Capital Projections: ‘Are you serious?’ edition
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting arthouse and repertory screenings in the coming week.
JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION
The hot-tempered bad boy of tennis is a natural subject for a documentary, but John McEnroe’s volatile personality isn’t what makes Julien Faraut’s cinematic essay so fascinating. The film weaves together vintage instructional films and a vault full of 16mm footage that obsessively documents nearly every step McEnroe took during the fateful 1984 French Open. Faraut visually breaks down the athlete’s technique for an abstract study of motion that’s mesmerizing even if you don’t know a breakpoint from shinola. Deft editing and surprising music cues emphasize the poetry of the body, as in super-slow-motion footage of a serve set to the thrilling chords of Sonic Youth’s “The Sprawl.” You don’t have to be a McEnroe fan or even a sports nut to enjoy such visual artistry.
Watch the trailer.
Opens today at Landmark West End Cinema.
BIG BROTHER
In the Ip Man films, martial arts star Donnie Yen (who was wasted in Rogue One) exudes the meek wholesomeness of Jimmy Stewart — until someone tries to pick a fight. Yen produced and stars in this very different adventure about the lifelong journey of learning. Henry Chen (Yen) is a former soldier who takes a job at a struggling secondary school where he is stuck with a class filled with unruly students from broken homes. While school officials bristle at his unconventional teaching methods, Henry manages to transform them into respectful students just by virtue of not giving up on his charges. Of course, he earns that respect in part through a few scenes of his signature kickassery as he battles a local thug who threatens to derail Henry’s progress. Such sentimental melodrama would make Good Will Hunting blush, but Yen carries the well-meaning melodrama with his modest charisma and martial arts mastery.
Watch the trailer.
Opens today at Regal Cinemas Rockville Center.
NICO, 1988
Christa Päffgen — better known as Nico — had an icy beauty that served her well as one of the icons of Andy Warhol’s Factory and as a singer on the Velvet Underground’s groundbreaking first album. But as age weathered her skin, it also revealed an increasingly cantankerous personality. Director Susanna Nicchiarelli’s biopic focuses on the last few years of the singer’s life, and although star Tryne Dyrholm convincingly portrayed a middle-aged career woman in the 2016 drama The Commune, Nico seems to elude her. Read my Spectrum Culture review.
Watch the trailer.
Opens today at Landmark E Street Cinema.
FANNY AND ALEXANDER
The AFI Silver’s Ingmar Bergman celebration wraps up with the director’s 1982 masterpiece, shown in its original six-hour version over two days. The movie opens in the holiday spirit, following a brother and sister in Sweden at Christmastime in 1907. After their father dies, their mother remarries, and while magic seems gone from their lives, it is rekindled by an old antiques dealer. Robert Ebert wrote, “Bergman somehow glides beyond the mere telling of his story into a kind of hypnotic series of events that have the clarity and fascination of dreams.“
Watch the trailer.
Part 1 screens Saturday, Sept. 1, at 1:05 p.m. Part 2 screens Sunday, Sept. 2, at 1:05 p.m. At the AFI Silver. $13.
93QUEEN
The Hasidic community of Borough Park, Brooklyn, is home to the voluntary emergency medical services organization Hatzolah, the largest ambulance corps in the world. But the group has long banned women from their ranks. Director Paula Eiselt, who is Orthodox herself, documents the efforts of a group of Hasidic women to provide emergency care to the neighborhood’s women. The New York Times‘ Ben Kenigsberg wrote that the film “shows how its subjects are able to find ways to combine strict observance and progress.”
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, Sept. 5, at 8 p.m. at the Avalon. $12.50.
TRUCK TURNER
Next week the Washington Psychotronic Film Society presents this 1974 Blaxploitation film starring Isaac Hayes as a former pro football player who becomes a Los Angeles bounty hunter after an injury ends his athletic career. The Los Angeles Times wrote that “the black action movie’s familiar formula, the superman hero immersed in ultraviolence, is transformed into an extraordinary visual experience through the expressive direction of Jonathan Kaplan and astonishingly mobile camerawork of Charles F. Wheeler.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, Sept. 3, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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