Friday, September 15, 2017

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 15 September 2017 - 21 September 2017

Remember to get your new releases in early this week, because the Somerville is firing up the big projectors later along with other special events, so it's very easy to run out of time to see things.

  • ... Things such as mother!, the new film from Darren Aranofsky that features Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem as a couple whose guests cause what is apparently even more bizarre havoc than usual. I don't know much more than that, because I've not seen any sort of preview or read much about it, and am looking forward to going in cold. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Somerville, Kendall Square, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    The Tuesday 7pm show at the Coolidge is an "Off the Couch" presentation with post-screening discussion with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society, which sounds like it may be a good idea. Other special presentations at the Coolidge include blaxploitation weekend midnight shows - Shaft on Friday and Foxy Brown on Saturday, both on 35mm - and a Big Screen Classic show of Band of Outsiders on Monday. There's also a 35mm Cinema Jukebox screening of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man on Thursday.
  • The other big mainstream release is American Assassin, with Dylan O'Brien as the title character who eventually winds up on the trail of a terrorist-for-hire played by Taylor Kitsch, both trained by Michael Keaton's CIA veteran, and I suspect that even if you're half my age, you read that and feld disappointed that Keaton is not actually the star of the movie. That one's at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    Boston Common also has the first of five weeks of Disney Princess movie reissues, and though it's only playing twice a day, it's probably worth heading in for the animated Beauty and the Beast. They also have Abracadabra, a relationship/possession comedy which is director Pablo Berger's follow-up to Blancanieves and is getting a very quick release: It's hitting American theaters just a month after opening in Spain - common for Asian films but I can't recall seeing it done for European ones.

    Concert film David Gilmour: Live at Pompei plays Revere on Friday night, and they also have a TCM presentation of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial on Sunday and Wednesday (as does Fenway and Assembly Row). After the dubbed version played last week, the subtitled Lupin III: The Castle of Cogliostro runs in Revere on Thursday. Again, not part of the GKids/Ghibli Miyazaki series, so you'll need a ticket separate from that season pass.
  • In addition to mother!, Kendall Square opens First They Killed My Father fresh from Toronto. The newest film from Angelina Jolie, it depicts the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from the perspective of a five-year-old girl. Another actor-turned-director, Danny Strong, is behind Rebel in the Rye, with Nicholas Hoult as J.D. Salinger; Sarah Paulson and Kevin Spacey co-star.
  • The Apple Fresh Pond website says that Simran runs 126 minutes, but everything else I've seen shows 238, and four hours seems like a lot for a sexy thriller about an Indian cleaning lady in America who gets involved in crime, even by Bollywood standards. I remember liking Kangana Ranaut in Krrish 3, though. The other Hindi-language opener is Lucknow Central, in which a man in jail awaiting his murder trial is recruited for a behind-bars-battle-of-the-bands. Tamil-language films Magalir Mattum(about three friends reuniting after 36 years apart) and Thupparivaalan (a "detective fantasy thriller") are also listed as subtitled. There's also Kannada-language romantic comedy Mugulu Nage and daily matinees of Lipstick Under my Burkha. Telugu-language action flick Jai Lava Kusa opens Wednesday.
  • The Brattle Theatre has plenty more Tilda Swinton: World's Greatest Actress this week: Separate shows of The Last of England and The Beach (35mm) on Friday, matinees of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe on Saturday & Sunday, and single admissions of Michael Clayton (35mm) and Constantine (35mm) on Saturday. It's double features for the reason of the series, with I Am Love & A Bigger Splash on Sunday, The Deep End & We Need to Talk About Kevin (both 35mm) on Monday, The Seasons of Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger and the collected "Cycling the Frame" & "The Invisible Frame" on Wednesday, with Conceiving Ada & Teknolust on Thursday. Tuesday, meanwhile, is Trash Night, and while I'm sure there must have been some drek from early in Swinton's career they could have used, they instead go with Slappy and the Stinkers.
  • The Harvard Film Archive continues Breathing Through Cinema - The Films of Chantal Akerman with News From Home (Friday 7pm), I… You… He… She… (Friday 9:30pm), and unconventional 1996 self-interview "Chantal Akerman par Chantal Akerman" (Sunday 5pm). There's also the back half of An Ethics of Observation. Four Films by Wang Bing, with 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Friday 7pm) and Ta'ang (Monday 7pm). Directors Joshua Bonnetta and J.P. Sniadecki are on-hand for the monthly "Cinema of Resistence" screening on Sunday evening, with their El mar la mar a very art-house take on life around the U.S./Mexico border. There's also a free screening of Sergei Eisenstein's October: Ten Days That Shook the World at the Tsai Center on Thursday evening.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts continues their runs of Hermia & Helena (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday), My Journey through French Cinema (Friday/Sunday), and After Love (Saturday/Wednesday), while starting one for Letters from Baghdad (Thursday), which has Tilda Swinton narrating the story of British spy & explorer Gertrude Bell. Thursday also has the first screening in their "Costa-Gavras: Encounters with History" series, a 35mm print of his 1982 film Missing with an after-screening discussion with local film scholars.
  • The Somerville Theatre kicks off their second annual 70mm & Widescreen Festival on Wednesday with Charlton Heston as Michaelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy, following it up on Thursday by repeating an essential from the previous year, Lawrence of Arabia. There's another whole week of stuff after that, from Howard the Duck to Cleopatra to 2001, so get comfortable and remember to sit close because the film looks great.
  • Bright Lights officially kicks off its fall program of free screenings in the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater, with Get Out on Tuesday and Risk on Thursday, both followed by discussions with Emerson professors.
  • CinemaSalem, in addition to Wind River and It, has the two extremes of sci-fi on screen: The new 4K restoration of action-packed Terminator 2 (presented in 2D) and the art-house stage adaptation Marjorie Prime.
  • Because the Brattle had all those Tilda Swinton movies on the schedule, they couldn't keep Columbus around, but it moves over to both West Newton Cinema and The Capitol. the Lexington Venue, meanwhile, brings back The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography.
  • The Regent Theatre has the second and final show of music documentary L7: Pretend We’re Dead on Friday.
  • Hey, The Boston Film Festival is still a thing! It looks to be entirely at AMC Boston Common this year, opening on Thursday with documentary In the Name of Peace: John Hume in America.
It's a week for curiosity morbid and genuine, with mother!, Abracadabra, American Assassin, and Simran looking for spots around the Tilda Swinton and 70mm series. And, yes, I will find it hard to skip Beauty and the Beast in a theater, especially since the last time it played it was in a lousy 3D conversion.

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