OK, OK, after all that parsing, what are the absolute best things to see at this year's San Francisco International Film Festival? What have I been holding back?

I really have no idea, but if you combine my inborn prejudices and weakness for good trailer editing you get these:

Entertainment - Neil Hamburger vehicle

Kronos Quartet Beyond Zero: ( Read more... )

Beats of the Antonov - "refugees from the Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountain communities seek shelter from the bombs dropped indiscriminately from Russian-built Antonov cargo planes in Sudanese government air raids, while creatively strategizing their survival." ( ( Read more... )

54: The Director's Cut - "The cut of the film released in theaters in 1998 removed more than 30 minutes of beautifully acted, Cabaret-like licentiousness in the form of amibisexual polyamory and rampant drug use at the Studio 54 nightclub and replaced it with 40 minutes of cloying romance and "aw shucks" dialogue in a bid to make the film palatable ( Read more... )

Now we are getting to documentaries which actually might be good and not a waste of time, in the same sense that crab Louie might be good and nutritious. That is to say, yeah maybe but I'm just not feeling it right now ( Read more... )

Before continuing, I should point out that movies are hard to make, and most movies st the SFIFF are at least decent. The reason for this progressive winnowing is that you simply can't see all the movies. It's not physically possible. And for most people, it's not psychically possible. My limit is about six ( Read more... )

There's nothing wrong with remaking a movie that isn't Robocop, but that's not what a film festival is for. Here are some movies which rip off material a little more specific than The Hero's Journey ( Read more... )

As always, a crop of filmmakers tries to make people see their movie by making it "about" a certain character type. "Quirky villagers." "Wise old women." "Young students." Then they forget to have them do anything. They might as well have made the movie about monkeys. Monkeys are always funny ( Read more... )

Darling, darling, don't you know, the worst crime a filmmaker can commit is to be DULL! And yet it happens, year after year. "Poetic meditations" on "longing and loss" keep coming. Why don't they just cut to the suicide? At least that would have some resolution ( Read more... )

After all the previous heuristic eliminations, there are an even dozen movies left. It'll be a miracle if I make it to two, what with work and the boy's birthday and visiting relatives and writing for Nanos. But here's what's left, in approximate order of my desire to see them:

20,000 Days On Earth ( Read more... )

Some movies are skippable because their distribution is guaranteed, say if they have a big star or were made by the Weinstein company. But if you have a terminal disease or a passion for motorcycle rock climbing, these look pretty good ( Read more... )