With all due respect to fiction, reality is where it's really at, and this year's 14th annual SF DocFest will be dropping plenty of truth-bombs on the Roxie, Brava, Balboa, and Vogue theaters. Other kinds of bombs figure into Mike Attie and Meghan O'Hara's In Country, about men who spend days at a time in Oregon re-creating the Vietnam War. No live weapons are used, of course, but the metaphorical version helps both veterans and new recruits work through their issues with real-life war. Meanwhile, Neil Edwards' Sympathy For The Devil looks back at the quasi-satanic Church of the Final Judgment, onto which the media hoisted many of its fears in the 1960s and 1970s. But this year's DocFest highlight (and by far the most important film to play in town since Electric Boogaloo at SFIFF) is Ryan Wise's I Am Thor, about the rise, fall, and attempted re-rise of Jon Mikl Thor. Beloved to many as the star of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic Zombie Nightmare, Thor's eponymous heavy metal band never hit it big, and I Am Thor follows his Anvil-like attempt to mount a comeback in a world that didn't quite embrace him in the first place. And after the June 11 screening, the Metal Avenger himself will be performing at Thee Parkside.
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