The Castro Theatre performs its role as both a showcase for classic film and a neat place to catch today's award-season cinema. The November calendar includes a special tribute to the Rolling Stones and the return of the Scary Cow Short Films Festival: see the theatre's website for more on these.
"Big Trouble in Little China" (1986) John Carpenter's classic horror tale set in San Francisco's Chinatown. Ex-Disney vet Kurt Russell is a macho trucker who seeks to save a buddy's abducted girlfriend.
"Escape from New York" (1981) Russell again as a guy trapped in a future Manhattan where the isle of joy has turned into a max-security prison. With Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence and Isaac Hayes. (both 11/3)
"Battle of the Sexes" (2017) The story flashes back to 1973, when aging tennis star Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell), more skilled at hustling for TV camera time than playing competitive tennis, challenges top female stars half his age to showdown matches. Riggs raises his sights to call out the reigning women's champ, Billie Jean King. The much-hyped event played before a live crowd of 30,000 and a national TV audience estimated at 90 million. The result was a huge boost in popularity for women's tennis, which had long languished in the shadow of the men's game.
"Tom of Finland" (2017) Finnish filmmaker Dome Karukoski presents the story of a legend, Touko Laaksonen (1920-91). This biopic, a hit at Frameline 41, concentrates on a handful of pivotal moments and relationships that inspired Tom's hypermasculine drawings, art that would excite gay men worldwide. Tom is faced with both defending his unique artistic vision and maintaining his freedom at the hands of vicious homophobes. (both 11/7)
"New Italian Cinema 2017" brings Italy's newest directors, veteran actors and filmmakers to the Bay Area, presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and New Italian Cinema Events of Florence, Italy. (Castro, Nov. 8; Vogue Theatre, 9-12).
"Franca: Chaos and Creation" Director Francesco Carrozzini's intimate portrait of his mother, the legendary editor of Italian Vogue, Franca Sozzani, who explored taboos, championed models of color, and gave photographers creative control. Features interviews with Karl Lagerfeld, Bruce Weber, Baz Luhrmann, and Courtney Love.
"The Stuff of Dreams" A shipwreck casts convicted criminals and itinerant actors onto a windswept island that houses a prison overseen by a warden (Ennio Fantastichini) who lives there with his young daughter Miranda (Alba Gaia Bellugi). The gangsters infiltrate the theatrical troupe to hide their true identities. The suspicious warden orders the lead actor (Sergio Rubini) to stage a performance of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" in order to distinguish the thespians from the miscreants. Director Gianfranco Cabiddu's beautifully lensed drama won the Italian Golden Globe for Best Film and the David di Donatello for Best Adapted Screenplay. Screenwriter Salvatore De Mola will attend.
"Fortunata" Director Sergio Castellitto gives us a young mother and self-employed hairdresser (Jasmine Trinca) rushing to appointments with the dream of opening her own hair parlor. She has a failed marriage, eccentric friends, and an eight-year-old daughter whose behavioral problems require therapy. Then she meets someone who desires her for the woman she is. Winner of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, Best Actress Award, Un Certain Regard. (all 3, 11/8)
"Rear Window" (1954) Arguably 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 temporary disability turns him into a "nosey Parker" busybody spying on his neighbors across a lower Manhattan courtyard.
A terrific supporting cast includes Thelma Ritter as Stewart's visiting nurse, who has a hilarious theory about the relationship between executive bathroom breaks and the behavior of financial markets; Grace Kelly, as Stewart's hyper-glam fashion-expert girlfriend; "B-actor" Wendell Corey as Stewart's WWII bomber-pilot sidekick; and a white-haired, pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr as an oddly sympathetic wife-killer. It's one of Hitch's endlessly addictive classics. The moral paradox of Stewart's mix of character traits, from voyeurism to vigilantism, makes the film both a thriller and philosophical puzzle.
"Blowup" (1966) Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni casts David Hemmings as a hip photographer roaming through a swinging London scene that culminates in a possible murder in a park. With music by the Yardbirds and Herbie Hancock. An English-language Italian/British co-production in color. (both 11/19)
"Disney's Sing-Along Beauty and the Beast" (1991) Co-directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise present a classic Disney-style full-length animation based on a timeless fairy tale. With the voices of Paige O'Hara, Robby Benson, Jerry Orbach, Angela Lansbury, Richard White, David Ogden Stiers, Jesse Coru, Rex Everhart, Bradley Michael Pierce, Jo Anne Worley and Kimmy Robertson. (11/22-30)