Friday, December 27, 2024

Film Rolls, Round 24: Piraha and … oh, never mind

I'm in a sort of ashamed awe at this post, which was nearly a year in the making - the first of the 9 movies intended to be included came off the shelf on 24 February 2023, the last on 19 November 2023, and while there's reasons, I'm certainly going to find ways to tighten this up on the next pass through.

But, it's the final round of the game! How does it play out?

Well, it starts with Mookie rolling a 9, which gets him to Piranha in 4K. As nutty as the choices for what gets put on 4K and what is let to languish on VHS/DVD can be, Joe Dante's first feature that caused people to sit up and take notice certainly seems like one that demands some attention.

Things got a little busy after that - March is Boston Underground Film Festival time, for instance - so it was April before get got back to this, excited about being close to the end. Bruce rolled a 12, and I honestly can't remember whether that got him to the first in the line of Kino Lorber's "Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema" box sets exactly, or if I just decided that the appropriate amount or over stopped you there. At any rate, it's a five-film box, and it seemed unfair to skew the results at the end, so, when I picked this back up in November (hey, there's Fantasia and other stuff in there!)...

Holy cats, Mookie rolled a six and ended up exactly where he needed to be! What are the odds? Okay, obviously 5%, but this picture was definitely staged.

It's been a whole year since then, during which I figured on re-watching the eight films noirs in order to write decent reviews but it just never worked out that way, so I'm going to treat those movies as bonuses and wrap this up. So I figured on not starting Season Two until I got this wrapped up, which means my shelf has been bloating all year, and isn't the idea to use this as a way to watch movies without hemming and hawing so much?

So, yeah, here's a quick wrap-up and a clean slate, mostly posted because I've wanted to take the photo at the bottom for at least a couple years.


Piranha '78

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 February 2023 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 4K Blu-ray)
Seen 7 February 2024 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 4K Blu-ray)
Available for stream/digital rental/purchase on Prime or elsewhere; 4K Blu-ray on Amazon

There's a moment or two during Piranha when some random old B-movie appears on a TV screen, and 45 years later, you can kind of laugh, saying it's just Joe Dante being Joe Dante, but I found myself kind of wondering if someone seeing it 45 years ago would wonder why Dante was reminding us that there were monster movies out there that were, if not necessarily better, at least more imaginative. I'm not sure what the term folks at the time would use the way we sort of dismissively say "content" in 2024, but that's kind of what Piranha is - producer Roger Corman cranking out a new movie to fill spaces on drive-in and grindhouse screens, or maybe play some late nights where a regular theater had a hole, but not really anything meant to last. It's got a fancy 4K disc not because it's particularly good or noteworthy, but because director Joe Dante and writer John Sayles went on to bigger and better things.

Which, it should be made clear, does not make Piranha bad; it does what it says on the box and does it in pretty capable fashion. Sayles gives Dante a script that includes everything a movie like this needs with the occasional fun variation or bit of dialog; Dante-the-director gets Dante-the-editor good material to cut together, and the cast could often maybe dial it down a bit - you can see a fun dynamic in Heather Menzies's headstrong skip-tracer and Bradford Dillman's grumpy local guide, except that they're too close to shouting when they should maybe be closer to bantering - but more often than not, it's the right people in the right roles and you can see them existing outside the movie. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say it's never great but solidly competent throughout - it's often very rought! - but Dante generally seems to get enough that's decent to put together.

The thing is, it's a Corman-produced movie from after he'd peaked, and there are times even a B-movie-lover like Dante seems frustrated with the spots he's got to hit, making sure that Menzies' Maggie is all "really?" about the nature of the distraction Dillman's Grogan suggests before flashing her [body double's] breasts, and there's an obvious need to hang a lantern on how cheap the fancy resort looks. There's a Phil Tippet stop-motion creature that they ran out of money for, but it's in the film because it cost money even if it doesn't go anywhere. Corman's clearly chasing a trend on a tight budget, rather than doing something that anybody involved finds particularly interesting or inspired by. Unlike a lot of those movies, it lucked into having just enough up-and-coming talent to remain watchable.


Okay! That makes the finale score before the Film Noir Box sets

Mookie: 81 ¼ stars
Bruce: 79 ¼ stars

Bruce was ahead until Mookie got that last film, but he would have had five movies compared to Mookie's three, so let's say it's too close to call!

Of course, if you do feel like calling it, here's how the pair stood up… literally!

Okay, that was fun! I'm going to try it again starting next week (next year!), once again trying to find a good balance between "it is a fun thing to do with a movie blog" and "you're not getting paid and have other hobbies, stop making everything a massive writing project!"" Which, if I specifically enumerated resolutions, would absolutely be my New Year's Resolution.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 December 2024 - 2 January 2024

Let's see just how much free time I have/need…
  • Lots of movies that have been promoted pretty much non-stop for a couple months opening for Christmas! First up is A Complete Unknown, with Timothee Chalamet playing Bob Dylan in his early years. It's at The Capitol Theatre, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, CnemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    It's kind of nuts that we're on our third version of Nosferatu, when the first is basically an end run around Dracula still being under copyright. Here, Robert Eggers puts together a nifty cast (Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgaard, Willem Dafoe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and draws heavily from the original's German Expressionist imagery. It plays The Somerville Theatre, the Coolidge (including 35mm), Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), and Assembly Row (including Imax Laser).

    I feel like I've spent more time watching the trailer for Babygirl than the film's actual runtime. Nicole Kidman stars as an executive who enters a submissive affair with her intern, and, you know, she looks pretty good for someone who has been doing movies about inappropriate relationships with younger guys for 30 years. It's at the Somerville, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row..

    The Fire Inside has cinematographer Rachel Morrison stepping into the director's chair (with a script by Barry Jenkins) to tell the story of Claressa Shields (Ryan Destiny), a teenage boxing prodigy who discovers that Olympic gold may not lift a girl from Flint, Michigan out of poverty on its own. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    Bloody Axe Wound, a horror comedy about a young woman taking over the family slasher business, opens for late shows at Boston Common on Thursday.

    Los Frikis, a Spanish-language film from the makers of The Peanut Butter Falcon about Cuban youths who infect themselves with HIV to gain access to a care facility in the 1990s, opens at Boston Common.

    Folks who have been holding it in: Wicked adds sing-along shows with on-screen lyrics at the Capitol, Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Boston Common also has Terrifier 3 on Christmas night, because it is apparently a Christmas movie..
  • New Indian movies at Apple Fresh Pond for Christmas are Baby John, a Hindi-language action movie with Varun Dhawan as a cop who fakes his own death to get to the bottom of a case (also at Boston Common); Telugu-language mystery Srikakulam Sherlockholmes, with a consulting detective hired to solve a serial murder case in 1991; and Barroz: Guardian of Treasures, a Malayalam-language action adventure playing in 3D. Tamil-language crime film Viduthaliai Part 2 is held over.

    Hong Kong's The Last Dance and Mainland China's Her Story share a screen at Causeway Street. On Tuesday (New Year's Eve), Causeway Street opens romantic comedy-drama Honey Money Phony, with Jin Chen as a nice girl in deep debt and Sunny Sun Wang as a con artist.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has A Complete Unknown and Babygirl like everything else, but they've got a 35mm print for Nosferatu, at least when it's playing on screen #1. On Friday, they open The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a thriller set (and secretly shot) in Tehran where a newly-appointed judge finds himself gripped by paranoia. That one also opens at Kendall Square and Boston Common.

    The final midnights of 2024 at the Coolidge are Dracula 2000 on Friday and a 35mm print of New Year's Evil on Saturday. Speaking of New Year's Eve, Strange Days plays on 35mm film both Monday and Tuesday, On Wednesday, they kick off the new year and annual "Projections" sci-fi series with Return of the Jedi. Thursday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Fellini's Amarcord.
  • The Brattle Theatre wraps the year-long celebrations of Columbia's 100th with Nineties Nostalgia, mostly on 35mm: A double feature of Little Women & Go on Christmas, A League of Their Own & Groundhog Day (plus a late DCP show of Anaconda) on Thursday, Single White Female & The Cable Guy on Friday, Bottle Rocket & El Mariachi on Saturday, separate shows of The Age of Innocence and Boyz n the Hood (both digital) Sunday, and Double Team & Bad Boys on Monday.

    In the middle of that, Friday's Friday Film Matinee is a 35mm print of Tap, which I never would have thought of as directed by Nick Castle. Then there are some holiday festivities - matinees of The Thin Man on New Year's Eve, with Stop Making Sense for the evening show, then the annual Marx Brothers Marathon - A Night at the Opera, Room Service, Animal Crackers (35mm), and Duck Soup (35mm). Then on Thursday, they open the new 4K restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
  • The Seaport Alamo has The Holdovers on Christmas, Paris, Texas on Saturday, When Harry Met Sally… on Sunday (including brunch) and Tuesday, South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut on Monday, The Apartment on Tuesday, and Phantom Thread on Tuesday and New Year's Day. No rep scheduled for Thursday the 2nd.
  • In addition to playing the big releases, Landmark Kendall Square brings back Emilia Perez.
  • The Regent Theatre switches up their school vacation sing-along shows this week with Bohemian Rhapsody playing with on-screen lyrics from Thursday to Tuesday. They also have a screening of Being Robin with star Roger Kabler on hand Sunday evening.
  • The ICA has a second weekend of Kids Flicks Short Films matinees this weekend, with shorts for kids as young as 5 on Saturday and Sunday's package recommended for ages 8 and above.
  • The Lexington Venue is open every day through the 2nd with Mufasa and A Completed Unknown.

    The West Newton Cinema opens A Complete Unknown, Babygirl, and Nosferatu, keeping Mufasa, Sonic 3, and Wicked. There's also a special "Behind the Screen"preview of The Room Next Door with producer Han West on hand.

    The Luna Theater has Ghost Cat Anzu on Thursday the 26th, Saturday the 28th, and Thursday the 2nd, Y2K on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and Heretic on Saturday.

    Cinema Salem has A Complete Unknown, Nosferatu, Mufasa, and WIcked from Christmas to New Year's Day. Friday's Night Light show is Pan's Labyrinth, and Eyes Wide Shut plays Sunday & Monday.
I've got the week off from work, so I'm looking at Nosferatu, The Fire Inside, Mufasa, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Honey Money Phony, Wallace & Gromit, and whatever else I can fit in.

Friday, December 20, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 December 2024 - 24 December 2024

Just through Tuesday, since some places haven't posted their Christmas schedules yet.

Also, I've been thinking that the listings at the Embassy on Fandango were just put in a while ago and not taken down when it ceased operations, but apparently the folks running the gymnastics school are doing it themselves rather than contracting it out or something. Peculiar, but at least there's a place to go to the movies in Waltham!
  • Two big franchise films open ahead of Christmas. Mufasa: The Lion King is a prequel to the CGI remake from a couple years back, but I gather it works well enough if you only know the original. It shows how Mufasa, Scar, and Sarabi met and formed their pride. It's mainly of interest because Barry Jenkins (of Moonlight, Medicine for Melancholy, and If Beale Street Could Talk fame) is directing. It's at The Capitol Theatre, Fresh Pond (including 3D), The Embassy, the Lexington Venue, Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including RealD 3D), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema & Imax Xenon 2D/3D & RealD 3D) Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema & Imax Laser 2D/3D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening is Sonic The Hedgehog 3, which brings Shadow (voiced by Keanu Reeves) into another Dr. Robotnik/Eggman plot. Jim Carrey plays both Robotnik and his father, even though he talked of retiring after the last one (also, is it disappointing that I thought the latter was played by Jim Broadbent when I saw the trailer, because that would have been fun casting?). It plays theCapitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill

    Fresh Pond has the Howard/Carrey How The Grinch Stole Christmas; Arsenal Yards has The Polar Express Saturday to Tuesday and The Royal Nutcracker Sunday & Monday.
  • Apple Fresh Pond has six new South Asian films for the weekend, although not everything shows every day. Playing through Tuesday are Vanvaas, a Hindi-language action film built around a man approaching senility (also at Boston Common); Tamil-language crime film Viduthaliai Part 2; and Telugu action movie Bachhala Malli. Kannada-language sci-fi adventure plays Friday/Saturday/Monday/Tuesday afternoons, Malayalam thriller Marco plays early matinees Friday/Sunday/Monday/Tuesday, with Rifle Club (also in that language) playing Saturday morning. Telugu action film Pushpa Part 2: The Rule continues at Boston Common.

    Hong Kong's The Last Dance and Mainland China's Her Story both continue at Causeway Street.
  • The Brattle Theatre has Singin' in the Rain for the Friday Film Matinee, and then it's back to the "Unsilent Nights" of big fun blockbusters: A double feature of Pacific Rim & Speed Racer, both on 35mm film, Friday evening and Saturday afternoon; The Dark Knight on 35mm Saturday evening; a double feature of Furiosa & Mad Max: Fury Road on Sunday; and Die Hard & Die Hard 2 on Monday. Tuesday, as is traditional, they are dark so that the staff can do some last-minute Christmas shopping (and no opening just to sell merch at the concession stand this year!).
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre holds the same films over through tuesday. The midnights this weekend are Underworld (on 35mm) and Hundreds of Beavers on Friday and the original Black Christmas on Saturday (a 35mm print rather than the restoration that's been going around) on Saturday. There are also Kids' Shows of The Muppet Christmas Carol on Saturday & Sunday, a 35mm Big Screen Classic presentation of Meet Me in St. Louis on Monday,
  • The Seaport Alamo has Eyes Wide Shut Friday/Monday, The Holdovers on Saturday, and a brunch show of It's a Wonderful Life (Tuesday). There are also Movie Party showtimes for Sonic 3 (Saturday), Elf (Sunday), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (a bit later Sunday).
  • Landmark Kendall Square continues to be the only local screen with Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and, hey, I'd make an exception to an anti-Netflix rule for those guys.
  • The ICA has Kids Flicks Short Films matinees this weekend, with shorts for kids as young as 5 on Saturday and Sunday's package recommended for ages 8 and above
  • The Lexington Venue has Mufasa, A Real Pain, and Conclave through Tuesday. Short "Star in the Night" plays Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesdaywith free popcorn for those who come with canned goods and unwrapped toys and free admission for everyone.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Mufasa and Sonic 3, keeping <Moana 2, Wicked, and A Real Pain. A Christmas Story plays Friday Evening, The Polar Express Saturday afternoon, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Saturday evening, Wonka Sunday afternoon, Elf Monday evening,

    The Luna Theater has Heretic on Friday and It's a Wonderful Life on Saturday & Sunday (though the Saturday shows are listed as sold out).

    Cinema Salem has Mufasa, Flow, Moana 2, and WIcked through Monday. Dial Code Santa Claus plays Friday, with Gremlins on Saturday.
  • Joe's Free Films shows a free screening of The Polar Express at Roadrunner in Brighton on Sunday (RSVP on EventBrite, with an upstairs area where parents can watch the football game and keep an eye on the kids watching the movie below
Got a lot of Christmas shopping to do this weekend, so I may not find time to squeeze anything but Wallace & Gromit in, though some of the big shows at the Brattle are tempting. Kind of shocked I missed the window on The End, which came and went fast even though some less likely-seeming things are hanging around.

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

The Last Dance

So, a bit of a game. You see this description, and what sort of movie do you think it is?

A debt-ridden wedding planner inadvertently becomes a successful funeral planner. However, he must convince a traditional Taoist priest of his legitimacy to continue operating in the field.

That's the description on IMDB and maybe a place or two else, so it's official-ish. I didn't actually mark the film as a comedy when I listed it on the "Next Week" post, though I thought I did, but for whatever reason it was kicking around in my head as one, even if it's about two hours and listed as a drama, but that sort of oddball situation and description sounds kind of light.

It's not particularly light, as it turns out, which maybe makes me a bit more surprised that it's apparently a big hit in Hong Kong - some of the folks who talk about film in Hong Kong on social media.were off-handedly commenting about folks just going to see The Last Dance again if the next movie coming out featuring Michael Hui (Donnie Yen action vehicle, The Prosecutor, and apparently Donnie Yen as a prosecuting attorney is a whole kettle of fish over there) doesn't do so hot, so it's apparently been packing them in for a month, even though it doesn't exactly have the look of a crowd pleaser. Sometimes another country's crowd pleasers can look unusual, though, and the way this opens with titles about the "gates of heaven" buddhist ritual being recognized as important cultural heritage, and maybe it's something fairly central to that life which hasn't been seen that often.

At any rate - pretty decent movie, and it's doing fairly well here, apparently. It'll probably have its last shows relatively early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and an 18-day run isn't bad for a Hong Kong film here.


Po · Dei Juk (The Last Dance)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #10 (first-run, laser DCP)

The part of my brain that tends to pull movies apart to see how they work has issues with this film; i can't help but think that it doesn't really need the first-billed actor at all, to the extent that you can almost forget about the girlfriend that is kind of crucial in terms of the whole thing getting started until she reappears near the end so that he can kind of have something that shows he's a changed man as the film wraps up. And yet, for as much as my instincts say to focus on the father/daughter story, I can't really say I'd care to lose any of the rest.

That "rest" starts by introducing Dominic Ngai (Dayo Wong Chi-Wah), fiftyish, not particularly handsome, and like a lot of Hong Kong's serial entrepreneurs, reeling in the post-Covid world. After his wedding planning business collapses, he's got just enough to buy out girlfriend Jade's Uncle Ming (Paul Chun Pui), who is retiring from his work as a funeral director to emigrate to Vancouver. He plans to bring some of the customization and add-on offers that are common at weddings to that business, but Ming only owns and manages half of the business. The remainder belongs to Buddhist priest Man Kwok (Michael Hui Koon-Man), whose nickname "Hello Man" does not refer to him being jovial. Exacting and principled, Man is not impressed with Ngai, but there are issues within his home as well - son Ben (Tommy Chu Pak-Hong) followed him into the family business, but is not as skilled or dedicated (and his Catholic wife is pressuring him to convert so that their son can have a leg up at a private school); daughter Yuet (Michelle Wai) is a high-strung paramedic carrying on an affair a married doctor friend (but mostly when she loses a patient).

After all, you can see a pretty good movie that could be made just from the wedding planner taking over a funeral director's business. It might be more comedic, as I had assumed this one would be, but there being two different movies that have to share space may just be what makes this one work. Dominic's story is worldly, with director Anselm Chan Mau-Yin and co-writer Cheng Wai-Kei finding a way of making one uneasy about the commercialism but also seeing how the inner workings so one understands the need for the commerce a bit. It teaches the audience about coping with death on a practical level while also letting Dominic perhaps get a bit more spiritual. That the commercial and mystical are linked in this business also means that the mundane grounds the story of the Man and his family, making faith and tradition more manageable things to deal with and more open to questioning than is often the case in this sort of story.

And that, I think, is where the really interesting parts of the film are, with the filmmakers seeming to believe the same, as it comes to dominate the movie. There's an intriguingly twisted irony to how the daughter who idolized her father growing up becomes an EMT who cannot handle death (her father's whole world) because the priestly tradition scorns women even as it has inevitably become just the family business to her brother. The family dynamic there is pointed and there is a sort of weary authenticity to how they fight or close ranks as appropriate. It feels like it's been going on for decades without ever becoming numb. Michael Hui, Michelle Wai, and Timmy Chu create a family that seems dysfunctional but not quite to the level where it should be blown up, with Wai's seeming about to explode overshadowing Chu's resignation that reveals itself as painful in its own way.

Dayo Wong doesn't really have the same sort of room to work. As mentioned, Catherine Chow Ka-Yee's Jade only appears relatively briefly at the beginning and end, and his on-the-job team is not built to create workplace drama. Dominic's clashes with Man often feel like a static situation rather than a give and take. The good news is that Dayo Wong can supply enough self-conscious energy to power a scene on his own, and can tamp it down to a sort of professional nervousness when dealing with customers with their specific issues. Even if the way the story has written doesn't give the most dramatic parts of Dominic's part a chance to play out on screen, he can hold the screen while explaining what led him to where he is.

The film is quite predictable in some ways - the funerals are not quite rote, but you can see their functions on the larger story, and there are bits in the end that feel like "this is how you structure a screenplay to pay things off" rather than things which really felt earned. The good news is that all the little pieces that don't quite fit together naturally are good enough on their own and one can see a pattern once they're put together, even if there are gaps to it.

Friday, December 13, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 December 2024 - 19 December 2024

Well, it's holiday/Oscar season, but still with room for some oddities.
  • Is Kraven The Hunter the last stand of the Venom-verse? It offers Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a younger Kraven rebelling against his mobster father (Russell Crowe) and working as a feared assassin rather than a middle-aged big game hunter who considers Spider-Man the most fascinating game of all. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema & Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening is The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an anime prequel directed by one of the guys behind Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the Cyborg:009 revivals. Not bad, although I'm not sure the folks who loved Peter Jackson's version are into something this old-school. It's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), and Assembly Row (including Imax Laser).

    Day of the Fight, a drama about a man recently out of prison attempting to resume his boxing career, plays Boston Common and has a killer list of supporting guys (Ron Perlman, Steve Buscemi, and Joe Pesci). 1970s-set thriller The Man in the White Van opens at Boston Common and South Bay.

    Fresh Pond has matinees of The Polar Express all week. Arsenal Yards has The Holiday Friday to Sunday.

    The Imax rerelease of Interstellar expands from Jordan's Furniture to South Bay and Assembly Row, as if there weren't already enough vying for the Imax screens! Queer, already playing the Coolidge, Kendall Square, and Boston Common, expands to The Somerville Theatre and Assembly Row.

    Homestead, an Angel Studios production about conflict on a compound after a nuclear exchange, opens at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay on Wednesday, though it also appears to be a TV series pilot.

    Animated music video collection Daft Punk & Leiji Matsumoto: Interstella 5555, plays the Seatport Friday to Sunday, Boston Common Friday & Saturday, the Coolidge on Saturday, and the Kendall on Sunday. K-pop concert film RM: Right People, Wrong Time plays Arsenal Yards Friday to Sunday, plus Boston Common, Assembly Row on Saturday. Arsenal Yards has a live viewing of Seventeen [Right Here] World Tour in Japan on Saturday. NCT Dream Mystery Lab: Dream()Scape plays Boston Common on Saturday. André Rieu's Christmas Concert plays South Bay and Assembly Row on Saturday. Babymetal: Legend-43 The Movie plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday.

    70th Anniversary shows of White Christmas play Boston Common, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday & Monday; Boston Common also has the 1974 Black Christmas on Sunday. There's an AMC Screen Unseen show on Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row, and an Early Access show of A Complete Unknown on Wednesday at Assembly Row (Imax Laser). Some of the early Dolby Cinema screenings of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Thursday are "Fan Event" shows.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Porcelain War, a documentary about two Ukrainian artists who make whimsical porcelain figures, with whimsy simultaneously very difficult and absolutely necessary when your country is invaded. One Sunday afternoon show is a special "Panorama" presentation, with director Slava Leontyev and subject Anya Stasenko (with Frodo the dog) participating in a post-film discussion.

    Midnight shows at the Coolidge this weekend are Queen of the Damned on 35mm Friday and Die Hard on Saturday. There's a Kids' Show of the Howard/Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas on Saturday morning, a Goethe-Institut presentation of Woodland early Sunday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is The Shop Around the Corner. Wednesday has two "Dracula Lives" shows, with Jozef van Wissem performing a live score to the original Nosferatu at 7pm and Only Lovers Left Alive at 9pm. Thursday offers two Christmas-adjacent movies, with Love Actually the "Rewind!" show at 7pm and Edward Scissorhands the cult classic at 9:30.
  • The End, a post-apocalyptic musical starring George McaKay as a boy raised in a bunker by parents (Tilda Swinton & Michael Shannon) who maintain a sort of stasis until a young woman (Moses Ingram) somehow arrives from the outside world, opens at Landmark Kendall Square and Boston Common.

    A Christmas Story is the Tuesday Retro Replay and Kendall Square. On Wednesday, they open Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl two weeks before it is pulled into the Netflix vortex. It's going to be strange having someone other than Peter Sallis voice Wallace, but, hey, I'll try and keep an open mind.
  • Thai horror sequel Death Whisperer 2 opens at Causeway Street. Vietnamese horror-comedy Betting With Ghost opens at South Bay.

    Apple Fresh Pond has Nepali comedy Tel Visa, about a family that has immigrated to the US, through Sunday. Saturday afternoon, they are presenting Haunted Diaries, a 90-minute compilation of what bills itself as "The World's First Silent Web Series", which appears to be produced by the local Desi community and a presentation of The Independent Indian Film Festival of Boston, although there's nothing on their website about it. For big releases, Telugu action film Pushpa Part 2: The Rule continues at Fresh Pond (telugu & Hindi) and Boston Common.

    Hong Kong's Last Dance and Mainland China's Her Story both continue at Causeway Street.

    Anime A Silent Voice returns to Boston Common and Assembly Row for dubbed shows on Sunday and subtitled ones on Monday.
  • The Brattle Theatre has their annual screenings of It's a Wonderful Life, playing on 35mm film for the Friday Film Matinee and from a DCP Saturday to Monday. They also have a new restoration of the 1974 Black Christmas playing later from Friday to Monday, and kick off an "Unsilent Nights" series with Close Encounters of the Third Kind on Tuesday and RRR on Thursday.
  • The Seaport Alamo has The Lighthouse on Friday & Saturday, Pride & Prejudice Saturday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, the 1974 The Great Gatsby on Saturday, the 1974 Black Christmas Saturday & Tuesday, a Dylan dress-up preview of A Complete Unknown on Monday, Querelle on Monday, The Conversation on Tuesday & Wednesday, and an advanced screening of Babygirl on Wednesday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive closes the semester with Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy. Pather Panchali plays on 35mm film Friday and Sunday; Aparajito is projected from a DCP Saturday & Sunday; and The World of Apu is on 35mm film Saturday & Monday.
  • The Capitol Theatre has a 4th Wall show on Friday with Wulfer, Exit 18, and Mingko, plus visuals by Coolpics.biz.
  • The Lexington Venue has WIcked, A Real Pain, and Conclave all week except Monday. Short "Star in the Night" plays Saturday & Sunday, with free popcorn for those who come with canned goods and unwrapped toys and free admission for everyone.

    The West Newton Cinema has documentary short "How Horses Heal" on Tuesday evening, with a post-film panel discussion including local advocates and specialists in equine therapy, with the proceeds going to Beachwood Integrative Equine Therapy. On Thursday, they have a "Ty Burr's Movie Club" presentation of Paterson. Otherwise, they stick with last week's lineup of Bird, Moana 2, Gladiator II (no show Thursday), Wicked, A Real Pain, Small Things Like These, and Conclave (no show Thursday).

    The Luna Theater has Heretic on Friday/Saturday, >Ghost Cat Anzu on Saturday, White Christmas on Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show.

    Cinema Salem has Flow, Y2K, Moana 2, and WIcked through Monday. The '74 Black Christmas plays Friday, with the '06 remake on Saturday, and a holiday Whodunnit Watch Party on Wednesday.

    If you can make it out to Danvers, Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada, with Richard Gere as a man who fled north rather than go to Vietnam, is playing at the Liberty Tree Mall.
Man, I wish the Alamo wasn't so boring, because having a monthly membership there really doesn't provide much of a release valve when the AMCs have more than 3 movies I want to see. I've got to catch up on the HK/China stuff and The Return, there's The Day of the Fight and Interstellar, and all they can help me with at this point is Kraven. Plus, Porcelain War at the Coolidge and Wallace & Gromit at the Kendall.

Friday, December 06, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 6 December 2024 - 12 December 2024

Thought I'd be missing this whole week, but my vacation has been chaotic-weird, so I guess I'd better pay attention.
  • The week's big release is Y2K, with a group of teenagers looking to make out on New Year's Eve 1999 discovering that, at least locally, there may be something to the Y2K bug as machines go hostilely haywire It's at the Somerville Theatre, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Another horror-comedy, Get Away, has Nick Frost as the head of a family whose rental home on an English island is a killer's stomping grounds. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.

    The Order is a true-crime tale with Jude Law as a fed digging into a racist militia organization involving Nicolas Hoult; it shows at Boston Common.

    The trailer for Werewolves doesn't mess around, saying right out that, a year ago, a super-moon turned millions of people into lycantropes, and now Frank Grillo is part of a project testing how to get them under control. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row. For something a little classier, there's The Return, which adapts the end of The Odyssey, as a broken Odysseus (Ralph Finnes) reaches Ithaca but does not reveal himself while Queen Penelope (Juliette Binoche) steadfastly refuses to remarry. That plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    For concert films, there's Laufey's Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl, playing for the week at Boston Common and Assembly Row (Imax Laser). K-pop feature RM: Right People, Wrong Place is at Boston Common, the Seaport Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards Friday to Sunday another K-pop show, NCT Dream Mystery Lab: Dream()scape, plays Boston Common on Wednesday.. Babymetal: Legend 43, the concluding concert of their world tour, plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Wednesday. Andre Rieu's Christmas Concert plays South Bay and Assembly Row Wednesday. Daft Punk & Leiji Matsumoto, a collection of animated music videos, plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, and the Saport on Thursday.

    Fresh Pond has matinees of Elf all week; Arsenal Yards through Sunday.

    Jordan's Furniture has an Imax re-release of Interstellar for the weekend.

    There's an AMC Screen Unseen show on Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row. Ray plays Boston Common Sunday/Monday night and South Bay Saturday to Wednesday. The Green Knight plays in Imax at South Bay and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre has three new films, including two from the IFFBoston Fall festival, which amusingly have a "dog & cat" theme. The cat, I think, gets the better of it - Flow is a terrific animated adventure about a black cat striving to survive a massive flood in a post-human world and having to grow beyond its nervousness around other animals. It's Latvia's Oscar submission, but that matters not because it has no dialogue - the animals mostly act like animals - but really plays to an audience. It also plays the Capitol Theatre, Boston Common, the Seaport.

    I wasn't quite so fond of Nightbitch, Marianne Heller's adaptation of a book about a mother who quit her job and moved to the 'burbs to raise her toddler son who may be going feral during her husband's long absences. Amy Adams stars; it also plays at Boston Common and Kendall Square.

    The bigger release is probably Queer, with Daniel Craig starring in an adaptation of a William S. Burroughs novel from the Challengers team of director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes, playing an expat in Mexico finding unexpected connection. It also runs at Kendall Square and Boston Common.

    In Coolidge rep, "Dracula Lives!" with Blade (35mm Friday Midnite) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (35mm Wednesday). The Ron Howard/Jim Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas gets both Saturday midnight and Sunday matinee shows for two presumably different crowds. There's a (sold out?) 35mm Science on Screen show of Gattaca on Monday, Open Screen on Tuesday, and a 35mm Big Screen Classic show of Eyes Wide Shut on Thursday.
  • Has Tyler Perry been in a "doing stuff for Netflix just out of your sight" situation lately? At any rate, his latest for the company, The Six Triple Eight, stars Kerry Washington as the commander of the only Woman's Army Corps unit comprised of people of color to serve overseas in World War II, and gets some time at Landmark Kendall Square to make an impression.

    Kendall Square also has a "Landmark First Look" on Monday (maybe the same as AMC's, maybe not) and a Retro Replay of Elf on Tuesday.
  • Hong Kong romantic comedy Love Lies opens at Causeway Street, with Sandra Kwan finding herself involved in an internet romance scam. Also coming from Hong Kong is Last Dance, with Michael Hui as a wedding planner who accidentally winds up a funeral director. It's at Causeway Street (which no longer seems to be playing Venom: The Last Dance, so that should be a little less confusing). Mainland comedy Her Story continues to have a full slate of shows at Causeway Street as well.

    Telugu action film Pushpa Part 2: The Rule opened on Wednesday but pushes wider, playing at Apple Fresh Pond (which also has Tamil & Hindi shows), Boston Common (also playing in Hindi), Causeway Street, and the Seaport.

    Anime Solo Leveling: ReAwakening looks like another "premiere event", putting together the first few episodes of the second season, which takes place some years later and has new dungeons and monsters. It opens at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. There's also Ghibli Fest shows of My Neighbor Totoro at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards from Saturday to Wednesday, with subs on even-numbered days and dubs on odd, but not every day at every theater, so check.
  • The Somerville Theatre has road-trip comedy Lake George, with Shea Whigham as a reluctant hitman teaming up with his target (Carrie Coon), for one show a day all week. And remember, the main screen is out of action because of the annual burlesque thing.
  • The Brattle Theatre has the premiere run of The Black Sea from Friday to Sunday, an improvised comedy about a Brooklyn barista who follows a girl to Bulgaria, and then finds himself marooned without a passport or ticket home (and the only Black man there to boot). The filmmakers will be there in person for a Friday evening show.

    There are also special screenings of Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90) on Saturday night, 35mm screenings of Big Time for Tom Waits's 75th on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, a "Best of RPM Festival" collection on Sunday, and a 4K restoration of Steven Spielberg's first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express, for its 50th on Sunday (also at the Seaport). During the week, there are best-of shows for Grrl Haus Cinema on Monday and Tuesday, and a 50th anniversary celebration of the Off the Wall Cinema with animation and live action shows culled from their collection on Wednesday and a "Big Event" on Thursday.
  • The Seaport Alamo has 2046 on Friday & Sunday for the weekly Wong Kar-Wai. The Witch plays Friday to Sunday, and Female Trouble on Wednesday. For Christmas, there's Batman Returns on Friday/Saturday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday, The Holiday on Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday, and Elf Movie Party on Sunday, Klaus on Monday.
  • Seven Samurai appears to be the last thing on the Movies at MIT schedule for the semester.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has art doc Georgia O'Keefe: The Brightness of the Light on Saturday afternoon.
  • The Regent Theatre has adventure film package "Mountains on Stage: Winter Edition" on Tuesday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive is being used for student films during the weekend, but has a 35m print of Where to After the Rain? to wrap the Yugoslar series on Monday, which also heralds the end of streaming the Yugoslavian Cinema episodes of Screening Room. TV-movie rarity Carol for Another Christmas, written by Rod Serling, directed by Joseph L. Makiewicz and starring Sterling Hayden, Peter Sellers, and Eva Marie Saint, shows there on Thursday evening.
  • Last day to stream Boston Turkish Festival's Documentary & Short Film Competition on Friday!
  • The Lexington Venue has WIcked, A Real Pain, and Conclave Friday to Sunday and Wednesday. They also have free screenings of classic WB short "Star in the Night" (free popcorn for those who come with canned goods and unwrapped toys) on Saturday and Sunday. They also have a special presentation of documentary Marqueetown, about a Michigander attempting to save his local 100-year-old cinema and learning about the history of film in the state, on Saturday Director Matt Farley will be on-hand for a Q&A.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Bird, keeping Moana 2, Gladiator II, Wicked (including "Behind the Screen" show on Sunday), A Real Pain, Small Things Like These, and Conclave (no show Thursday).

    The Luna Theater has Heretic on Friday/Saturday, Ghost Cat Anzu on Saturday, Gremlins on Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show.

    Cinema Salem has Y2K, Moana 2, WIcked, and Gladiator II through Monday.

    If you can make it out to Danvers, Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties, about a band stranded in Prague and forced to busk when dropped from a European tour, is playing at the Liberty Tree Mall.
No idea what I'm doing this week, as I've got 20 hours of flying while my watch moves five on Monday, but I may abuse the heck out of the membership cards because The Return, Werewolves, Lake George, The Order, and Get Away mostly seem to be holding space before next week's big openings.

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 November 2024 - 5 December 2024

Long holiday weekend, but since the big stuff came out last week…
  • Disney does release Moana 2, though, and while you can sort of see how it started life as a Disney+ series, and could still lead to another, it's an enjoyable adventure story with some fine big-screen bits. It's at , Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Fresh Pond has the CGI-animated version of The Grinch for matinees starting on Friday. Arsenal Yards has afternoon shows of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation Friday to Sunday.
  • Another week, another Netflix thing getting its awards release, with The Coolidge Corner Theatre opening Maria, which stars Angelica Jolie as Maria Callas as the opera singer finishes her life in Paris and, presumably, looks back upon it. The film also opens at Kendall Square.

    The Coolidge marks the end of Noirvember with Nightmare Alley on Wednesday, while continuing its tribute to John Waters with Desperate Living at midnight on Friday, A Dirty Shame at 9:45pm Monday, and Pecker at 7pm Thursday, all on 35mm film. The finale of their David Lynch series of midnights, Inland Empire plays early-ish (10pm) on Saturday. The Kids' Show on Saturday is Matilda, and Monday's Big Screen Classic is Four Weddings and a Funeral. They start December's "Dracula Lives!" series on Tuesday with a 35mm print of Tod Browning directing Bela Lugosi in the original Universal Monsters version. Composer Claudio Simonetti visits with his band Goblin on Thursday, playing an anthology of their horror movie scores. Thursday's Cult Classic show is Gremlins
  • Chinese comedy Her Story, starring Song Jia as a single mother trying to get a new start after losing her job, befriending a neighbor played by Elane Zhong Xhuxi, opens at Causeway Street.

    Nepali drama Purna Bahadur Ko Sarangi continues its run at Apple Fresh Pond. Telugu action film Pushpa Part 2: The Rule opens next Wednesday (the 4th) at Fresh Pond (which also has Tamil & Hindi shows), Boston Common, and the Seaport.

    Last chance for Ghibli Fest, with Boston Common playing The Tale of the Princess Kaguya on Wednesday (subtitled).
  • The Brattle Theatre gives thanks for Akira Kurosawa, with the recent 4K restoration of Seven Samurai running Wednesday to Monday. With the holiday, more people than usual can get to the Friday Film Matinee of Out of Sight on 35mm than is usual, and they've got an encore screening of the new restoration of Paris, Texas on Sunday.

    After that, there's a quick run through Robert Eggers's Dark Universe before Nosferatu this Christmas, with The Witch Tuesday & Wednesday, The Lighthouse Wednesday & Thursday, and The Northman on Thursday.
  • The Seaport Alamo has Happy Together on Friday & Sunday for your weekly dose of Wong Kar-Wai, Good Will Hunting Friday/Saturday/Monday/Tuesday (I am honestly unsure why this doesn't play more often), Silent Night, Deadly Night on Friday, the Jim Carrey How the Grinch Stole Christmas Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday; Love Actually Saturday/Tuesday/Wednesday, Foxy Brown Saturday, Elf Sunday/Wednesday, Gremlins Sunday, Christmas Vacation Monday, and a preview of Y2K with a livestreamed Q&A on Tuesday. Lots of the Christmas stuff is "Movie Party" nights, and some of the weekend Moana 2 shows are "Family Party" deals.
  • The Harvard Film Archive is mostly dark while the students are away, but returns Sunday with Harry Smith's Film No. 18: Mahogany, a peculiar work with four images projected in different quadrants of the screen. They also continue "The Yugoslav Junction" with a program of "Alienating Images: Animation Elsewhere and Otherwise" on Sunday evening and a dubbed 16mm print of The Soldier on Monday. The Yugoslavian Cinema episodes of Screening Room stream throughout the break.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has Mati Diop's documentary Dahomey on Sunday afternoon.
  • Looks like they're starting Christmas Retro Replays at Landmark Kendall Square with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation on Tuesday.
  • The Somerville Theatre welcomes winter with Hundreds of Beavers Thursday the 5th.
  • Boston Turkish Festival will be streaming selections from their Documentary & Short Film Competition through Friday the 6th.
  • The Lexington Venue has WIcked, A Real Pain, and Conclave Friday to Sunday and next Wednesday & Thursday. They also have a free screening of Ratatouille as part of the Taste of Lexington on the afternoon of Wednesday the 5th, and a special screening of documentary Far Out: Life On & After the Commune later that evening.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Moana 2, keeping Gladiator II, Wicked, A Real Pain, Small Things Like These, and Conclave.

    The Luna Theater has a Weirdo Wednesday show, Elf Friday/Saturday, and Die Hard Sunday, and maybe another WW next week but it's not on the schedule.

    Cinema Salem has Moana 2, WIcked, Gladiator II, and Conclave. Friday's Night LIght show is Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge.
Already saw Moana 2 (it's fun!) and will probably check out Her Story before a trip to see family for Thanksgiving and then go further afield for a couple weeks because I've got a lot of vacation time to use by the end of the week. I may catch some movies in the evening if I'm not good and worn out, or I may not.

Friday, November 22, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 22 November 2024 - 26 November 2024

Ah, the weekend before Thanksgiving, where it's briefly summer movie time again.
  • Two of the big Thanksgiving releases open this weekend, which means we'll finally be free of the trailer for Wicked, the film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the book which posited that maybe the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz had a complicated backstory. It's apparently only the first half, with Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, and others. It plays at the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), the Lexington Venue, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Colby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill (including RealD 3D).

    That took a while to get made, as did Gladiator II, which has Ridley Scott returning to direct and Paul Mescal as a new captured warrior placed in the arena as a pawn for an ambitious businessman (Denzel Washington), and Connie NIelsen and Derek Jacobi the most notable returning actors from the original. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up a new (?) black-and-white edition of Basquiat, Julian Schnabel's biography of the artist starring Jeffrey Wright with David Bowie as Andy Warhol and one heck of a supporting cast, though it plays limited showtimes in some of the smaller rooms.

    Midnights continue the David Lynch series with Lost Highway on 3on Friday and Mulholland Drive on Saturday, both on 35mm film, plus Coolidge Award winner John Waters's Female Trouble on Friday. There's also a special Saturday afternoon Rewind! presentation of Shrek 2, Winners for the Goethe-Institut German film on Sunday morning and The Lady from Shanghai for the Sunday afternoon Noirvember show with Nathan Blake leading discussion afterward. Monday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Hook, with Jeff Rapsis on-hand for a Sound Of Silents show of The Thief of Bagdad on Tuesday.
  • Apple Fresh Pond more or less clears house of South Asian Material, with new release Sookshma Darshini - a Malayalam-language thriller where the younger residents of a neighborhood are suspicious of a man's return - only plays through Sunday. They also have a re-release of Karan Arjun, a Hindi-language action picture from 1995 with Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khanas brothers reincarnated to avenge their deaths on Saturday and Monday. Nepali drama Purna Bahadur Ko Sarangi continues its run.

    Possibly the final week for Ghibli Fest, with Pom Poko playing Boston Common on Sunday (dubbed) and Tuesday (subtitled); The Tale of the Princess Kaguya plays Monday (dubbed) and Wednesday (subtitled). South Bay has Pom Poko on Sunday only.

    Vietnamese comedy The Trophy Bride hangs on for a show or two at South Bay through Monday.
  • The Brattle Theatre has a hodgepodge this weekend: A Friday Film matinee of their 35mm print of The Brothers Bloom, the new 4K restoration of Paris, Texas on Friday and Saturday, and a "Selected by R.F. Kuang" series where the author will present three films that relate to her work, all on 35mm: Lust, Caution (Sunday/Monday), The Grandmaster (Sunday/Monday), and Inglorious Basterds (Sunday/Tuesday), with Kuang present to introduce/discuss the films on Sunday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive is back at The Yugoslav Junction this weekend: A 16mm pairing of "Bergman's Non-Verbals" & "Light-Play: A Tribute to Moholy-Nagy" Friday evening with post-screening discussion Friday evening; another short film package later that night; Soviet silent Wings of a Serf with live accompaniment by Robert Humphreville on Saturday; and a "Drawn to Bits: THe Zagreb School of Animation" anthology on Sunday afternoon, screening on 16mm & 35mm film, with the Yugoslavian Cinema episodes of Screening Room streaming.

    On Sunday evening, they show Times Square, part of the Jenni Olsen Queer Film Collection. On Monday, Max Goldberg introduces Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, screening on 35mm film.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has The Fall as part of their Cult Classics series on Friday, plus Tears of Cem Karaca (Saturday) and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul as part of the Boston Turkish Festival's Documentary & Short Film Competition; with a number of other films slated to stream online starting on Monday.
  • Wicked Queer has the finale of their documentaries festival on Friday night, with S/He Is Still Her/e playing at The ICA
  • The Somerville Theatre has a 35mm double feature of Casablanca & Out of the Past on Saturday.

    Their sister theater in Arlington, , has their monthly Disasterpiece Theatre tape-trading/live-riffing event on Monday, and while it's free as always, there will also be a fundraiser for their sponsor High Energy Vintage
  • The Seaport Alamo has "Movie Party" shows for Wicked on Friday and Sunday and Elf on Monday.
  • Tuesday's "Friendsgiving" Retro Replay at Landmark Kendall Square is Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
  • Movies at MIT has American Fiction on Friday & Saturday; their weekly email requests you give them a heads-up at lsc-guest at mit.edu if you're not part of the MIT community.
  • The Lexington Venue has WIcked, A Real Pain, and Conclave Friday to Sunday.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Gladiator II and Wicked, keeping A Real Pain (once again with a special "Behind the Screen" presentation on Sunday afternoon), Albany Road, Small Things Like These, Anora, Conclave,and The Substance.

    The Luna Theater has We Live in Time Friday/Saturday, Music for Mushrooms Saturday, and Addams Family Values on Sunday.

    Cinema Salem has WIcked, Gladiator II, Conclave, and Heretic through Monday. Friday's Night LIght show is David Cronenberg's Crash.

    If you can make it out to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they have fantasy romantic comedy Say a Little Prayer in addition to the other new releases.
Really up against vacation even for this short week as I try to squeeze Small Things Like These in around Gladiator II and maybe Wicked (when would the best time be to see it in 3D but not be hit with an audience that wants to sing along?). Maybe work in the Casablanca/Out of the Past twin bill, or even see how difficult the Red Line is going to make catching the last show of The Trophy Bride. Maybe work a silent in there, too.

Also, shout-out to The Wild Robot and The Substance, probably on their last weekends two months after release and weeks after hitting their distributors' streaming services. That's some quality hanging around, especially for a weird art-house horror movie like The Substance!

Friday, November 15, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 15 November 2024 - 21 November 2024

Looks slightly less crazy this week as both the fall blockbusters and contenders grab blocks of screens rather than a room here and a showtime there.
  • The big thing is Red One, with Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans as a mismatched team tasked with recovering a kidnapped Santa Claus with just a few days before Christmas; it's apparently been delayed a year because it was a messy shoot and you can only release this movie in a very narrow window. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening wide is A Real Pain, with Kieran Culkin and director Jesse Eisenberg as two cousins on a tour of Poland to honor their late grandmother. It's at the Somerville, the Coolidge, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, and Assembly Row.

    Bird, a nifty little British indie from Andrea Arnold with Barry Koeghan as the ne'er-do-well father of a girl (Nykiya Adams in a great debut) who encounters a strange wanderer, opens at Boston Common. Drama Albany Road, with Renee Elise Goldsberry and Lynn Whitfield as a woman and her ex's mother stuck in a rental car together, plays South Bay and West Newton. The Outrun returns to Boston Common.

    WWII thriller Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin opens Wednesday at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Does Angel still do ticket shenanigans with their movies?

    The Fifth Element plays Sunday and Wednesday at Boston Common, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards. Music doc Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird plays Boston Common and the Seaport on Wednesday. There's a mystery preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row on Monday (and one at Kendall Square that may be the same movie and may not be). There are early-access Amazon Prime shows of Wicked on the fancy screens at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema), South Bay (Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), and Arsenal Yards (CWX) on Monday , as well open-to-everyone ones at Fresh Pond (3D), Boston Common (RealD 3D & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street (RealD 3D), South Bay (Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (CWX), and Chestnut Hill (RealD 3D) on Wednesday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre also opens Black Box Diaries in one of the small rooms; based upon of a sexual assault survivor's memoir that helped spark the #MeToo movement in Japan. Journalist Shiori Ito adapts her own book, having documented everything.

    They also open a remake of Street Trash, presented on 35mm at midnight on Friday and Saturday. The regular Lynch midnights this weekend of Wild at Heart on Friday and a 35mm print of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on Saturday. On Sunday, they have a Kids' Show of the most recent version of The Grinch in the morning and a Noirvember show of Leave Her to Heaven with post-screening discussion upstairs. Monday's Science-on-Screen show is Amadeus, with a "Queering the Screen" presentation of the 5th Annual Black Trans Women at the Center Festival upstairs, with Kokomo City playing Tuesday, and a digital Restoration of Paris Is Burning on Wednesday. Then on Thursday they welcome John Waters, who will host a 35mm screening of Cecil B. Demented in the afternoon and a wide-ranging conversation and presentation of the Coolidge Award in the evening.
  • The big release from India is Kaguva, a nifty-looking period action piece about an ancient warrior that apparently also has links to the present. Its primary language is Tamil, with showtimes at Fresh Pond (Tamil/Hindi/Telugu) and Boston Common (Tamil/Telugu). Also opening at Apple Fresh Pond is Hindi-language thriller The Sabarmati Report (also at Boston Common), Kannada-language drama Bhairathi Ranagal, a re-release of 2018 Hindi-language fantasy Tumbbad (also at Boston Common); Makta, a Telugu-language period crime film playing through Sunday. Held over are Nepali drama Purna Bahadur Ko Sarangi, Hindi-language horror-comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (also at Boston Common), Tamil film Amaran. Hindi-language actioner Singham Again continues at Boston Common.

    Anime Ghost Cat Anzu, which I couldn't fit into Fantasia but which features animated characters from director Yoko Kuno rotoscoped over live-action directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita (or at least, I presume that's the division of labor), opens at Boston Common. Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom continues at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    Filipino romance Hello, Love, Again, about a couple that reunites in Canada after being separated by the pandemic, opens at Boston Common.

    The two Chinese films at Causeway Street, The Unseen Sister and Cesium Fallout, expand to full days of showtimes.

    Vietnamese comedy The Trophy Bride continues at South Bay.

    K-pop concert/doc Fanmade: Enhypen plays Boston Common on Friday and Tuesday.
  • The Brattle Theatre has music doc Louder Than you Think, which looks at the band Pavement through the lens of eccentric drummer Gary Young, from Friday to Sunday, though at somewhat limited times as the theater also host Wicked Queer Docs and a Friday Film Matinee of The Man Who Wasn't There (35mm).

    After that, they have a quick series about "Ester KrumbachovĂ¡: The Secret Weapon of the Czech New Wave", including Daisies (35mm Tuesday/Wednesday), KrumbachovĂ¡'s Murdering the Devil (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday), A Report on the Party and the Guests (Tuesday/Thursday), and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Wednesday/Thursday).
  • The Seaport Alamo's weekly Wong Kar-Wai selection is In the Mood for Love, playing Friday/Sunday/Monday; they also play The Godfather Part II Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday, Interview with the Vampire Friday/Sunday/Monday; Pulp Fiction movie parties Saturday/Wednesday;A Woman Under the Influence Sunday/Monday/Tuesday; Chinatown Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday; In a Lonely Place Monday/Tuesday. Too-early Christmas stuff includes an Elf movie party on Saturday and a member preview of Nutcrackers on Wednesday.
  • ArtsEmerson and The Boston Asian American Film Festival have two screenings of The Glassworker on Friday night (the second added because the first ran out), a Pakistani animated film about two young people falling in love despite their clashing fathers. I donated to its crowdfunding campaign 8 years ago and, man, you'd think they'd give a heads-up about screenings like this!
  • The Capitol picks up Memoir of a Snail. They also have a Friday 4th Wall show with Declaw, Trash Sun, The DreamToday, and Petal Dance, with Digital Awareness on visuals.

    Mostly new releases at The Somerville Theatre has an "Invasion of the B-Movies" double feature of The Wasp Woman & The Monster from Green Hell on Sunday. They're also the latest stop for Boston-set LGBTQ+ fantasy Playland on Monday and Tuesday, and play music documentary The World According to Allee Willis on Wednesday.
  • Wicked Queer has their annual Documentaries festival this week, opening at The Museum of Fine Arts on Friday with George Michael: Portrait of an Artist, with shows through Monday at the MFA and Brattle, with an extra show next Friday at the ICA.
  • The Boston Jewish Film Festival has its final in-person weekend, with Bad Shabbos at the Somerville on Saturday, Delegation and Children of Peace at the MFA on Sunday, and four selections available to stream from Monday to Wednesday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive plays a number of films from the Jenni Olson Queer Film Collection with guests (including Olson) present all weekend: "We're Here, We're Queer" and "Flaming Youth" collections on Friday; Something Special and Dallas Doll, both on 35mm, on Saturday; an "Afro Promo" trailer package and Olson's The Joy of Life on Sunday; and her film The Royal Road on Monday. They are also streaming the Yugoslavian Cinema episodes of Screening Room, with that program returning next weekend.
  • Landmark Kendall Square has a surprise sneak preview on Monday, a Retro Replay show of Thelma & Louise on Tuesday, and documentary The World According to Allee Willis on Wednesday.
  • The Midweek Music Movie at The Regent Theatre on Wednesday is The Last Seat in the House, with director John Kane and his subject, the legendary sound engineer Bill Hanley, there for a post-screening Q&A.
  • The Museum of Science screens Canadian film Indian Horse, about a native who survives residential film to become a professional hockey player, in the Omnimax done on Friday and Saturday as part of Native American Heritage Celebration Weekend; admission is free but pre-registration is requested. They also add new Imax featurette "Train Time" to the Omnimax rotation and a shortened but enhanced version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" to the 4D room, both starting on Wednesday.
  • Movies at MIT has an unusually full week, with Perfect Days Friday & Saturday, student-made feature Log Log Land on Sunday, and a preview of Y2K with special guests on Tuesday; their weekly email requests you give them a heads-up if you're not part of the MIT community.
  • The Lexington Venue has A Real Pain and Conclave Friday to Sunday as late-ish shows of Rocky Horror on Friday & Saturday night (no live cast listed, though Full Body is at Boston Common on Saturday as usual). They also have two screenings of Daruma, an independent film about two people with physical handicaps traveling cross-country, on Saturday afternoon and Thursday evening.

    The West Newton Cinema picks up A Real Pain (including a special "Behind the Screen" presentation on Sunday afternoon), Albany Road, and Small Things Like These, holding over Anora, Blitz, Conclave, The Wild Robot, and The Substance.

    The Luna Theater has We Live in Time Friday/Saturday, A Different Man Saturday, Music for Mushrooms Saturday, and Escape From L.A. on Sunday. There's also a Weirdo Wednesday show.

    Cinema Salem has Conclave Heretic, We Live in Time, Anora, and Blitz through Monday. There's a Saturday Night Light show of the original Godzilla, and a Sunday evening tribute to Dame Maggie Smith with a free screening of Gosford Park.

    Freddy, a biography of Dominican comedian-turned-philanthropist Freddy Beras-Goico, plays at the Dedham Showcase
  • Joe's Free Films calendar has the BU Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival wrapping up with The Animal Kingdom on Tuesday.
I'm looking to check out The Glassmaker and Ghost Cat Anzu, probably should catch Conclave and Here before they're gone and kind of figure Red One and A Real Pain will stick around until vacation. Kind of tempted to head down to South Bay for Albany Road and/or The Trophy Bride, too, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time for the Czech films at the Brattle. Also, the previews for two Indian movies that weren't on my rader that I saw before Singham Again have me intrigued.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Weekend in Taipei

I can't really say for sure, but I feel like there would be at least a couple nifty stories about George Huang in Entertainment Weekly or Cinematical or the like if we had the sort of mainstream film & entertainment media we had when Huang directed his last feature, there'd be a nice, meaty story about just what he's been up to in the 30 years since Swimming with Sharks pushed a bit outside of the indie bubble, because it sure looks like a ride: One raunchy mainstream comedy of the type that were in style in the late 1990s, some TV, including a good chunk of one of those America telenovelas that MyNetworkTV debuted after the UPN/WB merger, a few behind-the-scenes jobs with friend Robert Rodriguez, the script for Hard Target 2, and enough work on scripts with a couple writer/directors to get WGA credit. It's an IMDB page that probably excludes some script doctor work and a number of scripts that probably got pitched, written as treatments, and maybe completed and into pre-production, but just sort of vanished because they never started shooting. I've read interviews where someone said, yeah, I've been working in the ten years between my first two features, but it never became a finished product, and that kind of looks like what happened with Huang.

But we don't really have that sort of coverage today; the nearest thing I've seen to what I'm suggesting look to be clips from a junket interview he did with Sung Kang on websites that are too SEO'd to be worth paying attention to. Which is a real shame; I raised my eyebrow when I gave Weekend in Taipei a cursory IMDB lookup after seeing the trailer in September, and was hoping I'd see something about it, but there just isn't an outlet, and this is the sort of thing that could maybe pique a little curiosity in a reasonably decent movie.

It might also be interesting to hear about EuropaCorp doing a Taiwan co-production when this could maybe be an issue with the Mainland, which seems to be willing enough to let studios cast/hire Taiwanese talent (as in this week's The Unseen Sister) but has on occasion taken a dim view of actually showing the place. Maybe it's okay if you imply all the cops are in the pocket of a Korean gangster and American cops can wave their badges around and make arrests. I don't know if this film would actually play there anyway - they've got plenty of iQIYI stuff to fill screens - but does someone hold a grudge against Besson if he wants to shoot there someday?

(I know, you've got to go to Danvers or Franmingham to see it Thursday, but there was a lot of noir this weekend! I only got to it Tuesday night)


Weekend in Taipei

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 November 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #12 (first-run, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA, this will show where when it is

Weekend in Taipei is more or less what it looks like - a mid-budget action movie from Luc Besson's factory that has a bit more gloss than the stuff which goes straight to video - but it's fully aware of that, giving the audience what it wants a little earlier than expected and putting in the work even if it's mostly doing the basics. Besson and George Huang mix things up just enough that you won't forget it on the way to the subway.

It opens with "King" Kwang (Sung Kang), a Korean immigrant who had risen to become a billionaire seafood supplier, appearing in court over a number of seemingly minor violations of fishing law, considering how the business is a front door rubbing drugs; wife Joey (Gwei Yun-Mei) was not there, instead buying another Ferrari seemingly on a whim, and Joey's 14-year-old son Raymond (Wyatt Yang) really hates his stepdad. Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, a stuff bust has gone sideways, and when DEA Agent John Lawlor (Luke Evans) discovers a possible source within Kwang's business, he wants to go to Taipei for a hand-off, and possibly misinterprets his supervisor's refusal to allow this, "especially after what happened 15 years ago", but suggesting he take a leave of action for a few days, as tacit approval.

Writer/director George Huang looked like he was going to be someone twenty or thirty years ago - Swimming with Sharks was at least a moderate deal - and while there's maybe a bit of rust, he's still got good fundamentals. Indeed, he seems to be having fun here, with an early Breakfast at Tiffany's homage that's a lot of fun and a fistfight in a movie theater that doesn't quite hit the notes he's probably looking for but which at least feels like he's trying something rather than serving up the expected action beats. I wonder a bit how much of the action is him and how much is Besson and his team; there's bits of slapstick violence in some and slick gunplay in others that feels a bit like Besson's house style but It's also kind of quirky, with the first action scene being especially shaggy-but-really-violent. Either the stunt drivers or visual effects crew has great fun when Joey gets behind the wheel.

I like the central pair a fair amount: Luke Evans understands the assignment and doesn't treat this as an audition for something bigger or mail it in, just vibing with the audience that came for some fun action. Gwei Yun-Mei is initially more severe as an elegant, lead-footed mom who takes no guff, and probably gives the movie a bi of a soul as a tomboy hellion repressed by her miserable marriage but ready to leap out at any notice, even as she has matured over that time. She's kind of great and while she's been in a fair number of the few Taiwanese films made it to American cinemas in the last decade or so, but it would be nice if we could see more of her, which didn't exactly happen after Qi Shu was in The Transporter.

Also, the movie handles flashbacks not with digital de-aging, but a grainy filter, a little makeup, and wigs. The wigs are terrible and I love them for it. It's a thing that works better than it should - the characters are relating these stories to Raymond and maybe that's how he's seeing it. It lands right between silly and clever and may not even click as what Huang may be doing until a day or two later, when it's suddenly even funnier.

I don't know that this makes Weekend in Taipei that much smarter or more rewatchable than the average EuropaCorp action flick, but maybe it's just odd enough to not feel like it's disappearing as you watch it. It's only getting one or two shows a day at relatively few multiplexes, but there are, at the very least, worse uses of a couple hours if you've got a monthly membership in those buildings.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

This Week in Tickets: 21 October 2024 - 27 October 2024 (No real pattern)

This Week in Tickets: 21 October 2024 - 27 October 2024 (No real pattern) It's funny, seeing other folks doing forty horror movies in October and I'm just all over the freaking place. Like, maybe Sunday's kind of Halloweeny, but...

This Week in Tickets
I started the week off right with North By Northwest on 70mm film, which looked great, but like The Searchers a few weeks back kind of looks odd because the restoration process had them scanning the VistaVision film in an unusual fashion - since VV is 35mm run through camera/projector horizontally, with each frame two standard frames, they scanned two "frames" and put them together digitally, then did the restoration work, then output that to 70mm film - like it's definitely been in and out of a computer, even without the weird line right down the center of the screen in one scene.

(To be fair, movies shot in VistaVision often look kind of off to me, like they never did quite figure out how to light right for the process)

The next night was given to Goodrich, which was not another corporate origin story and not exactly the Mr. Mom redux it initially looked like, but a pleasant enough couple hours. Would have been funny if Mr. Mom had been a Meyers-Shyer thing, though.

Wednesday night was a "last evening in theaters" show of The Outrun, which is one I spent the better part of a month not quite being in the mood for but ultimately liking a lot. It had a kind of weird release - spotty times everywhere but Kendall that make me wonder if it's sort of being four-walled for Academy members or something. Pretty good, though.

After a couple days not going out and watching baseball, I hit Chinese movie High Forces Saturday afternoon, which was wobbly but had some quality minor-action-movie trailers in front of it: Werewolves just getting right out there with "One year ago, a supermoon turned millions into werewolves" with no buildup whatsoever, Elevation offering more big ravenous aliens, and Weekend in Taipei's trailer updated because it first started showing up in October with a "Coming in September" caption on it. Then, somehow, not really doing anything besides groceries and a trip to the comic shop in the afternoon, I was oddly worn down by the time Max and the Junkmen in the evening and was in and out too much to really say i watched it. Amusingly, I passed on getting it in the Kino Lorber Fall sale because I knew I'd be watching it over the weekend. Hopefully they'll still have some left for the next big sale!

That turned out to be my last "Melville et Cie." film at the Harvard Film Archive, because Saturday offered the choice of two things on my unwatched shelf - The Bat at the Somerville with Jeff Rapsis on the organ and Army of Shadows at the Archive on 35mm film. I went with The Bat and it wound up a lot of fun. Then, in the evening, it was out to the Seaport for Magpie, which is also pretty neat.

More on my Letterboxd account as I see more, if you don't need to wait for me to actually get spelling and such right.


North by Northwest

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 October 2024 in Somerville Theatre #1 (A Bit of Hitch, 70mmm)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere; 4K, Blu-ray, and DVD available on Amazon

Much like Psycho didn't exactly invent the modern horror movie but refined it into something sort of respectable rather than the back half of a twin bill, North by Northwest feels like the birth of the modern blockbuster: A-list talent, a sense of play in the script that lubricates a kind of silly plot that's nevertheless always moving forward, and grand action set pieces that spill into familiar locations. Not the first of its kind, for sure, but more like the James Bond films and other bits of star-driven action that followed it than the Cinemascope epics that preceded it.

(Maybe I'm overthinking it, missing something obvious, or going over well-worn territory here)

At any rate, this is one of my go-to answers when someone asks me my favorite movie and I don't want to either spend a lot of time thinking about it or let them down by saying I can't name one, but I'm not being glib; it's an exceptionally fun film with enough great moments that one will probably surprise you even if you've seen it a dozen times. In this case, it's the awkward little "excuse me" flashbulb as someone captures a picture of Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill apparently stabbing a man, and the little callbacks to it later.

There's a certain oddity to Grant as this sort of reluctant hero 65 years later, as "Cary Grant" lands in the part of the Venn diagram where "foppish" and "suave" intersect, just enough of the latter that the moments where he's suddenly pretty capable don't quite jar. The rest of the cast, though, is terrific, especially Eva Marie Saint, who makes Eve feel exactly that cool, James Mason and Leo G. Carroll as amiably aloof opposites, and a wonderfully dangerous Marin Landau. Hitch and writer Ernest Lehman move them all around quickly but not frantically, slowing down a bit for the scene when we get to see the leads actually like each other without qualification in a way that's sweet, charming, and clarifying, just before the big Mount Rushmore finale, a rougher and scrappier thing than a modern take on it would be but which maybe works better because it's trying to communicate rather than fool.the audience.

Still a ton of fun, and I'm glad that Warner is pushing 70mm prints to theaters to promote the upcoming 4K disc.


Goodrich

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 October 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #2 (first-run, laser DCP)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere

Goodrich is the sort of film writer/director Hallie Meyers-Shyer's parents (Nancy Meyers & Charles Shyer) used to make, which in their own ways were kind of throwbacks to earlier days of cinema: Mostly-amiable comedies set against affluent backgrounds with well-cast stars. They were meant to entertain and do so in a relatively frictionless way, and if Meyers-Shyer can't quite make that work, it can be tough to see where it's what she's doing and where it's the times.

It opens in spikier fashion that could almost be a commentary on that as Andy Goodrich (Michael Keaton) is woken up by a call from his wife saying she has checked herself into rehab, so he's in charge of their nine-year old twins Billie (Vivien Lyra Blair) and Mose (Jacob Kopera). He's not completely inept, but the nanny having a conflict means he has to call on Grace (Mila Kunis), the daughter from his first marriage (pregnant herself) while he works to save the gallery he's run for decades which has been losing money for a while now.

Whether or not Meyers-Shyer had Michael Keaton in mind for the title role, the part fits him like a glove, letting him go into cruise control a bit. That's not exactly a problem; I like Michael Keaton, and this film is basically him being the same guy he was in his 80s/90s heyday, but maybe a little more mellow if not quite as much wiser as he should be. That's kind of a "for better or worse" thing, at times; it makes for a fairly pleasant couple of hours but you can't help but wonder if maybe his title character shouldn't have been a little more prickly or selfish at points, and the film dances around the moments when his blithe, privileged optimism is burst; things are expected to just work out, eventually, because he's generally a good dude and things work out for guys like that.

This isn't that movie, though, it's resolutely nice and well-meaning and after the first ten minutes or so works very hard to avoid situations where someone gets as upset as they maybe should. It plays fair while it does that, at least, and even theVivien Lyra Blair (as the daughter who is too witty for being nine) never grates. There's a part of me that wonders if this started life as a movie about Mila Kunis's Grace, which would seem the more autobiographical route, only to have the more interesting bits of the script coalesce around Andy. Kunis has a great moment or three where Grace is allowed to confront that she loves her dad but that she sometimes feels like practice for raising her siblings There's a story in there that is not necessarily just an L.A. story as is implied in the dialogue, which would seem to be where she would start from.

Goodrich is almost certainly not all it could be, but it's easy enough to enjoy throughout and gives its star a couple hours to do the sort of thing he does well. There's worse ways to spend a couple hours.


The Outrun

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 23 October 2024 in Landmark Kendall Square #6 (first-run, DCP)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere

Drinking and alcoholism are boring. Yes, they're incredibly impactful and cause drama, but I suspect that even those with a lot of personal experience will look at scenes of Rona drinking, fucking up her life because of it, and going through AA meetings, and have a little "ugh, this shit again" reaction as it happens. It kind of puts the like to the old trope that happy families are all the same but unhappy ones are unique and interesting.

This sounds like a complaint, but it's actually what makes The Outrun kind of engrossing: Main character Rona's narration, which wanders from her own history to topics from geology to mythology to biology, reveals her as smart, curious, and self-aware of how her childhood has left her kind of a mess, and the version of her we see when she drinks is more loud than fun and uninhibited. We kind of get it; her father's bipolar syndrome and mother's religiosity on top of growing up on a farm where the work often involves grimly delivering stillborn lambs and disposing of their carcasses is the sort of thing we can see drinking to escape. And "escape" seems to be her reaction to her alcoholism when things come to a head, insisting on the sort of rehab that locks her up and running north, not just to her home, but to progressively smaller islands. She perhaps needs the quiet to progressively get rid of the noise that leads her to drink - and to make getting a bottle more work when the compulsion comes over her anyway - but it's stark.

Rona fleeing crowds winds up leaving us with Saoirse Ronan and the desolate rocky beauty of the Orkney Islands, and it's a solid foundation to build a movie on; Ronan's taciturn but engaging performance matches the stern environment and offers hints of the occasional joy she'll be able to show later. You can see her trying at times and going through the motions at others, and how her best self is smothered under the noise of drunkenness. The film's got some big clear metaphors working - the rare bird that's hard to find, the polar-bear dips to give one a jolt - but they work pretty well, in part because Rona is smart enough to see them as something she can sort of adapt and learn from in the world rather than the filmmakers building the world to reflect their points. I especially like a moment toward the end when she's explaining how she's changing her area of study to seaweed to her religious mother in a tiny apartment; it's earnest nerdiness that the drink has covered, but it's her also engaging in the world and something important about it that makes life happen. Her mother (Sasika Reeves) doesn't necessarily get it, but this is the way her daughter understands a higher power even as she lashes out at Christianity and is pointedly silent during certain phrases at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

It's a tough sit at times - dull for some, maybe triggering for others - but the people involved recognize and work with it, winding up with something often quite lovely.


Wei Ji Hang Xian (High Forces)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 October 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #2 (first-run, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA; check here for when it is

Oxide Pang is just about exactly slick enough to pull this very silly movie off. He doesn't really make it good, per se, but he keeps it moving even as the audience's eyes roll, and when the finale gets big and silly, folks are going sure, why not, rather than really laughing at it, comparing it to Hollywood productions (I'm tempted to revisit Passenger 57 to see just how much they have in common), or asking just which Chinese city, exactly, is big enough for a ring road that the largest passenger liner in the world can land on but not an airport.

Before that, we're introduced to Gao Haojun (Andy Lau Tak-wah), whose demonstration is canceled and is thus able to fly home on the new superliner; the company president, Li Hangyu (Guo Xiaodong), will also be aboard, though in a private office suite, as will ex-wife Fu Yuan (Tamia Liu Tao) and daughter Xiaojun (Wendy Zhang Zifeng). The former has reconciled with Haojun since he has shown real progress in treating the bipolar disorder that used to lead him to fits of rage; given that one caused the accident that left Xiaojun blind, she has not. Also on board, roughly a dozen terrorists whose leader Mike (Qu Xhuxiao) has a similar diagnosis and aims to ransom the plane half a billion dollars - but should the passengers be worried that they brought parachutes?

The script is dumb, and if the bad guys are ever given names rather than numbers in Chinese, they don't make the subtitles. I think this is Andy Lau's second movie in as many years which feels like it may do a real disservice to people with bipolar disorder, though I can't say myself. The "Die Hard on a plane" stuff is often weirdly choppy and frustratingly edited - you can see just enough cool action to wish you had a clearer view - even before getting into how it doesn't really take the tight quarters and sudden motions of an airplane into consideration very much. It almost makes me wonder if there had been a long negotiation worth the censor board, between the brutality of the kills and the way this new release shows 2018 every time the year shows up.

The finale, on the other hand, is big and likably dopey. I don't really believe a minute of it, but Pang and his crew mostly manage to hit the sweet spot where you know the physics is laughable but the effects are pretty well rendered (or, as the credits show us, built), it's well-paced, and the filmmakers seem to know just how much to err on the side of larger than life as opposed to realistic. It's entertaining enough to send one out of the theater enjoying its absurdity, and somehowthat's value for the price of a ticket.


Max et les ferrailleurs (Max and the Junkmen)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 26 October 2024 in the Harvard Film Archive (Melville et Cie., 35mm)
Available to rent/purchase digitally ; Blu-ray and DVD available on Amazon

I dozed off a bit here, and I'm upset about it, because it looks like two or three really fun movies in one: A cop so desperate for a win (and maybe a deterrent) that he resorts to entrapment, a group of slackers unable to really commit to a crime, and the cop falling for an old friend's sex-worker girlfriend. It's almost built for their not to be a heist, and the filmmakers are clever in how they show the general path to the foregone conclusion and don't give it twists so much as odd terrain - to torture the metaphor further, nothing ever actually disappears behind a hill, but you can't follow a straight line.

Plus, Romy Schneider, wow.

Anyway, sticking a pin here to this movie the next time Kino Lorber has a big sale.


The Fall

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 October 2024 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Silents Please!, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA; check here for when it is; Blu-ray and DVD available on Amazon

Beyond having a few things that clearly inspired some comic book creators a decade later, The Bat is a genuinely fun Old Dark House movie, and that's a genre where I usually like the idea a lot more than the actual execution. It moves quickly enough that one can miss that it's playing fair, near as I can tell on a single viewing, has a fairly enjoyable set of characters that mostly stay on the right side of "too broad", and doesn't wear out its welcome.

The plot is kind of all over the place- it involves a cat burglar who announces his crimes, a young lady trying to hide her boyfriend who many believe to be said "Bat" from the police, passing him off to her spinster aunt as a new gardener, and a hidden room with a safe. It's convoluted and full of a few holes - if The Bat has been at this for a while, why are the cops investigating the latest robbery like it's a one-off - but the bones are simple enough to support more.

It's also kind of noteworthy that this was a movie from 1926 based on a play from 1920 or so, which means that it antedates a lot of things that it could be seen as riffing on, whether they be Batman or Agatha Christie or Miss Marple specifically, and, heck, The Old Dark House was a few years in the future. The building blocks were sort of sloshing around, but this puts a lot of things together in ways that anticipate what will work, and looks great - it's got a fair number of folks who would have notable careers well into the talkie era behind the scenes doing the excellent work where, nearly 100 years later, one can see the seams or the lack of refinement, but the ideas and execution are nevertheless impressive. There's a nice knack for having some funny bits and larger-than-life portions while still taking things fairly seriously.

It's not perfect even before you get to the racist tropes piled so high on the Japanese butler that one might be surprised actor Sojin Kamiyama was not a white guy in yellowface; it tries to juggle enough balls long enough that it can't help but drop a few on occasion. Still, the filmmakers tend to bounce back quickly and cram a lot of movie into its 90 minutes.


Magpie

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 27 October 2024 in Alamo Drafthouse Seaport #4 (first-run, laser DCP)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere

The fun thing about Magpie is that not a lot seems to happen, but it's still got three phases that potentially twist things up: Before one realizes this looks like an unreliable narrator movie, discovering that one doesn't necessarily know who the unreliable narrator is, and when it sorts itself out. It's not that tricky a mystery to solve, but it's satisfying because the red herrings work differently than usual.

As it opens, it's been about five or six years since Anette (Daisy Ridley) and Ben (Shazad Latif) moved to the countryside so that Ben could concentrate on his writing and they could raise their daughter Matilda (Hiba Ahmed), with Anette leaving her job in the publishing industry. Matilda is now a child actress, and has been cast in a period piece as the daughter of a character played by Alicia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), who has just had a sex tape posted online before filming. As Ben visits the set to supervise Matilda, he finds himself feeling a connection with Alicia, while being left home alone isn't doing wonders for Anette's mental health, and it is implied she had some sort of breakdown before Matilda was conceived.

In addition to playing a lead role, Daisy Ridley has a story credit here, and it sort of confirms that she's been seeking out a certain type of role since Star Wars, these wired-differently young women who can make a viewer feel like they're hard to crack. She's interesting to watch as Anette, portraying the way parenthood can overwhelm somebody while also making them feel left behind without necessarily yelling it. There's a precision to how it's directed, emphasizing strain without having to have Ridley exaggerate anything about Anette. There's also a sort of fun in watching her, Shazad Latif, and Matilda Lutz find ways to play scenes so that one isn't quite sure whether they're just a bit awkward, showing guilty conscience, or if the actors are portraying not what the characters are actually doing and how, but what someone else thinks they're doing.

It eventually heads toward a Big Reveal that includes flashbacks, but I like how director Sam Yates and Tom Bateman haven't really worked on hiding things that much, doing only the slightest bit of misdirection in hiding something so that the audience is actively engaged with what's happening later; they seem to want viewers weighing possibilities instead of passively watching and waiting to be blindsided and explained to.

It's a nicely compact film - 90 minutes, not really an ounce of fat on it, but also pretty sparse in its action. Everyone seems to know how to get a lot of its minor events, but it's seldom the sort of consciously still movie that requires the audience to elevate tiny movements to something bigger. Just efficient and tight without feeling like it's been passed down in the name of efficiency.
North by Northwest Goodrich The Outrun High Forces Max and the Junkmen The Bat Magpie