Friday, July 11, 2025

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 11 July 2025 - 17 July 2024

We are in the "one or two movies grabbing every screen" portion of the year.
  • This week, that's the latest take on Superman, written and directed by James Gunn with David Coreswet at Clark Kent, Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. Not sure what the story is, but it's the first time Warner has launched Superman movies with a larger DC Universe in place. It's at the Somerville, the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), The Museum of Science (Omnimax Fridays & Saturdays), West Newton, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D & Spanish subtitles), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D/3D & Dolby Digital & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening is Abraham's Boys, which is subtitled "A Dracula Story", featuring Titus Welliver as Van Helsing, who apparently moved to America with his sons after defeating Dracula, although maybe he's not totally defeated. It's at Boston Common and South Bay.

    Kids matinees include Pokemon: Detective Pikachu at Kendall Square Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday; The Wild Robot at Fresh Pond Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, and Kung Fu Panda 4 at South Bay Monday/Wednesday.

    This Is Spinal Tap is held over at Boston Common Friday to Sunday. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has 50th Anniversary shows at Boston Common Sunday & Wednesday.
  • Landmark Kendall Square opens Sovereign, featuring Nick Offerman and Jacob Tremblay as father-and-son believers in sovereign citizenship who will eventually cross paths with Dennis Quaid's police chief.

    Tuesday's comedy classic is The Jerk.
  • Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language gangster film Maalik, starring Rajkummar Rao; Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan, a Hindi-language romance about a visually-impaired couple; and Tamil-language drama Oho Enthan Baby. Hindi-language romantic anthology Metro… In Dino continues at Fresh Pond, where Bangladeshi action movie Taandob plays Saturday afternoon.

    Anime Jujutsu Kaisen: Hidden Inventory/Premature Death - The Movie plays Wednesday & Thursday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport.

    Chinese thriller Malice continues at Causeway Street.
  • The Brattle Theatre has an encore of Streets of Fire on 35mm for the Friday Film Matinee. After that, they have a run of Familiar Touch, with Kathleen Chalfant as a woman whose mind is breaking down on the other side of 80. Co-star H. Jon Benjamin will be on hand for a Q&A Friday. It also plays Saturday & Sunday, plus matinees Monday & Thursday. They also have late shows of Christiane F. in a new restoration Friday to Monday.

    In rep, Ari Aster programs a number of westerns - The Wild Bunch Saturday afternoon, Unforgiven Sunday afternoon on 35mm film, and No Country for Old Men Wednesday afternoon - ahead of an IFFBoston preview of his new film Eddington on Wednesday. There's also a "Pics and Crafts" show of Marie Antoinette on 35mm film Monday, and the start of their Robert Altman series on Tuesday with M*A*S*H & Brewster McCloud (the latter on 35mm).
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre rearranges showtimes, but mostly keeps the same movies. Midnights this weekend are Kill Bill, with Volume 1 on Friday and Volume 2 on Saturday, both on 35mm film. They also have documentary Sabbath Queen, which follows performance artist Amichai Lau-Lavie over 21 years before he returns to the thousand-year family business of being a rabbi, on Sunday afternoon, with director Sandi Dubowski on hand for Q&A.

    They also have The People's Joker on Monday evening, kabuki-derived horror movie Demon Pond on Tuesday, Dog Day Afternoon for Wednesday's Big Screen Classic, a 35mm Cinema Jukebox show of Saturday Night Fever on Thursday, and a cult classic show of Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion later Thursday night.

    (They're also the venue for Boston Jewish Film's Summer Cinematheque screening of Marathon Mom on Thursday, with tickets available on BJF's website.)
  • The Harvard Film Archive has more 35mm Mikio Naruse: Untamed (Friday evening/Sunday afternoon), A Wife's Heart (Friday night), and Sudden Rain (Sunday evening). They also welcome Yugoslav auteur Karpo Godina for bahrudin "Bato" Čengić's Life of a Shock Force Worker (with Godina's "Sunday Picnic") Saturday evening, a program of experimental shorts Saturday night, and episodes 1 to 3 of Frame for a Few Poses on Monday evening.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts screens La Chimera on Friday evening, with a panel of the museum's experts on hand for a conversation afterward.
  • WBUR's CitySpace has a "Set in Boston" screening of The Bostonians on Friday night, with Sean Burns & Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Megan Marshall discussing it afterward.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a 35mm double feature of Die Hard & Working Girl on Saturday evening (apparently it's a Bob's Burgers thing), with a midnight screening of Hundreds of Beavers later that night. Independent film Sunlight plays Sunday and Tuesday evening. Monday's Great Remakes double feature are the '58 and '86 versions of The Fly (the latter on 35mm film). Wednesday's Summer Camp show is What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? on 35mm, and Thursday features music documentary Harley Flanagan: Wired for Chaos.

    The Capitol Theatre has a 4th Wall show with Digital Awareness providing visuals for A Monolithic Dome, War Machine, and Astral Bitch on Saturday.
  • The Seaport Alamo has an "Agfadrome" screening of 1977 South Korean folk horror film Io Island on Wednesday.
  • The Regent Theatre has two movies on Sunday evening, with actress Taylor Treadwell there for meet & greet before American Warrior in the afternoon and documentary Goddess of Slide: The Forgotten Story of Ellen McIlwaine with director Alfonso Maiorana there for a Q&A in the evening. On Wednesday, they team with The Book Rack with The Princess Bride, with a post-film discussion about the adaptation.
  • There's a pretty full slate of outdoor screenings listed at Joe's Free Films: Moana at the Charles River Esplanade on Friday, Miss Congeniality at the Prudential Center on Saturday, 5 on Wednesday (Moana 2 at Boston Harbor Shipyard, Despicable Me 4 at Timothy J. Toomey Jr. Park in Cambridge, Moana at Castle Island and Point Break on 35mm at the Rose Kennedy Greenway via the Coolidge), and Flubber at Urban Park Roof Garden in Cambridge & The Outsiders at Somerville's Lincoln Park on Thursday.
  • The Lexington Venue is open all week but Monday with Familiar Touch, Friendship, and Hot Milk.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Superman and Bad Shabbos, continuing Jurassic World Rebirth, Elio, Materialists, The Phoenician Scheme, and The Life of Chuck.

    Cinema Salem has 28 Years Later, Jurassic World Rebirth, and Superman through Monday. The original The Toxic Avenger is Friday's Night Light show, with podcast The Spooky Picture Show hosting a 40th anniversary screening of Day of the Dead on Saturday, plus a Wednesday Classics show of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?.

    If you can make it out to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they've got a four-walled booking of influencers-getting-picked-off horror movie Skillhouse. The Dedham Community Theatre holds overFrench film Mr. Blake at Your Service.
Already have a ticket for Superman in Imax 3D on Saturday, a family gathering on Sunday, and then I leave for Montreal for the Fantasia International Film Festival on Monday. Can I fit Materialists and maybe a 3D Elio or even Sovereign in around that? Maybe, maybe not.

Friday, July 04, 2025

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 July 2025 - 10 July 2024

Huh, maybe I should have done a 5-day week last time, because this weekend is pretty quiet aside from Wednesday's openings.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre and Boston Common open IFFBoston closing night film Sorry, Baby, with writer/director/star Eva Victor playing an instructor at a small liberal arts school still reeling from something that happened when she was a grad student.

    The Coolidge also opens a special 25 Anniversary Edition of Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love which reintegrates some footage he cut before its original release.

    No midnight show on Friday night, but Green Room plays Saturday. Monday's Queer Cinema presentation is a 35mm print of All About My Mother; Tuesday's Kaidan Kimodameshi show is Kuroneko, also on 35mm film; Wednesday's Big Screen Classic is the original Sabina on 35mm; and Thursday's is Francis Ford Coppola's 2005 "Complete Novel" cut of The Outsiders.
  • Chinese thriller Malice, starring Zhang Xiaofei (recently seen in Yolo and Last Suspect) as a reporter investigating two people who fell to their deaths.

    Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language romantic anthology Metro… In Dino; Telugu-language action film Thammudu; and Tamil-language 3BHK, about a family looking to buy a home in the city Hindi-language sports movie Sitaare Zameen Par continues at Fresh Pond.
  • Jurassic World Rebirth opened Wednesday, and continues at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D & Spanish subtitles), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    40 Acres opened at Boston Common on Wednesday.

    Kids matinees include The Goonies at Kendall Square Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday; Kung Fu Panda 4 at Fresh Pond Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday and Arsenal Yards on Tuesday, and Despicable Me 4 at South Bay Monday/Wednesday.

    41st Anniversary shows of This Is Spinal Tap play Boston Common, Arsenal Yards Saturday/Sunday/Monday. There are secret previews at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row on Monday (possibly that sequel!). Less secret is Superman playing Tuesday at Boston Common (Imax Laser), South Bay (Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (Imax Laser), plus "Opening Night Fan Events" on Thursday at Boston Common (Imax Laser), South Bay (Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (Imax Laser)
  • The Brattle Theatre continues their "Spawn of Jaws: Blockbusters & Wannabe Blockbusters" series withRaiders of the Lost Ark on 35mm Friday & Saturday, Close Encounters Friday, Dune '84 on 35mm Friday & Tuesday, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on 35mm film Saturday (double feature with Raiders), E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on 35mm Saturday & Sunday, Poltergeist on 35mm Saturday & Sunday, Conan the Barbarian and a 35mm print of Action Jackson Sunday, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension on Monday & Thursday, Big Trouble in Little China on Monday, Beverly Hills Cop on 35mm & Flash Gordon on Tuesday, Batman on 35mm & Howard The Duck on Wednesday, and then wrapping things up with their annual 35mm Trailer Treats show and Streets of Fire on 35mm Thursday.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a midnight special of Cats on Saturday. They begin their "Great Remakes" series on Monday, with a double feature of 1951's The Thing from Another World & 1982's The Thing, the latter on 35mm. They screen indie Stealing Pulp Fiction on Tuesday, a Summer Camp show of Ash Wednesday on Wednesday, and the new 4K restoration of Shall We Dance? on Thursday.

    The Capitol Theatre the "Peninsula Dreams Film Festival" on Saturday afternoon, and then a "Blame Canada! USO Show" presentation of South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut in the evening, with a pop-up arcade and musical performances before and after the show.
  • The Harvard Film Archive gets a bit of a late start on their summer deep dive, "Floating Clouds: The Cinema of Naruse Mikio". The film that gives the series its title plays Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, with Sudden Raid Saturday night, Yearning Sunday evening, and Sound of the Mountain Monday evening. All film this weekend - and I believe for the entire series - are on 35mm film.
  • The Seaport Alamohas Attack the Block on Monday, and Hot Spring Shark Attack on Wednesday
  • Landmark Kendall Square is doing comedy classics in July, kicking off the weekly series with National Lampoon's Animal House on Tuesday.
  • The Regent Theatre has documentary Why Are You You? on Wednesday, which shares an abbreviation with subjects the Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (by design, I imagine).
  • Outdoor screenings listed at Joe's Free Films include Finding Nemo at the TimeOut Market on Monday, Inside Out 2 at Hoyt Field in Cambridge on Wednesday, and Paddington at Assembly Row & The Wild Robot at Somerville's Lincoln Park on Thursday.
  • The Museum of Science returns "Superhero Dogs" to its Imax shorts rotation, and tickets are on sale for Superman when it opens in a couple of weeks.
  • The Lexington Venue is open all week but Monday with F1, plus free matinees of Stars and Stripes Forever on Saturday and Yankee Doodle Dandy on Sunday.

    The West Newton Cinema continues F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, Elio, How to Train Your Dragon, Materialists, The Phoenician Scheme, and The Life of Chuck. Thursday's Ty Burr Film Club show is The Night of the Hunter.

    Cinema Salem has 28 Years Later, Jurassic World Rebirth, F1, and M3GAN 2.0 through Monday. Wednesday has the 1937 A Star Is Born, with the mystery Weirdo Wednesday show down the hall.

    If you can make it out to the Dedham Community Theatre, they are showing French film Mr. Blake at Your Service, starring John Malkovich as a widower who takes a job as a butler to Fanny Ardant, with Émilie Dequenne also in the cast.
I figure the long weekend will let me get an early start for bladder-busters F1 and Jurassic Park 7 around Malice and 40 Acres, hopefully catching up with Elio in 3D, 28 Years Later and Materialists before Hot Spring Shark Attack and the Trailer Treats - Fantasia is less than two weeks away so there's a wall there!

Friday, June 27, 2025

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 June 2025 - 3 July 2024

Bunch of rep at odds with each other this weekend.
  • In the 'plexes, though, you've got F1: The Movie, with Brad Pitt as a former F1 racer lured back from stock car racing to compete and mentor a cocky young driver. Joseph Kosinski co-writes and directs, so the giant-screen racing action should look incredible. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (Including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Landmark 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.

    M3GAN 2.0 looks to be going the Terminator 2 route, with its killer robot rebooted and (hopefully) reprogrammed to protect the previous film's survivors from a next-generation android, slanted more toward sci-fi action than horror this time around. It's at the Somerville, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.

    IFFBoston selection Hot Milk, starring Fiona Shaw & Emma Mackey as a mother and daughter who find an alternate reality while looking for a health cure on the Spanish coast. It's at Boston Common and the Seaport. Comedy Everything's Going to Be Great, starring Allison Janney & Bryan Cranston as a couple involved in regional theater, plays Boston Common.

    Jurassic World Rebirth opens Wednesday, with Garth Evans directing Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali on a mission to another abandoned island lab where InGen made hybrid dinosaurs. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill. Looks like they're doing old-school midnight shows, at least at Assembly Row, rather than pushing all the way back to Tuesday, too!

    Another IFFBoston film, 40 Acres, starring Danielle Deadwyler as the head of a family struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, opens at Boston Common on Wednesday (plus a bunch of early-Tuesday shows).

    Kids matinees include The Lego Batman Movie at Kendall Square Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday; Migration at Fresh Pond Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, and Minions: The Rise of Gru at South Bay Monday/Wednesday.
  • Apple Fresh Pond opens Telugu-language fantasy epic Kannapa with Vishnu Manchu as the mythic hunter, as well as Hindi-language horror-fantasy Maa, starring Kajol as a mother who transforms into the goddess Kali to fight a demonic curse, a follow-up to last year's Shaitaan, though I'm not sure how closely connected they are (not seeing directors/cast in common).

    Hindi-language sports movie Sitaare Zameen Par continues at Fresh Pond (also at Causeway Street), Telugu-language crime drama Kuberaa continues at Fresh Pond (also at Boston Common). Another encore of The Eken: Benaras e Bibhishika plays Sunday afternoon.
  • The Brattle Theatre has three series going over the week. Pride month programming includes The Celluloid Closet (35mm Friday afternoon), Love Lies Bleeding (Friday night), The Living End (Saturday night), and How to Survive a Plague (Sunday night). That makes it tight for "Japan's Pop Art Renegade: Nobuhiko Obayashi x5", which includes both his most (in)famous film, House on 35mm Friday & Saturday, plus two double features - the original The Girl Who Leapt Through Time & School in the Crosshairs on Saturday & Sunday, and The Island Closest To Heaven & His Motorcycle, Her Island on Sunday & Monday.

    On Tuesday, with Universal holding Jaws back for other theaters, they start a "Spawn of Jaws: Blockbusters & Wannabe Blockbusters" series, looking at the big films that arose in Spielberg's film's wake. It starts with a free 35mm Elements of Cinema show of Grease on Tuesday, followed by Star Wars Tuesday night & Wednesday afternoon (almost certainly the Special Edition), Close Encounters of the Third Kind Wednesday evening, Alien Wednesday night & Thursday evening, Raiders of the Lost Ark Thursday afternoon, and Aliens Thursday night. The series continues through Thursday the 10th.
  • Two stops up the Red Line, The Somerville Theatre continues their annual 70mm & Widescreen festival with a 35mm double feature of Harakiri & The Sword of Doom on Friday, a 70mm print of The Hunt for Red October on Saturday, separate 70mm shows of Always and Far and Away on Saturday, and 70mm Lawrence of Arabia on Monday. There's also a midnight show of the new restoration of Princess Mononoke (dubbed/4K) on Saturday, a 35mm "Greenscreen" show of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on Tuesday, and a "Summer Camp" show of Mommie Dearest on Wednesday.

    The Capitol Theatre has a live show paying tribute to Neil Young & Joni Mitchell on Saturday, and the monthly Disasterpiece Theatre show on Monday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre continues the zombie sequel midnight shows with Bride of Re-Animator on Friday and Return of the Living Dead III on Saturday, both directed by Brian Yunza. Monday's Queer Cinema presentation is Querelle. On Tuesday, they start a new "Kaidan Kimosdameshi" series of Japanese horror with a 35mm print of Ugetsu; Thursday has two 35mm classics of various sorts: Drop Dead Gorgeous at 7pm and the officially-designated cult classic Jackass: The Movie.
  • RoxFIlm has their closing night at The Museum of Fine Arts on Friday, with a shorts program in the afternoon and May the Lord Watch, a documentary on North Carolina rap group Little Brother, with band members on hand for a Q&A afterward, co-presented by BAMS Festival, which starts the next day.
  • The Seaport Alamo brings back On Swift Horses for Pride shows (I guess?) Saturday & Sunday. Cult hit Frankenhooker plays Monday, and there's a Movie Party of Legally Blonde 2 on Tuesday
  • The Regent Theatre has The Kids Are Alright - the concert movie featuring The Who, not the indie drama - on Saturday, including a Q&A with filmmaker Jeff Stein. They also have musical 1776 on Thursday afternoon, with a live reading of the Declaration of Independence that night
  • Outdoor screenings listed at Joe's Free Films include Toy Story at the MIT Open Space on Friday and 10 Things I Hate About You at the TimeOut Market on Monday.
  • The Museum of Science still has RSVPs open for a special showing of Sally in the Mugar Omni Theater on the 28th, and tickets are on sale for Superman when it opens in a couple of weeks.
  • The Embassy continues Elio through Sunday (maybe not 7 days a week yet).

    The Lexington Venue is open all week but Monday with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, The Life of Chuck, and F1.

    The West Newton Cinema opens F1 Friday and Jurassic World Rebirth Wednesday, holding over Elio, Prime Minister, How to Train Your Dragon, Materialists, The Phoenician Scheme, and The Life of Chuck. Short film program KINORAW has six shorts by Ukrainian filmmakers Saturday evening, and both Moonrise Kingdom and IFFBoston documentary Rebel with a Clause play Thursday night, the latter with the film's director and star on hand for a post-film Q&A.

    Cinema Salem has 28 Years Later, How to Train Your Dragon, F1, and M3GAN 2.0 through Monday. Vampyros Lesbos plays Friday for the Night Light show; Rocky Horror with Teseracte on Saturday (Full Body at Boston Common as always); a Girlies with Anniversaries show of Desperately Seeking Susan on Saturday, and Take Me Out to the Ballgame on Wednesday.
Man, there's just no way to make the Brattle and Somerville programs play nice with each other, huh? Trying to go back and forth between them through Monday, then seeing about F1 and Jurassic World. Although it's kind of crazy to me that apparently folks would rather use Imax screens for racecars than dinosaurs now.

Friday, June 20, 2025

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 June 2025 - 26 June 2024

Super-late on this, but something is wiping me out.
  • Anyone else kind of surprised that 28 Years Later is only coming out 23 years after 28 Days Later? It reunites original writer Alex Garland and director Danny Boyle for the first time since 2007's Sunshine and apparently ignores 28 Weeks Later to tell a story of folks who have survived infected-free on an isolated island getting in danger on a foraging trip to the mainland. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, and Ralph Fiennes star, and don't look up the already-shot next movie to find out who either survives or figures in flashbacks to come! That's at the Coolidge, The Capitol Theatre, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), and Arsenal Yards.

    The latest from Pixar is Elio, about a misfit kid who causes a bunch of trouble when his dream of being abducted by aliens comes true. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Embassy, West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Comedy Bride Hard stars Rebel Wilson as a secret agent and maid of honor that a group of mercenaries did not count on when they took her best friend's wedding hostage. It plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.

    Brokeback Mountain has a 20th Anniversary re-release all week at Boston Common and Sunday & Tuesday at the Seaport.

    Kids' matinees include Happy Feet Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday at Kendall Square; Despicable Me 4 Monday to Wednesday at Fresh Pond; and The Bad Guys Monday & Tuesday at South Bay.

    There's a Monday mystery preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, South Bay, and Assembly Row (probably the same movie for all chains, but maybe not; it's a mystery!). In non-mystery previews, F1 shows in Imax Monday at Boston Common and Assembly Row and again Wednesday at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema), South Bay (Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema),and Arsenal Yards (CWX).
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens Bad Shabbos, in which an interfaith couple sees the first meeting of their parents go awry due to a death before their dinner. Can't say I've heard of the folks playing the couple, but Kyra Sedgwick, Method Man, and David Paymer is a fun cast. Director Daniel Robbins will be on hand for Q&A after the two shows on Sunday afternoon.

    Midnights this month are apparently 'zombie sequels', with Friday night's show of 28 Weeks Later tying into Years playing and Day of the Dead playing at 10pm Saturday night to give time for a conversation with actor Terry Alexander hosted by Nikki Coleman. Sunday morning's Geothe-Institut German film is Two to One, starring Sandra Hüller as one of the masterminds of a heist of East German marks in the waning days of the country. Monday's Queer Cinema presentation is 1969 Japanese film Funeral Parade of Roses; there's an apparently sold-out show of Spirited Away on Tuesday with both the original author Sachiko Kashiwaba and translator Avery Fischer Udagawa on had for discussion; and National Treasure lays for the Thursday night Rewind! show.
  • Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language coach-learns-from-neurodivergent team movie Sitaare Zameen Par (also at Causeway Street, South Bay), Telugu-language crime drama Kuberaa (also screening at Boston Common, with Telugu & Tamil shows at both locations), and Malayalam language thriller Ronth.

    This week's Ghibli Fest presentation is The Secret World of Arietty, playing Boston Common, Assembly Row Sunday (dubbed), Monday (subtitled), and Tuesday (dubbed). Anime Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye continues at Boston Common.

    Korean concert film Red Velvet Happiness Diary: My Dear, ReVe1uv plays Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday at Boston Common.
  • It's Cronenberg Summer (or, at least, Cronenberg first-week-of-summer) at the The Brattle Theatre, with Rabid & The Brood Friday, Nightbreed Saturday & Sunday, Scanners & Videodrome Saturday, Naked Lunch on 35mm Sunday & Monday (Monday is a twin bill with The Brood), The Fly on 35mm & Dead Ringers Sunday, eXistenZ & Crimes of the Future '22 on Tuesday, and The Shrouds Wednesday & Thursday.
  • The Somerville Theatre continues their John Waters tribute a 35mm double feature of Hairspray & Pecker on Friday. There's also a 35mm screening of Alien for Saturday's midnight special and they start a "Summer Camp" series with Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, they kick off their annual 70mm & Widescreen festival with their own 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • RoxFIlm has shorts programs at The Museum of Fine Arts (Friday/Saturday), Hibernian Hall (Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday), MassArt (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday), and Just Book-ish (free Wednesday). Features include Village Keeper at the MFA Sunday, Acts of Reparation at Hibernian Hall Sunday, Rooted and Rap Dixon: Beyond Baseball at Hibernian Hall Monday, The Ebony Canal at Haley House Monday, and Self Discover at MassArt Thursday. Most have Q&A sessions afterward.
  • The Seaport Alamo has a Midsommar Movie Party on Saturday, and their Thursday-night screening of Megan 2.0 encourages cosplay.
  • Landmark Kendall Square has a Pride Month presentation of Pariah on Tuesday.
  • The Regent Theatre has We Are Guardians, a documentary on the residents of the Amazon rainforest, on Wednesday.
  • Outdoor screenings listed at Joe's Free Films include the Coolidge hauling a 35mm projector to the Rose Kennedy Greenway for a Science on Screen presentation of Blade Runner: The Final Cut on Wednesday and Happy Gilmore at Boston Landing on Thursday.
  • The Museum of Science has RSVPs open for a special showing of Sally in the Mugar Omni Theater on the 28th, paying tribute to LGBTQ+ icon Sally Ride.
  • The Embassy will be open 7 days a week during the summer, playing Elio on screen 1 for the first week.

    The Lexington Venue is open all week but Monday with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, The Life of Chuck, and The Phoenician Scheme. They also have a free matinee of The In-Laws on Sunday, and a free presentation of documentary Free for All: The Public Library on Tuesday.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Elio and Prime Minister, keeping How to Train Your Dragon, Materialists, and The Life of Chuck. They welcome The World Before Your Feet subject Matt Green on Saturday afternoon, followed by a ramble through West Newton in the spirit of the film. Midsommar plays on Tuesday, and on Thursday they host Eimi Imanishi to screen her short "Battalion to My Beat" and a work-in-progress version of feature Nomad Shadow.

    Cinema Salem has 28 Years Later, How to Train Your Dragon, Materialists, and The Phoenician Scheme through Monday. The Hunger plays Friday; D.E.B.S. and Swing Time on Saturday; The Asphalt Jungle, a craft night show of But I'm a Cheerleader, and Weirdo Wednesday on Wednesday; and a Girlies with Anniversaries show of Desperately Seeking Susan on Thursday.
Down for 28 Years Later and Elio in 3D, and maybe Bad Shabbos. Hoping I can catch up on a lot of Cronenberg I really should have seen by now, but we'll see how my stomach is feeling.

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

The Unholy Trinity

No real moviegoing musings to go with this one, other than it ain't bad, but is only hanging around Boston Common through Thursday afternoon, although it continues at the Liberty Tree Mall after that. Kind of got a pretty nice direct-to-video cast, and, man, someone in Montana must be offering people good money to shoot westerns there. I feel like I've seen credits for "Yellowstone Western Town" on a lot, enough to make me wonder if Trinity is the same town I saw in 1923.


The Unholy Trinity

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 June 2025 in AMC Boston Common #9 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available) (Prime pre-order link for pre-order), or pre-order the disc at Amazon

I almost feel a little sorry for Brandon Lessard, who plays the nominal protagonist of The Unholy Trinity and seems to have spent half of his young career as an actor so far in Montana-shot westerns. He's got the role at the center of the movie and he's not really a leading man, but on top of that, Samuel L. Jackson and Pierce Brosnan have shown up on set with an appetite for the scenery. You can more or less see him vanish as the film goes on, and maybe the movie isn't necessarily better for it, but it's more entertaining.

He plays Henry Broadway, a young man returning in 1888 to the Montana town of his birth from someplace back East to see his father Isaac (Tim Daly) before he is hanged, a preacher (David Arquette) urging repentance and confession during a busy afternoon of executions at the territorial prison. Isaac would have Henry kill Trinity's sheriff, who he says framed him for the murder of a Blackfoot couple, and a former slave lurking around the fort by the name of St. Christopher (Jackson) seems interested in helping. It turns out that the Sheriff in question is dead, though, allegedly killed by that couple's daughter Running Club (Q'orianka Kilcher), although new sheriff Gabriel Dove (Brosnan) is not particularly interested in lynching her the way the townspeople seem to want, and while he's out warning her, Henry get in trouble in town, rescued by St. Christopher, who reveals that he and Henry's father stole a bunch of Confederate gold during the war, but Isaac double-crossed him, and now he wants to know where the loot is.

That's a lot going on to start, and at times it feels like the filmmakers haven't quite figured out what kind of Western they're making: "The Unholy Trinity" has a spaghetti-western name and its opening moments give a fleeting impression of something gritty and full of nasty hypocrisies, but then Henry shows up and seems impossibly clean-cut despite some perfectly even five-o'clock shadow, refuses a couple whiskeys because he doesn't drink, acts awkward around a very sweet prostitute (Kartina Bowden), and really doesn't get the time to make one wonder if he's got the ability to be a cold-blooded killer before the script yanks that away. It spends the first act or so becoming the sort of cliché studio western that makes folks sneer at the genre despite not being that prevalent: A fairly clean town that feels like a standard set, characters that come off as unambiguously good or evil, and literal bars of gold to hunt down.

Pierce Brosnan can thrive a bit in this environment; his tousled silver hair makes him come off as a father figure who has learned a thing or two, and he's got the brogue cranked up to full power, so if Dove does seem to have anachronistically good attitudes toward the land's native people or making sure you get to the truth of a matter before stringing people up, he's making good use of the stereotype of a well-read Irishman with a gift of gab as effective as any pistol. The movie really starts to take off when Samuel L. Jackson gets to go full Samuel L. Jackson, getting the first of a few speeches that let him reel off his intentions and casually reveal himself as a dangerous man before saying he's got to get to ambushin'. It is enough fun to watch Jackson do his thing that we overlook how quick he is to kill, but there's always something simmering in him that makes the film more interesting than it might be: He's been a slave and been badly betrayed, but he's no hero, the cunning agent of chaos that this movie needs.

His scheming is what leads to most of the shootouts, which are strong, with plenty of bullets flying, but director Richard Gray and crew are pretty good at keeping track of everyone and everything, even with a mix of folks getting picked off with rifles, pistols, and fisticuffs. It's good, but not showy staging, and neither looking to be particularly gruesome nor feeling unreasonably sanitized. It also never looks particularly unlikely other than a few jumps Dove makes down inclines and from a second story window that I felt in my knees, which have twenty years less wear than Pierce Brosnan's.

Through all this, it's kind of interesting that Henry Broadway is there and sort of necessary for things to happen, but feels more like a catalyst than a protagonist, the kind of part where you can hopefully write "young Brandon Lessard holds his own with veterans Jackson & Brosnan)". That's not the case here, and the result is that the movie flounders for a while, at least until the old hands come in and assert control.

Friday, June 13, 2025

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 June 2025 - 19 June 2024

Is this week's How to Train Your Dragon a live-action remake or reboot? Like, if it does well, are they going to try to carbon-copy the well-liked sequels or try something new from scratch?
  • I mean, this could be an issue, because the new How to Train Your Dragon is pretty good for the same reasons the last one was pretty good, and I daresay Stoick is the role Gerard Butler was put on Earth to play. It's at Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D & Spanish subtitles), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including RealD 3D), South Bay (including Imax 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    For the grown-ups, Materialists is the new feature from Past Lives's Celine Song, which features Dakota Johnson as a matchmaker whose own love life is thrown for a loop when she reconnects with one ex-boyfriend (Chris Evans) at the same time she meets the sort of very nice, very rich man (Pedro Pascal) her clients dream of. It's at the Coolidge, the Somerville, Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    The Unholy Trinity, a Western starring Samuel L. Jackson as an outlaw and Pierce Brosnan as a lawman who both have eyes on the son of one of the outlaw's former associates who hid a stash of gold, plays Boston Common. Prime Minister, a documentary about New Zealand leader Jacinda Barrett, also plays Boston Common.

    The Life of Chuck expands to the Somerville, Kendall Square, West Newton, the Lexington Venue, the Seaport, and Assembly Row after opening last week at the Coolidge and Boston Common.

    Friday the 13th on Friday the 13th is apparently going to be more of a thing than usual this month, with the 1980 original playing at West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, and the Seaport Friday night. There are also Father's Day screenings of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at Boston Common Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday. Monday Mystery Previews are on tap at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. There are also non-mystery Early Access screenings of Elio on Wednesday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row, Chestnut Hill, all with RealD 3D in the afternoon and flat shows in the evening. Boston Common also has a Juneteenth Early Access screening of 40 Acres on Thursday. Some of the first-night shows of 28 Years Later on Thursday are listed as "Fan Events".
  • Landmark Kendall Square has Apple production Echo Valley, with Julianne Moore as a mother called upon to get daughter Sydney Sweeney out of a jam. Apparently matinees-only, a bummer for those of us who can't hit it during the weekend.

    Tuesday's Pride Month presentation is The Kids Are All Right.
  • Apple Fresh Pond opens a re-release of 2012 Telugu romance Andala Rakshasi, and Malayalam-language drama Vyasana Sametham Bandhu Mithradhikal (through Sunday). Thug Life continues in Telugu at Fresh Pond, as does Housefull 5, though apparently only the "A" ending.

    Korean concert film Red Velvet Happiness Diary: My Dear, ReVe1uv starts a run at Boston Common on Thursday.

    Anime Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye continues at the Embassy, Boston Common, the Seaport. A "double album" of last year's two Given sequels, Hiiragi Mix & To the Sea (the original seems to be exclusive to AppleTV but there's a Blu-ray) plays Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport on Monday.
  • After a Friday Film Matinee of Psycho II (surprisingly good!), it's Noir City Boston at the The Brattle Theatre! This year, it'ss almost all 35mm double features: Murder, My Sweet & Out of the Past on Friday; The Sleeping City & Mary Ryan, Detective early Saturday; Caged & The Narrow Margin later Saturday; Tomorrow Is Another Day & Tension early Sunday; and 99 River Street & My True Story later Sunday; there's also a new 4K restoration of Phantom Lady on Monday.

    Amid that, they have Father's Day screenings of The Empire Strikes Back at 9pm Saturday & Sunday. They then finish off the Linklater/Hawke/Delpy trilogy with Before Midnight on Monday, have Pride screenings of The Times of Harvey Milk on Tuesday, celebrate Juneteenth with Daughters of the Dust on Wednesday & Thursday, with a Strictly Brohibited screening of The Miseducation of Cameron Post on Wednesday.
  • Many places are showing the original Friday the 13th on Friday, but only The Coolidge Corner Theatre and their After Midnite crew hit the road and pair it with the 2009 version at Rocky Woods! Back in Brookline, "regular" midnights are Zombi 2 on Friday and a 35mm print of Evil Dead 2 on Saturday.

    Saturday also has Bleak Week continue with a 35mm print of Dead Presidents, while a digital restoration of Happiness and a 35mm print of Funny Games wraps things on Sunday. On Monday, they have Juliet B. Schor signing her book about the four-day-work week for a (Social) Science on Screen presentation of The Apartment, while the "Visible Mysteries: Queer Cinema" series offers The Watermelon Woman on another screen. Tuesday has Open Screen upstairs and Jeff Rapsis accompanying Don Q, Son of Zorro in the main hall. There's a seminar by Vernon Shetley before Thursday's Big Screen Classic show of the 1973 Robert Altman version of The Long Goodbye, covering how it is both film noir and New Hollywood.
  • The Seaport Alamo has Pavements Friday/SaturdaySunday/Tuesday for those that missed it at the Brattle. They also have a "Family Party" show of How to Train Your Dragon on Saturday, The Birdcage on Sunday, Showgirls on Monday, and Knife + Heart on Tuesday. Dark Wednesday, apparently.
  • Belmont World Film finishes their Pride/World Refugee Awareness Month show at the West Newton Theater with Under the Volcano on Monday, about a Ukrainian family stranded in Spain when their country is invaded while they are on vacation. The speaker is Nathalie Robelot Timtchenko, founder of First Aid for the Soul, which will be the beneficiary of a pre-screening reception at the theater.
  • The Regent Theatre has a Midweek Music Movie on Wednesday, documentary Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between.
  • The Somerville Theatre begins a John Waters tribute with Female Trouble on 35mm film Thursday.

    Friendship moves over to The Capitol Theatre to make room for the new releases in Somerville.
  • RoxFIlm opens at The Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday with a free Juneteenth screening of Paint Me a Road Out of Here with post-film Q&A. Note that tickets can't be RSVPed until 10am on Thursday and are first-come first-serve and not part of the festival ass.
  • Hey, the outdoor screenings are filling out a bit at Joe's Free Films, with Inside Out at the MIT Open Space on Friday; Moana 2 at Medford's Park at River's Edge, also on Friday; and Good Burger (programmed by the Coolidge) at Brighton's Charles River Speedway on Wednesday.
  • The Museum of Science has RSVPs open for a special showing of Sally in the Mugar Omni Theater on the 28th, paying tribute to LGBTQ+ icon Sally Ride.
  • The Embassy continues Ballerina and Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye through Sunday.

    The Lexington Venue is open all week but Monday with The Life of Chuck and The Phoenician Scheme.

    The West Newton Cinema opens the new How to Train Your Dragon, Materialists, and The Life of Chuck while holding over The Phoenician Scheme, Caught by the Tides, Lilo & Stitch, and Friendship. Friday the 13th plays Friday, locally-shot horror Stonegate on Saturday.

    Cinema Salem has Friendship, How to Train Your Dragon, Materialists, and The Phoenician Scheme through Monday. They obviously play Friday the 13th '80 for the Friday Night Light show. There's also a Spooky PIcture Show presentation of the original Fright Night on Saturday, Mildred Pierce on Saturday afternoon, Girlies with Anniversaries shows of The Virgin Suicides on Saturday and D.E.B.S. on Thursday; plus Swing Time for Wayback Wednesday with Weirdo Wednesday down the hall
Got a ticket for Yankees-Red Sox Friday and appreciate Noir City Boston scheduling stuff that runs fairly frequently that night; I'll be doing the four double features for the weekend, which sounds like a lot, but the back half are 65-minute B-movies even my treacherous bladder can stand. Materialists and probably a lot of catch-up during the week because the Sox are on the West Coast and "7pm movie + 10pm ballgame" is kind of convenient if you don't much care about sleep.

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Big Deal

A bit late on this one, because I opted to stream the one Red Sox-Yankees game I could stream this last weekend on Friday, didn't feel like going out in the rain on Saturday, and maybe shouldn't have gone Sunday but there were no matinees Monday. Looks like there aren't even end-of-run matinees on Thursday, and it kind of makes me wonder if I should move Next Week in Tickets up to Thursday mornings, since clearly the multiplex schedule runs Thursday to Wednesday with the occasional matinee stragglers on Thursday rather than Friday to Thursday with some night-before previews on Thursday.

Anyway… Is there something to say about contrasting this with A Gilded Game? Just because I saw them about a month apart and they're both movies about investment banks/firms being bastards from the same general geographical area doesn't mean there's that much to compare. I think the Korean movie had a better handle on making its money moves look like interesting drama, I guess. Maybe it's notable that Big Deal, in the very capitalist South Korea, seems more interested in implying that this is an evil system, while A Gilded Game, which mostly takes place in Communist China with occasional excursions to Hong Kong, seems to get closer to "there are evil people inside this system, so be very careful!". Odd, considering.


Big Deal

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 June 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #12 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

An unrelated internet discussion I was reading the other day about pro-police propaganda in film was particularly fond of how Korean films were impressively full of corruption, and this presumption is throughout Big Deal, which does pretty well to make it "advanced financial engineering" which is full of skullduggery entertaining despite much of it being utterly inevitable. I don't know that one exactly enjoys the assumption that business and the law has a handful of good people trying to get by in a sea of jerks, but one sure relates to it.

The decent person here is Pyo Jong-rok (Yoo Hai-jin), chief financial officer for Gukbo Soju, which makes the most popular brand of soju in South Korea (which has the highest per-capita alcohol consumption on the planet) but is on the verge of bankruptcy during the Asian financial crisis of 1997 because chairman Seok Jin-woo (Son Hyun-joo) has expanded and diversified recklessly. Lawyer Goo Young-mo (Choi Young-jun) suggests a new procedure that would give them five years to reorganize and pay off principal, and the company hires international firm Soljun Finance as consultants, who choose young Korean-born analyst Choi In-beom (Lee Je-hoon) to run point (though he hasn't been home for ten years), reporting to Hong Kong office head Gordon (Byron Mann), with the promise of heading up a Soljun Korea office if successful. Unbeknownst to Pyo and Seok, though, success doesn't mean a steady, resurgent Gukbo, but Soljun taking operational control and making money off an inflated valuation.

The engine that makes this work, I think, is that Yoo Hai-jin's Pyo Jong-rok is a guy one can latch onto without necessarily being fully invested in his success; Pyo is too earnest for this movie and the filmmakers and actor know that, and it's that to their advantage. Things that might otherwise make one cry foul layer on work because he may have a chance of being fully effective against either the global reach of Soljun or Soek's casual corruption, but represents just enough to the audience that maybe he can exert some influence. On the other side, writer/director Choi Yun-jin and actor Lee Je-hoon do some nice work with In-beom; he's a smarmy little corporate punk, but both the way he reels at Korea's drinking culture and dropped comments about how he lost his father at about the time he left the peninsula ten years ago make one wonder if maybe a decade of hyper-capitalist mentors have warped him to the point of needing someone like Pyo to fill that void. It's seldom the actual text of the film, but it does make him a believable wild card.

There's a nice group around them, too, some of whom may go unheralded. Not Son Hyun-joo, who is entertaining as the sort of petty tyrant one hisses at but with a tension that comes from knowing examples of this sort of jerk, nor Byron Mann as an avatar of pure smarm where you're never quite sure whether he's merely using In-beom from the start or genuinely likes the kid but is too purely amoral to let that concern him. But Choi Young-jun makes Koo professionally self-effacing where others wouldn't, and holds later scenes without really changing his aspect that much, while Kim Ki-hae needs to be practically invisible until you remember he's been around all along.

For a movie about financial crime, the story is pretty decent, neither complicated to the point of being boring or impenetrable nor too simple for characters to miss (in part because the guys smart enough to see it are mercenary enough to switch sides). It's got an egregious flashback to try to explain things, and some late-movie twists that may work better for folks familiar with the Korean court system (or turn-of-the-century scandals), and something that seems too well set-up to be a red herring. But, at heart, the filmmakers know what the emotion at its heart is (that the people who try to do a job and those that try to make money fundamentally don't understand each other), and mostly how to let the audience know they know rather than deliver a lecture.

The lecture is inevitable, of course, from dialog about how a person can't beat money and closing credits that point out it's 25 years later and we're still dealing with this sort of nonsense, after a strung-out early-credits scene that makes sure we understand the path to happiness. Choi is able to use his two main characters as counterweights to steer between being cynical and idealistic, for the most part, which may not be the best way to hammer home his message but may be the best way for it to reach the mainstream.