Friday, July 16, 2021

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 16 July 2021 - 22 July 2021

It's starting to look a bit like a summer movie season out there, even if there are some weird decisions going on.
  • Spanning all sorts of theaters is Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, new from biographical filmmaker Morgan Neville and, unlike a number of other Bourdain tributes, one that grapples with the end of his life. It's been getting a little flak for digitally synthesizing his voice to fill some gaps where they had had his written but not spoken words, which is a choice that probably needs to be examined a bit. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre (including a Sunday afternoon Masked Matinee), the Capitol, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row.

    Also playing the Coolidge and Kendall Square is Summertime, a film from the director of Blindspotting that tracks the intersecting lives of 25 people in Los Angeles, told through poetry.

    The Coolidge's alien invasion for the week is Tobe Hooper's memorably creepy remake of Invaders from Mars, playing midnight on Friday and Saturday on 35mm. The week's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of A League of Their Own on Monday, and there are theatrical showings of Bo Burnham's comedy special Inside on Thursday (at the Coolidge and the Kendall).
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square also opens Pig, which is a lot more centered and internal than one might expect for a movie featuring Nicolas Cage as a truffle hunter pursing his stolen pig through Portland, Oregon's strange culinary underworld (I like it quite a bit); it also plays Boston Common.

    An organization called "Doc.World" has a Doc.Boston Documentary Film Festival at the Kendall this weekend, with Missing in Brooks County playing Saturday night (along with two shorts) and a 12-short program on Sunday. Tickets are free for those who RSVP to the address on their site, but are first-come, first-serve. The Kendall and Boston Common also have Enormous: The Gorge Story for one night on Wednesday
  • I know other people don't like 3D as much as I do, but it's weird that Space Jam: A New Legacy isn't playing in the format, right? It feels like this "LeBron James and the Looney Tunes playing basketball with everyone else on the Warner Brothers servers" would be a natural, both for "might look kind of cool" and "prying $4 extra out of people" reasons. But, alas, it is only in 2D at The Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton, Kendall Square, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, Chestnut Hill, and HBOmax.

    In other years you might also have gotten at least a 3D conversion for Escape Room: Tournament of Champions, in which the survivor(s) of the first film look to find and stop the people behind the curtain, but get locked in another set of death-trap puzzles with those who have done so in other rooms. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    There are 70th anniversary screenings of The African Queen at Fenway on Sunday and Wednesday. Assembly Row shows a late screening of Back to the Future on Sunday, but that doesn't seem right.
  • The Brattle Theatre has more of "Some of the Best of 2020", including Another Round (Friday/Saturday), Deerskin (Friday/Saturday), Miss Juneteenth (Sunday), the restored Flowers of Shanghai (Monday), and Shirley (Wednesday/Thursday). The vertical "Movie Movies" series has a special encore of Singin' in the Rain on Saturday and Buster Keaton's The Cameraman on Tuesday, including a live score.

    Online in The Brattlite, they offer Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, a documentary about choreographer Bill T. Jones creating D-Man in the Waters, a major piece of art spurred by the AIDS crisis. There's also Witches of the Orient, a French documentary about the Japanese national women's volleyball team of the 1960s (you may remember that they were considered an almost undefeatuable foe in Leap last year). There's also Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over, Sweet Thing, The American Sector, Slow Machine, and Take Me Somewhere Nice.
  • Anime Fans can catch Fate/stay night [Heaven's Feel] III. spring song on Sunday and Tuesday at South Bay, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Demon Slayer keeps going at Boston Common.
  • The West Newton Cinema is open through Sunday with Space Jam 2, Black Widow, Summer of Soul, In the Heights, Nomadland (Saturday/Sunday), Raya and the Last Dragon, and Tom & Jerry.
  • Cinema Salem is open Friday to Monday with the big guns (Black Widow, Space Jam 2), the niche (Undine and Werewolves Within), and a Friday late show of Nobuhiko Obayashi's House.
  • The Lexington Venue has reopened, with Roadrunner and Summer of Soul. The Somerville Theatre, and The Harvard Film Archive, Embassy Cinema, and Belmont Studio are all still in limbo for various reasons. Theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol, The Venue, and many of the multiplexes.
  • This week's outdoor SomerMovieFest show has Mrs. Doubtfire playing at Nunziato Fieldon Thursday. As yet, it's the only thing on Joe's Free Films, but keep checking back.
Will I see Space Jam? Probably, along with Roadrunner and maybe Summertime.

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