it’s been a very busy week for me, with visiting family, changes in my PC World column, and a major hardware upgrade. So please excuse me if I missed a few things, like the new Pacific Film Archive schedule. I will get to them, hopefully, early next week.
West Side Story, Castro, playing all week. I haven’t seen this classic in so long I dare not review it, but it’s worth noting that this strange mixture of Shakespeare, ballet, and ’50s urban liberalism will screen in all it’s 70mm glory.
I Served the King of England, Embarcadero, opens Friday. For more than half of its runtime, Jiríh
Menzel’s clever and entertaining comedy celebrates the joys of serving the filthy rich. We accept this empty and amoral theme because the movie is funny and visually pleasing, but even more because Ivan Barnev is engaging and likeable as the story’s ambitious waiter protagonist. But just as the fun and games begin to tire us, the Nazis arrive. Jan falls in love with a German girl, collaborates with the enemy, and shows us just how low he can go. Told mostly in flashbacks, I Served the King of England maintains its light tone throughout; even when events get very dark. Read my full review.
Yojimbo & The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Pacific Film Archive, Saturday, 6:00. I’m not listing this officially as a DOUBLE BILL because the PFA charges separate admissions, but they’re showing the two films on the same night and they should go very well together. In Yojimbo, a masterless samurai (who else but Toshiro Mifune) wanders into a small town torn apart by rival gangs, and uses his wits and amazing swordsmanship to play the sides against each other. In the hands of Akira Kurosawa, the result h
is an entertaining action flick, a parody of westerns, and a nihilistic black comedy all rolled into one. The last film in the PFA’s The Long View: A Celebration of Widescreen series. The biggest and the best of Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti” westerns, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was the Pulp Fiction of its day, reveling in its own amorality and bringing you along to enjoy the ride. It’s violent, beautiful, iconic, and funny, with the best performance of Eli Wallach’s career and that incredible Ennio Morricone score. Part of the PFA’s United Artists: 90 Years series, although it’s another great widescreen movie.
The Ten Commandments (1956), Stanford, Saturday through Thursday. How do you grade a movie that you really love, but is–let’s face it–not very good? Cecil B. DeMille’s last epic is corny, melodramatic, and theologically ridiculous. It also raises pomposity to a whole new level. But in addition to being unintentionally hilarious (I could probably write an MST3K script for it in my sleep), it’s also beautiful to look at, and never, ever boring–no small feat for a flick that runs 220 minutes. There are even moments, few and far between, when the power of the original story overwhelms the silly shenanigans and takes hold of your heart.
Double Indemnity, Rafael, Saturday, 7:00. Rich but unhappy (and evil) housewife Barbara Stanwyckh
leads insurance salesman Fred MacMurray from adultery to murder in Billy Wilder’s noir thriller. Not that she has much trouble doing it (this is not the MacMurray character we remember from “My Three Sons”). A good, gritty thriller about sex (or the code-era equivalent) and betrayal. Part of the Rafael’s Fred MacMurray 100th Birthday Salute.
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Period comedy
clever and entertaining comedy. It’s an empty, meaningless, and, when you think about it, totally amoral message, yet we accept it, in large part because Ivan Barnev is engaging and funny as the story’s protagonist, an ambitious waiter named Jan Díte. Barney looks a bit like Alan Tudyk (
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, this makes you wonder how much writer/director Nanette Burstein manipulated reality and the cinéma vérité tradition to get what she wanted. On the other , it makes for good story-telling. Read my 
me that the great writer never really accepted the fact that women threw themselves at him because he was famous. He thought he was irresistible. Such confused thinking permeates Jan Schütte’s clumsy adaptation of three Singer stories. Love Comes Lately follows the adventures of a short-story writer who’s an obvious Singer alter-ego, and dramatizes two short stories whose protagonists are obvious alter-egos of the alter-ego. Otto Tausig plays all three characters, and yes, they’re all irresistible to women. Schütte manages a few good scenes, but the movie goes nowhere and leads to nothing. Read 
fiction, and with its corny dialog and spaceship crewed entirely by white males, Forbidden Planet is very dated. But MGM’s 1956 sci-fi extravaganza still holds considerable pleasures. The Cinemascope/Eastmancolor art direction pleases to the eye, Robby the Robot wins your heart, and the story—involving a long-dead mystery race of super-beings—still packs some genuine thrills. It’s also an interesting precursor to Star Trek.
Drama
‘s not much of a stretch; all three characters are old Jewish widowers raised in Europe but living in America. They’re also, of course, irresistible to women.
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(easily the most likeable one of the lot). We get to know other kids, as well. Another jock, Mitch, seems to have won last-minute star status when he started dating Hannah.
Kurosawa. A samurai (Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai) comes to a fort and asks permission to kill himself, then tells a harrowing tale of poverty made unbearable by the strict samurai code. Director Masaki Kobayashi had no love for feudal Japan’s social structure, which he shows as cruel, arrogant, and hypocritical. Part of the PFA’s 
of wonderful dance numbers and some good comic moments, but there are too many weak scenes to wholeheartedly recommend it. The real surprise is in the stars. Gentlemen helped turn Marilyn Monroe into a major name, yet co-star Jane Russell blows her out of the water. In this film, at least, Russell is funnier and sexier. How to Marry a Millionaire:, a lavish 1953 romantic comedy, fails to be romantic nor funny, despite the talents of Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe (who had only just achieved star status). But How to Marry a Millionaire was one of the first two films shot in Cinemascope, and the first with an intimate, contemporary, character-and-dialog driven story. That alone gives it historical interest.
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 an 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 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 Greg Pane on piano.
, 9:15. 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. A benefit for 
