by Matt Sills
It’s not unusual for filmmakers to drop secrets and surprises into their movies.  Whether overt, like Johnny Depps’s cameo in “21 Jump Street”, or subtle, like Pac-Man showing up on a computer screen …

by Richard von Busack
As per Zhou Enlai’s famous comment about the French Revolution, it’s too soon to sum up the Mexican revolution. For Greater Glory (For Greater Glory tickets and showtimes here) concerns one stage …

By Richard von Busack
It’s been a decade since Men in Black II; the world must have got more xenophobic since then. In Men in Black III, (Men in Black III tickets and showtimes here) Will …

By Richard von Busack
You’d love to applaud Hysteria (Hysteria tickets and showtimes here)  for the way it encourages female pleasure. But Tanya Wexler’s historical farce is so deeply arch and self-congratulatory, it hardly even allows …

Second week at the Roxie Theater, San Francisco: a basket load of underground and sometimes sub-basement noirs. Classics rub shoulders with gritty programmers, in one of the nation’s most funkified and eclectic rep-houses.
May 18:
Killer’s Kiss/Female …

By Richard von Busack
So infectious the CDC ought to be notified, the Richard Linklater comedy Bernie—an easy pick for top ten of 2012—is loaded with Texas brio. (Bernie tickets and showtimes here.)
Bernie (Jack Black) is …

by Richard von Busack
Sacha Baron Cohen’s resemblance to an elongated Charlie Chaplin may be a key to The Dictator. (The Dictator showtimes and tickets here.) He’s a funny figure but a chilly one. The Dictator …

by Matt Sills
This weekend’s release of “Dark Shadows” marks the eighth collaboration between director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp.  I’ve decided to take a look at their previous seven films together, and count them down …

By Richard von Busack
Beautiful and doomed, the denizens of the two week retrospective at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater carry out their appointed fates: victims spared from the American movie industry’s insistence on the punished villain …

By Richard von Busack
IF The Avengers featured British pensioners, it would be The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. (Best Exotic Marigold Hotel tickets and showtimes here.)  Senior citizens deserve this reward; they’re good and faithful moviegoers. …