Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 24 October 2025 - 30 October 2024

For my money, it's the peak of "streamers flood indie theaters for two months because they crave awards-based legitimacy" season!

• The most obvious example? Guillermo del Toro's new Frankenstein, featuring Oscar Isaac as Victor and Jacob Elordi as the Creature, is playing The Coolidge Corner Theatre on 35mm for most shows (check for screen #1) It's also playing at WEst Newton, Kendall Square (part of the October Netflix 4-pack), and the Seaport. By all accounts, both one of the most faithful adaptations and one of del Toro's best!
  
  Also on 35mm at the Coolidge (for all shows on screen #2) is Bugonia, the new from Yorgos Lanthimos. It's an adaptation of Jang Joon-hwan's Save the Green Planet!, with Jesse Plemons as the man who believes the Earth is being invaded by aliens and that an executive played by Emma Stone is one of them. It also plays Boston Common.
  
  From another streamer, sort of (MUBI plays nice with theaters, but the streaming site is their backbone) is The Mastermind, the new one from Kelly Reichardt starring Josh O'Connor as a carpenter turned art thief in 1970s Massachusetts Also at West Newton and Boston Common.
  
  Spooky stuff at the Coolidge includes Rocky Horror at midnight on Friday, the 24-hour 35mm Halloween Marathon at midnight Saturday (kicking off with The Creature from the Black Lagoon in likely-anaglyph 3D and An American Werewolf in London, but you won't know the next nine hours until they run), plus A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night on Sunday afternoon, The Substance on Tuesday, the 2021 Candyman remake with a half hour of shorts by Manual Cinema (whose work is featured in the film and whose The 4th Witch opens at ArtsEmerson the next night), Elvria: Mistress of the Dark for Rewind! (with after-party) Thursday, and then Scary Movie later that night for the cult classic. There's also a kid's show of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Saturday morning, Ed Wood (with Ingrid Stobbe seminar) Monday, and a sold-out preview of It Was Just an Accident also on Monday.
• Regretting You stars Mckenna Grace as a teenager whose mother (Allison Williams) had her when she was roughly her daughter's age, now getting involved with the cutest boy in school just before a fatal auto accident rocks their entire extended family. Director Josh Boone directed The Fault in Our Stars and it's from a novel by Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us). Opening at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  More male-and-boomer coded is Bruce Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, with Jeremy Allen White playing The Boss as he conceives/records Nebraska when Born in the USA seems to be going a bit too well. It opens at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax through Sunday), West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby CInema), Arsenal Yards (CWX), and Chestnut Hill. Apropos of nothing, Gaby Hoffman is in this and The Mastermind, despite it seeming like a decade since I've seen her in anything.
  
  Crowdfunded horror movie Shelby Oaks stars Sarah Dunn as a woman looking for her long-lost sister and possibly discovering a monster from their childhood. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Extremely fun queer zombie movie Queens of the Dead, which looks at drag night at a gay bar during the outbreak, plays Boston Common. Katy O'Brian stars and George Romero's daughter Tina directs.
  
  Sundance film Last Days has director Justin Lin going back to his indie roots after 15 years being mostly in the Fast & Furious business, featuring Sky Yang as a missionary attempting to convert the residents of a remote island while authorities try to present it from ending in disaster. It's at Causeway Street.
  
  Platform releases starting out at Boston Common this weekend before opening wider include Blue Moon, with Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, trying to get through former partner Richard Rogers (Andrew Scott) having the biggest hit of his career without him (also at the Capitol, Lexington Venue, and West Newton); Bugonia, and The Mastermind.
  
  British animated family-friendly Frankenstein story Stitch Head has preview shows at Boston Common and Arsenal Yards on Sunday afternoon before opening Wednesday.
  
  Also opening Wednesday at Boston Common: thriller Anniversary, starring Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler.
  
  K-Pop concert/doc TWICE: One in a Mill10n plays Boston Common and Assembly Row Saturday/Sunday, while G-Dragon: Ubermensch plays Boston Common Wednesday/Thursday and Assembly Row Wednesday (Imax Laser); Depeche Mode: M plays Boston Common/South Bay/Assembly Row Tuesday (Imax Laser) to Thursday (regular DCP those days). Arsenal Yards has Carpenter's Halloween Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday. A remastered ParaNorman plays Boston Common (RealD 3D) Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday, South Bay (RealD 3D) Saturday; There's a mystery preview Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row, and a non-mystery preview of Nuremberg with live-streamed Q&A at South Bay on Monday; Violent Ends also has a preview on Tuesday. Terrifier plays Boston Common Wednesday. The Twilight movies plays Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, starting Wednesday with the original and New Mon on Thursday, and continuing into the weekend.
• The trailers for Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc have been interesting, as they seem to be trying to sell it separately to folks who didn't know Chainsaw Man was a really popular manga & anime and to big fans. Either way, it gets a big opening, playing at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), and Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), in both subtitled and dubbed shows across most formats/locations. The last big anime hit, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, continues at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  The big guns opened for Diwali last week, but Apple Fresh Pond opened Hindi-language romance Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat on Tuesday with little early fanfare, as did Hindi-language vampire comedy/adventure Thamma (also at Boston Common). Bengladeshi action movie NeelChokro (aka Neel Charkra) plays Saturday & Sunda afternoons, and RRR director S.S. Rajamouli's blockbuster 2-parter Baahubali has been edited into one four-hour "epic" cut playing (at least) Thursday and next Friday in both Telugu and Hindi at Fresh Pond and playing Boston Common in Hindi on Wednesday (Imax Laser), and opening there and South Bay in Telugu on Thursday (including Dolby Cinema at Boston Common).
  
  Tamil-language comedy Dude continues at Fresh Pond; Telugu-language drama K-Ramp continues at Causeway Street; Telugu-language romance Telusu Kada is held over at Causeway Street; Kannada-language adventure Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 continues at Causeway Street.
  
  Chinese drama Sound of Silence continues at South Bay.
• The Brattle Theatre opens the weekend with Gods and Monsters on 35mm for the Friday Film Matinee, and then jumps into the GlobeDocs Film Festival, with a full slate of feature documentaries (and a local shorts program Sunday morning), all with filmmaker Q&A moderated by Boston Globe journalists.
  
  After that, they begin "Halloweek", which includes German vampires of the 1970s with Jonathan and Lady Dracula on Monday, and Tenderness of the Wolves on Tuesday; a free Elements of Cinema show of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors on Tuesday; a Shudder Triple Feature of Tigers Are Not Afraid, Oddity, and Mandy on Wednesday; and The Crow on Thursday. That's the late show, because Thursday also begins the second leg of IFFBoston's Fall Focus with The Secret Agent.
• The Seaport Alamo has Rocky Horror on Friday, The Lost Boys on Saturday, a Fleischer Halloween Party on Sunday, 28 Days Later on Monday, and Day of the Dead '85 on Tuesday.
• The Capitol Theatre hosts The Arlington International Film Festival on two screens from Friday to Sunday, and pick back up on Capitol 100 screenings (and get spooky) with The Pit and the Pendulum on Thursday.
  
  The Somerville Theatre has One Battle After Another on 70mm Saturday & Sunday afternoon, and return to Halloween Hullaballoo activities with The Omen on Monday, a double feature of Ghostbusters on 70mm film and Re-Animator on 35mm Tuesday, a 35mm double feature of The Witches of Eastwick & Wolf on Wednesday, and another 35mm twin bill of Copycat & The Silence of the Lambs on Thursday.
• The Museum of Science has Can I Get a Witness? with filmmaker Q&A as part of The Boston Asian American Film Festival on Friday Tron: Ares on Saturday.
  
  BAAFF also has virtual programming available through Sunday.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has The Boston Palestine Film Festival shows of A State of Passion on Friday and Happy Holidays on Sunday. The Museum kicks off the Boston Turkish Festival's Documentary/Shorts Competition with One of Those Days When Hemme Dies on Thursday.
• The Harvard Film ArchiveIs a bit less frantic this weekend, but still trying to make up for a little lost time. On Friday, they have two more by Mikio Naruse on 35mm film - Older Brother, Younger Sister at 7pm and Hit and Run at 9pm. Marta Mateus visits with her new film, Fire of Wind, on Saturday and a previous work, "Barbs, Wastelands", on Monday, playing with Manoel de Oliveira's "Bread". Later that evening, the Archive has rescheduled her third curated program, anchored by Robert Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc and also including shorts "En rachâchant" and "Saute ma ville". In between, on Sunday, they have I Accuse! on 35mm film as part of "Gore Vidal Goes to the Movies" in the afternoon and Hong Sangsoo's The Woman Who Ran in the evening.
• The Regent Theatre has music documentary Life on the Other Planet on Friday night, with an opening live performance by The Nervous Eaters, one of the bands featured. On Wednesday, they have the Girl Winter Film Tour, six short films of women in winter sports.
• Landmark Kendall Square has Halloween-y Retro replays including the director's cut of Tom Savini's 1990 Night of the Living Dead (Sunday/Monday), the American The Ring (Tuesday), and 28 Days Later (Wednesday).
• Movies at MIT has Rocky Horror in 26-100 on Friday with gag bags on sale and Full Body Cast accompanying (they will, as usual, be at Boston Common on Saturday). Remember to give them a head's up if you're not part of the MIT community.
• Last outdoor movie of the year? Joe's Free Films has Halloweentown on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening.
• The Lexington Venue has Blue Moon and Springsteen all week but Monday. There's also a free Saturday morning show of Quatermass and the Pit, plus documentary Four Winters with director Julia Mintz on Sunday afternoon.
  
  The West Newton Cinema celebrates what would be Jack Lemmon's 100th birthday with his children and grandchildren this weekend, with Days of Wine and Roses on Friday, The Apartment with post-film reception Saturday afternoon, the Lemmon clan in attendance for Some Like It Hot Saturday evening, and The Odd Couple on Sunday afternoon, introduced by Lemmon's son Chris and Walter Matthau's son Charlie (via Zoom) They also open Blue Moon, Frankenstein, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, and The Mastermind, also keeping Orwell: 2+2=5, Fairyland, A House of Dynamite, and Eleanor the Great. Hotel Transylvania plays Sunday morning, while documentary Death & Taxes plays Tuesday with posto-ffilm discussion.
  
  So much Halloween at Cinema Salem:Black Phone 2 (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), Ginger Snaps (Friday Night Light), The Lost Boys (Friday to Sunday), Halloween (Friday/Saturday/Wednesday/Thursday), Hocus Pocus (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), 28 Days Later (Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday), The Exorcist (Sunday), and Universal Monsters: Frankenstein Friday, Bride of Frankenstein Friday, Dracula Friday/Saturday, The Mummy Sunday,. The Blob is the Wednesday Classic plus a Werido Wednesday show.
  
  Out at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they've got Dream Eater, an "Eli Roth Presents" found footage movie with a filmmaker documenting her boyfriend's violent sleepwalking.

Man, that's a lot, and not a super-obvious place to fit Frankenstein and Bugonia in while they're on 35mm (although I suspect that will be a few weeks at the Coolidge), plus The Mastermind, Last Days, and maybe Blue Moon as potential short-timers, plus at least The Witches of Eastwick among the rep.

(Oh, and follow me on my Letterboxd page)

Film Rolls Season 2, Round 03: Prodigal Sons and Lau Kar-Leung x3 (+1)

Crap, there's an eight-month gap in here. How does that even happen? I really do want to get through this wall, but, nope, just adding to it while doing other stuff.

Way back in January, Dale rolled a 9 getting her to The Prodigal Son, one of Yuen Biao's most popular movies from the 1980s.

A couple days later, Centipede would roll a 4, which got him to Arrow's Lau Kar-Leung box set, but it would be March before I started in on it with Challenge of the Masters, then Executioners from Shaolin in April, Heroes of the East in September, and Dirty Ho in October. Which is crazy, even though there are three entire film festivals in there covering a whole month and attempts to catch up writing which led to me not hitting the shelf. Obviously, I have a problem with making movie-watching projects into writing projects .

So, how did all this time treat the players?

Baai ga jai (The Prodigal Son)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 January 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Arrow Blu-ray)
Seen 18 October 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Arrow Blu-ray)
Where to stream it, or buy the disc at Amazon

This is kind of a weird one, especially the first time through, as the filmmakers make some abrupt transitions and tone shifts, like they've got a good outline that doesn't always work in detail, but you can see the ambition there. A second time through, it works a bit better, especially after watching some of the Shaw Brothers films this evolved from. The comedy's goofier, but the greater themes are closer to the surface.

The man of the title is Leung Chang (Yuen Biao), the son of a wealthy merchant whose father pays martial artists to lose to him in street brawls, lest he get injured; he doesn't find out he's really bad at kung fu until friends ask him to take on Leung Yee-Tai (Lam Ching-Ying), an opera singer in female roles who is actually a master. Chang finagles his way into the troupe to attempt to learn from him, but winds up revealing Tai to Ngai Fei (Frankie Chan Fan-Kei), another enthusiast looking for a fight, eventually requiring a retreat to heal and train with Tai old friend and rival Wong Wa-po (Sammo Hung Kam=Bo).

I spent a bit of time looking up what the "home video cut" on this disc was (apparently, the same thing except with actor credits up front rather than as they appear), which was how I learned that it was apparently a prequel to Warriors Two; I suspect may explain the big weird jump in the middle where Leung and Ngai flee the circus and wind up at the home of Wong Wah-bo without much in-film work to connect them at all. I thought it was cut for time, but apparently it just wouldn't have been necessary for the Hong Kong audience. It's an odd and unusual shift - the film had just finished ramping up from mostly-comic to deadly-serious, and then it's getting slapstick and goofy again.

Sammo Hung and company do an impressive job of balancing whimsy and cruel violence here, though, better than should be possible. It's an especially nice showcase for Yuen Biao, who gets to play comic and earnest to start and shift his fighting to match. Biao never became quite so famous in the West as schoolmates Jackie Chan and Sammo, but his physicality here is impressive - he doesn't pratfall as the inexperienced student who doesn't really know kung fu, but he's a bit sloppy, and one can see him tightening that up as the film proceeds to its final confrontation. The last act nicely underlines the parallels between Chang and Ngai, both scions of rich families whose patriarchs take pains to insulate them from defeat. There's maybe not a particular lesson in this, but it's something that gives a little extra heft to a situation where both the comedy and violence could be hollow.

Liu A-Cai yu Huang Fei-Hong (Challenge of the Masters)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 March 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)
Seen 18 October 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Arrow Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

Every once in a while, I wonder what Wong Fei-Hung's defendants think of his status as a folk hero, his life being rewritten to fit a story's needs, perhaps because you can't tell a story in this era without referring to him. He's such a legend that every martial arts movie in the mid-1800s must be a Wong Fei-Hung movie, even if they're not really Wong Fei-Hung movies.

In this one, Wong Fei-Hung (Gordon Liu Chia-Hui) is presented as a teenager who loves martial arts despite his father's refusal to teach him, especially the annual "Pau Battle", an annual free-for-all where the various schools compete to collect tokens launched from fireworks. But there's more going on, as Yuan Ching (Lau Kar-Leung), who studied under the same master as Fei-Hung's father Kay-Ying (Chiang Yang), Lu Ah Tsai (Che Kuan-Tai), has arrived in pursuit of a fugitive (Lau Kar-Leung) who has embedded himself in a rival school. He sees Fei-Hung's natural aptitude, but may not be prepared for how desperate and deadly his quarry is.

At its best, Challenge of the Masters contemplates the question of what martial arts is for and the journey to understanding it; Gordon Liu plays Won Fei-Hung as a shallow kid who only sees the respect and action, and his attempts to force himself into the Pau battles without the requisite training are immature and dangerous, though maybe not arrogantly so, but is later forged into a righteous weapon of justice and vengeance. If Liu is a bit stiffer at this point, it's fine; it plays like he's mastered his rage, an exclamation point to how his performance evolves over the long stretch of training.

Director Lau Kar-Leung's action is on point throughout; there's an edge to the violence, with the way that the Pau battles get out of control a warning about how dangerous undisciplined martial arts can be, and he imbues his villain with a nastiness that is both confident and cowardly. It's what makes the final duel between him and Liu's Wong Fei-Hung so satisfying; it's a fast-paced fight where we've see that both can do damage, but we can see the earnest purpose to what Wong has become. Lau's He Fu is too skilled to be afraid, but his vibe is different.

The story is thin as heck; the Pau contest feels a bit like stuffing, a great spectacle tied to the more substantive story, but it reinforces things well enough. Like a lot of Lau's output (and that of writer I Kuang), it's a movie built to show the action with other stuff going on, but it runs smoothly in doing so.


Hong Xi Guan (Executioners from Shaolin)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)
Seen 19 October 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Arrow Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

I'm not sure exactly how this fits in with Chang Cheh's Shaw Brothers Extended Shaolin Temple Universe, though it doesn't really matter that much, other than how one can't necessarily help but think of the timeline and history throughout.

It picks up as the Temple burns, and Pai Mei (Lo Lieh) sends the governor's forces to ideally capture the fleeing monks, hoping they can be tortured into revealing the locations of others. After Tong Qianjin (Gordon Liu Chia-Hui) buys them some time to escape, Hong Xiguan (Chen Kuan-Tai) and his friend Xiaohu (Cheng Kang-Yeh) are among those taking refuge on the red boats, disguised as opera troupes. In one village, street performer Fang Yung Chun ("Lily" Li Li-Li) objects to their arrogance, but soon she and Hong are spending all their time together. But while they travel and perform, Pai Mei is consolidating his power, and it's not long after the couple marry that soldiers mount an attack on the red boats, sending them further into hiding.

Executioners has the feel of something that is based around history and/or legends and has been sort of messily cobbled together and then pushed to be irreverent, and I sometimes wonder if the legends retold in these martial-arts epics need an environment where both they and the creators can breathe. It's one thing to say someone trains for years in anticipation of a decisive fight in a serialized novel, but another when two or ten years occur between shots but only one character is being recast and the visual changes are too minor to really feel like time has passed. Often, "he trained for years" is used as a shorthand for it being very important but the other impact isn't felt on screen. Warrior monks seemingly only get more powerful and skilled, as opposed to a trade-off between one's technique improving but the body starting to turn.

So against this background, the romance between Xiguan and Yung-Chun is just kind of there, necessary but not passionate, the "comedy" is mostly abrasive, and the preparations for/fights against Pai Mei tend to be about hitting specific weak spots rather than strategy: The finale could be about the value of knowing multiple styles versus attempting to hone one to perfection, but that's mostly mentioned in passing. The big fights are, of course, good stuff, even if Pai Mei's signature move is apparently to let people kick him in the nuts so that he can grasp their foot with his groin and drag them around. The fights are good, of course, although the early ones with their desperation top the later ones with their silly rules


Zhong hua zhang fu (Heroes of the East)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 September2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

This and the other Lau Kar-Leung movie on the second disc of the box set are kung fu comedies that feel like they were completely dispensing with any pretense that the kung fu was just part of these movies' appeal or a way of telling the story. Here are guys who know how to fight, this story says, some wacky situations, and then let's go.

In this case, the wacky situation has Ho Tao (Gordon Liu Chia-Hui) objecting to an arranged marriage with a childhood friend - the daughter of one of his father's Japanese business associates - until he sees that Yumiko (Yuka Mizuno) is gorgeous. It turns out she shares his interest in martial arts, though her studies have naturally tended toward Japanese forms, and she quickly moves to monopolize the estate's training grounds. Eventually, Yumiko returns to Japan, where she reacquaints herself with old friend (and ninjutsu expert) Takeno (Yasuaki Kurata), who brings an entire brace of Japanese martial artists to challenge Tao.

The back half especially is one duel after another, more or less completely arbitrary, without much in the way of dramatic stakes once one sees that Tao and Yumiko have more or less put their issues behind them. But, hey, it works; the movie's a ton of fun. I wish that I knew a bit more about Hong Kong/Japan relations in the late 1970s, because in some ways this movie has a weird tension underneath: The arranged marriage eventually becomes reasonably warm, but while Ho Tao is initially described as just being pretty good at martial arts, he defeats a whole bunch of masters of various Japanese disciplines. Lots of movies and other bits of pop culture will try and walk a line where one is earnestly interested in and admiring of a foreign culture but with the unspoken assumption that one's own is better, although, hey, some of these folks are old enough to be WWII vets (and I've seen a lot of recent Chinese movies very focused on Japan as a sadistic occupying army), and one can't help but wonder what the thinking is here.

The long string of duels kind of overwhelms anything going on between Tao and Kumiko, which is a bit of a shame; one can see how the couple can be fun once they're a bit less at odds, and Cheng Kang-Yeh is kind of obnoxious fun as the servant who enjoys stirring the pot. The various Japanese martial-arts masters are kind of one-note aside from Yasuaki Kurata's Takeno, but they're generally entertaining notes. I'm a bit surprised that Yuka Mizuno seems to have had quite a short career - only two other films after this one - and while she's sort of rough as an actress, one can see potential enough to make one wonder what her story is.

Heroes of the East could be a really fun kung fu romantic comedy, but it's just focused on the fights. It's a very entertaining fight movie, and that's enough.


Lan tou He (Dirty Ho)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 October 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

Treating this as a bonus, since I have seen the film before, though it's been nearly 20 years since it played on film at Fantasia. I reviewed it at the time, although, yikes, is my writing and general familiarity with Asian genre film rough. Can't claim to be too much of a kid, either, at 32.

Ah, well. It was still a real kick to revisit . For all that "Dirty Ho" probably didn't have the same meaning at the time, it's full of winking innuendo to start, and Gordon Liu Chia-Hui is a real delight as the jewel merchant who is eventually revealed as more, cool and confident but eventually revealing the burden of his position - too decent, really, to want to be king, which ultimately makes him the only acceptable choice. He's a fun pairing with Wong Yu's title character - it's not quite a buddy movie, as it winds up too much a master-student situation - but Wong really finds a nice comic groove as someone half scammer, half put-upon, and manages to keep it even as the stakes get higher.

Good fun.


Not counting Dirty Ho because it's a re-watch, that gets both our players up to six movies, and nearly tied:

Dale Evans: 17 ¾ stars
Centipede: 17 ½ stars

Now, let's hope the next rolls don't get bogged down!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 17 October 2025 - 23 October 2024

Last call for VistaVision OBAA at the Coolidge!

• Black Phone 2 returns the original cast, as the kidnap victim from the first is drawn into a bigger mystery. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), CinemaSalem, Causeway Street, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The new film from Luca Guadagnino, After the Hunt, stars Julia Roberts as an academic who is shaken when a student (Ayo Ebediri) makes accusations against a colleague (Andrew Garfield). It's at the Coolidge (35mm for most showtimes), the Capitol, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Good Fortune features Aziz Ansari as a down-on-his-luck gig worker who swaps lives with a tech bro played by Seth Rogen thanks to a well-meaning but naive guardian angel (Keanu Reeves). Nice cast including Sandra Oh and Keke Palmer; pity about Ansari doing that Saudi comedy festival. The film plays the Somerville Theatre, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Truth & Treason follows idealistic teenagers in Nazi Germany attempting to expose the regime's lies. It's atFresh Pond, Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  
  Grow, about a kid who grows very large pumpkins, is a week-long Fathom release at Boston Common and Causeway Street. French animated film Falcon Express is dubbed into English and released as Pets on a Train, and if one of the pets trying to help a racoon stop a runaway stop a runaway train is not voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and tired of snakes, I'll be very disappointed; you know he'd take the paycheck. It's at Fresh Pond.
  
  The disturbingly rapid booking of films celebrating Diane Katon are Something's Gotta Give and Annie Hall at Boston Common..
  
  There's a mystery horror movie preview Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row; documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, directed by son Ben, also plays Boston Common on Monday K-Pop concert/doc TWICE: One in a Mill10n plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row Monday (except Assembly)Tuesday/Thursday; Concert film Mitski: The Land plays Boston Common, Kendall Square, and the Seaport Wednesday & Thursday.. In re-releases, The Last Dragon plays Boston Common Sunday/Monday/Wednesday; St. Elmo's Fire plays Boston Common Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday; The Corpse Bride is at Arsenal Yards Monday/Tuesday; Misery is at Arsenal Yards Tuesday/Wednesday; Scream '96 plays Boston Common and Assembly Row Wednesday; Nightmare Before Christmas also plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, Assembly Row (all in RealD 3D) on Wednesday. Some of the Thursday night shows of Regretting You at Assembly Row and Chestnut Hill are billed as "A Night of No Regrets" with a streamed Q&A.
• Not only do they have One Battle After Another and After the Hunt on film, but The Coolidge Corner Theatre also opens If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, which features Rose Byrne as a woman spiralling under pressure from an ailing child and absent husband (it's also at Boston Common). Also opening at the Coolidge and Boston Common is Urchin, directed by Harris Dickinson and starring Frank Dillane as a young man living on the margins of London.
  
  Spooky Coolidge midnights this weekend are the original A Nightmare on Elm Street on Friday and Scream on Saturday; while Art House of Horror shows include Wener Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre on Sunday afternoon, Under the Skin Tuesday evening, and both The Devil's Backbone and Child's Play 2 on Thursday, the latter in 35mm with co-star Christine Elise. Sunday morning's Geothe-Institut German film is Köln 75, following the chaotic process of staging a concert that became one of the best-selling live albums in history. Monday's Science on Screen show (marked sold out) is Cracking the Code: Phil Sharp and the Biotech Revolution, with Sharp as one of several speakers.
• Landmark Kendall Square opened Ballad of a Small Player, with Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, and Fala Chen on Wednesday. Horror Retro Replays include Psycho on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, plus Sleepy Hollow on Tuesday, and The Birds on Wednesday.
• Happy Diwali! Apple Fresh Pond and the plexes have a bunch of new movies for the season. Opening early were Telugu-language comedy Mithra Mandali (also at Causeway Street) and Tamil-language comedy Dude (also at Causeway Street, both with Telugu-language shows); joining them this weekend are Telugu-language romance Telusu Kada (also at Causeway Street), Telugu-language drama K-Ramp (ALSO Causeway Street), Tamil-language sports movie Bison: Kaalamaadan, and Tamil-language gang flick Diesel (through Sunday). Opening Tuesday at Fresh Pond and Boston Common is Hindi-language vampire comedy/adventure Thamma. Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 continues at Causeway Street (showtimes in Kannada) and Boston Common continues Hindi-language romantic comedy Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari.
  
  Korean animated fantasy adventure Exorcism Chronicles: The Beginning opens at Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  Pakistani horror film Deemak opens at Boston Common.
  
  Chinese drama Sound of Silence, about a lawyer who takes a case against Deaf defendants despite his own family background, plays South Bay.
  
  I swear Spirited Away already played as part of Ghibli Fest this year, but maybe it's just a thing that's always going on now. At any rate, the film plays Boston Common and Assembly Row Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday (dubbed) and subtitled Monday/Tuesday. For more contemporary anime, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid: A Lonely Dragon Wants to Be Loved plays Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row Monday. There's also a Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc preview for Crunchyroll subscribers at Boston Common (Imax Laser), Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Wednesday before it opens wide over the weekend. Two other anime continue: The 4K remaster of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue at Boston Common and Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• The Brattle Theatre has Hal Hartley's newest film, Where to Land, through Wednesday; it stars Bill Sage as a writer who applies for a job as a cemetery custodian, which leads to everyone he knows thinking that he is dying and rushing to celebrate his life. They also have Sinners for the late show Friday to Monday.
  
  On Saturday afternoon, they host the premiere of Massachusetts Avenue: Life Along Cambridge's Main Artery, with director Federico Muchnik in person. Sunday has the RPM Fest presentation of "Jean Sousa: Today is Sunday", with the artist in person. Andrew Bujalski visits on Monday with There There, a film made during the height of the pandemic with each cast member shot separately and their performances later edited together. Alice HOffman visits on Thursday to present a 35mm print of Practical Magic, including a new deluxe edition of her original novel.
• The Seaport Alamo picks up A House of Dynamite, which makes me wonder if Netflix brass are annoyed that people are seeing it in theaters. They also have The Corpse Bride Friday to Monday, Rocky Horror on Friday (it's at Boston Common with Full Body as usual on Saturday), Fright Night '85 Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday; Creepshow (regular show Saturday/party show Sunday). There's also a preview of Bugonia with streamed Q&A Sunday.
• The Capitol Theatre has From Russia with Love on Friday, and West Side Story on Saturday, as part of Capitol 100. On Thursday, they open The Arlington International Film Festival with a shorts program and German documentary Tourist.
  
  The Somerville Theatre plays a new 70mm print of Close Encounters of the Third Kind Friday to Sunday, with Hungarian comedy Gone Running also playing Sunday. They also kick off their Halloween programming with a new 4K restoration of The Fog Monday & Tuesday and Mad Monster Party? on Wednesday. Note that this means only certain shows of One Battle After Another are in 70mm, although they plan to continue using the large print whenever they can.
• The Museum of Science has Tron: Ares in the Omni theater Friday & Saturday for the next few weeks.
• The Museum of Fine Arts is the main hub for the The Boston Palestine Film Festival, opening with a sold-out show of Thank You for Banking with Us! on Friday and showing shorts programs on Saturday & Sunday.. The festival also has stops at the Coolidge for Passing Dreams on Saturday, the Brattle for documentary Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk on Tuesday, and MassArt for "7ajar", a program of short films produced by the eponymous collective.
• The Boston Asian American Film Festival is at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Center through Sunday, including a Saturday encore presentation for Friday's sold-out centerpiece film Love, Chinatown.
• The Harvard Film Archive has re-opened and is doing their best to reschedule everything canceled during the previous two weekends. They have two programs curated by Marta Mateus - Program IV on Friday evening is anchored by Weird Woman and includes shorts "Les magiciens de Wanzerbé" and "A Corner in Wheat", while Sunday evening's Program V has short "Revolução" preceding The Law of the Land. Friday night also features Mikio Naruse silent Apart from You, preceded by his "Flunky, Work Hard!", while two more play Monday (No Blood Relation and Street without End), all on 35mm and accompanied by Robert Humphreville. Saturday afternoon has a free-with-Harvard ID double feature of WHere Is the Friend's House & The 400 Blows the latter (plus a Chuck Jones cartoon) on 35mm film. The "Ultimate Cut" of Caligula screens on 35mm film Saturday night, with Leslie Morris introducing it as part of "Gore Vidal on Film". Sunday afternoon offers a free double feature of Steve McQueen's Small Axe films Alex Wheatle and Education.
• Movies at MIT has Your Name in 26-100 on Friday & Saturday; and would appreciate a head's up for attendees who aren't part of the MIT community.
• Definitely getting cold now, but Joe's Free Films shows Twilight playing on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening, "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" in Cambridge's Raymond Park on Saturday, and Pride & Prejudice at MIT Open Space on Thursday.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week but Mondaywith A House of Dynamite, Fairyland and Good Boy Friday to SUnday & Thursday. There's also a free Sunday morning show of The Changeling.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Orwell: 2+2=5 and Fairyland, keeping A House of Dynamite, Kiss of the Spider Woman, One Battle After Another,*Eleanor the Great,*Gabby's Dollhouse, and *Downton Abbey. There's Andrzej Zulawski's Cosmos on Friday, two documentaries s on Sunday - a "Best of Fests" presentation of Remaining Native and The Last Twins with post-film discussion - and both King Vidor's The Crowd and the Universal Monsters Frankenstein on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem opens Black Phone 2 (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), and continues to offer all the Halloween rep, with The Exorcist (Friday/Saturday/Sunday), Carpenter's Halloween (Friday/Saturday), Hocus Pocus (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), Psycho on Sunday (with a Whodunnit? Show set on the Psycho lot the same afternoon), The Lost Boys (Wednesday/Thursday), and Universal Monsters: The Mummy Friday/Thursday, DraculaSaturday/Wednesday, Creature from the Black Lagoon Saturday/Thursday, Bride of Frankenstein Sunday, The Wolf Man Sunday/Thursday. There's also a special event on Monday ("Haxan: The Witch as Muse") which combines live music, the silent film, and a witch-inspired perfume. House of Wax is the Wednesday Classic (with an encore Thursday), plus a Werido Wednesday show.

Feels like a lot, but I'm kind of iffy on some; I'll probably do Close Encounters, The Fog, and the Netflix movies; not sure about what else might fit in. And I'll also probably stop into the movie poster sale at the Somerville Theatre on Saturday afternoon, even if I don't have many hanging right now.

(Oh, and follow me on my Letterboxd page)

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 10 October 2025 - 16 October 2024

Ah, it's "streamers pretend they care if people see their movies because they're contractually obligated to give theatrical releases" season!

• As such, Netflix is releasing A House of Dynamite, the new Kathryn Bigelow thriller starring Idris Ela as the President and Rebecca Ferguson as the National Security Advisor responding to the unthinkable situation of a nuclear strike on the United States with no clear evidence for who ordered it, at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, West Newton, and the Lexington Venue.
  
  Midnight slashers at the Coolidge this weekend are Prom Night on Friday and a 35mm print of The Prowler on Saturday. At the other end of the day, there's an hour-long package of "Little Kid Flicks" at 10:30am Saturday & Sunday mornings. Sunday morning also features a Goethe-Institut presentation of two episodes of miniseries ZEIT Verbrechen, "December" and "Love by Proxy", with "December" director Mariko Minoguchi on-hand for a Q&A. Other rep this week includes "Art House of Horror" presentations of Diabolique '55 Sunday afternoon, Possession Tuesday evening, and Kwaidan on Wednesday evening; The Phantom of the Opera (1925) with a live score by Invincible Czars on Monday; Open Screen on Tuesday; Peeping Tom as the Big Screen Classic Thursday evening, and a 35mm print of Earnest Scared Stupid as the Cult Classic later Thursday night.
• Kind of fun: Greta Lee co-stars in both Dyanmite and Tron: Ares, which has Jared Leto as a Program spawned into the real world as disposable holographic mercenaries, although one wants to become a real boy. No Bruce Boxleitner (who played "Tron"), but Jeff Bridges shows up, as does Jodie Turner-Smith and Gillian Anderson. Gets a bunch of big screens, playing the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), the Museum of Science (Omnmax Friay/Saturday), Boston Common (including Imax Laser 2D/3D 7 Dolby Cinema 2D/3D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D/3D & Dolby Cinema 2D & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Roofman looks cute, with Channing Tatum as a good-natured escaped convict hiding out in a big-box toy store for months, becoming fond of its employees, especially the one played by Kirsten Dunst. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Also opening is Kiss of the Spider Woman, with Bill Condon directing a musical starring Diego Luna and Tonatiuh as cellmates, with the former retelling his favorite movie (starring Jennifer Lopez) in order to remain sane. It's at the Coolidge, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendall., and Assembly Row.
  
  There's also Soul on Fire, about an injured boy relying on his "family, faith, and community", with John Corbeett as the father, William H. Macy in there, and Sean McNamara as the director (and, honestly, I kind of want to know what the deal is with McNamara doing just a huge amount of stuff that seems to run the gamut from crud to sincere mediocrity to big in the conservative/faith community). It plays Boston Common, and Assembly Row.
  
  Fairyland, a Sundance 2023 film just finding distribution now, features Emilia Cooke as a young woman reminiscing about growing up with her gay father (Scoot McNairy) in the 1970s and 1980s; hope Geena Davis isn't just in a couple scenes as the mother who dies young! It's at Boston Common.
  
  A Nightmare on Elm Street plays Arsenal Yards Friday to Sunday; The Dark Crystal plays Boston Common on Sunday/Monday; Trick 'r Treat plays Boston Common Tuesday/Thursday. There are mystery movies at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Kendal, South Bay, Assembly Row on Monday; plus non-mystery previews of .After the Hunt at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row on Wednesday. Edward Burns's latest, The Family McMullen, revisits The Brothers McMullen (with Connie Britton and Mike McGlone also returning) and plays Wednesday night at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens Orwell: 2+2=5, with I Am Not Your Negro director Raoul Peck delving into the live and impact of George Orwell.
  
  The Kendall also has The Monster Squad for their Tuesday Halloween Retro Replay. Netflix's Ballad of a Small Player, with Coln Farrell as a gambler lying low in Macau pursued by a PI (Tilda Swinton) and offered a way out by a casino employee (Fala Chen), opens on Wednesday; Landmark is offering a four-pack with it, Dynamite, Frankenstein, and Nouvelle Vague for $30 to paid loyalty members.
• Row to Win, with Bo Huang as a small-time crook who returns to his hometown to coach son Adam Fan Chengcheng's crew team, has a kind of big opening for a Chinese movie at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.
  
  Horror movie The Bride stars Rima Thanh Vy as a young Vietnamese woman engaged to a wealthy Thai Man who apparently awakens a vengeful spirit when trying on a heirloom wedding dress. It's at South Bay.
  
  Anime 100 Meters, about a pair of rival sprinters in high school and beyond, plays Boston Common, Assembly Row Sunday to Monday. Two other anime continue: The 4K remaster of Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, plays Boston Common (actually picking up showtimes!), the Seaport, and South Bay. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues at Fresh Pond, Boston Common,Kendall Square, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Quiet-looking week for Indian movies, as Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 continues at Apple Fresh Pond (showtimes in Kannada, Telugu, Hindi, Tamil) at Fresh Pond, Causeway Street (Kannada/Telugu/Hindi), and at Boston Common. Also continuing at Fresh Pond and being picked up by Boston Common is Hindi-language romantic comedy Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari. Telugu-language comedy Mithra Mandali opens at Causeway Street on Wednesday and Tamil-language comedy Dude opens Causeway Street on Thursday (and probably Fresh Pond, but they're not on the site yet).
• The Brattle Theatre starts the weekend with a print of The Shadow for the Friday Film matinee, and then gets back to the IFFBoston Fall Focus series of upcoming releases: If I Had Legs I'd Kick You and The Plague Friday; Arco, Sound of Falling, It Was Just an Accident, and Sentimental Value Saturday; and Next Lffe, My Father's Shadow, Miroirs No. 3, The Mastermind, and Blue Moon on Sunday. More at the end of the month, too.
  
  Monday has the 2025 Sundance Institute Indigenous Films Tour package for matinees, an Open Crafting screening of The Lost Boys with lights up, and the premiere of Dance Freak with filmmakers in person. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, they have Hal Hartley's Long Island Trilogy, with Simple Men (35mm), The Unbelievable Truth, and Trust (35mm) both days (though in different orders), ahead of Hartley's latest next weekend.
• The Seaport Alamo has a (sold out) movie party for The Mummy Friday night, and Steven Kostanski's new Deathstalker movie Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday. The "International Cut" of Lifeforce plays Saturday, and the director's cut of Tom Savini's version of Night of the Living Dead on Saturday and Monday. There's more spooky stuff with The Craft on Sunday, a classic in Sullivan's Travels on Tuesday, and an already-sold-out preview of Frankenstein on Wednesday.
• Very busy Friday at The Capitol Theatre , with 12 Angry Men in the afternoon for the 100th anniversary, Nosferatu with live score by Invincible Czars in the evening, and a 4th Wall show of Equipment, See Through Person, Hey, Ily, Latchkey Kids, and Battle Mode. There's another 4th Wall show on Saturday, with Ringing, Main Era, Vivid Bloom, and visuals by Cool Pics. They're back to the Capitol 100 shows on Thursday with Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. The Somerville Theatre holds steady with One Battle After Another on the main screen in 70mm.
• The Museum of Science adds "Penguins 4-D" to the rotation in the little room starting on Saturday, with Tron: Ares in the Omni theater Friday & Saturday for the next few weeks..
• The main Revolutions Per Minute festival for 2025 continues with three days at the Harvard CAM Lab from Friday to Sunday, featuring nine separate shorts programs, free with RSVP. It wraps at Boston's City Hall on Tuesday with "Sound + Light + Movement", featuring Greg Kelley on trumpet and Lori Goldstein on cello accompanying an hour of silent experimental shorts, although one of their recurring programs will be at the Brattle in a week.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has documentary Minnie Evans: Draw or Die on Friday night and Gosford Park for "Cozy Crime" on Saturday afternoon..
• CineFest Latino 2025 returns for an encore of sorts on Sunday afternoon with Genero: Salsa playing at the City Pavillion in Boston City Hall; director Kamillah Aklaff will be on hand for a Q&A about the film which looks at how queer dancers are using salsa to upend gender norms in Cali, Columbia, the salsa capital of the world.
• The Boston Asian American Film Festival opens at the Coolidge on Thursday with Forge, in which a pair of sibling art forgers find themselves in over their heads when a millionaire hires them for a big job that has more going on that it would appear. Director Jing Ai Ng will be on-hand for a Q&A, and possibly stars Andie Ju and Brandon Soo Hoo (some images have them, some don't).
• Getting chilly out there, but Joe's Free Films shows Goosebumps playing on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening and I Know What You Did Last Summer '97 at the Allston Speedway (courtesy of the Coolidge) on Wednesday.
• Last weekend for The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston's virtual edition (although you may have a month to watch anything you order through Sunday; I'm not totally sure how it works).
• The Harvard Film Archive had another pipe burst last week (wasn't this what they were doing all that work to prevent the past couple summers?), so they will be closed for at least this weekend.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week with A House of Dynamite, plus Anemone and Good Boy Friday to Monday. There's also a free Saturday morning show of Three Days of the Condor and a free showing of Willie on Thursday in honor the 90th birthday of subject Willie O'Ree, the first black player in the NHL.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens A House of Dynamite and Kiss of the Spider Woman, keeping The Smashing Machine, Anemone, One Battle After Another, Eleanor the Great,Gabby's Dollhouse, and Downton Abbey. They show documentary short "An Uncommon Education: The Allen School" with post-film panel discussion on Tuesday, plus The Bostonians for "West Newton Cinema Reads".
  
  Cinema Salemis in full Halloween mode, with Carpenter's Halloween, Casper '95 and Hocus Pocus all playing Friday-Sunday and Wednesday/Thursday. The rep includes a "Miz Diamond Wigfall" presentation of The Shining and a Night LIght show of Dario Argento's Tenebrae on Friday, and two shows of Rocky Horror with Teseracte on Saturday (Full Body as the Common,as usual), The Exorcist Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday, Battle Royale Sunday, and Psycho for the Wednesday Classic (with an encore Thursday), a probably-spooky Werido Wednesday show, and Universal Monsters: Frankenstein Friday & Thursday, Creature from the Black Lagoon Saturday, The Mummy Sunday, Bride of Frankenstein Sunday & Thursday, The Wolf Man Sunday.

The MBTA messing with my attempt to see One Battle After Another in VistaVision last night puts a little more pressure into a week where there are limited times to see various things, since that one is hitting its end of its runs on the big film formats. That's on top of what looked like the only showtime for Deathstalker when I bought my ticket, the various things at Fall Focus which I don't figure will get releases (I'm eying Arco, Next Life, and My Father's Shadow), Forge, and likely short runs for A House of Dynamite. Ballad of a Small Player, Fairyland and Row to Win. I'm kind of crossing my fingers to see if The Bride will hang around a second week, because South Bay is a nuisance on the T. (And, yes, you'll probably see Tron: Ares on my Letterboxd page before a lot of these!)

This Week in Tickets: 29 September 2025 - 2 October 2025 (Don't Know What You're Missing)

Another quiet week.

Still not a whole lot in theaters, plus the first week I really missed having cable TV since dropping it, because ESPN had the Red Sox-Yankees series but no later AL games, the cost probably wasn't worth it. Before that, I opted to stay in Monday in an attempt to get Film Rolls back on track with the next film in a shamefully small box set I've been working through since January, Heroes of the East. It's fun, and I recommend it.

The AL Wild Card Series was the next three days, and instead of watching it, I used the MLB app to listen to it on the radio. Exciting, but a sad ending. Also, even though they were starting at 6pm, and the things to keep the game moving were in effect, it was still tight getting to one of the last screenings of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues at the Coolidge. It was fine.

The thing that surprises me? It lasted a week longer than A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, which was gone from everywhere in two weeks flat despite having a couple bona fide movie stars Disappointed in myself for not supporting it.

Did I take that to heart over the weekend? No! After catching A Writer's Odyssey 2 on Friday night, I did crosswords for most of the next two days.


Hoping to do better next week; watch my Letterboxd account to see if I manage.

Zhong hua zhang fu (Heroes of the East)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 September 2025 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon

I'm planning to write more about this in the next week as I finish the first Film Rolls post in away too long, but it will probably focus on how this and the other Lau Kar-Leung movie on the disc (Dirty Ho) are kung fu comedies that feel like they were completely dispensing with any pretense that the kung fu was just part of these movies' appeal or a way of telling the story. Here are guys who know how to fight, this story says, some wacky situations, and then let's go.

And, hey, it works; the movie's a ton of fun. I wish that I knew a bit more about Hong Kong/Japan relations in the late 1970s because in some ways this movie has a weird tension underneath: The arranged marriage eventually becomes reasonably warm, but while Ho Tao is initially described as just being pretty good at martial arts, he defeats a whole bunch of masters of various Japanese disciplines. Lots of movies and other bits of pop culture will try and walk a line where one is earnestly interested in and admiring of a foreign culture but with the unspoken assumption that one's own is better, although, hey, some of these folks are old enough to be WWII vets (and I've seen a lot of recent Chinese movies very focused on Japan as a sadistic occupying army), and one can't help but wonder what the thinking is here.


Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 October 2025 in Coolidge Corner #5 (first-run, DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or pre-order the disc at Amazon

Logging this on Letterboxd, I noticed that there are at least three other Spinal Tap things between This Is… and The End Continues, treated as in-continuity but not that important for those who missed them. There's a line in there about the band always reforming and returning in some manner or other, but that's kind of a meta as the movie gets. This "series" has always been a more jovial and affectionate poof than cutting satire, and isn't necessarily going to change hats at this point.

Which is maybe a shame because there's the boomer bands that just keep going until they literally lose their senses - Elton John^* is nearly blind, Huey Lewis's last album wound up short because of hearing loss, and Ozzy Osborne performed right up until his death - even though they're also selling their catalogs as estate planning, and nobody in a better position to do it. Instead, they're kind of playing the hits, sometimes literally, during seemingly endless rehearsal scenes, repeating jokes they've made before and settling for smiles of recognition rather than surprising laughs that catch one flat-footed. The funniest bit, perhaps, is Michael McKean's David St. Hubbins having moved into making ringtones and the like; it feels sharp compared to the randomness of what his bandmates are doing before the reunion show happens.

^*That said, his voice is still great when he shows up as a guest star. McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer have always had the chops to make things like Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind credible, but they get outclassed.

I think, to a certain extent, the improvisational nature of these mock documentaries trips them up on occasion. One can occasionally see the kernel of a good idea but no great jokes forming around it. Sometimes that's the joke - Guest's Nigel is earnestly dumb, and his passions are the kind of dumb that they're just going to fizzle out without a proper punchline - but that's different from how they don't quite know what to do with Valerie Franco despite her feeling like a perfect part of the ensemble as the new drummer There are a few pretty decent bits here and there, enough for a matinee ticket or stream, but all too often it's the sort of thing that leaves one torn between wanting these old pros to be as creative as they once were and not begrudging folks who still enjoy performing or those who still enjoy watching them even though their powers are diminished

There's something occasionally kind of sweet about how none of these guys, including and maybe especially Rob Reiner's documentarian, have grown much wiser as they've aged; he's still kind of earnestly delighted to learn all he can about rock & roll and they're still finding pleasure in their eccentricity, not really seeing in resentment. The very fact that they've been doing these bits off and on for 45 years means that there's four or five separate groups of archive footage to pull from, and there's a solidity to it not always present in revived franchises, and that as much as the content of the movie is often disappointing, the group's choice to focus on why nostalgia can be a comfort once you get to a certain age is earnest and pleasant.

A Writer's Odyssey 2

Kind of idly wondering if this will pick up more showtimes during the week, since the Taylor Swift thing basically ate theaters alive this weekend, taking up a crazy number of showtimes and seemingly making scheduling hard. It wasn't exactly a packed house, although it seems to be doing a bit better in China than the movie opening here next weekend, though it's getting stomped by the third movie in Chen Kaige's The Volunteers trilogy during its National Day opening. It's day-and-date, which suggests the first one did okay here.

It's kind of a weird sequel, because it seems like it abandons a lot of the lore of the first one. It's been four years, but it's odd looking at that movie's review and going "oh yeah!" at a bunch of things that were really pushed back or rearranged for this one. If nothing else, it's kind of an interesting way to do a sequel, one you see more often in books than movies, but also more than a bit strange.


Ci Sha Xiao shuo jia 2 (A Writer's Odyssey 2)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 October 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #4 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (eventually) or the first movie (Prime link), or buy the first on disc at Amazon

There's a moment in A Writer's Odyssey 2 where one character reminds another that "remember, they sent me to kill you" and, because I didn't revisit the original before watching this, I was like, right, there was a "they" last time! What happened to them? The funny thing is, it wasn't until re-reading my previous entry before starting this one that I realized that the feeling that the filmmakers (or the original novel The Assassination of the Author) are making things up as they go along doubles once you try to look at the series as a whole.

As the film starts, it's been a few years since Lu Kongwen (Dong Zijian) completed his serialized novel Godslayer by having his author-stand-in character slay the demonic Redmane. Somehow, in the aftermath, a charlatan/hacker going by Cicada (Chang Yuan) took control of Lu's account and is regarded as the true author of Godslayer, and has announced a sequel - but, it turns out, writing is hard, so he wants to work with Lu on it. Lu, meanwhile, is living with Guang Ning (Lei Jiayin), the would-be assassin who has reunited with his daughter Tangerine (Wang Shengdi), running a small restaurant. Lu's mind has been returning to that world of late, where Redmane has resurrected in human form (Deng Chao), and after encountering Lu Kongwen in what Lu thought was just a dream, convinces his world's Kongwen, Tangerine, and Tong Hu (also Lei Jiayin) to join him on a quest to kill the cruel God who apparently is casually writing the deaths of hundreds to highlight the cruelty of the three warlords who are fighting for control - which is to say, the real world's Lu Kongwen.

So, is Li Mu alive again, or still (since one of the genuinely weird things about the ending of the first was that the audience never knew whether the real-world CEO connected to Redmane died when he did)? No idea! There may be one blink-and-miss-it mention of Aladdin Group in the entire movie. Does Guang Ning still have an amazing ability to throw rocks for impossible results akin to Daredevil foe Bullseye? Never mentioned! What is Cicada's whole deal? Not sure, the guy sort of exits without fanfare midway through the movie and doesn't really figure into the story after that, since he doesn't have a Godslayer-world doppelganger - although, for all I know, this sort of online identity theft may be a thing that happens relatively often in China and not a big deal, but it sure seems like he's just a random plot device to knock Lu Kongwen back to dire straits but get him involved again. It's kind of sloppy writing, and even more so when you try to connect to what came before.

That said, it mostly works well enough if one comes in knowing it's a second part but not particularly worried about that. The situation lu Kongwen is in kind of seems iffy, but Dong Zijian gives a surprisingly compelling performance as a man who has briefly tasted success for doing something he loves but has stewed over how it's been taken away from him for the past few years, and see that seep into his cheerful, idealistic avatar. Deng Chao is playing to the balconies as Redname, but nevertheless manages the thing where you can see the heroes going along with him despite his obviously being evil. The crossover between the real world and the fantasy world tends to draw a grin, even when it's being very silly.

Plus, the fantasy world stuff is fairly fun. Once again, it occurs to me after the movie that Lu Kongwen is maybe meant to be the sort of fantasy writer who can really conjure up a nifty image but is kind of terrible at structure, and that's why so much of the stuff in the fantasy world seems kind of slapdash and under-explored, but also quite cool: I love the dragon airships and hope the promised/threatened third movie gives us a whole sequence built around them (as in the first, they are probably a heck of a thing to see in Imax 3D), Redmane can eat people with his hair, and it usually comes at the end of a niftily-staged duel. Returning director Lu Yang is back on the sharp blacks-and-whites aesthetic, but there's room for whimsy in his grimdark world, and the action is pretty good, feeling a bit weightier than other super-powered, CGI-heavy millieus.

Ultimately, though, the story seems kind of messy, and for a movie where the filmmakers are very explicitly saying to note the connections between the fantasy world and the real world, it doesn't seem to be about much in particular. Sure, there are metaphors all over the place - the film very helpfully underlines them - but when it comes right down to it, just what is this writer's odyssey and how is it affecting him? This movie doesn't necessarily have to be about something extraordinarily profound, but the way it bops around from playing one game to another tends to highlight that it's not quite as clever as it wants to present itself as.

Indeed, the mid-credit sequence is a bunch of "hey, this thing that was kind of fun earlier on doesn't really make any sense", hinting at something else that will show up in a part 3 (not sure what, as it involved some unsubtitled text). It's probably just enjoyable enough for me to get a ticket to that threequel when it arrives, although there's a real risk of diminishing returns.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 October 2025 - 9 October 2024

Wow, that Taylor Swift thing is grabbing a lot of showtimes this weekend, and I kind of wonder what other movies might get a couple extra showtimes come Monday.

• That would be Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which includes the music video for "The Fate of Ophelia", behind the scenes material, "lyric videos", and lots of talk about her new album The Life of a Showgirl. It's at the Capitol, the Coolidge, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), and Chestnut Hill through Sunday.
  
  In more conventional releases, there's The Smashing Machine, with Benny Safdie directing Dwayne Johnson as early UFC champion Mike Kerr and Emily Blunt as his wife. It's at the Somerville, the Coolidge, West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax Laser), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Also, welcome back Daniel Day-Lewis, coming out of retirement for Anemone, a drama he co-wrote with son (and director) Ronan. It also features Samantha Morton and Sean Bean, and plays the Coolidge, the Somerville, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Boston Common opens Bone Lake, a thriller where two couples book the same estate for vacation and I gather both definitions of "bone" are in play. Coyotes features Justin Long and Kate Bosworth as a couple trapped in their home by some very large, very smart canids; it's at Boston Common.
  
  There's also a re-release of Avatar: The Way of Water to get you psyched for the new one, playing Boston Common (Imax Laser 3D & Dolby 3D & RealD 3D), Causeway Street (RealD 3D), South Bay (including Imax Xenon 3D), Assembly Row (Imax Laser 3D), and Chestnut Hill (RealD 3D starting Monday). A re-re-lease of 1995's Casper plays Boston Common and CinemaSalem. The Sam Raimi Spider-movies log another weekend at Boston Common and Arsenal Yards (1 Friday, 2.1 Saturday, 3 Sunday).
  
  The Rocky Horror Picture Show gets Dolby Cinema 50th Anniversary shows at 10:30pm Saturday night at Boston Common, Assembly Row, and South Bay (note that Boston Common also have the regular Full Body Cast show at its regular time). BTS re-releases at Boston Common and Assembly Row are 2019's Love Yourself: Speak Yourself and Muster Sowoozoo on Sunday. Documentary Are We Good?, a documentary about comedian Marc Maron, plays Boston Common on Sunday. There are secret previews at Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday; not-so-secret previews of Tron: Ares at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema 3D), Assembly Row (Imax Laser 3D) on Wednesday. The Devil's Rejects plays Boston Common Monday/Wednesday, Friday the 13th '80 plays Boston Common and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
• One of my favorites from this year's Fantasia Festival opens at Landmark Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport: Good Boy, a ghost story where the protagonist is the dog of a man who has moved to an isolated house in the woods after some health issues, and sees something wrong that his human simply can't, but Indy is a Very Good Boy who tries to help.
  
  Kendall Square also starts horror movie Retro Replays this Tuesday with Friday the 13th '80.
• Aside from the major releases (and One Battle After Another in VistaVision), The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens Chain Reactions, which examines the impact of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on pop culture and specific filmmakers, another deep dive from Alexandre O. Philippe, playing late shows. It pairs with a set of midnight slashers, starting with Psycho on Friday night and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre itself on Saturday.
  
  Saturday also sees the start of a monthly "Cinema Masala" series with Diwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, one of India's biggest Bollywood (Hindi-language) hits, starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol set (at least before the interval) on a train trip across Europe. Monday's Big Screen Classic is The Spirit of the Beehive on 35mm film; Tuesday has an "Art House of Horror" screening of Carnival of Souls while Wednesday offers Repulsion; and Thursday's Cinema Jukebox show is Madonna: Truth or Dare.
• The big Indian movie this week is Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1, which opened Wednesday and continues with showtimes in Kannada, Telugu, and Hindi at Fresh Pond and Causeway Street, and in Hindi at Boston Common. Apple Fresh Pond also opens Hindi-language romantic comedy Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari and tamil-language drama Idly Kadai. Fresh Pond also has one last show of Nepali-language comedy Hari Bahadur Ko Jutta on Friday, and They Call Him OG continues at Boston Common and Causeway Street.
  
  Chinese fantasy A Writer's Odyssey 2 picks up a story of a writer discovering his serialized story is real, and plays Boston Common and Causeway Street.
  
  Another anime 4K remaster, Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, plays Boston Common and the Seaport, South Bay. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
• The Brattle Theatre has two from Japan this week: Happyend, which played IFFBoston in the spring, is senior-year high school shenanigans with a nervy edge due to the constant surveillance and general apocalyptic feel; I liked it quite a bit. A more cheery high school story is 2005's Linda Linda Linda, with a high school band flailing after their lead singer quits and is replaced with the Korean exchange student (Bae Doo-Na).
  
  Speaking of IFFBoston, they'll be kicking off their Fall Focus series on Thursday with After the Hunt and Queens of the Dead (which I saw at Fantasia and is quite a bit of fun).
• The Seaport Alamo plays Predators, a documentary examining the To Catch a Predator phenomenon of the aughts, at least through Wednesday, and GoldenEye plays at least one show a day Saturday to Wednesday. There's also Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Saturday, a Scream '96 movie party on Monday, and Closer on Tuesday.
• The Capitol Theatre hosts Midnight Fest, which, really, should have sent me some sort of press release or something before starting back on Wednesday. It runs through Sunday with new short packages, features; (B0dycam, Meat Kills, Donnie Darko); restorations (Ringu, The Changeling, Bad Hiarcut); and Q&As (Lights Out, Hell House LLC).
  
  The Somerville Theatre keeps One Battle After Another on the main screen in 70mm, with Anemone and The Smashing Machine on the others.
• The Harvard Film Archive has one night for each program this weekend: Friday is a new one ("A Terra! The Cinema of Marta Mateus", with the auteur presenting a set of three short films in the evening and a 35mm print of Erich von Stroheim's Greed, with Robert Humphreville accompanying, later in the evening. On Saturday, Humphreville accompanies two from Mikio Naruse's early career, Every-Night Dreams and Street Without End, both on 35mm with National Film Archive of Japan director Hisashi Okajima giving introductions. Sunday has two free Small Axe presentations, with Mangrove in the afternoon and Lover's Rock in the evening. Finally, Monday has Hong Sang-Soo's feature film debut, The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, on 35mm film.
• Movies at MIT has Shrek 2 in 26-100 on Friday & Saturday; and would appreciate a head's up for attendees who aren't part of the MIT community.
• The Museum of Science has Spanish-language Imax featurette Cuerpo Sobrehumano: Un Mundo de Maravillas Médicas Saturday afternoon and two free shows of Blue Beetle on the Omni screen Saturday evening as part of their Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations.
• The main Revolutions Per Minute festival for 2025 kicks off at The Museum of Fine Arts with two selections of short films - "Aldo Tambellini: Reflections" on Saturday and "Guvor Nelson: Call and Response" on Sunday, and then a special double bill at the Cambridge Foundry on Thursday, with the first half combining the work of percussionist Jon Mueller and photographer Tom Lecky before a program of short films by Tomonari Nishikawa.
• The Regent Theatre has a free local screening of Coco on Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films shows The Addams Family '91 playing on the Rose Kennedy Greenway Friday evening, the first of four spooky outdoor films in October.
• The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston continues the virtual edition through next Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue is open every day but Monday with Eleanor the Great, Anemone and Downton Abbey (the latter matinees through Sunday). There's also a free Saturday morning show of Infernal Affairs.
  
  The West Newton Cinema has the Taylor Swift thing and opens The Smashing Machine and Anemone, also holding over One Battle After Another, Eleanor the Great,Gabby's Dollhouse, and Downton Abbey. There's a Sunday "Behind the Screen " show of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life and Ty Burr's Movie club with I Know Where I'm Going on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has the Taylor swift thing through Sunday, plus a pretty family-friend start to spooky season, with Casper '95 and Hocus Pocus Friday-Sunday and Wednesday/Thursday. Friday night features both Mean Girls and The Gate. Wednesday's Classic is Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein, with Weirdo Wednesday on another screen. They also have a local premiere of A Halloween Feast, with the director and cast on hand for a Q&A.
  
  Killing Faith, a horror-western with Guy Pearce, DeWanda Wise, and Bill Pullman, opens out at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, as does One Big Happy Family, a comedy starring Lumi Pollack & Linda Lavin, and family fantasy Peas and Carrots..

Already got tickets for A Writer's Odyssey 2 and am looking forward to Anemone and The Smashing Machine, as well as Avatar 2 and Perfect Blue. Might be the week to head to Brookline for One Battle if I can just show up and get a ticket. Maybe I can squeeze something at Midnight Fest in too. (Follow my Letterboxd page to see if I follow through!)

This Week in Tickets: 22 September 2025 - 28 September 2025 (Almost Nothing)

I think I actually went a full week between the end of Honey Don't and the start of Dead of Winter, but that's fall for you, when baseball demands a lot of attention and the movies are kind of between seasons.

First stop this week, though, was the MGM Music Hall to finally see that Elvis Costello concert that I thought was last week. Amusingly, I didn't check to see if he was touring to promote a new album until a couple days before, and it turned out to be the opposite, a "Radio Soul!" tour that would be all songs from the first ten years of his career. At one point he made a comment about this being the last time he played them in Boston, and I don't know whether he's going to be done with touring or retiring or maybe just retiring songs he wrote for the voice he had as a young man. Or maybe he just knows he doesn't have all that many tours left in him and some just won't show up on setlists again.

I must admit, it did kind of get me to thinking about how this sort of tour flattens what a guy who experimented as much as him in the studio does so that the songs sound a little more the same; I've been digging out the CDs and listening to them since, they're a bit more playful that way and much less likely to end dah-dah-dah-daaahh (mimes exaggerated strokes at the guitar).

After that… Well, there's not a lot in theaters right now that promises to be more exciting than the last week of the baseball season that includes playing the team that there's an outside chance of overtaking to win the division. The Sox didn't play the Blue Jays quite well enough for that, but seeing that Friday's game at Fenway was on Apple TV and they were giving away souvenirs, I impulsively bought a ticket. I didn't immediately figure out why there was a ten-dollar difference between prices for tickets in the same section right away until I realized the two seats behind me were behind a big ol' support pillar. A good time, though - it was Japan night, so I got a cap with cherry blossoms on it, there was mochi at the concession stand, and Daisuke Matsuzaka was in town to throw out the first pitch. Coincidentally, Masataka Yoshida got three hits on the way to a 4-3 walk-off win.

Sunday was the last regular-season game of the year and I'd already bought tickets. I got there at the last minute so I saw that Niko Matsuzaka was singing the national anthem but not that she was Daisuke's daughter, which was cool. The game itself was kind of weird, like both teams were playing to avoid injury or were well aware that seeding weirdness meant the loser would get to face Cleveland instead of New York. Not throwing the game, but not trying too hard. The Sox wound up winning by the same 4-3 score, and they're in New York City right now.

That ended at about the right time to get to Dead of Winter without waiting around for long, which is fortunate, because despite a lot of previews, it only showed up at Boston Common in a sort of screen-filling deal. I liked it, though, and will tell you why just a little way down.


So, yeah, not a lot of movies here or on my Letterboxd account, and it may stay that way for as long as the Sox are in the playoffs. October for you!


Dead of Winter

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 September 2025 in AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available) (Prime link)

I've been recounting this anecdote for 20-odd years now, but one of the great, really useful things I've learned from a festival Q&A is "you'll be amazed who you can land for your movie if you write a good role for an older actor". Here, that means a little no-nonsense thriller that has the bones of being a pretty good movie has the chance to really be something once Emma Thompson gets involved: She isn't going to make it into something it's not, but it sure becomes something close to the best version of itself.

She plays Barb, a recent widow returning to Lake Hilda, the place her late husband Karl took her ice-fishing for their first date. Having trouble finding it, she asks the man (Marc Mechaca) at the only cabin for miles for directions, noting a couple things that seem kind of sketchy but figuring she's best off minding her business, at least until she spots him chasing a teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) through the woods. There's no signal for her phone and the police might be hours away in this sparsely-populated portion of northern Minnesota, so she aims to rescue the girl without much hesitation, and she'll soon find that the man's wife (Judy Greer) is the one driving the whole thing.

Screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson & Dalton Leeb and director Brian Kirk (who has mostly worked in television but also directed the pretty darn good 21 Bridges are impressively efficient laying things out in the beginning: They trust Thompson to put Barb's story on her face and how she interacts with her environment, use the opening titles to emphasize that she is getting far away from help and that the weather can get pretty nasty up there, before laying out the situation. Given that an independent thriller like this is likely to spend just a week or two in theaters, if that, before streamers pick it up, the filmmakers are unusually insistent that you watch what's going on rather than reinforcing events with dialogue that will keep the viewer only paying half-attention caught up. They also do nice work with scale and sound and how the location plays into it: The lakes are wide open but sounds carry, and the old-growth forests are tall enough that getting the attention of someone beyond that wall takes effort.

It's a great place to locate a small, impressive cast. Emma Thompson is the star that leaps out, and for a while one can't help notice the incongruity of her doing that sort of midwestern accent and how enthusiastic she seems to be about playing this character who is a very particular sort of American, but it winds up getting one to look at her and see she's kind of doing a lot to convey how simultaneously sensible and over her head Barb is, or how she's coping with her loss in the middle of all this. She's often wearing big, distracting emotions on her sleeve but it in a way that feels like an ordinary person feeling ruffled. She plays well off Laurel Marsden as Leah and Marc Mechaca in their confrontations, while he and Judy Greer pair off as the sort of villains that land in the sweet spot between "dumb crime" and scenery-chewing maniacs, all the more dangerous because one sees how they could be played for laughs but aren't. I like Gaia Wise & Cúán Hosty-Blaney as the young Barb & Karl, too, even if Wise winds up in "I know what young Emma Thompson looked like and it's not that" (though, to be fair, I know what 30-year-old Emma Thompson looks like better than 20-year-old Emma Thompson); they're not complicated but feel like complete people.

The small cast makes for a tight game of cat-and-mouse, with the challenges for Barb and Leah well-designed, allowing their foes to be dangerous without being unbelievably clever. What's going on is laid out for the audience fairly well without being explicit about it, which means that when it's revealed to Barb and Leah, the final connecting of dots reinforces their shock and horror rather than making it feel like they're slow to catch up; that it's weird and deranged and probably never going to work just makes the whole thing more tragic, and the filmmakers clearly get this. That genre awareness isn't always a net positive, though - the hunters who show up toward the end overexplain more in their ten minutes than the rest of the movie does and Barb seeing how it's going to end badly with them is a bit too clever.

They also aren't really part of what holds the rest of the movie together in ways that a lesser thriller might not cohere: It is not taking death for granted or treating it as a thing that just moves this sort of story along. Barb, of course, is recently widowed, and the brief flashbacks that show her last days with Karl cast a shadow; Leah has attempted suicide, which is why Greer's kidnapper can justify her plan as she fears for her own survival. One wonders whether Marc Mechaca's husband has not faced what that means, really, until he is staring death in the face himself, and it's interesting to see how he reacts when in that position.

Do not misunderstand, this movie isn't a meditation on mortality cleverly disguised as a suspense film; ruminations almost never derail what is, by and large, a movie focused on giving Barb problems to solve and how she is able to solve them. It's a straightforward genre movie, but one that's had a little thought put into it and executed well enough to command one's full attention.