The special-events slate is dry this Thanksgiving week, but several regular theatrical releases, including two heart-warmers and a serial killer doc, are worth a look.
“Rebuilding” is a narratively slight but emotionally rewarding drama about connection, community and climate written and directed by Max Walker-Silverman (“A Love Song”) and set in the American West. Josh O’Connor plays Dusty, a traumatized Colorado cowboy who has lost his ranch, and generations of family history, in a wildfire and is living in a shakily funded FEMA trailer camp. He reconnects with his former wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and establishes a caring rapport with his young daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre, a talented find). Unable to get a loan to rebuild his home, he realizes he must abandon the life he knew and move on. While the story is thin (it thickens somewhat in the final act, with a contrived development), “Rebuilding” feels like a refreshing breeze, with its gentleness, humanity and its portrayal of people accepting help when they need it and helping others when they can. Suggesting both a classic stoic Western figure and a contemporary father at a crossroads, O’Connor quietly dominates the movie, providing a solidity the screenplay sometimes lacks. The father-daughter scenes are wonderfully down-to-earth and unsentimental. Also impressive is the camaraderie among the displaced residents at the FEMA camp, including a wildfire widow played by Kali Reis and less prominent characters portrayed convincingly by nonprofessionals. “Rebuilding” is at the Metreon in San Francisco. Rated PG.
“Rental Family” from Japanese filmmaker Hikari (“37 Seconds”) is an amiable dramedy about modern loneliness and a morally hazy but effective method of easing it. Brendan Fraser plays Phillip, an unsuccessful Tokyo-based American actor—known for his appearance in a toothpaste commercial—who lands a gig with an agency that provides surrogate companions and loved ones. His first assignment is to impersonate a mourner at a funeral staged by a death-faking client seeking extolment. Another job involves masquerading as the groom at a wedding held to deceive the bride’s parents who disapprove of their daughter’s true partner. Complications occur when Philip becomes emotionally involved in the lives of people he’s been hired to deceive. In one case, he poses as the long-absent American father of a preteen named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), who needs to convince a school admissions panel that she comes from a two-parent home. Unaware that Phillip is an imposter, Mia bonds with the “father” she never knew. Phillip, meanwhile, begins to feel truly fatherly, and alive. “We sell happiness,” says Phillip’s boss (Takehiro Hira), citing Japan’s loneliness problem and dismissing Phillip’s questions about the ethics of their service. Inspired by actual “rental family” operations in Japan, the movie could have been more insightful. Hikari glosses over sad, disturbing aspects in favor of a pleasant and sometimes syrupy tone. But she undeniably has a gift for uplift, and assisted by Fraser, whose deceptively blank-looking face sweetly expresses Philip’s rejuvenation, she’s made a charming movie. “Rental Family” is currently in Bay Area theaters. Rated PG-13.
British filmmaker Charlie Shackleton reflects on the true-crime documentary he wanted to make but couldn’t in his new documentary “Zodiac Killer Project.” Long fascinated with the unsolved case of the “Zodiac Killer,” Shackleton was planning to make a Netflix-style adaptation of a book by Lyndon E. Lafferty, a former highway patrolman who believed that he knew the identity of the murderer who terrorized the Bay Area in 1968-69. In this film, Shackleton offers details about his unfinished documentary, a project abandoned when he was denied rights to the book. He shows locations that would have appeared — some in Vallejo, where two of the Zodiac’s four confirmed attacks occurred. He critically dissects the true-crime genre recipe, highlighting its use of reenactments and “bactors” (actors filmed from the back). Perhaps because of legal limitations, Shackleton doesn’t comprehensively examine Lafferty’s largely discounted theories about the Zodiac case, nor does he dig into why he himself is so drawn to a genre that can be superficial, exploitive and insulting to the concept of nonfiction. While “Zodiac Killer Project” is more entertaining than enlightening, it is informative, engaging and almost surely superior to the documentary that didn’t come to fruition. It opens Friday at the Roxie in San Francisco. Previews with Q&As with Shackleton are at 6 p.m. today at the Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley and 8:30 p.m. today at the Roxie.
“The Things You Kill,” directed by Sundance-honored Iranian filmmaker Alireza Khatami (“Terrestrial Verses”), screens at the Roxie Friday through Sunday. Combining the realism and moral complexity of Asghar Farhadi and Jafar Panahi with the surrealist and neonoir styles of David Lynch, the Turkey-set drama centers on a literature professor who unravels after his mother dies suspiciously. Themes include revenge, intergenerational violence, and masculine identity.
“Thabyay: Creative Resistance in Myanmar,” filmmaker Jeanne Hallacy’s hourlong documentary about creative pro-democracy activism in one of the world’s deadliest conflict areas, screens at San Francisco’s Main Library at 1 p.m. Sunday. A discussion with producer Gregg Butensky and activists Me Me Khant and Lone Kavan follows the screening.