You oughta be in pictures

Thursday 10/30

The first day of the Virginia Film Festival is always a toss-up—jump right into silver screens and a popcorn diet, or pace yourself for the weekend and hit the opening night gala at the UVA Art Museum instead? ($75, 10pm). Why choose at all? Catch either Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman’s hard-won, haunting animated film about the Israel-Palestine conflict, at Newcomb Hall ($3-9, 7pm), or Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, at McCormick Observatory ($9-12, 7pm). Then hit the gala, unless you’d rather search for black holes at the observatory or rabbit holes with Felicity Huffman and Elle “Little Dakota” Fanning in Phoebe in Wonderland at Newcomb Hall ($3-9, 10pm).

Friday 10/31

We can’t resist Bad Day at Black Rock at 10am ($6, Culbreth Theatre), a dark-hearted Western that follows WWII vet Spencer Tracy back to a villain-run small town. (Great bad dudes courtesy of Ernest Borgnine and the sneering Lee Marvin, and written by Millard Kaufman.) Look for John Grisham in the audience for My Life Inside, a documentary about an undocumented nanny charged with murder after a child in her care dies ($6, 1pm, Regal Downtown Mall). Go big on style during the 7pm screenings with The Wrestler, Darren “Requiem for a Dream” Aronofsky’s latest epic about the post-career days of a brawler played by Mickey Rourke ($12-15, 7pm, Culbreth Theatre). Cap the night by sifting through the interstellar stuff of Jeanne Liotta and the Kuchar brothers at McCormick Observatory ($9-12; 7pm and 9:30pm, respectively), or dining on Take Out with directors Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou at Regal Downtown Mall ($6-9, 10:15pm).

Saturday 11/1

“I wasn’t particularly interested in making a political film,” Peter Riegert told C-VILLE about The Response, a 30-minute short film created from Enemy Combatant status trials held at Guantanamo Bay. “It was more of a dramatic idea—‘What would I do in that circumstance?’” The Response sticks the audience in the spot where, in any other American courtroom, the jury would be for a combatant trial, then follows Riegert and his costars into an office before leaving viewers with a juror’s decisions. “I haven’t really had a chance to hear what the average person thinks,” says Riegert, who will attend the film’s 1pm screening ($6, Regal Downtown Mall). “I’m looking forward to that.”

Riegert, a vet of the stage as well as a few films and a certain Delta fraternity (C’mon, you know—he was “Boon” in Animal House), will also attend a 10pm screening of Local Hero ($3-9, Newcomb Hall). Hero is one of those eternally rewarding classics whose comedy gives way more over time to the style of the film and the weight of the story, about a man (played by Riegert) tasked with tapping into Scotland’s oil wealth for America’s benefit.

Today is also your best bet for connecting with a few innovative storytellers, both established and emerging. Guillermo Arriaga, the screenwriter for Amores Perros ($6, 1:15pm, Regal Downtown Mall), unveils his directorial debut, The Burning Plain, in which he has complete control over his trademark fractured narratives as well as Charlize Theron ($12-15, 7pm, The Paramount Theater). Between those flicks, catch UVA faculty member Kevin Everson’s The Golden Age of Fish, which riffs on modern African-American culture through an innovative narrative in which a black geologist digs up prehistoric materials in Cleveland, Ohio ($6, 4:15pm, Regal Downtown Mall). By 7pm, have your set under your rump, because the results of the annual Adrenaline Film Project screen at Culbreth Theatre, and the room always fills up fast ($7, 10pm).

Sunday 11/2

Virginia filmmaker Megan Holley won rave reviews and the Governor’s Screenwriting Cup with Sunshine Cleaning (screening on Saturday; $3-9, 7pm, Newcomb Hall), but it’s The Snowflake Crusade, a future perspective on cloning laced with surreal dreams, that helped Holley earn her stripes as a cinematic force (10am, Vinegar Hill Theatre). Riegert makes a return to Regal Downtown Mall with King of the Corner, his directorial debut in which he plays a Jewish-American man brought to the brink of social and romantic redemption later in life. ($6, 10:15am). And while today offers a few chances to snag classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the Stan Winston-crafted Aliens on the big screen, save your energy for OFFscreen’s presentation of The Exiles, a 1961 film about a Native American community quietly but momentously asserting itself during 24 hours in Los Angeles ($3, 7pm and 9:30pm, Newcomb Hall Theater).