Friday, September 14, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 14 September 2018 - 20 September 2018

Why do you not want me see the crazy cult movies on the big screen, MBTA? It's weekends like this that I wish I wasn't total crap on a bicycle, because BlueBikes seems like the only practical way to get home after a Coolidge midnight.

  • That's what you've got to consider when the After Midnite crew is driving the new release ship at The Coolidge Corner Theatre: Fantasia Closing Night film Mandy, featuring Nick Cage as a man hell-bent on revenge on a murderous cult from the maker of Beyond the Black Rainbow, plays screen one at midnight on Friday and Saturday but also gets evening shows in the two smaller rooms all week, while BUFF favorite Let the Corpses Tan is on screen two for weekend midnights, but also gets some afternoon and evening time in the Screening Room and Goldscreen. Corpses is short enough to catch the 66 or Green Line late, but Mandy is not, but you might want to reserve tickets early for the other smaller rooms.

    The Coolidge also has two Bergman 100 screenings this week - Autumn Sonata with Coolidge Award Winner Liv Ullmann for post-screening discussion on Sunday and Cries and Whispers on Wednesday, both on 35mm. Monday's Big Screen Classic is also on film, with a pre-film seminar for Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, while there's a party at Osaka after the Thursday 35mm "Rewind!" screening of Mean Girls.
  • Dumping time seems to be over at the multiplex, which is good - it's been a rough few weeks. It looks like Shane Black is shaking his formula up a bit for The Predator, in that it's set at Halloween rather than Christmas, but it's still got a giant alien monster going a-hunting in the suburbs. That one plays Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (in Imax), Boston Common (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), the Seaport (in Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax and Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax & maybe Dolby Cinema), and Revere (including XPlus).

    Those looking for a thriller with less stuff blowing up might go for A Simple Favor, starring Anna Kendrick as a suburban mother who becomes fascinated by her glamorous neighbor (Blake Lively), and then pulled into intrigue when she disappears. That's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    There's also White Boy Rick, about a 16-year-old kid who winds up joining a Detroit gang and then informing to the FBI; Matthew McConaughey plays the boy's father. It plays the Somerville, Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. That one looks like it might have had award ambitions at some point, while Unbroken: Path to Redemption appears to be an in-name-only sequel to Angelina Jolie's film, more blatantly faith-based and only returning a couple supporting characters. It plays Boston Common and Revere. Boston Common also has Where Hands Touch, the new one from Belle and A United Kingdom filmmaker Amma Asante, featuring Amandla Stenberg as a teenage girl with the crap luck of being biracial in Nazi Germany.

    AMC and Warner Brothers have grown pretty good about getting tribute screenings ready quickly, so you can watch Smokey and the Bandit at Boston Common. They're also starting a series of Disney Princess screenings, with the live-action Beauty and the Beast playing Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row; the next two Harry Potter movies, Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, play Boston Common Sunday. Lots of anime TV spinoffs this week, with Dragon Ball Z: Broly - The Legendary Super Saiyan Saturday at Fenway and Assembly Row, adding Revere for Monday's second show; Digimon Adventure Tri.: Future at those theaters on Thursday; and Haikyu!! The Movie: Battle of Concepts at Revere on Wednesday. There are 25th Anniversary Screenings of Jurassic Park at Fenway (Sunday & Tuesday), Revere (Tuesday & Wednesday), and Assembly Row (Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday). Mountain-climbing documentary The Dawn Wall plays Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere on Wednesday.
  • Kendall Square gets a couple of documentaries that look awful darn charming: Pick of the Litter, which follows five adorable Golden Retriever puppies as they are trained to become guide dogs for the blind, and Kusama - Infinity, which introduces audiences to Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, whose colorful installations can be a great change of pace in otherwise staid museums (I saw one in Melbourne; it was a delight).
  • Fenway gets two Indian movies this week, with Telugu-language Sailaja Reddy Alludu starring Naga Chaitanya Akkineni as a man who must win over both his love and her mother, while Manmarziyaan (aka "Husband Material") looks to be a Hindi-language love triangle starring Abhishek Bachchan, Taapsee Pannu, and Vicky Kaushal.

    Apple Fresh Pond continues U Turn (with both Tamil and Telugu shows), Sailaja Reddy Alludu, and Seema Raja for those looking for Indian cinema, and has their first "a couple shows in a small room" booking in a while for Don't Leave Home, a nifty little movie about creepy things happening in an old Irish mansion that I mostly liked at IFFBoston even though I was tired as heck, and which may deserve a second look.
  • The Brattle Theatre gets Madeline's Madeline, which features newcomer Helena Howard as a teen with mental issues who finds expression in a New York theater group, but it soon becomes clear there's some two-way exploitation going on. It played both IFFBoston and Fantasia, but it caught me with exactly the wrong attitude. It's got a full schedule all weekend, but just a single afternoon show Monday through Thursday. Writer/director Josephine Decker will be present at the 7pm show on Saturday.

    What bumps it? Plenty of other guests! Saturday morning, there's a premiere of nuclear power plant documentary Power Struggle with plenty of guests for post-film discussion, while Monday's DocYard presentation welcomes Sandi Tan and her film Shirkers, a profoundly meta documentary where Tan hunts down her own recently-resurface first short film. No official guests for Tuesday's Trash Night, while there's a special screening of Eighth Grade on Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, they start next week's run of Bisbee '17 a day early so that filmmaker Robert Greene can be there in person.
  • Renate Sami visits The Harvard Film Archive on Friday to present a program of her films on 16mm, with a panel discussion afterward. After that, it's a weekend of Bergman 100 screenings, featuring The Magic Flute (Saturday 6pm), The Devil's Eye (Saturday 9pm), and The Virgin Spring (Sunday 7pm), the latter two on 35mm film. They host a Directions in Documentary Sound panel at the Harvard Art Museum on Monday at 6pm, which possibly overlaps with their free preview screening of The Sound of the Bells at 8pm in the usual Carpenter Center venue..
  • The Museum of Fine Arts concludes their runs of Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf and Scarred Hearts on Friday/Saturday/Sunday, and those of I, Claude Monet and The Chronicles of Anna Magdalena Bach on Wednesday. They start one of Ryuchi Sakamoto: Coda on Thursday, which is also the day they kick off "Films from Pooh Corner" with Disney's 2011 Winnie the Pooh.
  • The Regent Theatre has a lot of movie presentations this week, starting with Records Collecting Dust II on Friday, with the vinyl-collecting documentary followed up not just by Q&A, but live performances. Wednesday features a one-night return of IFFBoston selection Rodents of Unusual Size with co-directors Chris Metzler & Jeff Springer on-hand, and Thursday is the first of three screenings of The Public Image Is Rotten, a documentary on Sex Pistols & Public Image founder John Lyndon. Oh, and one of their Boston Comedy Festival shows features noted movie parasites Trace Beaulieu & Frank Coniff,
  • The ICA screens the 2018 edition of the "Black Radical Imagination" program on Sunday afternoon in conjunction with their "We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-1985" exhibition.
  • School's back in, so Bright Lights is back to showing two free movies a week in the Bright Screening room at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theater, open to the public and followed by discussion. Tuesday's movie is How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and Thursday's is Leave No Trace (with producer Linda Reisman on hand)..
  • The Somerville Theatre has enough live events in the coming week to effectively be down to two screens, but they kick off their annual 70mm and Widescreen Festival on Thursday with John Carpenter's Starman.


I'm looking at fitting Mandy, The Predator, A Simple Favor, and Pick of the Litter in, at least, and probably catching Starman on Thursday (I saw it at the sci-fi marathon a few years ago, but the audience that thinks they're part of the entertainment did not help). It will be nice to potentially max out A-List and MoviePass after not using them for a week or two.

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