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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(Oscilloscope)Mark Landis looks like a shrunken, slumping John Malkovich. The Laurel, Mississippi resident has made dozens of gifts to museums around the country of art work reportedly originating from his late sister’s estate. And they’re all forgeries. Working mostly with materials from craft stores (and a splash of coffee to “age” wood), Landis duped museum curators who accepted him and his gifts on faith. Directors Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, and Mark Becker have a great subject and use a lively jazz soundtrack to set their film apart from the usual documentary portrait. But the filmmakers don’t dig far enough underneath his quirky surface. Landis is a talented mimic of artwork from 15th century masters to Dr. Seuss, but what drives a man to use his talents only to copy others?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema
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Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue (Drafthouse)Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard co-directed this stylish quasi-documentary that follows the writer/musician on his 20,000th day alive. The film is best in rare moments of self-effacement. Cave accompanies himself on piano when Bad Seed Warren Ellis says it reminds him of something. “Tim Buckley?” Cave hopefully asks. “No … Lionel Richie,” which leads to as close of a Nick Cave cover of “All Night Long” as we’re likely to get. But like Cave, the movie takes itself too seriously and has less to offer non-fans. A navel-gazing sequence where Cave talks to his therapist may not even be much good for fans. More interesting are scenes in the musician’s archives, where Cave looks at old photos from the Birthday Party’s heyday and locks of hair purchased at a Berlin flea market.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-Up and the AFI Silver
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Somebody’s chicken!Greg Sestero presents The Disaster Artist
Co-star of Tommy Wiseau’s midnight classic The Room, actor Greg Sestero will talk about his memoir The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside the Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made (read my Blogcritics review of the book here. Sestero will talk about working with Wiseau and answer questions about the book, which James Franco has tapped for a big-screen adaptation. The event includes a new behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of The Room.
Friday, October 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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Where Should the Birds Fly (October 4 at 4:00pm at the Goethe-InstitutThe fourth annual Palestinian Film and Arts Festival focuses on life in Gaza. Where Do the Birds Fly? (October 4 at 4 p.m.) looks at the effects of Operation Cast Lead on two young women.The film was directed by wedding videographer-turned human rights observer Fida Qishta. Gaza 36mm (October 3 at 7 p.m.), directed by Khalil Al Mozayen, looks at the ruined movie houses of the Gaza Strip. The festival also highlights Palestinian writers and artists from the Gaza Strip, like author Laila El Haddad and musician Huda Asfour.
View the trailer for Where do the Birds Fly?
October 2-5 at the Goethe-Institut. See the festival website for a complete program.
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Director Krishna Shah adapted the work of Nobel Prize winning author Rabindraneth Tagore for an award-winning Off-Broadway production. He directed Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in the acclaimed life-in-the-ghetto drama The River Niger. But he also directed this exploitation classic that the Washington Psychotronic Film Society curators describe as “A band of mullet-haired rockers who get massacred and then revived as zombies.” It’s the kind of career to which we can all aspire.
View the trailer.
Monday, October 6 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s.
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Also opening this week, Ben Affleck and Rosamond Pike star in David Fincher’s adaptation of the best-selling novel Gone Girl. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
