DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting and exploratory movies playing around town in the coming week.
—
(Magnet Releasing)A team of astronauts set off on a multi-year journey to determine if there’s life on Europa, Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. Director Sebastián Cordero uses the found-footage genre for a science fiction thriller that takes half its 90 minute running time to get any kind of tension going. It doesn’t help that the characters are banal and underdrawn—actual astronauts must have more personality than these fictional travellers, and more gravitas than their weakly written spokesperson (Embeth Davidtz). The film’s low budget shows, but good sound design helps overcome the limited resources. Europa Report eventually builds to a gripping climax, and maybe the slow build-up reflects the tedium of an impossibly long journey. But at least for its first half, it does not reflect compelling cinema. The European Space Agency plans to launch a probe bound for the real Europa in 2022. Those reports will probably be more intriguing.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
—
Mads Mikkelsen in PUSHER (1996)The AFI Silver Theatre’s program of Nordic Noir continues this week with a thriller that critics recently named the best Finnish film of all time. A rich playboy is found dead in his pool in the 1960 film Inspector Palmu’s Error (August 4 and 6), the first of director Matti Kassila’s adaptations of Mika Waltari’s detective novels. (Note: the AFI will be screening a DigiBeta copy of this rare title). Also screening this week, Mads Mikkelsen (currently seen in the excellent drama The Hunt) stars in Pusher, the 1996 debut film from director Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive, Only God Forgives). The AFI will screen Pusher on a 35-millimeter print.
View the trailer for Pusher.
Inspector Palmu’s Error screens Sunday and Tuesday. Pusher screens Friday, Saturday, and Thursday, Aug. 8. At the AFI Silver Theatre.
—
Andy Lau and Maggie CheungArt-house favorite Wong Kar-Wai returns to the screen this month with his martial arts film The Grandmaster. The Freer Gallery’s Hong Kong Film Festival closes out its tribute to the late Leslie Cheung with a 35-millimeter print of Wong’s 1990 breakthrough, the first of his films to be shot by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Set in 1960, Days of Being Wild traffics in Wong’s eternal themes of love, longing, and nostalgia, with a typically evocative soundtrack: Xavier Cugat. Starring a pair of actors whom Wong would return to again: Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung, who stars as Yip Man in Wong’s new film.
View the trailer.
Friday 7 p.m. and Sunday 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery. Free.
—
A pair of London chorus girls look for love and the spotlight. This doesn’t sound much like a film from the Master of the Macabre — until you throw in a murder. The National Gallery of Art’s program of Hitchcock’s silent films offers a newly restored 35-millimeter print of this rarely seen work, the director’s first feature film. Alma Reville was assistant director on the production, and legend has it that Hitchcock proposed to her after shooting. This Ciné-Concert will include musical accompaniment by Andrew Simpson.
Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
—
It’s a sure sign of gentrification that Bardo, once a cavernous space in Arlington, moved from Wilson Boulevard to Bladensburg Road. The resurrected Bardo Beer Garden shows DC-related movies on Thursday nights. Tonight you can see what the Florida Avenue Grill looked like thirty years ago in the Mr. T vehicle D.C. Cab. The movie, with its alarming racial tensions, is more interesting as a look at 1980s Washington than as a comedy. I pity the fool who blinks and misses character actor great Timothy Carey in a brief role as the Angel of Death.
View the trailer.
Thursday at 9 p.m. at Bardo Beer Garden (1200 Bladensburg Road NE).
—
Also opening this week: Cate Blanchette loses it in Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine; and Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg star in the comic book adaptation 2 Guns. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
