Adam’s Apples, Lumiere, Shattuck, and Rafael, opens Friday. The plot sounds like vapid, Hollywood, feel-good drek: A hate-filled neo-Nazi fresh out of prison (Ulrich
Thomsen) learns to help and care for others–thanks to the help of a minister who sees the good in everyone and a couple of oddball eccentrics. But Adam’s Apples is no Hollywood uplift tale. In fact, it’s the blackest of black comedies from Denmark’s Anders Thomas Jensen. That loving and forgiving minister is dangerously insane, the two oddballs should probably be locked away, and the parish doctor has the worst bedside manner since Groucho Marx’s Dr. Hackenbush. No wonder the neo-Nazi seems to be the sanest person around. On one hand, this is a profoundly religious picture, built on redemption and filled with miracles ranging from a Bible that always opens to the Book of Job to a man who just won’t die. On the other, I never laughed so hard at a man shooting a cat.
Sullivan’s Travels, Cerrito, Saturday, 6:00 and Sunday, 5:00. Preston Sturges gets preachy at the end of his Hollywood satire, allowing his protagonist (and arguably his alter ego) film director John Sullivan deliver the film’s message in a stirring speech. And what is that message? That movies are just entertainment and shouldn’t contain messages. Indeed, the whole final act is rather odd, turning melodramatic as Sullivan loses his identity and his freedom, but it’s reasonably well-done melodrama, and the first two acts are amongst the funniest Sturges ever did. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) gives up his posh Hollywood lifestyle to taste life at the bottom end of the economic scale, as research for a social message picture his studio bosses don’t want him to make. Part of the weekly Cerrito Classic series.
Steamboat Bill, Jr., Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30. One of Buster Keaton’s best, both as a performer and as the auteur responsible for the entire picture (it’s the last film in which he would enjoy such control). Steamboat Bill (Ernest Torrence) already has his hands full, struggling to maintain his small business in the wake of a better-financed competitor. Then his long-lost son turns up, not as the he-man the very-macho Bill imagined, but as a urbane and somewhat effete Keaton. You can look at Steamboat Bill, Jr. as a riff on masculinity or a study of small-town life as an endangered species. But it’s really just a a lot of laughs seamlessly integrated into a very good story”“and you really can’t ask for more than that. The spectacular, climatic hurricane sequence contains what’s probably the most thrilling and dangerous stunt ever performed by a major star. Accompanied by Judy Rosenberg at the piano. Part of the Museum’s Mother’s Day Buster Keaton Double Header.
The General, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Sunday, 3:00. Buster Keaton 
pushed film comedy like no one else when he made this one. He meticulously recreated the Civil War setting. He mixed slapstick comedy with battlefield death. He hired thousands of extras and filmed what may be the single most expensive shot of the silent era (then used it as the setup for a punch line told in a simple close-up). The result was a critical and commercial flop in 1926, but today it’s rightly considered one of the greatest comedies ever made. Accompanied by Gideon Freudmann on cello as the other part of the Museum’s Mother’s Day Buster Keaton Double Header.
Fight Club, Shattuck, Friday and Saturday, midnight. Strange flick. Edward Norton wants to be Brad Pitt. Who wouldn’t? Pitt’s not only shagging Helena Bonham Carter, he’s also a free-spirited kind of guy and a real man. Or maybe he’s just a fascist? Or maybe”¦better not give away the strangest plot twist this side of Psycho and Bambi, even if it strains credibility more than a speech by George W. Bush. And Bonham Carter gets to say the most shocking and hilariously obscene line in Hollywood history.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Red Vic, Monday. Tim Burton’s first feature revels in its own silliness. Pee-Wee Herman, before children’s television and indecent exposure, is a strange, almost neurotically innocent creature. The movie is uneven, and most of the jokes are extremely dumb, but the oddball charm cannot be denied. Besides, the last sequence, reworking the plot as a Hollywood action film, is alone worth the price of admission.
The Host, 4Star, opens Friday. A barely-functional family fights an uncaring government and a giant mutant carnivore, and it’s hard to say which is the scarie
r threat. I didn’t find this quite the masterpiece others saw”“the political points are obvious, the third act gets confusing, and the big finale fails to satisfy. But director/co-writer Joon-ho Bong succeeds where it counts: He makes you care about the characters and scares you out of your seat. Much of the credit goes to the talented computer animators at San Francisco’s own The Orphanage, who brought the monster to life.
Blades of Glory, Parkway, opens Friday. It’s no wonder Will Ferrell does such a great George W. Bush imitation; no one plays the self-confident fool like Ferrell. His macho figure skater and a handful of very funny gags make this by-the-numbers Hollywood gross-out comedy (or as gross-out as PG-13 can get) reasonably entertaining. Don’t look for any insightful satire of competitive figure skating; Blades of Glory is just a low-brow comedy taking obvious potshots. What’s important is that a reasonable number of the jokes hit home.
La Vie En Rose, Rafael, Saturday. 7:00. Early in this Edith Piaf biopic, a hunched, 
aged-before-her-time Piaf walks up to a recording studio microphone. She looks bored and mildly annoyed. When she starts singing in that incredible voice, she still looks bored and annoyed, her facial expression contrasting sharply with her soaring vocals. I knew then that La Vie En Rose wasn’t going to be a happy film about the redemption of art. Marion Cotillard gives one of cinema’s great performances as Piaf, who’s short life”“at least in writer/director Olivier Dahan’s view”“was about as miserable as a life can get. Horrendous childhood, bad luck, and her own selfish and unpleasant personality hurt her at every turn. This isn’t an easy film to watch, but it is also impossible to ignore. Great songs, too. For California Film Institute members, only.
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