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DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Indie: Lake of Fire
Michael Moore may have grabbed all the press where high profile documentaries are concerned, but it's Tony Kaye's Lake of Fire that is being quietly talked about as the most powerful documentary of the year. Which is remarkable considering its subject is one of the most talked about and analyzed issues on the American political stage. Finding a fresh perspective would seem difficult at best.
You may remember Kaye as the British director who famously trashed his career after the release of his debut feature, American History X, trying unsuccessfully to remove his name from the film and placing ads denouncing the final cut of the movie. He retreated back into an exile of music videos, commercials, and the occasional obscure ultra-indie feature. All the while, though, and even before the AHX debacle, he was working on Lake of Fire, a sprawling two-and-a-half hour documentary, self financed and made over the course of 17 years, that attempts to frame the abortion debate in purely non-judgmental terms, giving equal screen time and equal weight to both sides. It's a move bound to anger strict adherents to either position, but may have resulted in the definitive work examining the issue. Shot entirely in black and white and mostly on film (a documentary rarity anymore), the film looks to display Kaye's meticulous visual sense, and, from the sweeping strings in the trailer, his tendency to flirt with melodrama.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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Special Event: Robert Altman, Edward Hopper, and the Spaces of Unease, a lecture by film historian Robert Kolker, and a screening of Altman's Short Cuts
As we mentioned earlier this month, the National Gallery of Art is in the midst of an Edward Hopper exhibit. Hopper's work, his inventive use of moody light and shadow, his ability to convey emotions and suggest the stories of his subjects through a single image, dovetails nicely with both the cinema of his era and those filmmakers who have consciously taken his work as inspiration. This weekend the museum presents the first in a three-part series examining Hopper's relationship with the world of film, kicking off with a lecture by film historian Robert Kolker on one relationship in particular, Hopper and his influence on Robert Altman. Following the lecture, perhaps Altman's most Hopper-esque work (and, in this writer's opinion, his greatest), Short Cuts. The film weaves a web of interconnected vignettes out of the short stories of Raymond Carver, a writer who, in his melancholy snapshots of working and middle class America, probably owes a bit of a debt to Hopper's legacy as well. Altman's film charts a path through joy and tragedy (but shading more towards the latter), exploring every corner of Los Angeles with a huge ensemble cast that includes great turns by Jack Lemmon, Frances McDormand, Lily Tomlin, Tom Waits (in perhaps the greatest role of his quirky and unpredictable acting career) along with a host of others.
View the trailer.
Playing at the National Gallery of Art's East Building Auditorium on Saturday at 2 p.m. Admission is free.
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Repertory: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
What a great weekend for free movies. Short Cuts on Saturday, and then Sunday night at the American City Diner, a screening of the devastatingly funny, pitch-perfect early Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove. The film has aged remarkably well in its 43 years, probably because caricatures of incompetent world leaders, war mongering presidential advisers, and loony military officers with overactive senses of both duty and paranoia may, unfortunately, never grow old. Kubrick, screenwriter Terry Southern, and novelist Peter George's razor sharp script is a grand and irreverent fuck-you to the male bravado that dominates most international relations. Slim Pickins doesn't fall out of his plane with a huge phallic symbol between his legs that's going to trigger the annihilation of the planet for nothing, after all. Of course, you've probably seen this one dozens of times over the years, and it likely occupies a position of honor in your home theater library (right??), but like any great comedy, Dr. Strangelove is best watched with a crowd.
View the trailer.
Playing at the American City Diner this Sunday at 8:30 p.m. The screening is free. Dinner is not.
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Foreign: Milarepa
Largely unknown in the West, Milarepa was a Tibetan mystic and yogi who lived nearly 1000 years ago, and is one of the greatest national heroes of Tibet and highly regarded in Buddhist cultures worldwide. Stories of his life are heavy on mystical allegory and fantastic happenings, as he was reputed to have dabbled in sorcery and black magic as tools of vengeance before his ultimate ascension to the highest levels of enlightenment. Director Neten Chokling has created a visually dazzling account of Milarepa's early life, the first part of a two film set on the man.
Now playing at E Street Cinema.
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Major Release: Reservation Road
There are two movies being released tomorrow by directors whose previous films were heavy dramas about African nations. Having seen Gavin Hood's Rendition, I can wholeheartedly recommend that you not go to see that one, so instead we'll recommend checking out Reservation Road, by Hotel Rwanda director Terry George. Joaquin Phoenix appears to be showing off his range, contrasting his role in this film as a bereaved father searching for the driver of the car that killed his son, with his tough guy role in the also-now-playing We Own the Night. George's film is ostensibly a thriller, with Phoenix growing ever more obsessed with finding the hit-and-run driver, played by Mark Ruffalo, but beneath the pulpy setup may be a thought-provoking character study on different responses to tragedy.
View the trailer.
Opens Friday at E Street Cinema
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