Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 October 2019 - 31 October 2019

A lot of talk lately about Disney making it much harder for theaters to rent Fox classics, with the exception being The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but it feels like all the Boston-area theaters are booking it for Halloween anyway, just in case they don't get another chance, though there's also a lot of cool rep stuff that doesn't sound like audience-participation hell.

• The only horror movie getting a wide release this pre-Halloween weekend is Countdown, in which an app can somehow tell people when they're going to die, but when people find out they've got days… Well, you know. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  Down the hall, many will be showing The Current War, being billed as "The Director's Cut", which is strange because it was never released before, and I wonder how many people really remember what the Weinstein-related deal was a couple years ago to need this reassurance? It's a neat idea for a movie, though, with Benedict Cumberbatch, Michael Shannon, and Nicolas Hoult as Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and Nikola Tesla in the early days of electricity. That's at the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere. There's also Black and Blue, with Naomie Harris as a cop who discovers that much of her unit is corrupt and must escape with the body cam evidence. It plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  Two different artists have films taken from their new albums coming out, with Bruce Springsteen's Western Stars playing Boston Common, Fenway, and Assembly Row (including some Dolby Cinema shows) while Kanye West's Jesus Is King plays in Imax at Jordan's Imax, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Note that it's 37 minutes long, while Jordan's charges short-film prices, AMC is charging the same as a feature. If K-Pop is more your speed, BTS World Tour "Love Yourself: Speak Yourself" [The Final] plays Monday at Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere, while the Metallica/SF Symphony plays Boston Common and Revere on Wednesday for those who want the metal.
  
  The Dolby Cinema screens at South Bay and Assembly Row will be running The Wizard of Oz, although not necessarily for every show of the day. This month's Ghibli show is Spirited Away at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Revere on Sunday (dubbed), Monday (Subtitled), and Wednesday (dubbed). One Piece: Stampede plays Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, and Revere on Saturday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. There's a special Fandango preview of Doctor Sleep at Boston Common, Fenway, and Revere on Wednesday, and Revere has two last midnight shows of Habitual on Friday and Saturday.
• The Lighthouse expands to more theaters this week, adding The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Somerville, the Seaport, the Embassy, and Revere to Boston Common. Parasite adds the Somerville, Fenway, and the Embassy to the Coolidge, Kendall, and Boston Common.
  
  The Coolidge has a 35mm print of Bram Stoker's Dracula at midnight on Friday and their annual midnight-to-noon Halloween Horror Marathon, this year featuring haunted houses, starting late Saturday. It's all 35mm and the first two films are The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, with the other five surprises. Other Halloween-week specials include a kids' show of E.T. on Saturday morning (they do go trick-or-treating), a Big Screen Classic showing of the digitally restored The Shining on Monday (already listed as sold out), a "Panorama" presentation of Bong Joon-Ho's Snowpiercer with post-film discussion on Wednesday, and two 35mm "Cinema Jukebox" shows of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween night (tickets almost gone for the 7pm show, but another at 10pm).
• Jojo Rabbit gets a three screens at Kendall Square, with Taika Waititi's satire about a kid in Nazi Germany who has Hitler as an imaginary friend while his mother hides a Jewish girl in their attic also playing Boston Common and Fenway. They also get the new film by François Ozon, By the Grace of God, about three adult survivors of abusive clergy banding together to expose their molester and how the Church keeps such people hidden, and also give a screen to The King, which features Timothée Chalamet as Henry V
• Apple Fresh Pond opened Tamil movies Bigil and Kaithi on Thursday, but Diwali means there are lots more to open. Housefull 4 is the latest in a Bollywood series starring Akshay Kumar that aren't sequels but all focus on multiple romances; in this one, he's one of three brothers engaged to three sisters, only they're reincarnations of royalty from 600 years ago and realize that they are matched up with the wrong partners. Sounding less confusing are Made In China, which is also in Hindi and features Rajkummar Rao as a Gujarti businessman who relocates to China for a new start, and Saand Ki Aankh, starring Bhumi Pednekar and Taapsee Pannu as a pair of senior women with excellent sharpshooting skills.
• The West Newton Cinema is the only place picking up Cyrano, My Love, with Thomas Solivérès as playwright Edmond Rostand, trying to write Cyrano de Bergerac on deadline.
• The Regent Theatre actually has something akin to a regular run this week, with Farming playing twice a day from Friday to Thursday (though Friday's shows are in the "Underground" screen. The feature directorial debut of actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (adapting his own short), it stars Damson Idris as a Nigerian boy "farmed out" to a British family, where he becomes the leader of a gang of skinheads. Akinnuoye-Agbaje also appears, with Kate Beckinsale as the foster mother and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a teacher who sees more in him. There's also an encore of the ASN Roadshow program, with 22 oddities discovered by motion picture archivists around the world.
• The Brattle Theatre will be playing Memory: The Origins of "Alien" once a day from Friday to Tuesday, though times may vary; it zooms in on the famous chestburster scene the way that director Alexandre O. Philippe's 78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene dissected Psycho and its similarly memorable centerpiece.
  
  They fit an interesting group of things around it: A Saturday Morning Cartoon Cereal & Cartoon Party with all Halloween episodes on Saturday (naturally); a 35mm print of Lifeboat on Saturday and Sunday; The Rage: Carrie 2 hosted by the Strictly Brohibited crew on Monday; and a free Elements of Cinema show of The Tingler on 35mm on Tuesday. Wednesday is a special screening of documentary Strange Negotiations with director Brandon Vedder calling in for a post-screening discussion of his film about musician David Bazan. They have a Halloween double feature on Thursday, but it's the 2018 sequel and a 35mm print of Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the one where the studio tried to just make it an anthology series without necessarily including Michael Myers.
• The Harvard Film Archive has more of "Uncomfortably Yours: The Films of Alex Ross Perry" with 35mm prints of his films Queen of Earth (Friday 7pm) and Listen Up Philip (Sunday 7pm), as well as Perry presenting Brian De Palma's Body Double at 9pm Friday. The weekend matinee on Saturday is Poltergeist on 35mm film, and I wonder if they're taking that print on the 66 bus to get it to the Coolidge that night. The rest of Saturday is B-Movies, with a 35mm print of Thunderhoof paired with Ride Lonesome for a double feature at 7pm and the Archive's copy of Plan 9 From Outer Space at 10pm. "The Transcendent Cinema of David Brooks" has an encore of short feature "The Wind Is Driving Him Toward The Open Sea" & short "Redcap or Peanut Butter on My Roof" on 16mm at 5pm Sunday and a program of 16mm short films on Monday. Their Halloween program on Thursday is a 35mm print of Aliens, also kicking off a "Make My Day: The Cinematic Imagination of the Reagan Era" series which they will share with the Brattle throughout November.
• The Somerville Theatre continues their "All Killer, No Filler" Halloween Hullabaloo through Wednesday, with triple features on Friday (Fade to Black, Cutting Glass, and 35mm Psycho) and Saturday (35mm Firestarter, The Dead Zone, and 35mm Carrie); the pairing of A Nightmare on Elm Street and 35mm Wes Craven's New Nightmare on Sunday; Adam Green's Frozen on Monday, Tod Browning's Freaks on 35mm with short subjects on Tuesday; and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Wednesday. Halloween night itself they have the Teseracte Players with Rocky Horror. They also have an extended version of Once Upon at Time in Hollywood, though only matinees. Their sister cinema, The Capitol Theatre, will be showing The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D on Thursday, the first time I can recall it playing polarized around here (everywhere else always seems to get it in anaglyph).
• The Bright Screening Room sees a lot of use this week, starting out as the home base for The Boston Asian-American Film Festival, with shows from Friday through Sunday, many with guests and discussion. Then on Monday, Emerson's "Films from the Margin" club has a free screening of 1961 thriller The Mask, with Bob Furmanek and Greg Kintz of the 3-D Film Archive on hand to discuss its restoration (though I don't know if the room is set up for polarized 3D or anaglyph). After that, this week's Bright Lights screenings are Fast Color on Tuesday and Us on Thursday, both with faculty discussion but free and open to the public.
• It's the end of the month, so The Museum of Fine Arts is finishing up series. Boston Palestine Film Festival diverts to the Brattle to show Screwdrive on Friday evening before returning to the MFA with a short block and documentary The Apollo of Gaza on Saturday, wrapping up with documentary Four Colors and animated feature The Tower on Sunday. They also finish their "Exquisite Corpse: The Spirit of Hyman Bloom" program with Eraserhead and the Midsommar director's cut on Thursday.
• In addition to their regular Imax and 4D shows, The Museum of Science will be doing an "immersive" screening of The Blair Witch Project in the Planetarium on Wednesday night.
• Cinema Salem continues to do plenty for Halloween, with their original short documentaries "The History of Halloween" and "The True 1692" playing in 3D, splitting the small screen with indie horror Artik and Candy Corn. The Salem Horror Fest has a bunch of Steven King screenings there - the It miniseries on Friday' Cujo, Carrie, and Christine on Saturday (with Misery at the Salem Visitor Center); as well as The Dead Zone and the 1989 Pet Sematary on Sunday.
• The Luna Theater also has the Teseracte Players standing between you and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday, John Carpenter's original Halloween all day Saturday and Tuesday night, The Exorcist all day Sunday, and a special UMass Lowell "Philosophy and Film" presentation of Alex Proyas's Dark City on Monday. Oh, and the free Saturday Morning Cartoons, Sunday's "Magic Mystery Movie Club", and Weirdo Wednesday.

I will probably hit Parasite, The Lighthouse, Elm Street, The Mask, and want to get to Farming, Fast Color, and some of the spooky stuff, but that's kind of a lot!