Tuya’s Marriage

Tuya's Marriage (Music Box Films)

Last February mainland Chinese director Wang Quanan won the Berlin Film Festival's top honor, the Golden Bear, for his latest film Tuya's Marriage (opened July 11 at Landmark's Ken Cinema). Set in Inner Mongolia, the film focuses on hardworking woman who tries to provide for her two children and crippled husband. After winning the award, Wang said, "A very beautiful dream has become reality for me here. Perhaps this is the last glance at the herds people of the region. Ultimately they are going to disappear into the cities. I think that it is important, particularly in this time when the economy is booming, to ponder and reflect on what we're losing." And this tough, lovely film will be disappearing fast as well, its run ends July.

Flight of the Red Balloon

The Flight of the Red Balloon (IFC Films)

If memory serves me right, Flight of the Red Balloon (opening May 9 at Landmark's is only the second film by acclaimed Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsaio-Hsien to receive a theatrical release here in San Diego, and the first to open in a Landmark Theater. The now defunct Madstone Theaters played Hou's Millennium Mambo, and the late Ruth Bailey screened his works when she ran the San Diego International Film Festival at UCSD. The San Diego Asian Film Festival has also played his Flowers of Shanghai and Three Times. While the opening of Flight of the Red Balloon is cause for celebration, it's just a shame that the Hou film to receive the best release here in San Diego is not one of his masterworks. But any Hou film is worth seeing if you truly love cinema.

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation

The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (City Lights)

Politics and sports mix to surprising effect in Brazil's official entry for last year's Foreign Language Film Oscar, The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (opening April 11 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). It's 1970. Brazil is torn between giddy excitement over the country's third appearance in the World Cup, and despair over an increasingly repressive dictatorship. These elements provide the backdrop for a very intimate story of one young boy's coming of age.

Library Screenings

To Kill a Mockingbird screens free at the Encinitas Library on March 22. (Universal)

All five of the films competing for Best Adapted Screenplay at last month's Oscars were based on books, including There Will Be Blood, which used Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil! as source material. Three of the top ten grossing films from last year were also based on novels: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Bourne Ultimatum, and I am Legend. So it pays to read a good book in Hollywood. But films can also provide good companion pieces to literature, that's why two local libraries have designed reading programs with a film component.

The Encinitas Library, which just reopened last month after being closed for four years, will screen To Kill a Mockingbird on March 22 in conjunction with its month-long National Endowment for the Arts Sponsored Big Read of Harper Lee's award-winning novel. Then on March 30, the San Diego Central Library (SDCL) will hold the first of three film events set up in conjunction with the year-long One Book One San Diego project. Their book is Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. SDCL's first companion film is Majid Majidi's Children of Heaven.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Whatever you do, don't read that book! The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount)

"Do not dare to read this book. For if you take one fateful look, you barter at your life’s expense and face a deadly consequence."

Well there's no better way to insure that a child will read a book than to forbid him/her to do so. This inscription on the cover of Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You is all that's needed to prompt young Jared Grace (Freddie Highmore) to open the forbidden text and read. But the book proves to be something of a Pandora’s Box, and Jared ends up opening the doors to a parallel universe of fairies, goblins, sprites and a nasty ogre. The Spiderwick Chronicles (opened on February 14 throughout San Diego and in IMAX at the Edward’s Mira Mesa Cinemas) brings the highly successful series of children’s books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black to the big screen.

Definitely, Maybe

Abigail Breslin and Ryan Reynolds in Definitely, Maybe (Universal)

The idea behind a movie trailer is to make an upcoming release look attractive enough to convince you to shell out ten bucks to go see it. The recent trailer for the romantic comedy Fool’s Gold made it look so terrifyingly bad that I actually felt relief when I ended up missing the press screening for it. Definitely, Maybe (opening February 14 throughout San Diego), another romantic comedy jockeying for the Valentine's Day date crowd, also served up a rather unappealing trailer that seemed to promise only dopey formula romance. But for a change, this film actually proves smarter than advertised.

San Diego Jewish Film Festival

The coming of age tale Sixty-Six is the opening night film of the SDJFF (Universal)

The San Diego Jewish Film Festival kicks off its 18th season on February 7 with a British charmer called Sixty Six. The eleven-day festival will play at five local venues and showcase more than three dozen films and assorted panel discussions. Listen to my radio preview of the festival or read on for more in-depth details.

The title of the opening night film, Sixty-Six, refers to the year 1966 when Bernie Reubens (Greg Sulkin) is in the midst of elaborate plans for his bar mitzvah. Proclaiming itself a "tru-ish story," the film offers a delightful portrait of a young boy trying to make an impression on his own family. But it's difficult to get attention when you’re competing with the World Cup, especially when England happens to be hosting the World Cup. To make matters worse, Bernie has to contend with the final match between Blighty and West Germany landing on the exact same day as his much-anticipated rite of passage.

The Orphanage

If you have ever seen or met Guillermo Del Toro at the San Diego Comic-Con, then you know he's a filmmaker who is sincere about two things: championing the horror genre and helping young filmmakers. I was meeting up with Del Toro at the Comic-Con for an interview a few years back and was impressed by the fact that he took time to speak with filmmakers who came up to him after his panel. He also willingly accepted DVDs of their work. In fact, at one point he turned to his assistant and asked, in reference to the DVDs that had just been handed to him, "where are my treasures?" Now I've seen filmmakers toss the DVDs handed to them at the Comic-Con, but not Del Toro. And he apparently even watches them as well, although he says it may take some time before he gets to each. Now Del Toro shows his support for both horror and neophyte filmmakers by producing the feature debut of Spainish director J.A. Bayona and writer Sergio G. Snchez, El Orphanato/The Orphanage (opening January 4 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas).

If you are familiar with Del Toro's work then you can immediately see why he would be eager to support Bayona, Snchez and The Orphanage. Snchez' story has much in common with Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone. Both deal with orphan children and the supernatural in unexpected ways. Both Bayona and Snchez then approach this ghost story with the same kind of humanism as Del Toro. But The Orphanage does not come off as a Del Toro imitation. Bayona and Snchez imprint their own unique stamp on the film and reveal themselves as promising filmmakers.

The Water Horse

Alex Etel in The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (Columbia)

Dick King-Smith was a farmer for twenty years and turned to writing fairly late in life. He writes what he refers to as "farmyard fantasy," hence such children's books as Babe: The Gallant Pig, The Golden Goose, Harriet's Hare, Martin's Mouse and A Mouse Called Wolf. Babe was successfully made into a movie in the 90s, and now a film adaptation of King-Smith's The Water Horse (opening Christmas Day throughout San Diego) hits the screen. But The Water Horse is more than a mere farmyard animal and the story represents a shift to a much larger scale fantasy for King-Smith.

Fido

You just can't keep a good zombie down. Scottish comedian Billy Connolly joins the ranks of the undead in the Canadian zom-com Fido (opening July 6 for a limited one-week run at Landmark's Ken Cinema). Essentially, it's the story of a boy and his doguhhh, I mean pet zombie.