The San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILMFestival) – a Can’t Miss for Bay Area film fans – has just begun, and here’s my festival preview.
My DVD/Stream of the week is my favorite from last year’s San Francisco International Film Festival and one of the best films of the year, the Greek comedy Chevalier, a sly and pointed exploration of male competitiveness. Chevalier is now available to rent on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Netflix Instant, Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
In theaters this week:
- I liked the gloriously pulpy revenge thriller The Assignment with Michelle Rodriguez, the toughest of the Tough Chicks, playing both the Before and After roles in a hostile gender re-assignment surgery. The Assignment opens nationally in theaters today – but very in few theaters. It’s available now on Ultra VOD and YouTube.
- The little British drama The Sense of an Ending, with Jim Broadbent, Harriet Walter and Charlotte Rampling, is my current top choice.
- Bev Powley is very good in the agreeable comedy Carrie Pilby.
- If you’re looking for an unchallenging comedy, then The Last Word, with the force of nature named Shirley MacLaine, is for you.
- Kristen Stewart is excellent in Personal Shopper, a murky mess of a movie; don’t bother.
On April 8, Turner Classic Movies presents what is perhaps the best of director Anthony Mann’s “psychological Westerns”, Winchester ’73 (1950) with James Stewart. Winchester ’73 taps the quest and revenge genres, and it has the requisite Western Indian battle and climactic shootout. Westerns were oft about Good versus Bad, but Mann makes Jimmy Stewart’s character in Winchester ’73 much more complex and morally ambiguous – and he has what we now call “unresolved issues”. The bad guys are Dan Duryea at his oiliest and Stephen McNally at his most brutish. The 29-year-old Shelly Winters finds herself as the object of several characters’ desires. Millard Mitchell is perfect as Jimmy’s sidekick. One of my favorite character actors, Jay C. Flippen, shows up as a cavalry sergeant.
And here’s a wonderfully fun period romp: TCM airs Richard Lester’s hilariously broad The Three Musketeers on April 9.
