressive community. We give him credit for forcing pension reform onto the agenda. But he seems a bit too willing to attack the public sector as the source of the city’s economic woes — he refused to support the last public power measure and his main budget proposal is to make city employees pay more for their pensions –without in any way pairing that with a hike in the taxes that big businesses and wealthy people pay. And his lone-wolf approach to the pension issue has been divisive and doesn’t play well in this labor town.

Joanna Rees has offered some interesting, independent ideas, but she’s never held any elective office or had any involvement in local politics.

That leaves Sen. Leland Yee. A classic lesser of the evils.

Yee has a very mixed record. He was a conservative School Board member who wouldn’t even talk about higher taxes and once tried to split the wealthier West Side off into its own school district. He had a pretty bad voting record on the Board of Supervisors, particularly on tenant issues. He didn’t support health benefits for transgender city employees. But on a board almost entirely controlled by then-Mayor Brown, he was something of an independent, one of only two or three supervisors ever willing to go up against the powerful mayor.

And he’s moved to the left in the past couple of years. He has fully apologized for his vote on transgender benefits, has been strong on labor issues — and is (and always has been) a leading voice on open government. He has 100 percent voting scores from the leading labor and environmental groups in Sacramento. He has the support of a lot of local progressive groups, including SEIU Local 1021. He is supporting the proposal by Sup. David Campos to close the loophole in the city’s health-care law. He told us he would oppose any effort to change district elections.

Yee makes us nervous. As we noted in a profile (see “The Real Leland Yee,” 8/30/11):

“He’s grown, changed, and developed his positions over time. Or he’s become an expert at political pandering, telling every group exactly what it wants to hear. He’s the best chance progressives have of keeping the corrupt old political machine out of City Hall — or he’s a chameleon who will be a nightmare for progressive San Francisco.

“Or maybe he’s a little bit of all of that.”

But in the end, after 24 years in public life, it’s safe to say that Yee is not part of the old machine, not part of the Newsom/Kawa/Brown team that put Lee in office, not part of anyone’s corrupt operation. He’s himself, for better and for worse, and he’ll clean house in the Mayor’s Office. And at a time when City Hall could too easily drift back into the very bad old days, we’re willing to take a chance on Leland Yee.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY

1. David Onek

2. Sharmin Bock

3. Bill Fazio

District Attorney George Gascon is not a bad guy. He was a better police chief than many of the people we’ve seen in that job. He has a history of standing up for immigrants under very, very difficult circumstances — as the chief of police in Mesa, Arizona he had to tangle with a rabidly anti-immigrant sheriff and a conservative population, and he emerged with solid credentials. He brought some much-needed professionalism and stronger management practices to the SFPD. He’s personable, accessible and works hard to stay in touch with the community. As D.A., he’s worked well with the public defender and has (finally) come around to opposing the death penalty.

We just wish that Gavin Newsom hadn’t decided that the way to advance his own political career and agenda was to put his police chief in the District Attorney’s Office.

There are reasons that no police chief in the United States has become a district attorney — certainly not in modern history. The D.A. and the cops have to work together, but they also have to have a certain degree of separation — or there are inevitable, unacceptable, unworkable conflicts of interest. And while Gascon talks about transparency, he’s fighting the release of a crucial memo on problems in the crime lab.

So we’re looking for a new district attorney, and there are three contenders, each of them with strengths and weaknesses.

Our first choice is David Onek, whose career in nonprofit and academic work leaves him short of the courtroom and management experience we’d like to see in the next D.A. but who has by far the strongest credentials and agenda for reform. He starts off every interview and discussion by saying that the criminal justice system in California is broken — not bent, not sprained, not in need of a little attention, but utterly broken. The entire premise that’s driven criminal law in the past several decades — that offenders, including nonviolent and drug offenders, need to be sent to prison for longer and longer terms — has proven a failure. “We’re arresting and prosecuting people just fine,” he told us. “We need to reform the system.” And San Francisco could make a national statement by electing a district attorney who wants to change criminal justice, not just make it work better.

Onek’s strong focus on juvenile justice would be a profound policy shift — juvie is typically a secondary thought in the justice system. Onek promised never to charge a youthful offender as an adult without going before a judge first — and would do that only in rare cases. His plan is to get kids out of the justice system before they become hardened criminals. He’s also talking about working on employment opportunities for ex-offenders. He has always been opposed to the death penalty, and we think he’s taking seriously the need for more aggressive investigation and prosecution of political corruption.

Onek has never tried a case — a major drawback. On the other hand, neither has the incumbent. We acknowledge that putting someone with negligible prosecutorial experience in the top job is a stretch — but the justice system is such a mess that we’re willing to gamble on an idealistic reformer.

Two qualified, experienced prosecutors are also in the race. We give a slight edge to Sharmin Bock, who has spent her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. Bock’s spent a lot of time working on crimes against women and portrays herself as in independent, which is both good and bad: Good because it would give her an outsiders perspective on the office, bad because, unlike Alameda County’s D.A., San Francisco’s prosecutor is part of the local political infrastructure. But she does have some background prosecuting bad cops — she was part of the office that went after Oakland’s notorious Riders.

Bill Fazio, who was a San Francisco prosecutor and is now a defense lawyer, shares Bock’s courtroom experience. And his days on the defense side of the aisle have changed some of his perspectives — the one-time tough-on-crime guy who in 1999 ran for this office as a death-penalty advocate now agrees that executions are a terrible mistake. He’s a little shaky on drug crimes (“it’s only a problem when it’s a problem”) and to this day, he says the prosecution of the Fajitagate cops was “ridiculous” (wrong, Bill — there was a systemic cover-up, and it’s too bad the top brass got away with it). But we’ll give him our final nod.

SHERIFF

1. Ross Mirkarimi

Mike Hennessey has been sheriff of San Francisco for so long, and has done such a great job, that hardly anyone in town really thinks about the politics of the office any more. We take it for granted that we have the most progressive sheriff in the state, maybe the nation. We just assume that the jails will be run well, that the deputies will be held to a high standard of behavior, that alternatives to incarceration will be part of the program, that evictions will be handled in a humane way, that anti-recidivism programs will be funded and given priority, that immigrants won’t face automatic deportation — and that San Francisco’s top elected law-enforcement official will be a leader in innovative ways to approach law enforcement.

But it wasn’t always that way, and it won’t necessarily be that way in the future. This is a crucial election, pitting a progressive reformer who comes from the civilian world against two career law-enforcement officers. It’s a chance to vote for someone who will continue Hennessey’s legacy or to risk turning back the clock. That’s why we’re strongly endorsing Ross Mirkarimi, and only Ross Mirkarimi.

Hennessey was never a cop. He started off as a poverty lawyer, working in prison legal services under Dick Hongisto, who launched the tradition of progressive sheriffs in this city. He ran as a civilian and won — and there’s a value to that. The Sheriff’s Office in San Francisco has no Police Commission, no Office of Citizen Complaints; the only oversight of 850 sworn officers is the elected sheriff.

Since Hennessey’s election, law enforcement lobbyists have managed to make changes in state law that bar anyone without formal police training from serving as a sheriff. Under current law, Mike Hennessey — who is widely respected by his peers — wouldn’t be allowed to seek the office.

Mirkarimi meets the qualifications. He went through the San Francisco Police Academy as an investigator for the District Attorney’s Office and graduated as president of his class. He holds the Peace Officers Standards and Training certificate and is thus in an unusual position: He can run for sheriff without being part of the law-enforcement fraternity.

It’s not as if Mirkarimi is a stranger to the issues. He spent much of his first term in office working on public safety. When he took office in 2005, District Five, particularly the Western Addition, was plagued with violent crime. He personally appeared at every homicide scene, pushed for more police on the streets and for foot patrols and worked to organize the community around crime — and it worked. The murder rate dropped dramatically.

These days, Mirkarimi is working on anti-recidivism programs and wants to bring that approach to the office. Which is critical: Over the next two years, as the state implements a prison-system realignment, hundreds more inmates will be entering the San Francisco County Jail system — and while Hennessey has made a lot of progress, almost three quarters of the people who leave jail in San Francisco wind up getting in trouble with the law again.

The person who knows the job best is Hennessey — and he’s made his position clear. When Hennessey decided three years ago that he was going to retire at the end of his term, he met with Mirkarimi and told him he’d like to see the supervisor as his successor. In fact, Hennessey told us, he offered to appoint Mirkarimi as undersheriff, so he could learn the job and run as the second-in-command. But that wasn’t possible — city law prohibits sitting supervisors from taking another city job (unless it’s an elected position).

If Hennessey had become acting mayor he would have appointed Mirkarimi sheriff. “Ross is the person I want to see in the job,” Hennessey said. He noted two important reasons.

First, he said, “one of the hardest parts of any law enforcement management job is maintaining discipline in the ranks. And that’s very hard to do if you’re an insider. I’ve always considered myself a citizen more than a peace officer, and that’s allowed me to do the job.”

Second, Hennessey told us, “One of the reasons I was successful is that I’ve been an innovator. I see Ross as having that spirit. And I don’t see that in the other two candidates.”

If John Avalos isn’t elected mayor, Mirkarimi could become the only truly progressive person holding citywide office in San Francisco. In seven years on the Board of Supervisors, he was not only a leader on environmental and public safety issues but was an utterly reliable progressive vote. He represents part of the next generation of progressive leadership in San Francisco, and we’re proud to endorse him for sheriff.

There are two other candidates running — Chris Cunnie, a former San Francisco cop and head of the Police Officers Association, and Paul Miyamoto, a captain in Hennessey’s department. Both have experience, and both vowed to carry on Hennessey’s progressive legacy. But we can’t support either of them.

Cunnie was head of the POA when that union opposed the police reform measure that gave the supervisors three appointments to the Police Commission. He made a habit of blasting progressive District Attorney Terence Hallinan for not being nice enough to the cops. And under his leadership, the POA opposed a promotions plan designed to bring more women and people of color into leadership positions in the SFPD. He’s done some good things, and told us he wants to work to get people with substance abuse problems out of the legal system and into treatment (he was a very successful executive at Walden House, the treatment facility). But he’s endorsed by POA President Gary Delagnes, who has been a major obstacle to police reform.

Miyamoto spent his life in law enforcement and has the management experience, but lacks the kind of innovative agenda that Hennessey told us the next sheriff needs.

The bottom line is simple: All three candidates spend a lot of time touting the legacy and great work that Hennessey did, and all of them vow to continue in his footsteps. But Hennessey himself says the only candidate who can continue his legacy is Ross Mirkarimi.

That’s a pretty clear choice.

San Francisco ballot measures

PROPOSITION A

YES

SCHOOL BONDS

A lot of the educational facilities in San Francisco are in need of repair and renovation, and some of these improvements are critical for meeting health and safety standards. They include elementary schools, middle schools, high schools and child development centers, many of which are located in the city’s southeastern neighborhoods. This measure would allow the San Francisco Unified School District to issue $531 million in bonds to repair and rebuild facilities.

The expenditure comes with a number of safeguards and strings attached. SFUSD is required by law to conduct an annual financial audit to ensure that funding is being properly used, and an independent citizens’ oversight committee will be created within two months of approval to inform the public about how the proceeds are used. Vote yes.

PROPOSITION B

YES

STREET REPAVING BOND

There are few more basic functions of government than maintaining the streets. This $248 million general obligation bond would fund improvements to benefit drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, and public transit users. And if San Francisco doesn’t make this investment now, it will cost even more later to fix the roads once they’ve begun to degrade, so this really is a no-brainer. Some — particularly the right-wing, anti-tax scolds — might argue that keeping the roads in good shape should be part of the city’s annual budget rather than being paid for with borrowed money repaid by increased property taxes and rents. We might even agree, if the wealthy were being fairly taxed and the city was bringing in at least $248 million in additional annual revenue. But in this era of declining government resources, this bond is desperately needed. Most of it, almost $150 million, goes to resurfacing the streets, while $50 million goes to new improvements (including improved bike lanes) and $22 million each go to signal upgrades and sidewalk and ramp improvements. Leaders from across the political spectrum support it. Vote yes on B.

PROPOSITION C

PENSION REFORM

YES

PROPOSITION D

PENSION REFORM

NO

We’ll admit to a bit of political crankiness on this one: Our initial instinct was to oppose both of these measures. Sure, there are abuses in the city’s pension system (particularly among public safety employees). Sure, since the stock market crash, the cost to the city of funding the pension system has risen to levels unsustainable in our current fiscal environment. And at some point, the supervisors were going to have to deal with it.

But there’s a basic unfairness about all of this that bothers us: The city workers are being asked to give up part of their pay — but the wealthiest individuals and big corporations in San Francisco are giving up nothing. It’s part of the national trend — the poor and middle class are shouldering the entire burden of the economic crisis, and the rich aren’t suffering a bit.

That said, there’s political reality here — both of the pension reform measures will probably pass, and the one that gets more votes will take effect. And there’s really no choice between them — Prop. C, the measure written with the input and support of the mayor, the supervisors and labor, is the better option.

The two proposals are complicated. Both would reduce the city’s obligation to pay into the employee pension plan, particularly in years when the economy is bad, the stock market is down and the pension fund portfolio is shrinking. Both require city employees to work longer for lower pensions. Both have complex formulas for how that would happen.

Prop. D, written by Public Defender Jeff Adachi, has a slightly better formula for allocating the pain: Under his plan, employees making lower salaries would pay less than employees at the high end of the scale. His is also stronger on pension “spiking” — pensions would be based on the average pay of an employees last five years. Under the City Hall plan, that would be a three-year average.

But overall, Prop. C is a better measure — in large part because it reflects a legitimate process of collective bargaining. Adachi did his plan all by himself, with no input from labor or others at City Hall. Prop. C was hammered out in a series of meetings with members of the board, the mayor, and representatives of the city employee unions that will actually pay for the changes. That, generally, is how the process ought to work.

We would have demanded tax reform before we supported any pension reform, but given the options facing us, we’re going Yes on C and No on D.

PROPOSITION E

NO

CHANGING VOTER-APPROVED MEASURES

The right of the people to directly reform government laws when their elected representatives fail to do so is one of the most cherished and effective electoral reforms of the Progressive Era, when the initiative, recall, and referendum were established. But this measure would have the people voluntarily give up some of that power by allowing the Board of Supervisors to alter or repeal voter-approved ballot measures. Supervisor Scott Wiener, who pushed this measure with support from the big business community, never really explained why it was necessary or what legislation he was targeting — but among the potentially vulnerable measures are tenant protections and the city’s transit-first policy.

Wiener argued that this was just about not cluttering up the ballots with minor administrative tweaks. Do you see anything like that on the ballot? No, neither do we, and we aren’t buying that this is a problem in need of such a radical solution. The deck is already stacked against grassroots groups forced to resort to gathering signatures or persuading progressive supervisors to sponsor a ballot measure. Supervisors shouldn’t be able to undo what voters decide, not with a simple majority vote (after seven years) or even a two-thirds vote (after three years), particularly when they have plenty of power to place new measures on the ballot to address problems unintentionally created by voters. Vote no on E.

PROPOSITION F

NO

CAMPAIGN CONSULTANT RULES

Proposition F contains some straightforward, housekeeping-style changes to the city’s ethics rules governing the activities of campaign consultants. But it also includes a provision that’s fundamentally disempowering to the voters.

On the positive side, the measure would allow the Ethics Commission to accept reports from political consultants electronically, which makes sense, and it would require reports to be filed monthly rather than quarterly. But this is one of those cases of the bad outweighing the good. The definition of a campaign consultant would change from an individual earning $1,000 per calendar year on campaign activities to an individual earning $5,000 per year, effectively dimming the concept of sunshine in open government and making it harder for members of the public to learn of activities that affect local government.

More importantly, F flunks the smell test when it comes to accountability to voters, since it would make it possible for politicians, not just voters, to change the law governing campaign consultant activity. This is a departure from the current system, which requires the voters to weigh in on any change to campaign consultant law. This effectively grants elected officials greater control over the rules their own political consultants must follow, eliminating an important safeguard. Vote no.

PROPOSITION G

YES

SALES TAX INCREASE

San Francisco desperately needs new tax revenue to slow the steady decline in government funding and services over the last 10 years. We’d like to see a variety of options for voters to choose from, particularly options that primarily hit the richest individuals and corporations in the city (such as a local income tax, a commercial rent tax, transit impact fees, etc.). And if there were better options, we might not support Mayor Ed Lee’s plan to maintain the current sales tax rate rather than letting it drop by a half-percent as the state rate sunsets.

Sales taxes are regressive, hitting the poor harder than the rich, and not the best funding mechanism. We’re also not fond of this measure’s provisions to set that money aside to fund public safety programs and services to seniors and children, which is clearly a gimmick by tax-averse politicians to sell this measure to voters.

But the bottom line is that years of deep cuts have taken a disastrous toll on the city budget — threatening core social services and, yes, even public safety programs — and the city needs the money. Besides, this simply keeps the city’s 8.5 percent sales tax rate where it is, at a level we’ve already budgeted for. We’ll endorse Prop. G — but we look forward to seeing some more progressive measures on the ballot next fall.

PROPOSITION H

NO

NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS

Prop. H is a policy statement that would have no immediate impact — but it’s still dangerous. It’s an attempt to undermine the School Board’s assignment policy, a system worked out over more than two years after dozens of hearings and meetings. The current system isn’t perfect — but there’s no way to create a perfect way to assign kids to schools in a city where some neighborhoods are still segregated by race, the quality of local schools is unequal, the district offers special programs at school sites scattered across the city — and parents want the right to chose schools outside their neighborhoods.

So the assignment process allows parents to chose seven schools, weighs the demographics of the family and makes an effort to both ensure diversity and give as many families one of their choices as possible. It works more than 80 percent of the time. Prop. H would mandate that geography — proximity to a school — was given the highest priority in assignment. That means kids in rich neighborhoods would go to better schools — and some schools would be effectively re-segregated by race. It’s a terrible idea, and needs to be defeated. Vote No.

The Guardian endorsements were prepared by our editorial board, Rebecca Bowe, Bruce B. Brugmann, Tim Redmond and Steven T. Jones.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam

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October 4, 2011

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Schedules are for Wed/5-Tues/11 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Other Cinema:” program on the politics of social media, with works by Dominic Gagnon, Hrman Asselbergh, and others, Sat, 8:30.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-15. We Were Here (Weissman and Weber, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 7, 9:15 (also Wed, 2:30, 4:45). “Midnites for Maniacs: Monsters in Your Own Backyard:” •The Goonies (Donner, 1985), Fri, 7; The Hole 3D (Dante, 2009), Fri, 9:30; Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Dante, 1990), Fri, 11:59. Director Joe Dante in person; $15 for one or all three films. Pam Ann live performance, Sat, 7:30. This event, $35-30 at www.biggaycomedy.com. •Brighton Rock (Boulting Brothers, 1947) Sun, 1:15, 5:05, 9, and The Third Man (Reed, 1949), Sun, 3:05, 7. CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. Mill Valley Film Festival, Oct 6-16. Tickets (most shows $13.50) and more info at www.mvff.com.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10 (reservations required as seating is limited). “CinemaLit Film Series: Discovering Myrna Loy:” The Animal Kingdom (Griffith, 1932), Fri, 6.

NINTH STREET INDEPENDENT FILM CENTER 145 Ninth St, SF; www.whatisloveproject.com. $10. “What Is Love Project Launch Party:” Who Leads and Love is Not Enough, Sat, 7:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Paul Sharits: An Open Cinema:” “Paul Sharits: Early Work” (1966-1971), Wed, 7:30. “A Theater Near You:” Went the Day Well? (Cavalcanti, 1942), Thurs, 7. “The Outsiders: New Hollywood Cinema in the Seventies:” Loose Ends (Morris and Wozniak, 1975), Fri, 7; Killer of Sheep (Burnett, 1977), Fri, 9; Badlands (Malick, 1973), Sat, 6:30; Mean Streets (Scorsese, 1973), Sat, 8:25. “UCLA Festival of Preservation:” Eve’s Leaves (Sloane, 1926), Sun, 4. “Anatolian Outlaw: Yilmaz Güney:” The Poor (Güney and Yilmaz, 1974), Sun, 5:35. “Kino-Eye: The Revolutionary Cinema of Dziga Vertov:” “Kino-Week Nos. 31-35” (Vertov, 1919), Tues, 7. ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $5-9.75. “TV Noir:” •”Test Flight: Program One,” Wed, 6:15, 9:45, and “Program Two,” Wed, 8; •”Sex, Drugs, and Dragnet,” Thurs, 6:15, 9:50, and “CrimeBusters!”, Thurs, 8. American Teacher (Roth, 2011), Oct 7-13, check website for showtimes. Sleep Furiously (Koppel, 2008), Oct 7-13 (no shows Tues/11), 7, 9 (also Sat-Sun, 3 and 5). “Bioneers Film Night:” !Women Art Revolution (Hershman Leeson, 2011), Tues, 8:15; YERT (Your Environmental Road Trip) (Dixon and Evans, 2011), Tues, 8:45. Tickets ($6.50-8) and more info at bioneers.org/conference. SAN FRANCISCO FILM SOCETY NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $15. “An Evening with Susan Orlean and Rin Tin Tin:” Clash of the Wolves (Smith, 1925), Sun, 7:30. Author Orlean in person with her book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend. VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $5 donation. “The Vortex Incarnate:” •The Devil’s Rain (Fuest, 1975), Thurs, 9, and Invitation to Hell (Craven, 1984), Thurs, 11. YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Cruel Cinema: New Directions in Tamil Films:” Naan Kadavul (I Am God) (Bala, 2009), Thurs, 6 and Sun, 9; Subramaniapuram (Sasikumar, 2008), Sat, 7 and Sun, 4.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam

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October 4, 2011

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MILL VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL

The 34th Mill Valley film festival runs Oct. 6-16 at various North Bay venues, including the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. For tickets (most shows $13.50) and complete schedule, visit www.mvff.com. For commentary, see “Do North.”

OPENING

*American Teacher Public school teachers have one of the most important jobs in America — and most of them are paid very little in proportion to the long, difficult hours they put in (truth, no matter what Tea Partiers say). Vanessa Roth’s American Teacher — narrated by Matt Damon, co-produced by Dave Eggers, and spurred by the nonprofit Teacher Salary Project — examines the current state of the teaching profession, from its many drawbacks (like those mentioned above) to its chief rewards, namely, the feelings of joy that come from helping to expand young minds. As education experts lament the fact that top college grads gravitate toward big-bucks careers in law and medicine instead of teaching, the film profiles four teachers who’re struggling to stay in the career they love (one of them reluctantly quits his job at San Francisco’s Leadership High School in favor of a higher-paying gig with his family’s real-estate business). There’s also the Harvard grad tempted by a magnet school that pays its teachers over $100,000 a year; the pregnant first-grade teacher worried about the intricacies of maternity leave; and the most devastating tale, of a small-town Texas teacher and coach forced to take on a second job to support his family, at the eventual expense of his marriage. It’s likely that American Teacher will play mostly for audiences already sympathetic to its message, but there’s always hope a film like this will inspire an angry Fox News-er to have a change of heart. (1:21) Roxie. (Eddy)

*The Dead Most zombie movies tell the same basic story, some variation of “survivors on the run.” Sometimes, the repetition is forgivable, as when the special effects are particularly juicy, or there’s totally unique plot twist (2009’s Zombieland set a new gold standard for that one), or there’s some other special thing that makes the film stand out from the brains-gobbling pack. For British directing brothers Howard J. and Jon Ford, that thing is the setting, which is neither backwoods America nor empty London, but West Africa. When The Dead begins, the outbreak (never explained) has already commenced; in an abandoned village, a grizzled American soldier (Rob Freeman) encounters a grim African soldier (Prince David Osei). Since they’re the only two living humans for miles, logic dictates they should team up; much of the film follows the pair on a surreal road trip through a rural landscape populated only by slow-moving, staring, ever-hungry undead. Despite some flaws (uneven acting, plus a few culturally iffy points — isn’t “witch doctor” kind of an outdated turn of phrase?), The Dead delivers where it matters, with moments of genuine suspense and some satisfyingly gross-outs. A+ in the ripped-off limbs department, Ford brothers. (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

Dirty Girl The teenage heroine and hero of Dirty Girl, a self-possessed, unabashed slut and a chubby, diva-loving gay boy, were clearly meant for better things than life in the small-minded town of Norman, Okla., where they seem destined for a succession of beat-downs and shunnings. But as writer-director Abe Sylvia’s sweet-tart 1987-set story opens, Danielle (Juno Temple) and Clarke (Jeremy Dozier) have been wedged by a high school administration ill-equipped to handle square pegs into a remedial-track classroom that resembles the Island of Misfit Toys. There they are paired up for a “life skills” project as unenthusiastic new parents to a five-pound sack of flour (christened Joan after the pair’s respective idols, Jett and Crawford). Parenting missteps loom uncomfortably large in their lives: on Danielle’s home front, an ineffectual mother (Milla Jovovich), feebly deflecting her daughter’s rancor and clinging to her cheery Mormon boyfriend (William H. Macy); on Clarke’s, a homophobic father (Dwight Yoakam) and a recessive mother (Mary Steenburgen) passively witnessing his abuses. With none of the adults seeming up to the task of competently raising these misfit teenagers, it’s something of a relief when they acquire some wheels and Dirty Girl turns into a road movie — destination: Danielle’s mystery birth father, now living in California. With Danielle narrating — and penning diary entries in baby Joan’s name — Sylvia’s skillfully made first feature maps the high and low points of the journey with a comic eye and compassion, depicting a girl and her (flour)baby daddy’s deepening relationship and the complications attending any attempt to draw a family tree from scratch. (1:45) Shattuck. (Rapoport)

The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence In which a mentally disturbed man becomes obsessed with, and attempts to recreate, events that occurred in the original Human Centipede film. I think you know which events. (runtime not available) Lumiere.

The Ides of March George Clooney directs and co-stars, along with Ryan Gosling and Paul Giamatti, this timely political drama. (1:51) Balboa, California, Marina, Piedmont.

Margaret Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) is an Upper West Side teen living with her successful actress mother (J. Smith-Cameron, wife to writer-director Kenneth Lonergan) — dad (Lonergan) lives in Santa Monica with his new spouse — and going through normal teenage stuff. Her propensity for drama, however, is kicked into high gear when she witnesses (and inadvertently causes) the traffic death of a stranger. Initially fibbing a bit to protect both herself and the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) involved, she later has second thoughts, increasingly pursuing a path toward “justice” that variably affects others including the dead woman’s friend (Jeannie Berlin), mom’s new suitor (Jean Reno), teachers at Lisa’s private school Matt Damon and Matthew Broderick), etc. Lonergan is a fine playwright and uneven sometime scenarist who made a terrific screen directorial debut with 2000’s You Can Count On Me (which also featured Ruffalo, Broderick and Smith-Cameron). He appears to have intended Margaret as a pulse-taking of privileged Manhattanites’ comingled rage, panic, confusion, and guilt after 9-11. But if that’s the case, then this convoluted story provides a garbled metaphor at best. It might best be taken as a messy, intermittently potent study of how someone might become the kind of person who’ll spend the rest of their lives barging into other people’s affairs, creating a mess, assuming the moral high ground in a stubborn attempt to “fix” it, then making everything worse while denying any personal responsibility. Certainly that’s the person Lisa appears to be turning into, though it’s unclear whether Lonergan intends her to be seen that way. Indeed, despite some sharply written confrontations and good performances, it’s unclear what Lonergan intended here at all — and since he’s been famously fiddling with Margaret‘s (still-problematic) editing since late 2005, one might guess he never really figured that out himself. (2:29) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

1911 Jackie Chan’s 100th film is a historical epic, presumably containing some pretty awesome fight scenes. (2:05) Four Star, Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

*Puncture Chris Evans seems poised to break out of that chiseled superhero category with this smart, quietly rabble-rousing portrait of a hard-partying lawyer who makes the switch from ambulance-chasing to crusading. Mike Weiss (Evans) is an attorney with a penchant for cruising for crack, jumping on bumps, and hitting the hypodermic while buried in briefs or on the way to the courtroom or Senator’s office. He comes to learn that chemical addiction can translate into a consuming passion for justice when he and his partner, Paul (Mark Kassen, co-directing with brother Adam Kassen) meet with nurse Vicky (Vinessa Shaw), who has become infected with HIV after a prick from a contaminated needle. She only wants one thing: that her inventor friend Jeffrey Dancort’s (Marshall Bell) safety needle is used in hospitals to avoid future accidents like her own. “Sometimes the brightest light comes from the darkest places,” she assures Mike, in the throes of his fighting a battle with his own addicted body as his way-over-its-head firm struggles to wage war with a massively well-funded pharmaceutical giant. Throughout Mike’s showdowns and screw-ups — notably, nodding out and dripping blood from his ravaged nostrils instead of attending a vital meeting with his client — Evans convincingly pours himself into his part, while imparting the idea that his counselor’s only hope is the conviction that he’s in a righteous fight. Also on point: the Kassens’ restrained direction — encapsulating the seedy eccentricity of their protagonist, the OTT opulence of the opposition, and the crumminess of generic hotel suites, as well as rain drops refracting street lights — and Ryan Ross Smith’s minimal electronic score. (1:39) Bridge. (Chun)

Real Steel Father-son bonding, plus robot boxing. Or vice versa, not sure. (2:07) Presidio.

*Sleep Furiously Gideon Koppel’s poetical feature takes a snapshot of an ebbing agricultural hamlet in middle Wales where his parents now live, one near in flavor and geography to Dylan Thomas’ fictive “Llareggub” in Under Milk Wood. Not that any background information is laid out here — this is the kind of documentary that eschews narrative and informational elements for an impressionist approach, little fragments of artfully arranged life adding up to a flavorsome if incomplete whole picture. Koppel is attracted to the way things haven’t changed — we never see a TV on, let alone somebody using a cell phone — yet we soon glean that things in Trefeurig are changing whether he likes it or not. The local residents we meet don’t: a dwindling populace has already shuttered the post office and other basic lifelines, with the schoolhouse scheduled next. What’s at issue here is the extinction of a community, though despite the attempts we see at sustaining local traditions, that may already be a foregone conclusion. Still, life goes on, from livestock birthings and shearings to the rain-or-shine route of John the mobile librarian, whose monthly visits to isolated pensioners provides Sleep‘s closest thing to a connecting thread. Some may be frustrated by the film’s opacity, and Koppel’s directorial choices can be pointlessly mannered. Yet there’s a lovely, lyrical warmth of observation that makes this perversely named (after a Noam Chomsky quote) nonfiction work a real pleasure to watch. It’s also a pleasure to hear, thanks to one exceptional local choir (featured in a rehearsal segment) and an original ambient soundtrack by Aphex Twin. (1:34) Roxie. (Harvey)

*Take Shelter Jeff Nichols directed Michael Shannon in 2007’s Shotgun Stories, released right around the time the actor’s decade-plus prior career broke huge with an Oscar nom for 2008’s Revolutionary Road. Their second collaboration, Take Shelter, is a subtle drama that succeeds mostly because of Shannon’s strong star turn, with an assist from Jessica Chastain (suddenly ubiquitous after The Help, The Debt, and Tree of Life). Curtis (Shannon) and Samantha (Chastain) live paycheck to paycheck in a small Midwestern town; the health insurance associated with his construction job is the only reason they’ll be able to afford a cochlear implant for their deaf daughter. When Curtis starts having horrible nightmares, he can’t shake the feeling that his dreams prophesize an actual disaster to come — or are an indicator that Curtis, like his mother before him, is slowly losing touch with reality. Curtis does seek professional help, but he also starts ripping up his backyard, making expensive improvements to the family’s tornado shelter. You know, just in case. Domestic turmoil, troubles at work, and social ostracization inevitably follow. Where will it all lead? Won’t spoil it for you, but Take Shelter‘s conclusion isn’t nearly as gripping as Shannon’s performance, an skillfully balanced mix of confusion, anger, regret, and white-hot terror. (2:00) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

*Weekend See “A New England.” (1:36) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

ONGOING

Abduction (1:46) 1000 Van Ness.

*The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Cinematic crate-diggers have plenty to celebrate, checking the results of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Swedish documentarian Göran Hugo Olsson had heard whispers for years that Swedish television archives possessed more archival footage of the Black Panthers than anyone in the states — while poring through film for a doc on Philly soul, he discovered the rumors were dead-on. With this lyrical film, coproduced by the Bay Area’s Danny Glover, Olsson has assembled an elegant snapshot of black activists and urban life in America, relying on the vivid, startlingly crisp images of figures such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton at their peak, while staying true to the wide-open, refreshingly nonjudgmental lens of the Swedish camera crews. Questlove of the Roots and Om’Mas Keith provide the haunting score for the film, beautifully historicized with shots of Oakland in the 1960s and Harlem in the ’70s. It’s made indelible thanks to footage of proto-Panther school kids singing songs about grabbing their guns, and an unforgettable interview with a fiery Angela Davis talking about the uses of violence, from behind bars and from the place of personally knowing the girls who died in the infamous Birmingham, Ala., church bombing of 1963. (1:36) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Chun)

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

City of Life and Death There have been a number of recent works about the “rape of Nanking,” but perhaps none tackles the brutal nature of Nanjing’s fall with as much beauty as City of Life and Death. Shot in striking black and white, the film depicts the invasion of China’s capital by Japanese forces from a number of points of view, including that of a Japanese soldier. It can be difficult at times to become emotionally attached to characters within such a restless narrative, but the structure goes a long way toward keeping the proceedings balanced. The stunningly elaborate sets and cinematography alone are worth the price of admission, and it’s amazing that such detail was achieved with a budget of less than $12 million. But it is the unflinching catalog of the some 300,000 murders and rapes that took place between 1937 and 1938 in Nanjing that will remain with you long after watching. (2:13) Four Star. (Peter Galvin)

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) SF Center. (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Piedmont, Sundance Kabuki. (Louis Peitzman)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2:02) Lumiere.

Dolphin Tale (1:53) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

Dream House (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

50/50 This is nothing but a mainstream rom-com-dramedy wrapped in indie sheep’s clothes. When Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns he has cancer, he undergoes the requisite denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance like a formality. Aided by his bird-brained but lovable best friend Kyle (Seth Rogan), lovable klutz of a counselor Katherine (Anna Kendrick), and panicky mother (Anjelica Huston), Adam gets a new lease on life. This comes in the form of one-night-stands, furious revelations in parked cars, and a prescribed dose of wacky tobaccy. If 50/50 all sounds like the setup for a pseudo-insightful, kooky feel-goodery, it is. The film doesn’t have the brains or spleen to get down to the bone of cancer. Instead, director Jonathan Levine (2008’s The Wackness) and screenwriter Will Reiser favor highfalutin’ monologues, wooden characters, and a Hollywood ending (with just the right amount of ambiguity). Still, Gordon-Levitt is the most gorgeous cancer patient you will ever see, bald head and all. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Ryan Lattanzio)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Lumiere. (Eddy)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Killer Elite Jason Statham has a lot going on, in addition to devastatingly attractive male-pattern balding: along with fellow Brit Daniel Craig, he’s one of the most believable action heroes in the cineplex today. This continent-hopping, Bourne-ish exercise, kitted out with piercingly loud sound design, comes chock-full of promise in the form of Statham, Robert De Niro, and Clive Owen, wielding endless firearms and finding new deadly uses for bathroom tile — you don’t want to be caught solo in anger management class with these specialists in cinematic rageaholism. Mercenary assassin Danny (Statham) wants out of the game after a traumatic killing involving way too much eye contact with a small child. Killer coworker Hunter (De Niro) pulled him out of that tight spot, so when the aging gunman is held hostage, Danny must emerge from hiding in rural Australia and take on a seemingly impossible case: avenge the deaths of a dying sheik’s sons, who were gunned down by assorted highly trained British military hotshots, get them to confess, and make it all look like an accident. Oh, yes, and try to make sure his own loved ones aren’t killed in the process. Dancing backwards as fast as he can is those retired Brits’ guardian angel-of-sorts, Spike (Owen), another intense, dangerous fellow with too much time on his hands. Throw in my favorite Oz evil-doer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Danny and Hunter’s boss, some welcome been-there twinkle from De Niro, as well as a host of riveting fight scenes (and that ’00s cliché: sudden death by bus/truck/semi), and you have diverting popcorn killer. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Lion King 3D (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Albany, Clay. (Harvey)

Machine Gun Preacher The title sounds like a sequel to Hobo with a Shotgun — but there’s nary a speck of tongue-in-cheek, kitschy-koo-koo irony in this passionate rendering of the life of Sam Childers. Childers (Gerard Butler) was a former dealing, thieving biker who found God, built a refuge for Sudanese orphans and former child soldiers, and became their fiercest fight-fire-with-fire defender. As Machine Gun Preacher opens, Childers has just emerged from the pen — he’s still the mean motherfucker he always was, shooting up within hours of release and hooking up with chum Donnie (Michael Shannon) to rob dealers. But a semi-mystical run-in forces him to face the worst and sends him to church, to join wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan), a former stripper and addict. Childers’ fiery love of the Lord, and his spontaneous visions, lead him to construct his own church for sketched-out recovered sinners like himself and then on to war-torn Sudan, where he discovers even more to fix — and likely more than he ever can. To his credit, director Marc Forster (2001’s Monster’s Ball, 2008’s Quantum of Solace) doesn’t shy away from the visceral violence nor the enraged holy-rolling that’s a clear part of Childers’ life, although the most memorable part of Machine Gun Preacher must be Butler, who gets his righteous wrath on in his meatiest part since 2006’s 300. (2:03) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Embarcadero. (Harvey)

The Mill and the Cross One of the clichés often told about art is that it is supposed to speak to us. Polish director Lech Majewski’s gorgeous experiment in bringing Flemish Renaissance painter Peter Bruegel’s sprawling 1564 canvas The Procession to Calvary to life attempts to do just that. Majeswki both re-stages Bruegel’s painting –which draws parallels between its depiction of Christ en route to his crucifixion and the persecution of Flemish citizens by the Spanish inquisition’s militia — in stunning tableaux vivant that combine bluescreen technology and stage backdrops, and gives back stories to a dozen or so of its 500 figures. Periodically, Bruegel himself (Rutger Hauer) addresses the camera mid-sketch to dolefully explain the allegorical nature of his work, but these pedantic asides speak less forcefully than Majeswki’s beautifully lit vignettes of the small joys and many hardships that comprised everyday life in the 16th century. Beguiling yet wholly absorbing. (1:37) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Sussman)

Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) Balboa, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Shattuck. (Chun)

*My Afternoons with Margueritte There’s just one moment in this tender French dramedy that touches on star Gerard Depardieu’s real life: his quasi-literate salt-of-the-earth character, Germain, rushes to save his depressed friend from possible suicide only to have his pretentious pal pee on the ground in front of him. Perhaps Depardieu’s recent urinary run-in, on the floor of an airline cabin, was an inspired reference to this moment. In any case, My Afternoons With Margueritte offers a hope of the most humanist sort, for all those bumblers and sad cases that are usually shuttled to the side in the desperate ’00s, as Depardieu demonstrates that he’s fully capable of carrying a film with sheer life force, rotund gut and straw-mop ‘do and all. In fact he’s almost daring you to hate on his aging, bumptious current incarnation: Germain is the 50-something who never quite grew up or left home. The vegetable farmer is treated poorly by his doddering tramp of a mother and is widely considered the village idiot, the butt of all the jokes down at the cafe, though contrary to most assumptions, he manages to score a beautiful, bus-driving girlfriend (Sophie Guillemin). However the true love of his life might be the empathetic, intelligent older woman, Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), that he meets in the park while counting pigeons. There’s a wee bit of Maude to Germain’s Harold, though Jean Becker’s chaste love story is content to remain within the wholesome confines of small-town life — not a bad thing when it comes to looking for grace in a rough world. (1:22) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Sarah Palin: You Betcha! Isn’t the Sarah Palin joke kind of over at this point? Apparently not, as British documentarian Nick Broomfield (1998’s Kurt and Courtney) dons his ear-flap hat and travels to Alaska, intent on discovering the real Palin. Unsurprisingly, Palin dodges his interview requests; her supporters are none to eager to speak to Broomfield either, after word gets out he’s making “a hit [piece],” according to Palin’s father (who does appear in the film, along with his “antler dog”). Broomfield doggedly traces Palin’s path from Wasilla beauty queen to mayor to Alaska governor to Vice Presidential nominee, finding plenty of dirt (albeit no real revelations) along the way. Worth seeing for some of the odder asides (Levi Johnston’s manager suggesting the lad won’t go below $20,000 for an interview), but there’s not much new Sarah-bashing material here. Now, if Broomfield could marshal a Michele Bachmann hit-piece right quick, that’d be something worth cashing in on. (1:30) Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Opera Plaza. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Tucker and Dale vs. Evil Hillbilly horror is nothing new. Some might mark its heyday as the 1970s, a decade containing Deliverance (1972) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and I Spit On Your Grave (1978). Others might point to Herschell Gordon Lewis’ immortal Two Thousand Maniacs! (1964), probably cinema’s most persuasive example of why Yankees road-tripping below the Mason-Dixon Line should never, for any reason, detour off the main highway. Twenty-first century hillbillies are still scary, at least on the big screen; this is one stereotype that’ll never die. Any number of recent horror films — most of them remakes of the films noted above (or directed by Rob Zombie) — have drawn their clichéd plots from a checklist that always includes city slickers, cars that break down, cell phones that don’t work, and inbred locals. The lesson remains the same: stay the hell out of the backwoods, yuppie! But what if, asks Eli Craig’s Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, you were totally misjudging those sinister-seeming whiskey-tango yokels? What if, despite being a little unwashed and fond of sharp objects and power tools, they happened to be really nice guys? The film — about a couple of blue-collar guys (Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk) hanging out at their mountain cabin who unwittingly terrify a group of vacationing college kids — finds a sense of humor in the tired genre. The result is blood-spattered comedy gold. (1:28) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*We Were Here Reagan isn’t mentioned in David Weissman’s important and moving new documentary about San Francisco’s early response to the AIDS epidemic, We Were Here — although his communications director Pat Buchanan and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell get split-second references. We Were Here isn’t a political polemic about the lack of governmental support that greeted the onset of the disease. Nor is it a kind of cinematic And the Band Played On that exhaustively lays out all the historical and medical minutiae of HIV’s dawn. (See PBS Frontline’s engrossing 2006 The Age of AIDS for that.) And you’ll find virtually nothing about the infected world outside the United States. A satisfying 90-minute documentary couldn’t possibly cover all the aspects of AIDS, of course, even the local ones. Instead, Weissman’s film, codirected with Bill Weber, concentrates mostly on AIDS in the 1980s and tells a more personal and, in its way, more controversial story. What happened in San Francisco when gay people started mysteriously wasting away? And how did the epidemic change the people who lived through it? The tales are well told and expertly woven together, as in Weissman’s earlier doc The Cockettes. But where We Were Here really hits home is in its foregrounding of many unspoken or buried truths about AIDS. The film will affect viewers on a deep level, perhaps allowing many to weep openly about what happened for the first time. But it’s a testimony as well to the absolute craziness of life, and the strange places it can take you — if you survive it. (1:30) Castro. (Marke B.)

What’s Your Number? Following some sage relationship advice from Marie Claire about the perils of a lengthy sexual résumé, Ally (Anna Faris) resolves to cut off her partner roster at 20, too late to avoid getting tagged a slut by her friends but not, she hopes, to secure her soul mate — if she can cast back over a storied career of failed relationships and hook the one who might not have been a total douche after all. Aiding her in this sad, misguided quest is her far sluttier across-the-hall neighbor, Colin (Chris Evans), whose main selling point other than P.I. skills and a well-defined set of obliques seems to be that he’s virtually the only person in the movie who doesn’t think Ally is doomed to solitude for having slept with 20 people. Faris is a charmer, and — no mean feat given the modest claims of the material at hand — she injects a comic exuberance into Ally’s reunions with a succession of impossibles, who are either engaged to be married, still not interested, or a gay politico seeking a beard. For jokes not revealed in the trailer, see: the inexorable progression of Ally and Colin’s friendship (they have plenty of time to hang out, cyber-stalk people, and play games of strip H-O-R-S-E since she’s just been laid off and he has no visible source of income), which leaves Ally with a couple of insights into Colin’s character and motivations and the viewer shrugging, only half-convinced of the merits of bachelor number 21. (1:46) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Rapoport)

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

Rick Perry’s nutcase preacher

Zelda Bronstein

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October 4, 2011

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Did anyone else catch Terry Gross’s brilliant interview with C. Peter Wagner, the leader of the New Apostolic Reformation? He’s one of Rick Perry’s peeps, and his crew was involved in Perry’s big prayer meeting a few months back.

Lord, the guy is off his tree. I mean, full-on wackamole batso crazy.

Japan, for example, is in deep economic decline because it’s controlled by demons who were allowed to take over the country when the emperor had sex with the Sun Goddess. (She’s not a nice girl, the Sun Goddess.) Wagner isn’t sure how that happened, physically, but he’s certain that it did (since humans have been known to have sex with the incubus and succubus).

Must have been hot.

And, of course, there are a lot of demons in Congress — and not only Democrats. There might be some demonic Republicans, too. They have to be diagnosed with a five-page questionnaire so the demons can be cast out.

Oh, and some whole cities are controlled by demons. (I wonder which ones those might be?)

When you talk about demons over cities, we’re talking about what — sometimes what we refer to as territorial spirits, and they’re more high-ranking spirits in the hierarchy of darkness and they’re more powerful and they require different approaches, and it’s not as easy as commanding them to leave in the name of Jesus. So sometimes there has to be repentance, sometimes there has to be — there has been bloodshed in that city that needs to be repented of, there has been idolatry in the city that has ruined the land. There’s been immorality that needs to be repented of, and there are several social things that people really need to acknowledge that they’re bad and repent of them and ask forgiveness.

Mercy.

So this is the kind of dude who will be hanging around the White House in the Perry Administration. Talk about demons overhead.

Hot sexy events: September 28-October 4

Andrew Lam

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September 28, 2011

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In her soon-to-be-released look at the Bay Area BDSM scene, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (2012, Duke University) Margot Weiss raises some tough questions for those that would tout the pansexual “new guard” scene – the techie, mostly white, mostly hetero clique in the Bay’s BDSM panoply – as subverting societal norms.

In its reliance on expensive classes and even more expensive gadgetry as condition for entry, she sees silent class division. When familiar societal situations are re-enacted on the kink stage, Weiss sees not a refutation of incest, slave auctions, and male dominance over females, but instead a neoliberal refusal by the practioners involved to accept their position in society.

Weiss would probably be down, then, with this week’s Arse Elektronika tech-sex syposium (Thu/29-Sun/2). The event raises tough issues like whether having the lifestyle that allows one to enjoy kink is a luxury, class struggle among perverts, and the fossil footprint of a technologically-assisted orgasm. There will be talks and workshops, inventions and performance – go to question the meanings of desire.

The League

A hint of Barbary Coast class, please: this is Mission Control’s cigar club night. Regardless of the gender you walked in with, tonight’s an opportunity to go dapper dandy (ascots and pinstripes), or va-va-voom (backseams and lace straps).

Thu/29 8 p.m.-midnight, $20 free membership required

Mission Control

www.missioncontrolsf.org

Arse Elektronika

This symposium on issues surrounding the politics and point of alt sex takes place from the Center of Sex and Culture to Chicken John Rinaldi’s Chez Poulet. Check here for a full schedule of events.

Thu/29-Sun/2 $10-50

Various locations, SF

www.monochrom.at

“An Afternooon Delight with Reid Mihalko and Susie Bright”

What don’t you know about sex activist Susie Bright’s work? The woman’s done more than most for sex-positive feminism — even writing woman-friendly erotica reviews for Penthouse in the 1980s. Today, she sits down with sex educator Reid Mihalko (who, by the way, submitted a rambunctious threesome story to our call for Bawdy Storytelling’s greatest hits).

Sun/2 1-3 p.m., $10-40 sliding scale

Center for Sex and Culture

1349 Mission, SF

www.sexandculture.org

Rites of Love and Math

Last time we wrote about Berkeley math professor Edward Frenkel and the erotic movie he made and starred in, the film played to a packed house. “We had to turn away more than 100 people,” Frenkel wrote to us in an email announcing his next Berkeley screening, which is coming up on Sun/2. Inspired by Yukio Mishima’s samauri movie Yukoku, this skin-heavy film has scared up its fair share of controversy in radical-prude Berkeley.

Sun/2 7:05 p.m., $15

Landmark Shattuck Cinemas

2230 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 843-3699

www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org

28 films in six days: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (part three)

Sue Vaughan

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September 28, 2011

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28 films in six days: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (part three)

Check out parts one (here) and two (here).

21) Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold, UK) Adapting Emily Brontë’s novel from 1847 is a perfect project for the stark realist Andrea Arnold. Her previous films Fish Tank (2009) and Red Road (2006) have captured audiences with their brutal honesty and inspired storytelling. With perhaps the most visually poetic atmosphere since Lynne Ramsey and Claire Denis, Arnold manages to emphasize every snowflake in this austere tale of lost love without a single lazy hint of narration. Do not miss this for the world.

22) The Kid with a Bike (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy) Can these Belgian brothers make a bad film? Seriously? Like their Rosetta (1999), The Son (2002), and L’enfant (2005), this is yet another hypnotic neo-realist journey portraying modern-day youth like no other in cinema. Every character makes unexpected and inevitable decisions. No moment is false. The Dardennes create movies that make life feel more real.

23) God Bless America (Bobcat Goldthwait, USA) Of all the films at Toronto this year, though it may not be as fully realized or neatly trimmed as others, Bobcat Goldthwait’s low-budget quickie has the most immediacy. Blending Todd Solondz and Oliver Stone, the fiery God Bless America follows a couple of frustrated and nihilistic characters as they rant and rave their way across the country, incessantly exposing every annoying detail about this past decade. The film takes out everything from American Apparel to American Idol; in the Q&A following the film’s midnight screening, Goldthwait shocked audiences when he called out Kevin Smith and referred to Oprah Winfrey as the devil.

Even though Goldthwait’s constant, unmuzzled, reactionary explosions may ultimately overstay their welcome by the last act, God Bless America does something unlike any comedy I’ve seen this year: it cares enough about our country to get mad as hell and not want to take it anymore.

24) Trishna (Michael Winterbottom, UK) Deconstructing the Bollywood genre by simply removing the gloss from the top, Winterbottom has crafted a Thomas Hardy-inspired (yet modern) tale of life in the big city (in this case, Rajasthan). As a young woman (Freida Pinto of 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire) attempts to transcend her family’s poverty, she meets hip young tourist Jay (Riz Ahmed, 2006’s The Road to Guantanamo Bay) who falls for her beauty. What follows is a Robert Bresson-esque tale with spectacularly nuanced acting and editing that has the possibility of leaving you absolutely breathless.

25) Shame (Steve McQueen, UK) Gasps fluttered through the air as Michael Fassbender wandered around his apartment naked in the opening sequence of Steve McQueen’s sophomore output (after 2008’s Hunger, also with Fassbender). Shame explores the concept that the desire for sex consumes many of our lives; it’s a mesmerizing film that plumbs darker depths than anyone in the theater was prepared for. Containing hands-down one of the greatest and bravest roles of the decade (Fassbender took the acting award in Venice) — Shame also features a heart-wrenching Carey Mulligan performance, as Fassbender’s seriously self-destructive sister. Bearing the imminent scarlet letter of NC-17 (which most US movie chains won’t screen), Shame is still a movie not to be missed.

26) Your Sister’s Sister (Lynn Shelton, USA) The sleeper of TIFF 2011, Lynn Shelton’s follow-up to her genre-defining bromance Humpday (2009) is a pitch-perfect indie flick. Depressed and confused 30-something Jack (played by Mark Duplass, master of casual awkwardness) heads off to a remote island to figure out his life. The only trouble: his best friend (a mesmerizing Emily Blunt) also has a lesbian sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) who is already there doing her own soul searching. With this contemplative, honest, and hilarious film, Shelton is turning out to be quite a splendid voice for our current generation of progressive pitfallers.

27) Melancholia (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany) Lars von Trier’s infamous press conference at Cannes (in which he compared himself to Hitler among other things) should not dissuade any cinephiles from seeing his evocatively profound latest film. In fact, this sci-fi (by way of John Cassavetes) entry proves that the auteur not only dares to explore panic attack-inducing subject matters (comparing the anxiety towards marrying the wrong person with, say … the end of the world), but he’s able to do it with horrific beauty. As a result, Melancholia might be his most accessible and most traumatizing film to date.

28) We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsey, UK/USA) There are some films that need to be seen more than once. There are are some filmmakers who need to make more than one movie every eight years. Enter Lynne Ramsey. Adapted from Lionel Shriver’s book of the same title, Ramsey’s epic descent into the difficult relationship between a mother and son doesn’t just beautifully weave through the universal moments of familial love and hate (similar to Terrence Malick’s 2010 Tree of Life), it teleports you visually without relying on a single shred of narration, explanatory dialogue, or without ever condescending to the audience.

Kevin boasts stunning performances by Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller as the mother and son; what could’ve been a tossed-off husband role is made hauntingly sweet by the almighty John C. Reilly. Here’s hoping the success of this film will insure the kind of industry (and financial) attention that’ll allow Ramsey to shorten the gaps between her films. We Need to Talk About Kevin, but more importantly, we need to talk about Lynne Ramsey!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks teaches full time as the Film History Coordinator at the Academy of Art University; he also curates the film series Midnites for Maniacs, which celebrates dismissed, underrated, and overlooked films.

Film Listings

Andrew Lam

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September 27, 2011

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OPENING

Dream House Newlyweds Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, plus third wheel Naomi Watts, star in this psychological thriller. (1:33)

50/50 This is nothing but a mainstream rom-com-dramedy wrapped in indie sheep’s clothes. When Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) learns he has cancer, he undergoes the requisite denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance like a formality. Aided by his bird-brained but lovable best friend Kyle (Seth Rogan), lovable klutz of a counselor Katherine (Anna Kendrick), and panicky mother (Anjelica Huston), Adam gets a new lease on life. This comes in the form of one-night-stands, furious revelations in parked cars, and a prescribed dose of wacky tobaccy. If 50/50 all sounds like the setup for a pseudo-insightful, kooky feel-goodery, it is. The film doesn’t have the brains or spleen to get down to the bone of cancer. Instead, director Jonathan Levine (2008’s The Wackness) and screenwriter Will Reiser favor highfalutin’ monologues, wooden characters, and a Hollywood ending (with just the right amount of ambiguity). Still, Gordon-Levitt is the most gorgeous cancer patient you will ever see, bald head and all. (1:40) Presidio. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Machine Gun Preacher The title sounds like a sequel to Hobo with a Shotgun — but there’s nary a speck of tongue-in-cheek, kitschy-koo-koo irony in this passionate rendering of the life of Sam Childers. Childers (Gerard Butler) was a former dealing, thieving biker who found God, built a refuge for Sudanese orphans and former child soldiers, and became their fiercest fight-fire-with-fire defender. As Machine Gun Preacher opens, Childers has just emerged from the pen — he’s still the mean motherfucker he always was, shooting up within hours of release and hooking up with chum Donnie (Michael Shannon) to rob dealers. But a semi-mystical run-in forces him to face the worst and sends him to church, to join wife Lynn (Michelle Monaghan), a former stripper and addict. Childers’ fiery love of the Lord, and his spontaneous visions, lead him to construct his own church for sketched-out recovered sinners like himself and then on to war-torn Sudan, where he discovers even more to fix — and likely more than he ever can. To his credit, director Marc Forster (2001’s Monster’s Ball, 2008’s Quantum of Solace) doesn’t shy away from the visceral violence nor the enraged holy-rolling that’s a clear part of Childers’ life, although the most memorable part of Machine Gun Preacher must be Butler, who gets his righteous wrath on in his meatiest part since 2006’s 300. (2:03) (Chun)

The Mill and the Cross One of the clichés often told about art is that it is supposed to speak to us. Polish director Lech Majewski’s gorgeous experiment in bringing Flemish Renaissance painter Peter Bruegel’s sprawling 1564 canvas The Procession to Calvary to life attempts to do just that. Majeswki both re-stages Bruegel’s painting –which draws parallels between its depiction of Christ en route to his crucifixion and the persecution of Flemish citizens by the Spanish inquisition’s militia — in stunning tableaux vivant that combine bluescreen technology and stage backdrops, and gives back stories to a dozen or so of its 500 figures. Periodically, Bruegel himself (Rutger Hauer) addresses the camera mid-sketch to dolefully explain the allegorical nature of his work, but these pedantic asides speak less forcefully than Majeswki’s beautifully lit vignettes of the small joys and many hardships that comprised everyday life in the 16th century. Beguiling yet wholly absorbing. (1:37) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Sussman) *Mysteries of Lisbon Though produced for Portuguese television, Raúl Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon won awards and raves on the festival circuit. Suddenly, the aging Ruiz seemed more assured his rightful status as a master. Mysteries of Lisbon has arrived for a rather miraculous theatrical run — but Ruiz is gone. He died in August 2011, having directed many more films than his 70 years. His movies have typically been the province of hardcore cinephiles, but this splendid epic holds wider appeal. It’s difficult to think of another movie that so satisfyingly captures the intricacies and volatilities of the 19th century novel — anyone enthralled by the teeming creations of Balzac and Dickens will find that Mysteries of Lisbon‘s four-and-a-half hours stream by. Ruiz was no stranger to the 19th century — his recent films included Klimt (2006) and the Proustian Time Regained (1999) — but the ornately plotted trio of novellas by Portuguese author Camilo Castelo Branco which supply these mysteries seem specially tailored to the director’s affinity for involved narrations. The story sweeps across dozens of characters and several generations of doomed love, revenge plots, disguised identities, uncertain parentages, and religious vows. We even glimpse the Napoleonic Wars. Ruiz’s narrations are commonly likened to labyrinths, but for Mysteries of Lisbon‘s vigorous expansion I reach for the cosmos: one luminous sphere rotates another which in turn rotates a larger system, the whole of it spreading outwards in all directions at once. (4:26) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Goldberg)

Passione John Turturro’s lush tribute to the music of Naples, Italy is beamed directly from a strange alternate universe completely devoid of snark — a place where grand emotions and sweeping melodrama are presented at face value. In other words, anyone who can’t stomach a heaping helping of cheese will miss the point of Passione. (If you can stomach a small helping of cheese, the film will suck you in after a few minutes.) Passione is more free-form than docs like Buena Vista Social Club (1999), but it’s in a similar vein: a celebration of the musical traditions and artists from a specific place, and an exploration of what it is about that specific place that inspires such creativity. In Naples, there are centuries-old folk ballads, comedic ditties about the mafia, histrionic romantic duets, slinky laments, opera, and more. Actor-turned-director Turturro — the Brooklyn-born son of Italian immigrant parents — doesn’t really provide a structure so much as simply let the performances, most of which are staged in organic settings, flow. Fans of Italian popular music might recognize some of the singers, but most will be unfamiliar to stateside viewers. The majority of the songs offer subtitles, but even the ones that don’t are so over-the-top that their meanings (usually having to do with anguish, love, or the anguish of love) are easy to decipher. Turturro is scheduled to appear in person at the film’s Mon/3 evening screenings; check www.sffs.org for updates. (1:31) SFFS New People Cinema. (Eddy)

*Tucker and Dale vs. Evil See “Twang On.” (1:28) California, Lumiere.

What’s Your Number? Unlucky-in-love Anna Faris checks back in with all her former conquests in this romantic comedy. (1:46) Presidio.

ONGOING

Abduction (1:46) 1000 Van Ness.

*The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Cinematic crate-diggers have plenty to celebrate, checking the results of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Swedish documentarian Göran Hugo Olsson had heard whispers for years that Swedish television archives possessed more archival footage of the Black Panthers than anyone in the states — while poring through film for a doc on Philly soul, he discovered the rumors were dead-on. With this lyrical film, coproduced by the Bay Area’s Danny Glover, Olsson has assembled an elegant snapshot of black activists and urban life in America, relying on the vivid, startlingly crisp images of figures such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton at their peak, while staying true to the wide-open, refreshingly nonjudgmental lens of the Swedish camera crews. Questlove of the Roots and Om’Mas Keith provide the haunting score for the film, beautifully historicized with shots of Oakland in the 1960s and Harlem in the ’70s. It’s made indelible thanks to footage of proto-Panther school kids singing songs about grabbing their guns, and an unforgettable interview with a fiery Angela Davis talking about the uses of violence, from behind bars and from the place of personally knowing the girls who died in the infamous Birmingham, Ala., church bombing of 1963. (1:36) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Chun)

City of Life and Death There have been a number of recent works about the “rape of Nanking,” but perhaps none tackles the brutal nature of Nanjing’s fall with as much beauty as City of Life and Death. Shot in striking black and white, the film depicts the invasion of China’s capital by Japanese forces from a number of points of view, including that of a Japanese soldier. It can be difficult at times to become emotionally attached to characters within such a restless narrative, but the structure goes a long way toward keeping the proceedings balanced. The stunningly elaborate sets and cinematography alone are worth the price of admission, and it’s amazing that such detail was achieved with a budget of less than $12 million. But it is the unflinching catalog of the some 300,000 murders and rapes that took place between 1937 and 1938 in Nanjing that will remain with you long after watching. (2:13) Four Star. (Peter Galvin)

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) California, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) SF Center, Shattuck. (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2:02) Embarcadero, Four Star, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

Dolphin Tale (1:53) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Marina, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Farmageddon First-time director Kristin Canty embarked on this documentary after discovering the healing power of raw milk in helping her child’s allergies. And it shows. Farmaggedon really should have been titled A Raw Deal for Raw Milk, considering its primary focus on several small family-operated dairies and the souring treatment they have received from government bureaucrats, spurring Canty’s activist act of making this movie. Larry and Linda Failace of Three Shephard’s Cheese in Vermont (the latter wrote her own book, 2007’s Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA’s War on a Family Farm) seem to have suffered the most, driven out of business when the sheep they brought over legally, with all the required quarantines, were seized and destroyed by the government agents on the pretext that the animals might spread “mad cow” disease. The sight of Linda Failace breaking into tears reading her daughter’s words about how the sheep were like her brothers and sisters is heart-breaking. Undermining such powerful, outrageous material are Canty’s textbook missteps: the director has major problems organizing her seemingly scattershot, lopsided material into a coherent and, er, organic whole, and lets her many sources drone on without a strong narrative through-line. All of this makes Farmaggedon a bit of a struggle to watch, although the dirt Canty digs up is likely to justifiably raise the hackles of progressive foodies. (1:30) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) Roxie. (Chun)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Lumiere, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

I Don’t Know How She Does It I don’t know how a likable comedian like Sarah Jessica Parker does it — meaning, such mediocre material as this mom-com. Parker may have parlayed her Sex and the City fame into a fashion, fragrance, and spin-off franchises, but she still hasn’t quite found her stride away from Carrie Bradshaw, though her Lucille Ball-esque physical comedy here — pulling down her skirt in mid-mommy-frazzle in front of her high-powered client — can be cute. Kate (Parker) just might be the busiest mom in the world: she’s juggling two kids, a hubby whose own career is on the rise (Greg Kinnear), and a major fund idea, which she has to sell to an attractive banking bigwig (Pierce Brosnan). Poor, poor privileged mom — in the trenches of the still-unadorable field of banking, with her obviously sizable salary, enviable Boston duplex, flaky-nice nanny, and bubbly single-mom friend (Christina Hendricks)! The biggest assist comes from her careerist aide, played by Olivia Munn, who grabs the biggest laughs with her deadpan delivery. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

*Killer Elite Jason Statham has a lot going on, in addition to devastatingly attractive male-pattern balding: along with fellow Brit Daniel Craig, he’s one of the most believable action heroes in the cineplex today. This continent-hopping, Bourne-ish exercise, kitted out with piercingly loud sound design, comes chock-full of promise in the form of Statham, Robert De Niro, and Clive Owen, wielding endless firearms and finding new deadly uses for bathroom tile — you don’t want to be caught solo in anger management class with these specialists in cinematic rageaholism. Mercenary assassin Danny (Statham) wants out of the game after a traumatic killing involving way too much eye contact with a small child. Killer coworker Hunter (De Niro) pulled him out of that tight spot, so when the aging gunman is held hostage, Danny must emerge from hiding in rural Australia and take on a seemingly impossible case: avenge the deaths of a dying sheik’s sons, who were gunned down by assorted highly trained British military hotshots, get them to confess, and make it all look like an accident. Oh, yes, and try to make sure his own loved ones aren’t killed in the process. Dancing backwards as fast as he can is those retired Brits’ guardian angel-of-sorts, Spike (Owen), another intense, dangerous fellow with too much time on his hands. Throw in my favorite Oz evil-doer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Danny and Hunter’s boss, some welcome been-there twinkle from De Niro, as well as a host of riveting fight scenes (and that ’00s cliché: sudden death by bus/truck/semi), and you have diverting popcorn killer. (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Chun)

The Lion King 3D (1:29) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Albany, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Mary Lou A musical fable for fans of Glee, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and Bollywood, the latest from Eytan Fox (2002’s Yossi and Jagger) is a drag-flavored dramedy (Israel’s first?) Originally a hit miniseries in its home country, Mary Lou screens at the Castro in one big chunk jammed with singing, dancing, and a dreamy cast. Pouty Ido Rosenberg stars as Meir, a gay boy obsessed with finding the mother who left him when he was 10. After a disastrous graduation party, Meir flees his homophobic high school for the worldly environs of Tel Aviv, where he soon becomes a drag star named Mary Lou, after his mother’s favorite song. Love, loss, friendship, tragedy, joy, coming-of-age, and quite a few elaborate musical numbers soon transpire — the plot is not without clichés, to be sure, but it’s hard to hate on anything possessed of such sparkly energy. Not familiar with Svika Pick, the Israeli legend whose music provides much of the soundtrack? It matters not, especially if you’re a fan of deliriously corny pop tunes. (2:30) Castro. (Eddy)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Embarcadero, Four Star, Piedmont. (Harvey)

Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) Marina, 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*My Afternoons with Margueritte There’s just one moment in this tender French dramedy that touches on star Gerard Depardieu’s real life: his quasi-literate salt-of-the-earth character, Germain, rushes to save his depressed friend from possible suicide only to have his pretentious pal pee on the ground in front of him. Perhaps Depardieu’s recent urinary run-in, on the floor of an airline cabin, was an inspired reference to this moment. In any case, My Afternoons With Margueritte offers a hope of the most humanist sort, for all those bumblers and sad cases that are usually shuttled to the side in the desperate ’00s, as Depardieu demonstrates that he’s fully capable of carrying a film with sheer life force, rotund gut and straw-mop ‘do and all. In fact he’s almost daring you to hate on his aging, bumptious current incarnation: Germain is the 50-something who never quite grew up or left home. The vegetable farmer is treated poorly by his doddering tramp of a mother and is widely considered the village idiot, the butt of all the jokes down at the cafe, though contrary to most assumptions, he manages to score a beautiful, bus-driving girlfriend (Sophie Guillemin). However the true love of his life might be the empathetic, intelligent older woman, Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), that he meets in the park while counting pigeons. There’s a wee bit of Maude to Germain’s Harold, though Jean Becker’s chaste love story is content to remain within the wholesome confines of small-town life — not a bad thing when it comes to looking for grace in a rough world. (1:22) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42) Opera Plaza.

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

*Shaolin There’s a lot to like about Shaolin, from Andy Lau, as a warlord turned passionate monk, to the return of Jackie Chan, as a stir-frying Shaolin, to its overall Buddhistic message (by way of heaps of chopsocky, blood-spitting violence), to its many action scenes, complete with mucho ax-throwing and horsing around with out-of-control carriages. We’re at the dawn of China’s republic, and the warlords are squabbling over the country’s spoils. General Hou Jie (Lau) appears to be the most ruthless of them all, following his second in command Cao Man (Nicholas Tse) into the Shaolin Temple to pursue an enemy with a golden secret and arrogantly leaving his mark on the sanctuary signage. But tragedy turns Hou around and sends him in the temple once more, where he finds real brotherhood with the good-hearted monks. Lau has reteamed here with director Benny Chan, and the results effectively recast the star, sometimes too easily pictured as a villain with his hawkish looks, as a hero once again, all while foregrounding Buddhism and giving it to the white devils at the end — an anti-imperialism message that has become rote in recent years, little wonder considering China’s growing might and the hardening of positions on the front lines of the global economy. (2:11) SFFS New People Cinema. (Chun)

Straw Dogs Never could I have predicted there would be a day when the violent finale of Straw Dogs would be met with raucous cheers. The original 1971 film was produced within a morally ambiguous social climate and remains one of director Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial efforts; contemporary audiences trained to applaud a payoff of blood and gore are likely in the wrong headspace for a film like this. The remake, which sends a good-natured screenwriter (James Marsden) on a retreat in his wife’s (Kate Bosworth) sweaty Southern hometown where they find themselves at odds with a group of good ol’ boys, remains powerful and just as uncomfortable and mean as Peckinpah’s version, but it’s in service of a moral outcome that’s more in line with its commercial placement: ultimately it takes the road of “man becomes protector” over “man becomes monster.” If you have no interest in the original, you will find a fair bit of talent in this remake, but without the cynical attitude it can be hard to separate Straw Dogs from any other horror-movie-of-the-week. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Galvin)

*3 The press literature for 3, Tom Tykwer’s latest, throws around references to classic Hollywood screwball comedies, but this romantic drama is far too self-conscious, serious, and almost pretentious to ever completely ape the mercury lightness of that genre. Apart from one slightly jarring fantasy sequence or two, this polyamorous love story is all about contemporary Berlin bohemia, from hero Hanna’s (Sophie Rois) immersion in the worlds of science and art, to her increasingly plastic relationship with partner Simon (Sebastian Schipper). On the edge of their 20th anniversary, the smart, stylish 40-ish bohos are still in love, though a younger, perpetually amused-looking doctor Adam (Devid Striesow) threatens to turn their two-decade itch into something much more involved. Tykwer kicks off his high-minded romp with a pas de trois, sprinkling split-screen interludes into the program as he goes, but such devices fall away — sucking the viewer into its heady, seductive undertow — beneath the sheer eroticism of these sexual empiricists’ couplings, particularly in the humid, Cat People-like scenes set in a Badeschiff pool, which comes to resemble a carnally charged hothouse as envisioned by Olafur Eliasson. (1:59) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) Lumiere. (Harvey)

*Warrior Those wondering why the mixed martial arts scene has captured the imagination of so many can finally understand what the fuss is all about, now that it comes filtered through a melodramatic narrative akin to The Fighter (2010). Warrior‘s mis-en-scene is immediately recognizable: a prodigal returns, in the form of Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy). Once a talented teenage wrestler, the now-battered man is the damaged youngest son of alcoholic ex-boxer Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tom wants his father to train him for a major mixed martial arts tournament with a multimillion-dollar purse, though the two obviously still have a deadly hold on each other — the repentant Paddy is on the wagon and the emotionally bruised Tom harbors secrets he won’t reveal — and battle with cutting comments rather than fists. Tom isn’t the only prodigal in the house: Paddy has lost the trust of Tom’s bro, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter and present-day physics high school teacher who’s struggling to make ends meet with an underwater mortgage. Though Warrior is no Raging Bull (1980), it almost outdukes The Fighter in terms of its brutal bouts, conveying the swift, no-holds-barred action of MMA in the ring, while giving actors plenty of drama to wrap their jowls ’round — particularly in Nolte’s case. His tore-up turn as an all-excuses patriarch is as heartbreaking as a solid kick to the jaw. (2:19) SF Center. (Chun)

*We Were Here Reagan isn’t mentioned in David Weissman’s important and moving new documentary about San Francisco’s early response to the AIDS epidemic, We Were Here — although his communications director Pat Buchanan and Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell get split-second references. We Were Here isn’t a political polemic about the lack of governmental support that greeted the onset of the disease. Nor is it a kind of cinematic And the Band Played On that exhaustively lays out all the historical and medical minutiae of HIV’s dawn. (See PBS Frontline’s engrossing 2006 The Age of AIDS for that.) And you’ll find virtually nothing about the infected world outside the United States. A satisfying 90-minute documentary couldn’t possibly cover all the aspects of AIDS, of course, even the local ones. Instead, Weissman’s film, codirected with Bill Weber, concentrates mostly on AIDS in the 1980s and tells a more personal and, in its way, more controversial story. What happened in San Francisco when gay people started mysteriously wasting away? And how did the epidemic change the people who lived through it? The tales are well told and expertly woven together, as in Weissman’s earlier doc The Cockettes. But where We Were Here really hits home is in its foregrounding of many unspoken or buried truths about AIDS. The film will affect viewers on a deep level, perhaps allowing many to weep openly about what happened for the first time. But it’s a testimony as well to the absolute craziness of life, and the strange places it can take you — if you survive it. (1:30) Castro. (Marke B.)

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

Foreplay: Two pre-Folsom scenes

Andrew Lam

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September 23, 2011

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As Folsom Street Fair (Sat/24) looms over us like a leather daddy with an itchy whip paw, the city readies itself for the roughest, naughiest, sweatiest weekend of the year. Yesterday, I ran all over the city checking in with the sex scene. I kept my clothes mostly on, but then it is only Thursday…

Monarchy-Andrew Wedge fitting at Mr. S Leather

“This is Spartaaa!” I’m standing outside one of SoMa’s crucial leather one-stops with an old hand local kink photographer Rich Trove (check his site after the Fair for shots of your flings in the sunshine) and a fashion journalist from the Chronicle. Guess which one is trying to explain to the other what a traditional S&M harness looks like?

Our motley crew has been assembled by Folsom Street Fair’s executive director Demetri Moshoyannis to lurk around Mr. S‘s fitting room while British synthpoppers Monarchy was being fitted for their custommade Andrew Wedge harnesses. The band will be wearing them at their FSF performance on Sunday at 5:10 p.m. on the 12th Street stage.

“We have no idea what we’re in for,” smiled a member of the band’s entourage. Of course, that wasn’t exactly true — keyboardist Andrew Armstrong attended the fair with a friend six years ago.

“It kind of freaked me out in a good way,” said Armstrong, modeling the tight neoprene half-tank that Wedge (who vends high end fur and leather designs from places like the Castro’s Sui Generis) had fit over he and his bandmate’s white dress shirts and under the sharp black blazers they were sporting.

“There’s something a bit religious about it,” he said of Wedge’s designs, which had been agreed upon after a series of emails between the two of them. “It’s futuristic, but masculine as well. Even though we’re basically wearing bra tops.”

“England is very prudish. Well, we take these things seriously, but we do it behind closed doors,” he continued. Again, I found it hard to take him at his word, seeing as the band supplied its own imposing, matching black latex masks for the occasion. They don’t go out in public without them, it turns out, a comment on the nature of celebrity.

The crew and designer lined up for one last photo opportunity in front of Mr. S’s black leather and harness covered four post king-sized bed. “Not in front of the dildos!” cautioned Moshoyannis. “We want these to be pictures they can use.” Clearly he meant in the Chronicle.

Side note: if you’re still checking for some sexy threads for this weekend, you could do worse than check out Mr. S’s new sports section. Complete with urinals on the walls and an impressive selection of wrestling singlets, I found myself especially turned on by the display of $12 Style Pig knee socks. I picked some up in red, or as the helpful sales assistant clarified, fisting.

Good Vibrations’ Indie Erotic Film Festival at the Castro Theatre

Best reason to finally buy an iPhone: the Ohmibod Freestyle G. I snagged the mp3 compatible vibrator (really, really feel the rhythmn on your favorite beats) at the IXFF’s pre-party upstairs at the Castro, where Jiz Lee, Carol Queen, Kitty Stryker, and other SF local lustfuls drank cocktails of St. George absinthe and rootbeer, slapped on costume mustaches and generally enjoyed the burlesque stylings of Twilight Vixen Revue.

When the short erotic film competition began, it got surprisingly jocky. Lucia Aniello’s Dildo Sport, Kelly Robinson and Oscar Salisbury’s Fight, Flight, Or Fuck, and Rollo Wenlock’s computer-aged 30 Love all featured tennis, so I guess the New York Times article was onto something with that balls metaphor.

“30 love” – short film. from Rollo Wenlock on Vimeo.

Not everything was heavy breathing-appropriate, either. SF’s own Levni Yilmaz entered one of his backlit Magic Marker-ed creations from his series “Tales of Mere Existence,” What Would Penis Do?, a look at his awkward childhood forays into sexual activity. There was the quirky bunnies and peanuts and women’s rooms in Always, Only, Ever — an entry from Barbara Benas of Brooklyn — not to mention an I-guess-hot tryst between a female American soldier and burkha-clad woman in a designer cave, Julien Rotterman’s Salam and Love.

But some of it was. Erika Lust — who earlier this week had an IXFF evening dedicated to her erotic, high glamour European flicks — shared Love Hotel, a threesome flick that made a trip to Barcelona seem highly advisable. Sadly, as the evening’s hosts (Peaches Christ, Hugs Bunny, Lady Bear, and Dr. Carol Queen — when Carol Queen plays the evening’s straightman you know you’re in for it) pointed out, Lust edited out all signs of genitals. Sigh.

The evening’s winner, as determined by an overwhelming audience response at the end of the night, was La Putiza. Created by Mexican director Gerardo Delgado, the short flick combined erotic comic art, overblown superhero crusading, and joyful, copious amounts of gay sex. Sure, the aesthetic was refined and the lead actor was fuckable, but one suspects that the secret to Delgado’s success, entering into this most phallic of all SF weekends, went back to Peaches Christ’s gleeful promise at the start of the night’s program: 30-foot penises. For Good Vibes’ interview with the filmmaker, voyage here.

Thanks Castro Theatre, hope we didn’t make too much of a mess.

Fear not Folsom first-timers: advice through the lens of local photographers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 23, 2011

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Fear not Folsom first-timers: advice through the lens of local photographers

Folsom weekend has arrived and if you’re new to the game, you’ve got all kinds of decisions to contemplate before running out onto the leather field. Those who trot through the gates minus preparation are still going to win on visuals and play, but those who put in just a minute of pre-fair prep will really score– hard. The best place to garner suggestions is obviously via a Folsom veteran, but take it a step further and open your orifices to advice from those who not only make it a point to attend, but whose job it is to professionally observe, capture, and display erotic action at the fair and beyond.

Fear No Art features 17 local photographers and a body of work that will make you cum, gasp, smile, and laugh (not necessarily in that order). From intense bondage, hardcore sex, pretty toys, notes on death and loss, and even a woman strung like a harp, this collection is going to get you all revved up for the weekend’s plethora of sexual opportunities. Since these photographs are more so for offering inspiration and not the obvious logistical advice you may need for your first-time Folsom adventure, a handful of the artists have offered up some helpful hints to get you off in the right direction.

Patti Beadles

SFBG: Give us a couple notes on etiquette– what to do or not to do? Are there rules?

Beadles: Be respectful. Don’t touch people without permission. Looking is OK but gawking is tacky. Try not to sound like a drunken frat boy by making crude passes at people.

SFBG: What to wear? Ahh, the choices!

Beadles: Wear whatever you feel comfortable and sexy in. Leather is good. Lace is good. Heels are good. Boots are good. Whatever you wear, remember that you have to spend the afternoon in it while walking around in the hot sun!

Morgan Weinert

SFBG: Give us three must-sees for newbies.

Weinert: 1. The boot black stand at the intersection of Dore and Folsom. Make sure to tip your boot black! 2. Venus’ Playground. Great performances are open for all to watch but the women/trans only space is a great place to get out of the crowd. 3. The Kink.com booth is a crazy place to watch some interesting public performances. The Kink.com models and directors never hold back!

SFBG: What to wear? It’s so last minute…

Weinert: Multi-Kulti is a great place to get fishnet body suits, sequined booty-shorts, and false eyelashes. Clothes Contact is full of awesome vintage lingerie and great dresses– most of it sold by the pound!

Michael Rosen

SFBG: Name your absolute must-try?

Rosen: Five dollars gets you three minutes of spanking, flogging, or foot worship via one of the ladies of Fantasy makers, a local BDSM establishment. Five dollars can also get you three minutes to fondle the ample breasts of a beautiful, green-haired lady. All proceeds go to charity, this year to the Center for Sex and Culture.

SFBG: What should I wear?

Rosen: Dress to impress, or not. Nudity is OK; wear clothing you can stuff into a fanny pack. The police are cool, but they will tell you to stop any sexual touching. Bring your camera. Leave your “certified panty/jockstrap inspector” t-shirt at home. It’s OK to wear a law enforcement officer’s uniform, as long as it’s not from the SF Police.

Mim Weisburd

SFBG: Three must-sees?

Weisburd: 1. Fear No Art Exhibit 2. My Daddy’s hot ass 3. All your friends nekkid in the sunshine

SFBG: How about a must-try?

Weisburd: Something you have never ever done before.

Shilo McCabe

SFBG: Thoughts on etiquette?

McCabe: 1. Please refrain from taking photos without permission. 2. Don’t touch anyone without permission– seriously. Just because someone is showing a little (or a lot!) of skin doesn’t mean it’s there for you to touch. 3. Leave the kids at home! It’s kind of unnerving to see parents pushing strollers or walking around with toddlers in hand.

SFBG: What to wear?

McCabe: I always suggest to my friends that the most important things to wear are sunscreen and shit-kicking boots– in case you have to kick shit.

Fear No Art (Opening Reception)

Fri/23, 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., donations accepted

Mark I Chester studio

1229 Folsom St, SF

http://markichester.com

Warm Leatherette

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 22, 2011

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marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO Whew, things seem to be getting kind of straight-laced around these parts — election season and lack of funds are ratcheting up the tension, and everyone seems a tad uptight, like they’re all second-guessing their status updates. What this city needs is a good, hard WTF freakend like the one ahead to loosen us up.

The ravey-doozy Lovevolution (Sat/24, see below) and charitable, fetish-fiendish Folsom Street Fair (Sun/25, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., donation requested. Folsom between Seventh and 10th Streets, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org) are back to turn the Bay into a carnival of ecstasy — including satellite parties aplenty, thousands of risqué revelers (and the art school photography students who love them), and a crowd-crossover factor that can’t quite be equaled anywhere. And for those who really want to get away from it all, the enormous Earthdance is taking over Vallejo. Truly, it will all be a smorgasbord of transgressive transcendence. Now love me, live me, smack me hard!

EARTHDANCE

“Give peace a dance” at this totally cosmic three-day live music and DJ festival, showcasing a kick-ass zodiac of acts in the “Electronica Temple” like Tipper, Mimosa, Poirier, Sub Swara, and Ill-Esha, plus Ziggy Marley, Ghostland Observatory, Balkan Beat Box, Beats Antique, and I’m sure an eye-popping host of flaming poi twirlers.

Fri/23-Sat/25, $45–$195. Solano County Fairgrounds, Vallejo. www.earthdancelive.com

LOVEVOLUTION

Back after some time off — and exploding into its new home on the Oakland Coliseum grounds — this giddy giant of an outdoor daytime parade and festival was made for free hugs from something purple and fuzzy. Oh, and crowd-pleasing music: Glitch Mob, Moby, Pendulum, Plump DJs, King Britt and, of course, an outpouring of golden local talent. Riding around on floats, no less.

Sat/24, noon-8 p.m., $25, 18+. Oakland Coliseum, Oakl. www.sflovevolution.org

AMBROSIA AND THE BEARNSTEINS: SISTERS OF THE MOON

Fascinating drag implosion and commanding stage presence Ambrosia Salad has been reunited with her hirsute backing band of faux instrumentalists, the Bearnsteins trio, for another “rock odyssey through time and space, a psycho fantasy of air concerto and visual triumph!” Basically, the evening will be a mystical glitter-wreck of lip-synched, mind-blowing, rock opera glory — a great dose of local talent before the Folsom fiestas/fiascos ahead.

Sat/24, doors 9 p.m., show 10 p.m., $8. Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, SF. www.rickshawstop.com, Facebook: Ambrosia Sisters

SHOW ME WHERE IT HURTS

Steamy, dreamy dyke bar the Lexington Club hosts its annual pre-Folsom uniform party, a yowza kink-a-rama with perfomers Elizabeth and Buck Wilder, DJs Jenna Riot and Durt, a sizzling-est attire contest, and of course sexiness everywhere.

Sat/24, 9 p.m., free. Lexington Club, 3464 19th St., SF. www.lexingtonclub.com

TEMPTATION: FOLSOM EDITION

The Cat Club is always one of my favorite places to pop into for a breather during the Sunday Folsom Street Fair madness. (Favorite vision from a few years ago: a gorgeous creature on crutches somehow managing to roller skate around the dance floor in a latex mankini. Edge play!) This year, the Cat’s going big the Saturday night before the fair, as the ever-delicious Princess Pandora hosts an indie, goth, and 1980s electro gala with DJs Aaron Axelsen, Nako, and the monthly Temptation party resident DJs.

Sat/24, 9:30 p.m.-3 a.m., $8. Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF. www.sfcatclub.com.. Facebook: Temptation Folsom

DEVIANTS

Good lord! Folsom Street Fair keeps expanding its musical palette (Billy Ray Martin, In Flagranti, HOTTUB, and more perform this year) and scandalous party options. Check out, for instance, this Deviants gig: three of the best queer party crews in SF — Hard French, Honey Soundsystem, and Some Thing — are joining forces for this official after-Folsom Street Fair party, outside and inside Public Works. And it’s gonna be a corker, with Portland’s haunting housers Miracles Club and and Italy’s acid diva Hard Ton performing live, eyebrow-searing drag shows, an enormous amount of DJs (like Dabecy of Electronic Music Bears) and wee surprises. Something that won’t be a surprise is BABES AHOY.

Sun/25, 4 p.m.-3 a.m., $20/$30. Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. deviantsfolsom.tumblr.com

SEX ISSUE: Fun with cover model Leo Forte

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 21, 2011

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Photographer Matthew Reamer and Art Director Mirissa Neff had a steamy Sex Issue cover shoot with strapping adult performer Leo Forte last week. Rrroaw!

Leo — a self-proclaimed Latin musclepup, up-and-coming porn star, and jack of all trades — is part of the Kink.com kingdom (we’re partcularly fond of his work on the Naked Kombat series), has appeared in several flicks from Raging Stallion studios, and will be appearing at the huge Falcon Studios 40th anniversary party at Mezzanine, which looks kind of sexy-scary!

Check out more pics of Leo above — and grab a hard copy (tee hee) of the Sex Issue, out now on the streets. If you see him at the Folsom Street Fair, he might autograph it for you!

Hot sexy events: September 21-27

Andrew Lam

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September 21, 2011

1

Pretty much, today’s whole paper is a hog-tied, historical, self-confessional smutfest of San Franciscan proportions. It only makes sense, because I dare say this week of sex events will reach levels of debauchery that even the City by the Bay can be happily ashamed of.

Yep, it’s the Folsom Street Fair sex events column! Including things that aren’t Folsom Street Fair also, like Mission Control’s genderqueer play party, a Good Vibes film fest, and an art exhibition that’ll leave you panting.

Indie Erotic Film Fest short film competition and party

The culmination of a week of alternative porno presentations, tonight’s docket includes short blue films from around the world – something for everyone in this wild and wooly world of voyeurs. But cum early – the pre-screening party in the top floor of the Castro is gonna be balls, or at least mustaches. There’s a mustachio-ed photobooth and even more titillating, burlesque dancing courtesy of Twilight Vixen Review.

Thu/22 party 7 p.m., screenings 8 p.m., $10 each

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.gv-ixff.org

Steam does Folsom

Get squeaky-durty at this installment of Steam, the SoMa bathouse resurrection party. So many ways to play: enter into the wet towel contest ($100 prize for the best terrycloth tease), massages for $1 per minute, cheap drinks, cheaper go-gos, and hard crusing into the kinkiest weekend in the Bay. Tunes by Honey Soundsystem’s DJ Peeplay help you get some.

Fri/23 9 p.m.-2 a.m., $8 cover to benefit the SF Bay Area Leukemia and Lymphoma Society

Powerhouse

1347 Folsom, SF

Facebook: Steam Does Folsom

San Francisco erotic art exhibition

From the candy-coated gazes of Yancy Mendoza’s models to the unique sextaur sculpture stylings of Peter Keresztury, there will be enough images of penetration, playtime, and penis at this group art exhibition to merit a stopover in your weekend of hedonism rendered art.

Fri/23, 4-9 p.m.; Sat/24, 1-9 p.m.; Sun/25, noon-5 p.m., free

The Artists Alley

863 Mission, SF

www.eroticartevents.com

Velvet

Play in the SF girls of Leather “fungeon,” and have a genderqueer good time overall at Mission Control’s queer-trans-boi-butch-femme puppy pile. Scenes from the Crash Pad Series will be playing all night to ensure that you’ve got inspiration for all the naughty things you’re about to do to your alt sex cupcake.

Fri/23 8 p.m.-2 a.m., $20 Mission Control members only

Mission Control

www.missioncontrolsf.org

Show Me Where it Hurts

Sardine-pack into a crowd of the hottest, kinkiest dykes on the scene at this free party at the Lex. But dress to impress: Elizabeth and Buck Wilder are performing, DJs Jenna Riot and Durt are spinning… you’ll wanna look whip-smart at the night’s fetish-uniform costume contest.

Sat/24 9 p.m., free

Lexington Club

3464 19th St., SF

www.lexingtonclub.com

Folsom Street Fair

400,000 fetish fans packed into 13 sunny city blocks – the mother of all fetish fairs takes over SF this weekend. Check for hard-bodied, sweaty-fisted action all over the place, but also the annual erotic artist’s corner and two stages of live music all day. Oh and hey, for a rad look at women’s role at the fair over the years, check out Amber Schadewald’s cover story on the SF girls of Leather from early this summer.

Sun/25 11 a.m.-6 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Folsom between Seventh and 12th sts., SF

www.folsomstreetfair.org

Deviants: Official Folsom Street Fair after-party

There’s gonna be so much bump and grind at this union of Honey Sound System, Some Thing, and Hard French DJ crews that your harness will go bald. It’s only right – a minutes-long stumble from the main event in SoMa today gets you to the Erie Street cul-de-sac that Public Works looms over. Today, it’ll be blocked off for a outdoors-indoors party that have you screaming for more. The party features the hostessing powers of Sex Issue star Princess Donna http://bit.ly/oQu9mn and a photo confession booth staffed by queer porn maven Courtney Trouble.

Sun/25 3 p.m.-4 a.m., $20-30

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

The Sex Issue 2011

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 21, 2011

0

Well howdy — it’s Folsom Street Fair time again, and that means our annual steamy, dreamy Sex Issue. Check out the contents before, and play wild!

>>PRESENTING THE HOTTEST ASS IN THE BAY

The winner of our Bay Buns 2011 contest

>>BECAUSE PRINCESS SAYS SO

The mastermind behind Kink.com’s “Wired Pussy” and “Public Disgrace” sites finds power in perversion

>>SAN FRANCISCO SMUT MAP

A peep at our fair city’s filthy-gorgeous history

>>“AND THAT’S WHEN I CAME”

A steamy tale of SF sex from Bawdy Storytelling

>>WARM LEATHERETTE

Our nightlife column rounds up some smokin’ hot parties for this weekend

>>HIDING THE CONDOMS

Safeway’s decision to move condoms into locked cabinets worries public health advocates

Presenting the Hottest Ass in the Bay

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 20, 2011

3

Hundreds of you voted for almost two dozen Bay Buns 2011 contestants — but there could only be one fine-paired derriere that cracked the competition (and will strut away with a goodie basket from Good Vibrations).

Ladies, gentlemen, and others, a drumroll and cued up copy of “Baby Got Back” for … MIKAELA of the Excelsior. W00T! Thanks to all our wonderful contestants — and get that butt of yours ready for bay Buns 2012!

San Francisco Smut Map

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 20, 2011

3

culture@sfbg.com

SEX ISSUE 2011 In 1969, San Francisco became the first city in the country to permit the exhibition and sale of hardcore pornography. Although “permit” isn’t exactly right. The city’s vice squad (with the help of Supervisor Dianne Feinstein) fought it every step of the way. But by the time a rag-tag band of hippies with cameras began harnessing the Free Speech movement to challenge obscenity laws, San Francisco had already become, in the words of the New York Times, “a sort of Smut Capital of the United States.”

Earlier this year, director Ben Leon and I produced Smut Capital of America, a documentary short about San Francisco’s flesh-filled reign as the center of U.S. hardcore. (The skin flick industry didn’t move down to San Fernando Valley until the 1980s, when VHS took over and Los Angeles stopped arresting filmmakers.) The film industry itself may have been shaved and plucked, but San Francisco never lost its filthy patina, thank god.

Here are a few of the filthy great places, classic and new, that any self-respecting San Francisco pervert and/or fan might want to map.

1. The Condor Club

560 Broadway

The first topless dance took place in 1964 at the Condor when Carol Doda took to the stage in designer Rudi Gernreich’s revolutionary “monokini.” The bathing suit never really caught on, but topless dancing became an export that would become synonymous with San Francisco.

2. The Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theatre

895 O’Farrell

The good ol’ boys from Antioch made a fortune with movies like Behind the Green Door, but when obscenity busts began taking their toll, they moved to live shows. The place still give a great lap dance, but the days when you could eat a girl out for a dollar are long gone.

3. The Strand

1127 Market

I once heard it referred to as a stop on the underground gay railroad — and for good reason. While this theater showed big Hollywood movies and noir retrospectives, the balcony was the cruisiest, bleachiest-smelling place in town.

4. The Magazine

920 Larkin

This still-operational vintage magazine shop has never shied away from porn. And since few museums find it palatable to save smut, it’s a living archive of the sexual revolution, balls, and all.

5. The Screening Room

220 Jones

In 1970, the Screening Room became the first theater in America to show hardcore pornography, with a law-skirting documentary about the free-loving Danes called Pornography in Denmark. Director Alex deRenzy set off a cinematic revolution, and earned a profile in Time magazine. Perhaps fittingly, it’s now the Power Exchange sex club.

6. The Roxie and the New Follies

3117 16th Street and 2961 16th Street

Long before it was an indie movie rep house, the Roxie showed soft-and hardcore 16mm loops shot by the Mitchell Brothers, then just out of college. The New Follies, just down the street on then smut-filled 16th Street (it’s now the Victoria), pioneered bottomless dancing, and later, live sex shows.

7. The Sutter Theatre

369 Sutter

Arlene Elster and Lowell Pickett plotted the International Erotic Film Festival at their theater off Union Square in 1970, when the area was still known as the downtown Tenderloin. The films themselves screened at the prestigious Presidio Theater in the Marina with a red carpet covered by KPIX. Even smut-opponent Dianne Feinstin showed up to rant against the duo’s “very depraved wares.”

8. Le Salon

1118 Polk Street.

“There out to be a plaque on the building,” says Bay Area Reporter porn critic John Karr, who went to this bookstore to cruise and flip through dirty magazines. Store owner Roland Boudreaux eventually opened a non-smut operation next door with a connecting doorway so that customers could leave and enter without attracting stares from high-society queens.

9. The Lusty Lady

1033 Kearny

The original Lusty Lady showed 16mm films, but by the early ’80s this North Beach smut center had live dancers as well. In 1997, the dancers organized an Exotic Dancers Union to make it the first unionized sex club business in the United States. In 2003, they bought the business, making it a worker-owned cooperative.

10. The Gordon Getty Mansion

2050 Jackson

During the ’80s and ’90s, this Pacific Heights mansion was the home of smut merchant and Falcon Studios honcho Chuck Holmes, whose name now graces the LGBT community center on Market Street. In the afternoons, he shot gay porn in the basement. In the evenings, he hosted spectacular galas to raise money for visiting politicians.

11. The Armory

1800 Mission Street

Does anyone not realize that this former munitions warehouse now houses an arsenal of dildo-equipped robots and that the National Guard training hall is used to film “Wired Pussy” episodes? Thanks, Kink.com for making sure San Francisco is still known as the Smut Capital of America.

Hiding the condoms

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 20, 2011

3

news@sfbg.com

“All Condoms primary location at Customer Service” reads a small sign surrounded by empty shelves that once held condoms, pregnancy tests, and other important sexual health products at the Safeway on Potrero Avenue.

Because of concerns about theft, the condoms now sit among the Nicorette and razors in a row of glass cases near Customer Service, amid the chaos of hurried shoppers headed to and fro. Although Safeway’s recent condom lock-up may have reduced theft, it has also reduced accessibility, and may have deterred customers from buying a product crucial for the prevention of pregnancy and STD’s.

The increased security measures are not contained to the Potrero store, or even San Francisco’s Safeways. “There are a number of products (Oil of Olay for example) that we’ve had to secure under lock and key because of theft,” Susan M. Houghton, Safeway’s Northern California spokesperson tells the Guardian. “It varies by store and city, but yes, condoms were recently added — due to theft.”

Houghton would not go into any further detail about when or why the condoms were locked, but the move has raised concerns by public health advocates.

“We fully understand the position that Safeway is in, but we really would advocate for people having pregnancy tests, condoms — anything that really helps people manage their lives better — to be much more accessible,” Adrienne Verrilli, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood in San Francisco tells the Guardian. “Accessibility is often key, especially for young people.”

Kyriell Noon, executive director of San Francisco’s STOP AIDS project, says he believes locked cases could deter people from buying condoms, “especially for young people who are shy or could be embarrassed about asking for help…Condoms should be as easy for people to access as any other item available for purchase on the market. When there are barriers between people and condoms, I think many people will shrug and give up. But if they’re easy to access there’s no excuse to not use them.”

STOP AIDS knows the importance of condoms in the prevention of HIV, and distributes free condoms to 90 locations throughout San Francisco.

Safeway representatives and staff members refused to say which Safeways have moved condoms behind glass, but a visit to four San Francisco Safeways found condoms locked in cases at each of them, some even locked behind the Customer Service counter.

At the Safeway at Church and Market streets, we found that there is often a line at Customer Service, which customers must now wait in to purchase condoms. The process of acquiring condoms requires requesting the case be unlocked, making a selection under the watchful eye of an employee, and having the employee remove it from the case and walk it back to Customer Service where it can be purchased. Ten minutes had passed before I was leaving with my $8.99 12-pack of Trojan ENZ.

This challenge could affect teenagers more than adults due to embarrassment, hassle, or the now public process of choosing and purchasing condoms at Safeway. “It puts young people in a very awkward situation,” says Leah LaCroix, president of the San Francisco Youth Commission. LaCroix says she does not believe condoms should be locked up, even if it means a company loses profits.

“I think public safety is more important than that,” she tells the Guardian. LaCroix and the rest of the Youth Commission are currently urging the San Francisco Unified School District, “to reevaluate and come up with a new curriculum for health education,” she said. “I’m sure safe sex will be a component of their new curriculum.”

A 2009 Center for Disease Control survey found that 43.5 percent of high school students did not use a condom during sex, and 85.6 percent did not use birth control pills the last time they had sex, making sex education and birth control availability increasingly vital.

“I’m not sure you can criticize Safeway for protecting their merchandise,” says Beth Brown, manager of San Francisco’s New Generation Health Center. “I think there’s a larger issue of a lack of resources and lack of resourcefulness.”

Brown says she believes the Department of Public Health is responsible for providing these resources. One resource that is available is a service called Family PACT, which provides reproductive health services to low-income residents.

“The state of California pays for young people who need confidential services…and you can get all the birth control you want,” she tells the Guardian. The New Generation Health Center enrolls teenagers and young adults in the service, and gives away free condoms to non-enrolled teenagers as well.

“The state of California is actually a very good place to be if you’re young and sexually active,” says Brown, “because they will pay for it.”

“What’s interesting about that,” Verrilli said of Safeway’s condom lockup, “is that it’s kind of going backwards to where we used to be as opposed to moving forward to where we are.”

Today, with condoms available to purchase for any age, public health clinics in most cities, and sexual education available on the Internet, making birth control readily and publicly accessible seems to be the next logical step. Besides preventing pregnancy, condoms are crucial in preventing the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

“I think we should all be in the practice of increasing access to condoms rather than decreasing it,” Noon said. “I don’t know that Safeway’s decision alone would make a huge contribution to the spread of HIV, but they could be setting a precedent that other stores that sell condoms might follow. If it were the case that Walgreen’s and Rite-aid, etcetera, also began to follow this practice, I think we would have a problem.”

SFBG’S CONDOM BUYER’S GUIDE FOR THE YOUNG AND SHY

A wide variety of unlocked condoms are sold at:

Planned Parenthood — 1650 Valencia St. off Mission

Price: 30 cents each, come individually and in strips of 8 or 10.

Plus: offers STD testing and other health services

Walgreens — 200 West Portal at 15th

Price: 12 count $14 and up

Walgreens — 3201 Divisadero at Lombard

Price: 12 count $8.99 and up

Plus: open 24 hours a day

Walgreens — 3400 Cesar Chavez at Mission

Price: 12 count $13.99 and up

Walgreens — 1496 Market at Van Ness

Price: 12 count $15.99 and up

CVS/Pharmacy — 731 Market at 3rd

Price: 12 count $12.99 and up

CVS/Pharmacy — 2025 Van Ness at Jackson

Price: 12 count $12.99 and up

Plus: open until midnight every day

Free condoms are available at:

New Generation Health Center — 625 Potrero at 18th

Plus: offers bags of 20 at a time

STOP AIDS — 2128 15th at Market

Plus: also distributes free condoms to restaurants and stores in the city including:

Marlena’s — 488 Hayes at Octavia

SOMA Health Center — 551 Minna at 6th

Crossroads — 1519 Haight at Ashbury

LBGT Center — 1800 Market at Octavia

Books Inc. — 2275 Market at Noe

(Oona Robertson)

“And that’s when I came”

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 20, 2011

0

By Airial Clark

SEX ISSUE 2011 I’m a writer, mother, and social science researcher (in chronological order) who is passionate about poking and prodding at perceived cultural norms while raising two tweenage sons. Bawdy is the best outlet for my raucous compulsion for over-sharing. Here’s a tale I shared at a recent installation of the series:

I’m a sex geek. I’m working on a master’s degree in sexuality studies at a local university. It’s a social justice program focused on oppression and stigma.

I’m really careful to tell people that I’m studying sexuality as opposed to sex. It’s not like I’m researching how you specifically have sex, but more like how you cry about it in the shower afterwards. Really. Not. Sexy. So I’ve gotten used to deflecting people’s sexual advances based on my field of study.

Except there was this one time. I had an assignment to keep a seven day sex diary. I had to record all of my sexual encounters for one week, then write up a summary looking for patterns of behaviors. Our professor doesn’t read the diaries, just the summaries.

I’m a competitive student. Most of the students in my program are in their mid-twenties and fucking every night in the Castro. I can’t compete with that, I have kids! But I’ll be damned if I let them show me up for an assignment.

This was going to require a strategy.

I’d been flirting this really hot guy I’d met online for a while, but we hadn’t been able to hook up — yet. I’m a single parent in grad school and he’s a consultant traveling all over. But since he was finally going to be in town, I messaged him saying I needed his help with an assignment: I needed to cram seven days of sex into one night together. He said he willing to do anything for the sake of academia.

We meet for drinks and I’m all about it. First a hand job under his jacket at the bar, then we walk to a park where he goes down on me. But none of this feels exceptional enough. It was hot and awesome, but was it grade A material? Then he tells me he has 24-hour access to an office building downtown, we could fuck in a really nice bathroom there.

Perfect! So we make our way there, and as we’re in the stairwell heading to the bathroom, I can hear our footsteps echoing above and below us. I’m beginning to think that bathroom sex isn’t really all that unique either. People fuck in bathrooms at bars all the time.

I got a new idea. I say, “I don’t want to have sex in the bathroom.” You should have seen his face! He says, “Oh, okay, if you’re not into it, let’s go…” Then I grab him, pull him close and say, “I want to do it here, right here, in the stairwell.”

He smiled and we started kissing and grinding and clothing is starting to be removed, and then I have the best idea yet: “Wait! In the ass, fuck me in the ass! Yes, that is perfect.”

So he flips me around, bends me over and I’m holding onto the metal steps for dear life as I think to myself “I’m having butt sex in the stairwell of an office building with a man I met on Twitter. I am so going to get the best grade.”

And that’s when I came. *

BAWDY STORYTELLING is a monthly show-and-tell sesh with some of the Bay Area’s most forthcoming pervs. It next hits the stage, hard, on Thurs/22 at Oakland’s Uptown Nightclub with a “science fiction” theme. For tickets, go to www.bawdystorytelling.com

Because Princess says so

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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September 20, 2011

3

caitlin@sfbg.com

SEX ISSUE 2011 I saw Donna Dolore for the first time at a Hard French queer soul dance party at El Rio. I remember because she took my drink so authoritatively that I had no choice but to be okay with it. She sipped it, handed it back, and strode away. Can I get a thank you? Throughout the whole, sloppy afternoon, I noticed it was kind of her theme.

But no one seemed to care. Part of it was obvious: Dolore is a Sophia Loren with wider eyes, maybe a little taller, with the same generous tendencies towards sharing glimpses of the bust line. Only — I reflected, shortly before falling back into cheap-beer-and-go-go-dancer melee — that attitude. Who the hell is this woman?

Weeks later, I’m telling her the story in person in the cavernous break room at Kink.com’s headquarters in the San Francisco Armory (everything at the Armory is cavernous). It turns out that Dolore is in fact, a pretty big deal. Just ask her legions of heavy-breathing fans who know her as Princess Donna, the Kink.com director and star queer dominatrix.

“Oh my gosh, I did that?” At the office from where she plans shoots for the three Kink websites she heads, Dolore is a less formidable figure. She’s not wearing any makeup. Her black outfit makes her look like she’s about to take off for a light jog around the Mission.

But she might just be being coy. After all, I’d stalked her up good before our appointment and had come across this gem in a video interview she did a few years back: “I’m pretty true to form — Princess Donna acts a lot like I do.”

Dolore double majored at New York University, perfectly enough, in gender and sexuality studies and photography. She became a stripper while at school, and then on a tip from a coworker, got into professional BDSM shoots. Although she had been to some BDSM play parties, the work was the first time she’d ever been tied up.

“I was immediately into the challenge of being in a really stressful position — being flogged or caned, total sensory overload,” she remembers. “I would leave a shoot feeling really invigorated, a stronger person. It made me want to see what my body was capable of.”

Nowadays, Princess Donna sits — utterly sexily, usually in a short skirt and fuck-me heels — atop the Internet BDSM porn puppy pile.

At Kink she is the mind behind no less than three sites. For “Public Disgrace,” Dolore makes trips around the world to supervise the stripping-down, feeling-up, and penetration of beautiful women in town squares and busy bars. On “Wired Pussy,” she plays with electrical equipment, inducing screaming orgasms in her female partners.

In her latest endeavor, “Bound Gang Bang,” Dolore supervises teams of horny men and one or two women in fantasy-type shoots: high school nerds get their revenge on the bitchy mean girls, a prison warden drops her key and winds up giving head to inmates through a chain link fence. She has guest-starred in many of Kink’s different sites, usually as a top, sometimes as a bottom.

“I get stressed out because we have so much content to produce,” says Dolore, who works on one or two shoots a week. “But it’s a challenge that I enjoy.” One gets the sense that at Kink, Dolore has found a place that can nurture her talent for perversion.

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

Like most of Kink’s offerings, Dolore’s sites are unapologetically brutal. Women are dominated, wind up covered in ejaculate and with bound breasts that are agonizing to look at (well, at least for the BDSM newbie).

This is exactly the kind of stuff that sends shivers — the bad kind — up the spines of anti-porn feminists. But Dolore is a feminist too. As articulate as she is and as prominent she is and as wild as her porns are, she’s often called on to defend BDSM’s treatment and portrayal of women.

“I think the exact opposite of the people that think that BDSM would promote violence against women,” she says. That tired question — “is porn degrading to women?” — is something that Dolore finds degrading. Why, she asks, don’t the anti-porn musketeers ask the same of men in the industry?

“What is going on in our society that we continue to see sex as something that is put on women that they don’t desire? Why can’t we fathom it being a dream job for a woman?”

Kink is doing its part to raise awareness about the sexual pleasure that can be experienced by submissive actors. Before and after each shoot, the man or woman who you’ve watched screaming, a cattle prod or vibrator pressed against their genitals, is interviewed. That familiar dazed after-sex look is all over their faces, and their endorphin-heavy perk is really all you need to know what Dolore says is true: the models at Kink really, really love their job.

Delore contests the notion that only people who have been sexual abused take pleasure in pain, although she says you’ll find abuse victims in porn studios, just like any other workplace.

“Unfortunately, you could look to any profession and say a lot of them were abused as kids. You could look at secretaries and say that. Personally, I wasn’t sexually abused.” She smiles. “I’m just a natural pervert.”

Delore’s a regular on the queer party circuit — this week, you can catch her stealing drinks at Sunday’s “Deviants” Folsom Street Fair closing party. Her exuberance in exploring the outer realms of sexuality haven’t gone unnoticed in the San Francisco sex community. Kelly Lovemonster, editor of the queer quarterly sexuality zine [SSEX BBOX] is a close friend of Dolore, and calls her a “super heroine.”

“Even when she is portraying a submissive bottom, being cattle prodded, nipples clamped down and attached to electric cords, you can tell she is absolutely in control,” says Lovemonster. “She shows us that our dirtiest, scariest, and wildest sexual fantasies can come true through healthy communication and BDSM play. She rescues us all from a world where sexuality is suppressed and made shameful.”

This, according to Dolore, is a big part of why what Kink produces is important. The website puts BDSM urges out there, lets people that get turned on by being slapped across the face know that they’re not the only ones.

For the dis-empowered and isolated BDSM fan, that can be heady stuff. “You can explore your rape fantasy in a way that the woman is in control of what’s happening to their body — it’s a way to relive a situation where you had no control and relive it in a way in which you do have control,” says Dolore.

In a direct repudiation of the claims that abuse victims fall into BDSM for unsavory reasons. Dolore says she’s seen rough sex and power play rehabilitate partners whose sexuality seems terminally fucked. “I’m not a therapist but I feel like I am sometimes.”

But when I ask her if she considers herself an activist, she says no.

“When I think of the word activist, I think of people who are more outspoken than I am. I do my thing on my website, and people can come watch it if they want to.”

Which is not to say that the forward girl at Hard French doesn’t think she’s affecting change. Says the princess: “I’m just happy that I can help people be honest about what they want in bed.”

DEVIANTS: OFFICIAL FOLSOM STREET FAIR CLOSING PARTY

Sun/25 4 p.m.-3 a.m., $20-30

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

www.publicsf.com

Our Weekly Picks: September 21-27

Andrew Lam

-

September 20, 2011

0

WEDNESDAY 21

Veronica Falls CANCELLED

Apparently, this UK indie rock band found its relaxed retro pop sound right from the get-go. Singles “Found Love in a Graveyard” and “Beachy Head” combined jangly, propulsive rhythms with light, morbid lyrics for a result that could easily find an anachronistic home in the recent remake of Brighton Rock (and not just because every video for the band looks like it was ran through a Hipstamatic app.) Now with a self-titled debut album on Slumberland Records, Veronica Falls is scheduled to tour in support of the Drums and Dum Dum Girls next month. This will be their West Coast record release show. (Ryan Prendiville)

With The Mantles, Brilliant Colors

9 p.m., $13

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

THURSDAY 22

Teengirl Fantasy at Icee Hot

They put something in the water over at Oberlin. Beach House, Blondes, Teengirl Fantasy. Now at work in the real world, which includes opening for Crystal Castles, Teengirl Fantasy has found a style that’s just as likely to draw from the pop charts as it is from their academic pedigree. A little Lil Jon on one track, a little Raymond Scott on the next. With cooled, slo-mo beats and hyped up MCs turned down, the result is an aural muscle relaxant, allowing you to focus on making bedroom eyes across the dance floor. Teengirl Fantasy comes our way to play monthly party Icee Hot. (Prendiville)

With Total Freedom, Magic Touch (Damon Palermo), Shawn Reynaldo, and Rollie Fingers

10 p.m., $5-10

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

FRIDAY 23

Smuin Ballet

The late Michael Smuin was not one of my favorite choreographers. But he left behind a substantial inheritance that had gained him respectable audiences. Smuin choreographed one his most serious pieces, “Stabat Mater” — Dvorak’s response to the death of his infant daughter — in the aftermath of 9/11. He also loved to play with pop eroticism; “The Eternal Idol” — you can see its inspiration at the Legion of Honor — and “Tango Palace” showcase that propensity. Amy Seiwert premieres what she calls her “most “Smuinesque” piece yet — to Patsy Cline. Not the least of the company’s attractions these days is the quality of its dancers. Parking around the Palace — because of the Doyle Drive reconstruction — is somewhat restricted, so plan for extra time. Muni 43 goes there as well. (Rita Felciano)

9/23-Oct.1

$25-62

Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco

(415) 556-5000

www.smuinballet.org

FRIDAY 23

“Hong Kong Cinema”

Though this is the San Francisco Film Society’s first-ever Hong Kong Cinema mini-fest, there’s no shortage of HK film fanatics in this town, what with the SF International Asian American Film Festival, the programming at Frank Lee’s Four Star Theatre, and even the occasional HK flick that arrives via Hollywood. If you dug Benny Chan’s now-at-the-Four-Star Shaolin, you won’t want to miss his City Under Siege, about bank-robbing, superpowered circus performers. Also on tap: another superhero action comedy, Vincent Kok’s (Pixar-inspired?) Mr. and Mrs. Incredible; Clement Chan and Yan Yan Mak’s multigenerational drama Merry-Go-Round; All About Love, from Ann Hui (her latest, A Simple Life, has been tearing up the international fest circuit); Law Wing-cheong’s kidnap thriller Punished (starring Anthony Wong, always full of win); Alex Law’s coming-of-age drama Echoes of the Rainbow; and rom-com Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, a genre departure for action man Johnnie To. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through Sun/25, $13–$20

San Francisco Film Society New People Cinema

1746 Post, SF

www.sffs.org

FRIDAY 23

SF Cocktail Week: Barbary Coast Bazaar

San Franciscans have long enjoyed a romance with alcohol — from the debauchery of the Barbary Coast era, to the modern renaissance of the artisan cocktail, the city knows how to knock ’em back. Celebrate this high-proof history with SF Cocktail Week, which features a variety of tastings, dinners, seminars, and parties, including “Barbary Coast Bazaar,” a huge fete inside the Old Mint. Expect a roaring 1920s themed party, with vintage circus acts such as stilt walkers, jugglers, contortionists, magicians, and carnival games, along with food, and of course, a wide variety of tasty cocktails. (Sean McCourt)

SF Cocktail Week events run through 9/25, pricing varies

Barbary Coast Bazaar, 9/23

8-11 p.m., $85–$95

The Old Mint

88 5th St., SF

www.sfcocktailweek.com

SATURDAY 24

Moving Planet Worldwide Rally Day

You can make yourself sick thinking about it: what are you going to tell your kids (or — hey sexy single! — the neighbor’s kids) when they ask you what you did to stop climate change back when we still had a chance and the Bayview-Sunset commute didn’t call for a rowboat? Are we creeping you out? Then let us recommend Moving Planet Day. A worldwide rally for sustainability, it’s sponsored by 350.org and will include Sept. 24 actions from Buenos Aires to Nairobi. In SF, a march of self-propelled peoples on foot, bike, and skate will trek from Justin Herman Plaza to the Civic Center, where an afternoon of speakers, music, and other events awaits. (Caitlin Donohue)

10-a.m.-6 p.m., free

March starts at Justin Herman Plaza, SF

Afternoon activities at Civic Center Plaza, SF

www.moving-planet.org

Hank 3

The grandson of country music royalty, Hank Williams III, or as he’s now known, Hank 3, continues to hone his own brand of diverse music, releasing not one, but four brand new albums this month: Ghost to a Ghost/Guttertown, a double record in a country vein, Attention Deficient Domination, with more of a “hellbilly” feeling, and Cattle Callin, which is more on the metal side of things. The modern torch bearer of outlaw country is promising that this tour will touch on all of them, which he released through his own label, Hank 3 Records, and that fans can expect a two-and-a-half to thee-hour set at each barn burning show. (McCourt)

8:30 p.m., $26

The Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

SATURDAY 24

Celsius 7

The superchill but often splendidly goofy Bay rapper, a former member of the Psychokinetics crew, hails from one of the golden ages of local hip-hop — that late ’90s-early ’00s period when earnest showmanship and a healthy dose of good humor trumped aggro attention-seeking, niche genre overload, and crass product placement. Cel’s kept himself busy through Bay rap’s recent twists and turns, though, traveling the world and dropping some ace tracks, all the while staying true to his roots. This release party for his poppin’ second solo album, Life Well Spent (which features a nice roster of collaborators including Dirt Nasty, iLL MEDiA, and Baby Jaymes) will showcase his grin-inducing verbal dexterity, be loaded with special guest appearances, and serve as a convention of true school heads. (Marke B.)

9 p.m., $10 (includes copy of album)

Shattuck Downlow

2284 Shattuck, Berk.

(415) 455-4735

www.shattuckdownlow.com

SUNDAY 25

Chinatown Music Festival

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has an exhibit going on called “Daily Lives,” a group showing by local Asian American artists that takes prosaic trinkets and uses them to express the psychic winds that ruffle our insides. This weekend, “Daily Lives” is taking this exploration of the private, public. Put on your dark glasses and check out the sidewalk art exhibit in Chinatown — where your ambling will be soundtracked by a day of rad live music; traditional tunes from the SF Guzheng Society and pianist Jon Jang (who will be sharing his recently-penned homage to the Xinhai Revolution of 1911), plus more modern grooves by the grown-up local kids in Jest Jammin’ and the SF Latin Jazz Youth Ensemble. (Donohue)

1-7 p.m., free

Portsmouth Square Kearny between Clay and Washington, SF

www.apiculturalcenter.org

SUNDAY 25

Ladytron

Given the harder direction that Ladytron has gone in over the last few albums — even touring with Nine Inch Nails — I was not expecting what I heard on Gravity the Seducer: ABBA. Whether or not they were invoking the Swedish gods of pop on purpose, the opener “White Elephant” sets a tone for a lighter album. Not simply a step backwards to the sounds of Ladytron’s early albums, it’s its most synthetically dreamy, spaced out record yet. Of course, harder and softer are relative terms with the band, which has generally stuck to a distinctive sound, becoming electronic pop mainstays and developing a cult following in the process. (Prendiville)

With SONOIO, Polaris at Noon, and DJ Omar

8 p.m., $25

The Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

(800) 745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

MONDAY 26

Dr Ruth

We all fondly recall Dr. Ruth Westheimer as the funny, entertaining, and educational “sexpert” that hit the mainstream media in the 1980s and 90s, but did you know her amazing background before she was a household name? Born in 1928 in Germany, she lost her parents in the Holocaust, and actually fought (and was wounded) as a sniper during Israel’s war of independence. The icon will be touching on all these subjects, along with her new book, Heavenly Sex: Sexuality in the Jewish Tradition, at tonight’s special event. (McCourt)

7 p.m., $20–$35

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco

3200 California St., SF

(415) 292-1200

www.jccsf.org

TUESDAY 27

Tony Bennett Night

As San Francisco Giants fans know, whenever the team wins a game here at home, the crowd exits the ballpark to the sounds of the legendary crooner Tony Bennett’s signature song “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.” The 85-year-old icon performed the song live at last year’s World Series, and the team is honoring him with this special event where he will be celebrated in a pre-game ceremony. He also will perform a short set, and fans will receive a “Tony Bennett” bobblehead that has a sound chip that plays his beloved ode to our city by the bay. (McCourt)

Game starts at 7:15 p.m.; arrive early for pre-game events. Pricing varies; see website for current availability.

AT&T Park

24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF

(415) 972-2000

www.sfgiants.com/specialevents

TUESDAY 27

Nurses

If you listened to Nurses’ earliest album, you might not recognize the groovy melodic rock trio that stands before you today, presenting 2011’s Dracula (Dead Oceans). In the past five years, the harmonic freak-folk band — with a penchant for toy instruments and pianos — has gone through lineup changes, sound modifications, and location shifts. The two Nurses mainstays, singer-guitarist Aaron Chapman and singer-keyboardist John Bowers, have lived in the sweet sunshine of San Diego, close quarters during cold winters — the tour van in Chicago — and finally, settled in the dewy DIY spirit of Portland, Oreg., where they gained drummer James Mitchell, and further developed their technique. But that’s the test of a true musician, isn’t it? The ability to roll with the punches, to grow, to evolve. (Emily Savage)

With Dominant Legs

9 p.m., $12

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

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Film Listings

Andrew Lam

-

September 20, 2011

0

OPENING

Abduction A teenager (Taylor Lautner) sets out to find his true identity (duh, dude, everyone knows you’re a werewolf) in John Singleton’s action thriller. (1:46)

*The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 Cinematic crate-diggers have plenty to celebrate, checking the results of The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. Swedish documentarian Göran Hugo Olsson had heard whispers for years that Swedish television archives possessed more archival footage of the Black Panthers than anyone in the states — while poring through film for a doc on Philly soul, he discovered the rumors were dead-on. With this lyrical film, coproduced by the Bay Area’s Danny Glover, Olsson has assembled an elegant snapshot of black activists and urban life in America, relying on the vivid, startlingly crisp images of figures such as Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton at their peak, while staying true to the wide-open, refreshingly nonjudgmental lens of the Swedish camera crews. Questlove of the Roots and Om’Mas Keith provide the haunting score for the film, beautifully historicized with shots of Oakland in the 1960s and Harlem in the ’70s. It’s made indelible thanks to footage of proto-Panther school kids singing songs about grabbing their guns, and an unforgettable interview with a fiery Angela Davis talking about the uses of violence, from behind bars and from the place of personally knowing the girls who died in the infamous Birmingham, Ala., church bombing of 1963. (1:36) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

City of Life and Death There have been a number of recent works about the “rape of Nanking,” but perhaps none tackles the brutal nature of Nanjing’s fall with as much beauty as City of Life and Death. Shot in striking black and white, the film depicts the invasion of China’s capital by Japanese forces from a number of points of view, including that of a Japanese soldier. It can be difficult at times to become emotionally attached to characters within such a restless narrative, but the structure goes a long way toward keeping the proceedings balanced. The stunningly elaborate sets and cinematography alone are worth the price of admission, and it’s amazing that such detail was achieved with a budge of less than $12 million. But it is the unflinching catalog of the some 300,000 murders and rapes that took place between 1937 and 1938 in Nanjing that will remain with you long after watching. (2:13) Opera Plaza. (Peter Galvin)

Dolphin Tale A wayward dolphin with an injured tail is rescued by marine biologists, befriends a little boy and his single mother (Ashley Judd), and somehow Kris Kristofferson and Morgan Freeman are involved. Admit it, you’re weeping already. (1:53) Presidio.

Farmageddon First-time director Kristin Canty embarked on this documentary after discovering the healing power of raw milk in helping her child’s allergies. And it shows. Farmaggedon really should have been titled A Raw Deal for Raw Milk, considering its primary focus on several small family-operated dairies and the souring treatment they have received from government bureaucrats, spurring Canty’s activist act of making this movie. Larry and Linda Failace of Three Shephard’s Cheese in Vermont (the latter wrote her own book, 2007’s Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA’s War on a Family Farm) seem to have suffered the most, driven out of business when the sheep they brought over legally, with all the required quarantines, were seized and destroyed by the government agents on the pretext that the animals might spread “mad cow” disease. The sight of Linda Failace breaking into tears reading her daughter’s words about how the sheep were like her brothers and sisters is heart-breaking. Undermining such powerful, outrageous material are Canty’s textbook missteps: the director has major problems organizing her seemingly scattershot, lopsided material into a coherent and, er, organic whole, and lets her many sources drone on without a strong narrative through-line. All of this makes Farmaggedon a bit of a struggle to watch, although the dirt Canty digs up is likely to justifiably raise the hackles of progressive foodies. (1:30) Roxie, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*Killer Elite Jason Statham has a lot going on, in addition to devastatingly attractive male-pattern balding: along with fellow Brit Daniel Craig, he’s one of the most believable action heroes in the cineplex today. This continent-hopping, Bourne-ish exercise, kitted out with piercingly loud sound design, comes chock-full of promise in the form of Statham, Robert De Niro, and Clive Owen, wielding endless firearms and finding new deadly uses for bathroom tile — you don’t want to be caught solo in anger management class with these specialists in cinematic rageaholism. Mercenary assassin Danny (Statham) wants out of the game after a traumatic killing involving way too much eye contact with a small child. Killer coworker Hunter (De Niro) pulled him out of that tight spot, so when the aging gunman is held hostage, Danny must emerge from hiding in rural Australia and take on a seemingly impossible case: avenge the deaths of a dying sheik’s sons, who were gunned down by assorted highly trained British military hotshots, get them to confess, and make it all look like an accident. Oh, yes, and try to make sure his own loved ones aren’t killed in the process. Dancing backwards as fast as he can is those retired Brits’ guardian angel-of-sorts, Spike (Owen), another intense, dangerous fellow with too much time on his hands. Throw in my favorite Oz evil-doer Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Danny and Hunter’s boss, some welcome been-there twinkle from De Niro, as well as a host of riveting fight scenes (and that ’00s cliché: sudden death by bus/truck/semi), and you have diverting popcorn killer. (1:40) Presidio. (Chun)

Moneyball As fun as it is to watch Brad Pitt listen to the radio, work out, hang out with his cute kid, and drive down I-80 over and over again, it doesn’t quite translate into compelling cinema for the casual baseball fan. A wholesale buy-in to the cult of personality — be it A’s manager Billy Beane or the actor who plays him — is at the center of Moneyball‘s issues. Beane (Pitt) is facing the sad, inevitable fate of having to replace his star players, Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, once they command the cash from the more-moneyed teams. He’s gotta think outside of the corporate box, and he finds a few key answers in Peter Brand (a.k.a. Paul DePodesta, played by Jonah Hill), who’s working with the sabermetric ideas of Bill James: scout the undervalued players that get on base to work against better-funded big-hitters. Similarly, against popular thought, Moneyball works best when director Bennett Miller (2005’s Capote) strays from the slightly flattening sunniness of its lead actor and plunges into the number crunching — attempting to visualize the abstract and tapping into the David Fincher network, as it were (in a related note, Aaron Sorkin co-wrote Moneyball‘s screenplay) — though the funny anti-chemistry between Pitt and Hill is at times capable of pulling Moneyball out of its slump. (2:13) Marina. (Chun)

*My Afternoons with Margueritte There’s just one moment in this tender French dramedy that touches on star Gerard Depardieu’s real life: his quasi-literate salt-of-the-earth character, Germain, rushes to save his depressed friend from possible suicide only to have his pretentious pal pee on the ground in front of him. Perhaps Depardieu’s recent urinary run-in, on the floor of an airline cabin, was an inspired reference to this moment. In any case, My Afternoons With Margueritte offers a hope of the most humanist sort, for all those bumblers and sad cases that are usually shuttled to the side in the desperate ’00s, as Depardieu demonstrates that he’s fully capable of carrying a film with sheer life force, rotund gut and straw-mop ‘do and all. In fact he’s almost daring you to hate on his aging, bumptious current incarnation: Germain is the 50-something who never quite grew up or left home. The vegetable farmer is treated poorly by his doddering tramp of a mother and is widely considered the village idiot, the butt of all the jokes down at the cafe, though contrary to most assumptions, he manages to score a beautiful, bus-driving girlfriend (Sophie Guillemin). However the true love of his life might be the empathetic, intelligent older woman, Margueritte (Gisele Casadesus), that he meets in the park while counting pigeons. There’s a wee bit of Maude to Germain’s Harold, though Jean Becker’s chaste love story is content to remain within the wholesome confines of small-town life — not a bad thing when it comes to looking for grace in a rough world. (1:22) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

Restless See “Twee of Life.” (1:35) Lumiere, Shattuck.

*3 The press literature for 3, Tom Tykwer’s latest, throws around references to classic Hollywood screwball comedies, but this romantic drama is far too self-conscious, serious, and almost pretentious to ever completely ape the mercury lightness of that genre. Apart from one slightly jarring fantasy sequence or two, this polyamorous love story is all about contemporary Berlin bohemia, from hero Hanna’s (Sophie Rois) immersion in the worlds of science and art, to her increasingly plastic relationship with partner Simon (Sebastian Schipper). On the edge of their 20th anniversary, the smart, stylish 40-ish bohos are still in love, though a younger, perpetually amused-looking doctor Adam (Devid Striesow) threatens to turn their two-decade itch into something much more involved. Tykwer kicks off his high-minded romp with a pas de trois, sprinkling split-screen interludes into the program as he goes, but such devices fall away — sucking the viewer into its heady, seductive undertow — beneath the sheer eroticism of these sexual empiricists’ couplings, particularly in the humid, Cat People-like scenes set in a Badeschiff pool, which comes to resemble a carnally charged hothouse as envisioned by Olafur Eliasson. (1:59) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

ONGOING

Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star (1:36) 1000 Van Ness.

Circumstance Thirteen (2003) goes to Tehran? The world of sex, drugs, and underground nightclubs in Iran provides the backdrop for writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s lusty, dreamy take on the passionate teenagers behind the hijabs. Risking jail and worse are the sassy, privileged Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) and the beautiful, orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy), who, much like young women anywhere, just want to be free — to swim, sing, dance, test boundaries, lose, and then find themselves. The difference here is that they’re under constant, unnerving surveillance, in a country where more than 70 percent of the population is less than 30 years old. Nevertheless, within their mansion walls and without, beneath graffitied walls and undulating at intoxicating house parties, the two girls begin to fall in love with each other, as Atafeh’s handsome, albeit creepy older brother Mehran (Palo Alto-bred Reza Sixo Safai) gazes on. The onetime musical talent’s back from rehab, has returned to the mosque with all the zeal of the prodigal, and has hooked up with the Morality Police that enforces the nation’s cultural laws. Filmed underground in Beirut, with layers that permit both pleasure and protest (wait for the hilarious moment when 2008’s Milk is dubbed in Farsi), Circumstance viscerally transmits the realities and fantasies of Iranian young women on the verge. (1:45) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Chun)

*Cold Fish Did you love (or find yourself baffled by) Sion Sono’s Love Exposure during its Roxie run? Sono’s Cold Fish is similarly occupied with indoctrination, masochism, and extreme behavior. However, it’s also somewhat better able to sustain a tone of hysteria escalating toward dementia. An unhappy family (father Mitsuru Fukikoshi, daughter Hikari Kajiwara, stepmother Megumi Kagurazaka) is yanked into the orbit of a tropical-fish tycoon (Denden) who at first seems a boisterous benefactor providing shock therapy to their depressed lives out of simple altruism. But he and his bombshell wife (Asuka Kurosawa) soon reveal sides not just sinister but psychopathic, ensnaring all three in diabolical doings that encompass murder, rape, grisly corpse disposals, and more. Structured like Love Exposure as one long countdown to a transformative moment, Cold Fish pushes black comedy way beyond the bounds of taste with an oddly neutralizing good cheer. It’s a manic Grand Guignol set to the soothing kitsch strains of retro Hawaiian-flavored lounge music. (2:24) Roxie. (Harvey)

Colombiana (1:47) 1000 Van Ness.

*Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death, and Technology Local filmmaker Tiffany Shlain (founder of the Webby Awards) takes a look at 21st century connections, both technological and personal, in this documentary. And the film gets very personal at times; constructed mostly as a video collage (using animation, stock footage, etc.), its few original clips come from Shlain family movies, which become more poignant when it’s revealed that the filmmaker’s beloved father, an author and brain surgeon, is dying of brain cancer. Shlain’s film draws some of its themes from her father’s 1999 book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, a study of literacy’s effect on male-female dynamics over history, and the film is dedicated to him. But though the Shlain family’s struggles with loss and life (the filmmaker was pregnant when her father died) form Connected‘s thru line, the film’s probing, lively exploration of links (on- and offline) is universally relatable, and ultimately quite thought-provoking. (1:20) Embarcadero, Shattuck. (Eddy)

*Contagion Tasked with such panic-inducing material, one has to appreciate director Steven Soderbergh’s cool head and hand with Contagion. Some might even dub this epic thriller (of sorts) cold, clinical, and completely lacking in bedside manner. Still, for those who’d rather be in the hands of a doctor who refuses to talk down to the patient, Contagion comes on like a refreshingly smart, somewhat melodrama-free clean room, a clear-eyed response to a messy, terrifying subject. A deadly virus is spreading swiftly — sans cure, vaccine, or sense — starting with a few unlikely suspects: globe-trotting corporate exec Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow), a waiter, a European tourist, and a Japanese businessman. The chase is on to track the disease’s genesis and find a way to combat it, from the halls of the San Francisco Chronicle and blog posts of citizen activist-journalist Alan (Jude Law), to the emergency hospital in the Midwest set up by intrepid Dr. Mears (Kate Winslet), to a tiny village in China with a World Health investigator (Marion Cotillard). Soderbergh’s brisk, businesslike storytelling approach nicely counterpoints the hysteria going off on the ground, as looting and anarchy breaks out around Beth’s immune widower Mitch (Matt Damon), and draws you in — though the tact of making this disease’s Typhoid Mary a sexually profligate woman is unsettling and borderline offensive, as is the predictable blame-it-on-the-Chinese origin coda. (1:42) California, Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

Crazy, Stupid, Love Keep the poster’s allusion to 1967’s The Graduate to one side: there aren’t many revelations about midlife crises in this cleverly penned yet strangely flat ensemble rom-com, awkwardly pitched at almost every demographic at the cineplex. There’s the middle-aged romance that’s withered at the vine: nice but boring family man Cal (Steve Carell) finds himself at a hopeless loss when wife and onetime teenage sweetheart Emily (Julianne Moore) tells him she wants a divorce and she’s slept with a coworker (Kevin Bacon). He ends up waxing pathetic at a slick nightclub where he catches the eye of the well-dressed, spray-tanned smoothie Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who appears to have taken his ladies man stance from the Clooney playbook. It’s manly makeover time: GQ meets Pretty Woman (1990)! Cut to Cal and Emily’s babysitter Jessica (Analeigh Tipton), who is crushing out on Cal, while the separated couple’s tween Robbie (Jonah Bobo) hankers for Jessica. Somehow Josh Groban worms his way into the mix as the dullard suitor of Hannah (Emma Stone) in a hanging chad of a storyline that must somehow be resolved in this mad, mad, mad, mad — actually, the problem with Crazy, Stupid, Love is that it isn’t really that crazy. It tries far too hard to please everybody in the theater to its detriment, reminding the viewer of a tidy, episodic TV series (albeit a quality effort) like Modern Family more than an actual film. Likewise I yearned for a way to fast-forward through the too-cute Jessica-Robbie scenes in order to get back to the sleazy-smart, punchy complexity of Gosling, playing adeptly off both Carrell and Stone. (1:58) SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

The Debt On paper, The Debt has a lot going for it: captivating history-based plot, “it” actor Jessica Chastain, Helen Mirren vs. Nazis. And while the latest from John Madden (1998’s Shakespeare in Love) is fairly entertaining, the film is ultimately forgettable. Chastain plays Rachel, a member of an Israeli team tasked with capturing a Nazi war criminal and bringing him to justice. Mirren is the older Rachel, who is haunted by the long-withheld true story of the mission. Although The Debt traffics in spy secrets, it’s actually rather predictable: the big reveal is shrug-worthy, and the shocking conclusion is expected. So while the entire cast — which also includes Tom Wilkinson, Sam Worthington, and Ciaran Hinds — turn in admirable performances, the script is lacking what it needs to make The Debt an effective drama or thriller. Like 2008’s overrated The Reader, the film tries to hide its inadequacies under heavy themes and the dread with which we remember the Holocaust. (1:54) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2:02) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Drive Such a lovely way to Drive, drunk on the sensual depths of a lush, saturated jewel tone palette and a dreamlike, almost luxurious pacing that gives off the steamy hothouse pop romanticism of ’80s-era Michael Mann and David Lynch — with the bracing, impactful flecks of threat and ultraviolence that might accompany a car chase, a moody noir, or both, as filtered through a first-wave music video. Drive comes dressed in the klassic komforts — from the Steve McQueen-esque stances and perfectly cut jackets of Ryan Gosling as the Driver Who Shall Remain Nameless to the foreboding lingering in the shadows and the wittily static, statuesque strippers that decorate the background. Gosling’s Driver is in line with Mann’s other upstanding working men who hew to an old-school moral code and are excellent at what they do, regardless of what side of the law they’re working: he likes to keep it clear and simple — his services as a wheelman boil down to five minutes, in and out — but matters get messy when he falls for sweet-faced neighbor Irene (Carey Mulligan), who lives down the hall with her small son, and her ex-con husband (Oscar Isaac) is dragged back into the game. Populated by pungent side players like Albert Brooks, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks, and scattered with readily embeddable moments like a life-changing elevator kiss that goes bloodily wrong-right, Drive turns into a real coming-out affair for both Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn (2008’s Bronson), who rises above any crisis of influence or confluence of genre to pick up the po-mo baton that Lynch left behind, and 2011’s MVP Ryan Gosling, who gets to flex his leading-man muscles in a truly cinematic role, an anti-hero and under-the-hood psychopath looking for the real hero within. (1:40) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*The Future Dreams and drawings, cats and fantasies, ambition and aimlessness, and the mild-mannered yet mortifying games people play, all wind their way into Miranda July’s The Future. The future’s a scary place, as many of us fully realize, even if you hide from it well into your 30s, losing yourself in the everyday. But you can’t duck July’s collection of moments, objects, and small gestures transformed into something strangely slanted and enchanted, both weird and terrifying, when viewed through July’s looking glass. Care and commitment — to oneself and others — are two vivid threads running through The Future. Cute couple Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) — unsettling look-alikes with their curly crops — appear at first to be sailing contently, aimlessly toward an undemanding unknown: Jason works from home as a customer-service operator, and Sophie attempts to herd kiddies as a children’s dance instructor. But enormous, frightening demands beckon — namely the oncoming adoption of a special-needs feline named Paw-Paw (voiced by July as if it’s a traumatized, innocent child). Lickety-splitsville, they must be all they can be before Paw-Paw’s arrival. The weirdness of the familiar, and the kindness of strangers, become ways into fantasy and escape when the couple bumps up against the limits of their imagination. This ultra-low-key horror movie of the banal is obviously remote territory for July (2005’s Me and You and Everyone We Know). The Future is her best film to date and finds her tumbling into a kind of magical realism or plastic fantastic, embodied by a talking cat that becomes the conscience of the movie. (1:31) Roxie. (Chun)

The Guard Irish police sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) is used to running his small town on his own terms — not in a completely Bad Lieutenant (1992) kind of way, though he’s not afraid to sample drugs and hang with hookers. More like, he’s been running the show for years, and would prefer that big-city cops stay the hell out of his village. Alas, a gang of drug smugglers is doing business in the area, so an officious group of investigators from Dublin (horrors!) and America (in the form of an FBI agent played by Don Cheadle) soon descend. His mother’s dying, his brand-new partner’s missing, and between all the interlopers on both sides of the law, Boyle’s having a hard time having a pint in peace. Good thing he’s not as simple-minded as all who surround him think he is. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin, who directed 2008’s In Bruges — also starring Gleeson) puts an affable Irish spin on what’s essentially a pretty typical indie comedy, with some pretty typical crime-drama elements layered atop. Boyle’s character is memorably clever, but the film that contains him never quite elevates to his level. (1:36) Lumiere, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki. (Eddy)

*The Hedgehog You needn’t possess the rough, everyday refinement of the characters of The Hedgehog to appreciate this debut feature by director-screenwriter Mona Achache — just an appreciation for a delicate touch and a tender heart. Eleven-year-old Paloma (the wonderful Garance Le Guillermic) is too smart for her own good, bored, neglected by her parents, and left to fend for herself with only her considerable imagination and a camcorder. She drifts around her fishbowl of privilege, a deluxe art nouveau-style apartment building in Paris, leveling her all-too-wise gaze on its denizens and plotting certain suicide on her 12th birthday — that is until a new resident appears in her viewfinder: a kindly Japanese gentleman Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa). He has as much of a connoisseur’s eye as Paloma — the proof is in his unlikely focus of attention, the building’s concierge Renée Michel (Josiane Balasko, resembling a burly Gertrude Stein), who hides her cultured and bookish inclinations behind a gruff, drab exterior. They recognize in each other a reverence for an almost monkish life of the mind, the austere elegance of wabi-sabi, and the transient beauty of rough-hewn imperfection, even in the sleek, well-heeled heart of the City of Light. To the credit of Achache, working with Muriel Barbery’s novel, these unlikely fragile friendships between outsiders take hold in a way that sidesteps preciousness and stays with you long after its pages have turned. (1:40) Smith Rafael. (Chun)

The Help It’s tough to stitch ‘n’ bitch ‘n’ moan in the face of such heart-felt female bonding, even after you brush away the tears away and wonder why the so-called help’s stories needed to be cobbled with those of the creamy-skinned daughters of privilege that employed them. The Help purports to be the tale of the 1960s African American maids hired by a bourgie segment of Southern womanhood — resourceful hard-workers like Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) raise their employers’ daughters, filling them with pride and strength if they do their job well, while missing out on their own kids’ childhood. Then those daughters turn around and hurt their caretakers, often treating them little better than the slaves their families once owned. Hinging on a self-hatred that devalues the nurturing, housekeeping skills that were considered women’s birthright, this unending ugly, heartbreaking story of the everyday injustices spells separate-and-unequal bathrooms for the family and their help when it comes to certain sniping queen bees like Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). But the times they are a-changing, and the help get an assist from ugly duckling of a writer Skeeter (Emma Stone, playing against type, sort of, with fizzy hair), who risks social ostracism to get the housekeepers’ experiences down on paper, amid the Junior League gossip girls and the seismic shifts coming in the civil rights-era South. Based on the best-seller by Kathryn Stockett, The Help hitches the fortunes of two forces together — the African American women who are trying to survive and find respect, and the white women who have to define themselves as more than dependent breeders — under the banner of a feel-good weepie, though not without its guilty shadings, from the way the pale-faced ladies already have a jump, in so many ways, on their African American sisters to the Keane-eyed meekness of Davis’ Aibileen to The Help‘s most memorable performances, which are also tellingly throwback (Howard’s stinging hornet of a Southern belle and Jessica Chastain’s white-trash bimbo-with-a-heart-of-gold). (2:17) California, Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

I Don’t Know How She Does It I don’t know how a likable comedian like Sarah Jessica Parker does it — meaning, such mediocre material as this mom-com. Parker may have parlayed her Sex and the City fame into a fashion, fragrance, and spin-off franchises, but she still hasn’t quite found her stride away from Carrie Bradshaw, though her Lucille Ball-esque physical comedy here — pulling down her skirt in mid-mommy-frazzle in front of her high-powered client — can be cute. Kate (Parker) just might be the busiest mom in the world: she’s juggling two kids, a hubby whose own career is on the rise (Greg Kinnear), and a major fund idea, which she has to sell to an attractive banking bigwig (Pierce Brosnan). Poor, poor privileged mom — in the trenches of the still-unadorable field of banking, with her obviously sizable salary, enviable Boston duplex, flaky-nice nanny, and bubbly single-mom friend (Christina Hendricks)! The biggest assist comes from her careerist aide, played by Olivia Munn, who grabs the biggest laughs with her deadpan delivery. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Lion King 3D (1:29) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki.

*Love Crime Early this year came the announcement that Brian De Palma was hot to do an English remake of Alain Corneau’s Love Crime. The results, should they come to fruition, may well prove a landmark in the annals of lurid guilty-pleasure trash. But with the original Love Crime finally making it to local theaters, it’s an opportune moment to be appalled in advance about what sleazy things could potentially be done to this neat, dry, fully clothed model of a modern Hitchcockian thriller. No doubt in France Love Crime looks pretty mainstream. But here its soon-to be-despoiled virtues of narrative intricacy and restraint are upscale pleasures. Ludivine Sagnier plays assistant to high-powered corporate executive Christine (Kristin Scott Thomas). The boss enjoys molding protégée Isabelle to her own image, making them a double team of carefully planned guile unafraid to use sex appeal as a business strategy. But Isabelle is expected to know her place — even when that place robs her of credit for her own ideas — and when she stages a small rebellion, Christine’s revenge is cruelly out of scale, a high-heeled boot brought down to squash an ant. Halfway through an act of vengeance occurs that is shocking and satisfying, even if it leaves the remainder of Corneau and Nathalie Carter’s clever screenplay deprived of the very thing that had made it such a sardonic delight so far. Though it’s no masterpiece, Love Crime closes the book on his Corneau’s career Corneau (he died at age 67 last August) not with a bang but with a crisp, satisfying snap. (1:46) Albany, Clay, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Mary Lou A musical fable for fans of Glee, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), and Bollywood, the latest from Eytan Fox (2002’s Yossi and Jagger) is a drag-flavored dramedy (Israel’s first?) Originally a hit miniseries in its home country, Mary Lou screens at the Castro in one big chunk jammed with singing, dancing, and a dreamy cast. Pouty Ido Rosenberg stars as Meir, a gay boy obsessed with finding the mother who left him when he was 10. After a disastrous graduation party, Meir flees his homophobic high school for the worldly environs of Tel Aviv, where he soon becomes a drag star named Mary Lou, after his mother’s favorite song. Love, loss, friendship, tragedy, joy, coming-of-age, and quite a few elaborate musical numbers soon transpire — the plot is not without clichés, to be sure, but it’s hard to hate on anything possessed of such sparkly energy. Not familiar with Svika Pick, the Israeli legend whose music provides much of the soundtrack? It matters not, especially if you’re a fan of deliriously corny pop tunes. (2:30) Castro. (Eddy)

Midnight in Paris Owen Wilson plays Gil, a self-confessed “Hollywood hack” visiting the City of Light with his conservative future in-laws and crassly materialistic fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). A romantic obviously at odds with their selfish pragmatism (somehow he hasn’t realized that yet), he’s in love with Paris and particularly its fabled artistic past. Walking back to his hotel alone one night, he’s beckoned into an antique vehicle and finds himself transported to the 1920s, at every turn meeting the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Dali (Adrien Brody), etc. He also meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a woman alluring enough to be fought over by Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Picasso (Marcial di Fonzo Bo) — though she fancies aspiring literary novelist Gil. Woody Allen’s latest is a pleasant trifle, no more, no less. Its toying with a form of magical escapism from the dreary present recalls The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), albeit without that film’s greater structural ingeniousness and considerable heart. None of the actors are at their best, though Cotillard is indeed beguiling and Wilson dithers charmingly as usual. Still — it’s pleasant. (1:34) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Harvey)

Mozart’s Sister Pity the talented sister of a world-shaking prodigy. Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart, who may have had just as much promise as a composer as her younger brother, according to Rene Féret’s Mozart’s Sister. A scant five years older, enlisted in the traveling family band led by father-teacher Leopold (Marc Barbe), yet forced to hide her music, being female and forbidden to play violin and compose, Nannerl (Marie Féret, the filmmaker’s daughter) tours the courts of Europe and is acclaimed as a keyboardist and vocalist but is expected to share little of her brother’s brilliant future. Following a chance carriage breakdown near a French monastery, Nannerl befriends one of its precious inhabitants, a daughter of Louis XV (Lisa Féret, another offspring), which leads her to Versailles, into a cross-dressing guise of a boy, and puts her into the sights of the Dauphin (Clovis Fouin, who could easily find a spot in the Cullen vampire clan). He’s seduced by her music and likewise charms Nannerl with his power and feline good looks — what’s a humble court minstrel to do? The conceit of casting one’s daughters in a narrative hinging on unjustly neglected female progeny — shades of Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (1990)! — almost capsizes this otherwise thoughtful re-imagination of Maria Anna’s thwarted life; despite the fact Féret has inserted his children in his films in the past, both girls offer little emotional depth to their roles. Nevertheless, as a feminist rediscovery pic akin to Camille Claudel (1988), Mozart’s Sister instructs on yet another tragically quashed woman artist and might inspire some righteous indignation. (2:00) Bridge, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Chun)

*One Day Why do romantic comedies get such a bad rap? Blame it on the lame set-up, the contrived hurdles artificially buttressed by the obligatory chorus of BFFs, the superficial something-for-every-demographic-with-ADD multinarrative, and the implausible resolutions topped by something as simple as a kiss or as conventional as marriage, but often no deeper, more crafted, or heartfelt than an application of lip gloss. Yet the lite-as-froyo pleasures of the genre don’t daunt Danish director Lone Scherfig, best known for her deft touch with a woman’s story that cuts closer to the bone, with 2009’s An Education. Her new film, One Day, based on the best-selling novel by David Nicholls, flirts with the rom-com form — from the kitsch associations with Same Time, Next Year (1978) to the trailer that hangs its love story on a crush — but musters emotional heft through its accumulation of period details, a latticework of flashbacks, and collection of encounters between its charming protagonists: upper-crusty TV presenter Dexter (Jim Sturgess) and working-class aspiring writer Emma (Anne Hathaway). Their quickie university friendship slowly unfolds, as they meet every St. Swithin’s Day, July 15, over a span of years, into the most important relationship of their lives. Despite the blue-collar female lead and UK backdrop that it shares with An Education, One Day feels like a departure for Scherfig, who first found international attention for her award-winning Dogme 95-affiliated Italian for Beginners (2000). (1:48) 1000 Van Ness, Piedmont. (Chun)

*Our Idiot Brother If you thought 1998’s The Big Lebowski had eked all the humor that it could from the Dude, well, screenwriter (and Vanity Fair contributor) Evgenia Peretz, her not-so-idiotic brother (director Jesse Peretz), and star Paul Rudd would differ. They correctly guessed that there are still laughs to be wrung from a shaggy stoner in floral jams, only this time with less fuuuck-s and more benevolent, idiot-savant good vibrations. Dazed and confused broheim 2.0 (Rudd) is glimpsed through the jaded, harried prism of his three dysfunctional, supposedly normal sisters: frumpadelic mom Liz (Emily Mortimer), queen-bitch Vanity Fair writer Miranda (Elizabeth Banks), and slatternly would-be comedian Natalie (Zooey Deschanel). A good-hearted naïf who’s easily entrapped by a uniformed police officer claiming to need some pity doobage, Ned has just emerged from the joint and is now couch-surfing among his sibs, exposing the hypocrisies of bourgie-hipster Brooklyn, as well as the infidelities and vanities of family, friends, and partners (Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, and Hugh Dancy) as he goes, in his own good-natured, aw-shucks way. As innocuous (and desexualized) as Andy Griffith beneath the hippie trappings, this dude-with-a-little-d knows where his real family is — with his dog, Willie Nelson, who loves him just as unconditionally. Beastie besties have never seemed so innocent as they are in this proudly feel-good comedy, and despite a cringe-y, saccharine soundtrack and lackadaisical pacing, Rudd’s charismatic sunny slacker and some pointed jabs at the follies of the cooler-than-thou save this indie-that-could. (1:36) 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*Point Blank Not for nothing did Hollywood remake French filmmaker Fred Cavaye’s last film, Anything for Her (2008) as The Next Three Days (2010) — Cavaye’s latest, tauter-than-taut thriller almost screams out for a similar rework, with its Bourne-like handheld camera work, high-impact immediacy, and noirish narrative economy. Point Blank — not to be confused with the 1967 Lee Marvin vehicle —kicks off with a literal slam: a mystery man (Roschdy Zem) crashing into a metal barrier, on the run from two menacing figures until he is cornered and then taken out of the action by fate. His mind mainly on the welfare of his very pregnant wife Nadia (Elena Anaya), nursing assistant Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) has the bad luck to stumble on a faux doctor attempting to make sure that the injured man never rises from his hospital bed. As police wrangle over whose case this exactly is — the murder of an industrialist seems to have expanded the powers of the stony-faced, monolithic Commandant Werner (Gerard Lanvin) — Samuel gets sucked into the mystery man’s lot, a conspiracy that allows them to trust no one, and seemingly impossibly odds against getting out of the mess alive. Cavaye never quite stops applying the pressure in this clever, unrelenting cat-and-mouse and mouse-and-his-spouse game, topping it with a nerve-jangling search through a messily chaotic police station. (1:24) Opera Plaza. (Chun)

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes “You gotta love a movie where the animals beat up on the humans,” declared my Rise of the Planet of the Apes companion. Indeed, ape must not kill ape, and this Planet of the Apes prequel-cum-remake of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) takes the long view, back to the days when ape-human relations were still high-minded enough to forbid smart apes from killing those well-armed, not-so-bright humanoids. I was a fan of the original series, but honestly, I approached Rise with trepidation: I dreaded the inevitable scenes of human cruelty meted out to exploited primates — the current wave of chimp-driven films seems focused on holding a scary, shaming mirror up to the two-legged mammalian violence toward their closest living genetic relatives. It’s a contrast to the original series, which provided prisms with which to peer at race relations and generational conflict. But I needn’t have feared this PG-13 “reboot.” There’s little CGI-driven gore, apart from the visceral opening and the showdown, though the heartbreak remains. Scientist Will (James Franco, brow perpetually furrowed with worry) is working to find a medicine designed to supercharge the brain in the wake of Alzheimer’s — a disease that has struck down his father (John Lithgow). When the experimental chimp that responds to his serum becomes violently aggressive, the project is shut down, although the primate leaves behind a surprise: a baby chimp that Will and his father name Caesar and raise like a beloved child in their idyllic Bay Area Victorian. Growing in intelligence as he matures, Caesar finds himself torn by an existential dilemma: is he a pet or a mammal with rights that must be respected? Rise becomes Caesar’s story, rendered in heart-wrenching, exhilarating ways — to director Rupert Wyatt and his team’s credit you don’t miss the performance finesse of Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter in groundbreaking prosthetic ape face in the original movies — while resolving at least one question about why humans gave up the globe to the primates. One can only imagine the next edition will take care of the lingering question about how even the cleverest of apes will feed themselves in Muir Woods. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

Sarah’s Key (1:42) Four Star, Opera Plaza.

*Senna When Ayrton Senna died in 1994 at the age of 34, he had already secured his legacy as one of the greatest and most beloved Formula One racers of all time. The three-time world champion was a hero in his native Brazil and a respected and feared opponent on the track. This eponymous documentary by director Asif Kapadia is nearly as dynamic as the man himself, with more than enough revving engines and last minute passes to satisfy your lust for speed and a decent helping Ayrton’s famous personality as well. Senna was a champion, driven to win even as the sometimes-backhanded politics of the racing world stood in his way. A tragic figure, maybe, but a legend nonetheless. You don’t have to be an F1 fan to appreciate this film, but you may wind up one by the time the credits roll. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Smith Rafael. (Cooper Berkmoyer)

Straw Dogs Never could I have predicted there would be a day when the violent finale of Straw Dogs would be met with raucous cheers. The original 1971 film was produced within a morally ambiguous social climate and remains one of director Sam Peckinpah’s most controversial efforts; contemporary audiences trained to applaud a payoff of blood and gore are likely in the wrong headspace for a film like this. The remake, which sends a good-natured screenwriter (James Marsden) on a retreat in his wife’s (Kate Bosworth) sweaty Southern hometown where they find themselves at odds with a group of good ol’ boys, remains powerful and just as uncomfortable and mean as Peckinpah’s version, but it’s in service of a moral outcome that’s more in line with its commercial placement: ultimately it takes the road of “man becomes protector” over “man becomes monster.” If you have no interest in the original, you will find a fair bit of talent in this remake, but without the cynical attitude it can be hard to separate Straw Dogs from any other horror-movie-of-the-week. (1:50) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Shattuck. (Galvin)

The Tree of Life Mainstream American films are so rarely adventuresome that overreactive gratitude frequently greets those rare, self-conscious, usually Oscar-baiting stabs at profundity. Terrence Malick has made those gestures so sparingly over four decades that his scarcity is widely taken for genius. Now there’s The Tree of Life, at once astonishingly ambitious — insofar as general addressing the origin/meaning of life goes — and a small domestic narrative artificially inflated to a maximally pretentious pressure-point. The thesis here is a conflict between “nature” (the way of striving, dissatisfied, angry humanity) and “grace” (the way of love, femininity, and God). After a while Tree settles into a fairly conventional narrative groove, dissecting — albeit in meandering fashion — the travails of a middle-class Texas household whose patriarch (a solid Brad Pitt) is sternly demanding of his three young sons. As a modern-day survivor of that household, Malick’s career-reviving ally Sean Penn has little to do but look angst-ridden while wandering about various alien landscapes. Set in Waco but also shot in Rome, at Versailles, and in Saturn’s orbit (trust me), The Tree of Life is so astonishingly self-important while so undernourished on some basic levels that it would be easy to dismiss as lofty bullshit. Its Cannes premiere audience booed and cheered — both factions right, to an extent. (2:18) California, Lumiere. (Harvey)

*Warrior Those wondering why the mixed martial arts scene has captured the imagination of so many can finally understand what the fuss is all about, now that it comes filtered through a melodramatic narrative akin to The Fighter (2010). Warrior‘s mis-en-scene is immediately recognizable: a prodigal returns, in the form of Tom Conlon (Tom Hardy). Once a talented teenage wrestler, the now-battered man is the damaged youngest son of alcoholic ex-boxer Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte). Tom wants his father to train him for a major mixed martial arts tournament with a multimillion-dollar purse, though the two obviously still have a deadly hold on each other — the repentant Paddy is on the wagon and the emotionally bruised Tom harbors secrets he won’t reveal — and battle with cutting comments rather than fists. Tom isn’t the only prodigal in the house: Paddy has lost the trust of Tom’s bro, Brendan (Joel Edgerton), a former fighter and present-day physics high school teacher who’s struggling to make ends meet with an underwater mortgage. Though Warrior is no Raging Bull (1980), it almost outdukes The Fighter in terms of its brutal bouts, conveying the swift, no-holds-barred action of MMA in the ring, while giving actors plenty of drama to wrap their jowls ’round — particularly in Nolte’s case. His tore-up turn as an all-excuses patriarch is as heartbreaking as a solid kick to the jaw. (2:19) California, 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Chun)

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