- Heck, there's actually a much-anticipated movie getting good reviews this weekend, the new adaptation of Stephen King's It, which covers the first half of what some consider King's sprawling masterwork, with a dark force of evil (which takes the form of a scary clown) terrorizing a small Maine town. It's at the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, Jordan's (Imax) ,the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Assembly Row (including Imax), Revere (including MX4D & XPlus), and the SuperLux.
At the other end of the spectrum is Home Again, and it's kind of amusing that a film written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer (yep, their daughter) involves Reese Witherspoon coming home to Hollywood and the three guys she winds up taking in are filmmakers. Write what you know, I guess. It's at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere.
After that, there's room for some odd things playing smaller bookings. True to the Game is a more dramatic romance between a drug lord played by Columbus Short and a younger woman played by Erica Peeples. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, and Revere. Interestingly, 9/11 - featuring Charlie Sheen, Whoopi Goldberg, Gina Gershon, and Wood Harris in a chamber piece about five people trapped in a World Trade Center elevator, is only playing in the suburbs, in this case, Revere.
The surprising release that deserves your money this week is Gook, which also takes place on the day of an ugly tragedy - the Rodney King verdict riots - but is a genuinely terrific drama centered on a pair of Korean-American brothers whose shoe shop is in the middle of a mixed neighborhood that day. One of my favorites at IFFBoston, it's playing Fenway.
Close Encounters and Inhumans stick around for reduced schedules. There are also two Fathom bookings at Fenway and Revere: The director's cut of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan plays Sunday and Wednesday, while the first of two presentations of Lupin III: The Castle of Cogliostro - this one dubbed -plays Thursday. Note that it's not part of the monthly Ghibli/Miyazaki series GKids is running, so make sure you get a separate ticket. - Summer's over, so The Brattle Theatre also has an IFFBoston alumnus in Columbus, with John Cho as an architect marooned in Columbus, Indiana when his father falls ill. As an added bonus, writer/director Kogonada will be in town for the Sunday afternoon and evening shows doing intros and Q&As. It's got the whole weekend, but shares the room starting Monday, when The DocYard presents The Reagan Show with director Sierra Pettengill in person to introduce her archival documentary about how Ronald Reagan created the first truly made-for-TV presidency. There are Harvard Book Sotre readings on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then after the Columbus matinees, they kick off the "Tilda Swinton: World's Greatest Actress" series with a 35mm double feature of Orlando& Caravaggio.
- The Coolidge Corner Theatre's IFFBoston feature is Lost in Paris, directed by Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel, who also star as a Canadian librarian gone to check on her aunt in France and the vagabond who attach itself to her. It's mostly on the Goldscreen, which also picks up Maudie. The other smaller room mostly plays host to Viceroy's House, featuring Hugh Bonneville as the man dispatched to India post-WWII to supervise its transition to independence. Gillian Anderson plays his wife and Gurinder Chadha directs; it also plays Kendall Square.
The 35mm midnights this weekend are The Warriors on Friday and Repo Man on Saturday. There's also a Goethe-Institut presentation on Sunday morning - Welcome to Germany, a comedy about a family taking in a refugee which was 2016's biggest hit in Germany, but which only costs $5 to see as part of this program. There's also a "Stage and Screen" presentation of Barton Fink on Monday, with folks from the Huntington Theatre talking about it and their production of Merrily We Roll Along after the 35mm screening. Tuesday is an Open Screen night in the screening room, while they break out the film projectors again for a "Rewind!" show of Drop Dead Gorgeous on Thursday, with after-party at Osaka. - It looks like Kendall Square is finally opening back up with all the upgrades in place, and the two films it opens along with Viceroy's House are, guess what, things that showed at IFFBoston in April: Beach Rats features Harris Dickinson as a Brooklyn teenager discovering his sexuality, while Whose Streets? is a pretty darn impressive documentary showing what was happening on the ground in Ferguson during the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
- Boston Common opens two Chinese movies this weekend: Twenty Two is a documentary from the Mainland which has been a sleeper hit over the summer, with the title referring to the number of Chinese "comfort women" abducted during the Sino-Japanese War still around today. The Sinking City: Capsule Odyssey, on the other hand, comes from Hong Kong and goes for laughs, following a group of people who can only afford to rent a portion of a subdivided conference room in the city.
Apple Fresh Pond has plenty more Indian films this week, primarily Hindi thriller Daddy and Telugu actioner Yuddham Sharanam, with Telugu romance Meda Meedha Abbayi, Kannada comedy-thriller Operation Alamelamma, Bengali erotic thriller Bisorjon, and Hindi comedy Lipstick Under my Burkha playing scattered shows, and Baadshaho and ArjunReddy also sticking around. Tamil thriller Thupparivaalan opens on Wednesday and Magalir Mattum on Thursday. Oh, and there's a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening at midnight Friday, with Boston Common having their weekly show at 11pm on Saturday. - West Newton Cinema picks up documentary In Transit after it's one-week run at the Brattle, and also opens Fanny's Journey, which is a "kids hiding from the Nazis" picture that has the title character winding up leading a group of 11 kids from Italy to the Swiss border after already escaping from France.
- The Harvard Film Archive starts several new programs as part of their fall calendar. First off is "Breathing Through Cinema - The Films of Chantal Akerman", which begins on Friday with a 35mm print of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Saturday and Sunday are the first half of An Ethics of Observation. Four Films by Wang Bing, with cinematographer Huang Wenhai introducing Three Sisters on Saturday and Bitter Money on Sunday. Monday begins "Synaesthetic Cinema: Minimalist Music and Film" with Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, preceded by his short "Evidence", both on 35mm. They also re-commence the monthly Saturday matinees, this one not a classic but contemporary German film At Eye Level, presented by the Goethe-Institut.
- The Museum of Fine Arts continues to screen Michelangelo: Love and Death (Friday); and My Journey through French Cinema (Wednesday), also opening French drama After Love, with Bernice Bejo and Cedric Kahn as a couple "divorcing" after fifteen years and two children together, complicated by their never having actually married. In between they continue "Una Lengua Muy Poderosa: Contemporary Queer Films of Mexico" with Carmin Tropical (Friday), a selection of shorts (Saturday/Sunday), I Promise You Anarchy (Saturday), and Casa Roshell (Sunday). They've got a free outdoor "Sunset Cinema" show on Thursday, featuring Get Out, preceded by tunes from DJ Yvng Psvl as well as games, snacks, and art activities.
- The end of the scheduled calendar for The Somerville Theatre's "Silents, Please" series is exciting: The 1916 Sherlock Holmes, which was thought lost for nearly a century and tremendously important because it's the only filmed performance of William Gillette, who created the part on-stage and set the standard for everyone else who played the character. It's kind of a big deal - I went to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival to see it specifically last year - and plays on a restored 35mm print with Jeff Rapsis on the organ. Rapsis will also head to The Capitol on Thursday for Tol'able David, a less well-known thriller.
- ArtsEmerson's Film Program in the Bright Screening room this weekend includes a Friday night screening of A Date for Mad Mary, a co-presentation with Wicked Queer as a recently released ex-con frantically tries to find a date for her friend's wedding. It means their weekly presentation of a filmed play, Angels in America I, only plays Saturday and Sunday.
- The Regent Theatre has the first of two screenings of music documentary L7: Pretend We’re Dead on Thursday.
Got some baseball to see, but will go for It, Sherlock Holmes, Tol'able David, Columbus, and The Sinking City, at least.
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