Wow! No festivals. But we still have some movies worth watching.
A Century Ago: The Films of 1908, Rafael, Thursday, 7:00. One hundred years ago, movies were just 
about to discover they were an art form. And Thursday night, the Rafael will screen about two hours of shorts from the year D.W. Griffith first started working in the medium. Organized and presented by Randy Haberkamp, Director of Educational Programs for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Piano accompaniment by Michael Mortilla.
Our Hospitality, Pacific Film Archive, Saturday, 3:00. Three years before he made The General, Buster Keaton mined the antebellum South for comic gold in this almost gentle comedy about a Hatfield/McCoy–type feud. Still adjusting to the long form of the feature film (this was only his second), Keaton fills Our Hospitality with funny gems that have little to do with the story–like the journey from New York to the backwoods on a very early train (the movie is set around 1840). When Buster finally arrives at his destination, he finds himself a guest in the home of men sworn to kill him. Luckily, the code of southern hospitality forbids killing a guest…as long as he’s in your house. As one of the PFA’s Movie Matinees for All Ages, the PFA will screen Our Hospitality with Keaton’s short, The Haunted House. Judith Rosenberg will accompany both on piano.
Burn After Reading, Red Vic, Friday through Sunday. 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. Read my review.
Double bill: The Maltese Falcon and To Have and Have Not, Stanford, all week. Dashiell Hammett’s novel, The Maltese Falcon had been filmed twice before, but screenwriter and first-time director John Huston did it right with the perfect cast and a screenplay that sticks almost word-for-word to the book. The ultimate Hammett picture, the second-best directorial debut of 1941 (after Citizen Kane), an important precursor to film noir, and perhaps the most entertaining detective movie ever made. On the other hand, Howard Hawks’ To Have and Have Not has almost nothing to do with the book (or so I’ve been told; I’ve never read it). It’s best known for igniting the Bogart-Bacall romance, which itself ignites the screen.
Patti Smith: Dream of Life, Red Vic, Thursday through the following Saturday. 
Director 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 Smith herself–in introducing us to a very nice woman. But aside from an innate need to express herself and her strong political feelings, we know little about what motivates her to do what she does. Read my full review.
Filed under: Weekly Newsletter | Leave a Comment »
The Secret Life of Bees
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
name Anita O’Day
because he needed the money, turned Mario Puzo’s potboiler into the Great American Crime Epic. Marlon Brando may have top billing, but Al Pacino owns the film (and became a star) as Michael Corleone, the respectable son inevitably and reluctantly pulled into a life of crime he doesn’t want but seems most suited for. A masterpiece. And yet the sequel (which is also a prequel) tops it. By juxtaposing the rise of Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando in the first film, a young Robert De Niro here) with the moral fall of his son Michael (Al Pacino again), Puzo and Coppola show us how the decision a seemingly good man makes to care for his family will eventually destroy the very people he loves. Both films have recently undergone a major restoration by the master of the craft, Robert A. Harris.
When Disney finances your big-budget family entertainment, it takes guts to look closely and critically at such consequences of our consumer culture as garbage, obesity, and planetary destruction. Making an almost dialog-free film also took a fair amount of backbone. It also took sound designer Ben Burtt, who contributed as much to 
extremely anachronistic movie Modern Times
the mind of a psychopath as he tracks the life of and manhunt for one of Japan’s most notorious serial killers. The result isn’t pretty. Imamura and screenwriter Masaru Baba treat Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) analytically, neither asking for nor receiving any sympathy for a man incapable of giving any. Yet the film itself is far from cold. For while Enokizu himself fascinates and repels us, Imamura makes us care deeply for the imperfect people whose lives Enokizu touches, ruins, and in some cases cuts short. A great film.
yet made. But Billy Wilder’s farce about desperate musicians, vicious gangsters, and straight (as in heterosexual) men in drag definitely belongs in the top 20. And its closing line has never been beat. As the final and main night of the Castro’s 
Eli (Lina Leandersson) moves into his apartment building. She’s his age (or appears to be), seems almost as shy, and doesn’t go to school. How could she? She only comes out at night. Slowly, tentatively, they each let down their guard and become friends. Very close friends.
Friday for one-week engagement. In 1972, a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team and their friends and family crashed into a glacier high in the Andes. The survivors endured extreme cold, hunger, an avalanche, the deaths of loved ones, and the necessity of eating those loved ones’ corpses. Combining interviews with the survivors, re-enacted sequences, and some photography from the actual events, Gonzalo Arijon recreates the harrowing experience with dramatic intensity. I first saw Stranded at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and you’ll find my full report 
construction, may be the largest hydroelectric project ever attempted, and Chang’s film takes an unusual but effective approach to examining the project’s repercussions. He focuses his camera on two teenagers working a cruise ship that takes western tourists along the river, as well as one of those teenagers’ parents–a peasant couple forced to relocate as the waters rise. This is not about a construction project, but about the millions of people whose lives have been or will be disrupted because of the dam.
writing and directing this witty mesh of interrelated stories involving talkative killers, a crooked boxer, romantic armed robbers, and a former POW who hid a watch in a very uncomfortable place. Tarantino entertainingly plays with dialog, story-telling techniques, non-linear time, and any sense the audience may have of right and wrong.
