This week sees the continuation of the 50th annual Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, the country’s oldest continuously running genre film festival, at the Somerville Theatre. As always, this year’s fest is a vibrant mix of visions of the future (and, equally terrifying, the present) across 10 feature films and dozens of innovative shorts. Highlights this year include the U.S. premiere of Richard Shepard’s “Is / Was \ Will,” a dizzying look at dystopia featuring the voices of Kumail Nanjiani, Carrie Coon, Sam Rockwell and Murray Bartlett, on Friday; the New England premiere of the darkly funny AI documentary “I Hope This Helps,” which screens with a live Q&A with director Daniel Freed on Sunday; and Victoria Warmerdam’s Oscar-nominated short “I Am Not a Robot,” which screens as part of the “Altair” program of shorts on Saturday. Just as vital as the films, of course, is the community that has built up around the fest over the past half-century, which is as warm and inviting as any cinematic gathering you’re likely to come across. Nowhere can this be felt more clearly than at the 24-hour marathon closing the festival, as always, beginning at noon on Sunday and spanning all the way to midday Monday, featuring such gems as a 70 mm print of Tobe Hooper’s “Lifeforce” (1985), the original work print cut of Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982) and Hans Werckmeister’s 1920 silent classic “Algol” featuring a live musical score by the great Jeff Rapsis. If you can make it to the end, it’s a safe bet that you, too, will live long and prosper.
It’s Valentine’s weekend, which brings with it a pair of The Brattle Theatre’s most beloved traditions. In addition to being one of cinema’s greatest love stories, “Casablanca” (1942) is arguably the film most associated with The Brattle’s legacy, the theater being crucial to the film’s rediscovery by Harvard counterculturists in the late 1960s; it screens, as always, on Thursday and Friday (though, at the time of this writing, the 7 p.m. screenings are already sold out). A more recent tradition is Rob Reiner’s hilarious and achingly romantic “The Princess Bride” (1987), which joins “Casablanca” as the late show both nights. If you need something a little more bitter to wash down the sweetness of all those conversation hearts, you can return to the theater Saturday and Sunday for the unrated cut of David Cronenberg’s “Crash” (1996), a film with a vision of perverse sexuality and car-crash fetishism that makes it, perhaps, the perfect date movie for the anti-Valentine’s set.
If you were to ask a film buff as recently as 10 years ago to name the most famous film role of the great French actor Delphine Seyrig, there’s a good chance they would have cited “Last Year at Marienbad” (1961), which kicked off a continuing Seyrig retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive. Today, that honor would undoubtedly go to Chantal Akerman’s slow-cinema classic “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” (1975), which screens at the HFA on Saturday. “Jeanne Dielman” famously pulled off a historic upset in 2022 by topping Sight and Sound magazine’s decennial critics’ poll of the greatest films ever made, besting such canonical works as “Citizen Kane” (1941) and “Vertigo” (1958). It is as uncompromising a work of feminism as has ever been committed to film: Over the course of nearly three and half hours, we follow Seyrig as the titular widow through the minutiae of her daily routine, watching her in real time as she shops for sundries, prepares meals for her monosyllabic teenage son, and listlessly turns tricks for local businessmen. Though daunting, “Jeanne Dielman” is a hypnotic and powerful work, its rhythms building upon themselves into something as existentially horrifying as any suspense film. It also benefits greatly from being watched in an environment free from the distractions of streaming, which makes this rare screening – on 35 mm film, no less – all the more vital.
After Rick and Ilsa part ways on the Casablanca tarmac, it comes time for The Brattle’s other cherished yearly tradition: The Bugs Bunny Film Festival, an annual program of Warner Bros. animated shorts featuring the wascally wabbit and his Looney Tunes buddies. There isn’t much to say about these classic cartoons that hasn’t already been said, but it really is remarkable how, apart from the odd topical reference or unfortunately dated cultural stereotype, they remain more current and truly alive than any number of films made in the decades since. Credit must be given to those responsible: to the pioneering animators, including Chuck Jones, Tex Avery and Bob Clampett, who must be considered among the greatest directors of comedy on film, animated or otherwise, and to the acting talents of Mel Blanc, who breathed life into dozens of timeless and distinct characters using nothing but his voice. It must also be said, if you’ve never seen these cartoons on the big screen, they still play like absolute gangbusters, and that the communal laughter of viewers young and old is infectious. Don’t listen to what the pig says: That’s not all, folks, and it likely never will be.
While the toons of Warner’s Termite Terrace remain in regular cultural rotation, other studios’ output has fallen to the wayside, despite being just as innovative and laugh-aloud hilarious. Founded in 1929, Fleischer Studios became known for its kinetic and anarchic – and, more often than not, surreal or risqué – stable of characters, including Betty Boop, Popeye and the earliest screen depictions of Superman. Beginning Tuesday and running through Feb. 20, the Somerville presents a program of Fleischer Studios’ Greatest Hits, remastered in 4K in all their original black-and-white glory. All three of the characters will be there, along with original flagship character Koko the Clown, plus a behind-the-scenes tour of Fleischer Studios and some other fascinating rarities. Together, these shorts create an exhilarating portrait of a medium in its infancy, capturing the freedom enjoyed by the first generation of cartoonists with the ability to bring their characters to life.
In these troubled times, there is perhaps one common balm that brings relief to those across the political spectrum: the funny cat video. More than perhaps any other animal, cats are uniquely suited to screen comedy, their physical elasticity and bemused deadpan rivaling that of Buster Keaton in his prime. To that end, the Landmark Kendall Square Cinema on Wednesday plays local host to the New York Cat Film Festival. This year’s program promises a mix of live action, animated and documentary shorts dedicated to our feline friends. What’s more, a portion of each ticket sale goes directly toward helping cats in need at Broken Tail Rescue. And for you pooch partisans, fear not: the New York Dog Film Festival gets its equal time the following Tuesday, Feb. 26.
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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