Capital Projections: It’s hard being a man 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 ART OF SELF-DEFENSE
Lou Reed sang that it’s hard being a man. Long before ads in the back of comic books promised to turn 98-pound weaklings into bodybuilder Charles Atlas, male insecurity has been a potent motivator — and a lucrative commodity. In his second feature film, writer-director Riley Stearns (Faults) makes a black comedy out of the self-destructive male ego, with mixed results. Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) is so nerdy that even his pet dachshund doesn’t see him as an alpha — certainly not when his master has run out of dog food. After Casey is mugged and badly beaten on the way back from a late-night kibble run, he signs up for karate lessons from a volatile teacher (Alessandro Nivola). The instruction gives Casey confidence, but it also transforms this harmless nebbish into a jerk — and a potentially dangerous one, at that.
This is no subtle Art; the movie telegraphs its theme of oppression well before a talented female instructor (Imogen Poots), in a related plot line, is passed over for a promotion in favor of a less-qualified man. Comparisons to David Fincher’s 1999 drama Fight Club, with which it shares some elements, aren’t entirely warranted. Stearns’ ambitions are more modest, his deadpan comedy endearing enough to temper the heavy-handed preaching. If Eisenberg is essentially playing the same character he always plays, nobody else personifies the 21st-century nerd like he does.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, July 19, at E Street Landmark Cinema. $12.50.
SWORD OF TRUST
Will the long-running but increasingly contentious divide between rural and urban populations ever be reconciled? Not with this modestly amusing chamber comedy, it won’t — but that’s OK. Podcaster-comedian Marc Maron stars as Mel, a former New Yorker who runs an Alabama pawn shop with the help of his ever-distracted employee Nathaniel (Jon Bass). Mel sees dollar signs when a lesbian couple (Jillian Bell and Michaela Watkins) offer to sell a Civil War-era sword that they claim proves the South won the war. But in order to cash in on this dubious artifact, the four must join forces and navigate the cultural minefields and cartoonish conspiracy theorists of rural America. The Sword of the title is not as crucial as the Trust; this is less a tale of political extremes than of the unlikely friendship that develops among the four leads, whom director Lynn Shelton (Your Sister’s Sister) gently guides through a partially improvised script. Yet even if the characters are believable, the scenario in which they find themselves is not, and the city folk’s victory over country folk finally seems smug and divisive.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, July 19, at E Street Landmark Cinema. $12.50.
THE THOUSAND FACES OF DUNJIA
Now in its 24th year, the Freer and Sackler galleries’ annual Made in Hong Kong Film Festival brings the best in new cinema (plus a few vintage classics) from the city’s ever-vital industry. This weekend, the series features a 2017 martial arts adventure from director Yuen Woo-Ping. Aarif Lee (star of the thriller Cold War) plays Dao, a naive constable who joins forces with the struggling Wuyin clan in the fight to save the world from unspeakable demons. Ping is one of the great martial arts choreographers, and his career as a director stretches back to the Jackie Chan classic Drunken Master (1973). With a script by the legendary Tsui Hark (Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain), the movie invests the wuxia (literally, “martial heroes”) genre with plenty of dazzling action and colorful characters. The sometimes cheesy computer-animated creatures might make you long for the crude special effects of vintage Shaw Brothers films. But the shape-shifting three-eyed fish monster more than makes up for it. And wiry demons that look like glowing masses of tangled power cords suggest that this ancient world anticipated the dangers of modern technology. The biggest problem with The Thousand Faces of Dunjia is that the title doesn’t let you in on its dirty secret: This is just part one! The fantasy had a brief commercial run at a Gaithersburg multiplex upon its original release, but thanks to the Freer you can catch up with it in downtown Washington — and for free.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, July 21, at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
THE RIGHT STUFF
Tom Wolfe’s 1979 nonfiction landmark about the Mercury 7 astronauts — the first Americans in space — came at the end of a decade when national idealism had taken a hit from corruption and cynicism. What better way to remind the country of its greatness by taking to the skies? Director Philip Kaufman, who vividly captured U.S. paranoia in his 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, adapted Wolfe’s book for this 1983 epic that was a commercial disappointment but has since grown in stature as one of the great American films. Penned by Kaufman after screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) left the production, the film charts the rise and fall of pilots like Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) and John Glenn (Ed Harris). Yet, much like the book, the film also portrays the space program as a public relations bonanza that led to countless space-age products — ultimately including this very film. As inspirational as space travel may be, there’s also a sobering aspect, and Kaufman’s film addresses that with a clear eye. Roger Ebert, in his Great Movies series of essays, wrote in 2002, “That a man could walk on the moon is one of the great achievements of the last century. But after seeing The Right Stuff it is hard to argue that manned flights should be at the center of the space program.” The National Gallery of Art is screening a 35-mm print of the film as part of a weekend of moon-themed programming.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, July 20, at 11 a.m. in the East Building Auditorium at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE
As an elder statesman of action movies, Clint Eastwood has become a curmudgeonly grandfather figure typified by the modest 2018 thriller The Mule, in which he plays an elderly drug smuggler. Next week, as part of its ongoing United Artists Centennial Retrospective series, the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center revisits a time when the actor-director was still developing the iconic persona of the steely, silent tough guy. The second of Eastwood’s celebrated spaghetti Westerns made with director Sergio Leone, 1965’s For a Few Dollars More follows the uneasy alliance between Monco (Eastwood) and a former Confederate colonel (Lee Van Cleef), two bounty hunters in search of the same vicious outlaw (Gian Maria Volonté). The American terrain of Wild West mythology is convincingly approximated by Spanish locations. It becomes a magical backdrop for violent poetry played out in editing rhythms and extreme facial close-ups that make it seem like you’re seeing gods at war. Sure, you could watch this at home on your 55-inch television, but these movies were meant to be seen on a screen that delivers 40-foot-wide eyeballs.
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, July 23, at 4:30 p.m.; Wednesday, July 24, at 7:05 p.m.; and Thursday, July 25, at 4:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN
Coming full circle, in this week’s final pick, it’s hard being a man — especially in a post-apocalyptic society where the seeds necessary to rebuild civilization are in short supply. Professional wrestler Roddy Piper (star of the more subtly dystopian thriller They Live) plays Sam Hell, one of Earth’s last fertile men. Hell is kidnapped by a race of frog-men in order to impregnate captive women and thus repopulate the planet with slaves. Naturally, this is a presentation of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society. The 1988 sci-fi thriller, which archival company Vinegar Syndrome has lovingly restored from an original 35-mm negative, also stars dancer Sandahl Bergman and low-budget Western regular Rory Calhoun.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, July 22, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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