Friday, November 16, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 16 November 2018 - 20 November 2018

Thanksgiving next Thursday, so it's a short movie weekend, but a potentially busy one, even with the snow.

  • But it's one where Widows opens, with Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, and Michelle Williams among those playing the title characters who must complete their husbands' heist after things go south. It's getting great reviews as Steve "Not That One, Obviously" McQueen's best yet, playing at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    There's also Instant Family, with Marky Mark and Rose Byrne as a couple who, planning to adopt who wind up taking in three siblings rather than the one tween they expected. It plays Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    The big 3D blockbuster this weekend is probably Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the second entry in this Harry Potter prequel series which asks the audience to make the difficult choice between rooting for a secretive cabal that intent on maintaining a segregated society where power comes from their bloodline and Johnny Depp, a true no-win situation despite the first one being kind of fun. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D), the Embassy (2D only), Boston Common (including Imax 2D), Fenway (including 2D/3D RPX), the Seaport (including 2D/3D Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax 2D and Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax 2D and Dolby Cinema), Revere (including XPlus and MX4D), and the SuperLux (2D only).

    Boston Common, with a bunch of screens to fill, gets a jump on Oscar season with a couple of limited openings: Green Book stars Mahershala Ali as musician Don Shirley and Viggo Mortensen as the driver and bodyguard hired to assist him as he tours the Jim Crow South, while The Front Runner stars Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart, whose extramarital affair famously sunk his Presidential campaign in 1988. A couple others expand Boy Erased adds the Capitol and the Embassy to the Coolidge, the Kendall, and Boston Common; A Private War opens in Revere while already at the Kendall and the Common. Fenway has matinees of The Last Race, centered around a stock car track in a small town.

    November's Ghibli Fest picture is Castle in the Sky at Fenway and Revere, dubbed Sunday and Tuesday, subtitled on Monday; Revere has Slap Shot on Sunday afternoon. Several places have special screenings of the new Robin Hood on Monday, a day before the usual Tuesday previews and Wednesday opening day.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up one of the best and oddest from the IFFBoston Fall Focus, Border, which starts from a Swedish customs officer who can smell guilt on smugglers and gets stranger from there, but also smarter and more fascinating; it's from the director of Shelley and the writer of Let the Right One In, and bounces around between screens. They also have limited matinee screenings of Say Her Name: The Life and Death of Sandra Bland, mostly in the Goldscreen but with Sunday's show a special "Wide Lens" presentation with directors Kate Davis and David Heilbroner on hand to discuss their documentary about a suspicious prison death made as the situation unfolded.

    The Midnight Meltings wrap up this weekend with a 35mm print of Larry Cohen's The Stuff on Friday and one of Street Trash on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is The Battle of Algiers.
  • Speaking of the Fall Focus, Kendall Square picks up Korean film Burning, with Yoo Ah-in as an isolated young man whose life takes a turn when a wealthy, potentially dangerous American (Steven Yuen) enters. They also have Argentina's Oscar submission, El Angel, about a young, innocent-looking thief.

    Apparently letting Netflix rent a screen for Outlaw King worked out well enough to keep it around for a couple shows a day while also opening The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and oddball anthology Western from the Coen Brothers featuring Tim Blake Nelson, Zoe Kazan, Liam Neeson, and more in a project built to be both a feature and a series on the streaming service. So that looks like two trips out on the 70 line in as many weeks.
  • Thugs of Hindostan continues at Apple Fresh Pond, which also picks up Telugu films Amar Akbar Anthony and Taxiwaala.

    Last Letter sticks around for a couple shows a day at Boston Common, which adds A Cool FIsh to its Chinese film slate; that one looks like some sort of frantic crime movie about a security guard looking for his sister's kidnappers.
  • The Brattle Theatre finishes up their Recent Raves series before the holiday, with a double feature of Madeline's Madeline & Skate Kitchen on Friday, Hal playing with subject Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude (the latter on 35mm) Saturday afternoon, Let the Corpses Tan Sunday night, and Blindspotting on Monday. There's a free 35mm "Elements of Cinema" showing of Near Dark on Monday, and Trash Night on Tuesday.
  • The Boston Jewish Film Festival comes to a close this weekend, with screenings at the Brattle (Saturday/Sunday), the JCC Riemer-Goldstein Theater (Saturday), the MFA (Saturday/Sunday), the Somerville (Saturday/Monday), West Newton (Sunday), and the Center for the Arts in Natick (Monday). The closing night show is Redpemption at the Somerville on Monday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive continues their Tony Conrad series with a selection of his video creations on Friday evening, with an Early West German Film selection, The Glass Tower, later that night, with an encore of The Day the Rains Came (preceded by 35mm featurette "Asylrecht") on Sunday afternoon. They take a slight detour from that to welcome German filmmaker Valeria Grisebach for the rest of the weekend, with her presenting Western on Saturday, Longing (on 35mm) Sunday, and Be My Star (also on 35mm) Monday.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts is mostly hosting the Jewish Film Festival, but as they're off on Friday evening, they have screenings of Milford Graves Full Mantis and John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection.
  • The Museum of Science adds (or is it returns?) "Rocky Mountain Express" to their Omnimax film rotation as of Saturday, part of the new "All Aboard! Trains at Science Park" exhibit that also includes a 4D Thomas the Tank Engine film.
  • The Regent Theatre has Boys From Nowhere, a documentary about Boston garage punk bands in the 1970s, on Friday night, with filmmakers introducing it and one of the bands in question, Nervous Eaters, playing a set afterward.
  • Cinema Salem has Danish one-man show The Guilty in their 18-seater.


Down for Widows, Burning, and Buster Scruggs, even if that's a hike. Maybe A Cool Fish, too.

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