DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Repertory: The Third Man
The AFI continues to please with yet another showing of an absolute must-see classic. Last week it was The 400 Blows, and this week it’s three showings of Carol Reed’s gripping British noir, The Third Man. Based on a story and a screenplay by Graham Greene, the movie is a study in dark mystery, as characters skulk about the inky shadows of post-war Vienna trying to figure out just what it is that happened to Harry Lime, the character played with dark menace by Orson Welles. Here’s a case where production difficulties actually may have contributed to some of the unintended brilliance of the final product. Reed was forced to shoot around the absence of his star, who pulled a Marlon Brando and showed up weeks late to the shoot. Reed filmed a number of scenes with a body double, and as a result, in many of Welles’ scenes, he appears as simply an unrecognizable shape, melting into the shadows before we can get a glimpse of him. The film was ranked the best British Film of all time by the British Film Institute, and, oddly enough, the 57th greatest American film of all time by the American Institute (based on one American producer). We’ll go with the Brits: #1 seems a far better place for a film this good to reside.
View the trailer.
Showing on Tuesday, and then Saturday and Sunday of the following
weekend at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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Indie: Juno
Juno has a couple of things working against it. First, there’s its status as this year’s quirky little indie (or quasi-indie) that could. That title almost went to the surprisingly excellent Lars and the Real Girl, but buzz for Juno is reaching Little Miss Sunshine proportions. And, as LMS taught us, movies that sell themselves purely on cutesy quirk are bound to disappoint, even if they are entertaining. More annoying is the constant habit of the film’s marketing team to mention at every chance they get that the film’s writer, first time screenwriter Diablo Cody, used to be a stripper. Hasn’t pretty much every screenwriter held a weird odd job or two before they finally managed to sell a script? Granted, in Cody’s case, she was disrobing as a sociological experiment, but all the movie’s PR firm seems to want you to know is, “Wow! She was a stripper and then she wrote a movie!” Which is pretty insulting when you read the surprise implied in their tone. Anyway, apart from all this, the movie’s drawing rave reviews, so it appears this one is more than just the sum of its quirks. At the very least it’s an opportunity to see two cast members from the sorely missed Arrested Development back on screen together again.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street, Bethesda Row, and Georgetown.
