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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Robert Powell

Mahler

The series, “Directed by Ken Russell,” presented by the Library of Congress in association with DCist and Brightest Young Things, continues this week with a 35mm print of Russell’s 1974 film about composer Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale). The film takes place entirely on a train ride, the camera wandering to the kind of highly stylized flashbacks and dream sequences that are the director’s signature. Hosted by Music Division staff member and DCist’s chief film critic, yours truly. All films will be shown in the Mary Pickford Theater, third floor of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building (101 Independence Avenue SE). Doors open 30 minutes before screening. Seating is very limited, but standbys are encouraged to line up starting at 6:30 p.m. In the likely event of a sellout, available seats will be released to standbys five minutes before show time. For information, call 202-707-5502. Read more about the Library of Congress’ 2014-15 concert season here.

View the trailer.
Friday, September 19 at 7 p.m. at the Mary Pickford Theater. Advanced tickets are sold out, but people can get in free at the door. The standby line forms at 6:30 p.m.

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Wallace Shawn and Lisa Joyce (Bob Vergara/Abramorama)

A Master Builder

Playwright Henrik Ibsen was 70 when he had an affair with an 18-year old girl. This autobiographical detail fueled his play The Master Builder, about aging architect Halvard Solness and his complicated relationships with women and colleagues. Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory return to the screen for only the second time since My Dinner with Andre with their adaptation of Ibsen, written by Shawn and directed by Jonathan Demme. Shawn and Gregory rehearsed this material over a span of fifteen years, and their mastery of the material is clear. Shawn may best be known for crying “inconceivable!” in The Princess Bride, but his incendiary portrayal of a cruel, manipulative artist plays against that stereotype of elfin mischievousness. With Julie Hagerty in a strong supporting performance as the master builder’s neglected wife.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.

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Christoph Waltz and Mélanie Thierry (Amplify)

The Zero Theorem

Qohen Leth (Christoph Waltz) crunches numbers for a soulless company in a dystopic future decked in colors that would make the ’80s blush. Leth searches for the meaning of life. Will he find love? In his first film since The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
(2009), director Terry Gilliam opens his film with an homage to Terry Jones’ nude organist character in Monty Python, but this return to the Kafaka-esque futurism of Brazil is a poorly scripted muddle. David Thewliss puts in a lively performance as Leth’s boss, but the usually reliable Waltz is wasted in a role that doesn’t take advantage of his authoritative voice. Co-starring Tilda Swinton as Dr. Shrink-Rom (really!), the film has ambition and great sets, but its vision of the future already seems dated, like Chris Marker’s Level Five for dummies.

View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at the AFI Silver.

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Edgar Ramirez in The Liberator

Latin American Film Festival and the New AFI Program Guide

The AFI’s 25th annual celebration of cinema from Latin America (and, for good measure, Spain and Portugal) opens tonight with The Liberator, a Venezuelan biopic of freedom fighter Simón Bolívar (Édgar Ramírez, Carlos). Opening night festivities are sold out, but you can also see The Liberator on September 27. See the full festival program here. The Latin American Festival dominates the AFI Calendar through October 8, when repertory screenings return with a Silent Cinema Showcase (October 24-November 23), Noir City DC 2014 (October 18-30), and showcases focused on Robert Wise, Norman Lloyd, Věra Chytilová, Tim Burton, and William Castle. Download the new AFI Program Guide here (pdf).

View the trailer for The Liberator.
The Latin American Film Festival runs from September 18-October 8 at the AFi Silver.

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Olavi Virta and friend

Olavi Virta

The National Gallery’s series Helsinki Forever continues this weekend with documentaries by Finnish critic and filmmaker Peter von Bagh. The 1978 film Paavo Nurmi—The Man and His Times tells the story of the athlete nicknamed the “Flying Finn.” Nurmi won twelve Olympic medals and set more than twenty world records for long-distance running. But the reason I am listing this is for the accompanying short film, von Bagh’s 1988 documentary on Finnish tango singer Olavi Virta. According to the gallery, “there is a legend that when [the film] was screened for the first time, people in every part of Finland went wild, unable to handle the sight of tango’s greatest voice and the symbol of postwar celebrity.”

View Olavi Virta performing “Hula hula hula hula hula hoop” to understand why a nation went wild.
Saturday, September 20 at 2:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, West Building Lecture Hall. Free.

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Also opening this week: Kevin Smith makes a horror movie. We’ll have a full review of Tusk tomorrow.