Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 18 June 2021 - 24 June 2021

Want to hear some good news after a year of being frightened the pandemic would destroy movie theaters? Because we got hit with a pretty nice surprise on that count!

• The Coolidge Corner Theatre just announced plans to expand into the empty space behind the building, with two new screens, more room in the lobby, an educational space, and more. Ground breaks as soon as next month It comes at the same time they're closing their virtual room and announcing that Private Movie Parties end at the end of June, a big shift from the past year.
  
  In the meantime, they're one of the places opening Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, which looks pretty much like what it says on the label, a look at the actress across her long life and career. It's also at Kendall Square and Boston Common.
  
  They've got their first outdoor screenings this weekend, with Shutter Island at Medfield State Hospital on Friday & Saturday (though both shows are marked sold out on the site). They also have a "Masked Matinee" show of In the Heights on Sunday the 20th, for those who are not yet ready to be in theaters above 25% capacity with people taking their masks off for snacks.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square is one of the places that opens a couple with crossover potential. The Sparks Brothers is an IFFBoston centerpiece and Edgar Wright's first documentary, covering the band Sparks, a seminal but little-known pop band that looks tremendously eccentric, with Wright likely delivering a film stylish enough to match. It's also at Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  
  There's also 12 Mighty Orphans, with Luke Wilson as a teacher and football coach who has to innovate to compete with the better-funded schools. If nothing else, it has a fantastic supporting cast, with Vinessa Shaw, Treat Williams, Wayne Knight (looking awful Stephen Root-ish), Martin Sheen, and Robert Duvall. It also plays The Capitol, Fresh Pond, and Boston Common.
  
  Landmark is one of the chains participating in "Cinema Week", an industry-wide event encouraging people to return to theaters from Tuesday the 22nd through Sunday the 27th. There are drawings for prizes all weeks and discount tickets and snacks on Tuesday and Wednesday.
• The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard opened Wednesday and plays The Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Imax and Dolby Cinema), Fenway, South Bay (including Imax and Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Boston Common also opens Our Ladies, which follows a group of Catholic schoolgirls from small-town Scotland looking to get into trouble on a trip to Edinburgh.
  
  "Fast Forward" finishes up with The Fate of the Furious on Friday night at Boston Common, Fenway (for reward program members), and Arsenal Yards, ahead of #9 coming out next week. There's also a Cinema Week Quiet Place double feature on Wednesday at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill. Jerry Maguire has 25th Anniversary shows on Sunday and Wednesday at Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Polish Holocaust documentary Of Animals and Men plays Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Tuesday.
  
  AMC Boston Common has Juneteenth-related screenings of Harriet (Friday/Wednesday), Do the Right Thing (Friday), Moonlight (Saturday/Thursday), Fences (Saturday/Monday), Love & Basketball (Sunday/Tuesday), Barbershop: The Next Cut (Sunday). At Fenway, the offerings Friday to Wednesday are Miss Juneteenth (no show Sunday) and Moonlight.
• The Brattle Theatre is reopening soon with a re-launched website, although in the meantime members should check their emails for another couple weeks of free member screenings and presales for the summer of "everything we would have shown in 2020". To what extent they will keep up their virtual cinema after that is unknown, but in the meantime, they add Take Me Somewhere Nice to their offerings, which has a Netherlands-raised young woman visiting her hospitalized father in Bosnia and finding all sorts of trouble while perhaps learning more about herself. It's offered alongside Slow Machine, "Who Will Start Another Fire", The Power of Kangwon Province, Two Lottery Tickets, and The Paper Tigers, though maybe not for long, as the Coolidge shut their online offerings down with little notice.
• Belmont World Film wraps their virtual World Refugee Month program with A Fish Tale available through Monday; director Emmanuelle Mayer taking part in a Q&A on Monday evening.
• The Roxbury International Film Festival is still in hybrid form this year, with rolling online offerings, free outdoor screenings of Summer of Soul (Saturday) and Jingle Jangle (Thursday) at the MFA. They partner with ArtsEmerson to present Q&As for A Tale of Three Chinatowns (Wednesday with The Boston Asian-American Film Festival) and IFFBoston alum A Reckoning in Boston (Thursday), among many other events.
• Vietnam's Bo Gia (Dad, I'm Sorry) hangs on in South Bay; Japan's Demon Slayer does the same at Boston Common.
• The West Newton Cinema is back to mixing and matching, with In the Heights, Cruella, and Nomadland playing all weekend, while Shiva Baby, Together Together, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Tom & Jerry only play Saturday and Sunday.
• Cinema Salem (open Friday-Monday) has Les nôtres ("Our Own"), a French thriller about teenagers caught up in their town's secrets. It's alongside In the Heights and A Quiet Place Part II.
• The marquee at The Somerville Theatre says they will be closed until "later this summer", so still a ways off.
• Theater rentals are available at the Coolidge, the Brattle, Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol, The Lexington Venue, and many of the multiplexes. The Coolidge has slots available to reserve the screening room and the GoldScreen online through the end of June, including private shows of the films they have playing in the larger screens.

Still looking at In the Heights, Slow Machine, and Kangwon Province (I have a good Korean disc to play as a potentially sarcastic double feature), and some of the others are tempting. Oh, and Luca on Disney+, if only as a complement to last week's Children of the Sea.