Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 March 2023 - 9 March 2023

Happy "Geez, are the Oscars next week? I had better catch up!" week to all who celebrate.

• Creed III sees star Michael B. Jordan going behind the camera as director and facing a onetime-friend-turned-rival played by Jonathan Majors inside and outside the ring, and without Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa as a mentor. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), Boston Common (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, South Bay (inlcuding Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser/Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre shows up a year after its intended release, apparently because a movie having Ukrainian villains became a bad idea in 2022 (whether they've become Russian through the magic of ADR, I don't know). Guy Ritchie directs with Jason Statham as secret agent Dominic Fortune, Aubrey Plaza as his partner, Hugh Grant as the arms dealer they're targeting, and Josh Hartnett as the movie star they're using to get on the bad guy's yacht. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row.
  
  The latest version of Children of the Corn opens at Boston Common, after sitting on the shelf for the better part of three years, which even considering the pandemic doesn't sound good, but it's interesting in that it's the first film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer since Ultraviolet over fifteen years ago.
  
  Boston Common has most of the Best Picture nominees playing at various times over the weekend (excluding All Quiet). Casablanca plays South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday without it even having to be an anniversary (which is apparently why the Brattle had just the one show last month). Among the night-before previews is a Scream VI "3D Fan Event" at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• Irish nominee for Best International Film The Quiet Girl plays at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, Boston Common. Mostly in Gaelic, it tells the story of a girl dropped off with distant relatives for the summer, not sure when she will return to her immediate family, who starts to come out of her shell before learning a family secret.
  
  The Coolidge also offers a weekend of RRR screenings, 9:30pm on Friday and Saturday and 3pm on Sunday (as does Boston Common and CinemaSalem, at different times). The midnights are Michelle Yeoh Mystery Movies, with a different movie playing on 35mm film on Friday and Saturday, convenient double features with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whose rerelease is still going strong at the Coolidge after being kind of perfunctory elsewhere. They also start a new repertory screening for March, featuring the films of Claire Denis, with Chocolat on Tuesday (including a seminar from UMass Professor Sarah Keller) and No Fear, No Die on Wednesday.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square and West Newton open Return to Seoul, a much-lauded film about a 25-year-old woman returning to the nation of her birth after being adopted and raised in France. It was, despite that, the Oscar submission for Cambodia.
  
  For their March throwbacks, the Kendall is alternating Orson Welles and David Lean, kicking things off on Tuesday with Citizen Kane. They also have a one-night presentation of Remember This on Wednesday, which features David Strathairn in a one-man show as Jan Karski, who escaped Poland to get the word of the Holocaust out to the wider world.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Swordsmith Village plays the US just a month after opening in Japan, with the last entry one quietly one of the sleeper hits of the pandemic and this one (I think) offering a preview of the next season of the TV series. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, Kendall Square, Assembly Row; check showtimes for whether they are dubbed or subtitled.
  
  Vietnamese drama Nha Ba Nu ("The House of No Man") opens at South Bay; with Le Giang as a matriarch who runs her three-generation household the same way she does her crab noodle stall.
  
  Apple Fresh Pond opens Egyptian action movie The Spider (Al Ankabout) this weekend; it came out in the Middle East last summer and focuses on a drug dealer whose empire is under siege.
  
  Hindi-language action flicks Selfiee and Pathaan are held over at Fresh Pond, with Selfiee also at Boston Common; Bollywood romantic comedy Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar opens Wednesday at Fresh Pond and Boston Common.
  
  Cheng Er's WWII thriller Hidden Blade is down to one or two showtimes a day at Boston Common (you can actually see it at 7pm!).
• The Brattle Theatre presents Round Midnight on Friday, with Maxine Gordon introducing the film starring Dexter Gordon as a jazzman in Paris who forms a friendship with a destitute fan.
  
  Since 3/5 is "Reel Film Day", the Brattle makes a weekend of it, with a double feature of Peral & X on Saturday and Singin' in the Rain & Sullivan's Travels on Sunday, all on 35mm film.
  
  For the rest of the week, they celebrate the lead-up to the Oscars by noting one of the more egregious omissions in Gina Prince-Bythewood. Beyond the LIghts and Love & Basketball play Monday, The Secret Life of Bees on Tuesday, and The Woman King from Tuesday to Wednesday.
  
  There's also a special free premiere screening of Judy Blume Forever, on Wednesday - admission is free, but RSVPs are required (though they do not guarantee entry).
• The Somerville Theatre is back to having Midnight Specials this week, starting off with a 35mm print of The Big Lebowski on Saturday. They also have a Women's History Month "Silents, Please!" double feature on Sunday, with Jeff Rapsis accompanying Lillian Gish in Annie Laurie and Mary Pickford in a 1914 adaptation of Cinderella.
  
  The Capitol opens indie coming-of-age film Palm Trees and Power Lines, starring Lily McInerny as a teenager who starts a relationship with a man twice her age. They also bring back Women Talking for those doing some Oscar catch-up.
• The Harvard Film Archive is all about "Remapping Latin American Cinema: Chilean Film/Video 1963-2013" this weekend with Little White Dove on Friday, Jackal of Nahueltoro and To Kill a Man Saturday, El Pejesapo and Naomi Campbel on Sunday, and on Monday before going dark for a week during spring break.
• The Boston Baltic Film Festival takes place is the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount from Friday to Sunday, featuring 10 films from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, most with post-film Q&A. Starting on Monday, five of those films plus seven others will be available to stream online through the 19th.
  
  While you're in the festival mood, passes are on sale for Boston Underground Film Festival, and I imagine titles will be announced soon.
• The Regent Theatre is mostly a live venue, with "Children of the Streets" being presented as a play on Friday and Saturday, although it is also being shot as a mini-series pilot.
• The ICA has the Oscar animated and live-action shorts on Sunday; the various Oscar Shorts programs also playing at the Coolidge, the Somerville, the Kendall, the Lexington Venue, and Luna Lowell.
• Bright Lights shows "Subtle Images of Every Day Revolt: Short Works From Contemporary Iran", with the title of the program explaining it pretty well; this is four short films be female and non-binary Persian filmmakers, whether in Iran or elsewhere. It's free and open to the public at the Paramount's Bright Screening Room on Thursday night, with Q&A from some directors afterward afterward.
• Ant-Man 3 continues to play Friday & Saturday on the dome atThe Museum of Science, with "Everest" and "Ancient Caves" alternating the rest of the time.
• The Lexington Venue is open through Sunday with the three Oscar shorts packages, Living, and Cocaine Bear.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Return to Seoul and Cocaine Bear, continuing documentary Four Winters, Women Talking, A Man Called Otto, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans (no show Thursday), Aftersun (Saturday/Sunday), The Banshees of Inisherin (no show Monday), Puss in Boots (Saturday/Sunday), and Tár. No shows Tuesday this week.
  
  The Luna Theater has Close on Friday, The Whale and all three Oscar shorts programs on Saturday. and Misery all day Sunday. Weirdo Wednesday is back on the site.
  
  Cinema Salem is open through Monday with the Oscar Shorts, RRR, Cocaine Bear, Ant-Man, and The Fabelmans. If you can make it out to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they have Blueback, an Australian family movie with an impressive cast (Radha Mitchell, Eric Bana, Mia Wasikowska) about a girl who fights to keep poachers away from the large blue grouper she discovers while diving, and Hunt Her, Kill Her, a sort of reverse-slasher with Natalie Terrazzino as a janitor who must survive a gang of four would-be killers.
• 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.

Geez, a week and a half until Oscar and I still haven't seen the shorts, Women Talking, or Elvis, much less The Quiet Girl? Geez, how am I going to fit Operation Fortune and Return to Seoul in as well, not to mention Love & Basketball and Palm Trees and Power Lines?