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Fulltime Killer and Hell House aren't headliners, but look out! Grin and Bear It The SF International Film Festival: it happens every year By Richard von Busack Years in the critic's trade have given me mixed feelings about film festivals. Some lost films should stay lost, and early morning dogpiles may not be the best vantage point for appreciating film. It's rare that I feel that I have the time or the space to do justice to the ones I do see outside of festivals. But after reading Jonathan Rosenbaum's book Movie Wars, a fresh reminder of the insularity and xenophobia of American critics, I'd feel guilty for griping ... even though local audiences are as intellectually curious and as accepting of subtitles as the globe offers. This, even without the annual appearance of the San Francisco International Film Festival. Still, where else but SFIFF would you propose to view a Lebanese/Icelandic co-production? It's a short, playing at the Pacific Film Archive April 27, directed by the extravagantly-named Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdottir and titled "Who Hangs the Laundry?" In my household, it's me -- and I've had precious little time to hang it since these film fest screenings started. The 45th annual fest cannily tries to fill seats with celebrity appearance. The main event is the arrival of Kevin Spacey on April 24, appearing at a repeat screening (though once was enough) of 1994's Swimming With Sharks; Spacey, back in the savage mode that won him fame, plays a crass producer modeled on Joel Silver. Warren Beatty will receive the Akira Kurosawa award, then Akira Kurosawa will receive the Warren Beatty award and everyone will call it a day. The Seven Samurai may have had some influence on the director of Dick Tracy. However, a re-screening of Beatty's populist but embarrassing 1998 Bulworth will really demonstrate how sage he was in giving Halle Berry one of her first important roles. Of the films not appearing at the PFA leg of the festival: If you have a choice of the two openers, bypass the interesting but faded Thirteen Conversations About One Thing in favor of the slight-ly better The Triumph of Love. Both will be in current re-lease soon enough. Thirteen Conversations begins as another film about the pitiful randomness of life and choices. Soon enough it backs away from the implica-tions of this view, and becomes a series of interlocking stories about good happening to good people and evil happening to bad people. The highlight is Alan Arkin's performance as a small executive at a dying company; despite vicissitudes, he never loses sight of the importance of pessimism. By contrast The Triumph of Love (based on Marivaux's 1732 comedy) features some fine yet plaintive clowning by Fiona Shaw and Ben Kingsley, with the unsteady Miro Sorvino rather cute as a transvestite princess. Of the less celebrated films I've seen appearing in the West Bay portion of the festival, my favorite is Greg Ratliff's irresist-ible documentary about Christian fundamentalist haunted houses. It's titled Hell House (pray to get in and pray to get out!); in it, the terrors of abortion, drugs, and premarital sex are used to scare the bejesus into suburban brats on Halloween. Required viewing in the Age of Ashcroft; it screens April 28 and 30 and May 1. The Johnnie To/Wai Ka Fai picture Fulltime Killer (April 27 and 28) represents the Baroque Era of the Hong Kong action film, in which the dual between rival assassins may all be taking place in the mind of a besotted pulp fiction writer. Much milder, Zhang Yimou's Chaplineseque (but in a good way) Happy Times (April 27 and 28), represents Pascal's definition of life: a comedy with a bloody finish. The PFA features 13 days of SFIFF films: all the advantage of having the fest on the civilized side of the Bay, and with less danger of running into worse film snobs than me, even. The offerings include new works by Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, and Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the latter who unveils his newest, Millennium Mambo (April 19). Here also are two works by perhaps the oldest-living working director, the 92-year-old Portuguese Maneol de Oliviera (Oporto of My Childhood, April 20; I'm Going Home, May 1) Also, the latest picture by that provacteuse, Catherine Breillat (Brief Crossing, April 25). Breillat's most recent outrage Fat Girl, a.k.a. A Ma Soeur, not only was too hot for most distributors to handle, it also didn't get much credit for being a very funny film. At times, it's more profitable to listen to Martin Scorsese talk about film than to watch his most recent work. Thus, My Voyage to Italy (April 21), is a 246-minute long tour through Italian cinema that promises to be both a delight and a real education. Godard's In Praise of Live (April 26) promises, from the outline, to allude great man's feelings about seeing the Holocaust go Hollywood, in Schindler's List and elsewhere. Spirited Away (April 22) is the new film by Hayao Miyazaki, the animator recently celebrated in Helen McCarthy's book published by Berkeley's Stone Bridge Press. Among the documentaries on display: War and Peace by Anand Patwardhan (April 28) concerns nuclear proliferation on the India/Pakistan frontier. The Pinochet Case is Patricia Guzman's account of the legal case of the Chilean caudillo hauled before a Spanish judge. Interestingly, The Pinochet Case screens on May 1, a day that would have been celebrated as a holiday by some of the hundreds of people Pinochet tortured and slaughtered. And News From a Personal War (April 22) describes the still deadly com-bat between police and gangsters in the favelas of Rio de Janiero. Special presentations during the fest include a midnight-movie quotient (the most noteworthy, an early look at Dogtown and Z-Boys, the most essential movie about skateboarding yet made). Various receptions, wing-dings, and local film selections are oc-curing. Here's a chance to see a movie from Uruguay (25 Watts, it's called) or to corner that fading director and ask them "So, when are you going to get your second wind?" On the one hand, the two-week festival is an interruption from the usual teen- sperm/one-man army/wacky bankrobbers fare. On the other, it kills time before Spider-Man comes out. [ East Bay | Metroactive | Archives ]