DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
What it is: Tommy Wiseau and Greg Sestero appear in a live adaptation of what some call The Worst Movie Ever Made.
Why you want to see it: Cult hit The Room is not by any measure a Good Movie. But it’s a Great Bad Movie. Tomorrow night, the AFI Silver presents auteur Tommy Wiseau in a challenging new medium: live theater. The Room Live promises your favorite scenes as well as new scenes from everyone’s favorite possibly Louisianan filmmaker. Will it be a train wreck or a revelation? I’m hoping for the latter, and here’s why. What sets The Room apart from your typical midnight cult classic is Wiseau’s complete lack of irony. Tommy — as his fans intimately call him — never winks at the viewer as if he’s letting them in on a joke. He’s completely earnest, and completely, heroically himself, despite a nation recoiling in horror at The Room‘s love scenes. And as strange and silly as his vision may be, he’s true to his own star. Tommy’s first new work since The Room was last year’s short The House That Drips Blood on Alex, and he was the best thing about it. Sadly, he didn’t write the self-conscious, knowing script — you could practically hear the air quotes around any dialogue not spoken by its star. More successful is the recent short video series Tommy Explains it All (assaying, so far, Citizen Kane and Love) which makes the right decision to just let Tommy talk and let the magic happen. And if you go early enough, you can make a double bill of unparallelled aesthetic contrast with our next featured pick.
What to expect: God to forgive you.
What not to expect: To be torn apart.
View a clip from The Room.
Friday, June 10 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, June 11 at 5 p.m. at the AFI Silver. $20.
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What it is: An early masterpiece from one of the great directors.
Why you want to see it: Indie favorite Meek’s Cutoff wove a neat pioneer riff on Aguirre-era Werner Herzog. But its stark aesthetic also owes a debt to French director Robert Bresson. Bresson famously schooled his actors to read their lines without inflection — a trick cult director Monte Hellman tried on James Taylor in the existentialist road movie masterpiece Two Lane Blacktop. Though his actors (whom he called “models”) are forbidden to emote, such reticence is more powerful than standard melodramatic acting. Bresson sums up his cinematic philosophy in Notes of a Cinematographer: “… not beautiful images, but necessary images.” If this all seems a bit punishing, the patient moviegoer is rewarded with what some consider a religious experience — but whatever tenets you hold dear, Diary is as pure as cinema gets. This adaptation of a novel by George Bernanos (whom Bresson would tap again for the even starker Mouchette) weaves the profound out of the pedestrian, significance and awe out of out of “the most insignificant secrets of a life lacking any trace of mystery.” It’s the perfect introduction to one of the most challenging and influential masters of cinema.
What to expect: Beautiful images, despite Bresson’s dictum.
What not to expect: Aesthetic or any other kind of excess.
Opens tomorrow for a week-long run at the AFI Silver.
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What it is: You can come of age at any age in this comedy drama from Thumbsucker director Mike Mills.
Why you want to see it: It’s never too late to redefine yourself, and 75-year old Hal (Christophe Plummer) proves this by coming out of the closet after four decades of marriage. Hal’s son Oliver (Ewan MacGregor) meets Anna (Inglorious Basterds‘ Mélanie Laurent) and reminiscences about his father’s new beginning as he ponders his own. They’re already talking the O-word about Plummer’s performance.
What to expect: Love at any age.
What not to expect: The Von Trapp family singers.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Bethesda Row.
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What it is: A documentary about the teams of young poets who compete in Chicago’s Louder Than A Bomb festival.
Why you want to see it: I’m a sucker for movies about finding your voice, and Louder Than A Bomb promises just that in a document of the 2008 edition of the Chicago youth poetry festival of the same name. watch and listen as young poets find their individual voices, while at the same time learn to work as a team. Isn’t that what growing up is about? The West End Cinema also also offers choice poetry events to accompany this weekend’s screenings, with appearances by the DC Youth Poetry Slam Team (Friday, June 10 at 6:30 p.m.), Beltway Slam Poetry (Saturday, June 11 at 6:30 p.m.) and a possible appearance from Busboys & Poets’ 11th Hour Poets.
What to expect: Young voices that contain multitudes.
What not to expect: These voices to be silenced.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the West End Cinema. Director Jon Siskel appears for Q&As on Friday and Saturday night.
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What it is: A brutal tale of war.
Why you want to see it: In December 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army wrought unspeakable violence upon the Chinese capital. This tragic episode, known as The Rape of Nanking, is the subject of Chinese filmmaker Lu Chuan’s harrowing epic. Shot in black and white cinemascope (actually color negative digitally desaturated), this is already being called one of the great war movies.
What to expect: The horrors of war.
What not to expect: To ever forget.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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What it is: A Technicolor period romance … from Alfred Hitchcock?
Why you want to see it: One of the least-seen titles from the master of the macabre, Under Capricorn‘s initial reception may have been tainted by revelations that of an affair between director Roberto Rossellini and star Ingrid Bergman (a union that produced daughter Isabella Rossellini). Those were more innocent times, weren’t they? But the film’s appeal was not helped by an technique it shared with Hitchcock’s 1948 experiment Rope: the ten-minute take. With a cast that includes Joseph Cotten and lavish cinematography by Jack Cardiff (subject of a documentary soon to open at the West End Cinema), you wonder why it has a reputation as one of the master’s worst films. But does it live down to the hype? Don’t miss this rare chance to see it projected.
What to expect: A love triangle as only the master of the macabre can shape it.
What not to expect: A masterpiece.
Saturday, June 11 at 12:20 p.m. and Sunday, June 12 at 12:20 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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What it is: A program of inspirational films, lectures, and guided meditation.
Why you want to see it: Meditation may sound like an escape to some people; but if you’ve ever tried to be alone with your thoughts, to struggle with self-knowledge and self-acceptance, you know it’s much more difficult than it sounds. This four-day festival gathers recent films that you don’t have to be a Buddhist to learn from, including the east coast premiere of Crazy Wisdom (Friday, June 17 at 9:00 p.m. at the Spectrum Theater), a portrait of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, the Tibetan scholar-teacher whose admirers included Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Merton and Joni Mitchell; and Un Buda (Saturday, June 19 at 9 p.m. at the Spectrum Theater), a feature directed by Argentinian Zen teacher Diego Rafecas that looks at that country’s Dirty War in the 1970s.
What to expect: The hard work of inner peace.
What not to expect: David Lynch — see his Transcendental Meditation program tonight at the Avalon.
View the trailer for Crazy Wisdom. View the trailer for Un Buda.
At the Artisphere, June 16-19. For program details and tickets, visit the festival website.
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Also opening this week: Submarine, first-time British director (and familiar face to fans of British telly entries like The Mighty Boosh and The IT Crowd) Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s coming of age novel. The immensity of its darkly-inflected quirk is only exceeded by its geeky likability. There’s also Super 8 JJ Abrams’ entertaining — if sometimes uneven — homage to E.T., The Goonies, and the gratuitous use of blue lens flare. We’ll have full reviews of both tomorrow.
