Friday is Silent Movie Day, and this year, the Bay Area is taking notice. But if you still haven’t fallen in love with the world of silence with music, you can meet Joan Baez, or watch Jaws on a real boat. There’s also The Artist, John Huston’s strange crime comedy, Kubrick’s horror, and everyone is Stop Making Sense all over Northern California.
Festivals & Series
- The Broncho Billy & Friends Silent Film Festival opens Friday to Sunday
Silent Movie Day (and days after)
A+ City Lights (1930), Sebastopol, Friday, 5:30pm
In Charlie Chaplin’s most perfect comedy, the little tramp falls in love with a blind flower girl and befriends a suicidal, alcoholic millionaire, but neither of them know the real Charlie. The result is funny and touching, with one of cinema’s greatest endings. Sound came to the movies as Chaplin shot City Lights, resulting in an essentially silent film with a recorded musical score. Cinema has rarely achieved such perfection. Read my Blu-ray review.
A The Freshman (1925), Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Saturday, 7:30pm
It might be possible to watch Harold Lloyd’s 1925 masterpiece, The Freshman, without laughing, or without hoping that the protagonist will win the popularity he so deeply wants. But it wouldn’t be easy. Every shot in this film is brilliantly designed to make you either laugh or care–or both. Desperate to fit in, Harold becomes the class clown; everyone pretends to like him, but they’re all laughing behind his back. Everyone except, of course, the girl who loves him (Jobyna Ralston). Read my Blu-ray review. With two shorts: Fox Trot Finesse and Looking For Sally. Jon Mirsalis provides live music on the Kurzweil Keyboard.
A The Signal Tower, streaming at home
The Signal Tower gives you everything you want in a melodrama: A likeable hero, a dastardly villain, and a family in danger. The rip-roaring climax involves a horrible storm, a run-away train, a wife in peril, a husband torn between his family and his professional obligations, and a little boy with a loaded revolver. Rip-roaring entertainment, and recently restored. With music by Stephen Horne.
? Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy – Year One, Rafael, Saturday, 1:30pm
At the beginning of 1927, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy were two comedians who rarely worked together. At the end of the year, they were Laurel and Hardy. The silent shorts in this selection include Duck Soup (not to be the Marx Brothers movie), Flying Elephants, Putting Pants on Philip, and the best of all, Battle of the Century.
New films opening streaming
A- Joan Baez I Am a Noise, streaming Friday, not sure about theater engagements
If you’re expecting a collection of concert footage, you’ll be very disappointed. You get a bit of it, but not much. Neither will you get a cry for peace and justice. Instead, you get an aged yet still physically fit woman, who tells you about her life, good and bad – mostly bad. There’s little about her famous lovers: Bob Dylan, ex-husband David Harris, and strangest of all, Steve Jobs (who’s never mention in this film). The big surprise for me was that for many years, she was using Quaaludes.
Theatrical revivals
A+ Stop Making Sense (1984) Opera Plaza, Balboa, New Mission, New Parkway, probably more, through the week
New restoration! Great films can affect you in different ways. Some make you laugh, cry, or think. But the Talking Heads concert movie, Stop Making Sense, makes you want to jump out of your seat and dance. More than any other concert film I’ve ever seen, Stop Making Sense is a physical experience. The band is constantly dancing, moving in strange ways that look like nothing you’ve ever seen before. You can burn calories watching this film. Read my A+ appreciation.
A+ Jaws (1975) Buy tickets through the Roxie. Board at Pier 43 ½. Watch the film on the bay, Friday and Saturday, 9:00pm
The Roxie Theatre is partnering to turn the hybrid electric vessel Enhydra into a sailing cinema. People associate Jaws with three men in a boat, yet the picture is more than half over before the shark chase really begins. For that first half, Jaws is a suspenseful, witty variation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, An Enemy of the People, but with a hero more conflicted and less noble (Roy Scheider). Then he joins up with two other men, and the picture turns into a hair-raising variation of Moby Dick. Jaws’ phenomenal success helped create the summer blockbuster, yet by today’s standards, it’s practically an art film–albeit one that could scare the living eyeballs out of your sockets. See my Blu-ray review.
A The Artist, (2011), Lark, Friday, 5:00pm
Michel Hazanavicius not only made a silent movie about the death of silent movies; he also created a warm, funny, heartfelt, and occasionally sad tale about the talkie revolution. One major star watches his career collapse while a struggling actress becomes a star in the new medium. Meanwhile, they fall in love. Hazanavicius fills the picture with funny bits that illuminate the characters, the setting, and the medium. A black-and-white, narrow-screen, silent film is a hard sell in today’s market, and I was pleasantly surprised to see The Artist find an audience. Read my full review.
A- Beat the Devil (1953), Stanford, Friday through Sunday
John Huston’s strange crime comedy goes from Italy to Africa to a very bad boat in between. Peter Lorre casually offers a short monolog on the meaning of time. Jennifer Jones keeps winning chess games without even trying. And the whole thing is very entertaining. On a double bill with How to Steal a Million, which I haven’t seen in decades.
A- My Neighbor Totoro (1988), New Mission
֍ Saturday, 12:00 noon
֍ Sunday, 12:30pm
Subtitles. This Studio Ghibli feature may be one of the best cartoons ever for very young children. Adults can also enjoy the beautiful animation and their children’s delighted reactions. Two children and their father (mother is in the hospital) move into a rural house that turns out to be haunted. But it’s not haunted in a bad way. The magical creatures, including the powerful Totoro, make friends with the new people in the neighborhood.
Warning: You should tell your kids beforehand that it takes place before everyone had a phone in their pocket.
B+ Paper Moon (1973), Balboa, Friday, 7:30pm
16mm! In the first half of the 1970s, Peter Bogdanovich seemed to make one good film after another – each different from the others. While Paper Moon isn’t up to The Last Picture Show or What’s Up Doc, it’s still fine entertainment. Set in depression and the dust bowl, this movie successfully mixes comedy and pathos. The young child turns out to be a far better con artist than anyone around her. László Kovács’ black and white photography recreates the Kansas of the early 30s (or at least how we imagine it).
B+ Princess Mononoke (1997), New Parkway, through the week
For much of its runtime, this Japanese, animated, action fantasy takes you on a wild and exciting ride. The hand-drawn characters, the strange animals, and the amazing moments of fear, struggle, and love are surprisingly powerful. But the climactic battle between animals and people drags on too long, seemingly just for the point of making things big. The environmental message is both obvious and shallow. Too extreme for young children.
B+ The Shining (1980), New Mission
֍ Friday, 11:00am
֍ Sunday, 3:45pm
For once, the cliché is true: Stephen King’s novel, The Shining, is much better than the movie. Stanley Kubrick, brilliant as he was, missed the main point of the story – that the protagonist loves his family, and is a good man struggling with his inner demons. Without that, it’s little more than a sequence of scares (all good scares, but just scares). Kubrick added some surprising and effective touches, but overall, he turned a brilliant novel into a simply very good horror flick. Read my longer article.
B+ Clueless (1995), New Parkway, Friday, 10:30pm
Loosely adapted from Jane Austen’s Emma, this coming-of-age comedy follows a rich, well-meaning, but superficial teenage girl (Alicia Silverstone) as she tries to fix other people’s problems as well as her own. Sweet and funny, it looks at adolescent foibles with a sympathetic eye, rarely judging youthful behavior. With a surprisingly young Paul Rudd as the great guy she can’t appreciate.
B+ The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), Balboa, Saturday, 11:30pm
I don’t have to tell you about this one, do I?
B The Exorcist, several theaters, Friday & Wednesday
֍ Check times and theaters
This famous horror flick has a serious statement: convert to Catholicism. But for a Jewish agnostic like myself, the message doesn’t carry much of a bite. (When I first saw the movie, in a big, crowded theater, sitting next to two ex-Catholic friends, it packed a big wallop). The film is clearly trying to say that real evil is in modern medicine, while religion can save the day. But whatever it’s saying, it’s a well-made and entertaining movie.
C+ Contempt (1963), Lark
֍ Sunday, 4:30pm
֍ Monday, 10:00am
֍ Monday, 5:30pm
Jean-Luc Godard’s early movie about making movies isn’t very good. And it’s not even about making movies. The women worry mostly about their looks. The men spend most of their time treating the women badly. For most of the movie, a screenwriter (Michel Piccoli) fights with his wife (Brigitte Bardot). Jack Palance plays the producer who wants to film The Odyssey. This is the film where Fritz Lang, playing himself, says that CinemaScope is “only good for snakes and funerals.”
Movies I can’t review
- Rushmore, 4-Star, Wednesday & Thursday, 7:30pm
- Mean Girls, New Mission, Tuesday, 7:00pm
Bayflicks 