DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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George Plimpton (center) with the Detroit Lions (Walter Loos)Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself
George Plimpton was born into privilege and a long line of Exeter legends. He was kicked out of the exclusive prep school shortly before graduation, unable to absorb his lessons and daydream at the same time. But he made a long and varied career out of being a professional daydreamer. Plimpton made dreams come true in the literary vein, as founding editor of legendary journal The Paris Review. But the literary man was not afraid to get his feet wet, or to get punched in the face for that matter. Plimpton edited The Paris Review out of his 72nd Street apartment, and wrote for Sports Illustrated, where he pioneered a fearless immersive journalism. From football to hockey and boxing to baseball, there was hardly a past time which he did not struggle to understand from the inside. Plimpton admirably set himself up for failure every time, to the extent that his own writing took the back burner to what some saw as cheap stunts. But his books are back in print, and there’s a reason that directors Tom Bean and Luke Poling wait till the film’s closing frames to defend their subject’s prose. It’s worth the wait.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Soko (Music Box Films)In 19th century Paris, a teenage maid (singer-turned-actress Soko) has a paralyzing seizure, and is sent to an all-female asylum run by pioneering neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (Vincent Lindon). The buzz on the first feature from writer-director Alice Winocour is that its Victorian sexual awakening is seen through eyes that are too self-consciously modern, but its visual style, lush and visceral, may be hard to argue with.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
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Krishna Das in ONE TRACK HEARTThe fourth annual festival of spiritual awareness includes a program films that may be of intetrest even to those not seeking inner peace. The festival begins tonight with director Jeremy Frindel in person for One Track Heart: The Story of Krishna Das (June 20). Born Jeffrey Kagel, Krishna Das turned down the chance to beome the lead singer of Blue Oyster Cult, instead selling all his possessions in search of happiness in the Himalayas. Other enlightening titles this weekend include The Highest Pass (June 21), about a group of motorcyclists who journey along treacherous Himalayan roads; and Digital Dharma (June 22), about a fifty-year struggle to presrve and now digitize 20,000 volumes of ancient Tibetan writings.
View the trailer for One Track Heart.
June 20-23 at The Spectrum. See the festival website for a full schedule.
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The Freer’s 18th annual Made in Hong Kong film festival continues this weekend with a car chase movie. Hey, I can get that anytime! This is AMERICA, you might think. But this car chase movie won Best Picture and Best Director from the Hong Kong Film Critics Association, and since Hong Kong action movies can be even more thrilling and insane than what you get at the multiplex, that’s no small feat. And any American action movie would be improved by Hong Kong cinema’s master villain Anthony Wong, here playing a veteran cop.
View the trailer.
Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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Courtesy of the HirshhornCome for the bubble, stay for the puppy. Lewis Teague’s adaptation of Stephen King’s killer St. Bernard movie is the final installment in the Hirshhorn’s Summer Camp film series, Pup Tense. You won’t find a lot of defenders of the film outside of consumer advocates who champion the film’s pioneering expose of the Ford Pinto’s structural vulnerabilities. But it’s a good excuse to post a classic Ghanian movie poster, more of which you can see here.
View the trailer.
Thursday at 8 p.m. at the Hirshhorn. Free.
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Also opening this week, Sofia Coppola’s true crime movie The Bling Ring; and Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow, as well as highlights from this year’s AFIDocs.
