Next Week in Virtual Tickets: Films sort of playing Boston 4 September 2020 - 10 September 2020

So that was summer, huh? Not gonna go down in history as one of the greats. Anyway, a couple more theaters open back up, but not the folks with actual film projection. It's looking like we're going to see things get even tighter, as plexes give more screens to fewer films to try and deal with 25-person limits, so releases are spread out (or go straight to streaming services, as with the Mulan remake on premium Disney+).

• For those who don't want to go out, The Coolidge Corner Theatre has Critical Thinking, directed by and starring John Leguizamo as a teacher who leads a high school chess team from a majority-minority school in Miami to the national championships. They also pick up Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin to stream after its brief placeholder run at the Kendall, with director Werner Herzog doing a livestreamed Q&A on Tuesday evening, and also coordinate Thursday's weekly Coolidge Education seminar (with film critic/historian Imogen Sara Smith) with the re-release of a new restoration of Clair Denis's Beau Travail. There's also a Saturday afternoon Q&A with Epicentro director Hubert Sauper. No events are currently planned for MR. SOUL!!, Coup 53, From Controversy to Cure, and I Used to Go Here, but they are all still playing in the virtual screening room.
• The Brattle Theatre picks up the new reissue of Tsai Ming-Liang's The Hole, also keeping Ghost Tropic, Moroni for President, MR. SOUL!, Desert One, the restoration of Son of the White Mare, Jazz on a Summer's Day, Represent, Creem: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine, and You Never Had It - An Evening with Bukowski, the last three marked as being on their final week.
  
  They also have this weekend's 36 Cinema show with Michael Jai White and Josh Barnett doing live commentary for The Sword of Doom at 9:15pm Sunday night.
• Christopher Nolan's Tenet officially opens this weekend and basically pushes everything else aside, because the number of people that would fill one screen in normal days now requires (at least) four. Still, it's new Nolan with John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, and a bunch of the usual suspects, playing West Newton, Fresh Pond Kendall Square, the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax and Dolby Cinema), Fenway, the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax and Dolby Cinema), Chestnut Hill, Watertown (including CWX), and Revere (including XPlus).
  
  Apple Fresh Pond and Landmark Theatres's Embassy also pick up Bill & Ted Face the Music, though mostly on the smaller screens because it's also on VOD. With those two, The New Mutants, and Unhinged not quite filling Fresh Pond to capacity, they also have screenings of The Lego Movie and Happy Feet.
  
  Boston Common and South Bay also have 42 back on screens as a tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman. Revere screens last year's great Little Women on Tuesday evening and The Prado Museum: A Collection of Wonders on Thursday afternoon.
• The Eight Hundred continues to play at Boston Common, the Seaport, and Revere, with Train to Busan Presents: Peninsula still at Boston Common and Revere, with Father There Is Only One 2 playing Revere.
• The West Newton Cinema has cleared space for Tenet but also has a screen for Ira Sachs's Frankie, featuring Isabelle Huppert as the title character on vacation with three generations of her family in Portugal. They also hang on to Inception (Saturday-Thursday), 2001: A Space Odyssey, Casablanca (Friday & Saturday), Motherless Brooklyn (Sunday-Thursday), The Goonies (Sunday), and The Wizard of Oz (Saturday). They are also offering curbside popcorn pre-orders for pick-up on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
  
  The Lexington Venue is closed this weekend, with the next "coming soon" films listed for 18 September.
• the New England Aquarium reopened a few weeks ago, including the Simons Imax Theatre; it's worth noting that the concessions are closed and the films playing ("Great White Shark", "Turtle Odyssey", "Sea Lions: Life By a Whisker", and "Backyard Wilderness" are 22 minute shorts rather than the usual 45-minute featurettes, and I'm guessing they aren't in 3D so people don't have to worry about putting recycled glasses right on their nose.
• With the crew furloughed, I'm guessing there's nobody at The Somerville Theatre to switch up what's in their virtual screening room, so it's going to be The Fight, Amulet, John Lewis: Good Trouble, the Quarantine Cat Film Fest, Pahokee, and Alice for a while; ditto for The Capitol keeping "One Small Step" shorts, the Cat Film Fest, The Surrogate, and Heimat Is a Space in Time in their own virtual theater, though folks are selling ice cream and snacks.
• The Regent Theatre has their last Kalliope Trio livestream concert on Monday, but has emptied out the virtual room out.
• The Brattle, the Coolidge, and West Newton are all offering relatively reasonable rentals for up to 20-ish people; search their websites or call them directly get quotes on rates, available slots, and what the rules on concessions and masking are.

I'll probably be spending a lot of time "at" the virtual edition of New York Asian Film Festival this coming week, but may also try and head out to David Copperfield, Bill and Ted, or The New Mutants while holding out hope that the Somerville will open by the end of the month and have a 70mm print of Tenet.

If you're not ready to go out, make sure to write to your representatives via Save Your Cinema, and check out Nightstream, the upcoming online festival put on by BUFF and other genre festivals around the country.