Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.03: Head Like a Hole and The Ugly Stepsister

Hey, it's Head Like a Hole director Stefan MacDonald-LaBelle with festival programmer Chris Hallock, both down from Canada but making the absolute minimum number of USA-Canada jokes given the situation here!

Mostly, SML talked about how his film was about his reaction to corporate work, and it's not exactly single once you've heard him talk but I must admit that I was getting a different vibe while watching the movie, because the movie was kind of hitting Mormon and evangelical tones with me, because the song didn't match (and maybe wasn't as discordant as intended with the basement not matching the house upstairs).

Also, I do kind of find myself scratching my head at folks who do movies like these and talk about how working in an office was so soul-sucking that they'd rather be back in the job where they occasionally had to dispose of dead animals. Maybe it doesn't speak well of me that in twenty years into a job that has of late evolved into being more abstract and the start-up I was hired by being absorbed by a huge company that I truly believe changed its name because Google auto completes to something involving a major scandal. It's not that horrifying! I'd actually like to be in the office rather than remote again!

Don't get me wrong, I benefit from the people who can't do it and make art instead, but always feel weird when I'm in an auditorium and everyone nods along with the filmmaker saying this.

Very different vibe for The Ugly Stepsister, which may be gross but has a more mainstream sensibility, and where you can hear different people being grossed out by different things!


Head Like a Hole

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)

This is probably just me, but as the grandchild of a carpenter and someone who carefully checks the meniscus when using a measuring cup, I've got to say, the measuring that is a guy's entire job in this movie is garbage. It drove me batty every time he just put the ruler next to the hole at an angle or measured from the very end. Just, like, run a chalk line vertically through the center of the hole and measure from the 1cm mark!

This is an insane rant, but it's also a good chunk of the movie, where unemployed Asher (Steve Kasan), living out of his car, takes a job (with included lodging) that involves measuring "the anomaly" - a hole in the basement wall of a bungalow whose family seems to have abandoned it - every hour from nine to five. The boss, Emerson (Jeff McDonald) is mercurial and a stickler for punctuality and specific work attire, although facility manager Sam (Eric B. Hansen) is friendly enough. It's 15mm every hour, though, and eventually, something's got to happen, right?

Is the poor measurement technique a silly thing to care about? Yes, but there's not a lot of distraction from it. The film has one of those neat high concepts that nevertheless requires a lot of effort to stretch out to 90 minutes, and the characters surrounding the protagonist Asher are by and large quirky in a way that's one-note rather than intriguing - Jeff McDonald's Emerson, in particular, is all weird affectation from the start and seems to appear and disappear entirely as it becomes necessary. The weirdness and repetition is meant to be numbing to Asher, obviously, but it's seldom able to overcome the "only location we can afford" setting to feel real, or at least satirically connected to anything that needs attacking. When it comes time for something to happen, you can feel the filmmakers giving it a big, obtrusive push.

I like Steve Kasan as Asher, though; he's grounded and awkward without being an exaggerated geek, and reacts to the weirdness around him without breaking it. The B&W coloring looks good, too, flattening things that could be distracting without ever looking self-conscious. And when it's finally time to go all-in on being a horror movie, the filmmakers get a lot out of a little; the finale is weird and underplayed in just the right way.

It's a truly underground film at the underground film festival, far from fancy and often more dull even than it means to be, but the vibe is right and it starts and ends well.


Den stygge stesøsteren (The Ugly Stepsister)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

It's no dis on the rest of the cast or what's going on around her to say that this film's other stepsister, Alma (Flo Fagerli), has the inside track on being my favorite supporting character of the year. Aside from being a good counterpoint to the rest of the characters, she's someone we can all relate to in these times, as she seldom has actual lines but always looks to be on the verge of shouting "Jesus Fucking Christ, what the hell is wrong with you people?"

It opens with the title character, Elvira (Lea Myren), a young lady whose round face, constant reading from Prince Julian's book of poetry, and curls that seem to shout "so last year" make her seem the ugly duckling, in a carriage with younger sister Alma and mother Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), to live with new stepfather Otto (Ralph Carlsson) and stepsister Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) in the capital of their fairy-tale kingdom. Agnes is tall, worldly, and pretty, and seems initially friendly if aloof, until Otto drops dead during their first meal as a family, and all four of the ladies are appalled to discover that the other family has no money. When a ball where Julian (Isac Calmroth) will choose a bride is announced for four months hence, Rebekka sees and opportunity, sending Elvira to "Dr. Esthétique" (Adam Lundgren) and a fancy finishing school to make sure she catches the prince's eye - and if not his, that some other wealthy noble or merchant. Seeing Elvira as a rival while Rebekka spends all her time and money on this plan rather than her father's funeral makes Agnes icier, while Elvria's initial teasing by the other girls isn't exactly bringing out the best in her.

As a whole, the movie is a delightfully nasty inversion of the Cinderella story because it doesn't so much do the simple "what if the heroines were really the villains and the villains were really the heroines?" shtick but instead acknowledges that they're all teenagers, for the most part, innocent and selfish in equal measure, and with plenty of bile for those who would treat these girls as commodities. The filmmakers have a real knack for not Shrek-ifying the fairy tale setting to make it seem basically like the present but with medieval accoutrements too much but highlighting where you can see the same forces at play. It's particularly notable that Elvira gets a look at who Julian is behind the pretty poetry but seems no less determined even after being scorned; it's a sadly human reaction that requires little explanation.

What makes this inversion particularly enjoyable is the performances of the two young actresses at the center. Lea Myren never loses touch with the naive girl who is excited about new and fancy things, always letting the audience see who she was under who she's become. Thea Sofie Loch Næss does the same in a different way; Agnes is cool from the start but hardens, but she's usually just short of a villain, showing enough grief for sympathy even when bitterness overwhelms it. Ane Dahl Torp and Flo Fagerli make the devil and angel on Elvira's shoulders believable purple, with Torp's Rebekka all pragmatic ambition and Fagerli's Alma developing a questioning intelligence as she tries to see a different way.

The filmmakers are not subtle; some of the parody is very direct and writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt is going to extend a gross-out bit for as long as she possibly can, though seldom past the point where the audience is less reacting to the weirdness of the gag than being subjected her sadism. I noped out of the eye stuff pretty quick, for example, but just to put my hand in front of my eyes and peek out a bit, because it was working to make a point, whereas some in the audience clearly had not heard the whole bit with the slippers, and others seemed to murmur uncomfortably at the constant tapeworm-assisted stomach growling on the soundtrack. The film is very good at pushing pitch-black comedy right up to the point where it would be no fun anymore.

That's the film's whole deal, really. The audience knows from about five minutes in that it's going to be about using Cinderella to talk about the unhealthy pressures put on teenage girls, and the filmmakers keep finding ways to pound it home without going too far astray or beating a dead horse, right up until it's time to say they're done with this nonsense. It's mean and gross, but also funny and surprisingly sympathetic to all the girls stuck in its vicious circle.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.02: Fréwaka

Every year when I write stuff from the festival up, I feel like I should be prefacing reviews with "I don't grade on a curve and a lot of what you see at an Underground festival is going to be kind of rough", or that for as much as I like the people and energy of the festival, a lot of this isn't exactly my thing.

Which is why I only saw one movie on Thursday, even though I probably could have done three. I've never seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and don't have nearly enough interest to see a movie about it (it's a blind spot, but I'm not particularly ashamed of my horror blind spots). At the other end of the night, sure, there are good reasons to start a movie at 10:30pm when I've got work then next day, but I'm going to need more convincing than I got that a new film from the makers of Relaxer is one of them.

What's that leave us with? Weird Irish stuff. And while I like weird Irish stuff more than most supernatural horror, well…


Fréwaka

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it

I like Irish folk horror more than most other ways for movies to be built around the supernatural, but I'll readily admit: I do maybe need my hand held a little bit. The English or American boyfriend that gets laughed at before his girlfriend explains the town's traditions exists in order to make not just international audiences in general but me, specifically, a little more able to digest the movie a little better. Fréwaka, on the other hand, is mostly shot in Irish, very much intended for a local audience that knows what's going on, so maybe there's a bit more work for the viewer to get to the decent story behind it.

It opens with two prologues: A young woman vanishing on her wedding day in 1973, and a middle-aged woman hanging herself in a cramped compartment in the present day, fifty-odd years later. Soon we're introduced to "Shoo" (Clare Monnelly), the second woman's daughter, and her pregnant Ukrainian bride-to-be Mila (Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya), as they come to clean her apartment, with Mila wanting to sort the ephemera carefully while Shoo is inclined to throw it away. Mila will soon be doing that on her own, as Shoo, a home-care nurse, has just been given a placement for a stroke victim who must be an Irish speaker. Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain) lives in a large, foreboding house on the outskirts of a small town. She, it turns out, was the lady at the start, and what she experienced when missing has left her agoraphobic and paranoid ever since.

I like a lot of the material that writer/director Aislinn Clarke is working with here - the eerie imagery, the two women who have survived some sort of abuse and shut a lot out as a result, the Irish brusqueness that can stop a film from woolgathering and provides a quick laugh as folks get on with it. Clarke is careful not to present anything that can't be folks in small towns doing weird local rituals until very late in the game indeed, but there's a sort of logic to how the idea of Na Sídhe is presented. Peig describes a house under her house and the idea that the world is thin around the time of major life changes, and her memories of the other side are vague and metaphoric, like the human mind can't record it properly. Clarke's script lets Shoo come at Peig's fears of the supernatural skeptically but not condescendingly, talking about how counting objects and using symbols is how humans keep control of the world around them.

The two leads are strong as well; both Clare Monnelly and Bríd Ní Neachtain find individual ways to make their characters haunted and abrasive rather than serving as too-obvious mirrors of one another. They still spar even once they understand one another, though there's more sad self-awareness of what they have in common. The rest of the cast fills their roles in solid fashion, with Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya giving Mila some frustrated depth, and Olga Wehrly doing a terrific job of convincing the audience that there may indeed be something supernatural going on just by acting weird in a couple of scenes.

The movie kind of needs what Wehrly delivers at that point because it's never quite as scary as it maybe should be if you're not primed by knowing the mythology. It sort of trucks along as decent drama but seldom quite connects with the sweet spot where the supernatural and grounded expanding intersect. Whenever something eerie happens, one is as likely to shrug it off with a thought about how this might be an unreliable narrator situation, but that's quite understandable, given what this particular woman has gone through. Bits are good and well-staged, but seem to be treading water until the last act, when the sense of reality finally begins to shake.

And even then, it ends on final scenes that have me thinking okay, I guess, if you say so, Ireland: A striking image that certainly looks the Irish folk horror part, but doesn't exactly feel like the culmination of this particular story. I suspect it may work better if you know the material, and nothing wrong like that. It's an Irish movie for an Irish audience, and well-done enough that I expect it works really well for them.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 21 March 2025 - 27 March 2024

BUFF pushing a lot of stuff I might go for into next week!

• After the relatively quiet opening days, Boston Underground Film Festival runs through Sunday at The Brattle Theatre with all sorts of good stuff: Local horror, Head Like a Hole (with filmmaker), The Ugly Stepsister, and midnight shorts on Friday; music videos, comedy shorts, Sister Midnight, Alma and the Wolf (with filmmakers), Re-Animator (with star Barbara Crampton, and an AGFA mixtape on Saturday; plus two shorts programs (including animation), Best Wishes to All, Fucktoys (with filmmakers), and Escape from the 21st Century on Sunday.
  
  After that, they continue the verticals, with Frederick Wiseman's Welfare on Monday, and Aimée & Jaguar for German Queer Cinema on Tuesday. They also wind up the "March Movie Madness" they started at the Oscar watch with runner-up Dead Ringers on Tuesday and a double-feature of Taxi Driver and original-recipe Suspiria on Wednesday.
• The big release this week is Disney's Snow White, with Rachel Zeglar in the title role and Gal Godot good casting as the evil queen, although the preview starts to get ropy with CGI dwarfs and attempts to replicate the original animated film a little too closely. Clocks in under two hours, though! It's at The Capitol Theatre, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  The Alto Knights stars Robert De Niro as both rival crime bosses looking to control New York City, with a script by Nichola Pileggi and Barry Levinson directing, both of whom were pretty big deals for a while. It's at the Capitol, Boston Common, Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Locked is an American remake of an Argentine thriller with a neat little premise that has Bill Skarsgård playing a car thief breaking into a car whose owner (Anthony Hopkins) has apparently just been waiting to lock someone in while he controls the vehicle remotely. It's at Boston Common and South Bay.
  
  Stylish-looking sci-fi horror Ash, directed by rapper Flying Lotus and starring Eiza Gonzalez, Aaron Paul, and Iko Uwais, plays Boston Common and Causeway Street. More Twilight Zone-ish is The Assessment, with Alicia Vikander as a woman spending seven days reviewing the childbirth permit of a young couple (Himesh Patel & Elizabeth Olsen). It's at Boston Common and the Seaport.
  
  Magazine Dreams shows up two years after its Sundance premiere and a year-plus after an expected award-friendly release in December 2023, because star Jonathan Majors, playing a bodybuilder pushing himself to the limits, is still pretty radioactive. It's at Boston Common, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  Any Day Now, a locally-produced film that plays what-if with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery, opens at Arsenal Yards.
  
  Another local production, Eephus, expands to West Newton, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, the Seaport, already at the Somerville Theatre and the Coolidge Corner Theatre.
  
  Two movies apparently getting four-walled at Fresh Pond: McVeigh gets matinee shows with Alfie Allen as Texan bomber Timothy McVeigh with some recognizable faces in the supporting cast, while Popeye the Slayer Man is the inevitable reimagination of a character who has newly entered the public domain as a slasher-killer (Jason Robert Stephens). You can tell it's a horror film made in the northeast because Sarah Nicklin is in it. There's a preview screening of Death of a Unicorn at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards on Monday and at the Seaport on Wednesday, ahead of the Thursday early shows. Concert film Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert plays Kendall Square, Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row Sunday. Imagine Dragons: Live From the Hollywood Bowl plays the Kendall, Boston Common, and Assembly Row on Wednesday.
• Indian films at Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language romantic comedy Pintu Ki Pappi and re-releases of Telugu comedy Yevade Subramanyam (Friday to Sunday) and Malayalam thriller Lucifer (Saturday/Sunday), with Telugu drama Court - State vs. a Nobody held over (and expanding to Causeway Street). It's a quiet weekend before the big Eid releases start rolling out - Tamil actioner Veera Dheera Sooran Part 2 (also at Causeway Street starting Thursday) and Lucifer 2 on Wednesday, with Telugu comedy Mad Square (also at Causeway Street) and Telugu action-comedy Robinhood coming Thursday.
  
  Chinese drama Always Have Always Will, starring Peng Yuchang as a troubled man who winds up with a sick girl played by Yang Enyou tagging along, opens at Causeway Street. Ne Zha 2 hangs on at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and Assembly Row (RealD 3D).
  
  Princess Mononoke plays in a new 4K transfer at South Bay (Imax Xenon), Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Wednesday and Thursday.
  
  Vietnamese comedy The 4 Rascals continues at South Bay.
• More David Lynch at The Seaport Alamo with Lost Highway Friday to Sunday. Marie Antoinette plays Saturday & Sunday, and Girls Town on Tuesday. There's also a preview of Hell of a Summer with livestreamed Q&A on Tuesday.
• The Somerville Theatre picks up On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and also continues the IFFBoston "March Music Madness" series with Stop Making Sense on Friday, Divine Madness on Tuesday, and Amazing Grace on Thursday. There's a Midnight Special of Enter the Dragon on Saturday, a 35mm member screening on Sunday, and ¡Corazón!, a locally shot mumblecore Western musical set in suburban New Hampshire, on Monday.
• ArtsEmerson hosts documentaries selected by The Boston Asian American Film Festival and others this weekend, with Admissions Granted Friday evening with a post-film Q&A/panel, 9-Man Saturday afternoon, andHome Court (with short "Yellow Brotherhood") Saturday evening, also with Q&A/panel
• The Regent Theatre has a premiere event for locally-made sci-fi thriller Article 92 on Friday, delayed from a month ago. Why you schedule this movie first during the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival and then BUFF, I dunno.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre rolls over last week's movies, with The Room at midnight Friday and monkey movies Carnival Magic (Friday) and Link (35mm Saturday); they have, as expected, outlasted The Monkey there. They have The Lord of The Rings trilogy in 35mm on Sunday, although both it and the encore on 20 April are marked as sold out. Sunday also offers "Totally Trailblazers" show Salaam Bombay!, with Big Screen Classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Monday, and a Science on Screen show of Mulholland Drive on Tuesday (listed as sold out)
• The Museum of Science has Hidden Figures on the giant screen Saturday for Women's History Month (free, RSVP). Mickey 17 continues on the giant screen Fridays & Saturdays this weekend and next..
• Spring break is reaching its tail end, so The Harvard Film Archive is closed Friday & Saturday, with Albert Serra:Cinematic Time Regained picking back up with The Death of Louis XIV and Birdsongas separate shows Sunday, the latter on 35mm film, and a 35mm print of Serra's Honor of the Knights on Monday Serra himself will be in town next weekend..
• National Center for Jewish Film shows this week are Plunderer: The Life and Times of a Nazi Art Thief and The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka at The Museum of Fine Arts on Sunday, Soda at the Coolidge Monday (marked as sold out), The Blonde Boy from the Casbah at the Coolidge Wednesday, and Pink Lady at the Coolidge on Thursday.
• Landmark Kendall Square has Edgar Wright's The World's End on Tuesday.
• Movies at MIT has La Haine on Friday & Saturday evening. As always, if you're not part of the MIT community, they'd appreciate an email at lsc-guest (at) MIT dot edu ahead of time.
• Joe's Free Films shows three Revolutions Per Minute Fest shows at Goethe-Institut on Saturday: Shorts at 1pm & 2:30m, and Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis at 7pm with a live score by the Charlie Kohlhase Trio (that one is ticketed). There's also a "Women Take The Reel" screenings at Tufts on Thursday - The Projections of Anna May Wong (RSVP recommended).
• The Embassy has On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and The Brutalist through Sunday. The free Community Classic on Monday is All About Eve (or not; it's in earlier emails but not this week's nor on the website).
• The Lexington Venue is open all week except Monday with Black Bag, Eephus, and No Other Land.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Eephus and Snow White, also retaining The Day the Earth Blew Up, No Other Land, Anora, Flow, and A Complete Unknown. They also have special guests on Sunday - you can see Eephus with former Sox pitcher Bill Lee and Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy in the afternoon, while Edward Ashton, author of original novel Mickey7, will sign his latest and introduce/discuss Mickey 17 in the evening (note that the film has closed there otherwise). They also have a pair of short films - "Dukakis: Recipe for Democracy" & "The Officials" - on Wednesday night with filmmakers in attendance.
  
  Cinema Salem has Snow White, Black Bag, Opus, and Mickey 17 through Monday. There's a Whodunit Watch Party on Sunday, and Wayback Wednesday is Angels with Dirty Faces, with Weirdo Wednesday on the other screen. Highly alliterative special programming this week.

I am living at the Brattle for BUFF through Sunday, then likely trying to fit ¡Corazón!, Ash, The Assessment, The Alto Knights, and Locked into the rest of the week, since only one of them looks like it'll be around for more than a week. Also sighing sadly at the alternate Sunday of a great member screening at the Somerville and the Mickey 17 thing in West Newton, even if I don't that it's really possible to get back home via public transportation after that.

Boston Underground Film Festival 2025.01: The Surfer and Muerte en la Playa

I don't imagine there were a lot of guests scheduled for BUFF, especially the first night where the schedule was Sunday-evening tight, but I wonder how many are backing out. Nicole & Kevin might be joking about how the audience chooses the awards at this festival which means there's still democracy here, but the stories about people getting arrested by ICE folks trying to meet quotas at Logan aren't good, and film festivals sure seem like something where someone might come in on a tourist visa only to have someone who might have looked the other way before decide that was working. Like, I might not risk it.

Bleh.

Still, it was a fun night where the studio movie with indie roots and the restoration shared a theme of rage leading to murder in a sunny beach community. If you want more, The Surfer director Lorcan Finnegan's debut feature, Without Name, is currently sitting on my shelf in a disc released by Yellow Veil, a partner label of Vinegar Syndrome, who are apparently behind the restoration/re-release of Muerte en la Playa. The weird horror community crosses over a lot!


The Surfer

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Huh, I don't think I've ever heard Julian McMahon's actual accent before (and maybe I haven't; if the Sydney-born actor is laying Perth on something thick). There's something kind of funny about how he's been playing [North] American folks for twenty-five years without really scanning as Australian while Nicolas Cage's character is supposedly Australian but they've got to spend a couple minutes claiming that a few years in California twenty years ago has him talking like Nic Cage.

Or maybe it was longer; whatever the length, he's back in Australia now, intending to take his son (Finn Little) to the beach where he surfed growing up, pointing out the childhood home that he is repurchasing from the crest of a wave, presuming he can put together the financing to beat a last-minute all-cash offer. Since then, though, the locals have been bullying any outsider who comes to the supposedly-public beach, led by Scott "Scally" Callahan (McMahon), a motivational speaker who whips the local men into a frenzy. As Cage's surfer continues to haunt the beach, various things start going wrong, and the only ally he's got is a bum living out of his car (Nic Cassim) who blames Scally and his crew for his son's death.

The Surfer is the sort of Nicolas Cage movie that makes you wonder what would have happened if Cage hadn't taken the role. it might have been more timid, or it might have been the same but more unnerving because we're not looking for him to Nic Cage it up. He's good at this, and good in this movie, but it's not necessarily going to take one by surprise; we can sort of track how Cage will play his escalation from seemingly reasonable everyman to deadpan sarcasm to manic violence from previous experience at this point.

I do like the compact setup, though, with director Lorcan Finnegan and screenwriter Thomas Martin clearly establishing stakes and how the title character is trying to recapture things that are gone, in large part due to his own self-destructive action, and seeing up little bits of entitlement that keep him from being totally sympathetic and get him deeper and deeper in trouble. It's so keenly and carefully set out up front that what comes after is kind of drawn out as a result, stripping away everything he's rebuilt in maybe too finely granular a fashion, before a turn that maybe requires more or less of the movie, because there's a whole other basket of issues that demand a bit of attention after that, from the "localism" that seems to drive the folks on the beach to how Scally's guru status is likely more about giving people permission to be cruel than channeling aggression.

The film's got a look, though, a real way of getting across how Australia is unforgivingly beautiful (it is a place where dehydration can sneak up on you while you enjoy the sunshine and interesting plants and animals), and an eye for how the rich folks near this beach are kind of cosplaying at being hooligans enough for it to become real. The comic timing of each new bit of cruelty is impeccable, and the frustration and heatstroke making this guy feel even more unstuck in time is effective.

I hate to be a "cut 15 minutes" guy, especially since the grindhouse flicks that inspired this were often sort of padded themselves, but it does feel like there's a 90-minute version that attacks the viewer as ruthlessly as the opening does throughout rather than vamping because it's going to take a couple of days to wear this guy down. Maybe there's not quite a correct pace for this story, and you've just got to roll with how good many of the moments are.


Muerte en la Playa (Death on the Beach)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 March 2025 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon or direct from Vinegar Syndrome

You never totally know about IMDB entries for filmmakers outside the English-speaking mainstream, but to watch Muerte en la Playa is to be surprised that this comes near the end of the career of Enrique Gómez Vadillo rather than the start; it's got the feel of a young filmmaker trying to get things out as an outsider rather than a veteran who has had a decade or so and plenty of opportunities to hone his craft. That's both good and bad; transgressive energy pushes the film through periods where there are awkward talent gaps between some of the folks involved.

It opens with a nastily sexual murder at a boarding school that will have it closed, sending student David (Andrés Bonfiglio) home to his wealthy mother Lorena (Sonia Infante) and her latest paramour, Paul (Rodolfo de Anda), who seems an honest and pleasant enough gigolo. Lorena figures this will be a good time to start teaching David the family business; although she is disappointed that he would rather spend time with a pair of male hippies and deaf-mute servant Ruffo (Antonio Eric) than the various "secretaries" she has recruited to show him the ropes and prove he's the sort of man she imagines him to be, even if Paul and the rest quickly suss out that he is gay. Eventually, he finds new friends Tony (Humberto Lobato) and Nubia (Angela Alaltriste), while Paul quietly makes sure that the unusual amount of dead bodies showing up near the estate aren't investigated too closely.

I am mildly curious about the sources of Vinegar Syndrome's restoration, because the very start and end of the movie look like they are sourced from VHS copies, priming the audience to see it as the sort of disreputable, shot-on-video underground cinema of the 1980s, except that it quickly shifts to 35mm film and the sort of pretty darn passable cinematography that comes from pointing the camera at people with good physiques in sunny locations and not messing up the framing or the lighting, even if the point of view often movies like someone who just got their first camcorder for Christmas. Much of the rest of the movie feels like they only had so much time and film, so there's not always a great take or two to when they got to the editing bay.

Or they might have been going for a certain level of camp from the start; there are lines that it's hard to imagine being written in sincere fashion, although the actors do a fair job of delivering them without winking or stumbling over just how the character is supposed to be feeling to say this. The film isn't delivering great performances, but everyone is a well-cast match of the sort of guy they're meant to be.

Mostly, the vibe is right; one can feel the movie riding the line between the characters who are cosmopolitan enough to accept David as gay and the ones who will view that with contempt or disappointment. Squint, and you can see the bodies piling up as Lorena refuses to see her son for what he is in more ways than one. Any sort of message you might try to get from the film might be mixed at best and the ending is a bloody mess, but you can't really argue that maybe there's an argument to make being in the closet less scary in circa 1991 Mexico.

Or maybe it's not that deep, but just a portion of sleaze just capable enough to be watchable while also being quite ridiculous.

Papa

I guess the Lunar New Year releases are over, because the latest Chinese film to come out here is a Hong Kong release from late 2024 whose distributors were apparently giving other markets room to do their big year-end stuff before releasing it internationally. It is the sort of movie that seems to be made with an eye on the Hong Kong Film Awards the way American movies may have an eye on Oscar - very much a star vehicle for Lau Ching-Wan, but reserved, playing with form, maybe careful not to be too showy. I don't know the field well enough to guess how it will do; I kind of guess that The Last Dance might be the thing to beat, though I'm kind of amused that Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In is also a big-time contender. I love it, but it's very much an action-first movie with incredible production values.

Which is what usually gets exported for Hong Kong cinema, especially since it's been something like ten years since Wong Kar-Wai's last feature, but if feels like we're getting a few more Hong Kong dramas like this nowadays, as multiplexes have screens to fill and filmmakers have shifted to local concerns over the action that can be done bigger across the border.

Hopefully it plays. This had a surprisingly good audience Thursday evening after I feared I'd be the only one there.


Baba (Papa)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 March 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #8 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

I kind of wonder what some of my fellow Americans will make of Papa, because it not only seems to emphasize a different sort of ideals, but does not involve a lot of hand-wringing in getting there. Writer/director Philip Yung Chi-Kwong recognizes that this situation is a hell of a thing, and it doesn't really need to be kicked up any notches so much as examined from all sides.

It opens with Yuen Wing-nin (Sean Lau Ching-Wan) opening up his cafe, "Happy Valley", and looking across the street to his apartment, where the police are examining a crime scene: Nin's son Ming (Dylan So Man-To) has killed his sister Grace (Lainey Hung Nok-Yi) and mother Yin (Jo Koo Cho-Lam) with a cleaver before turning himself in to the police. By the time of Ming's court appearance, where he will plead guilty to manslaughter, he has been diagnosed with severe schizophrenia, which caused him to hear voices but may be treatable while he serves his time in the Siu Lam Psychiatric Center.

Or maybe this isn't the moment it happened, but some time later, when it's still impossible for Nin to look up without being brought back to that point in time. Yung tells things out of chronological order, but it's important to note that it's never with the intention of building some sort of mystery to be solved: The police spell out what happened very early on, and are told that it's a matter of a chemical imbalance rather than some sort of secret not long after. Instead, Yung constructs what feels like a sort of prison of memory; something will take Nin back to a happier time - when he first met Yin, buying a camera to capture Grace's birth, a scrawny kitten showing up at the restaurant - only for following that thread to return to the film's present. Sometimes, when there's some sort of conflict between Ming and someone else in the family, the audience (and likely Nin himself) will lean a bit forward, seeing if maybe that was the seed that led to the violence, but, no, it's just an ordinary memory tainted by what came after. Other times, he will seemingly forget his family is gone, or the audience will not be sure where they are on the timeline because Nin's brother will also have a son and daughter a couple years apart and a family dinner after 22 December 2010 can look like one from before.

The trick, often, is to look at Nin. Lau Ching-wan seems to have aged into the sort of face made for the kind of sadness that a grieving father would feel, with lines etched deep around sagging jowls, like slumping just a bit causes a stern gaze to slip. It's a performance that can seem monolithically stoic but reveals itself as some of Lau's best work as one looks closer. There's a kind and determined optimist not far beneath this working-class curmudgeon that one sees as he chats happily with customers or gives his now very fat cat a fancier dinner than he makes for himself. Without a lot of hand-wringing or making on-the-nose statements, it's clear that he still loves his son and is going to do what he can for him, and it seems so ingrained that the audience is seldom tempted to say "yeah, but…"

The rest of the cast impresses as well, even though they by the film's nature are only present sporadically: Jo Koo, especially, makes Yin feel like the sort of woman who would become Nin's partner in life and business, coming from the same sort of humble origins but more puckishly gregarious where one sort of has to discover that Nin is kind and reliable; they're compliments even though something at the base is very much the same. There's a lot of her reflected in Lainey Hung's Grace, though she's also clearly the sort of kid that maybe doesn't quite realize how much she's benefitted from her parents hard work and sacrifice, a little more playful and sassy. She and Dylan So appear to be making their film debuts here, and So is being nominated for best newcomer awards, and he's quietly very good, playing Ming more as an average moody teen than one with a particular edge, and capturing both his obvious guilt and how it's ultimately both frightening and a weight off to have the way his illness distorts things dissipate.

Yung mostly eschews speeches or dramatic turns, more often finding ways for the regular world to suddenly frustrate Nin. He's often better at finding odd little angles one might not consider, like a fellow inmate telling Ming he needs to find some way to present who he used to be as his treatment help him heal, or the little ways Nin tries to connect with the world, and how his community clearly likes and wants to support him without showering him with pity. He and his crew are also making the little apartments and shops in the Yuens' corner of Tsuen Wan feel warm, cramped, homey, or shabby as need be. It grounds Nin in this place, time, and class, making everything on the screen a reflection of him and his journey without getting too fancy.

It's a bit odd when Yung does finally circle around to showing the crime - I found myself caught between the feelings of it being exploitative because there was not actually being anything new to see and that we kind of had to see what Nin and Ming were carrying around, where each happy memory would lead them - but that's perhaps the only moment that in retrospect feels less than sure-footed. Otherwise, it's impressive work poking around something horrific without succumbing to despair or offering a solution.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 14 March 2025 - 20 March 2024

Oh yeah BUFF time!

(Also, the ticketing apps are being weird again for AMC Boston Common; it looks like they're running two screens through Sunday and fewer than the full 19 during the week)

• Which is to say, the Boston Underground Film Festival opens Wednesday at The Brattle Theatre, kicking off with a preview of Nicolas Cage in Lorcan Finnegan's The Surfer and an unearthing of Muerte en la Playa opening night. On Thursday, the offer Chain Reactions, a documentary on the impact of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Irish-language folk horror Fréwaka, and Joel Potrykus's Vulcanizadora. The festival continues to test how many things you can fit into the Brattle's schedule through next Sunday.
  
  Before that, though, they have High Tide on 35mm as the Friday Film matinee, and then a weekend of "Bruce Willis: Beyond the Bombastic", with The Bonfire of the Vanities (35mm) and Hudson Hawk (35mm) on Friday, Death Becomes Her on Saturday & Sunday (only Saturday listed as 35mm), a Pulp Fiction/Nobody's Fool double feature (both 35mm) on Saturday, The Sixth Sense (35mm) and Breakfast of Champions on Sunday; and 12 Monkeys (35mm) on Monday. Sunday also features an Adventure Time Afternoon with the makers of the tie-in comics choosing their favorite episodes and signing their new giant-size compendium. The Frederick Wiseman film for the week is Juvenile Court, and the German queer cinema presentation on Tuesday is Dorian Gray in the Yellow Press.
• But first, another local underground-ish film, Eephus opens at the Somerville Theatre and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, with director Carson Lund and co-star/former Red Sox Bill Lee making appearances at the Somerville on Saturday and the Coolidge on Sunday (there's more on tap, with folks at West Newton next weekend). It's a terrific little movie about the last game played on a town ballpark about to be bulldozed, between two rec league teams of folks from college to retirement age. Lee shows up as basically Bill Lee and recently-retired Sox radio guy Joe Castiglione is selling pizza.
• For their second film of the year, director Steven Soderbergh and writer David Koepp offer up Black Bag, with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender as married MI-6 agents whose life becomes a thriller when her field agent is suspected of being turned and his ratcatcher is required to suss out the truth. It's at the Coolidge, the Capitol, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Say farewell to the Novocaine trailer, as the film - starring Jack Quaid as a man without pain receptors stumbling forward in an attempt to rescue his new girlfriend from hostage-takers, opens at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  Not to be confused with Eephus, Opus stars Ayo Edebiri as a journalist invited to the estate of John Malkovich's reclusive pop star ahead of his first release in 30 years, but something is apparently not right beyond how fawning the rest of the press is. It's at the Coolidge, the Capitol, Fresh Pond, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (starting Monday), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  The oddest release this week is The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie featuring Porky Pig and Daffy Duck as the odd couple who must stop a secret alien invasion, which Warner Brothers has offloaded to small distributor Ketchup Entertainment, which I suppose is better than entirely disappearing it. It's a spinoff of the recent "Looney Tunes Cartoons" show on Max and uses those designs. It plays at Fresh Pond, West Newton, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  The Rule of Jenny Pen shifts to Causeway Street with whatever's going on at Boston Common leaving it no screen.
  
  There's an AMC "Screen Unseen" preview Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Concert film Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert plays Kendall Square, Boston Common, the Seaport, and Assembly Row Wednesday. Wednesday also has an A24 x Imax show of Spring Breakers at South Bay and Assembly Row and an Early Access screening of Ash with livestreamed Q&A with the cast at South Bay and Assembly Row. Thursday also offers an "Opening Night Fan Event" for Snow White in Dolby Cinema at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row, and "RAD Day", which includes both cult BMX flick Rad and the new A Rad Documentary, at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• A nifty one from last year's IFFBoston Fall Focus, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, and Boston Common (starting Monday). It follows a young woman in Zambia who finds the body of her uncle on the road but is, for reasons that gradually become clear, more than a bit ambivalent about the elaborate funeral arrangements.
  
  The Coolidge also "opens" one of my favorites from last year's Fantasia Festival, The Dead Thing, for midnight shows on Friday and Saturday; with Blu Hunt as a woman whose professional, dating, and home life seems at a dead end until she meets a good man with secrets; I really liked how, in a festival where folks were setting things in the past to avoid cell phones, it seemed to be figuring out how a gothic romance worked in a world with dating apps, flex-time, and roommates. Oh, and it's apparently on 35mm film to boot!
  
  Also at midnight on Friday is lab-monkey-at-large flick Shakma (preceded by short "Humanzee") on 35mm, while Saturday offers the original Japanese version of King Kong Vs. Godzilla, albeit in an English dub. Earlier that evening, they welcome Joe Bob Briggs for a "Cult of the Rock Star" double feature of Bubba Ho-Top & Rock 'n' Roll High School. Other rep for the week includes German doc Riefenstahl on Sunday morning, presented by Geothe-Institut and featuring a Zoom Q&A with director Andres Veiel afterward; a 35mm print of Agnès Varda's Vagabond with pre-film seminar led by Alex Kittle; New England Legacy screenings of documentary featurettes Primary & The Collective: Fifteen Years Later on Wednesday; and both a National Center for Jewish Film festival presentation of Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire with director Oren Rudavsky in person and a 35mm Big Screen Classic show of Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More on Thursday.
• Landmark Kendall Square picks up The Actor, with Andre Holland as an amnesiac who attempts to begin a new life with a local costume designer (Gemma Chan) until his memories start to re-emerge. Duke Johnson directs from a Donald E. Westlake novel; it also plays in West Newton.
  
  The Edgar Wright series at the Kendall continues with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on Tuesday. Tuesday also features thriller Misericordia, with director Alain Guiraudie on-hand for a Q&A.
• Indian films at Apple Fresh Pond include Hindi-language thriller The Diplomat, with John Abraham as the title character, who must attempt to return an Indian girl from Pakistan and a marriage presumably entered into under false pretences. The other new releases are in Telugu: Drama Court - State vs. a Nobody, romantic thriller Dilruba, and a re-release of 2012's romance Yuganiki Okka Premikudu, opening Saturday. Superboys of Malegaon continues at West Newton.
  
  Vietnamese comedy The 4 Rascals, about friends trying to "solve" a love triangle, opens at Causeway Street and South Bay.
  
  Hong Kong drama Papa, starring Sean Lau Ching-wan as a father trying to do the right thing after his schizophrenic son kills the rest of their family, opens at Causeway Street. Ne Zha 2 starts to wind down but still shows at Boston Common (RealD 3D starting Monday), Causeway Street, and Assembly Row (RealD 3D).
  
  There's an encore "Gundam Fest" screening of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack on Sunday at South Bay, and Assembly Row. Another anime preview, the "Witch Watch" Watch Part, plays Assembly Row Sunday to Tuesday.
• The Seaport Alamo has more David Lynch shows, Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me playing through Wednesday (and maybe Thursday). Jumanji plays Friday to Sunday, with Sunday a "Movie Party" show. The Barrymore/Diaz/Liu/McG Charlie's Angels plays Friday/Saturday/Monday/Wednesday; The Lady Eve Saturday/Sunday/Monday/Wednesday. A "Mystery Machine" movie plays Monday (maybe the same as AMC, maybe not), a members' preview show of Holland on Tuesday, and the Watermelon Woman, also on Tuesday.
• The Somerville Theatre ties into Eephus by showing Major League as Friday's midnight special. They also have Any Day Now, a locally-produced film inspired by the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery, on Monday night with director Eric Aronson and actors Paul Giulfoyle & Taylor Gray on hand for a Q&A. The 2025 edition of the Ciclismo Classico Bike Travel Film Festival on Tuesday, and an IFFBoston "March Music Madness" show of Wattstax on Thursday. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl also shows Thursday; it's not clear if that's a one-off or the start of a run.
  
  The Capitol Theatre has a 4th Wall show with Preacher & Daisy and Sweet Petunia on Friday, with BADWARE on visuals.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has Kubo and the Two Strings on Friday evening and Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery on Saturday afternoon.
• Movies at MIT has Ran on Friday & Saturday evening. As always, if you're not part of the MIT community, they'd appreciate an email at lsc-guest (at) MIT dot edu ahead of time.
• Joe's Free Films shows two "Women Take The Reel" screenings on Thursday, with Breaking the News at Northeastern and Category: Woman at Boston College
• The Museum of Science is showing Mickey 17 on the giant screen Fridays & Saturdays throughout March, with the exception of the 22nd when they will show Hidden Figures (free, RSVP).
• The Embassy has We're All Gonna Die and The Brutalist through Sunday. The free Community Classic on Monday is Erin Brockovich.
• The Lexington Venue is open all week except Monday with Black Bag, Mickey 17, and Anora. They also have a free Sunday matinee of Safe at Home!, a 1962 oddity featuring Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris as themselves, and documentary The (M) Factor: Shredding the Silence on Menopause on Thursday.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens The Day the Earth Blew Up and The Actor, keeping Mickey 17, No Other Land, Superboys of Malegaon, Anora, Flow, and A Complete Unknown. Hundreds of Beavers plays Friday night, and there's a "Producer's Circle" show of The Pneumafractalist on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Black Bag, Opus, Mickey 7, and Anorathrough Monday. Friday's Night Light show is Enter The Dragon, and Wayback Wednesday is Yankee Doodle Dandy

Already have tickets for BUFF and that Holland, and also figure to get to Black Bag and The Day the Earth Blew Up, hopefully The Actor and Opus and Any Day Now, but that's a full week, especially if I want to fill some Bruce Willis blind spots/revist favorites at the Bratte. That's potentially a full week!

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 March 2025 - 13 March 2024

Heads up - it looks like they're completing work on the upgraded Imax screen at Boston Common next week, and maybe upgrading the rest, because the apps show only a handful of screens in use on Monday and Wednesday and nothing playing Tuesday and Thursday. Also, there are like three movies that should be playing in 3D this weekend that aren't. C'mon, folks, give me this.

• Well, maybe not big sci-fi satire Mickey 17, the latest from Bong Joon-ho, and one which Warner Brothers has apparently been screwing around with the release date for months (last year to January to April to March), with Robert Pattinson as a working-class guy who signs up to be an "expendable" who will be sent into perilous situations in space to be killed and recloned. It's at the Coolidge, the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Museum of Science (Omnimax on Fridays/Saturdays), Jordan's Furniture (Imax), the Lexington Venue, West Newton, CinemaSalem, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport (including Dolby Atmos), South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
  
  In the Lost Lands should definitely be 3D, though; with Paul W.S. Anderson directing Milla Jovovich and Dave Batista in an adventure based on a George R.R. Martin story about a quest into the middle of a forbidden kingdom. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, and South Bay.
  
  Queen of the Ring features Emily Bett Rickards as a woman who broke into pro wrestling when such a thing was unheard of. It's at Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.
  
  Thriller The Rule of Jenny Pen has a fine horror movie scenario, with Geoffrey Rush as a man who recently suffered a stroke discovering that one of the other patients (John Lithgow) appears to be a torturing psychopath. It's at Boston Common, the Seaport, and South Bay.
  
  Clive Barker is a producer and "from the mind of" credit on Night of the Zoopocalypse, an animated zombie-animal adventure where a wolf voiced by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee and a mountain lion voiced by David Harbour have to stop the virus's spread. It's at Fresh Pond and South Bay.
  
  Also opening is Rule Breakers, a drama about Afghani girls attempting to get an education. It plays at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
  
  There are early-access shows of Novocaine at Boston Common, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards, and Chestnut Hill on Saturday; there's also a "Screen Unseen" mystery preview on Monday at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row; Black Bag has a Dolby Cinema preview on Wednesday at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row.
• In addition to Mickey 17 and re-opening Best Picture winner Anora, The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Universal Language, where the cities of Winnipeg and Tehran seemingly overlap in a group of overlapping stories. It also plays Boston Common.
  
  March is a month of monkey midnight movies at the Coolidge, with George Romero's Monkey Shines on Friday and the 1932 version of Murders in the Rue Morgue with Bela Lugosi on Saturday, both on 35mm. They also show Eraserhead at midnight on Saturday. At the other end of the spectrum, there's a Kids' Show of Paddington on Saturday morning. "Totally Trailblazers" features a 35mm print of Fast Times at Ridgemont High on Sunday afternoon and Smithereens with a recorded introduction by director Susan Seidelman on Tuesday. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is the 35mm Big Screen Classic on Monday, there's Open Screen on Tuesday, and a Cinema Jukebox show of documentary Lifers: A Local H Movie with filmmaker and lead singer Scott Lucas on-hand for a performance and a Q&A on Thursday.
• Landmark Kendall Square opens Atom Egoyan's Seven Veils, which stars Amanda Seyfried as a theater director trying to remount an opera by her mentor with important changes, based on a production of Egoyan's. They also have There's Still Tomorrow, starring director Paola Cortellesi as a woman in post-war Rome looking for a better life, a movie that was a box-office sensation and award winner in Italy.
  
  The Edgar Wright series at the Kendall continues with Hot Fuzz on Tuesday.
• Apple Fresh Pond Malayalam action movie Officer on Duty on Friday. A re-release of 2013's Telugu comedy-drama Seethamma Vaakitlo Sirimalle Chettu plays Friday night, Marathi comedy ChikiChiki BooboomBoom Saturday afternoon, and Bengali mystery Shotyi Bole Shotyi Kichhu Nei on Sunday afternoon. Chhaava continues at Fresh Pond and Boston Common and Dragon continues at Fresh Pond and Causeway Street, and Superboys of Malegaon at the West Newton.
  
  The Accidental Getaway Driver, a thriller about an elderly cab driver carjacked by escaped convicts with a mostly Vietnamese/Vietnamese-American cast, opens at South Bay. Vietnamese drama The Real Sister continues there as well.
  
  Ne Zha 2 continues shows at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including RealD 3D), Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), South Bay, and Assembly Row (including RealD 3D), Arsenal Yards . Detective Chinatown 1900 continues at Causeway Street.
  
  Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX: Beginning continues at Boston Common; there's also a "Gundam Fest" screening of Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack on Wednesday at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row.
• The Brattle Theatre has a weekend of "True Tales of Wonder Women", with Harriet and Wild Nights with Emily on Friday; Forever a Woman, Silkwood (35mm and featuring an intro and post-film discussion), and Professor Marston and the Wonder Women on Saturday; Thousand Pieces of Gold, Perspolis (35mm), and Frida on Sunday. Sunday also features and RPM Fest Presentation, "Lost and Found: Lei Lei", with seven of her short films. I think I saw an installation she did in Sydney, which was pretty neat.
  
  Frederick Wiseman films this week are Law and Order & Basic Training on Monday and Canal Zone on Tuesday, with no German queer cinema this week. There's a special presentation of James Carson's Cabin Music on Wednesday, with performance and Q&A by the filmmaker and musician afterward. On Thursday they begin a Bruce Willis series with The Sixth Sense & Unbreakable, the former on 35mm film.
• The Oscar shorts stick around an extra week with Animated shorts at the Coolidge, The ICA (Sunday), Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport; Live-Action shorts at the Coolidge, the ICA (Sunday), Kendall Square, Boston Common, and the Seaport; plus Documentary at the Coolidge.
• The Seaport Alamo has some David Lynch shows, with Blue Velvet Friday/Saturday/Monday and Eraserhead Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Tuesday. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? plays Friday to Monday.
• The Somerville Theatre and IFFBoston partner for "March Music Madness", with The Last Waltz (4k) on Friday, Prince: Sign 'O' the Times on 35mm Tuesday. They also get to be one of the first to project a 35mm print of Hundreds of Beavers, late Friday and at midnight on Saturday, and a return engagement of another cult film, Dinner in America, on Wednesday and Thursday. On top of that, there's a free screening of Made in Massachusetts on Sunday afternoon, a three-plus hour journey through a hundred years of movies shot in the Commonwealth, with filmmakers Adam Roffman and Vatche Arabian on hand.
  
  The Capitol Theatre plays host to the Lois Weber Film Festival on Saturday, opening with Jeff Rapsis accompanying Miss Weber's 1915 silent Hypocrites at noon, followed by three blocks of films - student/YA/experimental/drama, local/documentary/horror, and foreign (plus documentary feature Recovery City). Later that night, they have Splatter University with live chiptune scoring as part of Boston Bitdown.
• On Friday, The Harvard Film Archive begins an Albert Serra series ("Cinematic Time Regained") on Friday, with separate shows of The Death of Louis XIV and Lliberté. On Saturday afternoon the student-programmed cinematheque is open to the public with a double feature of Beau Travail & Brief Encounter. The rest of the weekend is given over to Ben Rivers, who is on hand for his film Bogancloch on Saturday, programs Peter Watkins's Edvard Munch on Sunday (which also ties into a Munch exhibition at the Harvard Art Museums), and presents his short "Now, at Last!" on Monday, the latter two on 35mm film.
• The Museum of Fine Arts presents Danish Oscar nominee The Girl with the Needle on Friday night and MIyazaki's Spirited Away on Sunday afternoon.
• Movies at MIT has Her on Friday & Saturday evening and From Ground Zero on Sunday, though the latter wasn't in the week's email. As always, if you're not part of the MIT community, they'd appreciate an email at lsc-guest (at) MIT dot edu ahead of time.
• Per Joe's Free Films, RPM Fest has two other shows on Sunday after the monthly Brattle presentation, down the street at Harvard's CAMLab, with shorts at 7pm and the feature To Alexandra at 8:30pm.
• The Museum of Science is showing Mickey 17 on the giant screen Fridays & Saturdays throughout March, with the exception of the 22nd when they will show Hidden Figures (free, RSVP)..
• The Embassy has We're All Gonna Die and I'm Still Here through Sunday, with the former about a couple making a road trip to retrieve the possessions that the 10,000 mile-long alien tentacle in the sky has deposited on the other side of the country. The free Community Classic on Monday is 9 to 5
• The Lexington Venue is open Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday with Mickey 17 and Anora. They will also screen documentary Recovery City on Wednesday, followed by a Q&A with the director and several subjects.
  
  The West Newton Cinema opens Mickey 17 and No Other Land, holding over The Klezmer Project, Superboys of Malegaon, Anora, Nickel Boys, Flow, and A Complete Unknown. What's Up, Doc?> screens as part of Ty Burr's Movie Club on Thursday.
  
  Cinema Salem has Mickey 7, Anora, Last Breath, Porcelain War, and The Monkey. They also have Giant for Wayback Wednesday with Weirdo Wednesday on the other screen.

I want to head out to the Embassy for We're All Gonna Die, but the times make it a little more difficult than I'd like (not like the Screen On Fire thing in New York on Sunday, but, still, annoying). In the meantime, Mickey 17, In the Lost Lands, maybe Zoopocalypse.