Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 29 September 2017 - 5 October 2017

It seems like a lot of places are getting their Halloween stuff started early this year and not messing around as October starts.

• The Somerville Theatre is not be starting their Halloween programming until next weekend, but in the meantime, they cap off the 70mm and Widescreen Festival with Gettysburg on the big reels Friday and then rare IB Technicolor 35mm prints of North By Northwest and Vertigo on Sunday afternoon, with 2001: A Space Odyssey on 70mm that evening. They'll give Dave a break for the rest of the week, leaving one theater empty aside from live events Saturday and Thursday and a one-night screening of Pearl Jam: Let's Play Two on Tuesday (also at Kendall Square, Fenway, and Revere). And while those are playing in the big room, the Micro will host the Boston Underground Film Festival's monthly "Dispatches from the Underground" on Wednesday for a program featuring the works of local filmmaker JIm McDonough and his "Friday Night Films" crew, who have had shorts in the BUFF program for the last three years.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of several places opening Battle of the Sexes, which has a pretty deceptive trailer - it makes it look like it's about Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs more than Emma Stone as Billie Jean King, but folks I've talked to who have seen it say that it's the opposite (nice choice of "Love Lies Bleeding" as the 70s cut on the soundtrack, though). It's also at the Capitol, The West Newton Cinema, The Lexington Venue, Kendall Square, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  Halloween programming never really stops at the Coolidge, so that they've got midnight 35mm screenings of When a Stranger Calls (Friday) and Peeping Tom (Saturday), that's kind of just par for the course. Other special screenings of note are a Sunday matinee of Chasing Trane, a documentary about John Coltrane followed by a panel discussion and presented by friends of the John Coltrane Memorial Concert, and a 35mm screening of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man on Monday. There's also a special free screening of Angelo Unwritten with director Alice Stone and local recipients of The Philanthropy Connection grants involved with the foster care system (TPC is presenting the show); instructions to RSVP are at the event page.
• Over at the multiplexes, American Made looks like an old-school Tom Cruise movie, with him playing a pilot who winds up gleefully working for the CIA and Columbian cartels in the 1980s; it's also notable in that he's re-teaming with Doug Liman, who directed him in Edge of Tomorrow. That's at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
  
  The mainstream horror presentation is a new version of Flatliners, this one starring Ellen Page and Diego Luna and directed by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo's Niels Arden Oplev, with Kiefer Sutherland picking up a check to give the remake a connection to the first. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  Richard T. Jones plays a pastor about to take over his father's church in A Question of Faith, playing at Boston Common and Revere, while Revere is the closest place for Til Death Do Us Part, with Annie Ilonzeh as a woman who runs away and changes her name to escape a controlling husband, who finds her anyway. Boston Common's Disney Princess movie for the week is Tangled.
  
  In Fenway, Regal's October horror series is surprisingly legit, with the 4K restoration of Suspiria on Monday and the original Fright Night on Tuesday. Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere give Mully, a documentary/drama hybrid about a Kenyan philanthropist and his rags-to-riches tale, a three-day run from Tuesday to Thursday, while Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere an encore of Jeepers Creepers 3 on Wednesday. Fenway also has anime feature No Game No Life Zero on Thursday.
• Victoria & Abdul gets a semi-wide release, with Judi Dench playing Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as a Hindu servant whom the queen befriends in the new one from Stephen Frears. It's at Kendall Square and Boston Common. Kendall Square also gets Woodshuck, an odd-looking thing from Kate & Laura Mulleavy (who normally design clothing) starring Kirsten Dunst in what is, apparently, a long drug trip.
• There were going to be three Chinese movies opening this week, but Beijing politics has Youth pushed back indefinitely, so the big deal at Boston Common is Chasing the Dragon, a 1960s period piece starring Donnie Yen as real-life gangster Crippled Ho and Andy Lau as similarly infamous cop Lui Lok. Wong Jing co-directs with Jason Kwan, who has been cinematographer for a lot of good stuff in Hong Kong in recent years. They also get Never Say Die, a Mainland fantasy/comedy featuring a lot of the cast and crew of the pretty darn good Goodbye Mr. Loser, this one focusing on a boxer and a reporter who switch bodies.
  
  Apple Fresh Pond continues to show Spyder in both Telugu and Tamil, and also opens Judwaa 2, a sequel to a 1997 movie which features the separated-at-birth twin sons of (I presume) the characters from the first, aiming to fight smugglers. They also get another subtitled Telugu action movie by the name of Mahanubhavudu.
• The Brattle Theatre spends much of the week looking to scare the audience with Mario Bava & the Birth of the Italian Giallo. Most of it is DCPs - double features of Evil Eye & Blood and Black Lace (Friday), 5 Dolls for an August Moon & A Bay of Blood (Saturday), KIll, Baby… Kill & Black Sabbath (Sunday), Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key & Don't Torture a Duckling (Wednesday), and a single feature of What Have You Done to Solange? on Wednesday - they go get a couple of 35mm prints for late shows and matinees: All the Colors of the Dark plays at 11pm Friday and 1pm Saturday while The Bird with the Crystal Plumage plays at 11pm Saturday and 1pm Sunday.
  
  In between, there are two special series: The DocYard will connect with director Ramona Diaz for her look at the world's busiest maternity hospital in Motherland on Monday while Disorder: The Rare Disease Film Festival has four full programs of (mostly) short documentaries on Tuesday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has the second half of their annual McMillan-Stewart Fellowship series this weekend, showing a 16mm print of F.V.V.A. by Niger's Moustapha Alassane on Friday evening, while a documentary about the man, Moustapha Alassane, Cineaste of the Possible, plays Sunday afternoon. They also continue the Chantal Akerman series, with a 16mm print of From the East at 9pm Friday, and a 35mm print of Almayer's Folly on Sunday evening. There's an encore of Wang Bing's Three Sisters Saturday afternoon, and then a Synaesthetic Cinema: Minimalist Music and Film program of films by Bruce Conner and Terry Riley on Saturday evening. Luminosity - The Films of Jerome Hiler begins on Monday with two 16mm short programs.
• The Museum of Fine Arts continues After Love (Friday) and Letters from Baghdad (Friday), with screenings of Micelangelo: Love and Death (Saturday) the starts of runs for Swim Team (Sunday/Thursday) and Frederick Weisman's latest, Ex Libris: New York Public Library (Sunday). They've also got their annual screening of the Manhattan Short Film Festival program on Saturday (it also plays the Regent on Sunday and from Friday to Tuesday at CinemaSalem) and a "Costa-Gavras: Encounters with History" presentation of The Music Box on Thursday.
• The Boston Latino International Film Festival has a full schedule at the Bright Screening room at Emerson's Paramount Theater on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with screenings in Harvard's Tsai Auditorium on Friday and at various spots on the Northeastern University campus on Saturday and Sunday.
• Bright Lights has two darn good IFFBoston alumni for free screenings with post-screening discussions with Emerson professors in the Bright room this week: I Am Not Your Negro on Tuesday and Whose Streets? on Thursday.
• In addition to the Manhattan Film Festival, The Regent Theatre has two screenings of Finding Joseph I on Saturday; it's a musical documentary, focusing on the lead singer of the punk band Bad Brains.
• CinemaSalem will kick off their Halloween programming with a "Wicked Shorts" program on Thursday.

Going for the big film on Friday and Sunday with the Chinese stuff in between on Saturday, and then we'll see how interested I am in Bava and the new releases after that.