Popcorn & Candy: Against the Grain
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
As the record-breaking first receipts roll in for advance sales and early screenings, it's clear that 99.9% of you plan to spend your moviegoing time this weekend dressed up as golden snitches — or at least in the same movie houses as people who are. But there are surely a few folks out there looking for some alternative or additional programming to the adventures of The Boy Who Lived. (500) Days of Summer is one of the few movies brave enough to go up against the Potter juggernaut, hoping that the very specific niche market for quirky indie-esque romantic comedies with great soundtracks will be big enough for some modest success.
On the surface, the film's pedigree doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence. "From the writers of The Pink Panther 2" doesn't have a whole lot of cache in newspaper ads. What it does have going for it is casting. Zooey Deschanel — the face that launched a thousand indie fanboy crushes — plays the titular Summer, a girl who doesn't believe in love. Which is a tough break for the guy who falls for her, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is quietly establishing himself as one of the finest actors of his generation (his upcoming turn as Cobra Commander in the reportedly awful G.I. Joe notwithstanding). Romantic comedies aren't inherently bad; it only seems that way because they usually are that bad, and one need only look to classic rom-coms from Hollywood's golden era to know that casting is key — a fact that seems lost on every person who keeps giving Matthew McConaughey's abs starring roles. Summer looks to offer some light romantic summer pleasure, sans guilt.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Georgetown, Chinatown, and Bethesda Row.
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Gene Screen: A Night of Film on Health and Genetics
A little farther off the beaten path, there's a free mini-film festival tonight at E Street. The Genetic Alliance, a locally based non-profit health advocacy group, solicited entries for short films based on health and genetics, and from those submissions selected five films that will all screen tonight at 6:30. The selected films range from basic genetics primers to films about people suffering from specific genetic maladies. After all the films have screened, there will be a moderated panel discussion/Q&A with filmmakers from two of the films.
Tonight only at 6:30 p.m. at E Street Cinema.
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François Truffaut continued his impressive run of early films with his third feature, which was based on a book he happened upon in a secondhand bookshop. While the New Wave was in full swing by the time the film came out, it still seemed revolutionary, combining the experimentalism of his (then) friend Jean-Luc Godard with the effortless storytelling technique that always made him the more popular of the two biggest personalities of the movement. What's remarkable about the film is not just Truffaut's technique, which weaves together newsreel footage, freewheeling hand-held camera work by Raoul Coutard, and self-conscious but never pretentious editing techniques. More than that, it's the fact that he takes such heavy subject matter and makes a film that is typified by — and so often is remembered for — its lighter moments. It's ostensibly a tragedy about love and failed relationships set around World War I, but it never feels like it gives up on the joys of love, even as it presents its failings. Jeanne Moreau is radiant as the love interest of the two men of the title, two men who both spend most of their adult lives pursuing (and sometimes attaining) her affections. It's a triad that you know will end badly &mdash a number of times, in a number of ways — yet it never comes off as jaded or cynical.
View the trailer.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the AFI
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Local filmmaker Aviva Kempner gained a good deal of well-deserved recognition for her first documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, a profile of the first Jewish baseball player to play in the major leagues. Continuing in the same vein of groundbreaking members of the Jewish community, she now turns her camera on Gertrude Berg, the Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress who was a pioneer of both radio and television situation comedy with her long-running character Molly Goldberg, who first debuted on radio in 1929 in The Rise of the Goldbergs and made the jump to television 20 years later in 1949. Not only did she play the character for 25 years, but she also wrote most of the episodes. Kempner profiles Berg through footage of her works, as well as interviews with prominent members of the Jewish community who were inspired by her, both from the content of her show (an upwardly mobile Jewish family) to her skills as an artist. Interviewees include Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, actor Ed Asner, and legendary television producer Norman Lear.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at The Avalon.
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Yet another entry in the time-honored tradition of films about inspirational — if non-traditional — teachers, Pressure Cooker documents three Philadelphia high schoolers who each are looking to get into culinary school. Their relentless driver is Wilma Stephenson, a culinary arts teacher who has established herself as something of a legend within the Philly school system for her ability to motivate high school students in a class many kids tend to use as an excuse to mess around. One look at the trailer, and it's obvious why: Stephenson comes off more as drill instructor than teacher. If I was in her class, I'd be motivated to cook better, too.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at
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Afghan Star, which played at SILVERDOCS last month, is also getting a theatrical release this week, and opens tomorrow at E Street. We reviewed it during the festival.