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DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
John Hillcoat's 2006 Aussie Western opens with an aurally shocking shootout in a ramshackle Outback brothel, bullets puncturing the wood and corrugated metal walls allowing new rays of lights into the dim shack. It's a fittingly gripping opening to one of the best (and most criminally overlooked) films of the '00s, and one that, for my money, tops even Unforgiven on the list of the best modern westerns. Guy Pearce plays Charlie, one third of the Burns Brothers gang, a group of outlaws known across this section of the newly settled Australia of the 1880s for the shocking brutality of their crimes. His younger brother Mikey is a simpleton and obviously just along for the ride. His older brother Arthur is the psychopathic and soulless mastermind. When a small town captain catches the younger two following a particularly heinous rape and slaying, he tells Charlie he'll spare them both the gallows if he brings him the head of his oldest brother.
As Charlie seeks out his brother, wrestling with himself and how to play this hand, the captain is dealing with townspeople that want Mikey's blood, and want it now, all while trying to shield his wife (Emily Watson, in an amazing performance), who is not quite the shy retiring flower he treats her as, from all the ugliness of a land he's determined to civilize. The script, by Nick Cave (who also contributed to a pitch-perfect soundtrack), is no rock star vanity project; Cave imbues this story with the sort of nuance and complexity (as well as bloody violence) of his finest murder balladry. His story was hailed in Australia for being one of the most accurate (and, as it follows, disgusting and upsetting) depictions of the colonization of the continent and subjugation of its Aboriginal peoples ever filmed. As for Hillcoat, if anyone doubted whether he was the right choice to direct the upcoming adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, let this serve as more than justification enough; the director has a particular eye for finding beauty in the bleak, and tiny rays of hope amid the most soul-crushing despair.
View the trailer.
Tonight through Saturday, and Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, at the AFI. Tonight's screening includes an introduction by University of Maryland professor Torey Liepa.
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In conjunction with the National Gallery's continuing exhibition, Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans", the museum is presenting a month long film series dedicated to the photographer and filmmaker. The series includes many of Frank's more recent short films, a collection of avant-garde shorts by other filmmakers reflective of the spirit of Franks' work, and documentaries from various points and perspectives throughout his career. This weekend's program falls into the latter category, a brief half hour video documentary (Fire in the East) from the mid-80s that features interviews with Allen Ginsberg, Emile de Antonio, Jonas Mekas, Rudy Wurlitzer, June Leaf, and John Szarkowski.
Fire in the East screens tomorrow and Saturday at 12:30 p.m. in the National Gallery's East Building Concourse Auditorium. Additional Robert Frank Programs will be shown throughout April. See the schedule for details. All programs are free of charge.
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You've got to hand it to Zhang Yimou. It seemed he was coming late to the game, as a high profile Chinese director suddenly making a martial arts film after a long career of serious drama. Hadn't Ang Lee already done that with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and in so doing managed to bring martial arts cinema to a broad mainstream American audience? While Zhang's film certainly didn't match its predecessor in box office receipts (it might not even have been released in the U.S. if not for the efforts of Quentin Tarantino to secure a North American release), from just a visual perspective, the film is a jaw-dropping achievement, from the director's inventive, symbolic, and gorgeous use of color, to the carefully choreographed ballets of the fight scenes, which are beautifully integrated into their surroundings. The images created in the fight between Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi (pictured at right) amid swirling autumn leaves are impossible to erase from the brain. Some (mostly Western) critics have objected strongly to a perceived pro-totalitarian bias in the story of a King seeking to become the emperor of a unified China, but this subtext hardly detracts from a film that succeeds on so many levels.
View the trailer.
Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at the Library of Congress' Mary Pickford Theater. Free.
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I'll admit to an overriding weakness for '50s sci-fi spoofs and homages. Few genres and time periods (with the possible exception of '70s disaster flicks) lend themselves so well to parody, what with the deadpan dramatics and sky-is-falling cataclysmic storylines. Plus, looking cheap and having poor production values never hurts these films, since their inspirations are just as quick and dirty. No need to recount the plot elements here. You can pretty much guess: the California desert, a flying saucer, a handsome scientist, his pretty blonde love interest, and a podunk local police force that contributes to its own already substantial ineptitude through its non-belief in the fantastic events going down around them. Hopefully director R.W. Goodwin, a veteran behind the camera at the X-Files and other TV shows, can wring serious laughs out of this setup. If not, movies like this are usually at least good for some unintentional laughs, particularly with chemical aids.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Cinema.
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Director Greg Mottola follows up the success of Superbad with a more personal comedy that mirrors his own experiences in the late 1980s as a recent college graduate with zero job prospects. Directing from his own script for the first time since the solid black comic indie The Daytrippers, Mottola tells the story of James (Jesse Eisenberg), who has a recently minted diploma and plans to celebrate with a European vacation. Only mom and dad are no longer going to foot the bill, forcing James into that most demoralizing of summer jobs, working the local amusement park. Mottola's got the usual cast of Apatow/SNL alums on board, including Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Martin Starr, as well as Ryan Reynolds, who we actually think is pretty funny when not attached to idiotic projects. Given the autobiographical nature, we're expecting something with a slightly sweeter and less crass temperament than Superbad, but with no shortage of laughs.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at a number of theaters throughout the area.
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The criticism on Hero having a totalitarian overtone... well yeah. This tells a story of the Qin Emperor who unified China into the totalitarian hegemony that has effectively continued to this day (albeit under different names and leaders, and I mean that only half-jokingly). Why were Westerners surprised when a value other than democracy was celebrated?