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

Religulous

Anyone with any familiarity with Bill Maher through his HBO talk show or its previous, less profane incarnation on network TV, Politically Incorrect, probably already has a sense of whether or not they'll enjoy Religulous. Maher has made no secret of his views on religion and what he sees as its incongruous place in a 21st century world of scientific reason. Those who find his tirades about the ridiculousness of religion to be mean-spirited, smug, and disrespectful of other people's beliefs aren't likely to be swayed by a film that stretches those rants out to feature film length. And with Borat/Curb Your Enthusiasm helmer Larry Charles directing the proceedings, don't expect Maher's tendency to mock to be restrained. And if you're the type that tunes in to his show every week, chances are you're squarely in the target audience.

The best measure of whether Religulous will have any appeal beyond that target is how well Maher and Charles get it across that their film is an agnostic one and not an atheistic one. As the host has made clear over the years, and has been reiterating in the interviews for the film, he finds disbelief just as distasteful as belief. It's the certainty about something that can't be proved or disproved that irks him, but time has shown him to be much harder on—or at least snarkier toward—the believers than the non. Whatever the case, it seems reasonably certain that Maher's film is destined to fill the divisive gap left in a year without a film by Michael Moore.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI and a number of other theaters throughout the area.

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All Roads Film Festival

By some estimates, half of all the world's languages could be facing extinction within the century. Linguists are in a frenzy to try to preserve records of these tongues before their last speakers are gone, and this is the subject of The Linguists, tonight's opening night film for National Geographic's brief All Roads Film Festival, which just runs tonight through Sunday. Now in its fifth year, the festival encompasses not just film, but photography and music as well, all highlighting the stories of indigenous cultures throughout the world. While the festival schedule is short, they pack in a lot of diverse material, by keeping largely to collections of short films centered around a particular theme or geographical area. And if you're still on the fence after checking out the programming, we should mention that there are few nicer places in D.C. to see a film than National Geographic's Grosvenor Auditorium, one of the finest public screening rooms in the city, and well worth checking out with a great program of films to see in it.

Tonight through Sunday at the National Geographic Society. Tickets are $9 per program or $56 for a four day festival pass, though a number of events are free of charge; see the schedule for details.

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The Verdict

There are, unfortunately, no theater screenings of any Paul Newman films this week. So if you're staying in, you could do a lot worse than to watch something from the career of one not just one of America's best actors, but also a man who demonstrated a humility, a work ethic, and a love for humanity that the rest of us can but aspire to. And any Newman will do. After hearing the sad news of his passing this weekend, I watched his hilariously grouchy turn as a conniving business executive in The Hudsucker Proxy, followed up with Newman's personal favorite of all his films, the deliciously profane Slap Shot. But if I had to recommend just one, it would be The Verdict. In Sidney Lumet's 1982 feature, Newman plays a sad sack lush of an ambulance chaser who develops a conscience and discovers a chance at personal salvation in the midst of a malpractice case he initially took on simply as an exercise in personal gain. Newman's willingness to put his matinee idol status aside and play difficult, complex, and even dislikable characters is one of the hallmarks of his career as he moved into and past middle age. His portrayal of Frank Galvin is one of the brightest moments of a career that seems like nothing but highlights, a rich and nuanced portrait of a man trying to salvage the last shreds of humanity and dignity out of a life wasted. In lesser hands, this could have been a mess of maudlin faux-inspirational redemption; Newman, in his work as in his life, cut through the bullshit and found the heart.

View the trailer.
Not playing anywhere, but if we were in programming at the AFI, we'd already be talking about the big, overdue, well-deserved Newman retrospective we're going to put together for next year. And this would be right up there with all the other must-sees, so hopefully it won't be long before we can see this and others on a big screen.

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Club Native

One of the most controversial issues facing many Native American communities is the matter of their own identity, of who actually gets to call themselves a native. What percentage of your blood comes directly from the native bloodline suddenly becomes a mathematical determination of who you are, and a point of contention among those trying to keep bloodlines as pure as possible to preserve a dwindling population. Young director Tracey Deer grew up with this constant fight as the backdrop to her coming of age, along with the intense pressure on her to not date, marry, or procreate outside the tribe, lest she continue to dilute the bloodline. With her home, the Canadian Mohawk reservation of Kahnawake, near Montreal, as her starting point, she explores the divisions and the racism that are tearing apart native communities where this has become an important issue.

View the trailer.
Sunday at 2 p.m. at the National Museum of the American Indian's Rasmuson Theater. Free.

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Derek

Derek Jarman's career was far too brief, encompassing just over 20 years and fewer than 11 features, but his influence reaches far. His work continually broke down walls. There was his frank and positive depiction of homosexuality, at a time when the subject was still very much taboo. His refusal, particularly as his career progressed and he gained more and more skill and confidence, to adhere to traditional narratives. His genre-bending modern takes on classical subjects. His ability to make his work both "pop" and "art" without ever dressing up the former or dumbing down the latter. One of his enduring contributions may be the career of Tilda Swinton. While her talents would probably not have left her unsuccessful, it was Jarman who made her into a cult star through a series of collaborations early in her career. Now Swinton is returning the favor with this love letter to her former director, a documentary about Jarman written by the actress and directed by the multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien.

Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery's East Building Concourse Auditorium. Free.

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Special Mention: Flash of Genius: Based on the lackluster reviews, it's hard to recommend Flash of Genius, the Greg Kinnear-starring biopic of Robert Kearns, the man who invented the intermittent windshield wiper, had the idea stolen by the big U.S. automakers, and then sued them (and won) in a landmark patent infringement case. It appears to be inspirational true-life-story by the numbers, but it does have an interesting local tie-in, which the CityPaper's Dave McKenna discusses in a City Desk blog post from earlier this week.