Oscar nominations were announced this week, but unless you are a cinephile like me you may be still working through your backlog of 2025’s finest films. Fortunately for us, the Brattle Theatre continues its (Some of) The Best of 2025 series this week. Two current Best Picture nominees are on the reels: Guillermo del Toro’s lavish retelling of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” on Friday (Jacob Elordi was also nominated for his soulful performance as the monster); Monday brings Clint Bentley’s “Train Dreams.”
Other 2025 releases the Academy overlooked but you shouldn’t: Saturday’s double feature of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Cloud” and Neo Sora’s “Happyend”; Sunday’s showing of the Massachusetts-set baseball hangout comedy “Eephus,” directed by Harvard Film Archive alum Carson Lund; and on Thursday Feb. 5, a Josh O’Connor double header of “Wake Up Dead Man” and “The Mastermind.” The latter, directed by Kelly Reichardt, is easily the most thrilling art heist picture set in Framingham. (Yes, it’s probably the only one set in Framingham, but it’s also very good.) The complete schedule, along with showtimes and ticket info, can be found at the Brattle’s website.
The Harvard Film Archive continues “From the Collection: Antonioni / Bertolucci / Olmi” this weekend with two films from the third and final member of its eponymous trio. The films of Michelangelo Antonioni are uniquely dreamlike, unlike the understated realism of Olmi and the fiery politics of Bertolucci. On Friday, the HFA screens “Blow-Up” (1966), Antonioni’s first English language film. A raffish fashion photographer (David Hemmings) realizes he may have recorded evidence of a murder during one of his shoots in swingin’ ’60s London. The director’s breakout film, “L’Avventura” (1960), screening Saturday, follows the beautiful Monica Vitti as she traces her best friend’s disappearance while they were on summer holiday together. These sound as though they could be the plots of Hitchcockian thrillers (a fact which Brian De Palma exploited in his 1980 kinda-remake “Blow Out”), but Antonioni is more interested in visualizing the mystery which envelopes his characters than he is in unraveling the mysteries themselves. As with all films in the series, “Blow-Up” and “L’Avventura” screen on original prints from the HFA’s collection.
If you’re looking for stories set closer to home, the Somerville Theatre on Saturday welcomes an encore presentation of Federico Muchnik’s documentary “Massachusetts Avenue: Life Along Cambridge’s Central Artery” (2025). Muchnik’s camera soars above our fair city (thanks to some state-of-the-art drones), but it also comes back to earth, interviewing the shopkeepers and longtime locals which give Mass Ave its piquancy. “I’m documenting a certain point in time in Cambridge that will soon be passed,” Muchnik told the Day’s Tom Meek last year, “and many of those things will become extinct.” That may be true, but thanks to artistic projects like this one– and the community which packs our independent cinemas– the spirit of Mass Ave will endure.
On Monday, the Harvard Film Archive kicks off another of its signature career-spanning retrospective series—and it’s a doozy. The Complete Stanley Kubrick is one of the most astounding filmographies in movie history. With uncompromising artistic vision, Kubrick has become as much a folk hero as a filmmaker since his death. The oeuvre contains some of the most famous films of the 20th century, but the series begins with two of his most obscure. “Fear and Desire” (1952) and “Killer’s Kiss” (1955) were Kubrick’s first two feature films. He produced them independently at a time when such a practice was rare. The small cast of “Fear and Desire,” a surreal parable about lost soldiers in an unspecified war, tromps in the forests of California. The noir “Killer’s Kiss” is shot guerilla-style in the streets of New York. These were dry runs in the development of a vision — Kubrick wanted to destroy all known prints of “Fear” — and so afford a glimpse of a genesis of genius. As a bonus, each screening is to be preceded by Kubrick’s early work-for-hire short films “The Seafarers” (1953) and “Day of the Fight” (1951). The series continues through April with some far better-known films, but if you consider yourself a Kubrick completist, you’re not going to want to miss Monday’s screenings. If you’re not, why not sample a master?
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.