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, which had been scheduled to open here Nov. 23 in the Act's printed calendar, is playing at the Balboa instead.

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY (Dec. 2-8): Naked in Ashes (Paula Fouce, 2005). See Opening for review. Call for times.

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.

THURSDAY (Dec. 1): International ANSWER screens two new films about Venezuela, Con los Pueblos de la Tierra (With the Poor of the Earth, Marta Harnecker, Chile), a favorable biography of Hugo Chavez, and Voices of Venezuela (Gloria La Riva), interviews with members of Chavez's social projects 7:30 p.m.

SATURDAY (Dec. 3): An Other Cinema screening of Hans Fjellestad's documentary about Tijuana culture, Frontier Life, preceded by a half-hour set of video and performance from the area 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: Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (Robert Greenwald, 2005) 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 p.m. A Touch of Spice (Tassos Boulmetis, Greece, 2003) 12:45, 2:50, 4:55, 7:10, 9:15 p.m.

FRIDAY THROUGH TUESDAY: A three-week samurai film festival opens with a new print of Masaki Kobayashi's excruciating (in a good way, it's a great film) Harakiri (Japan, 1962) 1:30, 4:15, 7, 9:30 p.m.

BERKELEY ART CENTER

1275 Walnut (between Eunice and Rose), Berkeley, (510) 644-6893 and www.berkeleyartcenter.org for venue; www.verticalpool.com for information on this program. $7. This city venue is inside Live Oak Park.

THURSDAY (Dec. 1): Antero Alli's latest DV feature, The Greater Circulation (2005), inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's "Requiem for a Friend." Artist in person 8 p.m.

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 & THURSDAY: Blank American landscapes over which figures scramble feature in both the wrong-man thriller North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959; 7 p.m.; also Wed 2 p.m.) and the student revolutionary Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970; 9:30 p.m.; also Wed 4:30 p.m.), two films otherwise without much in common.

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY (Dec. 2-8): Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family (Susan Kaplan, 2004). See Opening for review 7, 9:15 p.m.; also Sat, Sun, & Wed 1, 3, 5 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.

DAILY (Closed Mondays): Forget Conan, follow Pelle the Conqueror (Bille August, Denmark/Sweden, 1988), screening through Dec. 23. Max von Sydow stars as a struggling farmer. "First showing" of this 150-minute movie at 6:30 p.m.

LARK

549 Magnolia (at Post), Larkspur, 924-5111, www.larktheater.net. This single-screen art deco theater mixes new and repertory programming. $9 save as noted.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Kicked out of Hogwarts, Chris Columbus has to pay the Rent (2005) 6:45, 9:20 p.m.

STARTS FRIDAY: Call theater for program.

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 be playing here this week in the Lumiere's printed calendar, is showing at the Balboa instead. $9.50.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Dorian Blues (Tennyson Bardwell, 2005). Call for times.

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY (Dec. 2-8): Naked in Ashes (Paula Fouce, 2005). See Opening for review. Call for 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: "Touchtone," an evening devoted to experimental films employing telephones, dials up Eric Saks' answering-machine Dirt (2004) and an anthology of crank calls, Don From Lakewood (Saks and Patrick Tierney, 1989). Plus more, including Golan Levin's Dialtones: A Telesymphony (2001) 7:30 p.m.

THURSDAY: A free screening of Marcel Pagnol's witty play of a worm turning, Topaze (Louis Gasnier, France, 1933) 5:30 p.m. "Selling Democracy," a series screening U.S. government films made for European audiences promoting the Marshall Plan, offers "Strength for the Free World," anti-communist movies including The Hour of Choice, Without Fear, and Struggle for Men's Minds (all 1951-52) 7:30 p.m.

FRIDAY: Sam Peckinpah's elegiac tribute to rodeo life, Junior Bonner (1972; 7 p.m.) screens with his Cornwall horror-show Straw Dogs (U.K., 1971; 9:05 p.m.), a suitable companion to the same year's A Clockwork Orange in the rape and revenge survivalist art movie sweepstakes.