Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s subjective and selective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Marcello Conte and Myles Massey (Gravitas Ventures)An earnest montage shows a teenage boy’s excitement about his family’s vacation destination: the cheesy commercial landscape of Ocean City at a time when commercial strips weren’t the homogenous Anywhere, USA of today. Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte) is an awkward 13-year old who likes hip-hop and ping pong. On vacation with his family, he makes friends and learns something about himself. This coming-of-age throwback is set in a carefully detailed 1985 with references not just to mass market pop culture but to regional signifiers like Hammerjack’s and Chuck Brown. Frederick, Md. native Michael Tully avoids the knowing tone that sinks a lot of coming-of-age movies. Even if the fashions are laughable, the director finds humanity, if not always a second dimension, in his characters. Filmed on location in Ocean City, Md. Tully will appear in person at the 7:30 p.m. screening at the AFI Silver this Friday.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI Silver
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Burt LancasterMiddle-aged Ned (Burt Lancaster) is at a pool party in his affluent suburban neighborhood when he realizes he can swim a makeshift river home via his friends’ backyard pools. This 1968 film is considered one of the key American dramas of the 1960s. Adapted from John Cheever’s short story by director Frank Perry and his wife Eleanor, who wrote the script, with a score by then-22 year old Marvin Hamlisch. Part of the AFI Silver’s continuing Burt Lancaster series, the film will be presented in a new DCP restoration. Joanna Lancaster, the late actor’s daughter, will appear in person at the June 7 screening.
View the trailer.
Saturday, June 7 at 5 p.m., with Joanna Lancaster in person; Thursday, June 12 at 7:15 p.m. At the AFI Silver.
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Orson Welles and Jeanne MoreauThe AFI’s Shakespeare film series continues with a new DCP restoration of director Orson Welles’ adaptation of the Henry IV saga. Part historical drama, part coming-of-age tale, Chimes at Midnight doesn’t have the visual pyrotechnics of Welles’ early masterpieces> but he was born to play Falstaff, and this autumnal work is one of his greatest films. With Jeanne Moreau as Doll Tearsheet, John Gielgud as King Henry IV and local Shakespeare Theater regular Keith Baxter as Hal. Shown with the 2012 documentary short Las Versiones de Campanadas a Medianoche de Orson Welles, which tries to make sense of the film’s complicated production history and different release versions. This weekend the AFI is also showing a 35mm print of director Gus Van Sant’s take on the material. My Own Private Idaho (June 7,8 and 12) stars the late River Phoenix as a male hustler Hal who tries to break away from WIlliam Richert’s Falstaffian character Bob Pigeon.
View the trailer for Chimes at Midnight.
Saturday, June 7 at 7:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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The Freer’s series Here Comes the Night: Cinema Nocturnes continues this weekend with a 35mm print of director Kent MacKenzie’s 1961 study of Native Americans living in Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill district. The film was unseen for years, but was restored in 2008, and is a lost window not only into the life of those exiled from Southwest reservations, but (gentrifiers take note) into a vital urban neighborhood that was redeveloped into oblivion. Co-presented with the National Museum of the American Indian. Introduced by Jesse Wente (Ojibwe), head of film programs, Toronto International Film Festival.
View the trailer.
Friday, June 6 at 7 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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(Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin Archive)The National Gallery of Art’s series On the Street continues with this loosely scripted 1953 film that inspired the French New Wave. A kid from Brooklyn kid catches the subway to Coney Island, where he takes in the amusements and spends the night under the boardwalk. François Truffaut wrote that, “We would never have come into being if it hadn’t been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production.” Shown with the short film “In the Street” (1948), a document of summertime in Spanish Harlem co-directed by legendary street photographer Helen Levitt with Janice Loeb and James Agee.
View the trailer for Little Fugitive.
Saturday, June 7 at 3:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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Also opening this week, Tom Cruise dies hundreds of times in Edge of Tomorrow. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
