Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 August - 26 August

If you can only see one movie this weekend (which may very well be the case for me, with a family cookout and a baseball game on tap)...

• ...Go for Vengeance, playing 9:30pm Friday-Monday at the Brattle. It's Johnnie To working in English for the first time, with a French star. To no longer seems to be attached to the Le Cercle Rouge remake in development, so this is probably as close as we'll get (for now) to To paying direct homage to the French crime films that seem to be one of his main inspirations.
  
  The other films playing the Brattle over the weekend are a new 35mm print of Perry Henzell's 1972 cult classic The Harder They Come, and digital screenings of his long thought lost follow-up No Place Like Home. The noir features are Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur on Monday and a double feature of Key Largo and Murder, My Sweet on Tuesday. There are special screenings to finish the week off - the premiere of Boston-based Superhero movie Mission Park on Wednesday (nice way to end new comic day!) and concert film Burning: Mogwai Live on Thursday



• I saw two funny vampire movies at Fantasia - the Belgian Vampires and the Canadian Suck. So, Vampires Suck has to be as funny as the two combined, right? Oh, no? Bummer.
  
  Instead, how about Piranha 3D? I'm there for Christopher Lloyd basically doing Doc Brown, myself. And kids will probably dig Nanny McPhee Returns - Emma Thompson and Maggie Gyllenhaal are not a bad place to start in terms of having the movie not stink. Lottery Ticket has a pretty decent cast, as does The Switch (well, it's got Jason Bateman. I'm sure someone likes Jennifer Aniston, too).



• The big indie opening is Australia's Animal Kingdom, which looks terrific and opens at AMC Boston Common, the Kendall, and the Coolidge. The Coolidge also opens Alamar in the MiniMax, which is apparently now called the "GoldScreen". There are also plenty of fun special screenings on their larger screens - summer's last screening of The Room Friday at Midnight, Steven Seagal in Marked for Death Friday and Saturday midnight as part of "Cops in Heat", The Princess Bride Monday at 7pm, and Lost Angel on the same screen Tuesday at 7pm. Cast and crew will be there for an intro and a Q&A about that independent film about young actors in Hollywood



• I missed it tonight (the 19th), but Jaws is playing the Somerville Theater Friday (the 20th)



• The one-week warning at Kendall Square is for Patrik, Age 1.5, a Swedish comedy about a gay couple who think they are adopting an infant but instead wind up with a homophobic teenager. Also opening are Mao's Last Dancer, the aforementioned Animal Kingdom, and IFFBoston alumni Cairo Time. If you'd asked a hundred Trekkies which member of the Deep Space Nine cast would have the best post-series career, I'm not sure many people would have come up with Alexander Siddig El-Fadil, but good for him.



• The Harvard Film Archive kicks off a couple weeks of The Human Comedies of Eric Rohmer Friday to Sunday. A follow-up to last week's The Outsiders, Rumble Fish plays Monday night.



• No changes at the MFA, but can you really complain about more Restored Prints (a final screening of From Here to Eternity Friday afternoon, The Red Shoes from Powell & Pressburger, and starting Thursday, Odd Man Out by Carol Reed) and more Charlie Chaplin?