Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 6 April 2018 - 12 April 2018

Mildly curious, looking over what's opening in the Boston area this weekend, whether Chappaquiddick is opening quite so wide outside of Massachusetts and whether Boston Common had to scramble when the Chinese censorship board punted a movie. Bummer it didn't open a window for The Endless, but I'm guessing one of the boutique places will grab it for late shows.

• Even without that one opening, there are a couple of things that are apparently pretty darn good from the folks at SXSW, even if I didn't love their previews. A Quiet Place is a post-apocalyptic horror movie starring and directed by John Krasinski as the head of a family (including real-life wife Emily Blunt) who must keep silent because the monsters will kill anyone who makes a sound and which have exceptionally keen hearing. It's at Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema for those who want their complete silence in the best surround sound), Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. There's also Blockers, in which three parents (John Cena, Leslie Mann, and Ike Barinholtz) discover that their daughters are planning to lose their virginity after prom and clumsily attempt to intervene. Apparently, it's more sympathetic and smarter than it sounds. It plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
  
  There are also a couple of films based on real-life stories that maybe don't look quite so strong. The Miracle Season is an inspirational sports thing, in which the star of a high school volleyball team dies suddenly, and her best friend must lead the spiralling team the next year. It plays Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere. Then there's Chappaquiddick, which has Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy and digs into the events around the infamous accident that killed a young campaign staffer. It's at the Kendall, West Newton, Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, and Revere.
  
  Would Gemini be playing Boston Common if China hadn't decided The Possessed looked too supernatural for release? Dunno, but it's John Cho as a detective investigating something that happened between a starlet (Zoe Kravitz) and her assistant (Lola Kirke), and filmmaker Aaron Katz made Quiet City, Cold Weather, and Land Ho!, so I'm glad. They (and Revere) do get Chinese animated film Big Fish & Begonia, in which a teenager from the spirit world visits Earth in the form of a dolphin. Single shows both days, and no information on whether it is dubbed or subtitled.
  
  The Somerville Theatre has live events in the big room on Friday and Saturday, but they go back to running the 70mm print of Ready Player One on Monday. There are TCM screenings of Grease at Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere on Sunday and Wednesday. There's also a documentary on Congressman Brooks Douglass, The Amendment, playing Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere on Wednesday. Revere also has the first of two screenings of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior on Thursday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of several places to open Finding Your Feet, one of those retired-English-lady films, starring Imelda Staunton as a woman who discovers her husband of four decades is having an affair, and moves in with her sister (Celia Imrie) and taking a dance class. It's also at the Kendall and West Newton.
  
  Their midnight screenings on both Friday and Saturday are Mad Max: Fury Road, with the standard version on Friday and the Black & Chrome variety on Saturday. The Saturday morning in-between features a "Science on Screen Jr." presentation of The Last Unicorn, with Elaine Brewer of the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program talking about their efforts. There's a Sunday morning kids' show of Chicken Run, while the other screen hosts the Geothe-Institut's monthly German-language film, Three Peaks, then a preview screening of The Peacekeeper with director James Demo and the film's subject Padraig O'Malley there to introduce it. Monday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, and there's an Open Screen night on Tuesday.
• Kendall Square not only opens Finding Your Feet and Chappaquiddick, but also gets Stanley Tucci's new one, Final Portrait, with Armie Hammer as an American who commissions artist Alberto Giacometti (Geoffrey Rush), only to find him reluctant to finish. They also open Japanese documentary Ramen Heads, which goes behind the scenes of one of the country's top ramen shops.
  
  On Wednesday, they and their sister cinema in Waltham, the Embassy, open Beiruit, with Jon Hamm and Rosamund Pike as CIA agents trying to free a colleague in 1982 Nice to see Brad Anderson get something into theaters. They also have two screenings of Distant Sky - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Live, though the 7pm show appears to be sold out already.
• The West Newton Cinema is the only place playing a couple of films this weekend. For Spinning Man, they actually have the author of the original novel about a professor who becomes a suspect when a student goes missing, with Guy Pearce as the prof, Minnie Driver as the wife, and Pierce Brosnan as the cop. They also get World War I drama Journey's End, with Sam Claflin, Paul Bettany, Toby Jones, and Asa Butterfield.
• The IMAX screens mostly used for traditional eye-popping docs shuffle things up a little, with The Museum of Science putting National Parks Adventure, Mysteries of China, and Dream Big into rotation. the New England Aquarium, on the other hand, adds the Kristin Bell-narrated Pandas to their 3D screen. I think both of those places are still screening on genuine Imax film, though I'm not certain.
• Wicked Queer wraps up its 2018 edition this weekend with screenings at The Brattle Theatre, the MFA, and ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theater, as well as a closing night screening of Anchor and Hope at The ICA on Saturday (although the other spots are showing films from Boston's LGBTQ festival through Sunday).
  
  Unconnected to that festival, the Brattle also has a special free Crows & Sparrows screening of Wang Xuebo's Knife in Clear Water with Chinese film historian leading a discussion afterward. Once the festival ends, they welcome back IFFBoston selection Spettacolo and director Jeff Malmberg for a DocYard presentation, and then kick off Awesome, We're F*ckin' Ten: An Oscilloscope Retrospective with Awesome, I F*ckin' Shot That in 35mm on Tuesday, a double feature of The Fits & Wendy and Lucy (the latter on 35mm) Wednesday, and single shows of Embrace of the Serpent and The Love Witch (that one also on 35mm) Thursday; more will follow the next weekend.
• The Harvard Film Archive welcomes Wim Wenders this weekend, although a lot of folks were already on top of that: Although Friday night's The State of Things and Monday's Notebook on Cities and Clothes are not sold out, Mr. Wenders's appearances with Paris, Texas on Saturday and Wings of Desire on Sunday are completely reserved by members, with unclaimed tickets being sold at 6:45 those nights. He also gives the last of this year's Norton Lectures at the Sanders Theater on Monday afternoon (tickets are free and available the day of the lecture). They also welcome filmmaker Rigoberto Perezcano for his film Carmín Tropical on Sunday afternoon.
• The Museum of Fine Arts wraps up their 17th Annual Boston Turkish Film Festival with What a Crush on Friday, The Big World and Dream (followed by a Q&A with director Derviş Zaim) on Saturday, plus Sour Apples and Ayla, The Daughter of War (possibly featuring director Sıtkı Can Ulkay) on Sunday. On Wednesday, they begin a run of Cezanne: Portrait of a Life (also plays Wednesday) and their annual Hollywood Scriptures series, this time focusing on "Childhood Stories", with Lion on Wednesday and Mustang on Thursday.
• The free Bright Lights at Emerson's Paramount Theater next week goes with unconventional biographies: I, Tonya on Tuesday and The Disaster Artist on Thursday. As always, there will be a discussion afterward.
• This week's Belmont World Film Monday presentation at Studio Cinema is Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts, a spaghetti-western-influenced revenge story from Indonesia.
• The Boston International Film Festival - an entirely separate thing from Independent Film Festival Boston which often seems to be scheduled to confuse people - opens this Wednesday, with the opening night presentation of locally-produced sci-fi film Chimera at the Showcase Icon Theater in the Seaport. It moves to Kendall Square from there, settling in for the better part of a week.
  
  The Icon theater also has a special benefit screening of Boston to benefit the Martin Richard Foundation on Thursday, just before the documentary on the Marathon settles in for a one-week run.
• Apple Fresh Pond continue Telugu shows of Rajaratha while opening two more in that language - Chal Mohan Ranga on Friday and Krishnarjuna Yudham on Wednesday.
• CinemaSalem picks up Oh Lucy! (also still playing in West Newton) for the small room.

Sure, I'll check out A Quiet Place, Blockers, Gemini, and Beiruit. Probably also Isle of Dogs, which expands a bit, and/or Itzhak, which moves over to the Capitol.