Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 19 September 2025 - 25 September 2024

Movies!

• As cute as A Big Bold Beautiful Journey looked in previews, seeing that this fantasy about a couple very attractive people (Colin Farrell & Margot Robbie) exploring magical doors into their past together looks even more interesting seeing that it's directed by Kogonada and written by Seth Reiss (of The Menu) and has some nifty supporting players. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Him has a unique and intriguing genre mix - sports horror, as a potential superstar athlete (Tyriq Withers) finds his coach (Marlon Wayans) exhibits malevolence and terrorizing even beyond the level typical of college athletics - which is at least interesting. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Laser), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (CWX), and Chestnut Hill. There's even more college football on tap with Michael Chiklis as The Senior, who is completing his college education - and athletic eligibility - after a forty-year gap. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Documentary In Whose Name? has director Nico Ballestero following Kanye "Ye" West for what have been six very tumultuous years. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Post-apocalyptic action movie Afterburn has Dave Bautista and Olga Kurylenko seeking the Mona Lisa at the behest of warlord Samuel L. Jackson, but sadly isn't nearly as cool as it sounds. It's at Boston Common. London Calling also plays Boston Common, with Josh Duhamel as a hitman paired with a novice crime boss.
  
  the Imax re-issue of Apollo 13 (first time not cut to fit on a platter) plays Jordan's Furniture (and the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers),. Boston Common has Robert Redford tributes with All The President's Men and The Natural from Saturday to Wednesday, which seems unnervingly fast.
  
  Surprise previews Monday at Cuseway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Concert film David Gilmour Live at the Circus Maximus has an encore at Kendall Square, Boston Common, the Seaport, and South Bay on Sunday. Two BTS concert films play Boston Common and Assembly Row - one from 2016 on Wednesday and one from 2017 on Thursday - remastered in 4K. There are Imax previews of The Smashing Machine at Boston Common on Monday. It plays Wednesday in Dolby Cinema with a special preview of the Welcome to Derry series at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• The History of Sound, with Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor as a pair of men who would never find anyone else they loved quite so much after meeting in 1917 and collecting Maine folks songs, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, West Newton, Boston Common, Kendall Square, and the Seaport.
  
  The After Midnight crew makes field trips the the USS Salem in Quincy to show Ghost Ship & The Fog this weekend; Frida & Saturday are sold out but a third night has been added on Sunday. Back in Brookline, the Golden Princess midnight screenings are A Chinese Ghost Story on Friday and Peking Opera Blues on Saturday, when they also have the monthly screening of Eraserhead. Sunday morning's Goethe-Institut film is Impatience of the Heart; Monday's Big Screen Classic is M*A*S*H (with Emerson professor and TV writer Andy Mira presenting a seminar beforehand); Tuesday has a (sold-out) Science On Screen presentation of WALL-E; and Magic Mike XXL is the Cult Classic on Thursday.
• Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language Akshay Kumar courtroom comedy Jolly LLB 3; Hindi-language horror sequel Vash Level 2; Tamil-language romantic fantasy Kiss; Malayalam-language thriller Mirage; Malayalam-language action-comedy Vala: The Story of a Bangle; and Telugu-language romance Beauty (through Sunday). Mirai continues with Hindi & Telugu showtimes (also in Telugu at Causeway Street and South Bay); Marathi-language thriller Dashavatar has an encore Sunday afternoon; and Telugu-language action movie They Call Him OG opens on Wednesday (also at Boston Common and Causeway Street).
  
  The third Chinese movie this summer about Japanese war crimes during World War II, and the one most explicitly about them, is 731, named for the Japanese medical unit that conducted horrifying experiments. It's at Boston Common starting Friday. Chinese drama Fishes Flew Away opens Saturday at Causeway Street, starring Song Jia and Tong Liya as the former and current wife of a recently-deceased man clashing over ownership of the former's house. Animated Chinese adventure The Legend of Hei 2 continues at Boston Common.
  
  Vietnamese drama Face Off 8: Embrace of Light opens at Causeway Street and South Bay. There's no relation to the famous American action movie or the other seven from director Ly Hai; he just calls all his movies "Face Off X". This one is about a boy who wants to dance and a father set against it.
  
  This week's Ghibli Fest movie is Howl's Moving Castle playing Boston Common and Assembly Row dubbed Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday and subtitled Monday/Tuesday. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle continues at Fresh Pond, The Museum of Science (Omnimax Friday/Saturday), Boston Common (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill
• Landmark Kendall Square opens Netflix film Steve, which apparently inverts the novel Shy to make Cillian Murphy's teacher the lead and Jay Lycurgo's student Shy a supporting character.
  
  Tuesday's Anniversary Screening is Cinema Paradiso.
• The Seaport Alamo has Adulthood, with Josh Gad and Kaya Scodelario as siblings who find a corpse in their parents basement, for one show a day through Thursday. They also conclude the Nightmare on Elm Street series with #6 (Freddy's Dead) Friday and #5 (The Dream Child) Saturday, and the Harry Potter movies with #7 (Deathly Hallows Part II) on Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday. There are 25th anniversary shows of Bring It On Friday, Sunday, and Tuesday, with Sunday featuring a livestreamed Q&A with the cast; plus All That Heaven Allows on Saturday
• The Somerville Theatre has an Akira Kurosawa double feature of Rashomon & Yojimbo Friday night, a Sunday matinee of Indie comedy D(e)ad, Crumb late Sunday afternoon with Ghost World playing Monday evening. They also fire up the 70mm projector for One Battle After Another starting on Wednesday.
  
  The Capitol Theatre 100th anniversary shows of Captains Courageous Friday night and The Maltese Falcon on Saturday. Documentary Strange Journey: The Story of "Rocky Horror" plays Thursday night, including a performance by RH shadowcasters Teseracte Players There's also a 4th Wall set with The Burning Paris, Circus Tree, and Mancala on Friday
• The Brattle Theatre kicks off the weekend with Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory on 35mm for the Friday Film Matinee, and then digs into their "Found Footage Freakout", featuring It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This (Friday/Saturday/Tuesday), whose makers claim it will never be released online. Also included in the series are One Cut of the Dead (Friday/Saturday), Hell House LLC (Friday), Trollhunter (35mm) & Willow Creek (Saturday), Noroi: The Curse (Saturday), Ghostwatch (free matinee Sunday), The Midnight Swim (Sunday), Lake Mungo (Sunday w/ author intro), The Sacrament (Sunday), Eurpoa Report & The McPherson Tape (Monday), The Devil's Doorway & The Last Exorcism (35mm) Tuesday, V/H/S/2 (Wednesday), and Cloverfield (Thursday). They also preview next week's series with a set of Italian Silent Films at the Italian Consulate in Boston (RSVP required).
• 35mm Mikio Naruse films are back at The Harvard Film Archive this weekend, with Floating Clouds and Lightning playing separately on Friday and A Wanderer's Notebook on Monday. In between are a couple days of Hong Sang-soo with A Traveler's Needs and Walk Up playing digitally Saturday while Night and Day and On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate are on 35mm film Sunday.
• The Taiwan Film Festival of Boston is longer and more spread out this year: They're at the Museum of Fine Arts with Daughter's Daughter on Friday and Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman on Saturday. Then they move to the AMC at Causeway Street for Sunday, with three thematically linked shorts at 10:30am, a pair of documentary shorts at 1:30pm, and ping-pong drama Doubles Match at 4pm, with both short packages having filmmakers on hand. Romantic comedy Salli plays at the Coolidge on Monday with director Lien Chien-Hung, and drama Yen and Ai-Lee plays the Brattle on Thursday.
• The Boston Film Festival without adjectives is also this weekend, opening with The Fallow Few in the Bright Screening room on Friday; documentary shorts at the Boston Public LIbrary, animation at Mass School of Art & Design, nature docs Blue Zeus and Heart of a Lion in the Bright on Saturday; live-action shorts at MASAD plus Site and Remembering Big in the Bright on Sunday; and closing with The Last Dive and AMbleside in Rockport on Monday.
• CineFest Latino 2025 opens at the Coolidge on Wednesday with documentary Comparsa; directors Vickie Curtis & Doub Ganderson will be there to discuss their film about a Guatemalan festival borne out of a horrifying tragedy. It moves to ArtsEmerson's Bright Screening Room on Thursday with another doc, Uvalde Mom, with director Anayansi Prado there, then continues into next week.
• In addition to the Taiwan Film Festival, The Museum of Fine Arts starts a "Cozy Crime" series with The Trouble with Harry on Thursday. They will be hosting a virtual festival on streaming service Giloo starting next weekend.
• The Regent Theatre has an encore screening of Unfinished Business with filmmaker Michael Connolly on hand Tuesday. Again, it is not the Vince Vaught film or apparently the best-selling author Michael Connoly.
• Movies at MIT has American Psycho in 26-100 on Friday & Saturday; they'll be on an every-other-week schedule this semester, and still would like a head's up for attendees who aren't part of the MIT community.
• Joe's Free Films shows Akeelah and the Bee at MIT Open Space and Lilo & Stitch at Cambridgeside for Friday's outdoor movies.
• The Embassy looks like it's just renting screens out these days, with this year's edition of the Manhattan Short Film festival opening there on Thursday.
• The Lexington Venue has documentary Checkpoint Zoo and Downton Abbey all week (except Monday), and documentary Riefenstahl Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Thursday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Kerouac's Road: The Beat of a Nation (or re-opens it; I don't remember if they had it in June), The History of Sound, and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, holding over Downton Abbey, Spinal Tap II, The Long Walk, The Baltimorons, and Hamilton. There's a second show of Hello Beautiful with director Ziad Hamzeh on hand Friday night. Midnight Run plays Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Him, Downton Abbey, and The Conjuring: Last Rites through Monday. Saturday features Evil Puddle with star Matt Farley doing a Q&A, a "Totally Witchin' Triple Feature" of Teen Witch, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, & Warlock, and Rocky Horror with Teseracte Players (Full Body at Boston Common as per usual). Wednesday is also busy, with Now, Voyager for the Wednesday Classic, with Weirdo Wednesdays on another screen, and a premiere showing of documentary Deaf Santa Claus with subjects Charles & Karl Graves and director Anthony Mowl present for a Q&A.
  
  The Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers looks to be the closest place to see Megadoc, a making-of for Coppola' Megalopolis directed by Mike Figgis;Waltzing with Brando, starring Billy Zane as the actor and Jon Heder as the architect he hires to design an eco-friendly Tahiti mansion; kid-befriends-an-alien movie Xeno; and a re-release of Jackass 3 labeled "Jackass 3 in 2D" but with only 3D showtimes listed..

Saw Afterburn (eh), down for Big Bold Beautiful Journey and maybe London Calling, Steve, and Adulthood, the three of which figure to more or less disappear after these runs. Might try to do Peking Opera Blues at the Coolidge, though the last attempt at dealing T's late service still wrecked my sleeping schedule for days, but that one's legendary and I haven't seen it before.