Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies not taking place on the planet Jakku playing around town in the coming week.
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The AFI’s 28th annual European Union Film Showcase wraps up this weekend with a new deathly dry comedy from Romanian director Corneliu Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, Police, Adjective). Costi (Toma Cuzin, who can also be seen in an encore screening of Aferim! Sunday night) reluctantly helps his neighbor Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu) procure a metal detector to look for buried treasure on his late grandfather’s estate. Cinephiles with a taste for the glacial pacing of the Romanian New Wave will appreciate the film’s deadpan comedy of desperation, but those who find no potential for humor in the sight of three men digging a six-foot hole in the ground should probably just see The Force Awakens (or our next title) instead.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, December 19 at the AFI Silver.
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Margaret Sullavan and James StewartGeographically speaking, director Ernst Lubitsch’s ur-romantic comedy takes place a mere 400 miles from The Treasure, but in a very different world. The film creates a 1940’s Hollywood version of a Budapest main street where two lonely shop clerks (James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan) put away their loathing for each other and find love for the holidays. It was remade as You’ve Got Mail, but don’t hold that against this timeless romance. The AFI Silver will be screening a 35mm print. And it’s not the holiday season without It’s a Wonderful Life. The AFI will be screening a DCP of the Frank Capra classic from Sunday, December 20 through Thursday, December 24.
Watch the trailer
The Shop Around the Corner screens Monday, December 21 and Thursday, December 24 at the AFI Silver.
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Annie Girardot and Alain Delon (Milestone)An immigrant family from the South of Italy falls apart in the industrial North. The National Gallery of Art’s series Twenty-Five Years of Milestone Film continues this weekend with director Luchino Visconti’s epic drama from 1960 about the Parondi family. Critic Judy Bloch writes that Rocco (Alain Delon) is “a character like Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin or Bresson’s Balthazar.” That is one pretty donkey! This will be the Washington premiere of a new digital restoration.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, December 19 at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.
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An exiled prince stumbles on a magical land ruled by shape-shifting raccoons, and he falls in love with their princess. For the last several months, the Freer has given Washington moviegoers something that was the envy of jaded New Yorkers: the chance to see pristine 35mm prints from one of the masters of Japanese cinema—for free. Programmed to coincide with the release of a new book on Seijun by the Freer film curator Tom Vick (fun fact: I was short-listed for his job years ago, but I’m glad he got it), the series traveled to Lincoln Center last month, but this weekend the Freer wraps it up with a 35mm print of the director’s most recent and likely final film, from 2005. This weekend the Freer will also screen a print of Pistol Opera (December 18 at 7 p.m.), Suzuki’s 2001 sequel to his action classic Branded to Kill.
Watch a clip.
Sunday, December 20 at 2 p.m. at the Freer. Free.
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In case you missed it, I reviewed Star Wars: The Force Awakens yesterday — and I liked it! Read my review here, and stay tuned for my year-end best list.
