- The Brattle Theatre sort-of-kind-of starts the weekend with a retrospective of the Boston International Festival of Women's Cinema, which hasn't been held in 14 years but which would be celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. So they're putting together some of the greatest hits - single features of Chocolat (on 35mm) and I Shot Andy Warhol (on 35mm) on Friday; Paris Was a Woman, Baby, It's You, Señorita Extraviada, Divorce Iranian Style, The Watermelon Woman, and Boys Don't Cry (on 35mm) on Saturday; a 35mm double feature of All Over Me (with co-star Alison Folland in person) & The Incredible True Adventures of Two Girls in Love on Sunday; Home Before Dark with director Maureen Foley on Monday; and Whale Rider on Tuesday.
After that, they play host to The Boston Underground Film Festival starting on Wednesday. Both opening night films - East Coast premiere My Name is Myeisha and a 35mm print of Liquid Sky on its 35th anniversary - have directors and other guests and in attendance. None are scheduled for Thursday, when they show the "Touching from a Distance" shorts block, Pin Cushion, and The Theta Girl, but there's plenty of good stuff planned through the 25th. - The big release in the multiplexes is Tomb Raider, a 3D adventure which resets the film series in the way the games were revived a few years back, with a younger, less physically exaggerated Lara Croft (now played by Alicia Vikander) just getting started on using the family money to fight secret societies by robbing graves. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), Jordan's Furniture (2D Imax), the Embassy (2D only), Boston Common (including 2D Imax), Fenway (including RPX), the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax 2D), Assembly Row (including Imax 2D), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux (2D only)
A couple other things may have sleeper potential. Love, Simon seems to be getting a lot of good word as, if not the first teen romantic comedy with a gay main character, certainly the first to be aimed so squarely at the mainstream. It's at the Somerville, Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere. There's also 7 Days in Entebbe, which dramatizes a 1976 hijacking of an Air France plane and the rescue in Africa; it's at The West Newton Cinema , Boston Common, and Revere. There's also I Can Only Imagine, which is about the story that inspired the hit country song of the same title, which managed to bag Dennis Quaid and Cloris Leachman in supporting roles. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, and Revere.
There's also TCM presentations of Vertigo on Sunday and Wednesday at Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere. - The big boutique picture this week is The Death of Stalin, a new political satire from Armando Ianuncci, who does that sort of thing very well. It's got the rare multiple-screen booking at The Coolidge Corner Theatre (including an "Off The Couch" screening on Tuesday) as well as Kendall Square and Boston Common. The Coolidge also opens Happy End in the smaller rooms, Michael Haneke's "partial sequel" to Amour.
The Coolidge also has a busy midnight schedule this weekend, with the monthly 35mm showing of The Room and a 35mm print of Critters on Friday while New Year's Eve thriller Midnighters and Leprechaun in the Hood (the latter to celebrate St. Patrick's Day) on Saturday. There's Open Screen in the Screening Room on Tuesday, and they show Get Out as the first in a new "Wide Lens" series examining the social issues of a film on Wednesday. Finally, this week's entry in the Francophone Film Festival on Thursday is Corporate.from France. - Kendall Square also opens Leaning into the Wind - Andy Goldsworthy for a week, a nifty looking entry on the British artist famed for his sculptures that transform the landscape. There's a theoretically more open-ended booking for The Leisure Seeker, which also plays West Newton, featuring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland as a long-married couple going on a road trip despite the latter showing signs of severe dementia. It's a much more limited booking for Sailor Moon: The Musical - Le Movement Final, one show on Wednesday evening. That's a live-action stage musical based on the popular manga and anime, and cosplay is encouraged.
- Apple Fresh Pond gets Kirrak Party, a romantic comedy in the Telugu language about a happy-go-lucky college freshman who falls for a girl in the senior class. That plays all week, Kannada-language thriller Mufti plays Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. In English, they open The Forgiven, the new one from The Killing Fields director Roland Joffé, which features Forest Whitaker as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who meets a prisoner (Eric Bana) seeking redemption for his sins.
- The Harvard Film Archive has the second half of "Caught in the Net: The Early Internet in the Paranoid Imagination" in support of the exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art. It finishes with eXistenZ (35mm Friday), demonlover (35mm Friday), Strange Days (35mm Saturday), Electric Dreams (35mm Sunday), Level Five (Sunday), and Personal Shopper (Monday). They also have a special $5 family matinee on Saturday, showing both parts of "Revolting Rhymes", the adaptation of Roald Dahl's book which saw its first half nominated for an Oscar. Since that only covers half an hour, they'll show some fairy-tale shorts before the main feature.
- The Museum of Fine Arts finishes their run of David Hockney at the Royal Academy of Arts (Friday/Sunday) and their Femmes Fatales series, which wraps up with Under the Skin (Friday), To Die For (35mm Wednesday), and Dishonored (35mm Sunday). Then, on Thursday, they open their 17th Annual Boston Turkish Film Festival with Sideway, including a visit from director Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, a reception, and a musical performance by Esthema.
- The Somerville Theatre finishes the Sidney Poitier series this weekend, with A Patch of Blue on Friday, a double feature of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner & In the Heat of the Night on Saturday, and then another of The Lost Man & Lilies of the Field on Sunday. They'll be down a screen for a couple days, and then open the Irish Film Festival Boston with Breakout Feature Kissing Candice on Thursday, with actor Ann Skelly there in person.
- Belmont World Film begins their annual series of international cinema, this time with the theme "Bound by Beliefs", at the Studio Cinema in Belmont on Sunday with The Workshop, a French film which sees tensions flaring at the a seemingly agreeable writers' workshop in a Mediterranean town. It's at 7:30; there will be a special dinner and reception in the theater at 6pm.
- Bright Lights has two free screenings of female-led documentaries this week in the Paramount's Bright Screening Room: Tuesday's Sighted Eyes, Feeling Heart tells the story of playwright Lorraine Hansberry, best known for A Raisin in the Sun; director Tracy Strain will be there for a Q&A afterward. On Thursday, locally-produced documentary Unrest pops up again, with a panel discussion about myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome afterward.
- As with last week, if you can't make the Coolidge's midnight, Midnighters is playing in the screening room at CinemaSalem on Friday and Saturday. They give most of that screen's time to Hannah, which features Charlotte Rampling as a woman losing her grip on reality as her husband serves time in prison.
We'll see what fits in before BUFF, most likely Tomb Raider, Death of Stalin, and Entebbe.
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