Balboa Theatre. Big Eyes: Beautifully photographed and emotionally compelling, Big Eyes is Tim Burton's best film since Ed Wood, telling the story of Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), the artist behind those paintings of saucer-eyed waifs that you've probably seen without knowing quite who made them. Daily. Into the Woods: The music of Stephen Sondheim is its own special effect, and Rob Marshall wisely doesn't try to overshadow it in his film of Sondheim's Into the Woods, which is a wonderfully odd bird and charmingly lo-fi for a big Disney holiday release. Daily. 3630 Balboa, San Francisco, 221-2184, balboamovies.com.
Clay Theatre. Whiplash: Drumming well is the best revenge. Or so we learn from being schooled by Damien Chazelle's thrilling litany of mind games and physical punishments, which features a dynamic movie duet between Miles Teller as a driven young conservatory jazz drummer and J.K. Simmons as his unreasonably abusive teacher. Daily. 2261 Fillmore, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
Dark Room Theater. Bad Movie Night: The Nutcracker in 3-D: Hosts Sherilyn Connelly and Dan Foley save the worst for last as they close out their "War on Christmas" December series with a non-balletic abomination of a children's movie whose 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes seems generous at best. Sun., Dec. 28, 8 p.m. $6.99. 2263 Mission, San Francisco, 401-7987, darkroomsf.com.
Embarcadero Center Cinema. 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. 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 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. Mr. Turner: Mike Leigh directs Timothy Spall as the prolific 19th-century English painter J.M.W. Turner, whose work became a sublime segue from Romantic landscapes to Modernist abstractions, and whose personal life — as robustly inhabited by Spall — apparently contained multitudes of gropes and grunts. Starting Dec. 25. 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.
I.T. Bookman Community Center. The Black Candle: M.K. Asante's documentary about Kwanzaa and, by extension, the strengths and struggles of African-American culture features narration by the late Maya Angelou and contributions from Amiri Baraka, Jim Brown, Chuck D, Kwanzaa creator Dr. Maulana Karenga, and more. Fri., Dec. 26, 6 p.m. Free. theblackcandle.com. 446 Randolph, San Francisco, 586-8020, itbookmancenter.org.
Opera Plaza Cinemas. National Gallery: Documentary grandmaster Frederick Wiseman delves into one of the world's greatest museums, a London institution housing seven centuries' worth of art. To report his aesthetic and administrative findings, he'll need just 181 minutes of your time. Daily. 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. 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. Pioneer: When things go awry and his brother dies, Norwegian deep-sea diver Petter (Askel Hennie) becomes obsessed with solving the mystery, uncovering a conspiracy involving powerful oil interests — one made all the more dangerous by the fact that he may be suffering from brain damage and can no longer quite trust his own grasp on reality. Daily. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, 777-3456, landmarktheatres.com.
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