Thursday, January 08, 2015

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 9 January 2015 - 15 January 2015

After a very slow week of releases to start the year, things start to pick back up with award-targeting movies, and a couple bookings especially worth supporting with money.

  • Falling into both categories is Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson's very funny adaptation of the Thomas Pynchon novel. You are going to want to see it at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, because that's the place where it's playing in 35mm (it does also play at the Kendall, Fenway, and Boston Common).

    Also in 35mm: Friday & Saturday midnight screenings of The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Christopher Lee's final performance in the title role for Hammer. There are also midnight screenings of another noteworthy vampire film, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which hangs around in the Goldscreen for a second week. There's also the monthly "Open Screen" night in the screening room on Tuesday.
  • Among the other likely-Oscar-nominees opening wider is Selma, a great-looking depiction of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous civil rights march with David Oyelowo in the title role, Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon Johnson, and a fine cast around them. It's opening at the Capitol, Apple, Kendall Square, Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    Also opening wide but not looking nearly so good is Taken 3, which hopefully won't wrap the Liam Neeson series on a completely down note, but reducing the amount of Famke Janssen on screen and allowing hack Olivier Megaton to continue directing isn't a great sign. It's at the Capitol, Embassy, Apple, Boston Common, Fenway (including RPX), Assembly Row, and Revere.

    The Imitation Game also picks up some screens at Somerville and Fenway. Fenway also has a special presentation of The Wizard of Oz on Sunday
  • Hey, Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond is doing the thing where they book an independent genre film again! It's a good one, too - I liked Predestination a lot when it played Fantasia last year; it's a really nifty adaptation of Robert Heinlein's "Alll You Zombies" by the guys who did Daybreakers. This sort of thing usually goes straight to VOD in Boston, so, c'mon, support Apple screening this with money.

    They also have two Indian movies opening via iMovieCafe this week. Tevar (also playing at Fenway) is a Hindi-language thriller starring Arjun Kapoor as a cocky athlete who finds himself sheltering a reluctant bride (Sonakshi Sinha, who seems to be in a new movie every other month) from her muderous fianc (Manoj Bajpayee). That opens Friday; on Tuesday, they open i, featuring "Chiyaan" Vikram as a former model, now a broken hunchback, seeking revenge on the rival who ruined his life. It's from the writer/director of Endhirian, has music from A.R. Rahman, is partially filmed in China, and just generally looks huge. It was shot in Tamil, but some screenings will be in Telugu, and all will be English-subtitled.
  • In addition to Selma and Inherent Vice, Kendall Square also has Mr. Turner (also opening at West Newton. It has director Mike Leigh reuniting with actor Timothy Spall for a biography of J.M.W. Turner, one of the great British painters of the 19th Century.
  • For those needing to do a little catch-up on the films appearing on year-end best-of lists, The Brattle has their annual (Some of) The Best of 2014 series (obviously, it had different names in different years). It starts on Friday with The Grand Budapest Hotel (which also has screenings on Sunday to replace the pulled-for-rerelease Boyhood), and continues on with a double feature of Only Lovers Left Alive (35mm) & Under the Skin on Saturday, We Are the Best! on Sunday, The Overnighters on Monday, a double feature of Dear White People & Listen Up Philip on Tuesday, The Babadook on Wednesday, and Ida on Thursday.

    They also start their latest "Reel Weird Brattle" series this weekend, this one six weeks of 35mm "Mad Romance" that will culminate on Valentine's Day. The first selection is David Cronenberg's Crash, with James Spader discovering after an automobile accident that this is a fetish for some folks.
  • More of The Films of Alec Guinness are on the the Museum of Fine Arts film program: The Lavender Hill Mob and Kind Hearts and Coronets play Friday, followed by Lawrence of Arabia (Saturday), Oliver Twist (Sunday & Wednesday), The Bridge on the River Kwai (Sunday & Thursday), and The Man in the White Suit (Wednesday), with The Ladykillers finishing things off next Friday (the 16th)
  • The Harvard Film Archive has their special members' weekend screenings from Friday to Saturday - if you're a member, you probably got an email. Hope it's good stuff!
  • The Regent Theatre
  • has the monthly Gathr "Alive Mind" screening on Tuesday, Concerning Violence, a documentary on the struggle of African countries to liberate themselves from colonial rule in the 1960s & 1970s, combining archival film footage and excerpts from The Wretched of the Earth. Dr. Julian Go, a Boston University history professor who specializes in empire and colonialism, will be on-hand to introduce the film. Other noteworthy up coming Gathr screenings include pregnancy documentary 40 Weeks at Assembly Row on Wednesday and a not-yet-confirmed screening of Mad As Hell (a documentary about online news program "The Young Turks") that needs 77 more tickets sold to play at Kendall Square on the 28th.



My plans? Selma, Mr. Turner, Predestination (worth it), Taken 3 (I'm a sheep), The Overnighters, probably Tevar and/or I. And Whiplash (which I tried to see twice this week only to find no evening shows that day)! I mean it!

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