Next Week in Virtual Tickets: Films sort of playing Boston 31 July 2020 - 6 August 2020

Lots of places sending out links to Save Your Cinema right now, because things are starting to get tricky - because the state(s) can clear theaters to open, it's harder for them to tell their landlords, mortgage-holders, and the like that they can't bring money in, but both the restrictions they'ren under and people sensibly not wanting to go out, they're unlikely to make enough. So go to that site, let your Congresspeople know this is important, and hopefully there will be some assistance down the road as places try to figure out what comes next.

• Meanwhile, The Coolidge Corner Theatre continues to rotate movies in and out of their virtual screening room, with this week welcoming three documentaries. The Fight is the first film to be granted wide access to the workings of the American Civil Liberties Union, whose workload has seemingly grown exponentially after the election of Donald Trump as president. In addition to regular rentals, distributor Magnolia Pictures is also presenting a live Q&A on Sunday evening with both the filmmakers and the subjects. They also open two "Cinema Jukebox" entries, with Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind and Marley profiling two very different musicians. They also continue the runs of Yes, God, Yes, Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful, six Sundance Film Festival Short Films, and John Lewis: Good Trouble.
  
  There's also a second weekend of Goethe-Institut selection Relativity, with the German film running through Sunday. The Coolidge Education seminar for this week has Emerson professor Yu-Jin Chang discussing Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite on Thursday evening (rent/watch the film and sign up for both the introduction and Zoom discussion).
• The Brattle Theatre has recently been sharing pictures of the upgrades they're working on to be able to open safely, which will be tricky - the box office/concession area doesn't exactly have room for people to stand six feet apart. In the meantime, they're having a pop-up concession sale this weekend - order ahead at this page and they'll have popcorn, snacks, soda, beer, etc., ready for you during a specific half-hour window between 3pm and 6:30pm on Saturday. This should hopefully pair well with a Virtual Screening Room such as Beats, Shanghai Triad, Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things, In My Blood It Runs, and The Killing Floor, with 36Cinema's latest film-with-commentary, The Man From Hong Kong playing Saturday night.
• Wicked Queer, the Boston LGBT film festival, has been going on for a week and continues through Sunday evening, and it looks like they've pivoted from having films playing specific days to most being available for the rest of the festival period.
• The Somerville Theatre also brings The Fight to their virtual screening room, which also offers Amulet, John Lewis: Good Trouble, the Quarantine Cat Film Fest, Pahokee, and Alice. Their friends at The Capitol, in addition to having the ice cream shop open for snacks, have the "One Small Step" shorts, the Cat Film Fest, The Surrogate, and Heimat Is a Space in Time in their virtual theater.
• The West Newton Cinema is open with $5 matinees that (if I'm reading this right) include popcorn and a soda. No new releases, but 2001: A Space Odyssey joins Casablanca,Motherless Brooklyn, Dolphin Tale, The Goonies, and The Wizard of Oz; buying tickets ahead of time is recommended with moviegoers required to wear a mask and keep distance between groups.
  
  The Lexington Venue remains closed with the website indicating a planned August 7th re-opening.
• The Regent Theatre brings What Doesn't Kill Us back to their virtual offerings, along with Reggae Boyz and WBCN and the American Revolution. This week's Kalliope Reed Quintet concert streams on Friday night, with Bearly Dead streaming from their stage on Wednesday.
• New York's Japan Cuts continues to stream through the 30th, while the Korean Cultural Center's Korean Movie Night continue through the 26th.

This week's plan is mostly to not let the discs from the annual Barnes & Noble Criterion Collection sale sit on my shelf for too long and maybe get a head start on the screener streams from Fantasia, although my plan is mostly to try and follow the schedule being released Thursday when I can.