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

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired

Roman Polanski’s story is pretty familiar by now. Busted for sex with a minor and found guilty in a highly public trial, the director, during the prime of his career, fled to France to dodge a prison sentence and has never come back. Those are the basics, but just how accurate a picture of the situation does that paint? Not a very complete one at any rate, according to Marina Zenovich’s new documentary, made for HBO (and aired there in June) and opening in theaters this month. Polanski is a tricky subject. By nearly all accounts the director was railroaded by an image-conscious Hollywood judge who reneged on a back room deal to keep Polanski from serving any real time. Included in those “all accounts” of those who thought the director was treated unfairly are the ultra-conservative D.A. who prosecuted the case and the then-13-year-old victim in the trial. Of course, in launching a defense, one risks looking like an apologist for Polanski’s actions, which is probably the reason it’s been this long before anyone has made a film on the subject.

It’s a fine line Zenovich has to tread, and she navigates it masterfully. She scores interviews with all the still-living major players in the trial save for Polanski himself. For his commentary she relies on archival footage, particularly an uncomfortable and insightful dinner interview from the 70s. Zenovich puts the events of the trial into the context of Polanski’s life and work with a fairly detailed look at his early career and personal life, with particular attention paid, of course, to the murder of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of the Manson Family. She traces a direct path from the despair and sensationalized media crucifixion he faced in the wake of the murder to his own crime, yet uses it as explanation without ever making excuses for his behavior. Her study of the trial is gripping cinema, filled with enough twists, turns and double-crosses that it would nearly be implausible in a work of fiction.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI.

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The Last Mistress

Could it be that Catherine Breillat is growing more subtle in her old age? The director/provocateur has made a career out of what’s generally regarded (by, it should be noted, the male-dominated critical cognoscenti) as outrageousness, radically challenging traditional views of gender roles, and putting onscreen depictions of sexuality that set most to writhing in their seats. Whether in discomfort or by some other force probably depends on your point of view. So news that Breillat was making an entry into the often restrained (or at least sexually sublimated) area of the 18th century costume drama may have raised a few eyebrows. But her choice of material is right in her wheelhouse: Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly’s 1851 novel about a young libertine and his attempt to ditch his voraciously-appetited mistress in order to marry a virginal young aristocrat. One look at Breillat’s casting reveals her usual eye toward subverting expectations. With the sharp featured and seductively glowering Asia Argento as the mistress and the pillow-lipped and effete Fu'ad Ait Aattou as the libertine, it’s clear up front who has the dominant role in this pair. There are few voices as clear and uncompromising in cinema as Breillat’s. As it seems the director is in declining health (she suffered a stroke on the set of this film, and a second on the film she’s currently working on), who knows how many more chances there will be to see new work from Breillat in the theater. Voices as bold as hers are a tragic rarity.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street and Bethesda Row.

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The Endless Summer

Few films can claim to have started an entire subgenre of filmmaking, let alone setting into motion an entire lifestyle. The Endless Summer did both. Director Bruce Brown set out to make a film about surfing culture, and ended up following the best surfing and the best weather for it around the world. Hardcore surfers, introduced to beaches in Australia, Africa, Polynesia and elsewhere set out to find the waves introduced to them in the film, and so a whole subculture of traveling surf-seekers was born. Brown, traveling with two surfers, ostensibly takes us along on a trip searching for the elusive "perfect wave". Whether he found it or not (and we won't give it away) is really immaterial. The fast-and-loose style of the film, made on a shoestring with whatever lightweight equipment Brown could afford to take with him, is as carefree and exuberant as it is beautiful to look at. Less academic than most travel documentaries, less polished than an ad piece to sell plane tickets, Brown and his subjects stumbled into making the definitive surfing movie, one that has stood the test of time through a summer that has lasted over 40 years for those with the means and desire to keep following it.

View the trailer.
Tuesday at the Library of Congress' Mary Pickford Theatre at 7 p.m. Free.

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Slapsticon Comedy Festival

For lovers of pratfalls, sight gags, poked eyes, and general comedic mayhem, there is only one place to be for the next four days: the Rosslyn Spectrum. The Slapsticon Comedy Festival is now in its sixth year of showing rarities from the early days of filmed comedy, and their program is pretty much dedicated to screening as much otherwise-unavailable material as possible for four days straight. The festival is underway as we speak, and today's highlight can be seen at 7 p.m., a collection of never-before-screened material, including home movies and TV clips, of the Three Stooges. After that, it's W.C. Field's first feature film performance in D.W. Griffith's Sally of the Sawdust. Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. is another treat, with two of Buster Keaton's rarely seen later works, including his last filmed performance ever, in an industrial film for the Ontario Construction Safety Commission. His physicality isn't nearly what it was at the height of his genius in his later work, but we're generally of the opinion that any opportunity to see Keaton is worth the price of admission. Those programs are just the tip of the iceberg; the festival has tons of material, and all of the silent era films they're screening will be accompanied by live piano.

Today through Sunday, most programs at the Rosslyn Spectrum. See full schedule for showtimes. Tickets for individual shows are unavailable; the festival sells half-day tickets ($16), full-day tickets ($30), and four-day passes ($99). See the registration page for details.

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The Dark Knight

No one needs any encouragement to see the latest in the Batman saga this weekend, hence the non-featured position down here at the bottom of this week’s column. Tickets are selling so fast that many theaters are not only showing it at midnight tonight, but also showings around 3 and 6 a.m. If you happen to go to one of those, please do let us know what they’re like, and what sort of bleary-eyed fanboys are showing up. We’re curious, but not so much so that we are going to go through tomorrow in zombie-like stupor. With all the hype around the film, mostly surrounding Heath Ledger’s death and his reportedly masterful performance as the Joker, it’s pretty clear that Christopher Nolan better hit a home run with this, a movie so undeniably a masterpiece of the comic superhero genre that there’s no room for disappointment from a rabid audience that expects nothing less. Early reviews seem to indicate it’s just that. Well, except for The New Yorker’s resident contrarian David Denby, who also thought Hancock was a brilliant piece of cinema, so take that for what it’s worth. There’s a reason I let that subscription lapse. Anyway, Nolan’s affinity for the darker edges of Batman’s vigilante mythos, already evident in Batman Begins, allows him to walk the character along the tightrope separating hero from anti-hero with the grim and morally ambiguous effectiveness that typifies the best stories in the Batman canon. My expectations may be projected at the skies like the Bat signal on a dangerous night, but for once I don’t think getting my hopes up is going to lead to the inevitable letdown.

View the trailer.
Opens at midnight tonight at any location capable of projecting moving images on a flat surface.