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

As much as I am looking forward to seeing Love Lies Bleeding this weekend - it looks cool! - I'm also looking forward to two months from now, when it leaves theaters, and neither listings nor posters cause the Elton John song to play on repeat in my head. It's led me to look up "love lies bleeding" and discover that both the film and song are likely named after a flower, though, so that's fun.

• So, might as well start with Love Lies Bleeding, which features Kristen Stewart as a woman managing a gym owned by her gangster father (Ed Harris), her eye turned by a new-in-town bodybuilder (Katy O'Brien), even as the FBI is poking around >it's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Somerville, CinemaSalem, Kendall Square, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, and Assembly Row.
  
  Video game midnights at the Coolidge are Nintendo-themed, with The Wizard on Friday and the original live-action Super Mario Bros. on 35mm Saturday (The Room also plays late on Friday). There's also a kids' show of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids on Saturday morning, while Goethe-Institut presents Born in Evin with director and subject Maryam Zaree, who learned as an adolescent that she was born in an Irani prison after the rise of Khomeini. On Tuesday, they screen Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on 35mm with a pre-film seminar by Kyle Stevens, while Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death the Big Screen Classic on Wednesday and Winter's Bone the next film in the Debra Granik retrospective on Thursday. Thursday also has the first instance of Dune: Part Two moving upstairs and playing digitally rather than on 70mm film.
• Arthur The King is the more conventional wide-opener, with Mark Wahlberg as an adventure racer who, on his last race, encounters a Very Good Stray Dog who helps and becomes a symbol of his team. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  More peculiar is The American Society of Magical Negroes, which makes the trope literal, with Justice Smith assigned to make a software developer's life easier, because white tears cause Black trouble. It's at Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Also opening is One LIfe featuring Johnny Flynn and Anthony Hopkins as the same man at different points in his life - as a young man rescuing Jewish children from the ghettos in WWII Czechoslovakia and as a retiree wondering what became of them. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, The Embassy, and the Lexington Venue.
  
  Knox Goes Away is the second film that Michael Keaton has directed, and in both he plays a hitman, in this case one suffering from early-onset dementia, and his one last job appears to be getting his son (James Marsden) out of trouble. Nice cast, including Marcia Gay Harden and Al Pacino. It's at Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  Boston Common also has a surprising number of showtimes for Snack Shack, which looks for all the world like a throwback comedy about teenagers hanging around the community swimming pool; interestingly, it's directed by Adam Rehmeier, who made the more hard-edged Dinner in America. The Prank, also playing at Boston Common, looks edgier, with two students spreading a rumor online that their physics teacher (Rita Moreno) is a murderer after failing a test.
  
  Documentary Bad River also plays Boston Common; it's a documentary by Mary Mazzio about the Native people in Wisconsin attempting to prevent the contamination of Lake Superior.
  
  Labyrinth has an encore show at South Bay on Sunday. The Matrix plays 25th Anniversary shows on the Dolby screens at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Wednesday. Hal Needham-directed BMX film Rad plays Thursday at Boston Common, South Bay.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens Netflix release Shirley, starring Regina King as Sherley Chisolm, America's first Black Congresswoman, with the late Lance Reddick and Terrence Howard in supporting roles. They also give the mostly-matinee treatment to Shadya, with Amir Ebrahimi as an Iranian expatriate in Australia fleeing an abusive husband.
  
  Tuesday's New Hollywood film is Jaws, which if they were really clever would be the last film in the series.
• The Brattle Theatre has one roller coaster ride of a week coming up, starting with a free screening of Blackwaters on Friday afternoon, with a post-screening panel.
  
  After that, they present "Still Walking: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-Eda", including After Life (Friday/Saturday), Still Walking (Saturday), Broker (Saturday), Air Doll (Saturday), and Shoplifters (Sunday), and Monster (Sunday). Kore-Eda will appear in person at many shows (several marked as sold out), and is the special guest at the annual Chlotrudis Awards on Sunday night.
  
  Horror oddity Messiah of Evil returns on Monday & Tuesday in 4K (the theater installed a fancy 4K laser projector during renovations a week or so ago). That's a fair lead-in to The Boston Underground Film Festival, which kicks off Wednesday with a preview of Immaculate and a restoration of Fatal Termination (a Hong Kong actioner with Moon Lee and an infamous car chase; Thursday features Strange Kindness, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, and Femme, with the festival continuing through Sunday.
• It's a relatively quiet weekend for Indian film at Apple Fresh Pond, with only three new releases. Yodha (also at Boston Common) kind of looks like Hindi for "Passenger 57", with Sidharth Malhotra as a security expert who may be hijacking a plane or may be being set up, with some engine failure thrown into the mix. Also playing in Hindi is Bastar: The Naxal Story, which chronicles an uprising in 1910 Chattisgarh. They also open Telugu-language horror movie Tantra Telugu drama Sharathulu Varthisthai plays out at the Liberty Tree Mall.
  
  Shaitaan returns to Fresh Pond on Sunday, and is also held over at Boston Common; Gaami and Manjummel Boys return Monday.
  
  Chinese film YOLO continues at Causeway Street and Boston Common.
  
  The End of Evangelion plays Boston Common Sunday and Wednesday. Three other movies from Japan are still around but dwindling this weekend, with Oscar-nominated Perfect Days at the Coolidge, the Somerville, Kendall Square, the Embassy, the Lexington Venue; Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Hashira Training is down to South Bay; and The Boy and the Heron still at Fresh Pond and West Newton.
• The Alamo Seaport seems to finally be showing a full schedule, including 9pm shows, although none of French horror film The Animal Kingdom three screenings (on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday) are late ones. The rep calendar has more 1994 films, namely Pulp Fiction (Friday/Sunday/Tuesday) and Crooklyn (Saturday); there's also The Fugitive (Sunday/Tuesday), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Sunday Movie Party/Tuesday), the 2018 Suspiria (Tuesday), and an early screening of Riddle of Fire on Wednesday.
• The Somerville Theatre picks up Perfect Days and Love Lies Bleeding, brings back Oppenheimer for 70mm matinee screenings on Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and is still keeping Hundreds of Beavers around. They also start their spring rep series of "every movie mentioned in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" with a 35mm double feature of This Gun for Hire & The Glass Key on Monday. On Thursday, they begin "Smooth Cinema: Movies with the Yacht Rock Sound" with Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on 35mm film.
  
  Over at The Capitol, The Maltese Falcon is the Friday/Monday Capitol Crimes show, while "Good For Her" has a double feature of Midsommar & Pearl on Saturday and Tuesday.
• The Regent Theatre has two local rock docs this weekend: The Dogmatics: A Documentary plays Friday night, with "Boston's House Band", as they were called back in the 1980s, on-hand to perform a set afterward. On Sunday afternoon, they play Rock n' Roll Outlaw - The Ballad of Myles Connor; Connor was said to be Boston's first rock star, who also masterminded 30 museum heists, and will be at the screening..
• Spring break is over, so The Harvard Film Archive begins showing films again o Monday with Jean-PIerre Bekolo's first, Quartier Mozart, in which a young woman is turned into a man by a local witch, hangs out with a bunch of other guys, and it pushed to make time with the daughter of a local cop. Bekolo, the year's McMillan-Stewart fellow, will be in town to introduce films next weekend.
  
  Also: Today (Friday) is the last day to stream their "Cinema Before 1300" lecture, although I don't imagine it will be offline forever.
• Bright LIghts also returns with a free Thursday screening of The Persian Version in the Bright Screening Room of the Paramount Theater, with co-star Niousha Noor on-hand for post-film discussion.
• The Boston Baltic Film Festival is still streaming films through Monday.
  
  Boston Jewish Film continues to stream its "2024 Musical Roadtrip" series through Thursday.
• The Museum of Science looks sold out for its last two showtimes of Dune: Part Two, on the Omni screen this weekend , but still appears to have seats for Mad Max: Fury Road on the 22nd & 23rd.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday and Thursday with One Life, The Taste of Things and Perfect Days (no show Thursday).
  
  The West Newton Cinema has last call for the Oscar shorts (Documentary Saturday, Live-Action Sunday, Animation both days), brings back Poor Things and The Zone of Interest (Saturday/Monday/Tuesday/Thursday), and also shows Kung Fu Panda 4, Dune: Part Two, Driving Madeleine (Sunday), American Fiction (no show Wednesday), Migration (Saturday), Wonka (Saturday/Sunday), The Boy and the Heron, and The Holdovers (no show Tuesday/Wednesday).
  
  The Luna Theater has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Friday and Saturday, Blade Runner (Final Cut) on Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show.
  
  Cinema Salem has Kung Fu Panda 4, Dune: Part Two, Love Lies Bleeding, Oppenheimer, and Stopmotion from Friday to Monday.

So, can one fit Love Lies Bleeding, Knox Goes Away, The Animal Kingdom, YOLO, Shirley, The Maltese Falcon, This Gun for Hire, The Glass Key, and Quartier Mozart in before BUFF? No, Monday alone is brutal, and if you want to fit any of the oddities at Boston Common in, you're basically not doing anything else over the weekend.