Thursday, October 02, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 October - 9 October 2014

Back doing this after a couple of weeks in Austin when I just wouldn't have the time. This week, I just won't have the time to see some of them, which is kind of disappointing on my birthday week.

  • The big opening, especially in this Boston area, is David Fincher's Gone Girl - we do love native son Ben Affleck, who co-stars as a man accused of murdering his wife after she (Rosamund Pike) disappears, leaving a diary pointing suspicion his direction. It plays at the Somerville (main screen), Kendall Square, West Newton Cinema , Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    Also opening wide is Annabelle, a prequel to The Conjuring focusing on the evil doll. It's at Somerville, Apple, Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere and the SuperLux. A much smaller multiplex opening goes to Left Behind, with Nicolas Cage starring as one of the many sinners remaining on a chaotic Earth after the pure of heart are taken in the Rapture. It's at Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere. It apparently opens for one show a day at Boston Common on Saturday; on Sunday and Wednesday, that venue will be showing M*A*S*H for $6
  • Both Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe and Fenway open Bang Bang!, a masala action movie starring Hrithik Roshan as a mysterious stranger and Katrina Kaif as the bank teller who winds up swept along in his adventures. Haider, a Hindi-language adaptation of Hamlet set in modern Kashmir, will just be opening at Apple, which also gets Telugu-language Govindudu Andarivadele and Tamil action-adventure Yaan; the latter two are unsubtitled.

    Back at Fenway, China Lion is apparently settling in, as Breakup Buddies opens. It's the latest from Ning Hao, once again starring regulars Xu Zheng and Huang Bo, this time as friends who go on a road trip after one's painful divorce.
  • Along with a couple screens of Gone Girl, Kendall Square also doubles up on Men, Women & Children (as does Boston Common), Jason Reitman's ensemble piece that uses online communication as a thread to tie its storylines together. They've also got a one-week booking of The Notebook - not the Sparks book, but a story of twins sent to live with their cruel grandmother during World War II. They've also got midnight (or 11:45pm) screenings of Only Lovers Left Alive on Friday and Saturday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre goes kind of nuts with midnights this Friday and Saturday: The big house has the original Fright Night on 35mm, an encore of The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears (it played the Brattle a couple weeks ago) in theater #2, and Unearthed & Untold: The Path to "Pet Semetary" in the screening room. There's also a "Science on Screen" presentation of Soylent Green at 7pm Monday, with nutrition expert P.K. Newby introducing and discussing.

    They're also opening a couple of movies in the screening rooms: Last Days in Vietnam is a documentary on the desperate final days of the war when South Vietnamese allies would potentially be left behind. Memphis, on the other hand, follows a singer wandering the title city. It's mostly in the GoldScreen, though a special screening on Sunday afternoon will be attended by the director and play on a larger screen.
  • The Brattle has a fun weekend of musical movies, with both a new restoration of A Hard Day's Night and the pretty nifty Stuart Murdoch musical God Help the Girl; they're single features, and the 9pm shows of the latter on Friday & Sunday will be followed by a Belle & Sebastian concert film of the movie's songs.

    Not Saturday, as they must make room for the 11:30pm "Reel Weird Brattle" screening of Teen Lust, a 1979 curiosity notable for being directed by character actor James Hong. Things get classier on Monday, when the DocYard returns with E-Team, a fly-on-the-wall look at a human rights "Emergency Team" that investigates alleged abuses as soon as they are reported. Director Ross Kauffman will be on hand for a live Q&A afterward. Then on Tuesday, class goes out the window with a Trash Night presentation of Voyage of the Rock Aliens, which the Trash Night folks have wanted to show for a while but had to wait for a VHS to show up on ebay. Wednesday and Thursday, things are looking back up, with a new restoration of Double Indemnity, which ties into the Annual fundraising Gala at Oberon on Thursday.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a "Silents, Please!" screening on Sunday, a 35mm print of King Vidor's The Crowd, a seldom-screened romance about two people in a big. anonymous city. As per usual, it screens on 35mm film in the main theater with live accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis.
  • The Harvard Film Archive begins Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien, a month-long retrospective of the Taiwanese filmmaker's thirty-year career, with A Summer at Grandpa's (Friday 7pm), Cute Girl (Friday 9pm), The Boys from Fengkuei (Ssaturday 7pm), Gren, Green Grass of Home (Saturday 9pm), and Cheerful Wind (Sunday 5pm), all on 35mm. The four-hour silent Hagiographia II at 7pm Sunday is on 16mm, and wraps a program on experimental filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos. And on Monday, Portugese director Pedro Costa visits with his latest film, Horse Money.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts is playing a new DCP restoration of Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter feature Accident, a 1967 film of professors and a classmate seeking the attention of a beautiful female student; it plays Friday, Saturday, and Thursday. The same "Exclusive Screenings" label is attached to Field of Dogs, a new film from Poland about a distraught professor who quits his job to work in a supermarket (Friday, Wednesday, Thursday). A "Documentary Spotlight" screening of "A Matter of Conscience: Clergy Abuse" plays on Saturday, followed by a panel discussion. On Sunday, they've got this year's edition of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, where audience members can vote on which filmmakers deserve awards/prizes.
  • ArtsEmerson has a "Globe on Screen" presentation of Twelfth Night on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; it's the Broadway staging of the very funny Mark Rylance/Stephen Fry production I saw and enjoyed in London. The free Bright Lights presentations both have post-film discussions this week: Kill Your Darlings with producer Christine Vachon on Tuesday and The Congress with faculty members on Thursday.
  • The ICA has two programs playing free with museum admission on Sunday: Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters looks at an photographer who meticulously builds full-sized images, while Diller Scofido + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line looks at the architectural firm that actually designed the museum.
  • The Regent Theatre will begin the Mad in America film festival on Thursday with a double feature of Bipolarized... and The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
  • UMass Boston Film Series kicks off its fall session on Thursday the 9th with Love Child, a look at the first time "internet addiction" was treated as a mental illness in a courtroom setting. As usual, the screening is free and director Valerie Veatch will be on-hand to introduce and discuss her film afterward.


My plans? Not as much as I'd like - I have a wedding and birthday party to go to in Maine this weekend, so I'm missing The Crowd in favor of adorable nieces. I'll be going for Breakup Buddies and Strange Color beforehand, and probably at least Gone Girl and Soylent Green afterward.

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