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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Ian Richardson, Paul Rogers and Judi Dench The AFI’s Shakespesare Cinema series continues this weekend with a 35mm screening of one of my favorite screen adaptations of the Bard. Peter Hall’s 1968 Royal Shakespeare Company Midsummer boasts a dream cast including Judi Dench as Titania, Diana Rigg as Helena, Helen Mirren as Hermia, David Warner as Lysander, Ian Holm as Puck and Paul Rogers as Bottom (the latter two would form the key part of Peter Hall’s essential 1973 screen adaptation of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming). The movie is on DVD but only in a flawed transfer sourced from a ratty print, so this is a rare chance to see the film the way it was meant to be seen.
Saturday, June 28 at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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Aaron Swartz. Photo by Noah Berger.The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
Fresh off its Washington-area premiere at AFI Docs is this moderately engaging hagiography about Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide last year at the age of 26. Director Brian Knappenberger introduces us to accomplished hacktivist as a precocious child in home movies before getting into the issues Swartz held dear. In his short life, he brought greater public attention to the loss of internet freedom threatened by the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and helped develop RSS and creative commons standards. The film doesn’t have much in the way of opposing viewpoints – Swartz’s legal nemeses would not participate in the film, and the issue of copyright law is more complicated than the film would have you believe. But Swartz had his heart in the right place, and his admirers and well-wishers will find this elucidating enough.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema
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Emmanuelle Devos and Sandrine Kiberlain (Adopt Films)Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos) never got enough attention. Her mother didn’t hold her hand, Simone De Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain) refused her advances, the shop stocking her first book didn’t stock enough copies. Director Martin Prevost’s flat biopic focuses on twenty years in the relationship between Feminist author Leduc and De Beauvoir, but the script’s portrayal of Leduc is little more than petulant, more an allegory of contemporary entitlement (imagine Frances Ha as French auteur) than a well-rounded period portrait. The movie plods along with expository dialogue, its relationships unconvincing, its depiction of the writer’s process facile. Still, the movie might go down better with one of the Angelika Pop-up’s premium concession pairings, available for $10 with this coupon. For Violette, the Union Market Pop-up theater recommends the “French Connection” combo, two glasses of Chateau de Bbrondeau Bourdeaux, Rustic Bakery blue cheese walnut coins, and Pop Art Rosemary Truffle popcorn.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-up and Angelika Mosaic
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To coincide with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s focus on China and Kenya, this weekend the Freer screens films from China and Kenya that exlpore similar themes. Friday evening the Freer presents a digital screening of David “Tosh” Gitonga’s 2012 drama Nairobi Half Life, the first Kenyan film submitted for Academy Award consideration. Sunday, the Freer screens a 35mm print of director Xiaoshuai Wang’s 2001 social drama Beijing Bicycle.
View the trailers for Nairobi Half Life and Beijing Bicycle.
Nairobi Half-lfie screens Friday, June 27 at 7 p.m. at the Freer. Beijing Bicycle screens Sunday, June 29 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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Orchestra trumpet player Athanael (Jack Benny) falls asleep during a radio broadcast and dreams he’s an angel playing in the big band in the sky. The celestial jazzman is tasked with warning Earth of the impending apocalypse. The AFI Silver continues its Raoul Walsh series with a 16mm print of this rarely screened 1945 box-office bomb, which the eternally self-deprecating Benny used as a prime example of his failure for years.
View the trailer.
Saturday, June 28 at 11:10 a.m. at the AFI Silver.
