Thursday, December 23, 2010

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 22 December - 30 December

Yeah, it's late - this is usually a thing done during lunch hour, which just wasn't available today. Anyway, pay close attention, as there are three separate dates that movies open this week - Wednesday the 22nd, Friday the 24th, and Saturday, Christmas Day, the 25th.

New Releases
  • Not much time left before Christmas, but still a couple of days to check out Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale at Landmark Kendall Square. This Finnish horror flick posits that Santa has been frozen in ice for centuries... And good for us that he has been! But now, some fools have let him loose, and all hell is going to break loose. There's no one-week-warning, but it's a seasonal horror movie, so I'd be surprised to see it hit the new year. It opened Wednesday.

    Also opening Wednesday were All Good Things, a murder mystery with a nice cast but unimpressive reviews, and Somewhere, Sofia Coppola's new one. On Saturday, Rabbit Hole opens. My friend Scott Weinberg absolutely loved this one at Toronto, and it looks like Nicole Kidman is could get some well-deserved awards for it.


  • At the multiplexes on Wednesday, Little Fockers and True Grit opened up. Funny thing: I really liked Meet the Parents, but had no desire to see the first sequel, let alone this thing. True Grit, though, I can't wait to see - Jeff Bridges appears to be taking John Wayne's signature role and owning it, and the Coen Brothers seldom fail.

    On Saturday, we get Gulliver's Travels. We deserve better than that, people! Speaking of "better than that", Rabbit Hole also opens at the Boston Common theater.


  • On Wednesday, Tees Maar Khan opened at Fresh Pond. It's sharing its screen with a Telegu-language film Sunday and Monday, and a Tamil film tonight (Thursday) and Tuesday-Thursday, but it's definitely the main attraction. I'm not sure what to make of it; Farah Khan had tremendous success with Om Shanti Om, but I have to admit, when I saw the preview during the intermission of Action Replayy, I wasn't sure whether it was a real movie or a gag. It's real, though, and looks like it could be a fun, silly heist flick.

    On Friday, If You Are the One 2 opens at Boston Common. This Chinese film isn't hitting America quite so fast as the Bollywood productions - it opened in its native land last week - but made it here stealthily enough that it doesn't even have an IMDB entry yet. I haven't seen the first, but both are Feng Xiaogang films (Aftershock played here earlier this year), so I'll certainly check it out.


  • Also on Friday, the Stuart Street Playhouse opens Race to Nowhere. It had a preview screening at the Regent back in October, and is a documentary about parents and schools pushing kids too hard. It plays one matinee daily.


  • On Wednesday, the Coolidge opened The Legend of Pale Male in the screening room, a documentary about a man who spots a rare bird in New York City and follows it for the better part of twenty years. It looks beautiful.



Specials and Repatory
  • The Brattle has one night of Guy & Madeline left tonight. Then they close for shopping on Christmas Eve, but open back on on Saturday with the second half of the 20th Century Fox 75th Anniversary series. It's good stuff, too - the first three days are a double feature of Edward Scissorhands and The Grapes of Wrath; Tuesday is Hitchcock's Lifeboat and '47 film noir Kiss of Death. There's more crime on Wednesday, with The Boston Strangler and The French Connection. Then on Thursday, two cult movies - one a great David Fincher black comedy (Fight Club), the other incredibly overrated (Office Space)


  • The college-affiliated film programs are closed for Winter break, but the MFA is still open, with more of Isabelle Huppert and Great Directors and The Films of Lou Ye


  • The Regent Theater has special sing-along prints of The Sound of Music starting on Saturday and running through Thursday. It's one or two shows a day and the times can be as early as 10:30am and as late as 7pm, so check their website.



Opening wider and moving around
  • The King's Speech remains at the Kendall Square. On Saturday, it expands to the Coolidge, Regal Fenway, and AMC Boston Common.

  • Love and Other Drugs, opens up at the Stuart Street on Friday. The Social Network returns to the Somerville Theatre on Saturday.



My plans are, obviously, at the whim of travel and finishing Christmas shopping. Ideally, it will be Rare Exports tonight (Thursday), and then maybe a matinee of If You Are the One on Friday, so I can get a review up before it closes. Sunday night will almost certainly be True Grit, and Tuesday is likely going to be the trip to Reading for Tron Legacy that I couldn't make this week, with The King's Speech at the Coolidge also in the mix.

No comments: