Thursday, April 23, 2015

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 24 April 2015 - 30 April 2015

Look, we're all going to be spending most of our time at IFFBoston, right, but there are other things, too, I guess

  • But mostly Independent Film Festival Boston 2015, which takes over the Somerville Theatre and The Brattle Theatre through Monday. Lots of documentaries and smaller narratives - for genuinely small, there is a lot of great buzz on Don Hertzfeldt's "The World of Tomorrow", which plays as part of Shorts Package D on Friday and Sunday. Other noteworthy entries include the phenomenal Ukrainian sign language story The Tribe, thriller Day Release, The Look of Silence (a follow-up to The Act of Killing), Manglehorn (from David Gordon Green with Al Pacino), and more. There is also a full day of documentary panels and programming at UMass Boston on Friday.

    The festival moves to the Coolidge Corner Theatre for its last two days - I'll See You in My Dreams and The Wolfpack play Tuesday, while Me and Earl and the Dying Girl closes things out on Wednesday.
  • The Coolidge will be playing plenty around the festival, as well - they open Adult Beginners on Friday, which stars Nick Kroll as an entrepreneur who falls apart and winds up moving in with his sister's family. Be aware, that's in the GoldScreen, which is small.

    More hype is being given to Roar, a rediscovered and restored film in which the generally mild-mannered animals on an African wildlife preserve go nuts when the conservationist's family arrives. It plays midnight on Friday and Saturday, as does Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues, which closes out their tribute to director Charles B. Pierce's southern horror on a 35mm print. They also have the Talk Cinema season finale on Sunday morning with Best of Enemies, a look at the 1968 debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. (it also plays the Brattle on Saturday as part of IFFBoston).
  • Kendall Square isn't doing much to compete with the festival this year, although they do open Russell Crowe's directorial debut The Water Diviner, in which he plays an Australian father who, after World War I, went to Gallipoli to find the remains of his three sons and bring them home. It also plays West Newton and Boston Common (including Imax at the latter location). They also have 5 to 7, with Anton Yelchin as a young writer who becomes smitten with an older married Frenchwoman, only able to meet her during the hours in question.
  • Age of Adaline is the one large opener this week (probably more about not wanting to run into the Avengers buzzsaw than anything else), playing the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. It stars Blake Lively as a woman who has not aged since an accident in 1929, but her new beau's father (Harrison Ford) finds her awfully familiar. Well, there's also Little Boy at Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere, but the less said about what looks like a kind of horrifying faith-based thing about a kid praying for his father to come home from WWII (I'm ashamed I hadn't connected it with the second atomic bomb until I read an article), the better.

    Brotherly Love has a better title pun; it stars Eric D. Hill Jr. as a Philadelphia basketball prodigy whose siblings may drag him down. It's at Fenway and Revere.
  • The West Newton Cinema makes an odd landing spot for The Forger, which stars John Travolta as the title character who must steal and replace a Monet from a Boston museum with the help of his father and son. Just two shows a day, but I suppose it could stretch out to another week. They continue hosting the Belmont World Film Series, with Sunday's presentation being The Cut, one of the few films about the Armenian Genocide ever made even after 100 years. They will also host Jewishfilm.2015 starting on Thursday the 30th, with François Margolin's thriler The Art Dealer and Israeli Academy Award nominee Dancing Arabs
  • The Harvard Film Archive welcomes Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke this weekend. Though he apparently won't be arriving in time for his debut feature Duck Season on Friday night, but he will be there for Lake Tahoe (35mm) on Sunday and Club Sandwich on Monday.

    Resident filmmaker Ben Rivers continues his Midnite Movies 3 series as well, with Taiwanese horror film Split of the Spirit playing off a 16mm print at 10pm Friday and Four Flies on Grey Velvet - one of the reasons people think well of Dario Argento despite all the crap he has produced - in 35mm at the same time Saturday. Also on film: The next film in their Wojciech Jerzy Has retrospective, The Doll (Saturday 7pm, 35mm), and the last entry in the "Furious 70s" series, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Wednesday 7pm, 16mm).
  • I really wish I could make it to The Institute of Contemporary Art for their Friday night presentation, New Directions in Chinese Animation; I've found the short films of Lei Lei (who is attending, along with Chai Mi) kind of fascinating when I saw them at Fantasia and BUFF. They also will present Miss Hill: Making Dance Matter on Saturday and Sunday, telling the story of Julliard Dance Division director Martha Hill, one of the most important figures in 20th Century American dance. Director Greg Vander Veer and Debra Cash of the Boston Dance Alliance will be on-hand for a Q&A on Saturday.
  • It's a quiet week for The Museum of Fine Arts's film program, with just short programs. "A Chance to Dress" on Wednesday is a documentary following a cross-dressing MIT professor as he reveals this to friends and colleagues; director Alice Bouvrie and Dr. Southard (as well as his wife) will be on-hand for a Q&A. Thursday evening is SFMA Graduate Thesis screenings, a two hour program of films by local grad students.


I will be living at the various IFFBoston venues this week, though I may take the 66 to the Coolidge for Roar depending how the clock looks and my general alertness feels (it will play the Brattle at the end of May for those not up for that, but I'll be out of town). I suspect I'll want no part of being in a theater on Thursday unless it looks like Ex Machina is leaving town.

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