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

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Andy Hummel, Alex Chilton, and Jody Stephens (William Eggleston, Eggleston Artistic Trust)

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me

Condensed from a piece I wrote for Blogcritics. The Big Star story is the stuff of rock legend, born in the birthplace of Elvis, named for the cradle of civilization, undervalued in their time. For fans like me, the first hour of Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me is like rock doc heaven. Director Drew DeNicola begins with the Memphis rock scene in the 1960s and takes crucial side trips to Creem magazine and the Memphis Rock Writers’ convention that Big Star’s then-manager threw in order to get 100 rock journalists in one place to see a Big Star show. Founding member Chris Bell left the band after #1 Record to find his own muse, and the movie gives generous props to Bell’s essential contribution to the band. Even more fascinating (from a photographer’s view) is footage of Memphis photographer William Eggleston. Eggleston’s work is an iconic influence on photography and movies, and even though he is reluctantly connected to the Memphis rock scene – he would rather listen to Bach – he documented its early days on film and video. The photographer even played piano during the sessions for Big Star’s third album, Third/Sister Lovers. But the movie’s second hour falters, when interviews with people who were there are traded for testimonials from musicians influenced by Big Star. And there’s an elephant in the room that’s asked but not sufficiently answered. Why did Chilton turn away from this music and to the inconsistent R&B flavored rock and erratic standards that made up his solo career? Why is Big Star’s reunion album of new material, In Space (only referenced in passing via the cover art) so terrible? Still, anybody who loves Big Star will love most of this and forgive the overkill of talking heads.

View the trailer.
Friday, August 9-Sunday, August 11 at the AFI Silver.

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Wiley Wiggins and Patrick Riester (Kino Lorber)

Computer Chess

It’s man vs. machine in front of and behind the camera in mumblecore director Andrew Bujalski’s ugly new film. Computer Chess begins as a faux-document of a chess software tournament in the early 1980s. The director uses a vintage Portapak (much like the one used by William Eggleston in Stranded in Canton, which is excerpted in the Big Star documentary at the AFI this weekend). The camera’s technical limitations play up the emotionally limited characters who spend their weekends struggling against the limitations of computer technology. If that sounds like an exercise, it is, but these stunted characters go strange places where Bujalski’s previous mumblecore features didn’t. If you’re interested in outdated video technology and the lives of yesterday’s computer geeks, you might forgive Computer Chess its geeky navel-gazing and public access TV aesthetics.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.

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La Lion de Moguls (La Cinémathèque française)

Russian Cinema in Exile in the Ballets Russes Era

In conjunction with their Ballet Russes exhibit, the National Gallery of Art presents a series of films by Russian directors working in Europe. The series launches this weekend with a pair of ciné-concerts with live accompaniment by Ben Model. Secrets of the Orient (“Scheherazade”) (1928) is “an Orientalist fantasy” made in Berlin by Russian émigré director Alexandre Volkoff. French avant-garde director Jean Epstein directed the fantastic adventure Le Lion des Mogols (1924), in which a Tibetan prince falls for a beautiful movie actress. The Cinémathèque française restored the tinted 35 mm print. Both films will be introduced by Anna Winestein, director of the Ballets Russes Cultural Partnership.

Secrets of the Orient (“Scheherazade”) screens Saturday, August 10 at 4:00 pm. Le Lion des Mogols screens Sunday, August 11 at 4:00 pm. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.

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Mekong Hotel

Seen and Not Seen: Thai Cinema Today

Reservations are already closed for Friday night’s food and film program, but you can still watch two new Thai films in this program co-sponsored by the Royal Thai Embassy. Tang Wong is a coming of age film that focuses on four boys who pray for success at Bangkok’s Luang Poo shrine. When their wishes come true, they must publicly perform a traditional Thai dance. Mekong Hotel, the latest film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives), “moves between fiction, documentary, reality, and the supernatural.”

View the trailer for Mekong Hotel.
Tang Wong screens Sunday, August 11 at 1:00 pm. Mekong Hotel screens Sunday, August 11 at 3:00 pm. At the Freer. Free.

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Patrick

The AFI’S Ozploitation: Australian Genre Classics series continues with this tense thriller about a troubled teen (Robert Thompson). Patrick murders his mother and her lover and falls into a coma. But even though he’s confined to a hospital bed, violent psychokinetic powers help him seek revenge.

View the trailer.
Friday, August 9-Saturday, August 10 at the AFI Silver.

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Also opening this week, art house coming-of-age flick The Spectacular Now; and Elysium, the latest sci-fi blockbuster from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.