Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 18 March 2021 - 24 March 2022

If you like genre movies, it's a pretty spiffy week coming up!

• The biggest reason: The Boston Underground Film Festival kicks off at The Brattle Theatre on Wednesday, with You Won't Be Alone and the restoration of The Nest that night and Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr., Honeycomb, and The Innocents on Thursday, then sticking around through the next weekend. Buy tickets early, as many shows will sell out.
  
  Before that, the Brattle finishes up their Tribute to Sidney Poitier with Buck and the Preacher on Friday, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love on Saturday, In the Heat of the Night on Sunday, and 35mm prints of Sneakers and Stir Crazy on Tuesday.
  
  On Monday, they and The DocYard present A Thousand Fires, with director Saeed Taji Farouky in person to discuss his film about a family-run oil well and the son who dreams of being a soccer star.
• Master looks like it's on the classy end of that genre, with Regina Hall and Zeo Renee as two African-American women at a mostly-white New England college who find that its past may be haunting them in more than metaphorical ways. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and on Amazon Prime.
  
  The midnights include a screening of The Room and a 35mm print of Roger Corman's The Trip (which stars Peter Fonda & Bruce Dern from a script by Jack Nicholson) on Friday and a print of Fantastic Planet on Saturday. There's a Masked Matinee of The Worst Person in the World on Saturday, a Big Screen Classics marathon of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings on Sunday (with Ralph Bashki's animated version playing Wednesday), a 35mm print of Rashomon on Monday Tuesday has a Science on Screen presentation of Sorry to Bother You with Professor Michel DeGraff discussing language rights beforehand, while Thursday has a Cinema Jukebox show of The Doors.
• If you like horror, there are two new options. Sandra Oh stars in Umma as a woman who finds strange things afoot on her farm when the remains of her mother arrive from Korea. Irish Shim directs, and Sam Raimi produces. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row. There's also X from Ti West, where some locals do not take kindly to the crew of young people shooting an adult film in their town. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, the Embassy, and CinemaSalem.
  
  For those more drawn to crime, there's The Outfit, which is not based on the entry in the Parker series but instead features Mark Rylance as a tailor who maintains a drop box for the mob in order to benefit their protection, at least until a standoff occurs one night. That one plays The Capitol, Boston Common, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, and the Lexington Venue.
  
  If you want blaxploitation-style action, there's Alice, with Keke Palmer as a slave escaping a plantation who discovers that the world outside is not at all what she was led to believe. It's at Boston Common and Kendall Square.
  
  The restoration of The Godfather returns to theaters (again), with shows at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, and Boston Common. Boston Common also has Trolls: World Tour.
  
  Arsenal Yards plays the 2019 Little Women on Monday evening, while Greek film Man of God, depicting the life of Saint Nektarios of Aegina, plays Monday at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row. J-Pop concert film Arashi Anniversary Tour 5 x 20 Film: Record of Memories plays Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row on Tuesday. Boston Common and Fenway also rotate various Best Picture nominees in and out, mostly excluding the streamers, although Fenway includes CODA.
  
  There are also special previews of The Lost City on Saturday (Fandango) ,Tuesday (Girls' Night Out), and Wednesday (Date Night Out) at Boston Common, Fenway (Tuesday only), Assembly Row, in addition to the usual Thursday shows.
• Anime Jujutsu Kaisen: 0 - which I gather is a prequel to the anime series, based on a prequel to the Jujutsu Kaisen manga, may actually be opening on the most screens. It plays Boston Common (including Imax Xenon), Fenway, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill. Check showtimes for whether it's playing dubbed or subtitled.
  
  The big Bollywood action-comedy this week is Bachchan Paandey, which creatures Akshay Kumar as a rookie director making a film on gangsters who winds up with more trouble than he expected when he's spotted doing "research"; it's at Fresh Pond and Boston Common. Apple Fresh Pond also opens Telugu comedy Stand Up Rahul and Kannada-language action-comedy James on Friday, with Marathi-language historical action/adventure Pawankhind playing Saturday and Sunday. Telugu romance Radhe Shyam continues at Fresh Pond and Fenway; Fresh Pond keeps Bheeshma Parvan and The Kashmir Files; while Gangubai Kathiawadi continues at Boston Common. The big Telugu action epic RRR - Rise Roar Revolt finally opens at Fresh Pond (including Hindi and Tamil), Boston Common, Fenway (including Hindi), and Arsenal Yards on Thursday, with opening night at the Common including a 7pm Imax Xenon screening and Arsenal Yards showing it on the CWX screen.
  
  Chinese comedy-drama Nice View also opens at Boston Common, with Jackson Yee as a kid in Shenzhen who gets involved with gambling to pay for his sister's surgery.
• Landmark's Embassy Cinema.also has Ukrainian film The Guide, with proceeds going to the Ukrainian Relief Fund.
• The Somerville Theatre has a number of live shows in their main room this week, but also has Dr. Zhivago in 35mm on Sunday, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter from Monday (downstairs on Tuesday), and a "Face/Off: Travolta vs Cage" double feature at of Urban Cowboy and Raising Arizona on Tuesday.
  
  Their sister theater The Capitol also opens documentary I Am Here
• The Oscar Nominated Shorts continue on-screen with the Live-Action and Animated Selections playing the Embassy, animation at the Kendall, and rotating offerings of Documentary, Animation, and Live Action at the Coolidge and West Newton. The Luna has Live Action (Saturday) and Animation (Friday/Saturday); The ICA has Animation on Thursday.
• The Bright Lights program in the Paramount Theater's Bright Screening Room on Thursday is Inhabitants: An Indigenous Perspective, including a post-film discussion on the documentary about Native Americans returning to traditional means of managing the land; as usual, the film is free and open to the public with tickets able to be reserved on the afternoon of the show.
• Holy cow, The Harvard Film Archive is showing movies again, one of the last places in the area to re-open (at least among those that are going to reopen). Their first show back is My Voice on Thursday, the first in a series of films by Flora Gomes, this year's recipient of the McMillan-Stewart Fellowship. It stars Fatou N'Diaye as a Cape Verdean woman who believes she is cursed to die if she sings but is drawn to music, also voyaging to Paris. It plays on 35mm film.
• The Boston Israeli Film Festival presented by Boston Jewish Film starts on Thursday with a screening of Dead Sea Guardians at the West Newton, with most of the streaming selections also going live that day.
  
  Belmont World Film will begin their annual film series next Friday, with most films online and some screening in person; tickets and passes are now available.
• The West Newton Cinema continues The Batman, Cyrano, Uncharted, Drive My Car (Saturday/Thursday), Parallel Mothers (Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday), Sing 2 (Saturday/Sunday), West Side Story, and Encanto (no show Friday). The Lexington Venue has The Outfit and The Batman this weekend.
• The Luna Theater has the Animated Oscar shorts on Friday and Saturday, with the Live-Action program on Saturday. Fargo plays Sunday, plus the usual Weirdo Wednesday show.
  
  Cinema Salem has The Batman, The Worst Person in the World, and X this weekend.
• 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, and many of the multiplexes. Also, with the HFA back in business, we're down to the Imax screens at Jordan's furniture and the film program at the MFA being the last places to reopen, and both of them have removed film pages from their websites in the past couple months.

I will be trying to cram WAY too much in before BUFF, somehow hoping to get to a couple Poitiers, Alice, The Outfit, X, the last couple shorts programs, and Umma. Seems unlikely, to be honest.