For fans of noir nightmares from Double Indemnity to A Simple Plan---especially those who like a dash of absurdity as in Blood Simple---Prime Video's Blow the Man Down is a very interesting little film.

We start with a volatile situation: two sisters at their mother's funeral inherit nothing but problems. One doubles down on taking charge; the other goes wild. There's a murder, and covering it up turns into a farce. We are deep into noir territory.

But, there's a chorus of fisherman with surprisingly operatic voices singing sea chanteys. The movie is set in a New England fishing town, so, I guess, they're musical scenery.

And there's a trio of older woman who keep turning up . . . at the funeral . . . out for a walk in the village . . . they're always around. And there's Margo Martindale playing a matriarch as few other can. 

There are plot twists. There are surprises. Ominous things turn out to be unimportant. Little things loom large. When it was done, I had to mentally reverse-engineer some developments to see if they made sense. But I was always fascinated.

The policy of social distancing means there aren't many people around when we go out for a walk, and we avoid those few we see. The streets and plazas and neighborhoods feel empty, and traffic signals seem useless.

But we're having lovely weather, and the place still looks nice. The skies lately remind me of that fine old song by Joni Mitchell, ". . . ice cream castles in the air, and feathered canyons everywhere . . ."   

The new Transbay Transit Center has a roof garden. This is good because it covers four city blocks. It's nice to have four blocks of places to catch city buses and commuter buses that go outside the city. It's even better to get a big public park in the bargain.

The bit of greenery shown here is a collection of "living fossils," plants that were around long before people were. I find this reassuring, and I'm not sure why. Plants elsewhere in the park exemplify cloud forests, desert landscapes, Australia, and other cool stuff.

It's not all plants. There's a climber for kids, a plaza with cafe tables ringed by food and drink vendors, and a flat lawn with a stage incorrectly described as "amphitheater." All very cool.

I took this pic standing on a pedestrian bridge that connects the park to the fourth floor of an office building. We hit the coffee bar and sat out on chairs such as he one you see. We had our choice of chairs, which was unusual in the busiest part of town. This happened because everyone has been told to stay home through March 22, 2020.

We went out anyway. In our hearts we are from New Hampshire: "Live free, or die!"

We went to the Balboa Theater, one of San Francisco's remaining neighborhood movie houses, to see Bullitt, the 1968 action film starring Steve McQueen and green, Mustang fastback.

You don't see the title on the marquee, because it's on the other side. I could have photographed the other side, but then you wouldn't have seen that glorious sunset.

The car chase in Bullitt is rightly famous and more than fifty years later it still works. I had not remembered that the movie is a series of chases. Earlier in the film, McQueen chases the killer through the stairwells and basement corridors of a hospital. Later, he chases a different bad buy across the runways of SFO while planes are taking off. 

This showing was part of the Total SF series hosted by two writers for the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Hartlaub and Heather Knight. There pre-show trivia contests are fun and it's fun to see films shot in San Francisco with a home-town audience turning out to see how the place looks on screen. We previously saw The Rock and Sister Act in this series.