Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck (Claire Folger/Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions)
Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a Boston janitor who has weathered unimaginable tragedy. When he learns that his late brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has made him sole guardian of his teenage nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges), Lee feels completely unqualified for the job. Director Kenneth Lonergan has made only three films in 15 years, and this working class drama is his strongest, with Affleck the standout in a stellar cast that will make you reach for your hanky and imaginary Oscar ballot at the same time.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Thursday night at Landmark E Street Cinema and Landmark Bethesda Row
Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman (The Criterion Collection)
Actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) suddenly loses her voice on stage, and retreats to a cottage with her nurse Alma (Bib Andersson). The women soon find their identities hard to distinguish. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece is itself divided, at once a fascinating psychological drama and a bold avant-garde experiment unlike anything else he (or anybody else, his influence notwithstanding) ever made. To celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary, the AFI Silver is screening a new 35mm print, and it’s a must see for anyone who cares about the movies.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, November 27-Wednesday, November 30 at the AFI Silver.
Described by the Museum of Modern Art as “a Sirkian melodrama…put to the service of Maoist principles of loyalty and sacrifice,” this 1964 drama follows two friends in a traveling Chinese opera company in the 1930s and 40s. Like Douglas Sirk, director Xie Jin favored bold colors, but Xie fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, and the party condemned Stage Sisters for endorsing “the reconciliation of social classes.” Decades later, when Xie attempted to revive his career, he got it from the other side, dismissed as a Communist hack. Part of the Freer’s series, China Onscreen Biennial Sidebar: Dunhuang Projected.
Saturday, November 26 at 1:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building auditorium.
(Ad Vitam)
After three sisters go to Israel to sell their family home, their departed parents reappear, leading the siblings to reevaluate their plan. Released in 2014, this Franco-Israeli fantasy-drama is the first feature from director Shirel Amitai, who worked as an assistant director under Jacques Rivette. Jordan Mintzer in The Hollywood Reporter writes that “…at a timely moment that sees many French Jews moving to Israel in order to escape a hostile climate back home, the 1995-set story nonetheless fails to capitalize on a potentially thought-provoking scenario, opting instead for schmaltzy storytelling and predictable sibling rivalries, with a few welcome nods to actual historical events.”
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, November 29 at 7:30 p.m. at Edlavitch DCJCC, 1529 16th Street NW.
The Washington Psychotronic Film Society remembers the golden era of disaster movies with this 1976 disaster movie parody from director James Frawley (The Muppet Movie). The movie’s all-star cast is a time capsule of the era with Stockard Channing, Sally Kellerman Joseph Bologna, Ned Beatty, Ruth Gordon, and many more faces that will be familiar to anyone who watched a lot of tv in the ’70s. But the real star is the massive nuclear-powered and possible carnivorous bus Cyclops.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, November 28 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel.
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Also opening this week; Disney goes to the Pacific with the voices of Dwayne Johnson and the songwriting and singing talents of Lin-Manuel Miranda in Moana.
