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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The End of Music, LLC/Home Box Office Kurt Cobain’s work tapes may have more intrinsic value than the next guy’s, but they don’t necessarily make a good movie. Assembled from Cobain’s home movies, audio tapes, and journals, this intimate if overlong documentary takes its title from a mixtape pieced together by the late Nirvana front man. Director Brett Morgen was given access to fascinating material, and one can understand his urge to use as much of it as possible, but that impressionistic audio collage, reenacted by an animated sequence, is one of the weak points in a film that runs over two hours and could have used some trimming. So despite the good use of Cobain’s journals (many of his doodles are animated) and an evocative score that recasts many of Nirvana’s greatest hits, the movie feels like it’s not fully formed. And you may wonder why Dave Grohl (who’s in a LOT of music documentaries) isn’t in it. Reportedly Grohl was busy in the recording studio while Morgen was readying a cut of the film for Sundance. Grohl was interviewed but not in time to re-edit the film. I’m not sure I trust the priorities of a filmmaker who’d rather get ready for a festival than get an important interview (Krist Novoselic and Courtney Love do appear), and Melvins’ frontman Buzz Osbourne calls the film “90% … bullshit.” But the material and the music are enough to make this bullshit a must-see for fans.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at ArcLight Bethesda
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Ronald Zehrfeld and Nina Hoss (IFC)Nelly (Nina Hoss) was a cabaret singer before World War II, but has returned home from Auschwitz with facial injuries that require reconstructive surgery that alters her looks. As I wrote in my Spectrum Culture review, Lene (Nina Kunzendorf) tells Nelly that her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), betrayed her to the Nazis in exchange for his own freedom, but Nelly refuses to believe it, and tracks him down … in a nightclub with the overly-meaningful name of Phoenix. Nelly’s face is changed enough that he doesn’t recognize her, and she doesn’t let on who she really is even when he suggests that she looks enough like his presumably dead wife that she might be able to help him claim her estate. He asks her to stage a triumphant return from the concentration camp to prove she’s alive, and promises to split the estate with her. It’s a profound psychological horror: when Nelly tries to play herself as her husband wishes, he’s not convinced, as if he hadn’t really been paying attention to his wife at all.” Director Christian Petzold sets Vertigo after the Holocaust in this slow-burn melodrama that ends with one of the year’s most powerful scenes, but the drama that precedes it doesn’t fully rise to the occasion.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Bethesda Row
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(courtesy Titanus)This weekend the National Gallery of Art launches the month-long series Titanus Presents: A Family Chronicle of Italian Cinema, which features rare 35mm prints from the renowned production house that gave birth to films by legendary Italian directors like Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Michaelangelo Antonioni. The program begins with this 1962 giallo parody from director Steno, who had a prolific career but is little known in the States. The Gallery will also be screening 35mm prints of director Ermanno Olmi’s 1963 drama The Fiancés (Saturday, August 8 at 4 p.m.) and Antonioni’s early melodrama Le Amiche (Sunday, August 9 at 4 p.m.).
Totò Diabolicus screens Saturday, August 8 at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Free.
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The Freer’s 20th annual Made in Hong Kong film festival continues this weekend with a rare 35mm print of a landmark in Hong Kong action cinema. The gallery writes that, “Johnny Mak’s directorial debut is a seminal film that established the Hong Kong gangster movie genre and is now one of the Hong Kong Film Archive’s 100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies. Lam Wai plays Tung, the leader of a gang of former soldiers living on the edge of poverty in mainland China. Desperate to change their situation, they hatch a plot to rob a Hong Kong jewelry store and return to China with their spoils. This dream of easy riches falters upon the gang’s arrival in Hong Kong, where they are pursued by enemies on both sides of the law.” Friday the Freer will be screening a DCP of one of the more recent entries in the genre, director Lee Po-cheung’s Gangster Payday (Friday, August 7 at 7 p.m.).
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, August 9 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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“A jive-ass talking bama jama … has to set right some wrongs but left his fashion sense in the gutter.” So the Washington Psychotronic Film Society describes this 1975 blaxpolitation comedy starring Rudy Ray Moore, who also co-wrote the film and its soundtrack. Director D’Urville Martin played an elevator operator in Rosemary’s Baby. Who knew?
Watch the trailer.
Monday, August 10 at 8 p.m. at Acre 121.
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Also opening this week; Jason Segal puts on a bandana to play author David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour; and Miles Teller stars in another Marvel movie reboot, Fantastic Four. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
