DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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What it is: A masterpiece of horror in the National Gallery’s Cinéma Fantastique series.
Why you want to see it: The extreme plastic surgery of Pedro Almodovar’s new film The Skin I Live In (reviewed by Ian Buckwalter here) has earned it frequent comparisons to gross-out sensation The Human Centipede, but the real source may be the 1960 George Franju film that has inspired such diverse artists as John Woo and Billy Idol — and whose influence can even be felt in the aforementioned centipede. Brilliant but mad Dr. Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) abducts young women in the hopes of restoring the beauty of his daughter Christiane (Edith Scob), whose face was disfigured in a car crash. Don’t let the atmospheric black and white cinematography fool you — though low on the kind of gore that 21st century moviegoers are used to, the film’s surgical scenes are still fraught with horrifying tension.
View the trailer.
Sunday, November 6 at 4 at the National Gallery. Free.
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What it is: An answer to the burning question, “Do indie rock and fatherhood mix?”
Why you want to see it: Mid-career rocker Ethan Brand (Alessandro Nivola) is on the road with his band when he’s suddenly left in charge of a 13-year-old surprise from his past. Little Miss Sunshine Abigail Breslin is all grown up playing the titular Janie, whose drug addled mother (Elisabeth Shue, who made a more believable single mother in the execrable Piranha) checks into rehab and leaves daughter with a father who isn’t exactly the model of sobriety himself. If I told you that tween Janie has it more together than most of the adults in the movie, and that she has singer-songwriter talent of her own, your eyes may start to roll. Much of the embattled bandmates/life on the road material is stuff you’ve seen before. But the leads save it from maudlin sentiment. Breslin and Nivola, who sing and perform on screen (the camera focuses on her fretting to prove it!) have a warm chemistry, and the development of their relationship makes this rise above the contrived scenarios and make you think you’re watching real people. Read Ian Buckwalter’s full review of Janie Jones for NPR here.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Made in PolandWhat it is: The AFI’s popular festival is now in its 24th year.
Why you want to see it: High-profile pictures like opening night film The Woman in the Fifth (Ethan Hawke in Europe again!), Aki Kaurismaki’s Le Havre (Nov. 5 and 6) and the Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid with a Bike (Nov. 6 and 8) are likely to show up in commercial runs sooner or later. (Le Havre is due at E Street December 9.) But the European Union festival features plenty of titles that never hit local big screens again, so take a chance with one. Two very different sides of Poland are on view this week in with the Nazi-occupied Warsaw of Joanna (Nov. 7 and 10) and the punk rock Made in Poland (Nov. 5 and 9), which was shot in black and white and red and features a 17-yr protagonist who tattoos “fuck off” on his forehead. Slovenia brings the dialogue free Silent Sonata (Nov. 5 and 7), a study of grief with performances by members of Cirque Du Soleil. The film was originally called Circus Fantasticus and features a travelling caravan by that name who stops by a demolished house in the middle of an unspecified Slovenian war. Which, unless my preciousness detector is on the fritz, sounds like a recipe for trouble. Unless you like your dialogueless war movies with a generous dose of the circus, I’d take my camels to rest elsewhere. Other potential highlights include Cyprus’s By Miracle (Nov. 5, 7 and 8), a film on the challenges of homosexuality and faith; an “offbeat road movie” from the Czech Republic, Long Live the Family (Nov. 4, 8 and 9); the titular understatement A Funny Man (Nov. 9 and 10), which gives popular Danish comedian Dirch Passer the biopic treatment; and the Finnish Oedipal tale of The Good Son (Nov. 6, 7 and 9), in which a teenager finds mommy in an aging film star. And for those keeping score, France’s The Conquest (Nov. 5 and 6), which follows the rise of cabinet minister Nicolas Sarkozy, is scheduled to open at the West End on November 18.
View the trailer for Made in Poland.
November 3-22 at the AFI Silver. Check the AFI’s website for detailed listings.
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What it is: An adult film director takes on our nation’s failing prison system.
Why you want to see it: It’s back to the grindhouse grindstone for the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, purveyor of fine cinematic trash and treasure — occasionally at the same time! Working under the pseudonym Lancer Brooks, Tom DeSimone cut his teeth directing ’70s porn titles like Swap Meat and Dirty Truckin’. He left gay porn for Linda Blair with the breakthrough exploitation picture Hell Night (1981) and here pokes fun at that cinematic exploitation staple, the women in prison movie. Austrian-born Sybil Danning is the sadistic Warden Sutter, who lords over inmates like Charlie Chambliss (the Plasmatics’ Wendy O. Williams). Reform School Girls was shot in that lawless land, the Philippines, which provided cheap labor for many a womens’ prison film. For more on the exploitation films made in the Phillippines, see the excellent documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed!, just out on DVD this week. Read an interview with DeSimone about the making of this trash classic here.
View the trailer.
Monday Nov. 7 at 8 at McFaddens, 2401 Pennsylvania Ave NW. Suggested donation $2.
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Madame Freedom: Live Rescore by DJ Spooky
What it is: A controversial Korean film from the 1950s meets the 21st century.
Why you want to see it: In dire financial straits, a Korean housewife gets a job outside the house, which naturally leads to dancing, bad investments, infidelity and the inevitable repentence. The Freer celebrates the reopening of their Korea gallery with a special presentation of this 1956 melodrama accompanied by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky, whose new score combines a string duo, turntables and iOS mixing apps.
View highlights from DJ Spooky’s live accompaniment for Madame Freedom.
Friday, November 4 at 7pm at the Freer Gallery’s Meyer Auditorium. Free.
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Also opening this week: the romantic drama Like Crazy. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
