By Richard von Busack
Scotland, sometime in the second half of the first eon: in Brave, the clans are uneasily united under mountainous King Fergus (voiced by Billy Connolly). Bears are still a threat. Much celebrated …

(Aubrey Plaza in Safety Not Guaranteed. Tickets and showtimes here
by Richard von Busack
The endearingly odd Safety Not Guaranteed (a perfect title for a romance) concerns a put-upon intern named Darius (Aubrey Plaza) at …

by Richard von Busack
(Elena tickets and showtimes here.)
The important Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s third film, Elena, is a kind of thriller—at least the urgent, cello-driven Philip Glass score mutters about violent tensions beneath the smooth …

by Richard von Busack
Rock of Ages (tickets and showtimes here) is based on the bridgiest-and-tunnelliest of Broadway musicals—like Mamma Mia!, Rock of Ages is for a crowd that knows the music is cheese but doesn’t …

by Richard von Busack
There’s one unposed moment in Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom. (Moonrise Kingdom tickets and showtimes here.) Frances McDormand plays Laura, a raging mother—she shouts at her children through a bullhorn most of the …

By Richard von Busack
Whatever it lacks, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus ( Prometheus tickets and showtimes here) is an antidote to Avatar. The giants this time are less blue and more forbidding. But the contrast between fantasies …

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 …