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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Ros Serey Sothea and Sinn Sisamouth album cover (FilmForum/DTIF Cambodia LLC).Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll
You’re only going to get one chance to see this week’s best new movie on the big screen, and that chance will cost you $25. But it will be worth it. In my Spectrum Culture review of the film, I wrote that it’s “more than a music documentary. It preserves the memory of musicians who paid the ultimate price for making people dance.” Read the rest of my review here. The AFI Silver’s screening of this entertaining, harrowing documentary about Cambodian rock music will be accompanied by a Q&A with the film’s director John Pirozzi, but more importantly, by a live concert with Cambodian musicians from the ’60s and ’70s. Shadows-inspired guitar band Baksey Cham Krong will perform with original members, including singer Mol Kamach, lead guitarist Mol Kagnol and rhythm guitarist Samley Hong. Hard rockers The Drakkar, influenced by the Stones and Santana, include original singer Tana, lead guitarist Touch Chhattaha, and drummer Ouk Sam Art. The songs of Sinn Sisamouth, the iconic Cambodian singer who was killed during the Khmer Rouge era, will be performed by his grandson Sinn Sethakol. Finally, the songs of Ros Serey Sothea, who was also a victim of Pol Pot, will be performed by Dengue Fever singer Chhom Nimol.
Watch a clip.
Wednesday, April 29 at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver. $25.
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Berenice Marlohe and Anton Yelchin (Walter Thomson/IFC Films)Brian Bloom (Star Trek’s Anton Yelchin) is an aspiring New York writer who can somehow afford to live alone in Gramercy Park. But he lacks life experience until he meets beautiful Frenchwoman Arielle (Bond girl Bérénice Marlohe), whose progressive husband has allowed her the luxury of affairs as long as they take place between the hours of 5 to 7 pm. For some reason, Arielle falls in love with the little nebbish who goes on to literary renown. If you’ll pardon spoilers, Brian’s timed assignations inspire him to write a short story about a puppy that wins a New Yorker award presented by David Remnick himself. IFC distributed one of this year’s best movies, The Duke of Burgundy, but this competently made ludicrous premise is squarely in the tradition of Hallmark movies posing as indie cinema.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Jim Anderson, William Redfield and Garry Goodrow (Milestone Films)This month the AFI has been showing the work of experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke, whose films inspired John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese. I find the shaky experimental video of her 1985 Ornette Coleman documentary Made in America (April 27 at the AFI) difficult to watch. But as a fan of the Freddie Redd soundtrack album The Connection, I’ve always wanted to see Clarke’s first feature, and next week the AFI screens it in a 35mm print. This 1961 adaptation of Jack Gelber’s Living Theater play about a group of drug-addicted jazz musicians co-stars pianist-composer Freddie Redd and alto sax great Jackie McLean.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, April 26 and Tuesday, April 28 at the AFI SIlver.
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Come for the actors; stay for the impeccably dressed kitchenA magnificent Midwestern family falls on hard times at the dawn of the Industrial Age. And so did the man who envisioned it. Orson Welles’ 1942 adaptation of the Booth Tarkington novel is one of the great tragedies of cinema, its original two-hour edit probably lost forever. But even in its compromised form, it’s still a masterpiece; its hobbled resolution a cautionary metaphor for Welles’ great themes of hubris and the passage of time. The AFI Silver continues its centennial celebration of Welles with 35mm screenings of its mangled greatness. (And if you hurry, you have one more chance to catch a 35mm print of Citizen Kane, tonight at 7:15 p.m.)
Watch the trailer.
Friday, April 24 through Tuesday, April 28 at the AFI Silver.
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Who will win? You, the inebriated viewer.Actor-director Justin Timpane is nothing if not focused. His directorial credits to date consisting entirely of variations on a very particular subgenre: Ninjas vs. Monsters (2013), Ninjas vs. Vampires (2010), and this 2008 feature debut about seven friends whose struggle with early adulthood is further complicated when a dead friend comes back from the dead hungry for brains. But never fear, because three of these friends are Ninjas. Thanks to the Washington Psychotronic Film Society for being alive and not hungry for brains.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, April 27 at Acre 121, 1400 Irving Street NW #109.
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Also opening this weekend, failed venture capitalist Nick Kroll finds adulthood a struggle even without zombies in the indie dramedy Adult Beginners. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
