- So, let's start off with what's going on at the Coolidge. Two movies open, with Peace, Love and Misunderstanding splitting screen #2 with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Cape Spin! An American Power Struggle in the video room. Cape Spin! is a documentary on the much-contested attempts to build a wind-power facility off the coast of Massachusetts - famously opposed by the liberal Kennedy family, among others. Directors John Kriby and Robbie Gemmel will be on-hand for the 7:20pm shows on Friday and Saturday.
The special screenings, let us say, define a wide range. With the print for their planned "Summer Camp" feature gone missing, the midnight screenings this week are of Women's Prison Massacre, which they're offering up for free Friday and Saturday night. On the other end, Sunday morning features an encore presentation of last year's National Theatre Live presentation of Danny Boyle's Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller. This week, Cumberbatch plays the Creature and Miller plays Victor; a screening on Monday the 25th will have the roles reversed. Monday night has a special multimedia presentation, A Trip Through Strawberry Fields - Deconstructing the Beatles, in which Scott Freiman uses audio and video clips to demonstrate the Fab Four's enduring popularity on the occasion of Paul McCartney''s birthday. And on Wednesday the 20th, there will be a special preview of Pink Ribbons, Inc., a documentary on the marketing of breast cancer research; it will be followed by a panel discussion. - Across the river, the Brattle continues their Nicolas Cage: Greatest American Actor series with some more recent but still bizarre movies, many collaborations with pretty impressive directors. Friday has him in David Lynch's Wild at Heart; Saturday is a double feature of Con Air and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance; Sunday is a twin bill of John Woo's Face/Off and Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes; Tuesday is Spike Jonze's and Charlie Kauffman's Adaptation; and Thursday has him in Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and Neil LaBute's remake of The Wicker Man. Note that Saturday's schedule is a change from the original calendar, with Con Air's times changed and Ghost Rider 2 replacing The Rock (why they could get a print of one mid-1990s Bruckheimer film and not another, I don't know).
In between, there are a couple special events. Monday night is the DocYard presentation of Low & Clear, featuring a pair of one-time friends who find that they've grown apart over the years. It won an audience award at SXSW, and will be presented (along with an episode of monthly documentary short series "Sparrow Songs") by directors Tyler Hughen, Kalil Hudson, and Alex Jablonski. On Wednesday, the local entries in the 24 Hour Film Race 2012 will screen, with the best representing Boston in the next phase of the competition. - Over at the Kendall, the one-week booking goes to Whore's Glory, a documentary by Michael Glawogger that examines the lives of prostitutes around the world; it's the third part of a trilogy on the effects of globalization. The other two new releases will also play at Boston Common, and both are independent comedies. Lola Versus features Greta Gerwig as a woman whose fiancé leaves her just weeks before her wedding, leading to adventures in self-discovery. Adventures of a different sort may be on tap in Safety Not Guaranteed, in which a man (Mark Duplass) claims that he has discovered time travel and three magazine writers answer his classified ad in search of a good story.
- Also opening at Boston Common, as well as Fenway, Somerville, Harvard Square, and Fresh Pond, are Rock of Ages and That's My Boy. The former is an apparently much-changed adaptation of a stage musical scored with 1980s hits that stars Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta as would-be rock stars caught up in the world of Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise), with the likes of Alec Baldwin, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Paul Giamatti in supporting roles. The latter features Adam Sandler as a twerp who fathered a child as a teenager that has somehow made something of himself, so of course he shows up to be a pain in the neck when the son (Andy Samberg) gets married.
- This weekend's tribute series at the Harvard Film Archive is Jack Clayton, Between Innocence and Experience. It's a pretty impressive-looking series, though, featuring a number of vault prints and several entries gaining current attention for reasons other than just the films themselves. The schedules includes Room at the Top and The Innocents on Friday, The Pumpkin Eater and Our Mother's House on Saturday, Something Wicked This Way Comes (followed by his short "The Bespoke Overcoat") and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne on Sunday, and The Great Gatsby (projected digitally) on Monday.
- The Museum of Fine Arts continues the Roxbury International Film Festival through Sunday, with screenings of films by, for, and about people of color also playing at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and at Northeastern University. Then, on Thursday the 21st, they open three movies that will rotate timeslots for the next week - Lost Bohemia; Small, Beautifully Moving Parts, and Payback.
- The Regent Theatre in Arlington has more concert films on hand, with Monterey Pop on Friday and The Rolling Stones: Some Girls, Live in Texas playing on Wednesday. Saturday night they have a double feature of two independent horror movies, The Muse and Panman.
- The Bollywood opening at Fresh Pond is Ferrari Ki Sawaari, which stars Sharman Joshi as a father who must steal a legendary cricketer's Ferrari in order to give his son a chance to play at the Lord's Cricket Grounds. Wackiness, presumably, ensues.
My plans? Nic Cage stuff, Frankenstein (I've seen it with Cumberbatch as Victor and Miller as the Creature, so the other way around sounds nifty), Safety Not Guaranteed, and maybe Something Wicket this Way Comes. Plus the usual BS about catching up that I would have seen a month ago if I were really excited for them, of course.
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