film

Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Kimberly Chun, Sabrina Crawford, Michelle Devereaux, Susan Gerhard, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Laurie Koh, Rachel Odes, Lynn Rapoport, and Chuck Stephens. The film intern is Ihsan Amanatullah. For show times see Rep Clock, page 114, and Movie Clock, page 116. For complete film listings, see www.sfbg.com.

Opening

Aristide and the Endless Revolution File this doc under extremely informative – and extremely depressing. For anyone whose knowledge of Haiti's recent (and centuries-old) history is scant, Aristide and the Endless Revolution casts fascinating light on the country's troubled past, with particular focus on now-exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who strove to restore basic dignities to Haiti's impoverished population. Naturally, the United States – eager, the film implies, to keep Haiti's cheap workforce at its disposal – was involved in Aristide's downfall, putting its own greed above the fact that the president was democratically elected (twice) by a significant majority. The result? A land with no infrastructure and citizens beset by daily violence and seemingly no hope for the future (see: the second half of the film's title). Aristide supporters (including the exiled president himself) and detractors (including US assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega) supply interviews for Nicolas Rossier's doc, which is also filled with haunting footage shot on the streets of the struggling country. (1:22) Roxie. (Eddy)

*Brokeback Mountain See "Way out West," page 65. (2:14) Embarcadero.

The Chronicals of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Andrew Adamson (Shrek) directs this adaptation of C.S. Lewis's classic children's book. (2:05) Century 20, Century Plaza.

*Memoirs of a Geisha If you can get over the first stopper – a blue-eyed nonhapa star geisha, Sayuri, with otherwise archetypally Asian coloring played by Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang – chances are you might enjoy the old-fashioned Hollywood moviemaking propelling Memoirs of a Geisha. Sayuri is sold by her improvished, crumbling peasant family into the servitude of an okiya, or geisha house. If she's lucky she'll be trained to be a maiko, or apprentice, then a geisha – who, the script takes pains to point out (though dropping mixed messages) – is an artist and entertainer rather than a prostitute. When Hatsumono, the house's gorgeous money-making geisha (Gong Li, digging into her role like a spitting, tigerlike silent film icon), scuttles Sayuri's career, the girl finds hope in kind eyes of the Chairman (Ken Watanabe), a local captain of industry, and under the wing of Hatsumoto's rival geisha, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh). Considering Japan's longtime racial homogeneity and the fact that the casting reflects Western stereotypes about Asians "all looking alike," the dominance of Chinese actresses amid their Japanese male counterparts like Watanabe and Kiyoshi Kurosawa favorite Koji Yakusho (like Gong, dropping naturalism for operatic gestures) is puzzling, apart from predictable US box-office concerns. Still, Memoirs' Cinderella story should be comfortingly familiar for Western audiences, though the art-house success of Crouching Tiger and genre chops of Jet Li and company should allay any fears of middle America buying a major studio picture set in Japan – after the box office seppuku committed by The Last Samurai. (2:07) Metreon. (Chun)

One: The Movie See Movie Clock, page 116. (1:19) Act I and II, Lumiere.

*Piece by Piece See "Full-Color Burners," page 70. (1:18) Red Vic.

*Syriana See "New World Murder," page 71. (2:06) Century 20, Empire, Presidio, Shattuck.

39 Pounds of Love Born with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, Ami Ankilewitz wasn't expected to live past age six. Celebrating his 34th birthday in Tel Aviv, the miniscule Ami – a computer animator whose rather pedestrian avian-romance whimsies are intercut throughout – announces to his horrified parents that he's determined to undertake a "road trip," partly to confront the Texas doctor who'd made that damning diagnosis. But he's also driven by emotional fallout created when he parted ways with the pretty 21-year-old Romanian live-in caretaker who'd balked at returning his more romantic affections. Flying across the Atlantic, then traveling by RV across the United States with several helpmates (and camera crew), Avi is frail but determined. No one wants to be cynical about something like this, but Dani Menkin's documentary is the kind of movie whose "plucky" and "inspirational" notes feel predetermined, and its often uneventful, eventually anticlimactic progress feels padded out even at 74 slim minutes. (1:14) Act I and II, Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Ongoing

Aeon Flux (1:33) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Century Plaza, Kabuki.

The Aristocrats (1:26) Roxie.

*Ballets Russes (1:48) Albany, Balboa.

Bee Season (1:44) Oaks.

*Capote Truman Capote's life resists easy summary, so it's appealing that the first Hollywood biopic on the author ignores formula and turns one agonizing chapter of his life into an opportunity for an essay. Though Capote is based on the 1988 Gerard Clarke biography, Bennett Miller's film actually has a lot more in common with Janet Malcolm's 1990 The Journalist and the Murderer (a relationship the filmmakers also acknowledge). It's not so much a story of Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as the illustration of the question Malcolm so artfully dodged: What, really, do journalists owe their subjects? In this case, what did the glittering Capote owe the two killers who lent him their life stories for his nonfiction "novel"? Hints of the hundred separate movies that could be made from Capote's life emerge in key details: The scarf he rattles like a saber in Kansas's cop HQ calls to mind the family warfare that accompanied his growing up gay in the '30s and '40s; the bottle of booze he doesn't seem to leave home without foreshadows a grim decline. This film makes a wonderful habit of entering ensemble scenes midsentence, creating a vérité feel without the sea-sickening camera, and it's hard to find fault with the casting: Catherine Keener, gently butch as the conscience of the film, Harper Lee, nails Capote's alter ego and "research assistant," hired for her ability to steward the writer into Holcomb, Kan.'s housewives' hearts. (1:50) Clay, Empire, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Gerhard)

Chicken Little (1:15) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Century Plaza, Kabuki.

*The Constant Gardener (2:08) Galaxy.

Derailed (1:40) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Kabuki.

*The Dying Gaul (1:29) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael.

First Descent Two teenage snowboardering superstars leave packed arenas behind to hit the Alaska slopes, old-school style, with some of the sport's pioneers as their guides in the documentary First Descent. Along the way, the history of snowboarding's rise unfolds – from the outcast province of daredevils, through the X-Games frenzy, and ultimately to the Olympics. While there are nail biters (an avalanche, a vertical, rocky mountain) the pacing drags at times, a cardinal sin for this kind of film. Overall First Descent's a strange hybrid, mixing the classic skate flick formula – tons of tricks and chats with pros, made expressly for devotees – with a stab at mainstream audiences via a weird "this is for the rest of you boneheads" narration by an authoritative after school special-style voiceover (which turns out to be by Henry Rollins). While it might not do wonders at the box office, First Descent's destined for a long life on DVD, prime for multiple screenings in the bedrooms of teenage boys everywhere. (1:50) Century Plaza. (Crawford)

Flightplan (1:28) Galaxy.

Get Rich or Die Tryin' (1:57) Century 20.

Going Shopping For the women of Henry Jaglom's latest talky comedy, Going Shopping, shopping is more than a habit – it's a way of life. They try on attitudes, relationships, and emotional states as they would a pair of shoes; someone's always either laughing or crying but never for long. The shoestring plot revolves around Holly (Victoria Foyt), a sensitive, materialistic dame who runs her own boutique in upper-crust Los Angeles. When the store dips into the red, she finds herself needing to make ends meet while balancing delicate relationships with her mother and daughter. Jaglom punctuates the narrative with different women discussing the thrills and traumas of walking the aisle. Between the story's intergenerational babbling and the cutaway confessions, the film is as much about talking as it is shopping; at its most frantic, Going Shopping plays like a cracked-out, melodramatic version of something Woody Allen might have conceived. The whole thing feels frivolous, and while that may be the point in a film about disposable pleasure, I'm not sure I'm buying. (1:46) Opera Plaza. (Goldberg)

*Good Night, and Good Luck As Good Night, and Good Luck opens, Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) rips into an audience that has gathered to honor him at a 1958 Radio and Television News Directors Association gala. George Clooney (who also directs) and Grand Heslov's script stays true to Murrow's real-life speech, a searing indictment of television's shift toward fluffy programming, as well as the networks' increasingly close ties to advertisers. Were he alive today, Murrow would no doubt have additional thoughts about the 21st-century version of "this weapon"; in particular he'd probably take issue with the 24-hour-news culture, which favors sensational nuggets over in-depth stories. Good Night is a Murrow biopic of sorts, but it focuses on the specific events surrounding March 9, 1954, when Murrow's See It Now program dared to take on Sen. Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare. Director Clooney takes his cue from this moment in television history, using real film clips and plucking Murrow's on-air dialogue from transcripts. The result is a period-authentic, eerily resonant snapshot of a time when national security issues could trump the rights of individuals, and fear kept most Americans woefully silent. (1:30) Albany, Embarcadero, Piedmont. (Eddy)

*Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire I was pretty high on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is, without a doubt, the new champ. Its PG-13 rating is well earned, with sinister spookiness and kids-in-peril all but replacing whimsy and wonder (though one of Harry's first lines, after witnessing the TARDIS-like powers of a tent that looks tiny on the outside and spacious on the inside, could be a bumper sticker for the series: "I love magic!") The Hogwarts gang are teenagers now, and director Mike Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral) wisely keeps author J.K. Rowling's balance of wizardry and growing pains intact. What could be scarier than facing down villain Lord Voldemort (an unrecognizable Ralph Fiennes)? Try asking your crush to the school dance – a task that utterly paralyzes even the great Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe). (2:37) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Century Plaza, Four Star, Kabuki. (Eddy)

*A History of Violence Peel away an all-American facade, and you'll find a murderous gangster underneath: This message lurks throughout David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. The doc-like title of Cronenberg's latest (adapting a graphic novel of the same name) is par for a director whose vision has always been coolly antiseptic, and the first "big word" in its title is anathema to contemporary amnesia. Nonetheless, this lean and mean family tale has definite mainstream crossover appeal; Cronenberg's version of national allegory trumps Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, not least because it favors genre (Out of the Past, anyone?) and archetypes over bogus realism. From the Lynch-like diner small-talk about coffee and pie, to the foreboding, shiny black car slowly creeping into sunbathed golden settings, Americana fits the Canadian auteur like a surgical glove. The result is his best movie since Dead Ringers. There's a reason the name of History's protagonist, Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen), is so plain, so benign, though he's loathe to reveal it to wife Edie (Maria Bello), son Jack (Ashton Holmes), and daughter Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Mortensen's Mt. Rushmore of a face is the film's riddle, allowing a pair of wonderfully outsize Mafia turns by a sarcastic Ed Harris and a hilarious William Hurt to effectively steal scenes, if not lives. (1:35) Galaxy. (Huston)

Ice Harvest (1:28) 1000 Van Ness, Oaks.

In the Mix (1:37) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20.

*Jarhead "Welcome to the suck," the film's poster announces, referring not just to Operation Desert Storm (or the long, boring days of Operation Desert Shield that preceded it), but also to the Middle Eastern desert (hot, dreary, and sand choked) and military service itself, as seen through the wide eyes of a young marine named Swoff (Jake Gyllenhaal). Based on Anthony Swofford's acclaimed memoir, and directed with artful composure by American Beauty's Sam Mendes, Jarhead is an incredibly timely, well-acted film that crystallizes the unglamorous, and even pointless, mechanics of modern warfare into two searing hours. Though some of the members of Swoff's unit occasionally slip into caricature, even the sporadic mixed-message moment (rifles are fetishized, while Scud missiles are not) makes sense in Jarhead's milieu of conflicts both personal and political, both of which still resonate today. "We never have to come back to this shit hole ever again!" exclaims one soldier when Desert Storm abruptly ends. If only. (1:45) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Kabuki. (Eddy)

Just Friends With a PG-13 rating, Just Friends, a kind of sanitized There's Something About Mary, is ripe for the holidays – a clean getaway for packs of teens, returning college students, and anyone else fleeing the post-family-meal, sit-around-the-table-and-stare-blankly-at-each-other routine. It's based on the classic nerdy boy revenge fantasy: a dorky, overweight teen who can't pass best buds status with his pretty gal pal flees to LA and returns home to Jersey a decade later as a walking GQ cover. Or, read from the girl's view: The sweet, but thoroughly unattractive boy next door comes back a Tom Cruise lookalike who's still hung up on you (Danger! Danger! Now entering the Jerry Maguire zone). Either way, Just Friends sticks to romantic comedy clichés in a big way. Most of the punch lines, like the plot are predictable, and too safe to deliver the way Farrelly brothers films do. There are some gems, though, like star Ryan Reynolds' Saturday Night Live-style lip synchs. Amy Smart co-stars as the pretty girl, while Anna Faris (of Scary Movie fame) plays a bratty pop diva who bears an uncanny resemblance to Britney Spears. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Century Plaza. (Crawford)

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (1:43) 1000 Van Ness, California.

*Naked in Ashes Even in a nation of 1 billion, 13 million is a pretty respectable minority – and that is the estimated number of yogis currently traveling a 5,000-year-old spiritual path in India. Paula Fouce's documentary trains its somewhat loose yet engaging focus on about twenty individuals around the nation. Some practice "austerites" that are downright carnivalesque: There's a guy who¹s been standing upright 24/7 for 12 years, and another who attracts attention by pulling a fully loaded jeep with his, er, third arm. (As he helpfully advises, "This penis control trick is not for everyone.") There are also yogis who take regular pilgrimages high into the Himalayas, walking naked in snow, risking death from exposure. But Ashes isn't the Mondo Cane of Hinduism. Its benevolent outlook makes such bizarre behaviors understandable as one person's path of liberation from our current dark age of empty materialism. More often, this diverse survey of yogic gurus and disciples conveys the serenity gained by renunciation of earthly desires via prayer, meditation, charitable works, yoga, and so forth. To Fouce's credit, she's made an entertaining (as well as illuminating) movie about people with no use for "entertainment" whatsoever. (1:58) Opera Plaza, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

*New York Doll (1:25) Roxie.

*Paradise Now (1:30) Shattuck.

The Passenger (1:59) Opera Plaza, Shattuck.

*Pride and Prejudice Like the 12-bar blues and the facts of life, we all know how it goes, but precisely how do the particulars compare to our own internal Pride and Prejudices as well as, admit it, the definitive BBC miniseries with the wet-shirted Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy? Here, the crucial roles are fairly well filled: As Elizabeth, the bruised-eyed Keira Knightley is impish, girlish, and toothy, yet twinkly smart. Ape-draped MI-5 actor Matthew Macfadyen plays Darcy so low-down and subtle that he runs the risk of resembling a dot-mouthed cartoon, but when the time comes to confess his most ardent affections, he steps up and fills Firth's pantaloons, even if he has to channel Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff and stomp through the moors in what looks to be a bathrobe. Other roles are beautifully filled out by Brenda Blethyn, Donald Sutherland, Tom Hollander, Judi Dench, and Jena Malone. Director Joe Wright favors a muddy, frizzy-haired, minimal-makeup naturalism, reminiscent of '60s-era reworkings of Penguin Classics, complete with zooming camera, an emphasis on daylight, pigs' testicles, and odd moments of modern-day randiness. Did Elizabeth really check out Wickham's ass in the book? (2:08) Bridge, Century 20, Century Plaza, Empire, Piedmont, Shattuck. (Chun)

Prime (1:39) Galaxy, Presidio.

Rent (2:08) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Kabuki, Oaks.

*Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic Is Sarah Silverman as racist as she is thin? Why do I like Volvic while she loves Fiji? And what would Margaret Cho make of unapologetic Jesus-killer Silverman and her tiff with Guy Aoki? Perhaps it doesn't matter – Silverman's new movie consistently shoots sharper than Cho's last effort, partly because Cho is reeling off concert films at a frightening rate. To be sure, Jesus Is Magic owes a huge mirror-gazing debt to Sandra Bernhard's Without You I'm Nothing, though its star may be closer to Dory Previn, partly because her dance with a black audience isn't so smart. Whatever: There are plenty of ROTFLMAO moments here. Faves include her "Can I steal you for a minute?" shtick, Holocaust body count one-liner (and love of "small" Nazis), and just about every parody of piety that she launches. One of the framing devices that pushes this film over the hour mark – a look at show biz competition and vanity, featuring Silverman's sis – is funny. The other – a series of music sequences – is not. But most of the time, Silverman is successful at "getting into the psychology" of an audience, making them laugh and then spanking them for it. (1:12) California, Lumiere, Smith Rafael. (Huston)

*Saw II (1:31) Century 20.

Shopgirl (1:44) Embarcadero, Shattuck.

*The Squid and the Whale 'You'd like Kafka – one of my predecessors," onetime literary prodigy Bernard (Jeff Daniels) informs eldest son Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), the perfect reflecting-mirror parrot for all Dad's pretensions. It's Park Slope, Brooklyn, 1986. Joan (Laura Linney) has finally realized that being Bernard's wife – his third – is hard labor no one should have to endure in a free society. Still, their separation hits 16-year-old Walt and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline) hard, with joint custody splitting loyalties as well as the week. Frank wisely chooses Mom as a more reliable port in a storm, while Walt, as usual, seeks shelter 'neath professorial Dad's enormous ego; both kids deal with the home-front crisis in variably alcoholic, masturbatory, and plagiarizing ways. Noah Baumbach (Mr. Jealousy) won awards for both writing and directing at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, and his film is X-Acto-knife-sharply observed and acted. Yet one leaves the theater as if leaving a cocktail party where dinner was mistakenly expected. The conversation is brilliant; the hors d'oeuvres are superb. But a slightly dazzled inebriation wears off too soon, leaving the viewer sober and unsated. (1:28) Lumiere, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Three of Hearts (1:37) Castro.

A Touch of Spice (1:48) Balboa, Smith Rafael.

Ushpizin A sweet, if somewhat slight, look at life in an insulated Jewish Orthodox neighborhood in Israel, Ushpizin is being billed as a breakthrough for its access to the normally guarded community. Written by and starring an Orthodox Jew (Shuli Rand) and directed by a secular one (Gidi Dar), Ushpizin has a folksy, parabolic narrative shape common to much Yiddish drama. During the Succoth holiday – when Jews dwell in a makeshift shelter for a week to mark the Exodus from Egypt – holy husband and wife Moshe (Shuli Rand) and Malli (Michal Bat Sheva Rand) struggle with a pair of unexpected guests. The two men are fresh from prison and ready to take advantage of the Succoth obligation to welcome ushpizin (guests). As the men cause headache after headache, and Moshe's pre-Orthodox life on the lam comes to light, much consternation (usually in the form of shouting at God) ensues. The narrative throws plenty of obstacles at Moshe and Malli but always indulges their faith; by the end, a narrative's resolution is cut from divine intervention's cloth. (1:30) Balboa, Shattuck. (Goldberg)

*Walk the Line It's worth mentioning right up front that Walk the Line doesn't really shake up the template set down by Ray, the recent Elvis miniseries, and any number of other true musical tales: Start with a significant childhood event (preferably traumatic) to set the tone, then let that sucker echo throughout the performer's life. Coscripted by director James Mangold (Girl, Interrupted) and Gill Dennis and based on two Cash autobiographies, Walk the Line leans a bit heavily on Cash's guilt 'n' grief complex. It also relies on lurching transitions that map Cash's creativity in the most literal way possible. There's no doubting Mangold's reverence for Cash – though, seriously, everyone loves Johnny Cash – but thankfully the filmmaker is, at times, able to nudge past hero worship and point out that the man had some gnarly flaws. Cash's legend, especially when packed into the biopic mold, may be a familiar one, but Walk the Line still springs a few surprises. The lead actors are outstanding; both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do their own singing and strumming. With shiny black pompadour lacquered into place, natural born brooder Phoenix eerily mimics Cash's wounded snarl and gravelly voice, while Witherspoon – Walk the Line's stealth weapon – turns in a thoughtful, passionate performance. (2:16) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Century Plaza, Four Star, Kabuki, Presidio. (Eddy)

*Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (1:25) California.

Yours, Mine, and Ours (1:30) 1000 Van Ness, Century 20, Century Plaza, Kabuki.

Zathura (1:40) Kabuki.

Rep picks

'59 Seconds Film Festival' See 8 Days a Week, page 84. Artists' Television Access.

Pickup's Tricks This rare screening highlights this virtually unknown 1973 document, which was recently restored and transferred to DV by the makers of the documentary The Cockettes. If that feature was a beautifully structured ode to inspired anarchy, this is the real thing – a chaotic stew of high kicks, exposed penises, and glitter. Gregory Pickup (a Chicago-based painter these days) was an SF Art Institute grad student during the three years he shot footage of psychedelic drag sensations the Cockettes and the Angels of Light, both led, after a fashion, by the late Hibiscus, a.k.a. George Harris. That "celebrated boy genius from New York" is more or less the subject here; where the more recent documentary celebrated collective creativity, Pickup's Tricks pretty much bows at the altar of his star personality. (Best quote: "Whenever I watch a movie on television I just become whatever's happening.") Not that you can accuse this film of exactly focusing on anything. Reeling from orgiastic stage performances to outdoor happenings (notably a long crucifixion pageant) to whatever else the camera happened to be pointing at, the film is very much a product of a moment in which amateur camp goofing required only copious amounts of drugs – both among performers and audience – to appear brilliant. Viewing it in an unaltered state requires patience: It is typical that when the film ends with Hibiscus leaving SF for NYC, we get to see him lug just about every last personal item from apartment to van. Uh, fabulous. However, the longeurs are worth enduring for some pricelessly stoned audio interviews, unbelievable costumes, and the sight of Allen Ginsburg in yiddische-mama drag. (1:38) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. (Harvey)

*'Sid Davis Retro' See "ABC's of Watching Wisely," page 70. Artists' Television Access.

Yojimbo See 8 Days a Week, page 84. (1:50) Parkway.