The Sonoma International Film Festival continues through Sunday.
Michael Ondaatje & David Thomson: Dialogues on Film, Rafael, Friday through Sunday. The novelist (also a poet) and the film critic (also a novelist) get together to screen Last of the Mohicans, Point Blank, The Grifters, Who’ll Stop the Rain, and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and talk about the films.
The Edge of Love, Opera Plaza, Shattuck, opens Friday. Lovely to look at, both because of its stars and its visual style, this story concerns two couples
with fidelity problems, although there is far more suspicion of adultery in their lives than actual hanky-panky. One of the leading characters is the great poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), although he’s by far the least interesting of the four. This is an actor’s picture dressed up with beautiful photography and a little sex. The story is a bit thin, but the performances carry you through it. Read my full review.
Killer of Sheep, Pacific Film Archive, Wednesday, 3:00. Yes, Virginia, people made great low-budget films before digital video. Shot in 16mm in 1977, Charles Burnett’s neorealistic non-story lets us examine the day-to-day life of an African-American slaughterhouse employee struggling with poverty, family problems, and his own depression. Hauntingly made with a mostly amateur cast, Killer of Sheep takes us into a world most of us know about but have never actually experienced. Part of the Film 50: History of Cinema series and class, with a lecture by Marilyn Fabe.
Plan 9 From Outer Space, Cerrito, Thursday, 7:30. I call them unintentional comedies–movies so bad they’re funny (as opposed to so bad they’re boring). Ed Wood’s strange science fiction fable, which includes Bela Lugosi’s last performance, isn’t the best of them (or the worst, or the best at being the worst), but it certainly earns its cult following. Thrillville‘s 12th anniversary show, and the event will also include Re-Animator, a new short by Ernie “Hardware Wars” Fosselius, and the Twilight Vixen Review live onstage.
Blackmail, Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30. In 1929 it was common to make separate sound and silent versions of a movie, and Hitchcock’s first talkie is also his last silent. The story of a young woman who indiscreetly goes to a man’s apartment, then must kill him in self-defense, works better as a silent, which is how the museum will show it. Certain scenes in the talkie drag on, presumably to show off all that talk. This time, no scene lasted longer than appropriate. By the way, am I the only one who thinks Donald Calthrop, who plays the blackmailer, is a dead ringer for Kenneth Branagh? Judy Rosenberg will tickle the piano keys while Alfred Hitchcock tickles your sense of dread.
Revolutionary Road, Red Vic, Wednesday and Thursday. After a romantic prologue where an attractive couple meet and fall for each other, Revolutionary Road plunges you into a severely unhappy marriage–all the worse because the couple clearly still love each other. Thirtyish in 1955, the two are caught between their youthful, non-conformist dreams and the responsibilities of parenthood, made all the worse by the pressures to conform to a suburban norm. And the way they react to that pressure is making them incompatible. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, so romantic in Titanic, give raw, scraped-to-the-bone performances. Easily one of the best films of last year, but not a date movie.
The Wizard of Oz, Roxie, Thursday, 7:15. I don’t really have to tell you about this one, do I? Well, perhaps I have to explain why I’m only giving it a B. Despite its clever songs, lush Technicolor photography, and one great performance (Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion), The Wizard of Oz never struck me as the masterpiece that everyone else sees. It’s a good, fun movie, but not quite fun enough to earn an A. Special presentation: Evan I. Schwartz, the author of the book Finding Oz, will be on hand to introduce the movie.
Witness for the Prosecution & Shanghai Express, Stanford, Saturday through Monday. Set in a China that could only exist on a Hollywood soundstage, Shanghai Express is a dull melodrama raised to almost a fine art by glorious camerawork and art direction, and the entertaining performances of Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong. Witness for the Prosecution, on the other hand, is a light murder mystery with comic overtones–Agatha Christie as adapted by Billy Wilder.
The Reader, Elmwood, opens Friday. I have to ask myself: Am I a Kate Winslet fan because she’s a brilliant actor with an excellent taste in scripts, or because she takes her clothes off in almost every film? Probably a combination of both. Here she plays her least sympathetic character, but you still care for her greatly. Questions of guilt, evil, and the corruption of innocence abound. But would the main male character (played by David Kross and Ralph Fiennes at different ages) really be that messed up just because he had an affair at 15?
Medicine For Melancholy, Roxie, opens Friday. One could describe
this low-budget indi as the African-American version (and the Bay Area version) of Before Sunrise. We discover the two characters as they discover each other, maneuver around their mutual attraction, and talk about their very different attitudes about life and race. Wyatt Cenac (of the Daily Show) and Tracey Heggins make attractive and likable leads, and for the first hour they’re completely worth spending time with. But two-thirds of the way through the movie takes a wrong turn to nowhere. Beautifully shot with a color palette so desaturated it often looks like black and white. I saw Medicine for Melancholy at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival. Read my more in-depth report.
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