Washington Life's list of "The 100 Best Washington Movies Ever" earlier this week was, well, pretty stupid. Nearly every film listed was about federal Washington; the titles were chosen by a mysterious, unnamed WL Film Committee; and then there was Arch Campbell's introduction salivating over the scenic but very obvious beauty of the National Mall and the monuments.

After issuing our handy index to Washington Life's list, Arts Desk remembered that we're a constructive blog when it suits us. Plenty of the entries on the WL list—A Few Good Men, The Exorcist, Being There—are great "Washington movies." Others, like Apocalypse Now and The French Connection, are just plain great, even if there's no logical explanation for their inclusion.

But the burden of this list, or any listicle for that matter, is an over-reliance on the standbys. Do Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and All the President's Men occupy the top two spots on WL's list because they're actually that good? Or is it because they're high up on everyone else's lists of the greatest political—i.e., Washington—films?

So Arts Desk is going do Washington Life one better: Tired of the endless coronations for the same old same old? Let's discuss the Worst Washington Movies instead.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
In a political era awash with individualist bumpkins who think all we need to fix our problems are cheap slogans and some country-fried rage, Frank Capra's 1939 "classic" should be considered more of a warning shot. The acting is overwrought and the writing is lazy—Mr. Smith's actual trip to Washington is presented as an extended montage of headlines and photos of the monuments. Of course, every cheap-ass, quickly compiled list of "great political films" fixates on Senator Smith's third-act filibuster, but in this day and age we should be damning Capra for elevating the worst legislative tactic available to the already molasses-like upper chamber. And Jefferson Smith himself? An unmarried, childless 30-something presiding over a Boy Scout troop? Fucking creepy.—Benjamin R. Freed

Dave (1993)
This Kevin Kline vehicle may be about federal Washington, but it trades in one of hometown D.C.'s favorite myths: that there's this earnest, honest town beyond the White House gates that has nothing to do with the cynical crooks running the country. Kline's Bob Dave Kovic is presented as one of those all-American locals, running an employment agency in Georgetown and dabbling in impersonations of the president, also played by Kline, whom he resembles. He's eventually induced to masquerade as the president full-time and, naturally, learns that both the incapacitated chief executive and the shady aides who arrange the subterfuge are a bunch of crooks. What does Dave do? Among other things, he calls on a buddy, who drives his crappy car to the White House to go over the budget. If I ran my business this way, it'd be a disaster, the buddy says. Dave also announces some vague and sweet plan to give everyone a job. Gimme a break. In the real-life District, smart residents are every bit as cynical about the game of national politics as the elected arrivistes—and the business elite makes sure to keep itself wired on the Hill, not just in the Wilson Building. At the end, having extricated himself from the conspiracy, handed power to a noble vice president, and gone back to being Dave, Kline's character runs for the D.C. Council. The sap. I wouldn't vote for him.—Michael Schaffer

State of Play (2009)
In 2009’s State of Play, Russell Crowe plays Cal McAffrey, a hard-living journalist in a perenially crumpled suit. With his sterling integrity and steady diet of Häagen-Dazs and Milwaukee's Best, this grizzled lifer could show those newfangled bloggers a thing or two about real journalism. State of Play's desperate attempts at verisimilitude extend to its vision of Washington—one that has all of the authenticity of a ride on the Circulator. From Crowe’s faux-dingy apartment—what, no English basement?—to the Kramerbooks menu tacked to the refrigerator, it's obvious that a few of the production's intrepid interns took the Metro to Dupont at least once.—Matt Siblo

Mars Attacks! (1996)
Although the action in Mars Attacks!—Tim Burton’s disappointing paean to the alien-invasion films of the 1950s—spans many global cities prone to cinematic devastation, much of it expectedly takes place in and around recognizable D.C. landmarks. After the mayhem begins, however, most of our skyline is left in ruins. In one scene, a flying saucer toys with a toppling Washington Monument and uses it to crush a group of Boy Scouts. Under the guise of diplomacy, a Martian ambassador wins an invitation to speak on Capitol Hill—before promptly incinerating the entire U.S. Congress. Two lucky boys do get to live out the adolescent fantasy of arming themselves with ray guns as they escape an interrupted White House tour, but it’s not enough to save President Jack Nicholson from getting impaled. Though the B-movie shtick is pretty much on point, the gags often fall flat, in no small part because of the film’s reliance on mid-1990s special effects and a cast distractingly saturated with Hollywood stars. Some might enjoy seeing Pierce Brosnan’s head superimposed onto a Chihuahua; I'd rather watch an Ed Wood film.—Matt Bevilacqua

The Man With One Red Shoe (1985)
Some consider this film, a remake of the 1972 French movie The Tall Blonde Man With One Black Shoe, to be a comedic gem in Tom Hanks' early career, but it's all too hokey and gimmicky to be considered a masterpiece. Hanks, an innocent violinist living in Georgetown, wanders obliviously into a crazy CIA scheme—wearing one red shoe, naturally!—where bumbling agents end up suspecting he's a sinister spy. There may be secrets hidden in code in his sheet music! Hanks is seduced by a CIA blonde bombshell who tries to find out what he knows, which is nothing. There are chase scenes through Dupont Circle! Hanks catapults into the Potomac on a bicycle! Jim Belushi plays Hanks' sidekick and tries to be funny. While the movie certainly isn't sluggish, it's a bit too campy for a city that takes itself too seriously.—Michael E. Grass

True Lies (1994)
Actually, this movie rules. You can't argue with pre-gubernatorial Arnold kicking ass left and right. Of course, its entertainment value doesn't arise from breathtaking cinematography or quality acting; it's enjoyable because it's wildly absurd. With that in mind, its portrayal of life inside the District is just about incomprehensible—particularly the scenes that happen in Georgetown. Where's the soul-crushing traffic? How does the massive shootout in a Georgetown mall fly under MPD's radar? Most mind-boggling of all: How does Arnold, whose character works for an allegedly secret government organization, manage to go on all these gung-ho adventures without pushing through mountains of bureaucratic red tape? I could almost buy the horse in the hotel, but you'd think he'd have to fill out a form afterward.— Ryan Little

Burn After Reading (2008)
The most impressive thing about the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading is Brad Pitt’s highlights. But the best thing? The spectacular manner in which his doofus personal trainer is dispatched at the film’s three-quarters mark.  The film stitches espionage-thriller tropes to the comings and goings of various D.C. types, like John Malkovich’s frustrated CIA analyist, George Clooney’s bumbling U.S. marshall, and Frances McDormand’s gym-employee femme fatale. The characters are uniformly half-witted, but the Coens’ signature nihilism is a better fit for black comedy than the straight-up farce they’re going for here. When the inevitable non-ending arrives, you’re not left pondering the meaning of it all—only the reasons why you just wasted 90 minutes. To the film’s credit, it at least contains one very inventive sex device.—Jonathan L. Fischer

Photos by Darrow Montgomery; illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Washington City Paper: So what exactly does Solas Nua do?

Linda Murray: We’re a contemporary Irish arts organization, so theater is one strand of our programming. We also run the Capital Irish Film Festival, which is the largest film festival in the U.S. We run the D.C. Irish Writers Festival, and a big book giveaway every St. Patrick’s Day called Irish Book Day. Last year we gave away ten thousand books and this year we’re aiming for twenty. We have visual arts exhibitions, we have a monthly podcast, and we bring in musicians and do concerts, but theater is where we started in terms of programming and I think its something our audience particularly feels affectionate for. It's one of the very important strands of the programming that we do.

All of the programming is meant to showcase young Irish artists, to give them a platform in the U.S and just make American audiences aware of them. A side affect of what we do is often having local artists and Irish artists just connecting with each other and creating relationships of their own outside of our organization.

WCP: What can the audience expect to see at the First Irish Theatre Festival this year?

LM: I think there’s a good cross representation of writers at different stages of their careers in the festival. Enda Walsh, who we represented two years ago, for example. Somebody else is doing another play by him this year, and Enda is now becoming a very established playwright. He’s honed his craft and is right at the peak of his capacity as a writer. Somebody else is doing a Connor McPherson play, and of course he’s very accomplished as well. Then you have organizations like my own, where we’re focusing on young playwrights. For John Paul Murphy, this is his first play. He’s mainly a TV writer at home, so this is a new step forward for him. So you’ll get a nice sense of established writers working today in Ireland, as well as young up and coming talents as well. I think that’s something that the festival has done very well in offering over the last two years.

WCP: Can you talk a little bit about The Prophet of Monto?

LM: The play is a love triangle on some levels. There are two characters on stage, a man and a woman, Zoe and Larry. Their link is Larry’ brother Liam, who was Zoe’s boyfriend. It’s their relationships with Liam that are the focus of the play, and the unraveling of what happened to both of those relationships. It’s the dirty secrets that nobody talks about coming out and being aired–that’s the crux of the play. It’s a play about relationships,

It’s also very heavily set in Dublin, so it’s also a play of that city as well. It’s set in a very historic region of Dublin called Monto, and that area is traditionally associated with Joyce, so I think the playwrights consciously wanted to build upon that kind of legacy of writing about characters from that area of Dublin.

WCP: Is there a large group of Irish artists and playwrights in the D.C. community, or do you have to draw them from other places?

LM: There’s not a large Irish population, or even a large Irish American population, in D.C. at all. There’s a small one but nothing sizable–not like Boston or Chicago or New York. In some ways that’s been very freeing for us because we don’t have a population with a set of expectations, so it’s been nice to just show the work and have a diverse population come in and see it. Most of our artists are brought in from Ireland. In this case we have two Irish actors up in New York who are rehearsing and we brought in Des Kennedy, a young director from Belfast, to direct the piece. The playwright will be coming from Dublin when the show opens. So it’s often the case where we’re bringing in artists from Ireland.

WCP: Does collaborating with the First Irish Theatre Festival and performing in New York mark an effort to expand what Solas Nua does outside of the D.C. area?

LM: D.C. is our home, and our first priority is to our audience here. On the other hand, we are in some sense a national institution in that we showcase work that nobody else is really doing and that we’re exclusively focused on a very specific area of Irish culture. Last year we did a co-commission with Tinderbox Theatre in Belfast, and that show toured to New York and Philadelphia. The year before we were up in New York with Disco Pigs, for the first First Irish Theatre Festival. So I think we will definitely continue to do some projects outside of D.C., but D.C. is our home and the audience here is what matters to us most.

The Prophet of Monto runs from Sept. 8 to Sept. 25 at The Flea Theater, 41 White St. in New York, NY. Shows are at 9 p.m. $18.

Photo by Matt Dunn

Washington City Paper's Ramon Ramirez is less chipper, however. He says the album's denunciation of the colorless suburbs ignores the fact that America's urban centers can be just as soul-stiffling:

listening to Régine Chassagne dramatize a lonely drive through vast sprawl like it’s an apocalyptic nightmare loses something when the Red Line is tardy, crammed, and lacks air conditioning. Not unlike Butler’s suburbs, urban centers on the East Coast can feel exhausting. Not having a car and spending an hour commuting five miles is rarely fun. Cities combine culture and industry with pollution, isolation, and old, unsettling wealth. At least you don’t get that in Texas. There are sleazeball millionaires, sure, but Jerry Jones builds big football stadiums and chases fake blondes. It makes sense, goddammit.

Read the full review here. And check out Ben Westhoff's take on the third album by Bun B, the surviving half of the acclaimed Texas rap duo UGK.

The director Christian Carion's latest film, Farewell, opens this weekend at Bethesda Row Cinema. Benjamin R. Freed reviewed it in April when it showed as part of Filmfest D.C.:

Farewell, which gets its title from the code name of a KGB turncoat who gave Soviet intelligence to France in the early 1980s, would like to be a taut psychological thriller. Regrettably, its two lead performances are complemented by ill-placed musical cues (Pink Floyd’s “Run Like Hell” at the height of one character’s paranoia), celebrity cameos (Willem Dafoe!), and maybe the worst Ronald Reagan imitation ever put on film. Far more worthy are the two leads—Emir Kusturica as the Baudelaire-quoting KGB defector and Guillaume Canet as his low-level contact in the French embassy in Moscow. Kusturica’s weary, hangdog complexion (and a more than passing resemblance to John C. Reilly) convey years of frustration with the Soviet regime. And Canet, whose résumé includes genuinely chilling films like The Beach and his own Tell No One, imbues his reluctant spy with the right amounts of anxiety and fear.

Read the full review here.

"Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change" opens Saturday at the Corcoran.

CLOSING: “Modern Painters, Potomac River School” closes Saturday at American Painters; “Suspended Landscape” closes Wednesday at Transformer Gallery; work by Rie Tabata closes Thursday, April 15 at Orchard Gallery.

ONGOING: See our listings.

Reviews of Maria Friberg and John Brown after the jump.

Critic Maura Judkis visits "Maria Friberg: Transmission," running to May 8 at Conner Contemporary Art:

How much more of a loaded symbol could Maria Friberg have chosen in 2010 than the automobile? Cars, lately, have been emblematic of the American Dream taking a detour—of corporate malfeasance, of laziness, of failure, of the loss of control. Friberg’s two Transmission works show the undersides of vehicles against a clear blue sky, so we see the cars as a mechanic, and not a salesman, might. Friberg’s cars are juxtaposed with ethereal images of men lounging in trees, which make the cars’ dark undersides appear even more foreboding—an environmental admonition set against the vehicles’ oil- and exhaust-covered innards. It’s not Friberg’s fault that the connection between man and nature explored in these works takes a backseat to cars themselves—blame Toyota. In the video Transmission, a car moves through the screen, and it’s hard not to think of it as accelarating to its doom, even as we consider the car’s, and not the driver’s, point of view.

Louis Jacobson reviews Cross MacKenzie Ceramic Arts' show of assemblages by photographer John Brown, running to April 30:

John Brown’s dreamlike photographic assemblages document an arbor of vines in Southern California, season by season. Arranged in grids of five, six, or nine meticulously mounted prints, Brown’s large-scale works suggest the view seen when looking through a multipaned glass window. Inevitably, though, some seasons are more interesting than others. Winter is dreary, with naked branches slicing a cloudy sky. Summer, on the other hand, is lovely, with the same branches adorned with surprisingly detailed, translucent purple leaves. The big disappointment is our own newly arrived season, spring, which isn’t sprightly at all but rather bleak—and virtually indistinguishable from winter. The small exhibition also includes a selection of small, black-and-white botanical images.

LAST WEEK'S REVIEWS: "Hendrick Avercamp: The Little Ice Age" at the National Gallery; Susana Raab's “American Vernacular" at Irvine Contemporary; “In Our Time: Photographs by Anne Lass" at Goethe-Institut; "A.B. Miner: Naked" at G Fine Art.

Top image: "Summer" by John Brown.

OPENING: Little Shop of Horrors today at Ford's Theatre; Nights at the Opera: Golden Age today at the Kennedy Center's Family Theater; The Front Page today at Port City Playhouse; Clybourne Park Monday at Woolly Mammoth Theatre; Stomp Tuesday at Round House Theatre Bethesda; My Name Is Asher Lev Wednesday at Round House Theatre Bethesda.

CLOSING: Farfar Oasis and Lowtide Hotel today at Kogod Theatre; Chumbale tomorrow at Teatro de la Luna; High Fidelity Sunday at the District of Columbia Arts Center's Black Box Theater; Mahalia Sunday at MetroStage; Puss 'n Boots Sunday at Synetic Family Theater; That Face Sunday at Studio Theatre; Bus Stop Sunday at Olney Theatre; Carmen Sunday at the Jewish Community Center in Rockville; The Flass Menagerie at Rep Stage.

ONGOING: See our listings.

AFTER THE JUMP: Reviews of Amazons and Their Men and Lord Arthur Savile's Crime.

The Washington Stage Guild returns from a year-long production hiatus with the world premiere of Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, by Oscar Wilde. Critic Bob Mondello writes:

Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, Oscar Wilde’s mystery novella involving free will, anarchists, social niceties, and chiromancy, is laced with enough dialogue to suggest that Wilde might briefly have considered putting it on the stage. But in adapting it, WSG artistic director Bill Largess has also had to incorporate whole pages of acerbic description, finding ways to hoist by various linguistic petards a social set Wilde generally allows to be hoisted by its own.

Read the full review here.

Also reviewed this week: Forum Theatre and director Jordan Harrison's Amazons and Their Men at Round House Silver Spring, which centers on the Frau, an analogue of the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, infamous for her Nazi propaganda films and admired for her technical prowess. Critic Chris Klimek writes:

No more beholden to history than is Inglourious Basterds, Harrison’s drama is a knotted tree of conjecture grown from a seedling of fact: In 1939, Riefenstahl began making her long dreamt-of film of Heinrich von Kleist’s 19th-century play Penthesilea, casting herself as the titular Amazonian queen. When the Nazis invaded Poland, Riefenstahl was forced to abort the movie. Only her scene outlines survive. Forum Theatre’s ardent, haunting production, co-directed by Michael Dove and Elissa Goetschius, drops us onto the set of Riefenstahl’s pet project and immerses us in its speculative mysteries for 75 fidget-free minutes.

Read the full review here.

"El Dormitorio" by Eric Scibor-Rylski from "Mexico 2010" at the IDB Cultural Center.

OPENING: "Peep and Strip Show" opens today at the Art League; work by Freya Grand opens tomorrow at Gallery Neptune; "The Fantastical" opens Saturday at Project 4 Gallery.

CLOSING: Work by Margo Humphrey closes tomorrow at the Driskell Center at University of Maryland; work by William Christenberry, Robin Rose, and Donald Baechler closes Saturday at Hemphill Fine Arts; "Personal Interiors" closes Sunday at American University's Katzen Arts Center.

ONGOING: See our listings.

THIS WEEK'S REVIEWS AFTER THE JUMP:

Critic Maura Judkis examines "New Work" at Hamiltonian Gallery. She writes:

Part Snow White, part science fair project, Linda Hesh’s “In the Garden” takes a wry look at the original sin. One of four artists featued in Hamiltonian Gallery’s “New Work” exhibition, Hesh has laser-etched the word “Evil” into a bushel of apples, which are preserved in a myriad of ways—freeze-dried, pickled, mummified, and pulverized into applesauce. Her photographs explore how one bite of an apple has affected the condition of women throughout all time, but particularly in pop culture, where she pits Disney princesses against dominatrixes, linked by apples, evil, and Eve. The power of language in art unites three of the artists in the show, with each pondering the human condition and societal ills. Alex Kondner’s sand on canvas repetitively urges us to “Evacuate,” and Bryan Rojsuotikul’s self-referential paintings declare that “Art is Cancer” and ask “Whatis This? Some Kinda Avant-Garde Shit?” The answer, Rojsuotikul surely knows, is no.

Critic Louis Jacobson reviews "Mexico 2010: A Vision of the 21st Century" at the IDB Cultural Center:

Alarm bells ought to go off whenever a wall text informs viewers that the photography exhibit they’re visiting was mounted in honor of the 51st annual meeting of an organization’s board of governors. For the Inter-American Development Bank’s exhibit “Mexico 2010: A Vision of the 21st Century,” such institutional framing undercuts an intermittently enlightening visual cross-section. The downside is having to wade through earnest images of skyscrapers, green transportation options, and kids and seniors educating themselves using laptops; these photographs look like, well, images made to promote the good works of an international development organization. The hokey captions grate further: Does the image of a farmboy straining to move a cow forward by pushing on its rear end really represent “just one of the many challenges facing young people in Mexico today?” Still, don’t miss Dulce Pinzon’s refreshingly deadpan series of portraits of everyday Mexicans dressed up as superheroes; Eric Scibor-Rylski’s voyeuristic glimpses into the lives of husbands and wives and fathers and sons; and the arresting, diagonal formality of Alan Gerardo Gonzalez Ruvalcaba’s photograph of the narrow strip where sea and shore meet.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: "Painting the Town: D.C.’s Introduction to 'New Brow' Art Hits a Wall," Maura Judkis' feature on the opening of the ambitious "G40: The Summer" exhibit in Crystal City, which ejected two of its artists after they were arrested for tagging the roof of the building housing the show.

Ted Leo

But he's sometimes considered one, which can be attributed to the fact that he lived here for a period, and that at various times his groups have channeled D.C. sounds and concerns. The latter remains true, but perhaps only on the surface, on The Brutalist Bricks, Leo's sixth album with his backing band, the Pharmacists. In his review of the new record in this week's Washington City Paper, David Dunlap Jr. writes:

But Leo’s greatest strength isn’t his ideology or intellect, but his willingness to get personal. After the political prelude of “Bottled in Cork,” arguably the best song of Leo’s career, he sings “I got a message from my sister/She just had a kid” in a way that seems intimate, or at least like a tweet from a friend. Leo’s voice is in fine form: When a chorus of his overdubbed vocals finishes the song by repeating “Tell the bartender/I think I’m falling in love,” one wishes it would continue endlessly instead of fading out. Leo also takes an introspective approach on “Tuberculoids Arrive in Hop,” which is a more jarring shade of mellow than “One Polaroid a Day.” “Tuberculoids”—with its spare production, mournful tone, and the ambient tones of crickets and footsteps—is reminiscent of the introspective work of low-key, doomed souls like Eliott Smith and Skip Spence. Meanwhile, “Last Days” could come from a Pavement led by Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook. When Leo sings, “Woke up today/Got on my way/Heard someone say/Are we living in the last days?/And being alone, I naturally thought of you,” it’s evident that his songs aren’t academic lectures so much as they’re thoughtful soliloquies in reaction to world events.

Read the full review here.