Friday, August 09, 2019

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 9 August 2019 - 15 August 2019

When does school start these days? Has it pushed back far enough into August that it makes sense to start downshifting what goes into theaters this early?

  • Maybe next week; it looks like the studios are trying to squeeze a little bit more out of kids and teens before they no longer have time to come to matinees. For the younger ones, there's Dora and the Lost City of Gold, which has Dora & Diego from Dora the Explorer around 16, with Dora not quite fitting into a regular high school and Diego and friends also winding up in the jungle. That's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, and Revere. For the slightly older crowd, there's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, in which a group of kids find a book of horror stories that come to life. Produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by André Øvredal (who made Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe), it's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.

    For the older crowd, The Kitchen adapts a graphic novel about three mob widows (Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Hadish, and Elizabeth Moss) who decide to take crime into their own hands, with original artist Ming Doyle doing a meet & greet and autograph session at the Somerville Theatre on Friday night. It also plays Fresh Pond, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere. There's also an adaptation of The Art of Racing in the Rain, a romance with Milo Ventimiglia and Amanda Seyfried told from the perspective of their auto-racing-loving dog (voiced by Kevin Costner). It's at Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    Bring the Soul: The Movie continues at Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, and Revere; on the other end of the week, The Angry Birds 2 opens Wednesday at Fresh Pond (2D), Boston Common (2D/3D), Fenway (2D/3D), South Bay (2D/3D), Assembly Row (2D/3D), and Revere (2D/3D). Boston Common switches things up so that Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood takes the Imax-branded screen over from Hobbs & Shaw

    Hello, Dolly has anniversary screenings at Fenway on Sunday on Sunday and Wednesday (Wednesday only at Revere), while Woodstock celebrates the same birthday on Thursday at the Coolidge (where it's on 35mm as part of the Cinema Jukebox and Summer of '69 series) Fenway, South Bay, and Revere. There are Springsteen Fan Events for Blinded by the Light at Fenway and Revere on Monday. One of Satoshi Kon's best (not that he made any bad movies), Millennium Actress plays Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, and Revere on Tuesday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Cinema Salem get IFFBoston alum Them That Follow, a nifty movie about a hidden community of snake handlers which has a heck of a cast - Walton Goggins, Kaitlyn Dever, Olivia Colman, Jim Gaffigan - supporting a pretty terrific Alice Englert. It's mostly in the small rooms at the Coolidge and Salem, as is Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, playing early shows in the Coolidge's Goldscreen to pay tribute to the recently-departed author.

    The Coolidge holds Luz over a second weekend of midnights in the screening room, and it's worth noting that this great little debut is compact enough that there is little need to fret about catching the 66 afterward, if not the Green Line. The midnights on the bigger screen upstairs are a 35mm print of Teen Wolf and a DCP file of Meatballs. Monday night's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of the delightful Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (with optional pre/film seminar). A five-week "Hitchcock in Hollywood" course starts in the screening room on Wednesday, and it's an evening course unlike many of the previous Coolidge Education series. As mentioned above, there's a 35mm print of Woodstock on Thursday.
  • Kendall Square is the first place in the area to get IFFBoston alum The Nightingale, Jennifer Kent's much-anticipated follow-up to The Babadook which is by all accounts a harrowing tale of vengeance in 1825 Australia. They (and Boston Common) also get the festival's opening film, Luce, which is a little too clever for its own good at times but still frequently engrossing in its tale of the adopted pride of the town who raises alarms with his teacher. I don't believe the festival had Piranhas, a tale of teenagers and would-be Mafia in Naples looking to move up to the big time when a power vacuum appears.

    The Kendall, Embassy, Boston Common, South Bay, and Revere also open Brian Banks, which stars Aldis Hodge as a prisoner who had once been a promising football prospect trying to prove he was wrongly-convicted.
  • The big release from China this week is The Bravest, in which a team of firefighters attempt to contain a fire threatening a chemical plant which could ignite and level the entire city; it's one of the movies that the government is really getting behind and pushing, but it looks good despite coming from a guy whose career has thus far been romantic comedies. It plays Boston Common and Revere. Boston Common also has Hello, Love, Goodbye, a movie set in Hong Kong but which takes place among its Filipino population, with Alden Richards as a bartender romancing Kathryn Bernardo's domestic employee.

    Over at Apple Fresh Pond looks to be turning over their whole slate of Indian films this week, with even more coming next. Hindi-language groom-kidnapping action-comedy Jabariya Jodi seems to be getting the most showtimes, followed by legal thriller Nerkonda Paarvai, a Tamil-language remake of Pink, and Telugu romantic comedy Manmadhudu 2. There's also a show a day of Kurukshetta, a Kannada-language historical epic, through Monday.and on Wednesday.

    They also get an English-language indie, Light of My Life, written by, directed by, and starring Casey Affleck as a father
  • It's all repertory presentations at The Brattle Theatre this week, starting with a weekend celebrating the Dino De Laurentiis Centennial: A double feature of Europa '51 and La Strada (35mm) on Friday before a 9:30pm show of Cat's Eye (35mm); a triple feature of Dune (35mm), Flash Gordon (35mm), and Barbarella on Saturday; a pairing of the 1976 King Kong and Serpico (35mm) on Sunday; and 35mm presentations of Blue Velvet on Monday.

    Noirversary on Tuesday features a 35mm double feature of Phantom Lady & Ministry of Fear; Wednesday's Recent Rave is High Life; and Reel Music on Thursday is a twin-bill of Her Smell & Smithereens.
  • The Harvard Film Archive keeps The Complete Howard Hawks simple this week, with 7pm shows from Friday to Monday - The Big Sky (35mm), Rio Bravo (35mm), Red River (DCP), and Sergeant York (35mm).
  • The Museum of Fine Arts and the Roxbury Film Festival welcome director Clennon King and his film Fair Game: Surviving a 1960 Georgia Lynching on Friday evening; the Festival also co-presents The Last Black Man in San Francisco on Saturday.. They also continue "Space Exploration on Film" with the original Solaris (Friday) and a free outdoor "Sunset Cinema" show of 2001 (Thursday), and "A Splinter in Your Mind: Films from '99 with The Matrix (35mm Friday), and screen An Elephant Sitting Still on Sunday.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a special 20th-anniversary run of Hedwig & the Angry Inch to go along with their 35mm run of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood. For special presentations, there's a 35mm Saturday Midnight Special of Bring It On and a Jack Attack show of Hoffa on Thursday.
  • This year's Movie Night at Fenway Park is Tuesday, with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse showing on the Jumbotron, with the chance to walk the warning track before the show.
  • West Newton has the last 2019 Summer Cinematheque show from Boston Jewish Film in Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles on Wednesday, although the site marks it as sold out without mentioning whether there will be rush tickets or not.
  • The Luna Theater has The Last Black Man in San Francisco on Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday evenings, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am and Psycho Beach Party on Saturday afternoon, and The Wicker Man on Sunday, with the "Magical Mystery Movie Club" back to both Saturday and Sunday mornings while Weirdo Wednesday continues to chug along. The AMC at the Liberty Tree Mall has crime drama ECCO and weirdo horror comedy Nekrotronic from the makers of Wyrmwood
  • Joe's Free Films show multiples of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World this week (sometimes in two places at once), and you can also get two-thirds of the way through the Back to the Future trilogy with the original at Christopher Columbus Park on Sunday and the Coolidge's Greenway screening of Part II on 35mm Tuesday.


Down for The Nightingale, The Bravest, and some catch-up, trying very hard not to talk myself into heading all the way out to Danvers for Nekrotronic.

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