DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
What it is: The AFI’s nearly-comprehensive Alfred Hitchcock series continues with one of director’s greatest and most popular films. The auteur of the cinematic criminal here stands on the creative shoulders of two literary giants: crime writers Raymond Chandler, who co-wrote the screenplay, and Patricia Highsmith, whose source novel predated her classic Ripley series by just a few years.
Why you want to see it: Hollywood lost two of the last “They had Faces Then” faces this year in Elizabeth Taylor (the subject of an upcoming AFI retrospective) and Strangers star Farley Granger, whose impossible good looks give him the air of someone both vulnerable and slippery. A chance meeting with the even more slippery Robert Walker becomes a murderous game of criss-cross. Sure, you can see this on DVD, but there’s nothing like seeing black and white celluloid on the Silver’s big screen. Keep an eye out for shots of Washington’s own Union Station. The Silver’s Hitchcok offerings next week also include Granger alongside Jimmy Stewart in Rope, a cinematic experiment that was cleverly edited to appear as 80 minutes of uninterrupted action; and two of the rarest titles in his catalog, Adventure Malagache and Bon Voyage, short films that Hitchcock made for the British Ministry of Information.
What to expect: One of the great directors at his peak.
What not to expect: To see their like on Earth again.
View the trailer.
Strangers on a Train screens on Fri, May 27, 7:00; Sat, May 28, 7:00; Sun, May 29, 2:45, 9:45; Mon, May 30, 9:45; Thu, Jun 2, 7:00.AFI Silver. $11.
What it is: A samurai movie as seen through the eyes of gore master Takashi Miike, in a remake of a 1963 film.
Why you want to see it: It seems like only yesterday that Miike was making them pass out in the aisles with Audition. While that cult hit was torture porn before torture porn was cool, the director did not solely rely on gore to create unbearable tension. But that doesn’t mean that jugulars won’t erupt by the bucketful here.
What to expect: Revenge served hot.
What not to expect: The adrenaline to subside.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
What it is: The start of summer movie season.
Why you want to see it: Drunken blackouts are a primitive form of teleportation. One minute you’re tossing back a wine cooler and then BLAM: you wake up in a strange room with a chicken from an advanced civilization that visits hotels in search for human blood. The first Hangover took this bacchanal as a jumping off point for fraternal hilarity and even something that approached human feelings. Director Todd Phillips’ sequel ups (or downs, considering on your perspective) the ante with a scenario in which our favorite drinking buddies are teleported to Bangkok.
What to expect: Culturally insensitive hijinks.
What not to expect: A cameo by Mel Gibson, which was scrapped after his very public breakdown last fall. Maybe he should have pulled out The Beaver?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow within projectile vomiting distance.
What it is: a 1984 vehicle for Canadian actor and stand-up comic Murray Langston, better known as The Unknown Comic.
Why you want to see it: The cinematic children of Chuck Barris’ anarchic 1970s tv series The Gong Show are few in number, and sorely neglected in the annals of Film Comment. Barris himself directed The Gong Show Movie, which caught the game show auteur in the midst of a punishing television schedule, a pre-reality TV public who yearned for their fifteen minutes, and his own existential crisis. Night Patrol may appear less subtle in its Police Academy forumla — but is there is a chilling character study beneath the midgets and flatulence? A bumbling police officer (Langston) puts a bag over his head and becomes a nighttime comedy sensation. Is it the artist’s fate to destroy his identity in order to create it? Linda Blair stars along with Andrew Dice Clay, Billy Barty, Pat Paulsen and Gong Show regular Jaye P. Morgan.
What to expect: Fart jokes.
What not to expect: Gene Gene the Dancing Machine.
View the trailer.
Tuesday, May 31st at 8: at The Passenger. Suggested donation: $2.
What it is:Paul Mariano & Kurt Norton’s documentary about the National Film Registry, and the archivists who work hard to preserve America’s cinematic legacy at the Library of Congress’ National Audiovisual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia.
Why you want to see it:You may know talking heads Debbie Reynolds, Tim Roth, Rob Reiner and narratorial everyman Peter Coyote. But who are Steve Leggett and George Willeman? Friends and former co-workers of mine, their tales from the front lines of film preservation reportedly steal the show from the more famous talking heads. Learn how films are chosen for the National Film Registry, and what that honor actually means in preservation terms. And maybe understand why I’d rather watch a scratchy 35mm print than a DVD. Essential viewing for the cinephile. [Disclaimer: These opinions do not reflect those of my employer, the Library of Congress.]
What to expect: Edutainment of a high order.
What not to expect: Hobo with a Shotgun — that’s next door.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the West End Cinema. $11.
What it is: A reminiscence of growing up in Greece in the 1960s that was an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film in 2000.
Why you want to see it: After a visit to his dying mother, a man approaching middle age looks back on a childhood marked by political and social upheaval. The titular peppermint is a Greek liqueur taken from the family cabinet by the protagonist as a curious child. But the elixir’s affects are far more subtle than in this weekend’s blockbuster opening.
What to expect: A moving study of childhood.
What not to expect: A dry eye.
Wednesday at 8 p.m. at The Avalon.
The Romance of Astrée and Celadon
What it is: Director Eric Rohmer’s final film continues his late-career departure from the naturalistic tales of life and love in contemporary France. Based in part on a 17th century French pastoral novel, the film weaves a lush woodland tale of love between a shepherd and shepherdess.
Why you want to see it: Rohmer knew that this 2007 work would be his final film (he died in 2010), and for all the ethereal romance, the film breathes like a man who knows these reveries will be his last. Rohmer made a career out of talky films that followed the travails of love, and while his last testament may not look like Pauline at the Beach, his themes of sexuality and the difficulties of human relationships are eternal.
What to expect: The fools that mortals be.
What not to expect: The visual imperfections of his digitally-shot period piece The Lady and the Duke; Rohmer shot his last film on Super16, bébé!
View the trailer.
May 29 at 5:00 at the National Gallery Free.
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Also opening tomorrow: Woody Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris, which stars Owen Wilson as a successful present-day Hollywood screenwriter with literary aspirations waxing nostalgic about the artists’ Paris of the 1920s — only to find himself transported there every night. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
