Veteran 2 / I, The Executioner

I tend to talk about Chinese and Korean companies releasing their films direct to American theaters with minimal delay as a "new" thing, but Veteran was, near as I can tell, directly distributed by CJ nine years ago (although I think they were presenting as "CJ Entertainment" versus "CJ ENM" back then), so, yeah, we're looking at South Korean companies doing this for roughly a decade. The funny thing is, there's been enough growth in Korean pop-culture in that decade that this movie's sequel is probably hitting a lot more theaters than the first did, so it makes sense to rename it rather than have it look like a sequel to something the audience hasn't seen. Thus "I, The Executioner", which is accurate if more Mickey Spillane-coded than the movie is, most of the time.

One kind of funny thing about this is, Veteran was a movie that fold who were not really that into Korean movies were telling me they really liked back at the time, even though I kind of didn't, so it's in my head as a popular-enough Korean movie that the name which highlights the original might grab more interest than this, even though I assume CJ has research saying otherwise. Also, the original somehow got lodged in my head as a different sort of not-great actioner - more nasty violence than bloat - so I spent a fair amount of this one scratching my head, thinking it feels like a weird sort of sequel to Veteran before looking at my old review and realizing, no, it's kind of the same issues. Time and memory are weird.

Kind of amusingly, depending on where you look for listings, this is sometimes shown as "Veteran 2: I, The Executioner". I guess this used to happen all the time - consider Police Story 3 becoming Supercop which leads to the oddity of Police Story 3: Supercop 2.


Beterang 2 (Veteran 2 aka I, The Executioner)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 September 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #5 (first-run, laser DCP)

For some reason, I had a different lingering impression of Veteran in my head from when I saw it in its original release nine years ago, which had me thinking that the new sequel felt kind of off, kind of like those later Jackie Chan movies where they called them Police Story sequels just because he was playing a detective even if they didn't really feel like the first two. It turns out, the problem is the opposite: Veteran 2 is kind of the same as the first, gassy and meandering enough that the reminders that Ryoo Seung-wan can do some great action make one wonder why there's not more.

For those that forget, the cop of the title is Seo Do-Cheol (Hwang Jung-Min), who tends to take point on a detective team led by Oh Jae-pyeong (Oh Dal-su) and also including Bong Yoon-joo (Jang Yoon-joo), Yoon Si-yeong (Kim Shi-hoo), and Wang Dong-heyon (Oh Dae-hwan). Their latest target is "Haechi", a vigilante who is killing criminals who seem to get off light, egged on by "Editor Justice" Park (Shin Seung-Hwan) and his YouTube channel, and they've been assigned to guard Jeon Seok-woo (Jeong Man-sik), a character from the first film who only served three years for the death of a pregnant woman he drunkenly attacked. For assistance, they are seconded Park Sun-woo (Jung Hae-in), who has gained a reputation as the "UFC Patrolman" thanks to videos of his takedowns, but the trails lead in directions that don't quite add up.

The timelines don't quite add up to think that someone at CJ saw the money being made by Ma Dong-seok's The Roundup series, themselves sequels to a movie from several years earlier, and realized they had something like that themselves, but there are some frustrating similarities: Investigative teams that are too big for everyone to be part of the story, trying to find a space to use other returning characters, trying to build a story around the lead cracking a case when his primary skill is fighting. It's got a lot of what made the first feel kind of bloated to start in a couple of side plots involving Do-cheol's wife Ju-yeon (Jin Kyung) and son Woo-jin (Byun Hong-jun), and even a lot of the main threads aren't as interesting as they could be, especially the ones that put Do-cheol and company well behind the audience. It all comes together in the finale, but the reaction is often that it kind of had to, not edge-of-one's seat excitement at how Ryoo and co-writer Lee Won-jae tie things together.

It is a bit more streamlined than the first, though, and what's interesting is that the filmmakers do seem to be trying to walk the walk in terms of their meta-commentary: Where the first one sort of did the standard shades of gray with how it was tough to be married to this sort of tough-guy cop, this film has how posturing about violent crime tends to increase it and make society more dangerous near its heart. Do-cheol has seemingly mellowed a bit, in that where he tends to pop off about wanting to lay a beatdown on suspects, he's actually a bit more methodical and by-the-book; Hwang Jung-min handles the assignment in a way that's eminently believable though not operatic in highlighting the conflict. There are points made about how Korea is actually very safe (the chief is frustrated by casual talk of serial killers because there haven't been any in almost fifteen years and doesn't want this treated lightly) and that claims of various dangers are exaggerated by those looking to profit that are eventually connected by action rather than lecture. There is, perhaps, a little consideration of how movies like this shape this perception, which maybe makes it tricky to build a truly satisfying story, and pulls Ryoo, often top-tier in how he stages action, away from what he does best.

When he does get to do more action, though, it's still noteworthy just how good he is: The opening especially is playful and fun, as Miss Bong infiltrates what is apparently an underground casino for wine moms behind the scenes of an all-night plastic surgery clinic, a funny idea that leads to some well-staged bits that find a sweet spot between slapstick comedy and quality action. The finale tries to adapt that somewhat, balancing the danger of a setting where one wrong step can be deadly with how the confrontation can't just be Do-cheol beating the hell out of someone without betraying the story, and does fairly well. In between, it makes for an odd situation as the characters plug away until it comes time for a confrontation and one is reminded that Ryoo, Hwang, and newcomer Jung Hae-in (and various stunt performers) are good at this: There's not just impressive physicality on display, but intent and characterization: Do-cheol seems good at this but showing a bit of age; Sun-woo shows a certain earned pride in his abilities; and Ahn Bo-hun's Min Gang-hun does carry himself like a junkie ex-special forces type whose skills are still sharp and almost instinctive beneath a mourning, drugged-out haze.

Like the first film, Veteran 2 feels like a good editor could get a really great 105-minute movie out of its two hours, even before getting to how the film just really will not stop tying up every sublot after it is basically over. There are a lot of good pieces here, but it bogs down trying not to contradict itself.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 September 2024 - 3 October 2024

So what do you have for me for my birthday movies? … OK, that's kind of too much.

• It seems almost impossible, but Francis Ford Coppola's dream project Megalopolis, which he has been trying to make for forty years, is actually opening in theaters this weekend, with Adam Driver as an architect charged with reinventing a grand city after a natural disaster while those in power try to consolidate it. It's at the Somerville, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Laser), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill. Assembly Row is also showing "Ultimate Experience" presentations on Friday and Saturday evening, which apparently have an in-person performance component.
  
  The other big opening is The Wild Robot, the new DreamWorks animated film that looks like something sort of familiar - robot sent to an isolated island for one purpose winds up on its own and clashes with others like it later - but seems like it might be something special, coming from Chrs Sanders of How to Train Your Dragon fame and looking good in the new house style. It's at the Capitol, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Lee, featuring Kate Winslet as model-turned-WWII photographer Lee Miller, plays Fresh Pond and Boston Common.
  
  Fantasia selection Azrael, starring Samara Weaving as a human sacrifice fighting back in a post-apocalyptic, almost non-verbal society, plays Boston Common and South Bay. Another horror indie, Bagman, opens at Boston Common. Boston Common also has Pacific Rim through Wednesday (presumably a Latino heritage thing since Guillermo del Toro directed).
  
  Boston Common has MountainFilm Adventure Shorts Saturday & Sunday. Paul McCartney & Wings: One Hand Clapping has encores at the Saport on Friday and Kendall Square & Boston Common on Sunday. There's a mystery preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Monday evening, and Monday also has Imax "Fan First" shows of Joker: Foile à Deux on at South Bay and Assembly Row. There are early access Dolby Cinema screenings of Piece by Piece on Wednesday at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Stop Making Sense plays in Imax at South Bay and Assembly Row on Wednesday. Boston Common has Lights Out on Wednesday; Arsenal Yards has a Coldplay Global Listening event that night. 20th Anniversary shows of Mean Girls play South Bay on Thursday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre also opens a couple films in the smaller rooms: A Different Man (in the "Screening Room") stars Sebastian Stan as an actor with facial malformations who gets reconstructive surgery, only to see a play made about his old life; Adam Pearson, pretty great in director Aaron Schimberg's Chained for Life, plays the actor portraying him. It's also at the Kendall, Boston Common, and the Seaport.
  
  In the Summers plays on the GoldScreen; it follows two teenage girls who spend their summers with their father in New Mexico over four of those sojourns.
  
  September's Officially Sanctioned Midnight Movies wrap with Samurai Cop on Friday and Birdemic: Shock and Terror on Saturday. They have their first marathon in a while on Sunday, showing all five chapters of The Twilight Saga from11am to, I suppose around 10pm. Monday's Big Screen classing is Training Day, including a seminar with Coolidge staffer Billy Thegenus. As the calendar flips to October, they begin their "Schlock and Awe" tribute to William Castle with Macabre on Tuesday the 1st, which is the film where there were thousand dollar insurance policies against dying of fright. It continues with a new restoration of Hitchcock's Psycho on Wednesday (helpfully between Hitch days at the Somerville). On Thursday, the Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Wait Until Dark, while the cult classic later in the evening is Stop Making Sense.
• The big Indian import at Apple Fresh Pond this week is Telugu blockbuster Devara Part 1, featuring N.T. Rama Rao Jr. in a dual role as the protector of a coastal region in different time periods (I think). It also plays Boston Common. Also opening is Tamil-language family drama Meiyazhagan. Marathi-language biography Dharmaveer 2 appears to only be playing Friday. Tamil comedy Lubber Pandhu is held over.
  
  Chinese action film Go For Broke, which looks Hong Kong-set but with a bunch of Mainland and Taiwanese cast, opens at Causeway Street.
  
  Korean cop thriller I, The Executioner - or Veteran 2 renamed because Korean pop culture is bigger that when the first came out back in '15 - plays Causeway Street. K-pop documentary/concert film Jung Kook: I Am Still plays Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row through Sunday.
  
  Vietnamese horror movie Ma Da: The Drowning Spirit, plays South Bay.
  
  Studio Ghibli-Fest wraps with 20th Anniversary shows of Howl's Moving Castle at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards on Sunday (dubbed), Monday (subtitled), Wednesday (dubbed), and Thursday (dubbed); it also plays Boston Common on Friday (dubbed). Wednesday the anime series apparently switches to "AXCN Gundam Fest", with Mobile Suit Gundam subtitled at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row.
  
  Thai comedy How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies continues at Causeway Street and South Bay.
• It's Silent Movie Day/Weekend at The Brattle Theatre! A new 4K restoration of Pandora's Box plays Friday and Sunday, although the big (in every way) event is Abel Gance's 416-minute opus La Roue, which starts at noon on Saturday and finishes sometime around 8pm to give organist Jeff Rapsis a break (and others some time to hit the head and get something to eat). They also have a pair of Buster Keaton featurettes - "Sherlock Jr." & "The Navigator" celebrating their 100th on Sunday and Monday, and a free Elements of Cinema show of The Circus on Monday.
  
  For the work-week, they have Four by Sean Baker: Take Out on Tuesday, Tangerine Tuesday & Wednesday, and then a double feature of The Florida Project & Red Rocket on Sunday.
  
  This leaves gaps, filled by a 35mm print of Longlegs (Friday/Saturday); RPM Fest welcoming Karel Doing for a "Ruins and Resilience" program of short films on 16mm & 35mm film (part of their larger festival rather than "just" a monthly program; and a new 4K remaster of Dazed and Confused (Sunday).
• The Museum of Fine Arts also welcomes RPM Festival with "Historical Amnesia: Short Films by Sun Xun" (with Sun Xun in person) on Saturday with An Owl, a Garden, and a Writer on Thursday, with producer Farhad Mohammadi there for a Q&A.
• It's mostly Melville et Cie at The Harvard Film Archive this weekend: A 35mm print of Le Samourai (Friday), Henri Verneuil's The Sicilian Clan (Friday), Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (35mm Saturday), Two Men in Manhattan (Saturday), a 35mm print of Le Cercle Rouge (Sunday), and Claude Sautet's Class Tous Risques (Monday). Sunday afternoon features "Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith, nine short films playing on 35mm. They also have the first of a pair of new 35mm prints made for Japanese studio Shochiku's Centennial, Carmen Came Home.
• Cinefest Latino Boston runs through Sunday, with programming at the Museum of Fine Arts and Emerson's Paramount Theatre all three days and closing night film La Cocina at the Coolidge on Sunday evening.
• In addition to opening Megalopolis The Somerville Theatre has a midnight show of Miami Connection on Saturday. There's an "attack of the B-Movies" double feature Sunday afternoon, withThey Came from Beyond Space & Zontar, the Thing from Venus, with the restoration of Dazed and Confused playing later. "A Bit of Hitch" is split this week, with a 4K Restoration of Shadow of a Doubt playing Tuesday and a 35mm print of the 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much on Thursday.
  
  The Capitol has a 4th Wall show featuring Fletcher, Alaska's Angels, Tiberius, and Sophie's body, plus visuals by Max Ryan, on Friday, with the monthly Disasterpiece Theater show on Monday.
• The Seaport Alamo welcomes riffers Master Pancacke for Anaconda on Friday night and a "Choose Your Own Pancake" show on Saturday (I briefly thought they would be hosting the International Pancake Film Festival, but alas). Classic doc Hoop Dreams plays Saturday afternoon, and there's a sing-along The Greatest Showman on Sunday. Then, for whatever reason, it looks like they are closed Monday to Wednesday, with just sold-out shows of The Jerk and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on the site, and the Tuesday screening of The Birthday removed, which is a stone bummer.
• Movies at MIT has Wadjda on Friday and Saturday, and a special screening of The World Is Family on Monday with post-film Q&A. $5, open to the public, although the email suggests you give them a head's up if you're not part of the MIT community.
• The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston takes place Saturday & Sunday, with a number of features including post-film Q&As either in person or via Zoom.
• The Regent Theatre has more screenings of the 2024 edition of Manhattan Short on Wednesday & Thursday.
• The Tuesday Retro Replay at Landmark Kendall Square is The Blair Witch Project, and it looks like they'll be doubling up for spooky season with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre playing Wednesday.
• The Lexington Venue has Girls Will Be Girls and The Critic all week (except for Monday, when they are closed). The former only plays a matinee on Thursday as the evening slot is reserved for documentary Great White Summer, which looks at the aftermath of the first real-life shark attack off Cape Cod in over eighty years.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens The Wild Robot, keeping The Substance, Transformers One, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Between the Temples (no show Saturday), Sing Sing, and Inside Out 2. The SPOTLIGHT: Newton Filmmakers series continues with Maria Agut Carter's Rebel and David Sutherland's Out of Sight on Friday, Carma Hinto & Richard Gordon's Gate of Heavenly Peace Saturday afternoon, Bestor Cram's Bonnie Blue Saturday evening, and two double features on Sunday: "Wild Innovators: Rooted in Justice" & A Reckoning in Boston early, with A Father's Kaddish & a sneak preview of "Why We Dance" later. They also start Halloween programming with the original version of The Stepford Wives on Wednesday.
  
  The Luna Theater shows The Front Room Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; Look Into My Eyes on Saturday and Sunday; Cuckoo on Saturday and Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show. There's also a free screening of Alice Junior on Thursday, presented by the UMass Lowell Department of World Languages and Cultures..
  
  Cinema Salem has The Substance, Speak No Evil, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Friday to Monday; Darkman is Friday's Night Light show, Carl Theodor Dreye's The Passion of Joan of Arc plays Sunday for Silent Movie Day, and they also start Halloween programing with Interview with the Vampire, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween '78 (plus Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) on Wednesday, with Interview and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice also playing Thursday.
  
  Wolfs is apparently doing well enough for another week at the Showcase in Dedham (great job, Apple). The AMC at the Liberty Tree Mall has Faith of Angels, a religious thing about a man looking for a boy lost in a mine.
• Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are limited to E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on the Rose Kennedy Greenway to kick off "Fall Fright Nights". They also list Banel & Adama showing at BU as part of the Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival on Wednesday.

So La Roue looks like a once-in-not-very-often thing, but boy does it blow a hole in a movie-seeing weekend where I'm already seeing a ballgame on Friday, stuff like Azrael, Go For Broke and Ma Da have limited times, and even running across Harvard Square isn't going to let me see both Pandora's Box and Le Cercle Rouge. Plus, the Hitchcocks at the Somerville mean Megalopolis only gets the giant screen there for a day or two and who knows how long The Wild Robot will play in 3D, given how quick Transformers One got cut down.

(Also, no, still not heading to Dedham for Wolfs)

Fantasia 2024.09: "The Door", The Silent Planet, Don't Call It Mystery, and Penalty Loop

Kind of a short day because, as I told someone else, I respect horror but it's not really close to my favorite genre and I can be fairly easily persuaded to do Something Else, whether that's cozy mystery, ribs, or sleep.

Is this really the only photo I got of "The Door" producer Mark Delottinville and director Alexander Seltzer? I guess it is. I guess they were barely up there long enough to introduce their short before The Silent Planet and, hey, lucky they stayed for a third day, right?

After the film, The Silent Planet co-star Briana Middleton and director Jeffrey St Jules had a little more time to talk. She was very excited to work with Elias Koteas and said the experience lived up to expectations and Koteas was a terrific person to collaborate with. Less exciting, perhaps, was that she is from the southern half of the United States and they shot in Newfoundland, which can get pretty cold. Not a bad place for shooting a desolate alien world, though, since not everybody can afford to go to Iceland.

They also talked a bit about repurposing the same pod set as the home of three three different people and having to be fairly careful about shooting in a disused mine, which was not that dangerous but hard to set up in. Between all those things, the behind-the-scenes crew really did some nice work. The movie doesn't make a tiny budget look huge, but they made a fair-sized world out of not that much.

A lot of folks I know up there went to Chainsaws Are Singing at this point, and while I regret not being able to punch Estonia on my Fantasia passport this year, "slasher musical comedy" didn't really feel like my thing, and it would have overlapped with Don't Call It Mystery, which really did seem like my thing. Instead, I took advantage of it being a sort of lull between lunch and dinner at Deville Dinerbar, had some delicious root beer ribs with excellent fries (though I didn't need jalapenos in the corn bread), and more pain perdu than I was expecting for dessert. You can eat in Montreal.

Don't Call Me Mystery was fun, although it's kind of amusing to see the host, a big fan, explaining Viki Rakuten as how you can see the rest of the series. Some of the smaller streamers you need to watch Asian shows are, well, idiosyncratic even when they don't assume they're playing to expats rather than North American fans.

After that came Penalty Loop, with writer/director Shinji Araki (center). It was, as you might guess, a project that had its roots in the pandemic and the feeling of being more trapped than usual in the daily loop.

After that, I figured on seeing the remake of Witchboard with director Chuck Russell in attendance, but between staying for the Penalty Loop Q&A and the fact that Russell is a guy who kind of counts as a big name at this festival (that it's not a "party with Hollywood types" fest is part of what I like about it, but it does mean that when folks who have had mainstream success show, the folks who want to be near that swarm) and it being shot locally, there were a lot of people in the passholder line ahead of me. We got to the point where they were letting twos and threes in and then a sort of lull before they officially sent us away, and that's when I basically decided that anybody in line behind me probably wanted to see this movie more than I did, so I went back to the hotel, made a post, and got a bit of sleep.


"The Door"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

"The Door" lays its basic idea out there in straightforward fashion, and while there are some rickety or underdone bits, the cast nails what they've been called upon to do and the way that filmmaker Alexander Seltzer doesn't entirely fill every detail out makes it a nice springboard, if not entirely a thriller.

As it start, Felix (Raymond Ablack) is moving out of the house he and Kara (Tanaya Beatty) had shared until the loss of their daughter; as is often the case, one is trying to keep the place frozen in time and the other finds that a form of torture. He is just saying his last goodbye in the kitchen when she notices something that doesn't make any sense - a locked door that they have never used. She is freaked out but he says it must have always been there and they must have just ignored it when they saw it didn't go anywhere. He agrees to keep watch until they can figure out how to open it.

We all know what's going to be on the other side of the door, of course, and a feature version of the movie would probably be concerned with what comes after, maybe years after, but Seltzer is more concerned with what comes before, watching the strain between Felix and Rita play out. Beatty and Ablack are great here, their performances resolutely rooted in the characters' present but convincing us that they have a different past that overshadows it. The basic premise may at times feel like a bit of a stretch - how is Felix not thrown for a loop by this strange door appearing in a room he must know well? - but works because there is sort of something about it that resonates with how he was already putting this place behind him and she was not in a position to handle it changing at all.


The Silent Planet

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

Movies like this are a huge part of the reason I attend festivals like this. It's nifty science fiction that isn't just an obvious metaphor for something familiar but isn't completely out there, strong cast, neat world-building. It doesn't have a natural place to play in most theaters (although I am slowly coming around to the Seaport Alamo's "four seemingly random screenings over one week" thing), but fits here nicely. There should be more places where it fits nicely.

It introduces the audience quickly enough to its two main characters: Theodore (Elias Koteas) has been the sole inhabitant of Planet 384 for years or decades for a crime he claims not to have committed, writing journal entries his wife Mona will never read and working a mine because his pod will shut down if he doesn't meet a quota. He does this even after ripping the telemetry implants out of his body, which makes the system think the mine is no longer being worked, sending a new prisoner. Niyya (Briana Middleton) was raised by Oiaan refugees before they were wiped out, and her act of terrorism is half a way to stand up for her pacifistic alien benefactors and half a way to be sent away from humanity. She didn't count on the planet's previous inhabitant still being alive, but also starts to suspect that Theodore isn't who he says he is, and their sharing this planet is a cruel trick.

I kind of love both Elias Koteas and Brianna Middleton here. The script is, by and large, a two-person story that would have been tempting to play as very theatrical, but Koteas gives Theodore this nervous timidity and convinces the audience of his tendency to talk to himself, which could look like an affectation. Theodore hasn't bottled things up, but sanded himself down to something dull, for better or worse. Middleton plays Niiyya as someone who knows herself and humanity a bit too well and is young enough to be a bit harsh but not prone to panic. Middleton is good at making Niyya wary without her looking scared, not entirely sure if her Oiaan upbringing and human nature can be reconciled.

They probably can, as one of the main themes of the movie is how malleable a human psyche can be. There is, of course, a strange native entity on Planet 384 that can expedite or exaggerate the process a bit, but while it is considered dangerous and scary, neither characters nor filmmakers discount what it surfaces as the creature as opposed to the humans; it's an accelerant rather than a distraction. More important is that the human mind is reaching out in all directions, looking for patterns and ingesting new information, and already fallible. Someone subjected to isolation is going to reintegrate themselves in any way they can. It is, given when it was likely filmed, perhaps ahead of the game when it comes to how generative "artificial intelligence" fits into that; the custom-generated sitcoms that Theodore watches are terrible but likely reinforcing what the prison system wants them to reinforce anyway.

This all takes place in a world that feels like it's got more to reveal, always adding a couple more details than a scene absolutely needs but not getting sidetracked. I like how Niyya's pod is basically the same design as Theodore's but with a more modern user interface, the tents connected to them are easily inferred to be greenhouses, and Theodore has a collection of neat rocks that are visible but never mentioned; a man spending decades on a mining planet is going to collect neat rocks. It holds together but doesn't overwhelm, just enough visual effects to feel futuristic but not become the point.

It's a nifty little movie that will likely be buried by others with more and bigger stars or more striking visuals once it's off the festival circuit, but those who find it will be fairly lucky.


Misuteri to Iu Nakare (Don't Call it Mystery: The Movie)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Underground/Animation Plus, laser DCP)

Fine, I will figure out how that weird streaming service works so I can watch the series. That's high praise, because me deciding to catch up with a TV series is pretty rare. Don't Call It Mystery hits a lot of my buttons, though, and for how impenetrable movie spin-offs of television series based on long-running manga can be, this stands alone well, an entertaining one-off that hints that the bigger series has more to offer.

After an ominous start - a speeding car flying off a cliff and exploding - we're introduced to Totono Kuno (Masaki Suda), a curly-haired, highly-observant college student who is socially awkward in a way that is as likely to lead to saying too much as too little, visiting Hiroshima for a museum exhibition, a little freaked out by the high-school girl (Nanoka Hara) following him. She's Shioji Kariatsumari, whose grandfather has recently died; family tradition holds that one heir inherits the entire business, but remember the car crash? That was the entire previous generation. So Shioji and her cousins - Rikinosuke (Keita Machida), Seiko (Sairi Ito), and Neo (Riku Hagiwara) - are each being given the key to a storehouse with a problem to solve, to be judged by longtime family lawyer Yoshiie Kurumazaka (Yasunori Danta) and accountant Gunji Makabe (Takuzo Kadono), with Kurumazaka's grandson (and Shioji's crush) Asaharu Rumazaka (Kohei Matsushita) hanging around. A mutual friend has recommended Totono to Shioji, both for help solving the problem and because these contests have, over the past century, turned cutthroat and violent.

This is, however, pretty custom-designed to appeal to me, a mystery with an affable sleuth (and if original manga-ka Yumi Tamura isn't also a fan of old-school Doctor Who with a particular fondness for the Tom Baker years, I'll eat some sort of hat). It's got a structure that allows the story to get bigger and switch directions in ways other than dropping more bodies, which is a thing that can trip a lot of light mysteries up. It's cozier than cozy in some ways, but that's not necessarily a fault - screenwriter Tomoko Aizawa, director Hiroaki Matsuyama, and the cast give the audience a bunch of characters with various connections - every heir has a relative not in the line of succession or two, at least, and the puzzles are right up front, and the fun is in watching Totono work rather than doing it oneself.

The trick is that in a lot of ways, this isn't primarily a mystery, so much as that's the way to get the audience to another story which is, in itself, not that much, but which can serve as a good thing to be dug up while letting the audience enjoy the digging. It's maybe not necessarily a great puzzle, it's got levels - the storytellers commit to this being a multigenerational story with deep roots, and while there's a risk of losing track of the present in that, they mostly dodge it. It doesn't hurt that this sleuth's thing is observation, and the story rewards that as much as it does twisted thought processes.

It's also got a nice cast, some of whom carry over from the series and some of whom don't. Masaki Suda's portrayal of Kuno may or may not be close to the source material which I haven't read, but he nails the often-contradictory nature of the fussy amateur sleuth who really doesn't want to be in the middle of crime even though he keeps winding up there without testing the audience's patience. There's enough sparks between the main pair to make me wonder if Shioji is meant to recur, with Nanoka Hara doing well to reconcile how she's kind of frighteningly capable and determined for a teenager but also able to trip herself up because she's still very much a kid in some ways. There's enough personality all around to keep things interesting without making the red herrings more compelling than the actual solution; I don't know that the rest of the cast is filled with character actors who know the job, but it feels like it is.

The filmmakers do well to keep this story self-contained, although I suspect fans will certainly be able to place it and enjoy the mid-credit scenes. If nothing else, it feels like a good introduction to a franchise which maybe hasn't gotten as much of a push on this side of the Pacific because shojo manga doesn't get as much attention as the shonen material aimed at boys, but probably should.


Penalty Loop

* * * (out of four)
Seen 26 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

There's a lot about Penalty Loop that maybe doesn't feel right initially, like writer/director Shinji Araki had an idea for a nifty variation on a familiar theme but had to bend a lot of pieces out of shape to fit them together. Indeed, I'm not sure that I buy a lot of the story, but I see what he's getting at. There's some food for thought here, and Araki presents it in a way that's entertaining enough to eat up.

Something feels kind of off with Jun Iwamori's girlfriend Yui as the film starts, but it seems as though he'll never find out what it is, because she is murdered while he is at work. Eventually, Jun (Ryuya Wakaba) discovers who the killer is - maintenance worker Mizoguchi (Yusuke Iseya) - and constructs a meticulous plan to get his revenge. The next day, though, it seems like the previous is a dream, and his plan doesn't go quite so smoothly when Mizoguchi shows up to work. On the third iteration, it becomes clear that time is repeating - and Mizoguchi is as aware of what is happening as Jun is.

Araki mentioned during the Q&A that the film was written during Covid restrictions and, yeah, that tracks. It could be written at any point, but that set of circumstances certainly seems like it makes creating this movie, in this configuration, more likely, as the repetitive nature of one's days are brought into sharper relief and the daily goals But there's something else going on here, too, which coincidentally hearkens back to The Silent Planet at the top of the day, as it becomes painfully clear to Iwamori that what seemed apt at the start of this process doesn't at the end, because not only can people change, but they will adapt their brains to the system they are in, to the point where he may, for better or worse, wind up with a stronger connection to Mizoguchi than Yui.

It's not always smooth, to the point where I am curious how climbing the walls during Covid lockdowns influenced what seems like a sudden tonal shift, where a change of heart that traditionally takes forever or requires a major revelation seems to happen quickly, because folks just get sick of unpleasant things fast and we all know that now. It's a pretty weird shift, and I don't know that I really buy it, although I found the comedic material enjoyable enough to roll with it. It's not necessarily the only sharp turn, especially as Araki opts for a backstory to the loop which hand-waves much less than the typical time loop does, and makes the intrusions of so-called "normality" exceptionally unnerving.

Oddly - relatedly? - I do like the way that the end stretches in contrast. It's maybe an admission that recovering from such trauma isn't going to happen easily or by following some packaged program, and there are plenty of ways to parse someone saying he's fine when he's clearly not. It gives Ryuya Wakaba some really good, tumultuous material to work through after Yusuke Iseya's killer who shows depths and fear if not repentance. Iseya spends a fair amount of the movie threatening to steal the film from its apparent protagonist, and the chance for Wakaba to respond, highlighting the emptiness that inspired all of this, is welcome. Penalty Loop is creaky at times, like a Twilight Zone episode where you can help but think that Serling is really stretching to build a premise for his ironic ending and a big bump to get the story where it has to go on top of that. On the other hand, it's frequently funny, twists nicely when that's called for, and leaves the audience with a bit more than expected.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 September 2024 - 26 September 2024

There are two movies about women confronting older/younger versions of themselves this week, making me wonder if studios are all running things through an algorithm that spits out ideal release dates but the algorithms are all too similar.

• My Younger Self Movie #1 is The Substance, which has Demi Moore as an actress whose use of a black-market drug creates a clone which hasn't aged (Margaret Qualley), presumably for replacement organs or something. It's at the Coolidge, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  My Younger Self Movie #2 is IFFBoston alum My Old Ass, with Missy Stella as a teenager whose mushroom trip manifests her at 39 (Aubrey Plaza), whose advice may or may not be helpful. It plays the Coolidge, Boston Common, and Kendall Square, and is scheduled to expand next week.
  
  Also opening is Never Let Go, a new horror film from Alexandre Aja starring Halle Berry as a mother whose family has been threatened by a curse, but things may change as the oldest child begins to doubt. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Another horror movie, The Shade, plays once a day at Boston Common, and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a drama featuring Jim Broadbent as a man who just keeps walking after going out to mail a letter, plays one show a day at Fresh Pond.
  
  Of course, the biggest opening is probably Transformers One an animated prequel to, I imagine, every variation of the series, showing how one-time best friends Optimus Prime and Megatron found themselves on opposite sides. Nice voice cast, looks fairly kid-focused, too. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D & Mandarin subtitled shows), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including RealD 3D), South Bay (including RealD 3D & Dolby Cinema & Imax Xenon 2D/3D), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D & Dolby Cinema & Imax Laser 2D/3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  There's also a 10th Anniversary re-release for Whiplash, and, sure, why not? It's at the Somerville, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport. There's also "Batman Day" stuff, with Mask of the Phantasm at Boston Common (Friday-Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday), South Bay (Friday-Sunday/Tuesday-Wednesday), and Assembly Row (Friday-Monday); Batman '89 at Boston Common (Friday-Tuesday), South Bay (Friday-Thursday), and Assembly Row (Sunday-Wednesday); Batman Forever at Boston Common (Friday/Saturday/Monday/Wednesday), the Seaport (movie party Friday), South Bay (Friday/Monday/Thursday). Batman is only mentioned in passing in Blue Beetle, which returns to Boston Common for Latino heritage screenings.
  
  Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story plays Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Saturday. & Wednesday Boston Common and South Bay also have one more show of The Babadook on Sunday after last week's run. The Matrix plays again on Sunday at Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. Paranormal Activity plays Boston Common on Wednesday. Megalopolis has Imax previews at South Bay, Assembly Row on Monday, and regular early-access shows of Azrael on Monday at Boston Common. Paul McCartney and Wings - One Hand Clapping opens at Boston Common, Kendall Square, and the Seaport for a four-day running starting on Thursday.
• Also opening at The Coolidge Corner Theatre is Girls Will Be Girls, and Indian indie about a girl at boarding school whose first romance is put under a microscope by friends and teachers.
  
  70mm September continues with Spartacus (Friday/Monday), Inception (Saturday/Wednesday), and The Sound of Music (Sunday).
  
  Classic (by some definition) midnights continues with Troll 2 (35mm Friday) and The Room (Saturday with Greg Sestero). Sunday's Goethe-Institut German film is Beyond the Blue Border, about an East German swimmer and a friend trying to swim 30 miles to the West. Tuesday's Science on Screen show is Join or Die, with a post-screening discussion with Robert Putnam about how America's plunging participation in clubs and other in-person social activities is making society rickety. They also set up an outpost at the Mount Auburn Cemetery that night with a double feature of The Seventh Seal & Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. The Rewind!" show on Thursday is Easy A and I stand by position that a generation must pass before something can be considered a throwback. And, finally, they start a five-week class on found-footage horror in the classroom space upstairs on Thursday.
• Six new ones from India at Apple Fresh Pond: Tamil-language near-future action flick Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam; Tamil comedy Lubber Pandhu, Hindi-language action movie Yudhra (also at Boston Common) ; Hindi-language romantic comedy (?) Kahan Shuru Kahan Khatam; Malayalam-language drama Kadha Innuvare; Kannada-language musical drama Ibbani Tabbida Ileyali (through Sunday). Malayalam-language film Kishkindha Kaandam plays Saturday & Sunday Held over are The Buckingham Murders and Mathu Vadalara 2.
  
  Thai comedy How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies continues at Causeway Street and South Bay.
  
  Chinese drama Upstream is held over again at Causeway Street.
  
  K-pop documentary/concert film Jung Kook: I Am Still plays Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row through Sunday.
  
  Dan Da Dan: First Encounter, a collection of the upcoming series's first three episodes, plays at Boston Common.
• The Brattle Theatre has a special premiere screening of Cambridge Mosaic on Friday night, with red carpets & Q&As and more in association with the Cambridge Museum of History to celebrate Marvin Gilmore's 100th birthday.
  
  They've also got a special re-issue of Naked Acts, about a young actress nervous about doing a nude scene, from Friday to Sunday, as well as music documentary "We Are Fugazi From Washington, D.C."
  
  After that, they celebrate the Marcello Mastroianni Centennial with La Dolce Vita on Monday and 8½ on Tuesday. On Wednesday they have Boys State & Girls State with the filmmakers and the subjects of the new second film on hand afterward. Then on Thursday, they team with IFFBoston for a preview screening of A Different Man.
• The Somerville Theatre has The Searchers on Friday and a 35mm Hitchcock double feature of Strangers on a Train & Dial M for Murder on Tuesday (almost certainly the 2D version of the latter).
  
  The Capitol has a 4th Wall show with Trophy Wife, Shutups, and Main Era with visuals by Digital Awareness on Friday, and another with Stab, Video Days, and Wolfer (plus Digital Awareness visuals) on Sunday
• The Harvard Film Archive has Melville et Cie with the director's first film The Silence of the Sea (35mm Friday), Léon Morin, Priest (Sunday), and the new restoration of Army of Shadows (Sunday). Around that, they welcome Japanese director Hamaguchi Ryusuke, who will introduce Somai Shinji's Moving On Friday, present Drive My Car on Saturday, and two shows of GIFT, which he shot to match the score of frequent collaborator Ishibashi Eiko (who will be performing live), on Monday. All of those films are marked sold out on the website, but there may be rush tickets available if people don't show.
• The Seaport Alamo holds over ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amore!, and has a number of rep/enhanced screenings: The Warriors (Friday/Monday/Wednesday), a "Movie Party" screening of Batman Forever (Friday), The Muppet Movie (Saturday/Sunday), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Saturday/Sunday), Will & Harper with a livestreamed Q&A (Saturday), the uncut/restored Bad Lieutenant (Tuesday), and a member preview of Killer Heat (Tuesday).
• Movies at MIT has Malcolm X on Friday and Saturday and Sing Sing on Thursday. $5, open to the public.
• The Regent Theatre has surfing doc Maya and the Wave on Friday and the first screenings of the 2024 edition of Manhattan Short on Thursday.
• The ICA has two screenings of Eno, an unusual documentary by Gary Hustwit that is constructed anew from a bank of interview, performance, and archival footage each time; both will be presented on Friday and likely never presented the same way again. There is also a program of Sundance Film Festival 2024 Shorts on Saturday and Sunday.
• The Museum of Fine Arts screens Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition on Saturday afternoon.
• The Tuesday Retro Replay at Landmark Kendall Square is Magnolia.
• The Boston Film Festival is this weekend, looking semi-respectable with Sheepdog at the Aquarium Friday night (including director and cast members Vondie Curtis Hall and Virginia Madsen), events at the Boston Public Library (Saturday) and Paramount (Saturday/Sunday), Sweetwater at the MIT Media Lab on Sunday, and two closing-night events in Rockport on Monday.
• Cinefest Latino Boston takes place at various venues, opening with In The Summers including a Q&A with director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio at the Coolidge Wednesday and continuing Thursday with Frida at the Paramount on Thursday with director Carla Guitierrez. The latter is free (with reservation), so it's kind of like a Bright Lights show) The festival continues through Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday, plus Wednesday, with The Substance. They also have one screening of drama A New York Story on Wednesday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens The Substance, Strange Darling, and Transformers One, keeping The Critic, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Good One, Between the Temples, Sing Sing, Didi (no show Tuesday), and Inside Out 2. They also begin a SPOTLIGHT: Newton Filmmakers series on Thursday with a program of five short films by three local filmmakers and documentary feature So Much So Fast.
  
  The Luna Theater has Look Into My Eyes on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Cuckoo on Saturday and Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show.
  
  Cinema Salem has The Substance, Speak No Evil, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Friday to Monday; Batman '89 from Saturday to Monday, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday (Teseracte doing their thing while Full body is at the Common).
  
  Despite getting a lot of previews at more centrally-located theaters, Wolfs, with Brad Pitt & George Clooney as rival fixers, is only playing at the Showcase in Dedham. The AMC at the Liberty Tree Mall has A Mistake, a drama starring Elizabeth Banks as a surgeon put under pressure from a new disciplinary system, ensemble comedy All Happy Families, and son-delivering-estranged-father's-car drama What We Find on the Road.
• Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are really thin, with The Marvels on Saturday at Kendall Urban Gardens and Catch Me If You Can in the Seaport on Monday. They also list The Beast showing at BU as part of the Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival on Wednesday.

I've got more to catch up on because I came back from my trip with a stuffed-up head that a test assures me isn't Covid, but which still kept me from a couple things. I'll probably do Big Film for The Searchers and Inception, plus Tuesday's Hitchcocks. I'd like to head out to Dedham for Wolfs on Sunday, but, ugh, the time for what may not be a great movie!

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

Where are good places to read film coverage to get jealous of the folks at TIFF or Fantastic Fest? I feel like I'm going to see laurels on stuff later and be like, oh, I wonder if my friends had a good Q&A with that, if they're even still going.

• The big release this week is Speak No Evil, with Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis as parents finding themselves houseguests of a very creepy James McAvoy. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  The Killer's Game is a kind of standard-issue action plot - Dave Bautista as an assassin who takes out a contract on himself when he learns he has a fatal brain tumor to his girlfriend won't watch him suffer, only to discover it won't be rescinded when he learns the diagnosis is mistaken, but the cast includes action notables like Scott Adkins, Marko Zaror, and Sofia Boutella (along with Pom Klementieff, Terry Crews, and Ben Kingsley), so there should be some pretty decent fights. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  Kevin Smith's latest, period teen comedy (1986 is period now!) The 4:30 Movie, has a run at Boston Common (all 7pm-hour screenings, though, even though the title is right there!). They also have Disney's Encanto through Monday.
  
  Concert film Usher: Rendezvous in Paris continues through Sunday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. There are early-access screenings for Transformers One at Boston Common (RealD 3D), South Bay, Assembly Row, Chestnut Hill on Saturday, plus "Fan Event" shows at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema) Wednesday; and of The Substance at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Wednesday. 50th Anniversary screenings of Blazing Saddles play Boston Common, South Bay Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday (also Monday at Arsenal Yards); 25th Anniversary shows of The Matrix play Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards on Thursday; 10th Anniversary shows for The Babadook and Boston Common, South Bay on Thursday (with Whiplash starting an actual anniversary run at Boston Common that day).
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre (and other places) get a couple of wide-release documentaries this week. Will & Harper has the benefit of a big name, as Will Ferrell learns that a friend of 30 years is a trans woman and they go on a road trip together. It's at the Coolidge, the Somerville, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport.
  
  Also opening surprisingly wide for something that really wasn't on much radar a week ago is Look Into My Eyes, though, see intro, it played a bunch of the spring festivals; it takes a look at psychics and the niche they fill for their clients (amusingly, the hotel where I'm writing this has a psychic in the front and I walked past it several times before checking in because the psychic's signage was much bigger than the hotel's). Director Lana Wilson will be at the 7pm show on Friday at the Coolidge; it also plays Kendall Square.
  
  70mm September continues with Vertigo with a projection 101 seminar (Friday/Tuesday), Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (Saturday/Wednesday), Lawrence of Arabia (Sunday), and 2001: A Space Odyssey (Monday).
  
  It's the first actual Friday the 13th in almost a year, so the Coolidge After Midnight guys are setting up at Rocky Woods for an outdoor double feature of The Final Chapter and Jason X, including a pre-screening presentation by the folks at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. IF you can't head out, midnights in Brookline are Glen or Glenda? (Friday) and Miami Connection. In other rep, Sunday's Goethe-Institut German film is Facing Cancer, with director Volker Heise and Dr. Wolfram Goessling on-hand for a Q&A about their film where the latter, a cancer researcher, winds up a patient (note that while most GI films are early-morning shows, this one is in the afternoon). Monday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of David Lynch's The Straight Story, a charming, decidedly eccentric but non-weird story of an old man riding his tractor across backroads to make peace with his estranged brother. Thursday offers both a Cinema Jukebox sing-along of Grease and a Cult Classics screening of But I'm a Cheerleader.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens The Critic, with Ian McKellen as a theater critic who, faced with disfavor form his paper's new management, launches a scheme to regain his position. Nice supporting cast with Gemma Arterton, Lesley Manville, and Mark Strong, too. Also playing West Newton and Boston Common.
  
  One more documentary at the Kendall, with IFFBoston selection Seeking Mavis Beacon opening there; it follows a pair of folks looking for the Haitian-born model on the cover of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and pondering how a fictional character that was basically one photo conferred authority.
  
  Tuesday's Retro Replay is The Iron Giant, with a pre-recorded Q&A featuring producers Alison Abbate & Des McAnuff and voice actor Eli Marienthal afterward.
• New Indian films at Apple Fresh Pond this week include The Buckingham Murders (also at Boston Common), a UK-set but mostly-Hindi-language thriller features Kareena Kapoor as a grieving detective investigating a missing child; A.R.M. (Ajayante Randam Moshanam), a multigenerational Malayalam-language adventure (including 3D shows!); Ardaas Sarbat De Bhalle Di, a Punjabi-language ensemble drama with writer/director/star Gippy Grewal one of several people bonding while taking a bus as part of a pilgrimage to Sri Hazur Sahib; Telugu-language adventure Kalinga; and Telugu action-comedy Mathu Vadalara 2. Tamil-language actioner The Greatest of All Time is held over at Fresh Pond and Boston Common.
  
  Thai comedy How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies opens at Causeway Street and South Bay.
  
  Chinese action film Untouchable, billed as comic actor Shen Teng's first action movie, opens at Causeway Street; they also upgrade Xu Zheng's Upstream to a full schedule after only showing it once a day during its first week.
  
  K-pop documentary/concert film Jung Kook: I Am Still plays Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row on Wednesday and Thursday.
  
  Anime Dan Da Dan: First Encounter opens at Boston Common; it's a Science Saru production and director Fuga Yamashiro was the #2 guy on Inu-Oh, so it should be a high-energy blast. There's one last 30th anniversary screenings of anime Ninja Scroll continue at South Bay and Assembly Row on Sunday (subtitled). Boston Common has Trapezium, an anime about a would-be idol singer, on Wednesday.
• The Brattle Theatre celebrates Lauren Bacall's Centennial with To Have and Have Not (35mm Friday/Saturday), The Big Sleep (35mm original Saturday/Monday), Dark Passage (Saturday), Key Largo (35mm Saturday/Sunday), Written on the Wind (35mm Sunday/Thursday), How to Marry a Millionaire (Sunday), Dogville (Sunday), Harper (35mm Monday/Wednesday), Murder on the Orient Express (Tuesday),
  
  They also have a special presentation (w/ Strictly Brohibitied, BUFF, and Wicked Queer) of a restored 35mm print of 1994 oddity Fresh Kill with director Shu Lea Cheang in person on Friday night. On Wednesday and Thursday, they welcome animator Emily Hubley to host two programs for A Faith Hubley Centennial, with Wednesday's show dedicated to Faith and Thursday featuring the entire Hubley family of animators.
• The Harvard Film Archive continues Melville et Cie with Bob le Flambeur (Friday), Jacques Becker's Touchez pas au grisbi (35mm Friday), Un Flic (35mm Saturday), Le Doulos (Saturday), and Le cercle rouge (Sunday). There's also a Psychedelic Cinema show of the Disney Alice in Wonderland on 35mm film Sunday afternoon, and filmmaker Hamaguchi Ryusuke begins a visit on Monday, hosting a screening of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has Global Cinema Now shows of Sisi and I on Friday and Evil Does Not Exist on Sunday (though it doesn't look like the coordinated with Hamaguchi and HFA for a visit). There's also a Cult Classic show of Donnie Darko on Thursday (one could probably get from the HFA to the Coolidge for a weird teens cult classic double feature without a lot of trouble).
• The Somerville Theatre has a Midnight Special show of The Outlaw Josey Wales on 35mm Saturday night. There's also a big 35mm "Hack the Planet Day" screening of Hackers on Sunday, with a "360° visual preshow" that includes DJ and chiptune sets, a special appearance by cast member Renoly Santiago, and an afterparty upstairs in the Crystal Ballroom. Tuesday kicks off the "A Bit of Hitch" fall program with two of HItchcock's great early films, The 39 Steps & The Lady Vanishes. On Thursday and (next) Friday, they have a 70mm print of The Searchers.
  
  The Capitol picks up Good One on top of Speak No Evil; they have Dan Da Dan from Friday to Sunday, although it looks like they are showing the first three episodes of the anime rather than the film. There's a 4th Wall show with Makeout Palace, American Ink,and Trophy Husband on Friday, with Visualist supplying visuals; Saturday's is "H4XOR5" performed by Videopunks, a live rescore of Hackers before it plays at the Somerville the next day..
• The Seaport Alamo has ¡Casa Bonita Mi Amore!, a documentary that follows South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone as they try to rescue a beloved Denver Mexican restaurant, on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday. Other rep screenings include a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie party with cast members Paris Themmen & Julie Dawn Cole in person (Friday), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (Friday the 13th), The Deer Hunter (Saturday), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Sunday/Tuesday), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (Director's Edition Sunday/Tuesday), Rango (Monday), Clue (Movie Party Tuesday), and The Babadook, which right now they only have on Thursday rather than a full run.
• Movies at MIT has Dead Poets Society on Friday. $5, open to the public.
• The Regent Theatre has Boom: A FIlm About the Sonics for its Midweek Music Movie on Wednesday and Anytime, a feature following 15 freeride mountain bikers, on Thursday.
• The ICA has the first screening of a program of Sundance Film Festival 2024 Shorts on Thursday; there will be more next Saturday and Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday, plus Thursday, with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Across the River and Into the Trees, and Tokyo Cowboy.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens The Critic, keeping Tokyo Cowboy, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Good One (no show Thursday), Between the Temples, Sing Sing, Thelma, Didi (no show Tuesday), and Inside Out 2.
  
  The Luna Theater has Cuckoo on Friday and Saturday, Longlegs on Saturday, and The Goonies on Sunday; a Weirdo Wednesday show, and a free UMass Lowell Philosophy & Film screening of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Speak No Evil and Beetlejuice BeetlejuiceFriday to Monday; It Ends with Us Friday; and Strange Darling from Friday, Sunday, and Monday. The Time Masters is Friday's Night Light show, and there's a double-mystery Whodunnit (at a wedding) screening on Wednesday (double in that the movie is a cozy mystery but not revealed until you arrive).
• Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are thinning out, with Meet the Robinsons on Friday at MIT Open Space, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in the Seaport on Monday, and Common Ground at the Lexington Community Farm on Wednesday.

I'm in New York watching the Johnnie To series with To in person until Monday, but might fit some other stuff in around that and baseball then I'll probably hit the Hitch double and 70mm Searchers at the Somerville.

Fantasia 2024.08: "You Don't Read Enough", Darkest Miriam, "Piggy 1/2", Animalia Paradoxa, Rita, and This Man

Two sets of photos from the first show of the Day!

First up, the co-writer/director/star of "You Don't Read Enough", Emilia Michalowska, and co-writer/director Noa Kozulin, who commented that they were both the children of immigrants whose mothers both said the title to them on the regular.

After the feature, programmer Carolyn Mauricette welcomed Darkest Naomi writer/director Naomi Jaye and original novelist Martha Baillie; like the title character of Jaye's film, both Mauricette & Baillie have been library workers, mentioning that you find a lot of people in real life like in the film, waiting at the door for them to open in the morning and hanging around until closing time. They talked about how it was a tricky adaptation because the novel took the form of various incident reports, which wouldn't translate to film.

And we finish with Mitch talking to Rita director Jayro Bustamante. The film hails from Guatemala, which is a small country that doesn't have a lot of infrastructure for even a film of this scale, especially one where the cast was almost entirely young girls: They basically had to create an academy from the ground up - with 500 prospective actresses! - and then cast the graduates. If I recall correctly, roughly half made it into the film in one way or another, and some were finding other work since.

There were a number of folks from Guatemala in the audience - well-represented in the Q&A period, especially - which added something to the "thank you for this movie" intros which I often find kind of odd (especially when it's more or less the entire comment). There are variations on scandals like this all over the world - Native American boarding schools in Canada and the U.S., church-run sweatshops in Ireland, etc. - but it's got to be weirdly gratifying to see your small country's horror story memorialized well enough to play foreign film festivals because that probably means it is well-done enough to stick at home.


"You Don't Read Enough"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

I love that the title of this short would be comprehensible nonsense even if it's not actually mentioned within the film; there are just things about parental relationships of this sort that feel universal even if the specifics are extremely personal and random. The actual story is basically nonexistent: At 4:10pm, Kasia (Emilia Michalowska) gets a call from her Polish-immigrant mother saying she'll be home in about twenty minutes. This does not happen, and Kasia worries, resolves not to worry, and worries some more, all while thinking about how fraught their relationship has been.

The kick to it, though, is the moment when she starts thinking about what a burden would be lifted if something has happened to her mother, and the presentation and cutting is close to marvelous, keeping this undercurrent of guilt as opposed to doing a hard cut in and out of a pleasant reverie, but that's not how it works most of the time. It's just enough to have the ending bit not just be an amusing anticlima.


Darkest Miriam

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Septentrion Shadows, laser DCP)

Titles are funny; this movie with the name "Darkest Miriam" really didn't do much for me, but seeing in the end credits that the original novel was named "The Incident Report" made it click into place a bit more. How often is the title a marketing tool and how often is it the hub to which one is connecting the other pieces of the story? It doesn't change the movie much, but it does reframe it.

The audience doesn't hear much from Miriam Gordon (Britt Lower), dark or otherwise at first, as she leaves home and bikes to the library where she works, near a nice park in the center of Toronto, leading story hours and reshelving books. Soon, though, she is giving a list of the various oddballs who frequent the branch but still mostly reserved. Things change, though, when a fellow cyclist knocks her into a hole that has been excavated in the street and she stares up, dazed, for some time. The next morning, she awkwardly leaves her medical examination over the personal questions, but she seems okay and more assertive, actually approaching the cute slovenian cabbie/artist, Janko Priajtelj (Tom Mercier) who often takes lunch in the park at the same time.

Apparently the novel consists of the incident reports of the title, letting the documentation of something odd happening in the library and elsewhere rather that focusing on Miriam directly, and they're the moments of the film that often have the most punch: They're where we get to hear Miriam's voice and get a point of view that's wry rather than flat, and Lower's delivery is arch enough to emphasize both the remove and the insight into her mind. Once the film finishes, it can maybe sink in that it's been a series of incidents to be filed away and sorted, discrete and more indicative of the larger world than the entirety of her story.

Britt Lower is great, at least, slowly adding to what initially seems like an informed blankness as the film goes on, occasionally displaying a powerful anxiety as she realizes just how blank she maybe is. Through long stretches where one maybe starts to wonder if this is leading anywhere, she, at least, is always fascinating. She and Tom Mercier play well off each other, with Lower, Mercier, and screenwriter/director Naomi Jaye having a good sense of how to make Janko pushy and prickly where Miriam tends to retreat without looking like he's steamrolling her. They don't have to be soulmates here, just a couple folks who at least work together now, and the film is comfortable at that level.

They and the interactions with relatively random folks at the library work well enough that it can sometimes highlight that Jaye doesn't do quite so well when it's time to unambiguously center Miriam. The story that has her at the center (a stalker placing unnerving letters in books) is too centered around a reference rather than her interactions with people; unpacking her past happens piecemeal and often in quiet, possibly-metaphorical images and memories that aren't quite flashbacks. There's a certain logic to it - Miriam is who she is in large part due to things that happened at a slight remove, rather than to her directly - but it makes it possible to disengage.

I never did, not entirely, but it was hard not to feel that while the film created a number of small segments that mostly work together, the effect was often not to increase their importance in the moment but to diminish the larger tragedies. One can get to the end and feel like it should have been more affecting.


"Piggy ½"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Animation Pllus, laser DCP)

Writer Kuo Po-shen and director Fish Wang are not exactly subtle with their intentions in "Piggy ½"; it's a science-fiction film that is meticulously constructed to make a specific point, and that construction is heavy-duty: They do not want to simply posit a world that makes the horrors of ours sharper by creating analogs that feel truthful because of their intent, but a machine where you can see each part working, how they interact, and how they came to be constructed. Where some might avoid that level of detail lest a viewer feel that some specific piece invalidates the point or causes the story to fall apart, they apparently consider rigor convincing.

They're not wrong, although it can make bits slow going as anthropomorphic piglets Bob and Mei await the "ritual" that will determine whether they and the others of their generation will be become laborers or "canned goods", because their homeland does not have enough resources to support them all. Bob, in particular, is a natural rabble rouser and rebel, but his defiance and exile will, if nothing else, help sharpen his instincts as he learns more of what goes on behind the curtain maintained by the priests.

There's a lot of work to do, getting all the world-building in and also building it as an adventure for Bob and creating some nifty images. Wang doesn't exactly do two things at once all that much, so things can be rather deliberate at times, not so much obviously shifting from one gear to another, but concentrating very hard on the current goal, even as it shifts to new goals cleanly. It's never dull, though; the designs and animation are quite nice, the voice work is strong and emotional even if you're getting the actual dialogue from subtitles because you don't speak mandarin, and the finale is suitably big and bold. It maybe meanders a bit there, but a viewer can enjoy the audacity of it without worrying too much about it undercutting the central metaphor.


Animalia Paradoxa

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2024 in Salle J.A. De Sève (Fantasia 2024: Fantasia Underground/Animation Plus, laser DCP)

Animalia Paradoxa is the sort of movie where, after a certain point, each fade to black has the audience wondering if the movie's done. Not necessarily because one is ready after a half hour or so (though one may be), but because the story is wispy enough and so much about examining its present rather than pushing to a conclusion that it could be. When it doesn't, for better or worse, you repeat the process in another ten minutes or so.

It takes place in an urban dystopia, the sort of place where seemingly only the most blandly brutalist buildings have survived, although with enough density that there's not much chance of seeing anything other than a sky that is never anything other than gray. Somehow, an amphibious humanoid has wound up in the center of all this, trying to gather enough water from scant rain and occasional leaking pipes to take the occasional bath, scavenging food and trinkets which he can use for trade, hoping to find a way back to the sea.

Filmmaker Niles Atallah doesn't necessarily leap straight into this creature's tale, though, opening with stop motion that leads to found footage of newsreels and educational footage, kind of building one of those things where the main narrative is a couple layers deep so that one doesn't take it quite so literally or as hard science fiction, although it's not really necessary. These bookends and occasional digressions are enjoyable enough in their own right, and they're where the various different artists and craftsmen who came together to make this film get to show their stuff. It's dark but playful in the same way as Guy Maddin or Jan Svankmajer.

There's plenty to like in the main film between those bits; it's the sort of mixed media creation that intrigued by its juxtaposition of marionette, contortion, and stop-motion animation, the exaggeration and decay especially effective in this post-apocalyptic setting, where you're never entirely sure whether the world is now populated by actual mutants or just a twisted society. There's an impressive manner of getting a lot out of a little; our amphibian protagonist gets a lot of mileage out of a mask, grippy-lookimg sneakers, and odd posture, for example.

It's a slight story, though; this creature and many of the humans it interacts with are silent, and thus any goal of teaching the sea rather than just surviving day to day has to be inferred from relatively little. The residents of this crumbled city are more a handful of interesting designs than a community, as is the big (and striking to watch!) finale. It's also dusty and gray enough that one might think the film is black and white until the occasional hit of color, so the film will only occasionally startle with its incentive world.

It's kind of boring, really, a piece of art that often demands a lot of investment for relatively scant returns. This sort of thing isn't particularly meant to be mainstream or commercial, but it would be nice if all of the individual pieces performed some sort of alchemy as they came together to become an interesting movie rather than nifty little bits.


Rita

* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

Rita is better than a lot of films where the push is how true and important the story is. That's perhaps both because of and despite how magic-realist the film is; if you can get through the first ten or fifteen minutes where it is practically shouting how eccentric and fantastical it is, it manages to establish the right amount of distance and not be an exercise in fetishistic recreation of atrocities. It's familiar, in some ways, to the audience which will actually seek out and watch this film, and the challenge is to make an impression, which it meets.

It opens with a police vehicle driving deep into the Guatemalan jungle to a fortress; the prisoner, Rita (Giuliana Santa Cruz) is a 13-year-old girl who has run away from home and has now fought back against her father because he was targeting her even younger sister. She's assigned to a room where the girls where angel wings, and after some hazing, the other girls - tall, abrasive Sulmy (Ángela Quevedo), young Bebé (Alejandra Vásquez), leader Terca (Isabel Aldana) - begin to accept her, and in fact believe she is to be a crucial part of their plan to flee and stage a protest on international Women's Day.

The angel wings and other dorms where girls sport different fantastical accouterments are not entirely for show; there's a current of magic realism in the film that is maybe a little stronger than just symbolism. Even with all that, though, the film is still at its most affecting when it's matter of fact, with young teenagers speaking plainly about their abortions or having the staff taking glamor photos of the inmates that they more or less openly exploit. The filmmakers do pretty well in terms of finding a way to both give the villains respectable veneers and also play up how a lot aren't actually hiding.

The young cat is pretty darn good, especially when you consider they are almost all not just making their debuts but basically spent a few months learning the trade because Guatemala doesn't have much of a film industry. Giuliana Santa Cruz and Ángela Quevedo, the young ladies playing Rita and Sulmy, respectively, could become stars if there's any opportunity for them, displaying toughness that never feels like just imitating adults. The adults are solid enough, too, but after thinking about the film, it's impressive how much they stay back most of the time, letting the young women be front and center for their story. A climactic scene views them almost entirely through bars even as they're driving the action (or, in a way, inaction); they are not the focus here.

It's a grim film even with the veneer of fantasy and bursts of action and activity; writer Jayro Bustamante stays resolutely on-message, by and large avoiding moments of relief when some sort of good fortune gets Maria or one of the other girls out of trouble. There is something unsettling on how he makes use of the vast majority of the cast being adolescents - it's a tropical climate with no air conditioning so the girls are often stripped down but there's a sense that there are adults enjoying the view - which increases the creep factor without necessarily having to pummel with cruelty, and he's also good at creating a thrill when the girls put a plan into action. He also often twists the knife by having visitor's days that show the nice woman who had taken Rita in, just to point out that there could be a better way, and this system is designed to maximize cruelty rather than solve problems.

In some ways, the scene that's going to stick with me is one of the simplest and most against the grain, as a bus full of people pulls a girl in and tries to protect her; for all the power evil has in this movie, it is still hiding and covering up, because those are people's instincts, and one hopes the world can remember that. Rita is far from a hopeful movie, but it's one that recognizes that evil is not a universal constant.


This Man

* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 July 2024 in Auditorium des diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia 2024, laser DCP)

What the hell happened to Japanese horror? It used to be a major draw for genre festivals like this and surprisingly strong on home video, full of stylish images and genuine dread on the one end and nutty Yoshihiro Nakamura gore on the other, and this year there only were only live-action movies in the genre at Fantasia this year and one of them is this thing. I mean, it's horror - someone should be doing something weird and interesting!

It gives us a somewhat extended introduction to Yoshio Yasaka (Minehiro Kinomoto) and his eventual wife Hana (Arisa Deguchi) before introducing others - schoolgirl Rei (Miu Suzuki), teacher Nishino Yoshikawa), Yoshio's co-worker Anatsuji, Hana's friends Amie and Saki, etc. People around them start dying gruesome deaths, and word gets around that some had been speaking with their therapists about seeing the same man in their dreams before they died. As the police have no leads on a seemingly supernatural phenomenon, and people around the Yasakas begin to fall, they eventually consult with freelance sorcerer Unsui for answers.

That it sort of starts off from the same premise as the more respectable Dream Scenario is most likely bad luck, but not only does this not have the Japanese equivalent of Nicolas Cage, it doesn't have any really interesting characters, just some generic types whose intersections seem random and whose impulses to kill are random but not disconcertingly so. There's no recognizable hook to its mayhem, whether it be a darkly understandable motive or character one feels some particular affinity for, or even dread at the nihilistic meaninglessness of it. Like another recent horror movie, In a Violent Nature, it's the surface of the genre, the gory aftermath of attacks and the arcane remedies, with anything for those signifiers to represent stripped out.

That other movie was at least competent in its filmmaking; This Man mostly feels sloppy. It turns out to be very easy to get lost or think that something might be significant when it's not when there's nothing that demands particular emphasis, and the human brain tends to see patterns where none exists in that case. I've got a note about how many women in the film are wearing yellow sundresses, for instance, but it's not a trigger or the sort of wardrobe choice that helps one tell a number of characters with the same figure and haircut apart, but just a seemingly random choice that makes the movie more confusing than it has to be.

The filmmakers don't seem up to making its supernatural weirdness weird. When a cop jumps to "malevolent dream entity" as fast as one does here, that's a story that this movie isn't telling, and one can't help but think of what Kiyoshi Kurasawa would have done with reports that this was escalating. The world sure wouldn't have looked as normal as it does from that point, for sure. And while the filmmakers probably couldn't afford something like the exorcism at the end of It Comes, what they do instead is just a poor substitute, almost a comical parody of how often we've seen these repeated Buddhist prayers showing how it's the pacing, editing, and sound design that make those scenes work, because there's no power in their absence.

Maybe I'm unfairly comparing it to classics here, but festival selection is a filter, and this feels like something that wouldn't have passed through in previous years. It's got the surface aspect of those J-horror movies, but none of the chilling core that made them thrilling even before they had style applied ot them.

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

Welcome back, students! While you were away, AMC upgraded most of their theaters to laser projection (a good thing), (b) the HFA was dark during the summer but re-opens this weekend (probably neutral but maybe we get an upgrade out of it), Emerson ended the Bright Lights program (boo!), and the Embassy and their landlord have issues that have them "permanently closed" (a real bummer). But, hey, we're past the August blues!

• I don't know that I had graduated high school when Warner Brothers first started trying to make Beetlejuice 2, but 36 years later, we have Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Tim Burton back and Jenna Ortega as this generation's teenager getting a little too close to the dead. The trailers are kind of "hey, remember this bit?", but maybe that's just reassuring advertising and the actual film is more creative. It's at the Somerville, the Capitol, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, the Lexington Venue, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & Spanish subtitles), 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.
  
  Also opening wide is The Front Room, with Brandy as an expectant mother whose sinister, racist mother-in-law moves in, a horror-movie situation that looks like an interesting combination of creepy and superheated. It's at the Somerville, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Lover of Men: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln a documentary on how same-sex relationships were often only barely euphemized in the 19th century, likely including the 16th President, plays Boston Common.
  
  Shaun of the Dead surrenders the Dolby screen but hangs around Boston Common for another week.
  
  There's an AMC Screen Unseen preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Assembly Row on Monday. Concert film Usher: Rendezvous in Paris plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row on Thursday, the start of a short four-day run.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre and Kendall Square open His Three Daughters, with Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, and Elizabeth Olsen as half-sisters uniting on their father's deathbed.
  
  The Coolidge also has the projector in the main screen up and running the big 70mm prints for most of the month, with The Master (Friday/Tuesday), 2001: A Space Odyssey (Saturday/Wednesday), and Airport (Sunday).
  
  If there's a theme to the September midnights at the Coolidge, it's kind of "things that were pushed as midnight movies", with Showgirls on Friday and Mac and Me on Saturday, both on 35mm film. There's also a "Stage & Screen" show of Empire of the Sun on Monday plus a "Cult Classics" show of Eraserhead (Julianne Moore saw it there) on Thursday.
• Landmark Kendall Square also opens Merchant Ivory, a documentary on the partnership between Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, and others that produced a string of films that was almost synonymous with prestige filmmaker in the 1990s.
  
  They also have a "Landmark First Look" mystery screening on Monday (maybe the same as what's at the AMCs, maybe not), and a Retro Replay screening of The Virgin Suicides with a prerecorded interview with Sofia Coppola, Kirsten Dunst, and John Hartnett on Tuesday.
• The Brattle Theatre has Close Your Eyes, about a director whose final film collapsed decades ago when the star disappeared without a trace working with investigators to unravel the mystery. In meta fashion, this comes 30 years after director Victor Erice's previous film. It plays Friday to Monday.
  
  The (mostly) late show on those nights is Scala!!! a documentary about a punk repertory cinema during the Thatcher years. Also playing are several Scala favorites: King Kong '38 (Sunday/Thursday), the first and last film to play there; Whitnail & I (Monday); The Loveless & Ms. 45 (Tuesday); The Warriors & A Clockwork Orange (Wednesday), with the latter also playing Thursday, representing how an illegal screening of the banned film was one of the things that drove it out of business.
• The Greatest of All Time, an action flick about top hostage negotiators, opened at Apple Fresh Pond on Wednesday and continues to play in Tamil and Telugu (also at Boston Common in Tamil). Fresh Pond also open two more Telugu-language films this weekend, action comedy Uruku Patela and drama 35-Chinna Katha Kaadu. Held over are Saripodhaa Sanivaarm (also at Boston Common) and Stree 2 (also at Boston Common).
  
  Chinese comedy-drama Upstream, with writer/director Xu Zheng starring as a man who must rejoin the workforce after planning to be a stay-at-home dad, plays once a day or so at Causeway Street.
  
  There's a 30th anniversary screening of classic anime Ninja Scroll at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row on Wednesday (subtitled) and Thursday (dubbed). Well, maybe not "classic", but "around a lot back then" at least. Boston Common also has The Concierge, a kid-friendly anime that I found pretty delightful at Fantasia last year, on Wednesday.
• The Harvard Film Archive doesn't start the academic year with one of their overnighters, but they do reopen with a heck of a weekend: Psychedelic Cinema kicks off with Roger Corman's The Trip (35mm Friday), Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie (Friday), Monte Hellman's The Shooting (Saturday), and Robert Altman's 3 Women (35mm Saturday). On Sunday, the "Melville et Cie" series that was supposed to play in the summer finally commences with Robert Bresson's A Man Escaped in the afternoon and Jean-Pierre Melville's Second Wind in the evening, both playing on 35mm film. On Monday, they present a shorts program - "Figures of Absence: The FIlms of Dore O." - with Masha Matze, editor of a recent book about the German artist, on hand for a discussion.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has a weekend of Art Docs, with Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition on Friday, Painting the Modern Garden: From Monet to Matisse on Saturday, and My National Gallery: London on Sunday. They also screen Mountains, with lead actor Atibon Nazaire and a number of folks who are part of the Haitian-American community on hand, Thursday evening.
• The Somerville Theatre is mostly new releases for the first time in a while, but does have a midnight special screening of Midnight Cowboy on 35mm film Saturday night. Documentary Borderland: The Line Within plays Monday with Q&A from filmmakers Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis.
  
  The Capitol has indie horror comedy Graveyard Shark on Saturday and cult oddity Troll 2 on Thursday. There are two 4th Wall shows this weekend; Lurid Purple Flowers, Dumb Waiter, and Judo play Friday with Partygirl, The Orrs, and Balsamine on Saturday, and visuals by Digital Awareness for both.
• The Seaport Alamo has a few special brunch & movie party shows for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this weekend as well as a special menu, because of course they do. Repertory movie specials include Stalker (Saturday/Wednesday), Mad Max (Sunday), Zombie (Monday), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Tuesday/Wednesday), and a Wednesday preview of My Old Ass with livestreamed Q&A.
• Movies at MIT has their first screening of the school year with John Wick on Friday & Saturday. $5, open to the public.
• The Regent Theatre has "Summerdance 2024", which has seven short films and networking events, on Sunday afternoon.
• The Lexington Venueis open Friday to Sunday, plus Thursday, with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Between the Temples, and Sing Sing. The 2024 New York Dog Film Festival bumps the latter on Thursday, and a portion of ticket sales go to Street Paws Rescue.
  
  The West Newton Cinemaseems to be the only place in the area opening Tokyo Cowboy, with Arata Iura as a Japanese businessman on a company outing to Montana. They also get Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Good One, and Reaganholding over Between the Temples, Sing Sing, Deadpool & Wolverine, Thelma, Didi, and Inside Out 2. On Thursday, they're host to a screening of The Old Oak including a discussion of local immigration issues and resources (tickets via Eventbrite).
  
  The Luna Theater has Longlegs on Friday and Saturday, CatVideoFest 2024 Saturday, and Stand By Me on Sunday; plus a Weirdo Wednesday show.
  
  Cinema Salem has Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, It Ends with Us, Alien: Romulus, and Strange Darling from Friday through Monday. Seven Samurai plays Saturday and Tuesday.
  
  If you can make it out to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, there are a number of films that aren't making it into Boston: British drama Hoard, Edie Falco comedy I'll Be Right There, Chinese drama/romance I'll Be Right There, and western The Thicket, featuring Peter Dinklage & Juliette Lewis.
• Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are My Penguin Friend on Friday at MIT Open Space, Mean Girls in the Seaport on Monday, and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour at The LOT in Dorchester on Thursday.

Gotta say, I am tempted to head out to Danvers to catch one or two things, but as I am already planning some Absurd Movie Travel (a trip to New York for Johnnie To's appearances at the Museum of Modern Art), I'll stick with the two new releases, Upstream, and the Melville series films. Maybe 3 Women, plus some baseball.