Friday, December 30, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 30 December 2022 - 5 January 2023

Barely worth a post this week, at least in terms of new releases. Boston doesn't even get any just-under-the-wire awards qualifiers this year, and with how quiet those have been, I wonder to what extent that's the new normal.
  • Apple Fresh Pond has four new movies from India this week: Lucky Lakshman is a Telugu-language comedy with Syed Sohel Ryan as a young man trying to juggle two girlfriends and two best friends; Top Gear is a Telugu-language action flick, presumably with a bunch of fast cars; and Raangi is a Tamil-language human-trafficking thriller. Kushi is a Telugu-language romantic comedy about college students who try to match their friends up only to find themselves drawn to each other, plays one show Friday night, and Sembi, a Tamil-language drama about passengers on a bus (narrated by the bus, though probably not in a Doom Patrol way) opens Saturday.

    Among holdovers, Cirkus continues at Fresh Pond and Boston Common; Connect and Dhamaka play Fresh Pond, and 18 Pages is still at Boston Common.
  • The Brattle Theatre finishes 2022 with two more days of "Everything Everything Everywhere All at Once", with that movie paired with Kung Fu Hustle (on 35mm) and The Heroic Trio on Friday, plus 2001: A Space Odyssey on Saturday.

    Sunday is the tradition New Year's Day Marx Brothers Marathon, where you can hang around all day and watch A Night at the Opera, Animal Crackers, Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, and, hey, maybe they'll let you stick around for A Night at the Opera again.

    On Monday, they begin a series of new restorations with Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Three Colors" trilogy: Blue plays Monday and Tuesday; White on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Red on Monday and Wednesday. On Thursday, they shift gears and present Infernal Affairs (that one just gets the first film of three, but it's really all you need).
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre bumps EO up to the bigger rooms, so I guess it's been doing pretty well there.

    Friday's midnight movie is New Year's Evil, although the theater closes early for New Year's Eve on Saturday. Saturday and Sunday offer matinees of The Shaun the Sheep Movie for the kids. Their first repertory program of 2023 is "Projections" featuring art-house science fiction, with a 35mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey on Tuesday and David Cronenberg's eXistenZ on Wednesday.
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square has a Retro Replay of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb on Tuesday, the first of a month-long Kubrick series
  • At the multiplexes, there's an early screening of A Man Called Otto on Wednesday at Boston Common and Assembly Row; it apparently opens in some local theaters next Friday despite all the posters saying January 13th.
  • The Somerville Theatre has Slutcracker shows Friday and Saturday, so The Menu rejoins Babylon and The Whale on Sunday (and Empire of Light has just one afternoon show on Sunday).
  • The Museum of Science has its last show of Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome on Friday.
  • The Lexington Venue is open through Monday with Puss in Boots and The Fabelmans.

    The West Newton Cinema has showtimes for I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Babylon, Avatar 2, The Fabelmans, Aftersun, The Banshees of Inisherin (Saturday only), and Tár, and appear to be open on Mondays again.

    The Luna Theater has All the Beauty and the Bloodshed on Friday and Saturday, The Inspection on Saturday afternoon and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On all day Sunday. No Weirdo Wednesday listed right now.

    Cinema Salem has Babyon, Puss in Boots, and Avatar: The Way of Water from Friday to Monday.
  • For those still not ready to join random people in a room for two hours, theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
I have been a sluggardly lump during my staycation, so I'm still looking at The Whale, Puss in Boots, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Cirkus, The Pale Blue Eye.

Friday, December 23, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 23 December 2022 - 29 December 2022

Huh - no Christmas Day openings this year. There were some last year, even though it was just one day off a normal Friday opening rather than two. I wonder if studios have just sort of en masse decided it doesn't get them much, or if there's just fewer movies to do that with between Avatar being a juggernaut and production being slow during a pandemic.
  • Babylon, the new three-hour-plus juggernaut from Damian Chazelle, with Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Brad Pitt, and many more as movie stars and others in the business during the silent era, when Hollywood was anything-goes and chaotic. It's opens Friday at the Coolidge, the Somerville, the Kendall, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening is I Wanna Dance with Somebody, with Naomi Ackie playing Whitney Houston as Whitney Houston in a biopic directed by Kasi Lemmons, which from the trailer looks to focus more on her rise than the end of her life (although I tend to trust Lemmons not to make omit anything important). It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    The Whale opened last week at the Coolidge (with a Saturday masked matinee this weekend), the Kendall, the Somerville, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row.; Puss in Boots: The Last Wish at Boston Common (including RealD 3D/Spanish language), Fenway, South Bay (including RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards, Lexington, and Chestnut Hill, adding the Capitol, West Newton, and CinemaSalem on Friday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has EO in the screening room, telling the life story of a donkey from the animal's point of view.

    There's also one last Christmas midnight at the Coolidge with Rare Exports playing on 35mm Friday night.
  • Six new South Asian movies at Apple Fresh Pond this week: Cirkus (also at Boston Common) looks to be the big one; directed by Rohit Shetty and starring Ranveer Singh as one of two sets of identical twins separated at birth and just missing each other when they arrive at the same down; it co-stars Pooja Hegde and Jacqueline Fernandez. 18 Pages (also at Boston Common) is a Telugu romance in which a man finds the diary used by a woman with short-term memory issues; Dhamaka is a Telugu-language thriller where a radio news anchor gets threatening phone calls on the air; Connect is a Telugu (?) exorcism thriller; Laththi is a Tamil (?) movie where a cop and his son must escape from a besieged building; Kaapa is a Malayalam-language crime flick.
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square opens The Pale Blue Eye on Friday, before its Netflix run; the new film by Scott Cooper features Augustus Landor as a detective trying to solve a murder at West Point in 1830 with the help of Edgar Allen Poe. Documentary Wildcat opened on Wednesday.
  • The Brattle Theatre rings out the year with "Everything Everything Everywhere All at Once", with daily(*) shows of the Daniels' flick paired with its influences: Ratatouille on Friday (with their prior movie, Swiss Army Man, playing separately); The Goonies on Sunday & Monday; a 35mm print of In the Mood for Love on Monday; Big Trouble in Little China on Tuesday; A Fish Called Wanda and Police Story 3: Supercop, both on 35mm Wednesday; Holy Motors and Mind Game on Thursday.

    (*) Note that, as is tradition, they are dark on Christmas Eve so employees can do last-minute shopping, and it doesn't look like they're open to sell gifts as they have been in previous years.
  • The Regent Theatre has sing-along shows of The Sound of Music from Monday to Thursday - matinees all week, evening shows Monday and Tuesday.
  • The Somerville Theatre is back up to three screens this week (although the Slutcracker will be back next weekend), with The Whale getting the main screen.
  • The Museum of Science has Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome this and next Friday, with no more Saturday shows scheduled.
  • The Lexington Venue is open all week (except Christmas Day) with Puss in Boots and The Fabelmans.

    The West Newton Cinema gets Avatar 2, The Fabelmans, and the CGI Grinch (Saturday/Sunday). Hanging around are Strange World, Aftersun (no show Friday/Saturday), The Menu, The Banshees of Inisherin (Saturday/Sunday), Lyle Lyle Crocodile (Saturday/Sunday), and Tár. Closed Monday.

    The Luna Theater has Decision to Leave and The Inspection on Friday afternoon and Home Alone Friday evening/Saturday morning, then takes the holiday off until Weirdo Wednesday.

    Cinema Salem has Babyon, Pus in Boots, and Avatar: The Way of Water from Friday to Monday. There's also a special screening of Billy Wilder's The Apartment on Thursday.
  • For those still not ready to join random people in a room for two hours, theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, West Newton, the Capitol and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
I will likely hit The Whale, Puss in Boots, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, Cirkus, The Pale Blue Eye and some of the goodies at the Brattle, since I'm on a use-it-or-lose-it-PTO staycation next week. May also head out to the furniture store to see The Way of Water on that screen.

Friday, December 16, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 16 December 2022 - 22 December 2022

I feel like we've been making jokes about Avatar 2 not being a real movie that will ever come out for over a decade, and now here it is, playing on pretty much every large screen in the area.
  • Anyway, lots of Avatar: The Way of Water all over the place, and by all accounts, you want to see it on the biggest/best 3D screen, possibly with high-frame-rate (HFR) projection, as James Cameron has brought everything he's got to bear, including what's being described as a much better script. It's at The Capitol (including RealD 3D), Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 3D), West Newton (2D only), CinemaSalem (2D only), Boston Common (including Imax 3D/Dolby Cinema 2D & HFR 3D/RealD 3D), Fenway (including HFR RealD 3D), Kendall Square (2D/RealD 3D), South Bay (including Imax 3D/Dolby Cinema 3D/RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax 3D/Dolby Cinema 2D & 3D/RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill (including HFR RealD 3D). Note that I've only included HFR where it's specifically stated (apart from the Dolby screen at Boston Common where I saw the first that way in September) - I suspect the Dolby screens are all HFR, and wouldn't be shocked if the laser projection at the Reading Imax was, but they're not advertising "3D Plus" the way they were for Gemini Man a few years back.

    Apple's Spirited - a musical take on A Christmas Carol starring Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell - arrives at Apple Fresh Pond after being on their service and at various Showcases for the past month. Still no Emancipation anywhere nearby, though.

    Puss in Boots: The Last Wish opens Wednesday at Boston Common (including RealD 3D/Spanish language), Fenway, South Bay (including RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards, Lexington, and Chestnut Hill. South Bay has a preview of I Wanna Dance with Somebody on Wednesday before it opens later in the week.

    Elf and The Polar Express play mornings at Fresh Pond; Express and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation play through Sunday at Arsenal Yards. 75th Anniversary Shows of It's a Wonderful Life play Fenway, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens Holy Spider, a European-produced thriller set in the Iranian city of Mashhad, as a journalist investigates a serial killer targeting sex workers. It's Denmark's submission for the Oscars, and there's a special Panorama screening on Sunday afternoon.

    The much-anticipated The Whale opens on Tuesday at the Coolidge, the Somerville, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row and Wednesday at the Kendall, with Darren Aranofsky directing Brendan Fraser under something like 200 pounds of makeup as an obese teacher attempting to reconnect with his daughter before his body gives out.

    Midnights for the weekend at the Coolidge include Anna and the Apocalypse and The Room on Friday and a 35mm print of Die Hard 2: Die Harder on Saturday. The Muppet Christmas Carol plays Saturday & Sunday mornings, and there's a Rewind! screening of Elf on Thursday.
  • Boston Common gets Korean period thriller The Night Owl, featuring Alienoid star Ryu Jun-Yeol as a masseur who is blind during the day but has perfect night vision investigating the death of the crown prince.

    Hong Kong thriller The Sparring Partner hangs around for a show or two a day at Boston Common.
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square opens documentary Wildcat on Wednesday, which follows two young folks at a wildlife sanctuary in the Amazon.
  • The Brattle Theatre has its annual It's a Wonderful Life shows this weekend, running on 35mm film through Sunday. As usual, they are also running a "Holiday Adjacent" series of less-obviously traditional Christmas movies, including Bob Clark's original Black Christmas (Friday), a 35mm print of Die Hard (Saturday/Sunday), In Bruges (Monday), Spencer & Passing (Tuesday), and Wings of Desire (35mm Wednesday/Thursday). Note that the Bruges replaces the originally-scheduled L.A. Confidential
  • The Regent Theatre has sing-along shows of White Christmas from Monday to Wednesday.
  • The Somerville Theatre has the Slutcracker every day but Tuesday, and more wholesomely a Holiday Craft Fair in the Crystal Ballroom on Saturday. They also pick up Empire of Light, and interestingly show that most screenings of Spoiler Alert for the week are in "Moviehouse 4", which I presume is what they're calling the Micro instead of "Moviehouse 0", unless they've carved a new screen out of the Museum of Bad Art.
  • The Museum of Science has Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome Fridays and Saturdays through the end of December.
  • The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday with Devotion, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu, and also re-opens Wednesday and Thursday with Puss in Boots and The Fabelmans.

    The West Newton Cinema gets Avatar 2, The Fabelmans, and the CGI Grinch (Saturday/Sunday). Hanging around are Strange World, Aftersun (no show Friday/Saturday), The Menu, The Banshees of Inisherin (Saturday/Sunday), Lyle Lyle Crocodile (Saturday/Sunday), and Tár. Closed Monday.

    The Luna Theater has The Inspection at various times on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday; It's a Wonderful Life Saturday & Sunday; matinees of Concert for George on Monday & Tuesday; Decision to Leave Monday to next Friday; Christmas Bloody Christmas on Wednesday afternoon; plus Weirdo Wednesday that evening. I don't know that this place has ever had such a full schedule!

    Cinema Salem has She Said, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Triangle of Sadness Friday to Monday. There's also a special screening of Billy Wilder's The Apartment on Thursday.

    The Showcase in Dedham has Emancipation, among the usual suspects!
  • 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 and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
Already have a ticket for Avatar on Sunday, and will probably go for The Night Owl at some point (though its showtimes are scattered due to Avatar having All The Screens)., plus maybe a trip or two to the Brattle.

Monday, December 12, 2022

Film Rolls, Round 5: Luca and Stage Fright

The top row is a weird place, because there's a point where you jump from very early western movies to fairly recent ones, and then soon after you jump from very recent ones to reasonably early. Like so:
That ten gets Mookie right at the end of the first row, which was (at the time) basically "stuff that didn't make it into theaters during the pandemic". And, yes, I bought a copy of Luca even though I've got Disney+ and don't really figure on dropping it any time soon, although it's kind of messing with my thought process on this.
Meanwhile, Bruce was already on the second row (remember Dragonwyck?) and has rolled a seven, so he's just dipping his toe into the 1950 and a Hitchcock I hadn't seen yet, Stage Fright.

So let's see how that went!

Luca

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 April 2022 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 4K Blu-ray)

That Pixar would, to some degree, become simply one of several quite impressive animation studios was probably inevitable, and arguably a good thing overall: We want a lot of people out there doing good work, even if the top dog is not so restrictive in tone and style as one might fear. So it's okay for Luca to be a pretty good movie rather than one which pushes the technology forward or has a brilliantly abstract premise.

And Luca is, in fact, pretty good; the designs for the undersea society are more complete and creative than a DreamWorks "like New York but _____" while the town above the waterline is the sort of period construction that seems beautiful and nostalgic but never quite crosses the line of too good to be true. There's nice chemistry between the three main kids, who are all smart and focused in their own ways but also volatile in the way that tweens can be. There are entertaining adventure bits, the inevitable Terrific Pixar Chase, and an earnest and upbeat feeling even through the sadder material.

Does it have the sort of surprising gut punch that Pixar is often known for, or the ability to sort of get more out of its metaphor through its fantasy elements? Not quite, I don't think: There's nothing like how "When She Loved Me" has a million different ways to gut-punch you in Toy Story 2 and the absence of Alberto's family never quite reveals itself as the sort of hole director Enrico Casarosa seemingly intends it to. The film is ultimately a little glossier than its makers perhaps intend it to be.

Which is fine - Pixar's allowed to make films that are pretty good, if not necessarily special the way their greatest successes have been. I can imagine kids enjoying this and their parents being fairly charmed as they watch alongside, and that's not exactly easy!

Stage Fright

* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 April 2022 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)

I was mildly surprised to realize that I hadn't seen this particular Hitchcock when it showed up for pre-order on Blu-ray from the Warner Archive label; Hitch is a staple of the local repertory houses, after all, and I try to camp out there whenever one has a Hitchcock series. This one, though, falls between the silence and early English talkies that get programmed as his early days and the point when he was so well-established that he got big budgets and star-studded casts, everything he did being regarded as a potential classic at the time, both temporally and in feel.

Indeed, it's possible that seventy years later, being directed by Hitchcock works against it; with some journeyman director, a viewer might more easily appreciate how it's got elements of both film noir and a sort of classic British mystery. You can probably draw a pretty straight line between Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady and this, and if Jane Wyman's amateur sleuth isn't quite the delight that Ella Raines is in that movie, Marlene Dietrich is enough femme fatale to make up for it and Alastair Sim is the sort of cozy character actor whose very presence smooths out some of the film's more convenient contrivances. Not a bad little minor genre film, but the Master of Suspense never really did much in the way of the cozy mysteries this often recalls; indeed, his tendency was almost always to play them as comedy, at least until it was time to put the screws to someone.

Which is why the final sequence is so surprisingly good; no longer worried about having the audience get ahead of Wyman's Eve, he spends the final scenes putting her in genuine danger from a killer freed to be monstrous, setting the whole thing in the bowels of a theater among all the costumes, props, and other materials actors use to create characters for our entertainment and which the killer used to hide in plain sight even as Eve used them to go undercover. After an hour or so of playing nice, we're suddenly in the middle of a psychological thriller where Hitch is playing with people presenting false faces for the purposes of good and evil while playing a vicious game of cat and mouse.

Maybe it's better that he holds back and sort of springs it on us in the last act, plunging the audience into a darkness that lurks behind their safe, comedic murder mysteries, but the fact that the film feels relatively ordinary for so long likely keeps people from really associating it with the classics that appear around it in his filmography (it's a couple years after Rope and one before Strangers on a Train).


So that's a pleasant couple days in April, although they're evenly-matched enough to not affect the standings at all:

Mookie: 20 ¼ stars

Bruce: 22 ¾ stars

Bruce still leads, both in accumulated stars and on the path:

The next round, though, has a pretty major effect…

Friday, December 09, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 9 December 2022 - 15 December 2022

So, do you think the thinness of the last few months is more about the supply drying up because there was limited shooting when people were sensibly worried about Covid, general slowdown due to streaming/merger nonsense, or something more sinister?
  • Anyway, happy "not seeing the Spoiler Alert trailer before every movie" day to those who celebrate. If you haven't been to the movies that much, it's a romance with Ben Aldridge and Jim Parsons that takes a turn when the former's character finds out he has a terminal illness. Sally Field co-stars and Michael Showalter directs (and, yes, he also did The Big Sick; kind of crazy how busy he's been lately considering there was a point 10 years ago when he was hosting a game show on NESN). It's at the Somerville, Boston Common, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.

    Boston Common picks up three documentaries this week, all from notable directors: To the End, Rachel Lears's follow-up to Knock Down the House, follows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others working to improve US climate policy. 2nd Chance from Ramin Bahrani tells the story of Richard Davis, who invented the concealable bullet-proof vest and shot himself 196 times to demonstrate its effectiveness. And Luca Guadagnino made Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams, with Michael Stulbarg narrating the story of Salvatore Ferragamo, who clad the feet of everyone in old Hollywood, though that one is mainly matinees (and seems like it would be an odd double-feature with Guadagnino's Bones and All).

    Boston Common and South Bay also have a re-release of Father Stu.

    Fresh Pond has matinees of Elf and The Polar Express. Arsenal Yards, meanwhile, goes with evening shows of Krampus Friday to Sunday. Boston Common and South Bay have National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Friday, The Polar Express on Saturday, the Ron Howard/Jim Carrey Grinch on Sunday, the Illumination/Benedict Cumberbatch Grinch on Monday, and Elf on Tuesday. Tuesday's Christmas Retro Replay at Landmark Theatres Kendall Square is Batman Returns.

    Moonage Daydream has Imax screenings Saturday afternoon and Tuesday evening at Boston Common. Conan the Barbarian has 40th anniversary screenings at South Bay and Assembly Row on Monday and Tuesday.
  • Empire of the Sun is the big awards-contender thing opening this weekend; it comes from Sam Mendes and stars Olivia Coleman and Michael Ward as cinema employees dealing with various frustrations in the Thatcher era. This Love Letter to The Movies™ plays at The Coolidge Corner Theatre (including a Saturday Masked Matinee), Kendall Square, and Boston Common.

    Also at the Coolidge is All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, a documentary following activist and artist Nan Goldin as she pushes back against the Sackler family and the opiate crisis they exacerbated. A special "Panorama" screening, featuring people included in the film and other prescription-additction activists, plays Saturday afternoon.

    Midnights at the Coolidge this weekend include 35mm prints of The Nightmare Before Christmas on Friday and Santa's Slay on Saturday. Everything Everywhere All at Once plays a "Science on Screen" show Monday, with Harvard Astrophysicist Dr. Grant Tremblay there to introduce the idea of a multiverse. There's Open Screen on Tuesday, a Sound of Silents show with Jeff Rapsis accompanying Rin Tin Tin in The Night Cry on Wednesday, and a 35mm print of The Thin Man, including a special pre-film seminar with DigBoston critic Jake Mulligan.
  • Just a ton from South Asia this week at Apple Fresh Pond: Vadh is a Hindi-language thriller with Sanjay Mishra & Neena Gupta as a couple living a quiet life until their son goes to school in America and gets in some sort of trouble; Salaam Venky is a Hindi-language medical drama; Naai Sekar Returns is a Tamil comedy; Vijayanand is a Kannada-language rags-to-riches biography; Panchatantram, a Telugu-language drama; Gurthunda Seethakalam, a Telugu-language romance starring Satyadev Kancharana & Tamannaah Bhatia; Malayalam-language drama Saudi Vellakka; and Last Film Show, India's Oscar submission, which is a Gujarti-language story of kids falling in love with moviemaking.

    But that's just Friday! On Sunday, Nepali film Hijo Aja Ka Kura plays, as does a twentieth-anniversary re-release of Baba, a SuperStar Rajinikanth vehicle in which an atheist gains magical powers and uses them to take on corrupt politicians that was, apparently, a controversial bomb in 2002.

    They also keep Telugu crime flick HIT: The 2nd Case, Hindi action comedy An Action Hero, Hindi werewolf comedy Bhediya, and Drishyam 2 (the latter at Boston Common as well).

    Hong Kong thriller The Sparring Partner, about a grisly murder where the two people involved turn on one another in court, plays Boston Common.

    Hideaki Anno's Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time has one last show on Sunday at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.

    Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave continues at The Capitol and Lexington.
  • The Brattle Theatre has "The Adventures of Antoine Doinel" this week; four-and-a-half films by François Truffaut starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as his on-screen alter-ego over a period of twenty years. They include The 400 Blows (Friday-Sunday), "Antoine and Colette" & Stolen Kisses (Saturday), Bed and Board (Monday), and Love on the Run.

    On Sunday, they have three short film programs by two different groups. RPM Fest presents "Attention Wonders" by the late Robert Todd in the afternoon, with several colleagues on-hand to introduce and discuss. In the evening, there are two separate packages from Grrl Hau Cinema, including several local films.
  • The ICA has a 95-minute program of Sundance Film Festival Shorts from this year's event on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
  • Bright Lights closes out its fall season on Thursday with Fire of Love, the pretty darn terrific National Geographic documentary about married French volcanologists who would eventually perish together in an eruption but did valuable work together for decades. Director Sara Dosa will be on-hand, and it's open to the public at the Paramount Theater complex with tickets available that afternoon.
  • The Harvard Film Archive is on Christmas break for in-person shows, but the Kaidu Club Experimental Shorts package of 1970s Han Ohki works is available to stream through Monday.
  • The Somerville Theatre is, as is often the case in December, down a screen with The Slutcracker taking the main stage most nights (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday this week), which means that most screenings of Violent Night will be in the micro-cinema.
  • The Museum of Science will be showing Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome Fridays and Saturdays through the end of December.
  • The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday with Decision to Leave, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu.

    The West Newton Cinema has a listing for independent short "Family Feud" whose description matches a French-Canadian feature but the runtimes don't match, so I'm not sure what it is, really. Otherwise they keep Strange World, Aftersun (no show Friday), The Menu, The Banshees of Inisherin, Wakanda Forever, Lyle Lyle Crocodile (Saturday/Sunday), Armageddon Time (Saturday/Sunday), and Tár. Closed Monday.

    The Luna Theater has Joe Begos's Christmas Bloody Christmas Friday, Saturday, and Thursday; White Christmas Sunday; plus Weirdo Wednesday.

    Cinema Salem has She Said, The Banshees of Inisherin, Triangle of Sadness The Menu, and Violent Night Friday to Monday. The Thin Man plays Saturday and Sunday afternoon, and there's a "Cinema Sounds" screening of Gremlins on Thursday with music producer Richard Guerin talking Jerry Goldsmith and his score before the film. If you're up for heading out to the Showcases in Woburn or Dedham, you can catch Emancipation, with Antoine Fuqua directing Will Smith as a runaway slave - but that's apparently further than the T will easily take you!
  • 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 and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
Seeing The Sparring Partner and should probably try to catch up with Violent Night, White Noise, She Said, Devotion, and/or Bones and All before James Cameron more or less grabs every screen on Thursday.

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

Irish Movies in Ireland: The Banshees of Inisherin

Amusingly, sort of, this is the movie I put off watching near home because I figured it might be kind of fun watching it with a local audience and getting an idea of what lands and what doesn't, and it's the last one I got to. I was kind of tickled to see this marquee before I'd even gotten off the bus from the airport to my hotel:
I actually took this the night I saw it a few days later, which means that the Irish movie which opened a month earlier was still being treated as the main attraction even though the gigantic Marvel movie had opened in the meantime, as you can see a Wakanda Forever sign somewhere below the big one. At any rate, it's a nice urban multiplex with a basic concession stand rather than a cafe - albeit one that is combined with the box office - and though Cinema Treasures confirms that it was one giant screen cut into smaller spaces over the past century (which likely makes it not quite old enough to be open during the time the film is set), it's one that's still got some lobby and lounge space rather than just being hallways.

The time in question is the Irish Civil War, which few of the historical spots I went to really discussed until I visited Kilmainham Gaol, where the guide straight-up said that it's something they don't mention much, because it doesn't have the British as external villains in the way the potato famine, Easter Uprising, and the fight for independence do, although it plays as a crucial part of their history in retrospect, a reminder that a people can repress and do violence to themselves just as well as outsiders can - or, at least, the sort of history that gets put in museums and presented to tourists. That's not the way it's played in the film, ultimately, but Martin McDonagh has other interesting uses for that background.

After this, I figured I might wind up checking out the Marvel movie on one of the city's premium screens, just to avoid internet spoilers, but it turned out that Twitter was inward-focused enough to put that in my face and I wound up not doing so. Then it was back home, and doing work and such.

The Banshees of Inisherin

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 November 2022 in Savoy Cinema (Dublin) #7 (first-run, DCP)

There are many delightful things about The Banshees of Inisherin, but what makes the whole thing especially delicious is that, while the film reveals more the closer one looks at it, the filmmakers are well aware that one's commitment to art is not helped by pretense or snobbery. It's tremendously entertaining as well as dense, and doesn't treat genius as an excuse for a lousy attitude.

Is Colm Doherty (Brendan Gleeson) a genius? Maybe not, but he's serious about his craft as a fiddle player, easily the best on this particular member of the Aran Islands, and he's come to decide that doing so means cutting friend Pádraic Súilleabháin (Colin Farrell) out of his life. Pádraic isn't a bad fellow, even if he can be unpleasant after a few too many drinks, but he's no intellectual and Colm figures spending so much time with him prevents him from doing and being more. Pádraic can't really comprehend this - hanging out with the dimmer-but-also-amiable Dominic (Barry Keoghan), who has a pretty serious crush on Pádraic's book-smart sister Siobhan (Kerry Condon) isn't the same - so he keeps trying to reconnect. Colm then delivers an ultimatum: Leave him alone, or he'll start cutting off his own fingers, even if that would make playing the fiddle all but impossible.

Banshees could have been set during a number of periods, but writer/director Martin McDonagh sets it during the Irish Civil War, which split the country between those unwilling to even temporary compromise on their goal of a unified, independent Ireland and those willing to accept more gradual change. This doesn't exactly map to Colm and Pádraic, the latter in particular, but it's an interesting place to start, especially once McDonagh starts connecting to other things, such as how Siobhan's opportunities will come from leaving the island. This is a time where things should be triumphant, and yet this little society is tearing itself apart by the seams: Friendships that were perhaps a matter of circumstance are fraying or violently unwinding, people with power, like Dominic's father Peadar, are now homegrown rather than coerced monsters, emigration is depriving the community of some of their best and brightest, and painting the red British post boxes green doesn't cover the place's real problems.

There's more to a movie than just setting up a metaphor, and it's the performances here that may be the most metaphor, most noticeably with McDonagh re-uniting his In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, who make hitting a couple of tricky marks look almost effortless: For Farrell, it's a sort of well-meaning foolishness that doesn't quite put Pádraic at a remove from the audience, constantly making the clear wrong decision in a way that the audience can still emphasize with. The trick is to see how Colm and others could find him tedious and frustrating without making him a nuisance or the object of pity. There's often an interesting comparison to Barry Keoghan's Dominic, who is genuinely dim (compared to how Pádraic is often described as "dull"), but more pure-hearted, such that one might feel bad about finding him irritating.

Gleeson, meanwhile, has to make Colm a bit more opaque; there are occasional comments about how this is maybe not the first time he's sunken into a self-destructive depression, but McDonagh doesn't lay much more than that out directly. Instead, Colm is a mass of interesting contradictions, having lost all patience for Pádraic but not only not wishing him any ill will, but jumping in to defend Pádraic when it comes to blows. There's this sort of deep misery about his place in the world that gets pushed back when he has a chance to create. In a modern setting, people would talk about his mental health, but here he knits it together into a character whose behavior might not be consistent even if his thoughts are. One might expect Kerry Condon's Sibhan to be a kindred spirit, whatever is misfiring in his brain seems to be working in hers; she, perhaps, hasn't internalized the idea that difficulty or dangerous eccentricity correlates with genius to the point where she indulges it like Colm does (and aside from all that, McDonagh allows her to be sharp and risible enough to totally fall into the cliché of the woman who keeps the three men with their various forms of immaturity in line).

Condon and Gleeson get the more enjoyably chewy bits of dialogue to work with, the sort that reminds a viewer that McDonagh first found success as a playwright, although a big part of what works is that their lines mix well with the more plain-spoken lines given to Farrell and Keoghan, making many scenes a mix of considered explanation and sputtering confusion. McDonagh and his collaborators do lots of nifty things with the setting to help it tell the story: While the Súilleabháin home is snug, it's not oppressive, while Colm's cottage has the dimensions for two floors but isn't divided that way, managing to feel cluttered but with a great big empty space inside, on top of having no neighbors but being near a crossroads. One can occasionally see gunfire from the war on the shore, both far-off and unsettlingly close, and McDonagh quietly cranks what starts as an odd situation up to a surprisingly tense one by the finale.

Not that all this is exactly news; Banshees is one of the most anticipated and well-liked movies of the year, and the biggest surprise is how it hits its marks not just squarely but comfortably. Like Decision to Leave, it's an awards contender where one almost feels the need to point out that it's not just impressively constructed but a very funny movie that goes down easily.

Friday, December 02, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 2 December 2022 - 8 December 2022

It's an exceptionally dead period between Thanksgiving and Avatar and Netflix isn't extending Glass Onion's run, so let's see who is ready to pick up the money they're leaving on the table.
  • The big opening this weekend is Violent Night, with David Harbour as Santa Claus, who finds himself in the middle of a Die Hard-ish robbery when a kid on his Nice List is taken hostage. It sounds like something more suited for a trailer parody than a full film - indeed, that's what the trailer feels like - but that describes a lot of the films by director Tommy Wirkola which have worked better than they have a right to, and the action is choreographed by the guys who did Plan B. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Fenway, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX).

    Universal covers its Christmas-movie bases by also re-releasing Love Actually at Arsenal Yards (through Sunday). There are Christmas matinees at Boston Common and South Bay of Love Actually (Friday), Elf (Saturday); the Illumination Grinch (Sunday); National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (Monday); The Best Man Holiday (Tuesday); the Jim Carrey Grinch (Wednesday); and The Polar Express (Thursday). Top Gun: Maverick also gets a "hey, there are screens open" re-release at Boston Common and South Bay.

    There are 40th Anniversary screenings of The Dark Crystal on Sunday and Wednesday at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Broadway Rising, a documentary about the New York theater scene reopening after the pandemic, plays South Bay and Assembly Row on Monday. Another documentary, Johnny Cash - The Redemption of an American Icon is at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row Monday to Wednesday. Moonage Daydream returns to Boston Common (Imax Xenon) Wednesday. Greek film Smyrna plays Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Thursday.
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square picks up two streaming productions: Amazon's Nanny stars Anna Diop in the title role, a Senegaliese immigrant who watches another family's child while saving up money to bring her own son over, although both families are under some strain. Netflix has White Noise, Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's book about a family trying to keep it together with a potentially apocalyptic event on the horizon.

    They also have Memories of My Father, a film about a Colombian activist told from the point of view of his son, who would become a noted writer, although only for matinees. Neil Young: Harvest Time plays Sunday afternoon (also at Boston Common and Fenway). Tuesday's Retro Replay is Gremlins, starting a run of holiday-themed movies.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre is billing their run of A Couple in their smaller rooms as an exclusive booking, and it's unusual, a small film from Frederick Wiseman - an hour-long narrative rather than a sprawling documentary, following Sophia Tolstoy as she walks a garden, discussing her fraught marriage.

    Midnight movies include The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the 2019 Black Christmas on Friday and Krampus on Saturday (doing holiday movies this month). Babe is the Saturday morning matinee, while Goethe-Institut selection The Silent Forest plays Sunday morning. There's a special presentation of Children of Las Brisas (Los Niños de las Brisas) on Monday evening with director Marianela Maldonado, producer Luisa de la Ville, and others on-hand for a Q&A afterward.
  • Six new South Asian movies start Friday at Apple Fresh Pond: Telugu crime flick HIT: The 2nd Case features Adivi Sesh as a detective on the trail of a serial killer; Hindi action comedy An Action Hero (also at Boston Common) follows a movie star who has gone into hiding; Gold is a Malayalam comedy; Yaara Vey is a Pakistani romance; DSP and Gatta Kusthi are Tamil-language comedies; and Bhediya is a Hindi werewolf comedy. Bangladeshi sports film Damal has an encore on Saturday.

    Drishyam 2, Love Today, and Uunchai continue at Fresh Pond; Drishyam 2 is also at Boston Common.

    The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie, the finale of the popular series, plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row Friday to Wednesday (except Monday), some shows dubbed and some subtitled. Hideaki Anno's Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time has shows Tuesday and Thursday at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards (no show Thursday).

    Hong Kong romantic comedy Love Suddenly plays Boston Common; the poster makes it look like the same sort of "overlapping romances" as Love Actually, so maybe folks won't be too upset if they buy a ticket to the wrong one. Director Mak Ho-Pong and writer/producer Edmond Wong Chi-Mun did the Breakout Brothers movies and also worked on the Donnie Yen Ip Man series.

    Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave continues at West Newton and Lexington, and opens at The Capitol and Luna Lowell. Korean music/concert doc NCT Dream the Movie: In a Dream plays Boston Common and Fenway on Saturday.
  • The Brattle Theatre kicks off the holiday season on Friday with "Kevin Geeks Out About Christmas" and then a secret screening on 16mm (although they leave enough clues to figure out what it is).

    After that, they have a week of "Damn Fine Cinema: The Films of David Lynch", with The Straight Story (35mm Saturday/Monday), a package of short films in a double feature with Eraserhead on 35mm (Saturday), Inland Empire (Saturday), Lost Highway paired with Mulholland Drive (both on 35mm Sunday), Blue Velvet & 35mm Wild at Heart (Monday), The Elephant Man (Wednesday), Dune (35mm Wednesday), and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (35mm Thursday).
  • The Harvard Film Archive wraps their fall season with EAMI on Friday, with director Paz Encina on-hnad for a Q&A. They also have last week's Kaidu Club Experimental Shorts directed by Han Ohki in the 1970s available to stream through the 12th.
  • The Regent Theatre has outdoor adventure film program "Mountains on Stage: Winter Edition" on Wednesday.
  • Bright Lights has Long Live My Happy Head on Thursday, with directors Will Hewitt & Austin McCowan on-hand to talk about their film a Scottish cartoonist who starts making autobiographical comics after learning he has an inoperable brain tumor. Free to the public, tickets available starting noon the day of the show.
  • The ICA has a 95-minute program of Sundance Film Festival Shorts from this year's event on Thursday evening, with more shows during the coming weekend.
  • The Somerville Theatre is, as often happens in December, down a screen with The Slutcracker taking the main stage on weekends (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Thursday this week). They've also got a special show, "Kevin & Ken Save Christmas!", with audience voting for which holiday special, clip, TV episode, or short plays next, on Saturday.
  • The Museum of Science will be showing Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome Fridays and Saturdays into December.
  • The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday with Decision to Leave, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu.

    The West Newton Cinema has Strange World, Aftersun, Amsterdam (Saturday/Sunday), The Menu, The Banshees of Inisherin, Wakanda Forever, Lyle Lyle Crocodile (Saturday/Sunday), Armageddon Time (Saturday), Decision to Leave (Sunday), and Tár. Closed Monday.

    The Luna Theater has Decision to Leave Friday, Saturday, and Thursday; Concert for George Saturday afternoon; Die Hard Saturday night and all day Sunday; plus Weirdo Wednesday.

    Cinema Salem has The Menu, Violent Night, and Strange World Friday to Monday. There's also a show of Elf hosted by Miz Diamond Wigfall Friday night with a more kid-friendly matinee on Saturday, with VideoCoven running the original Black Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night on Thursday.
  • 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 and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
I am down for Violent Night, White Noise, and Love Suddenly, maybe catching up with Devotion and Bones and All. I probably should fill in some David Lynch-shaped holes as well, and we'll see if I catch up on the rest of Evangelion to the point where I go see the finale (I mean, I did see the other three, even if I didn't love them).

Monday, November 28, 2022

Irish Movies in Ireland: The Wonder

Saturday was one of those days when I sort of struggled to remember how I navigated new cities without a smartphone, in part because that navigation was kind of imperfect: For whatever reason, my Galaxy was popping up notes that my location was approximate in the Maps app, and whatever combination of gyroscope and GPS is supposed to calculate which way I was pointing could be off by 90 or 120 degrees. This always seems to happen to me in a new city, and I can't guess why.

The upshot is that while I was walking from the Georgian mansion-cum-tenament house at 14 Henrietta Street to the Irish National Museum of Art and Design, I got turned around a fair bit, so was zooming in and studying the map, and Google probably knows me well enough to highlight theaters at this point. So when I saw "Light House Cinema" and looked up to see this:

… I couldn't help but think, damn, that marquee game is on point! That is not the marquee, but an observation deck that was probably a smokestack for the power plant which has since been remodeled into a nightclub below at one point. Still, if Light House is a chain, they chose a heck of a location with that landmark across the street from this relatively modest location:

It's actually pretty nice inside, a bit less cramped and segmented than the IFI was, though with the same odd-to-me emphasis on a bar/café at which one can stop and talk before the film as opposed to place to get snacks for during. Probably more appropriate in this case, as I was seeing a movie about someone pointedly not eating, though I got some popcorn anyway.

As with the IFI, I'm kind of struck by how that entryway is a passage that sort of emphasizes how you're kind of going past the outer edge of the building, into a central area that might have been a courtyard before but is now windowless before you go down to the lower levels. Reasonable enough you don't necessarily want a whole lot of potential light pollution.

At any rate, I'm kind of glad I saw this on the Dublin trip as opposed to at the IFFBoston Fall Focus or its run at the Kendall afterward, if only because visiting places like 14 Henrietta and the like did a nice job of hammering the historical context of the movie home. There's "knowing of the Irish famine" and "having the desperation of it fresh in your mind", after all.

The next day would bring me to the Emigration Museum and the replica Jeannie Johnston; the former pointed out the extent to which the famine shrunk the country and the latter was actually used as a shooting location:

The guide pointed out, sort of amused, that the production repainted this half of the ship, as that was what would be on camera, and it would be another year before the trust would be able to paint the other to make it symmetric.

The Wonder

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 November 2022 in Light House Sheffield #3 (first-run, DCP)

The Wonder has an odd sort of framing device which initially made me think of how many people (myself included) initially thought TÀR was based on a real person, if only because they don't really make films about that sort of singular character unless they actually exist these days; was filmmaker Sebastián Lelio doing something similar but more deliberate, playing with the audience's assumptions about whether this really happened and what segments were necessarily speculative? As it turns out, probably not; by the time the film is over, it's got more interesting thoughts on how stories are told than just reassuring the audience they haven't been fooled.

After that, it sets the scene Rural Ireland, just past the midpoint of the Nineteenth Century. Nurse Elizabeth Wright (Florence Pugh), who had previously tended patients on the battlefields of the Crimea, has been hired for a most unusual job: Spend two weeks observing Anna O'Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), who has by all accounts not eaten since her fourteenth birthday, four months ago. She will alternate shifts with Sister Michael (Josie Walker), fittingly, as much of the town committee that hired her, including the local priest (Ciarán Hinds), seek evidence of a miracle, while the local doctor (Toby Jones) hopes for some sort of scientific discovery of how humans can perhaps draw sustenance from the ether. Lib is mostly practical, although she notes that Anna is bright and inquisitive, while her parents are sincere and non-exploitative. That said, Anna is not healthy, and what sort of nurse would allow her patient to starve to death, even if it is happening at an impossibly slow pace?

There is a casual mention of the Irish Potato Famine toward the start of the story, seemingly designed to make the audience discount the scale of the event (Ireland was a nation of 8 million at the start, with a million dying and another million emigrating during the famine, and the population still not recovered 170 years later), perhaps focusing on Lib's own demons. It makes sense; this is the sort of thing one tries not to speak of as opposed to moving forward, but it seeps in through cracks: It explains why Will Byrne (Tom Burke), the reporter sent by a London newspaper to cover the story, is no longer of this place even though he grew up there. As it becomes clear that Anna is choosing not to eat more than not needing to - and that her older brother is gone - the idea of survivor's guilt begins to take center stage, and not just for Anna. The men of God need to find meaning in this; the man of science needs to find a way for it to not happen again. Meanwhile, the full plates placed in front of Lib at the inn where she is staying begin to look downright vulgar as the film passes its midpoint. Co-writer/director Sebastián Lelio and company may not be able to evoke the actual hunger of the famine, but they can perhaps simulate remembering it, and knowing that it will leave its mark upon one forever.

It's such a raw and obvious scar that the audience may figure out what is happening before Lib does, but that serves to bring the film back to where it started and the idea of just what to do with what she's found. The truth, after all, is not going to support the narratives that Anna and the people in her orbit are committed to. Lib is practical, and more rigorous in her science than the doctor who sees her as more instrument than peer, but human minds are often too committed to the world being fair by their own lights, and if Lib is to save Anna, the solution must serve the narratives - including hers. The importance of this makes Niamh Algar's Kitty O'Donnell (Anna's aunt or cousin) an intriguing choice of narrator; despite being as close to things as anybody is, she's so peripheral as to be able to smash the fourth wall without it affecting the story. She pores over Will's stories with difficulty, as she is not quite so well-educated as him or Lib, but both within and outside the story, she's looking to supply context and help everyone - Lib, the viewer, herself - understand the whole situation, including where one can't really know, but has to fill in bits for oneself.

She's nevertheless off to the side for the most part, with Florence Pugh front and center, terrific as always. Lib is a mostly-functional addict, and the way that Pugh captures that not quite being segregated from her work as much as she'd like, especially as the film goes on and the stress of the assignment begins to wear on her. She establishes this aura of being wryly no-nonsense that stabilizes the film when she starts to lose control. It's reflected in Kila Lord Cassidy's Anna, a curious but not precocious kid who has this other layer to her experience even beyond the memory of the famine, and there's something blistering true about how she, in particular, needs a version of this story that makes sense.

That is, ultimately, what makes The Wonder fascinating beyond what's the main story - it's about how truth gets built, without ever being cynical about whether what actually happened is important.

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 23 November 2022 - 1 December 2022

Thanksgiving already? Dang! My sense of time is way off.
  • Steven Spielberg has a new one out, The Fabelmans, based more or less directly on his own childhood and discovery that he's got a real talent for filmmaking as his parents' marriage crumbles. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano stand in for them, and there's an impressive cast all the way down. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row.

    Also opening more in the specialty houses is Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All, whose trailer gives me some Let the Right One in Vibes, with Taylor Russell playing a young woman with a cannibal compulsion who flees her hometown to find there are others like her - some trying to quietly get by doing as little harm as possible, others more sinister. It's at the Coolidge, Boston Common, Fenway (starting Friday), South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    There's also The Inspection, with Jeremy Pope as a gay Black man who opts to join the Marines despite the fact that it is very much a hostile place for folks like him, with Gabrielle Union as the mother who was no more ready for that than the institution. It plays the Coolidge, Kendall Square, and Boston Common, and expands next week.

    Aside from all that turnover, the Coolidge continues its Noirvember material with Akira Kurosawa's Drunken Angel playing on 35mm Wednesday, while Devil in a Blue Dress plays Monday and Gilda on Tuesday, the latter two with pre-show seminars. Midnight shows over the weekend are Spielberg's genre films, with a 35mm print of Jaws on Friday and one of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on Saturday. There are weekend kids' shows of Panda! Go Panda!, an animated adventure directed by Isao Takahata with a story by Hayao Miyazaki from before when they founded Studio Ghibli.
  • Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery mystery opens at Boston Common, Fenway, and Assembly Row; the film brings back Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc to get to the bottom of a whole new murder case with an all-star cast. Note that (barring a change of heart) Netflix is only letting it have a one-week preview, so it's gone after Tuesday until showing back up on the streamer on Christmas.

    Disney debuts its latest animated feature, Strange World, in which the son of a lost explorer on an alien world is recruited to follow his trail across the bizarre planet to help save the settlement. It's at the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema 2D), Fenway, South Bay (including RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema 2D), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema 2D), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Devotion features Jonathan Majors as a naval aviator during the Korean War, notable for being the first Black man in that role. Looks solid. It's playing the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Arsenal Yards has the Illumination The Grinch on Friday and Gremlins Friday to Sunday.. There's an early screening of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish on Saturday at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill. Documentary Six Locked Doors: The Legacy of Cocoanut Grove (about the infamous Boston nightclub fire) plays Chestnut Hill on Monday. K-Pop concert film NCT Dream the Movie: In a Dream plays Boston Common, Fenway on Wednesday the 30th. I Heard the Bells, an "inspiring" film about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow writing the Carol of the Bells, plays South Bay and Arsenal Yards on Thursday 1 December
  • In addition to the other openings, Landmark Theatres Kendall Square has a new adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover beginning on Wednesday.

    The Tuesday Retro Replay show is the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit (have they been doing a Jeff Bridges month? I didn't catch that at first). There's also Neil Young: Harvest Time, a chronicle of Young creating his album Harvest, mostly composed of previously-unseen footage, on Thursday 1 December (also at Boston Common and Fenway).
  • The Brattle Theatre has more Marilyn Monroe classics this week, with double features of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes & How to Marry a Millionaire on Wednesday, Some Like It Hot & The Seen Year Itch Thursday and Tuesday, and Niagara & The Misfits next Wednesday and Thursday.

    After Thanksgiving, they offer an anti-consumeriism Black Friday Double Feature with They Live & Chopping Mall on Friday (including free popcorn). Saturday and Sunday are "Give Thanks for Bogie" days with Casablanca, with Monday described as a "Post-Thanksgiving Palate Cleanser" featuring a 35mm print of The Royal Tenenbaums.
  • New Indian movies start Friday at Apple Fresh Pond, with Itlu Maredumilli Prajaneekam a Telugu-language, rural-set drama and Padachone Ingalu Kaatholee a sprawling Malayalam comedy. Drishyam 2, Masooda, Love Today, and Uunchai continue at Fresh Pond, though not every one is playing every day; Drishyam 2 is also at Boston Common.

    Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time, Hideaki Anno's long awaited finale to his "rebuild of Evangelion", plays Boston Common (subtitled Imax Xenon) on Wednesday. One Piece Film: Red continues at Boston Common (subtitled) and Assembly Row (dubbed).

    Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave continues at the Somerville (through Sunday), West Newton and opens in Lexington.
  • Most of the students are away, so The Harvard Film Archive is closed most of the weekend, but they've got an encore 35mm screening of Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man Sunday afternoon. Monday evening, they have a selection of Kaidu Club Experimental Shorts directed by Han Ohki in the 1970s; Kaidu Club was one of South Korea's first groups of feminist filmmakers
  • The Regent Theatre shows Concert for George on Tuesday night, hosted by ChaChi Loprete of "Breakfast with the Beatles" and Gary Backstrom playing George Harrison's music on stage before the film begins. Apparently no sing-along movie this holiday break!
  • As with the HFA, Bright Lights is off with students going home for Thanksgiving, but will be back next Thursday (1 December) with the very cool Neptune Frost, with Professor Wendy Waters leading the discussion of Saul Williams's queer Afrofuturist cyberpunk stoory. Free to the public, tickets available starting noon the day of the show.
  • The Museum of Science will be showing Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome Fridays and Saturdays into December.
  • The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday with Decision to Leave, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu playing through Sunday.

    The West Newton Cinema gets Strange World, Aftersun, and Amsterdam, joiining The Menu, The Banshees of Inisherin, Wakanda Forever, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, Armageddon Time (Wednesday/Saturday/Sunday matinees), Decision to Leave, and Tár. Closed Tanksgiving and Monday.

    The Luna Theater has Weirdo Wednesday this week and next, Edward Scissorhands Friday afternoon, Aftersun Friday and Saturday, In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 and The 22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows on Saturday, plus Elf on Sunday.

    Cinema Salem has The Menu, Wakanda Forever, and Strange World Friday to Monday.
  • 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 and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
I've already got my ticket to Glass Onion, and am looking forward to The Fabelmans, Strange World, plus maybe Devotion and Bones and All, along with some more Marilyns.

Friday, November 18, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 18 November 2022 - 22 November 2022

Thanksgiving approaches, which means we'll get movies opening again on Wednesday. But for now...
  • ... a likely very quick run for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, with del Toro collaborating with stop-motion animator Mark Gustafson (who, in addition to his work in Claymation, probably deserves more credit than he gets for Fantastic Mr. Fox). It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre and Kendall Square for a fairly short run.

    Midnights this weekend at the Coolidge include Michael Haneke's Funny Games on Friday and Robin Williams in One Hour Photo on Saturday. Monday's Science on Screen show is I Heart Huckabees, with mathematician Joseph Mazur talking about probability and coincidence. Tuesday's Noirvember show is Chinatown, with Akira Kurosawa's Drunken Angel playing on Wednesday as they clean house with three films opening for the long weekend.
  • I'm reading that The Menu plays more as black comedy than horror despite what the trailer implies; it stars Ralph Fiennes as a celebrity chef who apparently has it in for the rich folks paying thousands per plate at his pop-up event, including Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy. It's at the Somerville, Fresh Pond, Lexington, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Arsenal Yards plays Chicken Run Saturday and Sunday mornings.
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square, the Somerville, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row open She Said, starring Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan as the New York Times reporters who got people to go on the record about Harvey Weinstein.

    The Kendall's Tuesday Retro Replay is The Big Lebowski
  • The Brattle Theatre has a quick weekend run (Friday, Saturday, and a matinee Sunday) of Utama, in which an elderly Quecha couple in Bolivia must confront both how climate change is making their life untenable and news from their grandson. It shares the screen with rock doc Meet Me in the Bathroom (Friday night and Saturday/Sunday matinees).

    On Tuesday, they start a series of Marilyn Monroe classics with a double feature of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes & How to Marry a Millionaire, which also plays on Wednesday.
  • Drishyam 2 is a sequel to a remake and a remake of a sequel, with Ajay Devgn returning as a man once again having to go to dark places to protect his family. It's at Fresh Pond.

    Also opening at Apple Fresh Pond on Friday are Telugu horror film Masooda (through Monday), Tamil action flick Kalagathalaivan (through Monday), Malayalam legal caper Mukundan Unni Associates (through Monday). Telugu comedy Alipiriki Allantha Dooramlo plays Saturday to Monday, and Bangladeshi soccer drama Damal plays Sunday. Hindu drama Uunchai continues at Fresh Pond and Boston Common; Fresh Pond keeps Telugu sci-fi flick Yashoda and Tamil comedy Love Today.

    One Piece Film: Red loses some big screens but continues at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row, with dubbed and subtitled shows by location.

    Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave continues at the Somerville, the Coolidge, West Newton, and the Kendall.
  • The Harvard Film Archive welcomes the director in question for a weekend of "Michael Roemer and the Rite of Rediscovery" presentations: He'll be hosting his films Dying (Friday 16mm), Vengeance is Mine (Saturday 35mm), Pilgrim, Farewell (Sunday 35mm), as well as Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Monday 35mm). Actress Brooke Adams will also be in town to discuss her films Days of Heaven (Sunday 3pm) as well as Vengeance Is Mine, which she appeared in.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a double feature of the first two Star Trek theatrical films on Saturday, both director's cuts in new 4K DCPs used for the recent disc releases (The Wrath of Khan was previously listed as 35mm).
  • The Museum of Science will be showing Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome Fridays and Saturdays into December, and also adds "Train Time" to its Omnima mix, plus a condensed Polar Express and Thomas the Tank Engine story to the 4D room as part of its annual train exhibits.
  • Wicked Queer's fall documentary festival is this weekend, including Esther Newton Made Me Gay (Friday), Uyra: The Dying Fores (Saturday), A Run for More (Saturday), and Casa Susanna (Sunday) at the MFA and Nelly & Nadine (Sunday), All Man: The International Male Story (Sunday), and The Radical at the Brattle.
  • The Lexington Venue has The Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu playing through Sunday.

    The West Newton Cinema gets The Menu and The Banshees of Inisherin, joining Wakanda Forever, Lyle Lyle Crocodile, Armageddon Time (Saturday/Sunday matinees), Decision to Leave, Tár, and Ticket to Paradise. Closed Monday and, apparently, on Wednesday as well.

    The Luna Theater has Aftersun for most of the weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), with a matinee of The 22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows on Saturday. There's also a Weirdo Wednesday show on the schedule.

    Cinema Salem has The Menu, Wakanda Forever, Armageddon Time, and Tár Friday to Monday.
  • 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 and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
I will probably hit Pinocchio, The Menu, Wakanda Forever, and the Star Trek and Marilyn double features. I should probably also fit She Said in there, considering how fast Call Jane came and went.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Irish Movies in Ireland: My Father's Dragon

I'm on a not-particularly-scheduled vacation in Dublin right now - I basically saw I had to use some time up before the end of the year, knew I couldn't use Thanksgiving to extend it a little more if I wanted to go extra-far, and figured I didn't want to screw around too much with having to navigate in a land where English isn't the de facto first language - Gaelic may be listed first on some signs, but there's a lot of English in the air.

Anyway, as I tend to do, I spent most of Thursday walking about, in this case near Dublin Castle - not exactly the stone edifice that word conjures up, but impressive and noteworthy all the same. It being November and surprisingly far north - climate-wise, it always blows my mind that Dublin and London are not just north of Boston, but Montreal! - it was soon dark, so I popped "movie theaters" into my phone, saw that the Irish Film Institute was nearby, and had my eyebrows go up at this:

I don't know if My Father's Dragon got any theatrical release in the U.S. at all, or if they just couldn't find a screen in the Boston area, but, hey, I like Cartoon Saloon a lot and I had already been mentally composing at least one "Irish movies in Ireland" post for the blog. So, nifty!

The IFI itself is kind of tucked away on the street; the lobby is down a passageway, past a little shop nook that sells discs and (maybe) film books. The concession stand is smaller than the box office, labeled as a café stand with seats around the circular lobby to the point that I wondered if this was a "no snacks in the theater" type of place, especially considering that there was a fairly bustling restaurant/bar area off the lobby. Maybe that was just the way boutique houses work in this city.

(I could, in fact, bring my chocolate chip cookie and Coca-Cola upstairs to the theater)

I wish there were more places with this sort of vibe around Boston; the closest thing is probably the ice cream parlor at the Arlington Capitol or when the Studio in Belmont was sort of tied in with the burrito place next door (or, I guess, the bar areas that have infested the local multiplexes). I don't think it's really a planned part of the Coolidge's expansion, although they'd maybe be the best fit. I could imagine the Brattle taking over one of the other spaces in the building for something like that, but it would also involve imagining the rents in Harvard Square being less crazy than they are (this also goes for imagining something like that being done with the old Harvard Square Cinema space, still vacant with rumors of a development including a two-screener in the basement seven years after it closed). It feels like we could have something like this, where film-lovers would have a sort of dedicated space to browse and hang out before and after a screening, but the right opening is hard to find.

My Father's Dragon

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2022 in Irish Film Archive #2 (first-run, DCP)

Between their Irish folklore series and The Breadwinner, Kilkanney's Cartoon Saloon has staked out an enviable place in the animation landscape - their films are instantly recognizable, and while often built with younger audiences in mind, they have generally been mature enough to appeal to adults without having to plant "aren't we clever for going over kids' heads" bits. They've been so good that My Father's Dragon being a tick below that is noticeable, if not truly disappointing: The movie is fine; and kids should enjoy it, but it may not click in quite the same way for their parents.

It initially introduces the audience to Elmer (voice of Jacob Tremblay), a bright and energetic kid who knows where to find anything in the small-town market run by his mother Dela (voice of Golshifteh Farahani), although that place can't quite last, and the pair are soon moving to "Nevergreen City", where Dela is having a hard time finding work and landlady Mrs. McClaren (voice of Rita Moreno) isn't exactly pleased to find she brought a kid with her. Other things go wrong - a cat follows Elmer home despite Mrs. McClaren's no-pets rule, he rubs the other kids who are down-and-out the wrong way, and Dela has to spend the money they were saving to re-open the store. That's how he ends up alone by the docks, told that if he can rescue a dragon, surely he could make some money selling pictures and rides and such. But when a bubbly whale named Soda (voice of Judy Greer) gets him to the island, things turn complicated: Boris (voice of Gaten Matarazzo) is just a kid dragon himself, tied to the island by orangutan Saiwa (voice of Ian McShane) to keep it from sinking by flying up.

The script by Meg LaFauve (based on Ruth Stiles Gannett's children's book) is not especially complicated, and neither she nor director Nora Twomey burdens it with more than needs to be there. They could have set up parallels between the island and the mainland, perhaps re-using voice actors or otherwise doing more to hint that the island is an imaginary place where Elmer can work through what's really eating him, beyond there being tangerines in both places. This happens and that happens, with Elmer and Boris not exactly moving in a straight line but close enough that kids can follow them. The film winds up introducing a lot of characters that viewers may figure would be more important, and there's not a lot of reason for this to be "My Father's Dragon" rather than "Elmer's Dragon", there's no flashing back or forward. The filmmakers aren't putting in complicated structure for kids who won't consciously notice it but will hopefully just be involved in the moment. That's fine, as is the moment or two when the film stops so Elmer can state exactly what he's learning; it does the job for the main audience.

So does the voice acting, with Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo apparently recording together and capturing the right vibe where Matarazzo's Boris is almost perfectly sweet, though scared, with Tremblay's Elmer often just selfish enough to frustrate the viewers without losing them. There are a lot of enjoyable character actors around them, from Golshifteh Farahani being note-perfect with Dela's faltering optimism to how Ian McShane and Chris O'Dowd are sort of frightening in their pragmatism, with folks like Alan Cumming, Dianne Wiest, Jackie Earle Haley, and Rita Moreno in between. Special props go to Whoopi Goldberg and Judy Greer, whose sly cat and happy whale are opposites woh work quite well together.

And, almost needless to say, the film is gorgeous, animated in classic style, with character designs that seem coloring-book-ready and which allow a lot of expression without distortion. There's a house style that makes Cartoon Saloon productions recognizable but seldom repetitive, especially the backgrounds that feel busy without quite being dizzying, the distinct color schemes for the village, city, and island. There are big, clear shapes, and rather than overwhelm the audience at crucial moments, Twomey will throw away perspective or reduce action to silhouettes to make sure what's actually important gets the most full, impactful emphasis.

That simplification, both in story and style, makes me wonder if the studio was animating with knowledge that this was heading for Netflix with very little time on the big screen. My Father's Dragon feels streaming-scale rather than grandly cinematic - fine enough for kids, but not as thrilling as this group's best work.

Friday, November 11, 2022

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 11 November 2022 - 17 November 2022

I'm out of town, but let's face it - a sequel to what many feel is Marvel's best movie is coming out this weekend and every other studio is going to stay the heck away, with maybe a little happening at the margins of the multiplexes, plus some good times at the independents.
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is the film dominating screens this week, with Ryan Coogler having to build a movie around the giant hole left by Chadwick Boseman's death, but the trailers make it look terrific, with much of the previous film's cast returning and Tenoch Huerta as Namor the Sub-Mariner, one of Marvel's first heroes, with the underwater nation of Atlantis reimagined as having Meso-American roots. It's at The Capitol (including RealD 3D), Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D/3D), West Newton, Boston Common (including RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema/Imax Xenon/Imax 3D), Fenway (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, South Bay (including RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema/Imax Xenon/Imax 3D), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema/Imax Xenon/Imax 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill (including RealD 3D).

    60th anniversary shows of To Kill a Mockingbird play Fenway, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday (no Arsenal Yards). Boston Common has a special early screening of The Menu on Tuesday. Concert film Liam Gallagher - Knebworth 22 plays Boston Common on Thursday.
  • Landmark Theatres Kendall Square continues to be the place where Netflix movies show up, with BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. That is absolutely the title of an Alejandro González Iñárritu film, this one following a Mexican journalist returning home to receive an award after living in Los Angeles for many years, which is apparently both emotionally overwhelming and absurd. It's a long one (though actually a few minutes shorter than Wakanda Forever) and is getting an unusually generous theatrical window, not expected to hit the service until mid-December or later.

    The streamer also supplies The Swimmers, about two sisters who fled Syria as refugees and would eventually compete in the 2016 Olympics. This one is mostly playing matinees, and will be on Netflix the 23rd. Tuesday's Retro Replay is The Fisher King.
  • It is Noirvember at The Brattle Theatre, and they make a good argument for living there this week with a slate full of 75th anniversary screenings (1947 was apparently a top-notch year for the genre): T-Men (Friday), Framed (35mm Saturday), Born to Kill (35mm Saturday), Dead Reckoning (Sunday), Dark Passage (Sunday), Desert Fury (35mm Monday), Ride the Pink Horse (35mm Monday), Crossfire (35mm Wednesday), Kiss of Death (Wednesday), The Lady from Shanghai (Thursday), and Johnny O'Clock (Thursday).

    They also have Meet Me in the Bathroom playing the late shows Friday to Sunday and earlier on Tuesday; a "this time and place was really special for rock & roll" doc that focuses on New York City in the early 2000s.
  • Hindu drama Uunchai, about three older friends reuniting at the Mount Everest Base Camp, opens at Fresh Pond and Boston Common.

    Apple Fresh Pond has Telugu and Tamil screenings of Yashoda, a sci-fi/action film starring Samantha Ruth Prabhu as a woman who discovers there may be more to her pregnancy than meets the eye. They also get Tamil comedy Love Today, about a young couple who switch phones for the day and presumably learn more about each other than they bargained for, and Malayalam family sports film Aanaparambile World Cup.

    Table for Six, which I seem to recall was climbing the all-time Hong Kong box office charts a few weeks ago, makes its way to the US, starring Louis Cheung as a man who shows at at his brother's dinner party with his new girlfriend Monica (Stephy Tang) - who also used to date said older brother. It's at Boston Common, but looks like it may be the first thing bounced when they want to show Black Panther a few more times.

    One Piece Film: Red loses some big screens but continues at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill, with both dubbed and subtitled shows in most locations.

    Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave continues at the Somerville and West Newton to the Coolidge, the Kendall, and Boston Common.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre keeps the same rotation for continuing runs. After midnight shows this weekend include a 35mm print of Blackenstein on Friday, with Michael Jai White as Black Dynamite Saturday, also on 35mm. Goethe-Institut Boston presents A E I O U: A Quick Alphabet of Love on Sunday morning; Monday's Big Screen Classic is Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie; a 35mm print of Out of the Past plays on 35mm Tuesday (with seminar) as part of Noirvember; Wednesday's Shakespeare Reimagined show is Throne of Blood on 35mm, and the film projector is also in use for Addams Family Values on Thursday, with a Rewind! afterparty at Parlour.
  • The Harvard Film Archive offers a chance for folks to study up before guests arrive next weekend, starting the "Michael Roemer and the Rite of Rediscovery" series with Nothing But a Man on Friday, paired shorts "Cortile Cascino" (16mm) & "Faces of Israel" (digital) and The Plot Against Harry on Sunday. "Brooke Adams: Radiance in Plain Sight" has Gas Food Lodging and Invasion of the Body Snatchers on Saturday and The Dead Zone on Monday. All are on 35mm except where notd; Roemer ad Adams will be in town next weekend.
  • The Museum of Science will be showing Wakanda Forever Fridays and Saturdays for the next month (some of the film takes place and was shot nearby!).
  • Bright Lights offers an aperitif for Wicked Queer's fall documentary festival with Mama Bears on Thursday, about Christan mothers who have their LGBTQ kids' back. Activist Kay Shappley and subject Sara Cunningham will be there for a Q&A. Free to the public, tickets available day-of; the festival begins at the MFA next Friday.
  • The in-person portion of the Boston Jewish Film Festival has finished, but a number of features and shorts presentations are available to stream via Eventive through Sunday.
  • The Lexington Venue has The Banshees of Inisherin and Ticket to Paradise playing through Sunday.

    The West Newton Cinema brings in Wakanda Forever and Lyle Lyle Crocodile, plus Armageddon Time, Decision to Leave, Tár, and Ticket to Paradise. Their current schedule shows nothing Monday or Thursday, plus a lot of time blocked out as "Rental" on Friday/Saturday/Sunday, which probably aren't the horror movie listed on Fandango, although I suppose it's possible.

    The Luna Theater has The 22nd Annual Animation Show of Shows, a program of nine new shorts plus a restoration on Friday and Saturday nights. In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50, Moonage Daydream, and Meet Me in the Bathroom also play Saturday afternoon (music lovers can just settle in). Sunday's got four shows of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (it's mostly a Tim Burton month), with a Weirdo Wednesday show also on tap.

    Cinema Salem was closed last week to recover from Halloween, but re-opens with Wakanda Forever, Armageddon Time, and Tár Friday to Monday. They also have two "VideoCoven Presents" shows on Thursday, with Salem Horror Fest alumni The Last Thanksgiving & Cold Wind Blowing.
  • 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 and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.
I'm still out of town for most of this week, but it's entirely possible I'll pop into Wakanda Forever just to protect myself from accidentally hearing too much (hey, it's dark and museums are closed at 5pm anyway). I may also try and catch a couple Irish/not-at-home movies in the evenings, and hit Table for Six when I get back Wednesday.