Friday, March 13, 2020

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 March 2020 - 19 March 2020

I'm writing this from the deck of a ferry in New Zealand where people don't seem too worried about COVID-19 at the moment, so I don't know what the smart move is back home; I know I'm going to be walking a hard line between "I should stay in even if asymptomatic to help prevent spreading the virus" and "places like the Brattle might be in trouble if people just stop showing up for a month" when I get back.

Be safe out there. Leave the extra seat if you do go out because, because there's gonna be some stuff that's worth seeing on the big screen (under normal circumstances), although some places - like the Harvard Film Archive, Bright Lights, and Museum of Fine Arts - have announced that they're closing for at least thirty days, while Irish Film Festival Boston has opted to reschedule for November.

  • If you do go out, Sony makes a bid for their own comic-book universe with Vin Diesel in Bloodshot, in which he plays Valiant's super-soldier able to regenerate his body via nanotechnology, though his memories are being erased and rewritten for nefarious purposes. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Imax/Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street (including Wide Screen), Fenway, the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax/Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax), Chestnut Hill, and Revere (including XPlus).

    The Hunt, delayed last year after people freaked out about how a movie about the rich hunting the poor (or is there something else going on?), chooses a lousy week to come out of quarantine, but can be seen at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Revere. At the other apparent end of the spectrum is I Still Believe, with KJ Apa as a popular musician who asks his audiences to pray for his sick girlfriend,, playing Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Revere.

    After a few months, ArcLight is finally living up to its claims of playing some non-mainstream stuff at Causeway Street with indie coming-of-age comedy Big Time Adolescence bagging a screen and Swallow - one of my favorites at last year's Fantasia Festival - getting at least one show a day for people to experience its lonely-housewife-ingests-increasingly-dangerous-things discomfort.

    Boston Common has the director's cut of The Exorcist as a sort of Friday-the-13th special. The original King Kong plays Fenway, the Seaport, and Assembly Row on Sunday. Documentary I Am Patrick tries to tie the saint's eponymous holiday to something other than binge-drinking at Fenway, the Seaport (Tuesday only), South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere (Tuesdaly only) on Tuesday and Wednesday. Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row have a double feature of A Quiet Place and its sequel scheduled for Wednesday, but given that the latter has been pushed down the schedule, best not to count on that.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Boston Common get First Cow, a story about outcasts in the old west who obtain the only cow in the territory and create a sort of community around it. It's the new one from Kelly Reichhardt and even the trailers exude a powerful humanity; I wouldn't be surprised if it's her masterpiece.

    The Coolidge is busy come midnight this weekend, with Swallow in the screening room; a Friday the 13th double feature on said day (I believe it's the remake followed by the first sequel in the original series on 35mm, but different sites/emails say different things); a 35mm print of Saw II with a Haus of Oni drag preshow on Saturday; and a continuation of their month of superhero flicks with X-Men: First Class on Friday and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on Saturday. They've also got Goethe-Institut presentation Lara on Sunday morning. Monday's Big Screen Classic is a new restoration of classic noir The Killers, with an optional seminar beforehand. They also have a preview show of Never Rarely Sometimes Always on Thursday night with director Eliza Hittman teleconferencing in afterward.
  • Kendall Square also gets Balloon, which was a Goethe-Institut selection and is a pretty darn good story of a family whose plan to flee East Germany via a homemade hot-air balloon. They also open Hope Gap, which features Annette Bening as a woman blindsided when her husband of decades (Bill Nighy) leaves her for another woman.

    To make room, they're moving Wendy and Burden over to the Embassy in Waltham.
  • Movies are evidently still being released in India, so Apple Fresh Pond has Angrezi Medium (or "English Medium"), a sequel to Hindi Medium with Irrfan Khan as a businessman sending his daughter to London for an English-language education. Baaghi 3 and Thappad (through Sunday) also show once a day each.
  • The Brattle Theatre has the last Space Film Festival show on Friday afternoon, with Gravity at 4pm. After that, they have a restoration of Soviet anti-war film Come and See, through the weekend (with a matinee on Tuesday), described as one of the more impressively spirit-breaking films of that genre. It splits the screen with (mostly) late shows of Purple Rain through Sunday.

    On Wednesday, they start ramping up for BUFF (and its local premiere of Saint Maud) with a repertory series called "A Little Faith Can Be a Dangerous Thing". It begins with Alice, Sweet Alice that night, while Thursday features a double feature of The Rapture & The Prophecy, all three on 35mm film. The series continues through Tuesday the 24th.
  • The Somerville Theatre has Pulp Fiction on 35mm film Friday night, including pre-show burlesque! They also break out the film for their first "Silents, Please!" show of the year, a Rin Tin Tin double feature. Then, Before their big festival (hopefully) kicks off next week, The Boston Underground Film Festival has their monthly "Dispatches from the Underground" at on Wednesday, featuring some of the best shorts from the 2019 edition in the micro.
  • ArtsEmerson is scheduled to show La Chana as part of the "Shared Stories" program, with shorts and post-film discussion, in the Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. Maybe not, though, seeing as Bright Lights has suspended their programming for the rest of the semester.
  • Belmont World Film starts their annual film series on Sunday with Agosto, a Cuban coming-of-age story set in 1994. It looks like there are still tickets for the pre-show dinner as well. Both will be at the Belmont Studio, which has the first half of the series before it moves to Newton.
  • The Regent Theatre currently has a couple of film programs on the schedule for this week: Music documentary Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams is scheduled for Wednesday, and "11th Annual Ciclismo Classico Bike Travel Film Festival" on Thursday, with live music from Slow Boat Home before the start of the program.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has announced that they will be closed for "up to 30 days", which probably wipes out the weekend's "Four Films by Stanley Kubrick" shows. It's not looking good for Thursday, either, so don't expect that day's screening of Cane River of opening night of The Turkish Film Festival (A Tale of Three Sisters), either.
  • The Luna Theater looks dark on Friday and Saturday, but the rest of the schedule shows the Magical Mystery Movie Sunday morning, Little Shop of Horrors for the rest of the day, The Witch on Tuesday, and Weirdo Wednesday.

    Cinema Salem has Onward, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band.


I'm still way out of town and figure that I'll just come home and drop after what looks like a 36-hour Tuesday, although maybe I should check and see what's in this country's theaters, just so I don't wind up going almost a month without seeing something on the big screen.

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