DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Michelle Williams and Gael García Bernal in Lukas Moodysson’s ‘Mammoth’.2009 AFI European Union Film Showcase
Tonight is the kickoff of the AFI and the European Commission Delegation’s annual European Union Film Showcase. The festival, now in its 22nd year, collects some of the best European film from the previous year’s festival circuit, often screening some of the biggest and best foreign films of the year before they get theatrical distribution, which makes it a great opportunity to get a sneak peek at these films before they are released in the U.S. This year’s festival is no exception, with 39 films from 24 countries in the lineup.
Some highlights: Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth kicks the festival off tonight with the acclaimed Swedish director’s first English language film, a commentary on globalization starring Gael García Bernal and Michelle Williams. In one of the festival’s three Centerpiece positions is a documentary by Serge Bromberg about one of the most talked about unfinished films ever made, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno. Another centerpiece is Niels Arden Oplev’s adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The last spot is occupied by Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the film that he was working on with Heath Ledger at the time of Ledger’s death. Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell all stepped in to play Ledger’s role, after Gilliam rewrote it to accommodate a shape-shifting hero. And, on closing night, it’s Jean-Marc Vallée’s British royalty period piece in which Emily Blunt plays The Young Victoria
View the trailer for Mammoth, tonight’s opening night film.
Opens tonight and runs through November 24 at the AFI. See the full festival schedule for details.
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Remember that corporate training video during which you and your coworkers tried desperately not to laugh? The comically bad public access performer you happened upon while flipping channels late one night? Founded in 2004 by a writer for The Onion and a producer on The Late Show with David Letterman, the Found Footage Film Festival celebrates this kind of unintentionally hilarious video, which they discovered can be found in large quantities for low cost at flea markets, garage sales, and thrift stores across America. They’ve developed their clip collection into a touring show, with themselves as emcees and commentators, that sounds a little like a live version of America’s Funniest Home Videos if that show had ever been, you know, funny.
View an example of the kind of footage they’ll be screening.
Saturday at 7:15 p.m. at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse. $10.
