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

Man on Wire

When I was eight, I visited the Grand Canyon with my mother, and the only way I'd get up to the edge was on hands and knees. If I went today, the result would probably be the same. You never know when a stray wind is going to whip up and cast you over a chest-high railing. Given the relative intensity of my own acrophobia, I'm not entirely sure how comfortable I'll be viewing James Marsh's new documentary, which chronicles the story of Phillipe Petit, who in 1974 stunned the world by managing to sneak up to the top of the then-under-construction World Trade Center, string 450 pounds of steel wire across the chasm between the towers, and then spent the better part of an hour walking, dancing, and hopping around on a 3/4 inch cable a quarter of a mile above the concrete and asphalt below. Needless to say, there was no net.

Marsh concerns himself mainly with two issues in the film. Firstly, how Petit managed to get up there in the first place, which the director describes as a scenario worthy of a heist movie all on its own. And secondly, just what significance the act itself carries. Petit considers himself an artist, not a daredevil. So as one watches and thinks about the most famous high-wire act ever undertaken, there's always that nagging question: "But is it art"? And if you're looking for me, I'll be the one at the back of the theater looking at the screen nervously between a crack in my fingers.

View the trailer.
Opens today at the AFI and E Street Cinema.

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L'avventura

A year after his death, the National Gallery is in the midst of a retrospective on the films of Italian master Michelangeo Antonioni, and on Sunday the museum screens his most celebrated, most confounding work. L'avventura was the director's breakthrough, the film that began his reputation as a giant, even as it divided audiences with controversy. Not that its content was shocking, mind you. The central argument about L'avventura wasn't over specific content of the film as much as it was over whether it was really any good or not, or if there was even a point to it. Antonioni took the entire concept of film narrative and tossed it out the window, setting up his movie as a mystery in which a group of vacationers search for a missing member of their party on a deserted Mediterranean island. Only the mystery, initially the reason for the movie's existence, becomes less and less of a factor in the film's meditative unfolding, until it's merely an afterthought (if even a thought at all) to the quiet interactions of the characters. Everything you may have heard about the film is true: it's slow, maddening, and steadfastly unwilling to meet the expectations of the audience. But it's also breathtakingly beautiful, and a keeper of mysteries far more important than where a missing girl lies. Revolutions don't always start with a bang, and L'avventura fires its shot with silent grace.

View the trailer.
Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art's East Building Concourse Auditorium.

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Shaolin Soccer

Stephen Chow's 2004 comedy, Kung Fu Hustle was sort of the Airplane! of martial arts movies. The film became the biggest hit ever to come out of Hong Kong, poking fun at a genre that tends to take itself fairly seriously even when the onscreen action can invite chuckles at its pure outrageousness. Chow's love for martial arts action movies made that film, and it's that same spirit that made his previous feature, Shaolin Soccer, just as enjoyable (if more cultish) a hit. In the film, a Shaolin monk regroups his old gang from the monastery to rekindle interest in Shaolin martial arts by showing their application in unusual areas: soccer, of course. Chow's reliance on CGI to accomplish many of the team's on-field tricks is, admittedly, somewhat offputting in what is still ostensibly a kung-fu flick, but the result is so goofy and hilarious that we're willing to give him a pass.

View the trailer.
Tonight at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium. Free, tickets required.

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Secret Ceremony

The Washington Psychotronic Film Society has been impressively expanding the scope of its programming of late, beyond just the bizarre and the cultish, to rarely seen and well-pedigreed fare such as this. Featuring Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Mia Farrow and Joseph Losey, this week's film seems like a lost classic based purely on the credits. But even with the support of a major studio, a psychological thriller about the sexually suggestive same sex relationship between a prostitute and a meek girl who adopts her as a mother figure, directed by a European director who still had the dark cast of McCarthy's blacklist hanging over him, wasn't likely to do big box office. Taylor plays the hooker, Farrow the young girl who attaches herself to her, and Mitchum is the domineering stepfather. It may all be hopelessly melodramatic or under-appreciated brilliance. You make the call.

No trailer, but there is a wonderfully creepy clip on YouTube.
Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. at the Old Arlington Grill. Free, suggested donation $2.

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Pineapple Express

Since the latest film in Judd Apatow's growing comic empire was released on Wednesday in order not to conflict with the opening of the Olympics this weekend, it's likely that the movie's core audience has already stumbled to theaters in a smoky haze to see Seth Rogan and James Franco as stoners who accidentally stumble into a drug war. Most notable about the film is the director, David Gordon Green, who makes an unlikely foray into studio filmmaking after building a career as an auteur of subtle arthouse fare like George Washington and Snow Angels. But while Green may worship at the altar of Terence Malick, he's not so exclusive that he doesn't recognize the pleasures of a good piece of entertainment, which is part of what makes him so great. Green knows that there's plenty of room for entertainment in art, and that even a buddy stoner comedy can be made with the same attention to craft as an Oscar contender. When the "line" between those two gets blurred, we all win. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a furious case of the munchies, and must be going.

View the trailer.
Now playing all over the area.

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Also, don't forget to catch the conclusion of 2008's Screen on the Green Monday night, with a screening of the original Superman. Really, the last SotG film? Is summer drawing to a close already? And tonight at the Library of Congress, a rare screening of Romain Gary's Kill!, notable for violence and sex so gratuitous that it has the distinction of being the first film to earn an "X" rating. Actually, we misread the Library of Congress' page. It's Romain Gary's previous film, Birds in Peru, that received the first X.