Some promising movies opened this weekend while I was sampling the San Francisco International Film Festival. The result: ten movies for me in seven theaters in three cities over four days.
I started on Friday at the SFIFF with Prince Avalanche and Rent a Family Inc. at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. Prince Avalanche, a droll comedy with Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch that will open in theaters later his summer, is very funny. Writer-director David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, Pineapple Express) introduced his film and took questions. Rent a Family Inc., a documentary about an odd Japanese practice of renting fake family members, was less successful. (Note: I missed my monthly poker game for these two flicks.)
On Saturday, I caught up with the new releases: The Reluctant Fundamentalist at Camera 7 in Campbell (okay), At Any Price at San Jose’s Camera 12 (liked it a lot) and the French thriller In the House at San Jose’s Camera 3 (surprisingly clever).
On Sunday, I caught Kon-Tiki at San Francisco’s Embarcadero Center Cinema; (I’m writing about Kon-Tiki tomorrow). Then it was over to SFIFF for Me and You at the Kabuki. Me and You is the latest from Italian cinema legend Bernardo Bertolucci, and I LOVED it. (I had to miss the great director William Friedkin’s appearance at a rare screening of his 1977 Sorcerer at Camera 3; I would have loved it, but I just saw Friedkin last summer at a Killer Joe screening and I already had my SFIFF tickets; to make up for it, I am gonna buy Friedkin’s new book and Netflix his Sorcerer.)
Then I rendezvoused with my nephew Danny and his friend Zeke for a special showing of the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the Castro Theatre, preceded by a Q&A with director Philip Kaufman. It was the first time that the guys experienced both a grand movie palace and an appearance by a filmmaker – and they enjoyed the movie, too. Body Snatchers, which I saw in its theatrical release, held up very well – and still has one of the all-time great closing shockers in cinema.
I returned to the SFIFF on Monday with The Wife. First, we saw The Spectacular Now at the Kabuki, a coming of age indie focused on teen alcoholism; one of the best films of the year, it will open widely on August 2. Then we saw Deceptive Practices, the fine documentary about my favorite magician/card shark Ricky Jay, at the New People Cinema.
Whew! That was a whirlwind! It’s lots of fun to go to the movies, but trying to write about so many in a compressed period is tough for me. The highlight was sharing the movie experience with The Wife and the guys. But I also saw some movies that will be on my Best Movies of 2013 – The Spectacular Now, Me and You and (probably) At Any Price – all in one glorious weekend.