Bayflicks.net

Musical biopic/mockumentary/weird undefinable something

Written by Todd Haynes and Oren Moverman
Directed by Todd Haynes

Artists should experiment, try new things, push the boundaries of their art. There can be no masterpieces without experimentation. But since experimentation involves trying something that may or may not work, failure is a real possibility. (I’m talking about artistic failure here, [...]

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In three years of Bayflicks, I have yet to see a week so totally dominated by silents. The silent movie events listed below outnumber the talkies three to one.
San Francisco Silent Film Festival–Winter Edition, Castro, Saturday, all day. What a great way to spend a Saturday! The festival begins at [...]

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The cinematic art is just barely old enough for centenaries. After all, the oldest movie to still retain some popularity as entertainment, “A Trip to the Moon,” is only 105 years old.
On December 6, the Rafael will look back at the year 1907 in a collection of shorts that promise to capture that transitional [...]

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The Red Balloon and White Mane, Rafael, Lumiere, and Shattuck, opens Friday for one week. Janus Films put two Albert Lamorisse short children’s films together into one feature-length package. Lamorisse’s masterpiece “The Red Balloon” introduced me to a cinema beyond Hollywood when I was too young to read subtitles. [...]

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Family-friendly fantasy comedy

Written by Bill Kelly
Directed by Kevin Lima

Howard Hawks’ famous criteria for a great film–three good scenes and no bad ones–almost applies to this family fantasy. It has more than three great scenes. But it also has a few that border on the edge of just plain bad, and some horrendously cast lead [...]

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A pair of family-friendly short subjects

Written and directed by Albert Lamorisse

It’s not easy marketing and distributing shorts in an industry geared to features. That’s probably why Janus Films put two short children’s films by Albert Lamorisse together into one package. Combined, “The Red Balloon” and “White Mane” run 73 minutes–just about the minimum for [...]

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Remember Hal Ashby? If you don’t, he was a top director in the ‘70s–one of those people who was Hollywood then but would be indiewood now if he were still alive. The Castro screens six of his movies over three nights in late November. Most are films I haven’t seen in decades but loved when [...]

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Crime drama

Written by Kelly Masterson
Directed by Sidney Lumet

What fascinates us about crimes going horribly wrong? There’s Double Indemnity, One False Move, A Simple Plan and most movies by the Coen Brothers. Now Sidney Lumet, probably our oldest working film director, tries his hand with Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. And even he’s [...]

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Redacted, Shattuck, Embarcadero Center, and Aquarius; opens Friday. An American soldier in Iraq videos everything he sees. A French documentary shows how checkpoints work and why they don’t. A security camera captures thugs planning a violent crime and talking about it afterward. Every shot in Brian De Palma’s Iraq [...]

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We think of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival as a summer event, but they’re taking over the Castro on December 1 for three presentations–two of them with live musical accompaniment.
There’s a good reason why the 11:00am show won’t have live music: It’s not silent. Warner’s Vitaphone short subjects were among the first widely-seen sound [...]

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