Youth

The first feature film of Justine Malle, Louis Malle‘s daughter, is a good effort. In this very short feature, we follow a girl through her sexual awakening which sparks at the same time as her father acquires a disease which slowly destroys his brain.

It’s a promising film, but it has its flaws. The acting of the main male character wasn’t very believable, and at times the film drifts into over-sentimentality. The main character was quite good, however, and the film has some moments of extreme honesty about sexuality and dealing with death which juxtapose against the sentimentality of the score. Read More…

Some animation with a little Christopher Plummer narration, a glimpse into a heartbreaking repatriation situation, and a nostalgic 1980s’ stylization of computer nerds playing chess. Let’s begin.

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My plan was to catch two movies today, but sometimes “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray”. Am I right, Robert Burns, or am I right? Long story short, I was in dire need of a quick power nap after work. So, in the spirit of Mr. Burns (the poet, not Homer Simpson’s boss) I told myself, “what Adam’s body wants, Adam’s body gets”. Deep poetry, I know. My quick power nap turned into a 2-hour siesta and, before I knew it, I missed the last festival screening of Olivier Assayas‘ Something in the Air. All was not lost though. I woke up in time to scoot on over to Berkeley’s PFA and catch The Act of Killing. Besides, Assayas’ film is planned for a limited release run here in San Francisco two weeks from now. Read More…

Having gotten up earlier than planned, thanks to my choosing to bunk with an energetic early bird, my start was an early one. I arrived at the theatre 2 hours before the start of my first movie. What happened then, you ask? Well I’ll tell ya what happened. Read More…

Before I begin my report of what I watched I’d like to point out that “officially” this is the 6th day of the festival, but being that I refuse to recognize the Opening Night film as a day, and considering I was unable to attend anything on Monday, I’m calling this Day 4. If you don’t like it, tough noogies! Now, that that’s out of the way, here’s how Day 4 went. Read More…

The fifty-sixth incarnation of the San Francisco Film Festival is hot on the tracks for (at the time of this writing) another week and a half, and Filmbalaya is here to tell you what you should see and what you shouldn’t necessarily spend your time on! Our healthy and entirely objective star system filters out the fat from the meat like a tennis racket panning gold… A very, very finely woven tennis racket that is. You can’t always afford a perfect panning system.

Anyway, you get the idea. This will be a living document, much like (hypothetically) the Constitution and Keith Richards. Read More…

What a better way to spend a beautiful, sunny San Francisco day than to watch some films at a film festival? With one exception it was well worth it! Here are a couple that I saw today, as well as Key of Life thrown in there for good measure.

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Two movies today, both at the Berkeley venue. One of which took place in the middle ages and the other in the middle of the ocean.

This first film, Frantisek Vlácil‘s 1966 enchantingly beautiful and often grimy Marketa Lazarová, was being shown in honor of George Gund, III, who passed away in January after a lengthy battle with stomach cancer. Aside from being a very generous donator to the San Francisco Film Society, as well as Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive, George was also an advent lover of foreign cinema, particularly films from the Czech Republic. As was announced before the film began, George’s love for Marketa Lazarová grew with every re-watch, which apparently there were several. He said – now, I’m paraphrasing here – he had a strong need to keep coming back to this film, both for its beauty and to discover yet another layer of the film that he had previously not seen.

Well, George, after my virgin viewing of this film that you so admired, I must say, I too now feel a wanting urge to return to this barbaric world, some time sooner than later. Perhaps the PFA will add this to their schedule during their tribute to you later on this year. So, now that you know I liked Marketa, here’s what I have to say about it. Read More…