DCist’s highly subjective, thoroughly uncomprehensive guide to the most hard-boiled, quality-wise movies playing around town in the coming week.
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What it is: When detectives were hard boiled and Hollywood product could equal art.
Why you want to see it: Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is a private dick who specializes in adultery cases. But when beautiful Evelyn Mulray (Faye Dunaway) hires him to cherchez la femme, he finds corruption that goes much deeper. This classic neo-noir is populated with what seem like stock characters — the sentimental cynic, the femme fatale, the blustery kingpin — but the film is crafted with exacting care, and the plot rises and falls with tragic precision. When Dunaway accidentally lets her head fall on her car horn, the awkward honk that results becomes bitter foreshadowing. Long before exile, director Roman Polanski regularly explored themes of confined spaces and spoiled innocence that anticipated his current state. The open Los Angeles desert in Chinatown may be at odds with the confined spaces of Rosemary’s Baby or his recent Carnage, but here the director works on the tension of being confined by genre conventions — and the happy ending screenwriter Robert Towne originally wrote. A nearly perfect combination of star power, dramatic structure and a director’s personal vision, colored by cinematographer John Alonzo’s beautifully muted palette.
View the trailer.
Friday, May 18 – Sunday, May 20 and Tuesday, May 22 at the AFI. $11.50
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What it is: The most devastating of romantic comedies.
Why you want to see it: The alienation of the modern worker and the city dweller is the subject of painful humor in Billy WIlder’s Oscar-winning classic. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon, in one of his greatest performances) is a doormat for the executive shoes at Consolidated Life insurance. He curries favor with his bosses by letting them use his apartment for their romantic trysts. Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is the elevator operator he takes a shine to, and their lives intertwine unexpectedly after near tragedy strikes. The movie lives in the titutlar apartment but it could as easily have been called The Office, after the soulless place whose cubicle farms and grey flannel suits (led by Fred MacMurray, playing against type as a coldhearted boss) nearly eats its workers alive. The Apartment is ostensibly a comedy, but the smart alecky cynicism of the script by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond packs an emotional wallop more intense than most so-called dramas. Billy Wilder is one of four Great Film Directors who will be honored by the US Postal Service on a series of commemorative stamps. A First-Day-of-Issue ceremony will be held at the AFI on Wednesday, May 23 at 10:00 am, followed by a free screening of The Apartment.
View the trailer .
Thursday, May 19 – Sunday, May 20 at the AFI. $11.50
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What it is: A silent icon accompanied by one of the world’s greatest klezmer fiddlers.
Why you want to see it: The JCC hosts Alicia Svigals and Marilyn Lerner’s premier of a score for the silent film The Yellow Ticket (aka The Devil’s Pawn), with ur-femme fatale Pola Negri. The 1918 film examines anti-Semitism in Imperial Russia. Negri stars as Lea, who hides her heritage to pursue a medical degree and resorts to prostitution to make ends meet. Svigals was a founder of the Klezmatics, and has composed or played for Itzhak Perlman, The Kronos Quartet and Allen Ginsberg.
Monday, May 21 at 7:30 pm at the Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center. $16.50. Purchase tickets here.
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What it is: The Bollywood epic of a sad clown.
Why you want to see it: Pop culture references to the Indian movie industry has brought Bollywood to the West, but even cinephiles who know the names Aishwarya Rai and Amitabh Bachchan may not be familiar with one of the cinema’s icons. The AFI’s series Raj Kapoor and the Golden Age of Indian Cinema, co-presented with the Freer Gallery of Art, focuses on the work of a Bollywood giant whose screen persona is said to combine Clark Gable, Gene Kelly, and Charlie Chaplin. Kapoor produced, directed, and stars in the nearly four-hour epic My Name is Joker (Mera Naam Joker), a film that was a commercial and critical failure upon its release in 1970. Joker follows the career of Raj ‘Raju’ Ranbir, a sentimental clown who sends sad clown dolls to the women he loves.
View a sad Bollywood clown dancing and singing with an inflatable heart..
Saturday, May 19 at the AFI. $11.50
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What it is: The Washington Psychotronic Film Society brings you the golden age of Japanese monster movies.
Why you want to see it:: Archaeologists unearth a bloodthirsty demon who invades Japan. Luckily, their native monsters, which include a proto-Ninja turtle, a long-tongued umbrella, and a woman with a seven-foot long neck, are there to rise against the foreign intruder. Would you believe it’s kind of a children’s movie? Spook Warfare is the second and best-regarded of a trilogy of Yokai films inspired by the work of manga artist Shigeru Mizuki.
View the trailer.
Monday, May 21 at 8:00 at McFadden’s. Free, suggested donation $5.
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Also opening this week, This is Not a Film, the work of an Iranian filmmaker banned from making films; and Richard Linklater’s true crime black comedy Bernie. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow. The Dictator, the latest from Sacha Baron Cohen, opened Wednesday.
