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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Stéphanie Cléau and Mathieu Almaric (IFC)Julien (Mathieu Almaric) is a married, middle-aged John Deere rep having an affair with Esther (Stéphanie Cléau), a woman married to a rich older man. Will adultery lead to murder? Almaric is better known in these parts as an actor, but his 2010 film On Tour won him a Best Director award at Cannes. He directs this adaptation of a Georges Simenon thriller with a cool fragmented narrative that runs an efficient 76 minutes, and for the first hour this is a taut and effective film. But despite its brief length, the film is stopped in its tracks by an awkward courtroom sequence that nearly undoes the stylish invention that preceded it.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End Cinema
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Anton Yelchin and Billy Crudup (J.R. Cooke / Samuel Goldwyn Films)Sam (Billy Crudup) is a successful ad man who’s devastated when his son is killed in a campus shooting. He turns to drinking and living off the grid (on a boat — get it?) when he finds his son’s dorm-recorded demo tapes. Sam performs one of his late son’s songs at a local open-mic night, which inspires young musician (Anton Yelchin) to form a band with the mourning father. William H. Macy has directed theater and a TV movie, but this is his first feature film behind the camera. Crudup’s performance has earned some buzz, but the Hallmark score, painfully earnest singer-songwriter material and maudlin script diminishes the film’s harrowing premise.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the Avalon.
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Cheng Pei-pei stars as a grieving mother and Ben Whishaw as her son’s gay puppy. (Strand Releasing) This week’s second arthouse film about a mourning parent comes from Cambodian director Hong Khaou. Cambodian-Chinese mother Junn (Cheng Pei-pei) lives in a retirement home in London and is approached by her late son’s lover Richard (Ben Whishaw), who wants to take care of her. The thing is, Junn never knew her son was gay. This well-meaning film has earned faint praise, like Manhola Dargis’ observation in the New York Times that Whishaw turns in an “impressive impersonation of a puppy.” Slant’s Chuck Bowen writes that, “The film has too much taste and tact, and it’s too reliant on your determination to like it for its nourishing, all-inclusive theme of social displacement, whether it applies to people of an inconvenient age, race, nationality, or sexual preference.”
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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The Freer launches the 2014 China Onscreen Biennial with the D.C. premiere of Sixth Generation director Wang Xiaoshuai’s drama about a cantankerous widow (Lü Zhong) who receives a series of anonymous phone calls. Xiaoshuai and producer Liu Xuan will attend the screening, which will be digital. Next month, the Freer, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art and the AFI Silver, will present a retrospective of the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien, which will provide area cinephiles the chance to see 35mm prints of work by this challenging director.
View the trailer.
Sunday, October 19 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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Ricardo Montalban in BORDER INCIDENT (October 18 and 20 at the AFI Silver)The AFI’s Silver’s annual film noir festival opens this weekend with an international flavor as Film Noir Foundation member Foster Hirsch introduces 35mm screenings of the 1937 French classic Pépé le Moko (October 18 and 22). Jean Gabin stars as a Parisian crook working the streets of the Casbah. Next week’s noir screenings also include Ricardo Montalban in director Anthony Mann’s 1949 migrant worker crime drama Border Incident (October 18 and 20); director John Boulting’s 1947 adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock (October 18, 21 and 22); and Orson Welles in the Carol Reed classic The Third Man (October 18 and 22). Hirsch introduces selected screenings throughout the series, whose 35mm pleasures are too many to list here. The AFI’s series dedicated to director Robert Wise also continues this weekend with a 35mm print of the 1949 noir classic The Set-Up (October 18, 20, 22 and 23).
View the trailer for Border Incident.
October 18-30 at the AFI Silver. See a complete list of screenings here.
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Local amateur film makers will dust off their old Super 8 films this weekend for Home Movie Day at the National Building Museum. Film archivists launched this nationwide series of events in 2002 as a way to celebrate amateur filmmaking and preserve unique records of our past from the days before YouTube made family videos commonplace. The event will also feature Home Movie Day Bingo with prizes for the WHOLE FAMILY! The registration deadline to bring films has passed, but come and see what your neighbors looked like growing up.
Saturday, October 18 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the National Building Museum. Free.
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Also opening this weekend, Miles Teller stars as a young drummer in Whiplash; and Bill Murray is your cranky neighbor in St. Vincent. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
