Weekly Film Agenda: Partly Cloudy Edition

The Times has called The Da Vinci Code "one of the few screen versions of a book that may take longer to watch than to read," but Bostonist had trouble getting past the first page. Boycotting? Your best alternatives (aside from renting Hudson Hawk) are adultery, witchcraft, and noir:

Friday 5/19 through Sunday 5/21

SoWa Film Festival
Watch new films for free in a South End loft. We're hoping to figure out what "independent cabaret style film making" means. The directors, many of them local, will be in attendance.
500 Harrison Street, Boston
Schedule
Request free tickets

Friday 5/19 through next week

The Fallen Idol
A year before Carol Reed made The Third Man from Graham Greene's original story, he made a more subdued picture from one of Greene's short stories, The Fallen Idol. Mr. Baines (played very quietly by Ralph Richardson) is butler at the French embassy, and his wife is nanny to the ambassador's 9-year old son Philippe. Philippe loves Baines but doesn't much like Baines' wife, so it comes as no surprise that Philippe begins to try to cover for Baines when he witnesses one of the tweedy, taciturn butler's assignations with Another Woman.
Kendall Square Cinema
2:00, 4:30, 7:10, 9:45 pm (with additional weekend showtimes), $9.25

Saturday 5/20

Witchcraft On Film
Double feature presents Carl Theodor Dreyer's 17th-century witch hunt Day of Wrath, followed by Witchcraft Through the Ages, a 1922 documentary with etchings, manuscripts, and hilarious reenactments: the director, Benjamin Christensen, appears in the role of Satan. (The original title, Häxan, sounds charmingly like it ought to start a Scandinavian metal band.)
Harvard Film Archive
7 pm (Day of Wrath), 9 pm (Häxan), $8 for both

Monday 5/22

The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman turns Raymond Chandler's story inside out. Elliott Gould plays Marlowe rumpled and stoned. The scene with his cat refusing to eat the tunafish is in itself worth the price of admission. Improvisatory, loose-goose ensemble playing meshes beautifully with a dense and classically tangled noir plot. Vilmos Zsigmond's crackling Panavision compositions are icing on the cake.
Coolidge Corner Theatre
7 pm, $9.50

Nick Edwards contributed the better part (and the best parts) of this post.