Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 1 March 2024 - 7 March 2024

So, who here wouldn't have watched Dune: Part Two if they'd released it in November or whenever without the cast around to promoting it?

(Is reminded how well that went for The Marvels.)

Well, okay, big movie this week!

• Dune: Part Two is pretty close to it for wide releases this week, and it's getting all the big screens, playing the Coolidge (70mm), the Somerville (mostly 70mm), the Capitol, Fresh Pond, The Embassy, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Boston Common brings back various Oscar nominees, though not as a marathon like in previous years, with The Holdovers (Friday/Monday), Barbie (Friday/Thursday), Oppenheimer (Friday/Tuesday), American Fiction (Saturday/Tuesday), Killers of the Flower Moon (Saturday/Monday), The Zone of Interest (Sunday/Wednesday), Past Lives (Sunday), Anatomy of a Fall (Sunday/Wednesday), and Poor Things still there as a regular booking.
  
  There's an AMC Screen Unseen show at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Monday, and a non-mystery preview of Snack Shack at Boston Common on Wednesday. Labyrinth plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards Wednesday
• In addition to the 70mm print of Dune: Part Two (although note that a live event bumps it to a digital screen downstairs on Friday), The Somerville Theatre also opens Hundreds of Beavers, a live-action cartoon about a fur trapper facing, well, hundreds of beavers that was the funniest thing I saw at Fantasia (or anywhere) last year, including a midnight show in the big room on Saturday night.
  
  Their friends at The Capitol have regular repertory screenings this month, with "Capitol Crimes" screenings of The Godfather on Friday and Monday, plus "Good For Her" shows of Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead on Saturday and Tuesday.
• The Brattle Theatre has documentary Four Daughters from Friday to Monday, with director Kaouther Ben Hania looking at a Tunisian mother trying to figure out why her first two daughters were radicalized, with her and the younger two playing themselves and actors filling in for the missing sisters during the recreations.
  
  Friday to Sunday also features late(ish) shows of Predator as a tribute to Carl Weathers, and they bring out a 35mm print of Moonstruck on Tuesday to pay tribute to Norman Jewison and celebrate "Reel Film Day".
• Five new Indian films at Apple Fresh Pond this weekend: Hindi-language comedy Laapataa Ladies is a comedy where two (very?) young brides become separated from their husbands on a train in the countryside. Tamil-language action flick Joshua: Imai Pol Kaka stars Varun Kamal as a bodyguard protecting a high-profile target from London in Chennai. Three are in Telugu: Operation Valentine (also opening at Boston Common) is an Air Force action flick, Chaari 111, which looks like a James bond knockoff; and Vyooham, which appears to be either a follow-up or distillation of a recent TV cop series. Bangladeshi thriller The Scent of Sin plays Saturday & Sunday. Manjummel Boys and Article 370 are held over, with the latter also expanding to Boston Common. If you can get out to the Liberty Tree Mall, there's Telugu thriller Bhoothaddam Bhaskar Narayana.
  
  Lunar New Year movies are rolling out here over the course of a whole month; apparently; this weeks' new offering is The Moon Thieves, a Hong Kong crime caper (set in Tokyo) from Legally Declared Dead filmmaker Yuen Kim-Wai. Pegasus 2 also continues at Boston Common, with Article 20 remaining at Causeway Street (and YOLO opening in both placesThursday).
  
  Three movies from Japan hanging around theaters this weekend, with Oscar-nominated Perfect Days at the Coolidge, Kendall Square, the Embassy, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, and the Seaport; Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Hashira Training at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards; and The Boy and the Heron still at Fresh Pond and West Newton.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre not only opens Dune on 70mm, but they flip their Oscar shorts programming to the Documentaries (on the Goldscreen and short enough for one block this year instead of two). For your other Oscar study-up needs, they will have a special screening of Robot Dreams, nominated for Best Animated Film, on Wednesday evening (Neon apparently intends a summer release); it also plays Kendall Square, the Embassy, and Boston Common that night.
  
  In rep, the midnight folks start a month of video-game movies with a 35mm print of Resident Evil on Friday and one of Mortal Kombat '95 on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Debut is Paul Thomas Anderson's Hard Eight on 35mm. Thursday's Big Screen Classic is Scorsese's The Age of Innocence
• The Alamo rep calendar is pretty thin with all the real estate Dune takes up, but they start unearthing an earlier Time Capsule, 1994, with that year's Little Women (Sunday) and Chungking Express (Monday), plus Michael Clayton on Tuesday and a Happy Gilmore movie party on Wednesday.
• Tuesday's New Hollywood feature at Landmark Kendall Square is The Last Picture Show.
• The Bright Lights presentation upstairs at the Paramount on Thursday is "Sacred Nations: Short Work by Contemporary Indigenous Storytellers", which, as it says on the tin, is a collections of six short films by and about Native peoples from Oceania to Massachusetts, with curator Lisa Simmons and at least some of the filmmakers on-hand for a discussion afterward.
  
  ArtsEmerson hosts The Boston Baltic Film Festival from Friday to Sunday, with Estonia's pretty-nifty The Invisible Fight on Friday; Lithuania's Remember to Blink, Estonia's Melchoir the Apothecary: The Executioner's Daughter, Latvian shorts, Latvian feature Soviet Jeans, and Lithuanian documentary Mūza on Saturday; Estonian docs The Paradox of Seabrook Farms (English-language) and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, Lithuanian drama The Poet, and Latvian classic Four White Shirts on Sunday; several of these and more will be available to stream starting Monday. Note that the festival does not seem to be on Emerson's calendar, but they do have a page with tickets.
• The Harvard Film Archive turns their schedule over with the last weekend of "Afterimage", with The Fall (plus short "Resist with Noam Chomsky") introduced by Simon Field on Friday, shorts package "The Troublesome Cases" with Field on Saturday evening, The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting later Saturday night, and an encore of Wind from the East on Sunday afternoon. Hong Sangsoo's in water plays Sunday evening, and then on Monday, they begin the showcase for this year's McMillan-Stewart Fellow, Cameroon's Jean-Pierre Bekalo, with a 35mm print of his 2005 sci-fi erotic thriller The Bloodettes.
  
  The Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque will also let folks in to see a 35mm print of Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder on Saturday afternoon, free for Harvard students.
• The Museum of Fine Arts finishes this year's Festival of Films from Iran on Saturday afternoon with The Winners, in which two kids find an Oscar statuette in a trash pile and must learn what it is and how to reunite it with its owner. On Sunday, the Films from Japan and "Created Worlds: Animation from around the Globe" series cross over with Blue Giant, an anime about a teenager who discovers a love of jazz.
• The Museum of Science also has Dune: Part Two, on the Omni screen, although Friday and Saturday's shows are listed as sold out, so reserve ahead of time for future Friday/Saturday shows.
• Oscar-Nominated Shorts continue, with the Kendall, West Newton, and Boston Common showing Animation and Live Action more or less all week with West Newton also having the docs Saturday & Sunday. The Coolidge has Documentary all week; The ICA has Animation and Live Action on Saturday; The Capitol has animation (Friday/Monday/Thursday), Live-Action (Sunday/Wednesday), and Documentary (Saturday/Tuesday); the Somerville has Animation (Saturday/Sunday); the Lexington Venue has Animation (Saturday), Documentary (Saturday), and Live Action (Sunday); Luna Lowell has Live Action (Saturday), Documentary (Saturday/Sunday), and Animation (Sunday/Thursday); Cinema Salem has Animation, Live Action, and Documentary Friday to Monday.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday with the Oscar shorts (see above), The Taste of Things, and Perfect Days.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Dune: Part Two, brings back All of Us Strangers, and holds over Drive-Away Dolls, the Oscar Shorts, One Love, Driving Madeleine, American Fiction, Migration (Saturday/Sunday), The Boys in the Boat (no show Wednesday), Wonka (Saturday/Sunday), The Boy and the Heron (no show Thursday), and The Holdovers. Closed Monday.
  
  The Luna Theater has The Zone of Interest evenings Friday to Sunday, with the Oscar Shorts Saturday.& Sunday afternoons andThursday evening.
  
  Cinema Salem has Dune: Part Two, the Oscar Shorts, Drive-Away Dolls and One Love from Friday to Monday. They also have All the President's Men on Thursday night.

Okay, no messing around, really gotta do Oscar catch-up this week! Fortunately, there's really only Dune, Hundreds of Beavers, The Bloodettes, and The Moon Thieves that I really need to work around them. Vaguely tempted to do a Paul W.S. Anderson/Paul Thomas Anderson thing at the Coolidge (and should probably go for The Age of Innocence as well).