Friday, April 27, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 April 2018 - 3 May 2018

On the one hand, Marvel moving the big thing up so it opens the same week as IFFBoston means I've got to be extra-vigilant about avoiding spoilers and such. On the other, it means that not much else is opening that I've got to worry about missing.

  • So let's give first priority to Independent Film Festival Boston 2018, which opened on Wednesday and will be settling in at the Somerville and Brattle through Monday before spending Tuesday and Wednesday at the Coolidge. It is, as usual, a pretty terrific line-up, from Debra Granik's long-anticipated (fiction) follow-up to Winter's Bone, Leave No Trace, to Andrew Bujalski's Support the Girls, to a Sunday packed with the likes of On Chesil Beach, First Reformed, The Third Murder, and Blindspotting, to When Jeff Tried to Save the World (a feature version of a short that played last year), to the Zellners' Damsel, with a closing night screening of Won't You Be My Neighbor. There will also be a student showcase, open screen, panels, and more.
  • So, it's agreed, we're all waiting for Thursday night to see Avengers: Infinity War, part one of the big payoff to ten years of Marvel superhero films, sending everyone from Iron Man to Spidey to Thor to the Guardians of the Galaxy against Thanos, who has probably been given a less ridiculous reason for wanting all the Infinity Stones than to impress Death Herself. So far, the word sounds pretty good. It gets basically every large/3D/premium screen out there, playing the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D/3D), the Belmont Studio (2D only), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX 2D/3D), the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax 2D/3D and Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax 2D/3D), Revere (including XPlus/MX4D), and the SuperLux.

    The only other thing really attempting any sort of wide release is Kings, a drama set during the Rodney King Verdict Riots featuring Halle Berry as a protective foster mother and Daniel Craig as… Well, I don't remember what he was doing there in the movie from the trailer. Not a great sign from the director of the pretty well-regarded Mustang. It finds screens at Boston Common and South Bay.

    If you missed Labyrinth during the Brattle's Muppet Marathon, it plays Sunday at Fenway and Tuesday & Wednesday at Fenway and Boston Common. Fenway and Assembly Row have Like Arrows Tuesday and Thursday, and Fenway has something called "All For One" on Wednesday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre and Kendall Square open The Rider, in which a rodeo cowboy tries to carve out a new identity after a career-ending injury. It's based upon true events, and if star Brady Jandreau and his family aren't quite playing themselves, they're not far off. Seems like a natural double feature with Lean on Pete.

    The Coolidge has Lowlife at midnight on Friday and Saturday, and since IFFBoston doesn't have an official midnight section, I don't see why this shouldn't be treated as an unofficial part of the festival. The other screen will have 35mm prints of the original Westworld (Friday) and The Terminator Saturday, for your killer robot needs. They'll be hosting a kids' podcast festival on Saturday and Sunday mornings, with special episodes performed live, and a Science on Screen show of Inception on Monday, with BU professor Steve Ramirez discussing the malleability of memory.
  • Kendall Square not only opens The Rider, but picks up Ghost Stories, which was BUFF's secret screening last month and a pretty darn fine spooky movie with Andy Nyman and Martin Freeman. It's scheduled for one week (kind of surprising itself, but I guess when a place starts accepting MoviePass, playing stuff that's also on VOD becomes more acceptable). They also open Godard Mon Amour, in which director Michel Hazanavicius dramatizes the romance between Jean-Luc Godard (Louis Garrel) and wife Anne Wiazemsky (Stacy Martin).
  • The Brattle Theatre is booked solid by IFFBoston through Monday, but have a varied program after that. Crows & Sparrows presents a free screening of the king-sized (230 minutes!) An Elephant Sitting Still on Tuesday, and then the decidedly less niche Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Wednesday. On Thursday, they have the first two a few screenings in tribute to the late Isao Takahata, with Pom Poko at 6pm and Grave of the Fireflies, the saddest movie ever animated, at 8:30.
  • The West Newton Cinema does their own thing, so instead of Avengers they open Love After Love, which features Andie MacDowell as a widow looking for a new beginning, much to the consternation of her two sons.
  • The Regent Theatre has live theater upstairs all week, but the "Regent Underground Theatre" space will be screening Modern Life Is Rubbish daily from Friday to Thursday; it's a romantic comedy about a young couple breaking up and trying to divide the record collection they've built during ten years together.
  • Apple Fresh Pond has a genuine oddity in Nothing to Lose, a self-financed biography of Brazilian evangelist Edir Macedo. It has apparently already landed in IMDB's listings of the worst ever.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts wraps their April calendar on Friday with their final screenings of 24 Frames and Cezanne: Portrait of a Life. The May program kicks of on Wednesday, with afternoon screenings of Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing on both that day and Thursday, and the start of the National Center for Jewish Film's annual film festival. A sold-out screening of RBG serves as a preview on Wednesday, and then The Museum serving as the official opening night on Thursday, with both director Ran Tal and former Israel Museum director James Snyder on-hand.
  • The Harvard Film Archive is being used by VES for student film screenings on Friday and Saturday, but return Sunday with Wim Wenders's A Trick of the Light. Monday is the monthly "Cinema of Resistance" show, with Jill Lepore introducing a 35mm print of Sacco and Vanzetti.
  • The Belmont World Film presentation at Studio Cinema this Monday is Disappearance, which hails from Iran and Qatar and has a teenage couple racing to find a doctor, only to find many requiring the permission of the young lady's father.
  • CinemaSalem has the interesting but flawed Gemini in their small room.


I'll basically be at IFFBoston all week, but will probably end up seeing Infinity War on Thursday because, honestly, I'm not sure how I'll have made it that long. I mean, I wouldn't rule out a 10am show on Sunday, or calling in sick to work, to be completely honest.

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