Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 April 2018 - 26 April 2018

It's not that there's nothing notable this weekend, but if you've got stuff you want to see and have been putting off, better get it in before stuff both massive and local eats up a lot of screens.

• The big local event is Independent Film Festival Boston 2018, which starts up on Wednesday and continues for the next week. The opening night film in the Somerville Theatre's big room is Eighth Grade, with director Bo Burnham and actress Elsie Fisher; on Thursday, they expand to the other four screens and the Brattle, with a bunch of short films, American Animals, A Kid Like Jake, This One's for the Ladies, and more.
  
  The Somerville Theatre has a couple of live events in the big room before that, plus a special "Aisle of Dogs" screening of Isle of Dogs where you can bring your dog and also raise money for a good cause. Their sister cinema in Arlington, The Capitol, has a "Throwback Thursday" show on the 26th, screening Flashdance.
• Before that, the multiplexes get some things that could serve as counterprogramming to the big stuff hitting every screen next week. I Feel Pretty stars Amy Schumer as a woman who, after a bonk on the head, believes herself to be the most attractive and capable woman in the world, although, it's not like Schumer is unattractive already, except maybe by exaggerated movie-star standards. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. There's also Super Troopers 2, which I think might be Broken Lizard's first production as a group in over a decade, but I guess folks liked the first. This one has the group manning a border area after hostilities erupt between the U.S. and Canada, and plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  There's a slightly smaller release for Traffik, a thriller featuring Paula Patton and Omar Epps as a couple vacationing in an isolated cabin only to find themselves surrounded by by bikers. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  This year's monthly Studio Ghibli series kicks off this week with The Cat Returns, playing Fenway and Revere in an English dub on Sunday and Wednesday, and Japanese subtitles on Monday. Wednesday at those spots also features a special premiere of the "Cobra Kai" YouTube series, which follows up on the original The Karate Kid thirty-odd years later; the event includes the original film before the first half-hour episode. And while it looks like there won't be any Marvel Marathons leading up to Avengers: Infinity War opening Thursday night, it'll probably be very difficult to see anything else at the multiplexes after 6pm or so.
• Kendall Square gets Kodachrome, which stars Ed Harris and Jason Sudeikis as a father and son on a road trip to the last lab developing the film of the title lest certain memories be locked away forever. There's also A Bag of Marbles; that story of two Jewish brothers fleeing the Nazis in rural France is slated for a week.
• After an initial "Cinema Jukebox" presentation on Thursday, The Coolidge Corner Theatre starts a run of Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami, a documentary on the pop-punk icon that, by all accounts, she more or less took over, because nobody makes Grace Jones a passive subject. They also pick up equine family adventure Lean on Pete, though it's mostly in the smaller rooms aside from a Friday "Box Office Babies" screening.
  
  They've got a special midnight screening of Best F(r)iends on Friday, with star Greg Sestero in person for the Room fans. That's not their "4/20" movie, and I don't know if Friday qualifies, though Saturday's Half-Baked fills that slot. Both of those are on 35mm film. Saturday also has a midnight screening of Lowlife, a loopy crime flick (one of the characters is a disgraced luchador) which is genuinely terrific, one of the best finds at Fantasia last summer (it plays next weekend, too). There's also a "Stage & Screen" presentation of Working Girl on Monday (promoting the Huntington Theater Company's production of Top Girls). There's also a "Wide Lens" presentation of Richard Jenkins in The Visitor, followed by a discussion of undocumented immigration. Thursday night is a live show, "Talk/Play" with Kenny Werner.
• The Brattle Theatre plays host to the Women In Comedy Festival for much of the weekend, and then a number of one-nighters before IFFBoston moves in on Thursday. There's a free "Elements of Cinema" screening of People on Sunday on… well, Sunday, including a short and discussion with BU professor Peter J. Schwartz, while director Jason Kohn is the guest for Monday's DocYard screening of tennis documentary Love Means Zero. Tuesday is Trash Night, and then on Wednesday they decide that they're going to taunt those of us who like both independent and big franchise films by playing Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, with The Last Jedi on the schedule for a week later.
• Apple Fresh Pond continues Hindi feature October (as does Fenway), and Telugu film Bharat Ane Nenu, also opening Hindi/Iranian film Beyond the Clouds, in which a family's black sheep drags his sister into trouble while on the run.
  
  If you like Chinese films, Boston Common has Dude's Manual, a college romantic comedy. Revere still has Dominican film Veneno.
• The Harvard Film Archive and Goethe-Institut program a new retrospective, The Management of Shattered Identity: German Films, 1945-1957, looking at the postwar entries in what had been one of Europe's most vibrant national cinemas. The weekend's selections are Under the Bridges (Friday 7pm on 16mm), Film Without a Title (Friday 9pm on 35mm), Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (Saturday 7pm), Peter Lorre's The Lost One (Saturday 9:15pm on 35mm), and Jonas (Monday 7pm on 35mm). The gaps in that schedule include a special $5 Saturday screening of The Sound of Music, and two documentaries in their Wim Wenders series on Sunday: Buena Vista Social Club at 4pm and The Salt of the Earth at 7pm.
• The Museum of Fine Arts continues the three films they have been running for the last week, with scattered screenings of November (Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday), 24 Frames (Friday/Thursday), and Cezanne: Portrait of a Life (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday).
• The Boston Jewish Film Festival has a special retrospective at The West Newton Cinema over the next week, showing some of the most popular presentations from their 30-year-history: Paper Clips plays Sunday afternoon with one of the documentary's subjects on hand, Live and Become with special guest on Monday, Above & Beyond on Tuesday, and Walk on Water on Wednesday.
• Monday's Belmont World Film show at Studio Cinema is What Will People Say, in which a second-generation immigrant in Norway is sent to Pakistand for having a local boyfriend, only to get shipped back north for a scandal there.
• CinemaSalem has the latest from IFFBoston alum Lynn Shelton, Outside In, starring Jay Duplass as an ex-con drawn to the former teacher who was one of the biggest advocates for his release..

I'll probably catch Kodachrome and A Quiet Place before the festival, and even if I can't get to Lowlife and November, the rest of you should, because they're pretty fantastic.