Alison Bechdel’s latest book is “Spent,” a comic novel examining money, privilege and late-stage capitalism. Photo: Courtesy Alison Bechdel In one of many funny scenes in Alison Bechdel’s new comic ...

Oakland saxophonist Howard Wiley is ready to celebrate California’s soul-powered musical legacy with the “Love, Kale, Pride & Revolution – California Love Series Part II” concert at the SFJazz Center ...

Sooner or later, we’re going to have to have a conversation about Richard Linklater being one of America’s best filmmakers. His movies have a consistent emotional intelligence, worn lightly. His worst ...

Dear Robert Freud Bastin: I never really met Gene Hackman, but I was at a press conference where he was getting interviewed, and I was close to him and saw how he spoke to people and carried himself.

Buttons aren’t just utilitarian fasteners. Plunge your hand into a bucket of them, and it’s like a mini swim in a ball pit. They click and clack with ASMR satisfaction. And in artist Beau McCall’s ...

Late in the second half of Harvey Fierstein’s groundbreaking comic drama “Torch Song,” drag queen Arnold Beckoff concedes that it’s easier to love the dead because they “make less mistakes.” It’s a ...

Ambrose Akinmusire and Alonzo King partner for “The Beauty of Dissolving Portraits,” which captures the struggle for connection in a fractured world. Theo Duff-Grant performs in “The Beauty of ...

The world premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Before We Fall” positively overwhelms in a concert featuring cellist Johannes Moser and conductor Dalia Stasevska. Conductor Dalia Stasevska leads the San ...

Gross-out moments in this Ilana Glazer-Michelle Buteau movie about the realities of pregnancy tend to obscure the movie’s more genuine, moving content. Michelle Buteau, left, and Ilana Glazer are ...

The new movie from the Philippou twins is a psychologically twisted example of the trapped-in-a-house horror subgenre. Sally Hawkins, right, and Jonah Wren Phillips star in the Australian horror film ...

The classic American Zoetrope logo appears, invoking a San Francisco-born maverick spirit. Sirens blare over an image of the Statue of Liberty. A voiceover ominously asks, “When does an empire die?

Jia Zhang-ke’s “Caught by the Tides” is less than two hours long and yet contains nearly a quarter-century of time’s relentless march forward. Few films course with history the way it does in the ...