SFist Watches: Movies This Weekend
We're not going to insult your intelligence by implying that you might not have heard that Revenge of the Sith opened this weekend, or that you aren't already going to see something at the final weekend of The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. So, with those "givens" out of the way, what else is out there?
In one of those blue moon type events, we agree with Mick LaSalle that Layer Cake is an exceptionally good film. We saw it an its premiere at the San Francisco International Film Festival and were struck by its slick brilliance.
As Roger Avary is to collaborator Quentin Tarantino, Layer Cake director Matthew Vaughan is to Guy Ritchie. But Layer Cake is no Killing Zoe (as worthy as we feel Zoe is), but is instead the work of a mature and well-developed -- some might say more developed than Ritchie -- director.
The twisty, fast paced, and literate story of an unnamed drug dealer who fancies himself (look, the movie made us British) above his gangster colleagues, this movie evokes not just Snatch but Goodfellas with its tightly narrated plot and compelling protagonist (man who may be Bond Daniel Craig). Layer Cake is our Big Budget (albeit classy and foreign) Pick of the Week, and you can catch it at The Embarcadero.
Other than that, we don't see a lot of compelling alternatives out there, but with the juggernaut that is Sith, we're hardly surprised by this.
What are you going to see this weekend, or are you hiding at home until the folks in the Jawa outfits have cleared the Metreon? Let us know in the comments.