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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Dr. Leonard Kleinrock, developed the mathematical theory of packet networks, the technology underpinning the Internet. (Magnolia Pictures)Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
Director Werner Herzog can be a challenging filmmaker, and not just aesthetically; one of the assignments he gives to students who take his on-line masterclass is to pick a direction starting at your house and walk 100 miles. The petrified moviegoer may well assume that his latest documentary, about the history of the internet and its future implications, is simply a cautionary tale. But in a recent interview with DCist, he made the surprising confession that he likes, of all things, cat videos. Herzog’s love for the insane outsider may have mellowed, and the characters in Lo and Behold are more nerds than wildmen, like artificial intelligence proponent Elon Musk, and Dr. Leonard Kleinrock, who helped develop the technology that led to the very platform you’re reading this on. Yet underneath this fairly gentle diatribe runs a fear that the web’s inevitable failure will leave mankind struggling to survive. Although the movie was made before the rise of Pokémon Go, the director has since responded to the app in typical fashion: “Is there violence? Is there murder?”
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at :Landmark E Street Cinema.
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(Lionsgate Premiere)The return of Harry Pottermania will probably not boost the box office chances for the latest film starring its cinematic wizard. This new crime thriller stars Daniel Radcliffe in a battle against a very different kind of evil as FBI agent Nate Foster, who infiltrates a white supremacy group. With a 93 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the buzz is good, though the Village Voice’s Bilge Ebiri has reservations, writing that, “for all its intriguing tonal shifts and weird attempts to blend humor and menace, the film neither plunges into its world nor makes us care about its story.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-up.
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This weekend the AFI screens a 35mm print of one of director Stanley Kubrick’s mid-career masterpieces. Based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, the picaresque period piece stars Ryan O’Neal as a callow Irishman who deserts the British army in a series of misadventures. Cinematographer John Alcott, who frequently worked with Kubrick but also shot the lurid Wings Hauser thriller Vice Squad, won an Oscar for the gorgeous available-light photography that makes every frame of this film a visual pleasure. Note: Saturday’s screening will be a 35mm print, while the Wednesday evening show will be a DCP.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, August 20 at 5:15 p.m. (in 35mm) and Wednesday, August 24 at 7:15 p.m. (in DCP) at the AFI Silver.
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Courtesy of the FreerDirector Jia Zhangke visited the Freer in 2014 for a screening of his uncharacteristically violent film A Touch of Sin. On Saturday, the Freer screens (at the American History Museum’s Warner Bros. Theater) the director’s latest film, which the gallery writes is, “an intensely moving study of how China’s economic boom and the resulting materialism have affected the bonds of family, tradition, and love.” Also screening this weekend is Jia Zhangke: A Guy from Fenyang (Sunday, August 21 at 4:15 p.m. at the National Portrait Gallery), a new documentary from Brazilian director Walter Salles (Central Station) .
Watch the trailer for Mountains May Depart
Mountains May Depart screens Saturday, August 20 at 2 p.m. at the American History Museum’s Warner Bros. Theater. Jia Zhangke: A Guy from Fenyang screens Sunday, August 21 at 4:15 p.m. at the National Portrait Gallery’s McEvoy Auditorium. Both screenings are free.
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The Washington Psychotronic Film Society brings you the best of Japanese monster movies next week with a screening of this 1966 feature from director Hajime Satô (Goke, Body Snatcher From Hell). Ôgon Batto, aka The Golden Bat, stars martial arts legend Sonny Chiba (Kill Bill) as head of a group that protects Japan by, as the society’s curators put it, “watching the skies for evil aliens. And hotdog, a whole shipload of them turns up! From their 4-eyed, clamp-clawed leader to a hot chick who can shape-shift. Our heroes accidentally re-animate the amazing Golden Bat, who has a long cape, a cane that shoots lasers, and the most insane, maniacal, echoing laugh ever heard.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, August 22 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel
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Also opening this week: Miles Teller and Joshua Hill star as a pair of twenty-somethings who win a huge Pentagon contract in War Dogs. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
