Movie-going ain't what it used to be. Films have gone digital. Rare is the exhibitor who will bother lugging film cans up to a projection booth when they can slip a DVD into a machine and press play. Is their resolution really better than my Mac laptop's? How can local cinemas compete with the Public Library, which offers free three-week DVD rentals from a vast collection? These are questions film-reviewer-cum-programmer Ruthe Stein sets out to answer with her sixth annual grab-bag of foreign English-language films, the Mostly British Film Festival, starting tonight, Feb. 13, at the Vogue Theater.
Stein, a frisky 40-year veteran of the Chronicle 's film pages, bought me a cup of tea on Sacramento Street, in a neighborhood called Presidio Heights. We were right down the street from the intimate, single-screen, 250-seat, vintage 1912 Vogue Theater, one of two crown jewels, along with the Balboa, now run by the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, founded in 2002 to preserve cinema's footprint in this ever-shrinking town. We met to talk and so she could pass me two brand-new commercial DVDs. She was nervous about me getting them back to her, as they were back-ups for the festival's screenings.
Mostly British could be called Entirely British, if we understand British to mean not only England, where it all started, but also the ruthlessly colonized neighboring countries Ireland and Scotland, and the erstwhile prison colonies Australia and New Zealand, as well as the great Indian subcontinent, aka the jewel in the crown, the one Queen Victoria was so chuffed about because it made her an Empress. These countries still suffer from the fall-out of British imperialism, and still crank out movies that are implicitly both an homage and critique of Britain's dreadful obsession with race, sex, and class. Mostly British skews toward homage, actually playing Love, Actually on Valentine's Day. (Friday, 7 p.m.)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), directed by Martin Ritt in luscious black-and-white, is a sober, somber, sparse filming of John Le Carre's breakthrough 1963 novel designed to depict the desperate real-life drudgery of spies, so unlike the sexist, cocksure, capitalist James Bond charades. Richard Burton had already met Elizabeth Taylor, but he still remembered how to act, and he's simply thrilling in a mufflered, morbid, sneaky, scary Cold War kinda way. Even Claire Bloom is believable as an idealistic shelver of books who gets snookered into a cultural exchange with the East Germans. Need I say more? It doesn't end well, and that's to its great credit. (Sunday, 6:30 p.m.)
The Hit (1984) was Stephen Frears' directorial debut, and maybe that's why Criterion added it to its otherwise prestigious list of DVD releases. I don't know about you, but watching British hooligans misbehave in Spain to the tune of near-flamenco is my idea of a bad drug trip. Yes, the acting talent is on tap. But where's the script? Yes, Spain is a gorgeous landscape, but we coulda had Don Quixote, we coulda had Carmen. Instead, this paean to modern Anglo sociopathy in the guise of a long drawn-out kidnap-and-murder scheme seems like a paid vacation for a British film production. At 98 minutes, it's an hour too long. But the really unforgiveable sin? Fernando Rey, Bunuel's fetish, who might have injected some metaphysics, is filmed like an extra. (Sunday, 9 p.m.)
Byzantium (2012) is a portentous title indicative of the sacrosanct seriousness with which Moira Buffini has adapted her play The Vampire Play to the screen. Sit back, relax, and wallow in two blood-bloated hours of a time-travelling mother-daughter heterosexist vampire tag-team's escapades in a gritty seaside town. What prompted the genius who brought us our all-time favorite hermaphrodite-inflected bloody IRA crime caper, The Crying Game, Neil Jordan, to direct? Maybe it's an Irish thing. Maybe he liked the idea of an enterprising hooker-turned-brothel-madam as a serial biter. But actress Gemma Arterton is no Miranda Richardson, and bite is just what this film lacks. Yawn. (Wednesday, 9 p.m.)
MBFF runs Feb. 13-20, Vogue Theater, 3290 Sacramento St., SF ($10-$12.50). Info: www.cinemasf.com.