Friday, February 02, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 2 February 2018 - 8 February 2018

Google's movie listings, gone. Now Flixter just redirects to Fandango. So now it looks like Rotten Tomatoes is the best spot to find that sort of information in one page, but since they have the same owners, that will probably stink as well. Why nobody is willing to just do a simple, compact listing is beyond me. But, we assemble this as we can.

  • Only one really noteworthy wide release this week, but it's kind of exciting to some, as the Spierig Brothers have a new one, with Winchester starring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, the insane heiress to her family's rifle company who build the most peculiar house in the world to hold the ghosts of all the people those weapons killed. But, maybe, what if she wasn't? The Spierigs are some of most creative genre filmmakers out there, and this is much more interesting than them doing a Saw sequel. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay (in Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, and Revere (including XPlus).

    Revere also opens Bilal: A New Breed of Hero, a Saudi/UAE-produced animated adventure that's apparently been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years. Revere also shows The Dark Night on Thursday evening. Assembly Row bumps The Greatest Showman up to Imax.
  • The Brattle Theatre has a one-week run of BPM: Beats Per Minute, Robin Campillo's acclaimed story of the early days of ACT UP in the 1990s. It got a bunch of awards at Cannes and by all accounts works as a thrilling drama, love story, and historical document. There's also a special presentation of experimental film Outfitumentary with director K8 Hardy in person on Wednesday, as well as a live recording of the "This Week in Dystopia" followed by a 35mm screening of Idiocracy with co-writer Etan Cohen in person on Thursday.
  • Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool was likely hoping for some Oscar nominations, didn't get them, and as a result is only opening at Kendall Square. It features Annette Bening as 1950s hollywood legend Gloria Grahame, who strikes up a friendship and possible romance with a young actor (Jamie Bell). They (and Fenway) will also have a couple screenings of Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution 1, which is apparently fills in the backstory behind the popular anime and manga series.
  • Apple Fresh Pond and Fenway both keep Padmaavat on a full screen, although Fenway will only be showing the first show of the day in 3D during the second week. Fenway also has screenings of Humble Politician Nograj on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, featuring Danish Salt as a corrupt politician trying to move up to a new office. Fresh Pond also continues Telugu thriller Bhaagmathie and opens Kannada-language romantic comedy Raju, Tamil action-comedy Chalo, and Telugu comedy Touch Chesi Chudu. There's also weekend matinees of Tamil adventure Oru Nalla Naal Paath (Saturday/Sunday) and Malayalm comedy Aadu 2 (Saturday).

    Over at Boston Common, the Chinese film of the week is Till the End of the World, with Mark Chao and Yang Zishan as two only two survivors of an airplane crash who must survive and, perhaps, fall in love They also get A Silent Voice, and, yeah, they did have that three months ago - this time around, it's an English dub, rather than the subtitled version from last year.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre adds screenings of I, Tonya and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to its mix of award-nominated movies. The midnight team starts a month of women in horror this weekend, with American Psycho on Friday night and The Slumber Party Massacre on Saturday, both on 35mm; the mornings after will go to the other extreme with Mary Poppins Saturday and Sunday morning. There's also a 35mm screening of There Will Be Blood on Tuesday, part of the "Daniel Day Lewis: I'm Finished" series, and it's worth noting that some of the screenings of Day-Lewis's final film, Phantom Thread, will be projected from DCPs rather than 70mm film this week (The Somerville Theatre is also advertising this as the film's last week in 35mm there).

    On Thursday, they will be giving their annual Coolidge Award to Werner Herzog, who will do a Q&A after an afternoon screening of his recent documentary Into the Inferno while engaging in a discussion of his career with friend Herbert Golder in the evening. The other theaters will be dark that day, and there will be other screenings of his films over the next month.
  • The Harvard Film Archive's screenings are split between three singular documentarians this weekend. Kevin Jerome Everson will be in town next weekend, but they start his retrospective on Friday with Tonsler Park and Quality Control on Monday. Agnès Varda will come a couple weeks later, and her The Beaches of Agnès plays Friday and One Sings, the Other Doesn't on Friday, both on 35mm. Frederick Wiseman's The Store plays earlier Saturday evening, and he will be there in person on Sunday afternoon for his nearly six-hour Near Death, also delivering his second Norton Lecture in the Sanders Theatre on Monday afternoon.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts opens their February calendar with the monthly "On the Fringe" show, in this case a 35mm print of Joe Versus the Volcano, part of an "Indie Film in the 90s" series. Much of the rest of the week is given to their Boston Festival of Films From Japan, including Tokyo Idols (Friday/Thursday),Teiichi Battle of Supreme High (Saturday), Jellyfish Eyes (Sunday), Resistance at Tule Lake (Sunday/Thursday), Rage (Wendesday), and Your Name (Thursday, this time subtitled). They also begin a run of In Between, a favorite from the Boston Jewish Film Festival featuring three young Palestinian women living outside the family homes; it plays Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday
  • The two films playing as part of Emerson's Bright Lights series at the Paramount Theater this week are, if nothing else, visual knockouts in different ways - Good Time on Tuesday is a perfect throwback to grimy/grainy thrillers of decades past, while Loving Vincent on Thursday is an impressively hand-painted animated film investigating Van Gogh's last days. Both are free to the public and followed by discussion by school faculty.
  • CinemaSalem uses their small room for In the Fade, a pretty darn terrific drama that played IFFBoston's Fall Focus and features a terrific performance by Diane Kruger as a mother whose family is destroyed by neo-Nazi attack.


I'm looking at BPM, Winchester, Film Stars Don't Die…, and maybe a couple other things. It's really time to cram stuff like I, Tonya, Call Me By Your Name, and Lady Bird, since there's a lot more new releases and festivals and vacations coming up starting next weekend.

No comments: