Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 29 June 2012 - 2 July 2012

Let's make this a short one, because there are films doing holiday openings next week. Plus I'm really tired, and give myself short odds of making it past the second inning of tonight's Red Sox game.

• There are a number of interesting filmmakers opening movies in the multiplexes this week. Not necessarily great ones, but interesting. Seth MacFarlane, for instance, has a huge following for his animated comedy block on Fox, and makes his feature directing debut with Ted, the story of a boy whose teddy bear comes to life... thirty years ago. Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis are funny people, it's an amusing concept, and it will get some local interest for being shot in Boston. It plays at Somerville, Harvard Square, Boston Common, and Fenway.
  
  People Like Us, on the other hand, comes from Alex Kurtzman and co-writer Roberto Orci, frequent collaborators with J.J. Abrams, though often on more fantastical productions than this, which features Chris Pine as a man sorting out his father's will only to discover that he's got a sister he never new about (Elizabeth Banks). Nice supporting cast - Michelle Pfeiffer, Olivia Wilde, your weekly does of of Mark Duplass, and please tell me Philip Baker Hall has a bigger part than "old guy who dies in the first five minutes". It plays the Belmont Studio, Kendall Square, Fenway, and Boston Common.
  
  Interestingly, the movie that perhaps has the least obvious appeal has the best director - Steven Soderbergh (who, let's face it, had me worried for not releasing a movie for five months) is the guy doing Magic Mike, which follows Channing Tatum as the top dog in an all-male strip show who takes a new kid under his wing. It plays Somerville, Harvard Square, Boston Common, and Fenway.
  
  And, of course, there's the latest Tyler Perry film, Madea's Witness Protection, where his signature character gets involved with a Wall Street whistleblower whose family is relocated to her small town. I'm told that Perry movies are genuinely insane, although I wonder if this will be the case - it looks like he's trying to appeal to an audience beyond his African-American niche, with a cast that includes Eugene Levy, Denise Richards, Tom Arnold, and Doris Roberts in addition to Perry, Romeo Miller, and John Amos.



• In addition to People Like Us, Kendall Square also opens A Cat in Paris. It's one of last year's Academy-Nominated animated films, and follows a cat who leads a double life - by day, living with a police detective's daughter; by night, tagging along with a daring burglar. All showtimes play dubbed, and as it is just a bit over an hour long, it plays with a short ("Extinction of the Saber-Toothed House Cat'). They will also have the monthly late-night showing of The Room at 10pm on Saturday (their last, apparently, as it returns to the Coolidge in July).



• The Coolidge has a pretty quite week as well - Hysteria takes up residence in the screening room, and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses plays midnights on Friday and Saturday. The big draw is on Monday, when the Big Screen Classics series goes weekly for July and August, starting the nine-week run with the original Japanese classic Godzilla (Gojira), complete with a raffle, a visit from Kaiju Big Battel. It's uncut, undubbed, and gorgeous on 35mm, so you want to go.



• The Brattle keep Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story hanging around through Sunday, so audiences have a few more chances to see this movie about the frontman of local band Morphine. On Monday, the DocYard presents The Extraordinary Ordinary Life of José González, which follows a Swedish Folk Artist as he tries to write his second album. Tuesday's Balagan show is "Reflection/Refraction", and Wednesday brings the return of Casablanca, on 35mm film where it belongs.



• The MFA has The Turin Horse, a new film by Hungarian auteur Belá Tarr the follows an early-twentieth century family through their daily life with long tracking shots. It won the Silver Bear at last year's Berlinale. It will also play Thursday before handing the baton to the next movie.



• The Harvard Film Archive is having a member's weekend. If you're a member, you probably know what's playing; the rest of us have to wonder.

My plans? Nothing but Gojira is set in stone, but that is pretty darn set in stone. I'll probably try to catch Ted, Magic Mike, and Moonrise Kingdom, especially with plenty of time to kill before west-coast ballgames.