Thursday, September 03, 2015

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 September 2015 - 10 September 2015

As usual, Labor Day is not a big movie weekend, which means there's really no excuse for Dragon Blade not opening in Boston. Sure, it's probably terrible, but a movie starring Jackie Chan as an ancient Chinese general fighting Roman invader Adrien Brody with the help of a friendly Roman legion led by John Cusack... That's the sort of potential terrible that one really wants to see for oneself.

  • What do we get here instead? The Transporter Refueled, in which some guy named Ed Skrein takes over for Jason Statham (or, technically, takes over for Chris Vance, who starred in that Transporter TV series). Hopefully, the action will be good. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Jordan's Natick (Reading is still being upgraded), Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Revere (including Xplus & MX4D), and the SuperLux. There's also A Walk in the Woods, teaming Robert Redford and Nick Nolte as septuagenarians who decide to hike the Appalachian Trail despite not really being wilderness guys (Emma Thompson and Mary Steenburgen also appear). It's at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    I'm not sure whether three years makes something a Labor Day tradition, but the past two years have seen Mexican crossover films released in the US with some success on this weekend, and this year they serve up Un Gallo con Muchos Huevos, an animated film about a chicken that must go on an adventure to save his farm. Apparently, it's a follow-up to a popular cartoon series. It plays at Boston Common and Revere. Revere also opens The Moving Creatures, a Brazilian film about three families/mothers in crisis.

    Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere also re-open Dope, a movie many felt got unfairly buried earlier in the summer. The End of the Tour also re-opens at the Somerville Theatre, and Jurassic World may only have had a one-week re-release in Imax, but continues (in 2D) at Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of three screens opening Grandma, which features Lily Tomlin in the title role, as a woman who has kind of been a mess for a long time but still tries to help her equally-broke granddaughter (Julia Garner) raise $600 by sundown Nifty supporting cast, including Judy Greer, Marcia Gay Harden, Sam Elliott, and John Cho. It also plays the Kendall and West Newton.

    The Coolidge also tries to stretch summer vacation out with their two main special presentations: The Goonies plays midnight on Friday and Saturday, and they get to be the last independent theater to play Jaws this summer, with it being Monday night's Big Screen Classic; both are 35mm. They also have the monthly "Open Screen" on Tuesday evening.
  • Kendall Square also opens Steve Jobs: The Man in The Machine, the latest from workhorse documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (apparently we get this, but not Going Clear). It is, apparently, pretty warts-and-all, especially since many who liked the guy apparently refused to cooperate.
  • The West Newton Cinema picks up A Borrowed Identity (aka "Dancing Arabs"), and Israeli film about a Palestinian teenager in a prestigious Jerusalem school which looks to have the same basic story as Gattaca, albeit without the science fictional aspects, as he assumes the identity of an Israeli neighbor.
  • Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond has plenty of Indian films opening on a slow weekend, with the biggest being Welcome Back, starring Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar as friends in love with the same woman, a situation that is complicated enough before the "children must marry in birth order" stuff starts. That's Hindi with English subtitles, There is also Telugu romantic comedy Bale Bale Magadivoy, Tamil action/adventure Payum Puli, and Malayyam action/comedy Double Barrell (Eratta Kuzhal), though those three do not appear to be subtitled.
  • Those of us who couldn't make The Apu Trilogy when the new digital restoration played earlier this summer are in luck as The Brattle Theatre brings it back. Pather Panachali shows Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday; Aparajito plays Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday; Apur Sansar runs Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. The weekend shows are single-admission triple features, if you want to catch these classics of world cinema in one go. On Thursday, The Baffler is throwing a party there as one of its contributors retires from his day job, with speakers, music, and a tribute film.
  • The Harvard Film Archive has their own marathon of classics - the annual Labor Day Weekend overnight theme this year is heist movies, and the all-35mm lineup is cracking: Big Deal on Madonna Street, Le Cercle Rouge, Topkapi, Once a Thief, Kansas City Confidential, and The Anderson Tapes. Films start at 7pm Saturday, end sometime Sunday morning, and the whole thing costs a mere $12.

    They also start a new set of programs for the fall season, with A Matter of Life and Death, or, The Filmmaker's Nightmare, a series of films the peek behind the scenes of filmmakers' work, kicking off Friday night with The Day of the Locust, and continuing Sunday evening with A Star Is Born. They also begin a 1970s film series, "Furious and Furiouser", on Monday, with Paul Schrader's Blue Collar
  • The Museum of Fine Arts continues with more screenings of The Great Man (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday) as part of "New French Cinema" and The New Rijksmuseum (Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, Thursday). Thursday also begins a series of films from the UCLA Festival of Preservation, with 35mm presentations of Douglas Sirk's 1951 film The First Legion and Frank Tuttle's 1932 feature The Big Broadcast, Bing Crosby's first starring role that is built around a group of radio stars.
  • With school back in session, Emerson College's Bright Lights series starts back up next week with a two-part look at one of the summer's best movies: "Mad Max: Fury Road - Rated 'F' for Feminist" on Tuesday night incudes a screening of the film and post-film discussion with Associate Professor Miranda Banks, while Tuesday has a visit from the film's Assistant Camera operator Michelle Pizanis to discuss the film and her career with the Boston Creative Pro User Group. Both are free, although the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater is small and an RSVP may be required for the BOSCPUG event.
  • The last free outdoor screenings on Joe's Calendar for the summer is The Quiet Man, at the Boston Harbor Hotel Friday night.


My plans involve that sweet heist marathon, baseball on Monday, possibly followed by Jaws, and tryinig to fit the Apu Trilogy in as I can. And, let's not kid ourselves, I will probably see The Transporter Refueled at some point, because I am weak.

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