Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 31 March 2017 - 6 April 2017

So, this weekend, an adaptation of an extremely popular thing from Japan made by folks from abroad… And Ghost in the Shell, too!

• That big 3D adaptation of Ghost in the Shell stars Scarlett Johansson and looks like it’s got a heck of an art design team if nothing else, even if the story does look more like RoboCop than the original manga. But, hey, it’s also got Takeshi Kitano, who doesn’t show up on this side of the Pacific this often. It’s at the Somerville Theatre (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond (2D only), Jordan’s (Imax), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including MX4D), and the SuperLux.
  
  The other big 2D/3D opening is The Boss Baby, DreamWorks’s latest animated feature stars Alec Baldwin as the voice of a newborn whose big brother sees him as, well, a businessman played by Alec Baldwin. It’s at the Capitol (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond (2D only), Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.
  
  Best bet in the multiplexes is probably the TCM presentation of North by Northwest, one of Hitchcock’s best that I’ve occasionally used as the answer when asked about my favorite movie ever. It’s great, presumably even in digital. Plays Sunday and Wednesday at Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere, with the latter also showing times on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
• Slightly smaller opening for The Zookeeper’s Wife, which stars Jessica Chastain as the title character, who had an exceptional place to help hide people from the Nazis during World War II; that one’s at the Capitol, West Newton, Kendall Square, and Boston Common. Kendall Square also opens Frantz, the latest from François Ozon, a black-and-white tale set between the two World Wars where the sister of a fallen German soldier meets someone he knew in Paris, though he’s probably mourning the brother more than attracted to the sister.
• The other adaptation of a Japanese hit is The Devotion of Suspect X, with The Left Ear director Alec Su adapting Keigo Higashino’s Naoki-winning mystery novel about a battle of wits between a police consultant and his friend who helped cover up a murder.
  
  For fas of Indian film, Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond has Tamil-language horror film Dora, Tamil thriller Kavan, Telugu sports film Guru, Kannada “family action” movie Raajakumara, with subtitled Bollywood fantasy Phillauri also hanging around.
• The Brattle Theatre is the central hub for Wicked Queer, the long-running LGBT film festival, which settles in on Friday and sticks around until a week from Sunday, with shows also playing at the Museum of Fine Arts (Friday-Saturday) and ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Theatre downtown (Friday-Sunday). I can vouch for Women Who Kill, playing the Paramount on Sunday; I saw it at Fantasia last summer and quite enjoyed it, though I never got around to writing it up.
  
  The one exception is Monday, when the festival moves to the Fenway Health Center and the Brattle, the DocYard, and ReelAbilities present Notes on Blindness, with directors James Spinney and Peter Middleton Skyping in afterward to discuss their recreation of the tapes made by writer John Hull as he lost his vision. ReelAbilities also has shows at the MFA on Sunday, the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center on Monday, the Cambridge Public Library on Tuesday, the Cotting School in Lexington on Wednesday, finishing up with Marathon: The Patriots Day Bombing at the Somerville on Thursday.
• The Somerville Theatre has a few other special screenings, including Swing Away, which plays on Tuesday after having been tough to see through snow the first time. They also have V For Vendetta on 35mm Wednesday evening in the big theater, while (I think) the Micro will be showing a music video program for BUFF’s monthly show. And though their silent series doesn’t start until next weekend, sister theater The Arlington Capitol will welcome Jeff Rapsis for a presentation of Steamboat Bill Jr. on Thursday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre brings back Kedi after a week away; that movie is having a nice little run after originally being scheduled for a week and out at Kendall Square a month ago. Along with the holdovers, they’ll also have midnight showings of the “Black & Chrome” Mad Max: Fury Road on Friday and Saturday, a Talk Cinema preview of Graduation Sunday morning, a 35mm print of 1984 on Tuesday (something being done at nearly a hundred art houses across the country), and a preview of Gifted on Thursday.
• The Harvard Film Archive will be having Jean-Michel Frodon introduce their “Contemporary French Alternatives” this weekend, and maybe Neither Heaven Nor Earth will be more in its element in that environment than it was at the middle of the night during the Sci-Fi marathon back in February, though I can’t say anything about Portrait of the Artist on Sunday afternoon. The rest of the weekend also features guests, with Arturo Ripstein & Paz Alicia Garciadiego introducing both their new film Bleak Street on Saturday and one of their less-screened ones, Woman of the Port, on Sunday. Then, Monday night, Jim Heiman visits for “Out With the Stars! Hollywood Nightlife in the Golden Era”, an “illustrated lecture” for those interested in show business history.
• In addition to the Wicked Queer and ReelAbilities festivals, The Museum of Fine Arts continues theirBoston Turkish Film Festival with Rauf (Friday), Locksmith’s Debt (Saturday), My Father’s Wings (Saturday with the director on-hand), Bad Cat (Sunday), and Ember (Sunday with the director doing a Q&A).
• Tuesday’s Bright Lights screening isn’t listed on Wicked Queer’s site, but they are co-presenting IFFBoston alum Presenting Princess Shaw on Tuesday with that festival as well as the Boston Jewish Film Festival, and the guest is none other than Princess Shaw herself. They also have their annual It’s All True student documentary showcase on Thursday.
• Monday’s Belmont World Film show at the Studio Cinema is Don’t Call Me Son, a Brazilian film about a teenager who discovers that he was kidnapped as a child and must get to know his biological family afterward. The speaker is Francie Mandel, who deals with young people facing similar traumas at Children’s Hospital.
• The Regent Theatre, in addition to showing 1984 on Tuesday, will be showing documentary Women of 1915, which tells the tale of women during the Armenian Genocide on Sunday afternoon, with director Bared Maronian there for a Q&A afterward.
• Before heading to Arlington, silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis will be at the Aeronaut Brewery on Sunday to add music to the 1924 version of Peter Pan. The Aeronaut will also have an ”International Super Shorts Film Festival” screening on Monday, while yet another Somerville venue has goes in for silents as The Rockwell does their monthly “Hush” screening, with Noxaphonic accompanying Battleship Potemkin on Wednesday; there’s a special two-course dinner package available for those who really want to be fancy about it, too.
• The only-at-CinemaSalem presentation this week is Saving Banksy, this documentary on the graffiti artist that focuses on the odyssey of a rat he painted on a wall in San Francisco back in 2010.

My plans include Ghost in the Shell, The Devotion of Suspect X, The Zookeeper’s Wife, Get Out, and I should probably do that Trainspotting double feature while I can.