Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Annette Bening and Lucas Jade Zumann (Merrick Morton/A24)
It takes a village to raise a child, and an unusual village in late ’70s Santa Barbara raises Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann), the teenage son of a single mother (Annette Bening). This coming-of-age drama charts writer-director Mike Mills’ own childhood, and while it’s not unusual for an artist to use their own life as their subject, his latest film largely avoids the potential for self-important navel gazing that may seem inherent to the semi-autobiographical drama. Which doesn’t mean the film never gets heavy-handed, or telegraphs big moments of Life Lesson Learned Here. The filmmakers also get minor details wrong, particularly when it comes to vinyl records (for instance, that 10″ pressing of the pre-Rollins Black Flag single “Nervous Breakdown” wasn’t released until the early ’90s). Yet the flawless ensemble cast and deft editing by Leslie Jones carries this on waves of pure cinema, especially when that alchemical balance of sound and vision finds just the right and not-too-obvious musical cue. 20th Century Women celebrates the women who raised Jamie during a time of vast cultural upheaval, but is finally a touching and funny movie about a boy becoming a man. Read LAist’s full review here.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row, and Angelika Mosaic.
(Olympic Pride, American Prejudice LLC)
OLYMPIC PRIDE, AMERICAN PREJUDICE
Athlete Jesse Owens famously defied claims of Nazi superiority at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. But he was just one of 18 African-American competitors participating in the event, and director Deborah Riley Draper tells the story of the less-heralded athletes who paved the way for the Civil Rights movement. Next week’s screening at the DCJCC will be followed by a Q&A with director Deborah Riley Draper, executive producer Michael A. Draper, and Wilfred “Wolfie” Fraser (son of Louise Stokes, 1936 Olympian and first Black woman to qualify for an American Olympic team).
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Edlavitch DCJCC, 1529 16th Street NW
Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch (IFC)
Father and son morticians (Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch) are mystified by a female corpse (Olwen Kelly) that has withstood horrific internal injuries yet seems perfectly preserved from the outside. VOD horror films are often cause for trepidation, and the latest from director André Øvredal (Trollhunter) has a sensationalistic title that may well give you pause. But this is a smart, well-crafted two-hander (three if you count the unusually expressive corpse) whose atmospheric lighting and sound is well-worth seeing in a theater—especially as much of the film takes place in a near-darkness that briefly turns it into a kind of experimental radio play. For now you have to venture to Winchester for this kind of midnight fare, but this is a preview of the kind of quality genre picture that moviegoers in town can expect when Alamo puts down roots on Rhode Island Avenue in 2019.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Alamo Winchester
still from WHEN THE EARTH TREMBLED (Lubin Manufacturing Co., 1913) (courtesy EYE Film Institute)
CINÉ-CONCERT: WHEN THE EARTH TREMBLED
As part of its series, Jean Desmet’s Dream Factory, 1906 – 1916, which celebrates a Belgian carny-turned-film-distributor, the National Gallery of Art presents a series of ciné-concerts that tap Desmet’s film collection (with digital transfers) and recreate what one of the showman’s own film programs might have been like. When the Earth Trembled reminds us that disaster movies existed long before Irwin Allen, with a featurette about a young mother who survives the Great San Francisco Earthquake. Pianist Andrew Simpson will be on hand for live musical accompaniment.
Sunday, January 15 at 5:30 p.m. at the large auditorium in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building. Free.
Director William Witney may be the only film maker whose career encompasses B-movie westerns and Blaxplotation. As The Washington Psychotronic Film Society puts it, “You know there’s gonna be trouble when a bell-bottom-clad, black female biker searches for her lost mama and crosses paths with stupid cops, the KKK, and an evil Col. Sanders look-alike.” Starring Bond girl Trina Parks (Diamonds Are Forever) and with a musical appearance by The Dramatics, whose theme song gives the tagline its kicker: “They’re fast as a jet, sharp as Gillette! And what you see is what you get.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, January 16 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel
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Also opening this week, a mother searches for her estranged daughter in Julieta, director Pedro Almodóvar’s adaptation of stories by Alice Munro. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
