As long as I’m doing film recommendations, I should note for the benefit of those of you in the D.C. area that AFI in Silver Spring will be screening Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville this weekend, with matinees Saturday and Sunday, and one final showing next Wednesday evening. It’s a surprisingly libertarian-flavored movie, especially given that Godard would later become a flaming Maoist, and deserves to be caught on the big screen while there’s a print in town.

You can preview it here, but it’s really not the same. Here’s Wikipedia’s synopsis:

Alphaville combines the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. Although set far in the future on another planet, there are no special effects or elaborate sets; instead, the film was shot in real locations in Paris, the night-time streets of the capital becoming the streets of Alphaville, while modernist glass and concrete buildings represent the city’s interiors. In addition, the characters refer to twentieth century events; for example, the hero describes himself as a Guadalcanal veteran.

Eddie Constantine plays Lemmy Caution, a trenchcoat-wearing secret agent. Constantine had already played this role in dozens of previous films; the character was originally created by British pulp novelist Peter Cheyney. However, in Alphaville, director Jean-Luc Godard moves Caution away from his usual twentieth century setting, and places him in a futuristic sci-fi dystopia, the technocratic dictatorship of Alphaville.

Update: The same headline actually works for this upcoming film, about which I must confess an almost unseemly degree of eagerness.