Capital Projections: Oscar hopefuls 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.
ROMA
After the outer space travels of his technically dazzling 2013 film Gravity, Academy Award-winning director Alfonso Cuarón returns home for the drama of a middle-class Mexico City household. Set in the Roma neighborhood in the turbulent early 1970s, the film focuses on Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a servant who lives with the family she tends to and cares for. Class issues keep Cleo at a certain distance from her employers, but the upstairs-downstairs teams share a respect and affection for each other. When Cleo gets in trouble, her boss is there for her. Exquisitely photographed in black and white, Roma isn’t as far removed from Gravity as it may first seem, trading the vast expanses of space for wide-angle lenses that observe home life with a sweeping and sentimental detail. This front-runner for next year’s Oscar race has already earned top awards from critics associations in New York and Washington, and while the film premieres on Netflix on Dec. 14, its brief theatrical run gives audiences a chance to soak in its rich sound design the way it should be experienced.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday at the Landmark E Street Cinema and Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema. $12.50.
THE WORLD BEFORE YOUR FEET
Matt Green walked away from an engineering job and a New York apartment — and kept walking, until he had covered every block in the five boroughs of New York City on foot. Director Jeremy Workman, a longtime friend of Green’s, spent three years accompanying the 21st-century flaneur on his quixotic journey, which spanned 8,000 miles. What makes Green’s quest more than just navel-gazing is his approach to the city. As I wrote in my Spectrum Culture review, “Green talks to the people he meets along the way. Some of them are friendly, others suspicious, yet the itinerant subject has a way of disarming the skeptical, simply by sharing his curiosity and enthusiasm for the city around him.” Workman and Green will both participate in a Q&A after the Avalon Theatre screening.
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m. at the Avalon. $15.
DEATH IN VENICE
The National Gallery of Art’s retrospective of director Luchino Visconti’s work continues with this 1971 adaptation of the novel by Thomas Mann. Dirk Bogarde stars as a composer who, after a disastrous concert, escapes to Venice, where he becomes obsessed with a Polish schoolboy. Roger Ebert wrote that Visconti “misses, or avoids, the subtlety of the novel’s development of the relationship between the two characters … [and] fails, then, to develop characters and relationships that matter. The failure is fatal to the movie’s success; but the physical beauty of the film itself is overwhelming. … The fashions, the entertainments, the table settings reveal Visconti’s compulsion for accuracy.”
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, Dec. 9, at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art in the East Building Auditorium. Free.
‘ROUND MIDNIGHT
In this 1986 drama directed by Bertrand Tavernier, tenor saxophone great Dexter Gordon stars as Dale Turner, an aging American musician befriended by a devoted fan (François Cluzet) in late ‘50s Paris. The role of Turner was a fictionalized composite of jazz legends Lester Young and Bud Powell and was a late-career high point for Gordon, who turns in a sensitive performance that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. The Library of Congress (disclosure: I work there, but was not involved with this program) will be screening a 35mm print. The film will be preceded by a talk by Maxine Gordon (the jazzman’s widow) celebrating the release of her book Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon.
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, Dec. 13, at 6:30 p.m. in the Mary Pickford Theatre on the third floor of the Madison Building at the Library of Congress. Free. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 6 p.m.
QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE
Why does mankind long to explore the solar system? This 1958 B-movie suggests that it may be to meet women. When astronauts crash-land on Venus, they find the planet is populated by beautiful women — most of whom hate men, with one significant exception. Zsa Zsa Gabor portrays Talleah (say that out loud in the actress’ Hungarian-Hollywood accent), who conspires with the visitors to overthrow the reigning queen. This, of course, is a presentation of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, Dec. 10, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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