Popcorn & Candy: Keep it Like a Secret
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
The Secret Policeman's Film Festival
In 1979, John Cleese and producer Martin Lewis helped put together a benefit for Amnesty International that featured half the members of Monty Python, a number of UK stand-ups and sketch comedy performers, and an acoustic set from Pete Townsend. The show became the genesis for not only a continuing series of Secret Policeman Balls that continued throughout the past 30 years (under a different name from 1991-2001), but that also inspired numerous similar events from Band Aid to Live Aid to Comic Relief. In addition to raising large amounts of money for Amnesty International, the events have produced dozens of memorable comedic and musical performances.
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first ball, the AFI is presenting a five-day festival of films from the balls over the years. Some of these are existing films that were put together at the time, and that have been available on video and DVD for years, while others compile rare clips that haven't seen the light of day in years into brand new collections put together specifically for the anniversary. Tonight at 6 p.m., the festival kicks off with a free screening of Triumph of the Ball, a 40-minute compilation from across all 30 years of the events, put together specifically for the AFI's festival. Martin Lewis will be in attendance at this, and a number of future screenings over the next five days.
View a classic John Cleese-Peter Cook sketch from the original 1979 Secret Policeman's Ball.
Opens tonight at the AFI and runs through December 15. See the schedule for details.
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Solas Nua, the District's leading purveyor of Irish culture, presented its first film festival within its first year of existence, but the festival only evolved into its current name and structure last year. This year's lineup has an impressive selection of 15 features and a number of shorts presented over the next ten days. The festival's biggest coup comes on opening night tonight, when they present the D.C. premiere of theater giant Conor McPherson's third feature as a film director, The Eclipse, an Irish seaside drama with an element of ghostly horror. Also on the roster is artist Steve McQueen's directorial debut, Hunger, which had a brief theatrical run in D.C. earlier this year. If you missed it then, don't let it slip by you again, as this harrowing, haunting account of the imprisonment and hunger strike of prominent IRA figure Bobby Sands is an extraordinary piece of cinema. And there's plenty more, just check the schedule for the rest.
View the trailer for Hunger.
Opens tonight at E Street and continues through December 20 with screenings there as well as at the Goethe Institut and Fort Fringe. See the schedule for full details.
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This documentary, which first screened in D.C. over the summer at Silverdocs, follows a social experiment/art project that was something like a cross between The Real World and Big Brother, with Dante serving as producer to this hellish re-imagining. Josh Harris' 1999 experiment had all the hallmarks of a combination of those reality shows: strangers coming to live together, a sealed-off NYC loft that no one could enter or exit, and cameras documenting the whole experience. Where it diverged was in the amount and quality of the mayhem Harris's scenario encouraged: 100 people were living in the loft; cameras in every corner ensured absolutely nothing was private, not even bedroom and bathroom activities; and just to up the chaotic ante, Harris provided recreational drugs and alcohol along with food. The whole thing became such a hellhole that FEMA stepped in and shut it down; undeterred, Harris tried again, this time with just him and his new girlfriend as the subjects. The complete lack of privacy resulted in some relationship difficulties. Ondi Timoner, director of one of the finest rock and roll documentaries ever made (Dig!, which is also about complete meltdowns of social mores), spent years documenting Harris's work on these projects.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Where is the line drawn between crackpot conspiracy theorism, astutely researched and reasoned prognostication, and pure prophecy? And regardless of which activity someone engages in, how does the relentless and obsessive pursuit of future truths affect one's life? That's the subject of Chris Smith's documentary, Collapse, which continues Smith's track record of idiosyncratic portraits of fringe characters, from American Movie to The Yes Men. In this case, the character is Michael Ruppert, the author, former L.A. cop, and self-described investigative reporter with a number of controversial theories and predictions on subjects ranging from the Sept. 11 attacks to the financial collapse to the dire consequences of living in a world at or past peak oil. Smith spent five days interviewing in a stark abandoned meat locker and whittled the footage down into a film that is mostly an hour and a half of Ruppert talking, interspersed with footage of the events he's talking about. Smith is less interested in whether or not Ruppert's theories have any basis as he is in simply finding out what drives the man, and what his life has become.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI.
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Zak Efron is the big star here, probably the reason Richard Linklater got funding to make the project, and the "Me" of the title, but make no mistake: even in death, even as a fictional character, Orson Welles remains far too charismatic a personality to be relegated to a supporting role. Linklater, a Welles aficionado, recognizes this and uses the "primary" plot — in which Efron plays a high school student who manages to land a small role in Welles' groundbreaking, star-making 1937 stage production of Julius Caesar — mostly as a vehicle to tell the more interesting story. The production may make Efron's Richard into a man, but it made the 22-year-old Welles into a star, and that's really what Linklater is focusing on here. As a coming of age story and a romantic vehicle for Efron, it's passable at best; the real attraction is Christian McKay, a British stage and television actor who delivers the most pitch-perfect portrayal of Welles yet seen in a film. It's impossible for Welles — ever egotistical, abrasive, abusive, yet somehow magnetically likable — to be anything but the star, and the truth is that Caesar was a coming of age of sorts for him as well. This account of his first highly public triumph is as entertaining as it is fascinating.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street, Shirlington, and the Regal Bethesda.