Following my brief theoretical statement on the Romanian New Wave, I have assembled this collected basic guide to the Romanian New Wave. This is with the intent of encouraging people to see the films of this most note-worthy movement which has produced some films which I consider among the highest of filmmaking of the last decade, with forays as well into this decade.

The list is very likely far from complete, as this country’s output has only begun to find itself noticed by the rest of the world, and due to this, many of the good resources on the movement are only to be found in Romanian. Please feel free to comment if you find anything missing, or if you have any thoughts. Read More…

A man from London, some prehistoric creatures, a couple of pot growers, Katy Perry, one faithful horse, a performance artist, and the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe.  What do all these things and people have in common?  They’re all featured in new films opening this week in San Francisco theatres.  To see the full list of films, trailers, and where they’re playing, follow the jump Read More…

July 6th: Five Element Ninjas/The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Roxie Theatre)

Nope, not missing the chance to see one of my favorite villains of all time, Ghostface Killer, on a theatre screen in the Shaw Brothers‘ martial arts classic, The Mystery of Chess Boxing.  Nobody – especially fans of fist-to-face action flicks – will want to miss this chance to see a vicious head-snatching baddie sling about his flying guillotine.  As for Five Element Ninjas, don’t know how I missed this one when going through my kung-fu phase a few years back, but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.

July 6th: Beasts of The Southern Wild (Embarcadero)

Newcomer Benh Zeitlin‘s feature-length debut has quickly moved into my most anticipated films of the year radar.  It has already snatched up 4 major awards at Cannes and 2 from Sundance, including the Grand Jury prize.  The plot as IMDB describes it is about a girl who faced with her father’s fading health and environmental changes that release an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs, leaves her Delta-community home in search of her mother.  Not to take anything away from the plot, because it does sound intriguing, but I’m more interested in seeing what all the hype is about surrounding the cinematography and acting that have been buzzing around this film.

July 6th: Savages (Major)

Olive Stone‘s return to fast-paced genre filmmaking like U-Turn and Natural Born Killers?  Let’s just say it’s the first time in a long time that I’ve been anticipating a new Oliver Stone picture.

July 7th – 11th: The Man From London/The Turin Horse (Roxie Theatre)

I still haven’t seen anything by film auteur, Bela Tarr, but with two of them coming to the Roxie hopefully now I can at long last become acquainted with a piece of this man’s filmography, if for no other reason than to have some of my film snobby friends stop harassing me; “How can you call yourself a film buff, yet you still haven’t seen anything by Bela Tarr?”

Here’s what the Roxie has to say about this upcoming week-long program “Béla Tarr, the Hungarian master of the measured-pace, real-time dramas that penetrate the murk of human existence has announced he has finished with film. Bad news for us who have already clocked in countless hours shadowing the desperate lives of his proletariat protagonists as they negotiate their beautifully bleak, black & white environs. As we incredulously bid Béla bye-bye, the Roxie proposes two, little-seen titles from this titan of long-form minimalism and his longtime collaborator, the novelist László Krasznahorkai, both presented in 35mm.” Read More…

A stage actress, a comedian, a college student, a bully, an activist, a farmer, a Pope, a teacher, a killer named Cinerhella, and a chance to explore the science and power of perception and imagination.  What do all these things and people have in common?  They’re all featured in new films opening this week in San Francisco theaters.  To see the full list of films and where they’re playing follow the jump

Read More…

“This way, it’s a nice family story. But it finishes like any other story. Because stories end badly. Stories are all stories of disintegration. […] Irrevocable disintegration.” — Karrer, Damnation (Bela Tarr, 1988)

Beginning with his fifth feature in 1988, Bela Tarr has built one of the most distinct and aesthetically unwavering oeuvres in cinema, totaling about a thousand minutes, composed of roughly 340 shots, and spanning five films made over the course of the last twenty-three years.

If Tarr stands by his word that The Turin Horse is his final work, then he and his loyal crew have concluded their run with a picture that distills Tarr’s aesthetic and subject almost to their limits. (For the uninitiated, that would be: gorgeous, vivid and patient black and white cinematography bearing solemn witness to the fates of losers stuck in the fraying corners of provincial Europe. Ah, that.) Read More…