DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Jean Marais and Josette Day. Courtesy Criterion.What it is: The best movie in town.
Why you want to see it: A merchant is taken prisoner by a hirsute creature (Jean Marais) who condemns him to death for stealing a rose. But the beast makes a deal with the merchant: bring me one of your daughters to take your place. Belle (Josette Day) sacrifices herself to the hot-breathed manimal, but finds that animal bloodlust and hideous shell hides a poetic soul. Greta Garbo famously quipped “Giff me back my beast” after the film’s happy ending, but Jean Cocteau’s masterpiece is still on many lists of the most romantic movies ever made. Visit the National Gallery of Art on Christmas Eve afternoon to wander the most enchanted of castles, with a magic mirror, living candelabra and statuary whose eyes gracefully follow your every move. Part of the closing days of the NGA’s Cinema Fantastique series. For more Cocteau, the gallery is showing Orphée (Dec. 31 at 2 p.m.), in which Marais gets to play the hero and attempt to rescue his wife Eurydice from the underworld.
View the trailer.
Saturday, Dec. 24 at 2 and 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art East Wing, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free.
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Chögyal Namkhai Norbu and his son Yeshi. Courtesy Long Shot Factory.What it is: Not your father’s Tibetan master.
Why you want to see it: A Buddhist temple gathering dryly cuts to a credit sequence set to Paolo Conte’s whimsical “Via con me.” This kind of culture clash and connection is at the heart of Jennifer Fox’s documentary My Reincarnation. The film covers 20 years as it follows Buddhist teacher Chögyal Namkhai Norbu and his Italian-born son, Yeshi, who from an early age was recognized as the reincarnation of another Buddhist teacher. Will the son, who we see grow from pizza-faced skeptic to successful businessman, continue to resist his father’s footsteps? Will the father, distracted by his demands as a teacher, learn to communicate with his son? Even those who have never assumed the lotus position may find wisdom in this Oedipal story of growth and contemplation, and those who recognize the distraction of Samsara will be even more intrigued by the subject’s—and thus the filmmaker’s—close access to the Dalai Lama.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema, 2301 M Street NW. Tickets $11.
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Courtesy Paramount Home Entertainment.What it is: The ubiquitous holiday classic on the AFI Silver Theatre’s big screen
Why you want to see it: It’s one of those movies that turns up so often you feel you don’t need to see it—it sees you. But Frank Capra’s film was not an instant classic, and has more in common with film noir than you might think. Director Errol Morris, whose Tabloid was one of this year’s best documentaries, recently tweeted about the film, wondering if it’s in fact “bleaker than all of film noir” despite its happy ending. After all, “You want to kill yourself, but Clarence won’t let you.” The contrast between Bedford Falls and Pottersville is especially relevant to this age of gentrification. Not all viewers have preferred the former’s idyllic America. Whatever you think it says about America and her past, It’s a Wonderful Life is American mythology at its finest.
View the trailer.
Today through Saturday, Dec. 24 at the AFI Silver Theatre, 8633 Colesville Road, $11.
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Hi, I’m Jean Marais on a cat! Courtesy Koch Lorber. Donkey Skin
What it is: How to not marry your medieval father.
Why you want to see it: A medieval King (Cocteau’s go-to-man Jean Marais) presides over a great castle where a stable of honor is granted to a donkey that shits jewels. But all is not well: his queen falls ill, and on her deathbed the king promises he will not marry till he finds a woman more beautiful than she. The answer turns out to be their daughter. Both queen and princess are played by Catherine Deneuve, a cool fairy-tale beauty if there ever was one. Delphine Seyrig (star of the classic avant-garde fairy tale, Last Year at Marienbad) plays the helpful Fairy Godmother, who suggests a disguise made of the titular skin in order to prevent incestuous unions. Jacques Demy directed Deneuve in two essential musicals, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, but if the charms of Donkey Skin are more awkward and the fairy tale (based on a 17th century work by the author of Cinderella) more than a little uncomfortable, this is still a fascinating lesser work, loaded with color and delights, and generous with freshly excreted gems.
View the trailer.
Saturday, Dec. 31 at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art East Wing, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW. Free.
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Courtesy Criterion.What it is: Sex and violence as only David Cronenberg can make it.
Why you want to see it: Skinny white ties, two-inch videoreels, television talk shows with mauve-striped sets, drop-outs. It’s 1983 and a cable television smut purveyor (James Woods) is looking for the next thing to sate his customers when he happens upon footage of torture and murder. Most people would recoil in horror, and certainly would not play such footage for the radio-call in host (Deborah Harry) you want to seduce. But this is David Cronenberg, a man who has made a career out of bodily anxiety and discomfort. (God, how I wish he had directed last year’s Black Swan.) Is technology at odds with the flesh, or does it enhance physical experience? The movie’s fashions may be terribly dated, but with the recent popularity of torture on mainstream movie screens, Videodrome seems prescient, even a bit tame. But it goes places no one else would think of treading. Cronenberg’s latest is—of all things—a tepid costume drama. But while fans wait for him to get his game back on, the Washington Psychotronic Film Society gives us a Boxing Day chance to remember when a Cronenberg movie really meant a dangerous method.
View the trailer.
Monday, Dec. 26 at McFadden’s, 2401 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Free.
