Midsummer Night's Dreams: 5 to Watch

The heat is on in the Bay Area this month — everywhere but San Francisco, where the natural air conditioning commands that everyone embrace the layered look. You needed no reminder but, as a public service, I’ve nonetheless included dressing tips with my roundup of this month’s most intriguing film events. One always wants to look good and fit in, even in the dark.

Vinit Parmar’s Quest for Energy at the SF Frozen Film Fest

To tell the truth, I’ve never managed to match the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival‘s moniker with its mission. I get that the foggy chill that defines summer in this city inspired the fest’s handle; how it relates to providing a venue for independent filmmakers with minimal budgets and encouragement for young directors with minimal experience is beyond me. Shorts dominate the lineup of below-the-radar films chosen for the July 12-13, 2013 weekend shindig at the Roxie, which should serve as a siren call for aficionados of new talent and personal visions. Recommended attire: fleece vest. For more information visit frozenfilmfestival.com.

Ray Harryhausen, the beloved wizard of witty special effects, had the good fortune to live long enough to see his work transcend the curse of camp. His wonderful stop-motion sequences transfixed kids and adults in the 1950s and ’60s, but came to be viewed as low-tech and even primitive after pyrotechnical computer-generated effects arrived in the ’80s. Moviegoers now recognize that soulless professionalism and empty bombast is no match for the heart and human touch that distinguishes Harryhausen’s work. The Castro commemorates his passing earlier this year with a double bill of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts Sunday, July 14, 2013. Take the little ones, by all means, and your handmade swords and shields. For more information, visit castrotheatre.com.

Louise Brooks in Prix de Beauté at the SF Silent Film Festival

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s great contribution was and is to blast away the dust, nostalgia and condescension which vintage movies were buried under for decades. Pairing archive-quality prints with first-rate musical accompaniment, the festival turns every screening into an event. The dangerously alluring Louise Brooks raises the curtain Thursday, July 18 with her last star vehicle, Prix de Beauté, and the bespectacled comedian Harold Lloyd rings it down Sunday, July 21 with the immortal Safety Last. It doesn’t matter which show you attend; this is the only festival in town in which every film is a winner. Period attire is encouraged, and admired. For more information, visit silentfilm.org.

The lone nonfiction recommendation among my picks this month is a portrait of an altogether remarkable man who, in retrospect, seems like a character from a novel. George Plimpton was a blueblood, a preppie, an intellectual, a raconteur and, above all, a participant whose approach to journalism (and life) was to leave the sidelines and throw himself into the play. Among his daring pursuits, he took snaps in a Detroit Lions preseason game and played the triangle during a New York Philharmonic concert. Tom Bean and Luke Poling’s perfectly titled documentary, Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself, plays the Roxie July 26-31. This is a rare opportunity to wear an Oxford shirt to the Mission. For more information, visit roxie.com.

Vinit Parmar’s Quest for Energy at the SF Frozen Film Fest

The annual J-POP Summit Festival, a high-energy, pastel-hued shindig of Japanese fashion, music and pop culture, expands this year with the introduction of the Japan Film Festival of San Francisco. The 15-film lineup, running July 27-August 4 at New People Cinema, encompasses the prolific Takashi Miike’s Lesson of the Evil (2012), a violent and blackly comic tale set in a high school, and Mika Ninagawa’s Helter Skelter , a study of a model with a secret (featuring model-actress-singer Erika Sawajiri in a comeback performance). Don your hippest summer garb, but don’t sweat it. There’s bound to be someone in an eye-popping outfit that’ll put you in the shade. For more information, visit jffsf.org.