Movies

A few highlights from “French Noir: From the Shadows into the Light,” a rewarding ongoing retrospective series that runs through Aug. 28 at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): Director Jacques Becker’s hard-as-nails 1960 prison picture,...

A crowd gathered under the multicolored bulbs of Oakland’s historic Grand Lake Theatre on July 15 for the sold-out red carpet premiere of Wood Street, a feature-length documentary portraying the eviction of what was once the largest...

In the first five minutes of the new Hong Kong/China action pic The Furious, we’re reminded of one of the time-tested truths of the exploitation subgenre: In real life, a character cannot get repeatedly slammed in the...

In the late 1990s, the films The Truman Show (1998) and EDtv (1999) were noted for their uncannily similar premises, in which reality TV shows go to increasingly invasive and unethical extremes in the pursuit of higher...

Nisha Balaram’s doc series, Meals That Made Us, premieres at the Center for Asian American Media’s 2026 CAAMFest (May 7–10). In three short episodes, Balaram travels around the Bay Area asking the question, “What is a meal?”...

Amy Goodman travels to places many of us are afraid to venture. She walked the chemical-dust-clouded streets of Lower Manhattan during the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, searching for survivors and examining the damage. She also visited...

To a dedicated admirer of European movies, going to “Fassbinder and the New German Cinema,” a 20-title retrospective series now under way at the Berkeley Art Museum Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), is like tucking into a deluxe...