For Your Consideration continues through the week. German Gems opens tonight at the Castro and runs through the weekend. And
B+ Budrus, Lumiere, Shattuck, opens Friday. This documentary is all about message, and I’m sure I would have hated it if I had disagreed with its point of view. But I liked the movie, 
which presented a Gandhian, non-violent side of the Palestinian struggle that I hadn’t seen before, but always hoped was there. When the Israeli government sets out to build its separation wall between the town of Budrus and its olive groves, the people peacefully revolt, standing amongst the trees as the army-backed bulldozers arrive. It’s an inspiring story that practically tells itself. Read my full review.
A Fantasia, Oakland Paramount, Friday, 8:00. I have a sneaking feeling that I don’t really have to tell you about this movie, aside from the fact that, as far as I know, this is its first theatrical presentation in the Bay Area in over 20 years. Let’s just say that this collaboration between Walt Disney, Leopold Stokowski, and countless other artists still stands out as a great achievement and an entertaining two hours.
B Mahler On the Couch, Castro, Friday, 7:00. Troubled by his wife’s infidelity, Gustav Mahler visited Sigmund Freud in 1910. That’s just a framing device for a film about 
Mahler’s stormy marriage to the former Alma Schindler, and it’s not a particularly original, insightful, or clever one. But if you ignore the Freud scenes, you get a very good drama about a famously troubled marriage, and a movie held together by one brilliant performance–Barbara Romaner as Alma. She’s joyous, energetic, brimming with life, and sexy as hell. But when difficult times come (and they do), she rages with a dark pain from the deep wells of her generally happy soul. This performance alone makes Mahler On the Couch worth seeing. Mahler On the Couch opens the three-day German Gems film festival.
Rifftrax Presents: Night of the Shorts, Castro, Thursday, 9:30. Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 present and comment on what are promised to be "some truly appalling shorts from past and present – the worst instructional, PSA, nature, science and safety videos ones [sic] can find!" With special guest riffers Maria Bamford, Adam Savage, Paul F. Tompkins, Cole Stratton and Janet Varney.
Golden Globes On the Big Screen, Balboa, Sunday, 5:00. Screening the Oscars theatrically has become a Bay Area art house tradition. Now the Balboa is now putting the other big award night on the silver screen. With "prizes and surprises" promised.
A Beauty and the Beast (1946 version), Wednesday, 3:10. 
Many years ago, I attended a double bill of the original King Kong and Jean Cocteau’s haunting retelling of the famous fairytale. The audience, mostly young children, ruined Kong by running, playing, and talking throughout the movie. I cringed, imagining how bad those little devils would behave when confronted with a slow-paced, atmospheric film with subtitles. But when Beauty and the Beast came on, they sat quiet, spellbound by a story they all knew but had never imagined it quite like this. Part of the class and series Film 50: History of Cinema.
A- The Social Network, Castro, Wednesday. This is clearly the biopic of our times, offering a window into the life and soul 
(or lack thereof) of a young man who changed everything. Much of it is fiction, of course, but that’s the case with all such biopics. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher paint Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) as the ultimate nerd, barely able to relate to other human beings as he revolutionizes the very way we socialize. I don’t know about the real Zuckerberg, but Eisenberg’s version appears to have a serious social disorder as he betrays partners, has sex with groupies, and almost inadvertently becomes extremely wealthy.
A- Sawako Decides, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sunday, 4:00. How do you manage in a highly competitive world when you’re hopelessly mediocre? That’s the question writer/director Yuya Ishii asks in this strange, ironically funny drama. 
(The YBCA is calling Sawako Decides a comedy; I’m not so sure I agree.) Sawako has done poorly at work and in love, drinks too much, and thinks little of herself. But with her father dying, she returns to her home town–current boyfriend and his young daughter in tow–to take over his small business. Although the last act comes dangerously close to a Hollywood ending, it’s overall a sad, funny, quirky, and ultimately moving tale of people who will never be winners, but may be able to scratch a modicum of happiness out of their lives. Sawako Decides is one of two films in the YBCA series Lost In Japan: The Existential Comedies of Yuya Ishii.
B- In the Heat of the Night, Cerrito, Saturday and Sunday, 11:00am. The 1967 Best Picture Oscar winner lost a lot of punch over the the last 43 years. It still works moderately well as a murder mystery, and even more so as a moment in time, captured in celluloid. In 1967, white Americans who didn’t hail from Dixie could still pat themselves on the back and be glad they weren’t like those bigoted Southerners. There’s plenty of such backslapping in this tale of a black police detective from Philadelphia investigating a murder in a small, Mississippi town. There’s also a few good scenes and one great one. Another Cerrito Classic.
Bayflicks 