Capital Projections: Mortality 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.
DIANE
Kent Jones completes his transition from film critic to director with his debut narrative feature about a woman who struggles with the fact that her friends and family are starting to die off. Veteran actress Mary Kay Place stars as Diane, who lives alone in western Massachusetts and seems like an upstanding citizen. She volunteers at a soup kitchen; visits her terminally ill cousin (Estelle Parsons); checks in on her son (Jake Lacy), a recovering addict; and still has time to joke with an old friend (SCTV’s Andrea Martin) over a mediocre buffet lunch. But with lives falling apart around her, Diane’s New England reserve and propriety begins to unravel — and with her descent into a quiet madness, the film shifts from a visual restraint to something more experimental. Jones previously made movie-related documentaries such as Hitchcock/Truffaut, and his first dramatic work naturally owes something to influences such as Orson Welles and Monte Hellman. But, as Jones told Indiewire, the film’s primary inspiration came from his own family, particularly his mother. Yet despite that very personal connection, Diane doesn’t always feel lived-in. One wishes the movie spent more time with its rich characters, but it clocks in at a perhaps overly efficient 96 minutes. Nevertheless, much of the ensemble cast successfully evokes the passage of time. Like Place, co-stars Glynnis O’Connor and Joyce Van Patten were fixtures of ’70s television, and if you grew up watching them, you’re bound to feel that, like Diane, you too are facing your own mortality.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, April 5, at Landmark E Street Cinema and Landmark Bethesda Row. $12.50.
RAMEN SHOP
From documentaries like Jiro Dreams of Sushi to comedies like Tampopo, some arthouse movies about food can seem like feature-length advertisements for local restaurants. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, But know that if you go in hungry to director Eric Khoo’s modest family drama, you will want to run to the nearest noodle shop immediately after seeing it. Masato (Japanese model and TV star Takumi Saitô) is an aspiring chef who looks up to his widowed father Kazuo (Tsuyoshi Ihara, star of 13 Assassins), a ramen chef who’s more interested in the kitchen than in his son. When Kazuo dies, Masato travels to Singapore — where his parents met — in search of good food and his own roots. There, he discovers that his maternal grandmother is still alive, and the two work alongside one another to prepare a satisfying meal seasoned with the wisdom of multiple generations.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, April 5, at Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
100 YEN LOVE
Asians like myself who didn’t feel particularly represented by the wealthy characters of Crazy Rich Asians (read my skeptical review here) can thank the Freer and Sackler galleries, in partnership with the New York Asian Film Festival, for some clever counterprogramming. The Crazy Broke Asians series launches Sunday with this 2014 comedy starring Sakura Ando (seen recently in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s crime drama Shoplifters) as Ichiko, a 30-something slacker who lives with her parents and works at a 100-yen store, which is the equivalent of your neighborhood Dollar General. Ichiko has no aspirations to speak of — that is, until she falls for a local boxer. Ando won best actress awards in Japan for her performance in this colorful crowd-pleaser.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, April 7, at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
BIRD
Actor Clint Eastwood may be best known for portraying gritty action heroes in spaghetti westerns and the Dirty Harry films, but as a director he has consistently revealed a more sensitive side to his persona. From his 1971 behind-the-camera debut Play Misty for Me to last year’s The Mule, he often makes jazz a focal point — something you wouldn’t expect from the rogue police detective that is his signature role. Eastwood’s 1988 labor-of-love dramatizes the troubled life of iconic jazz figure Charlie “Bird” Parker. Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog) stars as the troubled musician in what Roger Ebert, in his review, called a “substantial performance [that depicts Parker as] a large, warm, gentle man who was comfortable with himself and loved his work.” Smithsonian Theatres is screening a 35mm print of Bird as part of a jazz film series that runs from April 10 through 14 at the Warner Bros. Theatre at the National Museum of American History.
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, April 10, at 5:45 p.m. in the Warner Bros. Theatre at the National Museum of American History. $12.
THE NAKED CITY
This 1948 crime drama ends with one of the great closing lines in the movies: “There are eight million stories in the naked city — and this was one of them.” Director Jules Dassin’s The Naked City is one of the greatest noirs, shot entirely at real Manhattan locations that today evoke a lost city. The taut police procedural follows two New York detectives played by character actor Barry Fitzgerald (The Quiet Man) and noir regular Howard Duff (star of ’80s prime-time soaps such as Flamingo Road and Knots Landing). The partners investigate what appears at first to be a young woman’s suicide — but which turns out to be murder. The Naked City won two Oscars, one of them for gritty black-and-white cinematography by WIlliam H. Daniels, who in the ’30s had specialized in a glamorous lighting that made him a favorite of screen queen Greta Garbo. The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center will screen a new 35mm print as part of a Library of Congress Film Preservation Showcase, which features newly preserved prints of silent and early sound era pictures. Library of Congress film specialist Laurel Howard will introduce the film. (Disclosure: I work at the Library of Congress but did not work on this series.)
Watch a clip.
Saturday, April 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
LA RELIGIEUSE
Before director Jacques Rivette made the influential 1974 fantasy Celine and Julie Go Boating, he scandalized authorities with this 1966 adaptation of a Denis Diderot novel about a rebellious young novitiate in a convent. French new wave pin-up Anna Karina stars as Sister Suzanne, who’s shunned by her community and abused by her mother superior. The movie was banned in France upon its release, but America magazine writes, “There are no theological arguments made in La Religieuse. Suzanne’s faith is firm, her Christian belief a monument to itself, given her treatment. But again, the convents serve as metaphors, the story of Suzanne representing not spiritual soundness but human desire, both for freedom and the flesh.” The National Gallery of Art will be premiering a new digital restoration of a film that has long been out of circulation in the U.S.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, April 6, at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
Comments are closed.