DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Washington is a great town for film festivals. There are points in the fall when a new one kicks off every week. It’s pretty hard to argue that the massive SILVERDOCS festival isn’t the best of the bunch, but for festivals that don’t concentrate on documentaries, Filmfest DC is top of the heap, always coming out with an extremely diverse array of programming from all over the world that combines recognizable names and cinematic heavy-hitters with cinematic newcomers and rising talents. The festival kicks off tonight at the Shakespeare Theatre’s Harman Center for the Arts with a screening of Japanese director Yojiro Takita’s Departures, and continues for ten more days after with over 70 films at locations all over town.
The top of our must-see list? Mesrine, about legendary French criminal Jacque Mesrine, which is positioning itself as an epic crime drama in the tradition of Goodfellas or The Godfather. Director Jean-François Richet filmed the movie as two parts (The Death Instinct and Public Enemy #1, respectively), and casts Vincent Cassel in the title role. We can’t look at Cassel without thinking that he looks sort of like the French version of Matthew Lillard, except that Cassel is an amazing actor, and reportedly gives one of the performances of his career here.
There are plenty of other highlights in this year’s festival, including Brendan Canty and Cristoph Greene’s Wilco concert film, Ashes of American Flags, new films by directing greats Claire Denis, Takeshi Kitano, and Johnnie To, and a screening of the classic French New Wave portmanteau Six in Paris (with shorts from Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, and others, including a collaboration between Jean-Luc Godard and documentary cameraman Albert Maysles). And, Filmfest DC also has what every good film festival needs in the mix: a zombie movie. Kevin Hamedani’s ZMD: Zombies of Mass Distruction provides trenchant social commentary and subtle allegory (in this case, regarding post-September 11th U.S. policy) as only zombie movies can: with armies of the undead and plenty of blood, guts, and (we hope) disembowlings.
View the (French) trailers for Mesrine, Part 1 and Part 2.
Filmfest DC opens tonight and runs through Sunday, April 26. See the schedule for full details.
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For inspirational fare, it’ll be tough to beat this documentary, which follows the travels of Athens, Georgia teen Darius Weems, who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, the same disease that already killed his older brother. Darius and his family set out on a cross country trip (his first anywhere outside his hometown) with a final destination of Los Angeles, where Darius is going to get his wheelchair customized on MTV’s Pimp My Ride. This may be the first time in recorded history that spinning rims aren’t in the least bit tacky. Weems will be in town for this weekend’s screening at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, as part of a continuing effort to use the film to raise awareness of, and money to combat, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
View the trailer.
Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. $8, proceeds to benefit the
Darius Goes West Foundation, which supports the effort to treat and cure Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.
