THURS/23

La Mission (Peter Bratt, USA, 2009) A veteran S.F. vato turned responsible — if still muy macho — widower, father, and Muni driver, 46-year-old Che (Benjamin Bratt) isn't the type for mushy displays of sentiment. But it's clear his pride and joy is son Jess (Jeremy Ray Valdez), a straight-A high school grad bound for UCLA. Read more »

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Before there was Barney or Raffi, the answer to the question, "Who is most responsible for songs most likely to make children sing and push their parents to the very brink of sanity?" was most likely "the Sherman brothers." It might have been enough for Robert and Richard Sherman to write "Supercalifragiliciousexpialidocious," "It's a Small World," and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," each of which when heard once — let alone a zillion times — became instantly imprinted on the DNA of several juvenile generations. Read more »

The cause of showing neglected old films on 35 mm — that vanishing format — is one recently taken up by a number of local presenters, including the Film on Film Foundation and Midnites for Maniacs. We're not alone in that pursuit, with one notable purveyor of vintage esoteria on celluloid being Austin, Texas' Alamo Drafthouse. Read more »

REVIEW Jeremiah Zagar's feature has a subject that's not just close to home, it's in his home: father Isaiah is an eccentric artist who's created extraordinary mosaics covering myriad walls, rooms, and several entire buildings in Philadelphia. Julia, his wife of 43 years, views herself as the necessary "reality base" to his "crazy, self-absorbed but amiable ... rare flower." Isaiah is a bit of an exhibitionist, his art a "journal of my life" that might easily embarrass family members less accustomed to his idiosyncracies. Read more »

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Co-writer-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made their feature debut in 2006 with Half Nelson, a movie with an iffy concept — an at-risk Brooklyn middle school student discovers her teacher is a part-time crackhead but they become best buds anyway — somehow rendered utterly plausible. That same keen sense of atmospheric and character detail, as well as resistance to sensationalism or cliché, is on display again in their new film, Sugar. Read more »

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Already a veteran Irish Republican Army volunteer serving his second penitentiary term at age 27, Bobby Sands was leader of Republican prisoners at HM Prison Maze, a.k.a. Long Kesh, outside Belfast in 1981. Early that year he commenced a hunger strike joined by numerous other inmates, an action intended to define IRA incarcerates as political rather than criminal prisoners while boosting international attention for the independence cause.

After 66 days, he was the first of 10 participants to die. Read more »

HYPOTHETICALLY SPEAKING It's chaos theory's maxim that the mere brush of a butterfly's wings might produce a ripple effect sufficient to changes history. But let's face it: it's more interesting to muse upon the big what-ifs, like assassination attempts. What if Lincoln or Archduke Ferdinand had survived? What if Reagan hadn't?

Are such speculations actually useful, or just a glorified party game? Clearly Koji Masutani thinks it's the former, since he's gone to the trouble of making Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived. Read more »

REVIEW The minimum wage that Albuquerque single mom Rose (Amy Adams) earns as a housecleaner isn't enough to pay for the private school her eight-year-old son needs after his weird behavior exhausts the public one's resources. And aimless-party-girl younger sis Norah (Emily Blunt) just got fired from her own last crap job. Read more »

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hollywood's hitherto stereotypical or simply indifferent portrayal of Asians progressed, albeit in one-step-forward-two-steps-back fashion. (Notably horrifying was Mickey Rooney's 1961 yellowface caricature as Holly Golightly's "Japanese" neighbor Mr. Read more »

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A D.I.Y. movie musical made for all of $15,000, indie popster-turned-scenarist/actor H.P. Mendoza and local cinematographer-turned-feature-director Richard Wong's Colma: The Musical proved to be the little movie that could after its 2006 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival debut. It won a limited theatrical release and critical praise, including a flattering New York Times review. Read more »