Thursday, June 11, 2015

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 June 2015 - 18 June 2015

It's Jurassic World or bust at the multiplexes, apparently.

  • And Jurassic World is playing in a lot of theaters. I'm kind of curious how the folks 22 years younger than me or so are anticipating it, and if that plays into the theme of how, in the movie's world, people are getting jaded about dinosaurs. Nice cast in Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Vincent D'Onofrio, and I liked director Colin Trevorrow's Safety Not Guaranteed. Jurassic World plays in 2D and 3D at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Jordan's Furniture (Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common (including Imax 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Revere (including AVX), and the SuperLux.

    If that's a bit intense, AMC Boston Common starts a series of some of the year's earlier films with $4.99 screenings of Paddington at noon daily. Regal Fenway has an advance screening of Inside Out on Tuesday with making-of and interviews afterward. You can also add The Somerville Theatre the the places playing Love & Mercy.
  • Kendall Square doesn't have that opening there, but turn over half their screens nonetheless. One of them gets The Connection, which shows the European side of the events that inspired The French Connection, featuring Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche. Speaking of drugs, they also have Heaven Knows What, featuring Arielle Holmes as a heroin addict desperately in love with a man who asks her to slit her wrists (Caleb Landry Jones).

    For something lighter, there's Live From new York!, Bao Nguyen's documentary look at the early years of Saturday Night Live. A more dramatic comedy appears in The Farewell Party (also playing West Newton), in which the residents of a retirement home in Israel help a terminally ill friend, and soon find more people with interest in similar assistance.

    The scheduled one-week booking there is also on a reduced schedule, with only two or three shows a day for Aloft, which stars Jennifer Connelly as a mother who abandoned her son (Cillian Murphy) twenty years ago and is meeting him again. Given the six-year age difference between the actors, I'm guessing that's in different time periods.
  • In addition to The Farewell Party, The West Newton Cinema is the only place in the area playing a new adaptation of Emma Bovary with Mia Wasikowska in the title role and Era Miller, Paul Giamatti, and Rhys Ifans in the supporting cast. They also open When Marnie Was There, although I see no indication on the website as to whether it is in English or Japanese; dubbed is more likely.
  • The Brattle Theatre has a weekend booking of Jauja this weekend, with Viggo Mortensen as an engineer who arrives in Argentina during the late 1800s with his daughter and then plunges into the jungle to find her when she goes missing. It is said to be gorgeous, and comes from noted Argentine director Lisandro Alonso.

    The "Reel Weird Brattle: Class of 1990" show on Saturday night is Sam Raimi's Darkman on 35mm, a reminder that Liam Neeson's recent turn toward action-heroism has precedent. They follow it up Tuesday with a Trash Night show, which hasn't been named yet. On Wednesday and Thursday, they start a series highlighting Ingmar Bergman's Fifties, with 35mm prints of Summer with Monika on Wednesday and Smiles of a Summer Night on Thursday. Note that Smiles is moved up from the 23rd, in part because of new programming for that date and because the print for the previously scheduled Sawdust and Tinsel was in bad shape.
  • Fenway and Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond both continue to show Dil Dhadakne Do for the Indian-movie fans, and also both open Hamari Adjhuri Kahani, a romance between a single mother and a hotel magnate. If you don't need English subtitles, Malayam comedy Premam and Telugu romance Kerintha play as well.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has midnight screenings of The Stranger on Friday and Saturday night; it's got some nifty performances and atmosphere but is also one which can't bring itself to use the word "vampire". The other midnight show is the original Friday the 13 in 35mm. Friday, Saturday, close enough.

    Also on 35mm is Monday's Big Screen Classic, Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, one of the few movies that gets to be earnest and also funny about its seriousness. Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake are pretty great in it. They go the other way on Thursday night, showing peculiar VHS footage in The Found Footage Festival's Salute to Weirdos. Should look great blown up to the size of Screen #1.
  • Harvard Film Archive continues their two summer retrospectives. The Titanus Studio pictures are Numbered Days (Friday 7pm), Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Saturday 9:30pm), Cronaca Nera (Sunday 5pm), and Sweet Deceptions (Monday 7pm). The Robert Altman pictuers are A Wedding (Friday 9pm), M*A*S*H (Saturday 7pm, including rare short film "Ebb Tide"), and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's HIstory Lesson (Sunday 7pm). All are 35mm except "Ebb Tide".
  • The Museum of Fine Arts continues The Films of Roy Andersson with more screenings of You, the Living (Friday), the premiere of his new feature A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday), Giliap (Saturday), and A Swedish Love Story (Sunday).

    They will also be the main venue for The Roxbury International Film Festival, a week-and-a-half-long celebration of films by and about people of color. It starts with An American Ascent on Wednesday and Romeo and Circus Without Borders on Thursday. Filmmakers will be present for Ascent and Circus.
  • The Institute of Contemporary Art has two more showings of Archie's Betty this Sunday, at noon and three o'clock.
  • The Regent Theatre has live shows for most of the week, but has the Just a Minute festival on Wednesday (with festival founder & producer on-hand). Thursday night's film, bipolar Disorder documentary Pack Up Your Sorrows, will also have guests, including the filmmakers and musician/star Meg Hutchison.
  • Joe's Calendar shows free outdoor films starting to pick up this week, with Kramer vs. Kramer and the Boston Harbor Hotel Friday and The Neverending Story at Bloc 11 Cafe on Monday. The real can't miss-one, though, is "Coolidge at the Greenway" on Tuesday, where the Coolidge will have the first of three monthly 35mm outdoor screenings with American Graffiti.


My plans involve a wedding in Maine this weekend, so I'll be putting off Jurassic World until I can see it at the furniture story next Saturday (hey, I want my dinosaurs actual size) and likely missing Archie's Betty on Sunday. I'll try and catch Jauja and The Connection, plus I've never actually seen American Graffiti. Still, this stuff I need to move won't pack itself.

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