DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la LuneWhat it is: A new season of repertory classics on the Silver’s big screen.
Why you want to see it: Between FilmFest DC and the new AFI schedule, local moviegoers are going to have a full calendar for the next few weeks. Repertory series include a Silent Cinema Showcase, with a revival of Martin Scorcese’s superior silent movie homage Hugo along with a tribute to the Georges Méliès films that inspired it (April 13 and 14). The series features programs that highlight silent comics like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd; first lady of the movies Mary Pickford, and a screening of one of the all-time great silents, F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (April 21). Other series include tributes to Jack Nicholson, Shirley MacLaine, and the late Peter Falk; Castles in the Sky: Miyazaki, Takahata and the Masters of Studio Ghibli , with screenings of the works of animator Hayao Miyazaki in both dubbed (the English version of his essential My Neighbor Totoro screens this weekend) and original Japanese-language versions; a brief look at Horses in Cinema; a Monty Python retrospective; and Raj Kapoor and the Golden Age of Indian Cinema.
View the new AFI calendar here.
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Porco RossoWhat it is: The Freer Gallery’s all-day helping of works by the anime master.
Why you want to see it: Supplement the AFI’s Studio Ghibli series with the Freer’s selction of four of the director’s most popular works, introduced by Helen McCarthy, author of Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation. Ponyo and Porco Rosso will be screened in their English versions, while Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away will screen in their original Japanese versions with subtitles.
View the trailer for Ponyo.
All films screen Sunday, April 15 at the Freer. Free. Ponyo at 11:00 am; Porco Rosso at 1:30pm; Princes Mononoke at 4:00 pm; and Spirited Away at 7:00 pm.
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Portrait of Francesca Woodman and her father George Woodman, taken by Francesca Woodman. Untitled 1980 (New York). Courtesy of Lorber Films / Betty and George WoodmanWhat it is: A documentary about the quintessential tragic young artist and her less than essential artistic survivors.
Why you want to see it: Director C. Scott Wills appears at The Phillips Collection this weekend to discuss his documentary about Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) and the artistic family that she left behind. Francesca Woodman’s nude self-portrait photographs and video work are currently the subject of a retrospective at the Guggenheim, and both parents and her brother are also artists. The Woodmans’ art, abstract and decorative, is certainly not all of a piece with the late Francesca’s soul and flesh-baring work. But if the family’s creative streak is less than compelling, the family dynamic creates some fascinating moments.
View the trailer.
Saturday April 14 at 1:00pm at The Phillips Collection. Included with admission to special exhibition, Snapshot; free for members.
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Masahiko Kato, Kinuyo Tanaka, Keiko Enami, and Chieko Naniwa in SANSHO THE BAILIFF. © Brandon Films Inc./Photofest Sansho the Bailiff
What it is: The National Gallery’s Japanese Divas series continues with this 17th century tale.
Why you want to see it: One of director Kenji Mizoguchi’s most ambitious works, Sansho the Bailiff is based on Saikaku’s classic tale of a samurai’s daughter (Kinuyo Tanaka) who falls from grace and the upper class. New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane wrote of the film, “I have seen Sansho only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal.”
View the trailer.
Sunday, April 15 at 4:00pm at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Courtesy Electric Artists/Abramorama. Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope
What it is: Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock trains his eye on adults who play dress up.
Why you want to see it: The director/provocateur of Super Size Me continues his study of American consumerism with a visit to San Diego’s annual “geek Mecca.” The film follows five Comic-con attendees, and features interviews with some of the people behind geek culture, like Stan Lee, Josh Joss Whedon, Mat Groening and others. Dust off your Stormtroopers outfits: director Morgan Spurlock will appear at the West End Cinema for Q&As after the 7:00 and 7:30 shows on Friday the 13th, and will judge an audience costume contest.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Also opening this week, The much-anticipated documentary Bully, now with a new PG-13 rating; and Josh Joss Whedon’s horror movie about horror movies, Cabin in the Woods. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow, as well as a guide to the first round of FilmFest screenings.
