- Apparently "Oriental DreamWorks" is now called "Pearl Studio", which is less uncomfortable to say, but I'm guessing that being co-produced with a Chinese company means that Abominable can play in China despite the upcoming holiday there. It follows a bunch of kids who have to help a lost Yeti return home. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Fresh Pond (2D only), West Newton (2D only), Boston Common, Fenway (including RPX), the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Revere (including MX4D), and the SuperLux (2D only).
The last movie in this year's "Dream Big, Princess" series at Boston Common and Assembly Row is The Princess and the Frog; the month's Ghibli flick is The Secret World of Arrietty, playing Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Revere dubbed on Sunday and subtitled on Monday. There's also a new anime film, Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl, playing Boston Common and Fenway on Wednesday and Thursday, apparently a spinoff of the Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai series. Snoopy, Come Home plays the Regent and Revere on Sunday and the Lexington Venue on Thursday afternoon. Concert documentary Roger Waters: Us + Them plays Boston Common, the Seaport, and Revere on Wednesday. - The week's other big opening is Judy, which stars Renée Zellweger as Judy Garland after she's fallen on hard times and needs a comeback. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, West Newton, Boston Common, and Fenway.
At midnight on Friday, the Coolidge finishes what they started last week with Kill Bill: Volume 2 on 35mm, and also welcomes co-star Greg Sestero for The Room, also around the next night for The Disaster Artist. Saturday's other midnight is the first show of Depraved, Larry Fessenden's pretty terrific modern take on Frankenstein, one of my favorites at Fantasia, and will be hanging for midnights next weekend too. On Monday, they welcome director Jamie Catto for an advance screening of Becoming Nobody, his documentary on Ram Dass. Tuesday's 35mm Cine Almodóvar show is Talk To Me.
They also host the first couple nights of The GlobeDocs Film Festival, with Gay Chorus Deep South opening the festival on Wednesday and Made in Boise and Human Nature on Thursday. They will also be at the ShowPlace Icon in the Seaport on Thursday with a free sneak preview of Augmented and a 3D screening of Cunningham, apparently already sold out. - Kendall Square picks up one of the movies I'd hoped to catch at IFFBoston, Monos, a terrific-looking thriller about a number of child soldiers holding an American doctor (Julianne Nicholson) hostage. They also get documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, and a somewhat less conventional film about a famed artist, with Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles and animated feature about the surrealist filmmaker making a documentary with his friend who won the lottery.
- The Capitol Theatre in Arlington appears to be the only place in the area opening The Day Shall Come, in which Marchánt Davis plays a street preacher set up by the FBI to attract other kooks, but things wind up going completely off the rails. It's directed by Christopher Morris, who made the similarly political-but-screwy Four Lions.
The Somerville Theatre has some 35mm shows of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood this weekend, alternating on screen #1 with a new print of Monty Python and the Holy Grail through Sunday. They and the Coolidge will also be breaking out the really big film for Joker starting on Thursday - That movie specifically scheduled for me to miss is The Climbers, which tells the story of a Chinese team in 1960 attacking the "second step" of Everest. It's got a heck of a cast - Wu Jing, Jing Boran, Zhang Yi, and Ge Hu as the team, as well as Zhang Ziyi and a small role for Jackie Chan - with Daniel Lee directing and Tsui Hark producing. It opens on the Imax screen at Boston Common on Monday, hanging around there until Joker arrives on Thursday, at which point it moves to a regular screen. Another star-studded National Day movie opens there on Tuesday, with My Country, My People an anthology film built around 7 moments in the history of the People's Republic of China, directed by the likes of Chen Kaige, Nig Hao, Xu Zheng, and more. The also keep The Last Wish and Nezha around (with Nezha also at Lexington), as well as zippy anime adventure Promare.
It's also a big week for Indian movies, with Apple Fresh Pond opening two Tamil films on Friday, action-comedy Namma Veettu Pillai and thriller Otha Seruppu Size 7. Malayalam romantic comedy Love Action Drama plays Saturday and Sunday. The first really big opening is Syeraa, which tells the story of Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy (Chiranjeevi), who led a rebellion against the East India Tea Company years before the more famous ones; it starts on Tuesday with most of its screenings in Telugu but Hindi and Tamil ones on the schedule as well. Then on Wednesday, they (and Fenway) get Bollywood action movie War, which throws Hrithik Roshan up against Tiger Shroff as spies looking to eliminate each other. They also open English-language indie Obsession, featuring Mekhi Phifer, Elika Portnoy, and Brad Dourif in a potentially-lethal triangle.
Dominican comedy El Equipito continues at Revere, which also opens Nothing to Lose 2, the second of two biopics Edir Macedo has financed to be made about himself. - The Boston Women's Film Festival continues at the Brattle Theatre and Museum of Fine Arts through Sunday; I can personally recommend Knives and Skin, Paradise Hills, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, and Swallow.
- After that, The Brattle Theatre has a free "Elements of Cinema" screening of The Connection early Monday evening, and a [not entirely] Strictly Brohibited show of Born in Flames later that night. A new screen is being installed Tuesday (goodbye, seams!), and the first movie projected on it is a secret members-only show (from the 90s and in 35mm) that night. They pay tribute to Sid Haig with Spider Baby on Wednesday, and have a special premiere of Jack and Yaya on Thursday.
- The festival ends September film calendar at The Museum of Fine Arts, with October's kicking off with a three day run of Aga, a story of Northern indiginous parents looking to reunite with their daughter, starting Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday are also the start of a run of Romanian film I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians.
- The Harvard Film Archive welcomes experimental filmmaker Margaret Honda with her film Color Correction (very specifically on 35mm) on Friday night. They start their series of films by this year's McMillan-Stewart Fellow, Dieudo Hamadi, with the Congolese filmmaker's Examen d'état playing Saturday and Atalaku on Sunday. They break out a 35mm print of Murder by Contract later on Saturday as part of their B-Movie series, while Horse Money on Monday is both a Cinema of Resistence show and a sort of preview for when director Pedro Costa visits with his new film a week later.
- The Regent Theatre plays Rocketman as a sing-along show on Friday Night, and then has a free screening of "Laugh Now: A Perspective on Life, Liberty, and the Holocaust" on Saturday afternoon. Snoopy Comes Home plays Sunday; documentary The Chosen Generation of Bakka plays Wednesday.
- The Boston Latino International Film Festival continues through Sunday, with screenings mostly in the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount but also at Harvard's Tsai Auditorium, Northeastern University, and Rabb Hall at the Boston Public Library, with the closing awards ceremony at the Arlington Street Church.
They're out of Bright in plenty of time for Bright Lights, which shows Hail Satan? with Satanic Temple Lucien Greaves in attendance on Tuesday and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius on Thursday, that one featuring an appearance by Rev. St. Brother Cleveland “Do-Nit” Duncan III, Esq, Jr, aka Brother Cleve (a regular part of BUFF festivities). Free and open to the public. - Aeronaut Brewery has their quarterly visit from silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis on Sunday, this time adding music to 1927's The Lost World.
- On Wednesday, Belmont World Film will welcome director Aaron Kopp to The West Newton Cinema to discuss his film Liyana, which follows a group of orphans in Swaziland who create their own fairy tale.
- Cinema Salem has this year's Manhattan Short Film Festival in their screening room; it also plays at the Regent on Sunday afternoon and Thursday evening. The Salem Horror Fest starts on Thursday with a screening of Salem-shot Mass Hysteria
The Luna Theater has the directors of Punk the Capital on hand for a Q&A after Friday night's screening, final shows of The Farewell and The Nightingale Saturday afternoon, shorts from the GLAS Animation Festival on Saturday and Tuesday evenings, Donnie Darko all day Sunday, and a UMass Lowell Philosophy & Film screening of The Wrestler on Monday evening. The Saturday Morning Cartoons, Sunday's "Magic Mystery Movie Club", and Weirdo Wednesday are free surprise screenings. - Boston University's annual Tournées Film Festival has kicked off, with free films in the Photonics Building Room #206 - Memoir of War on Friday and Cold Water on Thursday.
There is too much to see before I have to leave! I'm thinking The Day Shall Come, Monos, and maybe Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles, kind of nervous that Holy Grail will become an obnoxious quote-along and figuring I should try and see Abominable while it's in 3D. Then the question is, do I bail on after-work socializing to find a theater in the Dallas area playing The Climbers or do I just wait for it to hit regular screens at home?