Capital Projections: Why the long face 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 DEATH OF DICK LONG
Horses play supporting roles in two very different films opening this week. In the case of this unusual Southern Gothic mystery, I’m reluctant to reveal exactly how. Set in a small Alabama town, The Death of Dick Long seems to open as an indie rock ’n’ roll movie, with a group of friends gathered in a barn for band practice — as well as a lot of drinking and bad decision-making. Before this particularly rowdy bacchanal is over, Zeke (Michael Abbott Jr.) and Earl (Andre Hyland) end up having to drop off their friend Dick at the hospital, although as the film’s title may indicate, it’s too late. What happened? Zeke and Earl either don’t remember or won’t admit it, even to each other, and Zeke’s wife Lydia (Virgnia Newcomb) grows suspicious of her husband’s ever-changing story. When she finally discovers the truth, she’s horrified, and you probably will be, too.
Director Daniel Scheinert dealt with a similar gallows humor in the 2016 black comedy Swiss Army Man, in which Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe plays a flatulent corpse. Here, with first-time screenwriter Billy Chew, Scheinert pivots toward realism, creating a Deep South crime story that evokes Fargo with different accents. Dick Long’s bungling buddies are so moronic that Alabama natives may well be offended, but the filmmakers clearly have an affection for these seriously flawed characters. Hyland, essentially playing a variation on his supporting role in Joel Potrykus’ micro-budget drama Relaxer, is inexplicably lovable as Earl, a slacker whose economic and intellectual impoverishment is profoundly tragic but hilarious. Hyland even has a memorable turn performing a Nickelback cover that improves on the original.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Sept. 27, at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema One Loudoun. $12.75.
THE DAY SHALL COME
Domestic terrorism hardly seems like proper material for a comedy. But director Chris Morris, whose 2010 film Four Lions poked fun at a group of incompetent British subversives, brings his absurdist political humor across the pond with even better results. The plot is hatched when Moses (Marchánt Davis), a Miami street preacher desperate to hold on to his small, struggling mission, makes a deal with Middle Eastern terrorists to help overthrow the U.S. government. The problem for Moses is that the scheme to entrap the unlucky revolutionary was cooked up by ambitious young FBI agent Kendra (Anna Kendrick) and her colleagues. The agency hopes to make itself look good by foiling an attack of its own making, but of course, things don’t go as smoothly as the feds hope.
In his first feature film appearance, Davis navigates a tricky balance between menace and goofiness. As much as he rails against the government, he still trusts The Man — or at least, Agent Kendra — enough to try to broker a deal. Even as Moses dreams of wreaking small-scale havoc, he’s likable, all the more so when he comes to believe that he can summon his trusty horse to send lightning down upon a Miami construction site. (He’s also trusted one of his minions with a horn he believes will call dinosaurs to their aid.) In a climate when it sometimes feels one can no longer laugh at anything, Morris, who co-wrote the script with Four Lions writer Jesse Armstrong, makes light of everything from Nazis to pedophiles, from racial profiling to bureaucratic ineptitude. Irreverent and relevant, The Day Shall Come is topical comedy that’s smart and cynical.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Sept. 27, at ArcLight Bethesda. $17.
MS. PURPLE
Actor Justin Chon is best known for multiplex products like the Twilight movies and the frat boy comedy 21 and Over (which I’m convinced features a sly reference to the work of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei). But Chon is also active behind the camera, specializing in low-budget indies that, like the 2017 drama Gook, dramatize the Korean American experience in Los Angeles. Now with his third feature, the director has made his most personal statement yet.
This lushly photographed drama tells the story of Kasie (Tiffany Chu). In order to help support her ailing father, she’s working as a doumi, a karaoke hostess paid for companionship and whatever else her rich businessman clients require of her. At her wits’ end, Kasie reaches out to her estranged brother Carey (Teddy Lee) for help, and as they tend to their father, the siblings tentatively reconnect. Ms. Purple is perhaps too ambitious; despite strong central performances, the film’s taut 87-minute running time doesn’t seem long enough for us to get to know anyone as Kasie dashes between her struggling family and her sordid professional life. Still, the film builds up to a powerful and moving conclusion.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Sept. 27, at Landmark E Street CInema. $12.50.
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES
From the iconic Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest to Florida’s Skunk Ape and Australia’s Yowie, regional legends of an elusive ape-like creature have frightened children and fascinated adventurers for centuries. While young audiences can enjoy a friendly Yeti in the new animated comedy Abominable, opening this weekend, the Freer and Sackler galleries offer an artful variation from Thailand as part of the series Buddhist Ghost Stories.
For this mesmerizing 2010 film, director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Cemetery of Splendor) took his inspiration from a book by Buddhist monk Phra Sripariyattiweti about a man who remembered his previous incarnations. The film’s rural setting provides a magical backdrop for ailing farmer Uncle Boonmee, who’s visited by a series of living relatives — and a number of ghosts, including a long-lost son who has taken a form that looks like a glowing-eyed Wookie. The late Roger Ebert, in a similarly glowing review, wrote, “If you are open, even in fancy, to the idea of ghosts who visit the living, this film is likely to be a curious but rather bemusing experience.” The galleries will screen a 35-mm print.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, Sept. 29, at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
Alred Hitchcock’s nickname as the Master of the Macabre captures the legendary director’s fixation on murder most foul, but it does nothing to convey the sheer entertainment value of his immaculately crafted films. This 1959 thriller, its title taken from Shakespeare, deliriously charts its protagonist’s existential crisis of identity; it’s also one of the most entertaining movies ever made. Cary Grant stars as ad man Roger O. Thornhill, who by typical Hitchockian contrivance is mistaken for someone who may not really exist. Suddenly pursued by a mysterious and nefarious organization, Thornhill is pulled into a cross-country scheme of intrigue with cool blonde Eve (Eva Marie Saint) in an anxious road movie that sends one of the great leading men through a signature Hitchcock scene, running a cornfield gauntlet from a crop duster. As many times as I’ve seen it, once I start watching North by Northwest, I can’t stop, and Hermann’s circular, neurotic score gives it the perfect air of modern unease. And as part of its weekend-long Hitchcock series, the National Museum of American History will screen a 35-mm print.
Also at the Warner Bros. Theatre this weekend: a 35-mm print of The Birds (Sunday, Sept. 29, at 3:30 p.m.), for which occasion the museum will bring a very special artifact out of its vaults — the original film script used by actress Tippi Hedren, which will be on display before the screening.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, Sept. 28, at 1:15 p.m. at the National Museum of American History in the Warner Bros. Theatre. $12.
SGT. PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND
I frequently defend the honor of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society, explaining to friends that, while the group may have a reputation for screening terrible movies, their selections are generally not examples of bad cinema but of different cinema — films that subvert aesthetic conventions to get at a greater truth. But next week, the WPFS screens a 1978 debacle that is inarguably one of the worst movies ever made. This misguided adaption of the Beatles’ 1967 classic was intended to capitalize on the then-ascendant Bee Gees, coasting on Saturday Night Fever at the height of the disco era. But director Michael Schultz (who just a few years earlier had made the great African American coming-of-age drama Cooley High) can’t make a silk purse out of Henry Edwards’ all-too-literal script, and the resulting movie is the nadir for most of the people involved. Even the film’s novelization, written by Edwards, was a throwaway; the author seemed to give up late in the book, eschewing narrative and instead listing various pop stars for page after page. Fortunately, the screening will be held at a venue where you can deaden the pain with beer and barbecue.
Watch me reading an excerpt from the novelization to feral kittens.
Monday, Sept. 30, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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