Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 17 October 2025 - 23 October 2024

Last call for VistaVision OBAA at the Coolidge!

• Black Phone 2 returns the original cast, as the kidnap victim from the first is drawn into a bigger mystery. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), CinemaSalem, Causeway Street, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The new film from Luca Guadagnino, After the Hunt, stars Julia Roberts as an academic who is shaken when a student (Ayo Ebediri) makes accusations against a colleague (Andrew Garfield). It's at the Coolidge (35mm for most showtimes), the Capitol, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Good Fortune features Aziz Ansari as a down-on-his-luck gig worker who swaps lives with a tech bro played by Seth Rogen thanks to a well-meaning but naive guardian angel (Keanu Reeves). Nice cast including Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer; pity about Ansari doing that Saudi comedy festival. The film plays the Somerville Theatre, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Truth & Treason follows idealistic teenagers in Nazi Germany attempting to expose the regime's lies. It's atFresh Pond, Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  
  Grow, about a kid who grows very large pumpkins, is a week-long Fathom release at Boston Common and Causeway Street. French animated film Falcon Express is dubbed into English and released as Pets on a Train, and if one of the pets trying to help a racoon stop a runaway stop a runaway train is not voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and tired of snakes, I'll be very disappointed; you know he'd take the paycheck. It's at Fresh Pond.
  
  The disturbingly rapid booking of films celebrating Diane Katon are Something's Gotta Give and Annie Hall at Boston Common..
  
  There's a mystery horror movie preview Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row; documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, directed by son Ben, also plays Boston Common on Monday K-Pop concert/doc TWICE: One in a Mill10n plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row Monday (except Assembly)Tuesday/Thursday; Concert film Mitski: The Land plays Boston Common, Kendall Square, and the Seaport Wednesday & Thursday.. In re-releases, The Last Dragon plays Boston Common Sunday/Monday/Wednesday; St. Elmo's Fire plays Boston Common Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday; The Corpse Bride is at Arsenal Yards Monday/Tuesday; Misery is at Arsenal Yards Tuesday/Wednesday; Scream '96 plays Boston Common and Assembly Row Wednesday; Nightmare Before Christmas also plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row (all in RealD 3D) on Wednesday. Some of the Thursday night shows of Regretting You at Assembly Row and Chestnut Hill are billed as "A Night of No Regrets" with a streamed Q&A.
• Not only do they have One Battle After Another and After the Hunt on film, but The Coolidge Corner Theatre also opens If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which features Rose Byrne as a woman spiralling under pressure from an ailing child and absent husband (it's also at Boston Common). Also opening at the Coolidge and Boston Common is Urchin, directed by Harris Dickinson and starring Frank Dillane as a young man living on the margins of London.
  
  Spooky Coolidge midnights this weekend are the original A Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday and Scream on Saturday; while Art House of Horror shows include Wener Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre on Sunday afternoon, Under the Skin Tuesday evening, and both The Devil's Backbone and Child's Play 2 on Thursday, the latter in 35mm with co-star Christine Elise. Sunday morning's Geothe-Institut German film is Köln 75, following the chaotic process of staging a concert that became one of the best-selling live albums in history. Monday's Science on Screen show (marked sold out) is Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution, with Sharp as one of several speakers.
• Landmark Kendall Square opened Ballad of a Small Player, with Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, and Fala Chen on Wednesday. Horror Retro Replays include Psycho on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, plus Sleepy Hollow on Tuesday, and The Birds on Wednesday.
• Happy Diwali! Apple Fresh Pond and the plexes have a bunch of new movies for the season. Opening early were Telugu-language comedy Mithra Mandali (also at Causeway Street) and Tamil-language comedy Dude (also at Causeway Street, both with Telugu-language shows); joining them this weekend are Telugu-language romance Telusu Kada (also at Causeway Street), Telugu-language drama K-Ramp (ALSO Causeway Street), Tamil-language sports movie Bison: Kaalamaadan, and Tamil-language gang flick Diesel (through Sunday). Opening Tuesday at Fresh Pond and Boston Common is Hindi-language vampire comedy/adventure Thamma. Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 continues at Causeway Street (showtimes in Kannada) and Boston Common continues Hindi-language romantic comedy Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari.
  
  Korean animated fantasy adventure Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning opens at Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  Pakistani horror film Deemak opens at Boston Common.
  
  Chinese drama Sound of Silence, about a lawyer who takes a case against Deaf defendants despite his own family background, plays South Bay.
  
  I swear Spirited Away already played as part of Ghibli Fest this year, but maybe it's just a thing that's always going on now. At any rate, the film plays Boston Common and Assembly Row Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday (dubbed) and subtitled Monday/Tuesday. For more contemporary anime, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to Be Loved plays Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row Monday. There's also a Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc preview for Crunchyroll subscribers at Boston Common (Imax Laser), Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Wednesday before it opens wide over the weekend. Two other anime continue: The 4K remaster of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue at Boston Common and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• The Brattle Theatre has Hal Hartley's newest film, Where to Land, through Wednesday; it stars Bill Sage as a writer who applies for a job as a cemetery custodian, which leads to everyone he knows thinking that he is dying and rushing to celebrate his life. They also have Sinners for the late show Friday to Monday.
  
  On Saturday afternoon, they host the premiere of Massachusetts Avenue: Life Along Cambridge's Main Artery, with director Federico Muchnik in person. Sunday has the RPM Fest presentation of "Jean Sousa: Today is Sunday", with the artist in person. Andrew Bujalski visits on Monday with There There, a film made during the height of the pandemic with each cast member shot separately and their performances later edited together. Alice HOffman visits on Thursday to present a 35mm print of Practical Magic, including a new deluxe edition of her original novel.
• The Seaport Alamo picks up A House of Dynamite, which makes me wonder if Netflix brass are annoyed that people are seeing it in theaters. They also have The Corpse Bride Friday to Monday, Rocky Horror on Friday (it's at Boston Common with Full Body as usual on Saturday), Fright Night '85 Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday; Creepshow (regular show Saturday/party show Sunday). There's also a preview of Bugonia with streamed Q&A Sunday.
• The Capitol Theatre has From Russia with Love on Friday, and West Side Story on Saturday, as part of Capitol 100. On Thursday, they open The Arlington International Film Festival with a shorts program and German documentary Tourist.
  
  The Somerville Theatre plays a new 70mm print of Close Encounters of the Third Kind Friday to Sunday, with Hungarian comedy Gone Running also playing Sunday. They also kick off their Halloween programming with a new 4K restoration of The Fog Monday & Tuesday and Mad Monster Party? on Wednesday. Note that this means only certain shows of One Battle After Another are in 70mm, although they plan to continue using the large print whenever they can.
• The Museum of Science has Tron: Ares in the Omni theater Friday & Saturday for the next few weeks.
• The Museum of Fine Arts is the main hub for the The Boston Palestine Film Festival, opening with a sold-out show of Thank You for Banking with Us! on Friday and showing shorts programs on Saturday & Sunday.. The festival also has stops at the Coolidge for Passing Dreams on Saturday, the Brattle for documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk on Tuesday, and MassArt for "7ajar", a program of short films produced by the eponymous collective.
• The Boston Asian American Film Festival is at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Center through Sunday, including a Saturday encore presentation for Friday's sold-out centerpiece film Love, Chinatown.
• The Harvard Film Archive has re-opened and is doing their best to reschedule everything canceled during the previous two weekends. They have two programs curated by Marta Mateus - Program IV on Friday evening is anchored by Weird Woman and includes shorts "Les magiciens de Wanzerbé" and "A Corner in Wheat", while Sunday evening's Program V has short "Revolução" preceding The Law of the Land. Friday night also features Mikio Naruse silent Apart from You, preceded by his "Flunky, Work Hard!", while two more play Monday (No Blood Relation and Street without End), all on 35mm and accompanied by Robert Humphreville. Saturday afternoon has a free-with-Harvard ID double feature of WHere Is the Friend's House & The 400 Blows the latter (plus a Chuck Jones cartoon) on 35mm film. The "Ultimate Cut" of Caligula screens on 35mm film Saturday night, with Leslie Morris introducing it as part of "Gore Vidal on Film". Sunday afternoon offers a free double feature of Steve McQueen's Small Axe films Alex Wheatle and Education.
• Movies at MIT has Your Name in 26-100 on Friday & Saturday; and would appreciate a head's up for attendees who aren't part of the MIT community.
• Definitely getting cold now, but Joe's Free Films shows Twilight playing on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening, "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" in Cambridge's Raymond Park on Saturday, and Pride & Prejudice at MIT Open Space on Thursday.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week but Mondaywith A House of Dynamite, Fairyland and Good Boy Friday to SUnday & Thursday. There's also a free Sunday morning show of The Changeling.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Orwell: 2+2=5 and Fairyland, keeping A House of Dynamite, Kiss of the Spider Woman, One Battle After Another,*Eleanor the Great,*Gabby's Dollhouse, and *Downton Abbey. There's Andrzej Zulawski's Cosmos on Friday, two documentaries s on Sunday - a "Best of Fests" presentation of Remaining Native and The Last Twins with post-film discussion - and both King Vidor's The Crowd and the Universal Monsters Frankenstein on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem opens Black Phone 2 (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), and continues to offer all the Halloween rep, with The Exorcist (Friday/Saturday/Sunday), Carpenter's Halloween (Friday/Saturday), Hocus Pocus (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), Psycho on Sunday (with a Whodunnit? Show set on the Psycho lot the same afternoon), The Lost Boys (Wednesday/Thursday), and Universal Monsters: The Mummy Friday/Thursday, DraculaSaturday/Wednesday, Creature from the Black Lagoon Saturday/Thursday, Bride of Frankenstein Sunday, The Wolf Man Sunday/Thursday. There's also a special event on Monday ("Haxan: The Witch as Muse") which combines live music, the silent film, and a witch-inspired perfume. House of Wax is the Wednesday Classic (with an encore Thursday), plus a Werido Wednesday show.

Feels like a lot, but I'm kind of iffy on some; I'll probably do Close Encounters, The Fog, and the Netflix movies; not sure about what else might fit in. And I'll also probably stop into the movie poster sale at the Somerville Theatre on Saturday afternoon, even if I don't have many hanging right now.

(Oh, and follow me on my Letterboxd page)

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 10 October 2025 - 16 October 2024

Ah, it's "streamers pretend they care if people see their movies because they're contractually obligated to give theatrical releases" season!

• As such, Netflix is releasing A House of Dynamite, the new Kathryn Bigelow thriller starring Idris Ela as the President and Rebecca Ferguson as the National Security Advisor responding to the unthinkable situation of a nuclear strike on the United States with no clear evidence for who ordered it, at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, West Newton, and the Lexington Venue.
  
  Midnight slashers at the Coolidge this weekend are Prom Night on Friday and a 35mm print of The Prowler on Saturday. At the other end of the day, there's an hour-long package of "Little Kid Flicks" at 10:30am Saturday & Sunday mornings. Sunday morning also features a Goethe-Institut presentation of two episodes of miniseries ZEIT Verbrechen, "December" and "Love by Proxy", with "December" director Mariko Minoguchi on-hand for a Q&A. Other rep this week includes "Art House of Horror" presentations of Diabolique '55 Sunday afternoon, Possession Tuesday evening, and Kwaidan on Wednesday evening; The Phantom of the Opera (1925) with a live score by Invincible Czars on Monday; Open Screen on Tuesday; Peeping Tom as the Big Screen Classic Thursday evening, and a 35mm print of Earnest Scared Stupid as the Cult Classic later Thursday night.
• Kind of fun: Greta Lee co-stars in both Dyanmite and Tron: Ares, which has Jared Leto as a Program spawned into the real world as disposable holographic mercenaries, although one wants to become a real boy. No Bruce Boxleitner (who played "Tron"), but Jeff Bridges shows up, as does Jodie Turner-Smith and Gillian Anderson. Gets a bunch of big screens, playing the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), the Museum of Science (Omnmax Friay/Saturday), Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D/3D 7 Dolby Cinema 2D/3D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Roofman looks cute, with Channing Tatum as a good-natured escaped convict hiding out in a big-box toy store for months, becoming fond of its employees, especially the one played by Kirsten Dunst. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Also opening is Kiss of the Spider Woman, with Bill Condon directing a musical starring Diego Luna and Tonatiuh as cellmates, with the former retelling his favorite movie (starring Jennifer Lopez) in order to remain sane. It's at the Coolidge, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendall., and Assembly Row.
  
  There's also Soul on Fire, about an injured boy relying on his "family, faith, and community", with John Corbeett as the father, William H. Macy in there, and Sean McNamara as the director (and, honestly, I kind of want to know what the deal is with McNamara doing just a huge amount of stuff that seems to run the gamut from crud to sincere mediocrity to big in the conservative/faith community). It plays Boston Common, and Assembly Row.
  
  Fairyland, a Sundance 2023 film just finding distribution now, features Emilia Cooke as a young woman reminiscing about growing up with her gay father (Scoot McNairy) in the 1970s and 1980s; hope Geena Davis isn't just in a couple scenes as the mother who dies young! It's at Boston Common.
  
  A Nightmare on Elm Street plays Arsenal Yards Friday to Sunday; The Dark Crystal plays Boston Common on Sunday/Monday; Trick 'r Treat plays Boston Common Tuesday/Thursday. There are mystery movies at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendal, South Bay, Assembly Row on Monday; plus non-mystery previews of .After the Hunt at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row on Wednesday. Edward Burns's latest, The Family McMullen, revisits The Brothers McMullen (with Connie Britton and Mike McGlone also returning) and plays Wednesday night at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens Orwell: 2+2=5, with I Am Not Your Negro director Raoul Peck delving into the live and impact of George Orwell.
  
  The Kendall also has The Monster Squad for their Tuesday Halloween Retro Replay. Netflix's Ballad of a Small Player, with Coln Farrell as a gambler lying low in Macau pursued by a PI (Tilda Swinton) and offered a way out by a casino employee (Fala Chen), opens on Wednesday; Landmark is offering a four-pack with it, Dynamite, Frankenstein, and Nouvelle Vague for $30 to paid loyalty members.
• Row to Win, with Bo Huang as a small-time crook who returns to his hometown to coach son Adam Fan Chengcheng's crew team, has a kind of big opening for a Chinese movie at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.
  
  Horror movie The Bride stars Rima Thanh Vy as a young Vietnamese woman engaged to a wealthy Thai Man who apparently awakens a vengeful spirit when trying on a heirloom wedding dress. It's at South Bay.
  
  Anime 100 Meters, about a pair of rival sprinters in high school and beyond, plays Boston Common, Assembly Row Sunday to Monday. Two other anime continue: The 4K remaster of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, plays Boston Common (actually picking up showtimes!), the Seaport, and South Bay. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues at Fresh Pond, Boston Common,Kendall Square, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Quiet-looking week for Indian movies, as Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 continues at Apple Fresh Pond (showtimes in Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Tamil) at Fresh Pond, Causeway Street (Kannada/Telugu/Hindi), and at Boston Common. Also continuing at Fresh Pond and being picked up by Boston Common is Hindi-language romantic comedy Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari. Telugu-language comedy Mithra Mandali opens at Causeway Street on Wednesday and Tamil-language comedy Dude opens Causeway Street on Thursday (and probably Fresh Pond, but they're not on the site yet).
• The Brattle Theatre starts the weekend with a print of The Shadow for the Friday Film matinee, and then gets back to the IFFBoston Fall Focus series of upcoming releases: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and The Plague Friday; Arco, Sound of Falling, It Was Just an Accident, and Sentimental Value Saturday; and Next Lffe, My Father's Shadow, Miroirs No. 3, The Mastermind, and Blue Moon on Sunday. More at the end of the month, too.
  
  Monday has the 2025 Sundance Institute Indigenous Films Tour package for matinees, an Open Crafting screening of The Lost Boys with lights up, and the premiere of Dance Freak with filmmakers in person. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, they have Hal Hartley's Long Island Trilogy, with Simple Men (35mm), The Unbelievable Truth, and Trust (35mm) both days (though in different orders), ahead of Hartley's latest next weekend.
• The Seaport Alamo has a (sold out) movie party for The Mummy Friday night, and Steven Kostanski's new Deathstalker movie Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday. The "International Cut" of Lifeforce plays Saturday, and the director's cut of Tom Savini's version of Night of the Living Dead on Saturday and Monday. There's more spooky stuff with The Craft on Sunday, a classic in Sullivan's Travels on Tuesday, and an already-sold-out preview of Frankenstein on Wednesday.
• Very busy Friday at The Capitol Theatre , with 12 Angry Men in the afternoon for the 100th anniversary, Nosferatu with live score by Invincible Czars in the evening, and a 4th Wall show of Equipment, See Through Person, Hey, Ily, Latchkey Kids, and Battle Mode. There's another 4th Wall show on Saturday, with Ringing, Main Era, Vivid Bloom, and visuals by Cool Pics. They're back to the Capitol 100 shows on Thursday with Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. The Somerville Theatre holds steady with One Battle After Another on the main screen in 70mm.
• The Museum of Science adds "Penguins 4-D" to the rotation in the little room starting on Saturday, with Tron: Ares in the Omni theater Friday & Saturday for the next few weeks..
• The main Revolutions Per Minute festival for 2025 continues with three days at the Harvard CAM Lab from Friday to Sunday, featuring nine separate shorts programs, free with RSVP. It wraps at Boston's City Hall on Tuesday with "Sound + Light + Movement", featuring Greg Kelley on trumpet and Lori Goldstein on cello accompanying an hour of silent experimental shorts, although one of their recurring programs will be at the Brattle in a week.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has documentary Minnie Evans: Draw or Die on Friday night and Gosford Park for "Cozy Crime" on Saturday afternoon..
• CineFest Latino 2025 returns for an encore of sorts on Sunday afternoon with Genero: Salsa playing at the City Pavillion in Boston City Hall; director Kamillah Aklaff will be on hand for a Q&A about the film which looks at how queer dancers are using salsa to upend gender norms in Cali, Columbia, the salsa capital of the world.
• The Boston Asian American Film Festival opens at the Coolidge on Thursday with Forge, in which a pair of sibling art forgers find themselves in over their heads when a millionaire hires them for a big job that has more going on that it would appear. Director Jing Ai Ng will be on-hand for a Q&A, and possibly stars Andie Ju and Brandon Soo Hoo (some images have them, some don't).
• Getting chilly out there, but Joe's Free Films shows Goosebumps playing on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening and I Know What You Did Last Summer '97 at the Allston Speedway (courtesy of the Coolidge) on Wednesday.
• Last weekend for The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston's virtual edition (although you may have a month to watch anything you order through Sunday; I'm not totally sure how it works).
• The Harvard Film Archive had another pipe burst last week (wasn't this what they were doing all that work to prevent the past couple summers?), so they will be closed for at least this weekend.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week with A House of Dynamite, plus Anemone and Good Boy Friday to Monday. There's also a free Saturday morning show of Three Days of the Condor and a free showing of Willie on Thursday in honor the 90th birthday of subject Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the NHL.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens A House of Dynamite and Kiss of the Spider Woman, keeping The Smashing Machine, Anemone, One Battle After Another, Eleanor the Great,Gabby's Dollhouse, and Downton Abbey. They show documentary short "An Uncommon Education: The Allen School" with post-film panel discussion on Tuesday, plus The Bostonians for "West Newton Cinema Reads".
  
  Cinema Salemis in full Halloween mode, with Carpenter's Halloween, Casper '95 and Hocus Pocus all playing Friday-Sunday and Wednesday/Thursday. The rep includes a "Miz Diamond Wigfall" presentation of The Shining and a Night LIght show of Dario Argento's Tenebrae on Friday, and two shows of Rocky Horror with Teseracte on Saturday (Full Body as the Common,as usual), The Exorcist Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday, Battle Royale Sunday, and Psycho for the Wednesday Classic (with an encore Thursday), a probably-spooky Werido Wednesday show, and Universal Monsters: Frankenstein Friday & Thursday, Creature from the Black Lagoon Saturday, The Mummy Sunday, Bride of Frankenstein Sunday & Thursday, The Wolf Man Sunday.

The MBTA messing with my attempt to see One Battle After Another in VistaVision last night puts a little more pressure into a week where there are limited times to see various things, since that one is hitting its end of its runs on the big film formats. That's on top of what looked like the only showtime for Deathstalker when I bought my ticket, the various things at Fall Focus which I don't figure will get releases (I'm eying Arco, Next Life, and My Father's Shadow), Forge, and likely short runs for A House of Dynamite. Ballad of a Small Player, Fairyland and Row to Win. I'm kind of crossing my fingers to see if The Bride will hang around a second week, because South Bay is a nuisance on the T. (And, yes, you'll probably see Tron: Ares on my Letterboxd page before a lot of these!)

This Week in Tickets: 29 September 2025 - 2 October 2025 (Don't Know What You're Missing)

Another quiet week.

Still not a whole lot in theaters, plus the first week I really missed having cable TV since dropping it, because ESPN had the Red Sox-Yankees series but no later AL games, the cost probably wasn't worth it. Before that, I opted to stay in Monday in an attempt to get Film Rolls back on track with the next film in a shamefully small box set I've been working through since January, Heroes of the East. It's fun, and I recommend it.

The AL Wild Card Series was the next three days, and instead of watching it, I used the MLB app to listen to it on the radio. Exciting, but a sad ending. Also, even though they were starting at 6pm, and the things to keep the game moving were in effect, it was still tight getting to one of the last screenings of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues at the Coolidge. It was fine.

The thing that surprises me? It lasted a week longer than A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which was gone from everywhere in two weeks flat despite having a couple bona fide movie stars Disappointed in myself for not supporting it.

Did I take that to heart over the weekend? No! After catching A Writer's Odyssey 2 on Friday night, I did crosswords for most of the next two days.


Hoping to do better next week; watch my Letterboxd account to see if I manage.

Zhong hua zhang fu (Heroes of the East)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 September 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

I'm planning to write more about this in the next week as I finish the first Film Rolls post in away too long, but it will probably focus on how this and the other Lau Kar-Leung movie on the disc (Dirty Ho) are kung fu comedies that feel like they were completely dispensing with any pretense that the kung fu was just part of these movies' appeal or a way of telling the story. Here are guys who know how to fight, this story says, some wacky situations, and then let's go.

And, hey, it works; the movie's a ton of fun. I wish that I knew a bit more about Hong Kong/Japan relations in the late 1970s because in some ways this movie has a weird tension underneath: The arranged marriage eventually becomes reasonably warm, but while Ho Tao is initially described as just being pretty good at martial arts, he defeats a whole bunch of masters of various Japanese disciplines. Lots of movies and other bits of pop culture will try and walk a line where one is earnestly interested in and admiring of a foreign culture but with the unspoken assumption that one's own is better, although, hey, some of these folks are old enough to be WWII vets (and I've seen a lot of recent Chinese movies very focused on Japan as a sadistic occupying army), and one can't help but wonder what the thinking is here.


Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 October 2025 in Coolidge Corner #5 (first-run, DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or pre-order the disc at Amazon

Logging this on Letterboxd, I noticed that there are at least three other Spinal Tap things between This Is… and The End Continues, treated as in-continuity but not that important for those who missed them. There's a line in there about the band always reforming and returning in some manner or other, but that's kind of a meta as the movie gets. This "series" has always been a more jovial and affectionate poof than cutting satire, and isn't necessarily going to change hats at this point.

Which is maybe a shame because there's the boomer bands that just keep going until they literally lose their senses - Elton John^* is nearly blind, Huey Lewis's last album wound up short because of hearing loss, and Ozzy Osborne performed right up until his death - even though they're also selling their catalogs as estate planning, and nobody in a better position to do it. Instead, they're kind of playing the hits, sometimes literally, during seemingly endless rehearsal scenes, repeating jokes they've made before and settling for smiles of recognition rather than surprising laughs that catch one flat-footed. The funniest bit, perhaps, is Michael McKean's David St. Hubbins having moved into making ringtones and the like; it feels sharp compared to the randomness of what his bandmates are doing before the reunion show happens.

^*That said, his voice is still great when he shows up as a guest star. McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer have always had the chops to make things like Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind credible, but they get outclassed.

I think, to a certain extent, the improvisational nature of these mock documentaries trips them up on occasion. One can occasionally see the kernel of a good idea but no great jokes forming around it. Sometimes that's the joke - Guest's Nigel is earnestly dumb, and his passions are the kind of dumb that they're just going to fizzle out without a proper punchline - but that's different from how they don't quite know what to do with Valerie Franco despite her feeling like a perfect part of the ensemble as the new drummer There are a few pretty decent bits here and there, enough for a matinee ticket or stream, but all too often it's the sort of thing that leaves one torn between wanting these old pros to be as creative as they once were and not begrudging folks who still enjoy performing or those who still enjoy watching them even though their powers are diminished

There's something occasionally kind of sweet about how none of these guys, including and maybe especially Rob Reiner's documentarian, have grown much wiser as they've aged; he's still kind of earnestly delighted to learn all he can about rock & roll and they're still finding pleasure in their eccentricity, not really seeing in resentment. The very fact that they've been doing these bits off and on for 45 years means that there's four or five separate groups of archive footage to pull from, and there's a solidity to it not always present in revived franchises, and that as much as the content of the movie is often disappointing, the group's choice to focus on why nostalgia can be a comfort once you get to a certain age is earnest and pleasant.

A Writer's Odyssey 2

Kind of idly wondering if this will pick up more showtimes during the week, since the Taylor Swift thing basically ate theaters alive this weekend, taking up a crazy number of showtimes and seemingly making scheduling hard. It wasn't exactly a packed house, although it seems to be doing a bit better in China than the movie opening here next weekend, though it's getting stomped by the third movie in Chen Kaige's The Volunteers trilogy during its National Day opening. It's day-and-date, which suggests the first one did okay here.

It's kind of a weird sequel, because it seems like it abandons a lot of the lore of the first one. It's been four years, but it's odd looking at that movie's review and going "oh yeah!" at a bunch of things that were really pushed back or rearranged for this one. If nothing else, it's kind of an interesting way to do a sequel, one you see more often in books than movies, but also more than a bit strange.


Ci Sha Xiao shuo jia 2 (A Writer's Odyssey 2)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 October 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #4 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (eventually) or the first movie (Prime link), or buy the first on disc at Amazon

There's a moment in A Writer's Odyssey 2 where one character reminds another that "remember, they sent me to kill you" and, because I didn't revisit the original before watching this, I was like, right, there was a "they" last time! What happened to them? The funny thing is, it wasn't until re-reading my previous entry before starting this one that I realized that the feeling that the filmmakers (or the original novel The Assassination of the Author) are making things up as they go along doubles once you try to look at the series as a whole.

As the film starts, it's been a few years since Lu Kongwen (Dong Zijian) completed his serialized novel Godslayer by having his author-stand-in character slay the demonic Redmane. Somehow, in the aftermath, a charlatan/hacker going by Cicada (Chang Yuan) took control of Lu's account and is regarded as the true author of Godslayer, and has announced a sequel - but, it turns out, writing is hard, so he wants to work with Lu on it. Lu, meanwhile, is living with Guang Ning (Lei Jiayin), the would-be assassin who has reunited with his daughter Tangerine (Wang Shengdi), running a small restaurant. Lu's mind has been returning to that world of late, where Redmane has resurrected in human form (Deng Chao), and after encountering Lu Kongwen in what Lu thought was just a dream, convinces his world's Kongwen, Tangerine, and Tong Hu (also Lei Jiayin) to join him on a quest to kill the cruel God who apparently is casually writing the deaths of hundreds to highlight the cruelty of the three warlords who are fighting for control - which is to say, the real world's Lu Kongwen.

So, is Li Mu alive again, or still (since one of the genuinely weird things about the ending of the first was that the audience never knew whether the real-world CEO connected to Redmane died when he did)? No idea! There may be one blink-and-miss-it mention of Aladdin Group in the entire movie. Does Guang Ning still have an amazing ability to throw rocks for impossible results akin to Daredevil foe Bullseye? Never mentioned! What is Cicada's whole deal? Not sure, the guy sort of exits without fanfare midway through the movie and doesn't really figure into the story after that, since he doesn't have a Godslayer-world doppelganger - although, for all I know, this sort of online identity theft may be a thing that happens relatively often in China and not a big deal, but it sure seems like he's just a random plot device to knock Lu Kongwen back to dire straits but get him involved again. It's kind of sloppy writing, and even more so when you try to connect to what came before.

That said, it mostly works well enough if one comes in knowing it's a second part but not particularly worried about that. The situation lu Kongwen is in kind of seems iffy, but Dong Zijian gives a surprisingly compelling performance as a man who has briefly tasted success for doing something he loves but has stewed over how it's been taken away from him for the past few years, and see that seep into his cheerful, idealistic avatar. Deng Chao is playing to the balconies as Redname, but nevertheless manages the thing where you can see the heroes going along with him despite his obviously being evil. The crossover between the real world and the fantasy world tends to draw a grin, even when it's being very silly.

Plus, the fantasy world stuff is fairly fun. Once again, it occurs to me after the movie that Lu Kongwen is maybe meant to be the sort of fantasy writer who can really conjure up a nifty image but is kind of terrible at structure, and that's why so much of the stuff in the fantasy world seems kind of slapdash and under-explored, but also quite cool: I love the dragon airships and hope the promised/threatened third movie gives us a whole sequence built around them (as in the first, they are probably a heck of a thing to see in Imax 3D), Redmane can eat people with his hair, and it usually comes at the end of a niftily-staged duel. Returning director Lu Yang is back on the sharp blacks-and-whites aesthetic, but there's room for whimsy in his grimdark world, and the action is pretty good, feeling a bit weightier than other super-powered, CGI-heavy millieus.

Ultimately, though, the story seems kind of messy, and for a movie where the filmmakers are very explicitly saying to note the connections between the fantasy world and the real world, it doesn't seem to be about much in particular. Sure, there are metaphors all over the place - the film very helpfully underlines them - but when it comes right down to it, just what is this writer's odyssey and how is it affecting him? This movie doesn't necessarily have to be about something extraordinarily profound, but the way it bops around from playing one game to another tends to highlight that it's not quite as clever as it wants to present itself as.

Indeed, the mid-credit sequence is a bunch of "hey, this thing that was kind of fun earlier on doesn't really make any sense", hinting at something else that will show up in a part 3 (not sure what, as it involved some unsubtitled text). It's probably just enjoyable enough for me to get a ticket to that threequel when it arrives, although there's a real risk of diminishing returns.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 October 2025 - 9 October 2024

Wow, that Taylor Swift thing is grabbing a lot of showtimes this weekend, and I kind of wonder what other movies might get a couple extra showtimes come Monday.

• That would be Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which includes the music video for "The Fate of Ophelia", behind the scenes material, "lyric videos", and lots of talk about her new album The Life of a Showgirl. It's at the Capitol, the Coolidge, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), and Chestnut Hill through Sunday.
  
  In more conventional releases, there's The Smashing Machine, with Benny Safdie directing Dwayne Johnson as early UFC champion Mike Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife. It's at the Somerville, the Coolidge, West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax Laser), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Also, welcome back Daniel Day-Lewis, coming out of retirement for Anemone, a drama he co-wrote with son (and director) Ronan. It also features Samantha Morton and Sean Bean, and plays the Coolidge, the Somerville, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Boston Common opens Bone Lake, a thriller where two couples book the same estate for vacation and I gather both definitions of "bone" are in play. Coyotes features Justin Long and Kate Bosworth as a couple trapped in their home by some very large, very smart canids; it's at Boston Common.
  
  There's also a re-release of Avatar: The Way of Water to get you psyched for the new one, playing Boston Common (Imax Laser 3D & Dolby 3D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (RealD 3D), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 3D), Assembly Row (Imax Laser 3D), and Chestnut Hill (RealD 3D starting Monday). A re-re-lease of 1995's Casper plays Boston Common and CinemaSalem. The Sam Raimi Spider-movies log another weekend at Boston Common and Arsenal Yards (1 Friday, 2.1 Saturday, 3 Sunday).
  
  The Rocky Horror Picture Show gets Dolby Cinema 50th Anniversary shows at 10:30pm Saturday night at Boston Common, Assembly Row, and South Bay (note that Boston Common also have the regular Full Body Cast show at its regular time). BTS re-releases at Boston Common and Assembly Row are 2019's Love Yourself: Speak Yourself and Muster Sowoozoo on Sunday. Documentary Are We Good?, a documentary about comedian Marc Maron, plays Boston Common on Sunday. There are secret previews at Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday; not-so-secret previews of Tron: Ares at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema 3D), Assembly Row (Imax Laser 3D) on Wednesday. The Devil's Rejects plays Boston Common Monday/Wednesday, Friday the 13th '80 plays Boston Common and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
• One of my favorites from this year's Fantasia Festival opens at Landmark Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport: Good Boy, a ghost story where the protagonist is the dog of a man who has moved to an isolated house in the woods after some health issues, and sees something wrong that his human simply can't, but Indy is a Very Good Boy who tries to help.
  
  Kendall Square also starts horror movie Retro Replays this Tuesday with Friday the 13th '80.
• Aside from the major releases (and One Battle After Another in VistaVision), The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens Chain Reactions, which examines the impact of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on pop culture and specific filmmakers, another deep dive from Alexandre O. Philippe, playing late shows. It pairs with a set of midnight slashers, starting with Psycho on Friday night and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre itself on Saturday.
  
  Saturday also sees the start of a monthly "Cinema Masala" series with Diwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, one of India's biggest Bollywood (Hindi-language) hits, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol set (at least before the interval) on a train trip across Europe. Monday's Big Screen Classic is The Spirit of the Beehive on 35mm film; Tuesday has an "Art House of Horror" screening of Carnival of Souls while Wednesday offers Repulsion; and Thursday's Cinema Jukebox show is Madonna: Truth or Dare.
• The big Indian movie this week is Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1, which opened Wednesday and continues with showtimes in Kannada, Telugu, and Hindi at Fresh Pond and Causeway Street, and in Hindi at Boston Common. Apple Fresh Pond also opens Hindi-language romantic comedy Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari and tamil-language drama Idly Kadai. Fresh Pond also has one last show of Nepali-language comedy Hari Bahadur Ko Jutta on Friday, and They Call Him OG continues at Boston Common and Causeway Street.
  
  Chinese fantasy A Writer's Odyssey 2 picks up a story of a writer discovering his serialized story is real, and plays Boston Common and Causeway Street.
  
  Another anime 4K remaster, Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, plays Boston Common and the Seaport, South Bay. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
• The Brattle Theatre has two from Japan this week: Happyend, which played IFFBoston in the spring, is senior-year high school shenanigans with a nervy edge due to the constant surveillance and general apocalyptic feel; I liked it quite a bit. A more cheery high school story is 2005's Linda Linda Linda, with a high school band flailing after their lead singer quits and is replaced with the Korean exchange student (Bae Doo-Na).
  
  Speaking of IFFBoston, they'll be kicking off their Fall Focus series on Thursday with After the Hunt and Queens of the Dead (which I saw at Fantasia and is quite a bit of fun).
• The Seaport Alamo plays Predators, a documentary examining the To Catch a Predator phenomenon of the aughts, at least through Wednesday, and GoldenEye plays at least one show a day Saturday to Wednesday. There's also Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Saturday, a Scream '96 movie party on Monday, and Closer on Tuesday.
• The Capitol Theatre hosts Midnight Fest, which, really, should have sent me some sort of press release or something before starting back on Wednesday. It runs through Sunday with new short packages, features; (B0dycam, Meat Kills, Donnie Darko); restorations (Ringu, The Changeling, Bad Hiarcut); and Q&As (Lights Out, Hell House LLC).
  
  The Somerville Theatre keeps One Battle After Another on the main screen in 70mm, with Anemone and The Smashing Machine on the others.
• The Harvard Film Archive has one night for each program this weekend: Friday is a new one ("A Terra! The Cinema of Marta Mateus", with the auteur presenting a set of three short films in the evening and a 35mm print of Erich von Stroheim's Greed, with Robert Humphreville accompanying, later in the evening. On Saturday, Humphreville accompanies two from Mikio Naruse's early career, Every-Night Dreams and Street Without End, both on 35mm with National Film Archive of Japan director Hisashi Okajima giving introductions. Sunday has two free Small Axe presentations, with Mangrove in the afternoon and Lover's Rock in the evening. Finally, Monday has Hong Sang-Soo's feature film debut, The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, on 35mm film.
• Movies at MIT has Shrek 2 in 26-100 on Friday & Saturday; and would appreciate a head's up for attendees who aren't part of the MIT community.
• The Museum of Science has Spanish-language Imax featurette Cuerpo Sobrehumano: Un Mundo de Maravillas Médicas Saturday afternoon and two free shows of Blue Beetle on the Omni screen Saturday evening as part of their Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations.
• The main Revolutions Per Minute festival for 2025 kicks off at The Museum of Fine Arts with two selections of short films - "Aldo Tambellini: Reflections" on Saturday and "Guvor Nelson: Call and Response" on Sunday, and then a special double bill at the Cambridge Foundry on Thursday, with the first half combining the work of percussionist Jon Mueller and photographer Tom Lecky before a program of short films by Tomonari Nishikawa.
• The Regent Theatre has a free local screening of Coco on Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films shows The Addams Family '91 playing on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening, the first of four spooky outdoor films in October.
• The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston continues the virtual edition through next Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue is open every day but Monday with Eleanor the Great, Anemone and Downton Abbey (the latter matinees through Sunday). There's also a free Saturday morning show of Infernal Affairs.
  
  The West Newton Cinema has the Taylor Swift thing and opens The Smashing Machine and Anemone, also holding over One Battle After Another, Eleanor the Great,Gabby's Dollhouse, and Downton Abbey. There's a Sunday "Behind the Screen " show of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life and Ty Burr's Movie club with I Know Where I'm Going on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has the Taylor swift thing through Sunday, plus a pretty family-friend start to spooky season, with Casper '95 and Hocus Pocus Friday-Sunday and Wednesday/Thursday. Friday night features both Mean Girls and The Gate. Wednesday's Classic is Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein, with Weirdo Wednesday on another screen. They also have a local premiere of A Halloween Feast, with the director and cast on hand for a Q&A.
  
  Killing Faith, a horror-western with Guy Pearce, DeWanda Wise, and Bill Pullman, opens out at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, as does One Big Happy Family, a comedy starring Lumi Pollack & Linda Lavin, and family fantasy Peas and Carrots..

Already got tickets for A Writer's Odyssey 2 and am looking forward to Anemone and The Smashing Machine, as well as Avatar 2 and Perfect Blue. Might be the week to head to Brookline for One Battle if I can just show up and get a ticket. Maybe I can squeeze something at Midnight Fest in too. (Follow my Letterboxd page to see if I follow through!)

This Week in Tickets: 22 September 2025 - 28 September 2025 (Almost Nothing)

I think I actually went a full week between the end of Honey Don't and the start of Dead of Winter, but that's fall for you, when baseball demands a lot of attention and the movies are kind of between seasons.

First stop this week, though, was the MGM Music Hall to finally see that Elvis Costello concert that I thought was last week. Amusingly, I didn't check to see if he was touring to promote a new album until a couple days before, and it turned out to be the opposite, a "Radio Soul!" tour that would be all songs from the first ten years of his career. At one point he made a comment about this being the last time he played them in Boston, and I don't know whether he's going to be done with touring or retiring or maybe just retiring songs he wrote for the voice he had as a young man. Or maybe he just knows he doesn't have all that many tours left in him and some just won't show up on setlists again.

I must admit, it did kind of get me to thinking about how this sort of tour flattens what a guy who experimented as much as him in the studio does so that the songs sound a little more the same; I've been digging out the CDs and listening to them since, they're a bit more playful that way and much less likely to end dah-dah-dah-daaahh (mimes exaggerated strokes at the guitar).

After that… Well, there's not a lot in theaters right now that promises to be more exciting than the last week of the baseball season that includes playing the team that there's an outside chance of overtaking to win the division. The Sox didn't play the Blue Jays quite well enough for that, but seeing that Friday's game at Fenway was on Apple TV and they were giving away souvenirs, I impulsively bought a ticket. I didn't immediately figure out why there was a ten-dollar difference between prices for tickets in the same section right away until I realized the two seats behind me were behind a big ol' support pillar. A good time, though - it was Japan night, so I got a cap with cherry blossoms on it, there was mochi at the concession stand, and Daisuke Matsuzaka was in town to throw out the first pitch. Coincidentally, Masataka Yoshida got three hits on the way to a 4-3 walk-off win.

Sunday was the last regular-season game of the year and I'd already bought tickets. I got there at the last minute so I saw that Niko Matsuzaka was singing the national anthem but not that she was Daisuke's daughter, which was cool. The game itself was kind of weird, like both teams were playing to avoid injury or were well aware that seeding weirdness meant the loser would get to face Cleveland instead of New York. Not throwing the game, but not trying too hard. The Sox wound up winning by the same 4-3 score, and they're in New York City right now.

That ended at about the right time to get to Dead of Winter without waiting around for long, which is fortunate, because despite a lot of previews, it only showed up at Boston Common in a sort of screen-filling deal. I liked it, though, and will tell you why just a little way down.


So, yeah, not a lot of movies here or on my Letterboxd account, and it may stay that way for as long as the Sox are in the playoffs. October for you!


Dead of Winter

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 September 2025 in AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available) (Prime link)

I've been recounting this anecdote for 20-odd years now, but one of the great, really useful things I've learned from a festival Q&A is "you'll be amazed who you can land for your movie if you write a good role for an older actor". Here, that means a little no-nonsense thriller that has the bones of being a pretty good movie has the chance to really be something once Emma Thompson gets involved: She isn't going to make it into something it's not, but it sure becomes something close to the best version of itself.

She plays Barb, a recent widow returning to Lake Hilda, the place her late husband Karl took her ice-fishing for their first date. Having trouble finding it, she asks the man (Marc Mechaca) at the only cabin for miles for directions, noting a couple things that seem kind of sketchy but figuring she's best off minding her business, at least until she spots him chasing a teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) through the woods. There's no signal for her phone and the police might be hours away in this sparsely-populated portion of northern Minnesota, so she aims to rescue the girl without much hesitation, and she'll soon find that the man's wife (Judy Greer) is the one driving the whole thing.

Screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson & Dalton Leeb and director Brian Kirk (who has mostly worked in television but also directed the pretty darn good 21 Bridges are impressively efficient laying things out in the beginning: They trust Thompson to put Barb's story on her face and how she interacts with her environment, use the opening titles to emphasize that she is getting far away from help and that the weather can get pretty nasty up there, before laying out the situation. Given that an independent thriller like this is likely to spend just a week or two in theaters, if that, before streamers pick it up, the filmmakers are unusually insistent that you watch what's going on rather than reinforcing events with dialogue that will keep the viewer only paying half-attention caught up. They also do nice work with scale and sound and how the location plays into it: The lakes are wide open but sounds carry, and the old-growth forests are tall enough that getting the attention of someone beyond that wall takes effort.

It's a great place to locate a small, impressive cast. Emma Thompson is the star that leaps out, and for a while one can't help notice the incongruity of her doing that sort of midwestern accent and how enthusiastic she seems to be about playing this character who is a very particular sort of American, but it winds up getting one to look at her and see she's kind of doing a lot to convey how simultaneously sensible and over her head Barb is, or how she's coping with her loss in the middle of all this. She's often wearing big, distracting emotions on her sleeve but it in a way that feels like an ordinary person feeling ruffled. She plays well off Laurel Marsden as Leah and Marc Mechaca in their confrontations, while he and Judy Greer pair off as the sort of villains that land in the sweet spot between "dumb crime" and scenery-chewing maniacs, all the more dangerous because one sees how they could be played for laughs but aren't. I like Gaia Wise & Cúán Hosty-Blaney as the young Barb & Karl, too, even if Wise winds up in "I know what young Emma Thompson looked like and it's not that" (though, to be fair, I know what 30-year-old Emma Thompson looks like better than 20-year-old Emma Thompson); they're not complicated but feel like complete people.

The small cast makes for a tight game of cat-and-mouse, with the challenges for Barb and Leah well-designed, allowing their foes to be dangerous without being unbelievably clever. What's going on is laid out for the audience fairly well without being explicit about it, which means that when it's revealed to Barb and Leah, the final connecting of dots reinforces their shock and horror rather than making it feel like they're slow to catch up; that it's weird and deranged and probably never going to work just makes the whole thing more tragic, and the filmmakers clearly get this. That genre awareness isn't always a net positive, though - the hunters who show up toward the end overexplain more in their ten minutes than the rest of the movie does and Barb seeing how it's going to end badly with them is a bit too clever.

They also aren't really part of what holds the rest of the movie together in ways that a lesser thriller might not cohere: It is not taking death for granted or treating it as a thing that just moves this sort of story along. Barb, of course, is recently widowed, and the brief flashbacks that show her last days with Karl cast a shadow; Leah has attempted suicide, which is why Greer's kidnapper can justify her plan as she fears for her own survival. One wonders whether Marc Mechaca's husband has not faced what that means, really, until he is staring death in the face himself, and it's interesting to see how he reacts when in that position.

Do not misunderstand, this movie isn't a meditation on mortality cleverly disguised as a suspense film; ruminations almost never derail what is, by and large, a movie focused on giving Barb problems to solve and how she is able to solve them. It's a straightforward genre movie, but one that's had a little thought put into it and executed well enough to command one's full attention.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 26 September 2025 - 2 October 2024

I'm pretty sure that all of the people who run Boston area's independent/art-house theaters are friendly and work together, but if they are competitive, the Coolidge just escalated things.

• The new film by Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another, is opening all over the place, but The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of four theaters in the world showing it in VistaVision - the other three are in New York City, Los Angeles, and London. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former revolutionary who has mostly laid low to raise his daughter pulled back into action when an old nemesis captures her. It also plays at the Somerivlle (including 70mm film), Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax Friday-Sunday), West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  For rep at the Coolidge, it's the last weekend of Shout's restored Hong Kong classics at midnight, with all-timer Hard Boiled on Friday and another John Woo classic, Bullet in the Head on Saturday (Rocky Horror also plays Saturday at midnight). There's also M for the Big Screen Classic on Monday night, and they kick off an "Art House of Horror" series with Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf on Tuesday. There's also a "Panorma" show of Heightened Scrutiny with post-film discussion, plus Rope, with a pre-film seminar led by Kyle Stevens, on Thursday.
• Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie is a spinoff of the TV show, with Gabby and her grandmother (Gloria Estefan) on a road trip that has them lose their special dollhouse with and have to retrieve it from a weirdo played by Kristen Wiig. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Speaking of movies from TV shows, The Strangers: Chapter 2 must have originally been part of something originally planned as one, right? All three were shot at once, but this arrives a year after the first and is by itself longer than the movie they remake. Bizarre. It's playing at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Eleanor the Great has Scarlett Johansson behind the camera and June Squibb in front of it, playing a nonagenarian returning to New York after the death of her best friend and roommate, and things get uncomfortable when she walks into a Holocaust survivors' group and does not back out when she realizes she's in the wrong place, to say the least. It's at the Coolidge, the Capitol, West Newton, Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, and South Bay.
  
  Boston Common seems like a small opening for Dead of Winter, starring Emma Thompson as an ice fisher who stumbles upon a kidnapping far from anyone else who can help in northern Minnesota, after all the times I've seen the trailer. He playing a midwesterner looks weird but good. Also just at Boston Common is Bau: Artist at War, starring Emile Hirsch in the title role as a man trying to keep his spirits up at a concentration camp and directed by the guy that did the Reagan movie.
  
  Dude Perfect: The Hero Tour, which is the latest iteration of a YouTube thing about doing basketball trick shots that made it to TV and then a live show, plays Boston Common.
  
  The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies get another theatrical re-release this weekend at Boston Common and Arsenal Yards - #1 on Friday, #2.1 on Saturday, #3 on Sunday. Mystery previews at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday (note that the AMC theaters have an R-Rated "scream unseen" while Kendall's is PG-13). Satisfied, a documentary about Hamilton co-star Renée Elise Goldsberry, plays Boston Common Tuesday to Thursday, just after the play has left screens. The Life of Chuck plays Boston Common and Assembly Row Wednesday in Dolby Cinema; A Nightmare on Elm Street also plays Boston Common and Assembly Row on Wednesday. Boston Common and the Seaport have an Early Access show of Good Boy, a ghost story from a dog's point of view, on Wednesday.
• Telugu-language action movie They Call Him OG opened on Wednesday at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common and Causeway Street. Friday brings Fresh Pond Hindi-language drama Homebound, Malayalam-language action-comedy Balti and thriller Karam (both through Sunday); Hindi-language Akshay Kumar courtroom comedy Jolly LLB 3 is held over. Marathi-language thriller Dashavatar has an encores Saturday & Sunday afternoons, and then Nepali-language comedy Hari Bahadur Ko Jutta opens Monday. Tamil-language musical drama Idly Kadai opens Tuesday, and period action prequel Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 opens Wednesday with showtimes in Kannada and Telugu at Fresh Pond and Telugu at Causeway Street.
  
  Chinese comedy The Adventure stars Jia Bing as a man who exchanges lives with his 18-year-old self (Wang Hao); it's playing limited matinees at Boston Common. World War II drama 731 also continues with scattered shows at Boston Common.
  
  A 4K upgrade of Mamoru Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through Time plays Boston Common subtitled Sunday & Tuesday and dubbed Monday. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues at Fresh Pond, The Museum of Science (Omnimax Friday/Saturday), Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  K-Pop concert film Kygo: Back at the Bowl plays Boston Common Friday night (and hangs around at the Liberty Tree Mall through Monday). The two remastered BTS concerts, 2016's The Most Beautiful Moment in Life and 2017's The Wings Tour, play Sunday afternoon at Assembly Row (separate admissions), while 2019's Love Yourself: Speak Yourself plays Wednesday, and 2021's Muster Sowoozoo plays Thursday.
  
  Vietnamese drama Face Off 8: Embrace of Light continues at South Bay.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens Apple film All of You, starring Brett Goldstein and Imogen Poots as friends who drift apart after she takes a test that locates her soulmate. They're also keeping Netflix film Steve for another week and offering package deals for all the October and November Netflix theatrical releases.
  
  Tuesday's anniversary screening is Clueless.
• The Seaport Alamo plays Megadoc, Mike Figgis's making-of documentary for Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, Friday/Sunday/Tuesday. The restored Re-Animator plays Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday, A Room with a View runs on Saturday, and there's a Van Helsing "movie party" on Monday.
• In addition to most showtimes of One Battle After Another at The Somerville Theatre being on the main screen in 70mm, they also open Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, supported by the rare Friday midnight show of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, on 35mm film with Teseracte Players.
  
  The Capitol Theatre continues its 100th anniversary celebration with Slingin' in the Rain Friday night and Shane on Saturday. And since it's the end of the month, there's a Disasterpiece Theatre tape-trade and viewing on Monday.
• The Brattle Theatre starts the weekend with The Muppets Take Manhattan on 35mm for the Friday Film Matinee before diving in "Cinephile Heaven: Cinema Ritrovato on Tour", bringing a full slate of restorations that played the festival in Bologna to their screen. This year, that's 8½ (35mm Friday/Saturday), Don't Torture a Duckling (Friday), "Fleisher Fairy Tales" (Saturday), The Big Heat & Thief (Saturday), Pink Narcissus (Saturday), Christopher Strong (Sunday), The Sealed Soil (Sunday/Wednesday), Shanghai Express (Sunday), Four Nights of a Dreamer (Sunday), The Gold Rush & 7th Heaven (Monday), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Monday), Lifeboat (free Elements of Cinema show Tuesday), Golden Eighties (Tuesday), Amores Perros (Thursday), and Carrie (Thursday).
• It's a 35mm Mikio Naruse weekend at The Harvard Film Archive, with Late Chrysanthemums Friday evening & Sunday afternoon, Wife Friday night & Sunday evening, Lightning Saturday evening, Repast Saturday night & Monday evening. Then, on Wednesday evening, they welcome Alice Diop and her new short film "Fragments for Venus". It's a free screening but first-come-first-serve, with the box office opening at 5:30pm for a 6pm show.
• CineFest Latino 2025 continues with shows in ArtsEmerson's Bright Screening Room (Friday/Saturday/Sunday) and the MFA (Friday/Saturday), and the Boston Public Library (Saturday), closing with Mistura at the Coolidge on Sunday.
• After hosting CineLatino Friday and Saturday, The Museum of Fine Arts plays Sugarcane, a focused and determined documentary about the Native boarding schools run by the Catholic Church and First Nations work to bring them to the world's attention.
• The Regent Theatre hosts the Manhattan Short Film festival Sunday and Wednesday; it's also at The Embassy in Waltham Friday to Sunday & Thursday. There's also an encore screening of Unfinished Business with filmmaker Michael Connolly on hand Tuesday at the Regent; again, it is not the Vince Vaughn film nor apparently the best-selling author Michael Connoly.
• Joe's Free Films shows Time After Time at MIT Open Space as part of the MIT Museum's "Time Travel on Screen" series (the MIT Museum will also be playing Cosmic Coda with pre-screening panel discussion; I liked it at IFFBoston although there was no entry for it on Letterboxd at the time). They also show a couple of programs at Boston University - a package of student films Friday night, and documentary featurette "Cathy & Harry" with both long-married pairs of subjects and filmmakers on hand for Q&A.
• The in-person portion of The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston is completed, but a virtual film festival will be running through 12 October (actually, it's more like passes will be on sale through then unless they hit their max, and then you've got 30 days from when you buy the pass).
• The Lexington Venue has Eleanor the Great and Downton Abbey all week (except Monday), plus late-ish shows of Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror Friday to Sunday. Documentary Between the Mountain and the Sky plays Thursday, including a discussion with aid worker Suzy Becker, who has worked with and documented subject Maggie Doyne.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens One Battle After Another (including a "Behind the Screen" show on Sunday), Eleanor the Great,Gabby's Dollhouse, and continues Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation, The History of Sound, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, Downton Abbey, and The Baltimorons. John Cassevetes' Opening Night plays as a Staff Selection on Friday, while the 1916 Snow White plays with sisters Leslie & Barbara McMichael on harp & viola for Silent Movie Day on Monday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Him and Downton Abbey Friday to Monday plus Hocus Pocus on those days plus Wednesday & Thursday, plus "Spelltacular Cabarets" with costumes encouraged from Friday to Sunday. There's also a Night Light show of Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters on Friday, a Murder, She Wrote Whodunnit Watch Party on Sunday, plus Modern Times and the Sherlock Jr./REM "Silents Synced" on for Silent Film Day on Monday. Stage Fright is the Wednesday Classic, with Weirdo Wednesdays on another screen.
  
  Netflix movie The Lost Bus, with Paul Greengrass directing Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera trying to get a class out of a massive fire, plays at the Showcases in Woburn & Dedham. The Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers has BFFs with director Constantine Paraskevopoulos playing a man trying to keep tight with his best friend played by writer Adam Rifkin, and a whole bunch of bigger names in supporting parts.

Movie-seeing time will be a bit cramped by getting to what could be two of the last games at Fenway this weekend, but I will probably try to catch One Battle After Another in VistaVision, catch up on Spinal Tap II and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and maybe All of You. Maybe the Chinese movies and/or something for Silent Movie Day as well.

(Follow my Letterboxd page to see if I follow through!)