DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing in town in the coming week.
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Miguel Sano (Strand Releasing)For adolescents, turning sixteen is a milestone that seems like it may never come. For teens with a particular dream, there is another reason to long for their birthday. At sixteen years of age, ballplayers are eligible to be signed to one of the Major League Baseball farm team and get a chance to make it to the big leagues. Ballplayer: Pelotero looks at two of the most promising athletes in an MLB training camp — in the Dominican Republic, which fields nearly one in five current major league players. John Leguizamo narrates. This is the first feature by D.C. native Trevor Martin, who co-directed with Ross Finkel and Jonathan Paley. We’ll have an interview with Trevor Martin on Friday.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema
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Co-director Emad Burnat. (Kino Lorber)Palestinian Emad Burnat taught himself to work a video camera, and this documentary, co-directed with Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi, is a record of the technology that he used to record life in his village of Bil’in at the front lines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like any family man, Burnat records the growth of his son, but life becomes increasingly dangerous as settlements encroach on his village and soldiers in the Israeli Army respond to non-violent protests with tear gas – and then bullets. Burnat watches as one after another of his brothers is arrested, and as one after another of his cameras is broken – one by a bullet that could have killed him. The horrors of the conflict are in full view of the camera – one of Burnat’s friends is handcuffed, and then shot in the leg at close range by a soldier. Another unarmed friend is killed by a soldier’s bullet. Such footage is more than enough to sway the objective observer, but there is no such thing as an objective filmmaker, and Burnat crosses into manipulative territory when he includes a scene of his son asking why they shot his friend. Still, you won’t see a more powerful documentary about this unresolved and seemingly irresolvable conflict.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
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Timothy Carey, in a headshot used to promote Stanley Kubrick’s The KillingFive men plan a bold racetrack heist, but things naturally don’t go as planned. This early masterwork from Stanley Kubrick bears little resemblance to his ambitious later films, but his attention to detail and ability to build tension with stark efficiency was already in full effect. Kubrick’s film was one of the inspirations for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, and as that 1990s film was a collection of some of that era’s most notable character actors, The Killing gives us a look at the great character actors of that era, including the great bug-eyed Elisha Cook Jr., whose career spanned back to The Maltese Falcon and ended sometime after an appearance on Alf. But pay attention to another actor, in his first of two films for Kubrick. Timothy Carey was one of the great film noir villains, a lumbering figure who often literally chewed his way through a scene. To call his career erratic doesn’t begin to tell the story: Carey once faked his own kidnapping, and turned down roles in all three Godfather movies. In The Killing and especially Paths of Glory (at the AFI Silver Theatre next weekend), Kubrick directed the best performances of Carey’s strange and fascinating career.
View the trailer.
Sunday, July 15—Tuesday, July 17 and Thursday, July 19 at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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This weekend the National Gallery is showing a new 35mm print of a film that is considered director Jacques Rivette’s masterpiece. Its more than three hours of whimsical adventure follows two young women (Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier) around a Paris that is as much a place of mind as of geography. According to contrarian film critic Armond White, Pauline Kael walked out of a 1974 press screening of Celine and Julie go Boating shouting, “I’m going to the movies!” While I must agree to disagree with White’s defense of Jack and Jill, like him I find Celine and Julie precious and kind of unbearable. Still, a lot of people I respect swear by rather than at it, and it won’t cost you anything to decide for yourself and give props to the Gallery’s excellent repertory program.
View the trailer.
Saturday, July 14 at 12:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Helen MirrenThe Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover
A gangster (Michael Gambon) takes over a posh French restaurant and imposes scatalogical punishments on transgressors, while his beloved (Helen Mirren) unwisely takes a lover. The Washington Psychotronic Film Society is often taken for purveyors of bad movies, but titles like this prove it’s not the bad but the outre that drives their cinematic passion. Peter Greenaway’s controversial mid-career masterwork is filled with enough lust and revenge to satisfy the B-movie fanatic, but is dolled up in the highest of arthouse production values. The film was stunningly photographed by master cinematographer Sacha Vierny, whose camerawork lit up gorgeous movies from Last Year at Marienbad and Greenaway’s A Zed and Two Noughts. Sure, I wish somebody was showing a 35-millimeter print of this, but this will do for a Monday night.
View the trailer.
Monday, July 16 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s. Free, suggested donation $5.
