Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 June 2021 - 1 July 2021

 

Wow, is this the year's halfway point already? Time has just flown, movie-wise, although it kind of feels like summer movie season is just starting this weekend.

• The big opening this weekend is F9: The Fast Saga, and I've got to admit, I'm disappointed that this is the best title they could manage between The Fate of the Furious and the inevitable Fasten Your Seatbelts. Anyway, the gang's all back (minus Jason Statham and the Rock), including those whose presence is kind of difficult to explain, with John Cena as Dom's long-lost brother who is now a rogue secret agent, and even more ludicrous automotive mayhem. It's at The Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, Kendall Square, Boston Common (including Imax, Dolby Cinema, and some shows subtitled in Mandarin), Fenway, South Bay (including Imax & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Boston Common has also booked Witnesses, which chronicles the forming of the Mormon religion.
  
  Fenway, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards have 25th Anniversary screenings of The Birdcage on Sunday/Monday/Wednesday. Fenway also has their first post-pandemic Russian feature, with Cursed Official - in which a corrupt deputy is cursed to be unable to take bribes - on Thursday evening.
• Over at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, they open Werewolves Within this weekend, a horror-comedy-mystery where the whole town winds up snowed in at an inn, only to have someone (or something!) knocking them off. It's also at Kendall Square. Note that it's only playing on the bigger screens at the Coolidge through Tuesday afternoon, as Zola grabs screen 1, with Taylour Paige as the title character who originally tweeted out her wild tale of a road trip from Detroit to Tampa gone very wrong indeed. That also plays Kendall Square, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay.
  
  There's also one show per day (all except Monday at 4pm) of La Piscine, in which Alain Delon and Romy Schneider play a couple staying in a friend's villa only to find it get much more uncomfortable when said friend shows up. They also restart midnights this weekend, with Army of Darkness on 35mm Friday night and Cats at 11:59pm Saturday. There's also a "masked matinee" of In the Heights on Sunday morning.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square also picks up A Crime on the Bayou, a documentary on the arrest and trial of Gary Duncan, a black teenager arrested on trumped up charges in 1966, and attorney Richard Sobol, who would defend him and become a lifelong friend.
• The Brattle Theatre is a week from reopening for regular-ish business with everything you might expect, and some special members-only screenings over the next week may still have tickets available. They're also continuing their virtual cinema shows for now, though, with two new additions. Sweet Thing is a locally-shot-on-16mm drama in which two kids who had preferred to stay with their father are forced to live with their mother and her dangerous boyfriend, at least until things get more dangerous and they run. The American Sector, meanwhile, has its filmmakers Courtney Stephens and Pacho Velez visiting the over 70 locations where a portion of the Berlin Wall is on display in America, examining the people and places around them. Also continuing are Take Me Somewhere Nice, Slow Machine, "Who Will Start Another Fire", The Power of Kangwon Province, and Two Lottery Tickets.
• The Roxbury International Film Festival runs through Saturday with the closing night featuring two films at the MFA: Executive Order (also available online) is set in a near-future Rio de Janeiro where people of African descent have been commanded to return to their "countries of origin"; documentary Ailey will only be playing in-person, though the Q&A is pre-recorded. ArtsEmerson and The Boston Asian-American Film Festival have A Tale of Three Chinatowns through Sunday, while A Reckoning in Boston is at ArtsEmerson through Saturday.
• The Regent Theatre screens Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm on Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday; it's a documentary about a small music studio built out of barn in Wales where some fairly notable albums were recorded.
• 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 has In the Heights, Cruella, Shiva Baby, and Nomadland playing all weekend (at various times), Tom & Jerry Friday afternoon, and Raya and the Last Dragon for matinees Saturday and Sunday.
• Cinema Salem (open Friday-Monday) has documentary Kenny Schraf: When Worlds Collide, a look at a member of the art scene that included Haring and Basquiat who lived. It's alongside In the Heights and F9.
• It's looking like The Somerville Theatre may be quite a different place when it reopens, with the two upstairs cinemas converted to a music venue, more 70mm screenings in the big room, and perhaps some D-Box seats. That's still a few weeks off. Theater rentals are available at the Brattle, Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol, The Lexington Venue, and many of the multiplexes.
• Hey, there's an entry for a free outdoor screening on the Joe's Free Films sheet, with Raya and the Last Dragon playing a drive-in show at Tufts (registration required)!

Not sure how much I'll hit the movies this week - Friday and Sunday are spoken for with a lucky Red Sox ticket and a trip to Maine to see family I haven't seen in a long while (including a nephew who I haven't met yet), but days off Monday and Tuesday because I had to use what was left over from last year by the end of the month. So probably F9, In the Heights, Werewolves Within, and maybe The Sparks Brothers.