TO MAY 22
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
FRIDAY, MAY 23
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY Jimmy Stewart won the best supporting actor Oscar for this comedy, playing a reporter who falls for the socialite (Katharine Hepburn) whose wedding he's supposed to cover. (1940, 112 min) (Also May 25-26) 4:45pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
A RAGE TO LIVE Loosely adapted from John O'Hara's novel, this is the tale of a highly sexed socialite (Suzanne Pleshette) whose lovers include one played by Ben Gazzara. (1965, 101 min). 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY The last in Sergio Leone's made-in-Spain "spaghetti'' western trilogy, one of the best uses of widescreen ever, gets the Silver's big-screen treatment. (1966, 179 min) (Also May 24-26) 9 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SATURDAY, MAY 24
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 26) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
TO DIE AT THIRTY French filmmaker Romain Goupil revisits May 1968, when he was a student protester, in this personal documentary. (1982, 95 min) 2 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
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. (1940, 99 min) 3:35 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
BED AND SOFA This silent-era Soviet comedy turns on a perennial Moscow problem: overcrowded apartments. 4:30 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
A WOMAN IS A WOMAN It seems oddly appropriate that one of Jean-Luc Godard's most playful fiction features is also one of the most autobiographical. Anna Karina, then newly married to the director, plays Angela, a burlesque singer and dancer who announces her desire to be in a MGM-style musical. Godard's exhilarating Cinemascope romp was made only nine years after Singing in the Rain, but of course Angela's dream is impossible — not because she isn't star material, but because '50s Hollywood is as distant as the classic novels and paintings the film invokes. Godard fragments the Hollywood musical, with Michel Legrand's score cutting in and out between bursts of dialogue, and glamorous sets replaced by everyday Paris locations. The film's sexual politics and plot, which involves Angela's desire to get pregnant, have dated more than its crazy-quilt style, but Angela does frequently get the last word in what is, after all, a valentine to its leading lady. (1961, 84 min) (Also May 25 & 28) 5:40 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SUNDAY, MAY 25
DESTRY RIDES AGAIN Jimmy Stewart plays an inexperienced deputy brought up to speed by Marlene Dietrich's saloon singer in this comic Western. (1939, 94 min) (Also May 27) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN The Russian Revolution of 1917 didn't work out all that well, but the one in 1905 — now there's a tale to stir the defiant soul! Bold but doomed, the sailors who rebelled against their cruel Tsarist officers won their triumph retroactively, as the heroes of this Sergei Eisenstein movie. A strident propaganda exercise as well as a masterly example of the director's theories of montage, the 1925 broadside has been widely claimed as the most influential — or even simply the best — film ever made. The "Odessa Steps'' sequence, in which Tsarist soldiers brutally slaughter civilians, is among the most emulated scenes in cinema history, inspiring homages in The Godfather, De Palma's The Untouchables, and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult. 5:45 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
TUESDAY, MAY 27
WILD RIVER Director Elia Kazan's well-regarded New Deal drama stars Montgomery Clift as a Tennessee Valley Authority employee who seeks to persuade an elderly woman to leave her home before its scheduled flooding. (1960, 110 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
THE FORBIDDEN QUEST In this Korean film, an 18th-century scholar tries his hand at an erotic novel, only to be overwhelmed by the book's success. (2006, 140 min) (Also May 28) 9 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28
5 CENTIMETERS PER SECOND This Japananimated movie uses three interconnected shorts to recount the saga of two long-separated friends. The title refers to the speed of a falling cherry blossom, which in Japanese lore represents the ephemerality of life. (Also May 31) (2007, 63 min) 4 pm, Historical Society of Washington, D.C. 801 K St NW. Free.
ATLANTIC CONVOY Former movie Tarzan Bruce Bennett stars in this WWII action drama, in which a North Atlantic fighter pilot comes to suspect that one of his colleagues is informing the German Navy about the locations of Allied ships. (1942, 65 min) Shown with U-BOAT PRISONER, which is loosely based on the true story of a double agent who helped a group of captured scientists escape from a German sub. (1944, 65 min) 7 pm, Films on the Hill, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 Seventh Street, SE. $5.
THURSDAY, MAY 29
VEXILLE Ten years after Japan closed its borders rather than accept the United Nations' decision to ban android development, female U.S. agent Vexille is dispatched to penetrate the barrier and learn more about J-bots. This computer-animated film was directed by Fumihiko Sori, who also made the live-action (but very cartoonish) Ping Pong. (2007, 109 min) 6:30 pm, Japan Information and Culture Center, 1155 21st St NW. Free; reservations required. RSVP to jiccrsvpwinter08@embjapan.org
I, A MAN One of Andy Warhol's lesser-known features, this film follows Tom Baker as he encounters a series of women, including Velvet Underground singer Nico and angry feminist Valerie Solanas, who shot Warhol later that year. (1967, 99 min) Shown with FASHION: FLOWERS, an episode of a Warhol cable TV show that features interviews with four florists. (1980, 30 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.