DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Geneviève Bujold and James Cromwell“James Cromwell” and “devil horns” are not words I ever expected to use in the same sentence, much less about a drama as benign as Still Mine. The modest elder romance is based on the true story of Craig Morrison, a St. Martin, New Brunswick farmer who had built four houses with his own hands. At the age of 88, and with his wife suffering the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s Morrison set to built house number five on his own land before running afoul of local bureaucrats. Writer-director Michael McGowan favors intimate details, from Cromwell carefully putting on a tie to Geneviève Bujold forgetting that she has to cut his hair. The leads play an aging couple with quiet chemistry, and It’s a touching human interest piece, but as drama Still Mine is a safe snooze, despite unexpected senior sexuality.
View the trailer.
Opens today at the Avalon Theatre.
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Joey Wong and Leslie CheungA tax collector (the late Leslie Cheung) arrives in a small town with no place to stay, so he spends the night at a haunted temple and falls in love with a ghost. This 1987 supernatural romance is one of the great Hong Kong fantasy films, and the Freer will be showing an archival 35-millimeter print. Part of the Freer Gallery’s 18th annual Made in Hong Kong festival.
View the trailer.
Friday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery. Free.
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(Criterion Collection)A drifter (Glenn Ford) falls into the valley of melodrama in Delmer Daves’ widescreen melodrama from 1956. While not on a par with his essential 3:10 to Yuma, director Daves wrings a tale of Shakespearean jealousy aginst an iconic American landscape. With a juicy, scene-chewing performance by Rod Steiger. Part of the AFI’s Ernest Borgnine Remembered series. Read my Blogcritics review of 3:10 to Yuma and Jubal here. The movie is available in a sharp Criterion Collection edition, but its gorgeous CinemaScope compositions are best viewed on the big screen at the AFI, who will be showing a restored 35-millimeter print.
View a fan-made trailer.
Friday, Sunday, and Monday at the AFI Silver Theatre.
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Einstein probably didn’t say that mankind would perish if bees died off. But the current decline in bee populations is troubling, if not entirely mysterious. Director Markus Imhoof traveled to four continents to follow very different pollination routes. None is more devastating than China’s, which must rely on humans to pollinate crops: Mao’s order to exterminate sparrows led to the insect infestations, heavy pesticide use, and native hive extinction. American and European hives aren’t doing so well, but help may be on the way from an unlikely source. Human subjects are mildly interesting, but the real stars have wings. Cinematographer Jorg Jeshel captured gorgeous macro footage of buzzing hives, and even more spectacularly, rigged small remote controlled helicopters with tiny cameras to follow subjects in flight.
View the trailer.
Opens today at Landmark Cinema E Street Cinema
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Ivor Novello in DownhillThe National Gallery’s series of silent Hitchcock films continues Sunday with the 1927 thriller Downhill. The stylistically innovative film includes dream sequences and other unusual visual effects, and boasts a strong lead performance by Ivor Novello as a boy expelled from school. Shown with the 1928 drawing room romance The Constant Nymph, directed by Adrian Brunel and written by Hitchcock’s wife, Alma Reville. Pianist Philip Carli will perform live musical accompaniment for both films.
Downhill screens Sunday at 4 p.m. The Constant Nymph screens Sunday at 5:30 p.m. At the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Also opening this week, Ryan Gosling reunites with Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn in Only God Forgives.
