SFist Watches: Movies This Weekend

There are so many reasons why Team America: World Police is our big budget pick of the week. Let us count the ways: 1)Dude, puppets. Who f**k. Yeah. 2)That pompous ass Sean Penn is lampooned in the film. We already thought his performance in Mystic River approached brilliant self-parody, but this takes the extra step into genius. Finally, there's 3) Our sworn Nemesis Mick LaSalle who gives it an empty chair. Given that our (and we know we're not alone) long-standing motto is to believe exactly the opposite of whatever LaSalle writes, TAWP must be the greatest movie of all time. Did we mention the f**cking puppets? Anyway, you can catch it at any of our local metroplexes.

Our friends at the Landmark Theaters have a lot of intruguing options, including Stage Beauty, the feel good cross-dressing Restoration-era drama of the year, at the Bridge, Red Lights, a creepy French thriller, at the Embarcadero, and Primer, a low-budget time-travel that's got to be better than The Time Machine. There's some stuff at Opera Plaza, but we hate that theater so you're on your own, there.

Also at the Bridge is Saturday's Midnight Mass presentation of Dead Alive, also known as "what Peter Jackson was doing before all that hobbit stuff" The lovely Miss Peaches Christ will be your hostess at this event, and her pre-show is not to be missed.

The Roxie brings us Bright Leaves, "a subjective, autobiographical meditation on the allure of cigarettes and their troubling legacy for the state of North Carolina." We just got back from Georgia, where many gas stations give out free cartons of cigarettes with every fill-up (we are not kidding), so this movie resonates with us particularly well.

Every week we look at this column with geocentric glee. We're so lucky to live in a city where socially conscious documentary, gender-twisted hosted zombie movies, and f**cking puppets are all just a Muni ride away.