Friday, October 15, 2021

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 15 October 2021 - 21 October 2021

I feel like we, as provincial Bostonians, should be more excited about a new Ben & Matt movie, even if it's not as Ben-and-Matt-y as it could potentially be.
  • It's kind of crazy that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck haven't co-written a movie since they won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting, but they both worked on the screenplay for Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, although apparently not quite so much as a team, with Affleck moving to a smaller part than his original co-starring role. It recounts the story leading up to the duel of the title three times, from the points of view of a knight (Damon), his squire (Adam Driver), and the former's wife (Jodie Comer), who claims the latter assaulted her. It's at The Capitol, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Kendall Square, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, the Embassy, and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening is Halloween Kills, the sequel to the 2018 Halloween sequel which discarded all that came in between, with Michael Myers escaping from apparently being burned alive to menace Jamie Lee Curtis's family again. It's at The Somerville Theatre, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Fenway, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, the Embassy, Chestnut Hill, and on Peacock.

    Boston Common continues having "Thrills & Chills Surprise Screenings" on Fridays and Wednesdays, plus a Saturday night screening of Rocky Horror. They (and the Embassy) also get "musician scraping by" drama Hard Luck Love Song, along with animated film Koati, set in a Latin American rainforest and listed as English-language on IMDB but Spanish-with-subtitles on Fandango.

    Arsenal Yards offers matinees of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit Friday to Sunday. There are 30th anniversary screenings of The Silence of the Lambs at Fenway, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday.
  • E. Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin have mostly taken their documentary cameras to high, dizzying mountains, so what they do in The Rescue is a real switch-up, focusing on the recreational cave-divers who lent their extremely specialized skills to a seemingly impossible rescue operation of 12 stranded schoolchildren and their coach in Thailand three years ago. It plays at The Coolidge Corner Theatre (with Vasarhelyi on-hand for live Q&A for two shows on Saturday), Boston Common.

    Also opening at the Coolidge is Bergman Island, a fictional film which follows married filmmakers (Vicky Krieps & Tim Roth) to the island where Ingmar Bergman lived and shot his films, hoping to find inspiration. Mia Wasikowska is also in it, and she's never less than interesting.

    The Coolidge also makes a weekend field trip to Medfield State Hospital, where they will be running a pop-up drive-in and showing the original versions of Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Friday and Saturday. The After Midnite crew will leave a contingent behind, of course, showing Stephen Sommers's The Mummy late Friday night and Young Frankenstein late Saturday. There's a Science on Screen show on Monday, with Harvard astronomer Dr. Avi Loeb introducing a 35mm print of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, plus a "Stage & Screen" presentation of The Witch on Tuesday, plus a Cinema Jukebox presentation of Tom Petty: Somewhere You Feel Free (The Making of Wildflowers) on Wednesday (also at Boston Common/Fenway/Kendall Square, with those locations also having Thursday shows).
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square has Todd Haynes's documentary on The Velvet Underground, as does West Newton. Kendall Square and Boston Common also open Mass, an ensemble film about two couples confronting each other after a tragedy.
  • Over at The Brattle Theatre is the primary home for The GlobeDocs Film Festival this weekend, although there are some shows at the Coolidge (only listed on the festival's website, not the theaters) and a number of the films playing both sites plus others also available online. All shows at the Brattle feature Q&A sessions. I can personally vouch for Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America on Friday evening.

    On Monday, they have a special benefit screening of Far From Afghanistan, with Tuesday featuring a selection of works by Barbara Hammer presented by Revolutions Per Minute. On Wednesday, the IFFBoston Fall Focus preview series starts with an already-sold-out show of The French Dispatch (don't worry, there's no Q&A and it opens the next Friday), with Sean Baker's Red Rocket playing Thursday and a very full program the next weekend.

    The Brattlite continues to feature Taiwanese horror Detention online.
  • Telugu-language romantic comedy Most Eligible Bachelor, starring Akhil Akkieni & Pooja Hegde, opens at Apple Fresh Pond and Arsenal Yards, with Fresh Pond also opening Telugu musical Pelli Sandad and action/adventure Maha Samudram, while also continuing Tamil-language Doctor.

    Chinese National Day flag-waver My Country, My Parents continues at Boston Common.
  • The Boston Women's Film Festival continue their virtual offerings through Sunday.

    The Boston Asian-American Film Festival is still all-virtual, kicking off on Wednesday with A Tale of Two Chinatowns, followed by Waikiki and Asian American - Eyz'd: An Immigrant Comedy Special on Thursday. All three feature Q&As after their initial streams, with the latter two available on demand for the length of the festival.
  • Bright Lights at Home has End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock for 24 hours starting at 7pm Wednesday. Director Shannon King and activist Pearl Daniel-Means dial in for a Thursday-night Q&A. Slots are free but limited.
  • The West Newton Cinema has The Velvet Underground, No Time to Die, The Addams Family 2, The Many Saints of Newark, Dear Evan Hansen (through Wednesday), Cry Macho (through Wednesday), and Shang-Chi. They're also showing Hitchcock's Psycho at 9pm Friday; no indication on their site if that's a one-off, something they're looking to do regularly, or an approaching-Halloween thing.

    The Lexington Venue is open through Sunday with No Time to Die and The Card Counter.
  • Cinema Salem has Venom 2 and Halloween Kills from Friday to Monday. The Friday "Night Lights" show is Cronenberg's The Brood, and they have extra spooky stuff: Mars Attacks! on Friday; Universal Horrors The Mummy, The Bride of Frankenstein, and Creature from the Black Lagoon on Saturday and Sunday; Haunt with co-star Damian Maffei and the hosts of The Horror Squad podcast; and their first "Horrorlogical" show, Deathdream with co-star Richard Backus on-hand. The Salem Horror Fest has finished their in-person shows, but will return next week for virtual programming.

    The Luna Theater has a very straightforward schedule this week: The Velvet Underground on Friday evening, The Craft on Saturday (with the 2pm show a masked matinee), The Exorcist on Sunday, and free-to-members (with Secret Satellite Society memberships from $5/week to $80-120/year) screenings on "Weirdo Wednesday" plus Thursday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive continues the virtual program which complements the Harvard Art Museums' "Devour the Land" exhibit with O'er the Land available from Friday to Monday. There will be some live screenings, but you need a Harvard ID for those.
  • For those still not ready to join random people in a room for two hours, theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, The Embassy, West Newton, the Capitol, The Venue, and many of the multiplexes.
I will probably catch The Last Duel, The Rescue, and maybe Halloween Kills while also trying to pick up a couple things that fell through the cracks while I was on vacation, watching baseball, or on vacation watching baseball - although with the Red Sox deep into bonus time where baseball is concerned (who figured they'd get this far?), it could cut into movie time.

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