Friday, June 17, 2016

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 17 June 2016 - 23 June 2016

Looks like kind of a quiet week, but given what's opening, it will probably be huge in box-office terms.

  • After all, new Pixar, and most everybody at least liked Finding Nemo, and it looks like Finding Dory is more of that in a good way, with the forgetful blue tang voiced by Ellen Degeneres remembering she has a family and going to look. Like most animated films these days, it's in 3D, which tend to work pretty well in the ocean. It's at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton (2D only), the Belmont Studio Cinema (2D only), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 3D), Boston Common, Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.

    There's also Central Intelligence, which has Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson as former high school classmates whose lives have gone in different directions - Hart's one-time big deal is now a small-town accountant, and Johnson's fat geek is now, well, The Rock, and a CIA agent who has apparently brought trouble home. Rawsom Marshall Thurber directs, and he did good work on Dodgeball. Playing at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, Revere, and the SuperLux. There are also 15th Anniversary screenings of The Fast and the Furious on Wednesday at Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere, for those who want to re-visit the series's pre-Rock origins as a smallish-scale drag racing story.
  • Kendall Square has De Palma, the documentary on one of the most iconoclastic directors of the modern age, for a one-week booking, so make sure you see all those Brian De Palma movies you haven't caught up on, because there will be spoilers aplenty! They and The West Newton Cinema also get Genius, which chronicles the friendship and working relationship of Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) and top editor Max Perkins (Colin Firth), who worked with many great American writers.
  • The Somerville Theatre presents and co-stars in The Dying of the Light, which shines a light on the vanishing art of film projection; that played the Coolidge earlier this year, but the Somerville plays it as a double feature with Out of Print, which looks at the same issue through the lens of repertory cinemas that still prioritize 35mm projection (it will, in fact, be shown on 35mm film). Note that the double feature only runs until Wednesday; on Thursday, they will be presenting Sin Alas, the first American narrative feature shot in Cuba in over fifty years, based upon the life of writer Luis Vargas. The theater's website mentions 16mm; not sure whether it will be projected that way or if that's just how it's produced. There will be a post-film Q&A with director Ben Chace and the cast joining from Cuba.

    To make room, The Nice Guys moves over to The Capitol, which also has a Throwback Thursday double feature of A League of Their Own & Fried Green Tomatoes on the 23rd.
  • The Bollywood movie opening at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond this week has actually been in the news this week for being part of a court case that severely weakened India's censorship board, as they apparently wanted Udta Punjab, a thriller set against the drug trade in Punjab, to cut out all references to drugs and Punjab. Shahid Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, and Diljit Dosanjh star. Other Indian movies opening include Telugu action flick Gentlemen, Telugu romance Meeku Meere Maaku, and Tamil action-comedy Enakku Innoru Per Irukku, with Te3n continuing from last week (at least through Sunday).
  • The Brattle Theatre gets something that is all too rare these days: A new restoration of a classic film on 35mm, in this case Jean Cocteau's classic La belle et la bĂȘte featuring Josette Day as the beauty and Jean Marais as the beast. That plays afternoons and evenings Friday to Sunday, although one later each day is reserved for The Shining on 35mm, because it's Father's Day weekend. Rounding out the all-film weekend is Saturday night's late "Reel Weird Brattle" presentation of Repulsion.

    Special features take up the rest of the week: On Monday, Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made tells the story of the three kids who spent seven years making a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as a bonus it's shown as a double feature with Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, with cast makers/filmmakers on-hand for both. Tuesday's Trash Night feature is Arena, in which a human vies to be the first one to defeat a whole slew of rubber monsters in 4038's most popular sport. Then, on Wednesday, director Justin Lerner brings his film The Automatic Hate to town, taking questions after the story of a man who gets in over his head when he learns there's a branch of his family he doesn't know about.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre mostly keeps last week's schedule, although they've got two midnights this weekend: The Kung Fu series continues with a 35mm print of The Mystery of Chess Boxing, famous for, among other things, introducing the phrase "Ghost Face Killer" to the world, as well as Cat in the Brain, a festival of over-the-top gore starring Lucio Fulci as a director driven insane by his own movies.

    For more highbrow fare, there's the Sunday morning Goethe-Institut German film, One Breath, in which a Greek woman comes to Germany to work as a nanny only to flee back home (pursued by her employer) after a disaster. Monday's Cinema Jukebox presentation is Buena Vista Social Club, which is not only presented in 35mm, but will be preceded by a live performance from violinist Ludovica Burtone and guitarist Leandro Pellegrino (neither Cuban, but fans of the music).
  • More Robert Aldrich at The Harvard Film Archive: The Last Sunset (Friday & Monday at 7pm), The Choirboys (Friday 9:15pm), The Dirty Dozen (Saturday 7pm), The Prowler (Friday 9:45pm), Story of G.I. Joe (Sunday 4:30pm), and Sodom and Gomorrah (Sunday 7pm). All in 35mm.
  • One last evening for Neon Bull and Aferim! at The Museum of Fine Arts on Friday. After that, give Saturday and Sunday to Our Rhode: 30 Years of Cinema by and About Cape Verdean Rhode Islanders, which includes films both about Cape Verde and the community of emigrants that has formed in New England, with filmmakers in attendance at nearly every show. It's not a bad segue to The 18th Annual Roxbury International Fim Festival, which focuses on films by and about people of color, which opens on Wednesday with The Amazing Nina Simone and Driving While Black, continuing with La Isla, Before I Do, and Soul On Ice: Past, Present, and Future on Thursday (and through to July 1st).
  • Joe's Boston Free Films shows the summer's first screening of Jaws at the Harbor Hotel Friday night. As it's probably projected off a Blu-ray, it will likely not be the best you'll see it this summer, but it is on the water, so that's something.
I've got two Red Sox tickets for the week, though I will probably go for Finding Dory, Central Intelligence, Belle et la Bete, and maybe some of last week's holdovers.

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