Popcorn & Candy: Love & War
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Foreign: Ballad of a Soldier
The AFI's great Janus Films retrospective continues, and there is probably no title on the schedule this writer is more eager to see on the big screen. Grigori Chukhrai's 1959 classic takes a simple concept — the tale of a Russian soldier making his way home to see his mother during a brief furlough during his service in WWII — and turns it into a beautiful and tender meditation on emotional bonds, particularly in times of war. The movie is straightforward, yet deeply layered, and Chukhrai strikes a perfect balance between the needs of the story to continue its forward march, and his own objective to convey deeper meaning. Beautifully shot and artfully rendered, Ballad of a Soldier may be about as close to perfect as a film can get. Another great Soviet film from the same era is Mikheil Kalatozishvili's The Cranes Are Flying, also showing this week.
Ballad of a Soldier plays at the AFI Silver Theatre on Saturday and Monday.
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Special Event: Casablanca
Screen on the Green comes to a close in grand style with one of the greats. Judging from the days we’ve made it down on the Mall to see films the past few weeks, attendance has been great, and with a title like this, we expect the space between 4th & 7th Streets to be packed. If you haven’t seen Casablanca, you owe it to yourself to go. And if you have, I don’t need to sell you on the movie. Show up early, enjoy the summer weather (which, by next week, may be back into a range one might consider enjoyable), and be sure to stand for the HBO Dance. It’ll be your last chance to do it for nearly a year.
View the trailer.
Playing on the Mall Monday night at sunset.
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Indie: Interview
Steve Buscemi continues to expand his résumé as a director of offbeat and thoughtful indie films with this remake of Theo van Gogh's 2004 Dutch film. Van Gogh was set to direct this English language remake of his own film, much as Takashi Shimizu did with the Japanese and American versions of The Grudge, but was violently murdered by a religious extremist who was offended by a documentary van Gogh had made for Dutch television. Buscemi took over the project, in which he'd already been cast. The subject, an unlikely romance between a jaded journalist and a misunderstood starlet, still seems timely, and we hope Buscemi was able to do justice to both the source material and van Gogh's memory.
View the trailer.
Opens at E Street Cinema on Friday.
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Repertory: Ferris Bueller's Day Off
There seems to be a lot of serious fare in the entries above. And I think Mr. Bueller himself would agree that life's too short not to laugh a little. Bueller came out in the midst of John Hughes' impressive run of mid-80's teen-themed hits, before he quickly jumped the shark by making the protagonists of his screenplays increasingly younger and younger, and holds up well, still generating laughs over 20 years after its release (and if you think that makes you feel old, just imagine how Matthew Broderick must feel).
View the trailer.
Playing at the AFI Silver Theatre Friday, Saturday, and next Thursday.
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Major Release: We’ll take a pass.
Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Stay away from the studio releases this week. Chris Tucker will undoubtedly utter some variation on his famously improvised line in yet another Rush Hour installment from Brett Ratner, the biggest action hack the movies have ever known. There’s what looks to be a terrible Neil Gaiman adaptation; hopefully Coraline will get a better treatment. Cuba Gooding continues to let his career slip away in Daddy Day Care. And there’s an awful looking werewolf movie just to round things out. Welcome to the no-man’s land between summer blockbuster season and autumn Oscar-bait.