This Week In Tickets: 26 April 2010 to 2 May 2010

Mostly previews this week, since I needed a bit of time away from theaters after IFFBoston. And it was a fantastic weekend, weather-wise, with Free Comic Book Day and the park that has been under construction near my house ever since I moved here finally opened to the public, so it was a good weekend to sit by the park, read comics, and watch baseball in the evening.

* Summer movie season kicks off Friday with Iron Man 2, which not only opens on a bazillion screens, but actually opens the long-awaited "Imax" screen at AMC Boston Common. It's not a real IMAX screen, but one of the digital screens that is branded such, and as yet, I'm not sure what the premium they'll be charging for Imax-branded shows will be. The movie is also opening in an IMAX blow-up at the furniture stores for a couple of weeks.

I saw a 35mm preview on Tuesday (minus the super-secret trailer); expect a review later today. It's a fun movie, not quite as great or surprising as the first, but still a nice way to kick off the summer. And, just as with the first, stay through the end credits; Marvel continues to expand their movie universe, and by gum, it actually got me excited about a character that never really interested me in the comics.

* The Boston LGBT Film Festival kicks off tonight (6 May 2010) at the Museum of Fine Arts, adds The Brattle as a venue tomorrow, and takes up residence at both venues for the next week and a half.

* The Coolidge moves The Square and The Secret in Their Eyes to digital screening rooms and opens Please Give and Babies on the larger screens. They will also be showing up on other screens around town.

* Late night: The Human Centipede (First Sequence) plays Friday and Saturday at the Coolidge. I think I can go without. The Brattle has digital presentations of House, and if you haven't seen it... Well, do so.

* The Harvard Film Archive has a series called The Poetic Realism and Casual Expressionism of Victor Gaviria; Mr. Gavaria will be on hand to introduce and take questions.

* The one-week wonder at Kendall square is The Exploding Girl; they're holding over The Good, the Bad, the Weird.



Since you can see both tickets up there, I didn't win anything in the raffles IFFBoston had for Marwencol and Micmacs attendees. Which is probably right - the guy with a press pass shouldn't be winning something.

The nice weather over the weekend got me lazy about writing reviews, although getting through Saturday takes some doing. Here's the updated IFFBoston 2010 index:

21 April 2010: The Extra Man
22 April 2010: Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, Cracks
23 April 2010: Winter's Bone, Down Terrace, Machotaildrop
24 April 2010: Pelada, War Don Don, The Freebie, I Am Love, The Good, The Bad, the Weird
25 April 2010: The Parking Lot Movie, NY Export: Opus Jazz, Hipsters, The Killer Inside Me
26 April 2010: Tiny Furniture, Shorts 3: Animation
27 April 2010: Marwencol, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
28 April 2010: Micmacs

House (Hausu)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 May 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagement)

The only other movie I saw last week was House (or Hausu), which I had seen a hear ago at BUFF '09, though only in digital projection. As you might expect, it looks really good in 35mm, and I suspect that Criterion or some related label will be putting it out on DVD and Blu-ray later this year, once these bookings die down a bit - for a movie released thirty-odd years ago, it's having a nice second life, first playing on the festival circuit in 2009 (it was at BUFF, NYAFF, and Fantasia last year, and that's just where it intersected my path), then having solid midnight bookings. In fact, I suspect that the only reason it had to wait until last weekend to play the Brattle was that it took nearly that long to pry the print out of New York City's IFC Center.

However, I suspect that when it does finally come out on video, I may wind up giving it a pass. Not because I don't love it - I do, in all its insanity - but because it's the sort of movie that needs an audience. At BUFF, the room was nearly full, and we fed off each other; for the 11pm show I saw, it wasn't crowded, and that didn't work quite as well. It's as though a certain percentage of the seats need to be filled for a cult movie to attain critical mass, and that screening fell just short of it.

Then again, in my living room, having a couple friends who have never seen it over would probably do it.