Next Week in Virtual Tickets: Films sort of playing Boston 8 May 2020 - 14 May 2020

Got a notification on my phone this week from the Hong Kong theater app I while there last year and, folks, it's listing movie showtimes.

-- sigh --

• The Coolidge Corner Theatre continues to keep as busy as a theater can during this period, adding indie romantic comedy Straight Up and documentary What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael to their virtual screening room, keeping Deerskin, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Beyond the Visible: Hilma Af Klint, and The Booksellers around. They also complete the "Documentary Films of Lee Grant" series with a second double feature, "When Women Kill" & "The Wilmar 8" joining the pairing of "Down and Out in America" & "What Sex Am I"? and standalone feature A Father… A Son… Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's probably wise not to dawdle too much; I learned this week that they're starting to turn these over more quickly, with some of last week's selections already gone.
  
  On the other hand, Geothe-Institut selection Lara is unexpectedly held over for another three-day run through Sunday, and the New York International Children's Film Festival has two programs of Kid Flicks (one for those 3 and up, one for 8 and up) supporting the Coolidge through the 17th. For special events, they are notably the local location of RZA's live commentary on Shaolin vs Wu Tang at 9:15pm Friday evening. The After Midnight crew hosts a Q&A with projectionist Nick Lazzaro on Saturday night, and will have a live YouTube broadcast with What She Said director Rob Garver on Tuesday. The week's Coolidge Education film is Johnny Guitar, with UMass Boston professor Sarah Keller recording an intro and hosting a Zoom discussion on Thursday
• The Brattle Theatre adds two new features to their own virtual screening room: Vitalina Varela from Pedro Costa had a premiere at the HFA earlier and follows its title character (who shares a name with her character) as she travels from Cape Verde to Portugal too late for her ex-husband's funeral; Thousand Pieces of Gold is a restoration of a film from 1990 that appears to have been minimized (despite a great cast including Rosalind Chao, Chris Cooper, and Michael Paul Chan) with director Nancy Kelly only able to make documentaries since Kelly and screenwriter Anne Makepeace will join the Brattle for a Q&A session on Tuesday evening, though RSVPs are necessary. Deerskin and The Cordillera of Dreams also continue in the virtual screening room, which also has a special one-time screening & Q&A of Spaceship Earth on Sunday evening.
  
  They haven't posted a new "Y'Know, For the Kids!" recommendation in a couple of weeks, but the list of things there is still worth checking out. #BreakYourAlgorithm is being rescheduled to Monday and Thursday, with the latest recommendation Sammo Hung playing his former teacher in Painted Faces. They also plan to team with "Strictly Brohibited" for a Women of Sci-Fi series starting on Wednesday, but details for that aren't up yet.
• The Capitol adds Spaceship Earth to its virtual cinema offerings alongside Dying for Gold, The Whistlers, Once Were Brothers, and Slay the Dragon. Their friends at The Somerville Theatre won't open up Sunday for a 35mm Harold Lloyd double feature of For Heaven's Sake & Hot Water (doubly a shame as they are hard to stream), and have had to cancel their 70mm fest for later in the month, but they've got a pop-corn pop-up on Sunday, good for picking up snacks to eat with their virtual cinema offerings of Pahokee, The Whistlers, and Once Were Brothers
• The Regent Theatre has extended their virtual screening room runs of The Mindfulness Movement and Fantastic Fungi through at least Sunday.
• West Newton Cinema continue their virtual screening room programs of Earth, Best of CatVideoFest, Once Were Brothers, Slay the Dragon, and The Whistlers. Their GoFundMe campaign is still active, as is the "Local Hero" advance ticket sales with a matching ticket going to staff at the Newton Wellesley Hospital.
• GlobeDocs is offering a free documentary feature this weekend - RSVP for Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools at the link, and they'll send a link to watch that and another for discussing the film a noon on Monday.

Hopefully I'll get to Thousand Pieces of Gold, Straight Up, Capital, and a couple others this week, along with clearing some more shelf space.