Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 14 February 2024 - 22 February 2024

Happy Valentine's Day! And President's Day! And April Vacation for folks with kids! Let's keep busy with movies!

• The most romantic thing going is probably The Taste of Things, which features Juliette Binoche as a personal chef to an aristocrat played by Benoit Magimel, who has loved her for years but never been able to convince her to marry him. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Embassy, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row. Pair it with Menus-Plaisirs at the Coolidge for seven hours of French food porn!
  
  Other romances at the Coolidge include A Room with a View on Wednesday, Rafiki on Thursday, Tropical Malady on Tuesday, The Lady Eve on 35mm Wednesday the 21s. The weekend's midnights include Spawn (35mm) and The Room on Friday and Sugar Hill on 35mm Saturday. Sunday afternoon (but at midnight in spirit) is a (free to members) double feature of Female Trouble & Bad Girls Go to Hell tied to the upcoming release of Drive-Away Dolls. There are Disney Sing-Alongs all week for the kids, with proper animated shows of The Little Mermaid (Monday), Encanto (Tuesday), Frozen II (Wednesday the 21st), and Moana (Thursday the 22nd). Monday's President's Day Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Point Break.
• Sony's latest Spidey-adjacent flick, Madame Web, offers up Dakota Johnson as the clairvoyant title character (who is usually much older although, well, let's not get into what Marvel's doing in the comics), Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Mercen, and Celeste O'Connor as characters who have been called "Spider-Girl" at various paints, and Tahar Ramin as one of Spider-Man's less interesting villains. It's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), Boston Common (including Imax Xenon), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Surprisingly, Bob Marley: One Love - with Kingsley Ben-Adair in the title role) and King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green behind the camera - is not an Oscar-focused movie pushed to 2024 by the strikes, though it was advertised that way for long enough, but was apparently always meant to open now; not sure what that says about Paramount's confidence in it. That one plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Land of Bad opens Friday, starring two Hemsworth brothers (not Chris), Milo Ventimiglia, and Russell Crowe in a "get the boys back home safe" war movie. Director William Eubank has done interesting things in the past, although I must admit to confusing Crowe with John Goodman when I saw the trailer. It's at Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  
  The musical The Color Purple returns to Boston Common on Friday; it never left South Bay.
  
  A24 Wednesdays at Boston Common and Causeway Street feature A Ghost Story (the 14th) and The Lobster (21st). The David Lynch version of Dune plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday and Monday for its 40th Anniverary; we'll see if there's reason to do so on its 45th. There's an AMC Screen Unseen preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Monday. Kiss the Future, a documentary about Sarajevo during the Balkan Wars and U2's advocacy for the city, plays Wednesday on the Dolby Cinema screens at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• Oscar-Nominated Shorts arrive on Friday! The Coolidge, the Kendall, Boston Common, and the Seaport have Animation and Live Action all week. The ICA has Animation (Friday-Sunday) and Live Action (Saturday/Sunday/Thursday); The Capitol has animation (Friday/Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday), Live-Action (Saturday-Thursday), and Documentary (Saturday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday); the Embassy has Animation and Live Action all week and Documentary Friday to Monday; the Lexington Venue has Live Action (Friday-Sunday); Animation (Friday/Saturday/Thursday), and Documentary (Saturday/Sunday/Thursday); Luna Lowell has Animation (Friday-Sunday), Live Action (Saturday/Sunday), and Documentary (Saturday/Sunday); Cinema Salem has Animation, Live Action, and Documentary Friday to Monday.
• Landmark Kendall Square also opens.Oscar-nominated documentary To Kill a Tiger on Friday; its title refers not to big-game hunting but a farmer's uphill battle to get justice for the rape of his 13-year-old daughter.
  
  The Tuesday-night New Hollywood show is Easy Rider
• The new South Asian movies at Apple Fresh Pond from Sunday are Ooru Peru Bhairavakona, a Telugu-language fantasy-thriller about a man lost in a hidden world; Telugu-language drama Raajadhani Files (plays through Sunday); Malayalam-language horror movie Bramayugam; and Malayalam-language romantic comedy Premalu. Tamil-language action flick Siren, about an ambulance driver turned criminal, opens Friday.
  
  Held over are Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (also at Boston Common), Lal Salaam (through Wednesday), Eagle (through Wednesday), and Fighter.
  
  Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children Complete, an extended version of the 2005 CGI feature, plays Boston Common, South Bay,and Assembly Row on Wednesday the 21st (dubbed) and Thursday the 22nd (subtitled). The Boy and the Heron is still at West Newton, Fresh Pond, and Boston Common (with one show at the Embassy).
  
  Chinese movies Table for Six 2 and Johnny Keep Walking! continue at Causeway Street; Pegasus 2 continues at Boston Common.
• The Alamo Seaport has the new restoration of Amélie starting on Wednesday for at least eight days, and holds How to Have Sex over for a second week.
  
  With that and the Oscar shorts, their rep calendar is thus a little squeezed, but has room for 1999 Time Capsules Drop Dead Gorgeous on Saturday & Sunday, Existenz on Monday, The Woman Chaser on Tuesday, and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai next Wednesday. They've also pushed their opening hours up to offer brunch-menu screenings on Saturday & Sunday.
• The Brattle Theatre has Valentine's (and day-after) screenings of Casablanca and The Princess Bride, both on 35mm film, although the 7pm Casablanca shows are already sold out. After that, they kick off the annual school-vacation screenings of The Bugs Bunny Film Festival, 80 minutes of classic Looney Tunes on 35mm film, all through the break.
  
  On top of that, they also have The Sweet East playing 9pm shows through Monday, featuring Talia Ryder as a South Carolina teenager who walks off the school trip to Washington and into various weird "caustically satirical" situations up and down the East Coast.
• The Somerville Theatre plays host to The Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival from Wednesday to (noon) Monday, with guests for Shatter Belt on Wednesday, two "Life After…" things on Thursday, and Faceless After Dark on Friday. There's a family double feature of The Iron Giant & Galaxy Quest, both on 35mm film, on Saturday and the annual 24 hour marathon starting at noon on Sunday. Unusually, Festival film Where is Anne Frank?, directed by Ari Folman, plays during the marathon Sunday afternoon. There are also three virtual presentations coming online Tuesday and Wednesday.
• The Embassy has an encore of In the Whale on Thursday evening. They also show The Secret of Pin-Up Island with writer/director Alecs Nastoiu, actress Rina Gri, and producer Ovidiu Vasu on hand for a Q&A on Sunday afternoon. Oddly, I don't see them listed as attending the Boston Sci-Fi Festival screening in Somerville on Saturday!
• Bright Lights presents The Disappearance of Shere Hite with director Nicole Newnham on-hand for Q&A this Thursday evening, and Unidentified Objects with director Juan Felipe Zuleta and actor Matthew Jeffers in person next Thursday; both shows are free and open to the public.
  
  ArtsEmerson/the Boston Asian-American Film Festival/RoxFIlm use the room for a free screening of short film "Reparations" and locally-shot featurette Freckled Rice plus "Our Chinatown" on Sunday afternoon, and also have a streaming encore of "Shared Stories" running from Friday through the 25th.
• The Harvard Film Archive goes with the Ousmane Sembène program this weekend, with 35mm prints of Faat Kiné (Friday) and Guelwaar (Saturday), plus new restorations of Emitaï (Saturday), Ceddo (Sunday), and Black Girl (Sunday), the last playing with a 35mm print of Sembène's short film "Niaye".
• The Museum of Fine Arts begins its Festival of Films from Iran this weekend with Terrestrial Verses on Friday evening and A Revolution on Canvas on Saturday afternoon.
• The Museum of Science is showing that they'll be screening Dune: Part Two on the Omni screen, interestingly saying "select nights" in one spot and Fridays & Saturdays in another.
• The Regent Theatre has documentary Who Can See Forever on Thursday, plus two programs of the Banff Mountain Film Festival, with "Paintbrush" showing Monday & Wednesday and "Arnica" on Tuesday & Thursday.
• The GlobeDocs Black History Month Film Festival presents "A Beautiful Resistance: Life" at the Museum of Science on Friday evening, and also has Eve's Bayou streaming ahead of a Monday panel discussion.
• The Lexington Venue is open Wednesday to Sunday plus next Thursday with the Oscar shorts (see above), The Taste of Things, American Fiction (this Wednesday), The Zone of Interest (this Thursday), and Driving Madeleine (this Thursday).
  
  The Luna Theater has Weirdo Wednesdays, a UMass Lowell Philosophy & Film screening of All Is Lost on Thursday,and the Oscar Shorts (see above).
  
  Cinema Salem has Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on Thursday, the Oscar Shorts, Lisa Frankenstein, American Fiction, and Poor Things from Friday to Monday.
  
  (The West Newton Cinema has not yet posted their showtimes for the upcoming week)
  
  If you can make it to the Liberty Tree Mall, they have Altered Reality, a supernatural thriller that has Tobin Bell, Lance Henriksen, and Ed Asner (!) picking up paychecks.

Oh, it's Oscar short time again, huh? Gonna try for some of them, maybe the documentary, although it's playing at "we assume any local Academy voters who need to see this can come for a matinee" times. Got tickets to Ghost Dog, and might go for The Woman Chaser because I've never heard of it and it kind of sounds like my thing. I'll also probably see Madame Web, because I'm kind of a sucker.