DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Saoirse Ronan (Magnolia)Teenage Daisy (Saoirse Ronan) is sent across the pond to vacation with cousins in the British countryside, when World War III breaks out. Adapted from the Young Adult novel by Meg Rosoff, How I Live Now is set up like a genre-jumping mix tape, with an audio collage of internal dialogue-cum-impending madness giving way to Amanda Palmer and Fairport Convention, all within the movie’s first five minutes. The movie’s tone shifts along the same lines, from teenage angst to surveillance state satire to a romance between kissing cousins. Director Kevin Macdonald somehow keeps the ship running amid these tonal shifts, and there are some striking images here, but it doesn’t all work, and Ronan doesn’t quite sell the emotional range of her character.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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(The Film Arcade)Joseph’s Levy’s documentary about three very different restaurants is straightforward and kind of square compared to any good cable TV food series. Spinning Plates suffers from a cloying soundtrack that never lets you forget what to feel, adding a slight twang for a family restaurant in America’s heartland and a Latin feel for a struggling Mexican restaurant. But the three stories it blandly tells are stories worth telling, from Chicago’s Alinea, named one of the world’s top ten restaurants, to a family restaurant in Iowa, to an immigrant family’s dream of success in Arizona. The film’s benign surface reveals an underlying injustice as Levy draws parallels between the troubles that befall each of these restaurant’s owners, and the relative difficulty they have overcoming them.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Zombies infest a Southern California coastal town in this 1973 low-budget indie that’s long on atmosphere but short on horror. Directed by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, the same year they wrote the screenplay for American Graffitti, Messiah of Evil doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it’s worth seeing on the big screen, especially for its pivotal grocery store set piece. The AFI tracked down a rare 35mm print for their Horror ’73: An Annus Horribilis at 40 series. With character actor great Elisha Cook., Jr. as a deranged bum.
View the trailer.
November 10 and 11 at the AFI Silver.
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Grace Kelly and friendA former tennis pro (Ray Milland) plots to murder his wife (Grace Kelly) in Dial M for Murder, adapted from a stage play, which doesn’t help the film’s stiffness. This isn’t great Hitchcock or even very good Hitchcock, but the master of the macabre made subtle use of 3D effects to make up for a lack of character depth with visual depth. The AFI Silver will be showing this in 3D from a new 4K digital restoration.
View the trailer.
November 8-14 at the AFI Silver
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“I know, let’s marry the self-deprecating old school television humor of a Jack Benny impersonator with Star Wars-style adventure! It would be like printing money!” said only one person in 1986. Thanks to the Washington Psychotronic Film Society for bringing this low-budget atrocity, which is not available on DVD, to our attention.
View a clip.
Monday, November 11 at McFadden’s. Free.
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Also opening this week, Matthew McConaughey stars as an HIV-positive good ol’ boy in The Dallas Buyers Club. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
