IFFBoston 2023½.03-04: Robot Dreams, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, and Tótem

As I said the other day, I missed the first night of IFFBoston 2023½, reading a tweet that it was sold out as I was on the subway. The closing night film was sold out well ahead of time, and I discovered the next film after Robot Dreams, Evil Does Not Exist was sold out when I got out of the first and went to get another ticket. I killed some time in the square, saw Monster was sold out, and then took the train to the Common for Under the Light.

Sunday, I tried to get tickets for everything at the start, and was told only the first two films had seats left. End result was only four films seen out of twelve, but it's not that huge a bummer, even if I was interested in most. You can't necessarily assume these things will all have Boston-area releases, true - the Kendall is basically a regular multiplex that has a couple limited releases on screens 8 & 9 these days, while the Seaport and Causeway Street reopenings being stalled means things need to be release-date-lucky to get a screen at Boston Common because it's bearing the whole load for Boston proper - but the odds are pretty good for most of them, especially if they get Oscar nominations That lets me basically treat this as a fundraiser for IFFBoston - a worthy cause! - and basically shrug it off in the case that I didn't get in Someone did, and that means they've maxed out, right?

In the meantime, this has taken long enough to post that All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is already opening at the Kendall this weekend. The release date for Robot Dreams is fast approaching, too, although I don't know if it gets screens on the 22nd with both Disney and DreamWorks have big animated movies. It feels like it could have benefitted from staking out a date right between big releases and hanging around for matinees for the better part of a month, although maybe not; it's not family-unfriendly, but not necessarily made specifically for kids, either, although who knows - it looks like the sort of thing showing up on the Alamo Seaport schedule for one show a day, although I don't know how linked they are with Neon.

Anyway - good movies! Glad IFFBoston could preview them, and enjoying their rollout!


Robot Dreams

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)

Robot Dreams is thoroughly my sort of thing, from its Atari-playing canine protagonist to its somewhat surprising ending. It's cute as can be without being saccharine and revels in its authentic small details without ever seeming to try to score points for 1980s nostalgia.

That protagonist is Dog Varon, alone and lonely in Manhattan's East Village, what he sees in neighboring buildings appearing to remind him of what he doesn't have. An advertisement for the "Amico 2000" companion robot plays on late night TV, and soon he's assembling a new best friend, who activates with a childlike wonder at the world that gets Dog seeing it with new eyes. They go to a public beach, but Robot's body does not react well to the sand and salt water, leaving him immobile as it's time to leave. Dog reluctantly returns home without Robot, intending to return the next day, but…

Well, that's the end of the first leg of a movie that splits pretty naturally into three parts, although without ever having a hard break or discontinuity. The first segment, in particular is close to pure fun, filled with blink-and-miss-it visual gags, the robot's sheer joy at every new discovery New York City has to offer, and the chance to identify with Dog's new sense of contentment, before that day at the beach sends the middle part of the movie into surreal territory. That allows screenwriter/director Pablo Berger to use the same style for different ends without creating a crazy tonal shift as the movie becomes sort of dark but allows the comedy and character evolution to continue without it actually becoming a dark comedy.

It works, in a way, because Robot is a robot, even if the temptation is to read them as a pet, roommate, or mail-order bride. It would be a cruel film otherwise - and likely still reads that way for many - but this does let it read as sad rather than mean. And that sadness is a part of life that the film acknowledges, and which is massive the point: That you can be surrounded by people in the city and struggle to make a connection, and sometimes they will be broken in ways you choose, have forced upon you, or stumble into. Dog has a perfect friend in Robot, but things change, and the why is less important than how everyone keeps going. That knowing Robot has Dog more willing to put himself out there in different ways could be played as betrayal, but instead it's growth.

That could be maudlin, but it's never the case, really. The film has a lot of 1980s Saturday morning cartoon DNA, from the character designs that seem more or less unchanged from Sara Varon's graphic novel to the pacing of it, with a ton of little comedic gags and offset but not overwhelmed by more serious moments. The film's anthropomorphic-animal-populated city is just grounded enough to allow for an occasion gag around Dog wagging his tail or the like (the clearances team must have worked overtime so that everything in the background could feel like the right detail rather than a pun on a real brand name). The lack of dialogue, with just a little reading needed, does something similar from a different direction, letting audiences of all ages wrestle with the emotions and how real they feel without forcing a viewer to get bogged down in details.

Yes, it's a bit heavier than the typical Saturday morning show, but its makers aren't intent on upending or subverting that too much. It's more inclined to be fun than sad, or at least find something hopeful in that sadness, and manages that quite well.


All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt does the thing where the filmmakers weave wisps of story into large amounts of imagery until there's something feature-length, which isn't always to everyone's taste. It does so very well, at least, resulting in something very solid when the same technique can often result in something that tries one's patience.

Filmmaker Raven Jackson initially introduces the audience to MacKenzie (Kaylee Nicole Johnson) as her father Isaiah (Chris Chalk) takes her and sister Josie (Jayah Henry) fishing, with mother Evelyn (Sheila Atim) showing how to clean and gut it. She's got a crush on a local boy, Wood (Preston McDowell), but when we see them as adults (Charleen McClure & Reginald Helms Jr.), they didn't wind up together, though that brief reunion may be what leads to Mack's pregnancy, even though she may not see herself as prepared for the responsibility.

The film starts by teaching patience, letting the audience patiently watch Isaiah show Mack how to cast, wait for a bite, and then reel her catch in without losing it, which in addition to setting the pace also allows the film to initially present itself as a set of images that ask for little aside from the audience giving things a close look. Closer than one might expect, at times, as Jackson and cinematographer Jomo Fray often crop faces out to focus on other details. That it is intriguingly composed and beautifully photographed is enough, at least for a while.

For some time, Jackson seems to be primarily concerned with capturing a specific place and time - rural Black life a few decades back - until something happens to shake young Mack's life, and she never really stops shaking. At that point, the film sort of becomes unmoored in time, jumping backwards and forward, sometimes in a purposefully jarring way, like Jackson doesn't want lines to be drawn that are too straight. Charleen McClure shines as the adult Mack in part because she almost never lets the woman's fragility appear front and center; she plays Mack as incomplete and just uncertain enough that her father and sister accepting it seems natural enough, but isn't showy about it. She entirely settles from her trauma until late, when she's not only become wise enough to recognize her lack of wisdom, but to recognize that she may be more capable than she thought.

That's sort of all there is to the film, but it's enough. The images are beautiful, and while some may be familiar, some are odd or fragmented in an interesting way. A particularly notable one is a a wedding, where the camera doesn't linger on the ceremony but initially concentrates on the elder women in the pews, marking the important event, but winds up shooting the bride and groom in the distance, out a window. Mack is part of this community, but cannot entirely engage with it directly, no matter how but young Kaylee Nicole Johnson's performance initially implies she'll grow up different than she does.

Mack doesn't have a journey so much as she grows and ultimately understands the world we live in a little better, and the audience comes to understand that. It's just personal enough to not feel anthropological, but also stands back enough that a viewer feels like they're giving Mack the space she needs.


Tótem

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)

It seems like you seldom see the child performers in movies like this listed in the credits in a way that highlights their actual importance; they're usually tucked away after the notable adults, or given an "Introducing... where a grown-up might have an "and..." This one puts newcomer Naíma Sentíes right up first, though, which is impressive, because the movie is designed to feel like an ensemble piece.

She plays Sol, seven or eight years old, whose mother Lucia (Iazua Larios) is dropping her off at her grandfather's house, where much of the rest of the family is gathering to celebrate the birthday of Sol's father Tonatiuh (Mateo Garcia), notably his sisters Alejandra (Marisol Gasé) and Nuria (Montserrat Marañon), whose daughter Ester (Saori Gurza) is a couple years younger and a bit of a troublemaker. As the adults prepare, Sol wanders a bit, looking at snails, insects, birds, and other creatures. "Tona", on the other hand, seems determined to stay in his room, as he is very sick and needs the assistance of his caregiver Cruz (Teresita Sánchez) for almost everything.

If filmmaker Lila Avilés (who, in addition to writing, directing, and producing, also appears to have a casting credit) hadn't found such a good Sol, she probably could have put together quite a fine movie about the adults hanging on by a thread: The sisters, for example, are a kind of fascinating pair, Montserrat Marañon playing Nuria as sensible and organized, even when things are going wrong, while Marisol Gasé's Alejandra seems like pure comic relief, but the way Nuria has worn down by the end while Alejandra hasn't, and there's tension as a result. There's grandfather Roberto (Alberto Amador) who seems annoyed by all this, even hostile, and Mateo Garcia not only looking like he is always on the verge of physical collapse but further burdened by shame. It's a family that is not broken or dysfunctional, but also clearly one that is not hanging out in each other's kitchens every day.

That would have been a pretty good movie, but Avilés always comes back to how, ultimately, this little girl wants to see her dying father, but he feels too ashamed of his illness and the extended family's noise is hard to cut through, and every time she does, the movie feels sharper, like her main priority is making sure that the audience understands that this is the important part and so it gets just enough more attention to really pop. Senties gives Avilés what she needs every time, from how she studies various animals with tremendous concentration to how she pours out her knowledge of them when given a chance. For all the chaos around her, there's a potentially comic scene that feels like genuine horror when Sol breaks something and worries a bit about getting into trouble but also seems to sense that something worse than "trouble" is in the air.

And, man, that last scene, where she suddenly looks terrifyingly grown up, as if the reason why this has become such a big party hits her. Just a really tremendous gut punch, and absolutely the culmination of everything Avilés and her crew have done so well - a combination of perfect lighting, framing, and wordless performance - which also both seems to connect every thread that has been running through the film and letting the less important ones fall away. Avilés puts Sol at the center in this last moment, and she and Senties do not disappoint.

Last Suspect

The last big Chinese movie released around here, Under the Light was directed by Zhang Yimou, and Last Suspect is directed by his daughter, Zhang Mo. I ask you, my friends - is communism not supposed to prevent this sort of thing? Certainly, it's not out of the realm of the possibility that two of the five hundred or so people in a nation of one and a half billion best suited to direct films released in a given year would be father and daughter - coincidences happen! - but is it likely? Especially when you see that the father is in many ways a legend and the daughter is not exactly at his level?

The somewhat interesting thing about the father/daughter angle is that Zhang Yimou was often seen as making art-house films with an eye to an international audience and eventually made a couple for American studios that were straight-up looking to be pan-Pacific hits, and Zhang Mo has made a pretty Western film here as well - as I mention in the main review, it feels like a certain variety of Hollywood thriller that used to be more prominent at the box office, and I suspect the courtroom scenes aren't particularly Chinese, even beyond how much of the signage is in English. She went to film school in New York City, so one wonders how much of the culture and tropes she soaked up.

It also means, amusingly, that she's credited with the English subtitles for the film, and I wonder how many other filmmakers are given that opportunity to oversee a foreign-language version of their work so closely.


Zheng jiu xian yi ren (Last Suspect aka Who's the Suspect?)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 November 2023 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)

It seems like Ashley Judd used to star in a movie like this every week, and now we've got to import them from China. A sad state of affairs, Hollywood. Not that this sort of film is usually particularly noteworthy or likely to hit anybody's top ten lists at the end of the year, but it's the sort of thing that people enjoy seeing or reading, and this delivers the good reasonably well.

This one quickly introduces Vicky Chen (Zhang Xiaofei), a top attorney in the city of Kuapuar who has a string of 30 successful criminal defenses, many against prosecutor Cui Myung-ji (Liu Huan), which keeps her busy enough that her eight-year-old daughter Eng (Wang Yixuan) sometimes feels neglected. On the other hand, when Eng is abducted during her school's field day, Vicky throws herself into the kidnapper's demands to defend Daniel Cek Khas (Eason Hung Junjia), who has appealed his death sentence for the murder of Rebecca Liang Xinyuan (Bao Shang'en). The trial begins in five days, and she's fortunate that her old friend Kim Ji-woong (Lee Hong-Chi) has a well-timed suspension from the police force to help her dig, but someone seems to want alternate suspect Jimmy Ahmad (Boogie Wang Ziyi) kept clear as badly as Eng's kidnapper wants Daniel exonerated.

Last Suspect is, as such things often are, not bad, the sort of mystery thriller that sort of cranks along despite not really having any characters that are defined well enough to be suspects or enough alternatives that Vicky and Kim have to eliminate them. It puts a premium on the protagonists running after something well - in this case, the film goes out of its way to establish that both Vicky and Kim are well-equipped to keep a foot pursuit close - or looking kind of worn out between clues popping up. The process is reasonably enjoyable and smooth, which it has to be, on the way to some courtroom theatrics that make me wonder just where this thing is supposed to be set that the preceding make any sense.

(The credits indicate that much of the film was shot in Macau, though I suspect "Kuapuar" is meant to suggest Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where enough of the population is ethnically Chinese that you don't have to confine action to Chinatown but it likely wouldn't be unusual to see all that English-language signage and a fair amount of conversation done in that language. I'm guessing that legal procedure is thoroughly made-up, though!)

Zhang Xiaofei and Lee Hong-Chi are good enough at all of that to keep things moving, hitting the spot where they both seem capable but also stressed and potentially in over their heads. The film is stocked with similarly well-cast characters - Eason Hung makes Daniel feel railroaded but also like a guy a jury would be inclined to convict; Boogie Wang projects the sort of spoiled smarm that would crack quickly under pressure. Liu Huan and Ken Tong Chun-Yip certainly feel like they could be regular courtroom nemeses to Vicky if we had a whole series of these cases. Kara Wai Ying-Hung makes a good, solid impression as the victim's grieving mother.

The story kind of hits a paradox where five days seems on the one hand like an absurdly short time to prepare for this sort of trial but also a long time for this sort of hostage situation to go on, and director Zhang Mo does her best to try and use various action bits to inject enough adrenaline into the whole thing that a viewer's heart might race enough that they don't look at what's going on too closely or gripe over what's being kept off-screen to preserve later twists. It is, after all, the sort of movie that has bonus crazy when it seems like everything has been laid out at the end, but the half-dozen or so writers quite manage to make that work, especially when they flash back and say that, despite the insanity it just served, there's also some sense (but there's really not). The last bits have some weird sympathies on display as well, working hard to show one character as kind immediately after establishing derangement and doing very little to flesh Rebecca out in flashback - the movie talks a good game about how she was a complicated, interesting person but has little time for her as a character aside from the carefully laying out the details of her being drugged, raped, and murdered.

Still, there's some undeniable fun to the last-actg reversals and increasingly unlikely explanations of how they happened. You kind of appreciate that sort of thing after an hour and a half of basically doing what this sort of movie is supposed to do, even if the whole of the story barely survives sitting through the credits.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 10 November 2023 - 16 November 2023

Happy Diwali to all those that celebrate! Was someone at Disney being clever putting the Marvel movie about heroes with light-based superpowers on this date or is it just a weird coincidence?

• That big Marvel movie is The Marvels, with Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Photon seeing themselves intertwined by what look like Nega-Bands so that they will switch places whenever they use their powers; at 105 minutes, it looks to be the tightest Marvel production yet and is hopefully more fun adventure than universe-shaking epic. It's at The Capitol, Fresh Pond (including 3D), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 2D/3D), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Imax Xenon 2D & 3D/RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, South Bay (including Imax Xenon 2D & 3D/RealD 3D/Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser 2D & 3D/Dolby Cinema/RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), Chestnut Hill.
  
  Horror-comedy It's a Wonderful Knife, in which a final girl wishes she had never been born and apparently sees a world where the killings never stopped, plays Boston Common, South Bay. Another one, As We Know It, in which a recently-jilted screenwriter must also deal with a zombie-virus outbreak in the late 1990s, plays a couple shows daily at Fresh Pond.
  
  Religious holiday musical Journey to Bethlehem gets a bigger release than such things usually do, playing Boston Common, South Bay. It's somehow roped Antonio Banderas in to play King Herod. Simón, about a Venezuelan rebel living in Miami exile, plays at Arsenal Yards.
  
  The Holdovers expands to the Somerville, Assembly Row, Chestnut Hill; it was already playing the Coolidge (some shows 35mm), Boston Common, and Kendall Square.
  
  Scarface has 40th Anniversary shows at South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards on Sunday and Wednesday. Documentary Medicine Man: The Stan Brock Story plays South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards on Tuesday. There's a "First Listen Event" for Dolly Parton Rockstar on Wednesday at Boston Common, Kendall Square; Billy Idol: State Line at Hoover Dam plays Boston Common Wednesday. There's an early screening of Saltburn on Saturday at Boston Common.
• The big event for Diwali is Tiger 3, which reunites Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif reunite as married former secret agents for India and Pakistan, once again called out of retirement to face a threat to both countries. It's the first entry in the series since it was retroactively made part of the "YRF Spy Universe", so it will be interesting to see if it becomes the same sort of big crazy adventure as War and Pathaan. It opens Saturday at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay (opens Monday).
  
  Three others open on Friday: Japan, a Tamil adventure about a master thief who steals something sensitive from a politician's house, which plays Fresh Pond (also in Telugu) and Boston Common; Jigarthanda DoubleX, a Tamil-language action comedy where a director teams with a gangster to try to make a western in 1975 Tamil Nadu, which is at Fresh Pond and Boston Common; and Bandra, a Malayalam-language mystery where a detective investigating the suicide of a Bollywood icon finds much more than she bargained for, which is at Apple Fresh Pond. Telugu action-comedy Keedaa Cola is held over at Fresh Pond.
  
  Last Suspect, a Chinese legal thriller directed by Zhang Mo (daughter of Zhang Yimou), plays Boston Common.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, which certainly feels like a movie from a poet, but Raven Jackson's look at rural Black life is all the better for it.
  
  Tuesday's Hanks-Giving Retro Replay at the Kendall is Joe Versus the Volcano, and a Yórgos Lánthimos retrospective begins on Wednesday with Dogtooth; both films $5.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre has Godfrey Reggio's featurette "Once Within a Time", one of two Steven Soderbergh-produced oddities in the corners of theaters' schedules this weekend. This one is a post-apocalyptic fantasy with a score by Philip Glass. They also pick up Rustin, Netflix's drama about an often-overlooked civil rights leader.
  
  They also keep The Killer around as it hits Netflix, the better to pair with their midnight Fincher Flicks, with Fight Club on Friday and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Saturday, both on 35mm. Noirvember features include The Hitch-Hiker on Sunday afternoon and The Maltese Falcon with a pre-show seminar from Jake Mulligan on Wednesday. There's also a 35mm "Stage & Screen" presentation of The Band's Visit on Monday and open screen on Tuesday, and a "Rewind!" presentation of The Notebook on Thursday.
• The Brattle Theatre celebrates "The Fifties at Warners" with Foster Hirsch, who recently wrote a book on the subject, in attendance for an umber of shows. Movies include Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (Friday), a 35mm Looney Tunes program (Saturday), Them! (35mm Saturday/Monday), I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (35mm Saturday), A Streetcar Named Desire (Saturday/Sunday), Calamity Jane (Sunday), The Bad Seed (35mm Sunday), House of Wax (Monday), Auntie Mame (35mm Tuesday), and the original Ocean's 11 (35mm Sunday).
  
  Also on the schedule: A Found Footage Film Festival show on Friday night and The Case of the Vanishing Gods with the filmmakers doing an introduction on Saturday.
• As mentioned, The Somerville Theatre picks up The Holdovers, which is extra fun because the film shot a scene or two there (doubling for a spot across the river) and was used to screen films for the cast and crew during filming. They also have the other Soderbergh produced oddity, black-and-whack sci-fi madness Divinity, playing on 35mm film at midnight Saturday. Jeff Rapsis accompanies a 35mm print of The Big Parade on Sunday as a slightly-belated Armistice Day "Silents, Please!" presentation, and Foster Hirsch crosses the river that evening to introduce The Searchers to fit an extra screening into the Brattles "Fifties at Warners" series. In The Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 plays Monday and Tuesday afternoon.
• The Museum of Science opens a new film made specifically for their Omnimax dome, "The Heart of New England", on Saturday after member previews on Friday; Udo Aduba and Mindy Kaling narrate a film that looks at the Gulf of Maine's ecosystem, the Marathon, the Panawahpskek people, and more items of local interest. They also bring back "Train Time" as part of the Omnimax rotation with "Everest", "Serengeti", and "Jane Goodall: Reasons for Hope", with advance tickets on sale for Oppenheimer on the Omnimax dome on Friday nights between Thanksgiving and New Year's. "The Polar Express" and "Thomas and Friends" also return to the 4D theater for Christmas/train time.
• The Harvard Film Archive welcomes Zelimir Zilnik for the final two entries in his "Filmmaker, Guest Worker" series: A West German Short Films program on Friday and Logbook Serbistan on Saturday. "Out of the Ashes: The US-ROK Alliance & South Korean Cinema" continues Sunday with The Marines .Who Never Returned and The Widow. Then on Monday night, Robert Humphreville accompanies Elvira Notari's silent The LIttle Girl's Wrong, which is followed by shorts "Italy Has Risen" and "Naples, Singing Mermaid".
• The Boston Jewish Film Festival has two more days of in-person screenings, with Finding Light at West Newton on Saturday, while My Architect and Perfect Strangers play at The Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday. Certain selections will be available to stream Monday to Wednesday.
  
  The MFA also has the first weekend of Wicked Queer Docs on Friday and Saturday, with another screening at the French Library before settling in at the Brattle next weekend.
• The Regent Theatre plays documentary UnCharitable on Wednesday.
• Bright Lights has Chasing Chasing Amy on Thursday, with director Sav Rodgers and producer Riley Rodgers on hand to discus their film about both the making of Kevin Smith's film and the impact it had on queer kids in the heartland. Free and open to the public, but remember that the Bright Screening room in the Paramount kind of a small auditorium.
• The West Newton Cinema has a special screening on Sunday afternoon of America's Family with director Anike Tourse on hand to discuss her film about an immigrant family torn up by ICE on Thanksgiving Day. They also open The Marvels and Priscilla, continuing Killers of the Flower Moon, Eras (through Sunday), Paw Patrol (through Sunday), Golda (Saturday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday), Barbie, and Oppenheimer (Monday-Thursday). Open all week, although for just the one evening show Monday to Thursday.
  
  The Lexington Venue has The Eras Tour (no show Sunday), What Happens Later, and Priscilla from Friday to Sunday.
  
  The Luna Theater has Stop Making Sense on Friday and Saturday, Dicks The Musical on Saturday, The Holy Mountain on Sunday, the weekly Weirdo Wednesday show, and a free screening of Aujourd'hui, featuring poet Saul Williams as a dying man, courtesy of The Department of World Languages and Cultures at UMass Lowell on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem finally adds The Marvels and Priscilla to Killers of the Flower Moon and Anatomy of a Fall for regular shows through Monday. There's also a Night Light show of Mulholland Drive on Friday.

Ticket already reserved for The Marvels in Imax 3D, and I've spent enough time catching up on its predecessors this past week that I'd better see Tiger 3. I'll probably catch a Warner Double Feature on Saturday because it looks like one of the prints is about to be retired per the Brattle's newsletter, then trying to see what fits in around them

Murderers' Missions: The Killer '23 and Bad Blood

I didn't necessarily plan this as a double feature, but the previous week's jury duty kind of clobbered me, or the commute did, and I wasn't even making much attempt to get out of the recliner until late Saturday. But, it's not like either of these movies are going to be around long - The Killer is from Netflix, and there's an eyebrow raised when one of those gets a second week Bad Blood is from Vietnam, and I was mildly surprised to see it playing Boston Common as well as South Bay, where the Vietnamese movies usually show up. Maybe they thought it would draw some more of us kung fu fans? At any rate, it looked like it was just me when the movie was close to starting.

Still, it's a natural-enough, with two people who are very good at violence tracking down the people who hurt their families, although the vibes are very different, with The Killer saying right off that you've got to be patient and then demonstrating, while Bad Blood has immediate machete violence. These movies are two sides of the same coin in many ways, and together a bit of a Rorschach Test in terms of what you may consider important in your crime flicks: The Killer is fancyish, kind of arch, maybe not quite as clever as it thinks it is (though probably smarter than I initially thought it was); Bad Blood is direct and pretty much maxes out "action" at the expense of everything else. I had more fun with Bad Blood that afternoon; though I'll probably talk about The Killer more over the next however many years.

Surprisingly, considering I saw them a week ago, both are still kicking around theaters: The Killer got held over at both Boston Common and the Coolidge, which may well keep it around for 9:30pm shows in the Screening Room until their Fincher midnights finish; Bad Blood is at South Bay, which I suspect has a decent Vietnamese immigrant population nearby.


The Killer '23

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 October 2023 in Landmark Kendall Square #5 (first-run, DCP)

The Killer is absolutely a "David Fincher film that Netflix also puts in a few theaters" situation: The film is impressively shot, meticulous in its construction, and all that good stuff, but there is also seldom much going on that's really essential; you can fold your laundry or screw around on your phone until some bit of character acting breaks through to grab your notice, and you pay full attention for the next five or ten minutes until Michael Fassbender murders that character. Then repeat; it's divided into chapters if you can't do a full (almost) two-hour movie at once.

It starts with Fassbender's multi-named Killer on a job in Paris, staking out an apartment that he knows his target will eventually return to, narrating how patience is paramount, talking about the lengths he goes to be invisible, and how not everybody is cut out for this sort of thing. But when the moment comes, his shot misses the target, and he must quickly abandon the job. Arriving at his isolated home in the Dominican Republic, he discovers that his employers have already made arrangements to eliminate him, but struck too fast, when only his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) was home. So, what to do, but work his way up the ladder, paying visits to the law professor who recruited him as an assassin back in college (Charles Parnell), the team sent to dispatch him (Sala Baker & Tilda Swinton), and the client (Arliss Howard).

That it seems built for how people consume Netflix rather than theaters isn't exactly me saying it's bad, so much as it's Fincher working in his chosen medium and trying to get the most out of it. Those bits of character acting, more or less building up to Tilda Swinton's piece are quite enjoyable, and even if half the point of the opening is to try the audience's patience so that they understand that, yes, this work does require enduring boredom and not cracking through lack of patience, the use of Rear Window framing is at least a little fun. Even when this guy is at his most detached, he is good enough at his job to be interesting to watch (and, yeah, I kind of think that applies to Fincher, Fassbender, and the Killer, which is why they all connect to this project and wind up on the same wavelength).

Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker (working from the bande dessiné by Alexis Nolent & Luc Jacamon) gives Fincher and Fassbender plenty of fun material to chew on; it is certainly entertaining to hear his misanthropic monologues in voice-over, and you can certainly see how this brace of enjoyable actors - Charles Parnell, Kerry O'Malley, Arliss Howard, and Tilda Swinton, most notably - signed on; it's a script they can chew on for however many days they're on set. Fincher can stage the heck out of an action sequence, too, though one in near-darkness is probably going to be brutalized by compression algorithms once it hits its forever home on the streaming service.

If you want to be generous, I suppose you could posit that the whole thing is a satire: Right from the start, Fassbender is presenting the image of the cool, methodical assassin who lives outside the rules, but the whole thing is built around how he basically screws up at the crucial moment - Fincher and director of photography Erik Messerschmidt are careful to show how, after working hard to make sure he has a clear shot and how he knows he will only have one, he instead kills a bystander. As he flies from location to location, he uses a series of fake identities taken from famous sitcom characters, which is not exactly him being memorable. It's just in-your-face enough to arguably be about undermining the mystique of these characters - if you've ever watched the John Wick movies and wondered if there are really enough murders of this sort for it to be a whole underground economy, Fincher and Waller may be on your wavelength - but if so, it's the sort of satire that perhaps doesn't do enough separate itself from the thing it's sending up. Fassbender and Swinton, for instance, fit the template too well. In other moments, it seems like he's reaching for something but can't quite get there, like there should be some commentary on how the title character can hang out in this WeWork space that's under construction for a couple weeks without being noticed, but it doesn't resolve into anything.

Still, I'm not sure this movie actually draws a reaction until the epilogue. A flinch and narration where the title character thinks he understands something - but probably doesn't, but in the way a non-psychopath does - is actually interesting, for a moment, but then the movie is done. It's fine, better than this sort of hitman movie made by less talented people, but maybe a bit too muted.


Ke an Danh (Bad Blood)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 October 2023 in AMC Boston Common #5 (first-run, DCP)

This is some pretty classic old-school martial arts action here - more or less every beat goes as expected based on the Taken template, but the action is darn solid in terms of being quick and brutal but easy to follow while also doing things like putting its hero against various modern art installations. It delivers what it promises and with style.

It opens with Lam (Kieu Minh Tuan) as a young man, having just seen his family killed and quite capable on avenging them as he storms the home of crime boss "Scarface" along with a whole mess of minions, but he takes the dying gangster's words that he'll continue to lose those he loves if he continues to be a killer to heart, and twenty years later, he's living a quiet life, poor, but mostly happy with wife Hanh (Van Trang) and stepdaughter Tien (Thua Tuan Anh), even if doing day labor occasionally gets him involved in jobs like helping Lu (Mac Van Khoa) and his company of "movers" who have not exactly been hired by an apartment's residents. One night Tien does not come home from a job interview in Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon, so he starts nosing around.

From there, you kind of know the deal - the young punks of the area do not have any idea what kind of guy is living in their midst, there's an ongoing investigation that doesn't need some lone wolf getting involved, and maybe he still has some friends from the old days. If it diverges from the path laid down by a few dozen movies with the same basic story, it's maybe because one can forget just what a mean streak this genre can have when stringing together action sequences is more the aim than, say, validating the father's pride and worth, as well as a the need for the police to not look entirely like they need vigilantes to do their work. Writer/director Dan Trong Tran knows the movie he's making, and if it means not messing around that much between fights or having a villain merry-go-round that keeps Lam from actually having an opposite number (the film kind of settles on Quoc Truong's art enthusiast), well, that's not really important.

What's important, obviously, is the action, and that's solid as heck; there's been good action coming out of Vietnam for 15 years or so, and while it's Dan Trong Tran's first film as writer/director (he has mostly produced for director Le-Van Kiet), he's got a decent eye and a solid action director in Kefi Abrikh; between the hard hits and the inventiveness of some of the settings, they manage to evoke the sort of Hong Kong pre-handover vibe intended. The movie is probably also a notch or two better than most at genuinely convincing the audience that this guy, underworld legend that he may have been at one point, is in fact 20 years past his prime and out of practice. He recovers soon enough, sure, but he also spends a lot of time getting the crap beat out of him. There's much less ego than usual here.

I must admit, though, that I'm mildly disappointed they didn't come back around to reference constipated civet-poop coffee that one character serves another early on, perhaps as a reassurance that the daughter will be stronger for having gone through this. That would be the sort of dorkily-earnest but kind of messed-up bit that would really cement Bad Blood as that sort of classic "great fights, weird elsewhere" movie.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 November 2023 - 9 November 2023

Hey, check it out - Alamo Drafthouse Boston is actually putting tickets on sale for two weeks from now, roughly a year from when it was first expected. Looks like they may have enough nifty special programming to have their own section here. In the meantime…

• The Holdovers will be opening wider in a couple weeks, but it has a decent size for its initial wave, maybe in part because it's set and shot nearby. It stars paul Giamatti as a boarding school teacher charged with looking after those who can't go home for the holidays, both despite and because of how he loathes the privileged brats. It's a reunion with Sideways director Alexander Payne and a ton of fun. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Boston Common. The Coolidge has got a 35mm print for screen #1, so check showtimes on the site.
  
  Ahead of its opening next week, the Coolidge has a special screening of Godfrey Reggio's featurette "Once Within a Time" on Friday night, with a post-fim Q&A from producer Steven Soderbergh and co-director Jon Kane.
  
  Midnights at the Coolidge in November feature the films of David Fincher on 35mm, with Alien 3 on Friday and Seven on Saturday. Monday's Science on Screen show is Danny Boyle's Sunshine, also on 35mm. Tuesday's Noirvember show includes a 35mm print of Thief on Tuesday, with pre-show seminar from BU professor Justin Liberman. On Sunday, they welcome Foster Hirsch for a screening of Rebel without a Cause, which kicks off a "The Fifties at Warner" series that will also include screenings at the Brattle and Somerville Theatres.
• All three of the wide releases this week, interestingly, are led by women, starting with Meg Ryan's feature directorial debut, What Happens Later, in which she and David Duchovny play a former couple who meet up, years later, during a delay in an airport and get marooned there (security, apparently, be damned). It opens at the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Sophia Coppola has a new film out, with Priscilla starring Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla Presley, who married Elvis very young and thus found herself at the epicenter of something no teenager is ready for. It's at the Somerville, Boston Common, the Kendall, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards.
  
  The Marsh King's Daughter features Daisy Ridley as a woman who spent the first ten years of her life being raised by the man (Ben Mendelsohn) who kidnapped her mother, who now has a daughter of her own to defend when her father breaks out of prison. It plays Boston Common and Assembly Row.
  
  South Bay and Assembly Row have Oppenheimer back on their Imax screens; Gran Turismo plays late shows at Boston Common ahead of Tuesday's home-video release; Arsenal Yards brings back Top Gun: Maverick (including CWX).
  
  Trolls: Band Together has early access screenings at Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Chestnut Hill on Saturday. The Last Waltz has 45th Anniversary shows at South Bay, Assembly Row on Sunday; concert film K-Love Live at Red Rocks is at Assembly Row on Monday and Tuesday; Tuesday music documentary The Stones & Brian Jones plays the Regent, Boston Common, and Kendall Square Tuesday. AMC starts a "Screen Unseen" series of mystery previews on Monday, with shows at Boston Common, Assembly Row.
• This week's Netflix opening at Landmark Kendall Square is Rustin, which stars Colman Domingo as one of the key figures in the Civil Rights Movement who organized the 1963 March on Washington, Director George C. Wolfe, notably, last made Chadwick Boseman's final film, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
  
  The month's Retro Replay series at the Kendall is "Thanks for Hanks", with The 'Burbs playing for $5 on Tuesday.
• The Brattle Theatre has the new restoration of Chen Kaige's Farewell, My Concubine, featuring Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi as two men who grow up in the Peking Opera Academy, dawn to each other although one would marry a courtesan played by Gong Li. It plays Friday to Monday plus a matinee on Wednesday, and several shows are already listed as sold out.
  
  There are also late shows Friday to Sunday and Wednesday of Where the Devil Roams, the latest horror indie from an upstate New York family, involving a murderous family that travels with the carnival. I saw it at Fantasia, and it's an interesting novelty, at least. On Tuesday, they team with RPM Festival to welcome Sarah Friedland and her "Movement Exercises Trilogy", a collection of three short films with a post-screening Q&A. Wednesday has a special premiere of music documentary In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50.
• Three new ones from India open at Apple Fresh Pond on Friday: Malayalam film Garudan is a drama where a college professor must work with a cop to solve a crime. Telugu action-comedy Keedaa Cola has a group of scammers getting much more than they bargained for when they fake finding a cockroach in a soda, and Telugu horror movie Maa Oori Polimera 2 has the heroes discovering black magic in a small village. On Saturday and Sunday, they also have Bangladeshi drama 1971 Shei Shob Din, Odia-language action flick Pratisodh, and Bengali thriller Dasham Avatar. Leo: Bloody Sweet also continues at Fresh Pond with shows in Tamil & Telugu.
  
  Mexican drama Radical opens at Boston Common, starring Eugenio Derbez as a teacher fighting for his students in a corrupt border town.
  
  Anime The Tunnel to Summer, The Exit of Goodbyes opens at Boston Common this weekend; it involves a mysterious tunnel which grants one's heart's desire at the cost of years of one's life. Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning plays Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards on Wednesday (dubbed) and Thursday (subtitled); Boston Common has an AXCN show of Ghost in the Shell (not sure which revision) on Wednesday (subtitled) and Thursday (dubbed).
  
  Vietnamese action film Bad Blood continues at South Bay.
• The Somerville Theatre appears to be down a screen this week, not showing anything on #2 until Wednesday, when Warren Miller's All Time, a compilation of skiing film from 74 years, grabs the big screen for two days.
  
  The Capitol hosts the Arlington International Film Festival through Sunday, with full programs on two screens all weekend.
• The Harvard Film Archive begins "Out of the Ashes: The US-ROK Alliance & South Korean Cinema" this weekend, taking a close look at Korean film in the postwar period in particular. The Flower in Hell plays Friday evening (with short "Nakdong River") and Sunday afternoon (no short), with 35mm prints of Holiday in Seoul and Yongary, Monster from the Deep playing separately on Saturday evening, and a collection of US Information Service-Korea shorts playing Sunday night.
  
  On Monday night, Robert Humphreville accompanies the first of two recently restored silent features by Elvira Notari, The Holy Night, which plays on 35mm film alongside the (digitally projected) short "Soldier's Fantasy"; a second will screen next week.
• The Regent Theatre has The Stones & Brian Jones on Tuesday, Joan Baez: I Am a Noise as the "Midweek Music Movies and More" show on Wednesday (though I don't believe there is a guest this week), and Advice for Girls: An All-Woman Ski Film on Thursday.
• The Boston Jewish Film Festival continues through the week, with in-person shows at the JCC Reimer-Goldstein Theater (Saturday/Sunday), the MFA (Sunday), Orchard Cove in Canton (Monday), West Newton (Tuesday/Thursday), the Coolidge (Wednesday), and the Brattle (Thursday).
• Bright Lights has postponed the week's intended screening, Israelism, until next February considering the subject matter, although the filmmakers will be hosting a virtual screening Sunday night (RSVP information here soon).
• The Museum of Science has tickets on sale for Oppenheimer on the Omnimax dome on Friday nights between Thanksgiving and New Year's.
• The West Newton Cinema opens Beyond Utopia, the documentary about defectors from North Korea. They also continue Killers of the Flower Moon, Eras (through Sunday), Paw Patrol (Saturday/Sunday), Golda, Past Lives (no show Thursday), Barbie, and Oppenheimer (Saturday/Sunday). Open all week.
  
  The Lexington Venue has The Eras Tour, What Happens Later, and Anatomy of a Fall from Friday to Sunday.
  
  The Luna Theater has Dics: The Musical on Friday and Saturday, Clue on Sunday, and the weekly Weirdo Wednesday show on the schedule.
  
  Cinema Salem finally gets Killers of the Flower Moon and Anatomy of a Fall now that Halloween is done, though they keep A Nightmare Before Christmas and Hocus Pocus (it is Salem, after all).
  
  If you can make it out Davers's Liberty Tree Mall, they've got Divinity, an absolutely crazy (but fun!) sci-fi flick that was so out there that the Boston Underground Film Festival made it the midnight show.

A fair amount of catch-up to do, but I'm also looking forward to checking out Farewell My Concubine, The Marsh King's Daughter, Sunshine, Rustin and maybe Priscilla and What Happens Later.

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.

IFFBoston 2023½.02: Fingernails (and Foe)

I'd kind of opted against expanding the Letterboxd entry for Foe, what with it being a let-down rather than something to give whatever meager boost an "official" review gives it, but it wound up being such an oddly apt pairing with Fingernails that I decided to maybe give it another paragraph or two.

Both, after all, are films nominaly set in the future but featuring no cell phones or other evidence of the internet, which amuses me when I remember Stephen Soderbergh whining a few months back about how he hated making modern movies these days because having the internet in one's pocket makes it too hard to keep people from knowing things, which is sort of silly because, well, have you seen people in general lately? Or tried to quickly find something now that Google values ad revenue over usefulness and the internet is filling up with GPT-generated garbage? But, also, you can apparently just skip all this, because if sci-fi films feel free ignoring it, surely contemporary ones can too.

(I wonder, a little, if Soderbergh also laments how nobody smokes any more because of how useful that was in staging scenes.)

Of course, the science-fiction-ness of these two movies caused some bumps for me, as I am simply unable to watch this sort of thing without wondering what a given bit of world-building implies beyond the movie's tight focus, and get frustrated when a little thought reveals how contradictory various pieces are or how clearly it's being set up to prove the filmmaker's point. Both Foe and Fingernails have some interesting bits but the details don't work, and while some are able to just embrace the heightened reality in the spirit that's intended, I tend to figure that life is dealing with a whole bunch of aggregated details, and if you're just going to fudge those away, what can the story really tell you about the human nature it intends to explore?

That's at least partly, if not mostly, a me problem, but I do suspect that it causes these movies to land softer than they might, even if it doesn't set off alarms for everyone.


Anyway, welcome to IFFBoston 2023½! It's going to be a short-ish report, because out of the 12 movies shown, I got to four. I missed the first night because, on my way, I saw that it was sold out, and turned around to see Killers of the Flower Moon at the Somerville before Jonathan Richman took over the main room for the weekend. I dawdled too long after work to get to the first show of the second night, but made it for the second. It's not a huge deal; I've been seeing a fair amount of trailers for Eileen at both Kendall Square and Boston Common, although that's not necessarily any sort of guarantee these days (remember all those trailers for The Kill Room over the past couple months?). Fallen Leaves, meanwhile, was the latest from a filmmaker I've never really followed and described as a sort of thematic follow-up to his other work, so, eh.

More on the other three in coming days.


Foe

* * (out of four)
Seen 18 October 2023 in Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)

I grow weary of art-house science fiction where the details aren't coherent but that's supposed to be okay because they ask big philosophical questions about being human, as if being human wasn't navigating a complicated world and the various details being thrown at a person. It's especially frustrating when the film has a weak twist near the end so that the audience doesn't have much time to contemplate its big ideas, or wind up finding themselves more focused on something else.

That's Foe, whose name suggests a thriller though the movie only occasionally cares to highlight any tension in its premise, and whose moments of world-building are kind of a waste of an effects budget for how little they matter. It is, far too often, boring even when it's not trying to avoid tipping its hand, and terribly unsexy besides: It's full of nude scenes where you can't help but notice how careful the camera placement is, and no real difference in energy between passionate and perfunctory sex.

It follows Hen (Saoirse Ronan) and Junior (Paul Mescal), a couple married seven years, living on the farm the latter inherited but not working it - there simply isn't enough water for anything but the hardiest of GMO crops - and growing consensus appears to be that humanity's future is in space. Outermore Corporation is building an orbital habitat, and is in a tight enough partnership with the government that they will be able to draft Junior. But that's some time in the future; in the meantime, their representative Terrance (Aaron Pierre) will be conducting interviews and otherwise observing Junior so that an "artificial human" replica can be created to make sure Hen's life can continue as normal.

This all makes no sense, of course - for all the talk of there being no water, Hen takes a lot of showers and there's no apparent efforts at conservation, space stations are far more fragile a human habitat than even a hostile Earth, and none of the rationale for creating these artificial humans rings true, especially since Hen and Junior apparently have no choice in it. It's a long litany of "why are you even doing this?" But arguably the biggest sin is that all of this doesn't say anything particularly interesting about Hen and Junior, or their relationship. Their backgrounds are blank enough that it's hard to see what Terrance is upending, and if Iain Reid's book had any interesting ideas about the ethics of creating the sort of clone Terrance describes, director and co-screenwriter Garth Davis doesn't find that of much interest for more than a moment or two. The revelation that allows everything to snap into place happens far too late to play out in anything but the most superficial, obvious way.

The movie's got Saoirse Ronan, so at least that role is in good hands, although I wonder if her being a known quality leads a viewer to centering her too much. Paul Mescal's Junior has the potential to be as interesting a character, but he's established early enough as "just kind of a jerk" that the angst about being potentially replaced can be played very well but not hit home. Aaron Pierreis just kind of around, equal parts sinister and curious.

It might be interesting to give the movie a second go to see what knowing everything reveals. At least, it would if this was a better movie worth another two hours of time. But it's not.


Fingernails

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 October 2023 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston Fall Focus 2023, DCP)

On the one hand, I think you've got to have some pretty weird ideas about both love and biology for the premise of Fingernails not to feel like it's stretching its premise past the point where it's useful. On the other, Jessie Buckley is so dang delightful that I immediately went to look up what else she has been in. Get her in some romantic comedies that are as witty and quirky as this movie is at its best and ditch the faux-profundity that doesn't work.

She plays an elementary school teacher, Anna, who was laid off when her school shut down on short notice, and, though she winds up telling boyfriend Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) otherwise, she winds up taking a job at The Love Center, which not only administers the scientific tests that can determine whether two people are truly in love by running a test on their extracted fingernails, but offers classes to help couples deepen their bond before taking a test. She's instructed to shadow/work with Amir (Riz Ahmed), who has been creating new exercises based on romantic movie plots as scientific research, and it's not long before she starts to feel a spark. She and Ryan had a positive test early in their relationship, and not much has changed, but one can't help but wonder if maybe knowing that they are in love has allowed Ryan to start taking her for granted.

The movie works fantastically when it's a romantic comedy filled with sci-fi absurdity; director Christos Nikou and co-writers Stavros Raptis and Sam Steiner are especially good at finding goofy workplace humor bits that maybe would only show up at a place like The Love Institute, right down to Luke Wilson being a perfect little bit of casting as the boss - sentimental, optimistic, but also kind of sad. Just about every weird exercise at the Love Center meant to strengthen a couple's bond is enjoyably goofy, and making Ryan kind of a drip but not really a bad boyfriend allows for some deadpan moments at home.

There's really terrific chemistry between Buckley and Riz Ahmed, in large part because their characters don't quite seem like the perfect match, often caught a little unawares at something the other does but kind of delighted by it. Buckley practically glows at times, as she's meant to, with a wide smile and a way of curiously looking around but also focusing on the other person in a scene, but also seeming aware of when things aren't quite right. Ahmed's Amir is dryer, not quite as dry, smooth, and witty as he thinks, a smart fellow who gets a touch less composed the more time he spends with Anna. Jeremy Allen White hits the right tone as Ryan in terms of making him a man of his weird time and place but still kind of weird and not good enough; the way he takes Anna for granted because they're Certified In Love that feels more disappointing than mean, as it could.

The big trouble is that the film's built in such a way that its makers apparently expect the audience to take the weird premise of the Machine seriously, even when making big assumptions that require a little exploration. There are bits of it that seem like rich veins of satire - the idea that people will put themselves through literal torture to find love, that knowing something is true can make you lazy about it, or that people are essentially studying for the test - but the filmmakers seldom go for that. Instead, the counterintuitive test results get taken at face value, never leading to the idea that there's something in these relationships we need to take a closer look to see or hints that there's something off about the system.

The heck of it is, if they were keener on thinking their pseudo-science and world-building through rather than just taking it as what you need to tell this story, there's good material here: When the audience is wondering how the Machine can tell two people are in love with one another - as opposed to just individually in love - by looking at separate fingernails, talk about quantum entanglement. Really leverage that a lab test only gives you the data for one point in time more than the movie does. Or be really daring, and take the mentions that most results are negative but that an often indifferent couple like Anna & Ryan are positive to talk about what kind of love this thing is measuring and if maybe a powerful infatuation or a strong friendship may be more valuable, even if one doesn't call it "love".

indep There's some of that, but as with Foe, it comes too late to really be explored in depth compared to the time spent playing things out by the arbitrary rules that had been established. It leaves enough of the movie adrift to make one start wondering what they're even trying to say here, and why it's never as thought-provoking as the early going had been entertaining.

Under the Light.

Genuinely curious what the deal with this thing's censorship-related delays, because it's apparently been kicking around years. Did it talk more directly about how its corrupt public official made it as far as he did in its original version? Was the blackmail video not hilariously pixelated? Or was it just a small change that needed to be made but reshoots were tough during covid? One notes that this apparently running afoul of the censors didn't seem to slow Zhang down much; he's continued to make a movie a year, even during a pandemic. It's kind of odd that the censors don't seem to hold grudges, to me. Also, did the censor board change enough that the script that they approved about corruption was okay, but the finished film wasn't?

It's weird, but seems to have turned out okay; Zhang appears to have had the biggest hits of both Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, although Full River Red was a monster compared to this (FRR made something like $650M, while Under the Light will be in the $200M range). Interestingly, I just saw Variety tweet an article out about FRR being shopped, and I kind of wonder if someone like Sony Pictures Classics or the like might feel it's worth picking it up and then doing a release geared to English-speaking boutique-house people. I've talked about folks doing that a lot, and I don't know that it's really happened recently - I honestly don't know if it's happened since Lagaan, 20+ years ago - but I keep wondering about doing it every time I see something that feels like it could have a wider audience.

One other thing: No real reaction from the mostly-Chinese [-American] audience to the Silent Night trailer which heavily hyped John Woo as the director. Not that I'm sure he's necessarily that big a name anywhere now, but I'm guessing the trailer was attached to this movie in part because someone figured the one with a Chinese director would be of interest.


Jian ru pan shi (Under the Light)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 October 2023 in AMC Boston Common #11 (first-run, DCP)

Ir's been noted that this is the first present-day, city-set movie Zhang Yimou has directed in a long time, and it's certainly got him flexing different muscles visually, but there are a couple scenes early on that remind one that is not all that far of from his period pieces thematically. The scheming ministers are now businessmen and mayors, but they're still arranging marriages and adopting heirs, commanding secret armies, and creating vast spy networks, though much of that is now electronic. Maybe that's why it sat on a shelf while Zhang cranked out at least three other movies - you can't imply present-day China is too much like its glorious past.

As things start in present day (and fictitious) Jinjiang City, a bus has been hijacked by Kong Sanshun (Wang Xun), demanding to speak with Vice-Mayor Zheng Gang (Zhang Guoli) and get a message to the press, almost killing him before police technician - and Zheng's adopted son - Su Jianming (Lei Jiayin) notes that his bomb can be detonated remotely. Su is then invited to a dinner with Li Zhitan (Yu Hewei), billionaire head of the Jinwu Group and the city's richest man, apparently looking to recruit the son of his old rival Zheng, even as he plans his own retirement and hand-off to up-and-coming executive David (Sun Yi-zhou), who is engaged to his pregnant daughter Sha (Chen Tong). Jianming instead pushes to be the lead investigator on the bombing, digging into surveillance video with fellow technicians Li Juilin (Zhou Dongyu) - also his ex-girlfriend - and Sun Heyang (Xu Zili), although the three will soon discover that investigating motives and corruption is much more complicated than their usual job.

Audiences clearly enjoy this sort of backstabbing, as it's Zhang's second holliday blockbuster of the year to do this sort of mix of political and family intrigue (albeit with the settings separated by nearly 900 years). It's gleefully nasty as its two poles plot against each other while also being inextricably tied together. Yu Hewei's Liz Zhitan is seemingly happier to get his hands dirty, and some of the violence is delightfully brutal, even if the cops are not involved; he gets to establish his nasty bona fides early and Yu does nifty work in making Li someone who could be slick but seemingly prefers to drop his mask very quickly. Zhang Guoli's Zheng is that slick, and it's never entirely clear whether he's squeamish or just practical where violence is concerned, also handling the somewhat fractious relationship with Su well. Joan Chen Chong is also on the periphery of this group as Zheng's wife He Xiuli, and if she's only seen a bit early on, it's no surprise when she grabs a few scenes by the throat later.

Between them, these two create a tremendous mess for the trio of nerdy cops tasked with investigating just how all of this ties together (I sort of suspect that there is a certain amount of The Big Sleep "does it matter just who ordered whom to kill someone else?" going on here), as one thing leads to another and suspects seem to take great pains to make sure that they can be rubbed out before Jianming can use them to nail Li Zhitan to the wall. It's kind of interesting that the heroes in this picture are uncool techs, with all three bespectacled and Lei Jiayin in particular seeming to carry a bit more paunch than a movie star usually does; that, apparently, is the new dedicated worker aiming to keep the fat cats honest. Lei feels like a particularly unconventional hero, slumped from carrying a chip on his shoulder and a bit of envy, but still smart and a bit arrogant about it underneath his self-loathing. It does let Zhou Dongyu - a petite actress not far removed from playing a bullied high-school student to much acclaim in Better Days - play entertainingly against type as the sarcastic partner who probably wasn't going to let Jianming get away with much even before he dumped her, giving their scenes prickly chemistry that can go all-business as easily as it could become rekindled romance.

It's great to look at, of course, with the picture often bathed in colorful but harsh, overly bright light as Zhang trains a piercing eye on the present the way he might unearth the corruption in the past; tourist boats become blobs from all the golden light they throw off, and the blue lights atop police cars cut through the dark like lasers. But there's also something older and more primal here, even before the literally buried evidence comes to light: Elevated walkways around high-rise apartment buildings make it look like the old city has pushed its way up through the modern one, and the heroes are menaced by an old-fashioned ax gang as their phones are blocked and they struggle to charge one. Of course, sometimes it's more whimsical, as the score suddenly seems to quote Bernard Hermann as Jianming and Huilin dangle in a climax that would make Hitchcock smile, or a spry Zhitian reminds younger assassins that he is both smarter and tougher than they are.

It's a bunch of fun, especially when Zhang has the freedom to let audiences hiss at those in the upper class, whether by money or status, even if one can maybe see where any mention of how Zheng and Li were able to get where they were has been carefully excised (I suspect Joan Chen's wife from an implicitly well-connected family has some material on the cutting room floor). It may not be Zhang's best, and it is possessed of an unusually heavy-handed reminder that crime does not pay at the end, but it's an impressively messy and mean change of pace for someone who often seems to be aiming to play classy art houses outside of China.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 October 2023 - 26 October 2023

Last weekend was the first time in a while that I didn't wind up in a movie theater or festival. It was weird; I hope the kids had fun. So to make up for it, we're getting new films from Martin Scorsese and Zhang Yimou today, plus IFFBoston hitting us with a shotgun blast of the noteworthy indies rolling out over the next few months, and the second weekend of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour.

• The big feature is Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese's grand western crime story of how the Osage people were fortunate to find oil on the land to which they were relocated and the men who conspired to take control, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, and Lily Gladstone, a whole brace of great character actor faces, and some late-inning co-stars brought in for when you start to feel the long runtime. It's pretty great and plays at the Coolidge, the Somerville (4K laser starting Monday), The Capitol, Kendall Square, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), the Lexington Venue, The Embassy, 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.
  
  Also opening wide is Dicks: The Musical, in which two young men discover they are long-lost identical twins (note: they are not played by the same actor or by twins), and plot to reunite their parents, with Megan Thee Stallion, Nathan Lane, Megan Mullaly, and Bowen Yang along for the ride. It's at the Somerville, Kendall Square, Boston Common, and Assembly Row.
  
  A new adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost opens at Fresh Pond; this one's animated and has Stephen Fry voicing the title character, a specter frustrated by the American family that has moved into the home he's been haunting for 300 years. It's one of those British animated features where the animation looks iffy compared to the Disney and Dreamworks trailers but the voice cast is killer, featuring Hugh Laurie, Imelda Staunton, Freddie Highmore, and Toby Jones in addition to Fry.
  
  Soul Mates, which has Annie Ilonzeh & Charlie Weber on a blind date from hell after being put together by a service that means to test compatibility under pressure, plays later shows at South Bay.
  
  The Nightmare Before Christmas gets a Halloween-season rerelease at Boston Common (including RealD 3D), South Bay, Arsenal Yards.
  
  Back to the Future plays Boston Common, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards on Saturday and Wednesday (no Wednesday at Arsenal Yards). There are 60th anniversary screenings of The Birds at South Bay and Assembly Row on Sunday and Monday. Documentary Beyond Utopia, focusing on families that fled North Korea, plays Boston Common and South Bay on Monday and Tuesday. There are Crossroads "Global Fan Event" shows at Boston Common and Arsenal Yards on Monday and Wednesday. The week's A24 horror screenings at Boston Common are Under the Skin on Monday and Midsommar on Wednesday.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens two things getting courtesy theatrical runs before heading to Netflix this week: Nyad stars Annette Bening in the title role, a former marathon swimmer turned sports journalist who decides to return to sport for one of its most daring feats - swimming from Cuba to Florida, without a shark cage - at the age of 60. Jodie Foster plays her coach, and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin direct, their first narrative feature after a number of terrific human-versus-elements features.
  
  The other is Pain Hustlers, which stars Emily Blunt as a woman who gets a job helping to move painkillers as opiate addiction becomes a full-blown epidemic; it also features Chris Evans, Andy Garcia, and Catherine O'Hara.
  
  Tuesday's $5 Retro Replay for 1980s slashers is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, so you can check Leatherface off the dance card. Wednesday also has a $5 show of Ace in the Hole, apparently not part of a series, but one doesn't really need an excuse.
• Zhang Yimou's second major Chinese holiday release of the year is Under the Light, a rare contemporary crime thriller from the director, after sitting on the shelf for various pandemic and censorship-related reasons for long enough that Zhang made and released at least three other films in the meantime. It features Lei Jiayin, Zhang Guoli, Yu Hewei, Zhou Dongyu, and Joan Chen, no doubt looks stylish as heck, and plays Boston Common.
  
  Two Indian action films opened Wednesday - Leo: Bloody Sweet in Tamil at Fresh Pond (which also has Telugu screenings) and Boston Common and Bhagavanth Kesari in Telugu at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, South Bay, and Arsenal Yards - and Apple Fresh Pond gets four more from the subcontinent this weekend: Ganapath is a Hindi-language sci-fi action/adventure starring Tiger Shroff; Yaariyan 2 is also in Hindi and follows three cousins having misadventures in Mumbai. Ghost (playing through Sunday) is a Kannada-language thriller centered around an attempted jailbreak, and Tiger Nageswara Rao (also at Boston Common) is a Telugu action flick about an infamous 1970s robber (not to be confused with Tiger Shroff above or the forthcoming Tiger 3).
• In addition to the big movies, The Coolidge Corner Theatre has plenty of Halloween fare, with midnights of Rocky Horror and Urban Legend (35mm) on Friday, plus Re-Animator late Saturday. The Big Screen Classics are M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense on Monday, Arsenic and Old Lace on Tuesday, and the 1942 Cat People on Thursday, with the first two on 35mm film and Northeastern University's Nathan Blake delivering a seminar before the third.
  
  For non-spooky fare, there's a Goethe-Institut presentation of German multiple-personality film Franky Five-Star on Sunday morning, with star Lena Urzendowsky participating in a post-film Q&A.
• The Brattle Theatre hosts Independent Film Festival Boston's annual Fall Focus, highlighting some of the fall's more notable foreign/independent releases, with Fallen Leaves and Fingernails on Friday; Robot Dreams, Evil Does Not Exist, Kore-Eda's Monster, and Dream Scenario on Saturday; All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Tótem, Perfect Days, and The Taste of Things on Sunday; and closing with Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Hero on Monday. That one's sold out, but they play Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke on Tuesday, and there's a special screening of Aftershock with filmmakers Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee present to discuss their documentary about how Black women, in particular, are at risk of complications and death when pregnant because of gaps in the American health care system.
• The Somerville Theatre pushes Killers of the Flower Moon and Dicks down a screen to accommodate Johnathan Richman's main stage shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, also bumping Stop Making Sense for the weekend except for a midnight show on Saturday. The main midnight on Saturday is Carny, which has Jodie Foster joining a traveling show with Gary Busey and Robbie Robertson. Dumb Money also returns Monday. Honoring Eric Bentley: A Centennial Tribute Concert, plays the main screen Wednesday, and there's a program of local horror shorts on Thursday with cast & crew on hand (though it's currently marked sold out).
  
  (Idle thought: They should have swapped the numbers of screens 2 & 3 during the remodel so they'd represent the sizes of the rooms in descending order.)
• The Harvard Film Archive begins a new series - "Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik's Expatriates" - on Friday with feature The Second Generation preceded by short film "For Ella"; Oldtimer plays Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, they have the restored I Heard It Through the Grapevine on DCP rather than their 16mm print; that evening's presentation also features James Baldwin, with three shorts under the title "James Baldwin Abroad". On Monday, they have a "From the Archive" presentation of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a strange, queer entry from Georgian/Armenian/Ukranian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov when all three nations were part of the Soviet Union, on 35mm film.
• The Regent Theatre has a "Psychadelic Cinema" show on Friday night, with films shot on Super-8 by Ken Brown in the 1960s for use in musical shows accompanied by Ken Winokur's Psychadelic Cinema Orchestra. Documentary Common Ground plays on Tuesday, with a pre-film musical performance by Cosmica and a post-film panel discussion. The "Midweek Music Movies and More" show is on Thursday this week, with "AKA Doc Pomus" followed by a brief panel discussion.
• Go On, Be Brave screens on The Museum of Science's Omni screen on Tuesday evening, with documentary subject Andrea Lytle Peet in person for a Q&A about the film chronicling her aim to be the first person with ALS to compete in a marathon in all 50 states. She will also be present for a screening at Kendall Square on Thursday.
• This week's Thursday Bright Lights show in the Bright Screening Room is The Tuba Thieves, a collection of stories dealing with hearing loss inspired by the theft of the big brass instruments from Los Angeles high schools. Director Alison O'Daniel will be on-hand, with the Q&A interpreted via ASL with the whole presentation open-captioned. Free and open to the public.
• The Boston Asian-American Film Festival welcomes Lulu Wang to ArtsEmerson's Paramount Theatre (Bright Screening Room) on Sunday for a preview screening of her new streaming series Expats; six shorts programs are available to screen through Sunday.
• The Boston Palestine Film Festival continues its virtual screening of five features and six shorts available through next 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 Thursday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema gets Killers of the FLower Moon, keeping Eras (no shows Monday-Wednesday), Flora and Son (Saturday/Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday), Paw Patrol, Golda, Past Lives, Barbie, and Oppenheimer (no show Sunday). Open all week.
  
  The Luna Theater has It Lives Inside on Friday and Saturday, Stop Making Sense on Saturday afternoon, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial on Sunday, and featurette "18 lus Soli" as part of UMass Lowell's Global Cinema series, including a Q&A, on Wednesday afternoon, with the Weirdo Wednesday show in the evening.
  
  Cinema Salem has Carpenter's Halloween, Hocus Pocus, and The Exorcist: Believer through Monday. The weekend's Universal Monsters shows are The Wolf Man (Friday/Sunday/Monday), The Mummy (Friday/Sunday), Frankenstein (Friday/Saturday/Monday), Dracula (Saturday/Sunday), Bride of Frankenstein (Saturday/Monday), The Invisible Man (Saturday/Sunday), and The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Sunday).
  
  If you can make it out to Dedham (or live there), Scottish drama The Road Dance plays the Community Theatre. Irish/Finnish drama My Sailor, My Love moves from that theater to the Patriot Cinemas in Hingham.
• Joe's Free Films shows an outdoors screening of Home Alone in Harvard Square on Friday night, and director Alex Winter on hand for a screening of his documentary The YouTube Effect in Wasserstein Hall at the Kennedy School on Monday.

Mostly living at the Brattle this weekend (but not sweating if most shows sell out before I get there because a lot will show up later), hopefully carving out time for Under the Light, Nyad, and Pain Hustlers during the week. Killers of the Flower Moon is also highly recommended.