I don’t have many things
to brag about my life, but one thing I can boast about is that I’ve seen a lot of good fucking films. In my late
teens and early twenties—formative, formative years—I was blessed to have a
couple of friends in my lifeless, pedestrian, suburban hometown of Fremont, CA who
had wicked-good taste in films. They opened my impressionable eyes to a slew of
gnarly movies. Before I could legally drink, I was an undergraduate film
student at San Francisco State and pulling a Tarantino by working at a local
video store (which back then was this corporation known as Blockbuster Video).
During my two years of film studies—especially the first year—I saw (and slept!)
through a parade of fantastic films during my 9 a.m. classes when my night-owl ass
would stagger through the early morning hours to commute from my parents’ house
to the fog-veiled westerly end of San Pancho.
In compiling this list, I
was surprised that none of my all-time favorite movie-going experiences happened
at the Embarcadero Center Cinema, the exquisite Castro Theatre (Eddie Muller’s
annual Film Noir Festival is
always fucking awesome), or Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. I’ve seen a lot of movies
at these film houses, especially the Embarcadero Center Cinema, while I was a
substandard film student.
This list was originally
meant to be five deep with a few honorable mentions, but the longer I sat and
rifled through my memories the more my honorable mention list
ballooned (much like the budget of a James Cameron film).
But without further ado,
here are the top ten I’ve been graced with.
10. The Big Lebowski
Red Vic Theater – San
Francisco, CA
April 20, 2008(?)
The
Red Vic was a small, eclectic art house
theater in the Upper Haight. Every year, they used to show the Coen Brothers’
stoner-friendly cult classic on 4/20 at 4:20 p.m. It was the kind of happening
that went down in San Francisco [coughing under my breath:] before the city
sold its soul and character for greed and profit. For years, I resisted this
annual happening until an old high school classmate, Jesse, asked if I wanted
to go, so we did. Long before recreational marijuana was passed into law in the
Golden State, Red Vic management encouraged Big Lebowski moviegoers to
toke up before and during the film screening. Though I had seen parts of the
film stoned many times before, it was thrillingly liberating to light up in a
movie theater and watch it on the big screen with a bunch of stoners who also
knew so many classic lines (“I said we’ll cut off your johnson!”) from the
film.
9. Top Hat
Niles
Essanay Silent Film Museum – Fremont, CA
2011
Long
ago, Charlie Chaplin shot five of his early films
in my old suburban hometown, Fremont. Since 2004, the Niles Essanay Silent
Film Museum has screened an impressive selection of silent films in their
theater. My wife, Maria and I had our second date at their theater to watch
this 1935 musical starring Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. This was pretty
remarkable because 1. I generally detest musicals (most classic musicals are so
cheerful that I find them disturbing) and 2. back then, after living in a
lively cosmopolitan city like San Francisco for seven years, my hometown felt
so dull and stale to visit.
But
Top
Hat was
incredible. I must have assuredly
seen Fred Astaire on the big screen in one of my film classes at SF State (I
probably slept through most of the film), but that night I finally understood
the charm and magic that man spun on celluloid with his smile, wit, and
virtuoso dancing. And it was doubly fun to discover Astaire and Rogers on the
big screen with a capacity crowd full of fellow film dorks, including my
sweetheart.
This
film cracks my top-1o movie-going experiences ever because I left that theater
sensing, for the first time, that Maria and I had something special. And my
intuition turned out to be right.
8. My Life Without Me
Madrid, Spain
2003
In the summer of 2003, I
backpacked through Western Europe. It was a life-altering experience: the first
time I traveled and lived on my own; the first time I viscerally grasped
just how vast and complex and unbelievably beautiful this planet is. That summer,
I fell hard for my then-girlfriend, Janel.
Committed relationships were still new for me then, and that one undoubtedly
brought out the best in me.
On my last night in
Europe, after being on my own for forty days in a foreign continent, I decided
to spend it by watching an American film starring Sarah Polley. While in
Madrid, a city I loved and hope to see again, I was fortunate to stay in the
apartment of a beautiful young woman named Laura, who my mother befriended
while they were both playing tourists in Perú. It was my fourth night in
Madrid, and I left Laura’s apartment without referring to my Lonely Planet
guide and navigated their metro to one of their downtown neighborhoods as
though it were second nature.
My Life Without Me was a sobering film that
managed to be melancholic yet sort of uplifting, if I remember correctly. (And
this was long before I became a cancer survivor.) I remember leaving the theater and
anonymously merging back with all the Spaniards out and about on a weeknight. I
was thinking of how it was my final seconds and minutes and hours in Madrid, in
Spain, in Europe. I had this foreboding sense that much was going to change
once I returned home. After savoring such freedom and overcoming any fear of
living on my own, I knew my days living at my parents’ house were numbered. But
I also felt quiet inside because Janel had already moved to Portland, OR to
attend graduate school. The beautiful, magical spring and summer we had
together was gone and I didn’t know if we would continue on. All of that was
there as I sat in the small, dark theater by myself and took that film in.
A
few days later, back at home, I would find out that our run was over and that I
wasn’t going to move to Portland. (Before I left for Europe, she had invited me
to follow her to Stumptown.) Then months later, after saving up money, I moved
out of the nest for good.
Coppola Theater, San Francisco
State University – San Francisco, CA
2000
In
my second year of formal film studies, I took a documentary class with Caveh Zahedi. One night, he screened
two documentaries for our class. The first was Alain Resnais’s Night and
Fog. If
you haven’t seen the 32-minute film before—which I humbly think every human
being should see—it splices picturesque, then-present-day color footage of the
Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps with archival black-and-white stock
footage the Nazis shot to document their operations at the concentration camps
when they were slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Jewish prisoners. I still
remember seeing archival footage of a bulldozer pushing an enormous pile of
corpses into a hole in the ground as if they were just twigs.
I
remember when the film finished and the overhead lights went on. In a theater
packed with over a hundred students, I remember how uncomfortably quiet we all
were. Caveh broke the ice by standing in front of the class and saying, “That
was heavy. Let’s take a break” before a horde of us quietly filed out of the
theater, hanging our heads, to step out for a smoke.
Back
then, I smoked about a pack of cigarettes once a week. I still remember how my
hands trembled as I held one to my lips and tried to light it after watching
that film. That’s when I truly realized how powerful documentaries can be, and I
still hope to shoot and edit one of my own someday before I die.
6. Fruitvale Station
Grand Lake Theater –
Oakland, CA
2013
No matter how long humans
will manage to exist, I am confident that Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station will
always be one of the most Oakland films ever made, and I watched it at the most
Oakland film theater the town will ever know. The biographical film based on
Oscar Grant’s death at the hands of the BART police is a cinematic masterpiece.
Maria and I caught Fruitvale
Station toward the end of its
summer run so the theater wasn’t packed but by the end there wasn’t one fucking
dry eye. (No exaggeration. I looked.) Watching Fruitvale Station at the
Grand Lake Theater at night with a small, intimate crowd felt like the ultimate
way to experience it.
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey
Grand Lake Theater –
Oakland, CA
2015
Stanley Kubrick is and
will probably always be my favorite film director, and 2001: A Space Odyssey is
among my top-5 favorite Kubrick films. In 2015, a 70 mm print was remastered
and circulated and bequeathed to mankind and the Grand Lake Theater got dibs on
a copy. I just about creamed my pants when I heard it was playing at my beloved
neighborhood theater.
Uncharacteristically,
I opted to heighten the film experience by smoking a little weed beforehand. (I
am a big fan of watching films sober.) And it was a good choice on my part. 2001 screened in the Grand
Lake’s primary theater and I was in sheer ecstasy before the film as the organ
player played Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” and “Also sprach Zarathustra” on the
mighty Wurlitzer.
And
then the film: my god, it was glorious to see it projected on a big screen.
Coupled with the film’s score, each languid outer space shot was a thing of
beauty. It was my first time seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey on the big screen, and
hopefully not the last.
When
we walked back home, Maria told me she enjoyed the film but didn’t understand
what happened at the end. This made me laugh and made the post-film stroll back
home a treat (for me at least) as I tried to explain my interpretation.
4. Contracorriente (Undertow)
Lumiere Theater (R.I.P.) –
San Francisco, CA
2010
This was a Peruvian
affair; Contracorriente was the first
movie filmed in Perú that I was watching on a big screen, and I was going to
see it with my sister, Mariana. We both left the theater teary-eyed. It was a
gorgeous, sad film—my favorite kind—and I was especially moved because the film
centered on a gay male relationship. I found this remarkable. Being a largely
Catholic country where men and women still have very clearly defined gendered
roles from birth until death, machista and homophobic attitudes are still prevalent.
And so, I left the movie theater feeling proud of my countrymen involved in the
film, proud that my country had produced this beautiful film.
But the reason this
movie-going experience cracks my top-10 is because it involves my sister. Over
many years, our relationship has ebbed and flowed. Together, unfortunately,
we’ve created ugly, awful moments that can never be taken back despite
heartfelt apologies. As adults we grew apart but this is one of the last
beautiful sister-and-brother moments we’ve had, which makes it all the sweeter.
3. Donnie Darko
Red Vic Theater – San
Francisco, CA
2007(?)
I can count on one hand
how many films I saw at the Red Vic, and here it is, cracking my top-10 again.
I saw this one alone, and I think it’s one of the reasons why it was such an
absorbing experience for me.
Like books, like songs,
films can become a defining moment in our respective trajectories. Looking back
now, I suspect Donnie Darko had such
a mesmerizing effect on me because of where I was and what was going on in my
life at the time I had it pore into my senses in the cavernous dark of the Red
Vic. After the film finished, I remember stepping out into the foggy night with
this deep, weighty veil of sadness consuming me. Although I was back out into
the world, I was still in the realm of the film I had just experienced (if that
makes any sense). I remember unlocking my bike and riding down Haight Street
back toward my home in the Mission in a state of befuddlement. For a good
minute or two, I cycled down the street with a completely distracted mind. A
few films have had that effect on me, where I’m so moved and emotional and
saddened and fragile that I (ideally) don’t want to talk to anyone for at least
an hour while the film courses out of me. (Pan’s
Labyrinth, Capote, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Lives of Others, In
the Mood for Love, and Moonlight
also come to mind.) But I think Donnie
Darko might have weaved such a spell
harder than any other film that night in my life.
2. Get Out
Regal Jack London –
Oakland, CA
2017
Ah, now this was a fun watch. A fucking
thrilling watch. I saw it with a fellow cinephile I had befriended from Saint
Mary’s. We were both hyped to watch this film. My Facebook feed had blown up
the week or so before with a bunch of FB friends—mostly fellow writers of
color—raving about it. And yet, Jordan Peele’s film managed to surpass my lofty
expectations and a lot of it has to do with the fact that I saw this film in my
beloved Oakland in a house packed with black folks and other people of color.
It was undoubtedly the most righteous environment possible to watch Get Out. The audience laughed at all the
uncomfortable moments when a more white, politically correct audience (in, say,
Berkeley or present-day San Francisco) would have probably sat quietly because
they were either unsure if it was meant to be funny or because they couldn’t
understand that it is funny. Towards
the end of the film, the crowd was like a single mass; we were all enraptured
in the film’s spell, and I remember several
audience members were loudly saying stuff like, “Kill that white girl!” or
“You better not look in there!” Everything I was thinking as I sat and watched
the film was being said aloud by others in real-time and it was exhilarating
and borderline cathartic to go through all the motions and painful truths that
film brilliantly unveils.
To boot, it’s a great
feeling to step out of a theater knowing you were fortunate enough to have just
witnessed a cinematic masterpiece on the big screen where films are meant to be
seen.
1. A Clockwork Orange
Smith Rafael Film Center –
San Rafael, CA
1999
In 1999, I was just twenty
years old. A mere pube. (In fact, I lost my virginity that year.) Endowed with
the gusto of youth, I was at the height of my adoration for Stanley Kubrick and
A Clockwork Orange was my favorite of
his films. (And it probably still is.) At that time of my life I was beginning
to more fully explore, which meant I was getting away from the doldrums of Tri-City
suburbia and discovering places like downtown Berkeley (Telegraph Avenue!:
Cody’s Books! Rasputin Music!) and San Francisco. Driving 50 miles and crossing
a bridge I had never known before in order to see my favorite film at the time
with a dear friend was exactly the type of thing I should have been doing at
that juncture in my life.
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