January at the Castro Theatre is taken up with three outstanding festivals: the 15th Edition of the comedy festival SF Sketchfest; the 20th anniversary of Berlin & Beyond, the Goethe-Institut's collection of new films from Germany, Austria and Switzerland; and the 14th edition of the Noir City film noir festival.
Sketchfest highlights (1/7-10): 1/8: Teen Witch, a 1989 teen cult comedy with 50s standup star Shelley Berman, presented by Peaches Christ (7 p.m.), followed at 9:30 p.m. by indie-film legend John Lurie (Stranger than Paradise ) in conversation with indie princess Parker Posey.
1/9: Hook (1991) Steven Spielberg's version of James M. Barrie kid's classic is mainly recommended for its star cast (Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts). ($20, 11:30 a.m.) Waiting for Guffman (1996) Mock doc about pre-Broadway tribulations of a new musical. Cast includes director Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban and Paul Dooley. (Moderated by Kevin Pollak, $30, 3:30 p.m.)
1/10: An Afternoon with Alan Arkin Rare screening of farce The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), enjoyable Cold War companion piece to the bloated Stanley Kramer romp It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Both films benefit from sheer kinetic energy produced by big-name personalities trying to survive a mediocre script. Arkin shines as a Russian sub officer trying to keep his hot-tempered captain from opening fire on annoying American vacationers. Supporting cast includes Carl Reiner as a paranoid American, Jonathan Winters as a trigger-happy Army reservist, and Brian Keith as a sheriff trying to prevent WWIII from breaking out on his watch. (Arkin in person, $25, 2 p.m.) Billy Crystal, the SNL veteran, chats with Alan Zweibel. ($35, 7 p.m.)
1/11 & 12: The Martian (2015) Low-key space thriller stars Matt Damon as an American astronaut stranded on the red planet. NASA brains struggle to bring him home. (3-D; 1/11: 2:15, 7 p.m.; 1/12: 2:30, 7 p.m.) With (1/11): Total Recall (1990) Philip K. Dick's story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" is the basis for this Paul Verhoeven-helmed, Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring sci-fi adventure about a man seeking his true identity by traveling to Mars. (4:50, 9:35 p.m.) With (1/12): Ghosts of Mars (2001) Ice Cube is a dangerous criminal joining forces with a Martian female cop to defeat cannibal zombie psychopaths in John Carpenter's sci-fi classic. (2:05, 9:35 p.m.)
1/13: Blade Runner (1982/2007) Ridley Scott's popular cult classic (based on Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) has Harrison Ford on patrol as a 21st-century cop in LA gone terribly to seed. With Sean Young, Rutger Houer, Edward James Olmos, and Daryl Hannah. (7 p.m.) Trouble in Mind (1985) Alan Rudolph's return to film noir has dogged cop Kris Kristofferson saving damsel Lori Singer from bad guy Keith Carradine. With the late Divine dressed as a man, Genevieve Bujold, and music by Marianne Faithfull. (9:15 p.m.)
Berlin & Beyond (1/14-17): 1/14: Opening Night, Who Am I �" No System Is Safe, fest star Tom Schilling in person.
1/15: Accent on German youth in a quartet of films, The Spiderwebhouse (10 a.m.), Head Full of Honey (Noon), Chucks (3:45 p.m.), centerpiece We Are Young. We Are Strong. (6 p.m.), plus US Premiere Toro (9 p.m.)
1/16: Berlin & Beyond features The Pasta Detectives (11 a.m.), Tour de Force (1 p.m.), After Spring Comes Fall, director Daniel Carsenty in person (4 p.m.), Family Party (7 p.m.), A Coffee in Berlin (Oh Boy ), star Tom Schilling in person. (9:30 p.m.)
1/17: Berlin & Beyond features Iraqi Odyssey (1 p.m.), Mrs. Mueller Must Go, actress Anke Engelke in person (5 p.m.), closing night feature Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (8 p.m.)
1/19: Orson Welles double bill. Chimes at Midnight (1966) Writer-director-actor Welles offers Shakespeare's War of the Roses cycle with himself as Falstaff, a knight to Prince Hal on the battlefield who suffers cruel rejection when Hal becomes Henry V. (3, 7 p.m.) F for Fake (1975) Welles revels in fakery of all kinds, including Clifford Irving's long-ago fake Howard Hughes biography scandal. (5:10, 9:10 p.m.)
1/22-31: Noir City 14: 1/22: Rear Window (1954) James Stewart's finest turn for Alfred Hitchcock, as a middle-aged magazine photographer who's a temporary shut-in due to an accident on the tarmac that leaves one leg in a cast. Stewart and Hitch deliver a riveting study of a frustrated "type-A" personality whose disability turns him into a busybody spying on his neighbors across a Lower Manhattan courtyard. Thelma Ritter, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey and a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr provide memorable supporting turns. The moral paradox of voyeurism vs. crime-fighting vigilante is laid out as both thriller and philosophical puzzle. (7:30 p.m.) The Public Eye (1992) Howard Franklin recalls the era of New York Daily Mirror tabloid photographer Weegee in this atmospheric piece starring Joe Pesci and Barbara Hershey. (9:30 p.m.)
Noir City 14 highlights: 1/24: Humoresque (1946) Joan Crawford, John Garfield and Oscar Levant headline this Jean Negulesco-helmed melodrama between an unstable patroness (Crawford) and an ambitious young violinist (Garfield). (3:50, 8:45 p.m.)
1/25: In a Lonely Place (1950) Nicholas Ray directs this high-octane Hollywood drama, a doomed tryst between screenwriter Humphrey Bogart and aspiring actress Gloria Grahame. (7:15 p.m.) The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) Little-known Humphrey Bogart vehicle has Bogey as a disturbed artist who paints female clients as Angels of Death, then murders them. Co-starring Barbara Stanwyck. (9:15 p.m.)
1/26: The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) Albert Lewin directs the best (or least offensive to gays) version of Oscar Wilde's icon of decadence, meaning a sexual sensibility or values at odds with the prudish, anti-queer sensibility of his own Victorian era. Dorian (Hurd Hatfield) is a young painter who retains his youthful good looks down through the ages, while a self-portrait starts to reflect the "sins" of his (to the Victorians) wanton lifestyle. Warning: Gay cinema maven Vito Russo (The Celluloid Closet ) had major reservations about this film, noting that Wilde's work reached the screen "shorn of its more bizarre sexual implications, while offering George Sanders ('I choose all my friends for their good looks') as a symbol of sophisticated decadence. Such ghettoized characters had their roots in the same anti-intellectualism and mistrust of difference that had characterized the shaping of Hollywood's image of the normal American man." Russo also cites a remark Greta Garbo made about her desire to star in a film of Dorian Gray with herself as Dorian, and Marilyn Monroe "as a young girl ruined by Dorian." (7:15 p.m.) With director Terence Young's 1948 noir Corridor of Mirrors. (9:30 p.m.)
1/27: Love Me or Leave Me (1955) Director Charles Vidor tells the story of singer Ruth Etting, with intense turns from Doris Day and James Cagney. Daniel Fuch's story garnered an Oscar. Doris shone with her versions of "I'll Never Stop Loving You," "10 Cents a Dance" and "Shaking the Blues Away." (1, 7 p.m.) Young Man with a Horn (1950) Russo appends an advisory warning to this Michael Curitz-directed bio-pic on jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke. Carl Foreman-Edmund H. North's screenplay drew from Dorothy Baker's book. Russo quotes the Baker book that Bacall's character Amy North is "a neurotic young girl who's tried everything," and adds, "Unable to make a heterosexual relationship work [with Kirk Douglas' musician], she is finally taken with a young woman artist whose patron she becomes. The two women leave together for Paris. A shattered Kirk Douglas, left in the consoling arms of a wholesome Doris Day, tells Bacall at the kiss-off, 'You're a sick girl, Amy. You'd better see a doctor.'" Douglas' trumpet-playing was supplied by the great Harry James. (3:30, 9:30 p.m.)
1/28: Screaming Mimi (1958) Russo argues that "Gypsy Rose Lee ['s character] almost certainly has a brief affair with a stripper who works in her club, 'The Gay and Frisky,' which features a sadomasochistic strip scene unusual for 1950s Hollywood." Director Gerd Oswald. (7:30 p.m.) Mickey One (1965) Arthur Penn directs Warren Beatty as a nightclub artist fleeing the mob. A stab at an American expression of the French New Wave sensibility. (9:15 p.m.)
1/29: The Bad and the Beautiful (1953) Vincente Minnelli uses hard-driving Kirk Douglas as a ruthless producer who inflicts psychic and professional damage on an ambitious young actress (magnificent Lana Turner), a struggling writer (Dick Powell) and vulnerable director (Barry Sullivan). Five Oscars, including Best Supporting Actress Gloria Grahame. (7:15 p.m.) The Big Knife (1955) Robert Aldrich helms this intense view of the Hollywood jungle, based on Clifford Odets' play. With Jack Palance, Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters and Rod Steiger. (9:40 p.m.)
1/30: The Lodger (1944) John Brahm directs this turn-of-the-century origin myth about Jack the Ripper. The atmospheric tale features Merle Oberon, George Sanders, Laird Gregor and Sir Cedric Hardwicke. (1 p.m.) Bluebeard (1944) Edgar G. Ulmer directs a sickly John Carradine in this neglected noir. (2:50 p.m.) Scarlett Street (1945) Fritz Lang directs Edward G. Robinson as a beaten-down husband targeted for descent into crime by Joan Bennett and her bad boyfriend Dan Duryea. Dudley Nichols' script reworks Jean Renoir's La Chienne. (4:15 p.m.)
1/30: The Red Shoes (1948) Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created the ultimate tribute to a young girl's dreams of dancing fame. (7:15 p.m.) Specter of the Rose (1946) Directors Ben Hecht and Lee Garmes produced this minor noir remembered for its ties to the creator of journalism classic The Front Page. (10 p.m.)
1/31: Peeping Tom (1960) Almost ended the career of its embattled director, Michael Powell. A young photographer snaps a picture of his female victims at the moment he kills them. This 101-minute version restores footage cut when the film came under attack. (1:30, 6:30 p.m.) Blow-Up (1966) Antonioni's first English-language feature stars David Hemmings as a young British fashion photographer who obsesses over a murder he may have captured on film in a public park. A great cinematic expression on the ambiguity of the photographic image. Music by the Yardbirds and Herbie Hancock. (2:30, 8:45 p.m.)