Making the transition from teenager to adult is hard enough anywhere. But when college isn't an option and your home town is turning into a ghost town, your life just might feel like a dead end. Peter Bogdanovich's masterpiece, The Last Picture Show, just may be the bleakest coming-of-age movie ever made. The two young … Continue reading A+ List: The Last Picture Show
Month: March 2016
SF International Film Fest Announced
This year's San Francisco International Film Festival was officially launched with a press conference and the opening of its website this morning (Tuesday). The festival will run from April 21 to May 5 at the Castro, the Pacific Film Archive, but mostly has several theaters in the Mission, including the Roxie and the New Mission. … Continue reading SF International Film Fest Announced
What’s Screening: March 25 – 31
No film festivals this week, but we have Les Blank, Ernst Lubitsch, and Freaks. Promising events A Life Well Spent: 16mm Films of Les Blank, Roxie, Sunday, 2:00 Bay area-based filmmaker Les Blank documented American culture like no other, finding the corners of our society where people came together and enjoyed life. The Roxie will … Continue reading What’s Screening: March 25 – 31
Bicycle Thieves as great as ever on Blu-ray
If the point of cinema is to create empathy, both for the characters on the screen and for real people, Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves is the greatest film ever made. It's about desperate poverty, and how the desperately poor feed on the desperately poor because they have no other options. I wrote about this … Continue reading Bicycle Thieves as great as ever on Blu-ray
Johnny Guitar Blu-ray review
This is my second Olive Films Women's History Month Blu-ray review. The first was Baby It's You. Nicolas Ray's Johnny Guitar, released in 1954, has to be the weirdest western made before Blazing Saddles. Stagy and talkie, it's filled with outrageous dialog and fanciful names (Johnny Guitar, the Dancin' Kid). The women behave like men … Continue reading Johnny Guitar Blu-ray review
Baby It’s You Blu-ray review
Three weeks ago, Olive Films sent out a press release linked to March as Women's History Month. The point was to highlight 24 "female-created or female-driven" films in the company's DVD and Blu-ray catalogue. Like Criterion and Kino, Olive licenses classic and obscure older films, often made by Hollywood studios, and releases them on disc. … Continue reading Baby It’s You Blu-ray review
What’s Screening: March 18 – 24
We've got two film festivals this week, both closing Sunday. Also, chances to wallow in James Bond, Muppets, and 35mm exploitation. Festivals CAAMfest continues through Sunday. The small and relatively young Albany Film Festival is the only festsival that I can easily walk to (and, as luck would have it, I can't make it). It … Continue reading What’s Screening: March 18 – 24
Trains on Film Saturday report
I spent Saturday at the Rafael, where I caught three of the six movies in the Trains on Film mini-festival ending today (Sunday). I had seen all three films before, but this was a great way to see them. And not only because of the big screen and enthusiastic audience. Film historian David Thomson and … Continue reading Trains on Film Saturday report
SFIFF: International Film Festival changes venues, announces some programming
We've still got more than two weeks to go before the San Francisco International Film Festival announces this year's program, but they've already fed us a few interesting tidbits about what we have to look forward to. The biggest change: The festival won't be in the Western Addition anymore. This shouldn't come as a surprise. … Continue reading SFIFF: International Film Festival changes venues, announces some programming
What’s Screening: March 11 – 17
Welcome to the new and--I hope--improved Bayflicks newsletter. The old newsletter format became unwieldy, discussing as many as 20 films a week, each with a photo and a paragraph. It was taking up too much of my time and--in the unlikely chance that you read it all--too much of yours. So from here on in, … Continue reading What’s Screening: March 11 – 17
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