Thursday, June 18, 2015

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 19 June 2015 - 25 June 2015

It's a weird week when the film with the fourth-most locations in Boston is the Bollywood picture.

  • It's a pretty far behind the pole, though, because Inside Out, the new film from Pixar, is opening all over the place in 2D and 3D. It's a whimsically-animated story about the emotional impulses inside a person's head being personified and going on an adventure through her memories and subconscious after a cross-country move has them out of whack. Supposedly one of the best things they've done in years, which is saying something. It's at the Capitol, West Newton (2D only), Belmont Studio (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    Also opening at the multiplexes is Dope, a Sundance selection that stars Shameik Moore as a kid from a tough Los Angeles neighborhood hoping to change his nerdy image at an underground party even while doing everything he can to get into a good school. Directed by Rick Famuyiwa, who seemed to make a big splash with The Wood fifteen years ago and then completely disappear. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    For special presentations, Boston Common has $4.99 tickets to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 this week (every day at noon, Monday to Thursday at 10pm as well); half-price for that seems fair. Fenway and Revere, believe it or not, win the race for the first Boston-area screenings of Jaws this year, with DCP screenings on Sunday and Tuesday.
  • Third place goes to Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a coming-of-age film that seems to land right on the border of really great and funny and kind of insufferable for most people; I liked it at IFFBoston. It's playing atThe Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Boston Common.

    The Coolidge also continues its June Summer Camp series with a 35mm print of Ernest Goes to Camp at midnight on Friday and Saturday; those looking for nastier midnight fare can also check out Angst, about a man released from jail after serving ten years for murder and is feeling the urge to kill again. On Sunday morning, they have this month's Goethe-Institut German film, We Are Young. We Are Strong., which recreates the 1992 Rostock anti-immigrant riots. They'll also have 9pm shows of Saturday Night Live documentary Live From New York in the screening room nightly.
  • The big Bollywood opening at not just Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond and Fenway, but Boston common as well, is Anybody Can Dance 2 (ABCD2), a Disney-backed film that has Prabhudheva return as a Mumbai dance teacher who, this year, will bring his crew to a competition in Las Vegas. It's split between 2D and 3D shows, and two and a half-hours of Bollywood dance numbers strikes me as an excellent use of 3D. Held over with subtitles are Dil Dhadakne Do at Fenway and Hamari Adhuri Kahani at Apple, while the latter also opens Vinavayya Ramayya (if you know Telegu) and has screenings of Premam (if you know Malayalam).

    If your taste runs more to Chinese, The Ark of Mr. Chow opens at Boston Common at roughly the same time it plays China. It's a satire of the intense academic system in China, in this case showing socially unprepared teens sent to college before they are ready. Writer/director Xiao Yang was the editor on Starry Starry Night and also did effects work on that film, so his debut feature has my attention.
  • In addition to giving Me and Earl and the Dying Girl a couple of screens, Kendall Square also opens the documentary that played IFFBoston the night before, The Wolfpack. This one focuses on six brothers who have grown up mostly shut away from society, most recently in a New York apartment, who nevertheless came to love movies and would meticulously recreate them. They and West Newton also open Testament of Youth, starring Alicia Vikander as a girl in a small English town who is accepted into Oxford when women rarely went to college, but feels the need to volunteer alongside her brother and friends when World War I breaks out.
  • The Brattle Theatre opens the recently rediscovered and restored Losing Ground, a 1982 picture that was one of the first features made by an African-American woman, which aside from its unique perspective also seems to have interesting things to say about art and academia. It plays Friday-Sunday, although only Sunday afternoon to make way for a Father's Day 35mm double feature of The Shining & The Royal Tenenbaums.

    There's also a "Reel Weird Brattle" presntation of Richard Stanley's Hardware at 11:30pm on Saturday, but the real out-there treat comes Tuesday, when director Myroslv Slaboshpytskiy will be on hand to present The Tribe, easily the most astounding film I saw at Fantastic Fest last year and a hit at IFFBoston and other festivals - it's a shockingly harsh story set at a school for the Deaf in Ukraine, told without dialogue or subtitles for the signed communication, but very clear nonetheless. It's tough to watch, but worth it. It bumped one of the Ingmar Bergman's Fifties to a different night, but there are still two more this week - 35mm prints of The Seventh Seal on Wednesday and Wild Strawberries on Thursday.
  • The Somerville Theatre is a week away from starting its summer programming, but will be hosting a program of selections from Brooklyn's Animation Block Party at 2pm on Saturday afternoon; admission is $5 and includes plenty of films from local animators, many of whom will join founder Casey Safron for a Q&A afterward.
  • Between holdovers and the new openings The West Newton Cinema can take your money for twelve movies on its six screens this weekend, but they will also be hosting a special screening of last fall's The Good Lie at 2pm Saturday to note World Refugee Day.
  • Harvard Film Archive adds a third summer retrospective to the mix this week with The Complete Sam Fuller, which has a lot of good stuff. The opening selections are Pickup on South Street (Friday 7pm), The Crimson Kimono (Sunday 7pm), and The Naked Kiss (Monday 7pm). They still continue paying tribute to Robert Altman, though, with Vincent & Theo (Friday 9pm) and Fool for Love (Sunday 4pm), while Titanus Studio takes Saturday with The Professor, aka Indian Summer, at 7pm and The Demon at 9pm. Everything is in 35mm this week, and with Member's Weekend coming up, it looks like time to re-up my membership there.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has one screening of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence Friday afternoon as part of its Roy Andersson program, but will spend most of the week as thefor The Roxbury International Film Festival, which continues with screenings of shorts and features by and about people of color all week, many with filmmakers in attendance. Note that Monday's events will be at the Shirley Eustis House, while Tuesday's "Dinner and a Movie" presentation of 12 Months will be at Haley House Bakery & CafĂ©, both in Roxbury.
  • The Regent Theatre has two screenings each of the Spike & Mike's 2015 Festival of Animation programs, with double features on Friday and Thursday. $15 for the pair, $10 if you want to see only the "Classic" or "Sick & Twisted" shows.
  • Free outdoor screenings listed on Joe's Calendar include the rescheduled "Coolidge at the Greenway" 35mm presentation of American Graffiti on Tuesday, Groundhog Day and Soul Power in different parts of the waterfront area on Friday night, and Back to the Future at Bloc 11 in Somerville on Monday. Looks like a lot of these programs have been cut this summer.


My plans should really start and end with "locking myself in the house and packing things", but I'm going to try and hit the furniture store for Jurassic World, catch Inside Out and The Ark of Mr. Chow, and see what room there is for Dope, Sam Fuller, and ABCD 2.

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