DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.

It Came From Beneath the Sea

Of all the museum film programs in town, the Hirshhorn is the best for a wildly eclectic mix of films, ranging from more high-minded programs like their stellar Cinema Effect exhibit to fun fare such as their screening of a remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark made by a group of teenagers in the the ’80s on a camcorder. A healthy blend of art and entertainment is exactly what we seek to highlight in this space every week, and the Hirshhorn navigates that dichotomy quite effectively.

The museum’s Summer Camp Film Series is all about celebrations of B-movie kitsch—last year they featured films featuring sci-fi femmes fatales. The series returns this summer with a trio of films featuring the 1950s work of master stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen. They cover the basic trinity of ’50s sci-fi/monster fare: radioactive monsters, alien monsters, and just plain aliens. In the first, It Came from Beneath the Sea, which screens a week from tonight, an irradiated octopus rises from the Pacific deep to wreak havoc on San Francisco. The octopus (actually, a sextopus, as producers only gave Harryhausen budget enough to animate 6 arms) goes after that favorite target of evil-doers visiting the Bay Area, the Golden Gate bridge, before the government goes after the beastie with a jet-powered torpedo that doesn’t quite work as planned.

View the trailer.
Screens a week from tonight at the Hirshhorn. 7 p.m., tickets free, first come first served.

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Third Annual Asian-European Short Film Showcase

The Goethe-Institut of Washington also has a solid track record of inventive programming, and their Asian-European Short Film Showcase is no exception. Kicking off on Monday, and screening at a number of venues all over town, each evening of the showcase takes shorts from two countries, one European, one Asian, and screens them all together. It’s a fascinating and very direct way to compare the cultures of the the two countries and continents, via their filmmaking. At each program, a representative from each country will facilitate a Q&A and discussion about the films with the audience. This Monday’s program features two films each from Germany and China; a writer from the Financial Times Germany and a representative from the Chinatown Community Cultural Center will be on hand for the discussion.

Begins Monday at the Goethe-Institut of Washington. Screenings start at 6:30 p.m.