Filmmaker retrospectives and horror classics highlight the week’s screen scene.
Significant French filmmaker Alice Diop, whose cinema contains stories from communities seldom represented onscreen, is the focus of a retrospective at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive running Thursday through Sept. 18. Documentaries by Diop include 2011’s “Danton’s Death,” about a versatile Black actor who is offered only “street” roles; and 2016’s “On Call,” filmed in a medical clinic visited by immigrants and refugees. “Saint Omer” (2022), Diop’s remarkable narrative feature inspired by the true story of a Senegalese immigrant on trial for infanticide, also screens. Diop appears in conversation at most programs. Visit bampfa.org for more information.
Martin Scorsese, a director who could film a crack on a wall and make it compelling, also has inspired a BAMPFA retrospective — a 10-month series opening this weekend. It includes 11 Scorsese films, beginning with the Little Italy–set “Mean Streets” (1973) on Saturday. “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” (1974) starring Ellen Burstyn in her Oscar-winning role screens on Sunday. More upcoming selections include “Taxi Driver” (1976), “New York, New York” (1977), “The Last Waltz” (1978), “Raging Bull” (1980), “GoodFellas” (1990) and “After Hours” (1985). Visit bampfa.org for more information.
The Balboa Theater hosts a pair of “pre-Halloween special events” — singular presentations of classic horror films — Friday and Saturday. On Friday at 8 p.m., “Creature From the Black Lagoon” (1954), directed by Jack Arnold and featuring a horrifying amphibious jungle monster, screens, presented in 3D on 35mm. On Saturday at 8 p.m., Sleepbomb, the San Francisco rock band specializing in movie music, presents James Whale’s “Frankenstein” (1931), with a live new score. Visit balboamovies.com.
The Ocean Beach Surf Film Festival is at the 4-Star Theater in San Francisco on Thursday through Sunday. Surfing-related films, music and special guests are on the bill. Visit 4-star-movies.com for details.
New releases in Bay Area theaters this week include “It Ends,” an existential thriller in which talented new filmmaker Alexander Ullom uses the horror genre to depict cusp-of-adulthood dread. The plot-spare movie inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” centers on four college-age friends — serious James (Phinehas Yoon), deceptively easygoing Day (Akira Jackson), military veteran Tyler (Mitchell Cole) and playful Fisher (Noah Toth) — who, during a hangout road trip, take a wrong turn and wind up in a hellscape on a two-lane highway with no end. Bizarrely, they no longer require food, water, or sleep. Screaming maniacs inhabit the woods. Is this purgatory? A wormhole? Is someone being punished for a terrible act? Ullom avoids explanation as the characters either accept or fight their predicament. Their friendship and sanity erode during the ordeal. Deeper character development might have made the movie more affecting because viewers don’t get to know these young people beyond the surface, and investment in their plight decreases as the nightmare progresses. However, Ullom, who is in his 20s, has a flair for dread and presents Gen Z jadedness observantly. Early scenes have sharp, amusing road-trip dialogue, delivered engagingly. As suspense builds within the confines of a Jeep Cherokee, the movie’s low-budget energy helps the action feel real and spontaneous. “It Ends” is an entertaining, spooky ride that suggests the real-world horror of young people entering adulthood, trying to determine who they are and what they will do with their lives.
“A Sad and Beautiful World” currently at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco is an old-fashioned, site-specific romantic saga, with Lebanese DNA and Hollywood-style romcom brightness. Filmmaker Cyril Aris (The Swing”) follows protagonists Nino (Hasan Akil) and Yasmina (Mounia Akl) over three decades in war-shaped Beirut. The film begins when the two enter the world on the same day at the same hospital, one minute apart, as bombs overwhelm their cries. They become childhood sweethearts, and, after years apart, they reunite, in meet-cute fashion, when Nino, now a personable restaurateur who has experienced a terrible loss, accidentally crashes his car through the facade of Yasmina’s mother’s place of business. The flame reignites. Yasmina, a level-headed economic consultant, cancels her plan to relocate to Germany and instead remains in Beirut to be with Nino. The two marry and have a daughter. War and national collapse threaten their future. Yasmina wants the family to leave Lebanon and build a new life somewhere stabler. Nino, who feels tied to his past and his country, is torn. Aris’ screenplay, cowritten with Bane Fakih, includes tones and subjects — a magical island presented with fantasy effects, notions of destiny and star-crossed love — that are incompatible with the prevailing realistic material and seem to belong in a different movie. Aris, who grew up in Lebanon during turbulent times, does present the terror of war and political instability effectively. The film stands out as a love story, too. The actors generate essential movie chemistry, keeping viewers concerned about the fate of their relationship throughout.
The Yerba Buena Gardens Festival in San Francisco hosts a free outdoor screening of “Black Panther” — the Marvel Studios blockbuster directed by Oakland-based Ryan Coogler — on Yerba Buena Gardens’ Great Lawn on Saturday. A pre-show starts at 6:30 p.m.; the movie starts at sunset, around 7:30 p.m. Visit ybgfestival.org.