This week marks the return of Wicked Queer, the Boston area’s much-loved LGBTQ+ film festival (one of the longest running such festivals in the world). For the first two weeks of April (“GAYpril,” on the festival’s posters), it takes up residence at the Brattle Theatre, as well as across the river at the Coolidge, the MFA, and other venues. This year’s festival kicks off with a pair of indigenous-produced features: the Mi’kmaq-language “At the Place of Ghosts,” which screens Friday, and the Michif-language “Blood Lines” on Saturday. From there the festival expands abroad, with queer-centric features from Morocco (“Bouchra,” screening Saturday), Mexico (“Jaripeo,” Monday), Thailand (“A Useful Ghost,” Monday), and Greece (“Uchronia,” Tuesday), as well as “Tender Revolutions,” a program of shorts from the SWANA region of Southwestern Asia and Northern Africa. The festival also features a restoration of Harry Dodge and Silas Howard’s groundbreaking gay road picture “By Hook or By Crook” (2001) on Sunday. For the complete schedule and ticket info, check out Wicked Queer’s website.
On Friday, the Harvard Film Archive digs into its vaults for a pair of films starring the late, great British actor Bob Hoskins. The evening begins, appropriately enough, with John Mackenzie’s gangster classic “The Long Good Friday” (1980). Hoskins plays hard-nosed London mob boss Harold Shand, who spends a particularly grueling day trying to maintain control of his criminal empire, wheedling the American Mafia on one hand and fending off attacks from the IRA on the other. Hoskins hits more tender (if no less seedy) notes in Neil Jordan’s “Mona Lisa” (1986), in which he plays an underdog ex-con who becomes an unlikely lover and defender of troubled call girl Simone (Cathy Tyson). Together, the films provide a showcase of Hoskins’ versatility and screen presence. Both films screen on beautiful original 35mm release prints from the HFA’s collection.
On Sunday and Wednesday, the Kendall Square Cinema turns its Filmmaker Focus on an overlooked feature from maestro of the macabre David Cronenberg. Though not a horror movie in the strictest sense of the word, “Maps to the Stars” (2014) is just as disturbing as any of the director’s work. The jet-black showbiz satire casts its net across a wide array of Hollywood fringe-dwellers, including a star-obsessed burn victim (Mia Wasikowska), an egotistical child star (Evan Bird), a sleazy celebrity psychologist (John Cusack), a limo driver and aspiring actor (Robert Pattinson), and a pill-popping has-been movie star (Julianne Moore). Moore won Best Actress honors at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance, which is by turns hilarious, tragic, and horrifying (the Academy, for its part, flinched, awarding Moore that year for her more conventionally pleasing work in the Alzheimer’s drama “Still Alice”). The resulting film proves that, even when not dealing with exploding heads and drooling fly monsters, Cronenberg knows how to get under your skin.
On Monday, the Somerville Cine-Club returns with another free screening at the Somerville Public Library (Central Branch). This time out, the Club screens the cult cyberpunk classic “Johnny Mnemonic” (1995), starring Keanu Reeves as a cybernetically enhanced “data courier,” carrying sensitive information in a chip implanted in his brain. The version screening will be the 2022 black & white edition, in which director Robert Longo desaturated the film’s color to get it closer to the film noir look he originally envisioned. Preceding the film is a rare 3-D 8mm digest print of “The Mad Magician” (1954), starring Vincent Price as the titular villain (red-and-blue glasses will be available at the door). It’s a safe bet to say this will be your only opportunity to catch this particular bill on screen — and it’s free, to boot!
On Wednesday, the Somerville Theatre continues its “Feel Good Films” series with “The Commitments” (1991), widely considered to be one of the best making-the-band movies ever made. Robert Arkins plays Jimmy Rabbitte, a young hustler in working-class Dublin determined to assemble and manage an old-fashioned blue-eyed soul band. Using all the unscrupulous means at his disposal, Jimmy pulls together a ragtag group of misfits and some dubiously acquired equipment and manages, almost in spite of himself, to make his dream come true. Of course, the precarious nature of creative collaboration rears its ugly head, and the band, dubbed The Commitments, struggles to stay afloat. While painfully relatable to anyone who’s ever played in a band, “The Commitments” is also warm and hilarious and has a killer soundtrack.
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