Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 23 February 2024 - 29 February 2024

Man, you can really feel the studios and theaters stretching to fill screens right now. I hope it will be better next year when we're further past the plagues and strikes and all, but we could also be down to like two or three major studios by then.

• The latest Coen Brothers solo project, Ethan's Drive-Away Dolls, opens at the Somerville, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, CinemasSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. It's a fairly enjoyable comic road trip with Margaret Qualley & Geraldine Viswanathan as lesbian best friends who wind up accidentally transporting the sort of bizarre cargo that men will kill for, and happily clocks in at a quick 84 minutes.
  
  Ordinary Angels looks to be going for "inspirational drama", with Hilary Swank as a small-town woman who helps a single father pay for his daughter's medical care. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The Sarajevo-in-the-Balkan-war documentary Kiss the Future begins a regular run at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row after what I guess were preview shows last week.
  
  A Hip-Hop Story, a comedy featuring writer Alfron Crockett and director Damaine Radcliff as two rap pioneers trying to save the genre, plays South Bay.
  
  Les Misérables is getting a re-release on the Dolby screens at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row; doesn't seem to be any particular significance to it. Soul returns to Boston Common and South Bay after last month's first-time-in-theaters release.
  
  Dune: Part Two has "Fan First" Imax shows at Jordan's Furniture, Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday. The Kung Fu Panda movies play Boston Common ahead of the upcoming fourth entry (#1 Friday, #2 Saturday, #3 Sunday). The Wednesday A24 selection at Boston Common and Causeway Street is The Lighthouse.
• Japan's submission for Best Foreign Language film, Perfect Days, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, the Embassy, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, and the Seaport. It's one of those foreign-film cross-fertilizations, directed by Wim Wenders, and starring Koji Yakusho as a man who cleans public toilets but still manages to find beauty in his routine, including a visit from his niece.
  
  The weekend's midnights at the Coolidge include The Book of Eli on Friday and Foxy Brown on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up. "Destination Romance" concludes with Titanic on Tuesday; The Lives of Others is the Big Screen Debut show on Wednesday, and there's a "Shakespeare Reimagined" presentation of A Midwinter's Tale on Thursday. All of the Coolidge's special presentations this week are on 35mm film.
• Oscar-nominated Io Capitano, an odyssey tracing the path from Senegal to Europe through the Sahara and Mediterranean for two young boys, opens at Landmark Kendall Square.
  
  The Kendall also has Spaceman, a Netflix film with Adam Sandler as an astronaut on a year-long mission coming to realize that his wife (Carey Mulligan) may not be waiting for him when he returns. It's directed by Johan Renck, who helmed a good chunk of Chernobyl, and has apparently been sitting on the shelf for a couple years.
  
  Combining the two, they also bring back two Netflix awards contenders, Society of the Snow and Maestro, for those of us who still may want to catch them on the big screen before the ceremony. The Tuesday New Hollywood selection is Dirty Harry.
• The big anime release this week is Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Hashira Training, is apparently not really a feature like Mugen Train but a special premiere event which combines the finale of the previous TV season with the premiere of the new on ahead of its premiere later this spring. This plays Boston Common (including Imax Xenon), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards (including CWX); check showtimes for dubbed versus subtitled, The Boy and the Heron is still at Fresh Pond, the Embassy, and West Newton.
  
  The last of the Lunar New Year movies to arrive in North America, Article 20, plays Causeway Street; it's from Zhang Yimou and has him doing a contemporary movie for the second time in a year (sort of, as Under the LIght had been delayed), this time focusing on a veteran prosecutor on his last case. Pegasus 2 continues at Boston Common.
  
  Big Indian-movie turnover at Apple Fresh Pond: Crakk: Jeetaga… Toh Jiyegaa, also at Boston Common, has Arjun Rampal & Vidyut Jammwal in a Hindi-language story of climbing from the slums of Mumbai to elite extreme sports; controversial Hindi-language political thriller Political War; Article 370, an action film starring Yami Gautam; "eccentric" Telugu-language romance Siddharth Roy; Telugu-language comedy Masthu Shades Unnai Ra (through Sunday); Telugu-language inspirational-teacher story Sundaram Master (through Sunday); and Malayalam-language comedy Manjummel Boys. Black-and-white period Malayalam-language horror film Bramayugam and Malayalam-language romantic comedy Premalu are held over at Fresh Pond, while Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya continues at Boston Common.
• The Alamo Seaport has indie horror Stopmotion.Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, which probably makes it more rep than new release. Their calendar is also has Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Friday/Tuesday); Fences (Saturday); Estonian kung fu adventure The Invisible FIght; 1999 Time Capsules Cruel Intentions (Monday), In the Mood for Love (Monday/Tuesday), Sleepy Hollow (Tuesday), and American Movie (Wednesday); a preview with livestreamed Q&A for Problemista; and one last show of Amélie (Tuesday).
• The Brattle Theatre opens Brazilian Oscar submission Pictures of Ghosts, a documentary that examines the city of Recife through the lens of its mostly-empty movie houses; it plays Friday to Tuesday. The Bugs Bunny Film Festival continues to play matinees (on 35mm film) through Sunday.
  
  On top of that, there's the monthly Stop Making Sense screening on Saturday (marked sold out), a free "Elements of Cinema" show of Silent Running with post-film discussion led by Matthew Nash, and IFFBoston presentation of Spaceman on Tuesday (passes required but don't guarantee entry), plus a Grrl Haus Cinema package of local shorts & videos on Wednesday. On Thursday the 29th, they have the two winners of the "Leap Day" polls for two movies that have never screened at the Brattle, Little Miss Sunshine and Perfect Blue.
• Warner Brothers is re-releasing Tenet on 70mm film with a special prelude for Dune: Part Two attached, and you know that The Somerville Theatre is all over that, running it on the big film all week.
  
  Over at The Capitol, they should be having the monthly VHS Disasterpiece Theater on Monday
• The Embassy picks up Frederick Wiseman's four-course meal of a documentary Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros, timed to play along with The Taste of Things for those who like the idea of nearly seven-hours of French cuisine on screen; they also open Perfect Days and continue The Boy and the Heron.
• Bright Lights has Bad Press upstairs at the Paramount on Thursday. I liked this one, about a Muscogee journalist trying to maintain her independence as one of the few Native nations to have a free press act attempts to push against her reporting, when it played IFFBoston last year. Directors Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler, plus subject Angel Ellis, will be on-hand for most-film discussion. Free and not just for Emerson students! Per Joe's Free Films, Peeler and Ellis will also be at the Harvard Art Museum for a screening on Tuesday evening (RSVP required).
  
  ArtsEmerson/the Boston Asian-American Film Festival/RoxFIlm/Cinefest Latino Boston continue streaming the "Shared Stories" program through Sunday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has encores of the latest two by Hong Sang-soo, with In Our Day Friday and in water on Sunday. The "Afterimage" screening on Saturday evening, "Hapax Legomena" gets started a bit early at 6pm to accommodate over three hours of 16mm shorts from the early 1970s. Guelwaar, screening on 35mm film, wraps the Ousmane Sembène series on Sunday afternoon. And on Monday, they show a 35mm print of Cotton Comes to Harlem with Matthew Whitman introducing the film to celebrate its star Godfrey Cambridge's papers being added to the Houghton Library.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has two films from its "Uniqlo Festival of Films from Japan" this week: Nobuhiko Obayashi's classic House (also part of "Bloody Gorgeous: The Art of Horror" and.Hirokazu Kore-Eda's lates, Monster.
• The Museum of Science has a special presentation of The Space Race, a documentary highlighting the first Black astronauts, on Wednesday evening. They also get an early start on their weekend screenings of Dune: Part Two on the Omni screen with a Thursday night show (so does everywhere else, but it's kind of unusual for the HFA!.
• The Regent Theatre has three programs of the Banff Mountain Film Festival this weekend, with "Paintbrush" showing Friday, "Arnica" on Saturday, and "Yarrow" on Sunday. On Sunday, they also have The Black Mass, a thriller following the victims of a spree killer in the last 24 hours before his rampage, with producer Michelle Romano on hand for a post-film Q&A.
• The GlobeDocs Black History Month Film Festival is in-person this week, with The Mural Master screening at the Capital One Cafe on Wednesday night, including a post-film panel discussion featuring director Andrew Eldridge, producer Jessica Estelle Huggins, and the Globe's Kris Hooks.
• Oscar-Nominated Shorts continue, with The Coolidge, the Kendall, West Newton, and Boston Common showing Animation and Live Action more or less all week, with West Newton also haveing the docs Friday-Sunday. The Seaport has Animation (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday) and Live Action (Saturday/Sunday/Monday/Wednesday); The ICA has Documentary (2 programs Sunday) and Live Action (Thursday); The Capitol has animation (Friday/Saturday/Tuesday), Live-Action (Friday/Monday/Thursday), and Documentary (Sunday/Wednesday); the Somerville has Animation (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday), Live Action (Friday/Saturday/Tuesday), and Documentary (Sunday/Tuesday); the Lexington Venue has Live Action (Friday-Sunday); Animation (Friday/Saturday/Thursday), and Documentary (Sunday); Luna Lowell has Animation (Saturday/Sunday), Live Action (Friday-Sunday), and Documentary (Saturday/Sunday); Cinema Salem has Animation, Live Action, and Documentary Friday to Monday.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday plus Thursday with the Oscar shorts (see above), The Taste of Things, and Perfect Days.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Drive-Away Dolls and hangs onto the Oscar Shorts, One Love, Driving Madeleine (Friday-Sunday), American Fiction, Migration, The Boys in the Boat, Wonka (Friday-Sunday), The Boy and the Heron (no show Thursday), and The Holdovers (no show Saturday). Documentary Baltic Truth plays Sunday morning, with filmmaker Eugene Levin on-hand to discuss his look at the Holocaust in Latvia and Lithuania.
  
  The Luna Theater looks to be all Oscar shorts this weekend.
  
  Cinema Salem has the Oscar Shorts, Drive-Away Dolls and One Love from Friday to Monday. Friday's Night LIght show is The Watermelon Woman. Saturday has a free (with donations encouraged) afternoon screening of Ukrainian feature The Guide and a late show homebrew horror HeBGB TV.

Already have tickets to Stopmotion and The Invisible Fight at the Seaport, and will probably try to find ways to fit in Perfect Days, Tenet, Article 20, Pictures of Ghosts, Spaceman, and Cotton Comes to Harlem, A Midwinter's Tale, and, gee, there's a lot of Oscar catch-up to do!