Popcorn & Candy is DCist’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
Jackie Chan and Aarif Rahman (Well Go USA_)
An archaeology professor (Jackie Chan) leads an expedition to find an ancient Indian treasure, but his team faces mercenaries who stake their own claim on the lost gems. Director Stanley Tong was behind some of Chan’s most popular action movies like Rumble in the Bronx, and this hybrid of kung fu and yoga (the latter comes in handy after the bad guys tie you up) begins inauspiciously with a hideous CGI sequence. But Tong knows his way around an action movie set piece, and the treacherous ice caves that hide buried treasure naturally become a playground for slick mano-a-mano fighting. You’ve seen better Jackie Chan movies than Kung Fu Yoga, but you’ve seen worse too; and you haven’t seen any others where Chan asks a lion if he knows Mandarin.
Watch the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at AMC Loews Rio
Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Hossain Sabzian (Criterion Collection)
The annual Iranian Film Festival continues with a 1990 film that was a career highlight for director Abbas Kiarostami, who died last year. In 1989, movie fan Hossain Sabzian briefly convinced a family in Tehran that he was, in fact, the acclaimed film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Kiarostami’s film about the incident combines documentary footage of Sabzian’s trial with reenactments in which the people involved in the incident act out what happened. Close-Up subverts expectations about documentary, cinema in general, and finally, justice: Makhmalbaf, playing himself, is more than willing to forgive Sabzian’s strange transgression, perhaps because the impersonator turns out to be such an interesting subject for a movie.
Watch the trailer.
Saturday, February 4 at 3:15 p.m. at the AFI Silver.
Lee Morgan (far left) with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers (Photo by Ben van Meerendonk, Courtesy of Submarine)
Hard bop trumpet legend Lee Morgan was one of the mainstays of Blue Note Records, but he met a violent end in 1972 when his common-law wife shot him after a performance at New York’s Slug’s Saloon. He was just 33 years old. The National Gallery of Art presents the Washington premiere of a new documentary by Kasper Collin (My Name is Albert Alyer).
Watch an excerpt.
Sunday, February 4 at 2:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art, East Building Auditorium. Free.
(Studio Ghibli)
The Music Division at the Library of Congress presents Toon Tunes with Solomon HaileSelassie, a series of 35mm prints of animated features with a focus on music. This week’s program is the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 historical fantasy about the struggle between man and nature. This film’s score is by frequent Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi. Advance tickets for the screening are already sold out, but standbys are encouraged to line up starting at 6:30 p.m. Available seats will be released five minutes before show time. Read more about the 2016-2017 concert season here. Disclosure: I work in the Music Division but did not work on this program.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, February 3 at 7 p.m. at the Mary Pickford Theater, third floor of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Building. Free. Advanced tickets are sold out, but the standby line forms at 6:30 p.m.
Peter Dyneley and friend (Park Circus)
Larry (Peter Dyneley) is a foreign correspondent in Japan, and his far-flung work has led him to become estranged from his wife (played by Dyneley’s real wife Jane Hylton). When Larry interviews a scientist (Tetsu Nakamura), the reporter becomes entwined in a world of geishas and a secret experiment that guarantees he will never be alone. The Washington Psychotronic Film Society presents this dry but entertaining tale of a two-headed beast.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, February 6 at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel.
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Also opening this week, The Salesman, the latest film from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (The Separation). We’ll have a full review tomorrow.
