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

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner:

The National Gallery's English New Wave retrospective closes this weekend with, as far as this writer is concerned, the best film of the period. Alan Sillitoe's screenplay (from his own short story) concerns Colin Smith, a British youth whose skill for distance running is only matched by his ability to get himself into trouble. It's an unfortunate hereditary trait. "Running's always been a big thing in our family," says Tom Courtenay as Colin, "especially running away from the police." When a small time bakery heist goes wrong, Colin finds himself in a reformatory where his fleet feet set him apart from his peers and catch the eye of the institution's Governor, who wants to use Colin to show up the rich wankers from a local private school. The movie hinges on a beautifully executed sequence in which Colin must choose whether or not he'll allow himself to be used as a pawn, even if it might ultimately be to his own benefit.

Courtenay is a revelation in his first major role. He might have lacked the matinee-idol good looks, but as the wiry athlete of the title he one-ups even James Dean's portrayal of youthful rebellion and resistance to authority. Like the eponymous hero of his subsequent (and somewhat better known) role in Billy Liar, Colin is a dreamer. But rather than Billy's fantastical flights of fancy, Colin broods and glowers on his own memories, and when Courtenay's eyes switch from mischief to darker moods, his character suddenly seems more weary of the world than his age should allow. Tony Richardson's exuberant direction, full of skillfully woven flashbacks and flashes of remembrance during Colin's runs, perfectly reflects the restlessness within the story's hero.

Screens Sunday at 4:30 p.m. (with the Lindsay Anderson short subject documentary Every Day Except Christmas) at the National Gallery's East Building Auditorium.

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4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days:

One of the best-reviewed films of last year (no "foreign" qualifier needed) was Christian Mungiu's unflinching drama about a young woman seeking an abortion in Ceauşescu's Romania, where not only abortion was illegal, but even contraception was banned. Mungiu pulls no punches in his depiction of the brutality of both the Communist regime in the country in the late 1980s and of the shady hotel room abortions desperate women were forced to endure. The film beat out stiff competition this year to pick up the Palme d'Or at Cannes, but is conspicuously absent from the reliably stuffy Best Foreign Language Film ballot at the Academy Awards. Hopefully that oversight won't adversely affect the film's distribution here in the States, as this is the latest and greatest entry in the current Romian film renaissance.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Cinema.

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Rebel, Artist, Superstar: The Films of Tadanobu Asano:

Tadanobu Asano may be far from a household name in America, but the actor is one of the most popular figures in his native Japan, thanks to a career over the past couple of decades that has established him as a daring performer unafraid of taking on controversial, difficult, or downright psychotic roles. This weekend, the Freer and Sackler Galleries, in partnership with the Kennedy Center and the Japanese Embassy, presents a three-film series of the actor's work. Asano himself will be in attendance at all the screenings. First up, tomorrow night, is Vital, in which Asano plays a medical student struck with amnesia in a car accident. When his girlfriend, who died in the accident, turns up for dissection in a class, memories begin returning, and he starts coming unglued. This is followed on Saturday by the Thai film Last Life in the Universe, in which he plays a Japanese expatriate distancing himself from a troubled past, and on Sunday the offbeat family drama Sad Vacation.

Friday night's screening is at 7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday's are each at 2 p.m., all in the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium. Tickets are free and are distributed beginning one hour before showtime.

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Two-Fistedness(The Black Hand Side Film Series):

In celebration of Black History Month, the Urban Film Series is presenting four programs on each of the Thursdays in February, starting next week. This year's series, the fifth year of the program, is titled "The Black Hand Side," and covers a broad array of subjects from history and spirituality in the African-American community, the riots of the '60s and slavery. It also seeks to specifically highlight local filmmakers. This week's program, "Two Fistedness", focuses on America's history of racial preference with two shorts and a feature. Brush Strokes is an animated short originally produced for the U.N. that attacks prejudice. Willie Lynch Letter & the Making of a Slave looks through the early pictorial history of black America. Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno's Revolution '67 looks at violent incidents in the 1960s civil rights movement through a six day period in July 1967 in Newark, N.J.

At E Street Cinema one week from tonight starting at 7 p.m. Additional programs in the series screen every Thursday in February.

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Diva:

French director Jean-Jacques Beineix roared into the public eye in 1981 with his debut feature, a dizzying thrill ride that announced him as a director to watch. While he never became very prolific, and has never really matched his first effort, Diva still stands as an amazing and intricate thriller. A mailman with an obsession with a microphone-shy opera singer manages to surreptitiously record one of her performances. But the tape gets switched with one containing some sensitive material showing a police chief's mob ties, and with that the roller coaster is headed downhill. Beineix's visuals are dazzling, and the motorcycle chase through the Parisian subway system is the stuff of legend.

Opens tomorrow at E Street Cinema.