I’m taking the week off of Bayflicks, but here are a few movies that I felt I had to mention:
Recommended: I Live in Fear (AKA Record of a Living Being), Pacific Film Archive, Friday, 8:50. Perhaps it’s the dreadful American title, or maybe it’s the lack of swordplay, but Kurosawa’s 1955 gem (made in-between Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood) is a woefully overlooked masterpiece. Toshiro Mifune is brilliant as an aging industrialist (he was only 35 when the film was shot) obsessed with the dangers of nuclear fallout. Part of the Archive’s Doctor Atomic Goes Nuclear series.
Recommended:  Amélie, Clay, Friday and Saturday, midnight; Rafael, Saturday 1:15. You’ve probably already heard of this enchanting French romantic comedy about a young woman who decides to make people happy (no, not that way). If there’s a whimsical bone in your body, this will tickle it. The Rafael screening is part of the Mill Valley Film Festival’s Tribute to Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Noteworthy: Donald Sutherland Tribute, Rafael, Saturday, 7:00. Sutherland is an excellent actor, and I’m sure the clips and Q&A will be wonderful. But the new version of Pride and Prejudice (set for general release very soon), is an odd choice as the feature-length cap on the evening. It’s a very good movie, but Sutherland has a very small part (although he is grand as the father of all those marriageable girls). M*A*S*H or Eye of the Needle would have seemed a better choice; in 40 years, Pride and Prejudice will do fine for Keira Knightley’s tribute.
Recommended: Bee Season, CinéArts@Sequoia, Sunday, 5:00, 7:45. I know this film’s setting well—moderately religious Jews in the contemporary East Bay. It doesn’t get everything right (although the father is very religious, they don’t appear to belong to a congregation or even a community), but it’s still a spellbinding story of a spelling bee prodigy and her increasingly dysfunctional family. And it’s one of the few Hollywood films I’ve seen recently that takes spirituality seriously. Definitely worth seeing, but if you wait a few weeks you’ll get to see it for a lot less money.
Bayflicks 