- The Brattle Theatre has to finish up the IFFBoston Fall Focus first, screening Jeff Nichols' Loving (and is it just me or is it weird that all the advertising for that acts like he didn't also have Midnight Special this year?). After that, though, Halloween weekend is in effect with a 35mm print of The Addams Family Saturday afternoon, with the evening given to Pet Semetary in a double feature with a making-of documentary. Sunday, the Andrew Alden Ensemble presents a live score for Nosferatu (the 7pm screening sold out, so they added one at 4:30pm), with other horror classics planned for the night itself on Monday: A free "Elements of Cinema" screening of Bride of Frankenstein, and a new restoration of Halloween with a message from John Carpenter at 8:30pm. They will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, but have the first of two November "Bad Hombres & Nasty Women" double featuers with 35mm prints of A Fistful of Dollars and Perdita Durango on Thursday.
- The Coolidge Corner Theatre starts of with somewhat more normal business, picking up Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women on one of the larger screens while Coming Through the Rye's extremely limited release is mostly one 6:30pm show daily in the GoldScreen. The "mostly", though, has a big exception on Sunday afternoon when it will be in the largest room and both director Steven Sadwith and co-star Chris Cooper will be on hand to introduce and answer questions after their movie about two teenagers on a quest to meet J.D. Salinger.
After that, though, it's all about the "Flick'r Treats" Halloween fare. Friday's midnight movie is a 35mm print of David Cronenberg's The Fly, while Saturday morning's Kids' Show is the pretty terrific ParaNorman, with costumes encouraged. Costumes are problably OK for the annual midnight marathon, which starts at 11:59pm Saturday with a double feature of Scream & Scream 2, and then continues for another eight hours of 35mm horror movies, the identities of which are closely-guarded secrets. On Monday night, they combine Big Screen Classics and Science on Screen Frankenstein-style with a double feature of Psycho (35mm) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Gutheil lecturing on the crimes of Ed Gein, who inspired both films. On Thursday, they too get electoral with Michael Moore in TrumpLand, with Moore Skyping in after the film for a Q&A. - The Somerville Theatre's big Halloween bash is Saturday night, when a 9pm screening of Army of Darkness on 35mm will be preceded by "Boomstick!", a "gorelesque" of Evil Dead-inspired sexy dancing. they look toward the election starting Tuesday with a special screening of independent documentary Traficant (about the bombastic Ohio Congressman), and then may be trying to send a message by playing The Intruder, Roger Corman's film featuring William Shatner as a front man come to a small town to stir up racial discord. More cheerily, Arlo Guthrie performs in the main theater on Thursday.
They also pick up The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, which vacates The Capitol to make room for The Arlington International Film Festival, back in its namesake town after a year in Cambridge and cramming a lot of movies in from Friday to Sunday (seriously, there's about ten minutes between screenings). - The Regent Theatre actually has Nosferatu a day before the Brattle, though with a different accompanist, the very-busy Jeff Rapsis (I'm guessing Halloween is one of the busiest seasons for silent-film musicians). They'll also have a local premiere of short cartoon "Lazy Huri" on Sunday afternoon, a slightly-late-for-Halloween presentation of Edgar Allen Poe: Buried Alive (a local production for PBS's American Masters series) on Tuesday, and motorcycle stunt film Moto 8 on Wednesday.
- The Handmaiden makes a quick turnaround after playing the Fall Focus, opening at Kendall Square and Boston Common on Thursday. It's the latest from Park Chan-wook, who reimagines British novel Fingersmith as taking place in 1930s Korea, with the title character both the secret lover of the Japanese lady of the house and part of a plan to rob her of her inheritance. Park almost never disappoints. They also get a one-week booking of Being 17, a new French film about high school boys who hate each other but wind up living together and finding a strange attraction.
- At the multiplexes, you're basically looking at Tom Hanks in Inferno, the third movie he and Ron Howard have made from Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels, and it looks just as stupid and ridiculous as the first (the trailer is just full of ridiculous logical leaps that don't make him look smart as they're intended to do,just like he's part of a bad script). But, hey, it's what's playing, and it shows at the Somerville, Embassy, Studio Belmont, Jordan's (Imax), Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including XPlus & MX4D), and the SuperLux.
- Heck, there's little enough that Fenway is getting back into the Bollywood game, showing Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, as does Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond. This big Diwali romance stars Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma as two young lovers who fall in love in New York, with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Fawad Khan also fitting in there somewhere. Diwali means a lot of movies opening there, including both Tamil and Telugu versions of Kaashmora, a fantasy about a black magic specialist fighting an ancient warlord. There's also Tamil thriller Kodi and Bollywood action/adventure Shivaay, with Ajay Devgn both directing and starring. Malayalam adventure film Pulimurugan plays Sunday; sadly, the theater's site only has the Hindi-language films shown as subtitled.
The continued strong showing of Operation Mekong on its second pass at Boston Common has me scratching my head a bit, but I really don't know what motivates some of these things. They also pick up Mr. Donkey a week after its Chinese opening; this wacky comedy apparently involves a village registering a donkey as a teacher at the school so that they can use government funds to rent it to haul water, which gets sketchy when someone from Beijing comes to inspect it. The last of the foreign-language films opening at the mainstream multipexes is Vai que Dá Certo 2 at Revere; it comes from Brazil and appears to reunite a crew of screw-ups in another big heist. - The Harvard Film Archive jumps between ongoing series this weekend, with a different on each day. They get back to their Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet retrospective on Friday with a set of shorter works - Communists at 7pm is just barely feature length at 70 minutes, so they pair it with "The Aquarium and the Nation" (both on DCP), while the two 35mm prints at 9pm ("Black Sin" and "Itinerary of Jean Bricard") are both about 40 minutes. Saturday continues Say It Loud: A Black Cinema Revolution with 35mm prints of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song at 7pm and Penitentiary at 9pm, both landmarks in African-American film. Sunday goes to Martin Khutsiev, with Spring on Zarechnaya Street on 35mm at 7pm and It Was the Month of May on DCP at 7pm. Then, on Monday, "Pam Grier, Superstar" continues with her and Richard Pryor in Greased Lightning.
- The Museum of Fine Arts concludes the Boston Palestine Film Festival with Speed Sisters on Friday, a short program and Open Bethlehem (including a Q&A with director Leila Sansour) on Saturday, with more shorts and a "Sci-Fi Trilogy" of short films by Sansour's sister Larissa on Sunday. The November schedule starts on Thursday with Tunisian drama As I Open My Eyes and award-winning documentary Do Not Resist, the latter co-presented by the Docyard and Roxbury International Film Festival with director Craig Atkinson on-hand.
- Emerson's Bright Lights shows at the Paramount Theater this week are both documentaries with the directors present. Tuesday's is Trapped, with director Dawn Porter discussing her film on the "TRAP" laws which attempt to make abortion so difficult as to be effectively banned, while Thursday's is Best and Most Beautiful Things, a film about a blind, neuroatypical young woman in Maine co-presented with the UMass Boston Film Series that not only includes director Garrett Zevgetis, but subjects Michelle and Julie Smith.
Well, I want to watch the World Series, but The Handmaiden at least is a must, it's probably about time I actually see Halloween (for someone who writes about a lot of horror films, my classic-slasher knowledge is abysmal), and there's a fair amount of catch-up, too.
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