FRIDAY, MAY 16
BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT Ridley Scott's version of this replicant saga is widely deemed superior to the original release. Through May 22, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
NIGHT TRAIN See May 18. 3 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT Hong Kong star Carina Lau plays is among the players in this love-triangle thriller, set in Chongqing. (2007, 93 min) 5 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
HERCULES 56 This documentary reconstructs the care of the Brazilian revolutionaries who in 1969 kidnapped the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, and where later flown to Mexico on a Hercules 56 cargo plane. (93 min) Sponsored by Reel Time Brazil. 6:30 pm, Greenberg Theater, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW. Free.
YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE A prime example of Italy's "Il cinema ridicolo," this is genre mash-up is the tale of a group of cave people protected from extraterrestrial invaders by the mysterious (and mystified) Yor, who then embarks on a quest to discover his identity. (1983, 90 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
DASEPO NAUGHTY GIRLS With abject apologies to Disney, Korea director Lee Je-young's comic-strip-derived farce could be retitled High School Musical. Sex is more important than scholarship at No Use High, where a tip on which teacher has syphilis clears a classroom, a poor girl turns to prostitution because "virginity doesn't pay the bills," one of the prettiest students is saving for a sex-change operation, and the principal is possessed by a supernatural avenger who tries to save the school by restoring the kids' innocence. Although it bumps up against some serious issues — bullying, poverty, and that Korean-cinema perennial, overseas adoption — the movie is more frisky than scandalous. (The teen hooker, for example, never actually has to engage in sex with her harmlessly kinky clients.) And, yes, the kids do break into song periodically, complete with yodeling by Anthony, the dreamy Korean-born "transfer student from Switzerland." The film is not for the sober-minded, but some of its buffoonery does double as social comment. 7 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
IN LOVE WE TRUST Beijing Bicycle director Xiaoshuai Wang returns with the tale of couple, now divorced, who consider having a second child to provide a bone-marrow donor for the first. (2007, 15 min) 7:10 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
LOST IN BEIJING In director Li Fang's tale of contemporary Chinese free enterprise, a simple transaction goes wrong for a simple reason: The commodity is a baby. One day when masseuse Pingguo is sloppy drunk, her rich boss, Dong, takes advantage of her. Through an unlikely happenstance, Pingguo's window-washer husband, Kun, can see the rape, and demands compensation. The payment is small, however, compared to what Kun thinks he can get when Pingguo learns she's pregnant; rarely has a husband been more interested in proving that the baby isn't his. Using the title of Wong Kar-wai's abandoned Beijing film, Li constructs a parable of the city's greed, asserting that his characters are typical by inserting documentary-style footage of everyday street life. (2007, 112 min) 9:35 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
ERASERHEAD Arguably David Lynch's best film, it's certainly his strangest and most haunted. Not recommended to anyone who's considering having children someday. (1977, 89 min) Midnight, though May 17, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SATURDAY, MAY 17
LOST IN BEIJING See May 16. 12:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
USELESS See May 19. (2007, 80 min) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
WESTERN TRUNK LINE See May 18. (2007, 101 min) 2:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
TOUT VAN BIEN Co-directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin, this mordant satire is the most accessible film of Jean-Luc Godard's revolutionary period. It's still extremely self-conscious, of course, beginning with the casting of Jane Fonda and Yves Montand as media types -- she's a journalist, he's a new-wave director who now makes TV commercials -- and including the use of stagey sets to represent a factory where a strike is underway. (1972, 95 min) 3 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
THIRTEEN PRINCESS TREES Ace cinematographer Yue Lu's film concerns a love triangle at a Chengdu high school. (2006, 101 min) 4:50 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SERGIO VIEIRA DE MELLO: EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD This is a tribute to the Brazilian UN diplomat who was killed in a 2003 explosion in Iraq. (56 min) Sponsored by Reel Time Brazil. 6:30 pm, Sponsored by Reel Time Brazil. 8 pm, Greenberg Theater, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW. Free.
THE CASE In actress-turned-director Wan Fen's black comedy, the marriage of an assertive innkeeper and her retiring husband is tested by then discovery of a mysterious suitcase and the arrival of a femme fatale. (2007, 87 min) 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
XAVANTE STRATEGY This documentary shows how young children from Brazil's indigenous Xavante tribe were sent to live and study with whites, learning the interlopers' culture in order to protect their own. (86 min) Sponsored by Reel Time Brazil. 8 pm, Greenberg Theater, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW. Free.
A BATTLE OF WITS Although set in 4th-century BCE China, this large-scaled drama is adapted from a Japanese manga, not a history book. When the city of Liang is threatened by the armies of Zhao, lone warrior Ge Li (Hong Kong star Andy Lau) arrives to help. Although a master military tactician, Ge Li is also a proto-Christian who preaches "universal love" and pacifism — until the next time he needs to massacre a few thousand Zhao warriors. Historical incongruities include a female cavalry officer — who, of course, becomes Ge Li's love interest — and a strapping peasant who seems to be of African descent. Director Jacob Cheung's epic is hard to take very seriously, but it's a ripping yarn nonetheless. (2007, 133 min) 9 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SUNDAY, MAY 18
PRIVATE PROPERTY In this French drama, filial secrets are revealed when mon decides to sell the family home. (2006) Sponsored by Cinema Art Bethesda. 10 am, Landmark Bethesda Row, Woodmont & Bethesda Aves, Bethesda.
IN LOVE WE TRUST See May 16. 12:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
WESTERN TRUNK LINE Set in 1978 in a cold gray Chinese town whose name means "Western Trunk Line," Li Jixian's film recounts a sort of romance between a factory-job slacker and the new girl in town, a musician and dancer from Beijing. Their affair is brutally abbreviated, however, in a place that seems to have no tolerance for change — despite the radio reports that China and the U.S. have suddenly established relations. The film's musical moments suggest a debt to Jia Zhang-ke's Platform, but overall this is a unexceptional example of the contemporary Chinese small-town downer. 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SHORT FILMS: IF YOU WERE ME 2 In this omnibus film, well-known Korean directors Park Kyung-hee, Ryoo Seung-wan, Jung Ji-woo, Jang Jin, and Kim Dong-won address such social issues as the struggles of refugees and immigrants and the difficulties of temporary workers. (2005, 112 min) 2 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Independence Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
REGULAR LOVERS Of all the recent films that try to evoke the ferment of Paris in May 1968, this is the most convincing. Director Phillipe Garrel was actually there — 20 at the time — and remembers both the moment and the new wave's audacious approach to filmmaking. This black-and-white ramble's first hour depicts the clashes between students and police, using small skirmishes to suggest the larger battle (much as Summer Palace did with the Tiananmen Square massacre). Then the story comes to focus on poet, layabout, and draft resister Francois (played by the director's son, Louis Garrel, who also starred in The Dreamers, Bertolucci's much slicker evocation of Paris 1968). Francois finds and loses love, while debating art, politics, parents, money, and monogamy amid the jazzy impressionist piano score and the occasional Kinks song. If the movie's latter two-thirds are a letdown, they're meant to be, leading to a conclusion that's abrupt and surprising, yet indisputable. (2005, 178 min) 4 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT See May 16. 5 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
NANA'S DIARY This documentary follows acclaimed percussionist Nana Vasconcelos into Brazil's northeast, where he researched the local folk music. (60 min) Sponsored by Reel Time Brazil. 6:30 pm, Greenberg Theater, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW. Free.
THIRTEEN PRINCESS TREES See May 17. 7:50 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SANTIAGO Joao Moreira Salles's documentary recounts the public and private careers of its title character, a butler who wrote some 60,000 pages of stories about the aristocratic lives around him. Sponsored by Reel Time Brazil. 8 pm, Greenberg Theater, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW. Theater, 4200 Wisconsin Ave NW. Free.
NIGHT TRAIN This chilly and chilling tale is set in director Diao Yinan's hometown, X'ian, as was his previous Uniform. The story centers on Hongyuan, a middle-aged widow who makes weekly train trips to a matchmaking agency's dances. She mostly sits and watches, and the men she occasionally meets are not prizes. At work, Hongyuan is more assertive: She's a women's court bailiff whose duties include administering the most severe of penalties. One day, she meets a different sort of man: withdrawn, possibly deranged Jun, with whom Hongyuan gradually realizes she has a woeful connection. Rendered in a wintry palette of eerie greens and blues and faded reds, the film offers a curiously beautiful vision of dead-end industrial China. If the visuals are perhaps too beguiling, the story is quite another matter: Diao suggests that there is only one way out, and only one way to approach it: with fatalistic acceptance. (2007, 94 min) 9:10 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
MONDAY, MAY 19
BLOW-UP Michelangelo Antonioni's austere style meets swinging London — including the Yardbirds — in this tale of a fashion photographer who may have accidently photographed evidence of a murder. (1966, 111 min) 6:30 pm, Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh St NW. $6.
GETTING HOME Yang Zhang's road dramedy is about a Chinese migrant worker who carries his buddy's corpse home. 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON Frank Capra's populist fable is the logical opener for AFI's Jimmy Stewart retrospective. (1939, 129 min) (Also May 24 & 26) 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
USELESS One of the most celebrated contemporary Chinese directors, Jia Zhang-ke has used documentary techniques in such films as The World and Still Life. This much simpler movie actually is a documentary, presenting three vignettes linked by the Chinese garment trade. In the first, Jia surveys big-city sweatshops; in the third, he introduces a coal miner who gave up tailoring because he couldn't compete with industrial seamstresses. More remarkably, the center section observes designer Ma Ke, whose Useless brand looks rather Japanese and is decidedly upscale. Conceived as "a sort of protest" against mass-produced clothing, the Useless line shows that China hasn't simply accepted capitalism — it's opened itself to bourgeois self-expression. 9:10 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
TUESDAY, MAY 20
THE LITTLE COLONEL Bill "Bojangles'' Robinson shines in this tale of a crabby Southerner who gradually comes to love his granddaughter, played by the lovable Shirley Temple. (1935, 80 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
HAPPY END Oldboy's Choi Min-sik plays an unemployed banker who fears his wife's successful career may lead her to another man, so he uses his abundant free time to investigate her. (1999, 99 min) (also May 21) 9:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
WEDNESDAY, MAY 21
THE BIG SLEEP Howard Hawks did what he could with William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman's notoriously befuddling script. It has something to do with cynical detective Philip Marlowe's (Bogart) investigation into the gambling debts of a wealthy general's daughter (Bacall). 6 pm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, McEvoy Auditorium, 8th & G Sts NW. Free.
BUBBLE FICTION This farce has a serious theme: the 1990 popping of Japan's economic bubble, from which the country has yet to recover. After a scientific genius accidentally converts a washing machine into a time machine, the Japanese government sends her daughter back to 1990 to prevent the fiscal meltdown. But no one is prepared to believe the young woman's warnings. 6:30, Japanese Information and Culture Center, 1155 21st St NW. Free; reservations required. RSVP to jiccrsvpwinter08@embjapan.org
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS Made in 1965 and first released in the U.S. in 1967, Gillo Pontecorvo's film has long been watched for lessons on wars other than the one it depicts. Still, this account of France's temporarily successful 1957 crackdown on the Algerian movement known as the FLN was not intended as an allegory. Pontecorvo doesn't hide his sympathy for the FLN, but the film is primarily a procedural, with crisp accounts of shooting French soldiers and bombing cafes and dancehalls. Shot in a black-and-white documentary-like style, the movie seemed so authentic that it was initially released with a disclaimer noting that it contained no newsreel footage. After 40 years of docudramas modeled at least in part on Pontecorvo's film, that footnote is no longer required. Yet The Battle of Algiers — now refurbished with improved subtitles and new prints — remains a dynamic, engrossing account of revolutionary violence and authoritarian countermeasures. 6:30 pm, Goethe-Institut, 812 Seventh St NW. $6.
THE LITTLEST REBEL When two soldiers — one blue, one gray — are sentenced to death, Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles'' Robinson hoof it to Washington to get President to save the men, one of whom is the girl's dad. (1935, 73 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER In this Technicolor romance, Tyrone Power plays a Southern gambler whose poker winnings include a necklace that really belongs to the loser's sister (Piper Laurie). His attempt to return it could lead to love, but not before a sword duel. (1953, 99 min) 7 pm, Films on the Hill, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 Seventh Street, SE. $5.
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullivan play contentious clerks who unknowingly fall in love while conducting an anonymous romance by mail in Ernst Lubitsch's beloved romantic comedies. Nora Ephron later e-mailed the same plot. (Also May 22 & 24) (1940, 99 min) 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
THOSE WHO REMAIN In actress-turned-director Anne Le Ny's first feature, Emmanuelle Devos and Vincent Lindon play a potential couple who meet while visiting a hospital where both have lovers being treated for cancer. 8 pm, Avalon Theater, 5612 Connecticut Ave NW. $9.75
THURSDAY, MAY 22
STORMY WEATHER Bill "Bojangles'' Robinson had his biggest role in this musical, playing a dancer who just can't get a singer (Lena Horne) to settle down with him. (1943, 78 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
BREATHLESS Jean-Luc Godard dedicated his 1959 feature debut to Monogram Pictures, a now-forgotten American maker of B movies. The plot seem consistent with that dedication: Small-time car thief Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo in his star-making role) panics when he's pulled over by a policeman and shoots the cop. He then goes on the run, hiding out with the help of his American girlfriend Patricia (Jean Seberg). The director doesn't merely treat these protagonists as crime-flick archetypes, however. The couple's brief romance mirrors the love-hate relationship between Hollywood and Paris (or between Hollywood and Godard). Still, this ideological battle doesn't overshadow all else, as it did for Godard a decade later. Freewheeling and spontaneous, the movie is the model for most subsequent fiction films made with handheld camera, natural light, and authentic locations — or an ironic conception of the gangster flick. The movie still looks fresh, more timely than many of its imitators. This 40th-anniversary reissue features a restored print and retranslated subtitles, but the film doesn't need refurbishing to seem new. 9:10 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75