DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Barbara Sukowa (Zeitgeist)“Hemingway was the premature ejaculator of the twentieth century!” “You just hate him because he wrote like a real man!” So goes the terrible expository dialogue in this biopic directed by Margareth von Trotta, once a beacon of the German New Wave with films like The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. I’d blame the bad acting on a language barrier, but English-speaking actors like Janet McTeer as Mary McCarthy mug just as insufferably, and Barabara Sukowa, who was fine in von Trotta’s Hildegarde von Bingen biopic, spends the entire film doing an impersonation in a bad makeup job crudely stolen from a Benny Hill sketch. Pam Katz co-wrote the awful screenplay with von Trotta, and if there’s an expository declaration they failed to make, call them up, they’ll add it. What makes the film watchable at all is the strength of Arendt’s ideas. The movie picks up in 1961 when Arendt was assigned to cover the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker. She returned with the radical notion that the darkest evil may be driven by no baser motive than to follow orders. Controversy ensued over her depiction of the role of Jewish leaders in the Holocaust, but while she digs in her heels, the filmmakers helpfully depict Arendt as a cuddly, chain-smoking wife who loves her husband and made goo-goo eyes at Heidegger. Arendt remains a fascinating figure despite the movie’s flaws. But at times, those flaws, rather than humanize a forbidding subject, simply make the movie nearly unwatchable.
View the trailer.
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema.
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Annie HallAnnie Hall and The Purple Rose of Cairo
Woody Allen’s last movie was a misstep, but in anticipation of Blue Jasmine, opening locally on Aug. 2, the D.C. Jewish Community Center will screen several films from Allen’s classic era. Next week’s double-bill pairs two comedies that to different extents happen to be about going to the movies. In Annie Hall, Alvy Singer (Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) court in and out of New York’s old repertory theaters, arguing with Marshall McCluhan in the lobby of the long-departed New Yorker theater. I won’t spoil the premise of The Purple Rose of Cairo for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but like his recent success Midnight in Paris its story of a depression-era moviegoer (Mia Farrow) is all about the comfort of art and the struggles of reality. Next Thursday the JCC hosts a Woody Allen Happy Hour at Black Whiskey; get more information and tickets here. And last but not least, the JCC will be screening 35-millimeter prints. THANK YOU.
View the trailers for Annie Hall and The Purple Rose of Cairo
Monday-Sunday, July 14 at the Washington, D.C. Jewish Community Center. $11
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(Studiocanal)Paul Raymond began his career with a mind-reading booth, but the attention granted to his beautiful assistant led him on the path to Soho topless clubs. By 1992, he was dubbed the richest man in Great Britain. Steve Coogan teams with Michael Winterbottom again in this biopic of the British porn entrepreneur. The actor-director pair hit their high mark with 24 Hour Party People. The buzz on this collaboration is that despite or maybe even because of the sensationalistic subject matter, Raymond is not a particularly interesting figure.
View the trailer.
Opens today at West End Cinema
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No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos
Cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond cut their Hollywood teeth on no-budget pictures like Wild Guitar and Psycho-a-go-go and nudies like The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill. By the late 1960s, the pair graduated to the Roger Corman B-movie machine. Kovacs’ work on biker films led to his landmark work on Easy Rider, and he recommended his school chum to Robert Altman, which resulted in Zsigmond’s masterful work on McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The Hungarians were responsible for much of the look of the American independent cinema of the 70s. Cinematographers will be intrigued by brief glimpses at camera setups and technical chatter, while the casual movie buff will gain a better appreciation of the art of cinematography with the gorgeous compositions and lighting. Vilmos Zsigmond will appear at the screening in person. Part of the National Gallery of Art’s Hungary, Hero, and Myth series.
View the trailer.
Saturday at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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I’ll let the Washington Psychotronic Film Society describe this Hong Kong slasher: “A long time ago, an evil cat ripped and tore up things on Earth. It had incredible powers and didn’t use the litter box. One family stood up to it and imprisoned it within the Earth. The evil feline has resurfaced and the folks that tried to euthanize it before are dead, but their other kin-folk aren’t. They have to wrassle this freak cat out of its 9 lives.” But really, it had me at “cat.”
View the trailer.
Monday at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s.
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Also opening this weekend, Pedro Almodóvar unsuccessfully returns to outrageous comedy in I’m So Excited. We’ll have a full review later today.
