Repertory Film Listings

Commentary by Gregg Rickman (greggr1@mindspring.com). Times compiled from information available Tuesday; it's always advisable to call for confirmation. Price given is standard adult admission; discounts often apply for students, seniors, and members.

We're interested in your film or video event. Please send materials at least two weeks in advance to: Film Editor, SF Weekly, 185 Berry, Suite 3800, San Francisco, CA 94107.

ACT I & II

2128 Center (at Shattuck), Berkeley, (510) 464-5980, www.landmarktheatres.com. $9.25 save as noted. One of this venue's two screens is a "calendar house" for Landmark Theatres. For additional screenings, see our Showtimes page. Please note that Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, scheduled to open here Nov. 23 in the Act's printed calendar, is not playing here but opening at the Balboa instead.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (Liam Lynch, 2005). Call for times.

STARTS FRIDAY: Call theater for program.

ARTISTS' TELEVISION ACCESS

992 Valencia (at 21st Street), 824-3890, www.atasite.org. $5 save as noted. This venue offers all manner of strange and unusual video and film.

FRIDAY (Nov. 25): Commemorate the anti-capitalist post-turkey "Buy Nothing Day" with videos and installations by local artists. Don't be "lobotomized consumer zombies that clog city malls and streets in gas guzzling monstrosities," march to see Colonized Pleasure (Sarah Lockhart), asserting that consumerism is literally a parasite, Exchange Policy (Gordon Winiemko and Julie Wyman), plus "Experiments in Hope" from the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, counterads from the U.S. and Finland, and live music by Middleclass Assassins and I will kill you fucker, neither of which will be playing corporate gigs anytime soon. $2-5 donation 8 p.m.

SATURDAY (Nov. 26): "Performing the Perfs," a live performance by Wet Gate's "all-projector orchestra" marking the group's 10th anniversary. Also, "Depths of Field," a 3-D slide show; clips from TV Sheriff and others; and a birthday cake in the shape of 16mm reels 8:30 p.m.

BALBOA

3630 Balboa (at 38th Avenue), 221-8484, www.balboamovies.com. $8.50 save as noted. This great neighborhood house shows films of all sorts. See our Showtimes page for additional listings.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: The President's Last Bang (Korea, 2004) 12:45, 2:50, 4:55, 7, 9:05 p.m.

WEDNESDAY: A "Sin in Soft Focus" series of pre-Code films from Paramount continues with Frank Borzage's lyrical adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms (1932; 1:55, 5:30, 9:05 p.m.), with 12 minutes restored to match the original release. Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes are the lovers. It screens with Marlene Dietrich kicking off her heels and following Cooper into the desert of Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930; 1:45, 5:15, 8:50 p.m.).

THURSDAY: "Sin in Soft Focus" -- Celebrate Thanksgiving with the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business (Norman Z. McLeod, 1931; 12:15, 3:35, 7 p.m.), screening with W.C. Fields in International House (A. Edward Sutherland, 1933; 2:10, 5:30, 8:55 p.m.).

STARTS FRIDAY: Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (Robert Greenwald, 2005) and A Touch of Spice (Tassos Boulmetis, Greece, 2003). See Opening for reviews. Call for times.

CASTRO

429 Castro (near Market), 621-6120, www.thecastrotheatre.com. $8 save as noted. Short-run rep in a spectacular 1922 Greco-Roman-themed palace designed by Timothy L. Pflueger. Evening intermissions feature David Hegarty on the Mighty Wurlitzer.

WEDNESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY: Formula 17 (DJ Chen, Taiwan, 2004) 7, 9:15 p.m.; also Wed & Thurs 1, 3, 5 p.m.

SATURDAY THROUGH TUESDAY: Cut your own Swiss cheese with "Sing-a-Long-a Sound of Music," the Rodgers & Hammerstein film musical The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) presented with subtitles for the audience to join in. Attendees in costume will be invited onstage 1:30, 7 p.m.

FOREIGN CINEMA

2534 Mission (between 21st and 22nd streets), 648-7600, www.foreigncinema.com. Free with meal. This restaurant screens foreign films, usually in 35mm, on the back wall of its outdoor patio, with drive-in speakers available for the tables of those who want to watch while they dine.

WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY: Young Blue Eyes is back -- Steve McQueen stars as Bullitt (Peter Yates, 1968). "Starts at dusk."

MONDAY: Closed.

STARTS TUESDAY: Forget Conan, follow Pelle the Conqueror (Bille August, Denmark/Sweden, 1988), screening through Dec. 23. "First showing" of this 150-minute movie at 6:30 p.m.

LUMIERE

1572 California (at Polk), 352-0810, www.landmarktheatres.com. This multiplex is only partly a "calendar house" rep theater; for the rest of the Lumiere schedule, see our Showtimes page. Please note that Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, scheduled to open here in the Lumiere's printed calendar, is opening at the Balboa instead. $9.50.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic (Liam Lynch, 2005). Call for times.

STARTS FRIDAY: Call for films and times.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

2575 Bancroft (at Bowditch), Berkeley, (510) 642-1124, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu. $8, second show $2. The East Bay mecca for film scholars, part of UC Berkeley's Art Museum, thrives at its on-campus location, up the steps on Bancroft between Telegraph Avenue and the Hearst Gym.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Closed.

FRIDAY: A Marcel Pagnol series opens with the Provençal filmmaker's novelistic, back-to-the-land Harvest (1937; 7 p.m.), with Orane Demazis and Fernandel, and the village comedy The Baker's Wife (1938; 9:25 p.m.), with Raimu. Highly recommended filmmaking, as earthy as loam.

SATURDAY: "Taisho Chic on Screen," a series of silent Japanese films, screens Mikio Naruse's Three Sisters With Maiden Hearts (1935) struggling for love and musical success in this great director's first sound movie 5:20 p.m. Naruse urges Wife! Be Like a Rose! (1935), as a woman tries to reunite her estranged parents 7 p.m. Seijun Suzuki re-creates the late 1920s in the "erotic, hallucinatory" Kageroza (1981) 8:35 p.m.