DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Tilikum, current Sea World resident (Suzanne Allee/Magnolia)
A tattooed, grizzled biker type tells director Gabriela Cowperthwaite that he has lived through two revolutions in South America; but the worst thing he’s ever done was capture baby orcas whales. Blackfish begins with harrowing 911 audio juxtaposed with what turns out to be ordinary Sea World footage. But ordinary industry practices may not be enough to keep even experienced trainers safe. In 2010, a veteran trainer was killed by an orca at Sea World Orlando, pulled to her death while a horrified audience watched. There’s no record of any orca harming humans in the sea, but left in the confines of a tank that’s basically a watery jail cell, the creatures suffer in order to bring vacationing families a Caged Willy show. Cowperthwaite’s film is a conventional documentary with a harrowing, heartbreaking subject. Sea World naturally disputes claims that its policies are harmful to both trainers and whales. Travelers in search of a Florida water show may want to opt for Weeki Wachee instead.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffman (Sofía Subercaseaux/Sundance Selects)Jamie (Michael Cera) is in Chile as a drug tourist, partaking of local weed and coke with little success. But his real target is the legendary San Pedro cactus. At a party with three brothers (all siblings of the film’s director Sebastian Silva), he meets and inadvertently invites 21st century hippie Crystal Fairy (Gaby Hoffman, who looks very much the daughter of Warhol superstar Viva) on a combative, unfulfilling quest for the next high. Michael Cera is too young to have a mid-career course change, but this year the 25-year old actor departed from his cuddly nebbish persona to take on a pair of related douchey roles. Jamie reads like a continuation of Cera’s role as himself in Seth Rogen’s self-indulgent stoner comedy This is the End. Crystal Fairy is a self-indulgent stoner quest movie. Its depiction of a young man who thinks money can buy enlightenment is as much cautionary tale as aimless road movie, but the titular hippie is problematic, the latest case of an unrealistic female character written by a man. Would a woman write a female character who can take a road trip and get naked in a hotel room with four men and not get harassed?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Count Gore DeVol presents Phantasm
Dick Dysel returns to the AFI Silver Theatre with his alter ego, the former host of Channel 20’s Creature Feature. The Count will appear live on stage to present a 35-millmeter print of Phantasm (1979), the first of a series of movies by Don Coscarelli (John Dies at the End) that follow the horrific exploits of a grave robber known as the Tall Man. Followed by a 35-millimeter print of Phantasm II.
View the trailer.
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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The Freer Gallery’s 18th Annual Made in Hong Kong Festival continues its tribute to the late actor Leslie Cheung with this industry satire from 1996. Cheung plays a director who after a series of box-office bombs agrees to make a “Category III” film (Hong Kong’s designation for soft-core porn). As with the series’ other Hong Kong classics, the Freer will be showing a print courtesy of the Hong Kong Film Archive, Leisure and Cultural Services Department and Orange Sky Golden Harvest Entertainment Group.
View the trailer.
Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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From “The Dancing Soul of the Walking People” (Paula Gladstone)From Vault to Screen
The National Gallery of Art continues it’s annual showcase of film preservation efforts with an avant-garde look at the beach and a program of works that explore the physical substance of film. Director Paula Gladstone took a Super-8 camera under the Coney Island boardwalk to make The Dancing Soul of the Walking People which captures light and shadow on sand to create “a near-surreal set of black-and-white images.” The program The Artist and the Fragile Emulsion includes short films by Andy Warhol, Warren Sonbert, David Wojnarowicz, Jack Waters, Ken Jacobs, and Beryl Sokoloff , experimental filmmakers who “relate (literally and metaphorically) the sensitive nature of the film emulsion to the fragility of human existence.”
The Dancing Soul of the Walking People screens Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Gladstone and sound restoration specialist John Polito will discuss the film and its complicated restoration. The Artist and the Fragile Emulsion screens Sunday at 4:30 p.m. Curator Jon Gartenberg, specialist in restoring the legacy of moving image artists, will appear. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Also opening this week, two of the best films of the year: Mads Mikkelsen stars as a man falsely accused of child abuse in Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt; and Joshua Oppenheimer’s must-see documentary about the leaders of Indonesian death squads, The Act of Killing. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
