This Week At the Movies

Looking for laughs this weekend? The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum hosts its traditional Mid-Winter Comedy Film Festival Friday through Sunday. The weekend starts off with something that hardly seems traditional in Niles: talkies. Friday night’s program consists of short sound comedies starring names normally associated with silents: Buster Keaton, Charlie Chase, Harry Langdon, and so on. Most of the other programs lack sound beyond the live piano accompaniment.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut takes over the Castro for the full week. That’s one great theater for this type of movie.

Want a chance to see “the greatest film ever made” on the big screen? Citizen Kane plays Saturday at 6:00 and Sunday at 5:00 at the Cerrito

.And speaking of most beloved classics, if you can get away for a Wednesday matinee, the Pacific Film Archive will screen Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans at 3:00. Haunting, romantic, and impressionistic, F. W. Murnau’s first American feature turns the mundane into the fantastic and the world into a work of art. The plot is simple: A marriage, almost destroyed by another woman, is healed by a day in the city. But the execution, with its stylized sets, beautiful photography, and talented performers, makes it both touchingly personal and abstractly mythological. Basically a silent, Sunrise was one of the first films released with a soundtrack (music and effects, only), and that’s how the PFA will present it.

We seldom get to see short subjects in theaters, these day. They’re so rare, in fact, that I wonder how any of them qualify for Oscar nominations. But the Embarcadero, Shattuck, and Rafael will the nominated shorts in separate animated and live action

Speaking of the Rafael, Ray Harryhausen & Friends return once again for an evening of old-fashioned analog special effects and discussion. No feature, this time, but a lot of clips are promised, both from the master himself and the digital artists he influenced.

The Stanford continues its Hitchcock series with a double-bill of Foreign Correspondent and Spellbound Friday through Monday. You should definitely catch Foreign Correspondent if you haven’t, already. Not one of Hitchcock’s best, but fun. It’s also an anti-Nazi film from a time when such a thing was still controversial in America (it was only Hitchcock’s second American film, made at a time when his native England was fighting alone for its life). Spellbound is, well, historically interesting, but not really very good.

For late-night, family-appropriate fun, the Clay screens The Princess Bride midnight Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. William Goldman’s enchanting and funny fairy tale dances magically along that thin line between parody and the real thing. There’s no funnier swordfight anywhere.

La Vie En Rose opens at the Lark this week. Another chance to see it on the big screen. Click here to see why it’s worth seeing.

And speaking of that gray area between first run and classic repertoire (or DVD), the Red Vic screens Lust, Caution Sunday and Monday. Click here for my microreview.

I haven’t seen it, it’s been getting rave reviews, and it’s nice to hear that the Elmwood is getting the exclusive Berkeley/Oakland premiere. The movie is In Bruges.

I was going to recommend Chasing Buddha, part of the Projecting Buddha series at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but it appears to have been dropped from the program.

And, of course, IndieFest continues.

Also worth catching: The Savages, There Will Be Blood, Juno.