Hugo: Martin Scorsese Milks the 3-D Trend for His Timeless Cause

Martin Scorsese’s first foray into big-budget family filmmaking — as well as his inaugural effort in 3-D — Hugo is a personal statement disguised as a sellout. Based on Brian Selznick’s 2007 kids’ book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Hugo centers on its title character, played by Asa Butterfield, a…

We Were Here: Five San Franciscans Remember the AIDS Crisis

A simple, powerful act of bearing witness, We Were Here is a sober reminder of the not-too-distant past, when gays were focused not on honeymoon plans but on keeping people alive. David Weissman’s oral history of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco also explores the specifics of psychogeography: Vividly recalling…

My Week With Marilyn Takes the Sex Out of Sex Symbol

We get the escapism we deserve, I guess: Just as 1930s Hollywood distracted Depression-era audiences with glitzy Fred and Ginger musicals, Harvey Weinstein is answering our Occupy-preoccupied times by releasing two Oscar hopeful fantasies in the same week. Both present the sad lives of Old Hollywood stars, but the soft…

Alexander Payne’s Pessimism Is Good for Business

“I don’t think about the home where my films will land,” says Alexander Payne, free-range in a film culture fenced off into art house and multiplex, to the detriment of both. He describes the audience that he writes for as “my best friends and myself . . . Then your…

The Muppets: An Imperfect Reboot, a Welcome Return

It’s time to play the music. It’s time to light the lights. It’s time to meet the Muppets. Again.In Disney’s franchise reboot The Muppets, the perpetually meta monsters attempt a comeback after years out of the spotlight. Meanwhile, the actual behind-the-camera filmmakers (including the picture’s co-writer and leading man Jason Segel) attempt…

Five Favorite Muppet Moments

Sure, the star of the week is turkey and all its fixin’s. But while folks reunite with their families for their annual Thanksgiving feast, another family of sorts will reunite on the big screen: the fuzzy, funny Muppets. Jason Segel’s reboot The Muppets finds the goofy gang disbanded, with Kermit…

Project Accessory Episode 4: eBay Dumpster Diving

Oddly enough, when the opening credits of the latest episode of Project Accessory flashed across the screen, I heard an unusual dragging sound coming from the television. Kkkrrrrr. Kkkrrrrr. Kkkrrrrr. It was like a claw was slowly dragging itself across a rough surface, nearly echoing off and echo off an echo. It got louder and…

SXSW Best Documentary Dragonslayer Opens at FilmBar

​Dragonslayer is a film that sets out to capture a generation: the lost boys and girls born during the Reagan Administration now stumbling and tumbling through a kind of dystopian Southern California, bathed in the warm rays of the western sun. To call it a love song to an entire…

The Other F Word: Punks Are All Grown Up

Flea almost cries. Twice. There’s your four-word summation of The Other F Word, a half-poignant, half-absurd documentary on punk-rocker dads, self-described as “a coming of middle-age story” that thrills to the sight of, say, Rancid’s Lars Frederiksen, who looks like a tattoo parlor and a Claire’s fell on him simultaneously,…

Bella and Edward Lock It Down in Breaking Dawn — Part 1

The single advantage the awful Twilight movies have over Stephenie Meyer’s awful-but-gripping novels is that, unlike the books’ sad sack, movie Bella Swan is a spiky, populist heroine. On film, Kristen Stewart beautifully underplays (or, for all I know, overplays to the absolute peak of her abilities) Bella’s deadpan ordinariness,…

Five Vampire Movies Better Than Twilight

while the weepy chicks and their mothers line up, yet again, to watch two shirtless, underage boys fight over a girl in Twilight: Breaking Dawn (Part I), true vampire fans will have plenty of classics to keep them occupied. Whether steeped in realism, indie schlock, or deep pathos, they know a…

Five Classic Marilyn Monroe Movies to See Before My Week with Marilyn

Marilyn Monroe was known and celebrated for her full figure and ample curves, which have dominated much of the discussion in anticipation of two new Monroe biopics: My Week with Marilyn and Blonde. Last year, the films’ directors announced that Michelle Williams would take on Monroe in My Week with Marilyn and Naomi…

Project Accessory Episode 3: Cat Suits and Camel-toe

If there is some blessing in the reality show Project Accessory, is that my the end of the season, I should probably be proficient in spelling it. Why do my fingers want to fly immediately to the “s” after the first letter? Why, why? Am I the only one? Couldn’t…

A Man Named Pearl to Screen at SMoCA Lounge

​Watching Pearl Fryar select a plant from the discards of the local nursery is a little like getting to see Michelangelo pick out a piece of marble. And what Fryar creates with the number of cast-off shrubs and trees — over a number of years of patient trimming and sculpting…

Five Must-See Indie Flicks in November

Sometimes it’s a one-night deal, and sometimes they stick around for weeks, so when it comes to seeing an independent film at one of the local theaters, you’ll want to plan ahead. That’s why we’ve wrangled must-see flicks screening in the Valley this month. Prep your bowl of popcorn and…

J. Edgar: Clint Eastwood’s Inspired Take on a Giant of the 20th Century

A resounding “yes” to the question trembling on every lip: There is life after Hereafter! Clint Eastwood goes deep into Oliver Stone territory and emerges victorious with J. Edgar. Although hardly flawless, Eastwood’s biopic is his richest, most ambitious movie since the Letters from Iwo Jima-Flags of Our Fathers duo,…

Le Havre: A French Town Rallies to Protect an African Immigrant

Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre is something of a comeback for the Finnish filmmaker. His warmhearted comedy of underdog working-class solidarity, made with a mixed Finnish-French-Senegalese cast in the French port city Le Havre, was the most warmly received movie — at least by the press — shown in Cannes. The…

What Are You Watching, Kara Gasperone?

Phoenix native Kara Gasperone’s interest in movies and TV is all over the board. The local blogger and professional therapist likes to indulge in shows with a little chaos and prefers shelling out her movie money at local film spots like FilmBar for a more unique experience.What are you watching?I always Tivo…