Thursday, November 06, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 November - 13 November 2014

Not a whole lot opening this weekend, but the movies which are opening are kind of big deals.

  • The big one is Interstellar, Christopher Nolan's grand-scale science fiction story starring Matthew McConnaughey and Anne Hathaway as astronauts searching for a new human home world. Michael Caine plays the head of the project, and Jessica Chastain the daughter who grew up while McConnaughey's character was aging slowly because of time-dilation. Nolan filmed an hour of the nearly three-hour epic using full-sized IMAX cameras, and urges people to see it on film. It's playing on 35mm film at the Somerville Theatre and Boston Common; digital Imax at Jordan's, Boston Common, and Assembly Row; DCP at Apple, the Embassy, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. for Bostonians who want to see it in real IMAX film, the closest place is in Providence (I wouldn't be surprised if the Aquarium eventually, but I wouldn't count on it); the nearest 70mm bookings (supposedly the best) are in New York City).

    The other new release is Big Hero 6, Disney's first 3D animated adaptation of a Marvel comic book, although it is not in the same continuity as the other Marvel movies. The comics were fun, although the adaptation looks to take some liberties (such as setting it in "San Fransokyo"). It's playing at the Capitol, Apple, West Newton (2D only), Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    In this week's oddly-small booking, Fenway will be screening On Any Given Sunday: The Next Chapter at 10:10pm nightly; it's a sequel/update to a 1971 feature on motorcycle racing. Boston Common has the first Tim Burton Batman as the $6 show on Sunday & Wednesday.
  • Kendall Square has the latest by Lynn Shelton, Laggies, which stars Keira Knightley as a woman who freaks out when her boyfriend proposes, and winds up hiding out with a new 16-year-old friend and her father. It's also at Boston Common.

    The one-week booking is Diplomacy, in which the Swedish Consul General in Paris during World War II attempts to convince the commander of the German forces not to execute Hitler's plan to leave the City of Light in rubble should it fall to the Allies. It's based upon a stage play, so I suspect it will be nice and tense. There's also a Tuesday night "Globe on Screen" show of MacBeth.
  • Apple Cinemas has a surprisingly busy week, with two indies not playing elsewhere. The Lookalike is a thriller that looks quite frankly bonkers, with a drug lord's men scrambling to find a double for the woman their boss is obsessed with. They're also screening Awake: The Life of Yogananda, a documentary on the man who introduced yoga and meditation to the western world.

    The iMovieCafe guys there have The Shaukeens, a Hindi-language comedy about three friends in their sixties who strive to live their lives to the fullest. That's subtitled; you'll need to speak Telugu to understand Brother Of Bommali (an action/adventure) and Malayalam for romantic comedy Vellimoonga.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens IFFBoston alum The Overnighters in their smaller rooms, although it gets a show on the bigger screen Friday night, when director Jesse Moss will be Skyping in for a remote Q&A. It's a documentary about how the oil boom in North Dakota has led to a huge shortfall in lodging.

    The weekend's midnight film is a 35mm print of Highlander, which used to be a pretty big-deal cult movie a couple decades ago, but seems to have become a less essential part of the canon lately. There's also a kid's show of the original Hayley Mills-starring The Parent Trap on Saturday morning, a Talk Cinema presentation of Two Days, One Night on Sunday morning, and a Big Screen Classics presentation of Hannah and Her Sisters dedicated to the late Boston Globe film critic Jay Carr on Monday.
  • The Brattle has a hodgepodge of a schedule this weekend, starting off with a visit from Kier-La Janisse to launch her new book Kid Power!. She'll be introducing The Bad News Bears on Friday night, while Saturday afternoon has a double feature of the original Escape to Witch Mountain and Return to Witch Mountain. Sunday, the guest is Casey Affleck, who will be introducing The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. On Wednesday, a related book signing will be followed by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; all of those will be on 35mm.

    IFFBoston has yet to announce their Tuesday "Fall Focus" preview, but another festival - The International Pancake Film Festival will be returning on Thursday at 8:30pm. $7 gets you a program of animation & puppets, as well as a plate of hot, buttery pancakes.
  • The Boston Jewish Film Festival takes Friday evening off, because Jewish Film Festival, but picks back up at various theaters afterward - the MFA (Saturday/Sunday), the Coolidge (Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday), the Brattle (Saturday), West Newton (Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Thursday), Showcase Patriot Place (Monday), the Arlington Captiol (Tuesday/Wednesday), the Somerville (Tuesday), Framingham (Wednesday), the Warwick in Marblehead (Wednesday), and The ICA (Thursday).

    The Museum of Fine Arts has a few more screenings of Listen Up Philip (Friday/Wednesday) and Fifi Howls from Happiness (Thursday), adding National Gallery to the mix on Wednesday & Thursday; it's a three-hour documentary by Frederick Wiseman that takes a look of the titular London institution. They also have selections from the Turkish Festival's Documentary and Short Film Competition on Friday and Saturday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive starts a new set of programs this weekend, including one for Malian filmmaker Cheick Oumar Sissoko, the latest Geneviève McMillan/Reba Stewart Fellow, with screenings on Friday, Sunday (no English subtitles on that one), and Monday. On Saturday and Sunday, Ukranian director Sergei Lonznitsa will visit to present Maidan (Saturday) and My Joy. There's also a free VES screening of The Turin Horse on Wednesday.
  • ArtsEmerson continues their Polish Film Festival, with Wajda's The Promised Land (Friday), The Wedding (Saturday), and Man of Iron (Sunday); along with Krzystztof Zanussi's The Illumination and The Constant Factor (both Saturday).

    The Bright Lights free screenings this week are Finding Vivian Maier (with faculty member Camilo Ramirez leading discussion) on Tuesday and the annual Silversonic music video showcase on Thursday.
  • The Regent Theatre has one film presentation this week, Inside Metal: The Pioneers of Los Angeles Hard Rock and Metal. Apparently, the documentary has lots of rarely-seen interviews and concert footage.


My plans? Interstellar, Big Hero 6, Nightcrawler, Whiplash, St. Vincent, Laggies, The Lookalike.

1 comment:

Eric M. Van said...

Just for the record, the nearest IMAX 70mm screen is in Providence, just 45-50 minutes down I-95, and spectacularly worth the trip. Since they have reserved seating and hence no long waits in line for event movies, it can actually be less time consuming than driving out to Natick which converted to digital from 70mm several years ago).