Friday, May 25, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 May 2018 - 31 May 2018

A couple years back, when the Brattle played The Force Awakens on a May 4th ("Star Wars Day") that fell during IFFBoston, they told a fan who was upset about the conflict that it wasn't really one, because they celebrate Orthodox Star Wars Day… May 25th.

  • Is the release date lining up with that or the original why Disney didn't bump Solo: A Star Wars Story to Christmas the way they did with the other Star Wars movies? Dunno, but whatever the reason, this weekend we get to see Alden Ehrenreich as young Han Solo, Donald Glover as Lando, and a fun group of actors in a movie started by Phil Lord & Chris Miller and finished by Ron Howard. It's all over the place: The Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (2D/3D Imax), Studio Cinema in Belmont (2D only), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax 2D), Fenway (including 2D/3D RPX), the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax 2D & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Revere (including XPlus & MX4D), and the SuperLux.
  • Speaking of IFFBoston, one of the biggest hits from that festival, First Reformed, opens up at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Boston Common; it's the latest from Paul Schrader, featuring Ethan Hawke as a preacher tormented by his time as a military chaplain who gets sucked into a complicated situation involving the widow of a radical environmentalist. The Coolidge, West Newton, and Kendall Square also open The Seagull, an all-star adaptation of Anton Chekhov's play featuring Saoirse Ronan, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Moss, Corey Stoll, Brian Dennehy, and more.

    The Coolidge wraps their June month of witchcraft-oriented midnights with the recent restoration of Suspiria on Friday night and a 35mm print of The Craft on Saturday.
  • Kendall Square, West Newton, and Boston Common open another high-profile film that played IFFBoston, On Chesil Beach, which features Saoirse Ronan and Billy Howle as a young couple in the mid-twentieth century who fall in love, get married, and then are uncertain about adding a sexual dimension to their relationship.

    Kendall Square also pulls out a few stops for their one-week booking of Filmworker, a documentary about Leon Vitali, who went from being an up-and-coming actor to Stanley Kubrick's aide-de-camp for over two decades. Director Tony Zierra and producer Elizabeth Yoffe will be on-hand for a Q&A after the 7:20pm show on Friday, and the theater will have 11am screenings of the various movies Vitali and Kubrick worked on through the long weekend: Full Metal Jacket on Friday, The Shining on Saturday, Barry Lyndon on Sunday, and Eyes Wide Shut on Monday.
  • Apple Fresh Pond still has Mahanathi and Raazi (also still sticking at Fenway), and also opens Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran, a Hindi-language thriller about India's clandestine attempts to test its first atomic bomb without neighbors, rivals, and allies finding out that they are soon to be a nuclear power.

    Fans of Chinese films can catch How Long Will I Love U, a romantic fantasy about two people who live in the same apartment 20 years apart suddenly finding that they each have an unwanted roommate when their timelines merge inside their bedroom. That one's at Boston Common.
  • Harvard University has their reunion the weekend after commencement, so the local cinam (The Brattle Theatre) has their Reunion Week, featuring movies that played multiples of 25 years ago. It starts off with separate screenings of The Piano (25th/35mm) and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (25th/35mm) on Friday evening, with Batman showing again Saturday afternoon. Saturday also has a double feature of Shadow of a Doubt (75th) & The Bride Wore Black (50th/35mm), while Sunday's double feature is Cabin in the Sky (75th/35mm) & Stormy Weather (75th), with the African-American musical theme continuing with a separate late show of CB4 (25th/35mm) that night. Monday opens with a matinee of The Ox-Bow Incident (75th) before a double feature of Tombstone (25th/35mm) & Posse (25th/35mm). It's single features for the next couple days, with a free "Elements of Cinema" screening of The Swimmer (50th) before Kuroneko (50th) on Tuesday, while Day of Wrath (75th) and Menace II Society (25th) play Wednesday. Thursday wraps it with a double feature of Dazed and Confused (25th/35mm) & Wild in the Streets (50th/35mm).
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has more screenings of In the Intense Now (Friday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday) and Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing (Sunday), but the bulk of the remaining May schedule is the bck of their Christopher Nolan retrospective, featuring 35mm prints of Inception (Friday), The Dark Knight (Saturday), The Dark Knight Rises (Saturday), "Quay" & Quay Brothers shorts (Sunday), and Interstellar (Thursday).

    There's also a special screening of Paper Lanterns, a documentary about Hiroshima survivor Shigeaki Mori and his quest to add the 12 American POWs who died in the explosion and whose fate was long unknown to the official record. Not only will directors Barry Frechette and Max Exposito be present along with family members of the POWs, but Mori himself will be there in his only visit to America.
  • The Somerville Theatre begins their summer midnight series this weekend with Valley Girl on Friday night and The 'burbs on Saturday, both on 35mm in the big room. Valley Girl has an 80s Costume Contest with prizes from a local vintage store, too.
  • The Regent Theatre has a free screening of Taking Chance on Monday (Memorial Day), with the documentary's subject - Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, who escorted the body of a fellow soldier home - on-hand for a Q&A. They also have two presentations of the Ciclismo Classico Bike Travel Film Festival - a set of new shorts on Wednesday and a greatest-hits show on Thursday.
  • It's not listed on the website, but The ICA will be playing a program of short documentaries from Independent Film Festival Boston as part of their Memorial Day open house on Monday.
  • If you missed Bye Bye Germany in Cambridge, it plays the small screen at CinemaSalem.


I've already got tickets to a couple baseball games and Solo, but I also figure to catch First Reformed, On Chesil Beach, How Long Will I Love U, and hopefully some of the nifty stuff at the Brattle. Don't know if I can make Paper Lanterns work or not.

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