DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

Indie: Sunshine
A group of astronauts are on a suicide mission to save a dying Sun, lest the earth perish as well. While it may sound like a plot suitable for Michael Bay's Armageddon 2: Bigger and Hotter, in the hands of director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) and his 28 Days Later screenwriter, Alex Garland, it may just do for contemplative science-fiction what 28 Days did for zombie flicks. Boyle's film looks to be a visual stunner, and is garnering comparisons to such sci-fi touchstones 2001, Blade Runner and Tarkovsky's Solaris. The excellent Cillian Murphy, working with Boyle and Garland for the second time, leads the ensemble cast.

View the trailer.
Opens this Friday at E Street Cinema.

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Major Release: I Know Who Killed Me
OK, so we're not seriously recommending you go see the new Lindsay Lohan flick this weekend. But:
1) In the continued wake of box office juggernauts like Harry Potter, Transformers, and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (believe us, we're just as surprised as you), it's a thin week for new releases.
and 2) Lindsay Lohan has worked very hard to drum up publicity for this movie. She could have been doing the same boring stints on Letterman, Leno, and Larry, but who the hell even watches those shows anymore? No, she went the extra mile and got caught for DUI and cocaine possession, and did it just a block away from the police station. That's commitment to publicity. You don't want to let her down after all her hard work do you? The movie is some claptrap about a stripper who never actually takes her clothes off who is the creation of a girl who goes missing and who happens to be her döppelganger, but that’s really beside the point.

View the trailer.
Opening Friday at a number of theatres around town.

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Foreign: 12:08 East of Bucharest
Winner of the Camera d'Or (Best First Feature) at Cannes in 2006, Corneliu Porumboiu's first film looks at the debate in a small Romanian village as to whether or not a revolution actually occurred there when Ceausescu's regime fell. Full of bitter and subversive comedy, the movie reaches for uncomfortable satire by daring to pose the question of just what the revolution accomplished.

View the trailer.
Now playing at E Street Cinema.

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Repertory: A Hard Day’s Night
In conjunction with an exhibit of photographs by Harry Benson, the National Portrait Gallery is screening the first of Richard Lester's Fab Four Films on Friday night. A Hard Day's Night is rightly regarded as a sort of Citizen Kane of rock movies. Lester and the Beatles took a stale genre, the rock and roll musical, and remade it into something entirely new. Elvis may have continued to make movies after Hard Day's Night, but they couldn't help but seem even more like the immediately dated promotional pieces they were in comparison.

Playing at the McEvoy Auditorium at the National Portrait Gallery Friday night at 7p.m. Free admission, seating first come, first served.

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Special Events: The Ten
Fans of the wildly hilarious Wet Hot American Summer won't want to miss the local premiere of writer/director David Wain's latest. Wain teams up with another alum of The State, Ken Marino, to take on divine law with a series of shorts, one dedicated to each of the ten commandments. Sure to be deliciously irreverent, offensive and blasphemous. In short, everything we look for in a good comedy. The film doesn't start a limited nationwide release until the end of next week, but you can see it early at this special screening on Monday at the DC Jewish Community Center.

View the trailer.
Playing July 30 at the DCJCC, 1529 16th Street, NW. Tickets available online, $9 JCC Members/Students, $10 General Admission.

Wait Until Dark
Audrey Hepburn gives the most riveting performance of her career in this taut thriller about a blind woman who must defend her home against a group of ruthless thieves. Films like Panic Room owe this movie a huge debt, though it seems often overlooked these days, perhaps as audiences tend to go for Hepburn's more cheery performances. Come out early to Screen on the Green Monday, get a good seat, stretch your legs for the HBO dance, and then settle in for the heart-pounding feature.

Monday evening at sunset on the Mall between 4th & 7th Streets.