Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 30 September 2022 - 6 October 2022

Odd thing - the 19-plex at Boston Common was only showing about 8 screens worth of movies right until Thursday afternoon, making me wonder if it was slated for the upgrades supposedly headed to a lot of the chain's theaters. Not this weekend, I guess.

• The big opening this weekend is Bros, starring Billy Eichner as a Provincetown man who hooks up with a guy who initially seems way out of his league. Eichner co-writes with Nicholas Stoller, who has done a fair amount of good comedy. It's at the Somerville Theatre, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Also opening wide is Smile, a horror movie about the latest person seemingly doomed to die because of a curse that manifests itself as people with unnaturally broad grins around her. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Fenway, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (CWX).
  
  Romantic comedy The Good House pairs Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline as a realtor who needs a big sale and Kevin Kline as an old boyfriend with some prime oceanfront property. These two look pretty good for folks in their mid-70s, I can't believe it's been almost 30 years since Dave. It's at the Capitol, Boston Common, Fenway, and South Bay. Arsenal Yards picks up The Greatest Beer Run Ever, with Zac Efron and Russell Crowe in Peter Farrelly's comedy about a guy in the 1960s trying to help his buddies in Vietnam (also on AppleTV+).
  
  Boston Common still has some Latino month shows of In the Heights (Friday/Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday), Selena (Saturday), The Curse of La Llorona (Monday), and Pan's Labyrinth (Thursday). There's a Universal Monsters show of The Mummy & The Bride of Frankenstein at Fenway and Arsenal Yards on Saturday. Fenway also has Mean Girls on Monday evening. DIO: Dreamers Never Die plays Sunday afternoon at Kendall Square and Boston Common, while Billy Joel Live at Yankee Stadium plays Boston Common, Fenway, Kendall Square, and South Bay on Wednesday. There are earlier-than-Thursday previews of Triangle of Sadness on Monday (Kendall Square) and Wednesday (Boston Common). Horror flick The Retaliators pops up for another one-off at Fenway on Wednesday, while Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row have Terrifier 2 as a "Thrills & Chills" screening Thursday night; it's (somehow) the third Art the Clown movie and like an hour longer than either of the other two, which seems a bit much.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square opens God's Creatures, with the always-reliable Emily Watson as a woman in an isolated fishing village whose lie to protect her son has unexpected consequences. There's also a Retro Replay of The Lost Boys on Tuesday.
• The big Indian release this week is Ponniyin Selvan: Part One, a grand-scale period action movie starring Vikram, Karthi, Jayam Ravi, Trisha Krishnan, Aishwaraya Rai Bachchan, and more against a backdrop of a land about to fall into civil war. I believe Tamil is its primary language, but it plays in multiple versions at Fresh Pond (Tamil/Telugu/Hindi), Boston Common (Tamil including Imax/Hindi), and South Bay (Tamil/Hindi). Also opening a bit wider (at Fresh Pond and Boston Common) is Vikram Vedha, an old-school action movie with Saif Ali Khan as the city's toughest cop and Hrithik Roshan as its nastiest criminal.
  
  Apple Fresh Pond has more spaced through the week. Friday brings Naane Varuvean, a thriller with Dhanush playing hero and villain, and Kantara, a Kannada-language adventure. Bangla-language crime/drama/romance Poran plays Saturday and Sunday, Telugu crime story GodFather opens Tuesday (also at Boston Common), and Wednesday brings two more in that language, romance Swathi Muthyam and action flick The Ghost. Brahmastra: Part One - Shiva hangs around Fresh Pond (2D Hindi) and Boston Common (3D Hindi).
  
  Chinese action flick Wolf Pack has Max Zhang Jin (who is great) and Aarif Rahman, and I don't know if it's taken this long to do Wolf Warrior knockoffs or if this is just the first one to get much of a release in the US. Limited showtimes at Boston Common.
  
  Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero may be reaching the end of the line at South Bay, with dubbed shows on Friday, Saturday, and Wednesday. Nice run.
• The Brattle Theatre opens My Imaginary Country, Patricio Guzmán's documentary on the 2019 democratic revolution in Chile, the latest in a string of movies documenting the country's history as it happens for almost fifty years; years the three parts of The Battle for Chile play as a companion presentation on Saturday.
  
  It's also Halloween, so that means spooky stuff, starting with F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu on Friday as part of their 100th-anniversary Silent Movie Day shows. From there, it's an easy segue into Vampires at the Arthouse late shows, with Park Chan-wook's Thirst on Saturday, a 35mm print of Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive Sunday & Monday, Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In on 35mm Tuesday, Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess on Wednesday, and Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night on Thursday (with her new one opening the next night).
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre ends the September midnights with Night of the Demon on Friday, on 35mm with a post-film Q&A featuring actor Hal Nevis, and starts October's John Carpenter program with Dark Star on Saturday. Psycho is Monday's Big Screen Classic, Boston Open Screen returns on Tuesday (is this the first since Covid?), and the second Three Colors restoration, White, plays on Wednesday.
• The Somerville Theatre starts their spooky stuff schedule with Killer Klowns from Outer Space at midnight on Saturday.
• The Harvard Film Archive starts "The Face of Time: Recent Films by Tsai Ming-Liang" this weekend, including Stray Dogs (Friday), Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Saturday), Good Manners (Sunday), and half-hour shorts "Walker" and "No No Sleep". They also throw in King Hu's Dragon Inn on Saturday night, for those who want to see that beloved wuxia action film that the folks in the previous film's shuttering theater were watching..
• CineFest Latino Boston started on Thursday with a Bright Lights screening, and continues through the weekend with Utama at Emerson's Paramount Theater on Friday and El Rey del Todo el Mundo at the Coolidge on Sunday.
• The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston has six films from the island at Boston Common on Saturday and Sunday: Documentaries Eagle Hand, Me and My Condemned Son, Enigma: The Chinese Crested Tern, and Let the Wind Carry Me; animated feature Grandma and Her Ghosts; and drama Listen Before You Sing.
• In addition to the regular schedule of documentary shorts, The New England Aquarium has The LIfe Aquatic with Steve Zissou on their giant Imax screen on Saturday evening. It's the last scheduled $5 cult classic movie night; hopefully it's done well enough to get a few more water-themed movies there.
• The Regent Theatre has one more show of this year's edition of The Manhattan Short Film Festival on Sunday, plus the Kendal Mountain Tour of adventure shorts on Tuesday.
  
  They also host the Loney Seal Festival, which has big chunks of shorts and features starting Wednesday night (through the next Monday) in both the main theater and the Underground room.
• The Bright Lights show in the Bright Screening Room of Emerson's Paramount Theater this Thursday is See You Then, in which a transitioning woman invites her old girlfriend to dinner to catch up ten years later. Director Mari Walker will be there for discussion; tickets are free and can be claimed day-of.
• The Lexington Venue has Bros and See How They Run playing through Sunday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Bros and keeps Don't Worry Darling, Jaws (Saturday morning), See How They Run (no show Thursday), Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Where the Crawdads Sing, Hallelujah, Minions (Saturday/Sunday), and The Bad Guys (Saturday/Sunday matinees). No shows on Monday.
  
  The Luna Theater plays Pearl for most shows Friday to Sunday, with the Sundance Institute Indigineous Shorts Tour playing its last two times on Saturday afternoon. Not seeing a Weirdo Wednesday show this week.
  
  Cinema Salem Friday to Sunday line-up is Bros and Barbarian. Being Salem, they're obviously into the horror, with Heavy Leather Horror hosting/presenting The Greasy Strangler on Friday, Mario Bava's Black Sunday on (you guessed it) Sunday, Miz Diamond Wigfall hosting Mean Girls on Monday, and VideoCoven presenting Creepshow for its 40th anniversary on Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films shows that there are still some outdoor programs going, with the Summer Shack pop-up in Harvard Square showing The Goonies Saturday and Nightmare Before Christmas on Thursday and Boston Together Again showing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Shell 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.

Tempted by the big Indian movies; less tempted by Bros and Smile, though folks seem to like them. I'll probably go for The Good House, some catch-up, and maybe some spooky stuff.