Monday, February 5, 2018

Screenings in the Bay (Monday to Friday): Beyond the Black Rainbow, SF Indie Fest, Mainland Noir



Who would have thought that February would be so eventful? Well it seems to be one film festival after another in the bay area, and this week it's all about the strange and beautiful films of the SF Indie Fest. They seem to be mainly clustered at the Roxie Theatre for the next couple of days, and (oh boy) do they vary! 

Terror Tuesday and Weird Wednesday have a healthy amount of seats reserved, but neither can compare to the Everything is Terrible! presented The Great Satan, which is nearly sold out.



Terror Tuesday

Tuesday 6th @ 10:15pm (1hr 36min)
Horror/ Mystery/ Thriller (IMDB)
This trend-setting thriller put its director, Dario Argento, on the international map and began a flood of imitative mystery-horror hybrids which dominated Italian genre output in the early 1970s. Tony Musante, best known for the television series Toma, portrays an American who witnesses the murder of a woman at a trendy Rome art gallery. Before long, Musante finds himself targeted by a mysterious killer. Based on a story by Byron Edgar Wallace, Bird and hints at the flamboyance which would become Argento's trademark. This and Argento's subsequent two films Il Gatto a Nove Code and Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio were much less horror-oriented than his later work. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi



Weird Wednesday

Wednesday 7th @ 10pm (1hr 50min)
Horror/ Sci-Fi (Rotten Tomatoes)
Set in the strange and oppressive emotional landscape of the year 1983, Beyond the Black Rainbow is a Reagan-era fever dream inspired by hazy childhood memories of midnight movies and Saturday morning cartoons. From the producer of "Machotaildrop," Rainbow is the outlandish feature film debut of writer and director Panos Cosmatos. Featuring a hypnotic analog synthesizer score by Jeremy Schmidt of "Sinoia Caves" and "Black Mountain," Rainbow is a film experience for the senses. -- (C) Magnet


Everything Is Terrible! Presents

Thursday 8th @ 7pm (1hr 12min)
Comedy/ Fantasy/ Horror (IMDB)
The found footage collective, Everything is Terrible! Has taken over 2,000 forgotten VHS tapes and re-contextualized them in order to tell the tale of The Dark Lord himself, Lucifer.



Balboa Theatre

Rewind Wednesday

Good Burger (1997)
Wednesday 7th @ 7:30pm (1hr 35min)
Comedy/ Family (IMDB)
Two dim-witted teenagers are forced to save the fast food restaurant they work at from going out of business, despite a new-and-improved burger joint opening across the street that want to be the "Top Dog" in the fast food industry.

Screened in VHS!

The Shape of Water (2017)
Monday 5th & Tuesday 6th @ 4:30pm, 7pm, 9:30pm (2hrs 3min)
Adventure/ Drama/ Fantasy
An other-worldly fairy tale, set against the backdrop of Cold War era America circa 1962. In the hidden high-security government laboratory where she works, lonely Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is trapped in a life of isolation. Elisa's life is changed forever when she and co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) discover a secret classified experiment.





Thursday 8th @ 9:30pm (1hr 37min)
Comedy/ Horror/ Sci-Fi (Rotten Tomatoes)
A homeless drifter discovers a reason for the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor: a conspiracy by non-human aliens who have infiltrated American society in the guise of wealthy yuppies. With the help of special sunglasses that reveal the aliens' true faces and their subliminal messages ("marry and reproduce," "submit to authority"), our hero tries to stop the invasion. This satire of Reaganomics and the "greed is good" era also has one of the funniest (and longest) fight scenes in American cinema.




SF Indie Fest

Monday 5th @ 9:15pm (1hr 25min)
Mockumentary
Black Cat is a satire on true crime documentaries gone wild. When a near-decade old murder case involving a movie star threatens to reopen, childlike adult Duke Moody decides to make a documentary, financed by his mother. Take a comedic thrill ride following a cast of zany characters, twists and turns and cold-blooded murder. – Chris Metzler



Tuesday 6th @ 7pm (1hr 33min)
Documentary (IMDB)
A suicide attempt survivor is on a mission to find fellow survivors and document their stories of courage, insight and humor. Along the way, she discovers a rising national movement transforming personal struggles into action.



Wednesday 7th @ 9:15pm (1hr 20min)
Horror/ Romance/ Sci-Fi (IMDB)
A surreal sci-fi romance wherein a beautiful young woman and strange metaphysical forces threaten the reality of a reclusive video arcade technician, resulting in bizarre biomechanical mutations and a shocking self-realization.



Wednesday 7th @ 9:15pm (1hr 19min)
Documentary/ Comedy (IMDB)
A gender-bending coming-of-age story of Rumi Missabu, the iconoclast co-founder of San Francisco’s infamous Cockettes. He left Hollywood 50 years ago on a quest for his true identity and found it in underground drag theater. Explore SF’s queer art past through his lurid tales in and out of the spotlight as he reinvents himself at the end of his life. 


West Coast Premier

Friday 9th @ 7pm (1hr 39min)
Sci-Fi/ Thriller (SF Indie Fest)
Despite being thousands of miles away, Maude can still feel her abducted twin sister Cleo through what may be a psychic link in this Outback Noir anchored by dual performances from Adelaide Clemens. Exploiting prejudice and pseudo-science, Shanahan crafts an unforgettable and unflinching portrait of attachment.




Mainland Noir

Thursday 8th @ 7:30pm (1hr 39min)
Comedy (IMDB)
Under a tin-gray sky, in a hollowed out corner of northern China, a stranger arrives in town bearing magical soap-but smelling it will cost you. Nearby, a pair of unenthused cops try cracking a seemingly simple case. Or not. And you can forget religious solace; the only monk around is not what he seems. Director Jun Geng is at his best when he celebrates the gaunt, manufactured landscapes of an unseen China and holds anyone of authority up to a Jarmusch-esque light for examination. Geng's affection for his ensemble of offbeat, yet everyday, characters-combined with cool, angular visuals that create a strange harmony between the harsh, geographical backdrop and its humble inhabitants-makes their absurdist journeys feel human. Steeping a caper in a workerless industrial center puts a fresh twist on the crime genre, proving Geng's love of working against convention, as he casts a satirical eye on a system so flawed it's tragicomic.


-Huntress

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