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

Repertory: Stranger Than Paradise
"You go to some place new and everything just looks the same," says Eddie, one of the two hipster-slacker protagonists of Jim Jarmusch's wickedly funny second feature. Press materials made a big deal of the origin of the film, pointedly calling it "A New American Film by a New American Director." There's no doubt Eddie (and Jarmusch) were saying something about a culture that seemed homogenized and stale. But the film also proved to be a stylistic landmark in American independent cinema. Jarmusch's bleak landscapes and minimalist approach remain just as striking today, and his three-part tale of the restless wanderings of Eddie, Willie, and Willie's Howlin' WolfScreamin' Jay Hawkins-obsessed Hungarian cousin Eva is as relevant and darkly hilarious as it was when it debuted nearly 25 years ago.

View the trailer.
Playing at the AFI Silver Theatre this Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, and next Thursday.

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Independent: The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Seth Gordon's film about the quest of two men to be recognized as the best Donkey Kong player in the world is being hailed as a quirky masterpiece, one of those documentaries that takes on a subject so bizarre, it's difficult to believe it's not a joke. I'm thinking American Movie, but even geekier. Gordon mines his subject's characters far deeper than one would expect in such an ostensibly goofy setup, and the result is apparently both hilarious and fascinating.

View the trailer.
Begins a one-week-only engagement at E Street Cinema starting on Friday, with appearances by producer Ed Cunningham at Saturday's 8 & 10 p.m. screenings.

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Special Event: Films of Albert Lamorisse: The Red Balloon, White Mane, and Stowaway in the Sky.
If you grew up on public television in the late '70s, it's likely that at one time or another you may have seen Albert Lamorisse's beloved short film about the adventures of a young Parisian boy (played by Lamorisse's son, Pascal) and the large red balloon that befriends him. Lamorisse, a former photographer (and, as an interesting side note, the inventor of Risk, the board game) made a number of whimsical films centering on the lives of children, and the Library of Congress is screening three of them. The aforementioned Red Balloon; White Mane, a short about a boy searching for a wild horse; and Lamorisse's first feature, Stowaway in the Sky, about a young boy (his son Pascal again) and a balloon trip across the French countryside.

Playing at The Library of Congress' Mary Pickford Theatre on Monday evening at 6:30 p.m. Reservations required, call (202) 707-5677.

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Foreign: Molière
Molière's works for the stage have been adapted dozens of times over the years, but far fewer films have looked at the man himself. Laurent Tirard's new feature about the playwright is less a biography than a musing on what might have gone on during an undocumented period in Molière's youth. The decidedly mixed reviews indicate that this might be something on the order of an airy, substance-free French version of Shakespeare in Love. Just the thing for anyone in the mood for nutrient-free, but nonetheless sweet, cinematic junk food.

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

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Major Release: War
Jason Statham hasn't exactly been hurting for roles in recent years, but he still hasn't been given a script that's really allowed him to shine the way he did in Guy Ritchie's Snatch and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, or the original Transporter. Maybe he's just a shade too scary (or too British) to fit the action hero mold for American audiences, but his talents just seem wasted in most of the films he's been in lately. Which doesn't stop pretty much every woman (and quite a few men) I know having crushes on him, but he's too good to be reduced to simple eye candy. I don't really expect that War will improve the track record, but with Jet Li as an adversary and with Hong Kong's respected Corey Yuen choreographing the action, it should at least be great to look at.

View the trailer.
Opens on Friday at a number of area theatres.