DCist’s selctive and subjective guide to some of the most interesting, buzz-worthy (or not) movies coming to town in the next week.
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Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway (Laurie Sparham/Universal Studios)The much-loved Broadway musical comes to the big screen with an Oscar-winning director (Tom Hooper, who won for The King’s Speech) and an all-star cast led by charismatic Tony-award winning Hugh Jackman. Jackman soared on stage in The Boy from Oz, but Peter Allen required a different set of chops than Jean Valjean, and Jackman’s flawed vibrato only reminds you how poorly Valjean’s bloated numbers compare to “I go to Rio.” Worse is Russell Crowe’s Javert. Crowe has the requisite physical swagger, but doesn’t have the musical authority to give the role of the determined gendarme a vocal gravitas equal to the role. That leaves Anne Hathaway’s Fantine, with the musical‘s juiciest part and best song, and what do you know, she hits it out of the park. I am generally resistant to Broadway sentiment, but her “I dreamed a dream, ” as manipulative as it is, is a guaranteed two-hanky show-stopper, sure to make you forget Susan Boyle’s audition. The young revolutionaries are better served by lesser known actors who can sing — Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne are terrific as Cosette and Marius. But it’s up to the male leads to carry the movie, and they don’t. There’s a lot of Oscar buzz around this prestige entertainment, and it’s already showing up on a lot of year-end bests, but unless you’re already a fan of the musical, feel free to skip it.
View the trailer.
Opens Christmas Day at a theater near you.
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Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Hoss (Adopt Films)It’s 1980. Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss) is an East Berlin doctor trying to escape to the west. In retaliation for applying for an exit visa, she’s sent down to the minors, as it were: a country pediatric clinic, where she is understandably mistrustful and distant with her colleagues. But love and career bring her out from the cold, as she is tentatively drawn to another doctor (Ronald Zehrfeld) and finds an affinity with a troubled teen patient (Jasna Fritzi Bauer). Director Christian Petzold has cast Nina Hoss in five films, and while I haven’t seen any of the others this instinctive actor-director collaboration has the quietly powerful tone of a Bergman or Ozu ensemble cast. Setting a love story in a time of repression may sound terribly sentimental, but the restrained performances keep the melodramatic volume to a minimum.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema and Angelika Mosaic. On Saturday, director Christian Petzold will participate in a remote Q&A from Berlin via Skype following the 1:30pm show at the Angelika Mosaic. Sunday, the Angelika hosts film distributor and director Jeff Lipsky for a discussion of Barbara and Rust and Bone (which I’ll review tomorrow). These discussions will take place Sunday following the 1:30 p.m. show of Barbara and following the 4:50 p.m. show of Rust & Bone.
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In 1951, on the small island of Anatahan, a group of Japanese soldiers were found. The last holdouts from World War II, the men struggled to survive and fought over the one woman on the island. This incident has inspired many a harrowing tale about the futility of war. But it also inspired this 1956 B-movie and a bold nude scene that sent fans who did not want to be reminded of the war lining up for a voluptuous distraction. The Freer’s Shintoho retrospective closes with this vehicle for studio discovery Michiko Maeda, who just a year later refused to lift up her skirt for a director. Her defiance cost her a more than forty-year exile from Japanese screens.
Friday, December 21 at 7:00 pm at the Freer. Free.
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Doris Nolan, Cary Grant, and Katherine HepburnA stock market whiz is engaged to marry a rich debutante, but falls for her boho sister. The AFI’s Holiday Classics series continues with one of the great convergences of old school Hollywood talent. While not as celebrated as The Philadelphia Story two years later, this 1938 ur-romcom was the second time Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn met with director George Cukor, but screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart (adapting a play by Philip Barry) fill out the classic team.
Saturday, December 22 – Monday, Dec 24 at the AFI.
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Jean Gabin and Michele Morgan (Film Alliance of the United States/Photofest)Director Marcel Carné is best known for his epic backstage melodrama Children of Paradise (showing at the Gallery on December 23 and 30). But this earlier film takes a look at the seedier milieu of a waterfront cafe in Le Havre, where crooks and doomed lovers alike meet. The National Gallery presents new digital restorations of these two Carné classics this week.
Port of Shadows screens Saturday, December 22 at 2:00 pm and 4:00 pm. Children of Paradise screens Sunday, December 23 and Sunday, December 30 at 4:00 pm. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Also opening this week, Tom Cruise auditions for a new franchise but Werner Herzog steals the show in an adaptation of Lee Child’s popular action hero Jack Reacher; and Marion Cotillard stars in the drama Rust and Bone. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow. Stay tuned for a review of Quentin Tarantino’s highly anticipated slave revenge fantasy Django Unchained before Christmas.
