Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston (and beyond) 9 July - 15 July

BOSTON

I've got no reason to complain about not being able to get to all this over the next seven days; I will, after all, be in Montreal, where it promises to be slightly less like an oven, seeing a bunch of movies that may not make it to local theaters at all, about twenty of them. Still, what's playing back home looks to be pretty decent:

• Yet another Independent Film Festival Boston 2010 alumnus opens at Kendall Square, Perrier's Bounty. It's a snazzy-looking Irish thriller with a great cast, and one I skipped at IFFBoston because I figured that the nifty Irish movie would play Boston a bit sooner than this. It's got the one-week warning on it, though, so I hope that I can prevail on you fine people to go see it so that maybe its run can get extended a couple times, when I'm back on the 29th, I'll have a day to see it.
  
  (Seeing that it's only opening with two shows a day, I'm not holding my breath!)
  
  I'm less worried about missing The Girl Who Played with Fire. It's also opening at the Boston Common AMC and in West Newton (and Coolidge Corner next week). Seeing how The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo managed to hang around the Kendall for three months, right up to its home video release (and still continues at the Arlington Capitol!), I suspect this one will last at least three weeks somewhere. Interestingly, West Newton also has Dragon Tattoo hanging around for one show a day, but it's at 8:30pm, so you can't do an in-order double feature.



• Also opening at the Kendall and at the Coolidge is the 50th Anniversary re-release of Breathless; it's a one-week engagement at the Coolidge, and likely at the Kendall. If you want to see it, don't wait too long.
  
  Midnights at the Coolidge, another "The End Is Nigh" flick, the original Mad Max. Well, the first film, at any rate; the Coolidge website doesn't mention whether it's the original Australian soundtrack or the one dubbed with American accents that Warner released alongside The Road Warrior.
  
  Oh, and they're showing Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen Monday. I do believe that there's a sort of rule that you've not allowed to call yourself a movie lover if you're in town when this plays on the big screen and don't attend.



• It's good to see that the acquisition by Starz hasn't changed Anchor Bay too much. They've apparently looked at their records, seen that they haven't extracted twenty bucks from each of Sam Raimi's fans in a couple of years, and decided to remedy that by putting The Evil Dead out on Blu-ray next month. Of course, that means new prints have to be struck, and one of them plays the Brattle over the weekend: 10pm Friday, Satruday, and Sunday; 8pm Monday.
  
  Also at the Brattle this week: Inglorious Basterds, Friday through monday; a free double feature of Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus at 11am Saturday morning, a preview of Winnebago Man on Tuesday, a panel discussion of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird (with a screening of the film) on Wednesday, and the annual Trailer Treats Party (with Trailer Smackdown Contest) on Thursday. That's a fun night, and just a good week's worth of stuff.



• The Somerville Theatre continues their rock & roll movie series with Madonna: Truth or Dare on Monday and Tuesday, and Stop Making Sense on Wednesday and Thursday.



• Movie at the Arlington Regent Theatre! One I'd really like to see, for that matter - Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary about Walt Disney Feature Animation's renaissance in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and by all accounts an honest and not-always-complimentary one, despite being distributed by Disney.



• And, of course, the bigger studio movies open all over the place: Despicable Me is the animated 3-D movie of the week, and Predators looks to bring the action. It actually looks like a pretty good weekend, especially by Summer '10 standards. The trailers for Despicable Me look like pretty good cartooning, at least in the clips I've seen, although I imagine that having a third 3-D movie come out within a month's time is going to strain the capacity in a lot of areas. At Boston Common, it looks to be added to the line-up at the expense of The Last Airbender, which is probably a good thing for both, in that Airbender was apparently hastily and half-heartedly converted to 3-D in post-production.
  
  I'm also hoping Predators sticks around until I make it back. I'm not a huge fan of the franchise, or even the first movie (despite it being Schwarzeneggar and McTiernan), but Nimrod Antal has made a couple better-than-expected movies in Vacancy and Armored, and I suspect that he can do something pretty darn impressive with the money Fox gave him and Robert Rodriguez.
  
  There is also a Grease sing-along playing AMC Boston Common. I would make some sort of snarky comment, but I haven't seen Grease, and for all I know, it's the best movie ever. I doubt this, and doubt that I'd enjoy a sing-along version of even, say, Disney's Beauty and the Beast (why, no, I haven't seen Rocky Horror Picutre Show, despite it playing Harvard Square every Saturday night).

NEW YORK

Racing Dreams opens at the IFC Center. It's a pretty good documentary, the best thing I saw at the Boston Film Festival last fall before bailing on it. I found out afterward that my friend Laurel did some behind the scenes work on it. Thus, it gets a few extra cool points and a little bit of a push from me. I'm sure that this could increase its box office by seven bucks or so.

FANTASIA

I'll try to be doing daily updates, but in case I don't, and you're curious about what I deem of interest (or, good heavens, want to meet up with the press-pass-wearing dork in the middle of the third row who speaks terrible French), here's the plan:

• Friday 9 July: Phobia 2 and Secret Reunion in Hall, then across the street for The Clash and Rubber in De Seve. Why? The first Phobia ("4bia") was pretty darn good, Secret Reunion matches the director of Rough Cut with the star of Thirst, Clash is from the makers of The Rebel, and Rubber looks demented. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of Herschell Gordon Lewis, so the tribute to him isn't a big deal to me.


• Saturday 10 July: Running back and forth across the street between Mandrill (DeSeve), First Squad (De Seve), Gallants (Hall), The Message (De Seve), and Mutant Girls Squad (Hall). Why? Well, I'll have seen many of the opposing films (Down Terrace, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, and Ip Man 2), I want to see First Squad more than Evil: In the Time of Heroes (though Greece has yet to be stamped on my horror passport), and Mandrill more or less locks me into it.


• Sunday 11 July: Starting in Hall with Alien vs Ninja and Technotise: Edit & I, then we see whether I'm more in the mood for Irish horror in Outcast or Korean erotic drama in A Frozen Flower. After that, I'll see if I'm still up for the I Spit on Your Grave remake. Why? Technotise is one of the films I'm building my schedule around (Serbian animated sci-fi with a Eurocomics style), so everything else is working around that.


• Monday 12 July: After I get out of work, it's all Hall - Crows Zero 2, At World's End, and The Revenant. Why? Gotta see the festival's only Miike film, At World's End looks nifty, and I can see Golden Slumber later.


• Tuesday 13 July: Mai Mai Miracle in De Seve, then over to Hall for Le Grand Chef 2 and Tears for Sale. Why? I liked the first Le Grand Chef.


• Wednesday 14 July: Kuroneko in De Seve if I get out of work on time; Gintama andHeartless in Hall, and then likely Feast of the Assumption: The Otero Family Murders in De Seve. Why? Seen and loved Marwencol. Plus, the Zappin Party is a tough split between "awesome" and "not just too campy, but also in French" for me.


• Thursday 15 July: Possessed in De Seve, Merentau in Hall, either We Are What We Are or T.T. Syndrome, and then maybe Lemmy. Why? Because word on the Indonesian martial arts movie is that it's got spectacular action, I'm not yet sure whether I'm more down for Mexican cannibals or Serbian slashers, and despite having already seen Air Doll, Lemmy wasn't something I even considered seeing when it played at IFFBoston, just on a "I've never listened to Motorhead" basis.