‘I Wake Up Dreaming’ noir festival at the Castro

The mesmerizing “Ride the Pink Horse” opens the latest “I Wake Up Dreaming” film noir festival (7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, paired with “So Dark the Night” at 6:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.), and what a film it is. Director-star Robert Montgomery plays a gangster bent on revenge until a Mexican woman becomes, weirdly, his guardian angel. It’s strangely affecting.

Elliot Lavine began programming film noir festivals 25 years ago at the Roxie; he moves to the Castro for the first time and says none of the 12 films — packaged in three double features and two triple features — have ever screened there. Highlights: San Francisco stars in “Chinatown at Midnight” (Aug. 13); Stanley Kubrick’s “Killer’s Kiss” (Aug.