Friday, January 31, 2020

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 31 January 2020 - 6 February 2020

Oscars in less than a week and a half, which doesn't leave a lot of time for catching up. The ceremony is crazy early this year.

  • There are, at least, plenty of places to catch up on nominated films, with the Oscar-Nominated Shorts playing not just the The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, Cinema Salem, and The ICA as usual, but also Boston Common, Causeway Street, and the Luna in Lowell. The Coolidge, the Kendall, and Boston Common have Animation and Live Action every day, while Causeway Street and CinemaSalem have them and the Documentaries as well. The ICA has Live Action on Friday, Saturday, and Thursday and Animation on Saturday and Sunday; the Luna has animation on Friday and Saturday, Live Action on Saturday and Tuesday, and Documentaries on Saturday and Monday. Docs will also be coming to the Coolidge and ICA next weekend.

    Aside from the ones that are still kicking around in release, several places are doing Best Picture showcases, with Boston Common having a single ticket with Ford v Ferrari, Joker and Little Women on Saturday while Fenway and Kendall Square are running Best Picture series. Fenway and Boston Common are skipping the Netflix productions, but the Kendall will be including Marriage Story and The Irishman in theirs.
  • While that's going on, there is new stuff opening. The Rhythm Section is a rare non-Bond film from Eon Productions, with Blake Lively as a woman seeking vengeance on those she believes killed her family and Jude Law as her mentor. That's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere. There's also Gretel & Hansel, a consciously dark take on the myth from cult horror director Osgood Perkins. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.

    Fenway has an encore of Russian fantasy comedy Kholop (aka Peasant) on Sunday afternoon. For anime fans, Revere seems to be the only place around here playing The Wonderland (which I found okay but not great at Fantasia), with one subtitled show Wednesday evening. The ArcLight on Causeway is doing a 29 Days of Free Film program, although apparently all of the tickets have been reserved at their website, although there is a survey/mailing list to let you know if they release more.
  • Apple Fresh Pond turns over their slate of Indian film, opening Telugu action movie Ashwathama; Hindi biopic Gul Makai, starring Reem Shaikh as Malala Yousafzai; Hindi comedy Jawaani Jaaneman, in which Saif Ali Khan's playboy discovers he has an adult daughter on Friday. Tamil-language action movie Dagaalty plays on Friday and Saturday, with Marathi political thriller Dhurala, also playing on the 1st. Panga continues from last week and Ancham Pathira plays one more show on Sunday.

    Dominican comedy Los Leones continues in Revere, and Japanese animated fantasy Weathering with You sticks around for another week at Boston Common. The latter also brings back Ne Zha to fill the Chinese-movie shaped hole left after the Lunar New Year movies were canceled, which Well Go is promoting as a new English dub, although the listings don't indicate dubbed or subtitled for these shows.
  • The Brattle Theatre pays tribute to the late Agnès Varda with a series of Varda Rarities: Lions Love (...and Lies) & One Hundred and One Nights play as a double feature on Friday, with Cinevardaphoto and Daguerréotypes paired on Saturday. There's an early matinee of The World of Jacques Demy on Sunday, with the rest of the day a double feature of shorts programs that cover 45 years of filmmaking. The series finishes with Jacquot de Nantes on Monday.

    After that, they begin a short run of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood on 35mm film, with shows on Tuesday and Wednesday before it (temporarily) cedes the screen to the opening night of Boston Jewish Film's Boston Israeli Film Festival, which welcomes special guests for the premiere of Aulcie.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has a 35mm print of They Live at midnight on Friday and Us on Saturday, with the latter day also featuring a midnight show of Cats. The Somerville is also doing late-ish "audience participation" shows, and I'm mildly curious to what extent this national attempt to make Cats a cult movie right away, without it fading into obscurity and being rediscovered, is organic and to what extent it's Universal trying to get something out of that debacle.

    There's also a Science on Screen Jr. show of Big Hero 6 on Sunday morning, with a robotics engineer teaching kids about soft and swarm robotics. Monday's Stage & Screen show is Chaplin's Modern Times, with post-film discussion with cast & crew from the Huntington Theatre Company's Sweat.
  • The Harvard Film Archive has more 35mm Silent Hitchcock this weekend, with The Lodger at 7pm Friday and Blackmail at the same time Saturday & Sunday, with the latter the sound version. Friday night's "Cinema of Resistance" show is Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool, screening on film at 9pm (note that it was pushed back a half hour after they adjusted The Lodger to play at a lower frame rate). The one Angela Schanelec film this weekend is a 35mm print of Orly (9pm Saturday), while the second shorts program in The Films and Videos of Richard Serra plays Monday evening, with a couple on 16mm film.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts continues the Boston Festival of Films from Japan, with The Island of Cats and Takashi Miike's First Love both playing on Friday and Sunday. There's also a nifty-looking show on Thursday, with "The Blunderwood Portable" showing the construction of an oversized Underwood typewriter sculpture, with a performance by the Boston Typewriter Orchestra and post-film discussion from the director and the featured artists
  • The Regent Theatre has two more screenings of Rolling Stone: The Life and Death of Brian Jones on Saturday and Tuesday, as well as a special matinee show of The Lorax to celebrate Tu B'Shevat, "The Birthday of the Trees", on Saturday morning.
  • Bright Lights continues its Spring series with The Dead Don't Die on Tuesday and All We've Got on Thursday, with the post-film discussion of the latter including writer/director (and Emerson alumnus) Alexis Clements. Both free shows are open to the public in the Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room with post-film discussion from Emerson faculty.
  • In addition to the shorts, The Luna Theater has Breakfast at Tiffany's on Sunday, after that morning's surprise Magical Mystery Movie Club show, with Weirdo Wednesday also chugging along.


Silent Hitchcock, Oscar shorts, and maybe drilling down through the piles and piles of Blu-rays for me.
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