DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
What it is: A tire awakens in the southern California desert only to discover that it has telekinetic powers that allow it to cause things to explode. You know, like people’s heads. Meanwhile, a crowd of people in the desert watch through binoculars, attendees at a movie that’s taking place in the “real” world instead of on a screen.
Why you want to see it: The murderous tire is an absurd horror premise on its own, but what really makes the film tick is the framing device of the film, that audience out in the desert, and their role in making the ridiculous actions in the film real or not. While the premise threatens to wear thin, director Quentin Dupieux keeps things brisk by committing to making a short horror-comedy and a brief absurdist piece of meta-fiction that wrap around one another in surprising and hilarious ways. You can read my complete review over at NPR.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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What it is: A film about the history and closing of the condominiums that used to serve as artists’ residences and studios atop Carnegie Hall, that, before the corporation that now owns the building evicted the last elderly tenants, housed a stunning array of artists from many mediums and disciplines throughout the 20th century (Marlon Brando, Isadora Duncan, Paddy Chayevsky, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein, just to name a very few).
Why you want to see it: Bill Cunningham, New York Times fashion photographer and subject of the fantastic recent documentary Bill Cunningham New York (read my review here) was one of the last tenants of the Carnegie towers. While watching the portions of that film that featured his fight to stay in the building along with the last few remaining residents, I couldn’t help but think that here was a subject for an entire documentary on its own: the history of this building, and the names that passed through it, both as residents and as students of those residents. This collection of artists, all living stacked atop one another above one of the most famous performance spaces in the world, is the sort of situation that will probably never be repeated again, and is symbolic of a different New York that is fading into memory.
View the trailer.
Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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What it is: Eight D.C.-based (or D.C.-associated) musical acts deliver live performances of one song each in a house set to be burned to the ground for fire department training. This was the first in a series, produced by Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, that has now used the same general format to document bands in six different cities.
Why you want to see it: There’s plenty of conceptual poetry to what’s going on here: the act of creation taking place in a structure about to be destroyed, the unrecorded memories of multiple lifetimes embedded in the walls as filmmakers document the final memories created there. Take that or leave that as you will, but the performances here are so immediate in this unusual venue, recorded live with no overdubs in a single take, that it doesn’t really matter if you find the subtext compelling. Filmed on a January afternoon in 2004, the bands featured here include The Evens, Weird War, Q and Not U near the end of their run, and fantastic solo turns by Ted Leo and Bob Mould. Mould’s performance of “Hoover Dam,” in particular, gives me chills in the same way his solo acoustic performances of “Brasilia Turned to Trenton” could absolutely destroy you back in the 90s.
View a clip of Q and not U ripping through “X-Polynation” from the film.
Opens on Monday at Artisphere and continues screening through May 15. Free.
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What it is: A classic Mexican horror flick from the early ’60s about four men who are cursed by a voodoo priest and targeted by murderous doll-like creatues.
Why you want to see it: Low budget horror has been a staple of Mexican cinema for decades, and a lot of it has some genuinely chilling elements. Doll People often gets mixed reviews from genre fans, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is how genuinely creepy the doll people are, enough to make it worth checking out despite its other flaws.
View the trailer.
Tuesday at 8 p.m. at The Passenger. WPFS screenings are free, but a $2 donation is suggested.
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What it is: Howard Hawks directed this musical comedy that put Marilyn Monroe in her first featured role in a major motion picture, alongside established star Jane Russell, as two showgirls who travel to Paris, trailed by a private detective trying to dig up dirt on Monroe, but who ends up falling for Russell.
Why you want to see it: Lavish production numbers, sharp wit, and performances that confirmed Russell’s status as a star and announced Monroe as a performer who was going to become huge, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was one of those films where Hollywood went for spectacle and got something special out of the deal.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow for one week at the AFI.
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Do Something Reel Film Festival
What it is: A collection of a half-dozen environmentally-focused films screening this month in 70 cities to raise awareness of and spur viewers to action on the issues addressed by the films.
Why you want to see it: Perhaps you didn’t get enough environmental films in the recently-ended Environmental Film Festival, or just love issue-oriented documentaries. The slate of films here includes one film that played last year at Silverdocs, On Coal River (our review), a film about bee colony collapse that you may have seen Ellen Page doing publicity for recently (she serves as the film’s narrator), as well as films about urban farming, our reliance on plastics, and the roots and benefits of vegetarianism and why we just can’t quit meat and dairy.
Opens Saturday at the AFI and continues through Wednesday. See the schedule for complete programming and screening times.
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Also opening tomorrow is The Conspirator, Robert Redford’s new film about the defense of Mary Surratt in her trial for taking part in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and William Seward. (We covered the film’s Ford Theatre premiere earlier this week.) We’ll have a full-length review tomorrow, as it opens at a number of local theaters.
