Thursday, July 12, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 July 2018 - 19 July 2018

Used to be you could be certain of some sort of horror movie on Friday the 13th; now you get cartoons with Adam Sandler doing the voice of Dracula. We can do better than this, world.

  • I kid, but I kind of enjoyed the first Hotel Transylvania - it is a Genndy Tartakofsky film as much a Sandler one, after all. The third one in the 3D-animated series (Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation) looks like more of the same, this time on a cruise ship, and you can probably do worse than that. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), West Newton (2D only), Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere (including MX4D), and the SuperLux.

    The other big 3D opening is Skyscraper, which has Dwayne Johnson as a security Department with a prosthetic leg trying to rescue his family (and, incidentally, everyone else in a massive Chinese supertall) from a combination of fire and terrorists who are probably actually just looking to rob the place, like in Die Hard. That family does include Neve Campbell as his wife, though, and we don't see her on-screen as much as we should. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), the Embassy (2D only), Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, and Revere (including XPlus).

    The most interesting things opening at the multiplexes is probably the genuinely weird-looking Sorry to Bother You, featuring Lakeith Stanfield as a guy who takes a telemarketing job and winds up moving up the ladder when he learns the art of sounding white on the phone, with Tessa Thompson as his militant girlfriend and apparently things getting screwier as it goes on. That plays at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Revere.

    There are also expansions for IFFBoston alums Three Identical Strangers (adding Fenway to the Somerville, the Coolidge, West Newton, Kendall Square, and Boston Common) and Leave No Trace (adding the Somerville, West Newton, and the Seaport to the Coolidge, Kendall Square, and Boston Common), with The Cakemaker adding The West Newton Cinema and continuing at the Kendall). Big has 30th anniversary screenings at Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere on Sunday and Wednesday. No obvious reason for the Seaport to be showing Patriot's Day on Monday, but they are, with Forgetting Sarah Marshall at Revere on Thursday seeming similarly random.
  • Kendall Square has The King this week, which features director Eugene Jarecki getting Elvis Presley's car out of storage and driving across America with musicians, celebrities, and others to get a look at the country. Jarecki will visit the theater on Sunday (probably in his own car) to do a Q&A after the 7:05pm show. There's also a special Tuesday night screening of Deconstructing the Birth of the Beatles, the latest in a series of filmed lectures by composer Scott Freiman, this time looking at the band's early ears rather than a particular album.
  • Yellow Submarine is popping up as a one-off in a bunch of places for its 50th anniversary, but The Somerville Theatre has it for the whole week, with Beatleness author Candy Leonard on Friday and Beatles trivia on Saturday.

    Their 35mm repertory programming for the week starts on Friday, as the Slaughterhouse Movie Club returns with a one-night-only "Bill & Ted's Sexellent Adventure" show featuring live burlesque followed by Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. That night and Saturday both feature Jaws as the weekend's 35mm Midnight Special, featuring trivia (Friday) & cosplay (Saturday) contests with prizes from Narragansett Beer. The weekly His & Hers Play It Cool double feature on Wednesday pairs Gilda with Robin and the Seven Hoods. The Somerville Film Festival also sets up shop there for two nights of free short films in the Micro-Cinema on Friday and Saturday.
  • The Brattle Theatre shows Krzysztof KieÅ›lowski's Three Colors Trilogy on 35mm this weekend, with Blue Friday evening and the entire series including White and Red on Saturday and Sunday, looping around from a different starting point each day.

    Those skip the late-ish shows, though, so that they can show the new restoration of Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song at 9:30pm from Friday to Sunday. Then it's a different program each night during the week: The Lady from Shanghai on 35mm for the Rita Hayworth Centennial on Monday, Trash Night on Tuesday, a 35mm double feature of Wonder Woman & Girlfight for "Heroic: Women Who Inspire" on Wednesday, and the annual Trailer Treats party on Thursday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre keeps the same schedule as last week, but also has the After Midnite crew make one of their Friday-the-13th trips to the Rocky Woods Reservation so that people can see two of those slasher flicks outdoors at a campsite. This time, the 9pm double feature includes Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning & Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, the latter on 35mm. They head back home and continue their serial-killer series on Saturday, showing a 16mm print of the Helter Skelter miniseries at 11:30pm. Monday's Big Screen Classic is The Lion King and Thursday's Cinema Jukebox show is O Brother, Where Art Thou? (on 35mm), and in between, they serve as this week's host for The Boston Jewish Film Festival's Summer Cinematheque, showing Memoir of War.
  • Sanju keeps going at Apple Fresh Pond and Fenway, with Fresh Pond also having two movies in Tamil: action-comedy Kadaikutty Singam and parody Thamizh Padam 2. They also give two shows a day to Jim Gaffigan: Noble Ape, a stand-up concert that gets to hit theaters before TV.
  • The Harvard Film Archive wraps their Luchino Visconti retrospective - and, apparently, their summer programming - this weekend, with Death in Venice on Friday, Conversation Piece on Saturday, and Ludwig on Sunday, all on 35mm film.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has what is arguably their signature film event, the Boston French Film Festival, featuring 12 Days (Friday/Saturday), Double Lover (Friday/Saturday), Back to Burgundy (Friday/Saturday), Faces Places (Saturday), Ismael's Ghosts (Sunday), Jealous (Sunday), A Paris Education (Sunday), The Royal Exchange (Thursday), Speak Up (Thursday), and Ava (Thursday).
  • Joe's Free Films shows a fair number of outdoor screenings this week, although fair warning, a couple of them are The Emoji Movie.


I'll see none of it, since I am writing this on a bus with iffy WiFi on the way to Montreal to marinate in sci-fi, horror, and martial-arts movies at the Fantasia International Film Festival for three weeks and one day. Crossing my fingers that Sorry to Bother You is still hanging around when I get back!

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