DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
What it is: The harrowing study of a troubled English playwright and the wrecked lives she left behind.
Why you want to see it: Andrea Dunbar grew up in working class Bradford, Yorkshire, and wrote her first play at 15, naming it The Arbor (1976) after Brafferton Arbor, the street where much of it transpired. The brutal realism of Dunbar’s autobiographical work, full of dysfunctional families shouting and cursing at each other, extends to her life in Clio Barnard’s film The Arbor. The documentary form has been subject to experimentation before (perhaps no better than in the work of Dušan Makavejev), and this film uses the novel technique of verbatim theatre, in which actors lip sync words spoken by the subjects interviewed for the film. The film’s horrifying power comes partly from the careful staging and actors’ readings, but more so from the terrible stories told.
Dunbar’s life went from bad to worse despite being heralded as a major dramatic voice in the ’80s. (Think early Mike Leigh, but much more depressing.) Brafferton Arbor was rough and made rougher by the hard drinking that led to Dunbar’s collapsing in a pub and dying from a brain hemmorhage at 29. But the tragedy does not end there. Dunbar was survived by three children: the oldest, half-Pakistani Lorraine Dunbar, was only eleven when her mother died. The cycle of abuse continued with the daughter, and if you think it can’t get any worse, it does.
Thankfully, it is the storytelling that is reenacted, not the stories themselves. These are mixed with archival footage from television specials on Dunbar, as well as scenes from the play The Arbor staged outdoors on present-day Brafferton Arbor. The latter come complete with neighborhood residents looking on as if at a live reality TV program, and that may be the point. if we want to look into our neighbors lives, then we had better be prepared to see how they truly live. But what does it say about this tale of abuse and neglect that those whose lives it portrays have a voice in it, but no body? As well done as it is, I’m not sure this is the best way to examine the trials of the House of Dunbar. But I will not soon forget them.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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What it is: A look at the underbelly of the white picket fence as only David Lynch can unearth it.
Why you want to see it: The AFI’s Dennis Hopper series continues with the actor’s most iconic role. 1986 was a defining year for Hopper: he starred as the blow-up doll-waltzing Feck in River’s Edge (coming to the AFI next weekend), and won was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role playing the town drunk in Hoosiers (coming the weekend of the 25th). But everybody knows he earned his golden statuette nomination for his third major role of the year, the unredeemable Frank Booth. How does Lynch’s stylized small town hold up after all these years? Lynch’s radical aesthetic has always been married to conservative values, like a respect for authority and order, and however daring his aesthetic it serves a moral purpose: the Lady in the Radiator is about the human need for warmth, the Eraserhead baby manifests the anxieties of fatherhood, and Frank Booth — well, why are there people like Frank? The movie seems a little corny now, and its surviving principals moved on to gentler fare: Kyle MacLachlan’s recent work includes an uncredited role in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2; Isabella Rosselini is making Green Porno; Lynch has given up on celluloid for video and Transcendental Meditation. Lynch’s stylistic daring has been largely assimilated into pop culture, but try to remember the first time you saw Blue Velvet — and if you’ve never seen it, prepare to explore the darkest corners of the American psyche.
View the trailer.
Friday through Thursday at the AFI Silver.
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What it is: One less car movie.
Why you want to see it: Festival director Brendt Barbur started the BFF in 2001 after being hit by a bus while riding his bike in New York. The touring festival has since expanded to over two dozen countries around the world, raising awareness of all aspects of bike culture wherever it brakes. The popularity of Capital Bikeshare makes this program of short films and feature documentaries more relevant to our city than ever. Highlights include: BMX Trailer Pack Race (part of Fun Bike Shorts, Saturday August 6 at 7 p.m.), which features music from a young Isaac Brook pre-Modest Mouse; Save the Bike Lane, which addresses bike infrastructure (part of Sun Chasers, August 6 at 5 p.m.); and With My Own Two Wheels, which follows two-wheelers from Zambia, India, Ghana, Guatemala and California to show the simple and universal power of pedals. And for a classic cycling film from indie Hollywood, don’t miss Breaking Away in the AFI’s tribute to Peter Yates, playing August 26th and 27th.
All film programs are at the GALA Theatre, 3333 14th Street NW. After parties will be at Wonderland Ballroom (Friday night) and DC9 (Saturday night). See the festival website for a complete list of films and events.
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UCLA Film & Television Archive’s Festival of Preservation
What it is: The National Gallery’s showcase for recent projects out of the West Coast archive.
Why you want to see it: The UCLA FIlm Preservation festival begins this weekend with work by a pair of near contemporaries whose aesthetics could hardly be farther apart. Paul Strand is one of the great modern photographers; his work moved between art and photojournalism with ease. His short film Native Land (1942), co-directed by Leo Hurwitz, is a much-admired political film about union busting — have things ever changed? Shown Saturday with Forgotten Village (1941), the first screenwriting credit by John Steinbeck. Sunday’s preservation showcase is Crusades (1935) from legendary cinematic showman Cecil B. DeMille. A New York Times reviewer at the time noted DeMille’s “contempt for icebox pedantry,” which is an especially elegant way of saying the man took certain liberties with history. With hundreds of extras and over-the-top set pieces, this is what a blockbuster used to look like.
Native Land and Forgotten Village screen Friday, August 5th at 2:30. Cecil B. DeMille’s Crusades screens Saturday, August 6th at 4:30. At the National Gallery’s East Wing Auditorium. Free.
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What it is: This week’s offering from the Freer’s Made in Hong Kong series shows the lighter side of that vital cinema.
Why you want to see it: A hit man teams up with a young screenwriter for movie references and homicidal urges. Does this buddy movie owe more to Balzac or Jerry Lewis? The answer lies somewhere in between, and with a spectrum like that, don’t you want to find out where? Starring Champan To as the main land assassin and Hong Kong TV star Wong Cho-lam as his unlikely pal.
View the trailer.
Friday, August 5th at 7 p.m. and Sunday, August 7th at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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Also opening this week: Miranda July’s much anticipated follow-up to Me and You and Everyone We Know, The Future, and the French thriller (not an oxymoron) Point Blank. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
