Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 22 November 2024 - 26 November 2024

Ah, the weekend before Thanksgiving, where it's briefly summer movie time again.

• Two of the big Thanksgiving releases open this weekend, which means we'll finally be free of the trailer for Wicked, the film adaptation of the musical adaptation of the book which posited that maybe the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz had a complicated backstory. It's apparently only the first half, with Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Yeoh, and others. It plays at the Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), the Lexington Venue, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Dolby Cinema & RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including Colby Cinema & RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill (including RealD 3D).
  
  That took a while to get made, as did Gladiator II, which has Ridley Scott returning to direct and Paul Mescal as a new captured warrior placed in the arena as a pawn for an ambitious businessman (Denzel Washington), and Connie NIelsen and Derek Jacobi the most notable returning actors from the original. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up a new (?) black-and-white edition of Basquiat, Julian Schnabel's biography of the artist starring Jeffrey Wright with David Bowie as Andy Warhol and one heck of a supporting cast, though it plays limited showtimes in some of the smaller rooms.
  
  Midnights continue the David Lynch series with Lost Highway on 3on Friday and Mulholland Drive on Saturday, both on 35mm film, plus Coolidge Award winner John Waters's Female Trouble on Friday. There's also a special Saturday afternoon Rewind! presentation of Shrek 2, Winners for the Goethe-Institut German film on Sunday morning and The Lady from Shanghai for the Sunday afternoon Noirvember show with Nathan Blake leading discussion afterward. Monday's Big Screen Classic is a 35mm print of Hook, with Jeff Rapsis on-hand for a Sound Of Silents show of The Thief of Bagdad on Tuesday.
• Apple Fresh Pond more or less clears house of South Asian Material, with new release Sookshma Darshini - a Malayalam-language thriller where the younger residents of a neighborhood are suspicious of a man's return - only plays through Sunday. They also have a re-release of Karan Arjun, a Hindi-language action picture from 1995 with Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khanas brothers reincarnated to avenge their deaths on Saturday and Monday. Nepali drama Purna Bahadur Ko Sarangi continues its run.
  
  Possibly the final week for Ghibli Fest, with Pom Poko playing Boston Common on Sunday (dubbed) and Tuesday (subtitled); The Tale of the Princess Kaguya plays Monday (dubbed) and Wednesday (subtitled). South Bay has Pom Poko on Sunday only.
  
  Vietnamese comedy The Trophy Bride hangs on for a show or two at South Bay through Monday.
• The Brattle Theatre has a hodgepodge this weekend: A Friday Film matinee of their 35mm print of The Brothers Bloom, the new 4K restoration of Paris, Texas on Friday and Saturday, and a "Selected by R.F. Kuang" series where the author will present three films that relate to her work, all on 35mm: Lust, Caution (Sunday/Monday), The Grandmaster (Sunday/Monday), and Inglorious Basterds (Sunday/Tuesday), with Kuang present to introduce/discuss the films on Sunday.
• The Harvard Film Archive is back at The Yugoslav Junction this weekend: A 16mm pairing of "Bergman's Non-Verbals" & "Light-Play: A Tribute to Moholy-Nagy" Friday evening with post-screening discussion Friday evening; another short film package later that night; Soviet silent Wings of a Serf with live accompaniment by Robert Humphreville on Saturday; and a "Drawn to Bits: THe Zagreb School of Animation" anthology on Sunday afternoon, screening on 16mm & 35mm film, with the Yugoslavian Cinema episodes of Screening Room streaming.
  
  On Sunday evening, they show Times Square, part of the Jenni Olsen Queer Film Collection. On Monday, Max Goldberg introduces Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, screening on 35mm film.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has The Fall as part of their Cult Classics series on Friday, plus Tears of Cem Karaca (Saturday) and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul as part of the Boston Turkish Festival's Documentary & Short Film Competition; with a number of other films slated to stream online starting on Monday.
• Wicked Queer has the finale of their documentaries festival on Friday night, with S/He Is Still Her/e playing at The ICA
• The Somerville Theatre has a 35mm double feature of Casablanca & Out of the Past on Saturday.
  
  Their sister theater in Arlington, , has their monthly Disasterpiece Theatre tape-trading/live-riffing event on Monday, and while it's free as always, there will also be a fundraiser for their sponsor High Energy Vintage
• The Seaport Alamo has "Movie Party" shows for Wicked on Friday and Sunday and Elf on Monday.
• Tuesday's "Friendsgiving" Retro Replay at Landmark Kendall Square is Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
• Movies at MIT has American Fiction on Friday & Saturday; their weekly email requests you give them a heads-up at lsc-guest at mit.edu if you're not part of the MIT community.
• The Lexington Venue has WIcked, A Real Pain, and Conclave Friday to Sunday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Gladiator II and Wicked, keeping A Real Pain (once again with a special "Behind the Screen" presentation on Sunday afternoon), Albany Road, Small Things Like These, Anora, Conclave,and The Substance.
  
  The Luna Theater has We Live in Time Friday/Saturday, Music for Mushrooms Saturday, and Addams Family Values on Sunday.
  
  Cinema Salem has WIcked, Gladiator II, Conclave, and Heretic through Monday. Friday's Night LIght show is David Cronenberg's Crash.
  
  If you can make it out to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, they have fantasy romantic comedy Say a Little Prayer in addition to the other new releases.

Really up against vacation even for this short week as I try to squeeze Small Things Like These in around Gladiator II and maybe Wicked (when would the best time be to see it in 3D but not be hit with an audience that wants to sing along?). Maybe work in the Casablanca/Out of the Past twin bill, or even see how difficult the Red Line is going to make catching the last show of The Trophy Bride. Maybe work a silent in there, too.

Also, shout-out to The Wild Robot and The Substance, probably on their last weekends two months after release and weeks after hitting their distributors' streaming services. That's some quality hanging around, especially for a weird art-house horror movie like The Substance!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 23 February 2024 - 29 February 2024

Man, you can really feel the studios and theaters stretching to fill screens right now. I hope it will be better next year when we're further past the plagues and strikes and all, but we could also be down to like two or three major studios by then.

• The latest Coen Brothers solo project, Ethan's Drive-Away Dolls, opens at the Somerville, the Coolidge, Fresh Pond, CinemasSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. It's a fairly enjoyable comic road trip with Margaret Qualley & Geraldine Viswanathan as lesbian best friends who wind up accidentally transporting the sort of bizarre cargo that men will kill for, and happily clocks in at a quick 84 minutes.
  
  Ordinary Angels looks to be going for "inspirational drama", with Hilary Swank as a small-town woman who helps a single father pay for his daughter's medical care. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The Sarajevo-in-the-Balkan-war documentary Kiss the Future begins a regular run at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row after what I guess were preview shows last week.
  
  A Hip-Hop Story, a comedy featuring writer Alfron Crockett and director Damaine Radcliff as two rap pioneers trying to save the genre, plays South Bay.
  
  Les Misérables is getting a re-release on the Dolby screens at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row; doesn't seem to be any particular significance to it. Soul returns to Boston Common and South Bay after last month's first-time-in-theaters release.
  
  Dune: Part Two has "Fan First" Imax shows at Jordan's Furniture, Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Sunday. The Kung Fu Panda movies play Boston Common ahead of the upcoming fourth entry (#1 Friday, #2 Saturday, #3 Sunday). The Wednesday A24 selection at Boston Common and Causeway Street is The Lighthouse.
• Japan's submission for Best Foreign Language film, Perfect Days, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, the Embassy, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, and the Seaport. It's one of those foreign-film cross-fertilizations, directed by Wim Wenders, and starring Koji Yakusho as a man who cleans public toilets but still manages to find beauty in his routine, including a visit from his niece.
  
  The weekend's midnights at the Coolidge include The Book of Eli on Friday and Foxy Brown on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up. "Destination Romance" concludes with Titanic on Tuesday; The Lives of Others is the Big Screen Debut show on Wednesday, and there's a "Shakespeare Reimagined" presentation of A Midwinter's Tale on Thursday. All of the Coolidge's special presentations this week are on 35mm film.
• Oscar-nominated Io Capitano, an odyssey tracing the path from Senegal to Europe through the Sahara and Mediterranean for two young boys, opens at Landmark Kendall Square.
  
  The Kendall also has Spaceman, a Netflix film with Adam Sandler as an astronaut on a year-long mission coming to realize that his wife (Carey Mulligan) may not be waiting for him when he returns. It's directed by Johan Renck, who helmed a good chunk of Chernobyl, and has apparently been sitting on the shelf for a couple years.
  
  Combining the two, they also bring back two Netflix awards contenders, Society of the Snow and Maestro, for those of us who still may want to catch them on the big screen before the ceremony. The Tuesday New Hollywood selection is Dirty Harry.
• The big anime release this week is Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba - To the Hashira Training, is apparently not really a feature like Mugen Train but a special premiere event which combines the finale of the previous TV season with the premiere of the new on ahead of its premiere later this spring. This plays Boston Common (including Imax Xenon), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), Arsenal Yards (including CWX); check showtimes for dubbed versus subtitled, The Boy and the Heron is still at Fresh Pond, the Embassy, and West Newton.
  
  The last of the Lunar New Year movies to arrive in North America, Article 20, plays Causeway Street; it's from Zhang Yimou and has him doing a contemporary movie for the second time in a year (sort of, as Under the LIght had been delayed), this time focusing on a veteran prosecutor on his last case. Pegasus 2 continues at Boston Common.
  
  Big Indian-movie turnover at Apple Fresh Pond: Crakk: Jeetaga… Toh Jiyegaa, also at Boston Common, has Arjun Rampal & Vidyut Jammwal in a Hindi-language story of climbing from the slums of Mumbai to elite extreme sports; controversial Hindi-language political thriller Political War; Article 370, an action film starring Yami Gautam; "eccentric" Telugu-language romance Siddharth Roy; Telugu-language comedy Masthu Shades Unnai Ra (through Sunday); Telugu-language inspirational-teacher story Sundaram Master (through Sunday); and Malayalam-language comedy Manjummel Boys. Black-and-white period Malayalam-language horror film Bramayugam and Malayalam-language romantic comedy Premalu are held over at Fresh Pond, while Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya continues at Boston Common.
• The Alamo Seaport has indie horror Stopmotion.Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Thursday, which probably makes it more rep than new release. Their calendar is also has Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Friday/Tuesday); Fences (Saturday); Estonian kung fu adventure The Invisible FIght; 1999 Time Capsules Cruel Intentions (Monday), In the Mood for Love (Monday/Tuesday), Sleepy Hollow (Tuesday), and American Movie (Wednesday); a preview with livestreamed Q&A for Problemista; and one last show of Amélie (Tuesday).
• The Brattle Theatre opens Brazilian Oscar submission Pictures of Ghosts, a documentary that examines the city of Recife through the lens of its mostly-empty movie houses; it plays Friday to Tuesday. The Bugs Bunny Film Festival continues to play matinees (on 35mm film) through Sunday.
  
  On top of that, there's the monthly Stop Making Sense screening on Saturday (marked sold out), a free "Elements of Cinema" show of Silent Running with post-film discussion led by Matthew Nash, and IFFBoston presentation of Spaceman on Tuesday (passes required but don't guarantee entry), plus a Grrl Haus Cinema package of local shorts & videos on Wednesday. On Thursday the 29th, they have the two winners of the "Leap Day" polls for two movies that have never screened at the Brattle, Little Miss Sunshine and Perfect Blue.
• Warner Brothers is re-releasing Tenet on 70mm film with a special prelude for Dune: Part Two attached, and you know that The Somerville Theatre is all over that, running it on the big film all week.
  
  Over at The Capitol, they should be having the monthly VHS Disasterpiece Theater on Monday
• The Embassy picks up Frederick Wiseman's four-course meal of a documentary Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros, timed to play along with The Taste of Things for those who like the idea of nearly seven-hours of French cuisine on screen; they also open Perfect Days and continue The Boy and the Heron.
• Bright Lights has Bad Press upstairs at the Paramount on Thursday. I liked this one, about a Muscogee journalist trying to maintain her independence as one of the few Native nations to have a free press act attempts to push against her reporting, when it played IFFBoston last year. Directors Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler, plus subject Angel Ellis, will be on-hand for most-film discussion. Free and not just for Emerson students! Per Joe's Free Films, Peeler and Ellis will also be at the Harvard Art Museum for a screening on Tuesday evening (RSVP required).
  
  ArtsEmerson/the Boston Asian-American Film Festival/RoxFIlm/Cinefest Latino Boston continue streaming the "Shared Stories" program through Sunday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has encores of the latest two by Hong Sang-soo, with In Our Day Friday and in water on Sunday. The "Afterimage" screening on Saturday evening, "Hapax Legomena" gets started a bit early at 6pm to accommodate over three hours of 16mm shorts from the early 1970s. Guelwaar, screening on 35mm film, wraps the Ousmane Sembène series on Sunday afternoon. And on Monday, they show a 35mm print of Cotton Comes to Harlem with Matthew Whitman introducing the film to celebrate its star Godfrey Cambridge's papers being added to the Houghton Library.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has two films from its "Uniqlo Festival of Films from Japan" this week: Nobuhiko Obayashi's classic House (also part of "Bloody Gorgeous: The Art of Horror" and.Hirokazu Kore-Eda's lates, Monster.
• The Museum of Science has a special presentation of The Space Race, a documentary highlighting the first Black astronauts, on Wednesday evening. They also get an early start on their weekend screenings of Dune: Part Two on the Omni screen with a Thursday night show (so does everywhere else, but it's kind of unusual for the HFA!.
• The Regent Theatre has three programs of the Banff Mountain Film Festival this weekend, with "Paintbrush" showing Friday, "Arnica" on Saturday, and "Yarrow" on Sunday. On Sunday, they also have The Black Mass, a thriller following the victims of a spree killer in the last 24 hours before his rampage, with producer Michelle Romano on hand for a post-film Q&A.
• The GlobeDocs Black History Month Film Festival is in-person this week, with The Mural Master screening at the Capital One Cafe on Wednesday night, including a post-film panel discussion featuring director Andrew Eldridge, producer Jessica Estelle Huggins, and the Globe's Kris Hooks.
• Oscar-Nominated Shorts continue, with The Coolidge, the Kendall, West Newton, and Boston Common showing Animation and Live Action more or less all week, with West Newton also haveing the docs Friday-Sunday. The Seaport has Animation (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday) and Live Action (Saturday/Sunday/Monday/Wednesday); The ICA has Documentary (2 programs Sunday) and Live Action (Thursday); The Capitol has animation (Friday/Saturday/Tuesday), Live-Action (Friday/Monday/Thursday), and Documentary (Sunday/Wednesday); the Somerville has Animation (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday), Live Action (Friday/Saturday/Tuesday), and Documentary (Sunday/Tuesday); the Lexington Venue has Live Action (Friday-Sunday); Animation (Friday/Saturday/Thursday), and Documentary (Sunday); Luna Lowell has Animation (Saturday/Sunday), Live Action (Friday-Sunday), and Documentary (Saturday/Sunday); Cinema Salem has Animation, Live Action, and Documentary Friday to Monday.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday plus Thursday with the Oscar shorts (see above), The Taste of Things, and Perfect Days.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Drive-Away Dolls and hangs onto the Oscar Shorts, One Love, Driving Madeleine (Friday-Sunday), American Fiction, Migration, The Boys in the Boat, Wonka (Friday-Sunday), The Boy and the Heron (no show Thursday), and The Holdovers (no show Saturday). Documentary Baltic Truth plays Sunday morning, with filmmaker Eugene Levin on-hand to discuss his look at the Holocaust in Latvia and Lithuania.
  
  The Luna Theater looks to be all Oscar shorts this weekend.
  
  Cinema Salem has the Oscar Shorts, Drive-Away Dolls and One Love from Friday to Monday. Friday's Night LIght show is The Watermelon Woman. Saturday has a free (with donations encouraged) afternoon screening of Ukrainian feature The Guide and a late show homebrew horror HeBGB TV.

Already have tickets to Stopmotion and The Invisible Fight at the Seaport, and will probably try to find ways to fit in Perfect Days, Tenet, Article 20, Pictures of Ghosts, Spaceman, and Cotton Comes to Harlem, A Midwinter's Tale, and, gee, there's a lot of Oscar catch-up to do!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 9 February 2024 - 13 February 2024

Valentine's Day is on a Wednesday this year, with a fair amount of turnover, so we'll treat it kind of like Thanksgiving with a short Next Week leading up to it and then cover 9 days next week.

• I don't think I've ever seen a movie promote a writer in the trailers so much as Lisa Frankenstein, which very much wants you to know it comes from Jennifer's Body screenwriter Diablo Cody, and stars Kathryn Newton as a teenager in the 1980s who revives the handsome corpse (Cole Sprouse) she has been pining over but must gather body parts to make him whole. Zelda Williams directs. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  Out of Darkness appears to play its horror straighter but is eccentric in its own way, focusing on a Stone Age tribe (speaking a conlang based on Basque) confronting an unknown danger in the woods. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  At least part of the upcoming week before Valentine's Day is filled with returns for various reasons: Dune: Part One lets one get caught up for the conclusion arriving in a couple weeks, playing Jordan's Furniture (Imax), Boston Common (Imax Xenon), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (Imax Laser), and Arsenal Yards (including CWX). The second pandemic Pixar to get a bleated cinema release, Turning Red, plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, and South Bay. Anyone But You, which I don't think actually left any screens since opening around Christmas, is being advertised as a "Valentine Encore", apparently with a few more minutes added (raunchier jokes? bloopers? special introduction?), at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  There's a new Peppa's Cinema Party at Boston Common starting Saturday to celebrate 20 years of Peppa Pig (seems like only yesterday when the niece headed to college in the fall was picking up a posh British accent from those cartoons).
  
  Music doc Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive plays South Bay on Tuesday.
• The Lunar New Year is this weekend, and that means some big Chinese films. Hong Kong comedy Table for Six 2 has a poster with 8 faces on it, so maybe it's a table for six plus two? It reunites the cast of the first, with all three couples having a joint wedding, and plays at Causeway Street starting Friday. Over at Boston Common, Mainland film Pegasus 2 opens Friday and has the first film's rally-car driver once again having to get a fresh start, this time helping to save a small auto manufacturer; The Movie Emperor opens Saturday and has Andy Lau playing an exaggerated version of himself in a Ning Hao comedy that is apparently more barbed than is often the case. Johnny Keep Walking! is also held over at Causeway Street.
  
  Telugu drama Yatra 2 opened Wednesday Apple Fresh Pond. Also opening this week are Hindi-language romance Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya (also at Boston Common), which stars Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon in an "impossible love story" about a pair who meet while one is assigned to a post in America; Tamil-language sports drama Lal Salaam stars Rajinikanth as a man trying to restore his reputation in his hometown (and the game of cricket); Tamil drama Lover, which stars Sri Gouri Priya and Manikandan K. as two people whose relationship is feeling the strain after six years; and Eagle, a thriller which stars Anupama Parameswaran as a journalist on the trail of an assassin played by Ravi Teja. Fighter continues at Fresh Pond and Boston Common (including RealD 3D at the latter).
  
  An AXCN show of Satoshi Kon's Paprika plays dubbed at Boston Common on Sunday. The Boy and the Heron is still at West Newton, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and the Embassy (Friday only).
• The Alamo Seaport has How to Have Sex for a week, Manning Walker's film starring Mia McKenna-Bruce as one of three girlfriends on vacation in Greece whose life is thrown upside down after a drunken party.
  
  Their rep calendar has Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Friday), a Twilight Movie Party (Friday/Tuesday with a regular screening Sunday), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Saturday), 1980s rarity Blonde Death (Saturday), The Blair Witch Project (Saturday/Monday), Mississippi Masala (Sunday), She's All That (Sunday), and a 1980s costume party for Lisa Frankenstein on Saturday.
• There have been emails going around talking about the opening of the expansion to The Coolidge Corner Theatre being "imminent", but we're not quite there yet. Which means there's not a whole lot of room for Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros, the latest deep-dive documentary from Frederick Wiseman, which immerses the audience in the operations of a restaurant in central France that has 3 Michelin stars and whose third-generation chef has recently handed the reins over to his son. At four hours, it plays once daily, in the Goldscreen on weekdays and screen #2 on Saturday and Sunday.
  
  They've also announced regular open-captioned screenings on Thursday afternoons and Tuesday evenings for regular bookings, with the exception of 35mm/70mm and repertory programs.
  
  Speaking of repertory programs, the midnights this weekend are both on 35mm film, with Demolition Man on Friday and Super Fly on Saturday. Disney's The Princess and the Frog plays Saturday morning, and you can say they're both Black History Month things if you squint a fair amount. On Sunday, the day starts with Goethe-Institut presenting The Universal Theory, a thriller set against a physics conference where nothing is as expected; there's also the monthly Sunday marathon, tying in with "Destination Romance" by presenting The Before Trilogy; that is, all three of Richard Linklater's walk-and-talks featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Monday's Stage & Screen presentation is a 35mm print of the 1996 version of The Crucible, and Tuesday's Big Screen Debut show is A Girl Walks Home at Night. Tuesday also features Open Screen upstairs.
• The Brattle Theatre presents the newly rediscovered Bushman from Friday to Sunday; this film from 1971 started out with Nigerian scholar Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam portraying a character much like himself, but became a documentary during filming as Okpokam is set to be deported for a crime he did not commit.
  
  They also have a tribute to the late Ryan O'Neal, including The Driver (Friday/Saturday), Barry Lyndon (35mm Saturday/Sunday), and a 35mm double feature of What's Up Doc & Paper Moon on Monday. On Sunday, there's both an RPM Fest presentation, "Hymn to Her", with six films by Stan Brakhage and Barbara Hammer that pay tribute to Jane Wodening, and a 35mm show of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me for "Superb Owl Sunday". On Tuesday, they begin three days of Valentin's screenings of Casablanca and The Princess Bride, both on 35mm film.
• The Harvard Film Archive brings the latest two from Hong Sang-soo to town, with in water on Friday following a film crew led by an indecisive actor on Jeju Island and In Our Day on Friday and Sunday telling two parallel stories of burnt-out artists. They've opened up the 35mm Undergraduate Cinematheque screening of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown on Saturday afternoon to the public, continue the "Afterimage" series with The Hour of Furnaces on 16mm Saturday evening and Film About a Woman Who… (with short "Breakfast (Table Top Dolly)") on Monday, also on 16mm. There's also the new restoration of Ousmane Sembène's Emitaï on Sunday evening.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has brash comedy Joy Ride on Friday night, a "Created Worlds: Animation from Around the Globe" show of The Painting on Saturday, and Pearl as part of "Bloody Gorgeous: The Art of Horror" on Sunday.
• The Somerville Theatre has three last screenings of Oppenheimer in 70mm this weekend (and they mean it this time; the booth will get crowded with the other big prints coming in)! They also have their first "Silents, Please!" screening of the new year, with Jeff Rapsis accompanying a 35mm print of the original 1924 adaptation of Peter Pan (made with J.M. Barries' approval and involvement) on Sunday afternoon.
  
  Sister theater The Capitol in Arlington brings back Past Lives and The Holdovers for the weekend.
• The Museum of Science has Nope on the Omnimax screen Friday and Saturday; note that it is likely not included in the free screenings in the room on Saturday (walk-ups only, first-come first-served).
• The Embassy in Waltham has a special Grand Opening Event for In the Whale on Saturday, with director David Abel on-hand for a Q&A and to be presented with the theater's inaugural Embassy Director of the Year award. The film itself is a documentary of a Cap Cod lobster diver who survived being ingested by a humpback whale. The film will also play Thursday.
• The week's New Hollywood special at Landmark Kendall Square this Tuesday is The Graduate.
• The Regent Theatre has documentary Who Can See Forever with subject Sam Beam on-hand for a live performance and short post-film Q&A on Friday, although it is listed as sold out; the film will screen on its own on Thursday.
• The GlobeDocs Black History Month Film Festival continues in virtual fashion this weekend with Crooklyn streaming in a lead-up to a Monday panel discussion.
• Joe's Free Films includes a show of Straight Outta Compton at the Mattapan branch of the Boston Public Library late Tuesday afternoon (RSVP required).
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday plus Thursday with The Holdovers (no show Thursday), The Zone of Interest, Driving Madeleine, and American Fiction.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Driving Madeleine, brings back Wonka (Saturday/Sunday matinees), and continues The Zone of Interest, The Boys in the Boat, American Fiction, The Boy and the Heron (subtitled all week, dubbed matinees Saturday/Sunday), Migration, Poor Things, and The Holdovers. No shows Monday.
  
  The Luna Theater has The Iron Claw Friday evening, Past Lives on Saturday, and Casablanca on Sunday.
  
  Cinema Salem is open through Monday with Lisa Frankenstein, All of Us Strangers, The Zone of Interest, American Fiction, and Poor Things. The Friday Night Light show is Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion.
  
  If you can make it to the Liberty Tree Mall (or Framingham), they have The Monk and the Gun, which has an American adventurer meeting a young monk in the isolated Himalayan nation..

I'll be checking out the three Lunar New Year releases (and streaming the original Pegasus), plus looking to fit in a couple other things, although it may be tight before One Love, Madame.Web, and The Taste of Things grab screens Wednesday.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 1 December 2023 - 7 December 2023

Genuinely weird couple weeks coming up at the movies in terms of mainstream releases - it's like we've hit some "natural lull" plus "studios not making so many awards contenders" plus "pandemic production delays" plus "stuff pushed out because of the strikes" situation.making for a weird December. This week, at least, it manifests as odd/interesting releases at the 'plexes.

• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is still kicking around well after its run was expected to end, and it's joined this weekend by Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, which I gather has more behind-the-scenes documentary footage than the Swift movie has, but should still be a lot of fun for her fans, and there are a lot of them. It's also only playing Thursday to Sunday, opening this week at the Coolidge,Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), the Causeway, South Bay (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Imax Laser/Dolby Cinema), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The latest Godilla movie from Toho, Godzilla Minus One, hits American theaters just a month after opening in Japan, and it's easily top-5 in the series, a banger in which writer/director Takashi Yamazaki moves the time frame up to the end of World War II and the aftermath and builds the human half of the story around a fighter pilot trying to atone for abandoning his kamikaze mission in the last days of the war. It's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), CinemaSalem, Boston Common, the Causeway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards (including CWX). It picks up some Dolby Cinema showtimes at Boston Common and Assembly Row and Imax shows at South Bay from Monday to Wednesday with Renaissance resting.
  
  John Woo's first American-produced film in twenty years, Silent Night, opens at Boston Common, the Causeway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. It features Joel Kinnaman as a man whose vocal chords were destroyed in the same gang attack that took his son going on a dialogue-free rampage - the trailer is basically "John Woo knows action; here's some violence".
  
  Also opening is The Shift, with Kristoffer Polaha as a man brought to a parallel world by a mysterious figure (Neal McDonough) looking to return to his wife; given that McDonough's character was literally Satan in the original short and it's being distributed by Angel Studios, I am guessing it's a bit heavy-handed. That plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, the Causeway, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Horror comedy Don't Suck, which stars Jamie Kennedy as a stand-up whose new opening act may be a vampire, plays one show a night at Fresh Pond. Documentary The Disappearance of Shere Hite plays limited shows at Boston Common. Simón is back at Arsenal Yards for one show a day.
  
  Norwegian family comedy Teddy's Chrstmas plays matinees at Boston Common, apparently dubbed in English with Zachary Levi as the voice of a teddy bear that a little girls spots at a Christmas fair that is apparently alive and looking to land with a rich family. Other Christmas bookings include The Polar Express at Boston Common (Friday/Saturday/Monday/Tuesday); Elf at Boston Common (Friday/Saturday/Monday/Tuesday); Arthur Christmas at Arsenal Yards (Friday); A Bad Moms Christmas at Arsenal Yards (Friday/Saturday/Sunday); National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (Sunday/Monday/Tuesday) at Boston Common; the Jim Carrey Grinch at South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Sunday & Wednesday; and the CGI Grinch at Boston Common (Sunday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday).
  
  Monty Python and the Holy Grail has "quote-along" shows at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Kendall Square, Assembly Row on Sunday and Wednesday. The Abyss: Special Edition plays Wednesday at Boston Common (Dolby Cinema), South Bay (Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema), and Arsenal Yards (CWX). Waitress: The Musical starts a five-night run at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill on Thursday. The Boy and the Heron has previews at Boston Common on Monday (Imax Xenon) and Wednesday.
• Remember that bit about studios not really doing prestige pictures any more? Landmark Kendall Square has historically specialized in that but are leaning heavily on Netflix previews for those movies right now, with Maestro, Bradley Cooper's film about Leonard Bernstein (and Carey Mulligan as his wife/beard), joining May December and Leave the World Behind this weekend.
  
  They also have the first of a couple Christmas Retro Replays on Tuesday in Scrooged, and a $5 Yórgos Lánthimos catch-up screening of The Killing of a Sacred Deer on Wednesday.
• The Alamo Drafthouse Seaport has one of my favorite's from this summer's Fantasia Festival, Raging Grace, playing once a day through Wednesday, with that final screening featuring director Paris Zarcilla for a live Q&A (which was pretty good in Montreal). It's a nifty thriller about an undocumented Filipina maid in the UK and her daughter who suspects her new job is too good to be true, as the woman who hired her may be poisoning her elderly uncle.
  
  Their calendar shows Saturday's "Movie Party" screening of The Polar Express, Sunday's movie brunch for The Holiday, and Tuesday's movie party of Elf as sold out, but there are tickets for Monday's 3D screening of I, The Jury, Tuesdays sensory-friendly show of The Bride of Frankenstein, and both The Holiday and The City of Lost Children on Wednesday.
• Three new Indian movies at Apple Fresh Pond this week: Animal is a jumbo-sized action film starring Ranbir Kapoor as a man who lets his feral nature run free to avenge his father, with showtimes in Hindi and Tamil (Hindi and Telugu at Boston Common); Sam Bahadur is a Hindi-language film starring Vicky Kaushal as a General leading India's army during the war with Pakistan; and Annapoorani: The Goddess of Food is a Tamil-language film starring Nayanathara as a woman aiming to become a master chef despite coming from a very traditional family. Marathi-language comedy Jhimma 2 plays Saturday & Sunday, and Telugu-language family romance Hi Nanna opens on Wednesday
• The Brattle Theatre has two new restorations this weekend: Victims of Sin, playing Friday to Monday, is a Mexican film noir/melodrama/musical from 1951 with Ninón Sevilla as a cabaret dancer who adopts an abandoned baby but must outwit the father when he is released from prison. A 35mm print of Messiah of Evil, a gonzo horror film celebrating its 50th anniversary, plays Friday to Sunday.
  
  There's also a special screening of Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow on 35mm Friday; it's based on a book by Ursula Parrott, and biographer Marsha Gordon will be there to introduce the film. On Sunday, they and RPM Festival welcome Douglas Urbank for "The Space Between", a program of his short films. There is also a quick Roald Dahl series, with a 35mm double feature of James and the Giant Peach & Fantastic Mr. Fox on Tuesday and The Witches alone on Thursday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre continues playing Napoleon on 70mm for the shows on the main screen, which isn't all of them this week, so check your showtime. Midnights are 35mm print of Night of the Living Dead on Friday and the original The Evil Dead on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Being There, after which it's Big Screen Debuts: Christopher Nolan's Following on 35mm Tuesday, This Is Spinal Tap on Wednesday, and Eraserhead on 35mm Thursday, including a seminar led by BU professor Jonathan Foltz
• The Museum of Fine Arts has Rise (En Corps), featuring ballerina Marion Barbeau in her acting debut as a dancer whose life in Paris crumbles, leading her to rediscover herself in Brittany, on Friday evening; the first of three encores from the most recent French Film Festival.
• The Harvard Film Archive finishes "Under the Underground - The Visionary Cinema of Kanai Katsu" with presentations of The Kingdom and The Stormy Times on Friday night, both on 16mm film. Also wrapping is "Out of the Ashes - The US-ROK Alliance", with encore screenings of The Marines Who Never Returned (Friday) and Aimless Bullet (Sunday), plus a 35mm print of Female Boss on Sunday evening. On Monday, they have a special presentation of "The Oath of the Sword", a Japanese-American three-reeler from 1914 long thought lost but now restored on 35mm film, with Robert Humphreville providing a live soundtrack and post-film discussion with Denise Khor & Alexander Zahlten
• The Regent Theatre has two encore screenings this week: Musical documentary Elis & Tom plays on Wednesday and adventure film package "Mountains on Stage" plays Thursday.
• The Bright Lights selection on Thursday is Playland, a free-form film set at Boston's Playland Café that merges narrative, documentary, and fantasy. Writer/director Georden West will be on-hand for discussion. Free and open to the public.
• The ICA will be presenting a package of Sundance Film Festival Shorts starting on Thursday.
• The Museum of Science still has Oppenheimer on the dome on Friday and Saturday evenings
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday with Napoleon and The Holdovers.
  
  The West Newton Cinema also holds steady with Napoleon, Saltburn, The Holdovers, Trolls: Band Together, Eras (Friday to Sunday), and Barbie (no show Sunday/Thursday).
  
  Though not listed on their site, The Irish Film Festival is presenting documentary Between Worlds, a documentary on composer Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin, on Sunday night. The screening is free but RSVPs are requested.
  
  The Luna Theater has Priscilla on Friday, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation on Saturday, White Christmas on Sunday, Weirdo Wednesday, and a free UMass Lowell Philosophy & Film show of Night of the Living Dead on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem is open Friday to Monday with Trolls Band Together, The Holdovers and Napoleon, and Godzilla Minus One. The Salem Horror Festival has a special double feature of The Sacrifice Game & Satranic Panic on Sunday evening (note that The Sacrifice Game also pairs with The Holdovers, so maybe see that in the afternoon). There's also a special advance screening of Merry Good Enough, which was shot locally last year and will have filmmakers on hand for a Q&A.

I am tempted to hit the furniture store to see Godzilla on a genuine Imax screen, can't miss Silent Night, already have a ticket for I, The Jury, and will probably fit Victims of Sin, May December, and Following in as well.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 27 October 2023 - 2 November 2023

We're sort of getting out of spooky season and into Oscar season, I guess, although between the strikes and the concert movies and everything, it's a weird year.

• Five Nights at Freddy's gets the "last horror movie of the season" slot, in which a man takes a job as a security guard at a Chuck E. Cheese-looking place where the animatronics are said to be far more than just vaguely creepy robots. It's at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill as well as on Peacock.
  
  Freelance is an action comedy which has John Cena as a former soldier reluctantly recruited to provide security for a journalist played by Alison Brie; director Pierre Morel made District 13 and Taken way back at the start of his career. It's at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  The Persian Version plays Boston Common, Kenmore Square; it's a comedy about a large Persian family whose sole daughter's pregnancy is discovered as they gather to support the father having a heart transplant - awkward because she's gay, but apparently a parallel for the youth of her take-no-prisoners mother in some respects.
  
  Amerikatsi, a comedy/drama about an Armenian-American who returns to the motherland only to find himself on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain and imprisoned, opens at Arsenal Yards after having played elsewhere a few weeks back.
  
  Gonna guess that the folks behind documentary After Death, playing Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, aren't inclined to come up with "there's nothing, so live your life to the fullest" as an answer.
  
  There's an early-access screening of The Holdovers on Sunday afternoon at the Somerville, West Newton, Boston Common, and Kendall Square. Mexican drama Radical, starring Eugenio Derbez, also has early screenings Sunday. Monday's A24 horror show at Boston Common is Midsommar. The Taylor Swift "Eras" film has Halloween showings in addition to the usual Thursday-Sunday shows. Terrifier 2 returns to Boston Common and Assembly Row on Wednesday and Thursday, right after Halloween.
• Anatomy of a Fall, a drama about a woman on trial after her husband dies from a fall and their blind son is the only witness, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row. Interestingly, the previews I have seen have been in English, although the film hails from France and is listed as primarily French and German, and the scenes in question don't look like times people would be speaking in their second languages, so it's possible the trailers are dubbed.
  
  The Coolidge's month-long Halloween programming comes to a close, with Hocus Pocus playing at midnight Friday, and Saturday offering a sold-out 35mm marathon centered around witches, including Rosemary's Baby, Suspiria '77, and The Blair Witch Project, and a Big Screen Classics double feature of Young Frankenstein & An American Werewolf in London on Tuesday, Halloween itself.
  
  There's also a kids' show of Coco on Saturday morning, although Day of the Dead isn't exactly Halloween, and a Science on Screen presentation of Death Becomes Her Monday night, although it's not exactly even horror-comedy. There's also Open Screen on Monday.
• The Killer, a new thriller from David Fincher starring Michael Fassbender as an assassin apparently seeking revenge around the world after a botched job. It's at Landmark Kendall Square and the Coolidge, just a slightly bigger release than the usual Netflix movie, which is kind of a bummer, considering what a big deal Fincher used to be.
  
  On Monday, the theater has both the new animated film My Love Affair with Marriage with director Signe Baumane in person, with John Carpenter's Halloween also playing that night. Halloween itself has the film's first sequel, Halloween II, as part of the $5 Eighties Slasher series. Also $5 is McCabe & Mrs. Miller on Wednesday (part of a "Films that Inspired Alexander Payne" set).
• Indian openings at Apple Fresh Pond this week include Hindi Air Force drama Tejas, starring Kangana Ranaut, Hindi mystery Sajini Shinde Ka Viral Video, and Telugu comedy Martin Luther King, whose connection to the American civil rights icon looks vague at best. Bengali drama Prohelika plays Sunday Leo: Bloody Sweet also stick around Fresh Pond (Tamil & Telugu) and Boston Common (Tamil).
  
  Vietnamese action film Bad Blood, with Kieu Minh Tuan as a former criminal turning to old friends to track down his kidnapped stepdaughter, plays Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  Makoto Shinkai's latest animated film, Suzume, has a return engagement at Boston Common (matinees only) this week; the Ghibli Fest selection is Spirited Away, playing Boston Common, subtitled Saturday & Tuesday, dubbed Sunday & Monday. Godzilla 2000 plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
  
  Zhang Yimou's pretty-decent (if censor-approved) thriller Under the Light continues at Boston Common. The Chinese adaptation of Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad plays out at the Liberty Tree Mall.
• The Brattle Theatre is the main host for The GlobeDocs Film Festival, running through Sunday with post-film Q&As for almost every screening, including Erroll Morris on Sunday afternoon with The Pigeon Tunnel. There are also a number of streaming presentations.
  
  For Halloween, they have a special "Elements of Cinema" screening of The Howling on Monday, Evil Dead II on 35mm on Monday and Tuesday, and Donnie Darko on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they have a belated celebration of National Cat Day with a new restoration of Czech oddity The Cassandra Cat and better-known Japanese oddity House.
• The Somerville Theatre and Julia Marchese present their 3rd Annual Halloween Hullabaloo with a long weekend of double & triple features: Friday's "Hardcore Horror" is Hellraiser & The Exorcist (both 35mm); Saturday's Demonic Haunts are Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (35mm), Mike Flanagan's Oculus, and Tobe Hooper's Poltrgeist (35mm); Sunday offers the Lesbian Vampire Delights of Daughters of Darkness & Blood and Roses (both 35mm) followed by Werewolves-a-Go-Go with An American Werewolf in London (4K) & The Howling (35mm); finishing up on Halloween (Tuesday) with Psycho & Alice, Sweet Alice (both 35mm). Saturday night also has a midnight show of Rocky Horror with the Teseracte Players (Full Body appears to be at Boston Common Friday/Saturday/Tuesday). In presumably non-scary material, they've got the 2023 Quality Ski Time Film Tour on Thursday.
• The Harvard Film Archive has another entry in "Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik's Expatriates" on Friday, The Most Beautiful Country in the World. Saturday has a reprise of Trenque Lauquen, Parts I & II. Sunday is James Baldwin day, with a the paired featurettes "Take This Hammer" & "The Negro and the Amerian Promise" in the afternoon and I Heard It Through the Grapevine 16mm in the evening. On Monday, they will screen Adachi Masao's REVOLUTION+1 followed by a live (though remote) conversation with the filmmaker.
• The Regent Theatre has the classic 1922 Nosferatu on Sunday with a live score featuring Paul Bielatowicz and his band, plus special guests joining remotely on auxiliary screens. The "Midweek Music Movies and More" show on Wednesday is Elis & Tom.
• The Boston Jewish Film Festival begins on Wednesday, with Remembering Gene Wilder at the Coolidge, while Thursday has the FreshFlix Short Film competition at the Brattle and Resistance - They Fought Back at West Newton. The Festival will continue at various venues next week and also have a virtual component.
• The Boston Underground Film Festival curates a program of Spooky Shorts at The ICA on Sunday afternoon.
• This week's Thursday Bright Lights show in the Bright Screening Room is Kim's Video, which tells the story of how Yongman Kim started an iconic New York City video store out of his dry cleaning business, but how the collection wound up in Italy before returning home to NYC. Free and open to the public, with directors David Redmon & Ashley Sabin on hand for discussion afterward.
• The Boston Asian-American Film Festival and Boston Palestine Film Festival both have virtual programs available through Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue has The Eras Tour and Killers of the Flower Moon from Friday to Sunday and Thursday. John Carpenter's original Halloween also plays Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema is the latest to bring back Hocus Pocus, also showing Killers of the Flower Moon, Eras (no shows Monday-Wednesday), Paw Patrol (Saturday/Sunday), Golda, Past Lives (Sunday matinee), Barbie (no show Thursday), and Oppenheimer (no show Sunday). They've also got the Sunday preview of The Holdovers, and are open all week.
  
  The Luna Theater has It Lives Inside on Friday and Saturday, Carpenter's Halloween on Saturday & Sunday, Nosferatu with Dylan Jack Quartet Sunday evening, and 2001: A Space Odyssey in UMass Lowell's Film & Philosophy series, with post-film discussion Thursday. No Weirdo Wednesday on the schedule.
  
  Cinema Salem has Carpenter's Halloween, and Hocus Pocus. The weekend's Universal Monsters shows are The Invisible Man (Friday), The Mummy (Friday), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Friday/Sunday), The Bride of Frankenstein (Friday), Dracula (Saturday/Monday), The Wolf Man (Saturday), and Frankenstein (Monday). The Crow plays Friday night, Miz Diamond Wigfall presentations of The Shining on Saturday which promise/threaten both drag introductions and "shadow performance", fan film Never Hike Alone 2 on Saturday afternoon, Freddy vs. Jason with stunt performer Douglas Tait on Saturday evening, and Night of the Living Dead on Sunday.
  
  If you can make it out Davers's Liberty Tree Mall, they've got Inspector Sun, an English dub of a Spanish animated film about a murder mystery played out by insects in a zeppelin.
• The Alamo Drafthouse Boston is still not able to open yet (apparently, getting your movie theater inspected in Boston is a beast right now), but they're presenting two movie nights - Hocus Pocus at Fenway Park on Friday and Cabin in the Woods at Dorchester Brewing Company on Saturday.

Honestly not sure what the next few days look like, but I'm thinking about Bad Blood, 5 Nights at Freddy's, The Killer, Freelance, and The Persian Version. Amusingly, Anatomy of a Fall might be the one that hangs around best.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 13 October 2023 - 19 October 2023

Of all the local theaters that closed during/after the pandemic, I would not guess that The Embassy in Waltham would be the first to re-open under new management, but to be fair, it's been in use as a gymnastics school and performing arts center for the past few months, and also had some screenings, so this weekend only marks its official return as a cinema. Because of those other uses, it's now a 2-plex rather than a 6-plex, but it's cool to have something in that neighborhood again!

• It re-opens with Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, a concert film of one of the year's two hottest tickets (with Beyoncé's Renaissance getting similar treatment in a couple months). To keep it an event with the sort of crowds you'd see at an actual concert, it's only running three or four weeks, and only playing Thursdays through Sundays. It's almost everywhere, playing at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Coolidge, Kendall Square, the Embassy, Lexington, West Newton, Boston Common (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), South Bay (including Imax Xenon/Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser/Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The Hunger Games gets screenings at Assembly Row on Sunday to attempt to juice excitement for the upcoming prequel. Documentary What Is Love? plays South Bay and Assembly Row Monday. Boston Common has A24 horror flicks X (Monday) and Under the Skin (Wednesday). There are 10th anniversary screenings of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods at South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Tuesday & Wednesday, and 35th Anniversary shows of Beetlejuice on Wednesday on the Dolby Cinema screens at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, more fun than expected at Fantasia, plays Assembly Row on Thursday. Boston Common also has an early access show of Dicks: The Musical on Wednesday before the regular early show the next night.
• Landmark Kendall Square has Foe, which stars Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal as a couple on an isolated farm when a possibly-inhuman stranger shows up with an unusual offer. They also open Joan Baez: I Am a Noise, which both follows the artist on a farewell tour and digs into her copious archives.
  
  The last leg of the Scorsese + DiCaprio series (before next week's new entry) is The Wolf of Wall Street, which plays for $5 on Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. There's also a special presentation of Finding Her Beat, with documentary subject Megan Chao Smith there for a post-film Q&A, on Monday; the film itself is about folks in Minneapolis forming an all-female taiko troupe, though the art form had long been man-only in Japan. The $5 Retro Replay 80s slasher for the week is Child's Play on Tuesday.
• Apple Fresh Pond has two new Indian films opening on Friday: MAD is a Telugu-language comedy about three dorm-mates at an engineering school, and Shot Boot Three is a family-friendly Tamil film about a kid and his new dog. Marathi-language family comedy Aatmapamphlet plays Saturday & Sunday.
  
  Thank You For Coming and Jawan continue at Fresh Pond through Tuesday. On Wednesday, a Tamil action-adventure about a chocolatier pushed too far, Leo: Bloody Sweet, opens at Fresh Pond (with Telugu screenings) and Boston Common (Imax Xenon on Wednesday), with Telugu actioner Bhagavanth Kesari also opening at Fresh Pond and Arsenal Yards Wednesday and South Bay Thursday.
  
  Chinese films Moscow Mission and Chang An continue at Boston Common for a third week. The Ex Files 4 hangs around a bit out at the Liberty Tree Mall.
• An October Friday the 13th obviously calls for a double feature, and The Coolidge Corner Theatre has Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood & Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan outdoors at the Rocky Woods Reservation in Medfield on Friday night. Back in Brookline, the midnights are The Mist in black & white on Friday and a new restoration of The House by the Cemetery on Saturday.
  
  On Sunday, they present the Coolidge Award to costume designer Ruth E. Carter, with her participating in a post-film Q&A after Black Panther in the afternoon and a more broad-ranging discussion and presentation in the evening.
  
  During the week, they are well-equipped to handle the Swift-shaped hole in their schedule with Jeff Rapsis on the organ to accompany The Phantom of the Opera on Monday, a Big Screen Classic presentation of Coraline on Tuesday, a book reading of Lore of the Jack O'Lantern on Wednesday and a 35mm "Rewind!" show of Twilight on Thursday, because apparently 15 years is old enough to be considered retro.
• The Brattle Theatre has documentary Godard Cinema from Friday to Sunday, covering, as one might expect, the life and work of Jean-Luc Godard, The presentation also includes Godard's last work, "Trailer of the FIlm That Will Never Exist: 'Phony Wars'", and plays as a double feature with a 35mm print of Godard's Vivre Sa Vie on Saturday & Sunday.
  
  From Friday through Monday (mostly late shows), they have the new restoration of Park Chan-Wook's Oldboy. Tuesday has an RPM Fest presentation, "Waiting for Snow", which features three short films by the late Michael Snow on 16mm film, and on Wednesday they team with the Museum of Home Video for "Ring, Ring: A Doorbell Cam Fantasia". Thursday is the first night if the Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus series, kicking things off with Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, and Shea Wigham in Eileen.
• The Somerville Theatre ramps up their spooky season shows with The Others in 4K from Friday to Sunday and locally-produced folk horror film The Sudbury Devil showing Friday evening, midnight Saturday, and Sunday afternoon. An Attack of the B-Movies double feature of A Bucket of Blood & The Bat plays Saturday afternoon and Tuesday evening. Early warning: If you want to see Killers of the Flower Moon on the Somerville's main screen opening weekend, hit the Thursday previews, because they'll have Johnathan Richman on stage from the 20th to 22nd.
• The Harvard Film Archive finishes their Rita Azevedo Gomes with the filmmaker there in person for two screenings - The Sound of the Shaking Earth on Friday and The Kegelstatt Trio on Sunday. On Sunday, they have the first of three screenings of I Heard It Through the Grapevine, this one on 16mm film; it has director Dick Fontaine following James Baldwin through the South, visiting important places in the fight for civil rights.
• Wednesday's "Midweek Music Movies and More" show at The Regent Theatre is One Hand Don't Clap, a documentary on the history of calypso and soca with a steel drum performance by Ron Reid before the show and a discussion with director Kavery Kaul afterward.
• The Boston Asian-American Film Festival actually kicked off last night, but runs through Sunday at ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theatre (Bright Screening Room), with features and shorts programs through Sunday and six shorts programs available to screen through next Sunday.
  
  This week's Thursday Bright Lights show in the Bright Screening Room is also presented by the BAAFF; it's the terrific Past Lives, with post-film discussion to follow. Free and open to the public.
• The Boston Palestine Film Festival has opted to postpone the in-person screenings that were scheduled to take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, but does have a five features and six shorts available on their site from Friday through next Sunday.
• The Lexington Venue has The Eras Tour, A Haunting in Venice and Flora and Son from Friday to Sunday, with Eras also playing Thursday. They also have documentary Brief Tender LIght with filmmaker Q&A after the show on Monday; it's listed as the "2023 AIFF Kick-off", although it is oddly not listed on the Arlington International Film Festival site.
  
  The West Newton Cinema gets Eras and keeps Flora and Son (Saturday/Sunday matinees), Paw Patrol, Bottoms (Saturday to Wednesday), Golda, Past Lives, Barbie, and Oppenheimer. Open all week.
  
  The Luna Theater has Friday the 13th on Friday evening, because obviously, Stop Making Sense on Saturday, Beetlejuice on Sunday afternoon, a Weirdo Wednesday show, and opens It Lives Inside on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Friday the 13th all weekend, along with fan film anthology Never Walk Alone. Hocus Pocus and The Exorcist: Believer are the regular shows through Monday. Donnie Darko plays as Friday's "Night Light" show; there are Universal Monsters shows of Dracula, Frankenstein, & The Creature from the Black Lagoon Saturday, The Invisible Man & The Mummy on Sunday, Mummy, The Wolf Man, Bride of Frankenstein, and Creature on Monday; Carpenter's Halloween plays Saturday and Monday; there's also a premiere part for Brix'n Mortar's music video "Hail the Wolf" on Saturday; two Teseract show of Rocky Horror Saturday night (Full Body at Boston Common); and Night of the Living Dead on Sunday.

Must say, for all that I've been reading articles about studios being upset at Taylor Swift and AMC doing an end-run around them, I'm not exactly seeing a whole lot of counter-programming for those of us who are basically hoping our nieces have fun but not getting in a room with 100 screaming teenagers, or offering special shows for Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday. I'll likely hit Foe, The Others and The Sudbury Horror, and maybe catch up on stuff like Bottoms, Expendables 4, and The Royal Hotel .

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 May 2023 - 18 May 2023

Still on vacation as I write this, but coming back soon with a fair amount to catch up on in this week-between-blockbusters.

• The counterprogramming is Book Club: The Next Chapter, which reunites Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen, and Mary Steenburgen for a bachelorette party in Italy; hijinks will obviously ensue. It's at The Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  A couple movies that were barely on the radar before a couple weeks ago but grab a spare screen after the initial see-the-new-Marvel-first-weekend rush also open. Hypnotic stars Ben Affleck and is directed by Robert Rodriguez, and features the former suddenly discovering that there are people out there with mind-control powers; it's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Kendall Square, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Knights of the Zodiac is a live-action manga adaptation starring Japanese-American actor Mackenyu (who has mostly worked in Japan) and a strong "should be doing more than just direct-to-video" folks (Famke Janssen, Mark Dacascos, Nick Stahl, Sean Bean). It's at Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  
  IFFBoston selection Blackberry opens at Boston Common and South Bay; a comic look at how a Canadian company created the smartphone market for business but was swept aside when Apple made it mainstream. Charlie Day writes and directs Fools Paradise, also starring as a man who gets caught up in showbiz insanity when a publicist (Ken Jeong) has him substitute for a movie star; that one plays the Somerville, Boston Common, and CinemaSalem.
  
  Rally Road Racers, an animated film which posits sloths racing up and down the Silk Road, opens at Fresh Pond.
  
  Arsenal Yards has matinees of The Wizard of Oz all week. Grease gets 45th anniversary shows Sunday and Wednesday at South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards. The Way, a 2010 film starring Martin Sheen and directed by son Emilio Estevesz, has apparently become popular enough in come circles to get a one-night re-release Tuesday at South Bay and Assembly Row. Concert film Eric Clapton: Across 24 Nights, plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and Kendall Square on Wednesday. Gerard Butler war/action movie Kandahar has a preview showing Wednesday at Boston Common.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up IFFBoston selection Wild Life, the new film from Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin, this one following entrepreneurs and outdoor enthusiasts Kris & Doug Tompkins as they work to create national parks in Chile and Argentina after leaving their successful businesses behind. Vasarhelyi will be on-hand for the 7pm screening on Saturday.
  
  They also open (with relatively limited showtimes) Other People's Children, about a woman who falls for a divorced dad and his daughter, and must grapple with how she's going to be at least partly an outsider in the girl's life while her time for having a child of her own is limited.
  
  Midnights at the Coolidge this weekend are Brian De Palma's Body Double on Friday and a 35mm print of Wild Things on Saturday. The National Center for Jewish Film presents 1341 Frames of Love and War and Where Life Begins on Sunday. The Jim Jarmusch series continues with Mystery Train on Tuesday and a 35mm print of Life on Earth on Wednesday.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square also has one from IFFBoston; Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie documents how the actor shot to fame as a young man and then was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease when he might otherwise have hit his leading-man prime.
  
  The Scorsese/De Niro Retro Replay for this Tuesday is Goodfellas.
• The Kerala Story, a docudrama about Indian women recruited into Da'esh, arrives at Boston Common and Apple Fresh Pond. Fresh Pond also opens Custody, wherein a cop must get a witness to court but the whole department is corrupt, in Telugu and Tamil; historical spy thriller IB 71; Hindi musical family drama Music School; and action-drama Raavana Kottam. Malayalam-language thriller 2018 returns to Fresh Pond for one show on Friday. Ponniyin Selvan: Part Two (aka PS-2) continues Tamil-language shows at Fresh Pond and Boston Common (Tamil).
  
  Anime Suzume continues at the Coolidge and Boston Common, subtitled.
• The Brattle Theatre gets ready for Asteroid City with The Compleat Wes Anderson, including Bottle Rocket (35mm Friday/Saturday), The Royal Tenenbaums (Saturday), Rushmore (35mm Saturday), Fantastic Mr. Fox (35mm Sunday), Isle of Dogs (Sunday), The French Dispatch (Monday/Tuesday), The Darjeeling Limited (Wednesday), The LIfe Aquatic with Steve Zissou (35mm Wednesday), The Grand Budapest Hotel (35mm Thursday), and Moonrise Kingdom (35mm Thursday). He's about two or three films away from not being able to squeeze this into a week the next time a new one comes out!
  
  And, of course, on Mother's Day (Sunday), they have a matinee of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
• The Somerville Theatre has a Bogard double feature of Key Largo & The African Queen, both on 35mm film, Friday night. Saturday's Midnight Special is Better off Dead. The most recent local shorts from the 48 Hour Film Project play Monday through Wednesday, and the Two-for-Thursday twin bill has Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter & Out of the Past, the latter on 35mm. The main room is used Saturday for a the Vienna Light Orchestra's candlelight tribute to The Greatest Showman.
• The Harvard Film Archive begins to shift into summer mode with a new Late Kiarostami series, with The Wind Will Carry Us on Friday and Five Dedicated to Ozu on Monday. The Hong Sangsoo series wraps with Hotel by the River on Saturday and Sunday and The Novelist's Film on Sunday. The final film of their Med Hongo retrospective, Polisario, A People in Arms, plays Sunday evening on 16mm film.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has the first weekend of their Festival of New Films From Japan, with speculative-fiction tale Plan 75 on Saturday and Sunday, a dubbed screening of animated drama Miss Hokusai, and Ribbon, a pandemic story from actor-director Non.
• Belmont World Film wraps this year's series with Peaceful, with Catherine Deneuve as a mother whose son (Benoit Magimel), has just received a terminal cancer diagnosis. It streams through Sunday night ahead of a sold-out show with a pre-film reception and talk with consultant/cast member Dr. Gabriel Sara, but there are apparently reush tickets and the discussion will be made available to those who stream the movie.
• The Museum of Science has Everything Everywhere All At Once, on the Omnimax screen Saturday nights through May for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, in association with The Boston Asian-American Film Festival.
• The Regent Theatre has documentary Anxious Nation on Wednesday and the A-Town Teen Film Festival on Thursday.
• Joe's Free Films has German film The Airship showing at Goethe-Institut with English subtitles on Wednesday; RSVPs requested.
• The Lexington Venue is open through Sunday with Book Club: The Next Chapter and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. They also have the 2nd Annual New England Community Film Series, with all ticket sales going to the local filmmakers, on Saturday afternoon.
  
  The West Newton Cinema brings in Book Club: The Next Chapter and keeps Guardians, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, Beau Is Afraid (no shows Friday & Thursday), Air, and Super Mario Brothers. Closed Monday.
  
  The Luna Theater has Beau Is Afraid from Friday to Sunday and on Thursday, plus a Weirdo Wednesday show.
  
  Cinema Salem is back in the Friday late show business with Battle Royale, and also opens Book Club, Fool's Paradise, Evil Dead Rise, and Hypnotic, keeping R.M.N. and Guardians as well.
  
  If you can get out to the Liberty Tree Mall, they have Oxide Pang's new movie Flashover, about firefighters trying to extinguish a chemical plant. He and his brother did a good job with Out of Inferno, so he's got experience.

I'll be seeing the Sunday Japanese films when I come back, and then there's a LOT of festival/vacation catching up to do!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 2 December 2022 - 8 December 2022

It's an exceptionally dead period between Thanksgiving and Avatar and Netflix isn't extending Glass Onion's run, so let's see who is ready to pick up the money they're leaving on the table.

• The big opening this weekend is Violent Night, with David Harbour as Santa Claus, who finds himself in the middle of a Die Hard-ish robbery when a kid on his Nice List is taken hostage. It sounds like something more suited for a trailer parody than a full film - indeed, that's what the trailer feels like - but that describes a lot of the films by director Tommy Wirkola which have worked better than they have a right to, and the action is choreographed by the guys who did Plan B. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Fenway, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX).
  
  Universal covers its Christmas-movie bases by also re-releasing Love Actually at Arsenal Yards (through Sunday). There are Christmas matinees at Boston Common and South Bay of Love Actually (Friday), Elf (Saturday); the Illumination Grinch (Sunday); National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (Monday); The Best Man Holiday (Tuesday); the Jim Carrey Grinch (Wednesday); and The Polar Express (Thursday). Top Gun: Maverick also gets a "hey, there are screens open" re-release at Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  There are 40th Anniversary screenings of The Dark Crystal on Sunday and Wednesday at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Broadway Rising, a documentary about the New York theater scene reopening after the pandemic, plays South Bay and Assembly Row on Monday. Another documentary, Johnny Cash - The Redemption of an American Icon is at Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row Monday to Wednesday. Moonage Daydream returns to Boston Common (Imax Xenon) Wednesday. Greek film Smyrna plays Fenway, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Thursday.
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square picks up two streaming productions: Amazon's Nanny stars Anna Diop in the title role, a Senegaliese immigrant who watches another family's child while saving up money to bring her own son over, although both families are under some strain. Netflix has White Noise, Noah Baumbach's adaptation of Don DeLillo's book about a family trying to keep it together with a potentially apocalyptic event on the horizon.
  
  They also have Memories of My Father, a film about a Colombian activist told from the point of view of his son, who would become a noted writer, although only for matinees. Neil Young: Harvest Time plays Sunday afternoon (also at Boston Common and Fenway). Tuesday's Retro Replay is Gremlins, starting a run of holiday-themed movies.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre is billing their run of A Couple in their smaller rooms as an exclusive booking, and it's unusual, a small film from Frederick Wiseman - an hour-long narrative rather than a sprawling documentary, following Sophia Tolstoy as she walks a garden, discussing her fraught marriage.
  
  Midnight movies include The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the 2019 Black Christmas on Friday and Krampus on Saturday (doing holiday movies this month). Babe is the Saturday morning matinee, while Goethe-Institut selection The Silent Forest plays Sunday morning. There's a special presentation of Children of Las Brisas (Los Niños de las Brisas) on Monday evening with director Marianela Maldonado, producer Luisa de la Ville, and others on-hand for a Q&A afterward.
• Six new South Asian movies start Friday at Apple Fresh Pond: Telugu crime flick HIT: The 2nd Case features Adivi Sesh as a detective on the trail of a serial killer; Hindi action comedy An Action Hero (also at Boston Common) follows a movie star who has gone into hiding; Gold is a Malayalam comedy; Yaara Vey is a Pakistani romance; DSP and Gatta Kusthi are Tamil-language comedies; and Bhediya is a Hindi werewolf comedy. Bangladeshi sports film Damal has an encore on Saturday.
  
  Drishyam 2, Love Today, and Uunchai continue at Fresh Pond; Drishyam 2 is also at Boston Common.
  
  The Quintessential Quintuplets Movie, the finale of the popular series, plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row Friday to Wednesday (except Monday), some shows dubbed and some subtitled. Hideaki Anno's Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time has shows Tuesday and Thursday at Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards (no show Thursday).
  
  Hong Kong romantic comedy Love Suddenly plays Boston Common; the poster makes it look like the same sort of "overlapping romances" as Love Actually, so maybe folks won't be too upset if they buy a ticket to the wrong one. Director Mak Ho-Pong and writer/producer Edmond Wong Chi-Mun did the Breakout Brothers movies and also worked on the Donnie Yen Ip Man series.
  
  Park Chan-Wook's Decision to Leave continues at West Newton and Lexington, and opens at The Capitol and Luna Lowell. Korean music/concert doc NCT Dream the Movie: In a Dream plays Boston Common and Fenway on Saturday.
• The Brattle Theatre kicks off the holiday season on Friday with "Kevin Geeks Out About Christmas" and then a secret screening on 16mm (although they leave enough clues to figure out what it is).
  
  After that, they have a week of "Damn Fine Cinema: The Films of David Lynch", with The Straight Story (35mm Saturday/Monday), a package of short films in a double feature with Eraserhead on 35mm (Saturday), Inland Empire (Saturday), Lost Highway paired with Mulholland Drive (both on 35mm Sunday), Blue Velvet & 35mm Wild at Heart (Monday), The Elephant Man (Wednesday), Dune (35mm Wednesday), and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (35mm Thursday).
• The Harvard Film Archive wraps their fall season with EAMI on Friday, with director Paz Encina on-hnad for a Q&A. They also have last week's Kaidu Club Experimental Shorts directed by Han Ohki in the 1970s available to stream through the 12th.
• The Regent Theatre has outdoor adventure film program "Mountains on Stage: Winter Edition" on Wednesday.
• Bright Lights has Long Live My Happy Head on Thursday, with directors Will Hewitt & Austin McCowan on-hand to talk about their film a Scottish cartoonist who starts making autobiographical comics after learning he has an inoperable brain tumor. Free to the public, tickets available starting noon the day of the show.
• The ICA has a 95-minute program of Sundance Film Festival Shorts from this year's event on Thursday evening, with more shows during the coming weekend.
• The Somerville Theatre is, as often happens in December, down a screen with The Slutcracker taking the main stage on weekends (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Thursday this week). They've also got a special show, "Kevin & Ken Save Christmas!", with audience voting for which holiday special, clip, TV episode, or short plays next, on Saturday.
• The Museum of Science will be showing Wakanda Forever on the Murgar Omni dome Fridays and Saturdays into December.
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Sunday with Decision to Leave, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Menu.
  
  The West Newton Cinema has Strange World, Aftersun, Amsterdam (Saturday/Sunday), The Menu, The Banshees of Inisherin, Wakanda Forever, Lyle Lyle Crocodile (Saturday/Sunday), Armageddon Time (Saturday), Decision to Leave (Sunday), and Tár. Closed Monday.
  
  The Luna Theater has Decision to Leave Friday, Saturday, and Thursday; Concert for George Saturday afternoon; Die Hard Saturday night and all day Sunday; plus Weirdo Wednesday.
  
  Cinema Salem has The Menu, Violent Night, and Strange World Friday to Monday. There's also a show of Elf hosted by Miz Diamond Wigfall Friday night with a more kid-friendly matinee on Saturday, with VideoCoven running the original Black Christmas and Silent Night, Deadly Night on Thursday.
• For those still not ready to join random people in a room for two hours, theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, The Embassy, West Newton, the Capitol and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.

I am down for Violent Night, White Noise, and Love Suddenly, maybe catching up with Devotion and Bones and All. I probably should fill in some David Lynch-shaped holes as well, and we'll see if I catch up on the rest of Evangelion to the point where I go see the finale (I mean, I did see the other three, even if I didn't love them).

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 2 September 2022 - 8 September 2022

Labor Day weekend is even weirder than usual this year, with the two biggest entries re-releases, a "National Cinema Day" on Saturday where a lot of places will be charging $3, any movie, any screen, all day long, and not even a lot of unimpressive material being dumped in the hope that it will maybe get a boost by a holiday weekend.

• Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul is the widest new release, playing at Fresh Pond, Fenway, Kendall Square, South Bay, Assembly Row, and the Embassy; it stars Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown as the leaders of a megachurch trying to rebuild themselves from nothing after a major scandal. There's also Gigi & Nate at Boston Common, featuring Charlie Rowe as a parapalegic man given a curious monkey as a helper animal.
  
  The bigger name releases are established hits: Jaws is releasing on Imax screens and in RealD (in what sounds like a surprisingly decent conversion). It's at Boston Common (Imax Xenon/Real 3D), South Bay (Imax Xenon), and Assembly Row (Imax Xenon). Sony also brings Spider-Man: No Way Home back with 15 minutes of deleted scenes and extras that were apparently not on the DVD/Blu-Ray/4K releases. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, CinemasSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby CInema), Fenway, South Bay (Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Fenway, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards have 40th Anniversary screenings of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday (no Arsenal Yards). There are Wednesday early screenings of Barbarian (Boston Common, Assembly Row) and After Ever Happy (Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards) before the regular Thursday previews
• Landmark Theatres Kendall Square has the latest from François Ozon, Peter Von Kant, a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant that reimagines the title character as a gay filmmaker, creating new twists on its tale. The Kendall also opens Three Minutes: A Lengthening, with director Bianca Stigter taking a 3-minute home movie that is the only surviving record of the Jewish inhabitants of a Polish town and both teasing as much as she can from it and providing context.
  
  Kendall Square starts a new Retro Replay program - "Back to School" - on Tuesday with Animal House. Their website is currently not showing any showtimes for Wednesday and Thursday, although it's also not showing any announcement of the place being closed
• The Brattle Theatre has a few weeks of straightforward bookings coming up, with Girl Picture playing all week; it's a Finnish film about two best friends who find their life heading in new directions when a third joins their circle. They also have late shows of Daisies, the Czech New Wave classic in a new restoration. They also have 35mm screenings of Modern Times from Saturday to Monday to celebrate Labor Day.
• Apple Fresh Pond has a new slate of Indian movies for the weekend. Cobra screens in both Tamil and Telugu, featuring Vikram as a mathematical genius who has an alter ego as a master criminal. Ranga Ranga Vaibhavanga is a Telugu-language comedy about a pair from the same hometown who never got along but wind up stuck with each other through medical school. Another Telugu comedy, First Day First Show, has a college kid getting into weird misadventures as he tries to get tickets to see a movie with his crush. Malayalam comedy Palthu Janwar, meanwhile, has an animator having to take a job as a veterinary inspector to make ends meet. Tamil-language drama Natchathiram Nagargirathu has four young people trying to figure out life and love. Hindi-language mythological adventure Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, which apparently was originally scheduled for December 2016, opens at Boston Common on Thursday in Imax Xenon (apparently 2D, although the standee at the theater mentions Imax 3D) and at Fenway in both Hindi (2D/3D) and Telugu (2D).
  
  Boston Common has Chinese comedy Moon Man bouncing around the schedule, with the makers of Never Say Die playing with the idea of an astronaut marooned on the moon as a disaster wipes out life on Earth. Romance Almost Love also hangs around.
  
  Anime The House of the Lost on the Cape plays Boston Common on Wednesday, with both dubbed and subtitled screenings of this film about a teenager discovering peace and maybe kappas at a traditional Japanese beach home. Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero still plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, Kendall Square, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards (including CWX), Chestnut Hill, and CinemaSalem; though most places are dub-only now.
• Did The Coolidge Corner Theatre have Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris when it first opened, or is this just picking up the Cute English Thing with more legs than you might expect when they've got some room on screens? I can't recall, but it's there/back, including a masked matinee on Sunday.
  
  The September After Midnite series is Midnight 101, kind of picking up where the Brattle left off, only actually at midnight, with a new restoration of Pink Flamingos playing Friday and a 35mm print of Repo Man on Saturday. Monday's Big Screen Classic is Office Space, and it's still Samurai Summer, with 35mm prints of Ran (on Tuesday) and A Fistful of Dollars (on Wednesday). Thursday's Cinema Jukebox show is Juice
• The Harvard Film Archive kicks off their Fall season with a program of Early Abbas Kiarostami, with Where is the Friend's House? playing Friday evening and Sunday afternoon (with 2 shorts), First Graders on Sunday night (with two shorts). Monday also has "Learning to Be Human, the Open-Ended Educational Film", a program of (mostly) 16mm short films curated by Brittany Gravely.
• The Somerville Theatre picks up the new 4K restoration of Apocalypse Now in its Final Cut on the main screen, with The Good Boss showing up downstairs.
• The Lexington Venue refreshes their screens with Vengeance, Emily the Criminal, and The Good Boss playing through Monday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema brings The Bad Guys back for matinees in addition to Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen A Journey, A Song, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, Where the Crawdads Sing, Minions, Downton Abbey: A New Era, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. No listings for Thursday.
  
  The Luna Theater has Bodies Bodies Bodies Friday and Saturday, the Sundance Institute Indigineous Shorts Tour Saturday afternoon and Thursday evening (with a less-themed Sundance Shorts program Saturday evening), Heathers on Sunday, and Weirdo Wednesday.
  
  Cinema Salem Friday-Monday line-up is Spider-Man No Way Home, Bodies Bodies Bodies, and Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero; they've also got Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Sunday evening.
• Joe's Free Films has outdoor movies more or less shutting down with Labor Day, although Ghost plays Copley Square twice on Thursday to give folks a reason to hang around and maybe spread their Orange Line commute out.
• For those still not ready to join random people in a room for two hours, theater rentals are available at Kendall Square, The Embassy, West Newton, the Capitol and Somerville, The Venue, CinemaSalem, and many of the multiplexes.

Am I pondering how I can use Saturday to catch up on a lot of stuff cheap? Mayyyybe. Definitely looking at seeing what the 3D conversion of Jaws looks like, and probably Moon Man among the new releases.