{"id":173052,"date":"2026-02-11T06:05:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/173052\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T06:05:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T06:05:23","slug":"movies-new-people-cinema-reopening-valentino-on-valentines-day-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/173052\/","title":{"rendered":"Movies: New People Cinema reopening, \u2018Valentino on Valentine\u2019s Day,\u2019 and more"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s some\u00a0exciting community news: New People Cinema, an integral component of the cultural scene in San Francisco\u2019s Japantown, is reopening this weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cNippon Vibes,\u201d presented in collaboration with the Roxie Theater, includes\u00a0\u201cYour Name\u201d (2016), \u201cKokuho\u201d (2025), \u201cGodzilla\u201d (1954) and \u201cThrone of Blood\u201d (1957) \u2014 all from Japan \u2014\u00a0are on\u00a0already\u00a0sold-out Saturday-Sunday bill.\u00a0\u201cKokuho,\u201d\u00a0the highest-grossing Japanese live-action film ever, will begin a regular theatrical run, at the Roxie and elsewhere, on Feb. 20.\u00a0New People Cinema\u00a0is\u00a043-seat theater\u00a0on the basement level of the New People complex at 1746 Post St.\u00a0Visit\u00a0newpeopleworld.com<\/a>\u00a0for details on\u00a0events happening down the line.<\/p>\n

The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont presents\u00a0\u201cValentino on Valentine\u2019s Day\u201d at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Honoring 1920s actor and heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, the program features a screening of \u201cCobra\u201d (1925), starring Valentino as a broke, womanizing Italian aristocrat who experiences scandal and love in New York City. Greg Pane provides\u00a0piano\u00a0accompaniment. Two short silent films precede \u201cCobra.\u201d Visit nilesfilmmuseum.org<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n

Other films in theaters this week include:<\/p>\n

\"\"Ubeimar Rios stars in \u201cA Poet,\u201d Simon Mesa Soto\u2019s dark comedy. 1-2 Special via Bay City News.<\/p>\n

\u201cA Poet,\u201d from Colombia, follows a Medellin man\u00a0who\u2019s\u00a0the epitome of artistic integrity but a failure at everything else. Written and directed by Simon Mesa Soto (\u201cAmparo\u201d), the movie is an astute satire and a soulful dark comedy about being an artist in today\u2019s commercialized world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Oscar, played by newcomer\u00a0Ubeimar\u00a0Rios, is a divorced,\u00a0award-winning\u00a0unemployed middle-aged writer who\u00a0published\u00a0poetry decades ago but has written nothing since. Rejecting job possibilities, he lives with his elderly mother, gets into drunken fights over authors, and sabotages every opportunity for improvement. His teen daughter Daniela (Allison Correa) is embarrassed by him.\u00a0His redemption begins when he accepts a high-school teaching job and begins mentoring a student,\u00a0Yurlady\u00a0(Rebeca Andrade),\u00a0who\u2019s\u00a0more interested in nail polish than poetry.\u00a0But she goes along with Oscar because he helps her financially struggling family.\u00a0Assisted\u00a0by a pair of colleagues, Oscar helps\u00a0Yurlady\u00a0qualify for a prestigious poetry reading.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a scenario that brings Cord Jefferson\u2019s \u201cAmerican Fiction\u201d to mind, organizers encourage\u00a0Yurlady\u00a0to write about issues that will impress white international judges, like skin tone and poverty.\u00a0With Oscar involved,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0clear\u00a0that\u00a0the big event will not go smoothly.\u00a0An outrageous attempt at damage control follows.\u00a0Rios, whose slumped-shouldered Oscar could be a poster child for midlife failure, is extraordinary as an incorrigible but sympathetic mess. The bond Oscar forms with\u00a0Yurlady\u00a0is unaffected and poignant.\u00a0Soto, an effective and\u00a0humane\u00a0storyteller, has made a movie that is not only richly entertaining, but surprisingly moving.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA Poet\u201d opens\u00a0Thursday at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael and Friday at the Roxie in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

\"\"Sam Rockwell is the Man From the Future in in \u201cGood Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die.\u201d Briarcliff Entertainment via Bay City News.<\/p>\n

Director Gore Verbinski (\u201cPirates of the Caribbean,\u201d \u201cRango\u201d) goes all out, with mixed results, in \u201cGood Luck, Have Fun, Don\u2019t Die,\u201d his wildly ambitious, sci-fi action comedy about the dangers of social media and\u00a0artificial intelligence in theaters this week.\u00a0Suggesting a mix of \u201cEverything Everywhere All at Once\u201d and \u201cGroundhog Day,\u201d while sporting Verbinski and screenwriter Matthew Robinson\u2019s own brand of gusto, the movie depicts a battle for the soul of humanity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The villain is\u00a0AI-age technology. The hero, played by a crazed Sam Rockwell, is an unkempt \u201cMan\u00a0From\u00a0the Future.\u201d In the opening, he bursts into a\u00a0Los Angeles\u00a0diner, rants about how artificial intelligence and smartphones have zombified humankind, and claims that he has come to this restaurant, as he has done 117 times before, to form a crew of diners (Michael Pena, Zazie Beetz, Juno Temple, Haley Lu Richardson) to help him prevent the\u00a0coming\u00a0apocalypse.\u00a0Amid the raucous and nutty action\u00a0are\u00a0backstories for three characters. One vignette features a service that creates clones of school-shooting victims, with ad-supported options.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the\u00a0movie\u00a0smartly satirizes how technology warps our minds, some\u00a0of\u00a0its\u00a0material\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0particularly\u00a0sharp or funny.\u00a0On the plus side is Rockwell, a compelling comic force as a leader who could be either a savior or a nutcase.\u00a0The film\u2019s\u00a0contemporary themes are relatable, and Verbinski and\u00a0his\u00a0company\u2019s\u00a0verve and originality\u00a0are\u00a0applaudable, even when\u00a0misspent.<\/p>\n

\"\"Caleb Landry Jones stars in \u201cDracula.\u201d Vertical via Bay City News.<\/p>\n

Luc Besson\u2019s \u201cDracula,\u201d the latest movie adaptation of Bram Stoker\u2019s vampire saga\u00a0now in theaters,\u00a0is ambitious\u00a0and stylish, but has\u00a0little passion.\u00a0Caleb Landry Jones plays the title character, condemned to eternal life as a vampire after he renounces God for allowing his beloved wife\u00a0Elisabeta (Zoe Bleu), to die.\u00a0The film follows\u00a0bloodthirsty Dracula over several centuries as he searches for his reincarnated lost love. Christoph Waltz (who better for the role?) plays a Van Helsing\u2013like vampire hunter pursuing him.<\/p>\n

Jones, complete with the requisite ridiculous Transylvanian accent, is a charismatic presence, whether in ancient, bewigged mode, a la Gary Oldman in Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s \u201cBram Stoker\u2019s Dracula,\u201d or as a long-haired top-hatted dandy. Besson, meanwhile, presents colorful set pieces and puts a personal stamp on the story,\u00a0setting\u00a0much of it in Paris, or supplying outlandish elements\u00a0like animated gargoyles.\u00a0But spectacle eclipses character and feeling in the\u00a0movie, which presents itself as an impassioned romance but is overall an emotionally lukewarm experience.<\/p>\n

The post Movies: New People reopening, \u2018Valentino on Valentine\u2019s Day,\u2019 \u2018A Poet,\u2019\u00a0\u2019Good Luck, Have Fun,\u00a0Don\u2019t\u00a0Die,\u2019\u00a0\u2018Dracula\u2019<\/a> appeared first on Local News Matters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s some\u00a0exciting community news: New People Cinema, an integral component of the cultural scene in San Francisco\u2019s Japantown,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-173052","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\/173052","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=173052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}