Thursday, September 06, 2012

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 September 2012 - 13 September 2012

Weird slate of releases this week. Not necessarily bad, just weird, like the studios aren't going to start releasing quality movies until after the Toronto Film Festival (which started on the 6th) and are just filling space. Seeing new stuff looks like kind of a crapshoot, with one major exception.

  • Of course, that exception isn't exactly new - to promote the soon-to-be-released Blu-ray edition of the movie and its follow-ups, Paramount and Lucasfilm are giving Raiders of the Lost Ark a one-week release on Imax screens. None of the film-based ones around here have picked it up, but it runs at Boston Common from the 7th to the 13th. If you can't catch it then or bristle at the cost of a premium ticket, AMC will be running a marathon of all four movies for $25 on the 15th, and the Brattle will have a new 35mm print starting October 26th. Whatever the format, the restoration is said to be amazing.

    Aside from that, the most prominent release this weekend is The Words, which features Bradley Cooper as a would-be author who passes a stolen manuscript off as his own and features a nifty supporting cast - Jeremy Irons, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde, John Hanna, Dennis Quaid, JK Simmons, and more. It plays the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and Fenway. There's a similarly impressive amount of star power to The Cold Light of Day - Bruce Willis & Sigourney Weaver - although they seem to be playing second fiddle to Henry Cavill, next year's Superman. He plays a trader whose family is kidnapped and who must track down a mysterious briefcase to save them. It plays Fenway, Boston Common, and Fresh Pond.

    Meanwhile, Branded (aka "The Mad Cow" on IMDB) gets an oddly-wide release for what looks to be another Darkest Hour. Not that the plot's the same (this looks more corporate-conspiracy), just that it seems like a Russian movie shot in English with a few American actors in hopes of increasing international sales. It plays Fenway and Boston Common. Boston Common alone gets Bachelorette, with Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, and Lizzy Caplan as girls who get roped into be bridesmaids for a girl they used to torment in high school (Rebel Wilson).
  • The Coolidge, meanwhile, opens [REC]3: Genesis, the latest installment in the Spanish horror series, this one featuring Paco Plaza directing solo, ditching the found footage conceit, and taking place at a wedding... You know, I kind of think this is just Plaza wanting to do a zombies-at-a-wedding movie and leveraging the "[REC]" brand. And, wait, it's not actually "opening", but just playing midnights Friday and Saturday, and the actual opening is IFFBoston opener Sleepwalk with Me? Hey, I've seen (and liked!) the movie with the NPR comedian starting to sleepwalk when his relationship starts to get serious; bring on the zombies.

    Among other special presentations is Seven, which kicks off the new "Science on Screen" series with a presentation by forensic psychiatrist Thomas Gutheil, MD; it runs in the big theater at 7pm on Monday. There's also a special presentation in the screening room on Wednesday of Little House in the Big House, a documentary about four inmates at a Vermont women's prison who learn a trade by working on a team to build a complete single-family house on the prison grounds.
  • At Kendall Square, it's come to this: Samsara, a documentary shot on 70mm film by the makers of Baraka, must advertise that the Kendall Square screening is being shown on 35mm. It should, at least, look gorgeous, as the filmmakers traveled the world to get breathtaking images to sew together with music and little (if any) narration.

    On the other end of the class continuum, they also open The Inbetweeners, a movie that that follows the raunchy British TV series' characters (as opposed to the new American version on MTV) on a vacation to Crete, where attempts at getting laid ensue.
  • The Brattle is being used for the Boston Comedy Arts Festival on Friday and Saturday, but film returns on Sunday to wrap up the Studio Ghibli series, with a double feature of Spirited Away & Howl's Moving Castle on Sunday, Castle in the Sky on Monday, My Neighbors the Yamadas on Tuesday, a double feature of Pom Poko and Porco Rosso on Wednesday, and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind on Thursday. Note that only the evening screenings of Spirited Away and Nausicaä are in Japanese with English subtitles; the rest are dubbed into English.
  • The Harvard Film Archive jumps from Paramount classics to Raj Kapoor and the Golden Age of Indian Cinema, which features the films made by India's most noteworthy early filmmaker with presentations from 1948 to 1973: Shree 420 (Friday), Awaara (Saturday), Aag (Sunday afternoon), Boot Polish (Sunday evening), and Bobby (Monday). Note that all of these movies are long ones, as is often the case with Indian cinema, with the shortest running 138 minutes.
  • The MFA continues its rotation of films about conceptual artists that began on the 5th: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present, Kumaré, and Free Radicals: A History of Independent Film all play over the weekend, with Marina Abramovic and Kumaré continuing into next week's cycle, when they will add Planet of Snail, a Korean drama about a blind and deaf man who communicates with his wife entirely via touch. The screening on Wednesday the 12th will be audio described for the blind in the audience; the one on the 13th will not.
  • Huh, check it out: The Somerville Theatre is keeping Oslo, August 31st around for a second week after the Kendall passed on it entirely, and picking Compliance up for a second run. Good job, smaller films!
  • These events aren't this week, but an early heads-up might be worth a note: All Things Horror and the Somerville Theatre will host The Etheria FIlm Festival on Saturday the 15th, featuring a line-up of science fiction and fantasy films directed by women. The Brattle's Watch-a-thon(s) will take place on October 6th & 7th; start raising funds now if you want free admission!
My plans? [REC] 3 tomorrow, Raiders and Samsara at some point, likely catching up on Oslo and Compliance, and maybe checking out whichever one of the random multiplex films doesn't get an EFC review by the guys who go to press screenings. Plus, two Red Sox games, because I bought the tickets when there was hope.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You should definately check out OSLO before it disappears.