Now that it’s summer, the cinemas are filled with blockbuster action films and not much else. If you’re looking for a cheap alternative, here’s a list of four films from the last year that you may have missed in theaters but ought to catch on Netflix.
In memory of writer-director Nora Ephron, the master of intelligent romantic comedies who died on June 26, Intermission presents a list of Ephron’s greatest achievements in entertainment.
Woody Allen’s latest film, “To Rome With Love,” doesn’t evoke as many laughs as last year’s “Midnight in Paris,” but it’s still an entertaining, if fleeting, piece.
The Memorial Day long weekend was an amazing one for jazz fans on both sides of the Bay, featuring musicians young and old from a variety of styles. I started off the weekend with a trip to Yoshi’s Oakland on Friday, a venue with consistently high-quality international acts on a student budget, making it well worth the trip across the Bay.
When the performance begins, three people—two women (Rene Augesen and Annie Purcell) and one man (Anthony Fusco) in the middle—are on stage in a row, facing the audience, and they are each completely submerged, except for their heads, in a large urn.
One of the most exciting and avant-garde events at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival was the live documentary presentation of director Sam Green’s “The Love Song for R. Buckminster Fuller.” It screened twice at the SFMOMA on May 1, a presentation facilitated in tandem with the SFMOMA, which has a current exhibit on Buckminster Fuller in the Bay Area.
“Bernie,” premiered last month at the San Francisco International Film Festival, where I caught up with Director Richard Linklater. Though he had a full day of interviews scheduled, Linklater remained laid back, friendly and open, sporting a Criterion Collection t-shirt and jeans.
If you’ve seen the trailers for the new Canadian film “Monsieur Lazhar,” you might be tempted to characterize it as just another “Dead Poets Society” or “To Sir With Love – that is to say, a film about some perfect teacher who changes the lives of troubled children. Though “Monsieur Lazhar” is about a teacher and his middle school students, it’s a film that involves complicated characters in difficult situations and is neither as dire nor as simple as it may seem. It’s a film about the things we can’t (but desperately need to) talk about. There are no overwhelmingly significant moments, just a series of small ones that eventually build to help the characters grow, grieve and start anew. And it’s absolutely moving and affecting: tears were shed, but they were every bit earned.