San Francisco International Film Festival 2018

[Chris Knipp]

LOTS OF KIDS, A MONKEY AND A CASTLE/MUCHOS HIJOS, UN MONO Y UN CASTILLO (Gustavo Salmerón 2017)

A quite hilarious home movie portrait of the actor Gustavo Salmerón's 's mother Juleta, who set those three goals for happiness and achieved them, and her chaotic late ife, entertaining simply because this real person and her family are fun to observe.

[Chris Knipp]

Festival closing.

The SFIFF (April 4-17) has wrapped and reports they showed 242 screenings of 186 films from 45 countries, which were attended by some 300 filmmakers and industry guests. Over two weeks, the 2018 fest showed 59 narrative features, 38 documentary features, four New Visions features, two episodic programs, and a total of 83 short films.

Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade and Sam Green’s A Thousand Thoughts Won Audience Awards for Best Narrative Feature and Best Documentary. $40,000 worth of awards were granted to winners.

[Chris Knipp]

GODARD, MON AMOUR (Michel Hazanavicius)

See Armond White's comment on this film which he calls "appalling and entertaining." He says: "Even a bad film about Godard, as this one is, introduces people to his genius." And there is indeed that. Louis Garrel livens up his presence and I saw the trailer with a friend before re-watching Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really There and he said, "I want to see that."

Armond White's National Review piece is just out because it's in theaters now, in NYC at Quad Cinema. In Landmark Cinemas shortly coming to San Francisco's Embarcadero Cinema.

[Chris Knipp]

CIVILIZATIONS: HOW DO WE LOOK? (BBC & PBS series)

(Finally got to watch this.)

A sample, the second hour-long episode of a nine-part series updating Kenneth Clark's famous 1969 one, "Civilization." Note the change from singular to plural. Likewise, the unifying voice of the single presenter has been replaced by three. Some new information, and new technology and a few important new archaeological findings, but Sir Kenneth's distinctive voice has not bee replaced with anything equally memorable. This starts out exactly sounding like a Fifties Encyclopedia Brittanica instructional film and never finds itself.

[Chris Knipp]

P.s. A full review of Godard Mon Amour is up now, since it is out in theaters.

GODARD MON AMOUR (Michel Hazanavicius 2017)

[Chris Knipp]

WAJIB (Annemarie Jacir 2017)

On the one-year anniversary of this film's Locarno debut, I'm posting my full review of this Palestinian film about a son who now lives in Italy who temporarily returns to his native Nazareth for his sister's wedding confronting the daily tensions and generational conflicts of life as a restricted people in a Jewish state. Mohammad and Saleh Bakri, the actors who play the father and son who travel around town in the old family Volvo hand-delivering the wedding invitations in the traditional way, are real-life father and son. No US release of this film seems to be in sight.

[Chris Knipp]

Now showing in theaters (20 Sept. 2018) from the SFIFF:

I Am Not a Witch

At:
Quad Cinema, NYC
Elmwood, Berkeley
Roxie, San Francisco

Metascore: 79%