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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Before you plan your next sea cruise, take a page from the lesson book of your elders. Next week Screen on the Green presents a 35mm print of one of the great disaster movies. Director Ronald Neame’s 1972 blockbuster was an all-star spectacular, classic melodrama and religious allegory all in one highly entertaining package that should be seen on as big a screen as possible—and a 20 x 40-foot outdoor screen qualifies. With Gene Hackman, Roddy MacDowell, Ernest Borgnine, and Shelly Winters, who won a Golden Globe for her supporting role as an heroic former swimmer.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, July 27 at 8 p.m. on the National Mall.between 4th and 7th Streets NW.
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Lee Sun-Kyun (Kino Lorber)This darkly comic thriller premiered this spring at FilmFest DC, when I wrote, “Detective Ko (Sun-kyun Lee) is driving to his mother’s funeral when he turns to avoid hitting a dog. Then he hits a human. Instead of coming clean, he puts the body in his trunk, setting off a complicated and darkly funny crime drama. Lee’s guilt-ridden reactions throughout the film should give him away to anyone who pays a modicum of attention to facial cues—the dog that indirectly caused the accident returns at intervals to lay a furry guilt-trip on him. But director Seong-hoon Kim fills his stylishly photographed second feature with entertaining and anxiety-producing twists.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-up
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Chow Yun-FatThe Freer’s 20th annual Made in Hong Kong Film Festival continues this weekend with director Wong Jing’s 2014 comedy starring Hong Kong action icon Chow Yun-Fat. Variety‘s Maggie Lee writes, “This glossy, reassuringly campy production serves up a boisterous mix of goofy humor and kinetic action, in which the crew and cast—led by Chow Yun-fat at his most waggish—cruise along so smoothly that the ridiculous story radiates an infectious sense of fun” The Freer will be showing a DCP. This weekend the festival will also screen a Digibeta copy of the 1981 Kung Fu movie Martial Club, followed by performances from the Wong People Kung Fu Association and a demonstration and discussion with martial arts masters Dennis Brown, Oso Tayari Casel, Vincent Lyn, Bobby Samuels, and Ron Wheeler, moderated by Bey Logan, martial artist and author of Hong Kong Action Cinema.
Watch the trailer for From Vegas to Macau.
From Vegas to Macau screens Friday, July 24 at 7 p.m. Martial Club screens Sunday, July 26 at 2 p.m. At the Freer. Free.
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Kirsten DunstThe AFI Silver adds another decade of nostalgia to its popular summer programming with the series, Keepin’ It Real: ’90s Cinema Now. Before she became the auteur of the privileged, director Sofia Coppola made her feature debut with this haunting adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel about four teenagers (led by Kirsten Dunst) who try to cope with the suicide of their 13-year-old sister. With James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Josh Hartnett and an evocative score by Air. The AFI will be screening a 35mm print.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, July 26 and Tuesday, July 28 at the AFI Silver.
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From “Self Portrait Portrait” (Black Maria/James Hollenbaugh)Black Maria: Selections from the Festival
This weekend the National Gallery of Art screens a selection of award-winning short films from the 34th Annual Black Maria Film Festival. The festival was named after Thomas Edison’s New Jersey studio, which was lined with tar paper that led his staff to compare it to the back of a paddy wagon, or Black Maria.The gallery will screen two programs of highlights from this year’s films. The first program includes, James Hollenbaugh’s “Self Portrait Portrait,” about a man who has been making self-portraits every day for the past 20 years, and Steve Gentile’s “A Pirate Named Ned,” an animated survey of the conflicting reputation of 18th century figure Edward Low, who was either a brutal pirate or a nice guy. The second program features Lynn Tomlinson’s “The Ballad of Holland Island House,” the animated tale of a house sinking on a Chesapeake Bay island; and “Prodigal,” an experimental documentary by Livia Ungur and Sherng-Lee Huang shot with a hidden camera on the streets of Romania.
Black Maria Program One screens Saturday, July 25 at 12:30 p.m.; Program Two screens Saturday, July 25 at 3 p.m. At the National Gallery of Art, West Building Lecture Hall. Free.
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Also opening this week, Adam Sandler’s video game skills save the world from alien attack in Pixels. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
