Crooks, comedy, Soviet science fiction, and a Dinner with Andre grace Bay Area movie theaters this week. Festivals We just had one documentary festival, but another, DocFest, opens Wednesday. It runs for more than two weeks. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival opens Thursday. Promising events My Dinner With Andre, Roxie, Tuesday, 7:00 Everybody was … Continue reading What’s Screening: May 26 – June 1

Is it possible to make an optimistic documentary about climate change in the age of Trump? Michael Bonfiglio manages to do just that in From the Ashes. I saw the Bloomberg Philanthropies documentary Wednesday night at a special screening., hosted by San Francisco mayor Ed Lee. The film will probably not receive a theatrical run … Continue reading From the Ashes comes the death of coal (we hope)

I probably first visited San Francisco's Roxie Cinema in 1977, soon after I moved from Marin County to The City. I'm not sure, but I think my first movie there was Akira Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den. At that time, I had no idea that the Roxie was both America's oldest continuously-operated cinema and one of its youngest … Continue reading The Roxie celebrates 41 years as an arthouse cinema

How many theatrical features are still shot on physical film? Judging from my own survey, about a third of them. Back in 2012, my first survey found 14 films shot digitally and 13 shot on film. By 2015, 20 films were shot digitally, and eight - a little more than a third - on film. … Continue reading How Many Films are Still Shot on Film: The 2016 Edition

Young men die so that older, richer, and more powerful men can amass greater wealth and power. That's pretty much the basic function of war. Stanley Kurbrick's best film, Paths of Glory, dramatizes that truth better than any other motion picture I've seen. For its strong story, dazzling visuals (which never dazzle for their own … Continue reading A+ List: Paths of Glory

B documentary Directed by Jason Cohen In the early 1980s, IBM ruled the personal computer market. If your computer wasn't made by Big Blue, it was incompatible with all the ones that were. Then a group of young, former Texas Instrument employees created Compaq, and everything changed. By the end of the decade, the PC … Continue reading Silicon Cowboys take on Big Blue

Sports fans like sports movies. Foodies love food porn. So it's no surprise that we cinephiles have a soft spot in our hearts for movies about movies. Few movies about movies are as funny as Living in Oblivion, Tom DiCillo's low-budget comedy about the making of a low-budget drama. Released in 1995--when independent filmmaking's popularly … Continue reading Living in Oblivion finds humor in the frustrations of filmmaking

I'm back from the longest vacation I've had in years, and there are still no film festivals in the Bay Area. But we do have great comedy, great dancing, and pods turning into real people. New films opening B Lo and Behold, Reveries of The Connected World, Clay, Rafael, opens Friday Werner Herzog tries–and to … Continue reading What’s Screening: August 19 – 25

I saw two very different films Saturday night at the Pacific Film Archive. They were not a double feature, and few people stayed for both of them. The American Friend Brief digression: My wife and I watched the first two seasons of Breaking Bad recently; we're not sure if and when we'll get to season … Continue reading Wenders & Suzuki: Saturday night at the Pacific Film Archive