Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Peter Dunning (Magnolia Pictures)
“You just know that your entire sense of existence has just made an enormous change.” Vermont farmer Peter Dunning is not talking about politics, but about the time when he was a 26-year-old artist fresh out of college and working at a sawmill where an accident mangled his hand. This isn’t a romantic movie about the simple life. One of the first scenes in Tony Stone’s unblinking documentary about Dunning’s bucolic life (“a living hell,” according to the farmer) shows the farmer shooting a sheep in the head and preparing it for slaughter. Now 68, Dunning struggles with alcoholism, bitterness, and suicidal thoughts. He’s just as likely to cuss you out in a hungover rage as to sing passages from West Side Story. This may not seem like the kind of movie you’d want to see right now in this time of uncertainty, but it may be exactly what we need to see right now: the stark perspective of a hard life working the land.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Landmark West End Cinema.
David Bowie does Busby Berkeley in ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS
My film series Shooting Stars: Bowie and Prince on Film continues tonight with an absolutely glorious 35mm print of this flawed 1986 musical set in London circa 1958. Bowie stars as an advertising executive in this adaptation of a novel considered The Catcher in the Rye for British youth. Director Julien Temple made his name in music videos, and the film’s stylish, dazzling musical numbers are among the most visually striking of the era. Even better is the soundtrack, including Bowie’s soaring title theme, which would become a focal point of Lazarus, the Off-Broadway musical that was one of the last works he completed before his death. Free tickets are already sold out for the series, but standbys are encouraged to line up starting at 6:30 p.m. as available seats will be released five minutes before show time. For more information, call (202) 707-5502. Learn more about the Library of Congress’ 2016-17 concert season here.
Watch the trailer.
Tonight, November 10 at 7 p.m at the Mary Pickford Theatre, third floor of the Madison Building, Library of Congress. Free. Tickets are sold out. but a standby line forms at 6:30 p.m.
THE CRIMINAL LIFE OF ARCHIBALDO DE LA CRUZ
The AFI’s Luis Buñuel series continues with a free 35mm screening of this rarely revived horror-comedy films from the director’s rarely revived Mexican period. Described as “a bizarro tale of music boxes, murder, and mannequins,” the movie stars Ernesto Alonso as a serial killer who is believes that his music box has the power to commit murder. Also screening in the Buñuel series this week are 35mm prints of the 1959 Mexican film Nazarin (November 13) and Diary of a Chambermaid (November 12 and 13) Film scholar Carlos Gutiérrez introduces free screenings of Nazarin and The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.
The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz screens Monday, November 14 at 7 p.m. at the AFI Silver. Free.
(The Criterion Collection)
The National Gallery of Art’s series Ipersignificato: Umberto Eco and Film evokes the late author’s “philosophy of the cinema” with 35mm prints of two classic Italian films. Federico Fellini’s 1973 comedy reminisces about life in a provincial Italian town under fascism. Shown with director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1968 film Teorema, which “mixes political allegory with occult fable.” The film stars Terence Stamp as a man who invades the home of a wealthy Italian family.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, November 13 at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium, Free.
From the 2012 Internet Cat Video Festival at the Walker Art Center
When I interviewed Werner Herzog this summer, the formidable director admitted that even he is charmed by the simple pleasures of cat videos. Next week the AFI hosts the Internet Cat Video Festival, a charitable corporation founded by filmmaker Will Braden, creator of viral cat videos and curator of the Walker Art Center’s feline video festival. The program is “dedicated to bringing the joy of cat videos to the masses and helping cats in need… raising money for local cat charities, animal welfare organizations and shelters.”
Watch my cat Udo seek comfort (not on the scheduled program).
Thursday, November 17, Saturday November 19, and Sunday November 20 at the AFI Silver.
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Also opening this week, Amy Adams translates messages from another planet in Arrival; and Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga star as interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving in Loving. We’ll have full reviews tomorrow.
