- So, under that plan, you would start at The Brattle Theatre with a Saturday Morning All-You-Can-Eat-Cereal Cartoon Party, three hours of animated Halloween specials and cartoons programmed by Kier-La Jannisse. Instead, it starts at 11am. Their other Halloween programming includes Friday night single features of The Monster Squad and Demons (35mm), with the first repeated Saturday afternoon. Then on Saturday night they have a live event, "Everything Is Terrible! Legends".
On Sunday, they celebrate the 15th anniversary of the theater becoming a non-profit run by the Brattle Film Foundation with a free afternoon screening of Metropolis (on 35mm, so it's the 2002 cut). The evening part of that celebration is a preview screening of Brooklyn. Then on Monday, they have a DocYard screening of Romeo Is Bleeding, with a free "Elements of Cinema" presentation of The Magnificent Ambersons on Tuesday, both with guests. Then, on Wednesday, they'll present the new Japanese animated film The Anthem of the Heart - Anyway, the Brattle's presentation overlaps with that of The Somerville Theatre, whose all-35mm Halloween Marathon starts at noon, and features West of Zanzibar (a silent with live music by Jeff Rapsis), Bela Lugosi in Dracula, The Monster That Challenged the World, Seconds, Aliens, and The Lost Boys. Ironically, this bumps the scary movie they have playing, Crimson Peak, on Friday and Saturday (it also skips Thursday for an early engagement of Spectre). Basically, if you wanted to do both, you'd have to choose between cartoons and silents at noon.
- Since the run-times of those movies adds up to noticeably less than 12 hours, there is likely either a surprise in there or you will have a little time to get on the T and head to The Coolidge Corner Theatre for their 15th Annual Halloween Horror Marathon, which starts at midnight with a 35mm print of Trick R Treat and one other movie taking place on Halloween night (my guess would be Tales of Halloween, but do not hold me to that), with four more movies playing afterward, including Halloween II. Live music, costume contests, and other good stuff.
They also have a 35mm screening of Rosemary's Baby on at midnight on Friday, and an early show of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit on Saturday. After that, the special presentations become less spooky, with the Goethe-Institut presenting German film The Drift at 11am on Sunday. Monday night has the Alloy Orchestra performing their score to Son of the Sheik live.
The Coolidge will also play host to the first two nights of The Boston Jewish Film Festival, with Apples from the Desert on Wednesday and To Life! & Encirclements on Thursday. Thursday also has shows at West Newton (Dough) and the Somerville Theatre (the Short Film Competition). - The multiplexes have a few last horror-type things coming out for Halloween, most notably Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, with kids teaming up with a resourceful waitress to end the zombie outbreak in their town; it's at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere. Boston Common also has Freaks of Nature, aka "The Kitchen Sink", for how it posits a town with humans, vampires, and zombies getting along well until you added aliens to the mix. They've also got a Friday night screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to go along with their regular Saturday presentation. Revere will have late shows of A Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday and Saturday nights.
Since most of the week will be post-Halloween, the multiplexes will open some more conventional films. Our Brand Is Crisis features Sandra Bullock and Billy Bob Thornton as rival election strategists brought in by candidates in Bolivia, and plays the Embassy, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. Burnt is more of a straight comedy, starring Bradley Cooper as a bad-boy chef looking to get back on his feet, because not everybody has Kitchen Confidential on DVD. It's at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.
Revere will also pick up two indies. Friends and Romans played the Boston Independent Film Festival (a different thing than IFFBoston) back in April, and features Michael Rispoli as a frequently-typecast actor trying to mount a production of Julius Caesar, only to find a real-life gangster hiding out in their theater. They also give a screen to Dancin' It's On (aka "East Side Story"), which sounds like Romeo & Juliet with its star-crossed lovers, only with much more in the way of dance-offs and less in the way of suicide. It's also got a couple shows a day at Apple Fresh Pond. For even more dancing, Revere has Sunday/Tuesday presentations of Oklahoma!, and a Sunday screening of Goodfellas (including a documentary) for those who want more gangsters.
The places with Imax-branded screens - Jordan's, Boston Common, and Assembly Row - will be switching out Crimson Peak for a six-day run of The Martian before Spectre arrives. - It's also a busy week at Kendall Square, which shares Suffragette with Boston Common, featuring Carey Mulligan as a 19th Century Englishwoman fighting for the right to vote (Meryl Streep plays one of the leaders of the movement). They also share Truth, featuring Robert Redford doing what looks like nothing to convince us he is Dan Rather in this dramatization of the investigation into Bush II's National Guard service that dashed his career, with it also playing the Embassy in Waltham.
They've also got a one-week engagement of Jafar Pahahi's Taxi, in which the Iranian filmmaker officially forbidden from making movies by the Iranian government finds another way around it, this time driving a cab and shooting customers (who are anonymous non-professional actors). They also have the nifty Experimenter, a nifty little film starring Peter Sarsgaard as behavioral scientist Stanley Milgram. - Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond holds over a bunch of Indian fims and hosts the Caleidoscope CineFest on Saturday, with five movies - 89, Aro Ekbar (with Skyped introduction), Chittagong (with director Q&A), Satyajit Ray's Abhijaan, and the 1953 version of Devadasu (the only one un-subtitled) starting at 10am. The first is a thriller listed as a "Halloween Special", and they will be having a different Halloween special, Troll 2, on Friday night.
The week also features two Chinese imports at Boston Common: Taiwan's Oscar submission, The Assassin, finally arrives after many trailers and a preview at IFFBoston's Fall Focus, and is really good; The Witness is a thriller about a blind woman who witnesses a crime and teams up with a man whose story contradicts hers to solve it. Interestingly, it's directed by the maker of the Korean film it remakes. - The Harvard Film Archive wraps up A Matter of Life and Death this weekend with four movies - Beware of a Holy Whore (Friday 7pm/35mm), The State of Thing (Friday 9pm/DCP), Body Double (Sautrday 7pm/35mm), and Cuadecuc, Vampir (Saturday 9pm/digital), preceded by "A Distant Episode" (16mm). The latter two are fitting Halloween presentations.
Sunday's "Five O'Clock Shadow" 35mm film noir presentation is Try and Get Me with Lloyd Bridges, while Thom Anderson's video Red Hollywood plays separately at 7pm. The first is directed by an avowed communist, the second probably referencing it as it documents blacklisted and leftist filmmakers. the "Furious and Furiouser" presentation on Monday is Czhechoslovakian classic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders - The Museum of Fine Arts continues their run of A Small Good Thing with screenings on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday. Thursday also has them bringing back IFFBoston selection Welcome to Leith, a documentary about white supremacists attempting to take over a North Dakota town.
- Bright Lights has two films with guests this week: I Believe in Unicorns has director Leah Meyerhoff present to present her story of fantasy and abuse, while one of Emerson's professors will lead a discussion of Rick Famuyiwa's Dope on Thursday. Admission is free at the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater.
- The Regent Theatre just has one film presentation this week: Aram, Aram, a drama set inside Los Angeles's Armenian neighborhoods, playing at 5pm on Sunday.
- UMass Boston Film Series has an offering this week as well: What Happened, Miss Simone. Director Liz Garbus will be on-hand to discuss her documentary on "The High Priestess of Soul", Nina Simone.
My plans will probably just include the Somerville Horror Marathon, along with Freaks of Nature, The Witness, and maybe Scouts Guide... And I'm realy not going to look past the weekend this time.