Queer indie films, a local-history doc and new thrillers are showing on screens large and small this week.
The SF Queer Film Festival, a showcase for LGBTQ+ filmmakers and independently produced queer cinema, presents its fifth edition Aug. 22-24 at San Francisco’s Roxie Theater.
The movies—11 programs of feature-length and short films—are chosen based on merit and for innovative, risk-taking and stereotype-busting qualities. In the opener, “Love Me Bait Me,” filmmaker Rachel van der Bie examines how LGBTQ+ representation on film and TV has changed and expanded over the past century in this documentary. “Babaylan,” a short film about Bay Area Filipino drag queens, completes Friday’s slate.
A Saturday highlight is “Cutaways,” indie director Mark Schwab’s comedy about a filmmaker who, having been unfairly canceled by social media, finds himself directing an online porn flick.
“Outliers and Outlaws,” Courtney Hermann’s documentary about the hundreds of lesbians who migrated to Eugene, Oregon, from the 1960s to 1990s and broke the rules, closes the festival on Sunday.
Short-film programs feature transgender shorts; fetish and experimental shorts; HIV/AIDS-themed shorts; and music videos. That’s far from all. For details, visit sfqueerfilmfest.com.
The Aquatic Park Bathhouse, the historic waterfront structure that houses the San Francisco Maritime Museum, receives some deserved spotlight in a new documentary on KQED. Directed by John Rogers, “A Balcony on the World” tells the story of the art-filled Streamline Moderne landmark at the north end of Van Ness Avenue.
Created in the 1930s and envisioned as a “democratic country club,” the Aquatic Park Bathhouse was a project of the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, which provided jobs for artists during the Great Depression and contributed immensely to public space and the cultural landscape.
The artwork commissioned for the building features maritime themes and the surrealist and abstract styles of the period.
Rogers also looks at challenges the building has faced, including unexpected privatization, and details the eventual transformation of the bathhouse building into the San Francisco Maritime Museum. Now operated by the National Park Service, the museum presents exhibits and programming on the West Coast’s maritime heritage.
“A Balcony on the World” airs on KQED 9 at 8 p.m. Aug. 22; 2 a.m. Aug. 23 and 6 p.m. Aug. 30.
Local historian Woody LaBounty gives a big-screen illustrated talk about Playland at the Beach—the popular amusement park that operated for nearly 60 years at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach—at the 4 Star Theater, San Francisco at 3 p.m. Aug. 24. Visit www.4-star-movies.com.

A reclusive negotiator goes on a manic wild ride to protect a whistleblower from corporate monsters in “Relay,” a paranoid thriller made sharp and tense by director David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water”) and actor Riz Ahmed. Ahmed plays Ash, a solitary New Yorker broken by circumstance and alcohol. An ace “fixer,” Ash arranges payoffs between malfeasant corporations and individuals who could sink them.
He communicates with clients through untraceable calls made through an old-fashioned voice-to-text service that is generally used by deaf people. (Mackenzie and screenwriter Justin Piasecki display a soft spot for analog technology.)
Ash’s client Sarah (Lily James) possesses documents that could destroy her biotech employers. As a result, Sarah is experiencing harassment so terrifying that she has decided to return the documents to the company in exchange for her safety.
To help Sarah, Ash engages in dangerous mad-dash and cat-and-mouse activities, fighting henchmen. The action —lots of chases and bullets—gets excessive toward the end. A plot twist defies credibility. The underdevelopment of the Sarah character is also frustrating. James doesn’t have enough to work with. Ahmed’s Ash, however, is a riveting portrait of contemporary isolation, personal struggle and the need to matter. Mackenzie keeps the suspense flowing and relevantly captures how corrupt officials thrive by intimidating their critics into submission.
“Relay” opens Aug. 22 at Bay Area theaters. Rated R.

Another satisfying thriller is “The Knife,” actor and former NFL star Nnamdi Asomugha’s directorial debut.
It centers on an African American suburban family whose members—Chris (played by Asomugha), Alex (Aja Naomi King) and two young daughters (Aiden and Amari Price)—make unfortunate choices when experiencing a home invasion and wind up in hot water with a dogged police detective (a scary-good Melissa Leo).
Asomugha, who cowrote the screenplay with Mark Duplass, directs this 80-minute movie tautly, suspensefully, and in an efficiently no-frills fashion. He subtly shows how law enforcement can unfoundedly equate Blackness with criminality. The actors impress throughout.
“The Knife” is at the AMC Metreon in San Francisco and Regal Jack London in Oakland. Rated R.

“Eden,” director Ron Howard’s new thriller, dramatizes the real-life 1930s horror show that occurred among a group of Europeans who succumbed to deadly power struggles on the Galapagos Island where they had arrived to create a utopia.
A visionary, Howard isn’t, but over the decades he has made some worthy films (“Apollo 13”; “Frost/Nixon”) and delivered watchable, relatable Hollywood entertainment.
That’s not the case with “Eden.”
While admirably tackling new territory, Howard, working from a script by Noah Pink, presents the colony’s human-nature nightmare so one-dimensionally and unappealingly that we can’t care about the survival of anyone. The cast—Jude Law as a Nietzsche-inspired German doctor; Vanessa Kirby as his loyal partner; Sydney Sweeney and Daniel Bruhl as an idealistic couple; Ana de Armas, over-the-top but not boring as a scheming baroness—deserves better.
“Eden” opens Aug. 22 at Bay Area theaters. Rated R.
The post Movies: SF Queer film fest, ‘A Balcony on the World,’ ‘Relay,’ ‘The Knife,’ ‘Eden,’ Playland at the Beach appeared first on Local News Matters.