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

My Life to Live

The AFI has returned to it's regular presenting schedule, which means that their Godard retrospective continues marching on. It's rather appropriate that My Life to Live is the first film to screen after the documentary festival: Godard infused his fourth feature with a realistic energy that came directly from the cinéma vérité movement that took documentaries as their inspiration. It's also, in this viewer's humble opinion, the best film that Godard ever made, a perfect blend of the director's best qualities; simultaneously playful, inventive, rebellious, confrontational, and brimming over with trenchant social commentary. And, it stars Anna Karina, who we'd be happy to watch reading the Parisian phone book for a couple of hours during her 1960s prime.

Karina plays a wife and mother who abandons her family to become an actress. When things don't go quite to plan, she drifts into a life of prostitution, and things continue to unravel from there. The film's subtitle, "A Film in Twelve Scenes", is a literal description of Godard's structure. There are exactly twelve scenes, and each one is introduced with a title card describing what we are about to see. It's one of a number of self-conscious or deliberately unconventional devices used by the director that in many ways pulls us out of the world of the film. As is often the case, Godard wants us to be quite aware that this is a movie; as much as he enjoys his bits of pulp fiction, he's determined to never make empty entertainment. And the film is as thought provoking in its examination of the conditions that push our lives one way or another as it is engrossing, and even sometimes infuriating.

If you head to Saturday night's screening, be sure to stick around for a book signing by New Yorker film critic Richard Brody, who will sign copies of his new book, Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.

View the (momentarily and marginally NSFW) trailer.
One screening per day from tonight until Sunday at the AFI. Check the schedule for times.

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Wake in Fright

Chances are you've never seen what is often talked about as one of the greatest films Australia ever produced. Despite a well-received premiere at Cannes in 1971, a nomination for the festival's highest prize, and popularity throughout Europe, the film was nearly lost. Back in its native land, the film bombed, and not only that, was ordered burned by the Aussie government. It has never been released to home video, and there are only two known prints in existence, one of which is screening this weekend at the Library of Congress. Why all the fuss? Wake in Fright (which was also released under the title Outback) bears some similarities to the also controversial Deliverance, with a somewhat mild-mannered professional taking a trip through a rural landscape populated by a group of people somewhat hostile to outsiders. The portrayal of rural folk in the Outback is accompanied by pretty graphic violence, including a kangaroo hunt that ends in an actual onscreen killing that, while not staged specifically for the movie, outraged viewers at the time.

Friday night at the Library of Congress' Mary Pickford Theatre at 7 p.m. Preceded by a trio of 70's horror trailers, as well as a screening of the short film Small Apartment, the Grand Jury Prize winner at this year's SXSW film festival, by locally-bred filmmaker Andrew Betzer. Free.

Kagemusha

Akira Kurosawa was largely inactive during the '70s, but came roaring back in 1980 with this grand war epic set in 16th century Japan, about a criminal sent into infiltrate opposition forces by impersonating one of their warlords. The film is a massive production, over three hours long and inconceivably huge in scale. Kurosawa filmed battle scenes that today wouldn't even be conceived without assuming they'd be filled in with CGI. The cost was reportedly immense, and it was only due to the help of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola that the film was even completed, which pretty makes up for the many cinematic sins that both directors have committed in their latter years. Kagemusha kicked off the trio of stunning, gorgeous films that he made from '80-'90, and like all of his work, practically demands viewing on the largest screen possible. Thankfully, the Freer and Sackler Galleries are giving D.C. that opportunity this weekend.

View the trailer.
Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. in the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium. Free.

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WALL•E

A conceptual, nearly dialogue free science-fiction about the last sentient being left on earth, an artificially intelligent manual labor robot who's just looking for a little love in the dead loneliness of a forgotten corner of the galaxy. What's this, a discarded draft for Kubrick's original vision of A.I.? Surely it can't be an animated film aimed at the kiddies. WALL•E sounds absolutely fascinating, and we have a feeling this is going to either be one of those films that redefines what "children's" entertainment can be, or is going to be the first huge miscalculation made by the animation geniuses over at Pixar. Considering that they managed to make a film about a rat with prodigious culinary skills (and with a title most 5-year-olds couldn't read off a poster no matter how long they've been hooked on phonics) into one of the best films of last year, no "animated" caveat required, we're leaning towards the former option. The producers reportedly looked to sci-fi films of the '60s and '70s for inspiration, so look for plenty of 2001 references, maybe some Silent Running, and if the folks over at Pixar are as film geeky as we think they are, maybe even a Solaris shout out or two. You know, for kids.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at theaters all over the area.

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Also probably worth a look: Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, whose vampire trilogy (which currently includes Night Watch, Day Watch, and an unproduced third film) has garnered a dedicated cult following, brings his dazzlingly dark touch to his first American production, Wanted, an adaptation of a vengeance themed graphic novel starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. And at E Street, Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, a quasi-documentary which was well loved by SILVERDOCS audiences last week, begins its theatrical run tomorrow. Stay tuned for our review tomorrow.