The younger sibling of San Diego's infamous summertime Comic-Con, the Bay Area's own WonderCon gets the jump—by a few precious months—on Hollywood's moneyed summer movie season. Since WonderCon moved from Oakland to San Francisco, the studios have taken to sending out talent to represent their slates of genre movies at increasingly fren... 
The Year's Best Films 1. Hero 2. Vera Drake 3. Dogville 4. Spartan 5. Kinsey 6. Sideways 7. Crimson Gold 8. Touching the Void 9. The Five Obstructions 10. Goodbye Dragon Inn
Runners-up: Bad Education, The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, Before Sunset, Shaun of the Dead, House of Flying Daggers, The Mother, The Motorcycle Diaries, Spider-Man 2, Alexa... With roughly 100 feature programs each year (plus short films), the San Francisco International Film Festival traditionally emphasizes great foreign films without U.S. distribution, with a good showing of domestic independents and a smattering of great retrospective choices. The festival annually awards an Akira Kurosawa Award for lifetime achievem... FESTIVAL OVERVIEW:
The Cinequest film festival takes place annually in my hometown of San Jose, CA. Ranked in recent memory by The Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide as one of the top ten film festivals in the world (and don't think they'll let you forget it), Cinequest rides on the tension of celebrating "mavericks" of independent cinema whil... Since 1982, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival has presented Asian-themed films from all over the globe. Presented by the Center for Asian American Media, the festival annually showcases cutting-edge narrative and documentary features, short films and videos, and a variety of other programs and special events. The festival... 
The Year's Best Films 1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World 3. The Magdalene Sisters 4. Hulk 5. Cidade de Deus (City of God) 6. Mystic River 7. American Splendor 8. Lost in Translation 9. The Station Agent 10. The Fog of War
Runners-up: House of Sand and Fog, Thirteen, Raising Victor Va... 
The Year's Best Films 1. Mulholland Drive 2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 3. In the Mood for Love (China) 4. Djomeh (Iran) 5. Memento 6. Hedwig and the Angry Inch 7. Ghost World 8. Startup.com 9. Tape 10. In the Bedroom
Runners-up: The Pledge, Series 7: The Contenders, Waking Life, Thomas in Love, Iris, Faithless, Cure, The Ma... 
The Year's Best Films 1. Bloody Sunday 2. Adaptation 3. Spirited Away 4. The Hours 5. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 6. The Pianist 7. Daughter From Danang 8. Rivers and Tides 9. Late Marriage 10. About a Boy
Runners-up: 25th Hour, Spider, Minority Report, About Schmidt, The Believer, Y tu Mamá También (And Your Mom Too), Tal... On this page, you'll find my picks for the "Top 10 Best Films" of each year at the movies. For my eligibility guideline, I use the American Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences criteria of films which had premiere U.S. theatrical runs (of at least one week) between January 1 and December 31 of each year, including, of course, foreign films w... The 46th San Francisco International Film Festival played at the AMC Kabuki and Castro Theatres in SF, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, and--for the first time--at Palo Alto's CineArts Theatre.
Of the festival's films, I screened John Malkovich's accomplished The Dancer Upstairs (Click for review.), the dazzling Winged Migration (Click fo... THIS YEAR'S PROGRAM:
The 2003 festival (lucky 13) runs from Thursday, Feb. 27-Sunday, Mar. 9.
The festival will screen over 60 feature films in 11 days. The complete
program guide is available online at the Cinequest web site. The
Maverick tributees this year are actors James Woods (Mar. 1), Lupe
Ontiveros (Mar. 5), William H. Macy (Mar. 7),... As in recent years, the "home" of the festival is the AMC Kabuki 8, though other venues include the glorious Castro Theatre and, stretching into other corners of the Bay Area, the
invaluable Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and Landmark's Park Theatre in
Menlo Park.
With the 45th fest looming, naysayers whispered about the festival's new... The 2002 festival (the twelfth one) ran from Feb. 21-Mar. 3. The festival screened over 60 feature films in 12 days. Of those, I saw 35 films in 11 days. Excepting Dirty Harry, the film presentations were fine, though the festival occasionally had trouble sticking to its schedule. The crop of films was a solid one, and the tribute events impressive... 