Thursday, October 30, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 31 October - 6 November 2014

Halloween on a Friday, which means theaters want something scary, but opening something that day means most of its weekend is after the day, so it's actually kind of quiet.

  • The big release is Nightcrawler, featuring Jake Gyllenhaal as a freelance crime-scene videographer who starts crossing lines in his zeal to get even closer to the story. It's at Apple, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway (including RPX), Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    The next-biggest opening is a tenth-anniversary rerelease of the original Saw, which means it's been ten years since the first Boston Fantastic Film Festival, which means that actually predated Fantastic Fest. I thought it was the same year. Huh. Anyway, nifty little movie that spawned an increasingly convoluted series and kicked-started James Wan's career. It's at Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Square, and Revere. Boston Common also brings back Harry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas on Friday, Sunday, and Wednesday, and also has The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday as well as the usual Saturday. Showcase Cinemas (including Revere) are showing John Carpenter's Halloween on Friday.

    There's also Before I Go to Sleep, with Nicole Kidman as a woman with no memory, short or long-term. Colin Firth and Mark Strong co-star, and it plays at Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, and Assembly Row.
  • The Brattle opens Horns on Halloween and has it play through Wednesday; it'sbased upon the book by Joe Hill and stars Daniel Radcliffe as a murder suspect who wakes to to find horns have grown from his head and people are compelled to tell him their sins. It's directed by Alexandre Aja and has a pretty spiffy cast. It's also playing at Boston Common, in case the other programs at the Brattle get in the way.

    Those include a special 10pm screening of the original theatrical cut of Donnie Darko on Halloween night, which figures in the movie. There's also DocYard presentation Hoax_Canular on Monday, with filmmaker Dominc Gagnon on hand to discuss his movie stitched together from teenagers' YouTube videos about the end of the world. Tuesday night is Trash Night, which this month is The Taking of Beverly Hills, and, come on, that's a movie I have on VHS because I enjoyed it unironically, not really sub-cult crap (I hope)! Then on Wednesday, there's a late-afternoon show of Gringo Trails and an evening screening of Tom Rush: No Regrets to benefit FOLK New England.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre mostly keeps the same line-up, but is one of three venues taking part in the Boston Jewish Film Festival's opening days, with opening night film Run Boy Run on Wednesday, while Transit andGett, the Trial of Viviane Ansalem play there Thursday. That's the day the Brattle has "The Gordin Cell" and Zero Motivation, while the Museum of Fine Arts shows the "Footsteps in Jerusalem" shorts program.

    Before that, they finish up their Halloween programming with a 35mm print of the Bela Lugosi Dracula at midnight on Friday and Saturday. Monday has another 35mm print, The Abyss, as part of the "Science on Screen" series, with marine geochemist Dr. Graham Shimmield there to introduce the movie.
  • Kendall Square has two one-week bookings this week. Citizenfour is a documentary about a filmmaker who goes to Hong Kong to meet a source that turns out to be Edward Snowden. The other is White Bird in a Blizzard, a pretty good mystery from Gregg Araki that features Eva Green as a dissatisfied wife who just disappears one day, Shailene Woodley as the daughter left behind, and Christopher Meloni as the husband. I liked it at Fantasia.
  • The only new Indian movie from Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe, Karthikeya is in Telugu without subtitles, but Fenway has two opening. ROAR: Tigers of the Sundarbans is an action/adventure about a guy who brings an apparently-orphaned tiger cub into his village only to face the wrath of its mother, while features Rekha as a grandmother who becomes a model.
  • The Harvard Film Archive concludes their Hou Hsiao-hsien series with Three Times (Friday 7pm), Daughter of the Nile (Friday 9:30pm), and Flowers of Shanghai (Sunday 4:30pm), all in 35mm, the latter a new print. Saturday they have a tribute to Robert Gardner, screening about three hours of the man's documentarian's work starting at 5pm with free admission. On Sunday night they have a program of very rare Fritz Lang Silents (Four Around a Woman and "The Wandering Image") at 7pm with Jeff Rapsis accompanying the restored 35mm prints. Then on Monday night, they will be showing a 35mm print of Tian Zhuangzhuang's 2002 version of Springtime in a Small Town (note that a visit by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bin has unfortunately been cancelled).
  • Before getting to the BJFF, The Museum of Fine Arts continues screening Listen Up Philip (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday) and Fifi Howls from Happiness (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday). There's also a special screening of John Stewart's directorial debut Rosewater on Tuesday, with tickets available on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 5:30pm
  • ArtsEmerson's film program in the Bright screening room features the first weekend of their Polish Film Festival: Three Andrzej Wajda classics in Ashes and Diamonds (Friday & Saturday), Innocent Sorcerers (Saturday), and The Wedding (Sunday). The Festival also includes new film In the Name of (Saturday, with star Andrezj Chyra on-hand). Sunday evening also features AWAKE: The Life of Yogananda, a biographical documentary on the life of the man who brought yoga to the west in the 1920s. During the week, the Bright Lights free screenings include three short films by Emerson professor Cristina Kotz Cornejo on Tuesday and "Stumped", a short documentary about a filmmaker who suddenly finds himself a quadruple-amputee. The subject will do a comedy set and participate in a Q&A session with the director afterward.
  • The Regent Theatre has an "Alive Mind" presentation of Monk with a Camera, the story of photographer and Buddhist monk Nicholas Vreeland, on Tuesday. There's also a presentation of MOTO 6: The Movie, with tons of motorcross action, on Thursday.
  • The Somerville Theatre's Halloween program is only half film, as they'll have Jeffrey Combs's one-man Edgar Allan Poe show Nevermore on stage to celebrate the recent unveiling of the Poe bust at the Boston Public Library. Ticketholders for that get to stay for the 10pm show of The Masque of the Red Death with Vincent Price, presented on 35mm film. They also have a Boston Asian-American Film Festival presentation of To Be Takei on Monday night, with subject George Takei on hand. The 5 Point Film Festival, a collection of adventure films, runs Wednesday and Thursday.

    Those are also the days that they get Interstellar early because they didn't rip all their 35mm projectors out when adding digital like so many theaters did, so go see it there and give Ian & Dave high-fives for keeping real film alive as much as they can. Boston Common will also be screening it on film those days, and I'm mildly curious as to whether they're bringing projection in for the occasion or if they kept one or two around, because I can't remember the last time I saw 35mm there.


My plans? All the stuff I meant to see last weekend but didn't, Nevermore, Nightcrawler, and hopefully The Abyss. Plus supporting the Somerville showing what looks like some pretty darn hard sci-fi on real film with money.

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