Friday, April 10, 2020

Next Week in Virtual Tickets: Films sort of playing Boston 10 April 2020 - 16 April 2020

The commercials say Trolls: World Tour is playing in theaters and online, and I'd be interested to hear about which theaters. All drive-ins? Are they doing double features with Onward? Nothing within a hundred miles or so of Boston, anyway.

  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has turned their virtual screening room over a little, dropping two in order to pick up a couple of things that played the theater back in the before times, The Best of CatVideoFest and The Times of Bill Cunningham. Saint Frances, Bacurau, Fantastic Fungi, Sorry We Missed You, and And Then We Danced all continue.

    "Coolidge Education" is looking to be a weekly thing for a while, with DigBoston's Jake Mulligan delivering a pre-show introduction for selection What's Up Doc on Tuesday and then hosting a post-screening Zoom on Thursday. JustWatch shows plenty of ways to rent/buy/stream.
  • The good folks at Frame One have finally started linking to their virtual cinemas on their homepages, although it's a couple links in - it feels like this isn't really a thing their website design can easily accommodate. The Somerville Theatre currently has The Whistlers, Once Were Brothers, and The Roads Not Taken in their virtual cinema; the latter is the new film by Sally Potter, starring Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning as a father and daughter considering alternate versions of the father's life. If you want genuine movie theater snacks, they're having another Popcorn Pop-Up on Saturday; call and pay ahead and they'll have popcorn, candy, soday, and/or ice cream waiting.

    Their friends at The Capitol in Arlington have also set up a virtual cinema. Their features are slightly different, with The Whistlers, Once Were Brothers, and gerrymandering documentary Slay the Dragon.
  • West Newton Cinema opened their streaming library last weekend; you can support that theater by renting The Roads Not Taken, Best of CatVideoFest, Once Were Brothers, Slay the Dragon, and/or The Whistlers from their homepage.
  • The Brattle Theatre builds on their last repertory series of recommendations with Virtual Vacation International, offering up lineups of films with strong senses of place from around the world. Tonight's recommendations are Chungking Express & Rebels of the Neon God; Saturday offers up a triple-feature of Man with a Movie Camera, London: The Modern Babylon, and My Winnipeg; Sunday is Wings of Desire & Roman Holiday; Monday's shows are Stray Dog and a "late show" of Güeros; Rafiki and Faat Kiné are on the docket for Tuesday; Cléo from 5 to 7 and Taste of Cherry on Wednesday; wrapping up with a musical double feature of Scott Pilgrim vs the World & Starstruck on Thursday. Or you can pick and choose and mix them up; nobody's enforcing anything.

    The running series continue as well; today's daily "Y'Know, For the Kids!" selection is Robert Altman's Popeye (with Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall), and this past week's #BreakYourAlgorithm selections were Don and The Last Days of Chez Nous, with new ones coming Wednesday and Thursday. That doesn't, technically, include Wednesday's Virtual Cinema screening of Roar; the $10 ticket both supports the Brattle and lets the viewer watch and/or participate in a Q&A with co-star John Marshal. They are also planning a "virtual premiere" of Other Music on Friday the 17th to replace the one they had to cancel when the building shut down.
  • Emerson continues Bright Lights at Home, where you can register for Zoom discussions. Once again, both of this week's films are Netflix exclusives, so if you subscribe, you can watch Dolemite Is My Name and then see discussion with Rudy Ray Moore biographer David Shabazz on Tuesday, or see director Petra Costa discuss her documentary The Edge of Democracy on Thursday.
  • GlobeDocs is offering post-viewing discussion for documentary short "Empty Sacred Spaces" on Monday; the RSVP page includes both the short film and the instructions to sign up for a discussion with the filmmakers Monday at noon.

There is, of course, also the usual spurt of streaming service and VOD releases, and it's not hard to disinfect any physical media you get in the mail (just rip that plastic off), which is probably where much of my watching will come from, although I'll probably check out The Roads Not Taken from among the new releases.

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