Thursday, July 10, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 11 July - 17 July 2014

On the one hand, I'm kind of glad the studios are only releasing one big movie and the local places are both doing big silent things before I head north for the Fantasia Festival. On the other, it's creating a weirdly lopsided weekend.

  • Fortunately, the one big movie this weekend looks to be really good: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has a strong up-and-coming director in Matt Reeves, a solid cast, and the same writers who helped make the movie it follows, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, surprisingly excellent. It's a 3D conversion job, but given the relatively low light levels shown in the trailers, that may not be the way to go. It's at the Somerville (2D only), Apple, Embassy, Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common, and Assembly Row.

    There's also a little expansion going on, with Begin Again adding screens at Fenway and Assembly Row while Snowpiercer opens at West Newton. Boston Common has Pretty Woman as the $6 on Friday and Wednesday, and the remake of RoboCop as the $3 late show Monday to Wednesday.
  • The Brattle is keeping Snowpiercer around for late shows through the weekend (10pm Friday & Saturday, 9:30pm Sunday). On Friday, the earlier shows are Jonathan Demme's hugely popular Talking Heads concert film. For the rest of the weekend, it's silents: Saturday starts with a new restoration of The Thief of Bagdad and concludes with An Evening of Magic Lantern Entertainment, the centerpiece of the Magic Lantern Society of US and Canada, dedocated to preserving and collecting devices used to entertain audiences before the invention of what we now know as cinema. Then on Sunday, there's a double feature of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance and Buster Keaton's spoof thereof, The Three Ages, the latter on 35mm.

    Then on Monday, the summer vertical schedule starts, with Mondays and Tuesdays a centennial tribute to the great Robert Wise, starting with two films that he edited, Orson Welles's Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons; both play in 35mm as a double feature on both days. Wednesday, they kick off the "Girls Rule!" program with the delightful We Are the Best!, and while the Thursday "Recent Raves" program won't start until next week, this Thursday promises to be a lot of fun with the annual Trailer Treats show, with all sorts of crazy, the entries to their "Trailer Smackdown" contest, and barbecue at six.
  • The Somerville Theatre also has silents this week, with Jeff Rapsis at the piano for a 35mm print of Orphans of the Storm on Sunday afternoon, which, like Intolerance, is a three-hour epic directed by D.W. Griffith featuring Lillian Gish. The Saturday morning "Affordable Family Flicks" screening is also on 35mm, in this case a print of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. There's also a All Things Horror screening of Providence filmmaker Richard Griffin's Future Justice on Saturday in the Micro-Cinema; the 7:30pm show is sold out but they added a second at 9:30. The Somerville also ships 22 Jump Street over to the Capitol, which will be showing Despicable Me at noon for $6 from Friday to Thursday, and Caddyshack as part of their Bill Murrathon series at 10:30pm on Friday and Saturday.
  • Kendall Square has A Coffee in Berlin (aka Oh Boy) for the one-week booking, a German Academy Award-winning black-and-white movie about a college drop-out havnig odd misadventures after his allowance is cut off. They're also opening Venus in Fur, the new one by Roman Polanski which adapts David Ives's play. The Friday/Saturday midnight - which wraps the series - is The Princess Bride.
  • Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe and Fenway both pick up Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, which features Alia Bhatt as a woman about to get married who meets title character Humpty Sharma (Varun Dhawan) as she's doing her wedding shopping. They also have screenings of Telugu-language thriller Drushyam all week and Malayalam-language drama Bangalore Days occasionally starting on Saturday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself, which is in the main screen during the day and the Goldscreen at night, switching places with Snowpiercer at 7pm. The main theater also has midnight screenings of David Cronenberg's Scanners on 35mm. The Monday Big Screen Classic is Blazing Saddles.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts continues the 19th Annual French Film Festival, which is mostly new films, including Michel Gondry's Mood Indigo, and the animated adaptation of Aya of Yop City.
  • The Regent Theatre has two films this week: The Alive Mind presentation of Daughters of Dolma, a documentary on Tibeten Buddhism from a woman's perspective, plays on Tuesday, while Redemption, which looks at the no-kill movement in America's animal shelters, plays Thursday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive has their semi-annual members weekend; if you're a member, you've received an email saying what's running.
  • From Joe's Calendar, the free outdoor films this week are Jimmy Was a Carpenter at the Liberty Hotel on Friday (RSVP required), the same night that the Boston Harbor Hotel shows The Wizard of Oz and Despicable Me 2 plays on the Esplenade (and a lot of other places during the week). Check the listings for more.


My plans? Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the Magic Lantern show on Sunday, 7 hours of silent films on Sunday, try and fit Life Itself and Deliver Us From Evil in at some point before heading north for the Fantasia Festival on Thursday, with Greyhound hopefully getting me there in time for Jacky in the Realm of Women and The Mole Song - Undercover Agent Reiji.

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