Take one
Surveying the first week of the S.F. International Film Festival

Thurs/15

Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch, USA, 2003) The hipster factor (on-screen, at least) of Jim Jarmusch's vignette collection makes it an apt opening-night choice for this year's festival. If Coffee and Cigarettes feels like little more than a smoke break before the next major Jarmusch project, that's because it's composed of short films made between his past ones. Nicotine-and-caffeine consumption loosely unites the 10 segments (along with, to a lesser degree, a visual fascination with checkerboard patterns). Some try to get by on little more than name recognition – Jack and Meg White's Tesla Coil demonstration, for example, coasts on "aren't we cute and cool" attitude. Other skits (Cate Blanchett as herself and as a resentful punk rock cousin; Alfred Molina fawning over a diffident Stephen Fry) bring an actorly sense of irreverence to the notion of celebrity. Jarmusch saves the best for last. "Delirium" lets Wu-Tang's RZA and GZA lecture a wasted-looking but feisty Bill Murray about the benefits of holistic health. Set in a dive bar on a sunny day, "Champagne" allows Taylor Mead – whose appearance certifies the film's Warhol debt – to show the nascent improvisers exactly how it should be done: with a worldly and weary sense of the absurd, and enough imagination to pretend a Styrofoam cup of instant is a flute of Krug. 7 p.m., Castro. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Fri/16

Control Room (Jehane Noujaim, USA/Egypt, 2003) When your TV journalist reports from his or her war zone, viewers generally assume they're putting their lives at risk to get a scoop – that they're witnessing what they're reporting on, or, at the very least, attempting to verify its truth. We don't picture them lining up like zoo animals for the latest feeding of prepackaged military news from flacks at a conference center safely distant from the action. "Centcom," in Qatar, is where Jehane Noujaim finds them. Her doc is a portrait of al-Jazeera covering the latest Iraq war but takes its cameras to both Western and Arab media to watch the information as it's processed. Control Room shows very clearly why so few news reporters offer any other side: the United States finds ways to "accidentally" bomb them. Though anyone looking for deep background on al-Jazeera may walk away frustrated by the cinéma vérité style, it certainly de-exoticizes the network (al-Jazeera's reporters, one says, often list the BBC as their previous place of employment). What's truly amazing is the film's ability to create controversy when its premise is so basic – that reporting on war should involve more than just broadcasting memos from military flacks. 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/17, 6:30 p.m., PFA; Sun/18, 1:30 p.m., Kabuki. (Susan Gerhard)

Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-Ho, South Korea, 2003) The United States probably generates more serial killer thrillers than any other country, but decades have passed since it produced one that – like this South Korean film – uses the subject matter to form a societal and political indictment. (In these terms Memories of Murder recalls Fritz Lang's M.) An award-winning box-office smash in its homeland, Bong Joon-Ho's suspenseful and ultimately haunting movie connects a series of unsolved rape-homicides to the sexism and brutality in a village's police department, and to the prejudice and suspicion that ran rampant during the late-'80s military dictatorship of Chun Doo-Hwan. The superb cinematography by Kim Hyung-Gu (Musa the Warrior; One Fine Spring Day; Chen Kaige's Together) is capable of making a wheat field appear menacing. Kim's camerawork and a trio of strong performances fuse in the climax, where good guys and bad guys remain hard to tell apart and a truth sought for years seems to vanish into a darkened tunnel. 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/19, 5:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

The Park (Andrew Lau, Hong Kong, 2003) Don't leave your cute little sister alone on the Ferris wheel. That's the first obvious lesson to be gleaned from this post-Infernal Affairs cheapie by Andrew Lau, in which ear-stabbing noise and hyperactive camerawork add up to a subzero scare factor. The plot construction is as mechanical and shoddy as the carnival-of-souls setting, and even on an off night, Tobe Hooper was better equipped at booby-trapping a garish fun house. 3-D is the gimmick that might have solved these malfunctions, but Lau only employs it occasionally, and the resulting effects don't rival Friday the 13th Part III's optical assaults, let alone House of Wax's. This rickety roller coaster switches gears from horror to hysterics (final girl Bobo Chan's terrible squeals and wails) during a melodramatic denouement that owes a debt to the Pang brothers' already derivative Eye. By then the lessons have turned Taoist – thanks to a heroic mom, the film's sole unconventional character. Midnight, Kabuki. Also Sun/18, 12:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin, Canada, 2003) Cinemania is as sinful and maniacal as can be when it comes from the hands and eyes of Guy Maddin, who reveals himself to be a leg man in this wonderful yet wearyingly manic depression-era comedy, set in a snow globe that doubles as his beloved hometown of Winnipeg. "If you're sad and like beer, I'm your lady," declares alcohol heiress Lady Port Huntley (Isabella Rosellini), who sports a pair of booze-filled prosthetic gams as she presides over an international music contest that makes Iron Chef seem tame and the Eurovision Song Contest seem tasteful: a spinning wheel of legs determines which nation battles which for the titular honor, and the winner of each round slides into a vat of sudsy brew. Is a Serbian cello more soulful and doleful than a Scottish bagpipe? Will the "it's all showbiz" mentality of ugly America, led by a louse (Kids in the Hall alum Mark McKinney) who cuckolded his father, prevail? What happened to Canada? The answers are moot. Like a witty drunk, Maddin's movie starts out energetic and gradually loses focus. By the end it might be dead or just very, very sad. 7:10 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/18, 8:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

Suite Habana (Fernando Pérez, Cuba/Spain, 2003) When filmmakers travel to Cuba, they tend to deliver the now predictable strains of Buena Vista music set to postcard shots of dilapidated buildings, '50s cars, and sexy dancing. All true but, as native son Fernando Pérez shows here, hardly the real story. Coming to documentary from fiction, Pérez (Life Is to Whistle) consciously emulates the "city symphony" tradition developed by Walter Ruttman and others in the '30s. Instead of the wonders of industry, however, he shows off the wonders of humanity: ordinary Habaneros touched by grace. Half love song, half elegy, Suite Habana captures the capital as insiders feel it: rain-swept, tragic, locked in a fierce struggle for survival. It's unclear whether this is a melancholic catalog of the failings of the revolution or a wan critique of the embargo that bankrupts it. What's unambiguous is Suite Habana's cinematic status. A landmark contribution to Cuban cinema, exquisitely shot and edited, it's easily the best documentary made on the island since the death of the legendary Santiago Alvarez. 9:25 p.m., PFA. Also Sun/18, 5 p.m., Kabuki; Tues/20, 1 p.m., Castro. (B. Ruby Rich)

Vibrator (Ryuichi Hiroki, Japan, 2003) The vibrations of a cell phone can't compare to those of a big rig's engine, which in turn seem small in relation to the great shakes of hot sex and the convulsive jitters of true love. So goes the philosophy of sensation presented by Ryuichi Hiroki's moving film. Alcoholism and bulimia have numbed Rei (Shinobu Terashima, excellent) to her shaky-by-definition existence; she's first glimpsed at a supermarket, tossing mental insults at magazine spreads with an unhinged insightfulness that could only come from a freelance writer. Approaching fellow shopper Okabi (Nao Omori – one dye job, one wardrobe change, and an entire personality away from his role as Ichi in Ichi the Killer) outside in the winter cold, Rei faces her fears for the first of many times, and Vibrator embraces the excitement of loud music and the freedom of the open road. The journey ahead isn't a joyride so much as a chamber piece set in a semi truck. 4:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Sat/17, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; Mon/19, 6:30 p.m., PFA. (Huston)

Sat/17

DIG! (Ondi Timoner, USA, 2003) Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be ... neo-psychedelic singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalists. Anyone who saw the reconstituted Brian Jonestown Massacre float gorgeous sounds through Bottom of the Hill a few months back may know the surprise ending to this downward-spiraling rock doc. So you can leave all your Behind the Music clichés of uplift and self-reformation at the door. But just because DIG! doesn't celebrate survival in a motivational speaker-tour kind of way doesn't mean it devolves into nihilism. It actually ascends into nihilism, which may just be the point. One can feel the dread sweat in this tale of two bands – seven sordid years in the making – as it follows the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre loving and hating each other, from Potrero Hill to the Viper Room to points across America, Europe, and back again. BJM's Anton Newcombe, lives up to his band's name, a guru in search of a cult, even as he throws off most of their members. As the Dandy Warhols happily make their way through Europe, it's Newcombe's outsize conviction that wins the day, even as he has to shout down fruit throwers with a harmonica hanging around his neck. On his way through a hotel lobby after a big meeting with record execs, he says to no one in particular behind the bellhop counter, "You have no idea what I just became." 6:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/19, 10 p.m., Kabuki. (Gerhard)

Last Life in the Universe (Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Thailand/Japan, 2003) One piano note fading into silence, the white noise of waves hitting shore, a Thai-Japanese language tape punctuated by shrill computer fanfare. These are three of this film's ambient motifs. A Mishima-like children's book titled The Last Lizard, an Ichi the Killer poster in Bangkok's Japan Cultural Center. These are two of the film's thematic clues. Add a cameo by Miike Takashi, Tadanobu Asano as a yakuza with the mind of a librarian (or a librarian with the heart of a yakuza), and cinematography by Christopher Doyle that finds new tints of warm green and cool blue. What you have is Last Life in the Universe: a suicide note that turns into a love letter, and a battle between Japanese fastidiousness and Thai funk that could teach Lost in Translation a few lessons about portraying cultural gaps. Aided immeasurably by Animal Room's sublime minimalist score, Pen-ek Ratanaruang's fourth movie starts out as mordant and morbid as a Billy Wilder one and ends in a state of grace, being sure to make time to get high along the way. 6:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/19, 9 p.m., PFA. (Huston)

Temptress of a Thousand Faces (Cheng Chang-ho, Hong Kong/Korea, 1968) If you've always thought of the perfect film being Danger: Diabolik! as produced by Hong Kong chop-socky impresarios the Shaw Brothers, well, my friend, be prepared to shed tears of genuine joy. This lost treasure from the siblings' vaults has everything you'd want in a film and more: supercriminals, imprisoned heroines, jewel heists, identity theft, a go-go soundtrack, gratuitous sex and nudity, semi-gratuitous fashion models, not-at-all-gratuitous kung-fu, and investigative journalism. Four years before director Cheng Chang-ho would jump-start the martial-arts film craze with the classic Five Fingers of Death, his tale of an Irma Vep mastermind granted thrills, chills, and Tina Chin round-housing goons in her slip; the world, or at least Times Square, would never be the same. Shot in beautifully tinted Shawscope, this genre-bender jumps on the bandwagon of '60s psychedelia espionage, grabs the reins, and steers it off a cliff. My advice: hold on tight and go along for the ride. Midnight, Kabuki. (David Fear)

Sun/18

After You (Pierre Salvadori, France, 2003) Antoine (Daniel Auteuil) has the "misfortune" of stumbling across Louis (José Garcia) just as he's about to kill himself. Taking the despondent gent under his wing, Antoine sets about trying to right the wrongs of his neurotic new friend's life with a job, a place to stay, and the hope of reconciliation with Louis's comely ex-girlfriend (Sandrine Kiberlain) ... whom Antoine begins to take a shine to as well. Francophiles in need of some good Gallic celebrity power could do worse than watching this trio gliding through this updated '80s Pierre Richard-style romp, but After You's pleasures never go beyond modest. Made up simply of "wacky" vignettes (Antoine helps Louis's blind grandmother, the inept Louis interviews for a sommelier position, etc.) that accumulate rather than accentuate anything, director Pierre Salvadori's film courts giggles but neglects any big-picture momentum; it coasts by on comic fumes but still feels about 90 minutes too long. 8:40 p.m., PFA. Also Tues/20, 6:45 p.m., Kabuki; April 22, 9:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 25, 6:30 p.m., Century. (Fear)

Beautiful Boxer (Ekachai Uekrongtham, Thailand, 2003) In the wake of Iron Ladies' success, recent Thai cinema has bent gender into ever more playful, and sometimes profound, shapes. Sayew charts the unresolved fantasies of a nerdy tomboy who writes porn for a dwindling family business. The Adventures of Iron Pussy imagines an avenging hero who is supermale or superfemale, depending on the occasion. Now Beautiful Boxer proves truth can be as wild, and perhaps more poignant, than fiction: it's based on the story of Parinya "Nong Toom" Charoenphol, a kickboxing champion who, to paraphrase the film's concise tag line, fought like a man to become a woman. This biopic's framing device verges on a P.R. ad for Thailand, and a pop-pulp approach dominates. Close-ups of oiled pecs and abs, check. Side plot about dying coach, check. Final showdown, check. But first-time director Ekachai Uekrongtham – as capable of finding dynamism in a makeup case as he is at capturing the aesthetic beauty of muaythai moves – faithfully visualizes Nong's life. The result is a tearjerker that kicks ass. 6 p.m., Castro. (Huston)

Chisholm '72 – Unbought and Unbossed (Shola Lynch, USA, 2003) It's election season again, a time to put aside your differences and remember not to vote your conscience, "for the good of the country." It's a time to forget the bigger picture and begin squabbling with your neighbor about whether third parties kill democracy. It's a time when we desperately need a documentary about Shirley Chisholm's brave and cantankerous run for the presidency in 1972. If Shola Lynch's documentary weren't full of so many great speeches, awesome dresses, and outrageously righteous characters organizing against a system that took the votes of women and African Americans for granted, it would be a grim reminder of just how easily and often democracy fails. It's worth the price of admission just to see Willie Brown arguing to bounce the courageous Chisholm off the Democratic convention floor, screaming for all posterity to hear: "Give me back my delegation!" 4:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also Mon/19, 10 a.m., Kabuki; Tues/20, 3:45 p.m., Kabuki. (Gerhard)

Home of the Brave (Paola di Florio, USA, 2003) Malcolm X often said the U.S. government was busier in places it had no right to be – such as Vietnam – than where it needed to be, such as Alabama and Mississippi. This doc offers further proof that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI agents attacked, rather than helped, those seeking justice and freedom during the '60s. The "only white woman killed in the struggle for civil rights," Viola Liuzzo might have been shot by the agent who nabbed three Klansmen for her murder: the agent was also a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Though that theory has been put forward before, director Paola di Florio moves beyond it to investigate the effects Liuzzo's life and death have had on her children. A smear campaign – for some reason, the FBI's file on the wife of a Detroit teamster is three times bigger than its file on the Klan – has driven two of Liuzzo's sons into hiding. (One joined the Michigan militia, a decision di Florio explores without falling into Michael Moore-style condescension.) As daughter Mary follows Liuzzo's path to the 1965 Voting Rights March, Home of the Brave's soundtrack choices are sometimes overwrought. The site of her mother's murder contains a pair of extreme ironies, one crushing and the other inspiring. 9 p.m., Kabuki. Also Tues/20, 7 p.m., Kabuki; April 21, noon, Kabuki. (Huston)

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, USA, 2003) Heavy metal gets heavier in a documentary that – like all of Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky's work, from the brilliant Brother's Keeper to the eerie and heartbreaking Paradise Lost(s) – blows one's mind. At a moment when Metallica's headbanging was being done by their toddler children (courtesy of papas James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich), the band invite intrepid filmmakers into their therapy sessions, one can only guess, as a joke, initially. But it's a truly revelatory process to watch, as the band work out mythic ego battles, Hetfield recovers from alcoholism, and ex-bass player Jason Newsted airs his grievances. Metallica indeed took over the funding of this movie when their record company threatened to turn it into cable-burger, but that fact is a tribute to their, well, metal: this has to be the least vain vanity doc of all time. 9:30 p.m., Castro. (Gerhard)

The Missing (Lee Kang-sheng, Taiwan, 2003) In interviews Tsai Ming-liang has said What Time Is It There? was partly inspired by the sadness etched onto his muse Lee Kang-sheng's face after Lee's father died. Lee's directorial debut, a film dedicated to his father, not only owes a stylistic debt to Tsai (long takes, aquarium's-eye angles, tearful outbursts, and tragicomic use of public announcements) but also often answers Tsai's symbolism. Lee's camera isn't so stationary: for an agonizing stretch of time, it tracks from mid distance the panic-stricken pacing of a grandmother as she frantically searches a park for a lost child. People can disappear in a mammoth city's rapid changes, and missing persons are quickly reduced to banal descriptive details – these are just two of the crushing observations here. (Lee, first glimpsed as a teen in Tsai's Rebels of the Neon God, also carries on Tsai's tradition by looking at a younger generation; one boy fights Bush's "coalition of the willing" via a video game.) What Time Is It There?'s zone-spanning meditation on mortality concludes at a ring-shaped Parisian landmark. The Missing ends at a similarly shaped structure in Taipei: within a circle, two characters grieve, unaware that only a wall separates them from those they seek. 6:45 p.m., PFA. Also Tues/20, 7 p.m., Kabuki; April 24, 4:15 p.m., Kabuki. (Huston)

This Little Life (Sarah Gavron, England, 2003) A baby born prematurely has only a one-in-four chance of surviving is what Sadie (Kate Ashfield) and Richie (David Morrissey) are told when their son, Luke, arrives 17 weeks before his due date, unable to function outside of an intensive care unit. The infant manages to beat the odds and improve steadily as the days pass, but the toll on Sadie begins to slowly unravel her mental health. With a keen eye toward the realities of modern health care and hospital life, neophyte director Sarah Gavron guides viewers through the ups and downs of the new parents' trauma every step of the way like an old pro. You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by their plight, but the wish that her film didn't adhere quite so closely to a stock TV-drama formula and offered something else besides easy emotional targets to hit never quite fades away. 1:30 p.m., PFA. Also April 24, 12:30 p.m., Kabuki; April 25, 4 p.m., Kabuki. (Fear)

Mon/19

El Alamein: The Line of Fire (Enzo Monteleone, Italy, 2002) Pity poor Serra (Paolo Briguglia), a university student who has volunteered to serve in the African desert during Italy's WWII campaign with Rommel's forces. Once there, he discovers that the brass has largely ignored the troops, that the English are quickly moving in on them, and that war is, in fact, hell. Quicker than you can say "loss of innocence," he and his platoon find themselves smack-dab in what would prove to be a decisive battle for the Allies ... and a slaughter for the Italian army. Director Enzo Monteleone's impressionistic take on the "greatest generation" 's fight as seen from the other side looks scorched-earth stylized and courts blockbuster-epic status; his decision to focus only moderately on war-movie spectacle, however, and more on the men wading through hours of banality leading up to battle betrays an old-fashioned cinematic ancestry that's a respite from the faceless video game depictions of warfare. 6:15 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 23, 5:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 25, 4 p.m., Century. (Fear)

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 2003) Ideal for the Castro Theatre rather than for the multiplex Kabuki, Goodbye, Dragon Inn haunts the final night of the Fu-Ho Grand Theater as it shows King Hu's Dragon Inn. Outside, it's pissing rain. Inside, a ticket clerk with a gimp leg (Chen Shiang-chy) peeks longingly at the projectionist (Lee Kang-sheng), a beak-nosed Japanese boy (Mitamura Kiyonobu) seeks a hookup, and a pair of Dragon Inn's stars – including Tsai Ming-liang regular Miao Tien – watch the men they once were battle for what might be the last time. Goodbye's metafilmic ploy isn't new; directors ranging from Godard to genre specialists such as Lamberto Bava and William Castle have utilized it. But no one, not even the Fu-Ho's lonely ghost audience, has cruised the aisles, toilets, projection room, and dark secret spaces as ardently as Tsai. His brilliant presentation of setting erases the boundaries between audiences, theaters, and screens. (The first time I saw Goodbye, somebody a row in front of me munched on nachos as the loud nut-chomping of one movie-watcher began to disturb another in Tsai's film.) Each shot here is contemplative and edited accordingly – jump-cut junkies beware – so viewers can contemplate not only the many planes of vision, shadings of color, and reflections of light contained in a monograph-ready image, but also the endangered state of cinema itself. 9:30 p.m., Kabuki. Also April 21, 7:15 p.m., Kabuki; April 25, 6:30 p.m., PFA. (Huston)

Tues/20

The General (Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, USA, 1927) Yes, Buster Keaton's epic about a meek conductor, his beloved railway engine, and the American Civil War has rightfully entered the canon of classic films. Its brilliant integration of plot and gags is a given; the cinematography, designed to look like a Matthew Brady photograph come to life, earns every kudo people feel fit to give it; and even the decades-old stunt work is pure Saturday-matinee bliss. But what truly lifts The General into the realm of cinematic nirvana is Keaton's ability to turn screen comedy into a Zen koan. Even a throwaway gag like Keaton being carried off by the moving carriage wheel he's been sitting on still feels like the closest any American filmmaker has come to projecting a transcendental sense of grace in a single shot. Accompanied by a live score courtesy of the Alloy Orchestra, this revival screening of the silent comedy is guaranteed to bowl you over like a runaway train. 7 p.m., Castro. (Fear)

For theater information see box, page 54.