Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
“Snowball” by Maud Lewis. Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, all rights reserved (Sony Pictures Classics)
In this biopic from director Aisling Walsh, Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) stars as Maud Lewis, a Canadian folk artist who developed juvenile arthritis and struggled to live on her own, until she found love with a disheveled curmudgeonly bachelor (Ethan Hawke). Lewis painted landscapes and animals in an endearing Art Naive style whose delights are a stark contrast to the suffering she endured—her back and limbs were terribly twisted by the time she reached adulthood. Stay tuned for a review from SFist.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row, and Angelika Mosaic.
Vince Giordano (Charlie Gross/First Run Features)
VINCE GIORDANO: THERE’S A FUTURE IN THE PAST
Orchestra leader Vince Girodano, with his 11-piece band The Nighthawks (no relation to the D.C. blues band of that name) has contributed vintage jazz to films by Woody Allen, Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, and is himself the subject of this 2016 documentary. “We change the mood of a lot of people who come to hear us, if they’re down or world-weary,” Giordano told DCist “Some tell me, ‘this is better than going to my psychiatrist.'” Giordano and his orchestra will appear at the AFI Silver Saturday night, where he will be interviewed by WAMU’s Rob Bamberger and perform a set of classic jazz. Stay tuned for a preview of the event on Friday.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, June 24 at 3 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
(Belva Film)
The National Gallery of Art wraps up its series dedicated to the minimalist work of the husband and wife film makers Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet with this 1984 drama adapted from Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika. Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that, “the camera somehow gives the impression that it would prefer to stay where it is. It’s a cat that wants to sit in the sun. The minimalism is expressed in the impassive attitudes of the actors, and in the manner in which they deliver their dialogue, which sounds as if they were giving instructions on how to put on one’s life jacket in case of an unscheduled landing at sea.” The gallery will be screening a 35mm print of this rarely revived title.
Watch a clip.
Sunday, June 25 at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium. Free.
(stevemobia.com)
Suns Cinema continues its series dedicated to the Art Theatre Guild, a Japanese underground film company known for subversive films, with an unusual coming-of-age tale. The film observes a director who revisits childhood memories of a cruel widowed mother, the girl he was obsessed with next door, and his dreams of joining the circus. If that sounds a bit like Fellini, Suns cautions that’s a “very wide of the mark: the film isn’t burdened with bombast or rhetoric, but it is rich in (authentically Japanese) poetry, and its modernist approach is challenging in the best and most accessible sense.”
Watch the trailer.
Tuesday, June 27 at 8 p.m. at Suns Cinema.
(WPFS)
This week the Washington Psychotronic Film Society presents a 2005 mockumentary that originated as a public access television show in Seattle. “In the tradition of This is Siinal Tap,” the Psychotronic curators explain, the film “follows the monstrous, foul-mouthed, paper-mache-headed title character and his human friends Sweet Benny and Marty on their quest for rock ‘n’ roll stardom. BitterMan23 on IMDb writes, “If you like random humor, then you’ll love this. Any movie that has a guy listening to a tape of celebrity footsteps automatically gets an A from me.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, June 26 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel.
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Also opening this week, cannibal love story The Bad Batch, from director Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night). We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
