Friday, December 07, 2018

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 December 2018 - 13 December 2018

I know Thanksgiving seemed to come relatively early this year, but studios more or less doing nothing for two weeks after seems like rather a missed opportunity. Hopefully it inspires folks around here to check out a couple of fun things from this summer's Fantasia Festival.

  • Better to see Anna and the Apocalypse now anyway - it is a Scottish teenage zombie Christmas musical, after all! Charming as heck, but apparently only playing Boston Common. They also bring back The Wife, which everyone seemed to look at as "Glenn Close going for an Oscar" back in August. They're also the only ones listing Once Upon a Deadpool - a PG-13 cut of the very R-rated Deadpool 2 - as opening Wednesday.

    The biggest opening, in fact, seems to be a 25th Anniversary re-release of Schindler's List, which plays West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay (Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema), and Revere. A Star Is Born never actually left, but it gets the Imax screens at Jordan's Furniture, Boston Common, Assembly Row and South Bay for the week, with Jordan's also playing The Polar Express in Imax 3D after school. A Star Is Born also opens at the Belmont Studio Cinema.

    There are also an unusual amount of preview screenings - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse plays Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row (Imax), and Revere on Friday evening & Saturday afternoon; Bumblebee Saturday night at Boston Common, Fenway (RPX), Assembly Row, and Revere (XPlus); and Second Act at Boston Common on Tuesday. Fenway continues Regal's holiday classics series with A Christmas Story at noon on Saturday, or some inspirational-looking thing called Buttons that has pulled in a pretty nice cast; Boston Common & Fenway also have the last (English-dubbed) screenings of Mirai Saturday afternoon. More holiday specials include a TCM presentation of White Christmas at Fenway & Assembly Row on Sunday and Wednesday, a Jim Henson double-feature of "Emmett Otter's Jug-Band Christmas" & "The Bells of Fraggle Rock" at Fenway on Monday, and Love Actually at Revere on Thursday. Fenway also has Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki on Thursday, so titled because it doesn't seem so long ago there was another documentary about his retirement (which didn't stick).
  • The Brattle Theatre's first Fantasia alum is Five Fingers for Marseilles, a pretty nifty modern Western from South Africa, although it only plays 9pm shows from Friday to Sunday, although they will also be showing documentary People's Republic of Desire with filmmaker Hao Wu there on Tuesday evening. Most of the schedule goes to Bathtubs Over Broadway, a documentary in which a late-night comedy writer discovers "industrial musicals" - trade show presentations produced and performed by legitimate Broadway talent - and the cult fans that trade recordings. There's also a DocYard screening of Island of the Hungry Ghosts with director Gabrielle Brady skyping in to talk about her film following a counselor on the island where Australia keeps asylum-seekers. They also have the second part of this year's Grrl Haus Cinema shows, with part three in Dorchester Friday the 14th.
  • Kendall Square is the Landmark Cinema opening a Netflix film this week, and it's one of the year's best movies in Roma, Alfonso Cuarón's gorgeous B&W story of an indigenous maid and the family for whom she works in the 1970s. It's very much a big-screen movie and who knows how many future opportunities anybody will have to see it on one. They also have Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes, about the man who shaped conservative media for the past several decades.
  • Apple Fresh Pond keeps 2.0 going, but also gets Kedarnath, a Hindu-Muslim love story. The Caleidoscope Indian Film Festival also plays through the weekend, with Evening Shadows at the Pao Arts Center on Friday, two films at Rhode Island College on Saturday, and The Song of Scorpions and C/O Kancharapalem back at Fresh Pond on Sunday.
  • A couple films that had played elsewhere expand to The Coolidge Corner Theatre this weekend in Shoplifters (also at Kendall Square) and Maria by Callas (also at Kendall Square and West Newton). They also have a special screening of Eternity's Gate (also playing the Capitol, Kendall Square, West Newton, Boston Common) on Sunday, with MFA curator Katie Hanson discussing the work of Van Gogh and his contemporaries.

    Midnights during the Christmas season will be featuring dangerous presents, with a 35mm print of Child's Play on Friday and the weekly screening of Gremlins on Saturday. There's a Goethe-Institut screening of Back for Good, in which a reality TV star returns home to bond with her epileptic sister, on Sunday. The Big-Screen Classic on Monday is a 35mm print of The Shop Around the Corner, with an add-on seminar before and after. There's Open Screen on Tuesday, a 35mm print of Wall Street as part of their Michael Douglas tribute, and a Rewind! presentation of Elf on Thursday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive concludes their Jiří Trnka, Puppet Master series with a set of short films on Friday evening, with the Early West German Cinema program having an encore of The Birth of Light at 9pm that night. Saturday afternoon's $5 family matinee is Meet Me In St. Louis, and then that night they begin a series Rediscovering Jacques Becker Antoine and Antoinette (Saturday 7pm), Édouard and Caroline (Saturday 9pm), The Trump Card (35mm Sunday 4:30pm), and Rendezvous in July (35mm Sunday 7pm). They wrap their weekend with Street Scene on Monday, tying in with an exhibition at the Houghton Library, with a tour beforehand.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts spends some time with Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy, with Varda's Lions Love (...and Lies) (Friday/Saturday/Thursday), Varda's Cleo From 5 to 7 (Friday/Wednesday), Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Saturday/Sunday), Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort (Wednesday), and Varda's Happiness (Thursday). There's also a Jump Cut preview of their "Color Tells a Story" series on Sunday with Black Narcissus, preceded by "A Trip to the Moon" on 35mm with live accompaniment.
  • Border pops back up at Cinema Salem for a week in the small room.
A fair amount of time off this weekend and I guess I can catch up on The Favourite and maybe some of the other stuff I'm behind on.

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