Bayflicks.net

I’m stepping back into Bayflicks, and plan to get to writing about movies–and going to them. So what’s going on?
DocFest moves from San Francisco to Berkeley’s Shattuck for its final week. I didn’t have time to check out what they’re showing this year, and I’m not about to start now. Here’s what [...]

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drama
Written and directed by S. Pierre Yameogo
Children mysteriously die in an African village, and the elders suspect witchcraft. But the ancient traditions they use to find the witch appear to have more to do with local politics than detective work or even magic. And so Napoko, the wife of an elder and the mother [...]

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[B] Espionage comedy

Written and directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

The Coen brothers are back to their old tricks, mining the dark comic prospects of a crime gone wrong. While Burn After Reading lacks the humanity of Fargo and the blazing, non-stop lunacy of Intolerable Cruelty, it still provides 95 very entertaining minutes.
The Washington D.C.-set [...]

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Political biopic

Written by Stanley Weiser
Directed by Oliver Stone

The very fact of W.’s existence raises an interesting and important question: Why go to an Oliver Stone movie after all the times he’s disappointed us?
And W. provides an answer: There is no good reason.
Judging from the final result, Stone didn’t know whether he was making a comic [...]

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HTML clipboard <!– span.filmtitle {} –>In a week or two I’ll get back to a serious Bayflicks commitment. In the meantime, the Arab Film Festival, DocFest, and the United Nations Association Film Festival continue.
Nosferatu, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30. The first (and unauthorized) film version of Dracula, and [...]

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I don’t get paid to review movies, but I do get paid to review TV sets. And since PC World wants me to review a lot of them for the January issue, I won’t have much time for Bayflicks. I’ve got one review already written and scheduled to go live late this [...]

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Musical Documentary

Directed by Steven Sebring

Steven Sebring spent over a decade following Patti Smith around with a camera (okay, I’m not sure how much of that time he actually devoted to the project), trying to get to the core of the cutting-edge rocker, poet, and generally arty person. He succeeds–with a great deal of help from [...]

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Contemporary Drama

Written and directed by Lance Hammer

Vast, flat, cold, muddy landscapes make a perfect metaphor for the lonely human heart in Lance Hammer’s directorial debut. I’ve been seeing a lot of low-key chamber dramas lately–all of them forgoing such comforting movie conventions as music, glamour, and a tripod. I like the trend.
The landscape in [...]

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Character-driven comedy

Written and directed by Mike Leigh

There’s no excuse for Happy-Go-Lucky working as well as it does, and not only because the term “Mike Leigh comedy” sounds like an oxymoron. This movie has no real plot, no significant conflict, and not an overwhelming supply of laughs.
What it has is a bubbly, upbeat, outgoing, and extremely [...]

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Festivals, of course. The Mill Valley Film Festival continues through the weekend, and the Oakland International Film Festival runs through the week. Plus, the CounterCorp Anti-Corporate Film Festival opens Wednesday, and the Taiwan and Arab Film Festivals open Thursday. I’ve placed Mill Valley screenings at the bottom of [...]

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