DCist’s highly subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Wealthy bachelor Colin (Romain Duris) lives a whimsical life of whimsical invention, like the whimsical pianocktail—a piano hooked up to a full bar that conjures up whimsical drinks when you play Duke Ellington. He seems to find an emotional base for his whimsy when he falls in love with Chloe (Audrey Tatou), but then she contracts a terminal illness. Michel Gondry’s films are full of invention, and his Noam Chomsky documentary was a surprisingly successful marriage of imagination with intellectual exploration. But as happens too often with Gondry, this adaptation of a novel by Boris Vian overwhelms his characters with whimsy that smothers feeling.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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The AFI Silver winds up its Burt Lancaster series with two more appearances by his daughter, Joanna Lancaster, and a 35mm screening of his finest late-career performance. Director Louis Malle’s 1980 film takes place at the legendary resort in serious decline. Lancaster stars as an aging gangster who falls for young neighbor Susan Sarandon. The script by playwright John Guare, who was dating Sarandon at the time, earned one of the film’s five Oscar nominations. But the movie came up empty on Oscar night, with Lancaster losing to Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond. Joanna Lancaster will also appear at Saturday’s screening of Cattle Annie and Little Britches. Both films will be projected in glorious 35mm.
View the trailer for Atlantic City.
Atlantic City screens Saturday, August 2 at 3 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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The Freer’s 19th annual Hong Kong film festival continues this weekend with a Digibeta screening of director Tsui Hark’s 1984 screwball comedy. Kwok-man (Kenny Bee) and Shu-Shu (Sylvia Chang) meet in Shanghai in 1937 while sheltering from a Japanese bombing raid, but when they meet again ten years later he has a new girlfriend (Sally Yeh). Critic Dave Kehr wrote that “Hark’s colors have the almost startling intensity of old Technicolor; combined with his stroboscopic cutting, they make the film seem to fizz and sparkle on the screen.” Sunday the Freer screens director Adam Wong’s 2013 film The Way We Dance, a low-budget Step Up set in Hong Kong’s street-dancing scene.
View the trailer for Shanghai Blues.
Shanghai Blues screens Friday, August 1 at 7 p.m. The Way We Dance screens Sunday, August 3 at 2 p.m. At the Freer. Free.
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In the Shadow of the Light
“Documentary . . . it’s when somebody makes a film on a certain subject with the intention of revealing. It is the kind of film I hate.” So says avant-garde filmmaker and Anthology Film Archives’ founder Jonas Mekas, the subject of Chris Teerink and Sarah Payton’s rare documentary portrait. But Mekas is one of the avant-garde’s most noted film diarists, and as the Gallery notes, “It’s clear … as he rambles around the Anthology’s treasures, holds court with colleagues, and ponders the work that has been his calling, the recording of Mekas’ life is a labor of love for the filmmakers and their subject alike.”
Sunday, August 3 at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s West Building Lecture Hall. Free.
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A newlywed husband disappears after receiving an urgent telegram. His wife finds him years later, the subject of a medical experiment gone horribly wrong! Director Roy Del Ruth’s career went back to silent cinema, and included Broadway Melody extravaganzas and a Topper movie. But one of his last films was this 1959 exploitation, now coming to a douchey bar near you thanks to the Washington Psychotronic Film Society.
View the trailer.
Monday, August 4 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s.
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Also opening this weekend, Chris Pratt stars in this weekend’s lighthearted Marvel product, Guardians of the Galaxy; and Howard University graduate Chadwick Boseman plays the Godfather of Soul in the James Brown biopic Get on Up. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
