Best of the Fest

Who could imagine a scenario more compelling than The Judge and the General? A lower-level judicial bureaucrat, a passive supporter of the 1973 coup that had overthrown an elected Marxist government, is assigned an investigation into the reputed crimes of the new regime. He uncovers documents in his own hand denying writs of habeas corpus sought by families of missing victims of the coup ... and then he begins uncovering the bodies of those victims. One disinterred corpse had been shot in the head. Another had been tied to a rail and thrown into the ocean. Ultimately he weighs indicting the coup leader himself, Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. Elizabeth Farnsworth and Patricio Lanfranco's film tells this compelling story, its protagonist Judge Juan Guzmán, whose rulings determine the rest of the former president's life. Farnsworth, an East Bay filmmaker and contributor to PBS' NewsHour, and Lanfranco, a Chilean, have done a fine job using their film to reveal not just the horror of the individual crimes, but also the support those crimes received from our own government. Gregg Rickman
At the Sundance Kabuki Sun., May 4, 3 p.m. and Mon., May 5, 6 p.m.; at the Pacific Film Archive Tue., May 6, 6:30 p.m.

Medicine for Melancholy
(Barry Jenkins, USA)

Part mood piece, part awkward love story, and part sociological exposé, San Francisco writer-director Barry Jenkins' debut feature is some kind of wonderful. This day in the life of a young African-American couple (Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Heggins) begins when they wake up the morning after they meet at a house party. Shot in timeless black-and-white, ranging across the city from the Marina to the Tenderloin to SOMA, the movie is simultaneously a laid-back sketch of a stutter-step courtship and a scathing comment on what it is to be black, middle-class, and invisible in San Francisco. The tone, though, is wistful rather than angry. This is the rare film that is as thoughtful as it is sensual, as attuned to personal epiphanies as it is to social injustice. Vaguely reminiscent of Charles Burnett's Los Angeles–set classic, Killer of Sheep, Medicine for Melancholy joins the short list of essential San Francisco indie films that includes Steal America and Revolution Summer. It deserves the wide audience, however, that eluded those movies. Michael Fox
At the Sundance Kabuki Wed., April 30, 9:15 p.m. and Wed., May 7, 3:30 p.m.; at the Pacific Film Archive Tue., May 4, 8:15 p.m.

Still Life
(Jia Zhang-ke, China)

Jia Zhang-ke, the preeminent cine-chronicler of contemporary China, returns with his fifth feature, an eccentric guided tour of postapocalyptic Fengjie — the ancient river city largely flooded and partially rebuilt several years ago as part of the monumental Three Gorges Hydro project. But the movie is also an open-ended progress report. There are two protagonists and a pair of parallel narratives. In one, a stolid miner (Han Sanming) comes downriver in search of the bought wife who left him 16 years before and the daughter he has never seen. In the other, a young nurse (Zhao Tao) arrives in Fengjie to look for a husband who has been too busy making his fortune to stay in touch. Much of Still Life is simply devoted to these characters as they wend their respective ways through eerily half-demolished (or half-built) neighborhoods. Deconstruction would seem to be Fengjie's main industry: Old buildings are blown up, workers are sometimes obliged to remove unwilling tenants by force, and job-related injuries are rife. Without unduly belaboring the point, Jia suggests a pervasive, free-floating corruption. Everything is for sale. Money trumps all. But what's striking about Still Life is its micro-analytical curiosity: Judgment seems suspended — like the bridge that magically lights up over the Yangtze or the unlikely tightrope walker glimpsed in the movie's last shot. J. Hoberman
At the Sundance Kabuki Fri., May 2, 6:30 p.m. and Sun., May 4, 9 p.m.; at the Pacific Film Archive Tue., May 6, 8:45 p.m.

Up the Yangtze
(Yung Chang, Canada)