- Of course, there's no doubt which ones are genuine wide-release movies; there the ones with a bunch of three-dimensional CGI. For the kids, you've got Monsters University, which flashes back to well before of the events of Monsters Inc. to show Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan first meeting at college (so, yeah, guys in their sixties voicing teenagers - the magic of animation!). Folks worry about Pixar these days, but the 3D re-release of Monsters Inc. was better than I remembered, so this could be worth a shot. Plays 2D & 3D at the Arlington Capitol, Boston Common, Fenway, and Apple.
For the grown-ups - though not necessarily so grown up as to surpass a PG-13 rating - there's World War Z, featuring Brad Pitt as a UN epidemiological investigator tracking down the start of a zombie plague that is threatening to consume the world. Max Brooks's novel was kind of brilliant, but I've got no idea how it gets streamlined down to one man's action movie. It was also post-converted to 3D, and plays in both two and three dimensions at the Capitol, Fenway (including the RPX screen), Boston Common, Apple, and the SuperLux.
Getting a somewhat larger release than I figured is Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, in which a group of Los Angeles teenagers take to robbing celebrities homes while they're tweeting their location as being elsewhere; they, naturally, become celebrities of a sort themselves. It's playing Somerville, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Fenway. - Joss Whedon's made-in-a-weekend-in-black-and-white-at-his-house adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing is also opening in a variety of different places - the Coolidge, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the SuperLux - but the Coolidge is the one that has the IFFBoston award winner in 35mm. And speaking of things related to that, they also have 2012 IFFBoston selection Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himselfplaying in the smaller digital rooms, with directors Luke Poling and Tom Bean popping by for Q&A after the 7:45pm shows on Friday and Saturday and the 2:15pm and 4:45pm shows on Sunday. And while Whedon won't be showing up, it's also the weekend where the Coolidge (and other theaters around the country show Serenity to raise money for Equality Now and collect non-perishable food for Rosie's Place. That's Saturday at midnight, a good movie for a good cause.
No special causes associated with the weekend's primary midnight screening, but really, do you need one? How often do you get the chance to see Killer Klowns from Outer Space on 35mm? Not enough, even counting this Friday and Saturday! Really, it kind of stuns me that the Chiodos never made another movie, even the guy behind The Room (which has its monthly screening Friday) got another chance! They've also got a special preview of Fruitvale Station on Wednesday - Kendall Square, meanwhile, is getting more than just Much Ado and The Bling Ring: Fill the Void was Israel's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year, a drama about arranged marriages among Hasidic families in Tel Aviv, including a proposed match between a widower and his late wife's sister. The one-week booking comes from France in the form of Augustine, in which the title character is a maid in the late 19th century who, after a seizure, is sent to a psychiatric hospital where the doctor may not always have her best interests at heart. They've also got a single-night booking for Tuesday the 25th of Free China: The Courage to Believe, which focuses on Jennifer Zeng and other Falun Gang practitioners being persecuted in mainland China.
- The Brattle Theatre has an amusing juxtaposition of movies this weekend - the matinee and 7:30pm shows from Friday to Sunday are Journey to Italy, a Roberto Rossellini classic about a British couple's marriage falling apart on a trip to the Neapolitan countryside that was once a staple of the Brattle's programming until prints became difficult to acquire. Then, at 9:30pm, another Brit comes to Italy only to find his sanity disintegrating in Berberian Sound Studio, a pretty great little giallo tribute featuring Toby Jones as the sound engineer come to edit a new movie that's more grotesque than he's used to. A movie sort of like Suspiria, which plays at 11:30pm on Friday and Saturday - and which also features Jessica Harper as an American coming to Italy to encounter strangeness. Suspiria is in 35mm; the other two are DCP.
That new projector gets a workout over the coming week, as the theater will be running a DCP Debut series to demonstrate that not only is it more or less necessary for booking new films, but that it does make a lot of repertory programs available. For instance, they'll be showing Double Indemnity on Monday, The Guns of Naverone on Tuesday, and La Dolce Vita on Wednesday. The program will continue through the next week, but is interrupted on Thursday for The Best of the First Ten Years of Open Screen, touted as a send-off for the originators of this "filmmaker open mic night", although others will keep the flame alive after they show their favorites. - That's an event that usually happens at the Somerville Theatre, although it seems to be on hiatus based on their website. Not on hiatus? Cinema Slumber Party, which after an oddball new release last week shifts gears to pay tribute to Ray Harryhausen with a 35mm print of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Their sister theater, the Capitol in Arlington, continues their "Summer Rewind" series with Ghostbusters on Friday and Saturday nights at 10:30pm and The Mighty Ducks at 11am Saturday and sunday mornings.
- Once again, the Regent Theatre just has the one film program this week, the Gathr Preview Presents screening of Broken on Monday evening. It's based upon Daniel Clay's novel and follows a young girl losing her innocence as she begins to take notice of some of the uglier things going on in her neighborhood. Eloise Laurence plays the girl, Tim Roth her father, and the cast also includes Rory Kinnear and Cillian Murphy. There's nothing on the schedule beyond it, which confuses me a bit since I bought a second four-week membership one week ago; hopefully they're not taking more than a couple of weeks off.
- The MFA's program continues mostly as it was from last week, with documentaries The Iran Job and Sign Painters each having single shows on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday, with Sign Painters also running Thursday afternoon. That evening (the 27th), the 15th Annual Roxbury International Film Festival, dedicated to films by and about people of color, kicks off with Things Never Said, which follows a spoken-word poet as she dreams of moving from California to New York. Cast members Shanola Hampton, Elimu Nelson, and Michael Beach will be there, and the series continues through next weekend at the MFA and other venues.
- iMovieCafe's Hindi-language, English-subtitled movie this week is Raanjhana, which stars Dhanush and Sonam Kapoor as two childhood friends whose romance is threatened when she goes to university and meets another man played by Abhay Deol. They also have scattered shows of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, which is subtitled, and Telugu and Tamil movies which aren't.
- Belmont's Studio Cinema continues to do the second-run thing, picking up Now You See Me, while the Capitol gets The Great Gatsby (2D only) from Somerville. And, most importantly, the Aquarium will be running Star Trek Into Darkness in IMAX 3D from Thursdays to Sundays through at least 14 July, which is a big deal because I believe they're still showing genuine IMAX film, which several segments of the movie were shot on, so it's our first chance locally to see the movie in all its glory.
My plans? Monsters University, Much Ado, Broken, World War Z, and it's a crying shame I can only hit two midnights (I'm thinking Sinbad and Killer Klowns). Maybe give Star Trek a double-dip on the giganto screen.
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