Thursday, May 02, 2013

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 May - 9 May 2013

Rejoice! You have many places to see the director and star of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang reunite!

  • Not kidding there, the message from the multiplexes seems to be that you will watch Iron Man 3 and like it; it's the only thing opening on mainstream screens in the Boston area this week and it's grabbing a ton of them, including all the deluxe screens. Here's hoping that Robert Downey Jr.'s fourth turn as the Armored Avenger (counting The Avengers but not The Incredible Hulk) is as fun as previous ones, especially since writer/director Shane Black is supposedly adapting Warren Ellis's "Extremis" storyline and will almost certainly give it a different feel than John Favreau and Joss Whedon. In 2D and 3D at the Arlington Capitol, Boston Common, Fenway and Fresh Pond; 3D-only at Jordan's Furniture.
  • Kendall Square makes up for the stasis at the multiplexes by turning over half of its ten screens. I've seen Renoir; it's certainly a pleasant and pretty look at the late years of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the formative ones of his son Jean. Also from France: In the House, the new one by François Ozon, which weaves a web of two teenagers, their families, their teacher, and the latter's wife.

    One of the grander attractions is Kon-Tiki, Norway's nominee for best foreign language film which chronicles Thor Heyerdahl's quest to prove that South Americans could have settled the Polynesian islands by using period-appropriate vessels. Oddly, IMDB lists The Weinstein Company as distributing an "English version" (and the trailer I've seen does have a lot of English). Apparently the Weinsteins really just can't help themselves.

    There are also two documentaries: No Place on Earth mixes interviews, recreations, and a reunion of Ukranian Jews who hid in the local caves for a year and a half during World War II; Bert Stern: Original Mad Man takes a look at the famed photographer who created iconic images for magazine layouts and advertising. Stern is the only one marked down as being a one-week booking, but expect The Great Gatsby to bump a fair amount next week.
  • Mud expands to The Coolidge Corner Theatre this weekend, doing an odd sort of screen-share with The Company You Keep, with Mud playing the big screen in the evening and the smaller rooms during the day with Company having the other screen.

    In case you missed it during the craziness a couple weeks ago, Antiviral returns for midnight shows in the screening room this weekend, with a live Q&A via Skype after Friday's show. The movie's got problems, but it's interesting. The main midnight is the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead.

    Music seems to be a theme of several other special screenings: There's a Ballet In Cinema presentation of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on Sunday moorning, as well as a Talk Cinema preview screening of Twenty Feet from Stardom, a documentary on backup singers which played IFFBoston last week. Monday night, the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra is in the main theater for a "Sounds of Silents" screening of Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality, a pretty great comedy; the Berklee kids put on a pertty good show, too. And from Tuesday through Thursday, they have three different short programs (YoungCuts, Elder, and International) as part of the LGBT film festival
  • The Boston LGBT Film Festival also plays the Brattle Theatre all week and through the 12th. That each show is labeled L/G/B/T depending on just which section of the audience it featuers; not sure if that's helpful or oddly limiting. There are also screenings at the ICA on the 5th (and 12th), ArtsEmerson's Paramount Center on the 4th and 8th, and the MFA on the 3rd to 5th and 8th through 12th.
  • The MFA's film program also has a few more Samurai Cinema screenings, specifically Samurai Rebellion on Friday & Saturday, and a Saturday morning screening of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast as part of their "Myths, Folklore, and Fairy Tales from Around the World" series.
  • The Harvard Film Archive wraps up their "L.A. Rebellion: Creating a New Black Cinema" series on Sunday and Monday, with a short program Sunday afternoon, the not-technically-part-of-the-program To Sleep with Anger Sunday night, and Emma Mae on Monday evening. There are two free screenings on either end - the 1969 Soviet King Lear (with an introduction by scholar Tiffany Ann Conroy Moore) Saturday afternoon, and a preview of Frances Ha (which played IFFBoston) followed by a Skype conversation with director Noah Baumbach.
  • ArtsEmerson is not showing much in the way of film while school's out, but their Bright Lights series has screenings of Emerson's thesis programs on the 5th, 9th, and 12th.
  • Hey, iMovieCafe is programming stuff with English subtitles at Fresh Pond. This week, it's Shootout at Wadala, a two-and-a-half hour crime flick directed by Sanjay Gupta and starring John Abraham, Manoj Bajpayee, Priyaka Chopra, and Anil Kapoor. It's got big action scenes and songs! There's also scattered showings of Greeku Veerudu if you happen to speak Telugu.
  • The Somerville Theatre used the time since IFFBoston to replace the seats in screens #2-4, and they've turned over everything but Evil Dead, picking up The Place Beyond the Pines, No, Disconnect, and Oblivion. Their sister cinema, the Arlington Capitol, picks up Quartet for a second-run.


My plans? Iron Man 3, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Our Hospitality, and maybe some catch-up. I'm also kind of curious to see what the new management at Fresh Pond (now called "Apple Cinemas") is like, so maybe I'll check out Shootout at Wadala.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You can wait on Iron Man - it'll be around until at least July.

Much better to check out IN THE HOUSE and MUD during what will likely be much shorter runs in town.

As is KON-TIKI. Believe it or not, the filmmakers double-shot the dialogue in Norwegian and in (stilted) English using the same actors. It doesn't hurt the film too much, but, is wholly unnecesary. Fortunately, there are a lot of wide shots and action footage where they probably just dubbed over the original Norwegian cut.

See those three while you can, Iron Man will still be there........