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

The Wild Child

At the end of the 18th century, a boy wandered out of the woods in the south of France who had apparently grown up entirely alone in the wild. He became a singular case study in how humans socialize and acquire language. Of course, themes of growing up and fitting into the world always played a major role in many of the films of Francois Truffaut, so for the director to make a film based on the Wild Boy of Aveyron seemed a natural choice. In the film, also set in the 18th Century, Truffaut himself takes on the role of a doctor who takes responsibility for caring for, teaching, and studying a 12-year-old boy found living in the wild. It was a rare lead performance for Truffaut, who often slipped into uncredited bit parts and cameos in his movies, but it's a performance that obviously had a great deal of personal resonance for the director.

Whether or not his presence in the role of the doctor and teacher can be read as symbolic of the older, wiser Truffaut attempting to shepherd his own metaphorical "wild child" into polite society is debatable, but not far-fetched considering how often he used film to work through the difficulties of his own tumultuous youth. More clear, though, are the director's statements about the state of nature and that of polite society not being as far apart as one might think. The former has its nobilities, and the latter its savageries, though assimilating from one to the other is never easy. The basic themes here will be familiar to anyone whose seen a Tarzan movie or two, but Truffaut, characteristically, handles them with an uncommon beauty and grace.

View the trailer.
A brand new 35mm print opens today for one week only at E Street.

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I've Loved You So Long

One of the most talked about movies from France this year, I've Loved You So Long stars Kristen Scott Thomas as a woman released from prison following a fifteen year term. Her crime is danced around in the plot, but involved a death in which her sister, who she's now come to live with following her release, was also implicated. It's a recipe for high and supremely dysfunctional familial tension that tells its story as much with what its characters aren't willing to say to one another, the spaces between words and the uncomfortable looks of distrust. One of the highlights of last month's European Film Showcase at the AFI is back for a proper theatrical run.

View the trailer.
Opens today at the AFI.

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Great Expectations (and others from David Lean)

Sweeping Technicolor epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai may be the first films to leap to mind when thinking of David Lean, but his early films are just as strong; highly mannered and meticulously structured films that seem definitively British in their elegance and restraint. But as is often the case with such carefully controlled demeanors, Lean's stories are laid on dense and passionate emotional foundations. The National Gallery is screening eight of Lean's films from the 1940s, newly restored by the British Film Institute in celebration of what would have been the director's hundredth birthday this year. There are familiar titles such as the brilliant melodrama of Brief Encounter and the definitive filmed version of Oliver Twist, with Alec Guinness' unforgettable turn as Fagin. And there are less talked about titles, like three of his collaborations with Noël Coward. But perhaps the greatest of his '40s films is his adaptation of Dickens' Great Expectations, perfectly transporting Dickens' painstakingly descriptive prose into a gorgeous, evocative, and often eerie (in the case of the decrepit Havisham mansion) world that captures the author better than any other filmmaker ever has.

View the trailer.
At the National Gallery of Art on Sunday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. Other films by David Lean screen throughout the next week. All programs are free.

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Timecrimes

Celebrated Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo got an Academy Award for his first short, 7:35 de la Mañana, and has made a string of lauded short films since then. For his first feature, he's written and directed a cleverly imagined time travel thriller about an unremarkable middle-aged schlub who suddenly finds himself involved in a snafu of interdimensional proportions when he accidentally hops into a rather clueless lab technician's time machine and hops back a few hours. There are now two of him of course, and he must make sure that the past him climbs into the machine just as he did and become the present him. Otherwise there could theoretically be two of him running around perpetually, and explaining that to the wife (not to mention himself) isn't going to be easy. Complicating matters is the mysterious man chasing him through the woods with scissors who caused him to jump in the time machine to begin with, and the lab tech (played with a perfect amount of wide-eyed ineptitude by the director himself), who may know more than he's letting on. The many twists and turns in Vigalondo's story don't break new ground for the genre and aren't necessarily that difficult to figure out, but his gift for fitting together all the difficult problems that face any time travel narrative make the film a thrill to watch. And his sly and dark humor adds a Hitchcockian feel to the whole affair, particularly the wonderfully convoluted finale.

View the trailer.
Opens today at E Street.

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What to do after the presents are opened...

So it's Christmas Day, the kiddies are blissfully piercing the sky with their brand new Princess Unicorn dolls and all those blood relations under one roof are beginning to wear on each others' nerves. You've got a good four hours to kill before the Roast Beast emerges in all its well-done glory from the oven, and you just want some dark and quiet for the bulk of that time. Don't worry, Hollywood's got your back. In addition to the glut of films already in theaters in this ridiculously back-loaded movie year, there are four Oscar hopefuls vying for your attention as the most fitting way to celebrate the birth of Our Lord and Savior. So pop one of the multiple copies of Wall*E that each of the kids got into the DVD for the young'uns and head out to the theater; there's a little something for everyone.

For fans of maudlin Holocaust romances that cheapen the gravity of the most grisly event in history with treacly strings and attractive actors gazing longingly at each other, there's Kate Winslet & Ralph Fiennes in The Reader. For your mom's not-so-secret obsession with Brad Pitt, you can go for the nouveau-Forrest Gump disappointment of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, in which Pitt plays a man who ages in reverse. The special effects and makeup are dazzling—Brad Pitt is made to look convincingly 20 years old, which may both excite and then slightly disturb your mom—but even David Fincher's darker directorial inclinations can't save this mess from screenwriter Eric Roth's decision to abandon both the story and the detached tone of Fitzgerald's short fiction in favor of a weepy love story. Fascinating in parts, but an utter failure on the whole. Dad, on the other hand, can relive the glory days of Dirty Harry by checking out Clint Eastwood's second directorial effort of the year, Gran Torino, in which the grizzled old star plays a grizzled old war veteran having difficulty dealing with aging, the modern world, and the steady influx of Asian immigrants into his neighborhood. If Eastwood has done his job well, you'll never hear, "Get off my lawn!" quite the same way again.

And for you? You'll want to see the best of the bunch of course, so it'll have to be The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky's tough and gritty followup to the fey and glossy The Fountain, in which he directs Mickey Rourke in a performance of such raw and tender emotional power that you'll want to rush back home and watch The Pope of Greenwich Village as soon as possible just to get more of this caliber from the actor. His aging wrestler, a minor cult star as past his prime as the entertainment in which he performs, is hands-down the performance of the year. Just be sure to bring your mulleted Uncle Tony who's down from Jersey for the weekend. He'll be as thrilled with the hyper-realistic (and often grisly) realities of staging a fake sport as you'll be with Rourke and this entire beautifully damaged film.

View the trailers for Benjamin Button, The Reader, Gran Torino, and The Wrestler. And while you're at it, check out One Trick Pony, the excellent song The Boss recorded (free of charge!) for The Wrestler.

All of these open on Christmas Day at a number of theaters in the area.