- The week's big opening is Five Nights at Freddy's 2, and is it just me not being up on what the kids like, or has this seemed to drop out of pop culture since the first film came out a couple years ago? More bloody possessed-robot shenanigans, I gather, at The Capitol Theatre, Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema & XL), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
British drawing-room spoof Fackham Hall opens at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row; it's very much in the Naked Gun tradition of the individual jokes being about as clever as that title but delivering a chuckle roughly every twenty seconds.
Fantasy romance 100 Nights of Hero, with a neat cast including Maika Monroe, Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Richard E. Grant, Felicity Jones, and Charli XCX, plays Boston Common and the Seaport.
A filmed version of the recent theatrical revival of Merrily We Roll Along starring Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, and Lindsay Mendez plays Boston Common and Causeway Street.
Hamnet expands from the Coolidge, Boston Common, Kendall Square, and Assembly Row to The Somerville Theatre, the Lexington Venue, West Newton, the Seaport, and Chestnut Hill.
Christmas rep includes the CGI The Grinch at Boston Common (Friday); Love Actually at Boston Common (Friday/Monday/Tuesday); Elf at Boston Common (Saturday/Tuesday/Wednesday) and the Seaport (movie party Saturday); National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation at the Seaport (Saturday/movie party Tuesday), Boston Common (Sunday/Thursday), and Landmark Kendall Square on Tuesday; The Polar Express at Boston Common (RealD 3D Sunday/2D Tuesday); The Holiday at the Seaport (Sunday/Tuesday); and A Christmas Story at Arsenal Yards (Tuesday).
Music documentary The Doors: When You're Strange plays Boston Common Saturday afternoon and REBECCA: Becky G plays Boston Common Wednesday evening. There are early access screenings of Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice at Boston Common (Imax Laser), South Bay (Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Monday. Concert films this week are Monsta X: Connect X at Boston Common Sunday; Rolling Stones at the Max at Boston Common (Imax Laser) Wednesday/Thursday and Jordan's Furniture (Imax) Thursday (the start of a weekend run); and The Cure: The Show of a Lost World playing Thursday at Boston Common and Kendall Square. Wedding Crashers also plays Boston Common on Thursday. - Also opening kind of wide is Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, which re-edits the two movies together with a little re-arrangement and a new animated bit. The Coolidge Corner Theatre has a 70mm print, but it also plays in lesser formats at Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
December midnights at the Coolidge are "Planet Hollywood Holidays", featuring the four initial investors in the chain (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore); it kicks off with Commando on Friday and Demolition Man on Saturday. Earlier Saturday is the next "Cinema Masala" show, with Shah Rukh Khan and Aiswarya Rai in Devdas; director Bi Gan visits for a (sold-out) screening of Resurrection on Monday; Jeff Rapsis accompanies the Sound of Silents Show of Our Hospitality on Tuesday (there's also an Open Screen night that day); the Coolidge Award tributes to Ethan Hawke continue with First Reformed on Wednesday; and Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers is the Big Screen Classic on Thursday. - South Asian films opening this week include Hindi-language crime epic Dhurandhar at Apple Fresh Pond and Causeway Street, Gujari-language family drama Laalo: Krishna Sada Sahaayate at Fresh Pond, and Malayalam-language crime drama KalamKaval at Fresh Pond Hindi-language drama Tere Ishk Mein continues at Fresh Pond Friday & Saturday. Telugu-language Andhra King Taluka plays Fresh Pond early Friday & Sunday.
The new anime release is Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution, which slots between the second and upcoming third season; subbed & dubbed at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Chainsaw Man - The Movie: Reze Arc is still at Boston Common.
Hong Kong thriller Under Current plays Causeway Street, with Alan Mak of the Infernal Affairs and Overheard series directing Aaron Kwok, Simon Yam, and Francis Ng as three people involved in the investigation of a possibly-corrupt charity.
Vietnamese action movie Hijacked opens at South Bay (although the Friday shows are apparently sold out/held back). - The Friday Film Matinee at The Brattle Theatre is the first of three inspired by "Wonder" at the ART, with Parenthood playing on 35mm film Friday afternoon, Little Miss Sunshine at noon Saturday, and Eighth Grade at noon Saturday.
Much of the week there is built around a restored re-release of Yi Yi ("A One and a Two"), the final film of Taiwanese director Edward Yang which follows a Taipei family over the course of a year.
Friday and Saturday night also include "Don Hertzfeldt's Animation Mixtape", an 85-minute program curated by Hertzfeldt which includes new and classic works; he contributes an introduction and closing credits. There's a "Best of RPM Fest show Sunday afternoon (RPM Fest also has three free short film programs at Goethe-Institut on Saturday), two screenings of The Nightmare Before Christmas on Monday (lights on at 6:30 for crafting, down at 8:30), a free screening of documentary short "Cambridge Mosaic" with post-film reception on Wednesday, and a double feature of both the 1955 and 1989 editions of We're No Angels on Thursday, with Cinématographe’s Justin La Liberty introducing the second (which his label recently released on disc). - The Seaport Alamo shows TikTok-derived romantic comedy Two Sleepy People, about two co-workers who marry every night but wake up strangers the next morning, on Friday night. They also bring Highest 2 Lowest back Saturday night, show Risky Business Saturday & Monday and Saturday Night Fever Tuesday & Wednesday for "Josh Safdie Selects", plus Kiss Kiss Bang Bang as part of Shane Black Christmas on Monday.
- Wicked Queer has a quick "Fall Focus" series at the The Museum of Fine Arts, since you can't expect things to have long runs on the festival circuit these days and need to check back in 6 months later: Cactus Pears Friday night, Four Mothers on Saturday, and Jimpa on Sunday.
- The Regent Theatre has an encore of You Got Gold: A Celebration of John Prine on Saturday, documentary Girl Climber on Tuesday, and winter collection "Mountains on Stage" on Thursday.
- The Harvard Film Archive has Columbia rarity None Shall Escape, a film speculating on how the Nazis should be punished made while World War II was still going on in 1944. There are also free screenings of student films Friday afternoon and evening
- Movies at MIT has Alien in 26-100 on Friday & Saturday; remember to give them a head's up if you're not part of the MIT community. Also on campus is the next show in the MIT Museum's "Time Travel on Screen" program, Rian Johnson's Looper, playing with short film "Steeplechase" on Friday.
- The Museum of Science has Wicked: For Good on Fridays and Saturdays through next week, with Avatar 3 taking over after that. There's also a Spanish-language show of "Superhuman Body" on Saturday.
- The Lexington Venue is open all week but Monday with Hamnet and Wicked. "Exhibition on Screen" documentary Caravaggio plays Sunday and Thursday.
The West Newton Cinema opens Hamnet (including a "Behind the Screen" show on Sunday), Five Nights at Freddy's 2, keeping Wake Up Dead Man, Zootopia 2, Wicked: For Good, and Nuremberg. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind plays Thursday.
Cinema Salem has Zootopia 2, Wake Up Dead Man, Wicked: For Good, and Five Nights at Freddy's 2 from Friday to Monday. Spooky Picture Show presents Black Christmas '74 on Saturday, and the Wednesday Classic is Anatomy of a Murder, with Weirdo Wednesday on another screen.
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