Refused are no longer fucking dead.

It’s only Wednesday, and this week has already brought two '90s punk stalwarts back from retirement. Both At the Drive-In and Refused will play this year’s Coachella, prompting many gray-bearded music journalists to reinsert their plugs. Bands here in D.C. are certainly not immune to the musical seven-year itch, but one thing we lack is a fancy, multiday music festival to facilitate (and underwrite) these types of reunions. Still, in case any local punk groups need an excuse to get back together—other than the fact that At the Drive-In and Refused owe a debt to a certain revolution-minded D.C. post-hardcore group—here are a few low-key suggestions.

Reunion: Nation of Ulysses
Hiatus: 20 years
Occasion: Passport DC
Justification: In a brilliantly choreographed tie-in, bewildered guests will be escorted into a shadowy, makeshift Embassy of the N.O.U.,  an event that perfectly dovetails with the 20th anniversary of the band's posthumous release The Embassy Tapes.

Reunion: Fugazi
Hiatus: 10 years
Occasion: 2012 Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair
Justification: An explosive rendition of "Merchandise" rings out with irony and serves as a helpful reminder of how many quality, homemade goods are still up for sale.

Reunion: Tuscadero
Hiatus: 13 years
Occasion: Tuesday at Haydee's
Justicification: The degentrification of Mt. Pleasant.

Reunion: The Dismemberment Plan
Hiatus: Eight, five, or one year, depending how you're counting
Location: 2012 National Book Festival
Justification: To promote You are Invited: A Collection of Breathless Reviews of Dismemberment Plan Reunion Shows, Volume 1.

HO-HO-WHO?: Toronto's Fucked Up, the often unprintable critical darlings who have dominated year-end best-of-lists with the audacious punk epic David Comes to Life.

YEAR OF THE REINDEER: Fucked Up is no stranger to the Christmas single,  proving that the ferocious band has a heart—this year's split 7-inch with Sloan will benefit COUNTERfit Harm Reduction Program and the Barriere Lake Legal Defense Fund–and a sense of humor since, in 2009, they released an all-star cover of the Bob Geldof earworm "Do They Know It's Christmas?" In defiance of Fucked Up's increasingly outsized ambition—what with the double-album rock operas and all—this year they settled on the "Rise Above" of Christmas songs,  "Jingle Bells."

NO EPIPHANY: As of press time, video of the band performing "Jingle Bells" on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations holiday special has been "removed by the user" and the limited edition 7-inch will be sold exclusively at the band's upcoming benefits in Toronto, making this cover somewhat elusive unless you (or, in my case, my fiancee) DVRed the show. That said, actively seeking out a cover of  "Jingle Bells" done in the key of throaty hardcore should not be a priority. Trust me: It sounds exactly how you'd think.

HOLIDAY CHEER FACTOR: 8/10 While its rendition of "Jingle Bells" might not warrant inclusion on your annual Christmas mix, kudos to Fucked Up for spreading good will towards (wo)men this holiday season.

HO-HO-WHO: Scott Weiland has been a staple of modern rock radio for the better part of two decades, first with Stone Temple Pilots and then in the Slash-aided supergroup Velvet Revolver. In a move both baffling and easily rationalized (“Bowie did it, man”), Weiland has become the latest grunge-era crooner to try his hand at an adult contemporary crossover, this time through holiday standards. Could Gavin Rossdale performing the American Songbook be far off?

SEX(-MAS) TYPE THING: '90s Alternative rock lacked a strong holiday-themed soundtrack, something Weiland rectifies on The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, a 10-song collection of swingin' Christmas classics. One can only imagine how the late Kurt Cobain would have gotten a piece of the action had he hit middle age. Sadly, the world will never hear Nirvana’s Santa-themed single “Wrap Me.” It should be noted that Weiland's pruned face is far more terrifying than the talking snowman referenced in "Winter Wonderland."

BIG EMPTY: This album is presumably the result of Weiland needing to shore up quick cash for some over-the-top rock star bullshit like, say, a Nicolas Cage-like private island. Even still, one wonders why Weiland's handlers—of whom we can assume there are many—didn't try to talk some sense into him before this was thrust into a public forum. The sparse arrangements reveal a voice, without the benefit of a megaphone, that is croaky when not completely off-key. Musical masochists in the D.C. area can catch Weiland perform his yuletide spectacular at the 9:30 Club on Monday, Dec. 19. Tickets, if you can believe it, are still available.

CHEER FACTOR: 0.01/10. This might be the most elaborate and depressing Dancing with the Stars audition tape ever created.

HO HO WHO: She: doe-eyed manic pixie dream girl whose new Fox sitcom re-ushered "adorkable" into the cultural lexicon. Him: earnest singer-songwriter on Merge Records whose lo-fi ditties double as car-advertisement jingles. Together, they are She & Him, whose new album, A Very She & Him Christmas, is guaranteed to soundtrack every ugly Christmas sweater party of 2011.

PRO-PRO-NOUNS: A Very She & Him Christmas, now available at your local Starbucks (no, that's not a dig), is a carefully constructed collection of holiday favorites by "indie" rock's most competent pop fetishists. If anyone could pull off a straight-faced homage to the golden age of Bing Crosby and Perry Como, it would be them.  Also, a portion of the proceeds from the album will be donated to the very worthy 826 organization.

NO-NO-JOY: From the unbearably affected album cover (The pompadour is not a good look for you, M.) to its snoozy tracklist, A Very She & Him Christmas is a mirthless experiment in swaying to the oldies. On “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” Ms. Deschanel's husky, monotone delivery smothers an otherwise enjoyable standard. Check out She & Him's performance on the Ellen Degeneres show below for a wide-eyed, Stepford-like performance in which no one smiles for the first two minutes. Happy Holidays?

CHEER FACTOR: 3/10. The world already has one mournful Christmas album. Not sure we need another.

The film opens with a nameless protagonist (True Blood's Lindsay Pulsipher) emerging from a bloody car wreck in a world she doesn't recognize. Or does she? The scene's use of “Pomp and Circumstance” is the first indicatation that Reader's vision is one of unrelenting incongruity, an attempt to achieve the oft-kilter ambiance of oddball auteur David Lynch. It doesn't have to make sense if it's creepy, right? The Oregonian even goes so far as to repurpose some of Lynch's aesthetic hallmarks: long shots of highway, obtuse dialogue (“these trees have a code”), and a desolate woodland setting. This would be forgivable—if not particularly memorable—had Reader bothered to sketch out a story as oppossed to employing directionless stock characters by way of Mulholland Drive. Incomprehensible hillbillies peeing Gatorade? Check.  Meanicing middle-aged women laughing uncontrollably? A must. The less said about the man in the fuzzy green costume, the better. Young directors take note: If one must follow in Lynch's distinct path, Inland Empire is not the film to emulate.

The actors hardly fare much better. Underneath a cloak of corn syrup, Pulsipher squeaks her distress but is mostly as dazed as the audience. “I can't even remember fucking nothing!” she screeches upon entering a kitschy abandoned home. After 81 minutess, it's hard not to envy her

The film screens at 11:50 p.m. at Artisphere. $8.

Little Horses

Showcase 9 has it all: a little bit of action, a dash of romance, and some comedy, both intentional and otherwise. The most discernible thread running throughout is a faint multicultural flair, and yet we're still subjected to another climactic prom night where the unsuspecting nerd asks the hottie to wear his promise ring.

Little Horses: It's no surprise that this won the Audience and Filmmaker's Favorite Awards at this year's festival; it's easily the best short I've screened. A poignant slice of life that's both funny and touching.

ABC: This is either brilliant, straight-faced satire or one of the worst attempts at action movie dramatics this side of Uwe Boll.

Something Special: A touching if clumsy reminder of the costs of war that doubles as an ersatz New Zealand marketing campaign.

Lenny Morris vs. The Universe: An unbearably quirky and formulaic nerd gets the pretty girl story in which the phrase "Houston, we have a problem" passes for dialogue.

El Torero y La Tora (The Bullfighter and the Bull): A brief silent comedy in which a Spanish Walter Mitty equates a stocky middle-aged woman with a raging bull.

Amadores (Amateurs): Banter leading up to physical contact is almost never witty and nearly always cringe-worthy. And then (spoiler!) we die. The end.

Intercambios (Exchanges): A teachable moment captured on film, Exchanges is the story of a well-intentioned Latina slighted by the blonde powers that be.

Miracle was not available to screen.

Fri., Sept. 16 at 9 p.m. at US Navy Memorial

Stanley Pickle: A one-note allegory on the importance of being one's self, Stanley Pickle provides an unbelievably earnest life lesson about what it means to be an individual in a society filled with automatons.

Adventure Girls III: 100 percent pointless advertisement for a web series involving school girl vampires. The entire short is posted as a trailer on the D.C. Shorts website.

Bip Bip: Proving that not every spool of French cinema oozes high-minded ennui, Bip Bip is a goofy five-minute diversion into the newfangled world of watches that will likely have you glancing at yours.

Bot: Pixar's greatest sin is having igniting the imagination of those who will never come close to matching their wit or heart. Here, an animated mad scientist learns the dangers of hubris through an impressionable bag of bolts he's brought to life.

La Tragedia Del Hombre Hueco (The Hollow Man's Tragedy): Proof that no one should be allowed to write a screenplay after they've been dumped. The story of slighted lover whose heart goes missing after a painful split. Working tag line: Breaking up is heart to do.

Protect the Nation: A well-intentioned if slightly by-the-numbers look at the many struggles faced by a young South African boy.

Miyuki's Wind Bell: Perhaps due to its shoddy company, this slow, thoughtful story about the mystery of family rises above the muck.

The Winking Boy: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly remade by someone who thought the original was too boring, The Winking Boy spares us the terror of being trapped in one's own body and plays mutism for laughs, with hilarious hi-jinks and randy nurses aplenty!

Matt Siblo: Here we are again, Ryan: another month, another indie-rock reunion. When news broke that Archers of Loaf was the latest '90s indie-rock sensation to relace its Converse One Stars, I'll admit that I was less than thrilled. Having come to the band late in the game—I got my copy of Icky Mettle a good decade after the fact—I became enamored with AOL as this intangible entity who put on legendary shows to throngs of ringer-T-clad college kids while I was still in middle school. More than most bands to recently resurface, they are so intrinsically linked to a specific epoch that a victory lap would be questionable. Seeing Crooked Fingers play a mellowed out version of "White Trash Heroes" in Central Park a few years back only reinforced this prejudice. But if Matt Pinfield can resurrect 120 Minutes, and Superchunk finds itself in the midst of a middle-aged renaissance, what's to stop Eric Bachmann & Co. from piling on?

Ryan Little: Yeah, it’s almost inevitable. The Internet has made chronological context much less important, and any band that once had its own niche can now get back in touch with it. Those fuzz-flavored licks of yore were bound show up in the reunion game sooner or later. Do you think this show is more in line with the casual hardcore reunions CP wrote recently about, or does it look like Pixies/Pavement cash-grab? I feel like the Archers were somewhere in between, fame-wise.

MS: It's tough to speculate on these things since I wouldn't pretend to know what compels musicians to reunite, never mind Archers of Loaf specifically. The Pixies/Pavement tours have become synonymous with monetary comeuppance, but I can’t imagine that AOL is in this solely for the dollars. Based on the limited press the tour's been getting, it doesn't feel like a massive windfall. It seems like one last opportunity to play out while others are likely to pay attention. I'm not sure there's been a more opportune time for a reunited Archers of Loaf but its resurgence isn’t the result of some surge of posthumous popularity like the others you mentioned.  

RL: We’ll just have to see what spirits they're in tonight...

Post-game Report:

MS: Everything about the show was done to scale. Low stakes is rarely a positive, but I appreciated the fact that there weren’t any false or inflated expectations in the air tonight. As for its 21-song set, there’s little to complain about—the band played all of the hits with appropriate gusto. I don't have many effusive words to describe the performance, but everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time. What did you think?

RL: I agree. There were no trumpets sounding the band's return, but there were old friends downing beers together to the soundtrack of their college years. The band held it together well enough, and while the set had no moments of pure ecstasy, there were more fist-pumping anthems than I expected. I wouldn't say electricity was in the air, but it felt nice. Did the performance match your expectations?

MS: I would say so—particularly the six minutes that saw “Web in Front” and “Wrong” played consecutively—though I think I’m suffering from a serious case of reunion fatigue. I might just have to sit the next round out. Sorry, Bettie Serveert...you've missed your window.

RL: There was a nice moment near the end of the encore following a messy, heavy rendition of "Revenge." The bassist blurted out something like, "Man, I love playing rock music...I know, that's a cliche." Sure, it was on the nose, but I think the crowd felt the same. Nothing wild or extraordinary, no breathless pontifications, it was just a really good rock show.

Photo by Erica Bruce

The film shows at 9:10 p.m. tonight, 2:30 p.m. Saturday, and 8:45 p.m. Tuesday at the AFI Silver Theatre, 8663 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring. $11. www.afi.com/silver.

It's a risky proposition to hinge a skeletal frame onto the shrugged shoulders of  a disagreeable character, particularly for Stella Schnabel (daughter of artist/director Julian Schnabel) whose background brings an added layer of party-girl privilege to the role. Yet her unflinching portrayal not only makes You Won’t Miss Me surprisingly bearable but something approaching enjoyable, if not necessarily pleasant. We initially meet Shelly (Schnabel) as she dolls out defiant half-truths to an off-screen psychiatrist; she has been committed to an in-patient psych ward but is subsequently released. Relieved yet deflated, the audience is quickly swept up into the whirlwind of Shelly's floating existence: awkward hookups, drug-fueled rants, and pathological oversharing. Sometimes these encounters end reasonably well; others end in self-loathing and tears.

As we become acquainted with Shelly, her swift release from the hospital comes as no surprise. She's not mentally ill or not in the traditional sense, anyway. Her over-the-top behavior is indicative of any number of what the DSM-IV classifies as personality disorders, stubbornly reinforced patterns of maladaptive behaviors and thought processes. In less clinical language, she is compulsively unreasonable and destructive. Through skimpy dialogue, we glean that the people in Shelly’s life harbor a passing contempt for her, including a mother whose absence provides an unnecessarily pat explanation of her lashing out. During one particularly grueling scene, we bare witness to a tantrum in an Atlantic City hotel room so uncomfortable it had me running for some Lexapro. As difficult as it is to empathize with her mean-spirited confusion, Schnabel delivers a fearless performance, a hypnotic glimpse into the emptiness of indifference. Rarely does ennui feel so terrifying and alive.

You Won't Miss Me is out on DVD this week via Factory 25.