DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Paul Giamattai (Claire Folger/Exlcusive Media Entertainment LLC)On November 22, 1963, a Dallas hospital became a grisly part of American history. President John F. Kennedy was admitted to Parkland Hospital, where staff were unable to save him. Moveigoers may wonder if we really needed another JFK movie, and we don’t, but the producers put an awful lot of talent into this historical drama: Zac Efron plays Dr. Jim Carrico, the first doctor to examine the President; Paul Giamatti plays amateur fimmaler Abraham Zapruder; BIlly Bob Thornton plays the Secret Service agent who takes charge of Zapruder’s footage; Jackie Earle Haley plays the priest who arrives on the scene too late to perform last rites. There are interesting threads here — photographers may be curious how difficult it was to get Zapruder’s film processed, and how many armchair historians think about Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother? The script isn’t as maudlin as you might expect, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t maudlin — wait till Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother launches into historical high dudgeon. The filmmakers seem to take their hand-held aesthetic from the Zapruder film itself, which lends the film a kind of ER-like intimacy that keeps it marginally watchable until the script falls apart. But while first-time director Peter Landesman may aim for well-meaning performances, what he gets is Actors Looking Really Serious Because History.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End CInema, Angelika Mosaic and Reston Town Center.
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Herb and Dorothy Vogel collected art on a modest budget; they lived on the salary he made at the post office, and they bought art with what she made working at the Brooklyn Public LIbrary. They purchased affordable works that would fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment, and amassed a collection of 4,000 works that they donated to the National Gallery of Art in 2008. Such a large collection could never be displayed in its entirety by any one museum, so the Vogels’ collection was distributed to museums in each of the fifty states. Director Megumi Sasaki’s film is a sequel to her 2008 documentary Herb and Dorothy, and follows the collectors as they shepherd their love for art across the country. Filmmaker Megumi Sasaki, and some of the film’s subjects, artist Martin Johnson and National Gallery curator Ruth Fine, will appear for Q&As after the 7:20p show Friday and the 4:20p show on Saturday. Due to the shutdown, Dorothy Vogel won’t be able to attend.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End CInema.
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Roar! (Rei Cine)Five friends wander into the Argentine forest playing word games and pretending to be lions in this variation on Gus van Sant’s Gerry. With a setup like that, director Jazmín López’s film has a high probability of becoming an exercise in arthouse preciousity, and the critical response ranged from those mesmerized by its vision to those stupefied by its pretenses. Part of the AFI’s continuing Latin American Film Festival, which gives Washington area audiences what will likely be their only chance to see this divisive film.
View the trailer.
Sunday, October 6 and Monday, October 7 at the AFI Silver.
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Lullaby Ride (Nachtlärm)Landmark E Street Cinema and the Goethe-Institut present the 21st annual festival of recent cinema from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Highlight’s include Marten Persiel’s This Ain’t California, which appears to be a reminscence of skateboarding behind the Iron Curtain; the big-budget epic Ludwig II; and the baby-napping thriller Lullaby Ride.
View the trailers for Lullaby Ride and This Ain’t California.
October 4-10 at Landmark E Street Cinem and the Goethe-Institut. Check the festival site for a complete schedule.
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The eighth annual Spooky Movie International Horror Film Festival opens next Thursday with director Bobcat Goldthwait in person with his new Sasquatch movie Willow Creek. I have seen a lot of godawful Bigfoot movies, and although I had issues with Goldthwait’s last film God Bless America, but I was hoping the director would bring a level of production values all but unheard of in this hirsute subgenre. Alas, it’s another found footage film. But connoisseurs of Bigfoot in Cinema, like me, will have to see it anyway.
View the trailer.
Thursday, October 10 at the AFI Silver.
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Shutdown Cinema: Note that, if the shutdown continues through the weekend, film events at the National Gallery of Art scheduled for this weekend will be cancelled. But even if the shutdown continues, this weekend’s screening of the Taiwanese film Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? that was to be at the Freer Gallery on October 6 at 2:00 pm will take place instead at the Goethe Institut at 2:30pm. Please check http://www.apafilm.org for updated information.
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Also opening this week, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney star in director Alfonso Cuarón’s space thriller Gravity. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
