DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Aniello Arena and Loredana Simioli (Oscilloscope Laboratories)Director Matteo Garrone’s 2008 breakout film Gomorrah was a brutal look at mafia families in modern-day Italy. His new film takes what at first seems like a more light-hearted subject. Reality starts with a garish, extravagant wedding out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Into this wedding walks Luciano (Aniello Arena) a fishmonger in clown makeup playing a fool for wedding guests. When Luciano tries out for the Italian version of Big Brother, his taste for the spotlight becomes a consuming obsession. Ironically, the onscreen story of Reality pales next to the truth behind it. Its leading man is currently serving a life sentence for killing three men. For ten years, Aniello Arena has been involved in a theater group at Volterra Prison, a Tuscan institution known as much for its food as for its theatrical productions. Arena’s first feature film has earned him praise for a role bitterly informed by his plight: that of a man trapped by his own desires.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
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©2011 Chizuru Takahashi – Tetsuro Sayama – GNDHDDTYokohama, 1963. Umi and Shun are a couple of high school kids excited and apprehensive about their country’s plan to host the 1964 Olympics, and about each other. You wouldn’t think a studio known for teenage witches and cat busses to produce this kind of neo-realist tale, but Studio Ghibli trains its art on something less fanciful than My Neighbor Totoro but with just as much grace and affection. Studio founder Hayao Miyazaki scripted the latest release from his celebrated animation studio but handed directorial reins over to his son Goro in their first multi-generational effort. Area theaters will screen the English-dubbed version, with the voice talents of Gillian Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bruce Dern, Jeff Dunham, Christina Hendricks, Ron Howard, and Aubrey Plaza, among plenty of others.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Regal Gallery Place and Angelika Mosaic.
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Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in The Black Cat (UCLA Film and Television Archive) In conjunction with Universal Pictures and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the National Gallery of Art will screen 35mm prints of some of the best-loved films from this legendary studio. This weekend’s program is for the classic horror fan, with iconic roles for two of the genre’s premier actors, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, both starring in Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat. Also screening is Karloff as The Mummy and Lugosi in Robert Florey’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue.
View trailers for The Mummy and Murders in the Rue Morgue.
The Mummy, followed by Murders in the Rue Morgue, screens Saturday, April 6 at noon. The Black Cat screens Saturday, April 6 at 2:30 pm. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Stoker director Park Chan-wook is best known for his brutally violent revenge trilogy, but this 2006 film found him in a playful romantic mood, at least as playful and romantic as you can get inside a mental institution. Factory worker Young-Goon is the titular heroine, who is not okay when she slashes her arm open (this still is Park Chan-wook after all) to install electrical wires.
View the trailer.
Tuesday April 9-Wednesday April 10 at the AFI.
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Beijing Flickers (April 12 and 13 at the Avalon)The international film festival is now in its 27th year. I’ve seen a lot of great movies at this festival over the decades: Mani Ratnam’s Iruvar and Dil Se (featuring one of the greatest musical numbers of all time), Guy Madin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital, The Buddha of Suburbia. Last year’s festival gave DC audiences their first look at my favorite movie of 2012, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. So if the films available for preview have not yet revealed a new favorite, who knows what sleepers are on the schedule? The festival opens next Thursday with the premiere of Underground: The Julian Assange Story. The hacker’s coming-of-age story won’t end up on my top ten, but there’s plenty more where that came from, including the espionage showcase Trust No One, comedic crowd-pleasers in The Lighter Side, Justice Matters, and Sister Cities through the Lens. A handful of titles are already slated for commercial release, so that means you can get an early look at Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (Mehta and Rushdie are scheduled to appear at the April 13th screening), Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell (April 14 at E Street), the Oscar-nominated Kon-Tiki (April 12 and 13 at Mazza Gallerie), and others. Or you could skip them for something you won’t be able to see elsewhere.
View trailers for Underground: The Julian Assange Story, Beijing Flickers, and Museum Hours
April 11-21 at area venues. Check the festival website for a full schedule.
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Also opening this week, director Miguel Gomes’ moving search for a woman’s past, Tabu. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
