DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Sgt. Nathan HarrisWhat it is: One of the best films of the year. And it was made with a DSLR.
Why you want to see it: War photographer Danfung Dennis did not have a film in mind when he embedded with the U.S. Marines’ Echo Company in Afghanistan in 2009. Dennis documented the movements of Sgt. Nathan Harris and the unit he commanded, and these scenes alone would have made a fine war documentary. But the unforeseen happened: Harris was shot through the hip on what was to be his penultimate mission, and the injured Marine went home to North Carolina. Thus Hell and Back Again becomes a document of war and recovery, shifting between Sgt. Harris’s struggles in civilian life and the horrors of combat. Which is the worse hell? Harris, and his wife Ashley, trusted Dennis enough to allow him to film some of their most personal moments: the director watches from the backseat of their minivan as they fight about his pain medication, he sees them get ready for bed, he witnesses some disturbing gunplay. Hell and Back Again shifts between civilian and combat life; as Harris stares out into space back home, the sounds of the battlefield can he heard on the soundtrack and we’re soon back in Afghanistan. These scene shifts are as sensitive as they are ingenious. With transitions from the horrors of war to a Walgreens parking lot, you might think the film would suffer from tonal problems. But the camerawork is so intimate, the sound and image editing so expert, that it is like we are seeing what Harris sees in his own conflicted mind. Early in the film Harris is frustrated as he and his wife look in vain for a parking space at Walmart. The Marine confesses that he’d rather be back in Afghanistan, where life is simpler. The immersive filmmaking of Hell and Back Again brings war home like no other documentary I know. One technical note: Dennis made the film on compact gear — a Canon 5DmkII with a custom Glidecam rig that married the control and intimacy of still photography with HD video. You can see a photo of his set-up here. Celluloid purists (like me) may lament the rise of digital film-making, but if must be done, let it be done like this.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Gary Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, SpyWhat it is: Closing weekend of the AFI’s showcase for films from the European Union.
Why you want to see it: If you can still get tickets, this weekend is your chance to get the first crack at two films before their imminent commercial runs: David Cronenberg’s study of Freud (Viggo Mortensen) and Jung (Michael Fassbender), A Dangerous Method (Nov. 18; sold out) and Gary Oldman’s autumnal espionage in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Nov. 21, when Oldman and director Tomas Alfredson will appear at the AFI for this closing night screening, which is also sold out). But there are films on tap that are less likely to make it to your local multiplex. The Great Vazquez (Nov. 19 and 20), a biopic about an influential Spanish cartoonist, is said to be “amorally funny” (cf. listing below). Play (Nov. 18-20) is based on a true story of Swedish youth in conflict. The French animated film Tales of the Night (Nov. 19, 20 and 22) features a series of six original fairy tales animated using only silhouetted figures as characters. And the Bulgarian film Ave (Nov. 19 and 22) is a tale of teenagers on the road and in love.
View the trailer for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Friday through Monday at the AFI. See festival website for details.
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What it is: Alcoholic clowns: a carful of laffs, a cautionary tale, or both?
Why you want to see it: Bobcat Goldthwait wrote, directed and stars in this uncomfortable comedy about a self-destructive entertainer. That should be enough to send the ordinary cinephile into DTs, but is Goldthwait’s directorial debut so easily dismissed? Imagine the intervention played without clown makeup and NRBQ, and Shakes the Clown might rise to the level of a Lost Weekend for Gen X-ers, a Leaving Las Vegas informed by seltzer, floppy shoes, and a one-night stand with Florence Henderson. Thank the Washington Psychotronic Film Society for giving local film buffs a venue in which to reassess the place of this film in the cinematic pantheon, or just to have a pitcher of PBR and shout at Mrs. Brady.
View the trailer.
Monday, November 21 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s. Suggested donation $2.
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George Franju’s JudexBlack Moon and Judex
What it is: The National Gallery’s Cinema Fantastique series continues this weekend with a pair of doozies.
Why you want to see it: The future of gender relations is not good. But hey, unicorn! Saturday’s feature is Black Moon, in which director Louis Malle — guided by the photography of Sven Nykvist, frequent lensman for Ingmar Bergman (and sometimes Woody Allen) — imagines a dystopia in which men and women don gas masks and battle each other in the French countryside, converging at Malle’s own estate. Malle’s next fiction feature would be the controversial Pretty Baby, with an exploited 11-year-old Brooke Shields giving an mesmerizing acting performance she has never equalled since. Sunday, the Gallery screens Judex (1963), director George Franju’s (Eyes Without a Face) homage to the silent French serial about a masked crime figther. The film has been compared to the work of Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and Jean Vigo, and the visual treat that promises makes this rare big-screen presentation a must-see.
View the trailer for Black Moon (Not Suitable For Badger Lovers) and a clip from Judex.
Black Moon screens Saturday, November 19 at 4. Judex screens Sunday, November 20 at 4. Both at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Pablo Picasso, Still life with chari-caning (1912)What it is: A celebration of the art of collage.
Why you want to see it: Pablo Picasso’s 1912 work Still Life with Chair-caning is regarded by some art historians to be the birth of collage. To mark next year’s centenary of the most post-modern of art forms, Hillyer Art Space, in collaboration with Meridian Hill Pictures and Sitar Art Space, screens this student-made documentary short. Following the screening, Hillyer will host a panel discussion with Brandon and Lance Kramer, executive producers of Life as a Collage and co-founders of Meridian Hill Pictures; and Forrest Penrod, the student director of the film.
View the trailer.
Monday, November 21 at 6 p.m. at Hillyer Arts Space, 9 Hillyer Ct. NW. Suggested donation $5.
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Also opening this week: George Clooney’s stars in director Alexander Payne’s latest examination of mid-life bourgeois crisis, The Descendants. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
