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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John Arcilla (center) with Alex Medina), Archie Alemania, Joem Bascon and Art Acuña. (Artikulo Uno)“He must be either the bravest man I’ve ever seen or the looniest loon this side of Frisco.” General Arthur MacArthur (Miguel Faustmann) says this of General Antonio Luna (John Arcilla) in this deliriously violent historical epic about the most tempestuous figure in the Philippine-American War. The movie hedges its historical bets before the credits roll, with title cards explaining: “While historical accuracy is important, there are bigger truths about the Filipino nation that can only be reached by combining the real and the imaginary.” That truth seems to be that my ancestors are FREAKING INSANE. Co-writer/director Jerrold Tarog takes a heavy-handed script of military strategy and oversized personality, and with the help of the charismatic Arcilla in the lead role, turned a volatile chapter in Filipino history into a wildly entertaining spectacle. If this movie is to believed, the Heneral was one part George S. Patton and two parts Michael Myers. Heneral Luna is one of the most expensive Filipino films ever made and broke box office records to become the highest grossing independent Filipino film of all time. You won’t be bored.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at AMC Hoffman and AMC Loews Rio
Tower Records founder Russ Solomon smiles in blissful ignorance of mp3s. (Gravitas Ventures)When this documentary played AFI Docs in June, I wrote, “Music consumers around the world mourned when Tower Records, the ur-music superstore, closed its doors in 2006. Director Colin Hanks (Tom’s son) crafts a loving tribute to the pioneering chain and its founder Russ Solomon, who took his father’s drug store in Sacramento, California and turned it into an empire that earned a billion dollars in 1999 but declared bankruptcy several years later. Solomon and his core staff tell of the legendary chain’s great rise and precipitous fall, and anyone who set foot in the stores featured in the film may shed an inside tear as I did when I saw the familiar layout of the East 4th and Lafayette branch in New York (including the little corner on the landing where they kept Japanese pop imports). Indirect props are given to the old Foggy Bottom store, where Dave Grohl, one of the celebrities interviewed, once worked.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at E Street Landmark Cinema.
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Keir DulleaA young mother (Carol Lynley) reports that her four-year old daughter is missing; but there seems to be no evidence she ever existed. Director Otto Preminger’s 1965 thriller also stars Laurence Olivier and Keir Dullea. Dullea has become an increasingly familiar presence in the Metro area after a number of appearances on stage with the Shakespeare Theatre Company, and he will be on hand at the AFI Silver this weekend for Q&As after this screening (in DCP) and after a 70mm screening of the Stanley Kubrick classic 2001: A Space Odyssey (November 7 at 7 p.m.).
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, November 7 at 4 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
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Courtesy of the FreerThe Freer takes a brief respite from its Seijun Suzuki series (which returns next weekend) for a two-part screening of a Bollywood blockbuster from prolific director Anurag Kashyap, who will appear in person at the screenings. The Freer writes that “this ambitious and extraordinary blood- and bullets-fueled crime saga has been called Indian cinema’s answer to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America. It charts seventy years in the lives—and spectacular deaths—of two organized-crime families fighting for control of the coal-mining town of Wasseypur, India.”
Watch the trailer.
Part 1 screens Friday, November 6 at 7 p.m. Part 2 screens Sunday, November 8 at 2 p.m. At the Freer. Free.
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Courtesy SantostreetA mad doctor (Carlos Ancira) hires a thug (Yerye Beirute, who played against Boris Karloff in Fear Chamber and Alien Terror) is hired by the foolish Dr. Marion (Carlos Ancira) to retrieve a coffin belonging to Count Karol de Lavud (Germán Robles). Naturally, things don’t go quite as planned. Mhwaaa haa haa! Next week’s offering from the Washington Psychotronic Film Society is a 1958 Mexican vampire movie presented in “Hypnoscope,” described as “a weird psychedelic orgy. Experience the thrills as if you were there IN PERSON.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, November 9 at 8 p.m. at Acre 121
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Also opening this week, sex and violence: bad-boy director Gaspar Noé’s 3D Love; and Spectre, the latest installment of the 007 saga. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
