Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting and furry movies playing around town in the coming week.
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Noel Marshall lived to be 79. (Drafthouse FIlms)Noel Marshall has only one credit as a director, a film financed in part by proceeds made from a little film he produced called The Exorcist. Roar, originally released in 1981, is unlike any other film—thank God! It started as a six-month production slated to cost $3 million, but it took 11 years and another $11 million to finish a movie that some think should have sent the director to prison. The trailer proudly boasts that no animals were harmed making this film—but that 70 members of the cast and crew were harmed. I didn’t actually count the names in the credits, but I reckon they’re about 70. The plot, as it were, turns on wildlife preservationist (Marshall) and his real-life family, then-wife Tippi Hedren, stepdaughter Melanie Griffith, and his sons John and Jerry. Marshall’s family pays him a surprise visit in Africa (though the film was largely shot in a California location that is now the Shambala wildlife sanctuary). The film strikes an odd balance between a gory nature video and an extended Benny Hill sketch in which his entire family runs for their lives. At one point, Marshall was hospitalized for six months; Hedren developed gangrene; Griffith required facial reconstructive surgery after being mauled; both Marshall sons suffered concussions; and cinematographer Jan De Bont (who went on to direct Speed) required 220 stitches after a lion tried to carry him by his scalp. Nobody really has to act here, and they don’t. But Marshall, in his only acting credit, has a strange charisma, like a deranged hippie woodsman set loose in the jungle with gorgeous wildcats as his untrained menagerie. It’s too bad E Street is only scheduling this for midnight screenings; in it’s terrible way, it’s essential filmmaking.
Watch the trailer.
Friday and Saturday at midnight at Landmark E Street Cinema.
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Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche (IFC)Actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) agrees to perform in a revival of a play that made her famous 20 years ago, but her former starring role is now taken by a troubled ingenue (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her relationship with a young assistant (Kristen Stewart) is becoming increasingly volatile. Director Olivier Assayas (Carlos) takes as his central metaphor a cloud formation in the Swiss alps called the Maloja Snake, which happens to be the name of the play Binoche has signed up for. Assayas wrote the screenplay for Binoche’s early breakthrough Rendez-Vous, so this film is self-reflexive, playing with the same kind of actor’s identity crisis as Assayas’ 1996 breakthrough Irma Vep. But where Irma Vep was bold and ultimately experimental, this film is dry and navel-gazing. Binoche and Stewart both won César awards for their performances, but despite the feeling that the primary actresses are all playing a version of themselves, the movie feels overthought and self-conscious.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Bethesda Row
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(Vitagraph Films)Three brothers in Cabria ply their respective trades in this family drama. Luciano (Fabrizio Ferracane) herds goats on the family farm, while Luigi (Marco Leonardi) and Rocco (Peppino Mazzotta) are mafia drug lords. Luciano’s hot-head son Leo (Giuseppe Fumo) wants to play with his cool uncles. This fragile dynamic falls out like many gangster movies, but it is grounded by the Italian landscape and the actors’ performances, especially Ferracane’s turn as an elder who’s at once vulnerable and volcanic. The film is based on true stories fictionalized in a novel by Gioacchino Criaco.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Angelika Pop-Up and Angelika Mosaic.
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Tatsuya NakadaiThe AFI Silver launches three new series this weekend, including Adventures in 3D, the second part of Shakespeare Cinema and an Orson Welles Centennial celebration. They’re also showing the best movie in town this weekend, and I don’t mean Citizen Kane (in 35mm April 17, 18 and 23). Sunday afternoon, the Silver dedicates its huge main screen to a 35mm print of Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 masterpiece, Ran. The director spent a decade planning his adaptation of King Lear, which stars Tatsuya Nakadai as a sixteenth-century samurai who must divide his kingdom among three sons. Ran‘s epic battle scenes are among the finest in cinema, while Toru Takemitsu’s mournful score is a brilliant counterpoint to the brutally choreographed chaos.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, April 19 at 5:30 pm at the AFI Silver.
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Bombshells from Venus are sent to Earth for a human mate in this Mexican sci-fi western. Horrorpedia writes that it’s ” a much-mocked relic of its era, rife with tin-pot ideas and execution of even lower quality materials. However, to not enjoy this film is to not enjoy life itself.” The film is alternately tedious and fantastic—I couldn’t get through the whole thing—but the Washington Psychotronic Film Society and host Acre 21 will make it easier with barbecue and beer. A lot of it!
Watch a clip.
Monday, April 20 at 8:00 pm at Acre 21, 1400 Irving St. NW #109
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Also opening this week: a Japanese mystery writer, a small-town California sheriff, and a running man come together in the engaging neo-noir Man from Reno. We’ll have a full review tomorrow, as well as a selective guide to this year’s FilmFest DC.
