Repertory Film Listings

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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.

DAILY: She's so cute! Little Miss Sunshine (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Ferris, 2006; noon, 2:20, 4:40, 7, 9:20 p.m. ) and in Theatre 2, Edward Norton stars as The Illusionist (Neil Burger, 2006; 12:15, 2:35, 4:55, 7:15, 9:30 p.m. ).

CASTRO
429 Castro (near Market), 621-6120 and www.thecastrotheatre.com. $10 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: Call for program.

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY (Sept 1-7): Viva Pedro!, an eight-film series of new prints of films by Pedro Almodovar, opens with a week's run of the clever comedy Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain, 1988), Call for times.

DARK ROOM THEATRE
2263 Mission (between 18th and 19th "between the pawn shop and the laundromat"), 401-7987, www.darkroomsf.com. Live cabaret, plus regular film screenings with audience cat-calling encouraged.

SUNDAY (Sept. 3): It's Shatner Month at the Dark Room's weekly "Bad Movie," opening with the bang of The Explosive Generation (Buzz Kulik, 1961), with Shatner as a high school teacher who lets students Patty McCormick and Billy Gray write essays about sex. Jim Fourniadis, Mike-Em, and Sean Owens host. $5 8 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 35 mm, 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: What is truth? Asked jesting Pilate, but did not stay to hear the answer. And then he saw Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) and realized it didn't matter anyway "Starts at dusk."

FOUR STAR
2200 Clement (at 23rd Avenue), 666-3468, www.hkinsf.com. $8.50. This enterprising theater hosts occasional special screenings.

WEDNESDAY: "Hard-core martial arts action" is promised in the Cantonese version of The Blood of Angels and Demons (Zee Lo, 2006), with star/director "Dr. Z" in person. See www.realasianfilms.com for more "Around 8:45 p.m."

THURSDAY: The English-language version of The Blood of Angels and Demons "Around 8:45 p.m.

GOETHE-INSTITUT
530 Bush (at Grant), 263-8760 and www.goethe.de/ins/us/saf/en1587184.htm for information on this program. The place to go for German cultural events. $6.

TUESDAY (Sept. 5): "Crossing Borders," a cross-cultural music film series, screens The Nomi Song (Andrew Horn, Germany, 2004), a doc about new-wave cult figure Klaus Nomi 7:30 p.m.

LARK
549 Magnolia (at Post), Larkspur, 924-5111, www.larktheater.net. This single-screen art deco theater has reopened with a policy mixing new and repertory programming. $9 save as noted.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: And why exactly does Al Gore want to keep Florida from sinking under water? Oh, that's right — he actually won there. Just An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006) 7 p.m.; also Thurs 9:15 p.m.

STARTS FRIDAY: The true tale of Harlem's Silver Belles, Been Rich All My Life (Heather MacDonald, 2005). See Opening for review. Call for times.

LUMIERE
1572 California (at Polk), 352-0810, www.landmarktheatres.com. This multiplex is only partly a "calendar house" rep theater. $9.50.

FRIDAY THROUGH THURSDAY (Sept. 1-7): Two Drifters (João Pedro Rodrigues, Brazil, 2005). See Opening for review. Call for times.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE
2575 Bancroft (at Bowditch), Berkeley, (510) 642-1124 and 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: A Kenji Mizoguchi series concludes with the life of a kabuki actor, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (Japan, 1939), in which his long-take oriented style reached an early perfection 7:30 p.m.

THURSDAY: "Beyond Bollywood," a series of recent Indian films, concludes with the Scorsesean crime drama Company (Ram Gopal Varma, 2002), set in the criminal underworld of Bombay 7:30 p.m.

FRIDAY: New prints of Nicholas Ray's excellent Bigger Than Life (1956; 7 p.m. ) and David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986; 8:50 p.m. ), the calculated audacity of which looks rather juvenile next to Ray's melodrama of suburban breakdown. "God was wrong!" — James Mason's amped-up schoolteacher. Top that, Dennis Hopper.

SATURDAY: Blue Velvet 6:30 p.m. Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946) which again seems more subversive to the romantic certainties of spy melodramas than Mr. Lynch's candy-colored nightmare 8:50 p.m.

SUNDAY: A "Mechanical Age" series of machine-based cinema opens with Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926; 5:30 p.m. ) and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936; 6 p.m. ), two approaches from different angles at the problem of the soul of man under industrialization.

MONDAY: Closed.

TUESDAY: Haunted Cameras, a program of recent experimental films, screens Stacy Steers' Phantom Canyon, Soon-Mi Yoo's Dangerous Supplement, and Nancy Andrews' Haunted Camera 7:30 p.m.

OPERA PLAZA
601 Van Ness (at Golden Gate), 352-0810, www.landmarktheatres.com. This multiplex is only partly a "calendar house" rep theater. $8.75.

WEDNESDAY & THURSDAY: Lunacy (Jan Svankmajer, Czech Republic/Slovakia, 2005) 2:15, 5, 8 p.m.

PARKWAY
834 Park (at Lake Merritt), Oakland, (510) 814-2400, www.picturepubpizza.com. $5 save as noted. This friendly neighborhood theater serves beer, pizza, and more with its films. 21 and over.