Most great storytelling involves a journey of some kind, and as the San Francisco International Film Festival heads down the road into its final week, the schedule reads like a sumptuous gazetteer of places only films can take you. After realizing he was a man living in a woman's body, then living as man for more than 15 years, Eads was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Director Kate Davis tenderly evokes her subjects as they try to nurse Eads along so he can make it to one last Southern Comfort convention, an annual gathering of transsexual rednecks. Like Eads, many of his transgender friends were forced to undertake an odyssey through the Georgia medical establishment, trying to find a doctor who would even agree to see them.
Nature delights in diversity.
A displaced Yakuza who has been sent into exile in Los Angeles, Kitano's soulful mobster takes on first the Mexican gangs, then the Italians, smoking and sneering as the body count rises. Corrigan is headed from New York to Hollywood to audition for a role in a movie about Jack Kerouac, and he goes there in the back of Schiavelli's Checker cab. The meter, and their mouths, are both running. You will either enjoy the indie spirit of this film, or it will seem like the longest cab ride of your life.