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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Ann-Margret, Roger Daltrey and Oliver ReedThe series, “Directed by Ken Russell,” presented by the Library of Congress in association with DCist and Brightest Young Things, concludes this week with a digital screening of Russell’s 1975 adaptation of The Who’s rock opera. Roger Daltrey leads the all-star cast, which includes ’70s pop stars like Elton John (in a role Pete Townshend wanted to go to Tiny Tim) and Tina Turner, bombshell Ann-Margret, as well as non-singers Oliver Reed and Jack Nicholson. Hosted by Music Division staff member and DCist’s chief film critic, yours truly. All films will be shown in the Mary Pickford Theater, third floor of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building (101 Independence Avenue SE). Doors open 30 minutes before screening. Seating is very limited, but standbys are encouraged to line up starting at 6:30 p.m. In the likely event of a sellout, available seats will be released to standbys five minutes before show time. For information, call 202-707-5502. Read more about the Library of Congress’ 2014-15 concert season here. Note: this will be screened from a DVD.
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Friday, September 26 at 7 p.m. at the Mary Pickford Theater. Advanced tickets are sold out, but people can get in free at the door. The standby line forms at 6:30 p.m.
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Andre Benjamin (Xlrator)A New York session guitarist moves to swingin’ London and watches his career take off. Director John Ridley’s Jimi Hendrix biopic was only screened for critics in New York and LA, and the buzz has been meh. Outkast’s Andre “3000” Benjamin looks like a credible Hendrix in the film’s trailer, but Variety notes that “one strains for any indication of what the man is thinking, or what sparked his artistic breakthrough…never does Hendrix convincingly appear to be an artist in bloom.” It is the nature of the biopic to fabricate events, but Jimi is apparently hampered by a scene of domestic violence that its real-life victim claims never happened. Ridley won a screenplay for his adaptation of 12 Years a Slave, and word is that his film avoids some of the usual biopic trappings, but what makes this an unfortunately typical biopic is news that the music doesn’t do justice to the Hendrix legend. What could?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Vittorio Gassman and Jean- Louis Trintignant (Criterion)The National Gallery of Art sent off its East Wing Auditorium (now closed during Gallery renovations) with director Dino Rosi’s 1962 classic starring Vittorio Gassman and Jean- Louis Trintignant. The Gallery’s repertory screenings continue this weekend from their temporary home at American University, with a reprise of this “sorely neglected… commedia all’ italiana [that] reads as a sort of elegy on unfettered energies of the early 1960s — fast cars, sleek jazz, rock ’n’ roll, even fashion sense.” This screening is in collaboration with American University School of Communication and the Embassy of Italy.
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Sunday, September 27 at 4:30 p.m. at American University School of Communication, Malsi Doyle and Michael Forman Theater, McKinley Building, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW. Free.
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The Freer’s series Dreams, Hallucinations, and Nightmares: The Films of Pen-ek Ratanaruang continues this weekend with a 35mm print of the director’s 2006 film about a hit man posing as a chef. After Last Life in the Universe, this was the director’s second collaboration with star Tadanobu Asano and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and this will be an increasingly rare opportunity to see a print of a film shot by the man who photographed many of Wong-Kar Wai’s best films. The Freer will screen 35mm prints of two other Ratanaruang films this weekend: Ploy (2007, September 28 at 1 p.m.) and Nymph (2009, September 28 at 3 p.m.).
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Invisible Waves screens Friday, September 26 at 7 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
The AFI’s Latin American Film Festival continues with this well-reviewed Brazilian neo-noir based on a true crime story. From the festival’s program notes: “The spark long gone, married couple Sylvia and Bernardo are desperate for excitement. Bernardo meets the sensual yet unstable Rosa, and the two begin a passionate affair. Meanwhile, Sylvia unknowingly strikes up a friendship with her. Inventively told from each of their perspectives, this edgy neo-noir has been winning awards around the world.”
View the trailer.
Friday, September 26, Sunday, September 28 and Tuesday, September 30 at the AFI Silver.
