DCist’s highly subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town and in your living room in the coming week.
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(Nedham Smith)The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan
If you missed out on screenings of this documentary about the iconic local graffiti artist, the filmmakers have teamed up with DIY digital distribution company Yerka. The Legend of Cool “Disco” Dan is more than the story of a mysterious tagger. Joseph Pattisall and Roger Gastman dig into the history of Washington’s go-go scene and its unfortunate relationship to a rash of gang violence in the 1980s. The movie makes its VOD premiere today. You can buy your online rental or DVD here. To celebrate the digital and DVD release, the AFI Silver will screen the film this weekend with a rare personal appearance by Cool “Disco” Dan, who will appear at the 5:15 p.m. AFI screenings. Read Matt Cohen’s review of the documentary here.
View the trailer.
Friday, October 18-Sunday, October 20 at the AFI Silver. Cool “Disco” Dan will appear and sign merchandise at the 5:15 screenings only.
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Mother of George
Andrew Dosunmu’s breakout indie hit from this year’s Sundance Film Festival stars The Walking Dead’s Danai Gurira and Isaach De Bankolé as a Nigerian couple living in Brooklyn, as they struggle with their own marriage, family, and their cultural heritage while attempting to conceive a child and start a family of their own. A poignant and beautifully crafted love story—gorgeously shot by Howard University alum Bradford Young—Mother of George effortlessly paints a vivid, nuanced, and intimate portrait of a couple trying to keep it all together, when everything around them is falling apart. — Matt Cohen
View the trailer. Opens tomorrow at E Street Cinema.
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Rick Hall and Clarence Carter (Magnolia Pictures)The second documentary this year about a fabled recording studio (the third if you count Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me‘s look at Ardent Studios), Muscle Shoals tells the story of the small Alabama town that spawned not one but two much-loved studios. FAME Studios co-founder Rick Hall assembled a team of session musicians called The Swampers that backed up some of the best R&B records of the 1960s. These musicians’ identities may come as a surprise: the men who formed one of the great soul music rhythm sections were a bunch of nerdy-looking white boys. The Swampers broke off to form their own studio, but the talent split led to lesser records (Dr. Hook, anybody?). Muscle Shoals also has a curious overlap with the background singers documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom; pointed to the black singers that backed up Lynrd Skynrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” as an example of subversive protest, Muscle Shoals proudly offers the southern rockers as the one that got away — they cut demos in Muscle Shoals but went on to bigger pastures.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema.
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Noir City DC
While the Spooky Movie Film Fest wraps up at the AFI Silver Theater this weekend, another festival kicks off: Noir City DC, D.C.’s annual Film Noir Festival. This year’s festival kicks off on Saturday with Alfred Werker’s He Walked By Night, which stars Richard Basehard as a “psychotic loner” who goes on string of robberies using his genius but maniacal electronic inventions. Eventually, the two cops after him use increasingly clever tactics of their own to track him after his crimes turn more deadly. This clever cat-and-mouse noir is noted for its gorgeous cityscape cinematography, shot by the legendary John Alton. Also playing this weekend as part of the festival is Clarence Brown’s Intruder In The Dust, Edward Dmytryk’ The Sniper, Robert Rossen’s Body and Soul, the Tay Garnett classic The Postman Always Rings Twice, John Farrow’s The Big Clock, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Window, and The Hitch-Hiker. — Matt Cohen
Noir City DC runs until October 30 at the AFI Silver Theater. Click here for info about tickets and showtimes.
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Also opening this week: Chloe Grace Moretz stars in Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Carrie; and director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
