Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 October - 10 October 2013

It was my birthday on Wednesday, but since that day has more or less been taken over by my niece, I'm just going to call tomorrow "Jay's Birthday (Observed)", what with the Red Sox having their first postseason game in a few years and Gravity opening.

• And Gravity is the main event this weekend, the first new film from Alfonso Cuaron in a few years. It features Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts in orbit when disaster strikes. Previews have looked amazing, early reviews are fantastic, and this looks like the sort of movie that is made to my personal specifications. It's at Somerville, Apple, Fenway (including 3D RPX), Boston Common (including the 3D Imax screen), the SuperLux, and Jordan's Furniture (3D).
  
  The other major opening is Runner Runner, with Justin Timberlake as a grad student who discovers an exploit in an online poker site, Ben Affleck as the guy who runs it that hires him, and Anthony Mackie as the cop investigating Affleck. Gemma Arterton's in there, too, probably as a girlfriend of some sort. It's at the Capitol, Apple, Belmont Studio, Boston Common, and Fenway.
  
  In addition to moving its continuing matinees of The Wizard of Oz to a regular 3D screen, Boston Common has another family-friendly picture, Grace Unplugged, with AJ Michalka as a young musician whose father has been through all the faith-testing things she will go through. They've also got Parkland, an ensemble drama set in the aftermath of the JFK assassination.
• Kendall Square has two films opening: Wadjda, whose title character is a 10-year-old girl from Saudia Arabia who takes part in a Koran recitation contest to raise money for something her teachers would find terrible (a bicycle!). They've also got a one-week-booking of Mother of George, with Danai Gurira as a Nigerian immigrant with an extraordinarily demanding mother-in-law. It is, by all accounts, a beautiful film, and producer Carly Hugo will be at the 6:55pm screening on Friday.
• The Somerville Theatre has two special programs this weekend: The Etheria Film Festival is back for a second year courtesy of All Things Horror; it's a group of science fiction films made by women, this year including a documentary featurette, a short film program, and the feature Best Friends Forever. It starts at 4pm Saturday and continues on into the evening. Then on Sunday, the "Silents, Please!" film series returns with Jeff Rapsis accompanying a 35mm print of Harold Lloyd's Safety Last! at 1pm.
  
  Meanwhile, at their sister theater in Arlington (The Capitol), an October classic horror series kicks off with The Shining at 10:30pm on Friday & Saturday. Both theaters do some second-run rearranging of screens, with 20 Feet From Stardom coming to the Somerville from Kendall Square and pushing The World's End to Arlington.
• The Coolidge is getting into the Halloween spirit with no less than three "@fter Midnite" programs Friday & Saturday night: First, Bad Milo! has its local premiere in the screening room; it's cute-but-bloody horror-comedy about a parasite that climbs out of Ken Marino's inestine when he feels threatened. They also have The Craft, featuring a group of young witches played by actresses who were pretty darn popular at the time (Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, Rachel True), on the upstairs screen, and special free 35mm screenings of The Keep in the main screen (it's a last-minute substitute for a messed-up print of something else, and likely free because of the legal mess that's kept it from appearing on DVD yet).
  
  Those aren't the only special screenings, though - Sunday morning, Talk Cinema has their second show of the current schedule wtih See You Tomorrow, in which a man in need of money opens a funeral home in a town where everyone is over the age of eighty - and surprisingly healthy. Tuesday has the monthly "Open Screen" program, as well as a British National Theater presentation of Othello (with Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear). And Thursday has a preview screening of Free the Mind, a documentary about the study of how various mental states manifest in the brain, with a number of local scientists.
  
  In addition to all the special screenings, they open Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction in the screening room; it's a documentary on the great character actor that also gives audiences a look at his work as a folk musician.
• The Brattle Theatre has matinees of Good Ol' Freda through Sunday, but gives most of the schedule over to their Best of Bogart series of double features: High Sierra & The Petrified Forest on Friday, To Have and Have Not & The Big Sleep on Saturday, Casablanca & The Maltese Falcon on Sunday, Key Largo & Dark Passage on Monday, In a Lonely Place & Dead Reckoning on Tuesday, The Caine Mutiny & The Desperate Hours on Wednesday, and a single feature of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on Thursday. Most are on 35mm, although some will be DCPs.
• The Regent Theatre is actually running movies most of the week. Sunday has a charity screening of Graceland, a pretty terrific Filipino thriller along the lines of High & Low, while Monday's screening of The Triumph: The Battle Has Begun benefits Comunita Cenacolo. Tuesday's Gathr Preview Series entry is The Other Shore, chronicling swimmer Diana Nyad's multiple attempts to swim from Cuba to Florida. Wednesday features Surge from Acquire the Fire, a Christian/motivational event which has a lot of music involved. Thursday wraps the week up with "Reel Rock 8", a collection of mountain-climbing short films.
• With not just a new month but a new quarter upon us, the the Harvard Film Archive starts up an entirely new schedule. It kicks off with three connected films in the new Songs of Struggle - The Radical Documentaries of Shinsuke Ogawa series. They include The Battle Front for the Liberation of Japan - Summer in Sanrizuka at 7pm on Friday, Sanrizuka - The Three Day War at 9:15pm (playing with Sea of Youth - Four Correspondence Course Students, as they are both fairly short features), and Sanrizuka - Peasants of the Second Fortress at 7pm on Sunday. The collaborators from Sea of Youth also worked together on Monday's film, Forest of Oppression - A Record of the Struggle at Takasaki City University of Economics.
  
  In between, director Joshua Oppenheimer will be in town on Saturday to show the longer director's cut of the already-harrowing The Act of Killing. An earlier featurette of his, "The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase", will screen at 5pm Sunday.
• The MFA has one last screening of The Legend of Cool "Disco" Dan on Saturday, while Herb & Dorothy 50x50 continues with screenings on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. There are also two more screenings from The National Center for Jewish Film Mini-Festival on Wednesday and a chance to see and vote on the films of the Manhattan Short Film Festival on Sunday morning. There are also several screenings of Who Takes Away the Sins: Witnesses to Clergy Abuse (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) with a panel discussion after each one.
• ArtsEmerson looks at India this weekend, with Midnight's Children (an adaptation of Salman Rushdie's book about children switched at birth as India split from Britain) plays Friday night, while 1986 Bollywood thriller Nagina plays Sunday afternoon. In between, there's a screening of The Bling Ring on Saturday night. The Bright Lights programs include a sneak preview of Escape from Tomorrow on Monday, Tey with director Alain Gomis on-hand Tuesday, and two short films by Emerson grad Julian Higgins ("No Wind, No Waves" and "Thief") on Thursday.
• Not only are the iMovieCafe guys opening Besharam at Apple Cinemas, but it's playing at Fenway as well. It stars Ranbir Kapoor as a well-meaning car thief who aims to change his ways to make things up to the love of his life.
• The UMass Boston Film Series has Big Men on Thursday, with director Rachel Boynton on hand to discuss her documentary on the frantic world of the African oil industry.

My plans? Gravity & baseball Friday, Etheria Saturday, The Other Shore Tuesday, and hopefully squeezing Runner Runner, Herb & Dorothy II, some Bogie, and maybe Big Men in around them. Plus The Keep, because who knows when else I'll get to see that?