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

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Bruce WIllis (Twentieth Century Fox)

Die Hard

The AFI’s annual Holiday Classics series offers the usual suspects like It’s a Wonderful Life (remaining screenings December 19-24) and The Muppet Christmas Carol (December 20-24) as well as a Blu-Ray screening of the late Peter O’Toole in The Lion in Winter (December 23-24). But Christmas isn’t just about sentimental favorites. The AFI Silver is showing a 4K DCP restoration of director John McTiernan’s 1988 classic Die Hard, the first and best of a series that saw the Bruce Willis character John McLane develop from an heroic ordinary Joe trying to get home on Christmas to an arrogant hot dog to a washed up shell of a man to an actor who should know when enough is enough. The fifth and latest installment of this franchise, A Good Day to Die Hard, was a lousy action movie and one of the worst movies of the year. See one of the great action movies on the big screen.

View the trailer.
December 20 and 23-24 at the AFI Silver.

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Steve Coogan is ALAN PARTRIDGE

European Union Film Showcase

The AFI’s spotlight of European cinema film is one of the best film festivals in town, a consistent preview of future arthouse favorites as well as a chance to see more challenging material unlikely to get wider release. The 26th iteration of this festival concludes with titles that run the gamut of the festival’s mission, including a pair of very different movies that are getting some buzz. I didn’t much care for the prestige picture Steve Coogan of Philomena, but am looking forward to the feature length debut of his signature character, media personality Alan Partridge (December 21). French director Alain Guiraudie’s Stranger by the Lake (December 20 and 22), an erotic thriller set at a gay beach, is one of the surprise titles on the BFI’s year-end best of list. The AFI warns, “Viewers are advised that this film contains scenes of a sexually explicit nature. No one under 18 will be admitted,” which corresponds to Criterion Collection writer Michael Koresky’s observation, “Never have scrotums been used as such elegant compositional elements.” Also of note this weekend, the Latvian latchkey kid drama Mother, I Love You (December 21 and 22) and the French indie rom-com 2 Autumns, 3 Winters (December 20 and 22).

View the trailers for Alan Partridge and Stranger by the Lake
Alan Partridge screens Saturday, December 21 at 8:00 pm. Stranger by the Lake screens Friday, December 20 at 10:00 pm and Sunday, December 22 at 9:45 pm. At the AFI Silver.

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Brigitte Bardot and Michel Piccoli

Contempt

A Hollywood producer (Jack Palance) hires director Fritz Lang (playing himself) to direct a modern version of Homer’s Odyssey. But it’s not commercial enough, so he brings in a novelist (Michel Piccoli), whose wife (Brigitte Bardot) may be a bigger coup for the producer. One of director Jean Luc-Godard’s most celebrated films was released fifty years ago this weekend. Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, Godard’s film is also fueled by the troubles he was having with his then-wife Anna Karina and American film distributor Joseph E. Levine. The National Gallery of Art screens a DCP restoration of the film, making cinematographer Raoul Coutard lush images of Italian shores and Brigitte Bardot pop out.

View the trailer.
Sunday, December 22 at 4:30 and Saturday, December 28 at 2:30 at the National Gallery of Art. Free.

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Romy Schneider and Helmut Berger

Ludwig

The National Gallery’s series Richard Wagner Revisited continues Saturday with this 1972 film, a lush biopic from director Luchino Visconti. Bavarian King Ludwig II (Helmut Berger) was Wagner’s great patron, supporting the composer financially and backing major works like Der Ring des Nibelungen. If, as some say, King Ludwig saved Wagner’s career, then we also have Ludwig to thank for Apocalypse Now and “What’s Opera Doc.” The film also stars Romy Scheider in a mid-career reprisal of her role as Empress Elisabeth of Austria, fondly known as Sissi, the subject of a series of historical melodramas Scheidner made in the 1950s that I wish some area repertory series would program. At 235 minutes, Ludwig is a commitment that I have never been able to sit through, but fans of Visconti’s epic melodramas may well revel in the cinematography and period costumes.

View the trailer.
Saturday, December 21 at 2:00 pm at the National Gallery of Art. Free.

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A Nightmare Before Christmas

Little Miss Whiskey’s Golden Dollar plans your Christmas Eve for you with a screening of two holiday horror classics. Sorority girls Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder are threatened by killer Keir Dullea in Black Christmas (pictured, 1974), whose director Bob Clark went on to make another holiday classic, A Christmas Story. In Jack Frost (1997), not to be confused with Michael Keaton and Buddy Hackett vehicles of the same name, a serial killer dies in a crash with a genetics truck (sure!) and comes back as the titular snowman. The house will be serving holiday drinks like Criminally Bad Elf and Samichlaus (14% ABV) for to drown your holiday horrors.

View the trailer for Black Christmas.
Tuesday, December 24 at 8:00 pm at Little Miss Whiskeys Golden Dollar, 1104 H Street NE. Free.

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White Reindeer

White Reindeer— Zach Clark’s pitch-black Christmas comedy—isn’t playing anywhere around here, but it should be. The film takes place and was filmed in and around Northern Virginia and D.C.—with one pivotal scene filmed at the Black Cat. By that merit alone, you’d think at least one local theater would play it. Still, there is hope for you: It’s currently available to rent on VOD platforms for a mere $6.99! As I said in my review for The Week, “White Reindeer walks a fine line between dry, bittersweet humor and morbid melancholia without ever coming off as too comical or too depressing. But underneath its bleak narrative tone, White Reindeer is weirdly charming.” Go ahead and knock back some eggnog and watch this yuletide gem. — Matt Cohen

Correction: I was wrong! The good folks at the AFI Silver Theater is screening White Reindeer on Dec. 26 at 9:20 p.m. Bonus: Director Zach Clark and cinematographer Daryl Pittman will be doing a post-screening Q+A. Get your tickets here.

View the trailer for White Reindeer here.
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Also opening this weekend, the Coen Brothers reimagine the Greenwich Village folk music scene with Justin Timberlake in Inside Llewyn Davis; and director David O. Russell takes on Abscam in American Hustle. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.