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 [...]
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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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B 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 [...]
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B 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 [...]
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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 [...]
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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 [...]
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