Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

WHO: Joel and Ethan Coen wrote, directed, produced, and (under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes) edited this.

WHAT: My favorite new Coen Brothers film since No Country For Old Men at least, and perhaps going as far back as their last folk-music-centric film O Brother, Where Art Thou? And though I've seen it only once, I rank it a tentative #10 on my top 10 list of films for the year (the first time a Coen film has made my annual list since I began compiling them, I think). See below for more on that, and for a link to a full-fledged review of the film.

WHERE/WHEN: Multiple showtimes daily for the foreseeable future at various Frisco Bay theatres including the Embarcadero, Kabuki & Empire in San Francisco, the Piedmont in Oakland, the California in Berkeley, the Camera 7 in Campbell, and the Sequoia in Mill Valley, among others.

WHY: I picked the above screen capture (from the trailer to Inside Llewyn Davis) not only because it was one of my favorite shots in the film, but because I knew I'd be using the occasion of this post to roll out my annual year-end-lists of new movies seen in 2013. And the sentiment seems apropos for a post that feels in some ways as thought-out, ill-judged, and pregnant with indeterminate permanence as a graffiti scrawl.

This post also completes my experiment of putting a post-a-day about a local Frisco Bay screening up on this blog every day in 2013- more on that endeavor in a future post, I promise, but for now I'll say that the process definitely altered my viewing patterns for the year.  I found myself watching even more repertory and experimental films to the exclusion of new films than I usually have, and more commercial US fare than foreign films. I also, for the first time since 2005, didn't venture out of Frisco Bay to any film festivals this year, which I suspect has had a hand in shaping the character of this list as a whole. Finally, I made less time to rewatch favorite new films, which makes this selection feel a bit more shaped by first impressions than usual. This means the ordering of the list beyond #1 is fairly arbitrary, and that the runners-up may have some claim on some of the lower-rung slots.

On the other hand, because I was filling content for my blog every day, I ended up writing at least a few words, and sometimes a few more than that, on each of these films placed on my top 10. I have linked the appropriate article, and, since these writings are basically informal musings of varying lengths, added a link to a particularly favored review by someone who has taken the time and thought to craft a serious critical piece on each in my top ten.

1. Leviathan (Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor) - Max Goldberg
2. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach) - Vadim Rizov
3. Like Someone In Love (Abbas Kiarostami) - Kenji Fujishima
4. The Place Beyond The Pines (Derek Cianfrance) - Michael Sicinski
5. Drug War (Johnnie To) Hua Hsu
6. 12 Years A Slave (Steve McQueen) - ReBecca Theodore-Vachon
7. The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbinski) - Ryland Walker Knight
8. All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor) Dana Stevens
9. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth) - Cheryl Eddy
10. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen) - Adam Nayman

Runners-up, alphabetically by title: At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman), Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski) Metallica Through the Never (Nimród Antal), Our Nixon (Penny Lane), Passion (Brian De Palma), The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

Ten (as far as I know) undistributed favorites, alphabetically by title: Big Joy: the James Broughton (Stephen Silha, Eric Slade & Dawn Logsdon) Bright Mirror (Paul Clipson), Dusty Stacks of Mom (Jodie Mack), Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 8 (Rick Prelinger), My Way To Olympia (Niko von Glasow), The Realist (Scott Stark), The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher), Tokyo Family (Yoji Yamada), Verses (James Sansing), Walker (Tsai Ming-Liang)

HOW: Inside Llewyn Davis has digital showings only, which is a shame because it was shot on 35mm by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, and is rumored to be the last Coen Brothers film to be shot on film (Delbonnel has already stepped into the digital world with next year's shot-in-North Beach release Big Eyes). Or perhaps it's not such a shame after all, as the Coens note they edit digitally and in fact pioneered the use of digital intermediates with  O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

Inequality For All (2013)

WHO: Robert Reich is the focus of this documentary.

WHAT: This breezy documentary addresses a weighty topic, the causes and ill effects of the enormous gap between the wealth and income of a few very rich Americans, and that of the rest of us. Some have lamented that the film doesn't go far enough in arguing for effective solutions to the economic mess we find ourselves in, and it's a fair point to be sure. But clearly the filmmaker (Jacob Kornbluth, a local) felt his film would be more powerful as a tool to raise awareness about the magnitude of the issue, and perhaps even convert some skeptics. To that end, he doesn't go overboard on hammering political points but rather centers his film on one eloquent and tireless advocate of the importance of this issue, UC Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, whose biography, it turns our, mirrors his chosen cause in poignant ways. Kalvin Henley has written a more complete review I can recommend reading.

WHERE: Screens at 9:00 tonight and at 6:30 tomorrow and Thursday at the Camera 3 in San Jose, and multiple times daily at the California Theatre in Berkeley at least through this Thursday. UPDATE 11/12/2013: The Balboa is also screening the film multiple times daily through Thursday.

WHY: Whether you feel you've heard Reich's arguments enough or feel you could never hear them enough (or more likely, fall somewhere in between those points on the scale), you may be interested in seeing Inequality For All simply for the local angle. A great deal of the documentary was shot in the Bay Area, including the above image of downtown Oakland's majestic Paramount Theatre (which screens The African Queen for $5 this Friday, incidentally).

Reich appears (with much less screen time, I'm led to believe) in another documentary coming to Frisco Bay soon: Frederick Wiseman's latest institutional investigation At Berkeley, which takes a more comprehensive view of the workings of the University of California's flagship campus. Since I last speculated about where it might screen, I've learned it will come to UC Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive December 3rd that Wiseman will be on hand for, but that will  be open only to the University's students, faculty and staff. A second PFA showing will occur January 18th, 2014 (dare I hope along with a retrospective of Wiseman films? It's been over ten years since the last), but before that both the Elmwood and the Roxie will screen At Berkeley for at least a week starting December 6th, with opening night screenings accompanied by a Skype q&a with the director.

HOW: Inequality For All was made and will screen digitally.

Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (1998)

WHO: Terry Gilliam directed this.

WHAT: This psychedelic adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's scalding portrait of American decline at the end of the 1960s is the last Terry Gilliam film that I really enjoyed, and it seems hard to believe it was released into multiplexes fifteen years ago. (I saw it at the Kabuki.) Gilliam's back-cover blurb for Bob McCabe's book Dark Knights and Holy Fools seems all the more poignant to a (former) fan in hindsight:

When Bob approached me about this book I was in the middle of making Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. As I continued with that movie, it started to become clear to me that it was a culmination of many things for me, maybe even a natural end to one stage of my work. So now seemed like a good time to look back at what we've been doing all these years.

WHERE/WHEN: Today only at the Castro Theatre at 4:35 and 9:35.

WHY: This is precisely the kind of film that made for a perfect revival at the Red Vic Movie House, which shut its doors and removed its 35mm projector a little under two years ago. So it seems a good time to mention that the Haight Street space is in the midst of preparing for it's second act, literally: it'll be turned into a performance space called Second Act that is expected to include screenings (on video, presumably) as part of its repertoire. Check its Facebook page for details and updates.

It also seems like a good time to mention a few screenings and series that may appeal to the, shall I say, "impaired" moviegoer. Former Market Street movie palace the Warfield is having a rare screening in the midst of its usual fare of live concerts and comedy performances. This Saturday it shows Jay And Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie, featuring characters created by Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, who will be on hand (live in person, I think, though promotional materials don't 100% clear that it won't be a live-by-digital hookup situation) for a Q&A. I'm not a Kevin Smith, but I'm a little tempted to attend just so I can say I've seen a movie in the venue that played the likes of Gone With the Wind and Spellbound in the classic Hollywood era, more cultish hits like The Hobbit and Dawn of the Dead during the 1970s, and where I've seen concerts from musicians from Tears For Fears to George Clinton to Einstürzende Neubauten.

The Landmark Clay Theatre continues to run midnight movies all summer long (this weekend is Jaws) and while their recently-installed digital projection system has precluded the use of 35mm projectors or prints, several of the shows attempt to make up for that with live elements, including an appearance by author JT Leroy at a June 28 showing of Asia Argento's The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things. Other bookings include the Frisco premiere of horror anthology V/H/S/2 and monthly showings of Tommy Wiseau's The Room. In case scotchka is your favorite method of impairment. The Camera 3 in San Jose has its own midnight/cult movie series, and is the last Frisco Bay venue that still regularly shows The Room and The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 35mm.

I definitely get a sense from the programming of this summer's sets of outdoor movie screenings (those in Marin and San Francisco are tracked at this website) that they've opted to pick movies less likely to bring audiences who like to flout open-container laws and send wafts of funny smoke into the atmosphere, than in some previous years. But these (all-digital) projections seem worth mentioning as well as the season gets underway.

But the Castro itself has more "cult movies" to show after tonight as well. Tomorrow it's Repo Man, on a 35mm double-bill with one of director Alex Cox's inspirations, Kiss Me Deadly. The 37th Frameline festival starts there the next day, and includes among its lineup the long-awaited return of Peaches Christ to midnight-movie hosting duties as she presents the (I've been told) surprisingly queer A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddie's Revenge starring "scream queen" Mark Patton. Of what we know of the Castro line-up after Frameline ends June 30th, the most relevant selections to this theme appear to be the horror movies screening in early July: Jaws on the 3rd of the month, and Suspiria and The Exorcist paired on the 12th.

HOW: On a 35mm double-bill with Oliver Stone's The Doors.

Before Midnight (2013)

WHO: Richard Linklater directed and co-wrote, with his lead actors Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, this  feature.

WHAT: What started out as nothing more than a particularly fortuitous mid-nineties Indiewood feature (Before Sunrise) and nine years later became an audacious experiment in sequelization (Before Sunset) is now, with Before Midnight, well on its way to turning into a monumental reinvention of that long-buried, little-regarded cinematic genre: the Saturday matinee serial. Only these films aim at adult audiences, feature more talk than action (or perhaps it's more accurate to say talk as action), and neither compress nor extend time between one episode's cliffhanger and the next's opening moment, but rather allow the audience and the actors as long to wonder what's befallen beloved characters Celine (Delpy) and Jessie (Hawke) in each nine-year interim. So real does this snapshot-moment approach feel, that most critics bypass making comparisons to Pearl White or Buster Crabbe, and head straight to Michael Apted's 49-year, 8-segment (and counting) documentary epic the "Up Series" when making cinematic comparisons in their reviews.

I found Before Midnight to be an incredibly satisfying part three in this (so far) trilogy; it keeps the spirit of the originals (neither of which I've revisited in more than brief clips since 2004) while making some serious structural departures that feel like perfectly logical extensions of the project. But I don't feel I have the words in me to write a review that truly does justice to the achievement here. So instead I'll link to the film's Metacritic page, wherein you'll find plenty of other reviews by some of the country's better critics. I'll note they range from the mostly positive to the wholly positive; I haven't seen any well-argued pans of Before Midnight yet.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens multiple times daily at various screens around Frisco Bay this week, including the Embarcadero, Shattuck, Kabuki, Sequoia, Guild, and Camera 7 Theatres.

WHY: You should know, if you haven't already figured it out, that Linklater is not just a filmmaker but a real cinephile. In the 1980s he co-founded the Austin Film Society and befriended one of the real titans of American experimental film, James Benning; this friendship is the subject of a currently-in-production film by one of the smartest young cinephiles around, Gabe Klinger.

Linklater's devotion to the underseen masterpieces of cinema history is well-documented as well; he recently had a piece on Vincente Minnelli's Some Came Running published in a book and excerpted in Movie City News (that film screens the Stanford Theatre this Thursday & Friday). Another Minnelli film The Clock came up as an acknowledged influence on the "Before Trilogy" in his on-stage appearance at the San Francisco International Film Festival with Julie Delpy and Mike Jones a month ago. (And a lovely clip from it came up in Christian Marclay's The Clock during the early, coffee drinking hours of the installation.)

Delpy was on the verge of revealing another classic film influence on the trilogy, and on Before Midnight in particular, during that SFIFF conversation, but was pulled back by her director, who apparently wanted to keep it a surprise for the audience, most of which had not seen their film yet but would the following night at the fest's designated closing screening. In that spirit I won't reveal the title on this blog other than by linking to the Castro Theatre and Rafael Film Center pages for its upcoming screenings at those venues. So click if you've already seen Before Midnight or don't mind having one of its cinephile references spoiled in advance.

HOW: I believe Before Midnight, the first in Linklater's/Delpy's/Hawke's trilogy to have been shot digitally, is only available to screen as a DCP right now.

Persécution (2009)

WHO: Patrice Chéreau directed, and Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg star in this.

WHAT: I have not seen it, so let me quote from the always-perceptive acquarello:

Stitching together pieces of a seemingly rootless and unremarkable life as itinerant worker, nursing home volunteer, and insecure lover, Chéreau creates a lucid and provocative exposition on the ephemeral - and searing - nature of the search for human connection.

WHERE/WHEN: 7:30 PM tonight and 5:00 PM Wednesday at the Vogue. UPDATE: A reader informs me it also screens March 20th at the Camera 3.

WHY: The Vogue screens this as part of the local stop of a touring package of contemporary French films entitled Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Though the series began on Friday, all but one of the titles play at least once more before Thursday, including Claudine Nougaret & Raymond Depardon's Journal de France, Jacques Doillon's You, Me & Us, and Patrice Leconte's The Suicide Shop.

HOW: I'm not sure. The Bay Area Film Calendar doesn't list any of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema screenings on its site, but that may be because the series snuck up on its compiler of local film-on-film screenings as quickly as it did on me. UPDATE: A reader informs that all these screenings will indeed be digitally projected.

Amour (2012)

WHO: Michael Haneke directed this.

WHAT: I know that earlier this week I said I don't do public Oscar predictions, but that wasn't meant to be a promise. I just can't resist going out on a limb with this one. Although Amour has been picking up prizes left and right starting with its Cannes debut and most recently at the Césars and the Independent Spirit Awards, is nominated in five Academy Award categories, and is widely expected to win in at least one of them today, Yet I predict the Amour team will go home empty-handed. If Amour does win an award. it won't be the one everyone thinks it will.

I'm not saying Amour doesn't deserve any Oscars. It's a very well-made film, and if I were an Academy voter myself I'd have strongly considered voting for it, at least in the only one of its five categories in which I've seen all of the nominees for: Best Director. But like most of Haneke's films its unblinking treatment of the illnesses of old age makes it an extraordinarily bleak viewing experience. To quote the tweet I typed after exiting the theatre, "You're riding a plane slowly crash-landing into Hell. With each cut the pilot makes you look out the window at the descent".

I would be thoroughly shocked if a film this harrowing is what a plurality of Oscar voters are going to want to present as the face of the film year by awarding it Oscars in top categories like Best Picture or Best Director. And although some believe there's a groundswell of support for the great Emmanuelle Riva to snatch the Best Actress in a Leading Role trophy, there's a lot of campaigning muscle being put behind other more bankable candidates, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who admires the performance of her (un-nominated) co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant more than hers. The Original Screenplay award is a tougher call; the Slant pundits make a good argument that this will break Amour's way in the absence of any other credibly viable candidates. Personally I'm rooting for Moonrise Kingdom here, but I wouldn't be so surprised to be wrong on this one. 

But I would be surprised, going completely against the tide, to see Amour take home the best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This bout of confidence will sound even more bizarre when I drop the other shoe: I haven't seen any of the other nominees in this category. I let A Royal Affair's theatrical run pass me by last year, and had to miss the Rafael's advance screenings of Kon-Tiki (which the Weinstein Company will release in April) and War Witch (which opens at the Roxie March 15th) and a press screening of No (which opens at the Embarcadero March 1st). So it's only a gut instinct that makes me feel that any of these other four films is more likely to win than the supposed frontrunner is. They all sound more up the Academy's alley than the film I watched last month.

Why would I know something all the pundits don't? I think some may be forgetting that a Haneke's last film the White Ribbon won quite a large number of so-called "precursor" awards on its way to Oscar night a few years back, and was widely predicted to win the award, but ultimately lost to the Argentine political thriller The Secret In Their Eyes. Some may remember that, but note that Amour has more evident support from the wider Academy, with its four nominations in other categories. But the same could be said about Pan's Labyrinth and Amelie, both of which also were multi-laureled frontrunners, but lost Oscars to The Lives of Others and No Man's Land, respectively. 

"Ah, but neither of those were also nominated for Best Picture," I hear some of you say. "Foreign Films nominated for Best Picture always win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar". What about Grand Illusion, The Emigrants, Cries and Whispers and Il Postino, then? "Well, none of those Best Picture nominees were actually nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the same time." Fair enough, I'll concede. But that leaves precisely three data points for this pattern you're trying to establish. Z in 1969, Life is Beautiful in 1998 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. It's just not enough of a trend for me to consider it significant, especially since these were all in the days of only five Best Picture nominees. I'm not so sure that Amour would have made the cut if there weren't nine slots in the top category this year.

Hype goes very far in awards season. But it can only go so far in the Foreign Language Film category, which is different from most Oscars in that, according to the rules, Academy members "can vote only after attesting they have seen all of the nominated films" in the category. Not only that, but historically, the films had to be seen at Academy-approved cinema screenings. I'm not certain if that's still the case, but the lack of most of the category's titles on lists of screeners received by Academy members makes me think it is. If the only Academy members voting in this category are the ones with the time and motivation to go to approved screenings, it's got to be a pretty small decision pool, and by the looks of recent lists of winners in this category, not one made up of fans of ice-cold clinical looks at the awfulness of the human condition. I think the collective consensus is much more likely to have picked a more inspirational or conventional movie, one they can take pride in 'discovering' for the rest of us to enjoy by anointing it with the priceless publicity of an Oscar.

WHERE/WHEN: Amour has multiple showtimes today through Thursday (and likely beyond) at the Clay, where it's been playing for many weeks (including when I saw it). Also playing at the Camera 3 in San Jose and other local venues.

WHY: If you don't care about Oscar season, I don't blame you. But if you haven't seen Amour yet you may want to do it soon, to get in the mood for the Pacific Film Archive's series devoted to actor Jean-Louis Trintignant that begins next Saturday. The aforementioned Z is one of the eleven films screening at the Berkeley venue.

HOW: Amour shows on 35mm at the Clay and the Camera 3, and (I believe) digitally elsewhere.

Castle In The Sky (1986)

WHO: Hayao Miyazaki, the greatest animator in Japan (and many argue, the world).

WHAT: In my unstudied opinion this was Miyazaki's first film in which he had all the resources (financial, autonomous, and creative) available to make a truly mature and cinematic animated film. When I say mature I don't mean 'for adults' of course; kids in every age group, from grammar school to retirement are able to connect with Castle in the Sky. But compared to Castle of Cagliostro, where he doesn't seem 110% interested in somebody else's material, and to Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which is a tremendous achievement and undoubtedly his (as it was based on a manga he created), but occasionally feels constrained by the animation medium, here he feels absolutely comfortable and in control with every sequence. Want more? I tweeted and podcasted (with Studio Ghibli-philes Adam Hartzell and Seiko Takada) after seeing it last fall.

WHERE/WHEN: At the Camera 3 in San Jose, only at 6:30 PM today and 8:50 PM tomorrow.

WHY: When there are prints of Studio Ghibli films in your town, you go. If you live in the South Bay you have no excuse not to attend this film and as much of the rest of this Miyazaki series as you can. Other titles with remaining screenings include Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away. Yes these are the English-dubbed versions but don't let that hold you back from a visual experience you won't regret.

HOW: 35mm print.