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

Diary of the Dead:

It warms our hearts that on this, that most romantic of holidays, George Romero has constructed another bloody festival of the undead. Because nothing says "I love you" quite like biting social commentary buried under multiple layers of rotting flesh, dismembered limbs, and rampant lust for fresh braaaiiiinns. For the fifth entry in his ...of the Dead series, Romero does a little bit of a reboot, working outside the world of the previous films. In the movie, a group of young filmmakers is shooting a horror film when zombies begin attacking, and they turn the cameras on the carnage, making an impromptu documentary of the disaster. Which, of course, sounds remarkably similar to the concept of Cloverfield, but before anyone accuses George of ripping off J.J. Abrams, let's remember that Dead went into production before the monster blockbuster was even greenlit. Romero's films, while great fun on a purely visceral level (literally: there tends to be a lot of onscreen viscera, after all), have mostly risen above comparable films due to his keen sense of how to weave in social criticism. Having covered topics from consumerism to class warfare to the military-industrial complex, Romero now sets his sights on the modern obsession with maintaining a visual record of our entire lives. Or, in this case, our entire deaths. We can surely expect poor special effects and worse acting, but Romero's movies have always been about the ideas; and the idea that we're drowning ourselves in media seems particularly timely.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Chinatown, the Majestic in Silver Spring, and the Hoffman in Alexandria.

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Oscar Nominees at National Geographic, the National Archives, and E Street:

Huzzah! The writer's strike is over! Which means that the Oscars, which film geeks look forward to like the rest of the world does the Super Bowl (even though we steadfastly deny that they actually mean anything) can go forward as planned, with all the lame jokes we've come to expect and cherish. Of course, we all know the nominees in the major categories and have had ample opportunity to see the movies in question. But every year, glamorous celebrities stride confidently onstage to read off nominees in categories that none of us (or, more than likely, them) have ever seen, or even had the opportunity to see.

Luckily, there are three D.C. venues that are offering the chance to see every nominated film in all of the shorts categories (documentary, live action, and animated), as well as all of the nominated feature docs and foreign films. The National Archives is handling the Feature and Short Subject Documentary nominees, as well as the Live Action and Animated shorts, from February 20-24. National Geographic is screening all of the nominees for best Foreign Language Feature, starting tonight and running through Sunday. And E Street is screening the live action and animated shorts for one day only, tomorrow. Archives screenings are free, National Geographic screenings are $7 (or $25 for all five), and E Street's standard pricing applies.

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Smiles of a Summer Night:

There are at least two rom-coms in major release this weekend, one of which is, by all accounts, awful, and the other may just look better in comparison. Are we the only ones who long for a time when watching a light comedy with a romantic theme didn't mean having to check one's brain at the concessions counter? If you're looking for something in the (faux) holiday spirit of affection this weekend, you can skip the multiplex and head for the AFI for this gem that's playing as part of the Silver Theatre's Bergman retrospective. Four women and four men, of various levels of attachment and chastity, find themselves in a country home for the weekend. Bergman deftly spins them around each of their respective hangups and attractions, examining how we pair up with our partners without sacrificing genuinely witty entertainment value.

Playing at the AFI tonight through Sunday. Showtimes.

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Anime at the Kennedy Center:

If you're an anime fan, then you likely already know about this weekend's events at the Kennedy Center, as part of the ongoing Japan! culture + hyperculture series. Tomorrow and Saturday, there are two anthologies of anime short films, released in Japan as Genius Party and Genius Party Beyond. Sunday, for the heartiest of fans, features a marathon over six hours long of new anime premieres, including another collection of shorts, plus two features based on material by some of Japan's most popular manga artists.

This weekend at the Kennedy Center. See their site for times and details.

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The Violin:

Francisco Vargas' debut feature tells of the civil unrest in 1970s Mexico through the story of an elderly, one-handed violinist, who must play by strapping a bow where his hand once was. No special effects needed here: Vargas wrote the script with just such an individual in mind, Ángel Tavira, who not only made his acting debut in the movie, but also scored a best actor prize at Cannes for the performance. Shot in moody black and white, the film has been racking up plenty of other prizes as well. Catch it while you can, it's only in town for a week.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow, for one week only, at E Street.