The Brattle Theatre’s “Women in the Waves” salute to female new wave filmmakers continues Thursday with one of the most anarchic voices in cinematic history. Born in 1929 in what was then Czechoslovakia, Věra Chytilová worked her way up from an assistant at Prague’s Barrandov Film Studios to become one of the leading lights of the vibrant Czech New Wave. Her signature film, “Daisies” (1966), is a veritable cherry bomb lobbed in the face of respectable society, a surreal feminist slapstick comedy about two young women named Marie (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová) who steal food from restaurants, make fools out of gentlemen callers and generally have a grand old time thumbing their nose at any and all forms of authority. “Daisies” screens on 35 mm Thursday in a double feature with Chytilová’s first feature, “Something Different” (1963).
When Western audiences think of Godzilla, there’s a good chance they think of the silly rubber-suit epics from the ’60s and ’70s, in which the King of the Monsters became a sort of reptilian superhero battling increasingly outlandish alien creatures. But Godzilla was created as a metaphor for the destruction wrought by the atomic bomb, and, when used correctly, can still be a potent symbol of man’s hubris. For “Shin Godzilla” (2016), which screens in a new 4K restoration this week at the Somerville Theatre, Apple Cinemas and AMC Assembly Row, maverick director Hideaki Anno (creator of the hit anime series “Neon Genesis Evangelion”) recast the Big G as a stand-in for the then-recent meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The film largely takes the form of a wry political satire, as different factions of the Japanese government lob responsibility of dealing with the monster back and forth like a game of pingpong. The film also features perhaps the most memorable depiction of Godzilla ever on screen, reimagining the dinosaur as a towering, grotesque god-monster pulsating with radiation. As a wise man once so aptly put it: “History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.”
Where does one start with Hong Sangsoo, the wildly prolific South Korean filmmaker who has directed no fewer than 33 feature films since his 1996 debut? The Harvard Film Archive has hit upon a novel approach. Their new series “Seasons of Hong Sangsoo,” the first leg of which begins Friday, sorts the director’s filmography by the seasons in which the films are set. The series begins Friday with perhaps the director’s most accessible film, “In Another Country” (2012), a lyrical triptych starring Isabelle Huppert as three variations on the same character on a wistful holiday in a desolate Korean beach town. The series continues with the similarly summery “Yourself and Yours” (2016, also screening Friday), “Like You Know It All” (2009, Saturday), and “Walk Up” (2022, Sunday), and on through November, by which time the films will have transitioned to autumn.
IFFBoston’s “World of Wong Kar Wai” series continues this week at the Somerville, presenting the much-loved Hong Kong auteur’s canonical classics in chronological order. Friday brings “Days of Being Wild” (1990), Wong’s sophomore effort, which finds the director settling into the dreamy romanticism that would become his calling card (it’s also, not coincidentally, his first collaboration with cinematographer Christopher Doyle). Wong’s stateside breakthrough, “Chungking Express” (1994), screens Saturday, and remains one of the most effervescent and playful films of the ’90s indie film explosion; it’s near impossible to watch the second segment of its narrative diptych, featuring Tony Leung as a hangdog police officer and Faye Wong as a pixyish diner waitress, and not fall in love with at least one of the leads. The series continues with “Ashes of Time” (also 1994), Wong’s first martial arts picture, on Sunday, and “Fallen Angels” (1995), a would-be third segment of “Chungking Express” that took on a life of its own, on Tuesday.
Boutique Blu-ray label Cinématographe returns to The Brattle this weekend with another round of its latest restorations and rediscoveries. Friday brings Elaine May’s jet-black comedy “A New Leaf” (1971), in which Walter Matthau’s coldhearted social climber sets his sights on May’s wealthy-but-vapid horticulturist, alongside Jim McBride’s American reimagining of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” (1983), starring Richard Gere and Valérie Kaprisky as a nationality-swapped version of Godard’s lovers on the lam. On Saturday, catch Jonathan Demme’s production of Spalding Gray’s spoken word performance “Swimming to Cambodia” (1987) as well as “Mixed Blood” (1984), a harrowing gangland picture directed by Warhol associate Paul Morrissey. The series closes Monday with a newly restored director’s cut of William Friedkin’s erotic thriller “Jade” (1995). All films are introduced by Cinématographe honcho Justin LaLiberty, who will also host a Q&A with Demme biographer David M. Stewart after “Cambodia.”
This column is about the joy of moviegoing, but a generation of film lovers (this writer included) discovered the medium in an entirely different building: the video rental store, which was an ubiquitous stop in American life through the 1980s and ’90s before being obliterated by the streaming revolution. In his essay film “VideoHeaven” (2025), which makes its local premiere at The Brattle on Sunday, director Alex Ross Perry (“Pavements”) goes long on this lost temple of cinephilia, assembling nearly three hours of video store-set scenes from movies and TV, alongside the odd news segment or Blockbuster training video. The narration, written by Perry and read by Maya Hawke, dissects what the video store meant in our culture, from the archetype of the snotty rental clerk to the horror of being caught eyeing the forbidden curtain of the “adult” section. For younger viewers, this will serve as an invaluable history lesson, while movie buffs of a certain age might feel like they’re returning to a long-lost home.
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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