Artists' Television Access. EXquisite Corpse Cinema: EX#3: Inspired by the old Surrealist parlor game, these 13 quasi-collaborative short works were based on a series of predetermined prompts, though each filmmaker worked separately and the final assembled result could only be seen once the parts were made in individual isolation. Fri., Jan. 30, 8 p.m. $7-$10. 992 Valencia, San Francisco, 824-3890, atasite.org.
Balboa Theatre. Records Collecting Dust: If you have more records than friends, or would gladly forsake a few meals in order to afford that rare first edition 10" on translucent colored vinyl, then you'll probably find a few fellow travelers in this documentary featuring interviews with punk/indie/underground music icons like Jello Biafra, Pall Jenkins, Keith Morris, Justin Pearson, Matt Pike, John "Speedo" Reis, Mike Watt, David Yow, and many more. Thu., Jan. 29, 7:30 p.m. $7.50-$10. recordscollectingdust.com. 3630 Balboa, San Francisco, 221-2184, balboamovies.com.
Center for New Music. Cinematheque Celebrates 2015: The avant-garde champions of San Francisco Cinematheque host a social gathering with film installations, video performances, music, food & drink, and more to preview their programming year. Tue., Feb. 3, 7 p.m. $10. sfcinematheque.org. 55 Taylor, San Francisco, 275-2466, centerfornewmusic.com.
Clay Theatre. Still Alice: Julianne Moore's performance as a well-to-do woman stricken with Alzheimer's before her time redeems Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's cringe-drama, which otherwise doesn't say anything new about the disease (though some seriously tacky product placement does imply that Pinkberry may be somehow related). Daily. The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The Bawdy Caste performs onstage while the ultimate cult film plays in the background. Last Saturday of every month, 11:59 p.m. $9-$10. 2261 Fillmore, San Francisco, 267-4893, landmarktheatres.com.
Dark Room Theater. Bad Movie Night: Xanadu: Hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Rose Lacy, and Mike Spiegelman lace up their skates for a spin around the roller disco with supernatural '70s muse Olivia Newton-John. Sun., Feb. 1, 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. A Most Violent Year: A 1981 NYC period piece with the word "violent" right there in its title, writer-director J.C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year might disappoint some viewers by stoking unfair expectations. Instead of an over-cranked opera, it's really just a subtle character study about a would-be heating oil tycoon, and a reiteration of the perceptive question Chandor has been asking for three films now: With his self-made world maybe inevitably coming apart, what's a man to do? 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. Daily. Mommy: Xavier Dolan's Mommy is an endurance test even by the standards of miserablist drama, a non-supernatural monster movie whose vision of a seriously dysfunctional relationship between a widowed mother (Anne Dorval) and her ADHD-riddled son (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) makes The Babadook look that much better. Starting Jan. 30. 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.
International House at UC Berkeley. The Throwaways: Co-directors Ira McKinley and Bhawin Suchak appear in person at two screenings of their documentary about the far-reaching impact of mass incarceration and police brutality on black communities. Thu., Jan. 29, 6 & 8 p.m. $10-$12 ($6 for students). kpfa.org. 2299 Piedmont, Berkeley, 510-642-9490, ihouse.berkeley.edu.
The Lab. Landscape Verses: Experimental interminglings of sound and cinema by Beige, Paul Clipson, John Davis, Marielle Jakobsons, and Tooth. Sat., Jan. 31, 7 p.m. $8. 2948 16th St., San Francisco, 864-8855, thelab.org.
Multiple Bay Area Locations. Berlin & Beyond Film Festival: The lineup for this 19th annual European cine-fest ranges across several countries, taking in mountain villagers, cabaret singers, road trippers, art forgers, refugees, architects, a female mariachi singer, and other irresistible characters along the way. Screenings are held Jan. 29-Feb. 1 at the Castro Theatre (429 Castro, S.F.), Feb. 1-2 at the Goethe-Institut (530 Bush, S.F.), Feb. 2 at the Aquarius Theatre (430 Emerson, Palo Alto), and Feb. 3 at the California Theatre (2113 Kittredge, Berkeley). Jan. 29-Feb. 3. berlinbeyond.com. Multiple addresses, San Francisco, N/A.
Opera Plaza Cinemas. Human Capital: Paolo Virzì's drama follows a group of interconnected upper-class individuals during the events of a particularly joyless Christmastime, and when a server is accidentally killed after a fancy-pants event, nobody gets away clean — though having money sure helps, especially if you know how much a human life is worth. 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. The Duke of Burgundy: Coming across like a film Peter Greenaway never got around to making, Peter Strickland's The Duke of Burgundy explores a master-slave relationship between Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna) and the slightly older Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), two entomologists who engage in carefully scripted sadomasochistic rituals when they're not studying or lecturing about butterflies and larvae. Daily. Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animation: Animated shorts, when made well, have a beautiful way of boiling down everything that ever was and ever will be great about movie storytelling. In general, the only shortness that's a problem here is the shortsightedness of the Academy: There's just so much more original and award-worthy animation being made in any given year than this somewhat puny batch of nominees ever can contain. Still, they've picked some good ones. Starting Jan. 30. Daily. Oscar Nominated Short Films 2015: Live Action: Forever flying far enough under the radar to avoid Oscar controversy are the short films, a genre which tends to be unheard of until a given film is nominated for the little gold statue. This is especially true of the live-action short films, and it's a shame, because there always a few works that deserve special attention. Starting Jan. 30. Daily. 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, 777-3456, landmarktheatres.com.
Presidio Officers' Club. Lost Landscapes of San Francisco: Rick Prelinger's popular screening series hits the Presidio for a free night of vintage film clips that show the city in all of its historic (or at least nostalgic) glory. Thu., Jan. 29, 7 p.m. Free. 50 Moraga, San Francisco, 561-4000, presidioofficersclub.com.
Presidio Theatre. Match: Few things are more entertaining than Patrick Stewart playing to the cheap seats, and since most of us will probably never get to see him in a live performance, Match — a nice little character piece starring Stewart as a flamboyant (if not necessarily out-of-the-closet) ballet instructor at Juilliard — may be the next best thing. Daily. 2340 Chestnut, San Francisco, 776-2388, lntsf.com.
Roxie Theater. Loitering with Intent: Adam Rapp's comedy is about a number of things, including some deeper themes about both the creative process and the business of show, but Loitering with Intent tends to lose them in favor of a Southern Gothic tribute in which nearly everyone's a Faulknerian idiot man-child. Through Jan. 29. Song One: Unabashedly fond of romantic rooftop hangouts in front of Manhattan skyline bokeh backdrops, Kate Barker-Froyland's tender drama stars doe-eyed Anne Hathaway as an anthropology student who, by dint of her brother falling into a coma, hooks up with a gently broody troubadour played by Johnny Flynn. Sweet downbeat indie folk ensues (mostly written by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice), which you'd better like if you want to get through this. Through Feb. 5. 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. Jan. 30-Feb. 5. Synesthesia Film Festival: This monthly gathering is less a proper "festival" than it is a chance to commingle with indie filmmakers and fans and view new discoveries together, including short films, student works, web shows, music videos, and more. First Wednesday of every month, 7 p.m. $10. synesthesiafilmfestival.com. 3117 16th St., San Francisco, 863-1087, roxie.com.
Sundance Kabuki Cinemas. Timbuktu: In filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako's documentary, the eponymous Malian city is a place increasingly in thrall to Islamic fundamentalism, a place of men with guns instead of minds, with a Sharia mandate to ban anything fun under threat of barbaric punishment. We begin to understand what makes Malian blues bands so soulful and mesmerizingly good: In a place like this, they get 40 lashes for playing music at all, and 40 more just for being together in a room. Starting Jan. 30. Daily. Song of the Sea: Folklore is life in Tomm Moore's animated masterpiece, a stunning visual tapestry and a simple story about how any family's grief for a lost loved one can be as deep and vast as a national mythology. It demonstrates, as maybe only a great animated film can, how ordinary life teems with wonder. Starting Jan. 30. Daily. 1881 Post, San Francisco, 346-3243, sundancecinemas.com/kabuki.html.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. New Anime!: The exclamation point is theirs, but it's appropriate, as the YBCA features some of last year's best anime films — including Koji Masunari's Welcome to the Space Show (Jan. 8, 10, and 11), Yasuhiro Yoshiura's Patema Inverted (Jan. 15, 17, and 18), and Isao Takahata's The Tale of Princess Kaguya (Jan. 22, 24, and 25) — plus Mami Sunada's rare peek inside anime powerhouse Studio Ghibli, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (Jan. 31). Thursdays, Saturdays, Sundays. Continues through Jan. 31. $8-$10. ybca.org/new-anime. 701 Mission, San Francisco, 978-2787, ybca.org.
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