West Newton Cinema

With “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” James Cameron takes audiences back to Pandora in an immersive new adventure with Marine turned Na’vi leader Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), Na’vi warrior Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), and the Sully family.

ABOUT THE FILM HAMNET is a historical drama directed by the Academy Award winning writer/director Chloé Zhao and based on the novel by Maggie O'Farrell. The film follows the arc in the relationship between William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes in the wake of the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet. It tells a powerful story of love and loss, and one that is believed to have inspired the creation of Shakespeare's masterpiece, Hamlet. POST SCREENING DISCUSSION Our distinguished panelists will explore the film’s cultural and historical context and discuss more broadly the influence of Shakespeare on the arts, having inspired countless works across different mediums and periods. Artists have continually drawn on Shakespeare’s work for inspiration, an enduring legacy that has shaped modern art and culture. FEATURING: STEPHEN GREENBLATT, Ph.D. John Cogan University Professor of Humanities, Harvard University Greenblatt is the author of fifteen books, including Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics; The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Shakespeare's Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; and most recently Dark Renaissance. He is General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and of The Norton Shakespeare. His honors include the 2016 Holberg Prize from the Norwegian Parliament, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and the 2011 National Book Award for The Swerve, and two Guggenheim Fellowships. He has been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, the Italian literary academy Accademia degli Arcadi, and is a fellow of the British Academy. IN CONVERSATION WITH: MICHELLE EPHRAIM, Ph.D. Professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Ephraim, a Shakespeare scholar, is the author of Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare, which was awarded the 2023 Juniper Prize for Creative Nonfiction; Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage; and the co-author of the literary humor book Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas. Her latest venture is the award-winning podcast, Everyday Shakespeare, which explores ways that Shakespeare sheds light on our modern problems.

"The acclaimed Russian stage director Dmitry Krymov the winner of many of Moscow’s top theatre prizes before his exile due to public criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, has spoken angrily of the impact of the war ahead of his first work with British actors." —The Guardian, Vanessa Thorpe ABOUT THE FILM A metaphor about the fate of Russia, its rulers and eternal values, Dmitry Krymov’s “Boris” subverts its ideas behind the cover of Pushkin’s text to show a direct line of the current governance of Russia with its imperial past, as well as all the myths on which Russian identity now rests. A flying raven, a poet, a folk choir, saints and sinners, living and dead - all come to life in the twilight of the Provision Warehouses of the Moscow Museum in this new interpretation of a classic work by one of the world’s most renowned stage directors. Featuring Mikhail Filippov, Viktoriya Isakova, Maria Smolnikova and 2021 Golden Mask Award-winner, Timofey Trubuntsev.

DRINK AND BE MERRY will be presented on December 18 at 7pm featuring a Q&A with the Director, Adam Volerich. ABOUT THE FILM Set at a struggling New York dive bar in the days approaching Christmas, 2019, Chet (Jefferson White), a beleaguered bartender in a state of extended arrested development, must balance taking care of his difficult regulars, who have nowhere else to go, and rely on him for far more than pouring drinks, with his naive desire to muster some Christmas Spirit. Q&A FOLLOWS THE SCREENING ADAM VOLERICH Filmmaker and Podcast Producer. The set is his natural habitat and the crew his family. His films have screened and been awarded at festivals worldwide. His latest short film, MISPRINT, premiered on Omeleto, and his feature directing debut, DRINK AND BE MERRY, is available to rent or buy. Adam is also the co-creator of the hit film podcast EYE OF THE DUCK on the Morbid Podcast Network for SiriusXM. He also produced and developed the Signal Award Winning and Ambie and Webby Nominated narrative fiction podcasts AMERICAN HOSTAGE (Amazon Originals), starring Jon Hamm (soon to be a TV Show from Shawn Ryan and MGM+), and THE FOXES OF HYDESVILLE (QCODE), starring Carey Mulligan, for Criminal Content. ETHAN WARREN Author Ethan Warren is the author of The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, and the forthcoming When I Paint My Masterpiece: The Cinematic Dylan.

The films written by Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”) take off from such twisted premises that they deserve an alternate grading system of their own. Maybe a sliding scale of pretzels, or one to five bottles of absinthe? The much-loved "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" stars Jim Carrey -- not the rubberfaced, alrighty-then Jim Carrey, but the art-film Jim Carrey: repressed, lovesick, unshaven. It's the most quietly serious work the star has done yet: he's very affecting and, when you least expect it, quite funny. His character, Joel, is in love with Clementine (Kate Winslet), a free spirited Barnes and Noble clerk with a penchant for Blue Ruin hair dye. Clementine was also in love with Joel for a few years, until she was not, at which point she went to the downtown offices of a company called Lacuna Inc. and had her memories of her boyfriend erased. (The technicians perform the procedure while you sleep; when asked if there’s any risk of brain damage, inventor Dr. Howard Mierzwiak, played by the late, great Tom Wilkinson, replies, "technically, the procedure is brain damage.”) Betrayed, Joel signs up for the same treatment — if Clementine won't have him in her head, he won't have her in his — except that halfway through the erasure, he changes his mind. Or, rather, he tries not to change his mind while the scrubbing bubbles of Lacuna chase Joel's Id around his own temporal lobes. Outside Joel's mind, meanwhile, the Lacuna staff are experiencing technical difficulties of their own, with Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood as a sort of Vladimir and Estragon with gainful employment and Kirsten Dunst as an ambitious company receptionist. Profound, silly, hilarious and deeply sad, "Eternal Sunshine" says that what we call "love" has as much to do with its object as a liftable plastic drawing sheet has to do with the wax tablet beneath it. But in its hectic, brilliant way, the film insists that whatever we draw there is better than nothing.

Anyone can survive five nights. This time, there will be no second chances.

From Academy Award® winning writer/director Chloé Zhao, HAMNET tells the powerful love story that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.

Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.

The Allies, led by the unyielding chief prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon), have the task of ensuring the Nazi regime answers for the unveiled horrors of the Holocaust while a US Army psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is locked in a dramatic psychological duel with former Reichsmarschall Herman Göring (Russell Crowe).

Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) returns for his most dangerous case yet in the third and darkest chapter of Rian Johnson’s murder mystery opus. Starring Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church.

Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), now demonized as The Wicked Witch of the West, lives in exile, hidden within the Ozian forest while continuing her fight for the freedom of Oz’s silenced Animals and desperately trying to expose the truth she knows about The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). Glinda, meanwhile, has become the glamorous symbol of Goodness for all of Oz, living at the palace in Emerald City and reveling in the perks of fame and popularity. Under the instruction of Madame Morrible (Oscar® winner Michelle Yeoh), Glinda is deployed to serve as an effervescent comfort to Oz, reassuring the masses that all is well under the rule of The Wizard. As Glinda’s stardom expands and she prepares to marry Prince Fiyero (Olivier award winner and Emmy and SAG nominee Jonathan Bailey) in a spectacular Ozian wedding, she is haunted by her separation from Elphaba. She attempts to broker a conciliation between Elphaba and The Wizard, but those efforts will fail, driving Elphaba and Glinda only further apart. The aftershocks will transform Boq (Tony nominee Ethan Slater) and Fiyero forever, and threaten the safety of Elphaba’s sister, Nessarose (Marissa Bode), when a girl from Kansas comes crashing into all their lives. As an angry mob rises against the Wicked Witch, Glinda and Elphaba will need to come together one final time. With their singular friendship now the fulcrum of their futures, they will need to truly see each other, with honesty and empathy, if they are to change themselves, and all of Oz, for good.

In Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Zootopia 2,” detectives Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (voiced by Jason Bateman) find themselves on the twisting trail of a mysterious reptile who arrives in Zootopia and turns the animal metropolis upside down. To crack the case, Judy and Nick must go undercover to unexpected new parts of town, where their growing partnership is tested like never before.