DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
It’s got a weak script and actors who are more decorative than interpretive. But Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is a tour de force of sound and vision. Bernard Hermann eschewed music for a soundtrack of swarms and pecks — I’ve longed for a Hooked On version. And, like Psycho did for the shower, you won’t look at a pigeon the same way again. Also next week in the AFI’s Hitchcock series: the fascinating and kind of terrible Marnie (August 14 and 18).
View the trailer.
Friday, August 12 at 7 p.m.; Saturday, August 13 at 5:30 p.m.; Tuesday, August 16 at 6:45 p.m.; and Thursday, August 18 at 6:45 p.m. at the AFI.
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Emma Stone had a star comedic turn in Easy A, so one wishes the best for her first major dramatic role. It may not be a good sign that Starbucks carries the soundtrack. But the real problem with this well-meaning picture begins with the concept: let’s tell the story of the Civil Rights movement through the eyes of the Mississippi deb who stood up for them. We’ve come a long way, and this film is a reminder of where we’ve been, but perhaps in ways the filmmakers did not intend.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow.
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If A Tree falls: The Story of the Earth Liberation Front
An organization whose acronym is ELF may sound innocuous enough, but the Earth Liberation Front has been on the FBI’s watch list as “the number one domestic terrorism threat.” At what point does environmental activism make you an outlaw?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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After the debacle of The Last Movie (1971), Dennis Hopper didn’t get to direct another movie for nine years. The result is his most powerful directorial effort, a tale of family dysfunction starring Hopper and Linda Manz, the narrator in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. Also in the AFI’s Hopper festival this week: River’s Edge (August 14 and 16).
View the trailer.
Saturday, August 13 at 12:30 p.m. and Monday, August 15 at 7:00 p.m. at the AFI
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This weekend’s offering in the Freer’s Made in Hong Kong Festival is this “sweetly nostalgic evocation of working-class Hong Kong in the 1960s.” Directed by Alex Law and starring child actor Buzz Chang (as “Big Ears”) and Hong Kong gansgter heavy Simon Yam.
View the trailer.
Friday, August 13 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, August 15 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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The Goethe Institut’s Climate Culture Change festival continues with this German silent film in which an alien from another planet gives man superpowers. What does he do with this new-found responsibility? A lost classic of German Expressionism. Screened on DVD.
Monday, August 15 at the Goethe Institut. $7/$4 for Goethe members.
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Also opening this week: Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle in The Guard. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
