DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Repertory: The 400 Blows Expect to see plenty of French New Wave retrospectives over the next year or so, as 2008 represents the movement’s 50th anniversary. If Claude Chabrol’s 1958 Le Beau Serge lit the fuse, François Truffaut’s 400 Blows was the first in a subsequent series of cinematic explosions that announced France’s new generation of…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Indie: Romance & Cigarettes John Turturro’s third film as a director is the sort that seems tailor made to become a cult classic. Not nearly polished or glamorous enough to be the sort of Broadway to big screen musical hit that Chicago or Hairspray was, it was too oddball to fit into the heads of most…

DCist’s highly subjective and hardly comprehensive new guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Foreign: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg The Avalon is screening tonight, for one night only, this classic musical by Jacques Demy and Michel Legrand. Both bittersweet and endlessly charming, the film features the always enchanting Catherine Deneuve as an umbrella saleswoman in love with the local auto mechanic. Nothing works out the way anyone wants it…

FRIDAY: >> Even though Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an obvious choice for the movie-going crowd this weekend, the Avalon Theatre — just north of the Potter madness at the Uptown — is showing Talk to Me, the new biopic on the life of famed Washington, D.C., talk-show host and activist Ralph Waldo “Petey” Greene Jr. 5:50 and 8:30 p.m. >> Unbuckled alumni The Vita Ruins celebrate the release of their…

TUESDAY: Unfortunately, the new book My Father’s Houses: Memoir of a Family is not Steve Roberts’ attempt to capitalize on all the buzz surrounding HBO’s new polygamy series Big Love by coming out with shocking revelations. Instead, Roberts recounts the story of his own life as a young man growing up in New Jersey, attending Harvard, and courting and marrying Cokie Boggs. Just when we though Steve Roberts might have actually written something interesting. At…

MONDAY: Tony Kushner will discuss the plays of Arthur Miller with Jeffrey Brown at the Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Ave NW. Topics may or may not include who the baddest Jewish playwright of our time really is, and whether anyone who convinced the likes of Marilyn Monroe to convert has any competition in that category to begin wtih. Tickets are $13 each; two tickets are included with the purchase of a book. 8:15 p.m. WEDNESDAY:…

FRIDAY: >> The Avalon Theatre is hosting Prism 2005: The New Cinema of Serbia and Montenegro through Sunday, and tonight at 7 p.m. is popular Serbian actor-director-producer Ljubisa Samardzic’s Skyhook. The film (pictured), a surprisingly life-affirming basketball flick set in the midst of NATO bombings in 1999, earned positive buzz at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. >> We don’t know about you, but we’ve been kinda addicted to Peter Jackson’s Production Diary, the LOTR director’s…

The sixth annual Washington D.C. Independent Film Festival (the “Ground Zero of Washington D.C.’s Indie Scene” according to their website) kicks off March 2 at the City Museum. The festival includes a smorgasbord of films including features, documentaries, shorts, and animation by local, national and international filmmakers. DCIFF’s opening night includes the world premiere of “Aryan Couple ,”a feature-length film by John Daly, the pioneer of independent film financing. (His previous productions include “Platoon,” and…

Have you ever been intrigued by Korean cinema? In the largest gathering of Korean film in the United States, the Korean Film Festival got started last week and runs through the end of next month. If you’re like DCist and don’t have much experience with Korean film, here is a primer. Upcoming this week: — “Eunuch,” today, 7 p.m, Avalon Theatre — “Please Teach Me English,” today, 8:40 p.m., Kennedy Center — “Jealousy is My…

Today marks the three year anniversary of the horrible terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which turned a beautiful September morning into a day that changed the nation and the world. Flight 77, out of Dulles Airport, was hijacked, descended on the city and crashed into the northwest side of the Pentagon. Flight 93, out of Newark, N.J., turned around near Cleveland and was heading toward Washington with its eyes on the Capitol, but…