Lincoln Spector: IOHTE

The San Francisco Bay Area is still home to a rich cinephilic culture nurtured in large part by a diverse array of cinemas, programmers and moviegoers. I'm honored to present a selection of favorite screenings experienced by local cinephiles in 2015. An index of participants can be found here.

IOHTE contributor Lincoln Spector is the proprietor of the Bayflicks website. This commentary has been extracted and slightly adapted from a post on that site.

7. An entertainingly gruesome Halloween
Castro
35mm

On Halloween, my wife and i improvised costumes and headed for the Castro–not for the street party, but for the movies: a triple bill of Night of the Living Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Evil Dead. The show started with a hilarious selection of trailers–mostly of deservedly forgotten flicks. We skipped Massacre (I don’t care for it much) and enjoyed a very long intermission. The audience was rowdy and fun, and we ran into friends. Unfortunately, the print of Living Dead was badly battered.

6. Noir triple bill with the Stones (no, not those Stones)
Castro
Noir City
35mm (I think)
The Noir City festival is always fun. But in 2015, the festival’s highlight were three thrillers made by Andrew and Virginia Stone, a filmmaking team whose work I was completely unfamiliar with until this screening. None of them were masterpieces, but they were all well-made and enjoyable. The usual Noir City audience helped with the enjoyment.

5. Apu Trilogy 
Shattuck
DCP
I finally saw the Apu Trilogy this year, on three consecutive nights. It’s clearly one of the great masterpieces of cinema (or, arguably, three of the great masterpieces). And it has been beautifully reborn with one of the most impressive restorations in history. The original negatives were destroyed in a fire, but L’Immagine Ritrovata at the Cineteca di Bologna physically restored much of the melted negatives to the point where they could be scanned.

4. Visages d’enfants
Castro
San Francisco Silent Film Festival
DCP
I had never heard of this film before I read the festival program. It sounded interesting, but I didn’t know until it started that I was watching a masterpiece. Set in a small town high in the Alps, in what appears to be the last 19th century, Visages d’enfants follows the difficulties of what is now called a blended family–and–as is so often the case–it wasn’t blended very well. Beautiful restoration, and Stephen Horne‘s accompaniment–on piano, flute, and I’m not sure what else–just dazzled. Before the film, Serge Bromberg gave an informative and enjoyable introduction.

3. Oklahoma!
Elmwood
DCP
The new digital restoration allows us to enjoy the movie as it was meant to be seen–and that hasn’t been available for decades. Yes, the plot is silly and some of the cowboy accents are terrible, but when you see Oklahoma! on the big screen, with an audience, you discover what a remarkable piece of entertainment it is. The songs are catchy, the jokes are funny, and Agnes DeMille’s choreography is amongst the best ever filmed. And the new digital restoration allows us to experience it in something similar to the original 30 frames-per-second Todd-AO.

2. Piccadilly
Castro
San Francisco Silent Film Festival A Day of Silents
The last silent film I saw theatrically this year was one I’d wanted to see for years. The Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong finally gets the great part she deserved in this British drama about dancing and sex in a London nightclub. Musicians Donald Sosin (on piano and Macintosh) and John Mader (on percussion) put together an often jazzy, occasionally Chinese score that always served the story.

1.Three-Strip Technicolor Projection Experiences
Pacific Film Archive
35mm archival print & 4K DCP
In July, quite by happenstance, I was able to compare the old and new ways to project a film shot in Technicolor’s three-strip process. The first, Jean Renior’s The River, was screened pretty much as the original audiences saw it–in a 35mm dye-transfer print manufactured in 1952. The second, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann, has been digitally restored and was digitally projected. Each was wonderful in its own way.

At Berkeley (2013)

WHO: Frederick Wiseman directed this.

WHAT: It's the time of year when critics begin listing their best films of the year. I'm generally uncomfortable with applying the word "critic" to myself, as what I write on this blog and elsewhere only very rarely and fleetingly approaches the kind of critical writing I find valuable as a reader. But I expect I will at some point publish a list along these lines, as I have done in previous years. In the meantime I feel pretty comfortable calling At Berkeley the "Frisco Bay" film of the year. As in, the 2013 commercial release of a film shot locally that I think is most "essential viewing" for area cinephiles. Its main competition here is probably from Fruitvale Station and Blue Jasmine, and although I liked both of these films more than I expected to, in the latter case this is especially faint praise (I haven't really admired a new Woody Allen film in over fifteen years) and in the former it's just not enough to compete with a master filmmaker who may still be near the top of his game.

I recognize that not everyone thinks At Berkeley deserves to rank among Wiseman's best films. I must admit I haven't seen enough of them, and those I have perhaps not recently enough, to make a truly informed statement on the matter. But I have seen a good handful of his key works: Titicut Follies, High School, Primate, The Store, and several others including the 1963 film The Cool World which Shirley Clarke directed but that Wiseman, not yet having tried his hand behind the camera, initiated and produced. And although At Berkeley may not include any of the jaw-dropping "I can't believe he was able to film that" moments that make some of his films work almost as smoothly as exploitation (by which I mean exploiting a thrill-seeking audience, not his subjects) as they do as art and as intellectual fodder, I feel it stacks up with just about any of them in presenting an established institution both as true to its own traditions and as a microcosm of larger human concerns represented in its character. In an unmistakably Wiseman way.

Though there may be a tendency for a documentary about a school to resemble in some ways a streamed TED conference, Wiseman prevents his film from slipping into this territory. Every lecture or discussion fragment is bookended by shots of the campus environment that silently comment upon the preceding and subsequent scenes just as methodically as the "pillow shots" that reinforce the dramatic and comedic moments in a Yasujiro Ozu film. Frequently Wiseman's moments of this sort work to weave whole sections of a sprawling, four hour and four minute feature into a tight basket of narrative and argument. Michael Sicinski's review points to one of the more memorable instances of this, an image of a lawn mower maintaining the campus green.

Sicinski's review is excellently written and insightful about a good many of Wiseman's strategies. However, I feel the author may overstate Wiseman's desire to make us feel specific feelings about the (unidentified) participants in the institution he films. His is not the only article to do so; Katy Fox-Hodess has written a compelling account of the campus issues At Berkeley illustrates, from the perspective of someone who believes Wiseman has clearly picked the wrong side to "cheerlead" for; it's  fascinating reading for context, but leaps even further to its conclusions about filmmaker intention. Perhaps I'm missing something these writers are seeing because of my own biases, but I did not sense watching the film that Wiseman's own sympathies lay with then-chancellor Robert Birgeneau and his staff any more than it did with the protesting students. He presents both parties, illustrates their animosities towards each other, and allows both to make cases for their positions and to hang themselves with their own rope. My sense is that open-minded viewers are not guided by the filmmaker to make conclusions about these players, but encouraged to think hard about their perspectives, biases, and the strengths and limitations of their tactics. My own thoughts about Birgeneau while watching the film tended to mirror those of Genevieve Yue more than Wiseman's own public statements about him and his administration, which he could just as easily be making to stay on the good side of an institution that could still cause real trouble for his film's release into the market, as to reflect his own genuine feelings.

WHERE/WHEN: Twice daily at the Elmwood and once per night at the Roxie, through this Thursday, after which it drops to a single showtime per day at the Elmwood (and none at the Roxie). Also screens once at the Pacific Film Archive January 18th.

WHY: I haven't visited the Elmwood in a while, but it's surely the most Berkeley place to see At Berkeley unless perhaps you're willing to wait until January 18th when it returns to the Pacific Film Archive after last week's campus-community-only screening with the director in person, recounted here and expected to be represented on the PFA's list of in-person guest podcasts soon.

I saw At Berkeley at the Roxie however- the "Little Roxie" to be exact, and can certainly recommend that venue as a non-Berkeley option. If you go there, be sure to pick up the newest printed calendar, which details much of the Roxie's upcoming programming not yet available on its website, starting with the 35mm prints of Gone With the Pope, An American Hippie in Israel and Trash Humpers screening December 20th, continuing with the week-long booking of Jia Zhang-ke's controversial A Touch of Sin January 3-9, and well into February.

HOW: Digital production & presentation.

All Is Lost (2013)

WHO: Robert Redford stars in this. He's practically the only soul in sight during the entire movie, in fact.

WHAT: Mick LaSalle's generally dismissive review of this "old man and the sea" tale updated for the age of the adventure-seeking (and law-breaking) solo yachtsman has some genuine insight into why Redford is so effective in this role. But as is too often the case, LaSalle's disinterest in the inherent properties of cinema (the language of shots, cuts, and the relationship between sound an image) makes him oblivious to some of the film's merits. For me, it was as thrilling to see just how writer-director J.C. Chandor was going to tell this story of survival despite his self-imposed limitations: an almost complete lack of dialogue, no solid ground on the horizon, no attempts at backstory or getting into Redford's head by means other than his facial expressions and actions. It's among my favorite American films of 2013.

WHERE/WHEN: Multiple showtimes today through Thursday at the Opera Plaza and the Century 9 in San Francisco, and the Aquarius in Palo Alto. It also screens at the Elmwood in Berkeley at least through Thursday, December 12th.

WHY: Today the New York Film Critics Circle announced its 2013 awards, the first awards of the year I pay more than a minute's attention to. Year-end awards have their limitations as diviners of true quality pictures, but they do serve as effective promotion for films worth seeing in theatres.  The New York Critics this year gave awards to three films not yet arrived in Frisco Bay cinemas (American Hustle, The Wind Rises and Inside Llewyn Davis) and two no longer on local screens (Fruitvale Station and Stories We Tell) but the majority of other awarded films are still viewable in nearby theatres. A 35mm print of Blue Jasmine with the NYFCC Best Actress pick Cate Blanchett is still hanging on at the Opera Plaza. Foreign Film awardee Blue Is The Warmest Color continues at the Clay and other local cinemas. Dallas Buyers Club (which contains Supporting Actor Jared Leto's awarded performance) and 12 Years a Slave (which earned Steve McQueen a Best Director NYFCC award) continue at multiple theatres. But All Is Lost is not only my favorite of the five films I've seen that won awards today, it's also the only one that I'm not sure will still be playing on a San Francisco screen by the end of the week.

HOW: Shot digitally, All is Lost is projected via DCP at all aforementioned venues except for the Opera Plaza, which has a 35mm print.

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.

I'm So Excited (2013)

WHO: Pedro Almodóvar directed this.

WHAT: You may have heard films referred to as "Grand Hotel on a boat" (Ship of Fools or the 1953 Titanic) or "Grand Hotel on a train" (Shanghai Express") or "Grand Hotel on a stagecoach" (uh, Stagecoach.) The idea is that the multi-character melodrama can be transposed to any location imaginable. So here''s "Grand Hotel on a plane circling over Spain because of landing gear trouble". It's Pedro Almodóvar's second film in a row that takes 1930s film genres and fully updates them with his trademark color palette, getting extra mileage from his reputation as one of the world's foremost gay auteurs. The Skin I Live In took cues from mad scientist movies like Frankenstein and Mad Love while I'm So Excited goes back to the melodramas and musicals of (especially) the pre-code era. I'm thinking especially of a film like the bizarre and frothy but completely unforgettable International House. A seemingly weightless plot but one that does have room for the embedding of political satire in between its musical numbers. I'm So Excitedi's cabaret revue lip-synch sequence can't hold a candle to Cab Calloway singing "Reefer Man" but it doesn't disrupt narrative as much as it integrates into it. 

I'm not going to turn this into a longer piece as this has already been reviewed extensively elsewhere, but two of my favorite takes come from diehard Almodóvar fan Nathaniel Rogers and from the more analytical Richard Brody. Read those; I essentially agree with both.

WHERE/WHEN: Multiple showtimes daily through at least Wednesday at the Century 9 here in San Francisco, though at least Thursday at the Elmwood in Berkeley, and through at least July 18th at the CinéArts in Palo Alto.

WHY: Perhaps this is the wrong week for a farce about an airplane malfunction and an emergency landing, especially in San Francisco. On the other hand, perhaps it's just the right one.

HOW: Digital projections at each venue. I believe I'm So Excited is Almodóvar's first feature shot entirely with a digital camera.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

WHO: Quvenzhané Wallis was just great in this. her first film role with more on the way.

WHAT: This wasn't among my favorite films of 2012, mostly because I found it stylistically and/or thematically derivative of prior films by David Gordon Green, Spike Jonze and especially Terence Malick, whose influence hangs over the proceedings like a storm cloud over the Bayou. But it contains performances (Wallis's especially) that seem remarkable, and a number of scenes (I'm thinking of the "Girls Girls Girls" scene in particular) that capture a singular poetry worthy of comparison to the films it seems to be emulating.

WHERE/WHEN: Screens three times daily at the Opera Plaza, and twice daily at the Balboa and (in Berkeley) the Elmwood, at least until this Thursday.

WHY: Yes, my hunch was wrong about Amour getting shut out at the Oscars yesterday. I will have to modify my generalized, stereotypical image of Academy members accordingly. In fact, of the nine Best Picture nominees, only one team came out of the evening completely empty-handed: Beasts of the Southern Wild, which went 0 for 4. It had the least number of nominations among the nine (less even than Skyfall, which failed to make the Best Picture slate). During the ceremony, jokes were made from the stage about its status as the most truly "indie" of the nominees (one song lyric said it cost "fifty bucks"; I hope the folks at the San Francisco Film Society have a sense of humor; they awarded a pair of post-production grants and helped ensure editing and visual effects work was done here in San Francisco) and perhaps its nominated participants were simply happy to be there, amidst the entitled Hollywood royalty epitomized by Ben Affleck, whose receipt of a statue as producer of Best Picture-winning Argo didn't seem to do much to change his petulant demeanor, worn presumably because of the massive injustice done to him by the directors' branch that failed to nominate him in that category as well. Never mind the massive injustice his movie does to a great "stranger than fiction" story that deserved a better movie in my opinion. I shudder to think of latecomers entering the theatre to watch this movie after its opening montage has already completed; it's the only moment of the film that provides appropriate political context to a film that teeters dangerously close to jingoistic propaganda otherwise. Anyway, if you can't tell, I wish Beasts of the Southern Wild or any of the other nominees had bested Argo. Now the latter is likely to hang around on local cinema screens a lot longer than the former, which having gone winless I suspect doesn't have much of a theatrical life left in it. Its more modest flaws deserve to be overwhelmed by the big-screen experience.


HOW: In 35mm at the Opera Plaza and the Balboa. Digitally at the Elmwood.

Marin and Beyond

If you're not reading the GreenCine Daily website with the frequency prescribed by its title, you may not have noticed that the site published my interview with Lance Hammer, the director behind one of 2008's most assured and affecting debuts, Ballast. It was published a little more than a week ago, and already the pointer post has dropped off the main page (a tribute to the Daily editor David Hudson's unflagging prolificacy). I would have mentioned it here at Hell on Frisco Bay earlier, but I wanted to be able to name the Frisco Bay venues where the film will be showing starting the Friday. I've now learned that Ballast will open here in Frisco proper at the Sundance Kabuki, where a filmmaker q-and-a is expected to take place opening weekend. In the East Bay, the venue is Berkeley's Elmwood, and in the North Bay, it's the Rafael Film Center. Hammer is self-distributing his film, so a ticket purchase to Ballast at any of these venues might be seen as a vote for greater filmmaker (as opposed to distribution company) autonomy when it comes to controlling the release of their films.

Speaking of the Rafael Film Center, it recently released its calendar of film programs for the next few months. Just coming off its stint as a venue for the 31st Mill Valley Film Festival, the restored San Rafael theatre is the North Bay location to see a lot of the season's most exciting commercially-released films, new and old. There are a number of exclusive screenings that should tempt potential bridge-crossers to come to Marin county for a night at the movies as well.

First, let me talk about the latter category. If you missed last Friday's in-person tribute to Harriet Andersson hosted at the Rafael by the MVFF, you might want to note that she's still in town, and will be on hand for a screening of Ingmar Bergman's Sawdust and Tinsel tonight. The screening is part of an eclectic set of Bergman's theatrical and television works, some of which are making their Frisco Bay premieres at the Rafael this week. There are a few selections repeated from recent Bergman retros around Frisco Bay, such as Cries and Whispers, perhaps Andersson's most powerful performance, which plays October 16-17. But there are also genuine rarities such as the Blessed Ones and the Best Intentions. The full five-and-a-half hour television version of Bergman's crowning achievement Fanny and Alexander will make its West Coast theatrical premiere in a HD presentation on October 19-23.

From October 29-November 2 the Rafael will host a series entitled Irving Thalberg's MGM, showing three films the mogul made at the most "star-studded" studio in the early 1930s. On the 29th, Red Dust pairs Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the steaming jungles of colonial-era Vietnam. On the 30th it's Ernst Lubitsch's slice of perfection the Merry Widow. And Private Lives, a vehicle for Thalberg's wife Norma Shearer that I have not seen, rounds out the trio on November 2. Another short series is a four-film, seven-day (Dec. 5-11) stint of Janus Films' touring Essential Art House collection of landmark foreign classics that stopped by the Castro last year and the Pacific Film Archive the year before. (Which reminds me to mention that, according to the Janus website, the PFA has booked Masaki Kobayashi's trilogy, the Human Condition for February 15th.)

The Rafael will have three November one-off events with guest speakers: a November 15 screening of Wall-E accompanied by a presentation from sound designer Ben Burtt. Burtt, visual effects whiz Craig Barron and silent film historian John Bengstom will take a look at Charlie Chaplin's silent-sound hybrid Modern Times November 20th, and Christopher Plummer will be on hand for a showing of Man in the Chair November 29th. Perhaps even more eye-catching, at least to my baby blues, is the December 4th return of the now-traditional "the Films of..." series highlighting films made exactly 100 years ago, in this case the Films of 1908. It will include early efforts from Max Linder and D.W. Griffith, as well as J. Stuart Blackton's famous "trick" film the Thieving Hand, all accompanied by Michael Mortilla at the piano. Back then they were just films, but today motion pictures of the Thieving Hand's length are considered shorts, and the Rafael will also be presenting an exclusive selection of some of Sundance 2008's better efforts. I've seen three of them, which range from good (Dennis) to excellent (Yours Truly and my olympic summer, which both also show up on the new SF Cinematheque calendar on November 6th.)

There's three more Rafael bookings I'd like to highlight, but these are not Marin-exclusive screenings. Each is booked to play for at least a week at the Rafael, but also at other Frisco Bay theatres on the same dates. In reverse chronological order, I'll start with Lola Montès, opening November 19 at the Rafael, the Elmwood, and the glorious Castro Theatre. This is a picture that I've only seen on video, where one barely gets the sense of its grandeur and scope. I can't wait to see it on a screen big enough to do justice to director Max Ophuls' vision and to the larger-than-life life of its subject played by Martine Carol, Lola Montez (who counted Frisco Bay as one of her realms of conquest).

Momma's Man opens October 24 at the Rafael, the Camera 12 in San Jose, and the Clay. One of the very best new films I've seen all year, this is the third feature directed by Azazel Jacobs, son of avant-garde film legend Ken Jacobs. He cast his father and his real-life mother Flo Jacobs as the parents of the lead character Mikey, a new parent who cocoons in his childhood loft rather than face his responsibilities as husband and father. As strange and alienating as his behavior may seem, the relationship between Mikey and his parents feels so natural that I really felt I started to understand what might lead a grown man to act in such a way, and what might or might not be able to lead him back out of the vicious circle he's drawn around himself. At one point he asks, "is this an intervention?" as if he hopes the answer will be yes, but knowing deep down that his parents' personalities preclude them from giving him that kind of a wake-up call. For me, the final shot packed a powerful dose of emotion that was unexpected given the detached, almost casual style that the rest of the film uses to present, but not underline in a heavy-handed way, the heartache of the situation.

Finally, Ashes of Time Redux opens October 17 at the Rafael, the Camera 12, the Shattuck in Berkeley and the Lumiere. I've considered the original arthouse wuxia to be among director Wong Kar-Wai's most interesting films since watching a scratchy print at the 4-Star several years ago, but I've never gotten around to revisiting it. I had no idea that the screening would be the last chance I'd get to see the intact film. According to articles like this one, this Redux version is not a new "director's cut" like so many reissues these days, but rather an attempt to preserve film elements that were not only at risk but in fact already becoming unwatchable due to poor archival practices in the Hong Kong film industry. It's great to see Ashes of Time's images (shot by Christopher Doyle, of course) back up on cinema screens, in such vivid colors. But I must confess that some of the attempts to patch over preservation problems are very distracting, particularly the new musical score with its too-prominent cello parts. (Yo-Yo Ma is great, but is not the solution to every musical problem.) The cast is packed with the greats of what many consider to be the peak period of Hong Kong cinema, but there's something bittersweet about seeing them (especially the late Leslie Cheung) digitally-spruced-up for a release like this: one can't help but wonder how many other films from the years before the handover are left to decompose because nobody who cares enough has the clout to save them.

Frameline schedule announced

Frameline, the world's largest film festival devoted to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender filmmakers and images, announced its full program earlier today. The festival runs June 19-29 here in Frisco at the Castro, Roxie, Victoria, and in Berkeley, the Elmwood. I missed the press conference myself and haven't had time to peruse thoroughly, but two items stick out at first glance-over.

First, Derek, Isaac Julien's documentary on the life and art of Derek Jarman, will be playing at the Castro on Sunday, June 29th at 4:30 PM, just before the closing night film, Breakfast With Scot. Derek was my favorite documentary seen at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and I wrote about it here. I know I responded to it so well in part because I knew so little about the boundary-shredding British filmmaker beforehand. I'm curious to know how Frisco's true-blue Jarmaniacs will respond. Meanwhile, Jarman's Sebastiane and In The Shadow of the Sun (with soundtrack by Throbbing Gristle) are playing a screening totally unconnected to Frameline at A.T.A. Wednesday, May 21.

Second, this year's Frameline Award is going to its own outgoing festival director Michael Lumpkin, and a seven-film selection of past Frameline hits with real staying power will be included in the festival. I've seen four of them (Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche, the Wachowskis' Bound, Joseph Gaï Ramaka's Karmen Geï and my personal favorite of the quartet, Pedro Almodóvar's Law of Desire) on the big screen before, but never with Frameline audiences. I've never seen the other three (Big Eden, Lilies and Yes Nurse, No Nurse) at all.

See anything else in the guide that looks particularly good?