Capital Projections: Kidnapped 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.
VIPER CLUB
In this ripped-from-the-headlines drama, Susan Sarandon stars as an emergency room nurse whose son, a journalist, has been kidnapped by terrorists in the Middle East. Impatient with an unhelpful FBI, she turns to a secret support group called the Viper Club, whose members (including The Sopranos’ Edie Falco) may be able to help. Director Maryam Keshavarz tells a harrowing tale by means of ham-fisted melodrama, pouring on maudlin memories and incidents; watch, for example, as Sarandon tells an ER doctor to give up on the young victim of a school shooting. It’s a timely but clumsy way to demonstrate how this ordinarily calm professional has become desperate in the face of her son’s abduction. Viper Club is well-meaning but checks off too many boxes to come off as anything genuine.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday at Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema and at the Regal Gallery Place Stadium 14. $12.50 to $13.56.
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
“Most 3D films are bad,” director Bi Gan (Kaili Blues) told Indiewire. In his second feature, Bi hopes to change that. The noirish drama doesn’t have anything to do with the Eugene O’Neill play of the same name, instead following a drifter who returns to his hometown of Kaili in search of a long-lost love. After a relatively conventional opening, Long Day’s Journey Into Night turns more ambitious in its second half, with an uninterrupted 59-minute shot in 3D. However, while the movie is an admirable technical accomplishment, it may be undercooked as drama. Variety writes, “It can be a wonderful experience to surrender to a film’s mood or aesthetics, or to ponder its personal vision through moving images, but in this case, the choppy structure simply lacks forward momentum, especially the sleep-inducing first hour.” Still, given that the film isn’t likely to get a commercial release in the DC market, any moviegoers curious to see the more experimental side of 3D technology shouldn’t miss this chance to see it — for free.
Watch a 2D clip.
Friday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
306 HOLLYWOOD
In this whimsical “magical realist” documentary, co-directors and brothers Elan and Jonathan Bogarín give the glamour treatment to an unglamourous subject: a New Jersey house, at 306 Hollywood Ave. in Newark, that belonged to their late grandmother, Annette Ontell. The Bogaríns catalog the mundane items Ontell left behind, and combine exploratory reveries with candid interviews that try to sum up a life. Variety writes that the movie “is best when it gets either very scientifically dry, or reaches beyond its liminal cuteness into ambitious visual poetry, as in a scene where a half-dozen brunette dancers whirl in Annette’s tailor-made clothing.” A Q&A with the co-directors will follow the Avalon Theatre’s screening.
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at the Avalon Theatre. $12.50.
OSSESSIONE
This past summer, DC-area cinephiles may have envied New Yorkers who had the chance to see a retrospective of Italian director Luchino Visconti at Lincoln Center. Fortunately, the National Gallery of Art is presenting nearly the entire series (except for a program of shorts) on the East Building’s big repertory screen — for free! The tribute, which runs through Dec. 16, starts on Saturday with this 1943 amour fou based on the 1934 pulp thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice. Ossessione was one of two European adaptations of James M. Cain’s novel that preceded the 1946 film noir starring Lana Turner and John Garfield. According to The New York Times’ Vincent Canby, “comparing the Visconti [film] with the [1946 American film] Postman is to stand a production of Traviata next to a McDonald’s television commercial.”
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, Nov. 3, at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
DANTE’S INFERNO
Halloween may be over, but the supply of scary movies at the AFI Silver Theatre has not yet run out. As part of this year’s Silent Cinema Showcase, the Silver is screening a 1911 adaptation of Dante’s Inferno that is considered the very first Italian feature film. As an added value, live musical accompaniment will be provided by multi-instrumentalist Maurizio Guarini of Goblin, the prog-rock band that scored many a creepy Italian giallo, including the 1977 Suspiria.
Saturday, Nov. 3, at 10 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre. $20.
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