Movies to See Right Now

OUR LITTLE SISTER
OUR LITTLE SISTER

In theaters right now:

  • The Japanese domestic drama Our Little Sister is remarkably uplifting. I would seek it out because it’s unlikely to remain in theaters for more than two or three weeks.
  • Zero Days is a documentary on a jaw-dropping hacker mystery – who and how was able to get Iranian military computers to destroy the hardware for their own nuclear weapons program.
  • Really liked the New Zealand teen-geezer adventure dramedy Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
  • The subversive documentary Under the Sun is a searing insight into totalitarian North Korean society, all from government-approved filming that tells a different story than the wackadoodle dictatorship intended.
  • Woody Allen’s love triangle comedy Cafe Society is a well-made and entertaining diversion, but hardly a Must See.
  • Finding Dory doesn’t have the breakthrough animation or the depth of story that we expect from Pixar, but it won’t be painful to watch a zillion times with your kids.
  • I’m not writing about Ghostbusters, but I’ve seen it, and it’s not terrible. Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are brilliant talents, and they produce some laughs in Ghostbusters.

Tomorrow, I’ll be writing about The Bandit, coming up on on CMT tomorrow night.

There’s still time to catch two of my top picks at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), which is wrapping up this weekend. False Flag and Wrestling Jerusalem will be screening at the Rafael in San Rafael.

My DVD/Stream of the week is the hilariously dark Argentine comedy Wild Tales. Writer-director Damián Szifron presents a series of individual stories about revenge. It’s still high my list of Best Movies of 2015 – So Far. It’s now available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Vudu and Xbox Video.

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival – the top picks

sfjff36 bannerHere’s a preview of the 36th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), which opens tomorrow, July 21, and runs through August 7 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. The festival offers a broad range of film experiences:

  • 51 features (33 Documentaries, 18 Narratives) from 13 countries (but mostly from the US and Israel).
  • 2 programs of short films (Jews in Shorts), a web series and first two episodes of the miniseries False Flag.
  • 14 world, North American or US premieres.
  • celebrity appearances by Norman Lear, Robert Klein, Adam (s0n of Leonard) Nimoy and a passel of filmmakers.

Here are my four top recommendations:

  • The documentary The Last Laugh explores humor and the Holocaust. Is there anything funny about Nazis or about the Holocaust itself? When is humor acceptable, therapeutic, transgressive or even taboo? How has the passage of time affected what is funny? And does it matter who tells the joke?  We hear from Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Rob and Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, concentration camp survivor and Hogan’s Heroes star Robert Clary and, most unforgettably, Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone.
  • An addictive taste of the Israeli miniseries False Flag, a character-driven thriller with elements of the whodunit, the paranoid thriller, the perfect crime movie and the espionage procedural.
  • The world premiere of Wrestling Jerusalem, an imaginative examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the perspectives of seventeen distinct characters, both Jew and Arab, in a one-man play.
  • Fever at Dawn – an epic romance with both an exploration of identity and a moral choice.

One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area,  the fest comes to you.  SFJFF will present 27-51 films at each of the main venues – the Castro in San Francisco,  CineArts in Palo Alto and the Roda Theater at the Berkeley Rep.   The festival will also screen at least 14 movies at both the Rafael in San Rafael and the Piedmont in Oakland.

Of my top picks, False Flag and Wrestling Jerusalem will screen in San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and San Rafael.  The Last Laugh will be playing at the Castro and the Roda.  Fever at Dawn will screen in San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto.

You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. The fest also offers a handy iPhone app available from the App Store: sjff36. You can follow the Festival on Twitter at @SFJewish Film; and, of course, you can follow my coverage at @themoviegourmet.