Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 19 December - 23 December 2014

It's the week before Christmas vacation, and two kids' movies are come out. There's an argument that it should be three.

• That argument comes from me, who liked the fairly kid-friendly first Hobbit movie and is vaguely disappointed that this trilogy (itself crazy) is moving closer to The Lord of the Rings in tone as it moves on, with the new one being The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies rather than "There and Back Again". As such movies go, it's actually fairly reasonable in length at 144 minutes, and available in 2D and 3D at most theaters, and 48-frame-per-second "HFR" screenings at some. It plays the Capitol, the Embassy, Apple, Jordan's (3D Imax only), Boston Common (2D/3D/3D Imax), Fenway (2D/3D/HFR RPX 3D), Assembly Row (2D/3D/HFR Imax 3D), Revere (2D/3D/HFR XPlus 3D), and the SuperLux (2D/HFR 3D).
  
  The more kid-targeted movies are both rehashes of a sort. Annie has Quvenzhané Wallis in the title role and Jamie Foxx as "Will Stacks" - apparently war profiteering is no longer cool, so "Warbucks" is out as a name - and is not, sad to say, the crazy adventure strip Annie was until it ended (mid-cliffhanger, eventually picked up by Dick Tracy) but an adaptation of the musical. Ah, well. It's at the Capitol, Apple, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb brings its group to the British Museum, and, yeah, it's Robin Williams's last film aside from a voice part next year. It's at the same theaters.
  
  For the grown-ups, Wild expands a bit, continuing at Kendall Square & Boston Common but also opening at the Somerville Theatre, the West Newton Cinema, and Revere.
• Lingaa doesn't look to have as much staying power as Endhirian did, but Peekay (aka "PK") opens at Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe and Fenway, a Bollywood production about a simple, child-like man who disrupts a city with his innocent questions and point of view; I kind of got a Forrest Gump vibe from the trailer. Aamir Khan stars as the title character.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre has a very limited engagement of The Way He Looks, Brazil's Oscar submission about a blind teenager - it is in the Goldscreen with The Babadook still playing the 9:30pm show. They also have 35mm screenings of Elf at midnight on Friday and Saturday, and The Muppet Christmas Carol on Saturday morning.
• The Brattle is also in the Christmas spirit with It's a Wonderful Life playing Friday to Sunday, and then the "Alt X-Mas" screenings: Batman Returns in 35mm on Monday and a double feature of Die Hard and Die Hard 2 on Tuesday. Though not technically part of that program, they'll kick off the Bill Murray series on Christmas with Scrooged (part of a double feature with Ghostbusters).
• The Harvard Film Archive finishes up the Jacques Demy retrospective before Christmas break with Bay of Angels (Friday 7pm), A Room in Town (Friday 9pm), A Slightly Pregnant Man (Saturday 9pm), and the delightful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Sunday 7pm); Bay and Umbrellas are 35mm. They also celebrate the holidays with "Another Kuchar Christmas" at 7pm Saturday and a free show of vintage holiday shorts at 3pm Sunday, headlined by Seth Green in in "Charlie's Christmas Secret".
• The Museum of Fine Arts has yet more of The Films of Catherine Breillat - The Sleeping Beauty (Friday), Bluebeard (Friday), Fat Girl (Saturday & Sunday), and Abuse of Weakness (Sautrday & Sunday).

My plans? The Hobbit in HFR, Wild, Batman Returns, and whatever I can fit in around quite a bit of Christmas shopping that needs to be done.