Capital Projections: Arthouse pingpong 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.
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
A drifter (Huang Jue) returns to his hometown of Kaili, where he mourns an old friend, searches for a lost love, and gets more lost than ever. That’s the basic premise of the second feature from Chinese director Bi Gan (Kaili Blues), and if it sounds like a thin framework for a 133-minute movie, that’s because it is. Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which doesn’t have anything to do with the Eugene O’Neill drama other than the shared title, was a hit on the festival circuit thanks to lush cinematography and an impressive technical accomplishment: an uninterrupted 59-minute shot in 3D. Inspired by the work of such directors as Wong-kar Wai and Andrei Tarkovsky, the visually stunning film has moments of brilliance, including a cameo from veteran Hong Kong actress Sylvia Chang playing the music video game Dance Dance Revolution. Unfortunately, the script is barely there, and graceful camerawork doesn’t provide enough energy or profundity to make the film much more than a pretty stunt that resorts to that most stereotypical 3D device — pingpong. Only a 2D version was available for preview, and the film could use another dimension — one that should have been created on the page before it was transferred to the screen.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, May 3, at Landmark E Street Cinema (in 2D) and Landmark Bethesda Row (in 3D). $12.50.
ASK DR. RUTH
She was born Karola Ruth Siegel — but you know her as Dr. Ruth. Ryan White’s documentary profile lets the diminutive media figure and sex therapist, who turns 91 in June, charm the viewer from the moment she asks the Amazon virtual assistant Alexa, “Am I going to get a boyfriend?” The film notes that Westheimer’s eternal optimism was born of struggle: Her parents were killed in the Holocaust, and she nearly lost her legs in an explosion on her 20th birthday. As I wrote in my Washington Post review, “Someone as charismatic as she is could have gone into any field, and presumably people would listen. But as ‘Ask Dr. Ruth’ demonstrates, her message is an important one: However explicit the language, all she really wants is for no one to be lonely.” The movie is getting a brief theatrical release before it heads to Hulu on June 1.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, May 3, at Landmark Bethesda Row and Cinema Arts Theatres. $12.50.
BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ
When director Pamela B. Green asks a variety of film professionals if they’re familiar with pioneering filmmaker Alice Guy (later Guy-Blaché), most of them have never heard of her. Born in Paris in 1873, Guy quickly rose from secretary to film director at the early motion picture studio Gaumont, later becoming head of production. While the first movies were often mere travelogues of famous locations, Guy introduced narrative elements, telling concise and often amusing stories in the space of a few minutes. She worked on hundreds of films, but for years her name was left out of film histories, her work thought lost to time like much of the era’s output. Green relates Guy’s career in the form of a detective story where filmmakers track down the director’s relatives and uncover work preserved by dedicated film archivists.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, May 3, at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
THE LAST MOVIE
Actor Dennis Hopper got his start playing naive teens in such films as Rebel Without a Cause. Then he struck box-office gold with his 1969 directorial debut, the counterculture classic Easy Rider. But as if actively avoiding success, he followed up that hit with a challenging work doomed to fail. After being out of circulation for decades, it’s only now seeing a resurgence. Hopper, who co-wrote the film with Rebel screenwriter Stewart Stern, stars as a stuntman who’s part of a Hollywood crew filming a Western in a remote Peruvian village. The Village Voice called The Last Movie “one of the great lost films of the 1970s. … It’s the rare film that seems both clearer and completely different with each viewing.” The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center is screening a new 4K digital restoration of the film.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, May 3, at 1:30 p.m.; Monday, May 6, at 2 p.m.; Tuesday, May 7, at 2 p.m.; Wednesday, May 8, at 2 and 7 p.m.; and Thursday, May 9, at 3 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
COEUR FIDÈLE
Director Jean Epstein’s silent classic from 1923 uses inventive visuals to depict a simple love story. Marie (Gina Manès) falls for dockworker Jean (Léon Mathot) but has been promised to Paul (Edmond Van Daële), a violent and possessive drunk. Pulp novelist and film scholar Monica Nolan writes that Epstein “told his melodramatic tale using every cinematic technique in the book, and inventing some new ones. He gives us soulful superimpositions of Marie’s face floating on the waves; he films on location in Marseille’s gritty port; he employs close-ups, inserts, tracking shots, in-motion POV shots.” The National Gallery of Art presents a newly restored version of the film courtesy of the Cinémathèque Française, with a brand-new score performed by the Alloy Orchestra, a trio known for combining found-object percussion with electronic music.
Saturday, May 4, at 3 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium. Free.
SANTO IN ANONYMOUS DEATH THREAT
Born Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta, masked Mexican wrestler Santo starred in more than 50 movies from the ‘60s to the ‘80s. Next week the Washington Psychotronic Film Society brings you one of them, a 1975 sci-fi adventure in which Mexico City residents receive anonymous letters that predict when they will die. Who’s behind this evil plot? As the society’s curators put it: “Surprise! It’s Nazis!” The cast includes prolific actor Armando Silvestre, who starred in other Santo movies as well as the Clint Eastwood Western Two Mules for Sister Sara and an episode of Wonder Woman. David Wilt — who earned his doctorate from the University of Maryland with a dissertation titled Stereotyped images of United States citizens in Mexican cinema, 1930-1990 — writes in his detailed survey of Santo movies that this is one of the wrestler’s better vehicles: “Shot with a small crew using 16mm equipment, there is a lot of mobile, hand-held camerawork which adds some excitement to the action scenes.”
Monday, May 6, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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