4-Star Theatre. The Sisterhood of Night: When three high school students go offline, forsaking social media and digital communication to form the titular Sisterhood, a rejected blogger starts writing horrible things about them online, whipping the town into a Salem-witch-trial-like panic about the lesbianic and/or satanic things the Sisterhood may be doing at night in the woods. Starting April 10. Daily. 2200 Clement, San Francisco, 666-3488, lntsf.com/4-star-theatre.html.
Artists' Television Access. Other Cinema: Save Our City: Erin McElroy of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project documents the takeover of the neighborhoods surrounding ATA — and, indeed, all across San Francisco — with maps and digital storytelling techniques that visually illustrate the forces at work, while other artists and agitators share their own techniques of resistance. Sat., April 11, 8:30 p.m. $6-$20. othercinema.com. Queer Art, Queer Voices: Periwinkle Cinema hosts a midweek screening of queer short films by Mario Ashkar & Thee Moonbaby, Ewan Duarte. Peter Max Lawrence, Wren Warner, and more. Wed., April 15, 8 p.m. $7-$10. periwinklecinema.com. 992 Valencia, San Francisco, 824-3890, atasite.org.
Castro Theatre. Disposable Film Festival 2015: Zoom in on some of the best short films made using non-professional equipment, including cellphones, webcams, DSLRs, and more. Thu., April 9, 8 p.m. $20. disposablefilm.com. Midnites for Maniacs: Macho Maestros: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks presents a one-two punch of a double feature that includes Sylvester Stallone's commie-bashin' Rocky IV (7:20 p.m.) and Michael Bay's Alcatraz-blastin' The Rock (9:30 p.m.). Fri., April 10, 7:20 p.m. $12. midnitesformaniacs.com. 429 Castro, San Francisco, 621-6120, castrotheatre.com.
Clay Theatre. Wild Tales: A cornucopia of comeuppance, this exuberant pulp anthology from Argentine writer-director Damián Szifrón would like to point out how ready and willing humans still are to act like animals. The tales include a perhaps deservedly unlucky assembly of airplane passengers; a dish of revenge best served at a late-night diner; a bribery spiral spinning out of control from a drunken rich kid's hit-and-run; an elaborate road-rage duel that'll be the envy of Tarantino; a demolitionist getting his own blow-up button pushed by parking-enforcement bureaucracy; and one catastrophically tacky wedding. Daily. The Room: Tommy Wiseau's cinematic bomb is every bit as bad as it's cracked up to be. You'll crack up as well at this riotous midnight screening with lots of Rocky Horror-style audience participation. Second Saturday of every month, 11:59 p.m. 2261 Fillmore, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
Embarcadero Center Cinema. The Imitation Game: After breaking Nazi codes, basically winning World War II, and pretty much inventing the computer and modern-day artificial intelligence, British mathematician Alan Turing was then chemically castrated for being gay and poisoned to death with cyanide. Last year the Queen granted Turing a posthumous pardon, but nothing really says "we're sorry" like Benedict Cumberbatch playing him in a posh, Oscar-hungry historical thriller. Daily. Leviathan: Writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev's sublimely bitter tragedy reveals that post-Soviet life is not sweet along the shores of the Barents Sea, where a middle-aged mechanic (Aleksey Serebryakov) endures increasingly unfavorable negotiations with his beautiful doom-barometer wife (Elena Lyadova), his sullen teenage son (Sergey Pokhodaev), and a petty, portly mayor (Roman Madyanov) who's determined to run him out of business and out of town, apparently just for the thrill of manifesting corruption. Daily. What We Do in the Shadows: In this mockumentary written and directed by two Flight of the Conchords guys, Vladislav, Viago, Deacon, and Nick are vampires of varying antiquity who cohabitate in a grungy flat in New Zealand. Followed by a documentary crew, they go on about the business of both being undead (if foppish) ghouls who feed on the blood of humans to survive, as well as being a bunch of straight men living together, which means the dishes and other basic chores tend to go undone. Daily. Effie Gray: In Richard Laxton's lushly photographed period piece, Victorian-era art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise) marries young Effie Gray (Dakota Fanning) and promptly sets about ignoring her, leaving Effie confused and struggling to find her role in the world — and for possible means of escape at a time when divorce was not a thing, especially for women. Daily. White God: A sort of Euro-miserablist cross between The Birds and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but with dogs, Kornél Mundruczó's White God shows us modern Hungary as a joyless society defined — and done in — by zero tolerance of mongrels. Daily. 3 Hearts: Benoît Jacquot's romantic melodrama comes across as something like An Affair to Remember meets Your Sister's Sister, sans both the sweeping glamour of the former and the latter's easygoing modern charm. Instead it has what seems like a calculatedly broad "French movie" appeal, with pedigreed stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chiara Mastroianni, and Catherine Deneuve arranged like rigid bowling pins on a slick, flat surface of plot, and Benoît Poelvoorde as the hapless semi-homely man in their midst, the gutterball. Daily. 1 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
Exploratorium. Saturday Cinema: Weekly thematic film screenings presented in the Kanbar Forum by the Exploratorium's Cinema Arts program. Saturdays. Free with museum admission. Pier 15, San Francisco, 528-4444, exploratorium.edu.
Kadist Art Foundation. A Journal of the Plague Year: Saturday Screenings: To augment its art show of the same name, Kadist shares a series of feature films in which racialized depictions of Asians — whether heroic like Charlie Chan or sinister like Fu Manchu — lead to pervasive cultural stereotypes and subsequent xenophobia. Sat., April 11, 3 & 5 p.m.; Sat., April 18, 3 & 5 p.m. 3295 20th St., San Francisco, 738-8668, kadist.org.
The Knockout. Cyberpunk Cinema: The monthly underground salon for sci-fi aficionados celebrates its first birthday with a showing of Dredd — the gritty 2012 flick starring Karl Urban & Olivia Thirlby, that is, not the godawful 1995 abomination with Sylvester Stallone & Rob Schneider — preceded by an episode of Cowboy Bebop. Mon., April 13, 6:30 p.m. Free. cyberpunkcinema.tumblr.com. 3223 Mission, San Francisco, 550-6994, theknockoutsf.com.
Opera Plaza Cinemas. The Wrecking Crew: If you've heard any pop music recorded in California in the 1960s or early 1970s, you've heard the work of the Wrecking Crew, a free-floating collective of studio musicians who played without credit on tens of thousands of songs. Danny Tedesco's joyous documentary is a personal, heartfelt tribute to those unsung heroes, who were just happy to get paid to do what they loved. Daily. Serena: Danish director Susanne Bier's Depression-era downer puts forth Bradley Cooper as a Carolina lumber baron whose company culture gets seriously disrupted by his new wife, Jennifer Lawrence, who knows how to land an ax and manage occupational hazards while also becoming one. Daily. Deli Man: Erik Greenberg Anjou's documentary traces the rise and fall of a sadly vanishing institution: the endangered species known as the Jewish Delicatessen. Daily. Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter: One of the best movies of 2015 so far, David and Nathan Zellner's black comedy stars the mesmerizing Rinko Kikuchi as a desperate Tokyo "office lady" who hates everything about her life, so she travels to North Dakota, certain that Joel and Ethan Coen's Fargo was a true story, and that the money is still buried by that one fence. Daily. An Honest Liar: A considerate profile of James "The Amazing" Randi, the gnomish prestidigitator who made his name breaking Harry Houdini's escape records, beheading Alice Cooper for a show, and elaborately debunking spoon-benders and faith healers as a matter of science-minded principle. Daily. Kill Me Three Times: Australian director Kriv Stenders has described his own dark comedy thriller as a cross between Blood Simple and Rashomon, but it's more like a tarnished relic sprung from some time capsule buried during the grim Tarantino-wannabe wars of the mid-1990s: all muscle cars and glib gunmen and nonlinear, non-interesting storylines that supply a twisty slog for stars Teresa Palmer, Luke Hemsworth, Alice Braga, and Simon Pegg. Starting April 10. Daily. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, 777-3456, landmarktheatres.com.
Roxie Theater. Ned Rifle: With this second and probably final sequel to his 1997 film Henry Fool, indie stalwart Hal Hartley again revisits the benchmark of his own indie stalwartness. Here, in an epitome of filmmaker's prerogative, is the son of that movie's title character on a self-appointed quest to kill him, resulting in a modest crime caper built out of dryly quirky philosophical conversations and a cast game enough to dig in to Hartley's deadpan writerly dialogue. Through April 9. Short Circuit 2015: Banish those thoughts of Steve Guttenberg, Ally Sheedy, and their proto-Chappie robot: This Short Circuit is actually a touring program of nine short fictional films from France. Thu., April 9, 7 p.m. $10. Marfa Girl: Director Larry Clark takes his usual cinematic interests (skinny amateur actors, teenage sex, disrespect for authority) and sets them in the dead-end border town of Marfa, Texas. April 10-16. The Reconstruction of William Zero: A family tragedy leads a grief-stricken geneticist to experiment with human cloning in this Carruthean indie sci-fi drama from writer/director Dan Bush. April 10-16. Invasion of the Body Snatchers: The two best movie adaptations of Jack Finney's novel about pod people — Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956 and Philip Kaufman's San Francisco-set version from 1978 — play together in a double feature, with local treasure Kaufman doing a Q&A with screenwriter Sam Hamm. Fri., April 10, 7 p.m. $12. Oakland Originals: Short documentary films pay tribute to East Bay personalities Michael Christian, DJ Agana, Tim Monroe, and Asiya Wadud. Sun., April 12, 5 p.m. $10. oaklandoriginals.com. 3117 16th St., San Francisco, 863-1087, roxie.com.
Shadow Ultra Lounge. Herofest: Ninth Annual Bay Area Action Film Festival: Expect things to get a bit bloody at this roundup of short action movies by local filmmakers, which focuses on grimy DIY crime capers, kung-fu punch-ups, sci-fi/superhero cosplay fantasies, and more for genre fanboys/-girls. Sat., April 11, 5 p.m. $5. torridproductions.com/herofest. 341 13th St., Oakland, 510-839-1999, facebook.com/ShadowUltraLounge.
Temescal Arts Center. Shapeshifters Cinema: Free monthly film series featuring experimental image manipulators and ambient sound shamans. Second Sunday of every month, 8 p.m. Free. shapeshifterscinema.com. 511 48th St., Oakland, 510-923-1074, temescalartscenter.org.
Victoria Theatre. Crossroads 2015: San Francisco Cinematheque, perhaps the city's biggest champion of cerebral and strange filmmaking, presents three days of avant-garde rarities and experimental premieres, with nine thematic programs offering lots in the way of unique projection techniques, personal appearances, live soundtracks, and more. April 10-12. $10 per program (of $60 for festival pass). sfcinematheque.org. 2961 16th St., San Francisco, 863-7576, victoriatheatre.org.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The Cry of Jazz: New Documentaries: Never mind Ken Burns' bebop hagiographies. These docs dig deeper beneath the surface, taking a closer look at some of the lesser known figures of the genre — including pianist James Booker (Bayou Maharajah, April 2); saxophonists Frank Morgan (Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story, April 9 & 11) and Rahsaan Roland Kirk (The Case of the Three Sided Dream, April 16); and percussionist Kahil El'Zabar (Be Known, April 18) — and concluding with a paint-splattered blast from the past that mixes footage of NYC's legendary old subway graffiti with music by Charles Mingus (Stations of the Elevated, April 23). Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., April 11, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., April 18, 7:30 p.m. Continues through April 23. $8-$10. Dark Horse: Film Noir Westerns: The YBCA hosts a month of Sunday double features that explore the darkness lurking at the heart of select old oaters, including Blood on the Moon and The Tall T (April 5), The Ox-Bow Incident and Pursued (April 12), Ramrod and The Gunfighter (April 19), and The Searchers and Winchester '73 (April 26). Sundays, 2 p.m. Continues through April 26. $8-$10. 701 Mission, San Francisco, 978-2787, ybca.org.
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