Artists' Television Access. Other Cinema: Best Western: Having done its part to keep Austin weird, the Experimental Response Cinema collective brings a series of fringe videos from Texas to the Bay Area for a night of avant-garde short films. Sat., Dec. 13, 8:30 p.m. $6. othercinema.com. Digital Carnage: Experimental videos and sound performances by students from SFSU's Digital Arts & Emerging Technologies program. Sun., Dec. 14, 7 p.m. $5. 992 Valencia, San Francisco, 824-3890, atasite.org.
Castro Theatre. Midnites for Maniacs: Out of the L.A. Past: This month's double feature kicks off with Robert Zemeckis' 1988 visit to Toontown, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, followed by Tim Burton's 1994 ode to cinematic ineptitude, Ed Wood. Both films are presented in 35mm. Fri., Dec. 12, 7:20 p.m. $12. midnitesformaniacs.com. 429 Castro, San Francisco, 621-6120, castrotheatre.com.
Clay Theatre. 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.
Dark Room Theater. Bad Movie Night: It's a Wonderful Life: Hosts Jim Fourniadis and Chris Rockey have a bone to pick with a certain holiday tradition. Sun., Dec. 14, 8 p.m. $6.99. 2263 Mission, San Francisco, 401-7987, darkroomsf.com.
Embarcadero Center Cinema. Miss Julie: Directed by Liv Ullmann, this adaptation of August Strindberg's 1888 stage work transplants the action — a long dark night of power plays between a baron's daughter (Jessica Chastain) and her father's valet (Colin Farrell) — from Sweden to Ireland, with Farrell as Chastain's challenger and Samantha Morton as his wounded and deceptively stoical fiancée. Daily. Birdman: In Alejandro González Iñárritu's bold comment on the uncertain new frontier of performing arts, Michael Keaton plays the wounded, ambitious, has-been star of a superhero-movie franchise, now mounting his own Raymond Carver adaptation on Broadway. Daily. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: There's nothing not to get excited about in this feature-length debut by Ana Lily Amirpour. Not only is it shot in glorious black and white, it's also an Iranian (!) vampire (!!) western (!!!), complete with Ennio Morricone-style music. If that doesn't turn you on, you may already be dead. Daily. The Theory of Everything: In director James Marsh's gauzy and chastely reverential movie, Eddie Redmayne relishes the physically challenging role of young astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, bending himself through a progression of wheelchairs from 1960s Cambridge toward the gnarled, impish, computer-voiced transglobal keynoter we all know and love today. Daily. The Homesman: Packed with top-notch actors who probably didn't need to hear more than "a western directed by Tommy Lee Jones" to be convinced to play small roles, The Homesman is less of a revisionist western than it is a tone poem on just how unfair, miserable, and downright rapey life was on the frontier. Daily. 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. Starting Dec. 11. Daily. 1 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
Exit Theatre. Now and at the Hour: See H.P. Mendoza's cinematic capture of Christian Cagigal's magical show before it makes the VOD rounds. Cagigal also performs in person before each screening. Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m. Continues through Dec. 13. $15-$25. 156 Eddy, San Francisco, 673-3847, theexit.org.
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.
New Parkway Theater. Found Footage Festival: No, they don't mean "found footage" in the sense of movies like Cloverfield or V/H/S. This traveling celebration of thrift-scored, dumpster-dived, or just-plain-trashy videotapes favors weird instructional films, bad local news clips, long-forgotten exercise promotions, and other manifestations of pre-internet kitsch. Wed., Dec. 10, 9:15 p.m. $10. foundfootagefest.com. 474 24th St., Oakland.
New People. 11th Annual Another Hole in the Head Film Festival: The 2014 edition of SF IndieFest's yearly horrorfest starts smack dab in the middle of Advent and includes such non-holiday fare as Tony Kern's Singapore ghost story anthology Afterimages, Marc-Andre Samson's cabin-in-the-woods exercise Where the Devil Dwells, Chris LaMartina's tentacular genre comedy Call Girl of Cthulhu, Hitoshi Matsumoto's kinky sex dramedy R100, and Juan Ortiz's remarkably atmospheric (for a film shot on an iPhone 4S) Jennifer Help Us. Also featured are venerable classics such as James Cameron's 1986 Aliens and Tobe Hooper's 1982 Poltergeist — both presented in the dying 35mm format, probably for the last time. Through Dec. 15. sfindie.com. 1746 Post, San Francisco, 525-8630, newpeopleworld.com.
Opera Plaza Cinemas. Citizenfour: The centerpiece of Laura Poitras' new documentary about Edward Snowden is Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald interviewing Snowden in June of 2013, where Snowden explains just how thoroughly our government violates the world's privacy. Though he disappears for much of the second half to go into exile, his presence remains — and if the film ends abruptly, that's only because the real-life story is still far from over. Daily. Point and Shoot: With the definition of masculinity becoming increasingly diffuse, Marshall Curry's documentary considers one fellow's attempt to become a man — whatever that may mean — by following Baltimore native Matthew VanDyke on his "crash course in manhood," which includes riding a motorcycle across northern Africa and taking up arms in the revolution against Gaddafi. Daily. Force Majeure: Ruben Östlund's film pulls off the remarkable trick of being a disaster movie that largely skips the disaster: A married couple goes on a skiing holiday, but when a false-alarm avalanche causes the husband to freak out and run, his panicked reaction causes permanent damage to their relationship. Östlund conveys the fragility of the mountain surroundings, making it feel like less like a vacation spot and more like a war zone — which is exactly what it becomes. Daily. Zero Motivation: Being in the military includes the risk of getting killed by bombs or bullets. But there's also the possibility of dying a metaphorical death from the boredom and drudgery of administrative work, which is the war waged in Talya Lavie's swell female army comedy whose episodic structure favorably recalls Robert Altman's M*A*S*H — now and forever the gold standard of military comedies. Starting Dec. 12. Daily. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, 777-3456, landmarktheatres.com.
Roxie Theater. Happy Valley: through Dec. 11. The Great Invisible: While nuclear accidents may create a more famous form of fallout, this documentary from Margaret Brown traces the personal and environmental fallout resulting from the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Through Dec. 10. Murder of a Cat: through Dec. 10. FACINE/21: 21st Annual Filipino International Cine Festival: Cinema buffs swoon over Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, but the films of the Philippines are largely neglected by the Western world. FACINE/21 strikes a blow against that injustice with three days of narrative features, documentaries, and shorts at the Roxie. Dec. 11-13. $10 per program. facinesf.com. The Found Footage Festival: No, they don't mean "found footage" in the sense of movies like Cloverfield or V/H/S. This traveling celebration of thrift-scored, dumpster-dived, or just-plain-trashy videotapes favors weird instructional films, bad local news clips, long-forgotten exercise promotions, and other manifestations of pre-internet kitsch. Dec. 11-12, 9:30 p.m. $13. foundfootagefest.com. 3117 16th St., San Francisco, 863-1087, roxie.com.
Second Act Marketplace & Events. Rural Route Film Festival: A literally on-the-road showcase of 10 short films spotlighting environmental and cultural issues affecting rural areas around the world. Tue., Dec. 16, 7:30 p.m. $10. ruralroutefilms.com. 1727 Haight, San Francisco, 668-3994, secondactsf.com.
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.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. New Waves in Mexican Cinema: The YBCA shines a light on burgeoning Mexican directors who do beautiful work in a less-is-more mode, including José Luis Valle's economical, potent parable about bereavement, The Searches (Las búsquedas) (Dec. 11 and 14); Nuria Ibáñez's direct and wrenching documentary The Naked Room (El cuarto desnudo), which is simply a series of closeups of children and young teens telling therapists about their deeply troubled lives (Dec. 18 and 21); Aarón Fernández's The Empty Hours (Las horas muertas), in which a teenage custodian takes up a relationship with one of the regulars in rent-by-hour roadside motel (Dec. 13 and 14); and Samuel Kishi Leopo's We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa), about a crew of lanky adorable scamps who struggle to come up with even two punk songs that they can remember and actually play (Dec. 4, 6, and 7). Thursdays, Sundays. Continues through Dec. 21. $8-$10. ybca.org/new-waves-mexican-cinema. 701 Mission, San Francisco, 978-2787, ybca.org.
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