Friday, March 28, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 28 March 2014 - 3 April 2014

Taking advantage of a day off to hit the early show at BUFF to see if this goes much faster/smoother when I am not trying to do it at midnight.

  • The Boston Underground Film Festival continues on through Sunday, with some pretty exciting stuff: I can certainly vouch for Doomsdays on Friday night, which is followed up by The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears by the folks who did Amer a few years back. There's some interesting stuff Saturday, but the closing night is the really interesting one: I sort of avoided Love Eternal at Fantasia, as there were always other options that looked like they were more my thing, but am very much looking forward to The Congress and Blue Ruin. It's all at the Brattle Theatre, who will be closed from Monday to Thursday to recover do some renovations.
  • There's a bit of strangeness at the multiplexes as well, with Darren Aranofsky's Noah the week's big opener. It is, apparently, a somewhat non-traditional telling of the tale, with Aranofsky not shying away from the stranger, more troubling parts of the Old Testament and Dead Sea Scrolls, enough that the studio is having a little trouble marketing it to the religious the way certain other recent movies are. It plays at the Capitol, Apple, Jordan's (Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common (including Imax), and the SuperLux.

    The other major opening is Sabotage, with David Ayer directing Arnold Schwarzeneggar and a pretty impressive supporting cast as a DEA task force only to find that some members of the squad are treating it as a heist. It's at Apple, Fenway, and Boston Common. Fenway and Somerville also pick up Bad Words, which expands to more screens nationwide, while Boston Common has The Silence of the Lambs playing Sunday and Wednesday. Many theaters will also be doing a Captain America double feature on Thursday (or at least early screenings of the much-anticipated sequel).
  • The Coolidge is back to a different movie on each screen, as Le Week-end opens upstairs. It features Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a long-married couple revisiting Paris for the first time since their honeymoon, and not always looking on each other fondly. But, hey, it's Paris, and if you're going to fall back in love anywhere... Jeff Goldblum plays a supporting role, and the film is also at Kendall Square and West Newton.

    The Coolidge's "Elvis month" of midnights wraps up with a 35mm print of Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch's set of interconnected stories passing through Memphis, Tennessee. The Coolidge also has a Monday "Science on Screen" program with Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker introducing Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and science on-screen every day as they will be running Particle Fever in the 14-seat GoldScreen. There's also an IFFBoston preview screening of Under the Skin on Wednesday with director Jonathan Glazer in person.

  • In addition to Le Week-end, Kendall Square, is also opening Cesar Chavez, Diego Luna's biography of the famed leader in civil rights and agricultural labor. Michael Pena has the title role, with America Ferrera, Rosario Dawson, and John Malkovich giving support (it also opens at Boston Common). They also have Oscar-nominated animated feature Ernest & Celestine, and in what is becoming a happy trend, this story of a bear and mouse who become friends will alternate between English-dubbed screenings and subtitled showings in the original French.

  • The Somerville Theatre mostly live events on the big screen this weekend, but there is a pretty great screwball double feature on Sunday with It Happened One Night and His Girl Friday. The other Centennial screening is Arabesque, with Stanley Donen directing Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren on Thursday. In between, the first team-up of
  • Somerville Subterranean Cinema, All Things Horror, and IFC Midnight happens on Wednesday, with real-time thriller The Den playing a couple of shows in the screening room.

  • The Harvard Film Archive finishes up The Glitter of Putrescence - Val Lewton at RKO, which is kind of sad because I'm sure a lot of the BUFF folk would have liked to be there. This weekend's features are The Ghost Ship (Friday 7:15), Isle of the Dead (Friday 9pm), The Seventh Victim (Saturday 7:15pm on 16mm), Youth Runs Wild (Saturday 9pm), Bedlam (Sunday 5pm), and The Leopard Man (Sunday 7pm); all are in 35mm except where noted. On Monday, Leonard Gardner visits to screen Fat City; he wrote the screenplay for this movie that is part of the John Huston series that mostly finished a month and a half ago.

  • It's all about the Boston Turkish Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts, film-wise, with screenings on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday, continuing through next weekend.

  • Despite what some online listings indicate, Apple Cinemas is not running the Ridley Scott/Tom Hanks/Mia Sara/Tim Curry Legend this week; it's a Telugu-language film from iMovieCafe. Queen continues to stick around for late shows.

  • The Gathr preview program came to a sudden end last week, but the Regent Theatre will still be doing occasional film screenings. On Tuesday, Our Vinyl Weighs a Ton plays, documenting the LA-based record label Stones Throw Records.

  • This week's Belmont World Film Series presentation is Only When I Dance, a documentary on two teenagers in a Rio favela who aim to become world-famos dancers. One of them, Irlan Santos da Silva, now performs as part of the Boston Ballet and will be on-hand when the film screens at the Belmont Studio Cinema on Monday.

  • Emerson's Bright Lights is having some fun on Tuesday, screening The Big Lebowski in the Paramount Theater's Bright screening room, with mock-White Russians being served, bowling shirts encouraged, and prizes being given out. They're back to digging up interesting obscurities on Thursday with Chasing Rainbows, a documentary on how the LGBT and Evangelical movements first started clashing in Hawaii.

  • Surprisingly, that's not part of the Boston LGBT Film Festival, which also kicks off on Thursday night, about a mile away the ICA. The opening night film is To Be Takei, a look at Star Trek co-star George Taeki, who has become a gay icon since coming out later in life.
My plans? BUFF (like, now), then maybe trying to fit Sabotage, Noah, Ernest & Celestine, and Le Week-end in afterward, and also choosing between The Den and Under the Skin on Wednesday.

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