DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting, long haul movies playing around town in the coming week.
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(Robert Frank)Photographer Robert Frank, best known for his seminal photo book The Americans, is forever associated with the look of the Rolling Stones’ classic Exile on Main Street: his intimate, carnivalesque photos grace the double-album cover. The Stones commissioned Frank to shoot a documentary film to support the album, but when they saw footage that caught them at their hedonistic, narcissistic worst, the film was shelved. A court order allowed Cocksucker Blues to be shown only once per year and in the filmmaker’s presence. But as Frank has gotten older, the movie has turned up without the auteur — he was in the vicinity but not on the site of the the 2008 Anthology Film Archives screening where I saw it. Peggy Parsons, head of the National Gallery of Art’s film programs, confirms that the “restriction [that Frank appear at screenings] has been lifted, at least for the first four museum screenings each year.” Anybody fascinated with this era of the Stones as they made their best album will have to see it. But for all the cinéma vérité sex and drugs and rock and roll, they don’t do anything you don’t expect the Rolling Stones to do. Preceded by Toward CS Blues: Delinquency and Danger in Rolling Stones’ Films, an illustrated lecture by David James. The Gallery will be showing a DigiBeta copy of the film.
View a *coughVHSbootleg* .
Sunday, May 25 at 4:00 pm at the National Gallery of Art. Free
A group of oil riggers sign up for a trucking gig that pays dearly. The job: to drive two trucks loaded with nitroglycerin up treacherous mountain roads to the site of an oil fire. Singing sensation Yves Montand had his breakout dramatic role in this film. Sure, French action movie doesn’t sound like a fun time at the movies, but director Henri-Georges Clouzot (Les Diaboliques) wrings gallons of sweaty tension out of this sub-equatorial melodrama, and I guarantee it’s more harrowing than any other action movie in town. The AFI celebrates the 60th anniversary of this clasic with a new 35mm print.
View the trailer.
Saturday, May 25, Monday May 27, and Wednesday, May 29 at the AFI Silver Theater.
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(Ahron R. Foster/Kino Lorber)Ain’t in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
The late Levon Helm was the only member of The Band who came from the American South that drove their musical and sartorial approach. That homegrown attitude informs director Jacob Hatley’s film to a fault. Hatley was given what appears to be full access to Helm, not just to his family home and concert appearances, but to doctor’s appointments that show the aging rocker’s fragility. The notion of rock stars in retirement is an intriguing one that is barely suggested in the film, which visits a retirement home to interview the widow of former Band-mate Rick Danko. But like many of the questions the movie raises — of The Band’s influence and history, of Helm’s background — it’s glossed over, or worse, not addressed at all. If there weren’t so many excellent music documentaries being produced right now, the hand-held, consumer-grade video in much of the film might not stand out. But when you have well-crafted, highly entertaining profiles out there like Beware of Mr. Baker and A Band Called Death, its shortcomings are more prominent. I found Ain’t in It for My Health watchable enough, a mostly casual affair that feels like you’re hanging out in somebody’s basement, but there’s little context provided, and not much incentive for viewers who aren’t familiar with his music.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Draw Sparky, impressionist style. Christa Theret (Fidelite Films and Samuel Goldwyn Films) Renoir
“The second I saw her, I knew she was a little Renoir.”
“You gave me three little Renoirs, but with this blasted war, two of them are missing.”
This is the kind of dialogue that turns natural light, beautiful French countryside and voluptuous nude models into kitsch in director Gilles Bordous’ biopic of the French master. FIlmed at the Renoir’s family estate, the movie is all exposition, melodrama and gratuitous boobs-because-arthouse, bathed in reverent warm light and overheated dialogue. Michael Bouquet (The Bride Wore Black) wears his august beard and failing arthritic instruments like a lascivious Santa Claus, spouting dialogue that reads like a shopping list of Characters in My Biography to his topless muse Andrée (Christa Theret). When his son Jean (Vincent Rottiers) returns on disability from the front lines of WWI, the movie takes another heavy-handed turn as we see the young man develop his interest in the cinematic art that he would soon master. If you want a Renoir fix, go to the Phillips, or rent The Rules of the Game instead.
View the kind of hilarious trailer.
Opens tomorrow at The Avalon, Cinema Arts Theater, and AMC Loews Shirlington
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Bert Stern and Suzie Parker (Bert Stern Studios/First Run Features)Photographer Bert Stern directed the acclaimed concert film Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1960), but he’s best known for iconic images that help defined the feminine ideal for a generation. His pictures can still court controversy, as in a shoot with Lindsay Lohan that recreates shots from Marilyn Monroe’s last portrait sitting — which happened to be with Bert Stern. Director Shannah Laumeister has been involved with Stern on and off since the 1980s, so this is no unbiased document, but Stern is reportedly revealing in his tales of self-medicated desperation and downfall, including a Mad Men like episode with vitamin shots.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema
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Also opening this week, man-child and woman-child behave badly in a pair of not very unfunny comedies: Noah Baumbach’s spot-on Woody Allen impersonation Frances Ha and The Hangover, Part 3. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
