4-Star Theatre. Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief: Filmmaker Alex Gibney interviews former members of the Church of Scientology and reveals abuses and strange practices within the controversial organization, based on Lawrence Wright's book of the same name. Through Oct. 8. Breathe: Melanie Laurent's teen psychological drama Breathe stars Josephine Japy as Charlie, a seventeen-year-old who does well in school and seems to have everything going for her. When the much more sophisticated Sarah (Loe de Laage} moves to town, however, Charlie finds herself drawn to the world girl whose mother supposedly works for an NGO. The two become fast friends, but soon Sarah makes Charlie uncomfortable with her wilder ways. When Sarah Charlie learns a secret about Sarah, their relationship takes a sinister turn. Through Oct. 8. Shanghai: This period drama concerns an American (John Cusack) in Shanghai who, through the investigation of the death of a friend, ends up falling in love while stumbling upon a political conspiracy. 1408 helmer Mikael Håfström directs. Gong Li and Ken Watanabe co-star in the production, from a script supplied by Hossein Amini. Daily. Lost in Hong Kong: Xu Lai had dreams once. To be an artist and marry the girl of his dreams. 15 years later, he's sick of designing bras, humoring his baby-crazy wife, and catering to loopy in-laws. But his upcoming family vacation, now including his DVD-pirating, aspiring-documentarian brother-in-law, has a hidden agenda: a chance meetup with his old flame. But ditching his clan for a clandestine hookup might be the least of his worries. There's been a murder, and his new hot pursuit might be from the cops who want a word with him. Starting Oct. 9. Daily. 2200 Clement, San Francisco, 666-3488, lntsf.com/4-star-theatre.html.
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. Labyrinth of Lies: Frankfurt 1958: nobody wants to look back to the time of the National Socialist regime. Young public prosecutor Johann Radmann comes across some documents that help initiate the trial against some members of the SS who served in Auschwitz. But both the horrors of the past and the hostility shown towards his work bring Johann close to a meltdown. It is nearly impossible for him to find his way through this maze; everybody seems to have been involved or guilty. (German with English subtitles) Starting Oct. 9. Daily. 2261 Fillmore, San Francisco, 267-4893, www.landmarktheatres.com/san-francisco/clay-theatre.
Embarcadero Center Cinema. Goodnight Mommy: The psychological horror film Goodnight Mommy is a twisted and fantastical take on the home invasion thriller. In the heat of the summer lays an isolated house in the Austrian countryside, where nine-year-old twin brothers await their mother's return after cosmetic surgery. She's recovering from an accident that has left her face covered in bandages, unrecognizable to her precocious sons. During her recovery her temper runs short with the boys, her behavior is domineering and her punishments turn harsh. The boys begin to suspect she isn't really their mother and they go about finding out for certain. What ensues is an atmospheric, terrifying observational struggle with fatal consequences on par with The Shining and Dead Ringers. Written and directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz (writer of Dog Days and the Paradise trilogy). (Fully subtitled) Daily. Meet the Patels: A laugh-out-loud, real-life romantic comedy about Ravi Patel, an almost-30-year-old Indian-American who enters a love triangle between the woman of his dreams... and his parents. Filmed by Ravi's sister in what started as a family vacation video, this hilarious and heartbreaking film reveals how love is a family affair. Fresh out of a breakup with his secret white girlfriend, who his parents knew nothing about, and freaked out that he's almost 30 and single, Ravi goes on a family vacation to India with his head and heart spinning. Ravi is willing to do whatever it takes to find love—but there's one tricky detail to consider: In his family, everyone has the last name Patel. Patels marry other Patels. It's not incest, it means they are from the same 50-square mile radius in India. Struck with how overwhelmingly happy the marriages are of his Patel family and friends, Ravi enters a fool-proof Patel matchmaking system and embarks on a worldwide search for another American Patel just like him. Witty and brutally honest, this comedy explores the questions with which we all struggle: What is love? How do we find it? And even then, how do we keep it? (Partially subtitled) Daily. The Diary of a Teenage Girl: A coming-of-age story that is as poignant as it is unsettling. Like most teenage girls, Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) is longing for love, acceptance and a sense of purpose in the world. Minnie begins a complex love affair with her mother's (Kristen Wiig) boyfriend, "the handsomest man in the world," Monroe Rutherford (Alexander Skarsgård). What follows is a sharp, funny and provocative account of one girl's sexual and artistic awakening, without judgment. Set in 1976 San Francisco, The Diary of a Teenage Girl begins at the crossroads of the fading hippie movement and the dawn of punk rock. In her feature film directorial debut, writer/director Marielle Heller brings Phoebe Gloeckner's novel to life with fearless performances, a stirring score, inventive graphic novel-like animation sequences, imagination, humor and heart. Daily. Amy: That would be Winehouse, in case you wondered which Amy is the subject of director Asif Kapadia's uncreatively titled documentary, which refines an apparent Kapadia specialty: the intense remembrance of stars who died too young. We see the doomed chanteuse in the throes of her destructive relationships — with a responsibility-averse father, with a volatile husband, with chemicals — and hear her music remixed to highlight how it was driven by the raw power of personal-demon-indulgence. Daily. Freeheld: The true love story of Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) and Stacie Andree (Ellen Page) and their fight for justice. A decorated New Jersey police detective, Laurel is diagnosed with cancer and wants to leave her hard-earned pension to her domestic partner, Stacie. However, the county officials—Freeholders—conspire to prevent Laurel from doing this. Hard-nosed detective Dane Wells (Michael Shannon) and activist Steven Goldstein (Steve Carell) unite in Laurel and Stacie's defense, rallying police officers and ordinary citizens to support their struggle for equality. Daily. 1 Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, 267-4893, www.landmarktheatres.com/san-francisco/embarcadero-center-cinema.
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.
The Knockout. Cyberpunk Cinema: Thrillhouse Records presents a classic sci-fi flick every month, preceded by an episode of Cowboy Bebop. Second Monday of every month, 6:30 p.m. Free. cyberpunkcinema.tumblr.com. 3223 Mission, San Francisco, 550-6994, theknockoutsf.com.
Multiple San Francisco Locations. SF Dance Film Festival: Mia: A Dancer's Journey screens at the festival kick-off event on Monday, Oct. 5, at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. The program includes International Shorts 1, Rare Birds, International Shorts 2, Dance Film Forum, Renewal Through Dance, Art and Science Collide, My Mother Loved Dance, International Shorts 3, Let's Get the Rhythm, Feelings Are Facts, and Co-Laboratory & Local Shorts. Screenings run through Sunday, Oct. 11. Thu., Oct. 8, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Oct. 9, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.; Sat., Oct. 10, 10:30 a.m., 2, 4:30, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.; Sun., Oct. 11, 2, 4:30 & 7 p.m. $20-$250. www.sfdancefilmfest.org/. Multiple addresses, San Francisco.
Opera Plaza Cinema. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution: Change was coming to America and the fault lines could no longer be ignored—cities were burning, Vietnam was exploding, and disputes raged over equality and civil rights. A new revolutionary culture was emerging and it sought to drastically transform the system. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense would, for a short time, put itself at the vanguard of that change. The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is the first feature length documentary to explore the Black Panther Party, its significance to the broader American culture, its cultural and political awakening for black people, and the painful lessons wrought when a movement derails. Master documentarian Stanley Nelson (Freedom Riders, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple) goes straight to the source, weaving a treasure trove of rare archival footage with the voices of the people who were there: police, FBI informants, journalists, white supporters and detractors, and Black Panthers who remained loyal to the party and those who left it. Daily. Shout Gladi Gladi: Narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep, Shout Gladi Gladi celebrates the extraordinary people who rescue African women and girls from obstetric fistula, a medical condition that can turn them into reviled outcasts. Filmed in Malawi and Sierra Leone, this documentary spotlights the quest of Ann Gloag, the indefatigable philanthropist and former nurse who drives the movement to save these vulnerable women, and presents the patients as they tell stirring tales of their struggles and triumphs. Everything culminates with the exuberant Gladi Gladi ceremony, a singing and dancing blowout that marks the day the women and girls return home cured. Starting Oct. 9. Daily. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon: Spawned at an Ivy League school in the 1970s by the wonderfully warped minds of Douglas Kenney and Henry Beard, National Lampoon rose from a counterculture rag to a revered comic institution. Bound by a passion for the absurd and a mistrust of authority, Lampoon's irreverence spanked nearly every available social taboo from weak-kneed politics to heated racial tensions. This unique cocktail of high satire and gallows humor exploded onto America's cultural consciousness, attracting visionary talents such as Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, whose comedic force helped expand the magazine's spirit to stage and film. Director Douglas Tirola unearths never-before-seen archival footage and brilliantly weaves it together with the magazine's beautiful and often shocking art, reliving National Lampoon's meteoric rise from go-to magazine of the counterculture to a brand synonymous with Hollywood's biggest comedies. Energetic, revolutionary, gently perverted and often hilarious, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead elevates nostalgia to a roof-raising experience. Starting Oct. 9. Daily. Phoenix: A spellbinding mystery of identity, illusion and deception unfolds against the turmoil of post-World War II Germany in the stunning new film from acclaimed writer/director Christian Petzold (Barbara, Jerichow). Berlin, 1945: Nelly (Nina Hoss, A Most Wanted Man), a German-Jewish, ex-nightclub singer, has survived a concentration camp. But, like her country, she is scarred, her face disfigured by a bullet wound. After undergoing reconstructive surgery, Nelly emerges with a new face, one similar but different enough that her former husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), doesn't recognize her. Rather than reveal herself, Nelly walks into a dangerous game of duplicity and disguise as she tries to figure out if the man she loves may have been the one who betrayed her to the Nazis. Submerged in shadowy atmosphere and the haunted mood of post-war Berlin, Phoenix weaves a complex, Hitchcockian tale of a nation's tragedy and a woman's search for answers as it builds towards an unforgettable, heart-stopping climax. (Partially subtitled) Daily. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, 267-4893, www.landmarktheatres.com/market/SanFrancisco/OperaPlazaCinema.htm.
Roxie Theater. Finders Keepers: Finders Keepers, a documentary about a man whose amputated leg is mistakenly sold at auction. Through Oct. 8. $7.50-$10. 863-1087. roxie.com. 3 Still Standing: For one bright, shining moment, three San Francisco standup comics seemed poised for the big time. Will Durst, Johnny Steele, and Larry "Bubbles" Brown were killing audiences in the Holy City Zoo, the Punch Line, and all the other packed, brick-walled venues that made San Francisco the country's best, most radical comedy scene in the 1980s. Agents–and Vegas–came calling, and why not? Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Paula Poundstone, Bobcat Goldthwait, and numerous others were honing their unique talents beneath the same spotlights and becoming stars. Then, as the '90s dawned, the local comedy scene died, and SF's era of cutting-edge, no-holds-barred humor faded into legend. What did these three comics do? They kept telling jokes however they could–and they still do. This loving, lively documentary–packed with hilarious vintage footage, intimate interviews, rat-a-tat editing, and a jazzy score–captures the triumphs and struggles, the art and dedication, of three indomitable performers who still bring it every time. Oct. 9-15. A Better You: This improv comedy follows Dr. Ron Knight (Brian Huskey, Neighbors, This Is The End, who also co-wrote the film), who in the unconventional healing community, stands out with his "Wake Up! Wake Up!" form of hypnotherapy. But with great ego and great success come great costs. As Dr. Ron becomes the prisoner to his own head, he loses touch with his gorgeous wife, Margo (Morgan Walsh), and their two children. Thrown into a midlife crisis, Dr. Ron looks for salvation on the most unlikely of shoulders: Hugo (Saturday Night Live's Horatio Sanz), the day laborer who is not only tasked with fixing Dr. Ron's rain gutters, but restoring his esteem as well. Oct. 9-14, 9 p.m. 3117 16th St., San Francisco, 863-1087, roxie.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.
The Walt Disney Family Museum. Tomorrowland: Walt's Vision For Today: Through animated sequences, musical compositions, sound bites, graphics, audio visuals, vintage posters, and more, Tomorrowland: Walt's Vision for Today will immerse visitors in the story of Walt's hopes and vision for the future, as reflected in his creation of the 1967 version of Tomorrowland at Disneyland. This exhibition allows visitors to experience Walt's perception of this beautiful tomorrow in a robust and vibrant way. Mondays, Wednesdays-Sundays. Continues through Dec. 7. 104 Montgomery, San Francisco, 345-6800, waltdisney.org.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Architecture & Design Films Showcase 2015: In our second Architecture and Design Film series, we present a showcase of 14 films and more than 20 screenings that cover architecture and design from every angle and aspect. Come and discover the DIY graphic arts scene in the UK, a history of land art, tiny houses, contemporary women architects, the battle to renovate the Rijksmuseum, and much more. Through Nov. 8. 701 Mission, San Francisco, 978-2787, ybca.org.
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