Popcorn & Candy: Rain of Fire
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
The most affecting film to deal with the human devastation of World War II isn't a sweeping, big budget epic. It's this intimate piece of Japanese animation about a brother and sister orphaned after an Allied firebombing of their hometown takes their mother, and the military their father. Seita, the older of the two, is forced to care for his young sister, Setsuko, after they are first foisted on an opportunistic aunt who can only be bothered to put a roof over their heads because it'll mean more food for her. When things sour with her, the kids are out on their own and take refuge in an abandoned bomb shelter as they try desperately to find food to survive.
Produced by Studio Ghibli, the animation house best known for films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, the film stands in stark contrast to those Miyazaki fantasies, a sobering look at the effect of the war on the Japanese people. Director Isao Takahata, working from a semi-autobiographical novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, balances the grim realities with the whimsy of the children, Setsuko particularly, who is often able to find light in the darkest places. All of which will be small consolation when you're crying your eyes out by the end. And before anyone accuses me of ruining anything here, that's not really a spoiler. This is World War II we're talking about here, not Disney. Happy endings were in short supply, and the story actually winds its way gracefully and beautifully to a conclusion more comforting than all that death and destruction should allow.
View the trailer.
Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium. Free.
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Washington Jewish Film Festival
The Washington Jewish Film Festival opens tonight for its 19th run of the best in Jewish filmmaking from around the world. Tonight's opener, Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger, is an Australian production about a young girl looking to use her bat mitzvah not only as her entrance into adulthood, but a chance to completely reinvent herself and her world. Toni Collette stars. From there, the festival runs through a program of nearly 60 features from all over the globe, covering a diverse range of stories that share this one common thread.
Opens tonight and runs through December 14 at seven venues around town. See the schedule for full details.
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While a lot of the international attention on Japanese filmmaking these days seems to be on its lucrative animation and horror exports, don't let that make you think that personal storytelling without chills, action, and creepy atmospherics are all Japan's filmmakers are interested in. Mourning Forest was last year's Grand Prix award winner at Cannes, a quiet and visually lush feature from director Naomi Kawase about a young retirement home worker who takes one of her elderly charges for a walk and then becomes hopelessly lost in the woods, becoming a mostly plotless character study of these two individuals as they wander, trying to find their way home. The setup reminds us of Gus Van Sant's Gerry, a film which can be tough going for some audiences with its long periods of quiet and inaction. Kawase's feature is described in similar terms by many critics, though consensus is that if you can move beyond the need for a film to be constantly steamrolling forward, Mourning Forest contains many rewards.
View the trailer.
Tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Freer Gallery's Meyer Auditorium. Free.
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Of all the horrific stories that have emerged in recent years from the civil war in Sudan (and there are plenty to choose from), the kidnapping and indoctrination of young children into killers is perhaps at the top of the list of most heinous offenses to come to light. The subject of War Child, Emmanuel Jal, was one such child soldier, carrying and using an AK-47 in the war from the time he was seven until his ultimate escape from the military five years later. In the years since, he has become an international hip-hop star, playing music that calls for peace with an urgency that comes from his own harrowing experience. Local filmmaker C. Karim Chrobog has made a huge impression with his feature debut about Jal, racking up a truckful of awards with a film that tells a success story as unlikely as it is uplifting. The film premieres tomorrow at E Street, and Washington Film Institute is sponsoring a pre-movie happy hour at Bistro D'Oc with the film's producers in attendance.
View the trailer.
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Punch-Drunk Love is easily Paul Thomas Anderson's most divisive film, and it's easy to see why. Coming on the heels of his epically-minded Boogie Nights and Magnolia, this quirky, and sometimes entirely dissonant and off-putting love story felt slight, nothing more than a throwaway to clear Anderson's head after the dense films that preceded it. The presence of Adam Sandler in the lead probably didn't help. Don't be fooled, though. Sandler delivers a performance of altogether shocking sensitivity, and underneath the quirkiness and odd plot directions lies a story about modern love and loneliness no less satisfying than the broader and more varied themes of his previous films. At the very least it's worth it to see a joyously over the top performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the head of a small-time crime venture who goes after the hapless Sandler after the latter has ticked off one of the former's phone sex operators, and the dispute escalates to surreal levels. Not to mention seeing the song "He Needs Me", from Robert Altman's ill-advised Popeye movie, recontextualized into a dreamy montage; the 10-year-old in me who still harbors an unjustified love for that movie couldn't help but smile.
And if none of that convinces you, there's still a safe bet at the AFI this week, as the theater is screening a newly restored print of The Godfather.
View the trailer.
One screening daily, Sunday through Wednesday, at the AFI. And if you're looking for The Godfather, that opens tomorrow and runs for one week.