Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 26 November - 4 December 2014

Happy Thanksgiving! Unless you're in Canada and reading about movies opening in Boston for some reason I don't quite understand, in which case happy movies-opening-Wednesday week! Not a lot opening, but what is should be fairly interesting.

  • The prestigious, Oscar-aiming picture is Foxcatcher, a drama casting Steve Carell against type as mercurial chemical-company heir John du Pont, who aims to make a splash backing the US Olympic wrestling team, with Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo as gold medalist brothers he lures to his estate to train. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre as well as Kendall Square and Boston Common.

    No midnights this week (insert "turkey making everyone too sleepy" joke here), but there is a 10:30am showing of The Muppet Movie on Saturday morning, and it's worth going even if you don't have kids, because that's a stone classic. On Monday, the Alloy Orchestra visits to accompany Lonesome, an unusual but fascinating [mostly] silent film. There's also an "NT Live" presentation of the recent Broadway production of Of Mice and Men with James Franco and Chris O'Dowd.
  • The main openings this week are both sequels, although The Penguins of Madagascar is better described as a spin-off, featuring four of the funniest characters from the surprisingly good (and pretty much complete) series in their own 3D adventures. It's at the Capitol, West Newton (2D only), Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    The sequel pitched to adults is Horrible Bosses 2, reuniting most of the cast from the first and adding Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine as new adversaries, and I must admit, the trailers look better than the ones for the first. It's at Somerville, Apple, the Studio in Belmont, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
  • Fenway also picks up Women Who Flirt, the new romantic comedy by Pang Ho-cheung, which is actually opening stateside a couple of days before it opens in mainland China. It's a Mandarin-language film about a young woman who has always disdained girls who flirt their way to what they want forced to try and do so to compete for a man's affections.

    They and Apple Cinemas are also finally opening Dr. Cabbie, which originally looked like it was coming in mid-September. It stars Vinay Virmani as an Indian doctor who emigrates to Canada only to find his medical degree is not recognized, soon having to take a job as a cab driver but running a clinic from his taxi. It also features Kunal Nayyar, Adrianne Palicki, and Mircea Monroe. In addition, Apple's iMovieCafe will be opening Tamil-language Kaaviya Thalaivan on Thursday (no subtitles), and Hindi-language comedy Ungli on Friday; the latter looking like a heist film about a group including Kangana Ranaut of Krrish 3.
  • The Bright Lights series in the Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room returns after the holiday with a screening of Lakshmi on Tuesday; this Indian film is a drama about a 13-year-old kidnapped and sold into prostitution and is one of the few to have the courage to testify against her abusers. They're also hosting a Boston Creative Pro User Group meeting on Thursday the 4th.
  • In addition to Foxcatcher on Wednesday, Kendall Square has Flamenco, Flamenco starting Friday and running for a week. It's what it says on the package, an hour and a half of performance directed by Carlos Saura and shot by Vittorio Storaro with the Seville Expo '92 pavillion and various Renaissance paintings as a backdrop. Other fine arts have single screenings after the weekend, with Hermitage Revealed on Tuesday giving audiences a guided tour of St. Petersburg, Russia'sState Hermitage Museum, while Thursday's Globe on Screen presentation is A Midsummer Night's Dream.
  • The Brattle wraps up 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Yearwith a double feature of Mr. Smith goes to Washington & Destry Rides Again on Wednesday and The Wizard of Oz in 35mm on Thursday, because at least someone remembers that Oz on Thanksgiving used to be a tradition.

    The weekend (Friday through Sunday)is given over to a new restoration of Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City, shot just months after the end of the Nazi occupation in 1945 and thus considered one of the more immediate war films ever made. On Monday, co-director David Wilson will be there to introduce a DocYard presentation of We Always Lie to Strangers, his film about Branson, Missouri. Wednesday features a genuine oddity, an archival 35mm print of the original, Cathy Lee Crosby-starring pilot for Wonder Woman, with a special introduction by Jill Lepore, who will be signing her book The Secret History of Wonder Woman earlier in the evening. The week wraps up with a special twentieth-anniversary presentation of Hoop Dreams on Thursday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive, likely figuring that most of their students and patrons are traveling for Thanksgiving, gives a lot of the schedule over to a new digital restoration of Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour, which plays (in DCP) on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. That still leaves a couple of slots free to continue Once Upon a Song... Jacques Demy, with Lola playing at 7pm on Saturday and a program of early shorts ("La Sabotier du Val de Loire", "Le Bel IndiffĂ©rent", "Ars", and "Lust") at the same time Sunday; the Demy films are on 35mm.
  • All Things Horror has their monthly screening in the Somerville Theatre's screening room on Saturday. It's Back Water, a car-breaks-down-in-the-woods thing which supposedly has a big twist in the middle. Tickets available here, and you might as well grab a seat for the Etheria Film Night while you're there.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts finishes their run of National Gallery on Saturday & Sunday before resetting for the December calendar. That starts on Wednesday & Thursday with Dirty Like an Angel, the start of a Catherine Breillat retrospective. Also playing those days is a run of Bad Hair, a South American film centered around a boy who wants to have his curly hair straightened for his yearbook photo; it will play occasionally through the 12th and is co-presented by the Boston LGBT Film Festival. The Documentary Spotlight on Thursday night is Lost in the Bewliderness, a quarter-century-spanning film about a boy abducted from Greece at the age of five and found in America eleven years later. Director Alexandra Anthony will be on-hand afterward.
  • The Regent Theatre
  • has their annual Thanksgiving weekend screenings of the Sing-Along Mary Poppins, with costumes encouraged and lyrics on the 35mm prints so everyone can, well, you get it. Three shows Friday, two Saturday, one Sunday. Then, on Monday, they screen Class Dismissed, a documentary following a Los Angeles family who decide to home-school their two children.



My plans? Women Who Flirt, heading north to eat turkey and pie, Foxcatcher, Penguins, Lonesome, and catching up with Whiplash, Citizenfour, and The Homesman.

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