Thursday, October 09, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 10 October - 16 October 2014

Lots of stuff coming out this weekend, although once you get past the multiplex stuff, it can be a bit of a scavenger hunt, with many things playing in just one location in the Boston area

    Aside from the openings, though, there's also the second annual Terror-Thon at
  • the Somerville Theatre. We all know how much the Somerville loves 35mm film, so the entire 13-hour program will be running off it in the main theater from noon to 1AM on Saturday. The seven features are Cat & the Canary (silent with live accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis), Poltergeist, Creature from the Black Lagoon (in 3D, likely anaglyph), The Thing (1982), Wait Until Dark, A Nightmare on Elms Street 3, and Let the Right One In. That is a pretty great line-up.
  • Somerville (along with Kendall Square, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, and the SuperLux) also opens up Kill the Messenger, featuring Jeremy Renner as real-life journalist Gary Webb, who put together the connection between drug smuggling and Nicaraguan rebels in the 1980s. Another major opening is The Judge, featuring Robert Downey Jr. as a big-city lawyer who returns to the small town where he grew up for his mother's funeral only to wind up defending his father (Robert Duvall as the title character) in court. It's at the Capitol, Apple, Embassy Square, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    That gets the most screens; the biggest ones are likely going to Dracula Untold, with Luke Evans starring in what seems like an ill-advised attempt to give Dracula a sympathetic background. It's at the Capitol, Jordan's (in Imax), Apple, the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), and Revere. There's also Addicted, an erotic thriller featuring Sharol Leal as a successful woman drawn to extramarital affairs; it's at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.

    For the kids, there's Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, which features Steve Carrell and Jennifer Karner as the title character's parents, as his poor luck apparently spreads to the rest of the family. It's at Capitol, Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Revere, and Assembly Row.

    The absolute strangest opening is #Stuck, which features Joel David Moore & Madeline Zima as a couple who hooked up the night before - and then get caught in a traffic jam when they would have rather just gone their separate ways. It plays Boston Common for, apparently, one screening at 7:30pm on Friday and 3pm Thursday. They're apparently skipping the classic this week, but will be screening a One Direction concert on Saturday (as is Showcase Revere).
  • Kendall Square not only has Kill the Messenger, but they have Pride, a comedy about the strange anti-Thatcher bedfellows of union miners and gay & lesbian activists. They also bring back The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, only instead of the two halves being edited together into one film, "Her" and "Him" will screen in sequence, although the order depends upon the showtime.

    Art and Craft, one of the one-week bookings, has co-director Mark Becker in person to present the Friday/Saturday 7:05 shows of his documentary on Mark Landis, an art forger who has not seen jail time in part because he gives his work away. The other (scheduled) one-week booking is The Two Faces of January, with Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, and Oscar Isaac in Hossein Amini's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel.

    For even shorter-time bookings, there are midnights on Friday and Saturday of Raiders of the Lost Ark (not 35mm, so not quite drop-everything); and a "Globe on Screen" presentation of The Taming of the Shrew on Tuesday.
  • Despite having previews playing all over the place, One Chance is only opening at the Coolidge Corner Theatre; it stars James Corden as an amateur opera singer who becomes famous on Britain's Got Talent. It's also got Colm Meaney as his father, and the world is just better with Colm Meaney playing resistant working-class dads.

    The main midnight this Friday & Saturday is Neil Marshall's excellent The Descent. Special guests will be on hand in the other theater, with undertaker J. Cannibal presenting his final Feast of Flesh on Friday, including Peter Jackson's Bad Taste but also including music, prizes, and burlesque. Johnny Cupcakes is the presenter on Saturday for Casper, with special edition posters and t-shirts. All midnights are on 35mm this week. There's also an Open Screen night on Tuesday and a Found Footage Festival show on Wednesday, and a Sound of Silents screening of the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera with new music by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra.
  • The Brattle has two special bookings this week, with a new restoration of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist playing Friday through Monday, and Terry Gilliam's new one, The Zero Theorem playing late shows Friday to Monday, early ones Sunday and Monday, and a full day on Wednesday.

    In between are other fun things: A Feline Film & Video Festival for Humans on Saturday afternoon, a 35mm "Reel Weird Brattle" show of Raw Force (aka "Kung Fu Cannibals") at 11:30pm that night, and the first IFFBoston Fall Focus screening on Tuesday; they kick the preview series with Lynn Shelton's new one Laggies. The week wraps up with Nas: Time Is Illmatic on Thursday.
  • The West Newton Cinema appears to be the only place in the area screening Wladyslaw Pasikowski's Aftermath - not to be confused with a couple other movies with the same name! This one is from Poland, telling the story of a man who returns to the country after decades in America and uncovers an ugly secret about what happened to the Jewish residents of his village during WWII.
  • The Harvard Film Archive continues Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien, with Dust in the Wind (Friday 7pm), Flight of the Red Balloon (Friday 9:15pm), Good Men, Good Women (Saturday 7pm), Café Lumière (Saturday 9:15pm), Growing Up (Sunday 5pm), and A Time to Live and a Time to Die (Sunday 7pm). Monday night, Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso and visiting lecturer Dennis Lim will be screening Alonso's new film Jauja, featuring Viggo Mortensen. And on Wednesday, VES will be using the room to screen silent The Big Parade, with Jeff Rapsis on the piano.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has two final screenings of the new DCP restoration of Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter feature Accident on Friday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday; the other holdover, Field of Dogs, plays Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday. There are two Documentary Spotlights this week - Saturday's is A Will for the Woods, with directors present to discuss their film about "green burial"; Thursday's is States of Grace, whose filmmakers will also be on hand after their film about a doctor severely disabled after an auto accident.

    There are also two shorts programs - "Black Radical Imagination" on Sunday afternoon, with filmmakers/curators present, and a free Fall Open House program on Monday
  • This week's Bright Lights events at Emerson's Paramount theater include a "Conversations with Boston Creativer Pro User Group" on Tuesday, Animation Show of Shows with curator Ron Diamond on-hand Wednesday, and a Boston LBGT Film Festival presentation of The Dog with directors Alison Berg and Frank Keraudren on Thursday.
  • The Regent Theatre continues Mad in America film festival from Friday to Sunday, including some live performances. The theater is dark Monday, but have an Alive Mind presentation of Web Junkie on Tuesday, while the Arlington International Film Festival starts on Thursday and runs through Sunday the 19th.
  • The ICA has once again has Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters and Diller Scofido + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line playing free with museum admission on Sunday.


My plans? I'm kind of curious about #Stuck, will probably do the Terrorthon, and look forward to getting a chance to double back to The Big Parade; I'll also probably catch up with Gone Girl and The Boxtrolls, with Kill the Messanger and several stops at Kendall Square the new-release priorities.

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