Friday, March 15, 2019

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 15 March 2019 - 21 March 2019

A lot going on over the next week; I've already got a bunch booked up.

  • So let's start close to the end, on Wednesday, when The Boston Underground Film Festival opens at The Brattle Theatre. They're mixing up what they've done in previous years, with a shorts program before the opening night film of documentary Hail Satan? and ending the night on Clickbait from Michael J. Epstein & Sophia Cacciola rather than a repertory film. The festival continues Thursday with Werewolf from Poland, Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records, and Girl on the Third Floor, and into the next weekend.

    Leading up to that, they have a weekend tribute to the late Michel Legrand with double features of Cléo from 5 to 7 & Vivre Sa Vie (35mm) on Friday, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg & The Young Girls of Rochefort on Saturday, and a 35mm print of The Thomas Crown Affair on Saturday, with the Chlotrudis Awards on Sunday afternoon. On Monday the DocYard welcomes filmmaker Irene Lusztig with her documentary Yours In Sisterhood (there's also ASL interpretation). Then Tuesday is Trash Night, presumably a natural lead-in to BUFF.
  • A lot of the stuff at the multiplexes, meanwhile, skews a bit younger, with Wonder Park a 3D-animated film from Nickelodeon which looks cute but is apparently kind of weird. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), Boston Common, Fenway (2D only), South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux (2D only). One step up is Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase, which I gather is not connected to the last Nancy Drew movie and looks like a straightforward adaptation/modernization of the series that plays Boston Common.

    Advancing to young adults, there's Five Feet Apart, a romance about two teenagers who have cystic fibrosis and as such cannot get within arms' length of each other lest they compound each other's disease, looking to get a boost from a nifty cast including Haley Lu Richardson and Cole Sprouse. That's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. Boston Common also opens Giant Little Ones, about two best friends who discover uncomfortable truths in the aftermath of a party.

    The last of the wide openings is Captive State, a thriller taking place ten years after an alien invasion. It plays the Somerville, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, the Embassy, and Revere.

    Fenway and South Bay have screenings of Gone with the Wind on Sunday and Monday, while Revere goes for something a little classier with Clueless on Sunday. Triple Threat brings together a murderer's row of action guys whose movies usually go straight to video in North America (Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Scott Adkins, Michael Jai White, Jeeja Yanin, Tiger Chen), which means they can break through to one show on Tuesday at Fenway, Boston Common, and Assembly Row. The week's anime presentation is Made in Abyss: Journey's Dawn, which plays subtitled on Wednesday at Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  • Gloria Bell plays The Coolidge Corner Theatre (including an "Off the Couch" screening on Tuesday), the Kendall, and Boston Common, and if this movie featuring Julianne Moore as a middle-aged free spirit who finds unexpected love with John Turturro looks a little familiar, it's because director Sebastián Lelio is remaking his own film Gloria. Another noteworthy director, Christian Petzold, has his latest open at the Coolidge and the Kendall, with Transit moving the original novel's WWII setting to the present day but retaining the story of a man who assumes the identity of another to escape fascism and romances the man's unknowing wife.

    Midnight killer machines at the Coolidge this weekend include a 35mm print of RoboCop on Friday and one of Demon Seed on Saturday. Saturday's midnights also include Starfish, with Virginia Gardner as the last woman on Earth trying to save humanity by collecting mysterious tapes; director A.T. White will be on hand for an introduction. On Sunday, they start the day with a Kids' Show of the original Jumanji and later have a special screening of The World Beneath Your Feet with director Jeremy Workman and subject Matt Green at 2pm; they gave entertaining Q&A at IFFBoston last year. There's a 35mm screening of The Rules of the Game on Monday, with an optional seminar before/after the Big Screen Classic.
  • In addition to Gloria Bell and Transit, Kendall Square opens Woman at War, with Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir as a fifty-ish Icelandic woman who wages a covert fight against the power company she feels is damaging the environment. They also screen documentary Salvador Dali: In Search of Immortality, for one night only on Wednesday.
  • There are Spanish-language films opening at several multiplexes this week: Garabandal: Only God Knows, plays Fenway and tells the tale of four girls who claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary in a small Spanish town in 1961; Boston Common and Revere, meanwhile, get No Manches Frida 2, a sequel to the Mexican/American hit that features a new set of hijinks as the screwy high school teachers (some of whom used to be bank robbers) and students from the first hit the beach for a volleyball tournament necessary to save the school

    It takes two Chinese movies to replace The Wandering Earth at Boston Common, with More than Blue from Taiwan featuring Jasper Liu as a cancer-stricken man trying to set the love of his life (Ivy Chen Yi-han) up with a boyfriend and The Crossing featuring Yao Huang as a teenager who commutes from Shenzen to Hong Kong for school and picks up a side hustle smuggling to finance a trip to Japan. Furie (from Vietnam) also continues at South Bay.

    For Indian films, Apple Fresh Pond opens Malayalam comedy Kodathi Samaksham Balan Vakeel, with Dileep as a lawyer thrust into a big case despite his pronounced stammer, on Friday, and Tamil thriller Thadam on Saturday. Badla and Gully Boy also continue, and Bengali drama Bijoya screens on Saturday and Sunday.
  • The Somerville Theatre opens Yardie, the feature directorial debut of Idris Elba, who tells the tale of a Jamaican hood about to go straight and focus on music when he encounters the man who killed his brother ten years earlier.
  • The Harvard Film Archive almost plays as a typical theater this weekend, with two screenings per day of Jean-Luc Godard's The Image Book on Friday and Sunday. Saturday features two "Accidental Detective" movies by Aaron Katz, with Gemini at 7pm and Cold Weather at 9pm.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts also shows The Image Book, playing Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday. They also have more screenings of of Corneliu Porumboiu's Infinite Football (Saturday/Wednesday) and Bauhaus Spirit: 100 Years of Bauhaus (Sunday/Wednesday). "Five Women Filmmakers" wraps with screenings of Birds of Passage (Sunday) and Zama (Wednesday), and then Thursday opens the 18th Annual Boston Turkish Film Festival with Nuri Bilge Ceylan's The Pear Tree.
  • Belmont World Film starts their latest series at The Belmont Studio on Sunday with The Heart, starring writer/director Fanni Metelius as a photographer starting a romance with a young, up-and-coming musician. It looks to be a particularly strong series this year, and I'm sorry I didn't mention it last week because tickets for the pre-film smorgasbord are no longer on sale.
  • The free Bright Lights shows in the Paramount's screening room this week are All About Nina on Tuesday, with director Eva Vives and comedic consultant/Emerson grad Jamie Loftus on hand for Q&A, and I Am Not a Witch on Thursday.
  • The Regent Theatre features short films this week, with 10th Annual Ciclismo Classico Bike Travel Film Festival on Wednesday and the local A-Town Teen Video Festival on Thursday.
  • The ICA has a World Music/CRASHArts presentation on Friday night, combining The Animated Films of Karen Aqua with live soundtracks provided by the late animator's husband Ken Field, his alto sax quartet, and a drum section.
  • The Luna Theater shows two more Harry Potter movies this weekend, with Goblet of Fire Friday & Saturday and Order of the Phoenix Saturday & Sunday. Death Becomes Her plays Sunday, Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams on Tuesday, and a surprise Weirdo Wednesday show.


I'll probably catch at least one of the two Chinese movies, potentially stay up late for Starfish, and watch Triple Threat before settling in at the Brattle for BUFF. Hopefully there's room for Transit, Yardie, and the other stuff I want to catch up on in the meantime.

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