San Francisco’s Castro District is known for its historical importance in the LGBTQ community, most famously for the election of Harvey Milk as the first openly gay elected official in California’s history. The Castro is used quite differently in the new independent comedy “Bathrooms Stalls & Parking Lots.”

Coming from Brazil, Leo (the film’s writer/director Thales Correa) arrives in San Francisco’s

A talking head archival documentary to be sure, but with a subject such as Mike Wallace (who spent his career as a so-called talking head) there was no other way to film it.

Wallace is, perhaps, the one man who defined television journalism. His demeanor was stern and his questions were sometimes strikingly blunt and he didn’t suffer fools gladly nor take BS answers to direct questions. Even Wallace

Brazilian-American filmmaker Alexandre Moratto’s “Socrates” is his first feature length film. It was produced by the Querô Institute of Brazil, co-written, produced, and acted by people ranging in age from sixteen to twenty. These young film makers come from low-income communities and they received support from UNICEF.

This story revolves around a fifteen year-old named Socrates

Low-key independent character pieces are director Lynn Shelton’s specialty. With films such as “Humpday," “Your Sister’s Sister," “Touchy Feely," “Laggies," and the undervalued “Outside In," Shelton creates projects that seem gimmicky on a surface level and infuses them with deeply personal meditations on the human condition. Her uniquely easygoing writing style has proven Shelton to be one of the most interesting writer-directors in film today. 

I must divulge two important facts. The first one is that the Western is my favorite film genre, and the second, my favorite Western (and third favorite film ever made) is Sam Peckinpah’s “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson (1973). I am of the opinion that Peckinpah’s work on that film is profound and special, and impossible to match. To this, I admit that any film based on the story and legend of Billy

Documentary filmmaker Alex Holmes brings to the screen the true adventure of the first all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World race. To achieve their goal to enter and be respected in the race, Tracy Edwards and her all-woman crew stood up to the sexism in the 1989 sailing world which was equally as harsh as their 33,000-mile ocean journey. The main focus of “Maiden” is on Edwards, and rightfully so.

In 1969 when a surge of protests against discrimination, the Vietnam War (at its most intensive then) and outdated political and social mindsets was taking place, in came a low-budget, counterculture, film that would speak for a generation and give filmmakers new artistic freedom. The film’s success would cause a seismic shift in the Hollywood system and see studios wrest power back from the producers and hand it