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 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. …

By Richard von Busack
It didn’t live fast, but Dark Shadows (Dark Shadows tickets and showtimes here) leaves a beautiful corpse. The clown-white makeup on the haunted Collins family alone gives this pulseless reboot the look …

By Richard von Busack
You can recognize the shape of the Canadian Oscar nominee Monsieur Lazhar (showtimes and tickets here) at 500 yards. It follows the pattern of legions of films from Goodbye Mr Chips to …

By Richard von Busack
Joss Whedon’s simply colossal The Avengers (The Avengers tickets and showtimes here) applauds the beauty of cooperation. Not such a stupid idea, considering what the lack of it is doing to our …

by Richard von Busack
Quoth the raven: this film sucks. In Raven (showtimes here) director James McTeigue (V for Vendetta) includes an early scene of the disemboweling of an obese captive with Edgar Allan Poe’s infamous …

Has the world suffered enough from pirates? In one of the best jokes in The Pirates! Band of Misfits (showtimes here) a crewmember observes, “You can’t just say ‘arrr’ and make everything better.’
This …