San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
REEL LOCAL NEWS
A restored 35mm print of “Trapped,” starring Lloyd Bridges, and “The File on Thelma Jordon,” starring Barbara Stanwyck, are the opening-night films of the 17th Noir City film festival, Jan. 25 to Feb. 3 at the Castro Theatre.
Bridges plays a counterfeiter trying to put one over on the feds who have enlisted him into an undercover operation in Richard Fleischer’s 1949 thriller, the latest to be restored by the Film Noir Foundation in partnership with the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Stanwyck plays a mystery woman who gets involved in a murder in Robert Siodmak’s 1950 film.
Among other films in the program are “The Well” (1951), the tale of a white drifter suspected in the disappearance of a black girl and shot in Yuba City and Marysville; “Killer’s Kiss” (1955), Stanley Kubrick’s story of a boxer’s dangerous affair, soaked in seedy Times Square ambience; “Nightfall” (1956), starring onetime Crockett Constable Aldo Ray as an innocent man on the run. The closing-night selection is Samuel Fuller’s “Underworld USA” (1961), starring Cliff Robertson as an ex-con out to kill the men who murdered his father.
“I call it curated time travel,” says “czar of noir” Eddie Muller, Noir City’s producer and host of the 2019 program. “We start out in the classic era at the peak of the noir movement and with each successive show we move relentlessly toward revolution — a 1960 double bill of “Psycho” and “Breathless.”
A sterling get: Emmy Awardwinning actor Sterling K. Brown (“This Is Us,” “Black Panther”) has been cast in the lead of Peter Nicks’ “The Fence.” Brown will play an undercover Boston cop who is beaten by his own colleagues when they mistake him for a suspect. For Nicks, the East Bay documentarian best known for “The Waiting Room” and “The Force,” this will be his first feature narrative. George Pelecanos (“The Wire,” “The Deuce”) and Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”) are collaborating on the script of the true-crime biopic, an adaptation of Boston Globe journalist Dick Lehr’s book.
WGA snub: Oakland filmmaker Boots Riley’s “Sorry to Bother You” and Oakland-set “Blindspotting,” written by and starring East Bay natives Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, have been deemed ineligible for recognition at the Writers Guild Awards. Neither film conforms to the union’s collective bargaining agreement that protects the benefits and rights of screen and television writers. Both films remain eligible for Academy Award nominations.
End of the world? “Night of the Comet,” the 1984 sci-fi/horror comedy starring Catherine Mary Stewart and Kelli Maroney as teenagers who survive a zombie infestation, takes center stage on Saturday, Dec. 29, when the Roxie Theater presents a “Roxie New Year’s Apocalypse Celebration.” Before the 9:15 p.m. screening, a show will feature videos in keeping with the apocalyptic theme set to ’80s music programmed by DJ Flink. Disney holidays: “Frank and Ollie,” a 1995 documentary about Disney animators Frank Thomas (“Dumbo,” “Alice in Wonderland”) and Ollie Johnston (“Bambi,” “Cinderella”); and “Christmas With Walt Disney,” a 2009 documentary, screen in conjunction with the “Home for the Holidays at Carolwood” exhibit at the Presidio’s Walt Disney Family Museum. The exhibit features a 3-D re-creation of Disney’s Holmby Hills home and miniature reproduction of his steam train, the Lilly Belle. The exhibit and the movies are free.