DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Indie: Control
Live fast, die young. The two most important rules to follow for rock ‘n’ roll immortality. We suppose having great music probably helps, too. Ian Curtis followed those rules, and enjoys a massive cult following nearly three decades after his death. Maybe “enjoys” is the wrong word. As the years have passed and Joy Division’s stature as one of the most important post-punk bands ever to come out of England (or anywhere else for that matter) has grown, so has Curtis’ own personal legend as the troubled and somewhat enigmatic frontman for the group. His wife Deborah’s mid-90s biography, Touching from a Distance, presented a much clearer picture of the singer, and that book has served as the basis for Control, the first biopic on the singer (excluding his periphery role in Michael Winterbottom’s Factory Records movie, 24 Hour Party People).
It also marks the feature filmmaking debut of Anton Corbijn, who has made a career out of taking some of the most iconic rock photography of the last 30 years. He actually started to become well known at around the same time that Curtis hit his own peak of fame, and some of Corbijn’s early assignments as an NME photographer were shooting Joy Division. It should come as no surprise then, that Control is a beautiful visual achievement, Corbijn working in his customary monochrome. Hopefully the story and the execution live up to both the visuals and to the stature of its tragic subject.
View the trailer.
Playing tonight at the AFI, and for one week only at E Street Cinema starting tomorrow.
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Foreign: European Union Film Showcase
The American Film Institute has joined forces with the European Union’s D.C. delegation to put together, for the 20th year, a collection of some of the best in European filmmaking. The showcase’s roster covers 32 films from 25 countries, including nine countries’ Oscar submissions for this year, plus three more from 2006. Among the highlights are the latest from Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, winner of the Director prize at Cannes this year, Anton Corbijn’s Control, which premieres tonight on the eve of its general theatrical release, and Persepolis, the animated feature adaptation of co-director Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel of her childhood in Iran following the revolution. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though, and the next three weeks are stuffed full of great foreign films at the AFI.
Runs from November 1-20. Full showcase guide available here.
