Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 November 2015 - 24 November 2015

Short week coming up with holiday openings next Wednesday. Good stuf, though, including something much anticipated since last year.

• I refer, of course, the The Brattle Theatre's opening of The Creeping Garden, the sort of documentary that plays the Fantasia Film Festival and fits here perfectly. Its subject is slime molds, a life form that is neither animal, plant, nor fungus. It's the main show for the weekend, and also plays at 5:30pm on Monday and Tuesday.
  
  The later shows on Friday to Sunday is a 35mm print of Dangerous Men, made over the course of 26 years and likely a mess. This thing where Drafthouse Films tries to push a cult film on the world is weird. On Monday, the theater teams with IFFBoston to present an encore of Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty, serving as an appetizer for Tuesday's preview of his new film, Youth, starring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre had to wait a week for Brooklyn (as did the West Newton Cinema; the film also continues at the Kendall and Boston Common), but it's well worth the wait. They will also be getting Trumbo this week, starring Bryan Cranston as famed (and blacklisted) screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Interesting people behind the camera on this one - writer John McNamara has done a lot of quality genre TV and director Jay Roach is best known for the Austin Powers movies.
  
  At midnight on Friday they have something I really liked at this year's Fantasia Festival, Irish horror movie The Hallow, one of the more genuinely creepy things I've seen in a while. They also seek to confuse their patrons by having the first screening of The Room in a couple of months despite also having Room during the day. On Saturday, the month-long tribute to Lloyd Kaufman reaches its apex with the man on hand to receive an award and introduce a 35mm print of his most famous film, The Toxic Avenger. On Monday, cybersecurity expert Susan Landau will introduce The Conversation as part of "Science on Screen", and that's good stuff.
• It's a fair-sized week at the multiplexes too, with a huge chunk of screens given to The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, finishing up the series that got pretty good after a lackluster start. It's at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Jordan's Furniture (in Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Revere (including XPlus & MX4D), and the SuperLux.
  
  The Night Before is somehow the second Christmas-themed movie of the season already, this one featuring Seth Rogen and Anthony Mackie as guys who have spent Christmas Eve with their best friend since he lost his parents on that day, but are planning a blow-out as they all move on with their lives. It's at Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, Fenway, Boston Common, the SuperLux, and Revere. There's a somewhat smaller release planned for The Secret in Their Eyes, a thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as an FBI team that has been hunting the killer of one member's daughter for over a decade, with the discovery apparently even more horrific than expected. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere. Boston Common and the Embassy also picks up By The Sea, which had only bee playing at the Kendall.
• Kendall Square has a one-week booking of Peggy Gugenheim: Art Addict, which may just be five days, so go see it if the story of one of the twentieth century's most prominent patrons of the arts is your thing.
• Fans of Chinese cinema have plenty to choose from at Boston Common, with early/late shows of The Last Woman Standing, Wednesday's opening of the cute-but-flimsy A Journey Through Time with Anthony, and a Taiwanese entry opening on Friday. Our Times looks to be yet another nostalgia-based romance, this time with folks who crossed paths while in high school during the 1990s having a second chance when they meet 18 years later.
  
  For Indian flicks, Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond opens up Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, which looks to be a "Prince and the Pauper" type thing featuring Salman Khan as the crown prince and the nice-guy double, which Sonam Kapoor as his princess. Sounds like Dave, too, for that matter. There's also Kumari 21F if you speak Telugu.
• Spotlight continue to expand, adding Somerville, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere to the Coolidge, Boston Common, Kendall Square, and the SuperLux. The Somerville Theatre also has their final "Silents, Please!" screening of the year with Jeff Rapsis on-hand to accompany The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the 1921 film that made Rudolph Valentino a star and introduced the tango to America.
• The Harvard Film Archive resumes its Maurice PIalat retrospective after a couple of months off this weekend with a vengeance, with To Those We Love (Friday 7pm), Graduate First (Friday 9pm), Loulou (Saturday 7pm), The Mouth Agape (Saturday 9pm, DCP), and Police (Sunday 7pm) taking up most of the schedule. There's still room for the two other continuing series, though - Sunday's "Five O'Clock Shadow" entry is Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo, while Monday's "Furious and Furiouser" flick is Robert Downey Sr.'s Greaser's Palace. All except The Mouth Agape are 35mm.
• The Museum of Fine Arts continues its screenings of Welcome to Leith and Frederick Wiseman's In Jackson Heights, with both having screenings Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
• The Regent Theatre will have their vacation sing-along next weekend, but before that they will be showing Back to the Future docuemtnary Back in Time on Monday. BTTF superfans/memoraelia experts Bill and Patrick Shea will be on hand, and all proceeds will be donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research.

Not sure what my plans will be - probably Four Horsemen, Hunger Games 3.5, The Night Before, Spotlight, Our Time and maybe The Secret in Our Eyes, fitting other things in as possible.