DCist’s highly subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around the are in the coming week fortnight.
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Goltzius and the Pelican Company
The AFI’s 26th annual European Union Film Showcase continues with a new film by arthouse provocateur Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover). Desperate for funds to order a printing press, sixteenth century Dutch engraver Hendrick Goltzius (Ramsey Nasr) and his theatrical troupe stage lurid biblical tableaux vivant to win the favor of the Margrave of Alsace (F. Murray Abraham). Goltzius and the Pelican Company continues Greenaway’s cinematic pursuit of the Dutch masters in recent films like Nightwatching and Rembrandt’s J’Accuse, and while his work has fallen into self-indulgence lately, the buzz around this film is promising. Other EU highlights this week include Belgian “visual fever dream” The Strange Color’s of Your Body’s Tears (December 14 and 19) from writer-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani; Our Heroes Died Tonight (December 13 and 14), director David Perrault’s homage to French crime thrillers, set in the world of early 1960s French professional wrestling (sacre bleu!); and the area premiere of Invisible Woman, which tells the story of the teenage mistress of author Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes, who also directed). The Fiennes picture is due a commercial release, but it’s doubtful you’ll get another chance to see the others on the big screen.
View the trailer.
Goltzius and the Pelican Comany screens Saturday, December 14 and Monday, December 16 at the AFI SIlver.
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(IFC)Sini Anderson directed this look at Bikini Kill/Le Tigre leader and riot grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hanna, who stopped making music in 2005. Why? I haven’t had a chance to watch the film but it appears that this is that rare music documentary that doesn’t feature a talking head appearance from Henry Rollins. Phew! Featured talking heads include Kim Gordon, Carrie Brownstein, Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz and Joan Jett, as well as fashion-blogger turned actress Tavi Gevinson.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema
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The Freer continues its series, Power, the Spirit, and the Flesh, in conjunction with the gallery’s yoga exhibit, with a rare 35mm screening (is there any other kind in late 2013?) of director Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s 2002 film about an aging executioner (Oduvil Unnikrishnan) haunted by the men he’s killed. The fiction feature has real-life echoes in director Joshua Oppenheimer’s harrowing documentary The Act of Killing, the best movie I saw this year.
Friday, December 13 at 7 pm at the Freer. Free.
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Artist Andrew Kötting and writer Iain Sinclair travelled together to the London Olympics by way of a water route around the coastline. They made this journey over the span of four weeks, pedaling a white plastic swan boat. The National Gallery’s series Réalité Tales: Young French Cinema continues this weekend with the results of this absurd, watery adventure.
View the trailer.
Sunday, December 15 at 4:30 pm at the Nation al Gallery of Art. Free.
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Pia Zadora and Robert KleinThis 1984 teleplay co-stars Pia Zadora as, in the words of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, a “sex-tart caught up in a classic French bedroom farce where everybody is sleeping with everybody else. In other words, the wrong holes get filled and the right ones don’t.” Pia! Director Robert Iscove’s first feature credit was the 1974 TV-movie Jack: A Flash Fantasy, a rock opera co-starring Gilda Radner and Alan Thicke. I’m getting a head start on the Psychotronic calendar here (this Monday, December 16 offers the 1966 Japanese monster movie Giant Devil), but I wanted to give readers a head start on what may be eleventh-hour Christmas wish list addition.
Monday, December 23 at 8 pm at McFadden’s. Free.
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Also opening this week: Emma Thompson stars as Mary Poppins’ author P.L. Travers in Saving Mr. Banks , and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
