Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014)

A scene from Diao Yinan's BLACK COAL THIN ICE, playing at the 58th San Francisco International Film Festival, April 23 - May 7 2015. Courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society

WHO: Liao Fan (last seen in Jackie Chan's dreadful CZ12) won the Best Actor prize at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival for his role in this. (He's the one lighting up in the above photo.)

WHAT: It's interesting to contrast this somber procedural, the third feature by Beijing-based filmmaker Diao Yinan, against an earlier wave of Chinese-language crime movies that came up in the post-film presentation with Film Workshop's Nansun Shi after her and her husband Tsui Hark's Taking of Tiger Mountain at the festival yesterday. In the late-eighties Hong Kong thrillers directed by the likes of John Woo and Ringo Lam, Hollywood stylistic influences are worn loudly and brightly (and taken to sometimes absurd levels), while cops exude a kind of glamorous cool even as they commit objectively despicable acts. It's elements like this that I feel may give some credence to James Naremore's suggestion that the North American vogue for Hong Kong action in the 1990s was "indulging in fin de siècle Orientalism," although I personally feel there was a lot more to it than that- a topic for another discussion at another time.

It may be overly-obvious to state that a film like Black Coal, Thin Ice feels far more attuned to international arthouse than pop cinema, both formally and thematically (although these inseparable realms in fact reinforce each other). There's far more ambiguity in this moral universe, and Liao's role as Zhang is that of a real neo-noir protagonist; one that appears more pathetic than glamorous. When we first meet him, he's at a train station seeing off his former wife, and can't help but try to force himself on her one last time before she leaves his life for good. It's like the opposite of a "save the cat" gesture intended to make audiences like an on-screen character better. For the rest of the film, we hang on the open question of whether we're going to find anything redeeming about this authority figure, as much or more than we wonder what the solution to the gruesome mystery at the center of the plot: who is chopping up human bodies and disposing of their pieces in a coal plant.

It's a grim film, but a highly compelling one, set in eye-opening industrial urban landscapes and punctuated by impactful moments contrasting with the rest of the methodical, clinical tone, such as sudden burst of violent action in the midst of a wrong turn in the investigation, or an almost tender close up on Zhang and a female character, chillingly coming right after the most overt visual reference to Carol Reed's The Third Man in the film, of the several noted by John Berra. Though Black Coal, Thin Ice isn't quite up to the standards of that landmark of British and indeed international cinema, it's a worthwhile genre piece that will be giving scholars much to pick over as it's discussed in the context of a rapidly-transforming nation in the coming years.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens 6PM today at the Clay, and 9:15 PM Wednesday at the Kabuki as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF).

WHY: If you've been seeing just one SFIFF film per day following my daily picks, you haven't seen anything made outside of the United States of America yet. And this is supposed to be an international film festival? I haven't crunched numbers yet, but I do get the sense that U.S. (mostly independent and underground, not Hollywood, of course) films are taking a more generous share of the attention at the festival this year, and I'm sorry to perpetuate that. My excuse: wanting to write about films I've seen rather than those I haven't each day; I'll be able to weigh in on more foreign titles as the festival rolls on. Anyway, I'm glad to finally get the ball rolling with a film from China, which has five titles listed in the SFIFF's "country index" in the back of its catalog. Others include The Taking of Tiger Mountain (mentioned above and playing again on Thursday), Peter Ho-sun Chan's Dearest (also screening Thursday), an American-made no-budget documentary on the Chinese rail system called The Iron Ministry (screening again May 4). There are two more chances to see Red Amnesia, another thriller that seems a productive pairing with Black Coal, Thin Ice as it was made by a director (Wang Xiaoshuai) just three years older than Diao; their two films even share the same editor, Yang Hongyu!

HOW: DCP presentation.

OTHER SFIFF OPTIONS: Today is the final festival screening of the German film Stations of the Cross and of Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno Live! with director Jody Shapiro, not to mention its titular cinema-royalty star, in attendance.

NON-SFIFF OPTION: The Roxie Cinema is screening a week-long engagement of the (human) injury-plagued 1981 cult classic Roar. Tonight it screens at the "Big Roxie" (as opposed to the smaller-screened "Little Roxie" two doors down) at 9:15.

Bastards (2013)

WHO: Claire Denis

WHAT: I haven't seen this film yet and I haven't read any reviews yet. I'm sold on seeing this film just on the basis of its director alone; all I really know is that it's her first feature film made on digital video. (Does this mean that White Material will stand as her last shot on film?) But I'm glad to know that, once I've seen the film and an ready to read reviews, David Hudson has been collecting links to them since its first US showing last month.

WHERE/WHEN: 8:30 PM tonight only at the Clay Theatre.

WHY: It's the final day of the San Francisco Film Society's annual French Cinema Now showcase, and some of the heaviest-hitting directors have been saved for last. The day starts with House Of Radio, the newest documentary from the maker of To Be And To Have and many other popular non-fiction imports. That's followed by the weekend's second showing of Anna Novion's Rendezvous in Kirina, which the Film Society gave pride of place on its festival marketing materials. I'm also very excited to see Vic & Flo Saw A Bear, the latest from French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Côté, who made the wonderful Curling in 2010. Bastards closes the program, and then the SFFS does it all again at the Clay next week with its longest-standing mini-festival, New Italian Cinema.

HOW: Digital screening.

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.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

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

WHAT: I first saw The Big Lebowski the way most people I know did: on home video. I remember renting the videocassette fifteen years ago and thinking, "hey that's better than most Coen Brothers movies" and then thinking little of it for quite some time. Until this weekend I had not seen it on the big screen.

But this film slowly and surely developed a following like few other films of its era. I'm pretty sure it's the only Coen Brothers film that has inspired its own religion (founded by an old acquaintance of mine, no less), and probably the one that has inspired more DVD editions (including one worked on by another friend) and more books than any other, as well.

Even Josh Levine, who published a book about the Coens in 2000 (when The Big Lebowski was their newest completed film), seems oblivious that it might be the one that would develop the most cultish fan attention, focusing his chapter on the film's preparation, and when talking about its reception limiting his observations to that of the critical consensus, and to the fact of its box-office disappointment in the wake of Fargo. But he does, in his final chapter, put his finger on why The Big Lebowski may be different from the other Coen works, calling it an exception to the rule that "every one of their films leaves the viewer feeling distinctly uneasy ... Even the comic Raising Arizona has a nightmarish quality, and the hero and heroine may have had their lives ruined by their own uncontrollable impulses."

WHERE/WHEN: Tonight only at the Clay Theatre at 11:55 PM.

WHY: The Clay is set to replace its 35mm projection equipment with DCP next Friday. They already have a lower-quality digital projector in place, which is being used to show this week's regular booking, the biopic Renoir, about the great French filmmaker's famous father. This means that tonight's midnight screening of The Big Lebowski will be the last time 35mm reels will be shown publicly at the venue.

The Clay is one of San Francisco's oldest movie houses, and has been projecting 35mm prints from all over the world for over a hundred years. In the 1930s, it showed a great many French imports; just just the widely-known ones by Renoir but still-relatively-obscure titles like Anatole Litvak's Mayerling, Sascha Guitry's Pearls of the Crown and Robert Siodmak's Personal Column. It also showed films from countries such as (for example) Russia, Sweden, Austria, China, and the U.K.

Though keeping its reputation for foreign film exhibition through the following decades, in the 1970s the Clay became a stop on the burgeoning midnight-movie circuit, screening fare like John Waters's Pink Flamingos to a late-movie-hungry crowd in an age before home video and widespread cable television. The Rocky Horror Picture did not make its original local debut at the Clay but, according to Gary Meyer, the Metro II, before moving to the Powell as a midnight movie. Now it screens monthly at the Clay, along with other periodic midnight screenings such as The Room, The Big Lebowski, etc. I've seen 35mm midnight shows of films from The Shining to Johnnie To's The Mission to Donnie Darko over the past ten years or so. 

But now it's time for the Clay to go "on hundred per cent electronic" as Jackie Treehorn might say. It's unfortunate that  the DCP industry has figured out a way to strong-arm most theatres to adopt a "no turning back" policy, removing 35mm projection equipment even from booths with the room to accommodate both. For a theatre like the Clay, the philosophy seems to be "adapt or die". For a 103-year-old movie house which has survived plenty of closure scares over the years, maybe it's good news as it seems to reflect confidence in future survival of the venue to invest in new technology for it. Hopefully it will mean the Clay can continue to show an increasingly diverse selection of midnight movies and foreign films to appreciative crowds for some time to come.

It seems a good time to mention the final three 35mm screenings happening at SFMoMA before their closure in just over a month, since they all seem to connect to The Big Lebowski in some (perhaps oblique) way. The museum's final 35mm showing will be May 23's The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman's Raymond Chandler adaptation that seems to have held more influence on the Coens' approach to reinterpreting that author than other films by Howard Hawks, etc. May 16 they screen Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, the film that essentially launched Lebowski lead Jeff Bridges's stardom. And on May 9th SFMoMA screens The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese's documentary record of The Band's farewell concert, an event that Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski might well have attended a good decade or so before his days as a roadie for Metallica. No, no members of The Eagles are invited.

HOW: The Big Lebowski will screen from an excellent if not pristine 35mm print, accompanied by an assortment of rare, vintage trailers and other odds and ends prepared by the Clay projectionist to run through the gate one last time.