Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 August 2021 - 26 August 2021

Late August is always a weird time on the movie calendar, but I think the studios actually having noteworthy stuff open because of their backlog but the indies putting out little enough that the bigger things are playing at more boutique-y theaters kind of balances 2021 out.

• Does The Coolidge Corner Theatre open The Night House (including the Sunday afternoon "Masked Matinee") under more normal circumstances? Probably not, but it looks like a spiffy supernatural thriller from David Bruckner with Rebecca Hall as a widow moving into the house her husband built before his apparent suicide and finding that something is definitely strange there. It also plays Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Kendall Square, and Assembly Row. The Coolidge also has an extremely limited run of Searching for Mr. Rugoff, with the documentary about a mid-century cinema entrepreneur playing the GoldScreen Saturday & Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening.
  
  Late night at the Coolidge, Folk Horror Friday has the '06 version of The Wicker Man on 35mm; someone asked Nicolas Cage what it was like being in that sort of unintentional comedy and he replied "do you think any of this happens by accident?" There's another 35mm print for Samurai Summer Saturday, Takashi Miike's terrific 13 Assassins. For those that can't stay up late, there's classic samurai with a 35mm print of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo on Monday evening.
• Original sci-fi thriller Reminiscence, from Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, opens at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Imax), Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row (including Imax), Arsenal Yards (in CWX), Chestnut Hill, and on HBOmax. It takes place in a flooded Miami and has Hugh Jackman as a specialist in virtual reality memory recreation who finds himself in a massive conspiracy when his femme fatale client goes missing. There's also The Protege with Maggie Q as an assassin looking to avenge her mentor (Samuel L. Jackson) against a crime boss played by Michael Keaton; it plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  For the kids, there's Paw Patrol: The Movie, a feature-length adventure from the Nickelodeon cartoon/toy line. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay (including sensory-friendly screenings), Assembly Row, Chestnut Hill, and on Paramount+.
  
  Chance the Rapper's Magnificent Coloring World continues daily at Boston Common, and another music-themed presentation, Halsey's long-form music video/album "If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power" plays the Imax screen at Boston Common on Wednesday night. 35th Anniversary screenings of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home play Fenway and Arsenal Yards on Sunday. Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards have Coraline for Tuesday, with about a half-hour of supplemental material on top of the great Harry Selick stop-motion picture ahead of its upcoming Blu-ray reissue (in 2D, though). There's also a one-night show of urban fantasy The Show at Boston Common and Assembly Row on Thursday, which I believe is the first feature written by comics icon Alan Moore.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square opens documentary Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power, including a Friday-night screening with director Abby Ginzberg doing an in-theater Q&A about the film and the Congresswoman who was one of the sole anti-war voices after 9/11.
  
  They also open Flag Day with Sean Penn directing himself and daughter Dylan as, well, a father and daughter, the twist being that the father was a notorious counterfeiter. It's also at Boston Common. There's also Fantasia selection Cryptozoo, Dash Bloom's animated follow-up to the bizarre My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea which has Lake Bell and others providing voices for cryptozoologists seeking to observe and/or capture mysterious and mythological creatures.
• The Brattle Theatre opens No Ordinary Man, a documentary on Billy Tipton, a pianist who was also an icon as a trans man. It plays during prime time (late afternoon/evening) from Friday to Sunday, and matinees from Monday to Thursday.
  
  It shares the screen with "Some of the Best of 2020", entering the home stretch with indie horror movie Relic playing Friday and Saturday, documentary Time on Sunday and Monday, and influential Czech sci-fi classic Ikarie XB-1 - which predated but anticipated many elements of Star Trek, 2001, and Alien - on Wednesday and Thursday. The Movie Movie selection on Tuesday is Variety.
  
  The Brattlite keeps their line=up of What We Left Unfinished, Sabaya, Summertime, Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, and Witches of the Orient.
• Chinese drama Confetti opens Boston Common, featuring Zhu Zhu as a mother who moves to New York City in order to get her dyslexic daughter an education, which is apparently difficult in the conformist People's Republic. Fans of action from the Hong Kong SAR can still catch Raging Firethere as well.
  
  Telugu-language crime comedy Raja Raja Chora plays Apple Fresh Pond.
• The West Newton Cinema is open at least through Monday and moving a bit back toward their boutique/second-run usual by bringing Dream Horse back to join Respect, Free Guy, Jungle Cruise, Stillwater, Roadrunner, Space Jam 2 (no shows Saturday/Sunday), Summer of Soul, and In the Heights.
  
  The Lexington Venue is also on the weekend schedule, opening CODA alongside Respect.
• Cinema Salem goes with The Night House, Free Guy, Pig, and Roadrunner Friday to Sunday, with a Friday late show of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue.
• The Somerville Theatre, The Harvard Film Archive, and Embassy Cinema are still closed for now. Theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol, The Venue, and many of the multiplexes.
• Joe's Free Films shows A League of Their Own at Christopher Columbus Park on Sunday, Raya and the Last Dragon at Dorchester's Ronan Park on Tuesday, and Trolls: World Tour at Roxbury's Marcella Playground on Thursday.
• The New York Asian Film Festival officially runs through the 22nd, but some of its films will still be available on Film at Lincoln Center's virtual platform into the next week, and they will also be using their Eventive site for a Taiwan Ghost Month series of seven recent supernatural thrillers from the island, including the recommended Silk, Detention, and Mon Mon Mon Monsters.

I'll be plowing through more Fantasia and NYAFFprograms, including the shorts programs, hopefully with time to detour to Cryptozoo, Reminiscence, and The Lake House.