Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 8 July 2016 - 14 July 2016

Quiet-ish weekend, which is good, because I'm heading to Montreal on Thursday. Folks, do Fantasia. It's awesome, although there's plenty good in Boston, too.

• Kind of quiet at the multiplexes, where there's a new 3D animated film for the kids: The Secret Lives of Pets comes from Illumination, the Minions guys, and has a bunch of dogs, cats, and the like banding together when one gets lost trying to get rid of his beloved owner's new shelter dog. Yeah, it's kind of Toy Story. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton (2D only), Boston Common, Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX 2D/3D), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.
  
  More adult (or, arguably, older-skewing) material is opening in the form of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, with Zac Efron and Adam Devine playing brothers who tend to find trouble left to their own devices, but when they bring blind dates (Anna Kendrick & Aubrey Plaza) to their sister's wedding, they are unprepared for how rowdy the girls are. At the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.
• That relatively small slate leaves room for Boston Common to open two Chinese movies. From Hong Kong comes Cold War 2, which seems to return most of the cast from the first (not released in US theaters/home video but streaming on Amazon and pretty darn good) and then adds Chow Yun-fat to another story of Hong Kong's two deputy police chiefs who don't trust each other amid a crisis plotted by a criminal mastermind. The mainland offers up Foolish Plans, a screwball comedy where three best friends get dragged into a scheme to marry the boss's pregnant mistress which, naturally, goes very wrong.
  
  The Indian films at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond most notably include Sultan, starring Salman Khan as a MMA star, who I suspect will at some point triumph over Chilean action star Marko Zaror, stretching disbelief hard. There are also screenings of Kannada-language film Godhi Banna Sadharan and Tamil-language comedy/horror/romance Dhilluku Dhuddu. They'll also have a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday night, with a different shadowcast than the one at Boston Common Saturday nights.
• The Brattle Theatre has a preiew of Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made with filmmakers in attendance a couple weeks back, but its actual run starts happens this weekend, with screenings from Friday to Monday. The Brattle will be doing their best to keep the audience around for at least a double feature, as Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (the fan film in question) plays Saturday evening and a triple feature of the first three Indiana Jones movies on Sunday (all on DCP, so no sounding the Raiders of the Lost Ark in 35mm alarm). An inducement to stick around nearly as good as Raiders plays at 9:30 from Friday to Sunday, the terrific South Korean supernatural thriller The Wailing, one of the best things to come out this year.
  
  The summer "vertical" schedule starts after that, with Monday and Tuesday given to the last leg of the "75 Years of Film Noir" series of series, this one dedicated to Femmes Fatales. The first pairing is a great one, with Otto Preminger's Angel Face pairing Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons, while Mitchum deals with Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past. The other two series won't start until a bit later, as they show Zardoz on Wednesday as a warm-up to their annual Trailer Treats party on Thursday.
• Kendall Square has some of the smallest turnover I can remember them having, only opening Zero Days. It's the new documentary from the very prolific Alex Gibney, who examines the Stuxnet worm that the US used to attack the Iranian nuclear program, and through it cyber-warfare in the twenty-first century.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of two places picking up Hunt for the Wilderpeople this week (the Kendall already had it and it also opens at the Lexington Venue); the new one from Taika Waititi was a favorite at IFFBoston (and also plays Fantasia), featuring Sam Neill as a foster father who goes into the bush with his charge when it looks like they may be separated.
  
  The Coolidge has a fairly full slate of special event screenings this week as well. The two midnight shows as part of "pscyho summer" are classics: The Shining (Friday) is the best-known one, but Saturday's Possession is right up there (and likely makes an interesting Sam Neill double feature with Wilderpeople) even if it'sbest-known to hardcore horror fans. Then, on Monday night, the Big Screen Classic is Pulp Fiction, while Thursday's Cinema Jukebox show is Cry-Baby, with a special performance beforehand by Diablo Gato. All four are on 35mm.
• The Somerville Theatre is all about the 35mm in their specials as well. The Saturday midnight is Seven, but Sunday's silents are a pretty elaborate program, too: A W.C. Fields double feature of So's Your Old Man & It's the Old Army Gang (the latter with Louise Brooks!) is nice to begin with, but they'll have W.C.'s granddaught Dr. Harriet Fields there as well, plus Fields's first silent short and a number of short subjects with sound. Later in the week, their friends atThe Capitol in Arlington will do a sports-oriented Throwback Thursday with Space Jam and The Bad News Bears
• The Museum of Fine Artscontinues their 21st Annual Boston French Film Festival with Down By Love (Friday), Vincent (Friday/Sunday), Seasons (Friday/Saturday), French Blood (Saturday/Thursday), Fatima (Saturday), The Innocents (Saturday/Sunday), A Decent Man (Thursday), and Two Friends (Thursday).
• The Harvard Film Archive was closed last weekend to install new seating, but they get back to the business of showing all of the movies Robert Aldrich directed now that this is done. This week's selections are Too Late the Hero (Friday 7pm), The Garment Jungle (Friday 9:30pm), Autumn Leaves (Saturday 7pm), his final film and series namesake ...All the Marbles (Saturday 9:15pm), a few shorter works (Sunday 5pm), The Grissom Gang (Sunday 7pm), and Twilight's Last Gleaming (Monday 7pm). The latter is digital, and two of Sunday's three shorts are on 16mm, but the rest are 35mm prints..
• Outdoor moies at Joe's Boston Free Films indicates two chances to see The Wizard of Oz (the Boston Harbor Hotel on Friday and the Prudential on Saturday), and two Thursday series in Somerille: The Peanuts Movie in Seven Hills Park and 1953 film noir The Hitch-Hiker at the Community Growing Center.

Before catch a bus to Montreal on Thursday, I'm figuring on Cold War 2, Wilderpeople, Mike and Dave, and whatever else will probably be long gone before I start seeing regular movies again. And, yeah, I should probably see Zardoz.