DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Courtesy GKIDSWhat it is: An homage to the music and culture of Cuba that earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.
Why you want to see it: Director Fernando Trueba, who won a best Foreign Film Oscar for Belle Epoque, collaborated with Spanish comic book artist/designer Javier Mariscal on this vividly animated love story that immerses the viewer in a dream like vision of the entertainment capitals of the 1940s and 1950s: New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and, most of all Havana. Cuban bandleader Bebo Valdés composed the film’s vibrant score, and the soundtrack includes classic jazz from Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie and others.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Au Hasard, BalthazarAu Hasard, Balthazar/Mouchette
What it is: One of the most depressing double bills in cinema.
Why you want to see it: This weekend the National Gallery of Art’s Bresson retrospective pairs two of the director’s best and bleakest works. Au Hasard, Balthazar (1966) is famously told from the point of view of a donkey, but this is no cuddly animal tale. Balthasar’s stark trials of punishing work, neglect, and abuse fully live up to the moniker beast of burden. Mouchette (1967) is based on a novel by George Bernanos, whose fiction Bresson also tapped for Diary of a Country Priest. It tells the stark tale of a lonely mute who cares for her sick mother and brother. On Saturday the Gallery will screen Bresson’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s White Nights, the rarely seen Four Nights of a Dreamer (1972).
View the trailer for Au Hasard, Balthasar.
Au Hasard, Balthazar screens Sunday, March 18 at 4:30, followed by Mouchette. Four Night of a Dreamer screens Saturday, March 17 at 4:30. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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What it is: March Mutt Madness continues at Psychotronic with this French Lee Marvin vehicle.
Why you want to see it: American thug Jimmy Cobb (Lee Marvin) is lost in the French countryside where he encounters a strange array of characters, from an ill man-boy to a farmgirl nymphomaniac. The dogs may not be literal and the thrills are not Marvin’s best in this not very canine picture, but thanks to Psychotronic for giving us a rare look at one of his last roles. Also starring Tina #8220;Ginger” Louise.
View the trailer.
Monday, March 19 at 8:00 pm at McFaddens.
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Courtesy of the Freer.What it is: Fiction and documentary blend in this look at the aftermath of a Korean textile factory/sweatshop fire.
Why you want to see it: Presented in conjunction with the Environmental Film Festival and the Korean Film Festival DC, Anyang, Paradise City is the first feature length film from photographer/video artist Park Chan-kyong (brother of Park Chan-wook, famous for his Vengeance Trilogy). The director takes a now sobering, now humorous look at the Seoul suburb, from a 1988 sweatshop tragedy, to an archaeological dig for an ancient temple, to the search for a grandmother tree half a millennium old.
View the trailer.
Friday, March 16 at 7:00 pm at the Freer. Free.
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What it is: George Cukor meets Cole Porter in the AFI’s Gene Kelly retrospective.
Why you want to see it: Gene Kelly’s final MGM musical and Cole Porter’s final film score was this 1957 comedy set in the world of a globe-trotting dance troupe. The movie is structured like Rashomon as candy-colored melodrama, with the titular women (Mitzi Gaynor, Kay Kendall, and Taina Elg) each telling their side of a stormy relationship with Kelly. Cukor was one of Hollywood’s great directors, and though this is far from his best work, the Cinemascope compositions and vivid technicolor make it worth a look on the big screen. Look for The Avengers Patrick MacNee in a small role.
View the trailer.
Monday, March 19 and Tuesday, March 20 at the AFI.
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Also opening this week: The Turin Horse, a 2 ½ hour apocalyptic vision from Hungarian director Béla Tarr; and Casa de mi Padre, an 84-minute telenovela parody starring Will Ferrell. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
