Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 19 November - 23 November

With Thanksgiving coming next week, a lot of movies will open on Wednesday, so it's a short-ish column this week in anticipation of a longer one next week (also, both the Regent and the MFA seem to be taking this weekend off).

• And, besides, a certain film is sucking up a lot of screens. By now, you're either seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, or you're not, and if you are, well, congratulations, it's going to be bloody ubiquitous. I'd advise getting your tickets early, as a bunch of shows are already sold out at Jordan's. If you're going with a group, the chart from yesterday's TWIT may help you balance cost, specs, and location when choosing a screen to see it on (note: during weekday afternoons, Fenway's RPX screen is three times the cost of the Somerville Theatre's main screen, a fact well worth remembering if you're bringing kids).
  
  The boy wizard has the rest of the studios quaking in fear, so the only other wide opening is The Next Three Days. Paul Haggis remakes a French thriller with Russell Crowe, Elizabeth Banks, Liam Neeson and an interesting-looking cast. It's kind of got the look of something that's not exciting enough to be a great thriller but too pulpy to be a "serious" picture.



• Fresh Pond doesn't get Harry Potter (to be fair, it is up the road in Arlington and at theaters one, three, and seven stops away on the Red Line), so they wind up picking up a new Hindi movie, Guzaarish, with Hrithik Roshan (who starred in Koi... Mil Gaya and Krrish) as a paralyzed man petitioning for the right to end his own life and Aishwarya Rai (who has just been ridiculously busy this year) as the nurse tending to him.



• The Brattle runs Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt & The Magnetic Fields, which played IFFBoston to good reviews earlier this year, Friday through Sunday. Looking at the description, I don't have much of a read on whether it's mainly for fans or a wider audience, but if you are a fan, you might want to check out the 7pm show on Friday (19 November 2010), wich will be introduced by Claudia Gonson, described on the Brattle's site as Merritt's "creative collaborator and the band's manager".
  
  The Brattle and Chlotrudis have not yet announced what Monday's CineCaché screening is; check the theater's website, Twitter feed, and Facebook Page for updates. Or drop by and be surprised.
  
  EDIT: It's I Killed My Mother, (very) young filmmaker Xavier Dolan's semi-autobiographical story of coming out as a teenager (and Canada's submission to the Foreign Language Film category for the Oscars in 2010).



• Kendall Square clears out one set of documentaries to add a couple more. The official one-week warning is for Wasteland, which features Brooklyn artist Vik Muniz returning home to Brazil for a project involving the world's largest garbage dump. Not officially on the one-week schedule (but I wouldn't be shocked if it only lasted the five days until Wednesday) is Ahead of Time, a portrait of Ruth Gruber, 96 at the time of filming, who was not only a prodigy (PhD candidate at 20) but lived a life of adventure as a globetrotting journalist. The other opening is Today's Special, a comedy about a man who takes over his parents' Indian restaurant despite only being trained as a French chef; lessons about food being a metaphor for life, and it being better for it to be spicy and improvised rather than meticulously planned are surely on tap.



• No openings at the Coolidge this week (Vision moves from the Kendall to one of the digital rooms), but several special events. Friday and Saturday, there are midnight showings of "A New Generation of Spike and Mike"; this does appear to be the same program I saw, liked, and reviewed a few months ago. Saturday night also features an eight-hour burlesque marathon with 100 performances, from midnight to eight. But the best bet may be Monday night, when the Big Screen Classics series features Rear Window. What's better than Hitchcock, Stewart, and Grace Kelly on the big screen? Nothing.



• The Harvard Film Archive this weekend pays tribute to director Jerry Schatzberg. The man himself will be present Friday and Saturday night, respectively, to introduce The Panic in Needle Park (Al Pacino's first starring role!) and Scarecrow (Pacino again, along with Gene Hackman). The series continues another two days after, with screenings of Puzzle of a Downfall Child on Sunday and Reunion on Monday. The VES screenings for the week are Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes on Tuesday and Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man on Wednesday.



• Emerson features four different films this weekend, without an apparent theme: "Wavelengths", excerpts from the Toronto International Film Festival's experimental shorts program, plays Friday night. Touki Bouki, a recently-restored 1973 film from Senegal, plays once Friday night and twice Saturday evening, part of a series of movies from the World Cinema Foundation. The family-friendly film Saturday afternoon is Azemichi Road, a recent Japanese coming-of-age film focused on tween girls. And Sunday night, they welcome screenwriter Jay Cocks, introducing and commenting on his 1978 French film, The Green Room.

If I had to guess what I'll see over this period, it would be The Next Three Days, Azemichi Road, and the CineCaché selection, whatever it winds up being I Killed My Mother. (Potter can wait until Tron kicks it off the IMAX screens and it heads to the Aquarium, where Inception should just about be running its course by then.)