Ari Aster brings his ‘Eddington’ and its influences; Altman is 100; an unexpected mashup works hard

Summer is a time for parties, which can lead the cinephile to a conundrum: Should one spend one’s evenings indulging their passion silently in a darkened room, or fulfill their social instincts interacting with other people? Thankfully, there are enough cinematic parties going on this week that you may not have to choose. On Thursday, The Brattle Theatre holds its beloved annual “Trailer Treats” showcase. This program, compiled from the theater’s treasure trove of vintage 35 mm coming attractions, is one of the most reliably raucous nights you can spend at the movies (especially when Sean Connery inevitably shows up in his speedo). If you’re looking for some fresh sunset air, you can take your pick between two free outdoor screenings: the animated sci-fi tearjerker “The Wild Robot” (2024) in Somerville’s Lincoln Park on Thursday and Alfred Hitchcock’s suspense classic “Rear Window” (1954) at the Kendall/MIT Open Space (the latter presented by The Brattle, kicking off a summerlong series of outdoor Hitchcock screenings). If you’re an indoor cat, you can return to The Brattle on Monday for a craft-along screening of Sofia Coppola’s sumptuous “Marie Antoinette” (2006) presented by Gather Here, with the lights up so you can share your project with fellow makers. Moviegoing is a social activity, and these screenings invite you to connect with your community and take in a classic at the same time.

Some double features spring naturally from shared themes, actors or creative teams, while others are simply so bonkers and outside-the-box that they can scarcely be resisted. This latter category is where we can place the Somerville Theatre’s Saturday double feature of “Die Hard” (1989) and “Working Girl” (1988), both on 35 mm and presented by ScreenBoston. On their face, the two films have little in common beyond their shared decade (and, I suppose, the fact that both take place in office buildings). Viewers of the animated comedy “Bob’s Burgers,” however, will easily spot the connection to the classic episode “Work Hard or Die Trying, Girl,” in which preteen eccentric Gene Belcher is forced to merge his “Die Hard” musical with his rival’s adaptation of “Working Girl.” Will the two films merge into a single, all-singing-all-dancing spectacle? Probably not, but you may find your toe tapping anyway.

The newly reopened Harvard Film Archive reprises its “Yugoslav Junction” series with one of the institution’s formidable visiting filmmakers. Though little-known on this side of the ocean, Karpo Godina was and is a true maverick genius, a prolific director of subversive psychedelia in the vein of Jean-Luc Godard or Robert Downey Sr. (to say nothing of fellow countryman Dušan Makavejev). In his first-ever appearance in New England, Godina is on hand this weekend to present a sampling of his work. On Saturday, Godina introduces a program of his own shorts (titled “The Ecstatic Square”) and discusses Bahrudin “Bato” Čengić’s controversial “Life of a Shock Force Worker” (1972), for which Godina was the director of photography. Godina returns Monday with the first three installments of his TV series “Frame for a Few Poses” (1978), in which the director traveled to remote villages to capture the natives’ unique talents. It is probably not an exaggeration to say these screenings present a once in a lifetime opportunity for fans of international new wave cinema.

Those with an eye for homegrown enfants terrible will want to keep an eye on The Brattle this week for a series curated by indie horror maestro Ari Aster. In anticipation of Aster’s new film “Eddington,” a neo-Western set in the thick of the 2020 Covid lockdown, Aster has selected a handful of similarly inclined films to which he looked for inspiration. Saturday brings Sam Peckinpah’s notoriously brutal revisionist Western “The Wild Bunch” (1969), which once held the record for most bullet hits in a film. Aster’s pick for Sunday is Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning “Unforgiven” (1992), which casts a similarly unflinching eye toward a cast of outlaws at the end of the American West. The series jumps several decades on Wednesday for the Coen Brother’s pulp masterpiece “No Country for Old Men” (2007), which brings the Western formula to a story set in the early 1980s. It all builds to a preview screening of “Eddington” itself Wednesday night. If Aster’s previous films are any indication, this will be at least as uncompromising as any of the other films in the series. (Note that while admission is free, passes are required and entry will be granted on a first-come-first-served basis).

The Somerville continues its “Great Remakes” series on Monday with another atom-age creature feature and its ’80s auteurist reimagining. Movie monsters don’t come much more iconic than “The Fly” (1958), in which a scientist’s experiment with teleportation goes awry and fuses his own genetic makeup with that of a housefly (all together now: “Heeeelp meeee!”). David Cronenberg, in his 1986 remake of the same name, keeps the setup more or less intact but adds a surprisingly poignant love story between Jeff Goldblum’s jittery scientist and Geena Davis’ crusading reporter – as well, of course, as buckets upon buckets of the director’s signature goopy body horror. In a time cavalier technocracy goes unchecked, there has perhaps never been a better time for this cautionary tale of ill-advised scientific hubris.

Filmmaker Robert Altman, whose shaggy, freewheeling countercultural masterpieces cut to the sickly soul of America as well as any filmmakers who ever lived, would have been 100 this year. Beginning Tuesday and continuing weekly through July and August, The Brattle presents Altmania, a centennial collection of some of the director’s finest works. The series kicks off, appropriately enough, with “M*A*S*H” (1970), the film that put Altman on the map, the darkly comic antiauthority wartime classic that became a pop cultural phenomenon (though it must be said that Altman’s film is more cynical and significantly more stoned than the TV Series it birthed). Altman followed it up quickly with the wonderfully strange cult object “Brewster McCloud” (1970), in which Bud Cort plays a reclusive young man who lives in a fallout shelter beneath the Houston Astrodome, toiling away at what he hopes will be a fully functional wing suit. Altman would go on to significantly more ambitious films (as we will see in the weeks to come), but he arguably never made a film more perfectly summing up his cockeyed take on American culture.

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.

A stronger

Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.

We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.

Please consider a recurring contribution.

Donate now