film
Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Robert Avila,
Kimberly Chun, David Fear, Susan Gerhard, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray
Huston, Laurie Koh, Patrick Macias, Lynn Rapoport, and Chuck Stephens.
The film intern is Dave Kim. For show times, see Rep Clock, page 92,
and Movie Clock, page 94. San
Francisco Documentary Film Festival
The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, presented by the San Francisco
Independent Film Festival, runs May 13-16. Venues are the Roxie Cinema,
3125 16th St, SF; and the Women's Building, 3543 18th St, SF. For tickets
($7-9) call (415) 820-3907 or go to www.sfindie.com.
For commentary, see "The Doc Is
In." All times p.m.
Thurs/13
Roxie In the Realms of the Unreal 5:15. Slasher 7:15.
Up for Grabs 9:15 and 11.
Fri/14
Women's Building Hitler's Hat and Traveling Sideshow:
Shocked and Amazed 5:30. Words with "Best of Face TV!
With Gregg Brown" 7:30. Goldstein: The Trials of the Sultan
of Smut 9:30.
Sat/15
Women's Building Parallel Lines 1:30. Trading with
the Enemy with "Black Hair" 3:30. Plagues and Pleasures
on the Salton Sea 5:30. Radio Revolution with "Radio
Takeover" 7:30. Big City Dick: Richard Peterson's First Movie
9:30.
Sun/16
Women's Building Alone across America with "Keep
the Change" 1. Still Doing It and The Naked Feminist
2:30. Awful Normal 5:15. In the Shoes of the Dragon 7:15.
Dirty Work with "Kosher Cop," "Starlet,"
and "I'm Dead after Work" 9:15.
Opening
Breakin' All the Rules Jamie Foxx stars as a man who gets dumped,
then promptly pens a best-seller about breakups. (1:25) Century Plaza,
Century 20, Jack London, Shattuck.
Coffee and Cigarettes If Coffee and Cigarettes feels
like little more than a smoke break before the next major Jim 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 Steve Coogan) 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. (1:36) Embarcadero. (Huston)
James' Journey to Jerusalem James (Siyabonga Shibe), a pious
young Christian, leaves his African village for the Holy Land, only
to be jailed by immigration authorities in Tel Aviv. The very next day,
a bossy businessman (Salim Daw) bails him out and puts him to work.
Wanting nothing more than to leave for Jerusalem, James diligently works
to pay off his debt. But he soon learns the ways of the world, pushing
the pilgrimage aside for his own profit-making business. On the surface,
James' Journey to Jerusalem is really just another coming-of-age
story, but director Ra'anan Alexandrowicz manages to give it a fairly
original perspective. Shot almost like a documentary, the film reveals
an underbelly of Israel that's practically invisible to Westerners –
a world marked by corruption, gentrification, and harsh classism. Alexandrowicz's
social commentary doesn't flag the film's pacing, and it's refreshing
to see an ironic twist to the obvious "moral of the story"
ending. (1:27) Act I and II, Opera Plaza. (Kim)
*Troy See "Achilles' Heel," page 46. (2:45) Century
Plaza, Century 20, Empire, Grand Lake, Jack London, Orinda.
*The Twilight Samurai See Movie Clock. (2:07) Albany,
Bridge, Smith Rafael.
Two Men Went to War The year is 1942, England is waging war
against the Nazis, and a senior member (Kenneth Cranham) of the British
Army's orthodontics division is denied the chance to fight due to his
advanced years. Hungry for action, the sergeant grabs his bumbling young
ward (Leo Bill), and the duo of dental Don Quixotes decide to fight
the Germans on their own, heading toward occupied France armed with
only a few guns and grenades. Director Bill Henderson and his cast,
all veterans of UK TV, aim for that Ealing Studios mix of whimsy and
stiff-upper-lip fortitude, but this gentle wartime farce only modestly
succeeds in taking shade in the shadow of British cinema's golden age.
It's a harmless exercise in ration-era nostalgia and Union Jack
pluck, but the resulting dig at Her Majesty's Forces is less a Cineplex
successor than a movie version of the island's cuisine: overboiled and
rather bland yet only slightly less substantial than a teatime scone.
(1:49) Galaxy. (Fear)
Ongoing
*The Agronomist As thousands of international peacekeepers try
to settle the unrest in Haiti, filmmaker Jonathan Demme (The Silence
of the Lambs) aptly releases The Agronomist, a documentary
about late Haitian radio journalist Jean Dominique. Demme intertwines
Dominique's struggle for democracy with a recent political history of
Haiti, bringing us up to speed on the unrest, corruption, and violence
that have been choking the country for decades. Surviving threats and
long periods of exile, Dominique voiced his opinions on the radio waves
until his murder in 2000. And as of now, it's still a losing battle.
The journalist's wife, Michèle Montas, narrowly escaped assassination
in 2002. Dominique's station, Radio Haiti Inter, has remained off the
air since last year, when persistent threats forced Montas to shut down
all broadcasts. Consequently, Demme's own frustration often surfaces
as a weighty us-versus-them tone; if you're looking for objective discourse,
The Agronomist isn't your movie. But since the film comes as
indigent Haitians prepare for their fifth government in 20 years, remaining
neutral is an understandable challenge. (1:30) California. (Kim)
Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2:13) Oaks.
Bon Voyage French director Jean-Paul Rappenaeu sets this elaborate
genre-blender in occupied Europe, but don't expect The Pianist;
Rappeanaeu's caricatures and farcical predicaments treat the Nazi invasion
with the gravity of a prom disaster. A besotted writer (Grégori
Derangère) becomes a fugitive when he helps a beautiful actress
(Isabelle Adjani) get away with murder. All of Paris then relocates
to Bordeaux to escape the Germans, and the writer finds himself negotiating
with escaped convicts, high-society patricians, and a French minister
(Gerard Depardieu) to sort out his life. Add a beautiful scientist handling
a top-secret experiment and you've got a plot that involves far too
much brain labor to follow. Bursting at its seams, the film often feels
as crowded as the town it's set in, but the director's sharp wit and
tongue-in-cheek melodrama – along with Derangère's performance
as the defeated hero – still make this blue-blooded farce pleasurable
to watch. (1:54) Clay, Shattuck. (Kim)
Broken Wings Israeli writer-director Nir Bergman's first fictive
feature is a dreary portrait of a Haifa family who have been wading
ever deeper into despair since its patriarch died a few months ago.
Mother Dafna (Orli Zilberschatz-Banai) drags herself to working a hospital
night shift, leaving the burden of parenting her younger children to
17-year-old Maya (Maya Maron), who resents the premature ending of her
youth. Teen brother Yair (Nitai Gvirtz) has dropped out of school for
a degrading job distributing flyers in a giant mouse costume, when not
generally moping around. A still-younger bro hurts himself in a fall,
the youngest daughter is withdrawn, and the car keeps conking out. Oy
vey indeed. Broken Wings swept the Israeli Oscars and has won
awards elsewhere too, but it's the kind of movie so suffused with self-important
gloom from the very start that some viewers will feel more numbed than
moved. If you're in the mood for 86 minutes of heavy sighs, eyes cast
wearily skyward, crying scenes, and so forth – well, go ahead,
knock yourself out. (1:26) California, Galaxy, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)
Carlos Castaneda: Enigma of a Sorcerer (1:31) Little Roxie.
The Clay Bird Though banned in its own country on grounds that
it would "hurt religious sentiment," Tareque Masud's The
Clay Bird rejects any form of religious or political extremism.
Masud sets his film in East Pakistan (modern-day Bangladesh) during
the 1960s, when the political climate of the country was set to revolution
and independence. A strictly religious father sends his son Anu to a
madrasa, an Islamic boarding school for lower-class Muslims. Anu has
trouble adjusting to the ascetic life of a madrasa student and befriends
an eccentric outcast among his classmates. Meanwhile, politics drastically
shift in East Pakistan, affecting everyone from Anu's activist uncle
to his conservative, orthodox father. While Masud's childhood drama
successfully hits the charming humor chord, it's too often breached
by political tirades and religious validation. The film's pacing slows
to a crawl as the story develops, but Masud's penchant for quiet, everyday
beauty makes it a little easier to sit through. (1:38) Smith Rafael.
(Kim)
Connie and Carla (1:48) 1000 Van Ness.
Dogville This movie's bark may be worse than its bite, but that
won't keep you from feeling like the fire hydrant that just got pissed
on by the time this canine of a film ends. Lars von Trier, the world's
greatest torturer of women on film, moves from the melodramatic crucifixions
of Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark (which at
least offered cathartic relief) to unblinkered mockery with Dogville.
If you've never seen live theater, you may be wowed by the austere
light effects and staging (the "town" is rendered in chalk
outlines; no walls) as von Trier turns a make-believe, Depression-era
Rocky Mountain town over the spit and damns us as we watch it sizzle.
But I trust if you're reading this, you don't fit into that category.
I'm sorry to report the cast – Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, Patricia
Clarkson, Ben Gazzara, and Stellan Skarsgård – perform as if they're
taking orders from the military staff at Guantánamo Bay. If the
idea of feeling scorn for an unrelenting three hours appeals to you,
your film has finally arrived. (2:57) Lumiere, Shattuck. (Gerhard)
Ella Enchanted (1:35) Century 20.
Envy (1:39) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness.
*Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind A glance at the work
of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation,
Human Nature) might lead you to believe he's at war with reality.
In his new collaboration with Nature director Michel Gondry,
Kaufman gives two characters the chance to erase one another from
their love-stung psyches. A morose man (Jim Carrey) is stationed in
his bed with electrodes on his head, having the memory of his girlfriend
(Kate Winslet) erased, when the technician (Mark Ruffalo) becomes distracted
by the receptionist (Kirsten Dunst) who just stopped in to strip in
front of her coworker. Oops. The patient's mind has just fallen off
the map. Please call the head doctor (Tom Wilkinson), so that more chaos,
complexity, frustration, and titillation ensue – while the patient,
in his momentarily untrackable mind, is rediscovering the higher meaning
of love, which he's now determined not to have erased. The rule with
Gondry and Kaufman is that the crazier it first appears, the more believable
they can make it feel. By sticking to fundamental emotional truths,
these two prove you can deconstruct love while still being drawn to
it. (1:48) Balboa, California, Empire, Galaxy, Piedmont. (Gerhard)
*The Fog of War (1:46) Galaxy, Shattuck.
Godsend Maybe it's tough bringing new material to the shocker
genre, but this lame sci-fi drama doesn't bother to even try. Director
Nick Hamm throws in everything on the thriller-movie checklist: mad
scientist, iconic shower curtain, rickety mansion, a disturbed Haley
Joel Os – whoops, I mean Cameron Bright – parochial town,
cryptic photographs, and of course, spooky schoolhouse. Still, Godsend
might have been a good movie, or at least a tolerable one, if it didn't
take itself so damn seriously. A hip young couple (Greg Kinnear and
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) lose their well-behaved son, Adam (Bright), meet
the world's best geneticist (a devilish Robert De Niro), and agree to
have the kid cloned. Things go well until the new Adam's eighth birthday,
when a sinister streak cuts through his angelic demeanor. The cloning
idea brings a touchy ethical nuance to the gothic, but Godsend
veers into clichés when it hops on the whole spooky-kid bandwagon.
(1:42) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Kim)
*Good Bye, Lenin! A huge hit at home in Germany and throughout
Europe, Wolfgang Becker's dramedy cocktail is mixed with such crowd-pleasing
astuteness you might almost feel guilty – there's nothing very
art house going on here past the subtitles. Resistance is futile, however:
Good Bye, Lenin! is easily the most satisfying release of the
year so far. Fiercely dedicated East German Christiane (Katrin Sass)
collapses into a coma after she witnesses the impossible: hordes openly
defying the state, marching in the streets for the right to "take
walks without a wall getting in the way," as son Alex (Daniel Bruehl)
puts it. When she wakes months later, history's course has drastically
shifted. But since the doctor urges that her weak heart be protected
from any excitement, Alex is determined to hide this news at any cost.
Thus the family flat becomes a tenuously sealed bubble of prereunification
life – but reality keeps finding new cracks to leak through. Good
Bye, Lenin! transcends a gimmicky premise to make the central charade's
construction and teardown work on several levels. The ingenious script
might be accused of emotional string-pulling – that is, if its
characters didn't seem so full-bodied or the cumulative effect weren't
so unexpectedly poignant. (1:58) Balboa, Empire, Lumiere, Piedmont,
Shattuck. (Harvey)
*Hellboy (1:52) 1000 Van Ness.
Home on the Range (1:16) Century 20.
*I'm Not Scared Despite the film's title, it's impossible not
to be frightened by how heinous adult behavior can be, especially when
it involves kidnapping and imprisoning a young boy in a muddy hole.
Director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) looks back at a politically
turbulent 1978 Italy. Racked by poverty, residents of a tiny
rural settlement in the Puglia region seek an easy solution, holding
for ransom a boy from an affluent home. All goes well until 10-year-old
Michele (Giuseppe Cristiano) discovers the prisoner, ultimately learning
that grown-ups don't always walk the straight and narrow. Salvatores
implements horror conventions only to throw us off; the bulk of this
stunning work resonates with coming-of-age themes and elegiac visual
grace. Paying homage to Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive,
Salvatores chooses a stark rural backdrop for Michele's exposure to
adulthood, and thankfully, doesn't conclude with phony moralism. (1:41)
Act I and II, Embarcadero. (Kim)
*Intermission The closest thing to crassness in Intermission
is how readily it exploits Colin Farrell's bad-boy image. The very first
thing we see is Farrell's Lehiff in jittery, snake oil-selling close-up,
chatting up a café waitress whom he suddenly nose-dislocates
– the better to rob her cash box. He then dashes off, too crazy
to be caught just yet. It's certain he'll trigger more havoc in the
next 100 minutes, a bull zigzagging through other people's emotional
china shops. Scenarist Mark O'Rowe's hit play Howie the Rookie concerned
a mattress full o' scabies. His first screen effort finds equally vivid
ways for myriad human interactions to embarrass, confound, and cause
amusing pain before healing ointments are applied. In a quintessential
contemporary Irish dramaturgical way, O'Rowe's language is gorgeous,
gutter-slangy, and hugely enjoyable despite being almost impenetrable
to foreign ears. Another significant youngish Irish theater talent,
John Crowley, makes his feature-film debut directing. Even if he allows
Intermission to look like fook-all (no one with a name as grandiose
as Ryszard Lenczewski should be capable of cinematography this ugly),
there's so much going on that after 10 minutes you'll forget cinema
was supposed to be a visual medium. (1:46) Lumiere. (Harvey)
Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2:00) Century 20, Jack London, 1000 Van
Ness, Orinda.
*The Ladykillers (1:56) 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck.
Laws of Attraction Ally McBeal meets Sex in the City
in this smug romance, which pairs two unlikely stars in even less likely
circumstances. An upper-echelon divorce attorney named Audrey (Julianne
Moore, in one of her what-was-I-thinking roles) squares off with the
new barrister in town (Pierce Brosnan), meeting her match in both the
courtroom and the bed. The hotshot lawyers take opposite sides in a
high-profile case, which conveniently sets up the conflict of their
ironic, mostly inebriated romance. Boasting one of the most contrived
plots in movie history, Laws of Attraction is still good for
at least a quick laugh, albeit one prefaced with groans and a slap to
the forehead. To enjoy yourself (and it is possible), you'll have to
toss your disbelief, overlook Audrey's punk-rocking mother, and pretend
you're not already sure what'll happen in the next scene. Hey, it's
romantic comedy – thinking hard just makes it worse. (1:39) Century
Plaza, Century 20, Grand Lake, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness, Orinda, Shattuck.
(Kim)
Man on Fire Jean-Paul Sartre once declared, "Hell is other
people"; I'll posit that a two-and-one-half-hour assault and battery
from director Tony Scott (Top Gun and other flash 'n' crash offenders
too numerous to mention) might be a close contender for second place.
An ex-military man (Denzel Washington) with a heavy conscience takes
a bodyguard gig in Mexico City during a rash of corruption and kidnappings.
He develops a bond with his ward (Dakota Fanning), who predictably gets
snatched; he predictably goes apeshit. What initially seems like a move
toward character development via Scott's uncharacteristic first-act
restraint – nearly an hour passes before the pyrotechnics start
– would be admirable were it not just knee-jerk emotional manipulation
set up to justify the third-act brutality. By the time the avenging-angel
act reaches red-level proportions, not even Washington's charismatic
eye-of-the-storm calmness can temper this prolonged marathon of cheap
pathos and pain. (2:26) Century Plaza, Century 20, Jack London, Kabuki,
Oaks, 1000 Van Ness. (Fear)
*Mean Girls Tina Fey, head Saturday Night Live writer
and ruler of the snarky universe, pens (and costars in) a hilariously
biting teen movie imbued with subtle sympathy. Sixteen-year-old Cady
(Lindsay Lohan) enters high school with wide eyes (she was home-schooled
in Africa) and is taken in by the ruling trio of perfect bitchy girls.
These ladies have killer demolition techniques, pulled straight from
Rosalind Wiseman's Queen Bees and Wannabes, a survival guide
to femmelet warfare and inspiration for Fey's screenplay. Cady is supposedly
spying on the "plastics" for her real, less-popular friends,
but soon she's seduced, and director Mark Waters shows us why. When
the evil ones emerge from a convertible to the tune of Kelis's "Milkshake"
song, they kinda kick ass. But next Waters ridicules the image, as someone
too old (a mom who still thinks she's a teenager) and too young (a little
sister who gyrates to Britney videos) obscenely imitates them. Lohan,
as Cady, skillfully travels to the dark side and back, bringing her
school's girl population with her. Some moral reckoning at the end makes
for Mean Girls' only trite notes. (1:37) Century Plaza, Century
20, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Koh)
*Millennium Mambo The first in what Hou Hsiao-hsien intends
as a series of films about life and love in present-day Taipei, Millennium
Mambo has a habit of striking viewers who've only seen it once as
one of the filmmaker's slightest works. Twice seen, it blossoms into
something far greater: a study of lost time and outgrown impulse in
line with the admittedly superior Flowers of Shanghai. In Mambo
a restless twentysomething (the exquisite Shu Qi) vacillates between
two boyfriends, one a techno DJ, the other a tough guy played by Hou
veteran Jack Kao. Shu Qi's character narrates the movie's disordered
series of events from the distant perspective of 10 years after the
time frame of the film, which is a gorgeously photographed meditation
on agony, ecstasy (the drug), and the life-changing effects of snow.
(1:41) Opera Plaza. (Stephens)
*Monsieur Ibrahim If you only see one cinéaste's dream
of Paris in the '60s this year – well, Monsieur Ibrahim
doesn't have the fake sex, but in all other respects it's a whole lot
better than The Dreamers. Monsieur Ibrahim is a coming-of-age
nostalgia flick no edgier than that phrase implies. But its sweetness
is genuine, and the showcased performances are very, very good. His
mother having died, Momo (Pierre Boulanger) is stuck playing underappreciated
housekeeper to a sullen father (Gilbert Melki). But the poor, working
girl-dominated environs that depress dad are catnip to Momo's flaring
adolescent nostrils. By the time pop has fled in general shame and self-loathing,
our young Jewish protagonist has already lost his virginity, earned
points toward a respectable first girlfriend, and landed a much better
substitute father figure in M. Ibrahim, a.k.a. "the Arab"
(Omar Sharif), who runs the dusty corner market. Slowly expanding from
chamber dramedy as their relationship gradually deepens, François
Dupeyron's feature turns into a road movie as soulful as it is picturesque.
I could have done without the final turn to melodramatic tragedy, but
that's a minor quibble. Sharif's performance suggests he's been waiting
a lifetime for this role, which awakens something beautiful behind those
famously liquid eyes. (1:35) Balboa, Empire, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.
(Harvey)
NASCAR 3D: The Imax Experience (:48) Metreon IMAX.
New York Minute Finally, the dual conglomerates known as Mary-Kate
and Ashley Olsen have grown up enough to vie for their share of teen
moviegoer dollars. As they do in most of their direct-to-video releases,
the girls again set out to prove how different they are from one another
– but this time they reeeally mean it. Ashley plays prissy
Jane Ryan, a straight-A student trying for an Oxford scholarship. Miss
Starchy-Pants is constantly embarrassed, however, by her flaky, rocker
sister, Roxy (Mary-Kate). Both girls head to the Big Apple – Jane
to deliver a speech and Roxy to slip her demo CD to A Simple Plan's
music reps – but bumbling crooks lie in wait. Preteens will like
the film, but the antics are far beneath the intelligence level of actual
17-year-olds. (1:26) Century Plaza, Century 20, Galaxy, Grand Lake,
Kabuki, Oaks, Orinda. (Koh)
Noi Noi (Tómas Lemarquis) is a smart fuckup on a slow
road to nowhere. His grandmother uses a shotgun to rouse him from bed
in the morning. His dad is a woeful Elvis impersonator – shades
of Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch – too drunk to realize
he's sabotaged the goals he's set for his son. While indebted to the
wry humor of the aforementioned directors, Dagur Kári is more
commercial minded; he's crafted a coming-of-age tale, albeit a morbid
one. Noi's vast snowy landscapes aren't kinetic, but they are
striking, and they certainly emphasize the isolation faced by the title
character. Bleak? Yes. But there are also some hilarious scenes –
a failed bank robbery and a bloody family get-together, in particular
– in Kári's effective slice of life and death. (1:28) Shattuck.
(Huston)
The Punisher (2:04) 1000 Van Ness.
Sacred Planet (:45) Metreon IMAX.
*Shaolin Soccer Finally – after multiple release-date changes,
a dubbing vs. subtitles debate (subtitles won, thank goodness), the
excising of some 20 minutes of footage, and a brief period when the
title was rumored have been changed to Kung Fu Soccer – the
2001 Hong Kong smash opens stateside. And the wait was worth it: you'd
be hard-pressed to find a more entertaining film, especially if you're
already a fan of goofy Hong Kong comedies. With its many high-flying
special effects, Shaolin Soccer could be dubbed Bend It like
the Matrix: director-star Stephen Chow ("the Jim Carrey
of the East") plays Sing, a.k.a. "Mighty Steel Leg,"
who believes Shaolin kung fu is the answer to everything (including
tight parking spots). After meeting a disgraced former soccer star known
as "Golden Leg," an inspired Sing rounds up his huge array
of brothers, all of whom are gifted fighters who've fallen onto hard
times (one's fat, one's depressed, one's unemployed, etc.) Under the
leadership of Golden Leg, Team Shaolin trains with one goal in mind:
to defeat the dreaded Team Evil in the championship match. Along the
way, spontaneous dance routines, Bruce Lee homages, awesome on-field
antics, and Chow's infectious energy elevate Shaolin Soccer far
above the usual underdog sports tale, and into must-see territory. (1:40)
Opera Plaza. (Eddy)
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring Beauty and brutality
mix like oil and water in another gorgeously shot film from Kim Ki-duk.
This one follows a man's life in and out of a floating Buddhist monastery
through one set of seasons, spring, summer, fall, winter, and another
– youthful folly, teen lust, full-grown vengeance, and adult penitence.
Like 2000's The Isle, which had its own shocking hook, this film
lulls you into a dream state with its water-lapping-up-on-a-shore pace,
then lowers the boom – with indelible tragicomic images. (1:43)
Albany, Opera Plaza. (Gerhard)
Stupidity (1:10) Little Roxie.
*Super Size Me Morgan Spurlock donated his body to filmmaking
– and he almost got the chance to donate it to science as well
when his 30-day diet of McDonald's food began destroying his liver.
No one has had quite this much fun with the first-person film-crusade
format since Michael Moore went searching for Roger. Spurlock has chosen
just as wily and dangerous a foe, and he too has the rare qualities
of showmanship that make this polemic against junk food in our schools,
neighborhoods, and indeed our brains as entertaining as it is informative.
Anyone who finds Moore's pedantries a touch patronizing when it comes
to the one-on-one interview (and, for the record, I do not include myself
in that category) will find nothing to object to in Spurlock's methodology.
As generous with the folks behind the counter as he is with the portions,
it's Spurlock himself – throwing up out a car window, displaying
a hard-won spare tire in patriotic briefs – who suffers for our
Mcfastfood sins. (1:38) Embarcadero, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Gerhard)
13 Going on 30 (1:40) Century 20, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness,
Shattuck.
*This So-Called Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs 'The Late Henry Moss.'
Nonfiction films about the making of theater number far fewer than
those about moviemaking, no doubt because most moviegoers don't care
much about live theater – unless there are movie stars involved.
Which is, naturally, one significant draw of This So-Called
Disaster: Sam Shepard Directs "The Late Henry Moss." Not
particularly renowned for being articulate or open about his creative
processes (one funny scene here has him squirming through a journalist's
pat questions), Shepard agreed to this vérité scrutiny
after playing the dead king in Michael Almereyda's modern-corporate
update of Hamlet. The Late Henry Moss was probably San Francisco's
biggest live theater "event," from a news standpoint, in decades;
the main attraction for ticket buyers and media was a cast that included
Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, and Cheech Marin. As it turned
out, their combined marquee weight both flattered and overwhelmed the
rambling, unfocused, ultimately minor play. But art is always more interesting
when you know the artist, or have otherwise been privy to inside information
about its making. This So-Called Disaster is compelling enough
to make me want to see the production again – well, almost. (1:27)
Roxie. (Harvey)
Touching the Void (1:46) Smith Rafael.
*The Triplets of Belleville (1:20) Balboa, Shattuck.
Van Helsing You'd think the combined star power of Dracula,
the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's monster, Hugh Jackman (as a creature hunter
employed by the Vatican), and director Stephen Sommers (The Mummy,
The Mummy Returns) would make Van Helsing a sure thing. But
as last year's rather similar League of Extraordinary Gentlemen already
proved, mashing a bunch of recognizable characters and CG hoo-ha into
one big, loud, self-important movie doesn't automatically spell entertainment.
Van Helsing goes through all the expected motions (ghoulies,
elaborate weaponry, an evil plan for world domination), but it's lacking
a certain something: call it a combination of fun, originality, and
a sense of purpose that aims higher than fast-food tie-ins. Those looking
for real Universal Monster thrills should stay home and watch Bride
of Frankenstein instead. (2:12) Century Plaza, Century 20, Grand
Lake, Jack London, Kabuki, 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)
*Young Adam Those looking for Dreamers-style exotica
and soft-core thrills are barking up the wrong movie: while this somber
study of working-class Glaswegians during the glum 1950s does have sex,
it's of the furtive, deglammed, real-people-rutting type you might expect
in an updated Angry Young Man flick. Ewan McGregor plays Joe, a young
drifter who wanders into working on the coal barge operated by easygoing
Les (Peter Mullan), owned by his wife, Ella (Tilda Swinton). Though
Joe isn't particularly gregarious, his presence relaxes an atmosphere
rather clouded by marital strain. Things have relaxed a little too much,
however, when Ella and Joe commence jumping each other's bones. Meanwhile,
Joe is haunted by memories of his romance with Cathie (Emily Mortimer),
part of the very different life he's recently abandoned – and a
sequence of events whose end might well be connected to the drowned
woman he and Les pull from the drink at the start. The excellent cast
and adapter-director David Mackenzie's deft approach – withdrawn
yet intense – to an almost-too-internalized story make Young
Adam a generally downbeat film that's nonetheless thoroughly satisfying.
(1:38) California. (Harvey)
Rep Picks
*Godzilla What premiered in 1954 Japan as Gojira was
vastly different from the admittedly delightful travesty that would
be the only version most Westerners ever saw. At long last, this fully
restored print of the Toho classic offers plenty of surprises for casual
fans not fanatical enough to have already tracked it down in the import
bins. Gojira was a very serious movie, a cautionary allegory
about humanity's possible future self-destruction, created by a nation
that had entered the atomic age in the worst way possible at World War
II's close. Ishiro Honda's 98-minute cut features several emergency
military-governmental meetings, a somewhat ponderous young-love triangle,
and much discussion of scientific ethics – most of which was, natch,
excised from the slimmed-down, souped-up U.S. cut. The latter, billed
as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, instead featured laughable
English-language dubbing and a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as
an American reporter in crudely inserted new scenes. (1:38) Castro.
(Harvey)
*'Other Cinema: Bill Daniel's "Sunset Scavenger" ' and
other works Set your coordinates for photographer-filmmaker-curator
Bill Daniel's program focusing on folks "living off the grid (and
the land) because of poverty or idealism, or both." A must-see
preshow features Daniel's Sunset Scavenger, a '65 Chevy van rigged
out with full sails on top (onto which images are projected) and an
internal "chart room" parked outside Artists' Television Access
for your perusal. Meanwhile the screen inside ATA shows Saul Rouda's
"Waldo Pt.," a 1971 psychedelic relic about hippie houseboaters
"livin' in the Bay, [where] you don't have to pay." The main
program features Daniel's new, double-projection documentary Soul's
Harbor," a contemporary equivalent portraitizing free spirits,
squatters, the homeless, and others currently near or on the water,
in variously watertight buckets of their own make-do creation. Finally,
ride the rails and hold on tight with the gutterpunk train-hoppers of
Dan Leighton's 2001 Wedding Train. Following highly volatile
young couple Nick and Naomi around the country en route to an on-again,
off-again wedding at Portland's 24-hour Church of Elvis, this rather
harrowing look at life in daily extremis features copious amounts of
smack, alcohol, pit bull fighting, motel wrecking, two-way spousal abuse,
kiss-and-make-up sessions, and Things Not to Do with Campfires (i.e.,
throw your puppy and/or self in one, pick up glowing logs with bare
hands, and so on). Forget Jackass – this is the definite
reckless-behavior lifestyle. Sorry, no puppy flinging allowed in the
theater. Artists' Television Access. (Harvey)
