Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week, most of which i didn’t get a chance to preview.
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Regina Casé dotes on the boss’s son, Michel Joelsas (Oscilloscope)Val (Regina Casé) is a live-in housekeeper in São Paolo. She has a confident attitude, running the household and doting on her boss’s teenage son Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), retrieving a bag of pot that his mother made him throw away. But there is a clear and patronizing divide between Val and her employers, and when Val’s estranged daughter Jessica (Camila Márdila) comes to stay with them, this dynamic shifts in unexpected ways. Director Anna Muylaert gets strong performances out of her cast and likes to peer around doorways like this is Rosemary’s Baby, which effectively captures Val’s alienation.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Gong Li (Sony Pictures Classics)Lu Yanshi (Chen Daoming) and Feng Wanyu (Gong Li) are a couple torn apart when Lu is sent to a labor camp. But when Lu finally returns home, it’s to a wife who has forgotten who he is. Director Zhang Yimou reunites with the actress who starred in seven of his films, including masterpieces like Raise the Red Lantern. I haven’t had a chance to screen it, but it has been hailed as a minor, if melodramatic, return to form. NPR’s Bob Mondello describing it as “as both a Nicholas Sparks-style weepie, and a social commentary about the Cultural Revolution.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark Bethesda Row
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Junior is an amateur Brazilian soccer player with dreams of going pro, but he has extra competition when his best friend Bento becomes the target of big-league scouts. The AFI’s Latin American Film Festival continues this weekend with the North American premiere of director Ives Rosenfeld’s crowd-pleasing debut. Screendaily’s Laurence Boyce writes that Hopefuls “is an intriguing social realist film from Brazil which focuses on the way in which football gives many young Brazilians the possibility of a better life while also preparing them for an existence that is rife with disappointment … it crackles with a raw power and energy that echoes the youthfulness of its protagonists.”
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, September 26 at 5:15 p.m.and Sunday Sept. 27 at 5:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver.Q&A with filmmaker Ives Rosenfeld at both shows
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A poor family raises a boy they found on the streets, but when he turns 17 he becomes curious about his biological family. It’s the kind of story you might see on the Hallmark Channel, except none of those weepies take place in Southern India. The story is about a boy found on the streets of Southern India. I haven’t had a chance to preview the film, but I’m told that this is the first time that “Hollywood production values [have been used in] a locally produced Murati style (Rajasthani) film. The film gets its U.S. premiere this weekend as part of the DC South Asian Film Festival. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Kishor Kadam and Smita Tambe, who received the Indian equivalent of Oscars for their performances, as well as filmmakers Nitin Adsul, Darrel Cox, Clark McMillian, and Rupesh Mahajan.
Watch the trailer (in Marathi).
Saturday Sept 26 at 6 pm at the AMC Loews Rio Cinema, 9811 Washingtonian Ctr., Gaithersburg, Md.
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I love a man who knows what to do with a tuna jaw.Today’s food section includes two articles about the D.C. area’s Filipino food. With next week’s Washington Psychotronic Film Society‘s offering, you might think that my countrypeople are set to take over the city. What do we want? Blood! Psychotronic curators describe this 1971 exploitation flick as “an odd hybrid of horror film and spy thriller. When Filipino women turn up dead without a drop of blood left, American sex-crime expert Adam Rourke heads to Manila to help his homicide detective friend find the killer. Going undercover as a journalist, he soon falls prey to the “Golden Goddess”, a South American belly dancer who’s uncovered the ancient Aztec secret for eternal life. Armed with the thickest lisp this side of Boris Karloff, a mannequin named Harvey, and a series of comic one-liners, Rourke has to romance women, interact with an odd assortment of undercover cops, and avoid the clutches of a lumpy-faced, murderous monster!”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, September 28 at Acre 121
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Also opening up this week, Katherine Waterston and Mad Men‘s Elisabeth Moss are toxic best friends in Alex Ross Perry’s Bergmanesque Queen of Earth. We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
