Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 October 2023 - 2 November 2023

We're sort of getting out of spooky season and into Oscar season, I guess, although between the strikes and the concert movies and everything, it's a weird year.

• Five Nights at Freddy's gets the "last horror movie of the season" slot, in which a man takes a job as a security guard at a Chuck E. Cheese-looking place where the animatronics are said to be far more than just vaguely creepy robots. It's at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill as well as on Peacock.
  
  Freelance is an action comedy which has John Cena as a former soldier reluctantly recruited to provide security for a journalist played by Alison Brie; director Pierre Morel made District 13 and Taken way back at the start of his career. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  The Persian Version plays Boston Common, Kenmore Square; it's a comedy about a large Persian family whose sole daughter's pregnancy is discovered as they gather to support the father having a heart transplant - awkward because she's gay, but apparently a parallel for the youth of her take-no-prisoners mother in some respects.
  
  Amerikatsi, a comedy/drama about an Armenian-American who returns to the motherland only to find himself on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and imprisoned, opens at Arsenal Yards after having played elsewhere a few weeks back.
  
  Gonna guess that the folks behind documentary After Death, playing Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, aren't inclined to come up with "there's nothing, so live your life to the fullest" as an answer.
  
  There's an early-access screening of The Holdovers on Sunday afternoon at the Somerville, West Newton, Boston Common, and Kendall Square. Mexican drama Radical, starring Eugenio Derbez, also has early screenings Sunday. Monday's A24 horror show at Boston Common is Midsommar. The Taylor Swift "Eras" film has Halloween showings in addition to the usual Thursday-Sunday shows. Terrifier 2 returns to Boston Common and Assembly Row on Wednesday and Thursday, right after Halloween.
• Anatomy of a Fall, a drama about a woman on trial after her husband dies from a fall and their blind son is the only witness, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row. Interestingly, the previews I have seen have been in English, although the film hails from France and is listed as primarily French and German, and the scenes in question don't look like times people would be speaking in their second languages, so it's possible the trailers are dubbed.
  
  The Coolidge's month-long Halloween programming comes to a close, with Hocus Pocus playing at midnight Friday, and Saturday offering a sold-out 35mm marathon centered around witches, including Rosemary's Baby, Suspiria '77, and The Blair Witch Project, and a Big Screen Classics double feature of Young Frankenstein & An American Werewolf in London on Tuesday, Halloween itself.
  
  There's also a kids' show of Coco on Saturday morning, although Day of the Dead isn't exactly Halloween, and a Science on Screen presentation of Death Becomes Her Monday night, although it's not exactly even horror-comedy. There's also Open Screen on Monday.
• The Killer, a new thriller from David Fincher starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin apparently seeking revenge around the world after a botched job. It's at Landmark Kendall Square and the Coolidge, just a slightly bigger release than the usual Netflix movie, which is kind of a bummer, considering what a big deal Fincher used to be.
  
  On Monday, the theater has both the new animated film My Love Affair with Marriage with director Signe Baumane in person, with John Carpenter's Halloween also playing that night. Halloween itself has the film's first sequel, Halloween II, as part of the $5 Eighties Slasher series. Also $5 is McCabe & Mrs. Miller on Wednesday (part of a "Films that Inspired Alexander Payne" set).
• Indian openings at Apple Fresh Pond this week include Hindi Air Force drama Tejas, starring Kangana Ranaut, Hindi mystery Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video, and Telugu comedy Martin Luther King, whose connection to the American civil rights icon looks vague at best. Bengali drama Prohelika plays Sunday Leo: Bloody Sweet also stick around Fresh Pond (Tamil & Telugu) and Boston Common (Tamil).
  
  Vietnamese action film Bad Blood, with Kieu Minh Tuan as a former criminal turning to old friends to track down his kidnapped stepdaughter, plays Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  Makoto Shinkai's latest animated film, Suzume, has a return engagement at Boston Common (matinees only) this week; the Ghibli Fest selection is Spirited Away, playing Boston Common, subtitled Saturday & Tuesday, dubbed Sunday & Monday. Godzilla 2000 plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
  
  Zhang Yimou's pretty-decent (if censor-approved) thriller Under the Light continues at Boston Common. The Chinese adaptation of Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad plays out at the Liberty Tree Mall.
• The Brattle Theatre is the main host for The GlobeDocs Film Festival, running through Sunday with post-film Q&As for almost every screening, including Erroll Morris on Sunday afternoon with The Pigeon Tunnel. There are also a number of streaming presentations.
  
  For Halloween, they have a special "Elements of Cinema" screening of The Howling on Monday, Evil Dead II on 35mm on Monday and Tuesday, and Donnie Darko on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they have a belated celebration of National Cat Day with a new restoration of Czech oddity The Cassandra Cat and better-known Japanese oddity House.
• The Somerville Theatre and Julia Marchese present their 3rd Annual Halloween Hullabaloo with a long weekend of double & triple features: Friday's "Hardcore Horror" is Hellraiser & The Exorcist (both 35mm); Saturday's Demonic Haunts are Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (35mm), Mike Flanagan's Oculus, and Tobe Hooper's Poltrgeist (35mm); Sunday offers the Lesbian Vampire Delights of Daughters of Darkness & Blood and Roses (both 35mm) followed by Werewolves-a-Go-Go with An American Werewolf in London (4K) & The Howling (35mm); finishing up on Halloween (Tuesday) with Psycho & Alice, Sweet Alice (both 35mm). Saturday night also has a midnight show of Rocky Horror with the Teseracte Players (Full Body appears to be at Boston Common Friday/Saturday/Tuesday). In presumably non-scary material, they've got the 2023 Quality Ski Time Film Tour on Thursday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has another entry in "Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik's Expatriates" on Friday, The Most Beautiful Country in the World. Saturday has a reprise of Trenque Lauquen, Parts I & II. Sunday is James Baldwin day, with a the paired featurettes "Take This Hammer" & "The Negro and the Amerian Promise" in the afternoon and I Heard It Through the Grapevine 16mm in the evening. On Monday, they will screen Adachi Masao's REVOLUTION+1 followed by a live (though remote) conversation with the filmmaker.
• The Regent Theatre has the classic 1922 Nosferatu on Sunday with a live score featuring Paul Bielatowicz and his band, plus special guests joining remotely on auxiliary screens. The "Midweek Music Movies and More" show on Wednesday is Elis & Tom.
• The Boston Jewish Film Festival begins on Wednesday, with Remembering Gene Wilder at the Coolidge, while Thursday has the FreshFlix Short Film competition at the Brattle and Resistance - They Fought Back at West Newton. The Festival will continue at various venues next week and also have a virtual component.
• The Boston Underground Film Festival curates a program of Spooky Shorts at The ICA on Sunday afternoon.
• This week's Thursday Bright Lights show in the Bright Screening Room is Kim's Video, which tells the story of how Yongman Kim started an iconic New York City video store out of his dry cleaning business, but how the collection wound up in Italy before returning home to NYC. Free and open to the public, with directors David Redmon & Ashley Sabin on hand for discussion afterward.
• The Boston Asian-American Film Festival and Boston Palestine Film Festival both have virtual programs available through Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue has The Eras Tour and Killers of the Flower Moon from Friday to Sunday and Thursday. John Carpenter's original Halloween also plays Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema is the latest to bring back Hocus Pocus, also showing Killers of the Flower Moon, Eras (no shows Monday-Wednesday), Paw Patrol (Saturday/Sunday), Golda, Past Lives (Sunday matinee), Barbie (no show Thursday), and Oppenheimer (no show Sunday). They've also got the Sunday preview of The Holdovers, and are open all week.
  
  The Luna Theater has It Lives Inside on Friday and Saturday, Carpenter's Halloween on Saturday & Sunday, Nosferatu with Dylan Jack Quartet Sunday evening, and 2001: A Space Odyssey in UMass Lowell's Film & Philosophy series, with post-film discussion Thursday. No Weirdo Wednesday on the schedule.
  
  Cinema Salem has Carpenter's Halloween, and Hocus Pocus. The weekend's Universal Monsters shows are The Invisible Man (Friday), The Mummy (Friday), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Friday/Sunday), The Bride of Frankenstein (Friday), Dracula (Saturday/Monday), The Wolf Man (Saturday), and Frankenstein (Monday). The Crow plays Friday night, Miz Diamond Wigfall presentations of The Shining on Saturday which promise/threaten both drag introductions and "shadow performance", fan film Never Hike Alone 2 on Saturday afternoon, Freddy vs. Jason with stunt performer Douglas Tait on Saturday evening, and Night of the Living Dead on Sunday.
  
  If you can make it out Davers's Liberty Tree Mall, they've got Inspector Sun, an English dub of a Spanish animated film about a murder mystery played out by insects in a zeppelin.
• The Alamo Drafthouse Boston is still not able to open yet (apparently, getting your movie theater inspected in Boston is a beast right now), but they're presenting two movie nights - Hocus Pocus at Fenway Park on Friday and Cabin in the Woods at Dorchester Brewing Company on Saturday.

Honestly not sure what the next few days look like, but I'm thinking about Bad Blood, 5 Nights at Freddy's, The Killer, Freelance, and The Persian Version. Amusingly, Anatomy of a Fall might be the one that hangs around best.