Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
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(Criterion)The AFI Silver’s Burt Lancaster retrospective continues this weekend with one of his greatest performances, even though he’s dubbed in Italian. Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Lancaster) is the patriarch of a proud noble family in decline, with the advent of the modern world of 1860s Sicily. Director Luchino Visconti specialized in lush epics that are meant to be seen on the big screen, and this 1963 film is his masterpiece—a must-see on the big screen. I’m glad the AFI is showing the restored 202-minute cut, but it’s too bad it’s DCP. If the ornate scenery and graceful cinematography wasn’t pretty enough for you, the film also co-stars Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale.
View the trailer.
Saturday, May 10 and Sunday, May 11 at the AFI Silver.
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Meat Loaf and Allie MacDonald (Magnet Releasing)A masked killer terrorizes a musical theater camp in this coming-of-age, finding-your-voice musical horror comedy. Stage Fright is structured like an ’80s slasher, with a violent pre-credit sequence introducing its predominate themes of show tunes and bloodshed. But the real theme is class: Camilla (Allie McDonald) is a camp cook who would kill for her own chance at the spotlight, but she needs to win over the camp director (Meatloaf) and the silver-spooned young actors attending. I think the musical theater numbers are meant to be annoying, and they are, and this tends to work against the coming-of-age element. This is director Jerome Sable’s second horror-musical, his first being The Legend of Beaver Dam, and it’s competent and kind-of watchable, but camp sensibilities threaten to overwhelm the adolescent horrors at its core.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at West End CInema.
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Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina (Criterion)Eddie Constantine stars as Lemmy Caution, a hard-boiled gumshoe caught in a dystopian future in director Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 sci-fi noir, also starring iconic Godard heroine Anna Karina. E Street Landmark is showing a new DCP of a film that was never officially reissued, and I’m glad companies are preserving our cinematic history for a new generation of moviegoers. Godard generally leaves me cold, but I fondly remember seeing a 16mm print of this at the PIckford Theater, the compromised visuals accenting the B-movie vision.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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(Milestone Film and Video)The series Martin Scorcese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema continues this weekend with offerings at the National Gallery of Art and the AFI Silver. Sunday afternoon, the Gallery screens director Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1982 film Austeria. At the start of World War I, a group of Polish Jews takes shelter at a roadside inn or austeria as an invading Cossack army approaches. Sunday night, the AFI Silver screens Andrzej Wajda’s 1960 love story Innocent Sorcerers, co-written with Jerzy Skolimowski (screenwriter for Polanski’s Knife in the Water and director of Deep End) and with a jazz score by Krzysztof Komeda (Rosemary’s Baby). As with all screenings in the Polish Masterpieces series, these will be in DCP format.
View the trailer for Austeria.
Austeria screens Sunday, May 11 at 4 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium, Free. Innocent Sorcerers screens Sunday May 11, at 9:45 p.m. and Monday May 12 at 7:15 p.m.
The Freer Gallery’s series Here Comes the Night: Cinema Nocturnes continues with a 35mm screening of director Claire Denis’ s 2002 film about a young woman caught in a traffic jam. Critic David Sterritt writes that Denis “[treats] each tiny detail as a lovingly placed fragment of what gradually grows into an enticing mosaic of time, place, and personality. Friday Night is part tone poem, part love song, and all pure magic.” Followed by a 35mm screening of director Chantal Akerman’s 1991 film Night and Day.
View the trailer for Friday Night.
Friday Night screens Sunday, May 11 at 1 p.m. Night and Day screens Sunday, May 11 at 3 p.m. At the Freer. Free.
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Also opening this week, watch Tom Hardy make phone calls, supervise a concrete pour and let his life fall apart while he’s driving in Locke. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
