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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(Dada Films)Director Carlos Saura returns to his signature subject with frequent collaborator Vittorio Storaro, the celebrated cinematographer who shot classics like Apocalypse Now and Last Tango in Paris. Originally released four years ago but only now getting American distribution, Flamenco Flamenco (not to be confused with Saura and Storaro’s 1995 one-word collaboration Flamenco) is full of passionate music and sumptuous photography that often leaves subjects dramatically obscured by shadow, the mere silhouettes of their dancers’ bodies conveying everything they need to express. It is not full of dramatic structure, the film unspooling in a series of vignettes that lack the connective tissue that makes Saura’s Lorca adaptation Blood Wedding the director’s masterpiece. Still, with cinematography this gorgeous, who needs a plot?
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Toni Servillo (Distrib Films)With elections drawing near, opposition party leader Enrico Oliveri (Toni Servillo) takes a beating in the polls and disappears. Fortunately, his twin brother Giovanni (Toni Servillo) has just been released from a mental institution and is happy to take on his brother’s identity. Will he teach the electorate how to get down? Director Roberto Andò’s satire of Italian politics is the latest entry in what has been a banner year for the cinematic doppelganger, with no fewer than three other films exploring the theme. But the best analogy for Viva La Libertà is the 1993 Kevin Kline comedy Dave, which offered a scenario much like this one, but with more heart and humor.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-Up
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A teenage factory worker (Sonia Suhl) is ostracized because of her mute mother who uses a wheelchair. When dead bodies start to pile up in her village, she begins to wonder if her changing body is the cause. The AFI’s European Union Showcase continues this weekend with a lineup of high-profile arthouse films and unknown quantities. Tickets are still available for sure things like Marion Cotillard in the Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days, One Night (December 12 and 14), a film that will get a commercial run in these parts next year. But this will probably be your only chance to see this well-regarded Danish coming-of-age movie, described as more Let the Right One In than Twilight.
View the trailer.
Tonight at 9:20 p.m. and Sunday, December 14 at 9:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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The Freer’s series Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien continues this weekend with a new print of a film that is on a number of critics lists of the greatest films ever made. Set in a nineteenth century Shanghai brothel, the film stars Wong Kar-Wai regular Tony Leung. I saw this challenging film upon its original release in 1998 and was frankly confounded by it, but its sumptuous photography makes this rare 35mm screening one of the cinematic events of this weekend. Friday at 7 p.m., the Freer screens a print of Hou’s 1996 film, Goodbye South, Goodbye. For a three-day weekend of Hou Hsiao-hsien, the National Gallery of Art will screen a 35mm print of the director’s 1995 film Good Men, Good Women at the Goethe-Institut on Saturday, December 13 at 2 p.m.
View the trailer for Flowers of Shanghai.
Flowers of Shanghai screens Sunday, December 14 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free
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Next week the Washington Psychotronic Film Society presents this U.K./French-produced 1977 documentary directed by Robert Glassman. The film includes performance footage of The Jam, The Stinky Toys, The Damned, The Police, Wayne County & The Electric Chairs and the Sex Pistols.
Monday, December 15 at 8 p.m. at McFadden’s.
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Also coming to get you this weekend, The Babadook. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
