Thursday, June 25, 2015

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 26 June 2015 - 30 June 2015

Places are getting a jump on the holiday next week, but the weekend still has some good stuff, including in places you might not expect to find fun summer movies.

  • The Brattle Theatre, for instnace, has the local opening of Big Game, which reunites Rare Exports director Jalmari Helander with that film's young co-star Onni Tommila; this time Tommila plays a young Finnish boy doing a solo hunting rite of passage when an escape pod from Air Force One lands in the game preserve, meaning he is the only one who can protect the American President, played by Samuel L. Jackson. That takes up most of the week until Thursday, but there is still time for Tremors on 35mm at 11:30pm Saturday as part of "Reel Weird Brattle: 25 Years Weird" and a free "Elements of Cinema" screening of Jacques Tati's Playtime with Emerson College professor Peter Flynn introducing the film and leading the discussion afterward.
  • Another foreign-but-very-accessible-and-fun film gets a small opening at The West Newton Cinema: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared was one of my favorites at the Fantasia Festival last year. It starts out with the explosives-loving man of the title escaping his nursing home and his adventures - both present-day and in memory - just get weirder from there.
  • They and The Coolidge Corner Theatre are also the only places opening A Little Choas (with the Coolidge splitting it between the screening room and big screen #2), despite the preview playing a lot at the multiplexes earlier this year. Distribution is weird! It's a nice-looking movie with Kate Winslet as a landscape designer commissioned to create a garden at Versailles by King Louis XIV (Alan Rickman, who also directs) and falls in love with a married colleague (Matthias Schoenaerts).

    The Coolidge also picks up IFFBoston alum The Wolfpack for a week in the 14-seat Goldscreen and wraps up the summer-camp set of midnights with a 35mm print of The Burning, an out-there slasher which has young Jason Alexander and Holly Hunter in the cast. Bet they don't last long. Also on 35mm is Monday's Big Screen Classic, thought by many to be the best movie ever made, Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
  • Two more IFFBoston movies open at Kendall Square this weekend: The Overnight is a dark comedy directed by Patrick Brice, featuring a young family making new friends in a new city, although things apparently get weird once they start hanging out together. Kind of the same basic idea as Brice's Creep, which for some reason seems to be going straight-to-VOD rather than getting the full trilogy made and released in a year that was expected.

    They also get Eden, a drama set against the backdrop of Paris's 1990s club scene, featuring the music of Daft Punk (among others). The folks who liked it at IFFBoston really seemed to like it a lot. There's also a somewhat unusual one-week booking: Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, which will see Pather Panchali, The Unvanquished, and The World of Apu play at various times throughout the week. There's also a one-night presentation of Faberge: A Life of Its Own, a documentary on the famous jewelers and their eggs.
  • The week's big opening is Ted 2, Seth MacFarlane's follow-up to his film about a boy whose teddy bear came to life and, like him, grew up to be a lovable but foul-mouthed loser. It gets a bunch of screens at the Somerville (where a scene or two from the first was filmed), Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    Also getting a wide opening is Max, whose title character is a bomb-sniffing dog in the US Marines who winds up living with his handler's little brother after being sent home from Afghanistan with PTSD, only to find new troubles/adventures. It was probably the most tonal whiplash I've gotten from a trailer all year, and plays at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere. For something more conventionally bizarre, Boston Common has Spongebob Squarepants: Sponge Out of Water back for $5 noon screenings (and late night shows starting Monday).
  • The Somerville Theatre begins Saturday "Midnight Specials" this weekend, with Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy the first of eight late-night 35mm prints.
  • After the big opening, Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond is the only place keeping ABCD 2 around for a second week, and that just for late-night shows. You'll need to speak Tamil for their other Indian film, Indru Netru Naalai, also playing late nights. They also pick up the Jaws baton this weekend, showing Spielberg's classic at 2pm from Friday to Monday.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts concludes The Roxbury International Film Festival, which has a filmmaker or two in attendance on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
  • It's Members' Weekend at The Harvard Film Archive, so all you members have probably already received an email saying what secret rarities they will be pulling out of the vaults for you!
  • The Regent Theatre doesn't seem to be listing the Spike & Mike's 2015 Festival of Animation programs on-line, but the Spike & Mike website shows it as running through Monday and a little poking around the ticketing system shows "Sick & Twisted" screenings on Friday & Saturday at 10pm.
  • Free outdoor screenings listed on Joe's Calendar include The Princess Bride and Yellow Submarine on the waterfront Friday night (with Maleficent in Revere) and Batman at Bloc 11 in Somerville on Monday.


See last week about doing nothing but packing (and going up to Maine to give birthday presents to my nieces in exchange for cake) and then actually moving on Tuesday, but there should be a way to fit Big Game, Jurassic World, The Overnight, and maybe Tremors into the schedule.

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