DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Bergman, Burnett, & the Coens at the AFI
If you don’t live near Silver Spring, you may want to think about just setting up camp there for the next month. After a slow January at the AFI Silver with a sparse selection of non-new releases, tonight the theater kicks off three month-long retrospectives full of fantastic programming. A little over six months after the death of Ingmar Bergman, the theater has set up a series in remembrance of the director. From his extensive filmography, the AFI has picked 10 movies, including audience favorites The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Summer With Monika. The Coen brothers get the complete review treatment, as every single feature they’ve made will hit the Silver’s screens over the next month, including twelve films from Blood Simple through The Ladykillers, plus No Country for Old Men, which continues the run that it started back in November. Lastly, there’s a timely look at the films of Charles Burnett, a director for whom interest has rekindled of late with last year’s re-release (and subsequent DVD release) of the legendary but little seen indie classic Killer of Sheep. In addition to screenings of Killer, the AFI will cover two other Burnett features, as well as a series of short films by the director spanning four decades.
All three series open tonight at the AFI Silver Theatre.
—
Alex Gibney’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated film detailing the spectacular demise of Enron shines the same bright and unforgiving light on the Bush military’s use of torture since Sept. 11. The whole affair would be (should be?) a scandal of gargantuan proportions if not for the fact that much of the American public has been convinced that torture is a sound and effective idea. Gibney humanizes the issue by framing the investigation around the story of an Afghani cab driver who was beaten to death while in American custody in 2002. He’s hardly the only one, but when it came out that he had no ties to terrorists and that his death had been ruled a homicide by the military’s medical examiner, his case became a catalyst for intense scrutiny of U.S. interrogation policy in the war on terror. Gibney scores interviews with some of the very officers who administered beatings, as well as military experts on interrogation techniques. Much like last year’s No End In Sight, Taxi is lent a great deal of credibility through the voices of soldiers and officials who at one time were on the other side of the issue. Also like No End, the result is measured and carefully reasoned in its approach, but infuriating in its effect, and has earned Gibney his second consecutive Best Documentary Oscar nomination.
View the trailer.
Opens tonight at E Street Cinema. Director Alex Gibney will be on hand for Q&A at tonight’s 7:10 p.m. screening.
