Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 September 2021 - 9 September 2021

If Labor Day being a big movie weekend becomes a thing because of Covid, I won't mind. I'd rather it happened some other way, obviously, but who needs three-day weekends with no cool new movies to watch?

• So gear up, folks, Marvel has Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings for us, with Simu Liu as the Master of Kung Fu, Hong Kong legend Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as his supervillain father, Awkwafina and Michelle Yeoh, and Jackie Chan protege Brad Allan in charge of the martial arts action. It gets a ton of screens at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax, Dolby Cinema, RealD 3D, and Chinese-subtitled shows), Fenway (including RealD 3D), South Bay (including Imax/Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, Assembly Row (including Imax/Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The Capitol also picks up the Cinderella movie that Columbia sold to Amazon, reimagined as a modern-day-ish jukebox musical by Kay Cannon, who wrote the Pitch Perfect movies and directed the apparently well-liked Blockers. Apple Fresh Pond, meanwhile, has late shows of something called Burial Ground Massacre, with Michael Madsen as the guy picking college kids off one by one (sort of; IMDB has him as "Demon" and wrestler Vinny Marseglia as "Masked Damon").
  
  Boston Common and Assembly Row bring back United 93 to mark the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, which, uh, I dunno. There are 35th Anniversary screenings of Backdraft Sunday and Wednesday at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row. There's also a special "Premiere Event" show of documentary The Alpinist (with ten minutes or so of bonus material) at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Tuesday. There also seems to be some extras included with Thursday's screening of Time Is Up (the English-language debut of director Elisa Amoruso) at Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Fenway also has an extended cut of RUSH concert film Cinema Strangiato 2019 on Thursday.
• Arguably the biggest news at The Coolidge Corner Theatre is that starting this weekend, proof of vaccination or a negative Covid test will be required for entry. They also open On Broadway, a documentary about the previous revival of the Great White Way, which is hopefully more than people famous for doing theater talking about how important theater in New York is to America. That's also at Kendall Square.
  
  With a new month comes new midnights, with "Marty after Midnite" featuring a 35mm print of Taxi Driver on Friday. Most weekends will feature two Scorsese films, but Saturday is given over to Haus of Oni for It Follows with a special drag pre-show. There's a Masked Matinee of Pig on Sunday, the annual labor day screening of Jaws on 35mm Monday, and the first "Rewind!" show in a while on Thursday, with Clueless followed by an after-party at Parlour.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square gets anthology film The Year of the Everlasting Storm, an shot-during-Covid anthology with seven filmmakers from around the world, with David Lowery representing the USA and Apichatpong Weerasethakul repping Thailand, among others. They also open Who You Think I Am, which stars Juliette Binoche as a middle-aged woman who creates a second Facebook profile and finds herself involved with her younger former lover's roommate.
• The Brattle Theatre has documentary Without Getting Killed or Caught from Friday to Monday, which looks at the life of Guy Clark, a legendary Texas songwriter whose relationships with his wife and best friend are as complicated and fraught as any country song. The Friday evening show also includes a pre-recorded Q&A with the filmmakers.
  
  Not having the chance to do the usual marathon back in April, the Brattle presents "Tales of the Muppet Diaspora" throughout September, with both the original films and the later projects worked on by Jim Henson and company. This week's presentations include The Muppet Movie on 35mm (Saturday/Monday/Tuesday), Little Shop of Horrors (Saturday/Sunday), The Muppets Take Manhattan on 35mm (Sunday/Monday), Follow That Bird on 35mm (Monday/Tuesday), Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (Tuesday), The Empire Strikes Back (Wednesday), and Return of the Jedi (Thursday).
  
  Online, The Brattlite holds steady with What We Left Unfinished, Sabaya, and Witches of the Orient.
• The West Newton Cinema has times listed through Monday and must looks like they're back to crowded marquees with Shang-Chi, Searching for Mr. Rugoff, On Broadway Together, Respect, Free Guy, Stillwater (Sunday/Monday), Roadrunner (Sunday), Space Jam 2 (Saturday-Monday), Summer of Soul, and In the Heights (Saturday-Monday).
  
  The Lexington Venue is also open through Labor Day with CODA and Respect.
• Cinema Salem goes with Shang-Chi, Candyman, and Free Guy Friday to Sunday. The Friday late shows - Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre this week - are joined by a couple other special presentations this week: There's a Sunday matinee of Vertigo, while record producer Richard Guérin visits for a a Cinema Sounds screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, chatting about the process of scoring films.
• The Luna Theater in Lowell has new events on the schedule, kicking off with the first "Weirdo Wednesday" in 18 months or so on the 8th. It's now free for their new "Secret Satellite Society" members, although you can purchase a weekly membership for $5 or a monthly one for $10.
  
  Elsewhere on the re-opening front, Landmark's weekly email indicates that the Embassy in Waltham will be back in business next weekend, which is cool (it's a neat little place and it's a bit of a hike to the next-closest cinema from there). The Somerville Theatre, meanwhile, is at least replacing the circa-March-2020 posters in the window with others, emphasizing their upcoming 70mm presentations. The Harvard Film Archive is probably shut down until the campus itself reopens in 2022. Theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol, The Venue, and many of the multiplexes.

Shang-Chi, The Night House, Jaws, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, maybe a little more. And, yes, there's lingering Fantasia stuff still to watch.