{"id":171278,"date":"2026-02-10T03:19:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/171278\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T03:19:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T03:19:09","slug":"screen-grabs-oscar-missed-this-heartwarming-tale-set-in-1990-iraq-you-dont-have-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/171278\/","title":{"rendered":"Screen Grabs: Oscar missed this heartwarming tale set in 1990 Iraq\u2014you don’t have to"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week sees something rare these days in SF: The addition of new film venues, after years of their number shrinking. Well, actually the theaters in question aren\u2019t new\u2014just returning to action after a hiatus of one sort of another. Japantown\u2019s New People, an event space whose past functions included a too-brief stint as SFFilm\u2019s year-round arthouse, appears to be at least temporarily back in the exhibition business with \u201cNippon Vibes\u201d<\/a> (Sat\/14 and Sun\/15), a weekend of Japanese cinema co-presented by the Roxie.<\/p>\n

Its four shows span eight decades, from the original 1954\u00a0Godzilla\u00a0(quite a different movie from the drastically altered U.S. release version) and Akira Kurosawa\u2019s 1957\u00a0Throne of Blood\u00a0(an ambitious feudal-era spin on\u00a0Macbeth) to the beloved 2016 anime\u00a0your name.\u00a0and last year\u2019s\u00a0Kokuho, an epic three-hour drama set in the Kabuki theater world that\u2019s now the highest-grossing Japanese live action feature ever. <\/p>\n

More conspicuous has been the re-opening of the Castro Theatre, whose controversial makeover as a venue primarily for live performance was negotiated with a proviso that it also regularly host a minimum number of film-centric events. After many months of renovation, last week saw the public invited in again with a screening of\u00a0The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. There won\u2019t be much more of a celluloid nature until mid-March, when the calendar starts to include special nights for local film festivals, celebrity appearances (John Waters with\u00a0Serial Mom, Gina Gershon with\u00a0Showgirls), sing-a-longs (The Sound of Music), 70mm presentations (Interstellar), and so forth. The full calendar is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This Thu\/12, however, the Castro will house local premiere for\u00a0Pillion, with director Harry Lighton and star Harry Melling in person, followed by a party at The Stud. Melling plays Colin, a dweeby gay man who still lives with his supportive-if-hover-y parents, sings in his father\u2019s (Douglas Hodge) barbershop quartet, and has perhaps the day job least likely to generate a social life: he issues parking tickets. Then by chance, he crosses paths with Ray (Alexander Skarsgard), a strapping biker. Rather unexpectedly, this imposing hunk drafts Colin as his new\u2026 slave? Sub? Houseboy? Whatever the appropriate term, it\u2019s a relationship with strict if often unspoken rules and bounds. Our hero finds it exhilarating, but also frustrating. Colin remains a closed book in emotional terms, forbiddingly \u201cdiscreet\u201d about even such fundamentals as what he does for a living.<\/p>\n

I was not a big fan of\u00a0Box Hill, the Adam Mars-Jones novel this is based on. Lighton\u2019s debut-feature adaptation maintains some of the book\u2019s cringey aspects, but also adds humor and grace notes. This is, at times, surprisingly graphic in sexual content for a relatively mainstream film, though shock value (and even eroticism) are downplayed in favor of character insight. There\u2019s also an interesting subplot of sorts in the bewilderment of Colin\u2019s ailing mother (Lesley Sharp) at seeing her son find a \u201cboyfriend\u201d at last, albeit on role-playing fetish terms she doesn\u2019t understand or like.<\/p>\n

That Castro screening was officially sold out at press time; however,\u00a0Pillion\u00a0opens in limited local theaters the following day. Fri\/13 will also see the wide release of another volatile love story, the latest adaptation of\u00a0Wuthering Heights, starring no less than Barbie (well, Margot Robbie) and Frankenstein\u2019s monster (Jacob Elordi)\u2014but that film was not advance-screened in time for our deadline.<\/p>\n

Other movies arriving this weekend run an interesting gamut of less-starry titles that range from foreign cinema in a classic neorealist vein to a political documentary, plus several unconventional fantasy or genre films.<\/p>\n

The President\u2019s Cake<\/p>\n

Sponsored link<\/p>\n

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Probably the best movie opening this week is one that might recall the postwar Italian depictions of child poverty in movies like\u00a0The Bicycle Thief. Hasan Hadi\u2019s debut feature is set in 1990 Iraq, when U.N. sanctions have thrown citizens into considerable everyday hardship. Nonetheless, it is mandatory that the entire nation celebrate Saddam Hussein\u2019s birthday, with nine-year-old rural schoolchild Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) \u201cwinning\u201d the dubious honor of making her classroom\u2019s honorary cake. This is in fact a terrible stroke of luck, because such basics as sugar, eggs, and flour are in extremely short supply\u2014yet the punitive consequences for failing this stupid obligation will be no joke.<\/p>\n

Helped as best she can by her grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), Lamia sets out on her near-impossible quest, providing us a fascinating glimpse of an unfamiliar time and place, made more so by their community of floating houses on marshland. Compellingly performed by mostly nonprofessional actors, very well crafted on an often impressive scale, it\u2019s a depressing-sounding story that somehow sports too much warmth, color, and suspense to come off as a simple downer. It did not, alas, make it to the Oscars\u2019 final five of current Best International Feature nominees\u2014though it should have.\u00a0Cake\u00a0opens in Bay Area theaters including SF\u2019s AMC Metreon this Fri\/13.<\/p>\n

A Poet<\/p>\n

In contrast to Lamia\u2019s innocence and industry, there\u2019s the Rumpelstiltskin-like character played by Ubeimar Rios in this Cannes Jury Prize winner from Colombian writer-director Simon Mesa Soto. Oscar won a prize for poetry in his youth, but now he\u2019s a middle-aged crank still living with his elderly mother, jobless, friendless, boozy, and obnoxious. Forced by an irate sibling to take a teaching job, he\u2019s surprised to discover his class of bored Medell\u00edn teens harbors a quiet girl living in bleak circumstances (Rebecca Andrade as Yurlady) who pens poems in secret\u2014and they\u2019re\u00a0good. An unlikely mentorship develops, though when Yurlady is introduced to the literary world as a bright young talent, Oscar discovers that while his colleagues are eager to claim credit for her \u201cdiscovery,\u201d they\u2019re equally quick to blame him once things take an unfortunate turn.<\/p>\n

This is largely a black comedy of sorts, with our anti-hero a memorably hapless, unsympathetic, and unattractive figure\u2014a bit redolent of the repulsively vainglorious Ignatius T. Reilly in John Kennedy Toole\u2019s\u00a0A Confederacy of Dunces. But he does rise to the occasion of doing good when given a chance, and there is a certain bittersweet poignancy to the way that ultimately does\/doesn\u2019t work out. (As the saying goes, Oscar finds that no good deed goes unpunished.)\u00a0A Poet\u00a0is a relatively small story. Still, it traverses a wide arc, starting out as caustic satire, finally arriving at an understated depth and tenderness. It opens Fri\/13 at the Roxie Theater.<\/p>\n

An American Pastoral<\/p>\n

In early 2023 a French film crew visited Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, where all five school board seats then held by moderate (as opposed to far-right) Republicans were up for election. In this very conservative area, no Democrats held office, though they duly campaigned. You can guess what happened: Whipped into states of hysteria by the phantom menaces of \u201cgender ideology\u201d and supposed \u201cporn\u201d on children\u2019s bookshelves (though notably no one claiming that ever names an actual tome), voters replaced the incumbents with extremists so unified, they all belonged to the same batshit local evangelical church.<\/p>\n

These are people who firmly believe the public schools they\u2019ll be in charge of are \u201cgovernment brainwash camps,\u201d that the 2020 presidential election being \u201cstolen\u201d is \u201ca fact,\u201d and so forth. (Some of them were even January 6 attendees.) We see a men\u2019s group watch a video that uses\u00a0Forrest Gump\u00a0to promote Christian militancy; a woman\u2019s gun instructional class; a minister decrying those who disagree with his rather un-Christ-like doctrine as \u201cvermin.\u201d Book banning is just the tip of the iceberg on this aggressive activist sector\u2019s wish list\u2014you can imagine democracy itself on the chopping block soon enough.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s taken its time getting released in the United States where it was shot, Auberi Edler\u2019s 2024 documentary remains alarmingly relevant\u2014a scrupulously neutral gaze at Americans so indoctrinated they have no idea they represent an extreme, and who are now driving national policy. The ironically named\u00a0Pastoral\u00a0is available via VOD and Digital streaming from Film Movement as of Fri\/13.<\/p>\n

Mad Flights: \u2018Good Luck,\u2019 \u2018Nirvanna,\u2019 \u2018Cold Storage,\u2019 \u2018Sweetness\u2019<\/p>\n

On a mercifully more escapist plane, four new releases offer above-average flights of fantasy, fun, and fans-gone-wild. Two are surprisingly elaborate exercises in absurdist humor, toying with the time-space continuum in ways that might recall\u00a0Everything Everywhere All At Once.<\/p>\n

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die\u00a0is the first film in a decade from director Gore Verbinski, since his run of commercial successes (notably the\u00a0Pirates of the Caribbean\u00a0films) ended with a couple expensive flops (The Lone Ranger, A Cure For Wellness). It starts out like the famous scene in\u00a0Pulp Fiction,\u00a0where a large L.A. diner is held hostage at gunpoint. But this sketchy-looking perp (Sam Rockwell) isn\u2019t demanding anything as basic as \u201cyour money or your life.\u201d Instead, he insists he\u2019s from \u201ca future that is totally, completely fucked,\u201d and needs to recruit fellow \u201crevolutionaries\u201d from the diners so \u201cHumanity can be saved\u201d before that future becomes inevitable.<\/p>\n

The rest of Matthew Robinson\u2019s episodic script gives us backstory on his reluctant new allies, while moving forward through an increasingly preposterous adventure that ends in a riot of CGI effects. En route, you may recognize nods to or elements of\u00a0The Stepford Wives, zombie movies, Pixar \u2018toons,\u00a0Idiocracy, even the Brothers Quay. It\u2019s a freewheeling yet cleverly constructed comic phantasmagoria whose core message is serious: All this reality-distancing stuff we\u2019re allowing to happen now (in particular AI technology) will have catastrophic consequences in the long-term. This is a splashy popcorn flick fanboy types are gonna love. But even even those of us normally less susceptible to such things will have to admit it\u2019s selling a very high grade of popcorn.<\/p>\n

Matt Johnson\u2019s\u00a0Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie\u00a0is a big-screen extension of the cult Canadian TV show he and co-writer Jay McCarrol starred in. They\u2019re back as themselves\u2014sorta: childhood friends turned adult collaborators on a musical act that so far has gotten them absolutely nowhere. Nonetheless, hope springs eternal. So after a parachuting stunt off Toronto\u2019s CN Tower doesn\u2019t go as planned, Matt hits upon a new path to fame, involving time travel. Jay dismisses that as delusional\u2026 yet somehow it\u00a0does\u00a0work, transporting them back to 2008, where they spy upon their younger selves. Of course getting back to the present-day without causing a giant mess turns out to be very, very complicated.<\/p>\n

This film will no doubt have more resonance for those familiar with its prior, small-screen incarnations. But it\u2019s still funny and ingenious enough to win over newbies like myself, its inside-joke referencing towards earlier jumbo fantasy mallflicks (especially the\u00a0Back to the Future\u00a0trilogy) rising to impressive heights of ironical spoof-slash-homage. (McCarrol\u2019s completely straightforward Big Orchestral Score, out-John Williamsing John Williams, is the perfect complement to that\u00a0sotto voce\u00a0satire.) Nostalgic millennials are the ideal target audience, but it\u2019s a testament to the collaborators\u2019 wit that Tail-End Boomer me had a very good time, too. Both\u00a0Good Luck\u00a0and\u00a0Nirvanna arrive in theaters nationwide Fri\/13.<\/p>\n

Also cleverly mixing comedy, action, and sci-fi-ish fantasy is Jonny Campbell\u2019s David Koepp-penned\u00a0Cold Storage, which opens with the discovery that debris from the space station Skylab\u2019s 1979 disintegration has had a calamitous effect on an outback town in Western Australia. The contagion is contained by NASA personnel, its surviving evidence stored in a high-security U.S. military facility back home.<\/p>\n

Years later, however, that eastern Kansas facility is no more\u2014now the site is just a commercial storage facility, open 24\/7, its current operators clueless about the alien menace buried deep within. Naturally, this will be the evening that \u201cparasitic fungus\u201d finally gets loose. Joe Keery from\u00a0Stranger Things\u00a0and\u00a0Barbarian\u2019s\u00a0Georgina Campbell play employees in for some unpleasant surprises; Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville are retired government agents called back into action by the emergency. There are some colorful supporting characters, including\u2014quite inexplicably\u2014a small, rather nondescript role for Vanessa Redgrave.<\/p>\n

With its droll performances, sharp presentation, and amusing individual ideas,\u00a0Storage\u00a0(another Fri\/13 theatrical release) gets so close to being excellent, it\u2019s disappointing that it never quite kicks into the highest gear we expect. Still: It is definitely fun, even while falling short of memorable.<\/p>\n

Closer to straight thrillerdom, though with a unmistakable streak of grotesque humor, is Emma Higgins\u2019\u00a0Sweetness. Her mother dead, her cop father (Justin Chatwin) tiptoeing around his only child\u2019s hostile moods, Rylee (Kate Hallett) is a bitter bundle of teenage goth angst who\u2019s alternately bullied and ignored by peers save sole friend Sidney (Aya Furukawa). Her churning emotions get channeled into obsessing over emo-pop band Floorplan, in particular their pretty-boy singer Payton (Herman Tommeraas).<\/p>\n

After attending a concert, circumstances unexpectedly land her in his car, where he repeatedly nods out at the wheel\u2014turns out this purportedly in-recovery rock star is actually still very much using. That (plus dad\u2019s convenient weekend absence) places Payton at her disposal, and she isn\u2019t about to let him go. Claiming to a skeptical Sidney that she\u2019s simply helping him kick the habit, Rylee keeps her glam captive handcuffed to a bed, then a basement pipe.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, this adolescent-fangirl version of\u00a0Misery\u00a0isn\u2019t going to end well. Payton may be increasingly resourceful in his desperation, but we soon grasp Rylee is\u2026 well, quite precociously crazy for her age. Canadian\u00a0Sweetness\u00a0is slick and well-cast. Still, we\u2019ve seen numerous variations on its like in recent years, and this particular effort heads towards closing ironies as predictable as they are trite. It releases to On Demand platforms Fri\/13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week sees something rare these days in SF: The addition of new film venues, after years of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":171279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-171278","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-san-francisco","9":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","10":"tag-san-francisco-news","11":"tag-sf","12":"tag-sf-headlines","13":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}