The big story in local cinema this week is, of course, the Independent Film Festival Boston, which dominates the screens of the Brattle Theatre and the Somerville Theatre starting Wednesday April 21 through next Tuesday. However, IFFBoston is far from the adventurous moviegoer’s only option. On Saturday, the Harvard Film Archive‘s salute to the Nobel-winning author László Krasznahorkai and the late Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr reaches its crescendo with arguably the pair’s greatest collaboration. Based upon Krasznahorkai’s 1985 novel of the same name, Tarr’s “Sátántangó” (1994) is a landmark of world cinema, revered for both its epic scope and its humanity. It is also, thanks to its gargantuan seven-and-a-half-hour running time, rarely shown in public, making Saturday’s screening appointment viewing for cinephiles. Tarr may have passed on, but his legacy in film will last for decades — and, thanks to programmers like those at the HFA, so will his films.
To coincide with the release of his new film “Mother Mary” (which opens Friday), the Kendall Square Cinema aims its Filmmaker Focus this week on director David Lowery. On Saturday and Tuesday, the Kendall screens arguably Lowery’s greatest film to date, “The Green Knight” (2021). Lowery casts Dev Patel as the headstrong but cowardly Sir Gawain, who sets off from King Arthur’s Round Table after being challenged by the title character, a monstrous, tree-like being played by a prosthetically enhanced Ralph Ineson. What follows is a dreamy series of adventures that lean toward psychedelic folk horror, including chance encounters with a headless ghost (Erin Kellyman), a corpse-robbing highwayman (Barry Keoghan), and a talking fox. “The Green Knight” captures the haunting strangeness that underscores much Arthurian legend and serves as a nuanced counterpoint to today’s drab strain of sword and sorcery.
The Harvard Film Archive’s Complete Stanley Kubrick retrospective reached the end of the director’s filmography last week with “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999), but the series isn’t quite done yet. On Monday, the HFA officially closes the book on the series with “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001), which director Steven Spielberg fashioned from an unfinished Kubrick script. Kubrick was almost as famous for the films he did not complete as the ones he did, and he abandoned “A.I.” (an adaptation of science fiction author Brian Aldiss’s 1969 short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”) in the mid-1990s after deciding the state of CGI effects wasn’t up to snuff. Of course, Spielberg knows a thing or two about special effects, and the completed film bears both directors’ unmistakable imprints. “A.I.” received mixed reviews at the time of its release (especially among Kubrick purists), but it has since been widely reevaluated and frequently ranks highly on “Best of the 21st Century” lists — a fitting legacy for a director whose films often took decades to be fully appreciated. (At press time, tickets to “A.I.” are sold out, but unclaimed tickets may be made available at the door at showtime.)
On Wednesday, the Somerville Theatre pays tribute to one of the great unsung female punk bands of the ’90s. Ilya Chaykin’s “Pretty Ugly: The Story of the Lunachicks” (2026) follows the rise, fall, and reunion of the title band. Founded in the late ’80s when its members were still in high school, the Lunachicks fit nicely into the nascent “riot grrrl” scene of feminist punk rock, mixing in flashes of heavy metal, bubblegum, and glam rock. The group attracted a devoted following (cult movie aficionados might recognize them from their performance in the 1999 Troma horror comedy “Terror Firmer”), but they faced the same sadly predictable adversity as countless female rock bands before and since. Happily, the band’s profile has risen in recent years following a reunion in the early 2020s. Chaykin’s film offers the Lunachicks the opportunity to tell their stories in their own words — and audiences the chance to see some killer live footage on the big screen.
We are, as of this week, exactly six months away from the end of October, which means it’s time for the Brattle Theatre to celebrate its annual Halfway to Halloween extravaganza. This year’s program focuses on giallo, the groovy, gory Italian strain of horror that set the template for the American slasher boom of the ’70s and ’80s. On Wednesday, the Brattle screens a brand new digital restoration of Pupi Avati’s giallo classic “The House with Laughing Windows” (1976), while Thursday brings the just-as-wonderfully titled “A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin” (1971) by giallo maestro Lucio Fulci. Also on Thursday is a free 35mm screening of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre” (1989), in which the legendary Chilean filmmaker applies a giallo influence to a typically weird story of circus performers, Oedipal anxiety, and a quasi-Catholic amputee cult. Halloween may be half a year away, but the tricks and treats on screen are just as good all year round.
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