Charlie Hunnam, Edward Ashley, Angus Macfadyen, and Robert Pattinson (Aidan Monaghan / Amazon Studios & Bleecker Street)
Director James Gray loves to make old-fashioned dramas like The Immigrant, and his latest yarn is a tale of exploration and adventure with patience that has all but disappeared from American film. Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy) stars as Colonel Percy Fawcett, who led expeditions deep in the Amazon jungle searching for a lost city. The film takes poetic license with the real Fawcett, who made eight expeditions to Bolivia (there are just three in the film) and expected the lost city to be the work of white men rather than of an advanced native South American civilization. Still, Gray and his cast (including a barely recognizable Robert Pattinson) weave an evocative mystery out of this tweaked past. Read a full review on SFist.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFi Silver, Landmark Atlantic Plumbing, AMC Georgetown, and AMC Shirlington
“Sacre bleu! Paul Cézanne! This will be in the Louvre!” Guillaume Gallienne and Guillaume Canet (Magnolia)
Director Danièle Thompson (whose career as a screenwriter goes back to ’70s arthouse comedy The Mad Adventures of “Rabbi” Jacob) looks back at the friendship of painter Paul Cézanne (Guillaume Gallienne) and author Émile Zola (Guillaume Canet) in this lush biopic. Thompson makes the rambunctious pair seem like 19th century dude bros, carousing with women as free-spirited as they are. Breezy if frustrating,
Cézanne et Moi moves too fast to ever get boring, and manages to convey some of the excitement that iconoclastic artists generated at the time. But the screenplay suffers from the usual biopic exposition problems, its characters helpfully mapping out major life events rather than speaking in actual dialogue.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark West End Cinema and Cinema Arts Theatre.
“It Came from Marlow Heights” (Travesty Films)
THE FIRST ABSOLUTELY FINAL RETROSPECTIVE FEATURING THE RETURN OF THE LANGLEY PUNKS
You won’t find the film Hyattsville Holiday on IMDB, but it’s considered the magnum opus of local filmmaking collective The Langley Punks, whose work was a staple at local independent theaters like the Biograph and the Key Theatre in the ’70s and ’80s. The AFI Silver host the Punks (whose members include journalist Dave Nuttycombe) for a program of selected short films. Read more about the Langley Punks in this Washington Post profile.
Saturday, April 22 at 7:30 at the AFI Silver.
(Silentology)
Pert Kelly (flapper Colleen Moore) works at a department store by day and dances at night in this pre-code silent comedy from 1929. The Hartford Courant wrote that, “Once again Colleen Moore is Charlestoning violently, chewing gum, making life in the cabarets lively, winning her true love in the last fadeout—and she is doing it all with her well known individuality and vehemence.” The Courant goes on to note that the film’s heroine “attains the goal of a rich marriage with an ease that will be comforting to the young girls who see the picture.” Pianist Andrew Earle Simpson will provide live musical accompaniment for this comforting picture.
Sunday, April 23 at 3 p.m. at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H Street NE. $20. Buy tickets here.
(WPFS)
This 1985 TV-movie was edited from three different Thai and Japanese Ultraman movies, one of which, Ultraman Zoffy, sounds like a feature-length clip reel consisting of fight scenes assembled from two different Ultraman television shows. The producers of the original films sued the producer of this film for their troubles. It sounds like a mess but I for one would look forward to an unauthorized MCU mashup with spliced-in battle scenes from unrelated movies. Thanks to the Washington Psychotronic Film Society for programming this po-mo monster movie.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, April 24 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel.
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Also opening this week, the feature-length gun fight of director Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, starring Brie Larson and Armie Hammer. We’ll have a full review tomorrow. Also stay tuned for a profile of Potomac-born producer Susan Leber, whose urban vampire movie The Transfiguration opens this week. Finally, don’t miss our guide to this year’s FilmFest DC.
