DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
It’s odd to think that most people’s first association with this title is a Disney film, considering how singular and striking Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film version is. I guess that’s what a singing candelabra will do for you. The story of Beauty and the Beast should be familiar by now regardless of the source material. A young woman agrees to be held captive by a horrific but gentle monster in order to save her father from certain death, and lo and behold, love grows between them. Cocteau’s was the first filmed rendering of the story, which was likely viewed as too difficult to put onscreen due to its magical and fantastical aspects and the limitations of special effects technology. Cocteau’s techniques were technically ingenious, but more importantly, were so subtle that they never took the viewer out of the story. Modern filmmakers who like to use effects just to show what they can accomplish would do well to learn the lesson that the story comes first. Beauty and the Beast is mesmerizing, a film born in a trance and viewed as a dream. The opportunity to see this on a big screen at the AFI is not to be missed. Their screening is part of a Montgomery College educational series, so students get in at a discount, and the film will be followed by a discussion. I envy the student assigned to go watch this for class credit.
View the trailer.
Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at the AFI.
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Indian Visions Film Festival and Brazilian Film Week
Two brief national film festivals kick off tonight, and go through Sunday. One is the Indian Visions Film Festival, which has just over a dozen features, plus a number of programs of shorts, and which includes both new films (many of which are D.C. premieres) and old (going back as far as A Throw of Dice, a 1929 silent film). The other is Brazilian Film Week, a series sponsored by the Embassy of Brazil, with six recent features over the next four evenings, each to be preceded by a short subject, plus one children’s program on Sunday afternoon.
Both series run from tonight through Sunday. Indian Visions screenings $10 each, and are at the Phoenix Theaters at Union Station. Schedule.
Brazilian Film Week screenings are all free, and are at the Greenberg Theater at 4200 Wisconsin Avenue, NW. Schedule.
