Friday, October 25, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 October 2024 - 31 October 2024

Happy Halloween; it's almost the end of Nosferatu season, at least for a couple months.
  • Venom: The Last Dance claims to be the series finale, with Tom Hardy and writer/director Kelly Marcel finally getting a chance to make one of these without some director who wants to make a normal movie interfering, apparently involving Knull, the symbiote King in Black, attacking earth. It plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D & Spanish subtitled shows), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D/3D & RealD 3D & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & RealD 3D & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    Also out this week is Conclave, with Ralph Finnes as the cardinal in charge of the process to select a new pope, with Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini in the supporting cast and apparently even more skullduggery than one might expect. It's at the Coolidge, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill.

    Your Monster plays at Boston Common; it stars Melissa Barrera as an actress who falls in love with the monster living in her closet (Tommy Dewey).

    Longlegs gets a full-week re-release including a pre-recorded Q&A and a preview of The Monkey at Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    The week's concert and music doc films include Tears for Fears Live (A Tipping Point Film) at Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport Saturday; Whitney Houston: The Concert for a New South Africa at Assembly Row Sunday; Luther: Never Too Much at Assembly Row Wednesday; Megan Thee Stallion: In Her Own Words at Assembly Row (Imax Laser) Wednesday, and Sabaton: The Tour to End All Tours at Boston Common Wednesday & Thursday.

    Five Nights at Freddy's is the "Blum Fest" show at Boston Common on Wednesday. Coraline has 3D shows at Boston Common and South Bay on Tuesday; Boston Common has an extra Rocky Horror Picture Show on Thursday; dunno if Full Body Cast is there like on Saturday nights.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre gets a 35mm print of Sean Baker's new film Anora, which stars Mikey Madison as a call girl who has a whirlwind romance with a Russian heir whose parents do not approve and come to New York to get the marriage annulled. The shows on screen #1 are on film, the rest on DCP, and it also plays at Kendall Square and Boston Common; it expands to the Seaport and Assembly Row next week.

    Midnights at the Coolidge are a 35mm print of The Tomb Of Ligea for Friday's Corman show, with a digital restoration of Frankenhooker also playing on Friday, and the annual all-35mm Horror Marathon on Saturday. It kicks off with The Invisible Man '33 and The Fly '86, then has five more mad scientists before concluding at noon. For other spooky stuff, there's also a Kids' Show of Monster House on Saturday, Rosemary's Baby on Sunday, a 35mm print of A Nightmare on Elm Street (including a seminar by Ava M. Fields) on Monday, The Tingler in Percepto! On Wednesday, and a Scream Halloween House Party on Thursday with the first and fifth films in the series.

    Sunday's Goethe-Institut matinee is Elbow, with both director Aslı Özarslan and Fatma Aydemir, author of the source novel, on hand for a Q&A afterward. There's also The Manchurian Candidate on Tuesday with an introduction by Judge Nancy Gertner, and a Cinema Jukebox show of The Crow '94 on Wednesday. The latter two are kind of spooky-adjacent, but not quite Halloween movies.
  • The Seaport Alamo appears to be the only place opening Magpie, which features Daisy Ridley as the mother of a child actress who begins to have suspicions of her husband when the girl is cast in a movie with a superstar; Other specials include Halloween '78 (Friday/Thursday), The Craft (Friday/Sunday/Tuesday), Wes Craven's New Nightmare (Saturday/Wednesday), Creature from the Black Lagoon (RealD 3D Sunday/Monday), The Guest (Monday/Tuesday), and a Rocky Horror Movie Party on Thursday.
  • Landmark Kendall Square picks up My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock, a documentary of sorts which imagines the director rewatching his films in the 21st Century and reassessing them, with Alistair McGowan supplying the voice.

    Tuesday's Retro Replay at Kendall Square is Go and Wednesday's Fright Night Retro is Trick 'r Treat.
  • Two new releases from India at Apple Fresh Pond starting Friday - Telugu-language action film Pottel and Malayalam-language thriller Pani. Wednesday has three opening - Ka (also at Causeway Street) and Lucky Bhaskar in Telugu and Amaran (also at Boston Common) in Tamil - with two more on Thursday, Tamil films Bloody Beggar and Brother. Held over (through Tuesday) are Tamil-language Vettaiyan (also at Boston Common) and Jigra (Hindi).

    Chinese thriller High Forces, directed by Oxide Pang with Andy Lau as a security expert aboard a hijacked airliner, is the last of the National Week movies to make its way stateside. It plays Causeway Street.

    Is Ghibli Fest still a "fest" if it continues year-round? This week, Kiki's Delivery Service plays Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards Sunday/Tuesday (dubbed) & Monday/Wednesday (subtitled); its also subtitled at Boston Common & Arsenal Yards on Saturday, but not at Arsenal Yards Tuesday & Wednesday. In other anime, Look Back stays around at Boston Common. Gundam Fest also continues (concludes?) with Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday.
  • The Brattle Theatre has the back half of the GlobeDocs Film Festival over the weekend, with Porcelain War and 2073 on Friday; Martha, Union, Recovery City< and Whatever It Takes on Saturday; and Local Shorts, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, Separated, and Zurawski v Texas on Sunday.

    Friday's matinee is The Bride of Frankenstein on 35mm film. There's more Halloween stuff after the festival, with Kwaidan on 35mm film Monday, Evil Dead 2 on 35mm film Monday & Tuesday, Practical Magic with author Alice Hoffman on Tuesday, and Nosferatu with the Andrew Alden Ensemble on Wednesday.

    Then, on Thursday, they kick off the IFFBoston Fall Focus with Nightbitch and It's Not Me.
  • The Harvard Film Archive continues António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Nuovo, with Trás-os-Montes (Friday 7pm), Mild Manners on 35mm (Friday 9:15pm), and The Vows on 35mm (Sunday 7pm). They also finish the Melville et Cie series with 35mm prints: Le Doulos (7pm Saturday), Claude Sautet's Max and the Junkmen (9:15pm Saturday), and Army of Shadows (3pm Sunday) Then on Monday, they have two more of Harry Smith's numbered films: Film No. 12 (Heaven and Earth Magic Feature) on 16mm film, as well as "Film No. 16 (Oz: The Tin Woodman's Dream)" on 35mm.
  • The Regent Theatre has one show of Eno, Gary Hustwit's documentary about the ambient musician that is different each time, with a panel discussion on Friday night.
  • The Somerville Theatre is doing a bunch of spooky stuff this week, with a double feature of 1986 heavy-metal horror film Trick or Treat presented by The Spooky Picture Show and Horror Arts Collective, with a secret second feature afterward. Later that night, the Midnight Special is Nosferatu with the Radiohead sync soundtrack. Sunday's "Silents, Please" show with Jeff Rpasis is The Bat, while the evening features a double feature of Basket Case & The Gate, the second in 35mm; Monday's is Night of the Creeps & Night of the Comet, with the second again being on film; same deal on Tuesday with Beetlejuice & Little Shop of Horrors; while both the original Friday the 13th & Halloween look to be digital. Halloween Night is Rocky Horror with Teseracte Players.

    The Capitol has a Saturday 4th Wall show featuring Pearl Sugar, Dress Better Please, and Kai Burns, with Digital Awareness on visuals.
  • Movies at MIT has Dr. Strangelove or: Low I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb on and Saturday; the email suggests you give them a head's up if you're not part of the MIT community.
  • The Museum of Science has Coco on the Omni screen Friday and Saturday evenings.
  • The Lexington Venue has We Live in Time and The Apprentice Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Thursday. For Halloween, they have 9pm shows of Longlegs Friday & Saturday and Halloween '78 Friday/Saturday/Thursday, with the Radiohead Nosferatu playing Saturday afternoon.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Venom 3, Conclave, We Live in Time, and The Goldman Case, , holding over Blink, Saturday Night, The Apprentice, The Wild Robot, and The Substance. They play ParaNorman on Sunday, War Game with post-film discussion on Tuesday, Get Out on Wednesday.

    The Luna Theater has Terrifier 3 Friday & Sunday, The Exorcist Saturday, Halloween '78 Saturday & Sunday, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Sunday.

    Cinema Salem is Friday to Wednesday but closed on Halloween, with Smile 2, Halloween '78, and Hocus Pocus Friday to Wednesday; Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Friday, Shaun of the Dead for the Friday Night Light show, global horror indie Beach Chain on Saturday, and A Nightmare on Elm Street Saturday to Wednesday. There are Universal Monsters movies pretty much all day from Friday to Tuesday.

    If you can make it to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they have Let's Start a Cult, Stavros Halkias as a cultist who missed the mass-suicide teaming up with the former leader to start things up again.
  • Joe's Free Films calendar shows three BU Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival shows this week: The Beast (with post-film discussion) on Friday, Lumumba: The Death of a Prophet on Tuesday, and Scarlet on Wednesday.
I am down for Venom 3, Conclave, Magpie, and High Forces while trying to fit in a 35mm Anora and maybe some Halloween stuff around the World Series. Also, I didn't get that HFA membership to not catch some of the last few Melville shows, especially Army of Shadows.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

This Week in Tickets: 14 October 2024 - 20 October 2024 (China, Hitch, oddities)

So, I gather nobody's been seeing these, even though I've definitely been posting them!

(You're not buying it, are you?)

This Week in Tickets
I've got several things I want to catch up with on this blog, from T.W.I.T. to FIlm Rolls to Fantasia to the festivals in between, and they feel nested in a way that I wasn't ever getting out of, so now I'm going to try to rotate and keep current and say "you know what, if this isn't done by bedtime it gets a really quick finish tomorrow morning before work because it is cutting into 'watching more movies' time".

Anyway, it was a fairly fun and busy week, starting off with a Chinese double feature - Tiger Wolf Rabbit being a fairly serviceable thriller from the mainland and Stuntman is a more ambivalent ode to Hong Kong movies than is typical. I must admit, I can't help but wonder what moving the Chinese and Korean films from Boston Common to Causeway Street is doing to their audience; even if it is leading to theater splits that make double features easier.

The middle of the week (around watching some baseball) was given to watching some Hitchcock at the Somerville. Marnie on Tuesday was a nice 35mm print, and Frenzy on Thursday in a new-ish 4K remaster. They're both what I call "post-peak Hitchcock" in the reviews, made after the late-1950s masterpieces and perhaps in some ways more interesting compared to what other folks were doing in the 1960s and early 1970s than the rest of Hitch's career, because other genre filmmakers had started internalizing his lessons.

Friday evening was a trip to Kendall Square for Rumours, the new Guy Maddin that I wish I liked a bit more, then Saturday morning I headed out to the Seaport for the re-release of Tarsem Singh's restored The Fall, two filmmakers who can be niche but also have incredible style.

Then I wrapped the weekend with a couple of movies that AMC basically scheduled against each other and made difficult to see during the week, more or less carving out the weekend's late afternoons: Kensuke's Kingdom on Saturday was a nice little animated film from the UK, and Panda Plan on Sunday was the latest Jackie Chan film. The most amusing thing about it, perhaps, was that I skipped a film of his at Fantasia figuring Well Go or someone would release it in the USA, but apparently not before his next one.

Anyway - my Letterboxd account is genuinely more reliable than this, although full of spelling errors and hastily composed thoughts that get sorted out here.


Yu Huo zhi Lu (Tiger Wolf Rabbit)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 October 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #4 (first-run, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA, but listings for when it is

There are a couple moments in Tiger Wolf Rabbit when the filmmakers try to pull back from what has become a movie perhaps too dour and grim to get audiences to the finish, and the result is just mild disbelief. It's better than outright whiplash of going from talking about child abduction to romantic comedy material and back again, but the filmmakers don't quite have the knack for taking a little step away from the abyss or occasionally touching solid ground that keeps the audience from drifting away.

It's a movie that really doesn't come together until the second half, like the filmmakers know the three characters they need for later but can't really get them to work together before the main story kicks in. It opens with some striking scenes, but kind of drags between introducing the oddly mismatched trio - Cui Dalu (Yang Xiao), a just-released convict whose child was abducted; Li Hongyng (Zhao Zanilla), the woman he hooked up while searching for his son and wound up running scams with; and Zhao Zishan (Liu Ye), a mysterious figure who wants to hire Dalu to find a worse criminal - and giving them a big mission. That mission, it turns out, is pretty good. It's fragmented, sure, but you can see them building a movie to get there.

I don't know that the full story of the film really holds up; it often feels like the screenwriters came up with its two halves separately and stitched them together the best they could; the screenplay gets the story through but every previously-unrevealed thing about the characters feels more useful for explaining their next steps than making any sense of their previous ones. The cast is good, and vibe well when they're allowed to, but there's a segment in the middle where the characters are literally lost and pulled out via a weird deux ex machina, like the writers had no idea to how to get things to come together naturally.

There's style to the film, too; it feels like the folks involved sought out parts of China that seldom show up on screen and made the most of striking landscapes and village architecture. The big visual swings and plot twists are probably more memorable than things in many more sensibly constructed movies, to the point where it impresses more than it disappoints, even if the result isn't quite the sum of the parts.


Stuntman

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 October 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #4 (first-run, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA, but listings for when it is

Stuntman starts out with what feels like a really good Police Story pastiche and gets interesting when that not only goes awry but the film fast-forwards to the present day and tempers its nostalgia for old-school Hong Kong action.

After the energetic stunt show, and the horrible accident at the end, it has once-famed action director Sam Lee (Stephen Tung Wai) running a little first aid clinic, catering mostly to former stuntmen who are now taking shifts as security guards and the like. At a martial-arts society reunion, he meets old friend Cho (To Yin-Gor), a director who wants him to handle the action on a movie he's putting together with action superstar Wai (Philip Ng Wan-Lung), who had been a suntman in Sam's crew but now has his own. Sam hires Lee Sam-Lung (Terrence Lau Chun-Him), who is just about ready to give up stunts to work at his brother's logistics business as the stunt co-ordinator, all while trying to prepare for the wedding of daughter Cherry (Cecliia Choi Si-Wan), though most of the father-of-the-birde work is going to her stepfather.

DIrectors Herbert Leung Kun-Seun and Albert Leung Koon-Yiu - I think they're brothers - have stuntwork bona fides and I wouldn't be terribly shocked if every piece of this movie was based on a real anecdote or experience. What's notable is that they present both the bits about making a movie and what comes after with remarkable clarity; where some may have blind spots about their life's work, the Leungs show what an action director does compared to a stunt co-ordinator, for instance, and what working-class jobs these actually are. Most importantly, while many fans of Hong Kong film and bigger names like Sammo Hung will often look back at the industry's heyday and talk about how a month would be spent on a single fight despite the guerilla filmmaking, they recognize that it was tremendously dangerous, and folks like "Heartless Sam" were a big part of the reason why. Perhaps the key thing they capture is that someone like Sam can be very good at his job and also extremely dangerous; the film's centerpiece is one that many films would play as a thrilling caper but which instead feels like Sam is going to get someone killed.

Hong Kong action is a complicated legacy and the film isn't completely successful at grappling with it; it's too fascinated by Sam to really give sufficient space to the younger characters who maybe want to be smarter about things even when he proves to be a terrible role model. It doesn't exactly help that Stephen Tung Wai has a wonderfully weathered face but never feels as natural as nearly everyone else in the cast as an actor, especially during the scenes with Cecilia Choi, where his smiling too wide and trying too hard only start to feel like something the character does rather than the actor in retrospect. The film is also big on "Hong Kong Spirit", not so much in a way that feels like it's meant to contrast with anywhere else, but also not in a way that examines it. Is it just doing more than such a tiny place should, stretching yourself past the breaking point no matter what, or...?

The stonework is legit, at least - Tung and the directors have extensive stunt backgrounds and know their stuff - and while I suspect the filmmaking is simplified, it's nicely grounded and doesn't seem interested in romanticizing the process too much.


Marnie

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 October 2024 in Somerville Theatre #1 (A Bit of Hitch, 35mm)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere; 4K and DVD available on Amazon

Perhaps the most entertaining thing about Marnie is that you can see Hitchcock trying to coax a James Stewart or Cary Grant performance out of his lead, who absolutely cannot be anything but Sean Connery. He knew the power of movie stars, but Connery was just starting to be James Bond and broaden his own screen persona beyond that as the film was shooting, so maybe Hitch wasn't fully familiar with his new tool yet.

Connery plays the wealthy head of a publishing company who recognizes the title character (Tippi Hedren) as the woman who robbed her previous job when she applies for work as a secretary but is nonetheless fascinated by her, covering up her crimes and blackmailing her into marriage. There's the makings of an intense thriller there, but Hitchcock, perhaps, is not the man to make it; his world view seems locked into seeing Marnie as the broken women driven to crime by previous psychological trauma and Connery's Mark Rutland mostly holding her tight so that he can see how to fix her. There's a moment - perhaps the film's best - when Hitchcock or screenwriter Jay Presson Allen seem quite happy to undermine the idea, as Marnie mocks Rutland's psychological approach, saying she's seen all the same movies, but hanging a lantern on those issues isn't exactly rising above it. The whole thing might be better off acknowledging Rutland as kind of a bastard and letting Marnie own her choices move, even if they don't wind up together.

Heck, you can see how that works in the second best thing about the movie, watching Diane Baker's Lil mature from bratty to bitchy before the audience's eyes; she's never a conventional good girl but it's tough to really dislike her as she's doing interesting things around the edges, even if it she is working at cross-purposes to the film's central romance. There are also a couple other impressive scenes - the bit where Marnie steals from the safe is a clinic in presenting such a basic bit of crime as genuinely tense, and the way Hitchcock and Hedren present Marnie's panic during the hunt (where she should feel safe and assured) is great as well - but they're often exceptions, the parts the filmmakers can make singe even if what's around them aren't as great.

The movie is very much post-peak Hitchcock: Elaborate psychological constructs, a script stuck between explicit and euphemistic, and an underlying meanness where a younger Hitch would have found chemistry and affection.


Frenzy

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 October 2024 in Somerville Theatre #1 (A Bit of Hitch, 4K laser DCP)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere; 4K and DVD available on Amazon

Fifty years later, Frenzy feels like it's in a weird, in-between spot, where a casual viewer might not be able to tell where Alfred Hitchcock is ahead of the times, where he's catching up, and where his experiments are having mixed results. It's good, but there are moments when I'd wonder what he's getting at; it can feel like a Monty Python sketch, and Hitchcock's dark sense of humor means it could be a joke or the sort of thing the Pythons were spoofing.

(And that's setting aside stuff like the joke about how exotic and terrible a "Margarita" is, which has aged about as well as James Bond scoffing at the Beatles)

Some of those bits are obvious bad ideas, like a long recap of what has already happened that exists to beat the joke about the detective's wife's cooking into the ground. Sometimes I wondered whether stuff like using a freeze-frame instead of holding a shot was meant to be unnerving or not. Other times, Hitchcock seems to be trying to get every morbid gag he's ever thought of in during what he probably figures will be one of his last few films.

But, on the other hand, some pieces are legitimately great. The armchair psychoanalysis might be terrible, but the way the killer slides from affable to vicious is genuinely terrific, and a scene where the camera seems to nervously back away from a murder and then wait for the body to be found feels about three layers deep. The film tortures by waiting just a little too long, but not so much that giggling breaks out. It's mean, and the results of murder are undignified in a way that makes the whole idea even more awful.

At times, it feels like Hitchcock wants to scratch the same itch as Psycho but knows folks will compare the two films and maybe tries too hard to differentiate between them (and his other "wrong man" stories). But it works more often than not, and looks gorgeous to boot.

Previous review (2013)


Rumours

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 October 2024 in Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)
Available to pre-order digitally on Prime; not yet streaming in the USA, but listings for when it is

Everything about Rumours feels like it should not just be a lot of fun, but work well together: Guy Maddin (And his frequent collaborators)! Bog body zombies! At the G7 summit! With a giant brain! And a fun cast, including an increasingly game-for-anything Cate Blanchett! And yet, it resolutely fails to come together. One of cinema's greatest weirdos seems too timid to be absurd or satiric.

You can tell early on, too, when the leaders are chummy but won't say what sort of crisis they are meeting to discuss, and then seem like they're being taxed to write out platitudes. In 2024, it seems like the weakest jokes you can make about politicians, even if the G7 feels like a lot of empty hype (has anything concrete actually emerged from one?); if you're making them, put some tension in it. Make them seem paralyzed into politeness rather than empty. Or maybe go all in on absurdity, which is often this group's specialty, but they seldom push a joke past odd into weird or unnerving territory. Rumours is all the little bits a movie puts in between the big gags that you might miss, elevated to the foreground.

When the jokes land and linger, the film can be pretty fun - a late gag with the Canadian Prime Minister going for the land acknowledgment in an emergency feels downright clever for instance. The cast is admittedly terrific: Everybody seems to at least be digging into the various bits of pompous dignity of their characters, with Roy Dupuis (as Canada's virile, scandal-plagued PM) and Denis Ménochet (as France's intellectual President) in particular making off with any scene that's not tied down. It's also very fun to see Maddin's silent-influenced style emerge from a movie that initially looks downright normal, especially once one learns that they have taken an actual forest and used lighting and smoke to make it look like a set. The melodramatic score is fun.

The filmmakers just don't seem to know how to connect all those ideas that probably seemed like they would write themselves once that failed to happen.


The Fall

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 October 2024 in Alamo Boston #4 (re-release, laser DCP)
Available to rent/purchase digitally on Prime or elsewhere; original DVD available on Amazon (new one likely on the way)

The Fall is arguably one of the great cinematic follies of our time, and that's no insult: It's just acknowledging that there's clearly a lot of time, money, and effort poured into a film that was probably never going to connect with a mainstream audience unless it got very lucky. It's a folly, but one that's worth being in the world. The world is richer for having such things in it.

And it's worth checking out during this re-release, even if it hadn't been cleaned up and presented as the finest digital file possible. The film is more eye-poppingly gorgeous than one likely remembers, for a start, even if you remember it looking pretty good; 15 years of movies being increasingly built inside machines rather than from figuring out how to populate a grand landscape or striving for consistency rather than this movie's glorious contradictions makes something like this harder to conceive even in memory, as we often remember things in relation to other things, and that can cause something as singular as this to fade precisely because there's nothing like it. Watching it for the first time in years allows it to stun anew because there is very little like, say, a scene where an elaborately-costumed army makes their way down an almost Escher-like series of stairs in sync.

The script often seems shaggier than the precisely-planned visuals, and the fact that it's a bit of meta-commentary - Roy's story shifts and expands and contracts to capture his young visitor's attention to a purpose - the viewer can perhaps see that a bit too plainly. It stays to grind at a certain point, but then, the movie is about to change, and perhaps wearing out its welcome keeps the audience from rejecting the shift, and Tarsem's choice to plunge what had spent a lot of time as a children's story with dark undertones into not just darkness but despair can feels audacious: There's no winking or quipping, but the sincerity is powerful, and Tarsem isn't trying to impress us so much as be honest about how hard crawling out can be.

The filmmaker never got to make this sort of big swing again, but what a thing to spend your credit on.


Kensuke's Kingdom

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 October 2024 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA, but listings for when it is

Kensuke's Kingdom certainly starts out in that easily-maligned category of "British animated films that look kind of cheap but somehow have an amazing voice cast", but happily grows into something better. The language barrier that never really gets bridged forces it to be more visual, and the filmmakers are wise to keep the scale manageable.

And it could be easy for it to seem too big, opening with Michael (voice of Aaron MacGregor) sailing around the world at some point in the 1990s, presumably, with his parents (voices of Cillian Murphy & Sally Hawkins) and older sister (voice of Raffey Cassidy), none too pleased about supposedly leaving his dog stella behind, though he's somehow managed to smuggle the pup on board and keep him hidden for days despite being not that great a sailor otherwise. It all leads to him being swept off the deck during a storm, landing on a seemingly deserted island, although eventually he'll meet Kensuke (voice of Ken Watanabe), who appears to have been there since World War II.

It's kind of wobbly at times, but the filmmakers are wise to lavish attention on what will get the most benefit: They quietly show how ow great it is to have a dog in this situation, lovingly render tropical animals, and make sure Kensuke's those doesn't look like a CGI effect on the middle of a hand-drawn film, as can happen. Heck, it happens here, as a choppy sea and the boat upon it are clearly created using different methods. The style switch to show his origins is very nice, and the animators give him a lot of dignity without making him stiff.

The filmmakers do sometimes seem to have a bit of trouble with how to tell the best part of the story; one suspects that the heart of the original book is Michael and Kensuke somehow getting to know each other without being able to speak, but that's probably more internal and time-consuming than the film can likely manage, while Michael remains a rather passive part of the story. The introduction of an external danger sometimes feels like something needs to be going on, but feels like an interruption more than a climax.

Still, as these small family movies which are fortunate to get one show a day for a week go, it's pretty decent.


Xiong Mao Ji Hua (Panda Plan)

* * (out of four)
Seen 20 October 2024 in AMC Causeway Street #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Not yet streaming in the USA, but listings for when it is

You don't have to do this, Jackie Chan. You're a seventy-year-old legend who has recently expressed a fair amount of interest in being seen as a serious filmmaker rather than a clown. You don't have to sign up for the movie with the CGI panda cub, ego-puffing self-referentiality, and action scenes where everyone can see you've lost a step. You can just do one movie a year, play mentor on and off the screen, and just enjoy the fruits of an incredibly successful career.

Maybe someone gave Jackie that advice before Panda Plan, which takes what must have at one point seemed like a clever idea for a movie - action movie star gets caught up in the middle of a plan to steal baby pandas while at a symbolic "adoption ceremony" - and just sucks the life out of it. Part of it is probably Chan's ego - when going meta, he's willing to have people joke about his nose and make himself look like a goofball, but he's not going to let folks take out the knives like Andy Lau did in The Movie Emperor - which means that a lot of this movie is heroes and villains alike fawning over Jackie-the-character and he never quite plays himself as an older man who needs choreography in a way that would add tension. The filmmakers don't spend much of their Dairy Queen product placement money on actors who can play English-speaking mercenaries like people who actually speak English. The effects work isn't great and the last stretch is a cringe-worthy attempt to give the heartstrings an unwarrented tug.

(It's interesting that Jackie has a line about receiving an Oscar, though; it's clearly what he says, rather than subtitles, and while he did receive an honorary award in 2015, I wonder if this takes place in an alternate universe where The Diary got made out he didn't pass on Everything Everywhere All at Once. Plus you kind of expect him to go with the Mainland China equivalent these days)

Of course, Jackie Chan can star in a movie like this and get a National Week release because he knows the ropes as well as anybody ever has, and it's not just habit to smile as he slips through gaps in leaders or dodges punches. He may not be as spry as he was, but the choreography is still pretty good, inventive and funny, and there's a moment when things slow down enough to let Jackie talk about why he loves making movies where we're reminded of his genuine charisma and how good he can be given a chance to play it straight.

Sometimes you can say that the rest of the movie is worth it for those good bits, but this isn't one of them; it's a bit that could fit in many other movies and have the whole thing be much better. Tiger Wolf Rabbit Stuntman Marnie Frenzy Rumours The Fall Kensuke's Kingdom Panda Plan

Friday, October 18, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 18 October 2024 - 24 October 2024

Happy "no more Smile 2 trailer" day to those who celebrate!
  • The preview disappears because Smile 2 hits theaters, with Naomi Scott as a pop star who is menaced by the killer expression or entity that makes people smile or whatever this series's deal is. It's at Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, The Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening pretty wide is We Live in Time, with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield as a couple who meet cute when she hits him with her car, have a kid, and then face a cancer diagnosis. It's at the Coolidge, the Somerville, Boston Common, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill; it expands to South Bay next weekend.

    While his returning to a character after 35+ years is still playing in theaters, Michael Keaton does a new riff on Mr. Mom after 40+ years, which means that Goodrich has him seeking help from the daughter from his first marriage (Mila Kunis), and if that doesn't make you feel old enough, it's written & directed by by Hallie Meyers-Shyer, who is, yes, the daughter of Nancy Myers and Charles Shyer. It's at Boston Common and Causeway Street.

    Exhibiting Forgiveness plays Boston Common and South Bay, with André Holland as an artist on the rise whose addict father arrives and disrupts his life.

    Two new animated films get one-show-at-Boston-Common-a-day releases you have to work around. Gracie & Pedro: Pets to the Rescue has a couple of pets lost during a move trying to find their family (with some fun folks doing supporting voices), while Kensuke's Kingdom has a shipwrecked boy trying to survive alone - although maybe there is some other presence on the island after all.

    Hocus Pocus is now apparently a holiday tradition, getting a run at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and South Bay.

    Several concert films this week: Taeyong: Ty Track in Cinemas at Boston Common Saturday; Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party at the Kendall and Boston Common on Sunday, Whitney Houston: The Concert for a New South Africa at Assembly Row on Wednesday; and Tears for Fears Live: A Tipping Point Film at Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport on Thursday.

    Back to the Future Part II gets 35th anniversary shows on Saturday & Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards (Monday only); Saw plays Boston Common and South Bay Sunday & Wednesday for its 20th. There's a Screen Unseen preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row on Monday. There are previews of Memoirs of a Snail at the Seaport on Tuesday and Assembly Row on Wednesday, the latter with a livestreamed Q&A. The A24 x Imax showing at South Bay, Assembly Row on Wednesday is The Witch, while Longlegs also returns to Boston Common, the Seaport, and South Bay with a prerecorded Q&A (and preview of The Monkey) on Wednesday & Thursday, and Boston Common also shows Black Phone on Wednesday . Some of the Imax Venom: The Last Dance early shows on Thursday are "Opening Night Fan Event" presentations, including at South Bay and Assembly Row.
  • Rumours opens at Landmark Kendall Square, with the directing team of Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson attacking the G7 Summit with zombies, with the heads of state played by a group including Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Roy Dupuis, and Charles Dance. It's also at West Newton, Boston Common, and South Bay, which means absolutely unsuspecting people will be hit with Maddin-level weirdness.

    There's a "Landmark First Look" on Monday; a Tuesday Retro Replay of Election with a (livestreamed?) Q&A of Alexander Payne, Reese Witherspoon, and Matthew Broderick; and a Wednesday Fright Night Retro Replay of Gremlins.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre also opens a couple in the 14-seat GoldScreen. The Goldman Case comes from France and chronicles a pivotal trial of the 1970s where a left-wing activist was accused of murder and the fallout divided the country on partisan and racial lines, and documentary Leap of Faith follows a group of American Christian leaders at a retreat in Michigan.

    Last call for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at midnight on Friday, well, for a while, at this location. Friday's 35mm Corman midnight is Tales of Terror, while Saturday has a 35mm print of William Friedkin's Director's Cut of The Exorcist on screen #1 and Dinner in America on screen #2, including a (very late) post-film Q&A with director Adam Rehmeier and producer Ross Putman.

    Sunday afternoon includes a Panorama screening of Invisible Nation with director Vanessa Hope and producer Ted Hope discussing their film about Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's sitting president (and the first woman to have the job). There are two "Schlock and Awe" screenings of The Tingler in Percepto! on Monday (the 70m show including a seminar by Mark Anastasio), and a 35mm Big Screen Classic show of Eyes WIthout a Face on Thursday.
  • Relatively quiet week for new Indian movies with Diwali less than two weeks away, with Malayalam thriller Bougainvillea the only new release at Apple Fresh Pond. Held over are Tamil-language Vettaiyan (also at Boston Common), Jigra (Hindi), and Janaka Aithe Ganaka (Nepali); Devara: Part 1 returns for one Telugu-language show Saturday night.

    The week's Chinese movies are Stand By Me, with Karry Wang as a homeless teenager who bonds with an abandoned child played by Zixie Guan, and Panda Plan, with Jackie Chan playing "movie star Jackie", who winds up paired with a baby panda that has poachers or animal smugglers or something after him. Both are at Causeway Street.

    Vietnamese horror film The Sisters opens at South Bay.

    In anime, My Hero Academia: You're Next! continues at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row; Look Back stays around at Boston Common. Gundam Fest also continues with Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday, with Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space on Wednesday.
  • The Brattle Theatre has a 35mm presentation of An American Werewolf in London at 3:30pm Friday They also have Stop Making Sense Friday & Saturday nights and Sunday morning for… Well, they don't particularly need a reason. They've also got locally-made Captain Dymo vs. The Cowmaster, shot on 16mm film in the mid-1970s but only put through post-production recently, on Saturday afternoon. RPM Fest presents Sasha Waters: "Labor and Parts" on Sunday afternoon.

    Those are mostly scheduled around the back half of Roger Corman: King of Cult, which also features some of the art-house films he imported: The Student Nurses & Caged Heat Friday, a single bill Amarcord on 35mm Saturday, a double feature of Chopping Mall & Piranha later Saturday; Autumn Sonata on 35mm Sunday afternoon; Rock 'n' Roll High School & Suburbia Sunday evening; Galaxy of Terror & Battle Beyond the Stars on Monday; Stripped to Kill on Tuesday; The Slumber Party Massacre & The Slumber Party Massacre II on Wednesday; and a 35mm print of Death Race 2000 on Thursday to wind things up.
  • The Harvard Film Archive begins a new series this weekend, António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Nuovo, with Belarmino & Campos's short "The Tuna Trap" (Friday 7pm), Change of Life (Friday 9:15pm), Paths (Sunday 3pm), Vilarinho das Furnas (Sunday 7pm), and a double feature of Campos's Falamos de Rio de Onor & Gente de Praia da Vieira on Monday evening; the Sunday and Monday evening shows will have conversations with José Manuel Costa and Haden Guest. Saturday, they have two "Psychedelic Cinema" shows: Kenneth Anger's shorts "Lucifer Rising" & "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome" on 16mm film at 7pm and Alejandro Jddorowsky's El Topo on 35mm film at 8:30pm.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a bunch of live events in the big room over the weekend, which means even Saturday's midnight show - Onur Tukel's serial killer flick Poundcake - is downstairs. Sunday's Attack of the B-Movies double feature is surprisingly good, though, with Vincent Price in House on Haunted Hill & The Last Man on Earth. Independent documentary Holding Back the Tide, which examines the oyster as a onetime major New York industry and queer icon, also plays Sunday afternoon, with director Emily Packer and writer/producer Josh Margolis on hand for a Q&A. On Monday, though, they start a three-day run of North by Northwest on 70mm film. On Thursday, they show the 2024 Quality Ski Time packages of short films.

    The Capitol has a specia screening of Empire Waist with a Q&A featuring director Claire Ayoub as well as a book signing and sample sale. Thursday's Creature Double Feature is Frankenstein & The Bride of Frankenstein. The Friday Fourth Wall show features Cal Fish, Forbes Graham, Leathe Projection, and Rachel Devorah with visuals by Black Tourmaline.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts hosts The Boston Palestine Film Festival with The Teacher on Friday, Life is Beautiful and Aida Returns on Saturday, and a short film package on Sunday. Sunday evening, they present "speculative documentary" Lyd at the Coolidge; experimental short "Familiar Phantoms" is paired with documentary feature Three Promises at the MassArt and Design Center Monday; documentary No Other Land plays The Regent Theatre on Wednesday; and featurette "From Ground Zero (Part 1)" plays the Brattle on Thursday.
  • The Seaport Alamo continues showing the new restoration of Tarsem Singh's The Fall, which also plays at the Coolidge. The Alamo also has The Shining Friday, Saturday, and Monday; World of Animation shows of Coraline (2D, I think) on Sunday & Tuesday; Cronenberg's The Brood on Monday; and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors on Tuesday & Wednesday
  • Movies at MIT has The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Full Body Cast for free on Friday (they will, as usual, be at Boston Common on Saturday), although the email suggests you give them a head's up if you're not part of the MIT community.
  • The Museum of Science will be showing Coco on the Omni screen for two weekends, starting on the 25th.
  • The Lexington Venue has Rumours, Saturday Night and The Apprentice Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday. Locally produced family Halloween movie The Hay Man plays Saturday, and Nosferatu has another Radiohead-synced show on Thursday.

    The West Newton Cinema has a fancy new website that shows them getting Rumours and Blink while keeping Saturday Night, The Apprentice, White Bird, Lee (no shows Saturday/Sunday), The Wild Robot, and The Substance. The Halloween movie for Wednesday is The Purge: Election Year, and they've got Jeff Rapsis in on Thursday to accompany Nosferatu.

    The Luna Theater has Terrifier 3 Friday and Sunday; Creepshow on Saturday; Roger Corman's The Raven on Sunday (presented by Poe in Lowell and with local horror host Penny Dreadful for the 2pm show); a Weirdo Wednesday show; and a free presentation of Election from UMass Lowell's Philosophy department on Thursday.

    Cinema Salem has Smile 2 Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday; A Nightmare on Elm Street Friday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday, The Monster Squad Friday/Saturday/Sunday (plus doc Wolfman's Got Nards on Sunday); The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Friday/Saturday/Sunday; Rocky Horror with Teseracte Players on Saturday; Halloween '78 Saturday/Wednesday/Thursday, a potential Universal Monsters triple-feature of The Wolf Man, Dracula, and Frankenstein on Wednesday; then another on Thursday Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Creature from the Black Lagoon (plus Dracula in the same slot as Frankenstein).

    If you can make it to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they have Allswell in New York, about three Nuyorican sisters played by Elizabeth Rodriguez, Liza Colon-Zayas, and Daphne Rubin-Vega; it seems to have kicked around a bit since playing Tribeca in 2022.
  • Someone hit the "suddenly cold" button, so consider the two outdoor screenings on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week at your own risk There's the Vancouver INternational Mountain Film Festival at the MIT open space on Friday and BeetleJuice on the Rose Kennedy Greenway on Thursday. There's also an RSVP-required show of Made in Germany? at the Harvard Art Museum on Sunday and a BU Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival presentation of The Animal Kingdom on Thursday, with author Victor Dixen on-hand (who doesn't seem to be connected with the film but is a top French sci-fi/fantasy author).
AMC is not making it easy to see both Panda Plan and Kensuke's Kingdom if you work, so I guess that settles my late afternoons this weekend. Aside from that, Rumours and North by Northwest are top priorities, and maybe I'll do the Keaton double feature of Goodrich and the oddly-delayed Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Friday, October 11, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 11 October 2024 - 17 October 2024

Some interesting decisions on what's coming out this weekend - a ton of animation, studios doing it themselves (or not), was the previous release a trial run or always intended as a preview…
  • Piece By Piece, an animated biography of Pharrell Williams done in the style of The Lego Movie - and directed by Morgan Neville, who has done a fair number of biographical documentaries - plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), and Arsenal Yards.

    Getting a full release from the jump rather than the prior film sticking around after some smaller bookings, Terrifier 3 has Art The Clown attacking his town on Christmas Eve; it's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.

    The cheekily-named The Apprentice, with Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump learning the ropes from Ray Cohn (Jeremy Strong), opens at the Coolidge, Kendall Square, West Newton, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill.

    Saturday Night opened at Boston Common last week and expands to the Coolidge, the Somerville, West Newton, the Lexington Venue, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill this week.

    Returning for a regular run after a couple special shows, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story showcases Reeve's recovery after paralysis. It's at Boston Common. Arsenal Yards is the latest stop for the 50th Anniversary tour of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

    The Nightmare Before Christmas makes its regular October returns to theaters at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including RealD 3D), South Bay (including RealD 3D). Boston Common also has Coco as this week's Hispanic Heritage show.

    Boston Common, semi-randomly, brings back Daddio for a Monday/Tuesday shows. Happy Death Day plays Boston Common on Wednesday. On Thursday, the remastered Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party, seldom seen since its original airings on MTV 40 years ago, plays Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row.
  • My Hero Academia: You're Next!, the latest (and supposedly final) entry in the popular anime series, plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row; check for subbed or dubbed times. Interestingly, Toho itself is distributing it in America, like they did with Godzilla Minus One; and I wonder if they're going to be more active bringing movies directly to North America like Indian/Korean/Chinese studios or if they're just cutting out the middleman for big franchises.

    I'm not sure whether the Sunday/Monday screenings of anime Look Back were meant to be a preview, but it gets a regular release at the Coolidge, the Capitol, and Boston Common. Gundam Fest also continues with Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Wednesday.

    Some big-ish imports this weekend: Hindi-language action movie Jigra, opens at Fresh Pond and Boston Common, starting Alia Bhatt (whom you might remember from RRR) as a woman out to rescue or avenge her brother; Hindi-language comedy Vicky Vidya Ka Woh Wala Video, also at Fresh Pond and Boston Common, stars Triptil Dimri and Rajkummar Rao as a couple whose "home movie" gets stolen (maybe an uncredited remake of 2014's Sex Tape, maybe not); Vettaiyan, the new movie starring Superstar Rajinikanth, opened Wednesday with Tamil and Telugu showtimes at Fresh Pond and at Boston Common in Tamil; Telugu-language drama Janaka Aithe Ganaka and Nepali drama Chhakka Panja 5 also open at Apple Fresh Pond.

    Chinese thriller Tiger Wolf Rabbit continues at Causeway Street.

    Korean concert film/doc Jung Kook: I Am Still returns to Boston Common and the Seaport in a "Party Edition" that includes an extra 20 minutes of sing-along footage; another, Taeyong: Ty Track in Cinemas, plays Boston Common Wednesday.
  • Landmark Kendall Square has the new film from Quentin Dupieux, Daaaaaali!, with Anaïs Demoustier as a journalist intending to make a documentary about Salvador Dali (played by six different actors) which never quite comes together.

    Wednesday's Fright Night Retro Replay is Blade.
  • Holy crap, The Birthday plays The Somerville Theatre from Friday to Sunday! I saw this at Fantasia in 2005 and it just fell through the cracks for twenty years, despite being a fun dark comedy with a weird but intriguing lead performance by Corey Feldman (released by Drafthouse Films, but apparently too weird for the Seaport Drafthouse). They also have Don't Let the Riverbeast Get You!, a locally-produced cult film from 2012, on Friday, and the first of two screenings of the original F.W. Murnau Nosferatu this October on Saturday, with the New England Film Orchestra premiering Al Kryszak’s new score. The week's Hitchcock presentations are Marnie on 35mm film Tuesday and the new 4K restoration of Frenzy on Thursday. On Wednesday, they've got a premiere of Portland, Maine-shot Hangdog, with writer/director Matt Cascella and star Desmin Borges in person.

    The Capitol picks up The Substance, and has The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Teseracte Players on Saturday, including a dance party hosted by Double Feature and a pop-up arcade. Sunday's 4th Wall show is Cat Ridgeway & The Tourists, Johnny Manchild & the Poor Bastards, and Bullpup, but no visual artist listed). Thursday's Creature Double Feature is The Wolf Man & Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
  • On top of the new releases, The Coolidge Corner Theatre continues Friday midnight screenings of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, with a 35mm print of The Raven (an adjunct to the Brattle's Corman series) and a digital restoration of Phantasm on Saturday Saturday and Sunday mornings also have a program of Little Kid Flicks, as the Coolidge serves the whole community. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Interview with the Vampire, Tuesday's Castle gimmick show is 13 Ghosts in Illusion-O, while Wednesday's 35mm print of John Waters's Polyester is in Odorama, while Thursday offers both Big Screen Classic I Married a Witch and Cult Classic It Follows
  • The Brattle Theatre begins its two-week salute to Roger Corman: King of Cult: The Little Shop of Horrors & A Bucket of Blood (the lottery on 35mm) Friday night; a 35mm twin bill of X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes & House of User on Saturday; a special anniversary show of Cockfighter with a special video intro from Kier-La Janisse for the late show Saturday; a triple-feature of Gas! Or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It, The Wild Ages, & The Trip on Sunday; Boxcar Bertha (35mm) & Dementia 13 on Monday; a 35mm print of Targets on Tuesday; and Ride in the Whirlwind & The Shooting on Wednesday.

    They've also got screenings of Sundance's Indigenous Film Tour on Sunday and Monday, and host opening night of the Boston Asian-American Film Festival with All That We Love on Thursday, with filmmaker Yan Tan on hand Thursday.
  • The Harvard Film Archive has a shortish weekend with the Monday holiday, mostly Melville et Cie, with the director's Magnet of Doom and the new restoration of Le samouraï on Friday, plus Jacques Becker's Le Trou on Sunday. Between, on Sunday, they have a Psychedelic Cinema show of 2001: A Space Odyssey on Saturday evening, preceded by Jordan Belson's "Allures" on 16mm film.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has Eraserhead as the Friday night Cult Classic, plus Global Cinema Now shows of Io Capitano on Saturday afternoon and Auction on Sunday
  • The Seaport Alamo has Wes Craven's original A Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday & Wednesday, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre Saturday Afternoon, Miyazaki's Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro on Sunday & Monday,.Shaun of the Dead Monday & Tuesday (the former a Movie Party show), a BeetleJuice movie party on Tuesday, and Tarsem's newly-restored The Fall on Tuesday & Wednesday (and next weekend)
  • Movies at MIT has Blade Runner 2049 on Friday and Saturday, $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 Museum of Science will be showing Coco on the Omni screen for two weekends, starting on the 25th.
  • The Lexington Venue has Saturday Night and The Apprentice all week besides Monday. Documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion has an encore show on Saturday, and Nosferatu on Thursday, synchronized to the music of Radiohead.

    The West Newton Cinema gets Saturday Night and The Apprentice, continuing, Joker 2, White Bird, Lee, The Wild Robot, and The Substance (no show Tuesday). The Halloween movie for Wednesday is the musical Little Shop of Horrors.

    The Luna Theater Terrifier 3 Friday to Sunday; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Saturday; the original Nosferatu synced to Radiohead on Saturday; John Carpenter's original Halloween on Saturday and Sunday; documentary Magic Trip, introduced by Brian Hassett (who will interview "Merry Prankster" George Walker via Zoom afterward); a Weirdo Wednesday show; and a free presentation of Pelo Malo from UMass Lowell's Department of World Languages and Cultures on Thursday.

    Cinema Salem has Joker 2 and A Nightmare on Elm Street Friday to Monday and Wednesday/Thursday, plus more Halloween programming: From Dusk Till Dawn as Friday's Night Light show; Blade Friday and Sunday; Halloween '78 Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Saturday & Sunday; a full day of Universal Monsters Sunday (Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Bride of Frankenstein); and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Wednesday & Thursday.
  • Just Poltergeist on the Rose Kennedy Greenway for outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week (it's getting chilly); also listed are Made in Germany? with filmmakers at the Harvard Art Museum on Saturday and Messidor showing at BU as part of the Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival on Wednesday.
May as well see Le Samourai again after Magnet of Doom on Friday, and also penciling in the midnight for The Birthday, Le Trou< and Marnie. Boxcar Bertha is probably my only Cornman-series thing, and the choice of Frenzy and I Married a Witch/It Follows on Thursday is tough.

Friday, October 04, 2024

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 October 2024 - 10 October 2024

It's kind of nice to have a couple movies you don't care about come out when you're a little bit behind and coveting the rep stuff
  • Joker: Foile à Deux is that big opening film, with Lady Gaga joining Joaquin Phoenix as the Harley to his Joker as they do musical numbers ahead of the trial for all the mayhem that closed the previews film. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & Spanish subtitled shows), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.

    Also opening is oddity White Bird, a spin-off of Wonder that has a secondary character from that film learning of his grandmother's escape from occupied France during World War II; it has apparently been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years but plays West Newton, Boston Common, and Assembly Row.

    Saturday Night, chronicling the lead-up to the first episode of Saturday Night Live opens at Boston Common this week and will expand to Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, Chestnut Hill next week.

    Monster Summer, a spooky adventure with Mason Thames as a teenager whose friends try to save their island town from some paranormal incursion, plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay. Supporting cast includes Lorraine Bracco, Kevin James, and Mel Gibson.

    Three different movies grabbing kind-of-crappy showtimes at Fresh Pond to say they've played Boston: Aussie animated film Scarygirl also has a kid trying to save her island home, although she's a half-octopus mutant in this case. Goebbels and the Führer actually seems to have some pedigree, as the German film cuts between dramatizations and documentary interviews of survivors. And The Problem with People features Paul Reiser and Colm Meaney as cousins from opposite sides of the Atlantic meeting in Ireland to try to bury a generations-long family feud.

    Furious 7 plays Boston Common as part of Latino Heritage month.

    There's an early screening of We Live in Time on Saturday with a livestreamed Q&A featuring Florence Pugh & Andrew Garfield, who seem to be pretty good interviews, at Kendall Square, the Seaport, and Assembly Row. AMC theaters at Boston Common, Causeway Street, Assembly Row have a "Screen Unseen" preview on Monday. Mean Girls has a 20th anniversary encore at South Bay and Arsenal Yards on Sunday. Boston Common has Insidious: Chapter 2 on Wednesday. There are double features of Terrifier 2 & Terrifier 3 at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay on Thursday to mark the latter opening
  • Documentary Blink, in which a family whose children are facing the rapid deterioration of their eyesight decides to take a trip around the world to make sure they see everything they can, plays Landmark Kendall Square, Boston Common, Arsenal Yards. Also opening at the Kendall, the Capitol, Boston Common, South Bay is The Outrun, with Saoirse Ronan as a young woman returning to Scotland's Orkney Islands after crashing in London.

    The Kendall also has a pre-recorded Q&A with Sam Mendes after Tuesday's Retro Replay screening of American Beauty. On Wednesday, they have documentary Daytime Revolution, which looks at the week John Lennon & Yoko Ono took over the Mike Douglas show, and Fright Night Retro Replay Deep Blue Sea.
  • Indian imports at Apple Fresh Pond opening Friday are Telugu-language Swag and Malayalam-language comedy Thekku Vadakku. Marathi-language comedy Navra Maza Navsacha 2 plays Saturday afternoon. The new Superstar Rajinikanth action/crime movie, Vettaiyan, opens Wednesday with Tamil and Telugu showtimes at Fresh Pond and Tamil shows at Boston Common.

    Held over are Telugu adventure, Devara Part 1 (at Fresh Pond and Boston Common), Tamil-language family drama Meiyazhagan, and Tamil comedy Lubber Pandhu.

    Chinese thriller Tiger Wolf Rabbit opens at Causeway Street.

    Anime Look Back has an unusual release, with full slates at the Coolidge, Boston Common, the Capitol, and Assembly Row (the latter two with one show daily) on Sunday and Monday; it's an hour-long featurette about two rival teenage comic artists who become friends. There are fewer shows for rock & roll comedy Bocchi the Rock!, which plays Sunday to Tuesday at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row. And there's an "AXCN Gundam Fest" encore of Mobile Suit Gundam subtitled at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row on Sunday.

    Korean cop thriller I, The Executioner (aka Veteran 2) continues at Causeway Street.

    Thai comedy How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies continues at Causeway Street.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Lee in the smaller rooms. They also have three screenings of Pulp Fiction on a new 35mm print on Sunday afternoon and Wednesday & Thursday evenings.

    For midnights, Fridays during October will be The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on Fridays, while the other screen ties in with the Brattle's Corman series, in this case The Pit and the Pendulum. Saturdays are less themed; this week's is The Omen '76. There's also a Science on Screen show of The Babadook on Monday, "Schlock and Awe presentations of House on Haunted Hill (in Emergo!) on Tuesday and Matinee on 35mm Thursday. There's also Open Screen on Tuesday.
  • In addition to picking up A Different Man, The Somerville Theatre starts their Halloween programming by booking The Forest Hills through Monday; the indie horror film features supporting turns by Dee Wallace, Edward Furlong, and Shelley Duvall, whose cameo is her final role and her first in 20 years. For those wanting more of Duvall, isolation, and horror, they have The Shining at midnight Saturday. The week's "Bit of Hitch" shows are Rear Window Tuesday and The Birds on Thursday, both on 35mm film.

    The Capitol has their first Creature Double Feature of Spooky Season on Thursday, with the Boris Karloff version of The Mummy and Claude Rains as The Phantom of the Opera.
  • The Brattle Theatre has Six Films by Jan Egleson this weekend, including his "Boston trilogy", with the filmmaker in person for many if not all shows. The films are Billy in the Lowlands (Friday/Saturday), The Little Sister (Saturday), The Blue Diner (Saturday/Sunday), The Dark End of the Street (Saturday), Big Time (Saturday), and Lemon Sky (Sunday).

    Also showing this weekend are two anniversary re-releases that are coming around for a second round: Shaun of the Dead show up in a new 35mm print on Friday afternoon, late Saturday and Sunday, and then all day Monday, while a new 4K restoration of Dazed and Confused plays late Friday.

    For the work-week, they have three nights of "Transness in Cinema" tied to the new book by Caden Mark Gardner & Willow Maclay. Tuesday offers a double feature of The Silence of the Lambs - 35mm with the authors on-hand - and T-Blockers; Wednesday pairs Sleepaway Camp & I Saw the TV Glow; and Thursday celebrates Edward D. Wood's 100th by pairing Tim Burton biopic Ed Wood with the director's Bride of the Monster.
  • More Melville et Cie at The Harvard Film Archive , with Jules Dassin's Rififi on 35mm film (Friday), Bob le Flambeur (Friday), The Second Wind (Saturday), The Silence of the Sea (35mm Sunday afternoon), and Les enfants terribles (35mm Sunday evening). There's also a Psychedelic Cinema entry on Saturday evening, One Step Away and another new 35mm print made for Japanese studio Shochiku's Centennial, Where Spring Comes Late, which is Yamada Yoji working with the same cast as his first Tora-san movie on a different story. Andrew Gordon and ALex Zahlten will have a post-film conversation.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has Cult Classic The Craft on Friday evening and The Boy and the Heron as part of "Global Cinema Now" on Saturday afternoon..
  • The Museum of Science has three free screenings of A Million Miles Away, a documentary on the life of NASA flight engineer José Hernández - from a small village in Mexico to the International Space Station, on Friday and Saturday as part of Hispanic & Latinx Celebration Weekend. Reservations required.
  • The Seaport Alamo has the last of the Harry Potter movies that have been all over their schedule with Deathly Hallows Part 2 playing Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. Don Coscarelli's original Phantasm plays Monday, and there's a preview of Piece by Piece with a live-streamed Q&A from Pharrell Williams & Morgan Neville on Tuesday.
  • Movies at MIT has The Boy and the Heron on Friday and Saturday, $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 Regent Theatre has more screenings of the 2024 edition of Manhattan Short on Friday & Sunday. Sunday also has Music for Mushrooms with pre-film meet-ups with psychedelic advocates and a post-film Q&A with producers Christopher Seward & Lewis Kofsky.
  • The Lexington Venue has A Different Man and Lee Friday to Sunday and Wednesday to Thursday. They also have two documentaries: Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion plays Wednesday and 76 Days Adrift on Thursday.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Joker 2, White Bird, and Lee, keeping The Wild Robot, The Substance, Between the Temples, Sing Sing, and Inside Out 2. The movie this Wednesday is John Carpenter's They Live, and former Boston Globe/Watch List newsletter critic Ty Burr hosts Rear Window on Thursday.

    The Luna Theater shows The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; the original Nosferatu synced to Radiohead on Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday; The Front Rom on Saturday; a free presentation of the documentary Gaza hosted by the Lowell DSA on Sunday; and a Weirdo Wednesday show.

    Cinema Salem seems to be using fewer screens but more days with Joker 2 and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Friday to Monday and Wednesday/Thursday (no BB> Thursday). Halloween '78 plays Saturday and Wednesday, Interview with the Vampire plays Sunday, and Blade on Wednesday and Thursday. It's also the start of Universal Monsters season with Creature from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein onSunday and The Wolf Man on Wednesday.

    Wolfs is still going for another week at the Showcase in Dedham.
  • Outdoor films on the Joe's Free Films calendar this week are The Craft at the Speedway on Tuesday and Ghostbusters on the Rose Kennedy Greenway for "Fall Fright Nights" on Thursday. They also list three documentaries at Harvard's Tsai auditorium with filmmakers present or video-calling in afterward - Tiananmen on Friday, The Forced Migration of Butterflies Tuesday, and Prime Meridian on Wednesday; Anatomy of a Fall and Four Daughters showing at BU as part of the Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival on Monday and Wednesday, respectively.
Man, can we trade some Joker showtimes for what's at Fresh Pond to be at reasonable times? No? Fine, then a bunch of Melville, Rear Window, Where Spring Comes Late, and seeing if I can fit in The Outrun, 3D Wild Robot and maybe Tiger Wolf Rabbit