Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 16 June 2023 - 22 June 2023

This is probably the average weekend when school gets out, but it doesn't look like theaters' hours are expanding on top of there being more stuff coming out.

• The first of three DC Universe films coming out this year, The Flash, plays The Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, South Bay (including Iamx Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill. It appears to adapt Flashpoint, in which Ezra Miller's super-speed hero travels back in time to prevent his mother's murder and winds up in a timeline that has been butterfly-effected into having no Superman, General Zod invading, and Batman an older hero (played by Michael Keaton). On the one hand, Michael Keaton, on the other, the preview threatens us with two of the little creep in the lead at once.
  
  Disney & Pixar, meanwhile, present Elemental, which posits a world populated by the avatars of the four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - and has young people from the latter two groups meet and fall in love, which is obviously tricky. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including RealD 3D, Dolby Cinema, shows in Mandarin), South Bay (including RealD 3D & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Also opening is The Blackening, a slasher spoof that takes the cliché that the Black person in these movies and asks what happens if the whole group is Black and the killer is maybe racist on top of that. It's at the Coolidge, Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards.
  
  The family matinee at Boston Common this week is Paw Patrol, playing Saturday and Wednesday mornings. There are sneak preview screenings of No Hard Feelings at Boston Common (Saturday), Assembly Row (Saturday) before its regular Thursday previews/Friday opening. Mad Heidi, the latest grindhouse-inspired update of a public domain story for kids, plays at Assembly Row on Wednesday. Two separate BTS solo project movies - SUGA: Road to D-Day and j-hope in the Box play Boston Common on Saturday and Sunday (not at the same time!); album art documentary Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) plays Boston Common on Tuesday; and the 2023 Grateful Dead: Meet-Up at the Movies is at Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row on Thursday, featuring a 22 June 1991 show from Soldier Field.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Blue Jean, which stars Rosy McEwen as a gym teacher in 1988 England who retreats further into the closet as the Tories prepare laws stigmatizing LGBTQ folks, despite a new student bringing her double life to a head. (They also have The Blackening.)
  
  Midnights at the Coolidge feature 35mm prints of the 1989 version of The Punisher (starring Dolph Lundgren) on Friday and John Woo's The Killer (one of the two famous heroic bloodshed flicks starring Chow Yun-fat) on Saturday. Sunday afternoon features a special screening of Dealing with Dad (in association with the Brookline Asian American Family Network and The Boston Asian-American Film Festival) with director Tom Huang and others on hand to talk about his film about a family that finds their father laid low by depression is actually more pleasant than his usual demanding self. Samurai Summer starts on Tuesday with a 35mm print of Sanjuro, continuing Wednesday with the Takeshi Kitano Zatoichi. Thursday's Rewind! show is a 35mm print of Jawbreaker with an afterparty down the street at Parlor.
• The big release from India this week - the only one! - is Adipurush, the most expensive film ever made in India, an adaptation of the Ramayana that plays Apple Fresh Pond in Telugu (including 3D shows), Tamil, and Hindi; it plays Boston Common in Hindi and Telugu. Neither location specifically specifies English subtitles, although I'd bet on them at Boston Common more than Fresh Pond.
  
  Anime Suzume continues at the Coolidge, subtitled. Anime Lonely Castle in the Mirror, a fantasy adventure from Miss Hokusai and Birthday Wonderland director Keiichi Hara, plays Wednesday (subtitled) and Thursday (dubbed) at Boston Common, Assembly Row.
• The Brattle Theatre offers three films that seem too recent to need restorations, both because I can't be old enough for stuff that played while I was an adult to have degraded and because, geez, haven't we gotten better about archiving them so they won't? Drylongso is a 1998 story of an Oakland art student documenting the way Black men seem to be dying at a horrific rate, and plays Friday through Monday. Party Girl, the 1995 film that wound up being Parker Posey's big break as the title character who gets a job as a librarian, plays Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday. A newly restored director's cut of Gregg Araki's The Doom Generation plays Friday through Tuesday. With one screen, you've obviously got to find which date/showtime works for you.
  
  On Saturday and Sunday, they have the now-traditional Father's Day screenings of The Shining, this year on 35mm film. On Wednesday they attack the summer solstice in similar fashion with Ari Aster's Midsommar. On Thursday, there's a Bicycle Film Festival presentation of feature documentary The Engine Inside.
• The Somerville Theatre continues the 70mm/Widescreen festival with Phantom Thread on the big reels Friday, an IB Technicolor 35mm print of My Fair Lady on Saturday, and IB Technicolor 35mm print of The Big Country on Sunday, and that 70mm print of Tenet they advertised for something like seven months before the pandemic (perhaps actually one that had been set aside for them, as projectionist David Kornfeld says it gives no signs of being run before).
  
  They also have an "Off The Reel, onto the Dance Floor" show of Rock 'n' Roll High School, with a post-film Prom upstairs at the Crystal Ballroom, on Saturday; Wigstock: The Movie plays at midnight on Saturday. Jazz funeral documentary City of A Million Dreams: Parading for the Dead in New Orleans plays Tuesday, followed by a discussion with director (and author of the original book) Jason Berry. Wednesday's "F— the Nazis" show is a 35mm print of Inglorious Basterds, and Thursday's twin bill comes from director John Flynn, with 35mm prints of Rolling Thunder & The Outfit. In between all that, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. and The Master Gardener move in for second-runs
• The Harvard Film Archive continues "Ozu 120: The Complete Ozu Yasujiro" with mostly silent weekend, with benshi Kataoka Ichiro there to narrate from Friday to Sunday and accompanist Robert Humphreville there through Monday. Films include Passing Fancy (Friday), Dragnet Girl (Saturday), A Story of Floating Weeds (Sunday), and Days of Youth (Monday). Tokyo Story (a talkie!) plays Sunday afternoon; all films screen on 35mm film.
• Tuesday's Harrison Ford movie at Landmark Kendall Square is Blade Runner 2049; they also start a Christopher Nolan series on Wednesday with Inception.
• The Roxbury International Film Festival begins Tuesday with pre-film parties before Squeeze at Hibernian Hall, which also hosts Covid-19 & Community and Black. Narratives in Boston Black Queer and Trans History on Wednesday. The official Opening Night is at The Museum of Fine Arts on Thursday, with documentary short "Welcoming the Embrace" looking at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in the Common and The Honeymoon a South African comedy. Both will have post-film Q&As They also curate a program of short films playing at The ICA on Monday morning in conjunction with their Simone Leigh exhibition, free with museum admission
• The Regent Theatre has Fiftieth Anniversary sing-along shows of Jesus Christ Superstar on Wednesday and Thursday with cast members Ted Neeley, Bob Bingham, Kurt Yaghjian, Robert Iscove, and David James there for introductions and post-screening meet & greets.
• The Lexington Venue is open through Sunday plus Wednesday and Thursday with Super Mario Bros. (no show Wednesday), You Hurt My Feelings, About My Father, and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. They also show teen comedy The Country Club (about young golfers in a junior tournament) on Wednesday, a couple days before it hits streams.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Those Who Remained, which appears to be a Hungarian Holocaust drama getting a post-pandemic rerelease. For more conventional offerings, they pick up Elemental and The Flash, keeping Spider-Verse, The Little Mermaid, You Hurt My Feelings, and Super Mario Brothers (Friday-Sunday afternoons). Closed Monday.
  
  The Luna Theater once again has King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard concert documentary Chunky Shrapnel on Friday, and then it's the first local showtimes for Jaws, all day Saturday and Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show.
  
  Cinema Salem brings in Elemental and The Flash alongside Monica and Spider-Verse through Monday. Bound and My Own Private Idaho once again play Saturday & Sunday, and on Thursday they host the Panorama Film Festival, a short film fest created by queer & trans youth.
• Joe's Free Films shows two at Goethe-Institut this week, with Nico on Wednesday and two experimental shorts with director(s) in person on Thursday (reservations required for the second). The Coolidge brings a 35mm projector to the Rose Kennedy Greenway on Wednesday with Egyptologist Laurel Bestock introducing the 1999 version of The Mummy.

Ugggh I don't wanna head out to the Coolidge past when the T runs but The Killer on 35mm. I'm also looking to catch Elemental in 3D, The Blackening, at least one benshi-narrated Ozu, The Longest Day, Tenet, Party Girl, Drylongso the Thursday double feature... Man, I hope my company gives us Juneteenth off, just for a few extra slots!