Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Niels Schneider and Anastasia Shevtsova (Oscilloscope)
Born to a struggling Moscow family, Polina (Anastasia Shevtsova) is groomed to dance from an early age, and years of hard work and sacrifice seem ready to pay off when she earns a spot on the Bolshoi Ballet. But her French boyfriend (Niels Schneider) inspires her to flee the classical dance of Russia for the more challenging, modern work of a French choreographer (Juliette Binoche). I’m a sucker for dance movies, and this week’s best new release is kind of an arthouse Step Up, with more graceful dancing and a real live Moose. Shevtsova comes from St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Ballet and successfully conveys all her character’s stubbornness, impulsiveness, and dedication. Co-directed by Valérie Müller and Angelin Preljocaj, Polina doesn’t hold any surprises, but it’s a frequently mesmerizing look at the world of dance as seen through the eyes of a budding young artist.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark E Street Cinema.
Justin Chon and Simone Baker (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
Eli (Justin Chon) and his brother Daniel (David So) are Korean-Americans who run a bootleg shoe store in South Los Angeles, sometimes with the help of their friend Kamilla (Simone Baker), an African-American tween. Chon, best known for the Twilight movies and the frat boy comedy 21 and Over (which I still insist features a sly reference to the work of Ai Weiwei), wrote and directed this dramatization of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the dynamic owes a lot to the racial tensions of Do the Right Thing; this is a climate in which Asians, African-Americans, and Latinas are all at each other’s throats. The movie has its heart in the right place, essentially echoing King’s plea, “Can we all get along?” But the scattered script and frequently shouted performances undercut the tragic drama of general human discord.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Atlantic Plumbing Cinema.
Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri (Amazon Studios/Magnolia Pictures)
This weekend, the AFI’s series of International Crime Dramas brings back one of 2016’s most entertaining movies. As I wrote last year, “it’s essentially the same gothic milieu as [director Park Chan-wook’s disappointing] Stoker, but the consistently strong cast and the roving camera that gives you a wide-angle tour of a half-Victorian, half-Japanese mansion—and the sex and violence—keeps things moving for a two-and-a-half hour ride that never gets boring. That architectural mongrel is an apt setting for a movie about clashes: between the conqueror and the oppressed, the criminal class and the aristocracy, propriety and bold candor, innocence and experience… the movie draws you in with expert cinematic technique before it immerses you in its lurid tale.”
Watch the trailer.
Friday, September 1 and Sunday, September 3 at the AFI Silver.
(Collection Musée Gaumont)
The National Gallery of Art’s series Gaumont at 120: Twelve Unseen Treasures wraps up this weekend with a 35mm print of this rarely screened 1939 crime drama. When several young women disappear after answering a personals column, police recruit a dancer (Orpheus‘ Marie Déa) to go undercover. But, enchanted by a charming and talented bachelor (Maurice Chevalier), will she be the next victim? Director Robert Siodmak made the film in France before he left for Hollywood, where he specialized in such taut films noirs as The Killers and Criss Cross. Legendary director Erich von Stroheim co-stars. The film was remade in 1947 as Lured, directed by Douglas Sirk and starring Lucille Ball in a rare glamour role.
Saturday, September 2 at 1:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Free.
(Horrorfreaknews)
The Washington Psychotronic Film Society celebrates Labor Day with a movie regularly considered one of the most entertaining bad movies ever made. Originally titled Goblins, the film was renamed to market it as a sequel to the 1986 horror movie Troll, even though the films have no narrative connection and the “sequel” does not in fact feature any trolls. The camp classic has since been celebrated in the wonderful 2009 documentary Best Worst Movie, directed by Michael Paul Stephenson, who starred in Troll 2 when he was 10 years old.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, September 4 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel.
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Also opening this week, veteran actress Lois Smith and Mad Men‘s Jon Hamm star in the science fiction drama Marjorie Prime, adapted from the Pulitzer-nominated play. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
