Castro Theater's August 2016 Calendar

This blog is really limping along.  I'm not posting at all and I'm watching fewer films than at any time in the last decade.  I don't know what I'm going to do with this blog.  My life is still in transition since my father's death last year.

Wednesday nights at the Castro in August were I Wake Up Dreaming by Elliot Lavine - allegedly his final noir series program.  I had seen several of the films on the program but still it was unfortunate I couldn't catch any of the programs.

I only saw two films at the Castro in August.  It was a double bill on August 12 that looked a lot a Midnites for Maniacs program but it wasn't.  Speaking of which, Midnites for Maniacs launched a new website in July.  It also appears that the Maniac's new home base is at the Roxie.  They haven't held an event at the Castro since May.

The Goonies starring Sean Astin & Corey Feldman; with Josh Brolin, Robert Davi & Joe Pantoliano; directed by Richard Donner; (1985)
The Lost Boys starring Jason Patric & Corey Haim; with Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, Corey Feldman & Dianne Wiest; directed by Joel Schumacher; (1987)

I had never seen The Goonies.  It's a cult classic but I'm about 5 to 10 years too old to have appreciated it as a child.  I've seen portions of it on television many times but I never really got into it.  I decided to watch it once through on the big screen to see if I could appreciate the film.  The short answer is no.  I always thought Steven Spielberg directed the film but to my surprise Richard Donner helmed the film.  Donner would make Lethal Weapon (a film I still admire) two years after The Goonies.  Goonies is filled with too much slapstick and silliness for my taste.  It's difficult for this 40something year old to embrace his inner child via The Goonies.

I saw The Lost Boys when it came out in the theaters in 1987.  The film was directed by Joel Schumacher who would go on to make some of the less admired Batman films of the Tim Burton era.  Scanning Schumacher's filmography, I think The Lost Boys ranks among his best.

Jason Patric plays the new kid in town who falls for the beautiful motorcycle chick (Jami Gertz).  What he doesn't know is that the gang she rides with aren't just Goth bikers but vampires.  Led by the charismatic David (Kiefer Sutherland in a flashy performance), the gang initiates Michael into their gang/coven. 

Fortunately for Michael the initiation is a two step process:  first he gets bitten by a vampire and second he must feast on the blood a victim.  Michael steadfastly resists the second part.  Serendipitously, Michael's younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) has become acquainted with the Frog brothers - two comic book store workers who are vampire hunters as a side gig.  These two are memorably portrayed by Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander. 

Patric & Sutherland provide the angst & menace (which works equally wells as teenage rebellion or vampiric tendencies).  Feldman & Newlander provide the comedy.  Haim provides the most outlandish 80s fashion.  If you throw in memorable rock-n-roll soundtrack & a particularly effective climax battle, The Lost Boys ranks as one of the 80s classics; it was as enjoyable as I recalled.  I think I enjoyed it more in my forties than my late teens.

§§§

Castro Theater Calendar - August 2016

Castro Theater's July 2016 Calendar

A little late this month but there are still a number of films playing at the Castro Theater in July which appeal to me. I have already seen four films at the Castro this month:

When We Were Kings and The Greatest on July 6 and American Psycho and Less Than Zero on July 8.

The 2016 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is at the Castro for the final 8 days in July.  I haven't really studied the program.  Before the SFJFF starts, two films interest me.

Mulholland Drive (July 13) - as Lynchian a film as David Lynch film has made to date.  I was a little befuddled by it when it came out in 2001 but I'm in the mood to reexamine the film.

Blow Out and Phantom of the Paradise (July 20) - for some reason I thought Brian De Palma recently died so I also thought this was a tribute double feature.  However, De Palma is still with us.  I confused De Palma with Michael Cimino.  I hope the Castro will program some Cimino films in August in tribute.  The Deer Hunter is the obvious choice and I would like to see it on the big screen.  I recall being impressed with Year of the Dragon (1985) when it came out but I was still in high school then.  I'm curious about Heaven's Gate which I have never seen.  It bombed at the box office and with critics and derailed Cimino's career.

Back to De Palma - I saw Blow Out at the Castro not so long ago.  Many consider it De Palma's best film (I'm still partial to Body Double but everyone has their favorite - Scarface, Carrie, The Untouchables, Dressed to Kill, etc.).  A couple days ago, I watched a little of Casualties of War on television.  It was strange to see a young John C. Reilly.  Otherwise, I was more impressed with the film than I was when it was released in 1989.  Blow Out beckons but it's the backhalf of the double bill which is the main draw for me.  I think the Castro has screened Phantom of Paradise 3 or 4 times in the past 2 years.  I keep missing the screenings.  I remember seeing Phantom as six or seven years old.  It had a PG rating but gave me horrible nightmares.  I can vaguely remember the the record pressing machine crushing Paul Williams face.

I should also note that the 2016 Japan Film Festival of San Francisco (JFFSF as opposed to SFJFF) is screening from June 23 to 31 at the Viz (I'm probably the one person who still calls it the Viz).  The Sacramento Japanese Film Festival is playing at the Crest Theatre next week (July 15-17).  I've seen three of the seven films on the schedule so I'm not sure if I'll make the trip.

§§§

Castro Theater Calendar - July 2016

Castro Theater's June 2016 Calendar

I did not go to the Castro Theater in May.  It's unusual for me not to attend a single screening there for an entire calendar month.

The highlight for the June calendar is the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival from June 2 to 5.  Frameline also occupies the Castro for 11 days in June.  The theater is closed or booked for private events for 8 days during the month.

I'm also planning a trip to the Sacramento French Film Festival in June.  The program has not been announced but the festival dates will be June 17 to 19 and 24 to 26.  For the first time, the festival is screening films at a second venue.  The primary venue remains the Crest Theater but on June 19, the festival moves a few blocks down K Street to the Esquire IMAX Theater.

I should also note that the 2016 San Francisco Documentary Film Festival (DocFest) is running from June 2 to 16 which means it conflicts with the Silent Film Festival.  The DocFest venues are the Roxie, the Vogue and the Great Star.

Looking at the Castro's programming, the highlights are:

June 8 - Sugarland Express (1974) which was Steven Spielberg's feature film directorial debut.  It's paired with Midnight Special with Michael Shannon & Joel Edgerton.

June 9 - Under the Cherry Moon, a 1986 film starring & directed by Prince which I barely recall from its original release.  A commercial & critical flop, it seems to be alternative programming in response to multiple screenings of Purple Rain since Prince's death.  It is paired with Absolute Beginners which I enjoyed.

June 10 - Jesse Hawthorne Ficks continues his months long tribute to John Carpenter with a Midnites for Maniacs double bill of In the Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness.  Speaking of which, Ficks is at the Roxie tonight screening Carpenter's The Thing and Bone Tomahawk (San Francisco theatrical premiere).

§§§

Castro Theater Calendar - June 2016

Castro Theater's May 2016 Calendar

I haven't been writing much.  I'm still dealing with my father's estate and I was in a minor car accident in March which has taken up an outsized portion of my time & attention.  I've also been seeing quite a few movies and seeing a film always takes precedence over writing about a film.

The Castro Theater's May 2016 calendar is underwhelming for me.

I'd like to catch the double feature of Mommie Dearest and Gypsy on May 4 but that is the penultimate night of the 2016 San Francisco International Film Festival and I have purchased tickets to 2 films that evening.

Similarly, I have never seen Valley of the Dolls which screens May 10 with The Miracle Worker as part of a Patty Duke tribute.  Unfortunately, I have other plans that evening.

Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (May 14) caught my attention.  From May 13 to 16, the Roxie in conjunction with Midcentury Eclectic! (Elliot Lavine, Don Malcolm, et al.) is screening 12 films under the series title Archaeology of Arthouse.  I've bought a pass and plan to see several films in the series.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to get away to the Castro to see Argento's film.

I have yet to visit the new PFA.  There are three film series beginning in May which will likely lure me to Berkeley:  Mexican Film Noir (May 7 to June 11), The Films of Seijun Suzuki (May 7 to June 30) and the UCLA Festival of Preservation (May 15 to June 26).

Not shown on the Castro's May calendar is the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival which runs from June 2 to 5 at the Castro.

Many years ago (the early 1990s), one of my first visits to the Roxie was to see a Pedro Almodovar film.  I think I caught a double bill or a couple films over a few night.  I recall one film distinctly as Tie Me Up!  Tie Me Down!  The other film was Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls like Mom which I thought was unbelievably outré at the time.  I subsequently seen films which renders Pepi, Luci, Bom...as passé.  Almodovar has a special place in my cinematic pantheon as I relate those films with my early days in SF.  I mention this because the Roxie is screening six of his early films as part of a retrospective from May 20 to 26.

§§§

Castro Theater Calendar - May 2016

Castro Theater's April 2016 Calendar

Since it appears that there is no longer a puzzle within the Castro Theater's monthly calendar, I will modify my title lines appropriately.

Among the films on the April calendar which caught my attention are:

April 11 - Hail, Caesar! paired with Anomalisa. The latest Coen Brothers film is a flop at the box office but I read an interesting article about the film in Film Comment.  The film has a number of thinly veiled references to actual Hollywood figures which makes it more interesting for me.

April 15 - Midnites for Maniacs is presenting Big Trouble in Little China and Never Too Young to Die.  CAAMFest showed Big Trouble in Little China a few years ago.  I missed that screening and have not seen this film since the 1990s.  I remember enjoying this film quite a bit as a teenager & young man so I'm anxious to see how it stands up to my current sensibilities.

The San Francisco International Film Festival is at the Castro for six days between April 21 & 30 including the opening night film Love & Friendship.

I would like to see Mustang (April 5) & Breathless (April 6) but I have other plans on both evenings.

§§§

Castro Theater Calendar - April 2016

Maggie Cheung Double Feature at the Roxie

Last week, I stopped by the Roxie to see a Maggie Cheung double feature.  It was presented as part of a Staff Picks series where Roxie staff members choose a film(s).  I cannot recall which staff member chose the films but Executive Director David Cowen introduced the films.

Irma Vep starring Maggie Cheung; directed by Olivier Assayas; French & English with subtitles; (1996)
The Heroic Trio starring Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh & Maggie Cheung; directed by Johnny To; Cantonese with subtitles; (1992)

I believe the choice was Irma Vep but Cowen augmented the choice with The Heroic Trio because the latter film is referenced in the former.

A few observations:

I'm surprised how many people don't know what a double feature is.  I heard both people in front of me in line ask if they could buy a ticket for only one film and cashier explained what a double feature is.

A few years after filming Irma Vep, Maggie Cheung married Irma Vep director Olivier Assayas.

Irma Vep was the first time I have heard Maggie Cheung speak English.  Surprisingly she spoke with an English accent which I later learned was due to her having lived in England between the ages of 8 and 18.

Irma Vep is an anagram for vampire.  The slender plot of the film has Maggie Cheung playing herself - a Hong Kong actor named Maggie Cheung who is in Paris to film a remake of Louis Feuillade's silent serial Les Vampires.  Why would they cast a Chinese woman (with limited language skills) to play a French vampire?  In the film, it is because the director (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is infatuated with Cheung based on her performance in The Heroic Trio.

Anything beyond this plot description is superfluous.  The production of Irma Vep (the film within the film) is chaotic and dysfunctional.  There is sniping, backstabbing, the director goes missing and Cheung seems to fall under the spell of vampire on the set.

 Irma Vep is one of these films that kind of meanders and is punctuated with memorable scenes (many with Cheung wearing a latex bodysuit modeled on Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman costume).  There is a amusing interview where a journalist interviews Cheung.  He launches into a diatribe of state sponsored films which are targeted towards the intelligentsia before singing the praises of Schwarzenegger and Van Damme.

Assayas positions the camera intrusively as if we are eavesdropping on the conversations.  I'm not sure how much of Cheung's performance is improvised or revealing of her true personality but Irma Vep's Maggie Cheung is a winsome & appealing woman as she tries to navigate the bizarre situation she has found herself in.

I have a suspicion that Irma Vep is a film that would benefit from repeat viewings.  It's likely littered with French film references that I didn't catch.  For example, I suspect that criticism of Léaud's character's films is really criticism of Jean-Luc Godard's work.  I'm sure the film must have seemed like a welcome change of pace for Cheung who was cranking out HK action and wuxia films at a prodigious pace in the first half of the 1990s.

Even without an intimate knowledge of the French film industry or the source material, Assayas' skill & vision as a director come through clearly in Irma Vep.

Maggie Cheung in Irma Vep

The Heroic Trio was directed by Johnny To and features an impressive cast of Chinese actresses - the late Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh & Maggie Cheung.  Mui who died at the age of 40 in 2003, is largely forgotten today.  In The Heroic Trio, she was the best known of the three lead actresses and her character was first among equals.  That Yeoh and particularly Cheung are heralded among their cohort of Chinese actresses make one wonder what Mui would have accomplished.  She was cast in Zhang Yimou's hit film House of the Flying Daggers (2004) but dropped out due to her failing health.

In the pantheon of great HK action films, The Heroic Trio is pretty far down the list.  It did well enough to merit a sequel but it felt more like a gimmick to get three attractive actresses on screen together.  Mui plays a police inspector's wife who has undergone rigorous training in martial arts.  When needed, she dons a mask and fights crime under the sobriquet of Wonder Woman.

Michelle Yeoh begins the film as the villain (Invisible Girl), the chief lieutenant of an evil master.  She uses an invisible cloak to kidnap male babies because her master has some plan to install the child as the next emperor of China.  In a subplot, Invisible Girl is Wonder Woman's younger sister who didn't make the cut with sifu who trained Wonder Woman.  They are estranged when the film begins.

Maggie Cheung plays the roguish Thief Catcher, a shotgun wielding, dynamite throwing, motorcycle riding, booty shorts wearing bounty hunter.  In another subplot, Invisible Girl & Thief Catcher trained together under the evil master but Thief Catcher has escaped his evil reach to make her living cashing in bounties.

The three converge when a high ranking police officer hires Thief Catcher to recover his kidnapped son.

The film is a series of fight scenes separated by flashbacks.  The action choreography isn't quite up to To's best work.  There are a few scenes that appear silly (typically at Thief Catcher's expense) but the film holds together as well as can be expected.  Eventually, Invisible Girl is convinced to join the other two in their battle against the evil master.

Watching The Heroic Trio is closer to an amusing check off on my cinematic bucket list than a rewarding film experience.

Maggie Cheung in The Heroic Trio

The Puzzle Within the Castro Theater's March 2016 Calendar

For the third consecutive month, there is not a puzzle in the Castro calendar.  As the saying goes, once means nothing and twice is a coincidence but thrice is a pattern.

Cinequest runs from March 1 to March 13 and CAAMFest runs from March 10 to March 20 so I won't have much time to drop by the Castro until the final part of the month.

Among the Castro highligts:

Elliot Lavine is back with Pre-Code films on Wednesday nights. 

Akira Kurosawa's Ran is paired with A.K. a documentary biopic on March 6.

A Sean Connery & Pierce Brosnan series from March 17 to 22 with an emphasis on their James Bond films.

§§§

The March series I am most excited about is not a Cinequest or at the Castro but instead at the Roxie.  From March 21 to 31, the Roxie is presenting Greenaway Week with screenings of The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Number, The Baby of Macon and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.  Greenway's latest film Eisenstein in Guanajuato plays from March 25 to 31. 

It was The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (which I saw in a Los Angeles theater in the summer of 1989) that turned me on to art house films.

§§§

Castro Theater Calendar - March 2016