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American Teen, Roxie, opens Friday. I can’t think of another documentary that felt so much like narrative fiction. American Teen, which follows four kids in their last year in a Warsaw, Indiana high school, is structured very much like a Hollywood movie, with struggles, lessons, and triumphs all in the right order. On one hand, [...]

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Trumbo, Lumiere, Shattuck, opens Friday. Trumbo walks a fine line between performance art and documentary. Like any conventional showbiz biodoc, it delivers plenty of film clips, old photos, home movies, and interview clips of people close to the subject. But it also spends much of its time on famous actors (Joan Allen, Michael Douglas, Paul [...]

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I haven’t had much time for Bayflicks this week–or for movie-going. You probably guessed. But here’s what I can tell you:
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival plays through Monday, but not, for the most part, in San Francisco. Since the Castro is free from that festival, it’s running one of its own this week: [...]

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The Jewish Film Festival, finished in San Francisco, plays this week in Berkeley and Palo Alto, and almost entirely dominates this newsletters I’ll put the non-Jewish films first.
Dr. Strangelove, UA Berkeley 7, Thursday, 8:00. We like to look back at earlier decades as simpler, less fearful times, but Stanley Kubrick’s “nightmare comedy” reminds you just [...]

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I just discovered that I left a very important screening out of this week’s newsletter–one of the best movies not getting released this week. Since the screening hasn’t happened yet (it’s Thursday night), here it is:
Emotional Arithmetic, Castro, Thursday, 8:30. In the best performance of an excellent career, Susan Sarandon plays an American-born Holocaust survivor [...]

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he Jewish Film Festival is up and running. I’ve separated my festival-related recommendations and warnings from the others.
Wonderful Town, Kabuki, opens Friday. Wonderful Town has nothing to do with the 1953 Broadway musical of the same name, although a few songs would liven up this very dull creature from Thailand. The story concerns a [...]

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The Jewish Film Festival opens Thursday. Here’s what else is happening:
Red River, Pacific Film Archive, Tuesday, 7:30. John Wayne gives one of his best performances, showing us the villain in the hero and the hero in the villain as the Captain Bligh character in this western variation on Mutiny on the Bounty. The character [...]

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San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Castro, Friday through Sunday. The big cinephile event of the week! Highlights this year include a free program on George Eastman House’s school for film preservationists, a personal appearance by Guy Madden, introducing a late-night Saturday screening of Tod Browning’s macabre The Unknown, and the movie that launched my lifelong [...]

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It’s been quite a week. I come home from vacation to discover that my site has been hacked and is infecting PCs. I cleaned out the infection immediately (or more precisely, someone at Bayflicks’ host, IX Web Hosting, did it), but making sure it doesn’t happen again feels like a full-time job. You can read [...]

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I only published one post this week: A review of Love and Honor. But I have an excuse: I’ve been gone all week on vacation. In fact, I’m gone now. I wrote this newsletter more than a week ago and set it to go live at the appropriate time.
Festival-wise, Another Hole in [...]

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