DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens (Tribeca)A banjo player (Johan Heldenbergh) and a tattoo shop owner (Veerle Baetens) meet, fall in love, have a kid who gets cancer and play bluegrass, but not in that order. Broken Circle Breakdown is adapted from a play by co-star Heldenbergh, and tries very hard to break your heart. The movie succeeds in fits and starts despite heavy-handed preachiness and a fragmented melodramatic narrative that shifts backward and forward in time like a hipster version of Betrayal. The preachiness works against the somber tone of authenticity, which makes sense because these bluegrass musicians are Belgian. The filmmakers have a love-hate relationship with America that could have provided some kind of aesthetic tension. But these characters, however heartbreaking their story, too often feel like they’re playing at the idea of being American. The actors sing and perform their own music and hit their marks right, but good cinematography and strong performances from the two leads can’t make up for an unconvincing concept.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
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Baby Face (November 17 and 18 at the AFI) To coincide with the release of the first part of Victoria Wilson’s multi-volume Stanwyck biography, the AFI offers a weekend of the actress’s juicy pre-code films. Watch Barbara Stanwyck as a nightclub singer in William Wellman’s 1932 The Purchase Price (Novermber 16); as an erotically charged missionary in the 1933 Capra classic The Bitter Tea of General Yen (November 16); as a Nietzsche-reading floozy in the 1933 Baby Face (November 17 and 19); a free-loving socialite in the 1931 Illicit (November 17 and 18); and as a post-code Christmastime shoplifter in the 1940 holiday film Remember the Night (November 17 and 20). All Stanwyck screenings cost $5, and will include a discussion and book signing by Victoria Wilson, author of A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940.
November 16-20 at the AFI Silver.
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from “The Earth as Seen from the Moon” in Le Streghe, Saturday November 16 at the National Gallery of ArtPier Paolo Pasolini
A retrospective of films by the controversial Italian director continues this weekend at the National Gallery and the AFI. Saturday afternoon the Gallery offers a program of four shorts, including the 1962 “La Ricotta,” which features Orson Welles as an obsessive director. Also on the program are “What Are the Clouds?” (1967), from the comedy Capriccio all’italiana; “The Paper Flower Sequence” (1968); and “The Earth as Seen from the Moon” (1967), from the portmanteau film Le Streghe. Sunday the Gallery screens the first film in Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life, The Decameron. Adapted from the tales of Boccaccio, the ribald episodic film comes off like an art-house Benny Hill. Introduced by Millicent Marcus. This weekend the AFI screens Pasolini’s 1966 homage to silent comedies, The Hawks and the Sparrows (November 16 and 17 at the AFI) and his celebrated 1974 adaptation of The Arabian Nights (November 17 and 18 at the AFI).
Pasolini shorts screen Saturday, November 16 at 2:30 at the National Gallery of Art. The Decameron screens Sunday, November 17 at 4:30 at the National Gallery of Art. Free. THe Hawks and the Sparrows screens Saturday November 16-Sunday November17 at the AFI Silver. Arabian Nights screens Sunday November 17-Monday November 18 at the AFI Silver. $12.
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(Courtesy Steven Rubin)Local independent filmmakers The Worthy Bros. (Victor Nolasco & Steven Rubin) graduated from the 48 Hour Film Project to write and produce this low budget mockumentary about the career of a fictional rock star named Jackie. Filmed in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia, The Jackie Movie hopes “to shine a light on the nature of stardom in the music industry while entertaining its audience with unique, quirky, and flamboyant characters.” With music performed by Jackie’s “real” band Jackie and The Treehorns.
View the trailer.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013 at 7:00 pm at Landmark E Street Cinema
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The Freer Gallery kicks off its series A 50th-Anniversary Salute to Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards with a digital restoration of a film by the late director Edward Yang (Yi yi). The Freer calls The Terrorizers (1986) an “intellectual thriller about the chaos of urban life and the vagaries of fate … A random prank phone call from a bored juvenile delinquent known as the “White Chick” sets the chain-reaction plot in motion.” You had me at “White Chick.” Also screening this weekend it Tsai Ming-liang’s erotic comedy Vive L’Amour, which earned the director comparisons to Antonioni and Buster Keaton.
View the trailer for The Terrorizers .
The Terrorizers screens Friday, November 15 at 7:00 pm. Vive L’Amour screens Sunday, November 17 at 2:00 pm. At the Freer Gallery. Free.
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Streaming pick: Makkhi (Eega)
If like me you’re always looking for new streaming titles on Netflix, you may have scratched your head about this Tollywood drama about a man who is reincarnated as a fly to avenge his death. Or you may have just immediately hit “play.” Director S.S. Rajamouli was wise not to make his hero a smart-alecky buzzer. The diminutive CGI star doesn’t speak, and is brilliantly designed to remain true-ish to nature and still evoke more sympathy than many a human superhero. Don’t miss the best rom-com/action movie/melodrama/metaphor for man’s losing battle with nature/musical I’ve seen this or any year.
