The Mostly British Film Festival runs through this week, as does IndieFest, which continues beyond it. As usual, I’ve put festival films at the end of this newsletter.
A The Housemaid, Lumiere, Shattuck, opens Friday. This picture’s US distributor, IFC Films, is calling it an "erotic thriller." Erotic? Definitely. But it’s not like any thriller I’ve ever seen – and I mean that in the best possible way. A young woman (Do-yeon 
Jeon) takes a job as a nanny and second-tier maid for a very wealthy couple. That the husband takes advantage of the new employee isn’t really a problem – you have to expect that with a born-wealthy young man with a pregnant wife. But when the young woman becomes pregnant (she seems to be the last to know), the wife, her mother, and the older, more experienced maid consider her womb a threat. With its spotless, almost antiseptic imagery, its difficult-to-read protagonist, and its sense of a world and a class system deeply out of joint, this one creeps into your bones and makes you shutter. Read my full review.
Shoah, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, first half, Saturday, 1:00; second half, Sunday, 1:00. I have to admit that I have never seen this much-acclaimed, epic Holocaust documentary. When the YBCA offered me a review copy recently, I turned them down. I couldn’t imagine spending more than nine hours watching this sort of thing. I’m not proud of that decision. But I thought I should note that the film contains no historical footage, is a recent addition to Roger Ebert’ Great Movies series, and has been restored for its 25th anniversary.
A The Band Wagon, Cerrito, Thursday, 7:15. Singin’ in the Rain’s producer and writers teamed up with director Vincente Minnelli to make the one great post-Ginger Fred Astaire vehicle. Their trick? They blended a small dose of reality into the otherwise frivolous mix. For instance, Astaire’s character, an aging movie star nervously returning to the Broadway stage he abandoned years before, is clearly based on Astaire himself. The result is a sly satire of Broadway’s intellectual aspirations, lightened up with exceptional songs and dances including “That’s Entertainment” and “I Love Louisa.” A Cerrito Classic.
A- Anne Francis Double Bill: Forbidden Planet & Bad Day at Black Rock, Castro, Friday. These two very different movies make a very odd double bill, connected only by the lovely and recently-deceased Ms. Francis as the only woman in each of them, and by their early and daring CinemaScope photography. They’re also both worth seeing. While everyone else was working hard to fill the giant Cinemascope screen, Bad Day director John Sturges and cinematographer William C. Mellor saw how effective it was to keep it empty. Spencer Tracy stars as a one-armed stranger who comes to a small 
desert town after World War II and discovers how far people will go to keep a secret. One of the few post-war films to deal with anti-Japanese bigotry. On the other side of the double bill, nothing dates faster than futuristic fiction, and with its corny dialog and spaceship crewed entirely by white males, Forbidden Planet looks very dated. But MGM’s 1956 sci-fi extravaganza still holds considerable pleasures.
A Memento, Castro, Wednesday. Only this exceptional thriller by Christopher Nolan. And how many tell the story backwards, putting you into the mind of someone who can’t remember what just happened? Okay, but how many give that man a mental disability that guarantees failure and makes him extremely dangerous both to himself and to innocent bystanders? Too many to name. How many thrillers center on a hero bent on identifying, and then killing, the man who murdered his wife? (If you didn’t understand the above, try reading it after watching Memento.) On a double bill with Seven, which I saw too long ago to write about.
B+ Double Bill: Gold Diggers of 1933 & 42nd Street, Castro, Thursday. Before A Hard Day’s Night, Singin’ in the Rain, and Astaire and Rogers (well, before Astaire), Warner Brothers was putting out a whole different type of musical; smart, sassy, funny, definitely pre-code, and with Busby
Berkeley production numbers that defy description (and the laws of physics). Gold Diggers of 1933 is the best early-thirties’ Warners musical; upbeat, sexy, and entertaining, but never really letting you forget that there’s a depression going on out there. 42nd Street comes in a close second. This is the movie where the cliché’s were born–you’ve even got the chorus girl ingénue whose big chance comes when the star breaks her ankle. Co-staring Ginger Rogers as Anytime Annie, who “only said no once, and then she didn’t hear the question.”
D Vertigo, Pacific Film Archive, Saturday, 8:35. What? I’m not recommending Vertigo? Everyone else thinks it’s a masterpiece, but it tops my short list of the Most Overrated Films of All Time. Vertigo isn’t like any other Alfred Hitchcock movie; it’s slow, uninvolving, and self-consciously arty. Part of the series The Films of Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock.
B+ Winter’s Bone, Opera Plaza, opens Friday for a special return engagement. This may be the slowest mystery/thriller ever made, and that doesn’t hurt it 
a bit. With her father gone and her mother hopeless, teenager Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) has become the responsible caregiver for her younger siblings in their ramshackle home in the Ozark back woods. But things get bad when the sheriff visits. Her father has jumped bail, and unless he’s found in seven days, they lose the property. You’ll never easily dismiss these people as “hillbillies” again.
B+ The Drummond Will, Roxie, Friday, 7:00; Sunday, 2:30;
Monday, 7:00. No one can make murder funny like the British. In this low-budget comedy, two very different brothers inherent a ramshackle house from the father neither of them cared for (they don’t much like each other, either). The house contains a bag with a very large amount of money, and at least some of the townspeople know about it. The brothers want to keep everything secret, of course, and it’s not really their fault that the people who might stand in the way of their new found wealth keep dying under suspicious circumstances. Made on a low budget, The Drummond Will lacks the largish cast and familiar faces we associate with English comedy, but the fresh faces seem just as funny. Special kudos go to Mark Oosterveen as the more straight-laced brother (his voice and phrasing remind me of Simon Jones–the original Arthur Dent), and Jonathan Hansler as the local constable (think John Cleese at a normal height). In widescreen black and white.
B Worst in Show, Roxie, Wednesday, 9:15. There’s one thing you know going into a documentary about Petaluma’s Ugliest Dog
Contest: You’re going to see an awful lot of adorably ugly dogs. (Believe it or not, even the one shown here looks lovable when cuddling with his owner.) What’s surprising is how involved and competitive the human contestants become, and why. There’s a real shot at fame and modest fortune by having your dog win this contest, which is covered by media from all over the world. And there are controversies. Should dogs qualify who are ugly because disaster or disease have disfigured them–opening up charges of exploitation–or just those who come by it naturally. And what about the Chinese Crested, a breed that is arguably bred for ugliness? The festival web site lists Worst in Show as a 90-minute movie, but the review screener sent to me by the festival runs just under an hour.
D+ The Evangelist, Roxie, Sunday, 4:45; Wednesday, 7:00. Another great idea ruined by poor execution. Danny–lonely, gay, miserable, and an atheist of the Richard Dawkins variety–adopts Gideon, a 12-year-old 
boy who seems to have materialized out of nowhere. But Gideon turns out to be a fanatical Christian of the most annoying variety. This could have been great with believable characters–or at least entertaining with funny ones. But Danny, as played by Theodore Bouloukos, is dull and borders on being a gay stereotype. And Gideon (Lucas Fox Philips) is simply annoying and arguably evil. There’s no attempt to make him a human being, but just a force of plot development. An interesting twist near the end, plus the way the film captured Provincetown, Massachusetts in widescreen black and white, brought the grade up from a straight D.
B Black Narcissus, Vogue, Saturday, 2:30. Not much more than a well-done but silly melodrama, Black Narcissus is nevertheless a must if you love old-fashioned three-strip Technicolor. No one could work emotional magic with that clumsy but beautiful system like cinematographer Jack Cardiff, and this is his best work.
C+ The Infidel, Vogue, Wednesday, 7:30. This comedy about ethnic and religious identity in modern England only manages occasionally to rise above moderately amusing. An easy-going, middle-aged Muslim family man (Omid Djalili) discovers that he was adopted, and that his birth parents were Jewish. He tries to learn about and come to terms with his new identity, causing all sorts of intended-to-be-comic misunderstandings with his family. To make matters worse, his son’s happiness depends on his making a good impression on a high-profile fundamentalist imam. It’s the sort of comic plot that would evaporate if any of the characters spoke the truth to their loved ones. But it has its moments.
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