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.