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

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

Repertory: Lawrence of Arabia
David Lean's epic telling of the story of T.E. Lawrence's time in the Middle East, and leadership of the WWI Arab Revolt is regarded as one of the greatest achievements in cinema. The AFI has been showing it on Sundays for the past month, but this Friday it opens a two week run. They're showing a restored 70mm print on the theater's big screen, which means you'll be able to see one of the most visually rich films in history just as it was intended. With a cast that includes Peter O'Toole as Lawrence, plus Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif, this is not to be missed. Set aside four hours some day in the next couple of weeks and head up to Silver Spring.

View the trailer.
Playing at the AFI Silver Theatre for two weeks beginning this Friday.

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Indie: Chalk
The debut feature by Mike Akel got a lot of film festival attention last year, and it looks pretty hilarious. A Christopher Guest-style mockumentary about first year teachers in an educational system that seems designed to chew them up and spit them out, word is that the film is so realistic and uncomfortably funny that it's easy to forget that it's all staged.

View the trailer.
Playing for one week only at E Street Cinema beginning on Friday.

Special note: This is England and The King of Kong, both of which we've highlighted recently, were originally slated for one-week runs at E Street, but both have been extended at least through next week. Catch them while they're still around!

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Special Event: The Bengies Drive-In's Annual Dusk Till Dawn Labor Day Weekend
It seems most people in D.C. are unaware that we have a great drive-in theater in the area, even though it belongs to our neighbors to the north in Baltimore. The Bengies (they refer to themselves with the definite article) celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, and boasts the largest movie screen in the country. There are classic cartoons between the features, a charismatic (if slightly eccentric) emcee running the show, and a well stocked snack bar that looks as if it probably hasn't changed much since the place opened. The Bengies is an experience not to be missed. And every labor day, you get even more bang for your buck than the usual triple feature, as the drive-in shows movies from sundown to sunup on Saturday and Sunday nights. You can show up for selected programs, or if you have the stamina, pull an all-nighter and sleep in the next day.

This year's Labor Day lineup:
Ratatouille, 7:45 p.m.
Hairspray, 10:00 p.m.
Rush Hour 3, 11:45 p.m.
Stardust, 1:45 a.m.
Nancy Drew, 4:00 a.m.

The programming for this year leaves a bit to be desired. And how on earth did they decide to put Nancy Drew in the final slot, which is really best filled by a horror movie? But with five films, there are bound to be a couple of clunkers. You can always recline your seats and take a nap during a really bad feature, or it can be argued that watching bad movies is part of the drive-in experience. And from the seclusion of your front seat, you can mock Rush Hour 3 all you want without disturbing anyone else watching the film.

One other note: If you're the sort of person who finds yourself annoyed when theaters try to enforce the sorts of rules that are designed to make everyone's moviegoing experience more pleasant, you're probably not going to like the Bengies. They're sticklers for the rules, and if you're not familiar with the ins and outs of drive-in etiquette (and even if you are), it's highly recommended that you read their rules completely before heading there.

The Bengies is located at 3417 Eastern Boulevard in Middle River, just east of the Baltimore. Here's how to get there.

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Foreign: Lady Chatterley
Pascale Ferran's film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover is not based on the most widely known version of the story, as the other two filmed versions were. This French language production, winner of the César award for Best Picture in France this year, takes as its source Lawrence's second draft of the novel, titled John Thomas and Lady Jane. Ferran's take on Lawrence's examination of the balance between the life of the body and the life of the mind, controversial in its time for its frank sexuality, is receiving mostly excellent reviews.

View the trailer.
Opens Friday at the Avalon Theatre.

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Major Release: Death Sentence
I wish I could recommend Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween in this space this week. His last film, The Devil's Rejects was so surprisingly good, a beautifully executed blend of grindhouse aesthetics and the sort of gritty violence not seen since Sam Peckinpah left us, that I had high hopes for his next project. But remaking a classic isn't really what I had in mind. Aside from a few fanboy mash notes that have popped up on the web, most advance word is that Halloween is a mess. The fact that the Weinsteins are releasing it in August doesn't inspire confidence, either. So maybe the real thrills are to be found in Death Sentence, loosely based on the 1975 novel by Brian Garfield, who also wrote the novel the Charles Bronson film Death Wish was based on. Bacon may not seem the tough hombre Bronson was, but that's kind of the point of the story, a mild-mannered suit and tie type turning into a vigilante. Bacon has proved he can do the tortured, morally ambiguous character pretty well, so we'll see if director James Wan can scale back the ultraviolence that caused his Saw series to jump the shark, and deal in the psychological tension that he's capable of.

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