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

Indie: Control

Live fast, die young. The two most important rules to follow for rock 'n' roll immortality. We suppose having great music probably helps, too. Ian Curtis followed those rules, and enjoys a massive cult following nearly three decades after his death. Maybe "enjoys" is the wrong word. As the years have passed and Joy Division's stature as one of the most important post-punk bands ever to come out of England (or anywhere else for that matter) has grown, so has Curtis' own personal legend as the troubled and somewhat enigmatic frontman for the group. His wife Deborah's mid-90s biography, Touching from a Distance, presented a much clearer picture of the singer, and that book has served as the basis for Control, the first biopic on the singer (excluding his periphery role in Michael Winterbottom's Factory Records movie, 24 Hour Party People).

It also marks the feature filmmaking debut of Anton Corbijn, who has made a career out of taking some of the most iconic rock photography of the last 30 years. He actually started to become well known at around the same time that Curtis hit his own peak of fame, and some of Corbijn's early assignments as an NME photographer were shooting Joy Division. It should come as no surprise then, that Control is a beautiful visual achievement, Corbijn working in his customary monochrome. Hopefully the story and the execution live up to both the visuals and to the stature of its tragic subject.

View the trailer.
Playing tonight at the AFI, and for one week only at E Street Cinema starting tomorrow.

---

Foreign: European Union Film Showcase

The American Film Institute has joined forces with the European Union's D.C. delegation to put together, for the 20th year, a collection of some of the best in European filmmaking. The showcase's roster covers 32 films from 25 countries, including nine countries' Oscar submissions for this year, plus three more from 2006. Among the highlights are the latest from Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, winner of the Director prize at Cannes this year, Anton Corbijn's Control, which premieres tonight on the eve of its general theatrical release, and Persepolis, the animated feature adaptation of co-director Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel of her childhood in Iran following the revolution. That's just the tip of the iceberg, though, and the next three weeks are stuffed full of great foreign films at the AFI.

Runs from November 1-20. Full showcase guide available here.

---

Repertory: Little Caesar and I Was a Communist for the FBI

The National Gallery continues to strengthen the tie between the work of Edward Hopper and the cinema world with yet another Hopper lecture followed by films that reflect the content of the talk. This Sunday at 2 p.m. Carleton University Art and Culture Professor Charles O'Brien presents a lecture specifically focusing on Hopper's tie to the filmmaking of his day, followed by two films that show contrasting Hollywood depictions of "bad guys" over the span of 20 years. First is 1930's Little Caesar, starring the legendary Edward G. Robinson in one of his trademark gangster roles. Despite his flaunting of the law, Robinson is unmistakably the hero of the film, in contrast to the anti-communist and pro-law and order tone of 1950's I Was a Communist for the FBI, about a domestic spy infiltrating a Pittsburgh Communist party branch, based on the true story of undercover agent Matt Cvetic, which would subsequently be turned into a popular radio series in the early 50s.

Playing at the National Gallery of Art's East Building Auditorium November 4 at 4 p.m., following the Edward Hopper lecture at 2 p.m.

---

Major Release: American Gangster

Reunite the director/actor team from Gladiator, add the writer of Schindler's List, and throw Denzel Washington into the mix for good measure in the sort of gritty urban drug trafficking drama that finally gave Martin Scorcese a little gold statue last year. The producers of American Gangster seem to be pretty clearly gunning for the Oscar voters with a fall release of this based-on-a-true story movie about New York drug kingpin Frank Lucas, who famously used the coffins of American soldiers coming in from Southeast Asia to smuggle his dope, and built a massive organized crime empire. Is it really as good as it wants to be? Advance reviews tend to play up the film's entertainment factor over any real substance, but even the glowing reviews tend to find it a little overdone. Of course, all those same things could be said about Gladiator, and that film cleaned up. American Gangster looks like it's probably worth checking out, but may not have the staying power of former Ridley Scott classics like Alien, or Blade Runner. And, since we mentioned it, Scott's dystopian sci-fi masterpiece is still playing over at the Uptown, in a beautiful new edit that looks spectacular on the gigantic screen.

View the trailer.
Playing at theaters around the area starting tomorrow.

---

Special Event: Sleepaway Camp

Admit it. You just didn't get your quota of Halloween fun this year. Blame it on the mid-week holiday, blame it on having to be a designated driver due to the cab strike, blame it on CVS being all sold out of fun-sized Snickers bars. We can't make it suddenly be the weekend, we can't drive you home, and we can't (won't) give you our candy. But we can at least tell you where one last scary movie is screening before all the holiday-related entertainment fare is dominated by It's a Wonderful Life marathons with perhaps a stray showing of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. Video Americain up in Takoma Park is kicking off what promises to be a weekly series of free after-hours screenings with a showing of a slasher classic, Sleepaway Camp. We'll leave out the plot description since you can probably figure it out on your own from the title. The store closes at 10, and the movie gets started at 10:30.

View the trailer.
Playing tonight only at Video Americain in Takoma Park, at 5837 Laurel Avenue.