Capitol Projections: Music history 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.
COLD WAR
Wiktor (Thomas Kot) is a musical director holding auditions for a Polish folk group when he meets headstrong Zula (Joanna Kulig). Little does he know that he’s meeting the love of his life. In this taut drama, director Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida) follows the on-again, off-again couple for some 15 years starting in post-war Poland in 1949. As their paths cross and their circumstances find them under different regimes with varying levels of oppression, the music they make together changes with the times. But is this necessarily a good thing? It’s fascinating to hear the film’s main theme, which Zula first sings at that fateful audition, evolve into something far beyond its traditional folk origins. Yet the use of a ruined church as the setting for crucial scenes suggests that when traditions adapt to modern mores, they are destroyed in the process. At once a melancholy romance, a dense historical epic, and a lushly photographed musical, Cold War earns its considerable Oscar buzz, with far more going on in its 88 minutes than meets the eyes and ears.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row and Angelika Mosaic. $12.50 to 14.50.
STAN & OLLIE
Director Jon S. Baird has come a long way from his 2008 feature debut Cass, which told the story of a brutal football hooligan. This largely tepid biopic observes the waning years of legendary comedy team Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (a heavily made-up John C. Reilly) during a 1953 stage tour of Great Britain. The movie begins with a long uninterrupted shot tracking the duo through a Hollywood studio — a shot that would have been impossible in Laurel and Hardy’s heyday, an almost-clever indication that these film subjects are quite outdated. Screenwriter Jeff Pope (Philomena) fashions moderate drama from the pair’s increasingly strained relationship, but while the apparent futility of their travels occasionally suggests Waiting for Godot, the movie too often falls back on quaint impersonations. Unlike the clips in the documentary The Great Buster that continue to draw laughs with Buster Keaton’s unique brand of physical humor, these actors’ tepid re-creations of vintage comic skits probably won’t make you seek out the real thing on streaming services. That’s a shame, because Laurel and Hardy classics such as Sons of the Desert are almost certainly more entertaining than this.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday at the Avalon Theatre, AFI Silver, AMC Shirlington, Angelika Mosaic and Cinema Arts in Fairfax. $10 to $12.50.
STAYING ALIVE
On Thursdays in January, the Mary Pickford Theater hosts Fraudway, which I curated for the Music Division at the Library of Congress, where I work. This week’s film, the much-maligned sequel to Saturday Night Fever, is one of the very movies that inspired the series, which showcases over-the-top production numbers that couldn’t be acheived on stage. Written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, Staying Alive is essentially Rocky in tights, continuing the story of dancer Tony Manero (John Travolta), who has left Brooklyn for Manhattan and is trying to make it on Broadway. Centered around an over-the-top production called Satan’s Alley, the movie’s backstage melodrama may be dated in its music and fashions, but its spectacle is a reminder of how entertaining the ‘80s could be. We’ll be showing a pristine 35mm print, so don’t miss this rare chance to revisit a decade that has been unjustly neglected.
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the Madison Building at the Library of Congress. Admission is free. Seating is first-come, first-served. For the best seating options, patrons are encouraged to arrive 15 to 30 minutes before the scheduled start time. For information, call 202-707-5502. Learn more about the Library of Congress’ concert season here.
LED ZEPPELIN PLAYED HERE
Join filmmaker Jeff Krulik for a Q&A this weekend as he celebrates the 50th anniversary of a concert that possibly never happened. Dozens of music fans in the Washington area remember a concert that Led Zeppelin reportedly played at the Wheaton Youth Center on Georgia Avenue. But no documentation — not a ticket stub, not a newspaper advertisement — exists that can prove that this fabled event actually transpired. Krulik’s 2013 film examines this disputed legend, with its potent combination of local interest and passionate obsession creating a perfect subject for the director of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. When I wrote about Led Zeppelin Played Here for DCist in 2013, Krulik explained to me that the Wheaton Youth Center (now called Wheaton Community Recreation Center) “is just as much a character in my documentary as any person.” The building, he said, “speaks volumes since it’s still basically intact, with its modernist curvy 1963 architecture and a gymnasium that looks the same as when Led Zeppelin did, or did not, play their first local concert on January 20, 1969.” (Disclosure: I am thanked in the film’s closing credits.)
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Sunday, Jan. 20, at 8 p.m. at the AFI Silver. $13.
AZIMUTH
The career of Bronx-born actor and filmmaker Mike Burstyn spans back to the 1968 Israeli drama The Dybbuk. At the age of 71, Burstyn made his feature debut as a writer-director with this 2017 drama set during the Six-Day War (also known as the Arab-Israeli War) of 1967. But as The Wrap writes, Azimuth “is not a war movie. It is more like a dance — a pas de deux in time to the staccato riffs by Messrs. Uzi and Kalashnikov, choreographed to a brilliant score by Sharon Farber that seamlessly weaves an ethnic delirium without overpowering the action.”
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 8 p.m. at the Avalon Theatre. $12.75.
FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE
Next week the Washington Psychotronic Film Society presents this 1977 exploitation thriller, one of only two credits from director Robert A. Endelson. The movie spins a lurid tale of three escaped cons who take a black Baptist preacher’s family hostage. Naturally, a cathartic vengeance will be delivered. Entertainment company Blue Underground, which released the film on home video, calls it “one of the few movies to ever drive even the most jaded 42nd Street audiences into uncontrollable frenzy,” which is exactly why the Psychotronic programmers like it.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, Jan. 21, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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