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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Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey (Bleecker Street Media)

Elvis & Nixon

On December 21, 1970, an unexpected visitor showed up on the White House lawn requesting to see then-President Nixon. That visitor was Elvis Presley, and the meeting that resulted was one of the most unusual photo-ops in the annals of pop culture. Director Liza Johnson (Hateship Loveship) turns this meeting of minds into a historical comedy, and while Kevin Spacey is merely doing a servicable Nixon impersonation, Michael Shannon, who looks nothing like Elvis, turns in a surprisingly sensitive performance. Shannon can’t help but lend a sinister air to every role he touches, and here he uses that menacing presence to raise this film slightly above the level of a one-joke comedy; you completely understand why everyone in his path honors whatever ridiculous request Presley makes, but you also see a hint of his naive, almost childlike vulnerability, though naturally not when he shoots out the television sets at Graceland. Shannon’s performance doesn’t save the film from music cues that at times turns this into a cheap oldies revue, but despite the movie’s flaws, the actor’s fans won’t be disappointed in their star.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row and Regal Ballston Common.

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Logan Marshall-Green (Drafthouse FIlms)

The Invitation

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his date Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi, recently seen in Miles Ahead) attend a dinner party hosted by his ex-wife (Tammy Blanchard), at the Los Angeles house where they once lived together. As the evening grows increasingly uncomfortable, Will suspects his hosts have sinister intentions—but is he just being paranoid? And what trauma is haunting him? Director Karyn Kusama has come a long way from the horror genre tropes of Jennifer’s Body (2009); what makes this stylish psychological thriller work is the unease with which Will tries to navigate a social situation that is familiar yet changed. If not quite as intensely as the similarly dysfunctional social horror of Krisha, this reflects a basic anxiety of being among other people.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI Silver

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Jesse Eisenberg and David Druis (Jakob Ihre/Motly)

Louder than Bombs

War photographer Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert) has survived assignments in volatile parts of the world. But after she dies in a car crash not far from her New York home, her family deals with grief in different and not always constructive ways. This is the first English-language film from director Joachim Trier (Oslo, August 31st), and its wild visual imagination is impressive without entirely working against the painful emotions at the film’s core. The family’s mourning is a complex backdrop for the messiness of life at any age, from her husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne) to her adult son Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg), but the overwhelming intensity of existence seems ultimately filtered through her teenage son Conrad (Devin Druid), which makes this sprawling but tightly controlled narrative an effective coming-of-age movie.

Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at The Avalon and Angelika Pop-up.

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Ginny Simms

Disc Jockey

Tonight, the Library’s Pickford Theater screens a newly restored 35mm print of a music feature from 1951 that has never been released on home video. Disc jockey Michael O’Shea may be in trouble when his boss wants to leave radio for television, but the DJ uses his contacts to round up support. The all-star cast includes Russ Morgan, Tommy Dorsey, George Shearing, Herb Jeffries, Sarah Vaughn, The Weavers, Red Norvo, and 28 real life radio DJs of the era. My friend Matthew Barton, recorded sound curator at the Library of Congress, will introduce the program.

Tonight, April 21 at 7 p.m at the Mary Pickford Theatre, third floor of the Madison Building, Library of Congress. Free. Seating is on a first-come first-serve basis. Doors open at 6:30 pm.

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Paul Muni

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

James (Paul Muni, in a heartbreaking performance) leaves his boring office job during the Great Depression. It seems like his luck can’t get any worse when he’s wrongly convicted of a restaurant holdup and is sentenced to hard labor. The AFI will screen a 35mm print of this classic 1932 Warner Bros. social problem drama, and it’s dark, almost chiaroscuro cinematography by Sol Polito should be seen on the big screen.

Watch the trailer.
Sunday, April 24 at 11 a.m. and 7:45 p.m. at the AFI Silver.

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Alsop opening this week, Anton Yelchin is a punk singer and Patrick Stewart a neo-Nazi cleanup man in Green Room, the latest thriller from Alexandria native Jeremy Saulnier. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.