DCist’s highly selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies coming to town in the coming week.
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Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan (Merrick Morton/Fox Searchlight)Mild-mannered author Calvin (Paul Dano) struggles with writer’s block ten years after penning a best-selling novel that he has been unable to follow up. One day, he’s shocked to find an unexpected guest in his apartment: the female character he’s been writing about (Zoe Kazan). Calvin is in full authorial control of his new girlfriend: anything he writes about Ruby comes true. But what happens when she develops her own personality? For the first half of Ruby Sparks, directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine) don’t do much to shake the sense that we’re watching anything more than an indie version of Three’s Company. But the tone shifts in ways I don’t want to spoil. Star and screenwriter Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of legendary director Elia Kazan, was inspired by the sight of a discarded mannequin, and a subsequent bad dream resulted in her riff on the Pygmalion myth. She told a preview audience that “women make something out of their bodies. It’s a particular male fantasy to create.” Kazan’s smart script weaves in rich themes of creativity, control, and relationships, but it doesn’t get the direction it needs to fully resolve the conflict between sit-com and thriller.
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Now playing at E STreet, AMC Georgetown and Bethesda Row
The best art documentary of the year is also one of the best films of the year. First-time director Alison Klayman profiles a modern artist whose relevance is political and personal, daring and whimsical — check out his door-opening cat. For its screenings at Silverdocs I wrote,
Dissident artist Ai Weiwei received international attention in 2011 when he was arrested in Beijing on trumped up charges of tax evasion. But did you know he used to work at New York’s Second Avenue Deli? Alison Klayman’s documentary takes its name from the sardonically named exhibit Ai Weiwei: So Sorry, which plays with Chinese stereotypes in the same way that Weiwei plays with and even destroys Chinese antiquities in the name of art. But his bad boy attitude strikes not just at artistic norms but at a repressive and opaque government. In the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Chinese officials refused to release official counts of the thousands of schoolchildren who died when their “tofu-skin” schools collapsed. Weiwei conducted his own investigation into the names of these children and based one of his most expansive works on this research. Weiwei’s art, which is currently on view in Washington at the Hirshhorn Museum and Freer and Sackler Galleries, may be in your face, but so is his life
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Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Rialto Pictures/PhotofestRevolution is in the cinematic air, from the latest installment of the Step Up series to The Dark Knight Returns. Christopher Nolan recently told critic Mark Kermode that he screened Gillo Pontecorvo’s study of insurrection for the crew of this year’s tragic blockbuster. But there may be no better fictional document of uprising than this arthouse classic, so realistic that the film begins with a title card explaining that it’s a work of fiction. Its immediacy and intensity is peerless, its relevance universal.
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Screens Saturday at 4:00 pm at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Wang Xueqi (Samuel Goldwyn Films)General Tu’an Gu (Wang Xueqi) wipes out the entire Zhao clan in order to rise to power. But thanks to a court doctor Ge You (Cheng Ying) who sacrifices his own son for that of a Zhao infant, the lineage survives, and the doctor plans his revenge. Director Chen Kaige is best known for glorious period dramas like Farewell my Concubine. This tale of family and revenge takes too much time to set up its key conflict, and unlike his best films emphasizes spectacle as much as character. But once the pieces are in place, the spectacle and character blend together for a thrilling and visually sumptuous melodrama of trust and payback.
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Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Virginie Ledoyen and Diane Kruger (Lumiere)Sidonie (Léa Seydoux) is one of the favored ladies-in-waiting in the court of Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger). But when news of July 14th starts to spread through the halls of Versailles, her loyalty is tested by her need to escape. Director Benoit Jacquot gets intimate performances out of most of his ensemble cast, though the Harry Lime-ish way he puts off the appearance of Virginie Ledoyen (the future Gatsby’s co-star in The Beach) leaves her as more of a lesbian trophy than a character. The film is sensuous and sordid, unafraid to show the dead rats that plagued the royal quarters. For some moviegoers this period piece may be a welcome corrective to one controversial portrayal of the doomed monarch, but is it wrong of me to prefer Sofia Coppola’s divisive new wave vision of the palace? Farewell My Queen is a period piece with that resonates with the Occupy era, but the more interesting cautionary tale may be found in the palace as metaphor: Lauren Greenfield’s documentary Queen of Versailles.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Bethesda Row.
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Also opening this week, two very different responses to the economic crisis: photographer Lauren Greenfield’s documentary on the making of America’s largest home, Queen of Versailles; and the latest installment of the successful dance franchise, Step Up Revolution. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
