Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Macon Blair (Radius-TWC)Dwight (Macon Blair) is a scraggly drifter turned highly inefficient killing machine in this locally made thriller. Director Jeremy Saulnier and Blair are Alexandria, VA natives, and shot this taut, well-paced thriller in Virginia with a cast that includes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her role for Eve Plumb as a vicious hillbilly matron. But the real story is the film’s production, into which Saulnier and his family poured their life’s savings and maxed out their credit. The result is a flawed but thoroughly watchable art-house revenge drama. There are plot holes all over the place—from the police officer who puts Dwight on notice, to the unexplained behavior of a family beset by murder, to the mysterious lack of police activity around a series of brutal crimes (and how could Dwight be such a wuss with those scary tattoos?)—but these are questions I didn’t ask myself until after the movie reached its brutal climax. Blair carries his role as the mild avenger like Dustin Hoffman in Straw Dogs happened upon a dark stretch of Appalachia. This violent, riveting tale of revenge earns its comparisons to the Coen Brother’s debut, Blood Simple. Note: director Jeremy Saulnier and actor Macon Blair will be appearing at weekend screenings at the AFI Silver (Saturday, May 3 following the 5 p.m. show ); and at Angelika Mosaic (Saturday, May 3 following the 7 p.m. show and Sunday, May 4 following the 7 p.m. show).
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End CInema, Angelika Mosaic and the AFI Silver.
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Godzilla (The Japanese original)
Before you watch Bryan Cranston take on the repercussions of the nuclear age in director Gareth Edwards’ reboot next week, take a look at the original Japanese classic in a new digital restoration. For years, American audiences only knew a radically altered Gojira, starring Raymond Burr, but Rialto Pictures restored Ishiro Honda’s original vision to its bleak original state for its 50th anniversary reissue in 2004.
View the trailer.
Friday, May 2-Sunday May 4 and Tuesday, May 6 at the AFI Silver.
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Scarlett Johansson and Bill MurrayIn conjunction with the exhibits Kiyochika: Master of the Night and An American in London: Whistler and the Thames, the Freer is showing a 35mm print of Sofia Coppola’s 2003 breakthrough film, made before audiences grew weary of her recurring theme of the alienated elite. The film was a comeback for Bill Murray, nominated for an Oscar for his role as a tired movie star reduced to endorsements for Japanese commercials, and a breakthrough for Scarlett Johansson, before she becamse a superheroine. Part of the series Here Comes the Night: Cinema Nocturnes, which promises 35mm prints of director MIke Leigh’s masterpiece Naked (May 16) and Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love (June 13) later this spring.
View the trailer.
Sunday, May 4 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free
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(Icarus Films)In my review for Spectrum Culture, I wrote, “I want to like what director Bill Morrison does. His new film sets archival and sometimes damaged footage from the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 to a mostly original score by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell. One would hope that movie music outside the Hans Zimmer school of telegraphed emotion had a chance of conveying something other than standard Hollywood bombast. But the musical cues are sometimes embarrassingly literal. A levee explosion is scored to (what else?) cymbal crashes… Frisell’s music does just what a Hollywood score does, emotionally narrating footage instead of enhancing it. And when the music finally lets loose, underneath footage of the flood’s aftermath with African-American men working hard to rebuild, the result is more patronizing than defiant.”
View the trailer.
Sunday, May 4 at 4:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Psychotronic style, with this Mexican horror movie about archaeologists who break into the tomb of an ancient Aztec general, arousing the great warrior’s head.
Monday, May 5 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s.
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Also opening this week, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Jodorowsky’s Dune. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
