Friday, October 17, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 17 October - 23 October 2014

After a packed schedule last weekend, things are a little less nuts, although there are also things playing which didn't plaly when they were first scheduled.

  • The big opening is Fury, with David Ayer directing Brad Pitt and a pretty solid supporting cast as a tank crew behind the lines in Nazi Germany. That plays at Somerville, Apple, Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway (including RPX), Revere, and the SuperLux. That being testosterone central, The Best of Me probably makes fine counter-programming, being a Nicholas Sparks adaptation starring Michelle Monaghan and James Marsden as lovers reuniting after a long separation. It's at Somerville, Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    Then there's one for the entire family with The Book of Life, an animated adventure directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez and produced by Guillermo del Toro with Diego Luna and Channing Tatum voicing romantic rivals to a princess (Zoe Saldana), with a great look and more fun voice acting. It's at the Arlington Capitol, West Newton, Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere. A really surprisingly small number of 3D screenings - it's 2D-only at the first three locations.

    Boston Common also has #Stuck on the schedule again, this time as a regular booking rather than just a couple of shows (which were cancelled last week). Their Sunday/Wednesday "classic" screening this week is Good Will Hunting. Down the Green Line at Fenway, The Golden Era, Hong Kong's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, show up just a couple weeks after opening in China. It stars Tang Wei as a renowned writer from the 1930s.
  • Kendall Square shares St. Vincent with Boston Common; it stars Bill Murray as a curmudgeon who winds up looking after the son of the single mother next door (Melissa McCarthy). Naomi Watts also co-stars. They also have a one-week booking of Lilting, which features Cheng Pei Pei as a retiree who didn't learn her son was gay before he died, and is now confronted with his lover (Ben Whishaw). There's also a single screening of We the Economy, a package of twenty shorts overseen by Morgan Spurlock, playing on Monday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has The Blue Room bouncing between screen #2 and the smaller screens; Mathieu Amalric stars and directs this adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel. Could be nifty, and it's a tight 76 minutes. They also pick up The Two Faces of January in the Goldscreen.

    There's a weekend full of special programs, too. The two midnights on Friday & Saturday are Cronos - Guillermo del Toro's first feature - and Frankenweenie, Tim Burton's expansion of an early short into a feature. Sunday morning features two special screenings - the monthy Geothe-Institut German film screening is West, a story of a single mother crossing into West Germany in the 1970s, while the Talk Cinema presentation is Force Majeure, a pretty darn great story about a marriage seeming to get just the push it needs to unravel during a ski vacation.
  • The Brattle will be running The Princess Bride for most of the weekend (Friday through Sunday), with star Cary Elwes on hand for Friday night's show after a reading/signing of his new book As You Wish. Saturday evening also features ski movie Days of My Youth with a 35mm print of the bizarre Al Adamson creation Carnival Magic playing at 11:30pm as part of "Reel Weird Brattle".

    After the weekend, there are a number of special events: Monday features a DocYard presentation of Return to Homs, with director Talal Derki skyping in after the showto discuss the documentary about two activists in Syria. Wednesday brings director Henry Corra (and some of the subjects) of 2006 film Same Sex America. Then, on Thursday, the Boston Asian American Film Festival kicks off with Revenge of the Green Dragons, with directors Andrew Lau and Andrew Loo doing a Q&A after their first English-language feature. This had been scheduled for the Boston Film Festival, but apparently got pulled to make its Boston debut as part of this festival, which says something about how far the BFF has fallen.
  • All Things Horror doesn't appear to be calling their big triple feature at The Somerville Theatre "ShudderFest" this year, but ten bucks in advance or twelve at the door gets you admission to The Last Buck Hunt, The Creep Behind the Camera, and Bag Boy Lover Boy.
  • The Harvard Film Archive mixes and matches a bit this weekend, showing both of Athina Rachel Tsangari's films - Attenberg on Friday with the director (and visiting professor) in attendance and The Slow Business of Going at 4pm on Sunday. There are free screenings on Saturday and Sunday - Home Movie Day Saturday afternoon, and two from the Hou Hsiao-hsien series - The Puppetmaster on Saturday evening and A City of Sadness Saturday night. And then, on Monday night, director Jim Hubbard will be present to screen his documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT UP.
  • After one last screening of Field of Dogs on Friday afternoon, The Museum of Fine Arts starts the Boston Palestine Film Festival, with screenings Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday.
  • Emerson's Bright Lights series also has a Palestine Film Festival presentation, with the pretty-nifty Omar screening Tuesday. On Thursday, they have a Queer Awareness Month screening of "Alone with People" in their Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room.
  • The Regent Theatre continues the Arlington International Film Festival that started on Thursday through Sunday. They've also got a screening of Who Is Dayani Cristal? on Wednesday night.
  • The ICA has three film screenings this week: Born to Fly on Saturday night, The Notorious Mr. Bout on Sunday, and Sam Green's The Measure of ALl Things on Thursday.


My plans? Fury, The Golden Age, Book of Life, St. Vincent, The Blue Room and the other stuff I haven't gotten around to yet.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Everyone's excited for Bill Murray in "St. Vincent", but I'm looking foward to Chris O'Dowd in it.