Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 25 April 2025 - 1 May 2024

I love IFFBoston and all, but there's both some finger-crossing that things last past it and wishing I could get to other stuff too going on this week.

• As mentioned, Indpendent Film Festival Boston has all the screens at the Somerville and Brattle throughTuesday, including both indigenous documentary shorts & student shorts programs on Saturday, centerpiece documentary Pavements at the Brattle Saturday night, Zoo as part of the Frederick Wiseman retro Sunday afternoon, previews of Friendship Monday & Tuesday, and then heading down the 66 to close with Sorry, Baby at the Coolidge on Wednesday.
• Its mildly amusing that in the years since the original became a TNT staple, Jon Bernthal became big enough to rate as Ben Affleck's co-star in The Accountant 2, rather than just one of several folks listed as supporting cast. Here, Affleck's autistic underworld accountant must call in his brother (Bernthal) when a murder pulls him into a federal investigation. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, the Kendall, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Video-game adaptation Until Dawn, where some poor teens get stuck in a time loop where they are murdered by various monsters and slashers, opens at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  The latest from David Cronenberg, Shrouds, continues the introspection-through-science fiction themes of Crimes of the Future, with Vincent Cassel as a tech guy who invents a way to monitor one's deceased loved ones' decay while also mourning his own wife, only to have a conspiracy evolve around it. It's at the Coolidge, Kendall Square, and Boston Common.
  
  Also opening is The Legend of Ochi, in which a young girl in Carpathia discovers that the stories of monsters in the mountains from which the adults must defend the village are at best incomplete, as she befriends a cute, intelligent juvenile. It's at the Coolidge, the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Cheech & Chong's Last Movie is a documentary framed as a road trip that has the pair reflecting on both the counterculture comedy that made the pair household names and their separate careers after that initial peak. It's at West Newton, Boston Common, Kendall Square, and South Bay.
  
  Twenty years since Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith already? Guess so; it gets a one-week re-release at Fresh Pond, the Embassy, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill. No sign of the 3D conversion I'm pretty sure was done but never released ten years ago, though. Happy Gilmore also gets a re-release at Boston Common (all week), the Seaport (Saturday/Monday/Tuesday), and Arsenal Yards (Sunday/Wednesday).
  
  Pink Floyd at Pompeii - MMCLXXII has encore screenings at Kendall Square, the Seaport, and Assembly Row on Sunday. Blumhouse does a "Halfway to Halloween" rerelease of M3GAN at Boston Common on Wednesday. There's also an early access screening of BUFF opener The Surfer with livestreamed Nicolas Cage Q&A on Wednesday at theSeaport South Bay, and Assembly Row. Some of the early Imax Laser Thunderbolts screenings at Boston Common and Assembly Row are listed as "Fan Events".
• On Swift Horses opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Boston Common (and the Somerville on Wednesday). It looks under the idealized 1950s in California and finds both forbidden loves and gambling addiction.
  
  Crowe v Washington ends with the pairing that likely inspired it - Gladiator on 35mm film at midnight Friday and Gladiator II the same time Saturday. Midnights on the other screen are The Room on Friday and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Saturday. Sunday's Gene Hackman show is The Birdcage, with The Royal Tenenbaums on 35mm Tuesday; Monday's Big Screen Classic is Scarface, with seminar by Mikal J. Gaines, plus 9 to 5 ("Big Screen Classic") and Midsommar ("Cult Classic") on Thursday,. They also welcome very special guest Francis Ford Coppola for Megalopolis with post-film discussion, but both the original Monday night screening and added Tuesday matinee look to have sold out very quickly.
• New South Asian films this week at Apple Fresh Pond include Ground Zero, a Hindi-language action-thriller set against the 2001 Parliament attack (also at Boston Common); Tamil-language action flick Gangers; Malayalam-lagnuage drama Thudarum; Sarangapani Jathakam, a Telugu-language comedy about a horoscope fantastic facing the real world (through Sunday); Hindi-language drama Kesari Chapter 2: The Untold Story of Jallianwala Bagh (also at Boston Common) is held over. Bangladeshi action film Daagi plays Saturday and Marathi-language comedy Susheela Sujeet play Sunday. On Monday, Fresh Pond opens biopic Phule, while Telgugu-langage action entry HIT: The 3rd Case opens Wednesday (also at Causeway Street) and Tamil actioner Retro opens Thursday (also at Boston Common).
  
  Anime Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing is around for another week at Boston Common.
• The Harvard Film Archive lets folks not at the festival catch up with some encores, including two from Wang Bing's Youth trilogy - Homecoming on Friday and Hard Times on Saturday - and then two from the Satyajit Ray series on Sunday: Company Limited in the afternoon and Devi in the evening, both on 35mm film. Monday is another drip into the Kobe Planet archive, documentary Asia Is One on 16mm film.
• ArtsEmerson has a "Shared Stories" presentation of documentary Igualada, about a rural black woman who ran for president of Colombia (where the entrenched power is none of those three things), on Friday, and a "Projecting Connections" presentation of Come Home, My Child, about a Taiwanese immigrant who has been writing to people in the New York prison system for a decade, on Saturday. Both will have post-film Q&As with the directors and others.
• The Seaport Alamo has a (partially) different selection of Max Fleischer Cartoons on Saturday than the Somerville had a month or so ago. They also show The Departed Sunday & Tuesday, Makoto Shinkai's Suzume on Monday.
• The Museum of Science has Treasure Planet on the dome as part of Massachusetts Space Week on Sunday, with a screening of Pakistani animated film The Glassworker on the schedule for the 31st of May.
• Monday is the last of the month, which means The Capitol Theatre will probably be doing the monthly Disasterpiece Theatre show.
  
  The Somerville Theatre emerges from IFFBoston on Wednesdays with On Swift Horses opening and Secret Mall Apartment returning downstairs and a Gene Hackman double feature of Scarecrow (35mm) & Absolute Power upstairs; Scarecrow was one of the movies most cited as among Hackman's best work in all of the obituaries. Thursday, they show Pineapple Express for the monthly "Greenscreen" presentation in association with The Goods.
• Landmark Kendall Square concludes thier David Lynch tribute series with Mullholand Dr. on Tuesday.
• You can tell the plumbing situation at The Brattle Theatre was pretty bad because of the new carpeting installed, but they're open for IFFBoston, and celebrate "Halfway to Halloween" on Wednesday with new 4K restorations of Phenomena & Tenebre (the two Argentos may or may not be a double feature). On Thursday, they've got a free "Elements of Cinema" screening of The Wicker Man, and an already-sold-out pineapple expiration date screenings of Chungking Express.
• Joe's Free Films shows the directors of Oscar-nominated documentary Sugarcane presenting the film on Tuesday (RSVP required), among other things.

• Movies at MIT has 1997's Taste of Cherry on Friday and Saturday evenings. As always, if you're not part of the MIT community, they'd appreciate an email at lsc-guest (at) MIT dot edu ahead of time.
• Belmont World Film and the Brazilian consulate will be providing snacks with Manas on Monday, with three speakers for perspective.
• The Regent Theatre shows The Shawshank Redemption on Wednesday with post-film discussion on how it was adapted from the book.
• The Embassy has Revenge of the Sith and Sacramento. Field of Dreams plays for Monday's free community matinees.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday/Thursday and turns the schedule over, opening Bob Trevino Likes It, Pride & Prejudice (no show Tuesday), and The Ballad Of Wallis Island. There's also a short run of locally produced horror movie Round the Decay through Saturday, with cast and crew on hand for a Q&A with Saturday's matinee.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens The Legend of Ochi and Cheech & Chong's Last Movie (with plenty of 4:20 showtimes), also bringing back Conclave, and holding over The Penguin Lessons, Sinners, The Wedding Banquet, Secret Mall Apartment, and A Minecraft Movie. They also have plenty of documentaries Recovery City with director Q&A on Friday, We Will Dance Again on Saturday and Sunday, and Etched In Glass: The Legacy of Steve Ross with post-film discussion on Tuesday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Revenge of the Sith, The Accountant 2, Sinners, and A Minecraft Movie through Monday. Friday's Night LIght show is zombie biker movie Psychomania, and the Wednesday Classic is Them!. There's also a Weirdo Wednesday show, plus a presentation of indie MFA: The Terminal Degree with live music and a post-film Q&A.
  
  Dark comedy The Trouble with Jessica opens at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, if you can get there.

I'm at IFFBoston through Wednesday, and who knows whether Thursday will be a "see it before it's gone" day or a "lets just say in and order a pizza" day.