Capital Projections: Destination kidnapping 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.
THE WEDDING GUEST
In writer-director Michael Winterbottom’s latest offering, Dev Patel — who’s buffed up since Slumdog Millionaire — stars as Jay, a mysterious traveler on his way to Pakistan for a wedding. But an ominous musical score tells us that this isn’t going to be a romantic comedy. Preparing for the big event with guns and duct tape, he’s not there to toast the bride (Radhika Apte) — he’s there to kidnap her. And she might not be resistant to the idea. Winterbottom has cranked out another quickie genre movie (this is his seventh feature in five years), and while he has lately specialized in easy-going comedies such as The Trip to Spain, here he puts his efficiency to the service of a thriller. But despite its globe-trotting characters, The Wedding Guest isn’t exactly jet-fueled; its plot is a slow burn that never catches fire. Patel, cast against the fawning, youthful type of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is perfect as an intense hired hand. He and his co-star Apte manage to generate some sparks, but Winterbottom’s script seems to run out of ideas for the runaway duo at its center.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, March 8, at Landmark Bethesda Row Cinema and Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
WOMAN AT WAR
Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) is not happy that a Chinese aluminum company wants to build a smelting plant in the Icelandic countryside that she calls home. So the 50-year-old choir director takes matters into her own hands, sabotaging power lines to discourage the outsiders from developing the land. Director Benedikt Erlingsson (Of Horses and Men) tackles an example of environmental terrorism similar to that faced by Ethan Hawke in director Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. But while that study in faith and politics played up its themes with 21st-century angst, Woman at War — which features a score performed by an accordion-tuba trio and Ukrainian folk singers who appear on screen like a Greek chorus — tempers its global crisis in quirky satire. With a tone that’s as far from a jeremiad as you can get, the movie is an endearing study of quixotic obsession more than a cautionary tale. Which is exactly what makes it so entertaining, if perhaps less provocative than its themes may suggest.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, March 8, at Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
DEAD SOULS
For this monumental eight-hour documentary, director Wang Bing spent more than a decade speaking with the survivors of re-education camps in China’s Gobi Desert, where prisoners whom the Communist Party determined to be “ultra-rightists” were abandoned and left to starve. This is Bing’s third project documenting Mao Zedong’s treatment of dissidents. Wang interviews former prisoners about the camps’ harrowing conditions, in which they were forced to drink their own urine and subsist on crushed date palm leaves that caused dangerous constipation. Sight & Sound magazine writes that the prisoners’ offenses, “all of them minor, ranged from voicing disagreement with official policy to getting on the bad side of their superiors; some can’t even explain what they did to be convicted. In fact, most were staunch Communists and actually accepted being sent to the camps, whose official role was reeducation through labour, hoping to come back with stronger ideals through which to better support the nation.” The Freer Gallery of Art will screen the film in three parts over two days, and Wang will appear at all screenings in conversation with Carma Hinton, a documentary filmmaker, and Clarence J. Robinson, professor of visual culture and Chinese studies at George Mason University.
Watch the trailer.
Part one screens Saturday, March 9, at noon; part two screens Saturday, March 9, at 4 p.m.; part three screens Sunday, March 10, at 1 p.m. At the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
DEAR SON
In this Tunisian drama, a father struggles to support his wife and teenage son. Riadh (Mohamed Dhrif) is old enough to retire from his job as a forklift operator, but he’s already struggling to make ends meet. He has put off renewing his car insurance, he can’t afford condo fees that his wife Nazli (Mouna Mejri) refuses to pay anyway, and his son Sami (Zakaria Ben Ayyed) goes so far as to tell him not to get his favorite cereal because they can’t afford it. Even worse, Sami suffers from chronic migraines that worry his parents — and when their son ends up getting involved with jihadists, they have even more to worry about. Director Mohamed Ben Attia’s powerful second feature was produced by Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, who directed such neo-realist films as L’Enfant. Much like the work of the Dardennes, Dear Son addresses its timely themes with a steely-eyed yet compassionate tenor. The film is part of the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center’s 15th annual New African Films Festival, which runs through March 22. See the Washington City Paper for my preview of seven other films in this year’s festival.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, March 11, at 7:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
THE LEARNING TREE
Director Gordon Parks’ 1969 feature debut, based on his semi-autobiographical novel about growing up in Kansas, was the first major studio film directed by an African-American. In a 1972 interview, Parks, who also produced the film and composed its score, told Robert Ebert that, “Until a few years ago … blacks didn’t even dream about getting into movies, except as actors. It was a closed world, sealed off by discrimination.” But Ken Hyman, then-president of Warner Bros./Seven Arts, was familiar with Parks’ work as a writer and photographer. “We had a meeting that lasted 15 minutes,” Parks said, “and he gave me the job of directing The Learning Tree. All of those years of prejudice and bigotry were broken down in 15 minutes.” The National Gallery of Art will be screening a 35mm print, with introductory remarks by Philip Brookman, consulting curator in the gallery’s department of photographs.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, March 8, at 12:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Free.
ZACHARIAH
Long before Miami Vice made him a household name, Don Johnson appeared in this 1971 film that was billed as “the first electric Western.” Johnson stars as Matthew, who with his buddy Zachariah (John Rubinstein, son of noted concert pianist Artur) joins an outlaw gang. Here’s how the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, which is hosting the screening, explains it: “When rivalry rears its ugly head, Zach leaves his friend and heads out on a quest of self-discovery through drugs, whores and shacking up with an old hippie.” The film’s soundtrack may be the bigger draw, with on-screen appearances by such musical acts as Country Joe and the Fish, the James Gang, and jazz drummer Elvin Jones.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, March 11, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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