SCREEN GRABS The holidays are over, but the holiday movies remain, or in some cases are still arriving—a few awards-bait features opened only for qualifying runs in New York and LA before year’s end. The biggest such is Steven Spielberg’s The Post, about one real-life coverup spanning several Presidencies that unraveled during Nixon’s second term, handing the NY Times and Washington Post a big scoop not long before the regime-ending scandal of Watergate.
This paean to the power of a free press could hardly be more timely, yes. Still, it’s the kind of prestige mediocrity that inevitably gets nominated for umpteen Oscars not because it’s good—it isn’t—but because it’s “that kind of movie,” and because its major talents already have a walk-in closet worth of Oscars between them. Showboating lead performances by Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks only underline the obviousness of an enterprise whose good intentions are compromised by its air of banal self-congratulation.
There are, however, a fair number of more interesting films on tap this week:
THE GREEN FOG
To close its 60th anniversary program last year, the San Francisco International Film Festival had the excellent idea of commissioning beloved Canadian iconoclast Guy Maddin (The Saddest Music in the World) and his recent collaborators Evan and Galen Johnson to make a film with a likewise newly commissioned score by Jacob Garchik, played by the Kronos Quartet. The starting premise was to “remake Vertigo without using footage from the Hitchcock classic,” instead weaving a wide variety of archival clips—”golden age” Hollywood classics, ’70s thrillers, TV series, recent hits, all shot and/or set in San Francisco—to create a “parallel universe” version.
If you were lucky enough to see the Castro world premiere with live musical accompaniment last spring, or if you’d like to see the delightful results again, the Roxie is bringing The Green Fog back, this time with the score soundtracked. This collage feature may recall Vertigo only in the vaguest ways, but it’s a wonderful tribute to SF as a much-mined movie location, as well as a frequently hilarious prank of mash-up absurdism. You’ll catch not just your favorite local landmarks, but a bizarre array of stars ranging from Bogart and Joan Crawford to John Saxon, Sandra Dee, Richard “Shaft” Roundtree, and a particularly funny emphasis on that definitive non-representative of “San Francisco values,” Chuck Norris. Opens Fri/5 (four shows only), Roxie Theater. More info here.
HOSTILES
The upside to the fact that they don’t make many Westerns these days is that when they do make one, it’s no throwaway—it’s usually pretty good. This latest by director Scott Cooper of Crazy Heart and Black Mass is an ambitious tale set in 1892, when a US Army captain on the verge of retirement (Christian Bale) is ordered to escort a dying, long-imprisoned Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) back to his ancestral lands—a most unwelcome task, given the history of violent enmity between the two. En route their party—which grows to include a frontierswoman (Rosamund Pike) whose entire family has been killed by raiders—is under constant threat of attack by both white outlaws and warring tribes.
A mournful tale of loss and forgiveness, Hostiles might strike some as too “politically correct,” as it labors a bit artificially at times to orchestrate reconciliation between the US government, settlers, Natives, and even African Americans. (Jonathan Majors plays a black Army corporal, in a cast whose other notables include Stephen Lang, Adam Beach, Peter Mullan and Call Me By Your Name’s Timothee Chalamet.) Nonetheless, it’s an engrossing period adventure with strong performances and plenty of handsome scenery. Opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.
QUEST
After the triumph of formerly SF-based Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight and other films in 2016, 2017 emerged an equally strong year for African-American cinema: Not just in narrative features like Get Out and Mudbound, but in myriad strong documentaries about current and historical issues in the black community. Making its local debut a year after an acclaimed Sundance premiere, Jonathan Olshefski’s film chronicles several years in the lives of the Raineys, a couple in North Philadelphia who persevere despite some shocking, unexpected setbacks that we live through right alongside them.
It’s a powerful testament to the hurdles related to race, crime, financial hardship, and so forth that frequently arise even for black families who “do everything right.” Sober, gainfully employed, loving parents who stress the importance of education, the Raineys don’t fit any racist stereotype of how African-Americans “only have themselves to blame” for failing to advance in our supposedly classless society. Opens Friday, Roxie. More info here.
HAPPY END
Austrian writer-director Michael Haneke has only been a staple on the US arthouse circuit for fifteen years, since The Piano Teacher memorably initiated his enduring collaboration with Isabelle Huppert. So it might not have registered that he’s 75 years old—old enough to begin repeating himself, certainly. This latest (his first since 2012’s Amour) feels like a respectable but rote retread, critiquing bourgeoise hypocrisy and social inequities without the stronger impact he’s usually managed before.
A mother’s overdose lands a 12-year-old girl (Fantine Harduin as Eve) in the Calais household of a remarried father (Mathieu Kassovitz) she’s had little to do with until now, and who isn’t exactly a natural in the paternal role. Also under that roof are his sister (Huppert), an icy businesswoman whose attentions do nothing to help a hapless adult son (Franz Rogowski); and their senile tycoon father (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who wishes Death would hurry up to claim him. It takes him a while to realize that budding little dormant-volcano-of-dysfunction Eve might help.
There’s the usual masochistic Haneke payoff of some truly cringe-worthy moments—notably a classic “ruined dinner party” climax, and one memorably over-the-top karaoke performance that’s a rare comedy highlight for this director. Still, this is a comparatively minor work by a major artist. Opens Friday at Bay Area theaters.
BLOODY MUSIC AND EXPLODING CHESTS AT THE ALAMO
While the SF Main Library continues its series of local punk films, the Drafthouse offers a one-night look at NYC’s underground music of the late 1980s. Video artist Charles Atlas’ 1989 Put the Blood in the Music takes the pulse of Manhattan music-makers at the time, with particular emphasis on avant-garde composer and improviser John Zorn as well as the emerging noise-rock gods Sonic Youth. Others heard from in passing include Lydia Lunch, performance artist Karen Finley, veteran scenester John Cale, and the Times critic John Rockwell. Little seen outside one UK television broadcast, it’s a valuable time capsule whose subjects positively reek of that classic “downtown” Noo Yawk combination of brattiness and pretension. Mon/8, Alamo Drafthouse. More info here.
There’s nothing pretentious in the least about the next night’s Terror Tuesdays selection, 1980 Italian exploitation flick Contamination. It, too, reflects its cultural moment—when nearly every piece of horror shlock felt compelled to imitate the chest-bursting gore of recent smash Alien. There are plenty of exploding bodies in this mostly Earthbound tale of humanity imperiled by acid-filled space-creature eggs that turn out to have been secretly brought back by a recent mission to Mars. British actor Ian McCulloch (not to be confused with the Echo and the Bunnyman frontman) plays the “good” astronaut. There’s also a bad one—and a giant green alien “cyclops” straight out of a cheesy 1960s Japanese sci-fi thriller. Other attractions include a score by rock soundtrack specialists Goblin (of Argento’s Suspiria) and some really terrible dubbed English dialogue. Offered in a new restoration transfer, Contamination (also known as Toxic Spawn) was directed by Luigi Cozzi, also responsible for the camp classic Star Wars ripoff Starcrash (1978) and Lou Ferrigno’s two wonderfully ridiculous Hercules movies. Tues/9, Alamo Drafthouse. More info here.
2017 SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL SHORT FILM TOUR
Seemingly half the Bay Area film community will soon be leaving for Park City, Utah for the biggest annual event in national indie film and video. They’ll be braving the freezing cold to take their chances on whatever they can score tickets for at the Sundance Film Festival. But while you’re waiting for the breakout films (last year’s big ones included The Big Sick, Get Out, and Call Me By Your Name) to reach theaters, you can catch up with some of last year’s best short-form Sundance selections in this traveling program. It runs a prize-winning international gamut from documentary to narrative to experimental.
One we’ve already seen (as part of the Pacific Film Archive’s Polish Animation series) is Renata Gasiorowska’s Pussy, a delightful line-animation about a woman’s dedicated, albeit much-interrupted, quest for masturbatory fulfillment. Also on tap are actress Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut Come Swim, Peter Huang’s Canadian 5 Films About Technology, and several more. Opens Friday, Roxie. More info here.
