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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Robert Gustafsson and Iwar Wiklander (Music Box Films)

The 100-year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

The nursing home where Allan (Robert Gustafsson) lives is getting ready to celebrate his centenary, but the crotchety resident slips out into this wacky, forced amalgam of Forrest Gump and Quentin Tarantino. The narrative hops from present-day hijinks that involve a biker gang, a suitcase full of money, and an elephant, to Allan’s adventures with Franco, Stalin, Einstein, and Ronald Reagan. Based on a novel by Jonas Jonasson, this comedy was the highest-grossing Swedish film of all time. Its nearly two-hour run time is never dull, but its characters never rise above adolescent cartoons, which figures, since the simple-minded Allan is befriended by great dictators not for his character, but for his pyrotechnic abilities. It’s a good thing Allan never meets Ingmar Bergman, who would probably have had him executed for crimes against drama.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.

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Ariana Rivoire and Isabell Carré (Film Movement)

Marie’s Story

At the end of the 19th century, a blind and deaf teenager (Ariana Rivoire) is taken to a school for the deaf run by Catholic nuns, where Soeur Margeurite (Isabelle Carré) takes on the challenging task of educating a child who acts like a wild animal. Director Jean-Pierre Améris approaches this true story of a French Miracle Worker with an almost Bressonian eye for detail. Robert Bresson would have never stood for some of the cloying musical choices, but he would have approved the film’s appreciation for touch, the only sense Marie has left to communicate with. Marie’s Story is about the hard acquisition of language and the hard work of faith.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-Up.

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Catherine Denueve and Guillame Canet (Cohen Media Group)

In the Name of My Daughter

Maurice (Guillame Canet) is a womanizing lawyer working for Renee (Catherine Deneuve), who runs a struggling casino in Nice. When Renee’s daughter Agnès (Adèle Haenel) moves back in with mom after a failed marriage, Maurice moves in. This tale of corporate intrigue and a doomed affair is based on the true story of casino heiress Agnès Le Roux, who disappeared in 1977 after her affair with Maurice Agnelet turned sour. Director André Téchiné churns out this kind of French drama in his sleep, and the first half of the film gets some drama out of a plot that is more back-stabbing than homicidal. But the film thuds into a second half that unfortunately conveys the tedium of a long, drawn-out court case.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Bethesda Row.

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Akim Tamiroff says hi!

Touch of Evil

By the end of the 1950s, Welles had taken on the Falstaffian proportions that most people remember him by, and like the mischievous story-teller whom he would also play to perfection, corrupt Sheriff Hank Quinlan is prone to lying. But Quinlan creates fiction in the name of justice in much the way that Welles uses cinematic tricks to make truth out of fiction. He plants a nearly flawless company of character actors in a black-and-white border landscape that sizzles with vice. Dennis Weaver is the only wild misstep, yet his role, watching over a scantily-clad Janet Leigh in an isolated motel, anticipates Anthony Perkins in Psycho a few years later. The final set piece, with dialogue fading in and out of electronic distortion, is a metaphor for the distortion of reality and the difficulty of recording truth with a machine: the hard life of making movies. Note: this will be a DCP presentation.

Watch the trailer.
Friday, May 22-Saturday, May 23 and Monday, May 25-Thursday, May 28 at the AFI Silver.

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Also opening this week, the future and the past: MIchael Fassbender stars in the revisionist Slow West; and George Clooney stars in the Disney feature Tomorrowland. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.