Free Movies This Week

June 24, 2008 by Svetlana  Send to a Friend

This week lots of really, really, really good movies (legendary even) ripe for your early summer plucking. Go or else.

Tuesday

Lets kick the week off with
Dog Day Afternoon @ National Portrait Gallery at 7pm. The best movie ever made about a heist gone awry (I said it) this features Al Pacino in a masterclass of desperation and anxiety as a man attempting to steal money for his boyfrend’s sex change op. Based on a true story.
Directed by the late and great Sydney Lummet.
WATCH THIS TRAILER:

just as gritty but involving corsets, LoC continues its “Tudors on Film” series with

Mary Queen of Scots @ Library of Congress also at 7pm in which a regal Glenda Jackson stars as Mary, Queen of Scotland, and likely heir to the English throne, who faces a tumultuous life as she battles the plotting of her lords to unseat her and fights to have her claim to the English throne recognized. She is imprisoned by her cousin Queen Elizabeth, who accuses her of treason.

Wednesday

As always Psychotronics are at it with
Alien Warrior @ Arlington cinema and drafthouse in which (wait for it!) A kind-a God-like alien convinces his kind-a God-like alien dad to let him go to Earth to fight the “Great Evil.” What he meant by the “Great Evil” is gang-members, hustlers, pimps and prostitutes. He manages to teach some hood rats that doing bad things is wrong…only his communication skills aren’t at their bestest so he grunts, smashes, and yells to get his point across. While he schools the fools, there’s bad break dancing and bad kung-fu to contend with along with some rather tasty dialogue. Get ready for a brain-chill.

Thursday

If you have an afternoon off check out
Travelers and Magicians @ Freer Sackler at 2pm (though it will play again in July at a more 9-to-5iver friendly time)

and until “Screen on The Green” kicks off in a few days the James Bond series is still your best outdoor movie bet. This week:
The Man with the Golden Gun @ Capitol Plaza

Friday

A little something for anyone and everyone:
Do you line anime?
go to the 12th installment of Dragonball Z @ Japanese information center at 7pm

Do you like old, art movies?
1957’s Untamed @ Freer Sackler at 7 pm should be your pick.

and

Have you always wondered what “The Greatest of Australian Film Achievements” is?
Well wonder no more and go and see Wake in Fright @ Library of Congress at 7 pm in which John Grant is a mild mannered young schoolteacher in the desolate Australian outback town of Tiboonda. Summer vacation occurs and John is taking leave to heavily populated Sydney, where his girlfriend awaits. Along the way, he must stop in the town of Bundanyabba (or “Yabba”) to catch a flight. Once there, John encounters a clan of people unlike anything he has ever known. They are charming people who inhale alcohol in equal quantities as they do air. Men who are quickly prone to violence and derive pleasure in it, including their main joy of hunting and slaughtering kangaroos. John slowly finds himself slipping further and further into the madness of his surroundings.

Saturday

Apollo 13 @ Museum of Natural History
Tom Hanks.
Gary Sinise.
Ron Howard.
“Houston, we have a problem”.

Sunday

Is a big one.

from epicness of 16th century Japan in Kagemusha @ Freer Sackler at 2pm

to the finalization of the MosFilm series with
The Cranes are Flying & The Letter Never Sent @ National Gallery of Art

to some seminal cult classic action with:

Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey @ Museum of Natural History which I am yet to meet someone who fully gets it and also yet to meet someone who admits to hating it (even if it is the most sterile movie ever made, and all the more unsettling for that).

For the uninitiated here is the synopsys:
When a monolith is found buried on the moon’s surface, scientists realize that they were put there intentionally by a more advanced species. Dr. David Bowman, his crew, and the super computer named HAL-9000 are sent to Jupiter where they believe the monoliths originated. Are the monoliths the reason for our evolution as sentient beings? Will whoever discovers the source of the monoliths achieve the next step in evolution? What might those next steps be?

This is how it starts:

and for slightly more lighthearted space adventures, The Summer Camp Movie series ends with
The Earth vs. The Flying Saucers @ Hirshhorn at 6:30pm in which potentially peace-seeking aliens are mistakenly fired upon by the US army and retaliate by attacking London, Paris, and Moscow before the climactic showdown set just blocks from the Hirshhorn. In this nail-biter, scientists race to develop a super weapon to repel the saucers’ mega death rays!

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