Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
(Warner Bros. Pictures)
Director Christopher Nolan has taken audiences through Gotham City (The Dark Knight franchise) and into outer space (Interstellar), but he’s getting some of the best reviews of his career for this historical dramatization of a May 1940 incident in which Allied troops trapped by German forces were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. Indiewire isn’t alone in calling this, “the best film he’s ever made.” Nolan, one of Hollywood’s last champions of analogue filmmaking, has the clout to have his latest film released in 70mm film in selected markets So, as with the roadshow version of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, a handful of area multiplexes will be outfitted with 70mm projectors for a limited time. See it on the biggest screen possible.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tonight in 70mm at the AFI Silver, Regal Gallery Place, AMC Hoffman, and AMC Tysons, in IMAX laser at the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater, and in other formats at other area theaters.
(Kino Lorber)
Thana (Thaneth Warakulnukroh) is a middle-aged Bangkok architect who becomes unhappy with his job when one of his biggest projects is slated for demolition. But one day he runs into Popeye, an elephant that he remembers from his childhood 30 years ago. The directorial debut from Kirsten Tan turns the tables on the old dream of running away to join the circus—the architect buys his old elephant friend and takes it on a road trip. NPR’s Mark Jenkins writes that, “the movie, shot in muted colors and often from an distance, doesn’t pretend to understand even its central duo all that well. Their journey is gently absurd, not revelatory.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
Craig T. Nelson, Heather O’Rourke, and JoBeth Williams (MGM)
After buying a new home, a family is rattled when five-year-old Carol Ann (Heather O’Rourke) begins to watch too much television. Recently subjected to an indifferent remake, this 1982 horror classic was a prescient media satire whose wildly careening supernatural beats visited havoc on suburban tranquility and the real estate market. Though credited to Texas Chainsaw Massacre helmer Tobe Hooper, the film was long rumored to have actually been directed by producer Steven Speilberg, and those rumors have only just this week been confirmed. Screened as part of the AFI Silver’s weekend-long look back at Fantastic ’82, a cinematic summer that marked the released of such defining genre movies as E.T. (July 22 at 2:15 p.m), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (July 22 at 4:45), John Carpenter’s The Thing (July 21 at 10:45 p.m.) and Tron (July 22 at 7:05 p.m.).
Watch the trailer.
Poltergiest screens Friday, July 21 at 7:30 p.m .at the AFI Silver.
(The Freer)
The 22nd annual Made in Hong Kong Film Festival continues this weekend with a “Tarantino-esque action movie” starring actress Kara Wai, a veteran action star who first came to prominence in ’70s Hong Kong films like Mad Monkey Kung Fu. In this 2016 thriller, Wai plays a retired assassin who lives as a housewife. But when a former criminal associate (Hong Kong action veteran Simon Yam) comes knocking, she’s forced back into a world she had left behind. Also screening this weekend, Three (July 23 at 1 p.m.), a lesser effort from master director Johnnie To.
Watch the trailer for Mrs. K.
Sunday, July 23 at 3:30 at the National Museum of American History, Warner Bros. Theater. Free.
Bad guy Robert Ryan cuddles up in occupied Japan (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp./Photofest)
Samuel Fuller (Shock Corridor) directed this 1955 CinemaScope film noir about an American military cop (Robert Stack) in occupied Japan who infiltrates a gang of rogue GI’s led by Robert Ryan and falls in love with geisha Shirley Yamaguchi. The gallery will be showing a 35mm print. Introduced by Marsha Gordon, professor of film studies at North Carolina State University author of Film is Like a Battleground: Sam Fuller’s War Movies. Gordon will sign books after the screening.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, July 22 at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Free.
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Also opening this week, Ethan Hawke plays a character named Jolly the Pimp in Luc Besson’s science fiction fantasy, Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
