Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 9 December 2011 - 15 December 2011

New movies this weekend! Doesn't look like they're good new movies, but that just means gives you another chance to see Hugo.

• The two new movies are New Year's Eve and The Sitter; both come from directors who have been doing a good job of burning through any good reputation they had. Garry Marshall's movie is a sort of follow-up to his last, Valentine's Day. Like that one, New Year's Eve is a bunch of intersecting love stories that share an impressive cast. The previews make it look miles wide and a centimeter deep, but it may be pleasant enough. It's at the megaplexes, Fresh Pond, and Arlington.
  
  The Sitter is the latest movie directed by David Gordon Green, and man... Guy used to write and direct gut-wrenching independent movies; now he's on his third straight dumb-looking comedy. This one stars Jonah Hill as a college slacker who gets into misadventures looking after his neighbor's kids, without the benefit of looking as cute as a young Elizabeth Shue. It's at the megaplexes, Harvard Square, Fresh Pond, and Somerville.
  
  And, if you want to travel further afield, there's The Greatest Miracle at the Showcase in Revere. It's a Mexican-produced (but apparently English-language) 3D animated film, about three troubled souls who find solace in the church. I'm guessing it does not have a message of how superstition just leads to false hope.



• Two smaller movies open at Kendall Square. Shame has gotten a fair amount of publicity for Fox Searchlight accepting that a movie about sex addiction is going to get an NC-17 rating. Fortunately, the advance word is not just about how naked Michael Fassbender gets, but how great the movie is. That one gets two screens and an open-ended booking; the one-week booking is Outrage, the latest movie from Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano. It's his first crime film in a decade, with Takeshi starring as a put-upon yakuza lieutenant; apparently it's been successful enough in Japan that Takeshi is already shooting a sequel.



• Over at the Brattle, they have a new 35mm print of Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film Weekend. Not to be confused with the recent British film of the same name, this one has a French couple trying to collect a bequest with the world going insane around them. It's got the theater mostly to itself, with the exception being a Balagan show on Tuesday at 7:30pm; it's a program of works by underground filmmakers who died during the past year.



• Over at the Coolidge, most of the new stuff is on the tiny GoldScreen. For most of the day, it's Tomboy, the movie about a young girl mistaken for a boy in her new neighborhood that is also held over at the Coolidge; at 9:40pm, From the Back of the Room has the screen. It's a documentary about the women of punk rock and the Riot Grrrl movement. On Friday night, the room gets upgraded to theater #2 for a special midnight screening with director Amy Oden on-hand to introduce and discuss the movie and a live performance by Troubled Sleep.
  
  In other special bookings, the original 1940 The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi plays midnight on Friday and Saturday, with The Room showing up for its monthly visit on Saturday only. Sunday morning's Goethe-Institut film actually references its namesake with Young Goethe in Love. Monday's Science on Screen feature is 12 Monkeys, with science writer Carl Zimmer on hand to discuss the film afterward. On Tuesday, members of the Boston Psychoanalytic society will be on-hand to discuss The Descendants as part of an "Off the Couch" screening at 7pm.



• It's a very quiet weekend at Emerson's Paramount theater, with just a couple of shows: On Friday and Saturday evening, they screen David Lean's Summertime as part of the Katharine Hepburn series; this one features Hepburn as a never-married middle-aged woman who takes a vacation in Venice, perhaps hoping for romance. Friday night also has an IFFBoston screening of The Swell Season, which catches up with the stars of Once as they tour the world after falling in love for real.
  
  Over at the Harvard Film Archive, they spend the weekend continuing the Henri-Georges Clouzot series, with The Raven, Miquette and Her Mother, Quai des Orfèvres, The Spies, The Mystery of Picasso, and The Truth all playing at various times between Friday and Monday.
  
  The MFA, meanwhile, brings The Festival of Films from Greece to a close with Plato's Academy on Friday and Saturday and Alps on Sunday. Architecture & Design on Film continues throughout the week with Eames: The Architect and Painter on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday; How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster and John Portman: A Life of Building on Wednesday and Thursday; and Unfinished Spaces on Thursday. All three will also continue through next week



• Over at the Regent in Arlington, they've got a special one-night only event on Thursday the 15th: The local premiere of The Wrecking Crew, which aims to bring the same attention to the namesake group of California studio musicians that Standing in the Shadows of Motown brought to the Funk Brothers. Director Danny Tedesco (son of Wrecking Crew guitarist Tommy Tedesco) will be on hand to introduce the movie and answer questions.



• The Hindi movie at Fresh Pond this week is Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl, in which Ranveer Singh plays a conman who has been living off seducing women, with a group of them now deciding to team up to get their revenge. It's a full-one two-hour-plus Bollywood musical, so know what you're getting into. It's splitting the screen with the Telegu-language Panjaa, so check times before heading out.



• There's also a little bit of first-and-a-half-run action going on this weekend, aside from Tomboy showing up at the Coolidge. The Ides of March moves from Somerville to the Capitol, and though Moneyball is also playing there, it's not set-up for a double feature. The New England Aquarium, meanwhile, picks up Happy Feet Two, which will play at 5pm weekdays and 4pm and 6pm on weekends and school vacation days, for the most part. That's real 70mm IMAX, by the way, and at $3.55 less than the digital "Imax" at the Boston Common Theater at the same time. Plus, you can get a combo deal which lets you into the Aquarium to see actual penguins as a bonus.
  
  I note that Boston Common is not showing any listings for evening IMAX 3D shows of Happy Feet Two, although nothing else is playing marked as IMAX. I choose to believe that they do this out of shame.

My plans? Again, not a whole lot. Saturday will probably be eaten by me setting up a command center to try and buy Red Sox tickets online after Japanese class. Speaking of which, I'm almost sure to see Outrage after that, if only to see if I understand the occasional word. Around those... Maybe The Wrecking Crew, Weekend, and/or Shame, and maybe try to catch up with My Week with Marilyn.