SFIFF59 Spotlights #1: Microbe & Gasoline / Dead Slow Ahead / Very Big Shot / Granny’s Dancing on the Table

SFIFF59

It’s that wonderful time of the year, again! Yes, time for the San Francisco International Film Festival (SFIFF). The 59th edition of SFIFF will be hosting its two week celebration and screenings of incredible cinema from around the globe — April 21 through May 5. Year after year, Spinning Platters is here to provide you with tons of SFIFF coverage before, during, and after the event. Let’s start you off with four spotlights you should check out when SFIFF59 rolls around…

Microbe & Gasoline
(France, 2015, 105 min, Global Visions)

A scene from Michel Gondry's MICROBE AND GASOLINE will play at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, on April 21 - May 5,2016.
A scene from Michel Gondry’s MICROBE AND GASOLINE will play at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival, on April 21 – May 5,2016.

Writer/director Michel Gondry’s newest cinematic entry may be his most charming to date. The whimsical tale of two adolescent friends (nicknamed Microbe and Gasoline) building a mobile tiny house for a chance to roadtrip across France to meet girls and explore the world is everything you’d want it to be — funny, inventive, and entertaining. Gondry’s usual DIY visual panache is less on display — maintaining focus instead on the two young lead characters whose conversations and musings on life transcend audience age groups. You’ll love Microbe & Gasoline!

Screenings:

  • Sunday, April 24rd, 6:00pm, Victoria Theatre
  • Tuesday, April 26th, 5:30pm, Alamo Drafthouse

Tickets available here.

Continue reading “SFIFF59 Spotlights #1: Microbe & Gasoline / Dead Slow Ahead / Very Big Shot / Granny’s Dancing on the Table“

Film Review: Demolition

Vallée’s newest meditation on grief could finally mean Oscar for Gyllenhaal

New friends Karen (Naomi Watts) and Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) find themselves in a tense situation.
New friends Karen (Naomi Watts) and Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) find themselves in a tense situation at a function honoring Davis’s recently deceased wife.

How do we process sudden loss? Is there a right or wrong way to grieve, and how can we keep grief from overwhelming us? These are the weighty questions director Jean-Marc Vallée continues to contemplate in his somewhat uneven but emotionally arresting new picture Demolition. While not as strong as either Wild or Dallas Buyers Club, Vallée’s previous two films that explored death and grief, Demolition nonetheless is worth recommending based both on its raw and unique way of depicting the grieving process, and also on the strength of Jake Gyllenhaal’s exceptional performance as a man left shell-shocked by the unexpected death of his wife. Continue reading “Film Review: Demolition“

Film Review: The Boss

The Boss gets to a hilarious point, and then avoids it the rest of the way.

Troop Badass.
Troop Badass.

Melissa McCarthy has been a central figure in the female-led comedic renaissance in modern cinema. 2011’s Bridesmaids kicked off a constant flow of adult comedies featuring female leads, and the results have been great. That isn’t to say that female-led comedies were never produced before, but they were few and far between — about one to every ten male-led adult comedies (a guesstimate). The Boss is the latest entry in the new wave of such films, and while it’s not nearly as funny as others, it gleefully crosses the politically incorrect line on a few occasions while criticizing some of our society’s most antiquated views of women of all ages. And when it does, unfortunately not often enough, it’s hysterical!

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There, I Fixed it: Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are”

 

"You're pretty good so far, and haven't disappointed me. Please continue to be satisfactory."
“You’re pretty good so far, and haven’t disappointed me. Please continue to be satisfactory.”

Last night I was at a favorite piano bar, and someone offered me a hundred bucks to sing “Just the Way You Are.” I’m a fan of Billy Joel’s music, but I’m not a singer, and, since he’s basically a classically trained opera singer, he’s impossible to render on tune. Also, I’d never met this guy, never sang at this bar, and the guy was wearing a bad suit and tried to put his hands on my hips. So the answer was a stern no, with additional instructions to back off said less politely.

But let’s talk about this song for a minute or two. “Just the Way You Are” was a classic wedding song in the seventies. Look how sweet it is! It’s about loving someone with all their flaws. Or at least, that’s the obvious message. We are going to take the innocence right out of it, turning it from charming love song into something else by deploying my trusty feminist raygun at this pop standard.

Continue reading “There, I Fixed it: Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are””

Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 2016-04-01 – 2016-04-05

In the spirit of having a joke-free April Fool's Day.
In the spirit of having a joke-free April Fool’s Day.

April Fool’s Day is a hellscape filled with brands attempting to be funny. Don’t encourage them.

No fooling here, it’s preview time. This week in the Bay Area, we have local punk rock, queercore, nerdcore, a flautist, a man who built his career upon eels, and a benefit about benefits.

Let’s preview. Continue reading “Spinning Platters Weekly Guide to Bay Area Concerts: 2016-04-01 — 2016-04-05”

Film Review: Midnight Special

The boy is Special, and so is the film

Roy (Michael Shannon, l.) will do anything to protect his very special son Alton (Jaeden Lieberher).

Writer/director Jeff Nichols (Mud, Take Shelter, Shotgun Stories) continues his collaboration with the terrific actor Michael Shannon to great effect in his utterly engaging new science fiction film Midnight Special. Unlike another film by a well known writer/director that opened today, Nichols’s film grips you from its opening minute and keeps you enraptured for its nearly two hour run time. A film that pays homage to others of its genre while still managing to be totally unique, Midnight Special is well worth your box office dollars. Continue reading “Film Review: Midnight Special”

Film Review: Everybody Wants Some!!

Nobody will want any of Linklater’s tedious newest

Hangin’ out. So. Much. Hangin’ out.

Remember that time in college when you sat around your buddy’s room, listening to records, smoking pot and talking about Carl Sagan and old Twilight Zone episodes? Or that time you went to a super freaky party thrown by theater majors? Or that time your housemate got totally bent because you beat him at ping pong? You don’t? Well, writer/director Richard Linklater sure does, and he’s going to make you relive all those experiences and more in his meandering, occasionally funny, but mostly dull new picture Everybody Wants Some!! When you need not one, but two exclamation points to take the place of genuine excitement in your film, you know you’re in trouble. Continue reading “Film Review: Everybody Wants Some!!”

Film Review: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Why so serious?

Face to face. Angry man v angry man. Grumble v grumble.
Face to face. Brooder v brooder. Mano y mano (with guns and gadgets)

“Hey everyone, Batman is fighting Superman!” <<everyone rushes to the schoolyard>> “Aw, is it over?” “Yeah, it didn’t last long and it wasn’t too exciting, but they promised to fight someone else together next time.” There you have it — that’s a pretty good summary of the disappointing DC tent event, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. What ends up functioning as a 2 hr 40 min movie trailer for an pending Justice League movie is enjoyable at times but mostly a mess of style over substance. Anyone familiar, and probably critical, of director Zack Snyder’s work won’t be surprised by this. There was so much (tentative) hype for BvS that it would’ve been nearly impossible for it to live up to the expectations, but hey, The Force Awakens pulled it off so BvS has no excuse. BvS is disappointing on so many levels, save a surprisingly stellar Ben Affleck as Batman, because its favors more over less, background over foreground, and a serious tone over a fun one.

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Show Review: ‘E.T. the Extra Terrestrial’ Live in Concert with the SF Symphony

All the music. All the magic. All the feels.

Screen Shot 2016-03-23 at 10.17.41 PM

I haven’t seen E.T. in twenty years, but by the time the credits rolled I had teary eyes and the theme song wonderfully repeating itself in my head. My girlfriend sitting next to me exclaimed, “my track record of crying every time I see E.T. is still intact”. That’s the power of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 classic E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, and there really was no better way to watch the film than with live orchestral accompaniment at the San Francisco Symphony.

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Show Review: An Evening with Loreena McKennitt at the Masonic, 3/19/2016

Canadian queen of Celtic melodies returns to San Francisco for an austere and intimate performance

Loreena McKennitt
Loreena McKennitt

“Surreal” is probably the most appropriate word to describe how the evening felt this past Saturday night, when Loreena McKennitt returned to the Bay Area for the first time in nearly 10 years and treated a sold-out crowd at The Masonic to a gorgeous performance that stretched on for nearly three hours. There were no opening acts to speak of; there was only one encore (albeit with two songs), one intermission, and three musicians onstage for most of the concert. At the center of it all was a fantastic performer who, now in her 31st year of performing, sounds just as powerful and mystifying as she did on her albums from decades gone by, both in voice and in instrumentation. It was quite the sight to behold, made more intense by the unwavering concentration and respect of the audience; aside from when the musicians bowed at the end of the show, not a single conversation was to be heard, nor a phone held aloft to document the moment — an extreme rarity in today’s live music scene.

Continue reading “Show Review: An Evening with Loreena McKennitt at the Masonic, 3/19/2016”