Updated Forecast: In Excess of 8" of Snow, Plus Wind
Federal Govt. Closed Tuesday
And Now, 10-20 Inches
Morning Roundup: After the Snowfall Edition
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Devil's Night falls on a Friday this year, so why is it that the studios aren't taking advantage? There's not a single horror movie being released wide this weekend, which leaves us with nothing but a couple of holdovers from the previous weeks for anyone looking for cinematic scares. The AFI's always excellent Halloween on Screen series has plenty of great repertory to offer of course, including tomorrow's annual Nosferatu screening, but that's really about all that's going on in the metro area.
There is, however, an option for those willing (and able) to wander a little farther afield. The Library of Congress has an excellent Devil's Night program on tap with a double feature of classic horror. First up is Mario Bava's Black Sunday, the landmark Italian vampire/witchcraft blend that served as the bridge between the mannered Gothic horror of the early 20th century and the gore-fests that would come to define the genre. That's followed by the occult classic The Wicker Man. If you've only ever seen the hilariously awful Nicholas Cage remake, you owe it to yourself to wipe that from your mind with the genuinely unsettling 1973 original, shown here in a rare print from the LOC's vaults.
The only problem? Those vaults, and the gorgeous new theater the LOC built to go along with them, are located in a vast complex in Culpeper, Virgina, a two hour drive from downtown in the best of situations, and plenty more than that on a Friday evening. Which is great for providing a massive space to accommodate the LOC's important task in preserving film history, not so great for actually presenting those films to the nearest population center. For those of you who live and work in the outer VA suburbs, or anywhere between Chantilly and Charlottesville, it's a fantastic place to see a movie. And their programming, as it was when they were screening at the Pickford theater in D.C., is still diverse and consistently great. But for those of us inside the beltway, or without a vehicle, it's just not a viable option. While the Pickford wasn't the greatest place to see a movie, it was at least accessible. The LOC still includes a link to the Pickford schedule on their site, but it hasn't been updated since they quietly ended screenings there in the spring. I'm told by an LOC employee that the Pickford is a "thing of the past."
It's really a shame that one of the greatest film archives in the world has intentionally rendered their regular peeks into their collection inaccessible to most of the metro population they once served. Hopefully they'll realize that and re-institute D.C. screenings; but that probably depends on how much they hear from you.
View the trailers for Black Sunday and The Wicker Man.
Tomorrow at 7:30 p.m. at the Library of Congress' Packard Campus Theater in Culpeper, VA. Free.
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In other news of movies disappointingly not coming to theaters near us, there's the case of The House of the Devil, which is, so far, one of the best reviewed horror movies of the year. But not only is it only opening on only three screens nationwide this weekend, the movie's distributor only has it lined up for nine screens in the next month. And there are no plans, according to a representative, to open in D.C. at all. Number of theaters that opened with Saw VI last weekend? 3,036. Something's wrong there.
However, D.C. residents can still watch it, as it's available to those with cable as an on-demand title. I hate including films you can't see on a big screen in this space, but this one is worth breaking convention, especially if you're a fan of the kind of atmospheric 1970s/80s tension-building horror that director Ti West so effectively pays homage to here. It's not for everyone; if you always thought your little brother and his nerdy friends were a little odd for coming home from Hollywood Video on the weekends with obscure Eurotrash occult films, you'll probably hate House of the Devil, which spends at least 90 percent of its running time with no scares at all, just winding the tension tighter than might seem possible with its generic "babysitter alone in a big house" premise. Its bloody finale contrasts the slow build by going completely – almost laughably – over the top, but that's pretty standard for this kind of Satanic cult flick, and part of the fun. West's skill at recreating the feel of this brand of thriller, without ever letting the resurrected genre conventions descend into parody, is the real attraction. Appearances by cult faves Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov make the whole deal even sweeter.
View the trailer.
Unfortunately not playing in any area theaters, and not likely to, but well worth the On Demand rental if this is the sort of thing you usually go for.
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In a glaring oversight, I failed to mention the AFI's excellent noir series in last week's column. The series runs for two weeks, so there are still plenty of girls & guns features yet to come. Highlights from the rest of the series include Robert Siodmak's classic adaptation of Hemingway's short story The Killers, with a young Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. Also on the schedule is Out of the Past, a defining noir with Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas, directed by Jacques Tourneur. Out of the Past is so beautifully shot by Nicholas Musuraca that you could just watch it with the sound off and take in the carefully shadowed images. Sunday afternoon's screening of the film includes a panel discussion assembled by the Film Noir Foundation, who always do such an excellent job with putting together this festival every year.
Continues through November 4 at the AFI. Check the schedule for full listings.
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This new thriller by director Dante Lam has been hailed as one of the best Hong Kong action flicks in recent memory, with some critics talking about it with the same reverence reserved for other latter-day classics like Infernal Affairs (which was remade by Martin Scorcese as The Departed). If it's as good as many have said, can a Hollywood remake be far behind? Tonight, the Hirshhorn is giving local audiences a chance to see the film, which never got U.S. theatrical distribution apart from a few festival screenings. The plot is just as convoluted as one can usually expect from the genre, with kidnappings, murders, and multiple storylines about cops, crooks, lawyers, intricately interwoven from different perspectives in present-day and flashback. At the center of it all is a troubled police sergeant and the killer he's on the hunt for.
View the trailer.
Tonight at 8 p.m. at the Hirshhorn. Free.
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Michael Moore used the gambling analogy in his discussion of predatory mortgage lending in his Capitalism: A Love Story. For those who thought that section was the film's strongest, and wish it could have been stretched out in more in-depth fashion for the entire running time, there's American Casino, in which filmmakers Leslie and Bruce Cockburn explore this predatory crapshoot from every angle. For the human fallout side of the story, much of their shooting was done in Baltimore's inner city neighborhoods, and they use local hip-hop artists to score much of it as well.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI. Leslie and Bruce Cockburn, the film's writer/producer/directors, will be in attendance at tomorrow's 7:10 p.m. screening.
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Novelist Nick Hornby (who we recently interviewed), hasn't waded back into the waters of screenwriting since he adapted his own work for the the original British version of his novel Fever Pitch over ten years ago. For his second foray, he's chosen to adapt not his own work, but a portion of the autobiography of British journalist Lynn Barber. The adapted section focuses on Barber's coming of age in 1960s London, and an affair she has with an older man (played here by Peter Sarsgaard, with Carey Mulligan playing "Jenny," the Barber character, in a role for which the actress is already getting Oscar buzz).
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street, Bethesda Row, and Cinema Arts.
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Somebody get that girl a tube of Clearasil.