By Beth Accomando
September 3, 2025
This week I am not reviewing a new film that is opening but rather highlighting a programmer with a passion for bringing unique film events to San Diego.
As someone who not only covers film in San Diego but also programs movies, I know how hard it is to run events and try to not to go broke. So when Eddie Gurrola started Popcorn Reef just under three years ago I was thrilled to see another person dedicated to bringing innovative film programming to San Diego.
Gurrola’s first love is cult and grindhouse cinema typified by films with titles like Strip Nude for Your Killer, Street Trash, Slaughterhouse Death Metal, and Watch Them Come Blood. But he also embraces mainstream Hollywood hits like Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey as well as new indie films you won’t find in mall theatres like Franky Freako.
Gurrola defines Popcorn Reef as: “It’s about knowing that no matter what’s going on in Hollywood today, there will always be a place for the magic and the spectacle of cinema, even if it’s relegated to a little reef in the middle of the ocean.”
It’s like an oasis for anyone who loves film on the fringes. But finding venues to show cult and indie films can be a challenge.
Gurrola programs at Tenth Avenue Arts Center, which he lovingly calls the “IMAX of Grindhouse.” It is a massive screen that is rolled out on wheels, not state-of-the-art but absolutely perfect for watching cult films that many of us experienced on VHS. He also screens at Adams Avenue Theater in Normal Heights, and most recently added Regal Mira Mesa.
And he likes to brag that curating retro films like Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama on the big screen in the brand new luxury recliners at Regal is something no one else is doing. The comfort of those recliners also makes sitting through one of his movie marathons a lot more inviting.
Gurrola has been programming at least one film a month and this month he has a pair of ambitious projects. But what you need to understand is that Gurrola works a full time job and Popcorn Reef is just a passion project he does purely out of love, and that’s why the programming is unique and worthy of your support.
First up this month on September 10, is Rebel: The Director’s Cut with director/writer/producer Robert Schnitzer live in person for a Q&A after the film.
Why is this film special? It marks Sylvester Stallone’s first starring role and IndieWire recently called, “one of the great unsung independent films of its era, a movie filled with electrifying New York location shooting, political urgency, and sophisticated moral inquiry.”
It’s also a film with a backstory that makes it worthy of attention. Back in 1973, Schnitzer made the film on a shoestring budget, and cast the then unknown 24-year-old Stallone. Once completed, the film never got a full release. But when Schnitzer got the rights back to his film, he decided to remastered it in 4K and create a Director’s Cut.
“Robert told me that he went back just because of all the technology that’s available now and he was able to make some subtle tweaks to his original vision, and do the 4K restoration,” Gurrola said. “I’m really excited about it because we’re going to get to talk all about what it was like making these movies in New York City on a DIY type of scale, with no permits, and just going for it. I love hearing those types of stories. We had Bill Lustig here for Maniac earlier this year. So it’s cool to touch base with these old school New York guys and see how the golden age of filmmaking was happening.”
Then on September 24, Gurrola is bringing director Sam Firstenberg down for a 40th anniversary screening of American Ninja. If you grew up in the 80s and loved action films then you likely reveled in the insanity served up by directors like Firstenberg over at Cannon Films.
“Sam Firstenberg is one of the dudes who just made some of the wildest films at Cannon,” Gurrola said. “He directed, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, and then Revenge of the Ninja, with Sho Kosugi , and then Ninja 3, Avenging Force, and then the first two American Ninja films. So it’s the 40th anniversary of American Ninja, and honored to do this and really excited to have him here to talk about how the movie got made and just wrap our head around that era in time.”
And what a crazy time it was. There is even a documentary made about the history of Cannon Films called Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, that chronicles both the films and how they were made.
In addition to the restorations Popcorn Reef is showing, Digital Gym Cinema just kicked off a restoration month with the grindhouse gem Night of the Juggler. That 4K restoration was done by art house distributor Kino Lorber. Plus there are some niche labels focused entirely on genre and grindhouse cinema, so there are an increasing number of films, some thought lost, that are becoming available.
“It’s really exciting,” Gurrola said about the increased availability of films. “I love everything that all the Blu-ray labels are doing. That’s a lot of what we try to do with Vinegar Syndrome and Severin when they put these things out, and could be able to give them a theatrical platform to show these types of films. And there’s so much coming down the pipeline that it’s hard to keep up.”
But Gurrola does try to keep up by continually going after new releases and new restorations. He hopes to make an exciting announcement soon about partnering with a beloved brand in indie cinema that will allow him to not only screen cult classic but new indie films being made by young filmmakers.
So what drives someone to essentially take on a second full-time job that will likely reap no financial rewards but consume all your free time?
“I’ve thought about that several times as I’ve been doing this,” Gurrola said with a laugh. “But regardless of making money or anything, it’s just something that’s really fun to do. And I think it’s above all else for me, it’s about creating a brand that even extends past people here in San Diego being able to experience it. I always think of these things when I’m programming them as if I were in Iowa, if I were in Montana, and I stumbled onto the website and saw that these things were happening, would I be able to feel a part of it? When I’m watching movies at my house alone, which is what I do — that’s why I started this. To feel like there is something I can think of that exists where you can watch it on the big screen and have that type of programming all put into one place. I think that is a little bit my North Star of how it’s programmed and also what internally motivates me to do it. But it’s also just so much fun, too, especially when we have the filmmakers out here, to be able to connect with them and actually learn, hear cool stories and to learn how they made these movies. Everything that I try to do is to appreciate these jaw-dropping spectacle movies and understand how those things got created in the first place.”
But cinemas are at a difficult moment. There is so much streaming content that it is often hard to get people to leave their couches and home theaters. Even studio films with acclaimed directors and stars have a hard time filling cinemas. Gurrola just saw Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing, which he enjoyed but the theater was far from full.
“I bet that there’s a lot of people that know about it and want to see it, but then they just don’t get off their ass and go,” Gurrola said. “I think that we experience the same thing here as film programmers, where, ‘Oh, wow, that sounds so cool.’ But then getting them to show up is another thing.”
Over at Film Geeks, where I am one of the programmers doing monthly shows at the 54-seat Digital Gym Cinema, we calculated that it only requires .00004 percent of San Diego’s population to fill the house. That doesn’t sound that hard but it is a constant challenge for those of us screening films in San Diego.
I love what Gurrola is bringing to the San Diego cinema scene and I urge you to check out his programming. And this month it’s not just great film choices but also the opportunity to meet and talk with the filmmakers. That is worth getting off your couch for.
Digital Gym Cinema always has something new and worth seeing. Opening this Friday, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is featured in the documentary The Last Class, which offers a portrait of a master educator dealing with his own aging and his students inheriting a world out of balance. One thousand students fill the biggest lecture hall on campus—the last class to receive Reich’s wisdom and exhortations not to accept that society has to stay the way it is. His final assignment: Who will be the teachers of tomorrow?
Coming Sept. 9, Digital Gym continues its film restoration series with Akira Kurosawa’s classic High and Low, based on the American hard-boiled novel King’s Ransom. Toshiro Mifune plays a wealthy industrialist whose son has been kidnapped. You can pair this with Spike Lee’s new take on the same source material. His film Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington, is in cinemas now and starts streaming this week on AppleTV+.
