DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
What it is: The AFI saved the best for last in its three-part Hitchcock Retrospective.
Why you want to see it: Mistaken identity is a plot line as old as Oedipus, but is there any version more thrilling than this masterpiece of cat and mouse intrigue on the American road? Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) is having a lovely time with his mum (Jessie Royce Landis, who was only eight years older than Grant) at The Plaza when an uncannily timed phone call sends him on a cross-country wild goose-hunt. And since this is mid-career Hitchcock, there has to be a cool blonde (Evan Marie Saint). The second most famous sequence in Hitchcockiana (after the shower scene) has to be the crop-dusting scene, a brilliantly staged and edited set piece that, as exciting as it is, is about so much more than it looks. Grant and a stranger begin the scene at opposite ends of a wide screen composition: man’s natural alienation from his fellow man. What happens when that distance is bridged? Aerial tricks, smoke and danger, and finally, a disaster that brings humanity together for one of the great shared activities: rubbernecking. I never grow tired of this film, and if you’ve never seen it, the AFI’s big screen is a great place to start.
Also note that by popular demand (full disclosure: I was one of the demanders), the AFI has rescheduled a 70mm screening of Lifeforce preempted by Irene. Friday, September 2nd at 11:00 p.m., you have another chance to catch a 1980s cult hit that has a vital connection to the golden age of cinema: the theme for Lifeforce was written by none other than Henry Mancini.
View the trailer for North by Northwest.
Saturday, September 3 at 7:15 p.m.; Sunday, September 4 at 2:20 p.m.; Monday, September 5 at 7:00 p.m. At the AFI Silver.
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What it is: An Aussie superhero or a coming of age movie? You’re both right.
Why you want to see it: The typical superhero movie is one or two parts identity crisis mixed with several parts saving the world, a generous helping of testosterone and an optional dash of rom-com. But what if the formula were inverted? What if the superhero tale was a story of finding your voice, with a heaping tablespoon of meet-cute? This is the perhaps too sweet conceit of the Aussie indie hit Griff the Invisible. I can be very forgiving of finding-your-voice movies, from Straw Dogs to She’s the Man. But if a tagline like, “The only superpower is love” raises your unibrow, there’s good reason. Self-consciousness can lead to smugness — look how special I am! — and this unfortunately overcomes the script’s charms like a fleet of masked marauders. Griff (True Blood‘s Ryan Kwanten) is a twenty-eight year old office geek bullied by his co-workers, but at night he dons a rubber suit and chases off muggers with no discernible superpowers other than a need to act as special as he feels. His brother Tim (Patrick Brammall) shows up with geeky new girlfriend Melody (Maeve Dermody), and naturally his brother’s girl and Griff are meant for each other. These characters have potential, but they’re slathered in contrivance. Griff, the character, and the movie, wants to be liked very badly, and you want to like him/it, but he/it is just too damn self-conscious. Kwanten’s role is the kind of mooncalf that the young Johnny Depp used to play, but the True Blood star, and his brother, seem to be knowingly playing types: The Geek and His Concerned but Out-of-Touch Brother. Maeve Dermody is the only one who’s allowed to be natural — and since her character is introduced trying to walk through walls to test her theory of permeable matter, you can appreciate the magnitude of her achievement. Griff has its heart in the right place, and its no crime to present it on its sleeve. But as Griff darts down the street in costume, you can’t help but feel he’s running from the real characters hiding underneath that precious quirk.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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What it is: Rural romance in the Avalon’s Greek Cinema series.
Why you want to see it: John Hughes may never have tackled the delicate subject of artificial insemination in livestock, but leave it to the Greeks to ride that bull for all the adolescent melodrama it’s worth. This tale of teenage girlfriends who have a lot to learn about love and the slaughterhouse is a coming of age movie in more ways than one. Whether the film addresses man’s complicated relationship with animals remains to be seen. But the title alone just screams “date night,” doesn’t it? Go on, ye strapping fieldhand, go ask that cute milkmaid if she wants to see The Cow’s Orgasm, and watch her face light up.
View the trailer.
Wednesday, September 7 at 8:00 p.m. at the Avalon.
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A Polish Quartet: Jerzy Skolimowski in the 1960s
What it is: The early films of a Polish New Wave director.
Why you want to see it: Skolimowski may best known for co-writing Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water, but his own films are seldom screened in these parts. His most recent picture, Essential Killing (2010) was a well-regarded study of terrorism but never found a US distributor. Over the next two weekends, the National Gallery will screen the four low-budget, semi-autobiographical films which launched his career as a director. This weekend’s titles include Identification Marks: None and Walkover, both of which star the Skolimowski himself as Andrzej, a young man who finds himself on the edge of conformity and rebellion.
Identification Marks: None screens Saturday, September 3 at 4:00 p.m. Walkover screens Sunday, September 4 at 4:30 p.m. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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After-school SpecialWhat it is: A popular showcase for short films from around the world, now in its eighth year.
Why you want to see it: 145 films from 23 countries in 11 days is a lot of ground to cover, but odds are good you’ll see something interesting in one of this festival’s 17 90-minute showcases. The programs begin next Thursday with screenings at E Street and the Artisphere. Showcase 1 offers a typical variety, from “The Man in 813”, the first film by local electronic musician Arlin Godwin, to the intriguing “After-school Special”, written by misanthropic playwright Neil LaBute (Nurse Betty).
September 8-18 at E Street, Artisphere, Atlas Performing Arts Center and the U.S. Navy Memorial. Check the festival website for details.
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Also opening this week: John Sayles’ look at the Philippine-American War, Amigo. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
