Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 24 December 2014 - 1 January 2015

Merry Christmas! Lots of new movies being released, some just barely.

  • The "just barely" is why you should support your local independent theaters; they, it seems, are the only ones who are going to wind up playing The Interview; though Sony's back-and-forth on the comedy where James Franco & Seth Rogen go to North Korea as entertainment journalists only to have the CIA ask them to kill Kim Jong-un drew some unwanted attention (perhaps you heard) and had the major chains bail, it's still going to be playing at Apple Cinemas Cambridge starting on Christmas. It will also be at the Somerville starting on 2 January; unfortunately, they committed to other movies during the time when the release was canceled.

    So, what are the other Christmas releases? Well, the one that has me most excited is Big Eyes, Tim Burton's take on Walter & Margaret Keane (Christoph Waltz & Amy Adams); the former took the credit for his wife's paintings which were a major sensation in the early 1960s. It's his first collaboration with writers Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski since Ed Wood, and this sort of biography is where this crew usually strikes gold. It's at the Somerville, Kendall Square, West Newton, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    Into the Woods also opens; it's an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical that takes fairy tales and mashes them up with a more adult perspective, although that is perhaps compromised a bit by having it come from Disney. It plays Somerville, Kendall Square, West Newton, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    In the more obviously awards-targeting releases comes Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie and starrign Jack O'Connell as an Olympic athlete who winds up in a Japanese POW camp during World War II. Some trailers have hinted at a more religious angle than others in terms of how he perseveres. It's at the Somerville, Kendall Square, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. There's also The Gambler, starring Mark Wahlberg as a professor with some massive debts that he figures can only be erased by winning big. It's at the Capitol, Apple, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    Those all open Christmas Day; looking at the end of the next week-plus, A Most Violent Year with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain is on the schedule for New Year's Eve, but as yet no theaters have put it on the schedule yet; maybe that's just the NYC/LA date.
  • Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe are both keeping Peekay around for another week; the latter also has Telugu-language Mukunda playing (mostly) late shows without subtitles. Fenway also opens a Chinese romantic comedy, Love on the Cloud, with Angelababy and Chen He as folks with show business dreams in Beijing who make a lot of their contact via mobile devices. It opens today (Christmas Eve), but doesn't seem to be showing a full schedule until Christmas Day.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre will be getting The Imitation Game on the main screen as it expands on Christmas, and then opening Citizenfour for a week in the Goldscreen starting on Friday the 26th (remember when that was just a one-week booking at Kendall in October?). They're forgoing midnights and special screenings this week, as a lot of folks are out of town for the holidays, and closing early on Wednesday for New Year's Eve.
  • The Brattle is closed for Christmas Eve (although they'll be selling gift cards and the like until 4pm), but re-open on Christmas to start a Not Just a Nut: The Essential Bill Murray series with a double feature of Scrooged and Ghostbusters. The series continues with Meatballs & Stripes on Friday, Groundhog Day & Caddyshack (35mm) on Saturday, Rushmore & The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (both 35mm) on Sunday, The Razor's Edge (35mm) on Monday, Lost In Translation & Broken Flowers on Tuesday, and Ghostbusters 2 at 9pm on New Year's Eve.

    There are also a couple extra screenings in there - a free Elements of Screening presentation of Winter's Bone at 6pm Monday, and the now-traditional 35mm New Year's Eve Double Feature of The Thin Man & After the Thin Man (though it starts at 4:30pm this year). New Year's, as usual, features a Marx Brothers Marathon with A Day at the Races (35mm), Animal Crackers, Duck Soup, and A Night at the Opera (35mm).
  • It's a quiet week film-wise at the Museum of Fine Arts, with just a Sunday afternoon screening of National Gallery. Last one, so if you've been wanting to see this 3-hour documentary, that's the time.
  • Christmas vacation means that the Regent Theatre breaks out their Sing-Along The Sound of Music print; there's costumes, lyrics on-screen, goodie bags, and audience participation. It plays at various times from Friday to Tuesday.


My plans? Love in the Cloud, Big Eyes, The Imitation Game, The Gambler, catching up with The Hobbit in HFR and Citizenfour.

No comments: