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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Jemaine Clement (Unison Films)How do four undead gentlemen of various generations and cultural backgrounds get along under one roof? Very bloodily. Flight of the Conchords‘ Jemaine Clement teams up with co-director Taika Waititi (Boy) for this dry and occasionally hilarious mockumentary about vampires sharing a flat in Wellington, New Zealand. You won’t be surprised that Clement has some of the movie’s funniest bits (ask him how a virgin is like a sandwich), but Waititi is a standout as Viago, a vampire so fussy he puts down newspaper before a kill. Twilight rears its head when the vampire flatmates encounter a pack of roaming werewolves, but where that tween sensation was a metaphor for the changing adolescent body, What We Do in the Shadows is about the aging adult body and our failed attempts to extend its usefulness and meet its insatiable needs.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema
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Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan (Radius-TWC)A struggling actress (Anna Kendrick) and a young novelist (Jeremy Jordan) fall in and out of love in Richard LaGravesne’s adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s Off-Broadway musical. The narrative is mostly driven forward by song lyrics that cross each other in time: Kendrick’s songs start at the end of their marriage, Jordan’s start at the beginning, they meet at his proposal and diverge again. This clever time-shifting is a meaningful ploy about the nature of time, and when you close your eyes, you might hear something of what made this material work on stage. That’s “might.” At first, Kendrick’s broken love songs work, but Jordan’s musical narrative of his literary exploits would be corny even if they weren’t delivered as if he were working a Motown revival. Worse, when you open your eyes you see a lot of shaky camerawork and indifferently directed actors. Kendrick’s pipes sell her character, but her facial expressions too often seem like they’re waiting for guidance that never comes. But as the songs get better, so does the movie, carried along by music that starts to overcome the film’s visual mess. It’s probably a must-see for musical theater fans, and though I’m not one of them, I reluctantly gave into the songs’ charms despite their seriously flawed delivery system.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-up
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Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus (Paradis Films)The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Canon Films
The 25th Annual Washington Jewish Film Festival continues with high and middlebrow entertainment, the latter including director Hilla Medalia’s documentary about the beloved purveyors of lowbrow cinema. Director Menahem Golan (who passed away last year) and his cousin, producer Yoram Globus, were Israeli filmmakers who took ownership of The Cannon Group in 1979, ushering in a golden era of low-budget exploitation movies which included vehicles for Jean-Claude Van Damme (who is interviewed here), quickie pop-culture cash-ins like Breakin’ (which the NYJFF showed in tandem with this film) and the occasional Jean-Luc Godard picture. The Go-Go Boys is actually one of two recent documentaries about Golan and Globus, and the title of the other one explains why my own favorite Cannon sequel is left out of this film’s equation. I haven’t seen Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, but I have thoroughly enjoyed director Mark Hartley’s other documentaries about exploitation movies, Not Quite Hollywood and Machete Maidens Unleashed (but stay away from his remake of the Ozploitation classic Patrick). The Go-Go Boys can’t help but be entertaining given its subjects, but chances are Hartley’s doc is more in the spirit of its subject. If the other Golan-Globus movie ends up in D.C., I’ll be the first to tell you.
Watch the trailer.
The Go-Go Boys screens Sunday, February 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver and Thursday, February 26 at 6:15 p.m. at American University’s Katzen Arts Center.
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Tracey Walter and Emilio EstevezAfter the untimely demise of its former host McFadden’s, the Washington Psychotronic Film Society is back in a new Columbia Heights home. Next week, the Psychotronic curators present one of the best cult movies of the ’80s, director Alex Cox’s sci-fi punk action comedy Repo Man, starring Emilio Estevez and two of the era’s most prolific character actors, Harry Dean Stanton and Tracey Walter. The film was shot by Wim Wenders’s favorite cinematographer, Robby Müller, and features a soundtrack that includes Iggy Pop, Black Flag, Fear, and more of your favorite then-angry young men who are now angry old men.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, February 23 at 8 p.m. at Acre 21, 1400 Irving St. NW #109.
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I Dream of Wires;The Modular Synthesizer Documentary
Bump ‘n Grind, Silver Spring’s first coffee shop record store, launches a movie series next week with director Robert Fantinatto’s 2014 documentary about the resurgence of the modular synthesizer. The moduwha-huh, you may ask? According to the filmmakers, “Inventors, musicians and enthusiasts are interviewed about their relationship with the modular synthesizer — for many, it’s an all-consuming passion. Established musicians such as Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Carl Craig, and John Foxx show off their systems and explain why they opt to use this volatile but ultimately rewarding technology. Meanwhile, a new generation of dance and electronica artists including Clark, James Holden, and Factory Floor explain why they’ve stepped away from laptops to embrace the sound and physicality of modular synthesizers”
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, February 24 at 7 p.m. at Bump ‘n’ Grind, 1200 East West Highway, Silver Spring. Free.
