Alejandro Jodorowsky takes viewers on quite an acid trip in surreal Western EL TOPO
LATE-NIGHT FAVORITES: EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
February 15-17, $13.50, 12:15 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
Chilean-born Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo is a psychedelic head trip, an acid Western that will blow your mind. Jodorowsky stars as the title character, a gunslinger traveling through a deserted landscape accompanied by his naked young son, who already knows his way around a firearm. After coming upon a town that has been decimated by a nasty group of marauders working for the Colonel, El Topo seeks violent revenge, eventually taking off with a woman and leaving his boy behind as he meets four masters on his path to proving he is the best there is. But soon El Topo is praying for redemption with a community of inbred cripples trapped in a cave. El Topo is a wild and bizarre journey through religious imagery, romance, and vengeance, a surreal spaghetti Western strained through the mad mind of Jodorowsky, widely hailed as the creator of the midnight movie. The film melds Bergman with Leone, Tod Browning’s Freaks with Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, filtered through Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s Lone Wolf and Cub. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before and, despite your better instincts, will lure you into the cult of Jodorowsky. El Topo is screening Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night at 12:15 am in a high-definition digital restoration as part of the IFC Center series “Waverly Midnights: Late-Night Favorites,” which continues March 1-2 with James Cameron’s Aliens, March 8-9 with a new 4K digital restoration of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, and March 15-16 with a 35mm print of Jodorowsky’s radical 1973 flick The Holy Mountain.
In his 1994 autobiography, Hard Stuff, former Detroit mayor Coleman Young wrote, “In the evolutionary urban order, Detroit today has always been your town tomorrow.” That’s precisely the warning that permeates Detropia, the latest documentary by director-producers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, who have previously teamed up on such films as The Boys of Baraka, the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp, and the Peabody-winning 
That’ll be the day when someone tries to claim there’s a better Western than John Ford’s ethnocentric look at the dying of the Old West and the birth of the modern era. Essentially about a gunfighter’s attempt to find and kill his young niece, who has been kidnapped and, ostensibly, ruined by Indians, The Searchers is laden with iconic imagery, inside messages, and not-so-subtle metaphors. Hence, it is no accident that John Wayne’s son, Patrick, plays an ambitious yet inept officer named Greenhill. The elder Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, a tough-as-nails Confederate veteran seeking revenge for the murder of his brother’s family; he’s also out to save Debbie (Natalie Wood) from the Comanches, led by a chief known as Scar (Henry Brandon), by ending her life, because in his world view, it’s better to be dead than red. Joining him on his trek is Debbie’s adopted brother, Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), who wants to save her from Edwards. The magnificent film balances its serious center with a large dose of humor, particularly in the relationships between Ethan and Martin and Ethan with his Indian companion, Look (Beulah Archuletta). And keep your eye on that blanket in front of the house. The Searchers is screening in a DCP projection February 15-18 at 11:00 as part of the IFC Center series “Weekend Classics: John Ford,” which continues with such other Ford fare as Young Mr. Lincoln, The Whole Town’s Talking, and The Last Hurrah.
The Korean Academy of Film Arts takes on urban renewal in their annual collaboration, The House. Ban Joo-young, Lee Hyun-jin, Lee Jae-ho-I, Park Eun-young-I, and Park Mi-sun team up to tell the story of a young woman, Ga-young (voiced by Kim Kkobbi), struggling to get by in modern-day Korea. With no money and no real job, she moves into a ramshackle apartment with Hee-ju (Ha Jae-sook) while dreaming of winning the lottery and being able to move into a nearby wealthy complex. But when she finds a magic bracelet, she suddenly can see the spirits of the old houses, who would die if their buildings were torn down by the city, changing Ga-yong’s attitude about just what home means. The filmmakers combine CGI and real photographs with the drawing style of Yoshitoro Nara and the look and sensibility of Hayao Miyazaki’s classic Spirited Away in The House, an admirable if ultimately unsatisfying story that has too many holes and lacks nuance. It ends up feeling overly derivative and unsentimentally political, even if it is based on some real circumstances, as evidenced by the pictures that accompany the closing credits. Also featuring the voices of Choi Jeong-ho, Choi Ha-na, Kim Hee-jin, and Oh In-sil as multiple characters, The House is screening for free February 12 at 7:00 at Tribeca Cinemas as part of the latest biweekly Korean Movie Night series, “Drawn into Film: Korean Animation!,” which continues February 26 with Yuen Sang-ho’s debut, The Window.