by Richard von Busack
Valery Todorovsky’s energetic Russian hit musical Hipsters (tickets here) concerns the “stilyagi”—the few but proud counter-culturists of Moscow in 1955. In Moscow, clean cut Mels (Anton Shagin) is running with his Party-member …

A QUARTET of nasty bourgeois, played by four top-drawer actors with crack timing, make Roman Polanski’s Carnage (showtimes here) a civilized entertainment. Based on Parisian author Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage, the film is …

By Richard von Busack
Should-have-been successes, musicians’ musicians that they were and are: Fishbone are profiled in Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler’s delightful Everyday Sunshine, playing at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco through Friday.
Fishbone had …

By Richard von Busack
ONLY Steven Spielberg could do what is done in War Horse. Only he could have authorized the expensive World War I re-creations: a sumptuous cavalry charge, with officers Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom …

By Richard von Busack
Show up early and get into the sweet spot in a 70mm Imax Theater  meaning, near the center and back a row or two. Not only will you be the first person …

By Richard von Busack
In setting up the career of the ultimate arch-villain, Arthur Conan-Doyle may have introduced him wrong-way round. We don’t witness the moment of discovery when Sherlock Holmes first pieces together the vastness …

By Richard von Busack
Sometimes a movie is particularly irritating just because it’s about 10 degrees away from something that might have worked.
In Young Adult, Diablo Cody gets away from the arch slang of Juno: Oscar-winning …

by Richard von Busack
TAKESHI KITANO’S new film is almost plot-free but rich with incident, visual skill and loads of violence. Outrage shows the Japanese filmmaker at the top of his craft. The action consists essentially …

by Richard von Busack
“On, Slasher! On, Flasher! On, Basher and Bitchin’! On, Vomit! On, Stupid! On, Bummer and Nixon!”–National Lampoon, c. 1975
Two day’s worth of coal lumps await patrons at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater, as …

By Richard von Busack
(Opens today at CineArts at Palo Alto Square).
Introducing the year’s best documentary… Some might be avoiding the new Werner Herzog film Into the Abyss because of its subject matter: a triple murder …