Friday, April 05, 2019

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 5 April 2019 - 11 April 2019

We live in a world where both Captain Marvels have big Imax/3D movies coming out within a month of each other. Crazy, huh?

  • Because of weird trademark shenanigans, comics based on the Fawcett Comics character later purchased by DC Comics can no longer call him by that name, so now he's Shazam!, with Zachary Levi playing Earth's Mightiest Mortal, with the twist that he's a kid who becomes an adult superhero when he says a magic word. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D), Boston Common (including Imax 2D), Fenway (including RPX 2D), the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax 2D), Assembly Row (including Imax 2D), Revere (including MX4D and XPlus), and the SuperLux (2D only).

    There's also a new version of Pet Sematary, this one from the makers of Starry Eyes and demonstrating why moving from Boston to small-town Maine is the wrong direction. It's at the Somerville Theatre, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Revere, and the SuperLux.

    Aiming a bit higher is The Best of Enemies, with Taraji P. Henson as a civil rights organizer and Sam Rockwell as a Klansman as Durham, NC sees their school system integrating in 1971. That one plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, the Embassy, and Revere. Boston Common also has The Public, with director Emilio Estevez also part of an ensemble cast in a film about the homeless taking over a library as they seek shelter from the cold.

    Revere takes its turn showing Rock and Roll Circus on a premium screen at midnight Friday, with a screening in XPlus. This year's monthly Studio Ghibli series starts with Howl's Moving Castle, playing Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Revere; as is usually the case, the Monday show is subtitled and the other two are dubbed. There is also a "premiere event" for Terry Gilliam's long-awaited The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which plays Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Dedham on Wednesday ahead of an April 19th release. The Shining plays Revere on Thursday.
  • Kendall Square opens three new movies this weekend. Diane stars Mary Kay Place as a woman trying to connect with her addicted son and facing harsh memories, and is the first narrative film from writer/director Kent Jones. Sunset aims for a somewhat larger scale, following a woman who comes to Budapest in 1913, just as war is about to break out. The Brink is sadly not last year's Fantasia selection which featured Max Zhang doing underwater kung fu, but a documentary following Steve Bannon as he tries to push for his brand of right-wing extremism to become a global movement.

    There's also a special presentation of Weed the People on Monday, with director Abby Epstein and producers Ricki Lake & James Costa on hand for a moderated Q&A, along with a screening of Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams on Tuesday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has another movie getting (mostly) 9:30pm shows this week, with The Wind starring Caitlin Gerard as a settler in the old west who fears that the endless, howling wind is a portent of more supernatural evil. It also gets a midnight screening on Saturday, after the monthly "Martial Art House" show of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on 35mm Friday. The "regular" midnights are The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (35mm) on Friday and a new restoration of The Tough Ones on Saturday.

    Saturday also features a Science on Screen Jr. show of Bee Movie in the morning, with beekeeper Dr. Noah Wilson-Rich teaching the kids about apiaries and colony collapse syndrome. There's a grown-up Science on Screen Monday, with podcaster Wade Roush discussing dystopias before the 7pm show of Blade Runner (the final cut), and a 9:55pm show that doesn't include the introduction. Tuesday has both Open Screen and a preview screening of The Biggest Little Farm followed by a discussion of local farming led by Greenbelt president Kate Bowditch. There's one more special screening on Thursday, as author Brian Coleman presents a 90-minute show of found footage in The "Buy Me, Boston" Video Loft.
  • A pretty strong month for Chinese movies kicks off at Boston Common with P Storm, the latest entry in a series featuring Louis Koo as a Hong Kong anti-corruption investigator, this time going undercover in prison to find how a scammer is running his operation only to encounter a crooked cop he put away in the series' first entry. It's surprisingly fun!

    Apple Fresh Pond opens Telugu-language drama Majili, which stars Naga Chaitanya Akkineni as a once-promising cricketer looking to pull himself together after nursing a broken heart for over a decade. Super Deluxe and Lucifer stick around, with Kannada-language romance Panchatantra playing Saturday to Sunday and Gujarati road-trip movie Chaal Jeevi Liya on Sunday.
  • The Capitol has 8:20pm shows of Dragged Across Concrete (which is what passes for late night shows in Arlington, right?), so if you want to see Mel Gibson & Vince Vaughn in Craig Zahler's movie about crooked cops looking to do more damage on suspension, that's likely the only chance. Their friends at The Somerville Theatre, meanwhile, will kick off their "Reel Films/Fake Bands" series on Thursday with a 35mm print of That Thing You Do!
  • Wicked Queer wraps this weekend with a full slate at The Brattle Theatre and the Paramount's Bright Screening Room through Sunday, as well as shows at the MFA. The Brattle also has a DocYad screening of Black Mother with director Khalik Allah on hand to discuss his exploration of Jamaica and its spiritual diversity. They also wrap The Good Works of Claire Denis with 35mm prints of Trouble Every Day (Tuesday), 35 Shots of Rum (Wednesday), and White Material later Wednesday).
  • This weekend's guest at The Harvard Film Archive is Brazilian filmmaker João Moreira Salles, who presents his documentary Santiago on Friday evening and his new film In The Intense Now at 7pm Saturday. In between, there a 35mm Saturday matinee of Summer Wars ($5 or free with a Cambridge Library card). The Lucretia Martel series ends Sunday afternoon with Zama, and there are a pair of New Thai Cinema presentations, with Nakorn-Sawan Sunday evening and The Island Funeral on Monday. There's also a free VES screening of Becoming Animal on Thursday
  • It's the last weekend of 18th Annual Boston Turkish Film Festival at The Museum of Fine Arts, including The Pigeon (Friday), Butterflies (Friday), Halef (Saturday/Sunday), and Sibel (Saturday/Sunday). There's a Rembrandt "Exhibition on Screen" show on Wednesday and Thursday, with a "Hollywood Scriptures" presentation of The Children Act on Wednesday evening and animated film The Tower (presented by the Boston Palestine Film Festival) on Thursday.
  • The ICA begins a "Month of Sundays" this weekend; April's theme will be "Beautiful Trouble" and the first show is Joan Jett: Bad Reputation, which plays at 1pm and is free with admission to the museum.
  • The Regent Theatre shows locally produced film Sweeney Killing Sweeney on Sunday afternoon, including a meet & greet with stars Steve Sweeney, Tony V, and other members of the cast and crew.
  • This week's Monday Belmont World Film entry at The Belmont Studio is Jirga, in which an Australian soldier travels to Afghanistan to reckon with his actions there. Director Benjamin Gilmour will dial in for a Q&A afterward.
  • Bright Lights welcomes director Stephen Maing to the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday for a screening of his film Crime + Punishment on Tuesday, and the next day he will both give a presentation in the afternoon and host a program of student films in the evening as part of Emerson's "It's All True" documentary festival. Thursday's visit from Maxim Pozdorovkin is not exactly part of the festival, but his film The Truth About Killer Robots is also a documentary.
  • The Museum of Science adds a 4-D version of Smallfoot (which, like the 4-D version of The Martian, is cut down to about 15 minutes)
  • The Luna Theater has All About Eve on Friday and Saturday, Boy and the World Saturday/Sunday morning and Tuesday evening, The Field Guide to Evil on Saturday, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane on Sunday, and Weirdo Wednesday.


I've already caught P Town, so I'll be going for Shazam! for sure, trying for The Wind, and seeing what else I can catch up on around watching the start of the baseball season and hoping this awful start by the Red Sox is just a weirdly bad week.

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