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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This weekend, the AFI screens a DCP restoration of the extended director’s cut of Sergio Leone’s late-career masterpiece. If the Godfather saga was about family, this epic gangster drama is about friendship—the decades-long friendship between Robert DeNiro and James Woods, from their ’20s childhood in New York’s Lower East Side to a reunion in the tumultuous ’60s. The film’s initial American release in 1984 slashed its running time and placed scenes in straight chronological order, but this 266-minute cut honors the director’s vision of a violent opium dream. Also starring Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth McGovern, and Burt Young, and with a gorgeous score by Ennio Morricone. A must-see on the big-screen.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, September 4 and Sunday, September 6-Monday, September 7 at the AFI Silver.
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Where in the Greater Washington area can you see Tamil, Telegu, and Kannada films on the big screen? Falls Church’s DC Cinemas, that’s where! The theater has been showing Indian movies since it was the Loehmann’s Twin. I haven’t been since the ’90s, and Google reviews complain about the bad food and no air conditioning. But even with chain theaters like the Regal Countryside in Sterling showing a regular slate of Bollywood movies (they’re still showing the epic blockbuster Baahubali), this is the only place where you can see current movies from other Indian film industries. Dynamite is a Telegu remake of the Tamil kidnapping thriller Arima Nambi (Man With The Strength of The Lion). According to his Wikipedia page, director Deva Katta “worked as a vehicle crashworthiness expert for General Motors,” which makes him a natural to helm an action movie, right? If anybody knows someone out there who handles press for Indian movies screening in the D.C. area, let me know!
Watch the trailer.
Now playing at DC Cinemas, 7291 Arlington Boulevard, Falls Church, Va.
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Laura Dern and Nicolas CageNicolas Cage and David Lynch were a match made in sleazy movie heaven. This weekend the AFI Silver celebrates the 25th anniversary of their sole collaboration with a 35mm print of Lynch’s wicked homage to The Wizard of Oz, co-starring Lynch regulars Laura Dern, Sherilyn Fenn, and Jack Nance, and featuring a memorable head performance by Willem Dafoe.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, September 4-Saturday, September 5 and Wednesday, September 9 at the AFI Silver.
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(Courtesy Photofest)The National Gallery of Art’s retrospective of the Italian production house Titanus continues this weekend with a 35mm print of director Dino Risi’s Italian comedy from 1955. The movie follows the light romantic adventures of Sophia Loren and her cousin Franca Valeri (who wrote the script) as they navigate the affections of a poet (director Vittorio De Sica), a suspect car salesman (comic actor Alberto Sordi), and a fireman (Raf Vallone). Rosi went on to direct the 1974 comedy Scent of a Woman, remade as the awful Al Pacino vehicle in 1992. Also screening at the Gallery this weekend are 35mm prints of Banditi a Orgosolo (September 6 at 2 p.m.), director Vittoria De Seta’s forgotten 1961 tale of shepherds on Sardinia; and director Francesco Rosi’s organized crime drama I Magliari (September 6 at 4 p.m.), with Sordi in an atypically serious role.
The Sign of Venus screens Saturday, September 5 at 1 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium.
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Old Greenbelt Theatre’s Friday night cult series continues tomorrow with a screening of this midnight chestnut—but with a slightly earlier 11 p.m. start time to accommodate an aging cult audience. In high school, I essentially heard the film’s complete dialogue before I ever saw the movie, and found it a safe bet to avoid anyone who’d come up to me with tales of the Knights who say “Ni!” Can you believe this movie is 40 years old? I’m going to take a nap at my desk.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, September 4 at 11 p.m. at the Old Greenbelt Theater, 129 Centerway, Greenbelt, Md.
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Also opening this week, Robert Redford and Nick Nolte take A Walk in the Woods in a salty adaptation of Bill Bryson’s beloved travel book. Read my review here.
