Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 February 2026 - 19 February 2025

Big week upcoming - Valentine's Day, President's Day, school vacation, and Lunar New Year, all of which have movies attached!

• Fun fact: Margot Robbie has produced Emerald Fennell's previous two features, but "Wuthering Heights" is the first she's appeared in; she and Jacob Erlordi star as the stepsibling lovers in what is apparently a very horny take on Emily Brontë's novel. It's at the Coolidge, the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax Friday-Sunday), the Lexington Venue, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema & XL), 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.
  
  All-star thriller Crime 101 features Chris Hemsworth as a master thief targeting couriers on California's highway 101, Halle Berry as his inside woman at the insurance company, and Mark Ruffalo as the cop tracking him down, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Nick Nolte, and Barry Keoghan also figuring in the action. It's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's (Imax Friday-Sunday), Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  For the kids, there's GOAT, looking for some of that Zootopia cash, only its small prey animal in a world where predators rule is a goat playing a heightened version of basketball. It's at Fresh Pond, the Capitol, West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Two crazy-looking sci-fi comedies this week: Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die comes from Gore Verbinski and features Sam Rockwell as a time traveler putting together a ragtag team including Michael Pena, Haley Lu Richardson, Zazie Beets, and Juno Temple to prevent the AI that ruins the world from coming on line; it's at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row. There's also Cold Storage with Joe Keery & Georgina Campbell working at a self-storage unit with a secret room containing a mutated parasitic fungus and Liam Neeson as the government operative sent in to clean in up; that plays Boston Common and Causeway Street.
  
  Also opening is Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie, which mixes a time-travel with hidden-camera shenanigans in the successor to the web & television series by Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol. It plays the Coolidge, Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, and South Bay.
  
  Does horror game adaptation The Mortuary Assistant play Boston Common rather than go straight to streaming if Iron Lung hadn't made a buttload of money? Maybe not, but that did and it does.
  
  AMC combines Valentine's Day and Black History Month with The Best Man and Love & Basketball at Boston Common and South Bay. Pretty in Pink screens at Boston Common & Arsenal Yards from Friday to Thursday. "The Blue Angels" has the first of three monthly Imax 3D shows at Boston Common on Saturday.
  
  Previews include I Can Only Imagine 2 at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and Assembly Row on Saturday; mystery movies at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Monday; and Imax early-access shows of EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert at Jordan's and Assembly Row on Wednesday. Music features include Paul Groban: Live from Union Chapel at Boston Common Friday to Sunday; Eric Church: Evangeline vs. The Machine Comes Alive at Jordan's (Imax) and Boston Common (Imax Laser) on Saturday; and Paul McCartney: Man on the Run, covering his life discovering who he was as a man and musician after the Beatles in the 1970s, plays Boston Common, Kendall Square, and Assembly Row on Thursday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens Pillion, which stars Harry Melling as a mild-mannered fellow who falls into an apparently quite healthy BDSM relationship with a handsome, confident biker played by Alexander Skarsgård. It's also at Kendall Square and Boston Common.
  
  For the weekend midnights, the Coolidge once again has two nights of Whistle, continuing their February gothic tales series with Eve's Bayou on Friday and a 35mm print of Crimson Peak on Saturday. At the other end of the day on Saturday & Sunday mornings are kids' shows of Trolls. They celebrate Valentine's Day with The Princess Bride on Saturday, as well as "Opposites Attract" shows of When Harry Met Sally… on Sunday and What's Up Doc? on Wednesday. For school vacation, there are sing-along matinees of Disney animated classics Mary Poppins (Monday), Beauty and the Beast (Tuesday), The Lion King (Wednesday), and Encanto (Thursday); President's Day has the annual screening of Point Break, playing on 35mm film and including a seminar led by Professor Mikal J. Gaines. Tuesday also has an "Icons" screening of Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field, also on 35mm film Thursday evening, there's a Panorama show of Holding Lait, a documentary following the parents of two Gaza captives, with director Brandon Kramer on hand; The Thing is the Cult Classic show later that night.
• The Capitol Theatre opens By Design, in which a woman (Juliette Lewis) swaps bodies with a well-crafted chair only to find that her friends and family prefer her inert body as she comes into possession of a handsome bachelor. They also pick up French Jodie Foster mystery A Private Life and play Amélie for Valentine's Day on Saturday. Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory plays on Monday.
  
  The Somerville Theatre hosts The Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival over the weekend, with features on one screen and shorts in the Micro cinema Friday & Saturday, and then the annual 24-hour Marathon in the big room starting at noon on Sunday. For school vacationers, they have The Muppet Movie on Tuesday and The Muppets Take Manhattan.on Thursday, with sensory-friendly screenings early in the afternoon. When Harry Met Sally… plays on 35mm Wednesday for "Feel Good Films".
• Indian films at Apple Fresh Pond this week are Telugu-language dance comedy Funky (also at Causeway Street and Boston Common), Telugu-language romance Couple Friendly, Hindi-language crime drama O' Romeo (also at Boston Common and Causeway Street), Hindi-language romantic adventure Tu Yaa Main, and Tamil-language bureaucratic nightmare My Lord. 2010 Telugu-language romantic comedy Orange plays for Valentine's Day on Saturday.
  
  Tunisian/Palestinian Oscar nominee The Voice of Hind Rajab opens at Fresh Pond and CinemaSalem.
  
  Anime Fruits Basket: Prelude plays Boston Common, the Seaport, Assembly Row dubbed on Monday. Scarlet moves to a regular screen (and also includes some dubbed showtimes) at Boston Common.
  
  K-pop doc The Rose: Come Back to Me plays Causeway Street. Another K-Pop concert doc, Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience, sticks around Boston Common.
  
  Lunar New Year movies start arriving Tuesday: Blades of the Guardians is Yeun Woo-Ping's first feature since Master Z in 2017, featuring Chinese action superstar Wu Jing as a wanted fugitive hired for a dangerous escort mission and includes "Big Tony" Leung Ka-Fai, Max Zhang Jin, CiSha, and Jet Li in his first movie since the Mulan remake (not sure whether he's fighting or just mentoring/serving as the villain)! It opens at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Spy thriller Scare Out is the latest from Zhang Yimou and features Jackson Yee, Song Jia, Yang Mi, and Zhu Yilong; it plays Boston Common and Causeway Street.
• The Museum of Science adds "America's Musical Journey" to its rotation of Imax featurettes as of Saturday. Not to be outdone, The New England Aquarium adds "Penguins: A Love Story" the same day.
• The Brattle Theatre starts the weekend with a 35mm print of Dangerous Liaisons for the Friday film matinee, before the traditional (and largely sold-out) shows of Casablanca Friday to Sunday. Other Valentine's features of Bride of Chucky late Friday, a 35mm print of Dirty Dancing on Saturday, and Barb Wire late Sunday.
  
  The timing of Valentine's means they get a slightly later start than usual for the annual Bugs Bunny Film Festival, which starts Sunday and runs through all of school vacation week with an 80 minute program of Looney Tunes

presented on 35mm film. A few evening shows have been bumped to make up for shows cancelled by the snowstorm a couple weeks ago, with Sorry, Baby playing Tuesday and Fréwaka & Weapons on Wednesday.

• The Seaport Alamo has two free member screenings on Friday, with The Mist at 7pm and Verbinski's The Ring at 9:45. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me plays Saturday & Sunday; 13 Going on 30 Tuesday afternoon and for a movie party on Thursday; If Beale Street Could Talk on Tuesday. There's a Weird Wednesday show of Dance Freak, and one of Saturday's early shows of Psycho Killer has a livestreamed Q&A afterward.
• The Harvard Film Archive has Alain Kassanda's "Trouble Sleep" on Friday, ahead of his upcoming visit as the 2026 McMillan-Stewart Fellow. The Antonioni/Bertolucci/Olmi series continues with The Spider's Stratagem on Friday, Le Amiche and A Man Named John on Saturday, and L'avventura on Saturday, all on 35mm film. Saturday afternoon has a student-programmed double feature of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (35mm) and Djibril Diop Mambety's Hyenas. Monday's Kubrick is Paths of Glory on 35mm film.
• The Museum of Fine Arts celebrates Valentine's Day with In the Mood for Love Saturday afternoon, with the original short film playing afterward.
• Landmark Kendall Square has Titanic on Tuesday, and both the 2026 New York Cat Film Festival and Peter Jackson's The Frighteners on Wednesday, and it amuses they're showing that one during the Olympics because I remember the Summer Games absolutely crushing its original release.
• The Regent Theatre hosts the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival, with a program of 6 short adventure documentaries playing Monday to Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films shows documentary Prime Time Band at the Arlington Library on Wednesday, with director Sky Bergman joining remotely afterward, and three films for Black History Month at Somerville's Armory - Soul, The Hate U Give, and a third to be announced - on Thursday.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week with Amélie (no show Monday), No Other Choice, and "Wuthering Heights". SpongeBob: Search for SquarePants plays matinees Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday; documentary featurette "Beyond their Years: The Incredible Legacies of Herb Carnegie and Buck O'Neil" shows for free on Thursday, with director Scott Fitzgerald on hand.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Natchez, a documentary looking at a Southern town that attracts tourists interested by its Antebellum attractions though the residents are divided, "Wuthering Heights, and GOAT, holding over Mr. Nobody Against Putin, Send Help, Father Mother Sister Brother, Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, and Hamnet. Silent film Sparrows starring Mary Pickford plays Sunday afternoon with live accompaniment by Bruce Vogt, and documentary Night Fight screens with filmmaker/subject Khary Saeed Jones on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Send Help, No Other Choice, The Secret Agent, "Wuthering Heights", The Voices of Hind Rajab, and Hamnet from Friday to Monday. Foxy Brown is Friday's Night Light show and romance on the High Seas is the Wednesday Classic, with a Weirdo Wednesday show down the hall.
  
  The AMC out at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers opens indie horror The Observance (featuring Ted Raimi!), horror-comedy Mimics and South African action flick Hunting Jessica Brok

I really mean it, I'm seeing The Secret Agent this weekend, and probably catching Crime 101, By Design, Blades of the Guardians, and Scare Out. It's aggravatingly likely that the cast gets me into "Wuthering Heights" even though I haven't really liked Fennell's previous movies and some folks seem to think it misses the book's point. Anyway, hopefully at least another seven on my My Letterboxd page by the time I post another one of these!

Film Rolls Season 2, Round 06: Harry Palmer and Shin Dong-hun

It's gonna be a long one today, because I spent the next month after round 5 getting through a couple of box sets!

Dale rolls a three, making the relatively short hop to Imprint's very slick-looking Harry Palmer box set! I don't necessarily need or even want fancy box sets much these days - horizontal inches of shelf are at a premium! - but this is a pretty nice package, which generally seems to be the case with Imprint, although I haven't gotten very many more of the fancy releases. Tariffs & shipping make it rough, currently.

To start December, Centipede rolled a 17, which jumps then a good way into the first Korean box, which is all material from the Korean Film Archive. I purchased a bunch of those when Kimchi DVD had a sale and I figured, what the heck, these things may never be cheaper (or even available again), and shipping costs less per disc when you order a bunch, and I've got the tendency of thinking of Korean cinema a starting roughly when Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance arrived stateside, so why not give myself the chance to learn more. The first one landed on was a pair of animated films from 1967 by Shin Dong-hun.

So, that's five movies (and a bunch of special features) that kept me busy for the better part of a month. How'd it go?

The Ipcress File

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the American disc at Amazon

The Imprint disc includes the trailer, and it's kind of telling that, even more than highlighting how this is based on a very popular novel and some of the people who worked on the James Bond movies, it promotes Michael Caine as an exciting young face to watch. Obviously, they got that call right: I don't know that the pointedly non-Bond-like spy story is actually that great, but everything that would make Caine a star in the 1960s and 1970s is here from the start, just the right ingredient to make a movie that flirts with dryness kind of exciting.

Caine plays Harry Palmer (nameless in the original Len Deighton novels), a former soldier that got a little bit too entrepreneurial with the supplies and was given the choice of working for MI-5 or prison. He's bored out of his mind doing surveillance for Colonel H.L. Ross (Guy Doleman), who seconds the insubordinate agent to Major Dalby (Nigel Green), a stuffy middle-manager investigating the abduction of British scientists who, when ransomed, are seemingly unable to continue their work.

Palmer was given a name for the movies, presumably because dialog that avoids mentioning it would have called attention to the filmmakers trying to avoid naming him more than it would have allowed him to be an anonymous functionary in the way that a novel told in the first person would (the special features tell what feel like oft-repeated stories about Caine and the producers trying to come up with the most unobtrusive name possible). Which is not to say Palmer is a cipher - he is a man of intelligence and taste, but with a scrappy, working-class edge to him, a guy you can easily imagine doing the crimes alluded to but also honest enough in his way, observant and willing to take the straightest line between points A and B even when it's not the done thing. He is in this way the template for every character Caine would play over at least the next twenty years, at least until he became a familiar and reassuring presence, and he's got it down to a science from the start. He's well-paired with everybody else in the film - Guy Doleman as the boss who knows you've got to embrace all of Palmer to get his best work, Nigel Green as the aristocratic officer who is increasingly irrelevant in post-war Britain, Sue Lloyd as the office girl who knows exactly what Palmer is up to, Gordon Jackson as a veteran who has just the class and experience to be amusedly aloof, etc. - and it never becomes a story about Palmer, or the sort of 1960s Brit he embodies, but who he is feels essential to the story and Michael Caine feels essential to that.

It's wrapped around a story about brainwashing, which is central to a few high-profile Cold War thrillers (The Manchurian Candidate being the most obvious), and looking at it from 60 years later, it's kind of odd that it was not a big part of more. It was, after all, presented as an existential ideological conflict, and the fear that one could have one's brain broken to embrace communism despite it being obviously inferior (and, indeed, necessitating some sort of traumatic attack) was embedded deep enough to still persist today, despite somewhat different targets. There's maybe a metaphor to that sort of collectivism smothering individual genius or making one a mindless pawn, even with the idea that Palmer's rebellious streak is what might serve as a bulwark against it.

Or not; the film is rather too matter-of-fact to lean into that sort of thing. It makes for an entertaining watch, though, as Palmer does something more like actual police work than one sees in crime or espionage films, finding the short cuts through his networks that would give him information the likes of Dalby wouldn't even consider important. It climaxes on a grueling attack on his mind as he tries to resist brainwashing, an impressively surreal moment that nevertheless emphasizes the crudity of the process, like Palmer isn't important enough for bespoke mind-control.

All in a day's work, of course, although Palmer and the film have no illusions about the nobility of such work.


Funeral In Berlin

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the American disc at Amazon

Following The Ipcress File about a year and a half later, Funeral in Berlin is probably the best of the Harry Palmer films, especially for those who come to them looking for a sort of anti-James Bond. It's the purest game of spy-versus-spy (versus spy?) of the bunch, with a story that demands attention and a reminder of just how present some elements we take for granted were at the time.

It has Palmer (Michael Caine) dispatched to Berlin, where he had been stationed at the time of his arrest, to facilitate the defection of Col Stok (Oscar Homolka), a KGB official about to be transferred from Berlin to somewhere far less prestigious and feeling disrespected, a huge get if for real, and one who demands his extraction be handled by Kreutzman (Günter Meisner), who has proven the most capable and audacious at smuggling people across the border. Palmer will be working with Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), a co-conspirator in the larceny that got Harry blackmailed into the secret service (although Harry kept his mouth shut). He immediately finds he has the attention of model Samantha Steel (Eva Renzi), and while Harry isn't necessarily one to feel she's too beautiful for the likes of him, he's not a big believer in coincidence, either.

More so that the other films, Funeral is concerned with the mechanics of spycraft, how one goes about arranging something which must be audacious and almost undetectable, linking the skills of both street criminals and officials at anonymous desks doing boring file-pulling. The filmmakers put together a lean, streamlined tale with very few unnecessary parts, even though some may look like needless procedural detail. The main set-pieces of extractions are thrilling and full of a sort of whimsy amid the serious business, and as before, the ensemble around Caine is well-chosen: Everybody easily embodies what they appear to be, enough to keep everything moving forward in parallel with the audience not necessarily questioning more than they are meant to, and easily maintain that sense even their hidden agendas are revealed. The key to being a good spy, apparently, is presenting as much truth as one can so as not to slip up, and a good thriller reveals the parts of the lie that matter without making one feel a fool for missing it.

Which, inevitably, leads to something devastating for the seemingly aloof Palmer: On the one hand, he finds himself still quite capable of rage even beyond the manipulation by friends and foe that he has come to accept as par for the course. For as cynical as he is, he's not actually close to amoral, and while it's been fun to see him puzzle his way through things and adapt when he can't, there are points at the film where he's got to deal with anally not being who he had hoped and the fact that an enemy rather likes him despite it all. It's not a big breakdown scene, but one does get enough of a sense of Harry that it's not exactly surprising that he's done all he could to leave this life behind by the start of the next movie.


Billion Dollar Brain

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Imprint Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the all-region Australian box set at Amazon

It's easy to get kind of excited but also somewhat wary when getting ready to watch Billion Dollar Brain: This is the most overtly spy-fi premise of the three Harry Palmer stories, often treated as more grounded than the rest of the genre, but it's also got Ken Russell in the director's chair, and maybe a screwy story will allow for a preview of Russell's later, stranger work. Or maybe it will just be a mess.

As it starts, Palmer (Michael Caine) is working as a low-rent private eye, finishing another tawdry divorce case only to find prior employer Colonel Ross (Guy Doleman) waiting for him, looking to bring him back into the fold. Palmer refuses, but also takes a call from a recorded voice that wants to hire him to deliver a sealed package to Helsinki, where he's to meet American comrade Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden), though it's his paramour Anya (Françoise Dorléac) who is at the airport when he arrives. These two threads are, of course, the same case, with Palmer realizing he's smuggling eggs filled with a dangerous virus, and that Newbigen is working for - and plans to recruit Harry into - an anti-communist organization led by a former General Midwinter (Ed Begley Sr.) whose activities are plotted by a fancy computer. Harry is dispatched to Latvia to facilitate a revolution before arriving at Midwinter's Texas compound.

If it were a better movie, Billion Dollar Brain would be ripe for rediscovery. It's not just that it's ahead of time on seeing the dangers of artificial intelligence and "patriotic" American organizations whose symbols are too Nazi-adjacent for it to be a coincidence, but either Len Deighton's novel or John McGrath's screenplay has also zeroed in on the very specific point that these things are actually not that bright, easily manipulated and played by grifters who, sure, maybe agree with some of the goals but mostly want to drain the big rich moron terrified of paying taxes as much as possible. The film is at its most memorable when Begley is full of bluster in his weird compound or addressing his large but deeply silly militia. It's an insight that many are still just coming around to 60 years later, and for all that Russell and company have great fun with the insanity of it, they're still to be taken seriously as threats, if only for the chaos they create if not for their ability to achieve their goals.

Unfortunately, there wind up being a few too many threads going on here for the whole thing to form a good pattern. The deadly bioweapon, the astroturfed Latvian rebels, and Newbigen's scheming all wind up at cross-purposes to each other, there's not really a great spot for Anya inside all of this, and as much fun as it is to see Oscar Homolka's Colonel Stok again, he feels more like fanservice than a clever insert. There's something that seems like it has real potential at the core - is Harry more disgusted with the way everyone in the spy business uses each other to join up with Newbigen to leach off Midwinter or horrified at how these cavalier monsters could get a lot of well-intentioned Latvians killed? - and the idea that trying to fight something as incoherent but well-funded as this organization is actually really difficult could fold in there, but it never all comes together, rather than just being a bunch of things happening.

Indeed, it's mostly good at the extremes, whether that be Michael Caine continuing to charm and seduce as the smart, pragmatic Palmer or the broadest American nonsense. There's some fun in between, but the film doesn't fully figure out how to have capable agents tussle with screwy villains.

Hong Kil-dong (The Story of Hong Gil-dong)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the American disc at Amazon

I was a tad surprised to see Shin Dong-heon's 1967 animated features seemingly owing more to Disney and other American animation houses than those of Japan, but why not? Despite the two countries being physically close, Japanese occupation was well within living memory and there were plenty of American army bases in the country on top of Hollywood's global reach. It does, nevertheless, make is somewhat ironic that the preservation and restoration of this film hinged on a Japanese print.

The film itself starts with Minister Hong (voice of Lee Chun-sa) being told by a fortune-teller that he must kill his concubine's son Gil-dong (voice of Kim Suil) in order to avoid a doom of his own. He doesn't have the heart to do it (which is good, because it's a ruse by his envious wife) and instead exiles Gil-dong. Gil-dong accepts this stoically, and soon meets Chadol Bawi (voice of Kim Sun-won), a diminutive but spunky wanderer, and the pair make enemies of despotic governor Um Ga-jin (voice of Yeom Seok-ju). In order to fight him, Gil-dong studies swordsmanship with Master Baekun (Lee Wu-yeing), during which time Um's power grows and begins to threaten the elder Hong.

The film is based upon a Joseon-era epic that was itself likely inspired by a Korean Robin Hood figure (although the research connecting them would not be published until a couple years after this film), or at least a portion of one version of it, and it being such a large work that a 67-minute film can only cover so much is a bit of a problem: Writer Shin Dong-woo seems to pick the important highlights that form into a story the best, but it's kind of inert. Not boring, really, but maybe too steady - Gil-dong doesn't really evolve much over the film, mostly becoming more skilled with a sword, and his ties to Chadol Bawi, farm girl God-dan and her father, or even the various villains, don't exactly intensify. One expects that all happens over the course of a long novel, but director Shin Dong-heon and screenwriter Shin Dong-woo have beats they need to hit and every extra cel is time and money, so it's streamlined.

It looks great, though, the animation is smooth and the designs are appealing, showing plenty of Disney and Fleischer influence. I'm not sure how far off it is from other Korean animated films of the period - a quick glimpse at the booklet suggests it was a major hit and spawned imitators quickly, along with an immediate follow-up/spin-off for Cadol Bawi. It's a nifty little movie, and while I've kind of harped on its faults because it was a disjointed thing to watch at night - I kept thinking I'd nodded off and missed something only to see that it just leapt forward a bit - it looks pretty great for its origin and period.


Hopi and Chadol Bawi

* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 December 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Korean Film Archive Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (when available)

Work must have started on Hopi and Chaol Bawi just about as soon as The Story of Hong Gil-dong hit South Korean screens, because it came out the same year, and it certainly seems to benefit both from the previous film's success and from perhaps being less tied to famous source material: It's a bigger, more fantastic adventure that lets the crew from the first stretch in new directions rather than be penned in by respecting the original novel.

With Hong Gil-dong busy with official duties, sidekick Chadol Bawi (voice of Kim Sun-won) goes out looking for master swordsman Hopi, hoping to learn his lightning sword technique. Hopi saves him from attacking wolves, but disappears into the night, while thief Gomsoe is happy to take credit. Hopi, it turns out, is not the defender of the oppressed that Chadol Bawi imagined, Nevertheless, the three wind up having their paths cross with corrupt officials who intend to cede the northern part of the kingdom to the Jurchen tribe, led by a shapeshifting wizard.

Hong Gil-dong wasn't a bad movie at all, but its central character being unfailingly righteous and heroic could make it feel very predictable; here, the filmmakers let Chadol Bawi's earnest youthfulness take center stage and let Hopi's bitterness and Gomsoe's willingness to go along serve as counterpoints. It puts friction into the picture, and suspense, and the revelation of the tragedy in Hopi's past makes everything more operatic rather than just being spelled out like in the previous movie. It's not really a complicated story, but it lets kids watching identify with Chadol Bawi and feel a little nervous about where Hopi might wind up, which is a genuine emotional hook.

On top of that, the trio gets to occasionally face monsters instead of just bandits and soldiers, which allows director Shin and his compatriots to really let loose, using the tools of animation to have impossible things happen, design exaggerated creatures, and make alpha villain Somasul especially a worthy adversary. Even the less supernatural action scenes such as the attacking wolves toward the beginning are striking. It's a dizzying land of adventure and legend at times, and the animation is pretty darn good, occasionally showing some of the looping that you'd see in the Fleischer cartoons that clearly serve as an inspiration but also some Disney grandiosity.

It can kind of be a lot at times, especially at the end, when you're enjoying the big action sequences but also maybe mentally thinking back and wondering if all these folks being bad guys makes sense; were they ever working against each other before being revealed as allies? It's also got a last-minute revelation that's kind of inevitable even if it's not really set up or hinted at, as much because you kind of need to give Hopi something after all this. That's not a bad thing - it feels right - but it kind of feels like it came out of nowhere.

Perhaps surprisingly, after doing these two features, Shin Dong-heon would not direct another, instead working in television (including a stint at Nelvana in Canada) and writing about music. Perhaps Korean productions got crowded out between American and Japanese animation, or perhaps the overwhelming nature of theatrical animation was overwhelming. Either way, he leaves behind a couple of striking films that deserve to be more than a footnote in the history of global animation.


Well, that's a lot - how's it affect the score?

Dale Evans: 31½ stars
Centipede: 28¾ stars

Dale benefits from the slightly bigger box set, but that can get flipped later!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 6 February 2026 - 12 February 2025

Odd weekend incoming.

• After all, the biggest opening is arguably The Moment, a mock-doc starring Charlie XCX in an exaggerated comedy about her negotiating the absurdities of her first stadium tour. It's at the Coolidge, the Somerville, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), and Assembly Row.
  
  Luc Besson directs a new take on Dracula that seems to owe a lot to Francis Ford Coppola's, with Christopher Waltz as a vampire-hunting priest. It's playing Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Kevin James stars in Solo Mio, playing a man jilted at the altar who goes on the honeymoon anyway and meets a nice local. That's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  Buffalo Kids, an animated film about Irish orphans having adventures when they come to America, actually comes from Spain and has been dubbed with a British cast including Gemma Arterton, Sean Bean, and Stephen Graham. It's at Fresh Pond and Boston Common. Another animated adventure, Time Hoppers: The Silk Road, is from Canada and features characters of mostly MENA descent; it's at Boston Common Saturday & Sunday.
  
  The third part of Renny Harlin's 3-part remake of The Strangers opens at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Chestnut Hill; I'd love to hear how likely my theory that it started as a 6-episode streaming series is. There's also Whistle, in which a group of teenagers including Dafne Keen and Sky Yang find an "Aztec Death Whistle" that causes the way one would eventually die to manifest in the present. Goofy premise, nice cast. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and the Coolidge (Friday/Saturday midnights only, with screenwriter Owen Egerton on-hand Saturday).
  
  Colombian film A Poet, with an aging poet mentoring a teenager in a scene that's not exactly great for young people, plays Boston Common.
  
  AMC has a number of films showing at Boston Common and South Bay for Black History Month, with Ali playing this week.
  
  Assembly Row and South Bay will be showing the Winter Olympics at various times, starting with the opening ceremony on Friday afternoon. There are early RealD 3D previews of GOAT Saturday at Boston Common and Assembly Row; a preview of Crime 101 with a livestreamed Q&A afterward at Kendall Square, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday; a mystery preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, also on Monday; and an early Dolby Cinema show of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die at Boston Common and Assembly Row Tuesday. Concert film Eric Church: Evangeline vs. The Machine Comes Alive plays Boston Common (Imax Laser), with Gale: Yellow Brick Road (yet another dark take on Oz) also playing Boston Common that evening.
• Apple Fresh Pond opens Tamil-language romance With Love, Guari-language romantic comedy Lagan Laagii Re, Malayalam-language thriller Anomie (through Sunday), and Malayalam-language comedy Ashakal Aayiram (through Sunday). Hindi-language action flick Border 2 keeps going for another week.
  
  AMC discovered Hong Kong fantasy-action movie Back to the Past was severely underbooked last weekend and added a screen at Causeway Street and more shows at Boston Common by Sunday.
  
  Anime Scarlet didn't get an Oscar nom with its odd December limited release, but I like it quite a bit, and it plays mostly matinees at Boston Common (Imax Laser) and South Bay (Imax Xenon) this week; it's slated for more showtimes when it moves to regular screens Thursday.
  
  K-pop concert doc Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience plays Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema).
• The Brattle Theatre opens Magellan with Gael Garcia Bernal as the first navigator to cross the Pacific; it's probably the most mainstream thing Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz has done and its 164-minute runtime is probably among his shortest! They also have the restoration of Safe from Friday to Sunday. Before that, the weekend begins withh a Friday Film Matinee of Do the Right Thing in 35mm.
• The Somerville Theatre has Parsley from Friday to Tuesday; this Dominican film recounts one of the darkest periods of that nation's history (when all Haitians in the country were ordered executed in 1937) from the perspective of a pregnant Haitian married to a Dominican man. One Battle After Another and The Testament of Ann Lee continue 70mm screenings through Sunday (check the screen for Ann Lee). After that, The Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival kicks off with a preview of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die and two shorts programs on Wednesday, with Dream Theater, The Black Hole (not the 1970s Disney film), and another shorts program on Thursday.
  
  The Capitol Theatre picks up Sentimental Value for those who need to do a bit of Oscar catch-up.
• In addition to the special shows of Whistle (with the writer present on Friday), The Coolidge Corner Theatre's February midnights are gothic romances, starting appropriately enough with a 35mm print of Ken Russell's Gothic on Friday and Tony Scott's The Hunger on Saturday. The weekend's "Cinema Masala" is a new restoration of Sholay playing in the big room Saturday (sold out) and Sunday. Monday features both a stage & screen show of Auntie Mame and a special preview of Pillion featuring director (and Coolidge Breakthrough Artist Award winner) Harry Lighton. There's Open Screen on Tuesday, an "Opposites Attract" show of Woman of the Year on Wednesday, and Now, Voyager on 35mm Thursday with a pre-film seminar led by UMass Boston professor Sarah Keller
• Folks keep going to Two Sleepy People at The Seaport Alamo, huh? They also kick off a month of free-to-members Friday night horror movies with John Carpenter's The Thing, jump forward to the end of the original run of Twin Peaks with episodes 28-30 on Saturday, plus Repo Man Saturday evening, a "Crafthouse" screening of the musical Phantom of the Opera Sunday afternoon, Brief Encounter a bit later Sunday, Ciao! Manhattan and Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight on Tuesday, and both a movie party for My Best Friend's Wedding and a preview of Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie with livestreamed Q&A on Wednesday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has more Antonioni/Bertolucci/Olmi series with Red Desert introduced by Max Goldberg on Friday (sold out), plus The Spider's Stratagem and Partner on Saturday. The Complete Stanley Kubrick has an encore of Killer's Kiss and "Day of the Fight" on Sunday and The Killing on Monday. Everything this weekend is on 35mm film.
• The Museum of Fine Arts concludes their annual Festival of Films From Iran with Black Rabbit, White Rabbit Friday evening, The Great Yawn of HIstory Saturday afternoon, and Taste of Cherry Sunday afternoon.
• Time Travel IS Dangerous! plays as part of "Time Travel on Screen" at the MIT Museum on Friday night, with Stephen Fry narrating a tale of two thrift-shop owners who use a discarded time machine to fill their shop with antiques.
• Landmark Kendall Square has Ghost on Tuesday, and Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion on Wednesday.
• The rescheduled-due-to-weather last day of the Belmont World Film's annual Family Film Festival is now Saturday, with "The Scarecrow's Wedding", School Chale Hum, and We Are Greenland: Soccer Is Freedom playing at the Regent.
• The Regent Theatre also hosts the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival, with a program of 6 short adventure documentaries playing Monday to Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films shows Crossfire playing with the Somerville CineClub at the West Branch Library, part of a series on film noir and the Red Scare.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday with The Secret Agent, Hamnet, and A Private Life. Massachusetts Avenue: Life Along Cambridge's Main Artery plays with Q&A Saturday (the Venue is on that street, although well past the Cambridge border!), Among Neighbors on Sunday morning, and there's a free screening of documentary The Social Dilemma followed by discussion on Tuesday..
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Oscar nominated documentary Mr. Nobody Against Putin and holds over Arco, Send Help, The Testament of Ann Lee, The Choral, One Battle After Another, Father Mother Sister Brother, Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, and Hamnet. Filmmaker John Sayles visits on Saturday, reading from his new novel Crucible and hosting a screening of City of Hope. Sinners plays as a Behind The Screen show on Sunday, and Train Dreams plays Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Send Help, Iron Lung, No Other Choice, The Secret Agent, and Hamnet from Friday to Monday. Casablanca is the Wednesday Classic, with a Weirdo Wednesday show on another screen..

I'm thinking Magellan, Parsley, Dracula, and maybe The Moment among new releases; Safe and Time Travel Is Dangerous! from the rep, and some Oscar catch-up that really needs doing before the flood of movies for Valentine's Day/vacation week (and maybe Lunar New Year). Maybe check out some stuff for the SF film fest, although they make it difficult to get a handle on it. Updates on My Letterboxd page daily. Well, no promises, but I'm on a 39-day streak right now, so odds are good.

From the Chinas: Busted Water Pipes & Back to the Past

Chinese box office numbers are crazy - I've got no idea how accurate the page I usually use is, because the numbers can be absolutely all over the place, with mega-blockbusters just absolutely rocketing through the top of the scale and head-scratching results like Return to Silent Hill having twice the opening of Busted Water Pipes last weekend, because the former is both foreign and bad, and, also, what do movie tickets cost in China, because these aren't big box-office numbers for a country of over a billion people?

At any rate, both these movies arrived in Boston this weekend, which was probably the roughest one for something to show up in North America of the new year so far - Send Help was probably the intended main attraction but Melania certainly looks like it took a number of screens out of circulation via four-walling and Iron Lung got a whole bunch of screens despite apparently not advertising much to movie audiences at all (I didn't see a single trailer in front of any sci-fi/horor/indie genre entry all month), although it probably has a ton of online fandom that I'm just not aware of because I don't game. As a result, these were scrapping for showtimes at the start of the weekend; I had to leave work early to get to a late afternoon show of Busted Water Pipes and Back to the Past was playing very early and very late at Boston Common on Saturday and Sunday. Apparently, though, you sell out a bunch of those shows and they'll find room; it's now got a full screen at Causeway Street and more accessible showtimes at Boston Common.

Personally, I like Busted Water Pipes more; and it's kind of a bummer that it's getting student/senior-friendly times at best and might be out of town after Wednesday - definitely worth catching if you get a chance!


Busted Water Pipes

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 30 January 2026 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Busted Water Pipes is one of the more impressively ridiculous movies I've seen lately: The filmmakers are committed to just piling one more bit of silliness on top of another for the whole running time, keeping things so far over the top that it can even ramp up the violence as it goes on while still feeling more slapstick than black comedy.

It opens with a hostage rescue in the capital city of fictional kingdom Ronham going spectacularly wrong, and the cop who led it, Yu Dahai (Eddie Peng Yuyan) transferred to the small town of Hoping even though it was his superior with political aspirations who provided bad information. A bona fide supercop, he basically wipes out crime in Hoping while waiting to be brought back, and seven years later that means the police station in this town could be shut down as an unnecessary expense. What he and his co-workers don't know is that Dahai's friend Luo Siji ("Allen" Ai Lun) is technically a fugitive in hiding, although he turns out to be a better spiritual leader than he ever was a crook, and isn't pleased when tomb-raider uncle Luo Yin (Zhang Qi) and two not-so-bright nephews show up looking for the tomb of legendary pirate Chen Yisao, more so when their psychopathic escaped convict cousin Luo Hao (Zhou You) joins them. The tomb, it turns out, is under the police station, and when the cops bust a water pipe trying to dig for it, that allows the Luos to kidnap plumber Li Baibai (Bu Yu) and use that as a way to gain access.

This skips a lot, because there are more jokes and side characters and determination to get from one to the other in the funniest way possible. There's little done that just advances the plot without having a punchline of some sort attached to it, and the filmmakers' response to needing something to move to the next piece is throwing something new in, even if it doesn't necessarily follow from what comes before.

It's a good thing that they've got a fair amount of material, because the movie would really fall apart otherwise. The same impulse that lets them throw a bunch of goofy jokes into the corners (like the identifiers on the back of Armed Accounting's Kevlar vests) also leads to not fleshing much out at all or abandoning gags they've maybe tapped out even though maybe those guys should be around more (having one character be a psychopath who will murder no longer useful characters helps, I suppose). The script can border on the incoherent, and tends to have two sidekicks any place where it could probably make do with one. It would probably be nice to have a few more ladies mixed in as well - the only one of any note is Dahai's daughter Xioahe, with Yang Chenxi funny enough in the role that one might spend a lot of the film's middle wondering where Xiaohe is during all this.

But there's a lot of good slapstick, and those skills translate into an action finale that is funny and absurd but which could also be dropped into a more serious action movie without a whole lot of damage. That's in large part due to Eddie Peng, who has done a fair amount of action but here gives his super-cop in exile this sort of comically puffed-up masculinity that's had its rougher edges shaved off so he can be larger than life but not a buffoon or playing as mean. He's countered by Zhou You's Luo Hao, who plays like the dumb killer in a Coen Brothers movie, too stupid and casual with his violence to really feel like an antagonist rather than an agent of chaos, which keeps the movie from landing in too-grim territory.

Busted Water Pipes is goofy as heck, and I bet it would be fun to see in a packed theater. Unfortunately, its North American release comes close enough on the heels of its Chinese one and on a week crowded enough that it's mostly playing awkward times and you get pockets of the room laughing rather than a roar. Maybe it hasn't quite done well enough in its home territory for good word of mouth to get to the diaspora, but it's a good enough time to have broad appeal.


Chum Chun Gei (Back to the Past)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2026 in AMC Boston Common #13 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it and the original series

It's oddly reassuring to me when I see that the things people bemoan about American pop culture are not exclusively our problems. For example, A Step Into the Past was a hit show on Hong Kong's TVB network a generation ago, and has had both a reboot (in 2018) and this theatrical sequel 24 years later. American companies aren't the only ones who mine decades-old IP like this, even when name recognition is the most the new project has going for it!

That series posits that in 1999, Hong Siu Lung (Louis Koo Tin-Lok) traveled back in time 2000 years to witness the coronation of the emperor who would unite China's seven warring kingdoms, only to find the man dead, and wound up training Chiu Poon (Raymond Lam Fung) to impersonate him lest history change. 25 years later, he's on the verge of accompanying it while Hong attempts to keep a low profile with wives Wu Ting-Fong (Jessica Hester Hsuan) & Kam Ching (Sonija Kwok Sin-Nae) and son Bowie (Kevin Chu Kam-Yin), ready to flee if the Emperor decides his "Grand Tutor" is now a liability. Along a parallel track in 2025, the man who was originally supposed to go back in time but took the fall for Hong's disappearance, Ken (Michael Miu Kiu-Wai), has just been released in prison and is looking for payback, forcing the scientists to send him, daughter Galie (Fay Bai Baihe) and a number of mercenaries back, where he intends to alter history by using holographic technology to replace the Emperor.

To what end? Cool special effects, basically; although there's lip service paid to Ken wanting to prove history can be changed and the mercenaries intending to loot the palace of lost treasures, it's hard to really grasp what his endgame is. He gets to bring back a lot of futuristic technology, though - a timeline where they built a time machine in 1999 is apparently one where phones are a combination of transparent plastic and holographic projection, a combination motorbike and hoverboard can shrink to something that fits in one's pocket in abject defiance of the law of conservation of mass, and armor that can repel even its time's automatic weapons, let alone the sharp sticks in play here. It's slick enough, though, although a little blandly black-and-silver in its design (producer/star/production mogul Koo's previous sci-fi film, Warriors of the Future, seems to have had the same look from the stills I've seen), but the mashup of futuristic and historical is kind of fun, more often than not.

The original series is on Tubi (or it isn't, apparently leaving at the end of January), so maybe I'll watch a bit to see if it makes this film better at some point. The movie's not bad, exactly, but doesn't really have a reason to be. It's set too early to pick up on the show's implied tease of Hong's son being destined to depose Chiu, there's no real time travel shenanigans in terms of paradoxes effect preceding cause, and on top of Ken not seeming to have a goal, all that material takes time away from what could be an interesting story about how Chiu has become a tyrant and the responsibility Hong bears for that. There are possibilities all over the place - is Hong shaping his son differently than he did Chiu, are there parallels in Bowie's and Galis' relationships to their fathers, is it wiser to maintain the steady status quo or to try to forge a better world? - but nothing winds up emerging as a theme, and the filmmakers never really find anything to do with the decent hook of Ken plotting to do what Hong did out of necessity. Stuff happens, but it's more a series of events than a story where anything really hits if you don't have previous attachment.

It's not entirely difficult to see what the film appears to be a success in both Hong Kong and the mainland (and filling seats in Boston when given a chance): Koo is good in a role that lets him do a bit of everything, and has put a lot of resources into it, with his "One Cool X" companies all over the credits. The returning cast is all pretty solid, enough that one can understand why they'd all be around even if there's not really enough for them to do, and newcomers like Bai Baihe and Kevin Chu carry their parts well. Action director Sammo Hung can still choreograph a pretty darn good fight, especially when it's not all visual effects. It feels like a blockbuster that does a fair job of satisfying long-time fans without leaving the next generation behind.

Maybe it works if you love the show, since it doesn't entirely fail for those of us who didn't know it existed before the movie started. Even not knowing much about the show, though, this seems like a bit of a missed opportunity, something that looks good on a rights-holder's balance sheet but no strong story of its own.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 30 January 2026 - 5 February 2025

Happy New Sam Raimi Movie Day to those who celebrate, which is presumably everyone, right?

• The new Raimi is Send Help, which has mousy Elizabeth Banks relishing the role-reversal after a plane crash strands her and her boss (Dylan O'Brien) on an island in the middle of the Pacific, only she's the one who is uninjured and knows how to live off the land. It plays Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The annual late-January "Jason Statham as a deadly operative dragged back into action" flick is Shelter, with Bill Nighy and Naomi Ackie hopefully picking up nice paychecks as the authorities hunting him and the young girl stuck with him down. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards (including CWX)
  
  Sci-fi horror flick Iron Lung is a video game adaptation adapted by streamer Mark "Markipiler" Fischbach (he writes/directs/stars) as "The Convict" scouting a blood ocean on a distant planet. It's at Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including XL), Causeway Street, Kendall Square (possibly only Friday), the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  Also opening this weekend is Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature Arco, apparently only playing in an English dub although it is very much a French sci-fi story that looks like a bandes dessinees adaptation. It has a kid from the far future who swipes his family's time travel gear getting stuck in 2075, where the survival of humanity is still on the brink. It's at the Coolidge, West Newton, Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, and Assembly Row.
  
  Islands, a thriller starring Sam Riley as a resort tennis pro who gets involved with a visiting family (and possibly murder), opens at Boston Common. Palestinian/Jordanian drama All That's Left of You also plays Boston Common.
  
  One Battle After Another, F1, and Marty Supreme return/upgrade to Imax screens at Assembly Row; It's another Lord of the Rings weekend at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay; and The Lego Movie plays in 3D at Fresh Pond through Thursday.
  
  Documentary Paris Hilton: Infinite Icon opened at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Wednesday; vanity project/obvious bribe Melania plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Gang drama (inspired by a 4th-century legend) Moses the Black plays Boston Common Saturday afternoon and Wednesday evening. There's a "Scream Unseen" preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row Monday evening. K-Pop concert film Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience has advanced Imax screenings Wednesday at Boston Common, Assembly Row.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens A Private Life, which features Jodie Foster as a psychiatrist in Paris who is convinced that one of her patients was murdered, and enlists her ex-husband to help solve this case. It also plays the Arlington Capitol, the Lexington Venue, and Boston Common.
  
  For midnights, the Coolidge welcomes Cinematic Void's Jim Branscome to introduce the original Suspiria on Friday and A Bay of Blood on Saturday for the end of Giallo January. They get the cult movie vibe going earlier in the evening with Repo Man, with a couple podcasters from The Ringer doing an introduction. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Slap Shot; they wrap "Projections" with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on Tuesday; start February's "Opposites Attract" series with My Man Godfrey on 35mm Wednesday (including a pre-film seminar with Jake Mulligan); and start a Sidney Poitier series with The Defiant Ones on 35mm Thursday.
• If I'm reading Landmark Kendall Square's website right, they've got last week's pre-recorded Q&A on all screenings of Sentimental Value, which returns for a full run this week. Tuesday's Retro Replay is Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Wednesday's "Filmmaker Focus" is North By Northwest.
• Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language action film Mardaani 3, with Rani Mukerji as a cop hunting down kidnapped girls; Hindi-language drama Om Shanti Shanti Shantihi, featuring Eesha Rebba as a survivor of domestic abuse (through Sunday); Nepali drama Aa Bata Aama; Malayalam-language horror comedy Prakambanam (through Sunday); and Malayalam-language crime drama Valathu Vashathe Kallan (through Sunday). Held over for another week is Hindi-language action flick Border 2.
  
  Hong Kong fantasy-action movie Back to the Past, featuring Louis Koo traveling back in time to usurp the Qin Dynasty, plays Boston Common. Boston Common also opens Chinese comedy Busted Water Pipes, where a small-town police trying to justify staying open in a town with no crime gets broken into by thieves posing as plumbers.
• The Brattle Theatre has Crossing Delancey for the Friday Film Matinee, then returns to "Some of the Best of 2025: Frankenstein and One of Them Days on Friday evening; Happyend & Cloud Saturday; Eephus for the Sunday and a 35mm double feature of Splitsville & Friendship later Sunday evening; Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk and Train Dreams on; Peter Hujar's Day & The History of Sound on Tuesday; An Unfinished Film & Caught by the Tides on Wednesday; finishing with The Mastermind & Wake Up Dead Man on Thursday.
• The Seaport Alamo holds Two Sleepy People over for another week, and also has Hard Boiled from Friday to Sunday for those who got snowed out last week. Josie and the Pussycats also plays Friday to Sunday, with Twin Peaks episodes 14-17 on Saturday, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence on Sunday, the last Twillight movie party (Breaking Dawn Part 2) on Monday, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? on Tuesday, and an early access show of Luc Besson's Dracula on Wednesday.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has the first week of their annual Festival of Films From Iran, with It Was Just an Accident Friday evening, Certified Copy Saturday afternoon, Cutting Through Rocks Sunday afternoon, and The Things You Kill on Thursday evening.
• The ICA has BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions for one night Friday and short film program "Intaglios of Breath and Light: An Indigenous Present" on Thursday evening
• The Somerville Theatre has One Battle After Another on 70mm film on Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday, bumping The Testament of Ann Lee to smaller digital screens those nights.
  
  The Capitol Theatre has the GLAMM (Gaming Local Arts, Music, Movies) festival Friday night.
• The Harvard Film Archive continues the Antonioni/Bertolucci/Olmi series with Blow-Up on Friday, L'avventura on Saturday, and The Conformist (rescheduled from last week) on Monday. On Monday they begin The Complete Stanley Kubrick, with Killer's Kiss and "Day of the Fight" at 7pm with Fear and Desire and "The Seafarers" (16mm) at 8:45pm; all except that one short are on 35mm film.
• Last call for Avatar 3 on the Omnimax screen Friday & Saturday at the The Museum of Science.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week but Wednesday with The Choral, Hamnet, and Marty Supreme, and A Private Life (though not every film every day). There's a free screening of documentary short "Beyond Their Years: The Incredible Legacies of Herb Carnegie and Buck O'Neil" on Thursday evening.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Arco and Send Help, keeping The Testament of Ann Lee (including a Behind the Screen show on Sunday), The Choral, The Voice of Hind Rajab, One Battle After Another, Father Mother Sister Brother, Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, and Hamnet. Last week's snowed-out silent double bill of The General & The Immigrant with Bruce Vogt is rescheduled for Sunday; Groundhog Day plays Monday afternoon.
  
  Cinema Salem has Send Help, Iron Lung, The Testament of Ann Lee, and Hamnet Friday to Monday. Documentary Soldiers of Song plays Saturday afternoon; there's a Whodunnit Watch Party Sunday; Pride and Prejudice for the Wednesday Classic, with a Weirdo Wednesday show next door; and a screening party for "Face Crusher Legends" on Thursday.
  
  In addition to the wide openings, the Liberty Tree Mall multiplex in Danvers has German animated film Tafiti: Across the Desert dubbed into English and Worldbreaker, a sci-fi action piece starring Milla Jovovich & Luke Evans directed by Brad Anderson.

I'm doing the Boswords Winter Wondersolve on Sunday, and the timing is actually kind of annoying, because when you combine that with MGM apparently four-walling Melania, it puts both the two Chinese movies 3D screenings of Send Help in places where they only overlap with other things. I'll try and carve that out, hopefully also squeezing in Cloud and Splitsville at the Brattle and crossing my fingers that a couple other things hang around one more week. My Letterboxd page will have updates on managing it.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 23 January 2026 - 29 January 2025

Kind of fun to see theaters guess right/wrong about what they need screens for before Oscar noms come out!

• Not likely to show up at next year's Oscars is Mercy, directed by Timur Bekmambetov and starring Chris Pratt as a cop accused of killing his wife and forced to prove his innocence to an AI judge/jury/executioner (Rebecca Ferguson) in 90 minutes. It's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D/3D), Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & XL & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), the Seaport (Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), and Chestnut Hill (including RealD 3D).
  
  Director Christophe Gans (but apparently none of the original cast) is back for Return to Silent Hill which apparently ignores the second film and touts closer connections to the video games. It's at Boston Common and Causeway Street.
  
  Boston Common and South Bay also open Clika, which follows an aspiring Mexican-American musician who gets involved with dealing drugs to stay afloat. Atropia at Boston Common features Alia Shawkat as an actress working at an army base training troops for urban combat in Iraq; Boston Common also gets In Cold Light, with Maika Monroe as an ex-con on the run after witnessing her twin sister's murder.
  
  Oscar nominees back in theaters (or getting more screens) include One Battle After Another at West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendall, and South Bay; Sinners at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendall, and South Bay; The Secret Agent at the Capitol, the Kendall, and West Newton; Sentimental Value at the Coolidge (and also at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and the Kendall with a taped Q&A on Sunday); Hamnet at the Coolidge, the Capitol, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendall, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards; The Voice of Hind Rajab at the Coolidge, West Newton, and the Seaport.
  
  The Testament of Ann Lee picks up West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Kendall Square, and the Seaport in addition to the Coolidge (70mm when on screen 1) and The Somerville Theatre (70mm when on screen 1), which would have been a fine strategy if it had gotten even one well-deserved nomination.
  
  The Lord of the Rings movies another weekend, with Fellowship playing Friday, The Two Towers Saturday, and The Return of the King Sunday at and Assembly Row; Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay play all three movies every day, although the order may be odd. Hard Boiled plays Boston Common Sunday/Monday/Wednesday and the Seaport Sunday/Monday/Tuesday.
  
  Send Help has an early access show at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Saturday; Whistle plays early at Boston Common on Wednesday. There are secret screenings at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendall, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday. Megadeath: Behind the Mask has an encore at Boston Common on Saturday.
  
  Documentary Paris Hilton: Infinite Icon opens at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens H Is for Hawk, with Claire Foy as a woman who takes up falconry while grieving her father (Brendan Gleeson). It's also at Boston Common.
  
  Kendall Square also has Frankenstein for another week, with the Seaport also picking it up, and a Retro Replay of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on Tuesday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre has Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer for the true crime midnight on Friday and Sisters for Giallo (adjacent) January. They also have the original animated How to Train Your Dragon for kids' shows Saturday & Sunday. Sunday morning's Goethe-Institut German film is the latest from Fatih Akin (taking over for mentor Hank Bohm), Amrum. Tuesday's "Projections" show is Stalker (regular 7pm show sold out, but a second was put on at 9:35pm). Director Allie Rood will be part of a panel following Prickly Mountain and My Design/Build Life on Wednesday (already sold out); they also welcome author Gary K. Wolf for Who Framed Roger Rabbit on Thursday (also sold out), with a Cult Class/Projection screening of A Clockwork Orange later that night.
• Apple Fresh Pond gets Hindi-language action flick Border 2, Tamil-language action-comedy Thalaivar Thambi Thalaimaiyil, Malayalam-language thriller Baby Girl, Malayalam-language wrestling comedy Chatha Pacha: The Ring of Rowdies, and a re-release of Tamil actioner Mankatha (through Sunday). Telugu films Mana Shankara Varaprasad Garu and Anaganaga Oka Raju (through Sunday) continue.
  
  Anime All You Need Is Kill continues at Boston Common.
• The Brattle Theatre kicks the weekend off with a 35mm print of Batman for the Friday Film Matinee, before getting into "Some of the Best of 2025: The Monkey (35mm) & Final Destination Bloodlines on Friday evening; Bugonia (35mm) & Eddington Saturday; Familiar Touch Sunday & Monday afternoons; Fréwaka & Weapons Sunday evening; Sorry, Baby on Monday (with Strictly Brohibited hosting the 6pm show); Resurrection & Misericordia on Tuesday; If I Had Legs I'd Kick You & Die My Love on Wednesday; and Nouvelle Vague & Vulcanizadora on Thursday.
  
  They also host RPM Fest on Sunday afternoon with a screening of short Films by Raymond Rea, who will be there in person.
• The Seaport Alamo has TikTok-spawned romcom Two Sleepy People all week. They also have John Cassavetes' Opening Night on Friday, Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell later Saturday, Twin Peaks episodes 10-13 on Saturday, Reds on Sunday, My Own Private Idaho on Monday, Christiane F. on tuesday, and a movie party for Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 on Thursday.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has an"Arton Film" weekend, with Kelly Reichardt's The Mastermind on Friday, documentary The Painter and the Thief on Saturday afternoon, and Caravaggio on Sunday afternoon.
• The ICA has two programs of short films from the Boston International Kids Film Festival on Saturday & Sunday, with the 11am program suited for those 10 and under and the 2pm program aimed at kids 11 to 15.
• The Capitol Theatre has both a 4th Wall show with Boarzoy, Frogs, and Spanghew as well and a screening of the five-episode series The Imposter Syndrome on Saturday night (it was created by the new head of the Arlington International Film Festival, who will be on hand), plus the monthly Disasterpiece Theater event on Monday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has a free screening of Steve McQueen's Occupied City on Saturday (currently at capacity although there will be a rush line in case people don't show), with McQueen giving a talk at the Sanders Theatre on Wednesday. On Monday, they project their print of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist
• Belmont World Film's annual Family Film Festival features animation workshops at the Belmont Media Center on Saturday although the three films scheduled to play the Regent on Sunday are being postponed due to weather (to either the 7th or the 8th of February, depending on whether or not the Patriots are in the Super Bowl).
• The Regent Theatre has similarly postponed Nepali film Harsha, intended to screen Sunday evening. A program from the Ritual Mountain Bike Film Tour plays Wednesday.
• The Museum of Science continues to show Avatar 3 on the Omnimax screen Friday & Saturday evenings through the end of January.
• The Lexington Venue looks to be closed Sunday & Monday to avoid the heavy weather, playing The Choral, Hamnet, and Marty Supreme the rest of the week. Documentary Among Neighbors plays Tuesday, and there is a free screening of The Librarians on Wednesday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens The Testament of Ann Lee, keeping The Choral, No Other Choice, The Voice of Hind Rajab (including a "Behind the Screen" show on Saturday), One Battle After Another, Father Mother Sister Brother, Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, *Hamnet, and Zootopia 2. There's a double feature of Buster Keaton's The General and Charlie Chaplin's The Immigrant with pianist Bruce Vogt providing the music on Sunday; Among Neighbors also plays here on Tuesday; and documentary Teenage Wasteland plays Wednesday, with subject Fred Isseks on-hand to discuss the film.
  
  Cinema Salem has The Testament of Ann Lee, Hamnet, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and Is This Thing On? on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, not messing with the storm on Sunday. Friday's Night Light show is Logan's Run; the Spooky Horror Show presents Sam Raimi's original The Evil Dead on Saturday; and the Wednesday Classic is Baby Doll, with a Weirdo Wednesday show next door.

That snow's going to mess up some plans, eh? Like, just targeting Hard Boiled directly. Going to try for some Oscar catch-up - it seems very strange that Sentimental Value is making such a small return! - and also catch H Is for Hawk, Return to Silent Hill, and In Cold Light. Check my Letterboxd page for what I think of 'em.

The Fire Raven

Any word on what the big Lunar New Year movies are this year? There was actually a Chinese-language preview attached to this - something about crime being so rare in a certain town that the police station is targeted for elimination, so the cops start committing small crimes to save their jobs - but the bit with the title went by very fast. The holiday comes relatively late this year and there haven't been a whole lot of Chinese releases reaching Boston recently (it wasn't that long ago that something would grab a screen the same day as a new Star Wars movie a week before Christmas!), so it's been a really quiet where Chinese films are concerned lately. Resurrection has been the most prominent Chinese film in America, and that's from the art-house channel rather than the mainstream one.

The Fire Raven seems to be the biggest New Year's Eve movie in China this year, although Western movies are unusually competitive in that market right now, as Zootopia 2 is a juggernaut and Avatar 3 a pretty big deal. It's playing kind of lousy slots at Boston Common, either very early or very late in the day, and on top of that, after I reserved my seat, the AMC app was kind of flaky about showing the ticket: It would show as a slot taken on in the A-List section, but wouldn't be in my tickets. I had to bring up the email I got sent, which was strange.

Worth catching if that fits your schedule and you like weird action/mystery things, though.


Ni Sha (The Fire Raven aka Hidden Kill)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2026 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Not having seen a trailer - a common occurrence with Chinese movies, which will often show up in America without a whole lot of English-language promotion - and having associated writer/director Sam Quah Boon-Lip more closely with another series of crime movies than he maybe should be, I was expecting something pretty different: One of those grim movies set in Thailand or a Thailand-like places but where everyone is ethnically Chinese and speaking Mandarin which allows for more grisly crimes and corrupt cops than something set in China. Instead, it plays like something adapted from a larger-than-life manga, a big screwy adventure that careens out of control at times.

(It's fair to be confused, though - his film Wu Sha, or Sheep Without a Shepherd in English, spawned Wu Sha 2 and Wu Sha 3, which are similar premises and also star Yang Xiao, but are separate stories, while Quah has also directed two films named "Mo Sha", the latter arriving in America as "A Place Called Silence", and this is "Ni Sha" in Mandarin, though, for all I know, these are all different symbols.)

It takes place in the fictitious "Doma City" and what appears to be the near future, just before the local holiday of "Crowmoot" and a local election, which will be influenced by the Air and Ventilation Taxes being levied on the literal Undercity. The crow the camera follows to start the film leads the audience to the murder of Talaura (Huang Yi), a shady talent agent, by someone wearing a crow mask. Lead detective Fang Zhengnan (Janine Chang Chun-Ning) recognizes the sketchbook left at the scene as one drawn by her foster brother Tianyang (Peng Yuchang) when he witnessed a murder on a train 15 years ago while he and Zhengnan hid from conductors. To Zhengnan's partner Edward (Wang Xun), that makes Tianyang the prime suspect, but Tianyang's "eagle eye" for detail finds discrepancies, leading them to believe that someone is trying to avenge that murder, with fight promoter Shang Zhan (Alan Aruna) and gangster Tongcai (Hai Yitian) likely next on the hit list.

Tianyang also has a prosthetic leg that can do some pretty neat tricks, and the attempt on Shang's life is larger-than-life in an almost slapstick way that may, admittedly, have been more delightful considering that I was expecting a far more dour movie. Quan often seems like he's got a notecard file filled with elevated action world-building details that he's stitching together because this is not the sort of thing he's known for and he might not get another chance, and sometimes it can be a lot of fun - the way one of Talaura's accomplices gets taken out is hilarious cartoon violence - but sometimes it can just be a lot: The 15 years earlier segments have 15 years earlier segments of their own, and a lot of revelations tend to feel kind of random, in that you see that, sure, this character has been around and could slot into that position, but Quan's script usually has to flash back to even make you notice them rather than make one immediately realize that this fits. Chekhov's bionic leg sits on the mantel for what seems like a good long while.

It's still kind of fun, in large part because Chang Chun-Ning and Peng Yuchang are allowed to hit the ground running, with Quan presenting this pair as folks who have apparently solved other cases together, with what feels like a natural pre-existing vibe and upbeat, energetic attitudes despite the fact that the story shovels tragic backstories and an environment that can grind one down. They're charismatic problem-solvers who work well together, with enough folks like Wang Xun, Xu Jiao, Huang Xiaoming, Hai Yitian providing color as supporting characters to offset a couple guys in important spots who can be kind of bland.

The visuals and action are a good time as well. The design of this world tends toward the colorful and poppy rather than just sleek black or run-down brown, and there's a bit of willingness to push the effects past seamless if it will look cool. Chang Chung-Ning and the stunt team acquit themselves well enough when asked to get into a fight, although sometimes the action feels like a few more takes and resources might have made it better; for example, there's a point in a car chase when barrelling through tunnels full of construction has gotten two vehicles tangled in the same plastic mesh and the audience has barely had time to wonder what they're going to do with this before it's over. There's also a pretty decent train-based climax which feels like coming full circle on top of how setting an action sequence on a train makes it 23% better most of the time.

There's also an extended, impressively violent epilogue that, for as good as its best bits of mayhem are, tends to underline how Quan is seemingly trying to cram a lot of bits into one movie, and he also seems to have pushed the Chinese censors about as far as they're willing to go in terms of a killer not getting properly punished, even in sort-of-Malaysia rather than the mainland to the point where one might remember the intertitles tut-tutting about vigilantism as much as anything else. This isn't exactly surprising - Sheep without a Shepherd worked in large part because it leaned into how a viewer wanted folks to get away with something - and I hope he's got more chances to do fun adventure as opposed to gloomy crime, whether that's making this into the series it seemingly should be or not.