Friday, November 01, 2024

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

Awards season starts with the Fall Focus in Boston.
  • After the Friday-afternoon matinee of Out of the Past on 35mm, The Brattle Theatre is all in for the IFFBoston Fall Focus for the weekend, with Eephus and Devo Friday; The Seed of the Sacred Fig, All We Imagine as Light, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and Bird on Saturday; and Flow, Nickel Boys, Gaucho Gaucho, Hard Truths, and A Real Pain on Sunday, with the fest heading up the Red Line for its close on Monday.

    There's a free 35mm "Elements of Cinema" screening of Fright Night on Monday evening, and then after that they give folks a chance to chill out with 35mm shows of The Muppet Movie Monday to Wednesday.
  • The new film from Robert Zemeckis, Here, reunites him with Forrest Gump writer Philip Roth and stars Tom Hanks and also has him toying with form in that the whole film is shot in the same location (a suburban living room) and the same angle, covering the life of the family that lives there and then some. It's at Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.

    Absolution, with Liam Neeson as another career criminal having a crisis of conscience and trying to reconcile with his family, plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.

    Boston Common seems to be the only place on the T playing Juror #2, possibly Clint Eastwood's final film, which stars Nicholas Hoult as the title character, who realizes that the trial he's been selected for is judge whether someone else is guilty of a crime he committed.

    Animated film Hitpig! is based on Berkley Breathed's children's book Peanut & Pickles, with Jason Sudeikis voicing a porcine bounty hunter who does have the heart to bring the escaped elephant (voice of Lily Singh) that he's been assigned to track. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and South Bay. Also opening for kids is Lost on a Mountain in Maine, the sort of family adventure Disney used to make, following a kid struggling to survive on Mt. Katahdin while the community mounts a rescue. That plays Fresh Pond.

    Anora, already at the Coolidge, Kendall Square, Boston Common; expands to the Somerville Theatre, the Seaport, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill this week, with Causeway Street coming next week. White Bird returns to theaters, playing Causeway Street and Arsenal Yards.

    Mostly late shows at Fresh Pond for Director's Cut, in which a punk band looks to shoot a music video but the director (Louis Lombardi) is a psycho.

    Coraline plays in RealD 3D at Boston Common and South Bay on Friday. Boston Common has an extra screening of Rocky Horror on Friday evening, in addition to the usual Saturday night show. There are early shows of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill on Saturday. John Wick has 10th anniversary shows at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday. Between the Temples returns to Boston Common for a mini-run Sunday to Tuesday. Boondock Saints has 25th anniversary shows at Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Thursday.
  • Netflix movie Emilia Pérez opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and the Seaport; it's a musical about a former drug cartel leader looking to restart her life. The Coolidge has in in 35mm for certain shows through Wednesday; it's got to share a screen with the 35m print of Anora, which plays house #1 in 35mm through Tuesday.

    The Coolidge also opens two independent films with special events: High Tide has Marco Pigossi as an undocumented Brazilian immigrant in Provincetown, with Pigossi on hand for a Q&A Friday evening. They also open Dahomey, a documentary which examines the return of various artifacts from a Paris museum to modern Benin. It's mostly matinees, but there is a special "Panorama" screening with experts on art curation and repatriation on Friday evening.

    Midnights in November feature David Lynch, with a 35mm print of Eraserhead on Friday and one of The Elephant Man on Saturday. Noirvember starts Sunday afternoon with Rebecca, with a post-screening discussion featuring Northeastern professor Nathan Blake up in the Engagement Center afterwards. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Robert Altman's 3 Women. Thursday features another screening of The Tingler in Percepto (do they wire up different seats each time, or do folks know which one tingles by now?), and a 35mm Cult Classic 35mm presentation of Blade Runner (the "final cut"). They also start a five-week "Behind the Screen: Analyzing Film from the Makers' Perspective" on Tuesday evening.
  • Memoir of a Snail plays Landmark Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport. It's an Australian stop-motion film with Sarah Snook voicing an eccentric girl (she's really into snails) trying to cope with everyday life. Eric Bana and Jacki Weaver co-star, as they must in an Australian film.

    The Retro Replay at Kendall Square on Tuesday is Harold and Maude
  • The Seaport Alamo begins a Wong Kar-Wai run of "Seaport Selects" with Days of Being Wild Friday to Sunday. They also have Election (Payne/Witherspoon/Broderick, not To & Yam) Friday/Saturday/Tuesday (cute), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Friday/Monday/Tuesday, The Great Dictator Saturday, They Live Saturday/Tuesday, The Parallax View Sunday, and a Clueless movie party Wedneday.
  • Happy Diwali! In addition to what opened last week to get a jump start on the Indian holiday - . Wednesday has three opening - Telugu-langauge thriller Ka (also at Causeway Street), Telugu-language drama Lucky Bhaskar, Tamil films Amaran (also at Boston Common), Bloody Beggar, and Brother - Apple Fresh Pond also opens.two Hindi-language franchise entries, with horror-comedy Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 (also at Boston Common), an all-star cast of Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Sing, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, and more in Singham Again (also at Boston Common & the Seaport), plus Kannada-language actioner Bagheera.

    Toho brings Godzilla Minus One back to theaters for the franchise's 70th anniversary, getting a full run at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport (including "Minus Color" shows), South Bay, and Assembly Row. For anime, AXCN presents Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday, Monday and Wednesday; aside from being a terrific anime, it's got an all-time great needle drop at the climax.
  • The Somerville Theatre has a 70mm print of Vertigo to wrap their "A Bit of Hitch" series - which was apparently no guarantee, as the previous theater with the print they were supposed to show messed it up good. They keep using the big projector on Monday for the finale of IFFBoston's Fall Focus, running The Brutalist on 70mm film, and who knows if anyone will show it that way during its regular release? On Wednesday and Thursday, they have Warren Miller's 75, the latest package of ski movies in a line dating back to 1950.

    The Capitol has a Friday 4th Wall show featuring Lemon Truth, Today Junior, and Viruette, with Josh Artman on visuals. They also host the Arlington International Film Festival starting Thursday, with opening night film The Books He Did Not Burn (and short "Safety State").
  • The Harvard Film Archive has another weekend of António Campos and the Promise of Cinema Nuovo, with Francisco Valente introducing What Will I Do With This Sword? and Loveless (35mm) on Friday, with Trás-os-Montes playing Sunday afternoon and Wild Stories Sunday evening Saturday is for Psychedelic Cinema, with Antonioni's Zabriskie Point and a 35mm print of Koyaanisqatsi separately; the series wraps on Thursday, with a free 35mm presentation of the Monkees in Head, introduced by Steven Biel and preceded by a 16mm print of James Whitney's "Lapis". On Monday, they have the biggest of Harry Smith's numbered films: Film No. 18 (Mahogany).
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has I Saw the TV Glow on Friday evening.
  • The Regent Theatre presents an AGFA Trailer Show double feature on Friday night, with two programs of trailers pulled from the American Genre Film Archive - The AGFA Horror Trailer Show and The Cult of AGFA Trailer Show - for a total of three-plus hours of preview for films of questionable quality. On Wednesday, they've got the "Girl Winter Film Tour", six shorts celebrating winter sports with poster signings and Q&As with some of the directors and athletes.
  • Boston Jewish Film kicks off their annual festival on Wednesday with The Performance at the Coolidge, featuring a tap-dancing performance at the start and a Q&A with director Shira Piven and co-writer Joshua Salzberg. There will also be filmmakers at the Coolidge for Avenue of the Giants on Thursday, and at the Brattle for the FreshFlix shorts package the same night.
  • Movies at MIT has Superbad 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 to Sunday, and slight spooky season hangover with Halloween '78 and the Radiohead Nosferatu playing late-ish shows Friday and Saturday.

    The West Newton Cinema opens Here, How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, keeping Venom 3, Conclave, We Live in Time, The Goldman Case, The Apprentice (no listing Thursday), The Wild Robot, and The Substance. They also have a preview of Albany Road on Sunday.

    The Luna Theater has A Different Man Friday/Saturday, Music for Mushrooms Saturday, and Dr. Strangelove on Sunday. There's a Weirdo Wednesday show, and Don't Call Me Son, presented by UMass Lowell's Identity and LGBTQ+ Experiences film series.

    As you might imagine, Cinema Salem is not letting Halloween go with a fight, open Friday to Monday with Smile 2, Halloween '78, and Hocus Pocus Friday to Wednesday, and A Nightmare on Elm Street Saturday to Wednesday. They also host the Happenstance Horror Fest on Saturday, with two blocks featuring three short-film packages each.

    If you can make it to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they have Chasing Chasing Amy, a documentary on the impact Kevin Smith's film had on a queer kid in a small tow, and; The Carpenter, an action-oriented take on the Christian gospels (Jesus apparently had a Viking carpenter's apprentice).
  • Joe's Free Films calendar shows one BU Albertine Cinematheque French Film Festival shows this week, Colette and Justin on Wednesday.
Tough balance between catching up and getting ahead this weekend with IFFBoston 2024.5 doing the same sort of insane 15-minute-turnaround-despite-intros-and-people-loitering normally only seen for BUFF. I'll probably go with most of that, 35mm evening at the Coolidge Tuesday, and maybe fit Juror #2 and Godzilla Minus One Minus Color in there somewhere.

Also, looking ahead to next week, two of my favorites from this year's Fantasia Fest are coming and it's nuts that the weird French sci-fi flick Meanwhile On Earth is getting a real run at Boston Common while the easy-to-sell wall-to-wall action of 100 Yards gets one show in the Seaport.

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