The 66th SFFilm Festival opens tomorrow, Thursday, April 13th, and will run through Sunday, April 23rd. Tomorrow’s opening night premiere – a documentary about Steph Curry — is sold out for advance tickets and at rush (if you want to show up and take your chances), but luckily there’s tons more cool stuff to see over the next week and a half. Here we present just a taste: a look at four upcoming screenings — two documentaries and two narrative features.
1.) Rally
(Documentaries: USA. 101 min.)
Legendary San Francisco powerbroker Rose Pak might be the main focus of director Rooth Tang’s first feature documentary, but her film also works as an absolutely riveting look at San Francisco’s often controversial but always endlessly fascinating political and social history. Anyone with even a passing interest in SF politics will love the dish Tang serves up here, as we’re given a front row seat to the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of recent mayoral and supervisor elections. Featuring interviews with a who’s who of Bay Area political, media, and community personalities, the film nicely balances Pak’s inspiring biography with the story of San Francisco’s changing landscape, and we begin to understand just how much the former influenced the latter.
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Fri., April 21st, 5:30pm, CGV Van Ness (At rush)
– Sun., April 23rd, 12:00pm, BAMPFA, Berkeley
2.) Being Mary Tyler Moore
(Documentaries: USA. 120 min.)
TV director and cinematographer James Adolphus makes his feature film debut with this well-crafted look at actress and producer Mary Tyler Moore. Moore’s career spanned nearly six decades, and her early single, working female characters were seminal figures of empowerment for a generation of women used to only seeing housewives on TV sitcoms. Even in her first major role as Dick Van Dyke’s wife Laura on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Moore broke new ground by insisting on wearing pants and flats instead of dresses and heels in scenes that showed her doing housework. Featuring no narration but only archival clips and interviews with Moore herself and new interviews with colleagues and admirers, Moore’s story comes alive. Adolphus shows us a fearless, ahead-of-her time woman whose triumphs and tragedies played out in the public eye but who never lost her zest for life, creative or otherwise.
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Sun., April 16, 12:30pm, CGV Van Ness
– If you miss Sunday’s screening, the film also will air on HBO in May.
3.) BlackBerry
(Narratives: USA. 123 min.)
This film is sure to be a favorite of San Francisco techies. Canadian director Matt Johnson’s documentary chronicles the rise and stunning demise of Research in Motion (RIM), makers of the once high-flying and ubiquitous BlackBerry smartphone. The company’s leaders are masterfully played by Glenn Howerton (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and Jay Baruchel (She’s Out of My League; Knocked Up). Howerton generates all the laughs, mostly by portraying executive Jim Balsillie as a volcanic and slightly unhinged CEO. Baruchel turns in a far more nuanced performance as Mike Lazaridis, the RIM cofounder who transitions from naive nerd to C-suite shark. BlackBerry extends the recent string of expertly told business stories that includes Ford v Ferrari and Air. The Festival fittingly awarded the film its Sloan Science on Screen prize, which rewards a picture with a “compelling depiction of science in a narrative feature film.”
Screenings (information here):
– Mon., April 17th, 7:30pm, Premiere Theater, SF Presidio (At rush. The film will be followed by conversation with UC Berkeley physicist Joel Moore and Director Matt Johnson).
– If you miss Monday’s screening, the film have a limited theatrical release in mid-May.
4.) Dalíland
(Narratives: International. 103 min.)
With movies about Charles Manson, Andy Warhol, and the fictional Patrick Bateman (American Psycho) under her belt, Director Mary Harron is no stranger to films about eccentric personalities. She adds surrealist painter Salvador Dali (Ben Kingsley) to her repertoire here, focusing on the last 15 years of his life, when his popularity and finances were waning, much to the dismay of his wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa). Our guide to Dali’s artistic and personal peculiarities and his co-dependent marriage is young James (Christopher Briney), a fictional gallery assistant who becomes immersed in Dali’s avant-garde world. Ezra Miller plays the young Dali in a few flashbacks, and that Miller’s Dali seems like he’d grow into Kingsley’s Dali is both a feat of the actors’ skill and Harron’s direction. While James is something of a blank slate, art aficionados will appreciate Harron’s take on Dali’s unconventional final years, which included excessive parties attended by the likes of model and future pop star Amanda Lear (Andrea Pejic) and rock star Alice Cooper (Mark McKenna, having fun with the role).
Screenings (click here for tickets):
– Fri., April 14, 8:30pm, CGV Van Ness (At rush)
– Sat., April 15, 7:45pm, BAMPFA, Berkeley
