Dinner at Fred's
This quaint, occasionally funny black comedy embodies all that's "minor" about independent films, but it does answer the nagging question of what happened to Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall. McDonald resurfaces as endearingly weird Fred in this low-budget combination of It's a Wonderful Life and The Old Dark House written and directed by Shawn Alex Thompson. Gil Bellows plays Richard, a corporate everyguy whose encounter with Fred's zany family -- including Christopher Lloyd as a good-natured psycho on a snowmobile -- gives him the courage to dump his boring job, his creepy boss, and his trophy girlfriend. The film tries to mingle absurd humor with a sweet, almost sentimental quality, but the scenes aren't sharp enough or sweet enough to quite succeed as either. The ubiquitous Parker Posey's here, but it's McDonald and his unique comic persona -- a sort of distracted deadpan -- who steals what there is of the show. (Gary Morris) Thursday, Oct. 2, 9:45 p.m., Sequoia; Sunday, Oct. 5, noon, Lark
Fame Whore
The screeching title tune says it all early: "I ain't got talent, and I ain't got style!" What no-talent, no-style writer/director/etc. Jon Moritsugu (Mod Fuck Explosion) intends as a daring critique of a society obsessed with notoriety comes off like a laughably inept 1960s sexploitation film without the saving grace of the sex. This three-part story -- about a closeted, foulmouthed tennis player named Jody George, a self-deluded casting director, and a mincing dog-shelter worker -- lacks the least bit of grit or power, not to mention things like decent lighting, dynamic cutting, or credible acting; atmospherically and dramatically, Fame Whore is DOA. The kind of sensibility operating here is woefully apparent in a quote from the director: "I mean, someone like Jody George, who uses the word 'pussy' like a thousand times -- that in itself, I think, is sort of shocking." Right. (Gary Morris) Saturday, Oct. 4, 10:15 p.m., Lark
The Healers of 400 Parnassus
Don't let the subject put you off from this exceptional film, an AIDS documentary that rises above the rabble with its striking portrait of professional caregivers -- doctors, nurse practitioners, and social workers -- at the UCSF Infectious Diseases HIV Clinic, aka 400 Parnassus. The nurses and doctors here, taking their medical mandate to the max, are deeply involved in their clients' lives and in the world of HIV, and talk eloquently of getting as much from their patients as they give. "We're here because there's no place else we'd rather be," says Dr. Steven O'Brien. These "healers" are hindered not only by a cunning disease, but by politics and profit motive; during filming, Dr. O'Brien's position was cut to "save money." Also on this bill is Before I Sleep, a moving record of the last four years of one of the first American teen-agers to speak about her experiences with HIV. (Gary Morris) Saturday, Oct. 4, 1 p.m., Lark
Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise
Paul Alexander Juutilainen's documentary is unabashedly on the side of 1960s student radical guru Herbert Marcuse, celebrating his leftist critique of affluent America and focusing on then-Gov. Ronald Reagan's attempt to force the aging philosophy professor from his post at UC San Diego in the late '60s. The real villain of this piece is not, however, Reagan and the American Legioneers (who merely look silly in old TV clips complaining about the red professor), but instead the university bureaucrat who ultimately succeeded in chasing Marcuse from his post by instituting mandatory retirement for all at age 70. In retirement himself today, he lies right to the camera about his act not being directed at the tenured embarrassment, but instead at old fogies everywhere. In a nutshell, Marcuse's argument about the repressive side of liberal humanist "tolerance" is proved. Better foes like Reagan than friends like that. (Gregg Rickman) Sunday, Oct. 5, 6:30 p.m., Oddfellows
The House of Yes
Witty dialogue pingpongs around the screen in first-time director Mark Waters' adaption of a play about a profoundly disturbed family's Thanksgiving festivities. Unfortunately, so does Waters' camera, which is frequently on Actor A when we want to see Actor B's reactions. That aside, Waters gives this film's gimmicky source material its best possible showcase, drawing strong acting work from indie queen Parker Posey as a Jackie Kennedy-obsessed neurotic, and also from Genevieve Bujold as her equally dry but not at all brittle mother. Posey, who normally floats through her films with little more than her dental-receptionist smile and patented sidelong glances to see her through, reinvents herself here as an impaled, impaling butterfly in a pink pillbox hat. With the male leads (Josh Hamilton, Freddie Prinze Jr.) playing brothers bland and twitchy respectively, you know your family's really in trouble when the nice-girl outsider is Tori Spelling, every inch the doughnut-house hostess she plays. All jokes aside, though, this is not really a comedy, and the film's socko finale is unearned melodrama. (Gregg Rickman) Saturday, Oct. 4, 7 p.m., Sequoia; Sunday, Oct. 5, 2 p.m., Sequoia
Kiss or Kill
Young, misunderstood, not very bright, small-time criminal couple accidentally kill one of their scam victims, find an incriminating videotape in his briefcase, and go on the lam, hotly pursued by the cops, a guy who really wants that videotape, and several red herrings. They get into a heap more trouble, but heck, they love each other, so we're meant to love them, too. In other words, it's a standard-issue outlaw-couple-on-the-run picture, only this one's from Australia. The press kit says the writer/director, Bill Bennett, spent 10 years writing the script, then threw it out and improvised the whole thing. Maybe he should have stuck to the script. Tricked up with lots of jump-cutting to give it that "edgy" feel, it has an astonishing opening scene, some nice Australian desert scenery, and is thankfully free of self-conscious neo-noirisms. Otherwise, it feels like a fake American indie you've seen a dozen times before. (Tod Booth) Sunday, Oct. 5, 9:45 p.m., Sequoia
Little Shots of Happiness
This might have been called The Redemption of Todd Verow. Verow's a respected underground filmmaker whose career was thought to have capsized with the gruesome, widely detested Frisk, an ode to extreme sadomasochistic sex. But Verow's sensibility is more palatable in this grim dissection of the humdrum horrors of everyday life. Frances (brilliantly played by Bonnie Dickerson) is a sunny Edie Sedgwick look-alike who by day works as a telemarketer and by night deserts her husband to whore it up, get drunk, steal other women's boyfriends, and rob her rich sister. She's a kind of collapsed gamin who moves to the mindless rhythm of the industrial music that throbs relentlessly on the soundtrack. A scene where Frances becomes the hated guest/sex object for a couple she doesn't know comes off like a sample from Paul Morrisey's Trash, but most of Little Shots of Happiness moves to its own disturbing, original rhythms. (Gary Morris) Monday, Oct. 6, 9:30 p.m., Lark
Medea
A woman lies in a tide pool, gripping the sand, in the opening images of this powerful experimental video version of Euripides' play. Based on a screen treatment left behind on his death by the great Carl Dreyer, and shot in 1988 by Danish enfant terrible Lars von Trier, this adaption proceeds like the stateliest of silent movies, with long stretches of screen time devoted to mimed agony. As with the greatest silent films, one's strict attention is rewarded with intense emotional communion with the images, here quite overwhelming given the supercharged material. A comparison of this film with Dreyer's masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc is instructive, as the snide attitude of the filmmaker's other works is stripped away by the tragedy's force. Von Trier's trademark use of back projection is much in evidence -- shots of Medea's sleeping children loom up behind her in an early scene, for example. So is the filmmaker's thematization of passion through powerful, color-treated images, done on a bigger scale in such works as Breaking the Waves, but never so potently. Warning: The videotape shown at the film festival press screening was almost inaudible. It is to be hoped that the MVFF will have secured a better print by screening time, but even under adverse conditions the film was still compelling. (Gregg Rickman) Saturday, Oct. 4, 6:30 p.m., Oddfellows
Pippi Longstocking
What to make of Pippi? Many a future riot grrrl was raised on Astrid Lindgren's Swedish superbrat heroine, but whether modern kids will take to her is questionable. Her bizarre image -- spray-gunned freckles; shellacked-erect pigtails; that loopy, vacuous grin -- may strike some as more disturbing than empowering, even in the disbelief-suspending world of an animated feature. After a shipwreck that supposedly leaves her orphaned, the too-resourceful Pippi takes up residence in a small town with a talking horse and monkey. There she spends her time breaking dishes, throwing pancake batter on the walls, picking up adults and throwing them to the ground, and generally reveling in her considerable destructive powers. Director Clive Smith hedges his bets by adding a Disney-esque Broadway-style score, with grating numbers like "My Name Is Pippi!" This and other tired tunes are screamed at the audience as the unbalanced little imp gleefully dismantles the town. (Gary Morris) Saturday, Oct. 4, 5 p.m., Sequoia
Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
Born with cystic fibrosis, Bob Flanagan managed to survive to the age of 42, in 1996. He was in and out of hospitals all his life, but hung on and to some extent enjoyed a pain-filled life with the help of ritualized, slash-and-burn S/M. Kirby Dick's documentary is likely to be the only one on this subject, judging from the stampede out of the theater by disgusted Sundance audiences. Dick shows us every bloody detail of Flanagan's daily life, from nails through his penis to a slave contract in which dominatrix Sheree Rose takes over his life. But the wheezing Flanagan is a classic "pushy bottom" who bickers with his mistress as often as he submits, and there's some evidence that this "supermasochist," whose need for attention and publicity was insatiable, used Rose for his own purposes. Gallows humor abounds -- there's a shot of a coffin containing a TV set "playing" Flanagan's bewildered face -- but his extreme self-absorption begins to wear on the viewer as much as the sight of his razored, whipped, and bound flesh. (Gary Morris) Wednesday, Oct. 8, 10 p.m., Sequoia
20th Anniversary
Mill Valley Film Festival
The 20th edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival, presented by the Film Institute of Northern California, opens Thursday, Oct. 2, and runs through Oct. 12 at various locations in Marin County. The main venues are:
The Sequoia Twin Theaters, 25 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; 388-4862.
The Lark Theater, 549 Magnolia, Larkspur; 924-3311.
The Cinema Theater, 41 Tamal Vista, Corte Madera; 924-6505.
Oddfellows Hall, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; 383-1030.
Tickets for most shows are $8, $6 for kids and seniors. Special events are more. Phone orders must go through BASS, at (510) 762-2277. You can buy tickets at the fest's box office, at the corner of Blithedale and Throckmorton in Mill Valley, or get them online, at www.ticketweb.com.
The fest's Web site is at www.finc.org.
Call 383-5346 for more information.
