by Richard von Busack
SAN FRANCISCO, city of mystery—and betrayal! Handsome, sensitive, muscular yet long-haired exec Johnny (Tommy Wiseau) seems to have it all: a view apartment with a rooftop patio, a “future wife” named Lisa …

by Richard von Busack
50/50, whose alternate title could be So/So, has a pair of first-rate actors, Anna Kendrick and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Their work is regularly disrupted by Seth Rogen, the movie star who got Jonathan …

by Richard von Busack
THE NEW baseball film Moneyball opens with a Mickey Mantle’s quote: “It’s unbelievable what you don’t know about a game you play every day.” This unorthodox picture is clearly one of the …

By Richard von Busack
Even if it turns out she has only had one life, Shirley MacLaine has made it count. Appearing Friday, Sep 23 at the Wells Fargo Center in Santa Rosa, MacLaine is hosting …

(Now playing at the Shattuck Cinemeas in Berkeley and Embarcadero Cinemas in San Francisco; opens Friday Sep 23 at Camera Cinemas in San Jose.)
by Richard von Busack
The left-brain, right-brain split—perfect material for a sitcom in …

By Richard von Busack
Several different kinds of cool, Drive is. But like much cool, it is mannered. The film is based on a sliver of small press, second-wave pulp by James Sallis. Nicolas Winding Refn, …

And I don’t care. Reputedly the London-based source novel of I Don’t Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson is witty; in real life, Pearson is married to the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane. This …

By Richard von Busack
Opens Sep 9: Regent Square, Pittsburgh; Landmark Lumiere, San Francisco; Landmark Shattuck Cinemas, Berkeley;
Opens Sep 16: Miami Beach Cinematheque;
Opens Sep 23: Cornell Cinema, Ithaca; Landmark Tivoli Theatre, St. Louis.
Opens Sep 28-29: the …

By Richard von Busack
Contagion is the return of the compass-spinning, star-studded spectacular, done digitally on a tight budget with lots of interiors and city park scenes. Its treatment of a lethal pandemic called “MEV1” is …

by Richard von Busack
Pulling from a fifth of Overactor’s Choice blended whiskey and sobbing about the Pequod, Nick Nolte puts a third mortgage on his integrity to try to give the titanically overblown Warrior some …