DCist’s highly subjective, thoroughly uncomprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Nanni Moretti and Michel Piccoli in We Have a Pope. Courtesy IFC Films.What it is: What if we didn’t follow our calling?
Why you want to see it: Cardinal Melville (seignorial actor Michel Piccoli) is not one of the odds on favorites for Supreme Pontiff in this papal election. When his peers unexpectedly vote him into Holiness, Melville suffers from a terrible case of stage fright. Director Nanni Moretti (Caro Diario) stars as the psychologist who tries to offer secular guidance, but when His Holiness Elect disappears, the shrink finds himself stuck in Vatican City, biding his time by organizing a volleyball tournament among the College of Cardinals. This may seem irreverent and silly but it nicely humanizes the clergy. Some critics have complained that this is not a biting satire of the church, but it’s aim is more inclusive than divisive: how many of us are called to something that we feel we aren’t prepared for? It is about the church’s representative of God on Earth, but it is just as much about how man represents himself. The wandering Cardinal tries to revisit his first love – the theater, and what We Have a Pope is ultimately about is our failure to answer our own calling, be it secular or holy.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street.
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Diane Keaton, Elisabeth Moss, and Kasey in DARLING COMPANION. Courtesy Sony Classics.What it is: Writer-director Lawrence Kasdan’s latest ensemble piece about America focuses on a narrow slice of pie.
Why you want to see it: Beth (Diane Keaton) has a better relationship with the mutt she rescues from the side of the freeway (hence the dog’s name) than with Joseph (Kasdan regular Kevin Kline), the hard-working surgeon she married . The unhappy couple marry their daughter Grace (Mad Men’s Elisabeth Moss) to the Indian veterinarian who tended to Freeway, and a delightful multi-culti wedding in the Rocky Mountains ensues. But somewhere in the woods, Kline loses track of Freeway, which is loaded with more meaning than the movie can deliver: he lost his way; the wedding guests call out “Freeway!” in the middle of untouched wilderness. Oh the humanity. The search for Freeway naturally brings everybody together, but it is also a test of how deep the filmmakers multi-culti sensibilities actually go. The running “gag’, if it‘s supposed to be funny, is the alluring gypsy woman Carmen (Ayelet Zurer) who summons her clairvoyant powers to either lead the white man to their canine treasure or to dupe them. Score one for The Magical Other, the sexual powerhouse who can see what animals see, vs. The Diminished White Man: kidney stones, dislocated shoulders and shrunken penises are among the bodily ailments and fears that the aging ensemble laments. The cast espeically Richard Jenkins, do the best they can with the script. But it’s just another platitudinous Kasdan joint. Darling Companion is a competently made film with a dramatic structure and pronounced character development, but little real life. What can you say about a movie that chides its protagonist (Kevin Kline) for thinking the world revolves around him, and then in turn thinks the world revolves around its canine problem?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Bethesda Row.
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Jason Segal and Emily Blunt. © 2012 Tom and Violet’s Wedding.What it is: The best Emily Blunt rom-com of the year to date.
Why you want to see it: From producer Judd Apatow and the makers of Bridesmaids and Forgetting Sarah Marshall comes this romantic comedy about what happens after the proposal. Someday a movie will do for rom-com forumlas what Cabin in the Woods does for horror. In the meantime, we have this entry, which tries to inject serious observations about relationships into the standard template, in this case starring Tom (screenwriter Jason Segal) and Violet (Emily Blunt). But other injections are more troubling. Is the multi-culti post-doc psych department truly inclusive or is it just a set-up for a punch line? In light of the criticism against the lack of diversity in Lena Dunham’s new HBO series Girls, it’s worth thinking about. Engagement brings together a Pakistani woman, a heavily accented Chinese geek (what is this, 1984?), a black guy obsessed with masturbation, and two white Brits. The punch line is that the Asian guy calls the Pakistani woman a bitch! Is this supposed to be a corrective to tokenism, a satire of it, or just obnoxious? Where The Five-year Engagement works at all is where it sticks to forumla. The rom-com resolution that, despite the bumps in the road, the couple really are meant for each other after all may push the right buttons even if certain details push the wrong ones.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at a multiplex near you.
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Juliette Binoche and Anaïs Demoustier in Elles, a film by Malgorzata Szumowska. A Kino Lorber release. Photo: Szymon RoginskiWhat it is: A journalist explores the world of prositution only to find her own sexuality challenged.
Why you want to see it: Elles begins with a dimly lit sex scene that turns out to be a porno, but who’s watching it? Paris Reporter Juliette Binoche, doing research for her expose of the world of young women turning tricks to put themselves through school. There’s a fine French line between expose and exploitation, and it’s crossed faster than you can say “Très jolie, Coco.” But Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska raises important issues in a film that’s intimate in uncomfortable ways, and Juliette Binoche gives an unusually revealing performance.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the Avalon.
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Ineko Arima in Tokyo Twilight.Early Summer and Tokyo Twilight
What they are: Two Ozu masterworks in the National Gallery’s Japanese Divas series.
Why you want to see them:: Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara explore father daughter relationships in a pair of ensemble pieces that could have Lawrence Kasdan for breakfast. In Early Summer (1951), Hara plays a daughter whose impending marriage threatens to breakup the fabric of an extended family. In Tokyo Twilight (1957), Ozu’s final black and white film, Hara is one of two daughters coming to terms with the reappearance of the mother who abandoned them and their father (Ryu).
View a clip from Early Summer.
Early Summer screens Saturday, April 28 at 2:30 pm. Tokyo Twilight screens Sunday, April 29 at 4:30 pm. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Also opening this week, drama ina and out of the classroom: Kenneth Lonergan’s long-delayed Margaret, and FilmFest DC favorite Monsieur Lazhar. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
