This is usually the time of year The Brattle Theatre kicks off its annual “Dead of Winter” series, showcasing chilling tales of supernatural terror. This year, one might be forgiven for being preoccupied by horrors of a more earthly and existential nature. To that end, the theater will this year run a series dubbed “Dread of Winter.” Not all of the selections this time around deal in the fantastical, and genre purists might debate whether many constitute “horror movies” at all, but all tap into a particular vein of eerie dread that feels just about correct right about now. Who hasn’t, for example, felt a little like Catherine Deneuve in Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” (1965, screening Friday and Saturday in a double feature with Ida Lupino’s 1950 “Outrage”), slowly going mad in her London flat while unseen forces may or may not be stalking the halls? The offerings range from hard-boiled hunts for serial killers (such as Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories of Murder” [2003] and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cure” [1997], playing in a double feature Thursday) to art house science fiction (as in next Wednesday’s double feature of Claire Denis’ outer space freakout “High Life” [2018] and Jonathan Glazer’s alien creepfest “Under the Skin” [2013]). When the vibes are this far off, sometimes you need movies to match.
The centerpiece of this series, however, is undoubtedly Sunday’s 35 mm screenings of David Lynch’s harrowing “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (1992). This yearly Brattle tradition for “Superb Owl Sunday” (they’re not what they seem, after all) has taken on bittersweet meaning as the first local screening of a Lynch film since the filmmaker’s passing last month at the age of 78, and while it certainly will not be the last in the weeks and months to come, it likely serves as an ad hoc memorial to one of the greatest cinematic artists of our time. The film itself, for its part, speaks to Lynch’s influence across generations; dismissed by critics and audiences at the time of its release for its unsparingly grim portrait of the last week of the life of teen beauty queen Laura Palmer, it has since been rediscovered and reappraised by younger viewers as one of the director’s most surreal and humane works. Lynch may be gone, but his work will no doubt continue to evolve and transmute in the eyes of cinephiles.
On Friday, the Somerville Theatre welcomes a concert by hard psych band Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, whose latest album, “Nell’ Ora Blu,” pays homage to the head-spinning soundtracks of Italian giallo films – lurid, stylish thrillers of the 1960s and ’70s that paved the way for the contemporary slasher film. To celebrate, the Somerville screens on Thursday 4K restorations of undisputed landmarks of the genre. First is Mario Bava’s “Blood and Black Lace” (1964), a bloody murder mystery widely considered to be the first true classic of the genre. It’s followed by “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” (1970), a truly nutty whodunnit pairing horror maestro Dario Argento (making his feature directorial debut) with legendary composer Ennio Morricone and equally legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Both are lush, stylish and gleefully perverse and will have you glancing over your shoulder on the way home for sinister, black-gloved figures.
The Harvard Film Archive continues its celebration of one of the most innovative voices working in cinema today, and begins a salute to another. Friday sees the beginning of “Fables of the Reconstruction,” a showcase of the films of Dominican-born filmmaker Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias, with the director’s first two features, “You Look Like a Carriage That Not Even the Oxen Can Stop” (2013) and “Santa Teresa and Other Stories” (2015).
Over the weekend, the Archive’s retrospective of this year’s McMillan-Stewart fellow Rosine Mbakam comes to a head as the director appears in person for two of her most recent films, “Mambar Pierrette” (2023) on Saturday and “Delphine’s Prayers” (2021) on Sunday. It’s a vital reminder that anyone who says that film is anything but alive and well simply needs to step away from the multiplex.
This year marks a major milestone for one of the city’s most beloved cinematic institutions: The Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, the oldest continuously running genre film festival in the country, kicks off its 50th (!!!) installment Wednesday at the Somerville. We’ll get more into the meat of the festival next week, but opening night festivities include Danny Dones’ riotous mockumentary “Clone Cops”; the New England premiere of the search-for-intelligent-life documentary “Small Town Universe,” co-presented by the Museum of Science and with director Katie Dellamaggiore in attendance; and the first of seven programs of cutting-edge shorts, followed by the customary opening night party at The Burren. It’s one of the most storied celebrations in all of sci-fi fandom, one that goes back half a century while rocketing us into the future.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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