DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies coming to the area’s repertory screens in he coming week.
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Based on Yann Martel’s Oprah-sanctioned novel about a shipwrecked boy and a tiger, Ang Lee’s adaptation Life of Pi is one of the holiday season’s most anticipated releases, but positive comparisons to Avatar really really worry me. This weekend the AFI Silver Theatre gives audiences a chance to revisit what may be Lee’s prime, including a film considered to be one of the best of the 1990s. The Ice Storm is Lee’s adaptation of Rick Moody’s novel of alienated America, set during a contentious Thanksgiving in 1973.
View the trailer.
Friday, November 23 and Wednesday, November 28 at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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Don Lope (Fernando Rey) corrupts young orphan Tristana (Catherine Deneuve, who wasn’t that young and innocent) but loses out to a virile young artist (Franco Nero). Luis Buñuel’s 1970 film traffics in his usual themes of oppressive social mores and tortured psyches. One of the less frequently revived titles in the Buñuel canon, the movie has been digitally restored for a new generation, unversed in the sorrows and joys of scratchy, faded repertory prints.
View the trailer.
Opens Friday at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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German director Werner Schroeter is not on the radar of American moviegoers, but his work influenced better known directors like Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who shares Schroeter’s fondness for camp. The National Gallery of Art, in conjunction with the Goethe Institut, presents two of the director’s early films this weekend. Palermo or Wolfsburg finds a young Sicilian unhappy with his situation at a Volkswagen plant in the industrial town of Wolfsburg, and after a failed romance, plans his revenge.
Saturday, November 24 at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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A love triangle led by a ham actor (John Barrymore, natch) erupts among the vaudeville acts living in a Greenwich Village boarding house. This 1927 silent directed by John Ford was long thought to be lost, but a print was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive in 2009. The New Yorker’s Richard Brody said it’s not just a historical curiosity but an “instant classic.” Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Donald Sosin and Joanna Seaton.
Sunday, November 25 at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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A street gang kills a Chinatown shop owner who comes back for undead revenge. The Washington Psychotronic Film Society has unearthed this American version of the kyonsi or Chinese hopping vampire movie (seek out Mr. Vampire for an excellent example that’s both scary and hilarious).
Monday, November 26 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s. Free, suggested donation $5.
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Also opening this week, is Anvil director Sacha Gervasi’s Hitchock biopic fiendishly entertaining?
