DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting, anti-heroic movies playing around town in the coming week.

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From The Act of Killing, co-directed by DC native Joshua Oppenheimer

AFIDocs

The festival formerly known as SilverDocs opens next week with a shorter and more concentrated program. Running five days in contrast to last year’s seven, the festival is also curiously light on music documentaries; Muscle Shoals (June 20 and 23), about the legendary Alabama recording studio, and The Punk Singer (June 22 and 23), about riot grrrl Kathleen Hanna made the cut, but where’s Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me? Still, there’s plenty for moveigoers to dig into. Some of the more intriguing titles include the Werner Herzog and Errol Morris-produced The Act of Killing (June 22 and 23), co-directed by D.C. native Joshua Oppenheimer; We Always Lie to Strangers (June 20 and 21), about the Branson, Mo. entertainment industry; McCullin, Jacqui Morris’s study of British photojournalist Don McCullin; and The Machine which Makes Everything Disappear, which documents the results of a casting call in the Soviet Republic of Georgia. Stay tuned to DCist next week for more festival coverage.

View trailers for The Act of Killing, Muscle Shoals, and The Machine which Makes Everything Disappear.
June 19-23 at area venues. See the festival site for a complete schedule.

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Andrea Riseborough and Clive Owen (Magnolia)

Shadow Dancer

Colette (Andrea Riseborough) is a single Belfast mother who botches an attempted bombing on the London Underground. An MI5 agent (Clive Owen) promises clemency if Colette leads the agency to her brothers in the IRA. Family betrayal and a conflicted morality is at the heart of this film by Man on Wire director James Marsh. The leads are effective, but the family dynamic isn’t developed beyond sensationalistic motivation, and what’s worse is what the script makes of Colette’s relationship with the agent. The result is a curiously flat melodrama-cum-thriller. Also starring The X-Files‘ Gillian Anderson as Owen’s unsympathetic middle manager.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema

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James Caan and Laura Devon

Red Line 7000

“If Only Angels Have Wings, Only Devils Have Wheels.” This is the ad campaign I would have come up for this late-career Howard Hawks racing car picture, but then the target audience in 1965 was probably indifferent to auteur theory. Three race car drivers and their revolving relationships with three women are the focus of this rarely revived film starring a young James Caan. Keep an eye out for George Takei in a minor role. Chicago Reader critic Dave Kehr wrote of the film that, “Depending on your point of view, you’ll find it either beautifully pure or sadly unshaded. A puzzlement, but intriguing.”

Listen to a radio spot.
Saturday, June 15 and Sunday, June 16 at the AFI.

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Vulgaria

Made in Hong Kong

The Freer’s 18th annual Hong Kong film festival starts this weekend with Vulgaria, director Pang Ho-Cheung’s ribald satire of the Hong Kong movie industry. The festival continues through July with new releases from the vibrant national cinema, as well as a pair of very different but essential Hong Kong classics: The 1986 John Woo/Chow Yun-Fat gangster movie A Better Tomorrow (July 12 and 14) and the 1987 fantasy A Chinese Ghost Story (July 19 and 21), both of which will be screened in archival 35mm prints.

View the trailer for Vulgaria.
Vulgaria screens Friday, June 14 at 7:00 pm and Sunday, June 16 at 2:00 pm at the Freer. Free.

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Innocence

A young girl accuses her physical therapist of abuse in director Jan Hřebejk’s psychological thriller. Winner of two 2012 Czech Lion Awards, the film is part of the Czech That Film festival presented by Prague brewers Staropramen.

View the Czech trailer.
Wednesday, June 19 at 7:00 pm at West End Cinema.

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Also opening this week, an alien orphan is sent to Earth in Man of Steel. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.