FRIDAY, JULY 25
LADY WITHOUT CAMELIAS A shop girl becomes a movie star, but is caught between two men, in Michelangelo Antonioni's early drama. (1953, 106 min) 2:30 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
THE DARK CRYSTAL The last two Gelflings seek the title object in the first PG-rated flick from the Muppet factory. (1982, 93 min) (Also July 26-28, 31) 2:45 & 9:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM SERIES The first day of this annual fest includes Looking For Life and Gulpilil: One Red Blood. 4:30, National Museum of Women in the Arts Reservations recommended; reservations@nmwa.org or 202-783-7370. $5.
THE PARALLAX VIEW Watergate-era paranoia blooms in this tale of a journalist (Warren Beatty) whose ex-girlfriend's death leads to a conspiracy. 4:45 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SHINOBI Adapted from The Koga Ninja Scrolls, this is the tale of two rival ninja clans pitted against each other by Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. Then the leaders of the two clans's next generation fall in love, and plan an alliance. (2005, 107 min) 6:30 pm, Japanese Information and Culture Center, 1155 21st St NW. Free; reservations required. RSVP to jiccrsvpspring08@embjapan.org
EXODUS The battle of the sexes is a well-kept secret in director Pang Ho-cheung's blackly comic Hong Kong police story. Tsim (Simon Yam), a cop who's been repeatedly passed over for promotion, is assigned the routine interrogation of a man caught in a public ladies's room. Kwan insists he was trying to uncover details of a widespread female conspiracy to kill men, an explanation the happily married Tsim is inclined to dismiss. But then Kwan suddenly changes his story, and Tsim's original report vanishes. Intrigued by the possibility that some sort of plot really is at work, the cop unofficially pursues Kwan's retracted allegation — all the way to a quietly shocking final scene. Pang, whose Isabella was prettier but vaguer than this poisoned bon-bon, moves slowly but deliberately, ultimately explaining the absurd sequence that opens the film. A minor work, perhaps, but an impressively assured one. (2007, 94 min) (Also July 27) 7 pm, 7 pm, Freer/Sackler Galleries, 12th & Constitution Ave SW. Free; tickets distributed one hour before screening.
FELLINI SATYRICON By the time he made this 1969 film, Federico Fellini had probably forgotten he was ever a Neorealist. All that remains from the director's early work are its fervent eroticism and his life-long interest in circus-like pageantry. Often screened mostly for its campy theatrics and lurid (bi)sexuality — as a midnight movie, in other words — the film is brazenly unrealistic and bewilderingly episodic. But these qualities don't merely represent the indulgences of a cinematic megalomaniac (which Fellini certainly was). Instead, the movie's style results from the director's quest to be true to his ancient sources, including Greek tragedy, Roman frescoes, and Petronius's Satyricon itself, which survives only in fragmentary form. Protagonist Encolpius (Martin Potter) hops from incident to incident, at first desperately pursuing unfaithful adolescent lover Gitone (Max Born) and later trying to survive such perils as an earthquake, mercurial tyrants, political upheaval, the Minotaur, and — worst of all — a "blunted sword." Don't look for Jupiter, Diana, or Mercury in Satyricon's cosmology; Priapus is the god who matters. Not everything in the film is derived from Nero's age: A scene in which Encolpius and the poet Eumolpus (Salvo Randone) stroll through a gallery, deploring the decline of contemporary art, could be an outtake from La Dolce Vita, simply plunged two millennia into the past. Among Fellini's gambits for making the ancient Mediterranean seem unfamiliar is to use such non-Western music as Javanese gamelan and Bali's kecak chant, which invokes not the gods of Rome but India's Rama. 7 pm, Washington Studio School, 2129 S St NW. Free; first come, first served.
KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES Tyrone Power stars in this socially conscious swashbuckler, set during the 1857 Sepoy rebellion and adapted from a novel by Talbot Mundy. The film will be introduced by Brian Taves, the author of a new book on Mundy. (1953, 100 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK The ultimate '80s "thrill-ride" movie, Spielberg and Lucas's return to the values of 1930s adventures serial returns to all its values, including casual racism. 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
LABYRINTH The Muppets went goth for director Jim Henson's 1986 fable, which features David Bowie as the Jareth the Goblin King and heavy (if credited) borrowings from Maurice Sendak and M.C. Escher. An awkward Jennifer Connelly, who certainly doesn't look like a future Oscar winner, plays 15-year-old Sarah. Forced by her moderately wicked stepmother to babysit infant half-brother Toby, Sarah invokes a curse from a fantasy book, calling for goblins to take the kid. They do, and a panicked Sarah must pursue Toby to the goblin's world and rescue him by 13 o'clock. Aided by a untrustworthy troll, a kind-hearted Sendak-style monster, and a military-minded talking terrier, Sarah makes her way through the Jareth's labyrinth to his castle. Written by Terry Jones, this sometimes recalls fellow Pythonite Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, but is much softer; the early gag that equates fairies with pesky insects is never topped. Bowie's five songs — which include one that's recycled from "Let's Dance" — are not his best work. But they're better than his ornate shag hairstyle. 11:30 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SATURDAY, JULY 26
AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM SERIES The second day of this annual fest includes Maria Bethania: Music is Perfume and Faraw! Mother of the Dunes. 10 am-4 pm, National Museum of Women in the Arts Reservations recommended; reservations@nmwa.org or 202-783-7370. $5.
DR STRANGELOVE A newly restored print of Stanley Kubrick's satire of the McCainiac worldview, early-'60s style. Two Kubrick experts, Robert Kolker and James Naremore, will discuss this and today's second film by the director. (1963, 98 min) 1:30, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
REPETITION This film restages 1971's Stanford Prison Experiment, but the presence of cameras changes the result. (2005, 75 min) Shown with THE BATTLE OF ORGREAVE, a reenactment of a 1984 clash between striking British miners and police and a consideration of how televised images of the strike affected public opinion. (2001, 63 min) 3 & 4:45 pm, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays through Sept. 6, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 7th St & Independence Ave SW. Free.
EYES WIDE SHUT Set in New York, filmed in London, and based on a story of century-old Vienna, Stanley Kubrick's final testament doesn't seem connected to any real place, or actual emotion. Some of the more intimate scenes work, but the baroque orgy sequence makes The Da Vinci Code look smart by comparison. (1999, 159 min) 3:45 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
LOVES OF A BLONDE In Milos Forman's international breakout film, a teenage girl looks for romance in a loveless totalitarian burg. 5:05 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
SUNDAY, JULY 27
IRIS Iris Murdoch devotees may feel that Richard Eyre's film — adapted in part from husband John Bayley's memoir, Elegy for Iris — makes a bit too much of the novelist's love life as a young woman. Some of the sexed-up moments aren't strictly necessary, but Eyre was wise to choose eros over thanatos. Like Bayley's book, Iris is not principally about the period after Murdoch (played by Kate Winslet and Judi Dench) began to fade into the twilight of Alzheimer's disease, requiring Bayley (Hugh Bonneville and Jim Broadbent) to provide full-time attention. By shifting frequently between the '50s and the '90s, the movie disrupts the downward slide that, while medically accurate, would have made for dismal and predictable viewing. The narrative's system of flashbacks is familiar from other attempts to capture the vagaries of human memory, yet without the ominousness such devices often express. If the film risks being too lightweight, that's preferable to the crushing sentiment of a disease-of-the-week movie. Warm and gentle, if inevitably oversimplified, Iris is not a tragedy but, appropriately, an elegy. With a lecture by and discussion with former Washington Post film reviewer Desson Thomson. 10 am, Avalon Theater, 5612 Connecticut Ave NW. $15; $40 for all three films in series.
AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM SERIES The final program of this annual fest includes Cape Verde: My Love, As Old As My Tongue, and a film about the great Afro-Peruvian singer Susana Baca. 11 am-6 pm, National Museum of Women in the Arts Reservations recommended; reservations@nmwa.org or 202-783-7370. $5.
SUMMERTIME This is another of director David Lean's tales of brief encounters, with Katharine Hepburn as an American school teacher who falls for a unscrupulous Italian art dealer while in Venice. (1955, 100 min) (Also July 29-30) 1 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
THE GIRLFRIENDS A woman returns from Rome to her hometown, Turin, where she tries to negotiate the complexities of class and female friendship. With little hint of the director's later existential concerns, this is the Michelangelo Antonioni film for people who prefer Sense and Sensibility over Waiting for Godot. 4:30 pm, National Gallery of Art East Building auditorium. Free.
BLACK PETER Milos Forman's debut feature is a naturalistic account of an alienated youth. (1964, 85 min) (Also July 28) 5:05 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
FULLTIME KILLER A soulful-hitman fantasia that borrows from John Woo, Wong Kai-wai, and Suzuki Seijun, this is among the most deliriously idiosyncratic works in the canon of co-directors Johnnie To and Ka-Fai Wai. Among the many odd touches is that, although the film is set primarily in Hong Kong, much of the dialogue is in Japanese. Asia's leading assassin, known only as O (Takashi Sorimachi) is Japanese, and aspiring killer Tok (Andy Lau) is learning the language as part of his emulation. Both men get involved with Chin (Kelly Lin), who works at a video store specializing in Japanese fare. Stuffed with cinematic references and clogged with plot, the movie is too self-conscious to stand alone, but loads of fun for fans of flash, action, and in-jokes. (2001, 102 min) (Also Jul 28) 9:10 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. $9.75
MONDAY, JULY 28
ALL ABOUT EVE Bette Davis's exemplary role, as an actress battling a starlet who wants to supplant her. (1950, 138 min) 6:30 pm, National Theater, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave NW. Free; tickets distributed a half hour before screening.
IN TREATMENT A sensation in Israel before being remade for HBO, the original of this series offers sex and death on a TV budget: In each half-hour episode, psychologist Ruben Dagan meets with a person who has traffic-stopping issues. In the first installment, the patient is a young woman who confesses to a sordid sexual encounter in a unisex bathroom — which she regrets not because she loves her boyfriend, but because she has a mad crush on Dagan. In the second, the shrink tries to counsel an Israeli Air Force pilot who just hit "the wrong people" in a West Bank aerial bombing, and now wants Dagan's permission to visit the scene of his lethal error. This is the second half of a two-part program that presents the first five episodes of the show, each featuring pungent dialogue and head-spinning dilemmas. No wonder every five-show suite concludes with Dagan's visit to his own therapist. 7 pm, Washington DC Jewish Community Center, 1529 16th Street NW. $10.
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE Two cute old ladies cutely murder in this black comedy, which doesn't entirely suit director Frank Capra's sensibility. Sunset, Screen on the Green, the Mall near Constitution Ave & 4th St. Free. 877 262 5866.
TUESDAY, JULY 29
PACIFIC VIBRATIONS A Southern California hit that then went national, this is the ""environmental surf film" that brought the genre in the eco-era. (1970, 92 min) Shown with two shorts, Kings of the Wild Waves (1964, 16 min), and Skaterdater (1965, 18 min). 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 30
THE COLOR OF OLIVES This documentary treats an incendiary subject — a Palestinian family whose life is confined surrounded Israel's West Bank Wall — but has been described as "peaceful." (2006, 97 min) 6:30 pm, Jerusalem Fund, 2425 Virginia Ave NW. Free.
THE QUIET DUEL In this early and rarely seen Akira Kurosawa drama, a doctor (Toshiro Mifune) catches syphilis from a patient, and is subjected to the stigma against people with the disease. (1949, 95 min) 7 pm, American Film Institute Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Rd. Free.
SUGAR CANE ALLEY Set in Martinique, Euzhan Palcy's film follows two residents of a sugar-plantation shantytown, an orphaned boy and his grandmother. (1983, 103 min) 7 pm, National Museum of Women in the Arts Reservations recommended; reservations@nmwa.org or 202-783-7370. $5.
THURSDAY, JULY 31
ZORA NEALE HURSTON: A HEART WITH ROOM FOR EVERY JOY A short documentary on the folklorist, ethnographer, Harlem Renaissance leader, and author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. (2005, 42 minutes) 6 pm, Smithsonian American Art Museum, McEvoy Auditorium, 8th & G Sts NW. Free.
IN NAME ONLY Cary Grant and Carole Lombard star in this tale of marital discontent, which starts light but gets progressively darker. (1939, 94 min) 7 pm, Mary Pickford Theater, Library of Congress Madison Building, Third Floor, 101 Independence Ave. SE. Free; call 202-707-5677 for reservations.