Friday, August 25, 2017

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 August 2017 - 31 August 2017

Well, this is potentially inconvenient - half or so of this weekend's new movies are kind of boutique-y things, but Landmark Kendall Square is closed because of construction (either their own or the even bigger construction site all around them) at least through the weekend. So, if you see them listed, remember it's not at least until Monday (and if your plans for the weekend involved seeing Menashe, you can get to West Newton on the T, but I think they still only take cash).

  • One of my favorite things at Fantasia was Good Time, a fast-moving, surprising thriller featuring Robert Patiinson as a young bank robber frantically trying to raise bail money for his mentally-handicapped brother. It's exciting, unpredictable, and stylish as heck. It's at the The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Somerville, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Revere, and the Kendall. One I managed to miss at both Fantasia and IFFBoston is Patti Cake$, starring Danielle Macdonald about a Jersey girl with hip-hop aspirations. It's at the Coolidge, Boston Common, and the Kendall.

    Aside from that, the Coolidge does Die Hard-knock-off weekend at midnight, with 35mm prints of Passenger 57 (Friday) and Die Hard With a Vengeance. The projectionist will then work a bit of a marathon on Monday, as the Big Screen Classic is The Godfather.
  • Over at the multiplexes, they open Ingrid Goes West, in which Aubrey Plaza plays a social media obsessive who moves to Los Angeles to ingratiate herself with as "influencer" played by Elizabeth Olsen; hilarity ensues. It's at the Somerville, Boston Common, Fenway, Revere, the SuperLux, and Kendall Square.

    There's also Leap!, a French animated film given an English-language soundtrack for release here, with a would-be ballerina and her inventor buddy running away from their orphanage to make it big in Paris. It's at the Arlington Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere. And there's also Birth of the Dragon, about a legendary fight between Bruce Lee (Philip Ng) and martial-arts master Wong Jack Man (Xia Yu) that few witnessed but which supposedly legitimized Lee in the eyes of many. Amusingly, it comes from WWE Films, and is apparently the first thing they've made that is basically a couple of weeks of guys talking smack before settling it with a fight despite being in business for ten years or more. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    The relatively quiet week means it's as good a time as any for a re-release, and James Cameron hs not only restored Terminator 2: Judgment Day, but converted it to 3D. That's at Boston Common and Assembly Row (an AMC exclusive, apparently). It being the last weekend of the month, GKids has their monthly Ghibli/Miyazaki presentation, one of my favorites, Castle in the Sky. It's apparently been popular enough for there to be three shows from now on (English on Sunday and Wednesday and Japanese on Monday), playing at Revere and Fenway.
  • The Korean movie opening this week is Midnight Runners at Boston Common, starring Park Seo-joon and Kang Ha-neul as mismatched cadets at the police academy who witness a kidnapping and decide to thwart it on their own, although they're probably one decent cop between them. Surprisingly, no Legend of the Naga Pearls despite all the trailers; I'm guessing the distributor didn't expect Wolf Warrior 2 and A Taxi Driver (which they also released) to have this sort of staying power and wound up competing with themselves for screens.

    Plenty of Indian stuff, though, with Tamil spy thriller Vivekham playing both Fresh Pond and Fenway. Fresh Pond also has it in Telugu; Fenway is advertising it as subtitled and even getting some RPX screenings. Apple Fresh Pond also gets subtitled Bollywood romantic comedy Gentleman (aka "Reload") and Telugu drama ArjunReddy while keeping subtitled Hindi films Bareilly ki Barfi and Toilet Ek Prem Katha.
  • I don't know whether the Kendall being mostly closed affected this booking, but The Capitol and The West Newton Cinema are the places opening French drama The Midwife, with Catherine Frot as the title character who forms a reluctant relationship with her father's mistress (Catherine Deneuve), when the former usually only gets these things second-run. The Capitol also has their end-of-month "Throwback Thursday" show on the 31st, with Grease.

    Sister screen The Somerville Theatre throws it back even further on Sunday the 27th, with Jeff Rapsis accompanying the monthly "Silents Please" screening. This month is Get Your Man, with Clara Bow and Buddy Rogers falling in love in Paris in director Dorothy Arzner's romantic comedy. It's newly restored, though some bits are still filled out with stills. 35mm film, of course - they're still showing Dunkirk in 70mm, as well.
  • The Brattle Theatre hosts the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival from Friday to Sunday before starting the last week of the summer vertical programs: The Robert Mitchum series finishes with a 35mm print of The Yakuza on Monday (its double-feature partner, sadly, couldn't be booked) and a digital presentation of Dead Man on Tuesday. That one plays late-ish, though, as Tuesday also features the monthly "Elements of Cinema" program, this one the utterly delightful The Young Girls of Rochefort, with Jacques Demy directing sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac as the title characters, who would like to leave the harbor town, but keep getting pulled back for lively song and dance. It will be followed by a visit from guest speaker Catherine Clark.

    Wednesday features a couple enjoyable single features to finish out the "Recent Raves" - Hirokazu Kore-eda's charming After the Storm and genuinely creepy Canadian horror flick The Void for the late show. Finally, Thursday wraps up the Agnes Varda series with Jane B. par Agnes V. and Kung Fu Master.
  • Jean Renoir takes center stage at the The Harvard Film Archive, with both 35mm prints of his films - The Crime of M. Lange (Friday 7pm) and The Rules of the Game (Sunday 4:30pm) - and the three-part series Jean Renoir, the Boss playing this weekend. Oddly, Jacque Rivette's documentary trilogy plays out of order, with part 1 playing Friday at 9pm, part 3 Sunday at 7pm, and part 2 playing Monday at 7pm. That just leaves Saturday for Ernst Lubitsch, with 35mm prints of The Marriage Circle (7pm, with accompaniment by Martin Marks) and Trouble in Paradise at 9pm.
  • It's all Feed Your Head: Films from 1967 at the The Museum of Fine Arts this week, with The Trip (Friday), The Graduate (Friday), The Jungle Book (Saturday/Sunday), You Only Live Twice (Saturday), Cool Hand Luke (Saturday), In Cold Blood (Sunday), Valley of the Dolls (Thursday), and Le Samourai (Thursday). The last is on 35mm, and the first may be on Blu-ray, but it's directed by Roger Corman, written by Jack Nicholson, and stars Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, and Susan Strasberg.
  • The Regent Theatre appears to be starting their own silent film series, with the hard-working Rapsis accompanying two from Buster Keaton on Friday. Three Ages spoofs Intolerance (and only runs half as long), featuring Buser in the Stone Age, Roman Age, and Jazz Age, and that's followed by Sherlock Jr., a comedy about a projectionist who enters a movie (and that simple special effect is still perfect 90 years later). They also partner with UXPA Boston for a free screening of Urbanized on Wednesday, the third part of director Gary Hustwit's "design trilogy" that also includes Helvetica and Objectified.
  • The 18-seat room at CinemaSalem has IFFBoston alum City of Ghosts, a fine documentary about the Syrian citizen journalists behind the blog Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently.
  • The Joe's Free Films shows multiple screenings of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and The Secret Life Of Pets this weekend, but the big free outdoor movie event is Films at the Gate, the annual Chinatown celebration of Chinese film which opens on Friday with My LIfe In China, hosted by director Kenneth Eng, before featuring two featuring Donnie Yen, who spent some of his youth there: Ip Man 3 on Friday and Butterfly and Sword on Sunday, with father Klyster Yen (kind of a big deal in his own right) introducing it after a demonstration by the students from mother Bow Sim Mark's school. (And, yeah, you can make it all Donnie Yen outside all weekend if you combine the two).


I've got some baseball to watch on Friday, but I'll be looking at Birth of the Dragon, Logan Lucky, Get Your Man, Butterfly & Sword, and T23D, at least, with lots of other temptations.

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