WHAT TO DO TONIGHT:

After moving from his home in rural Maine to Brooklyn, filmmaker Ian Cheney says he lost his childhood fascination with astronomy. That’s not surprising in a city where lit-up streets and buildings render stars nearly invisible. Light pollution serves as a frequent boogeyman of the modern age, a metaphor for critics who say we’ve lost touch with nature’s simple wonders. But what if the cosmos weren’t obscured for future generations of urbanites? Would seeing the Big Dipper really enrich their lives? Has constant exposure to artificial light somehow impaired city dwellers? In The City Dark, showing tonight courtesy of the Environmental Film Festival, Cheney attempts to address those questions. An ardent eco-documentarian (he co-wrote and -produced the 2007 corn-industry exposé King Corn), Cheney has avoided being lumped with alarmists such as Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) by substituting emotional manipulation with sincere curiosity, subtle self-awareness, and welcome humor. —Matt Bevilacqua

The film shows at 7 p.m. at E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW. $15. 

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT:

Occasionally, inglorious bastards turn out to be little more than lying bastards. Such is the case in The Debt, a 2007 Israeli film directed by Assaf Bernstein that inspired the forthcoming remake with Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson. In Bernstein’s film, a trio of young Mossad agents is sent to assassinate an old Nazi war criminal, a twisted doctor known as the Surgeon of Birkenau. Told in flashbacks, the mission looks like a typically brutal espionage flick—until it turns out our heroes botched the mission, let their target slip away, and told their bosses the Nazi committed suicide. Rather than let the truth emerge, the commandos decide to finally make good on their original assignment. Now pushing 70 and out of the spy game, they don’t find hunting down evildoers as easy as it used to be. But watching elderly people take part in combat is bizarrely entertaining. —Benjamin R. Freed

The film shows at 8 p.m. at the Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW. $11. 

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT:

Reggie Watts isn’t exactly a comedian. He doesn’t tell jokes or stories or anything like that. He’s more a song-and-dance man who uses his voice, a microphone, pedals, and a multitrack looper to build beat-boxed tracks like “Fuck Shit Stack,” a complex, wordy, lewd tune that toys with English grammar and commercial hip-hop clichés. Many followers of the comedy and music underground have praised Watts’ genius, but film, television, and recordings aren’t the right vessels for his art. He thrives onstage, which is probably why Conan O’Brien asked him to be his opening act for the duration of O’Brien’s Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour. Watts’ four-night stint at Woolly Mammoth is a golden opportunity for the uninitiated to discover what fans of unconventional comedy have been loving for years. —Brandon Wetherbee

Reggie Watts performs at 8 p.m. tonight through Thursday and 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Friday at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, 641 D St. NW. $35–$45.

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT:

Since releasing a debut cassette last winter, Phonic Riot has expanded from two members to an ever-changing lineup of four. But the D.C. band isn’t exactly going for more intricacy. The bass adds thrust; a second guitar offers sheet-metal histrionics and little else. And that’s OK: Noisy, shriek-filled, and art-abused, the band seems to inhabit the musical space occupied in the mid-1980s by Sonic Youth. Guitarist and singer Angela Morrish has a Corin Tucker yell that’s strained and spectral but also big, which gives force to words that sometimes evoke feminist poetry and gender theory. She’s a thoughtful lyricist, though she doesn’t write nearly as menacingly as she plays her guitar. —Jonathan L. Fischer

Phonic Riot performs with Trophy Wives and Dark Sea Dream at 9 p.m. at the Velvet Lounge, 915 U St. NW. $8. 

WHAT TO DO TODAY:

Whether 3-D movies are here to stay probably doesn’t matter to David Emerick and James Matthew Crooks: The two photographers are stubbornly fixated on life in two dimensions. Emerick, the director of new media at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, photographs the largely unadorned walls of big-box stores and warehouses. But the spaces’ very anonymity—and their similarities to each other—make many of the images in Emerick’s show, “Variations,” somewhat unvaried. The ones that stand out are those with a feature, however small, that breaks the dominant plane, such as a vent cover that casts a dramatic, daggerlike diagonal shadow. Crooks, who presents similar material in the concurrent “Opposing Planes,” finds a little more success within his self-imposed 2-D confines, partly because he’s bolder in using color (such as a pattern of alternating white and red painted squares) and shape (a sharply angular spire jutting into the sky, a sinuously curving sign studded with rows of yellow light bulbs). But the most compelling image by either artist is surely Crooks’ “Iron Side” (pictured), a close-up of the tops of four weathered metal bolts whose rounded forms are startlingly erotic. —Louis Jacobson

The exhibitions are on view noon to 5 p.m. Monday and Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday to Aug. 26 at Hillyer Art Space, 9 Hillyer Court NW. Free.

WHAT TO DO TODAY:

The farewell show for Irvine Contemporary’s 14th Street NW location features works by 10 artists, but most of them pale in comparison to the insanely clever sculptures of Sebastian Martorana. Sure, Kerry Skarbakka intrigues with a self-portrait of himself tumbling through the air while in the thrall of a Bierstadt landscape at the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Akemi Maegawa impresses with a Chia Pet–like sculpture of a brain with tender shoot growing from its top; and Susana Raab reprises her photograph of a Southern-vernacular flag sculpture made from plastic cups stuck into a fence. But really, it’s difficult for any of the artists to compete with the understated yet dazzling works of Martorana, a Baltimore sculptor who confidently pulls off a reverse Claes Oldenburg: making soft objects hard. In “Canvas,” Martorana carves a piece of marble so it bears the subtle textures of a painter’s canvas, right down to gently folded corners. In “Frustration 8 1/2 x 11,” he turns another hunk of marble into a ream of office paper, including a top sheet that’s slightly crinkled. But his tour de force is a humble bath towel carved from marble, tossed over a rod—a work that exudes an incongruous delicacy. —Louis Jacobson

The exhibition is on view 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Saturdays to August 27 at Irvine Contemporary, 1412 14th St. NW. Free.

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT:

The twin exhibitions now on view at Flashpoint don’t limit themselves to appearing in the gallery; they become part of it, toying with the architectural features not just of the exhibition space, but also the facility’s accompanying cubicles, conference rooms, and bathroom areas. In Trace, Nicole Herbert adds a series of supernumerary fixtures to the office in ways that echo the surroundings, such as windows with taped outlines that abstract the view outside, or fake water pipes that go from nowhere to nowhere. The works are hard to locate, even with motion-sensored lights to illuminate them, and their conceptual impact is equally subtle. More successful are the works of Janell Olah (pictured), curated by Amanda Jirón-Murphy. Olah hijacks the building’s air vents and HVAC system with a network of translucent plastic coverings that inflate and deflate depending on how the air is flowing. The appearance of Olah’s works is frustratingly indifferent—the visual vibe of her materials might be described as “IKEA-shower-curtain”—but the notion of giving a star turn to something as fleeting as airflow is clever. Plus, there’s something unexpectedly thrilling about a row of cloud-shaped plastic forms spontaneously inflating in unison whenever the AC kicks on. —Louis Jacobson

The exhibitions are on view noon to 6 p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays and noon to 3 p.m. Saturdays to August 27 at Flashpoint, 916 G St NW. Free. 

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Armed with her firsthand experiences as a woman in the punk scene and camera equipment borrowed from her day job, D.C. filmmaker Amy Oden began shooting the interviews that would compose From the Back of the Room in 2007. It took four years of blood, sweat, and fundraising to produce the film that will gets its hometown premiere tonight. (The Black Cat hosted a preview screening a few weeks ago at C.L.I.T. Fest.) Oden says she was inspired to make From the Back of the Room when she realized her own punk community wasn’t the progressive utopia she once thought; consequently, her film doesn’t just document scene history—it interrogates it. While it follows in the tradition of Kerri Koch’s 2005 riot grrrl documentary Don’t Need You, Oden’s work cuts a much wider swath, spanning three decades and including women whose music is heavier than riot grrrl’s relatively glossy bop. The filmmaker’s four-year project paid off: From the Back of the Room is an exhaustive, diverse, and thoughtful meditation on women in the punk community. —Lindsay Zoladz

The film shows at 8 p.m. at E Street Cinema, 555 11th St. NW. $10. 

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT:

Two of summertime’s most beloved Monday- night entertainment options, Screen on the Green and the Fort Reno concert series, are time-honored, wholesome traditions. But to some, they suffer from a couple drawbacks: They’re outdoors and alcohol-free. In swoops the Kennedy Center to provide a boozy, air-conditioned alternative: the new Millennium Stage happy hour series. Mondays in August, the regular free concerts on the Millennium Stage will move to the roof-level Atrium, where patrons will find a full bar and a food menu between 5:30 and 8 p.m. Tonight’s kickoff event includes a performance by Brazilian multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Badi Assad, the accomplished younger sibling of guitar virtuosos Sérgio and Odair Assad. But while a dance floor will be set up, Assad might not offer that kind of vibe—try next Monday’s performance by the Ethiopian-American group Debo Band and collaborators Fendika, or New Orleans funk/rock/soul musician Mia Borders the following week in the Grand Foyer. It’s not the wildest party in town, but the cheap drinks, nonexistent humidity, and outstanding view might make this the coziest Monday evening out in August. —Ally Schweitzer

Happy hour takes places from 5:30-8 p.m., Mondays through Aug. 29 at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Level Atrium, 2700 F St. NW. Free.

WHAT TO DO TODAY:

Those pining for the return of Artomatic might not have to wait too long for their uncurated art fix. The District of Columbia Arts Center’s “1460 Wall Mountables” exhibit is similar to the massive, democratic art show, but much smaller: Dozens of artists paid $15 to reserve a 2-by-2 foot space for their artworks. Is all of the work great? Absolutely not. Still, a few pieces stand out. Steve Wanna’s “This Could Get Messy” is a motor stirring tempera powder; Fan Lab DC’s LED-illuminated cubes raise an eyebrow. So might Dan Tulk’s minimal sculptures of string, wood blocks, and twigs (pictured). There are other great drawings and paintings, but visitors may need to sift through ill-advised, Rauschenbergian pieces of junk (literally) to find them. —John Anderson

The exhibit is on view 2 p.m.-7 p.m. Wednesdays to Sundays to Aug. 28 at the DC Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. Free.