The Stranger

Rhythm Section

The Turning

Blake Lively Is Bad at Killing in The Rhythm Section

Suzette Smith — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 17:05:03 -0800

by Suzette Smith Paramount Pictures
Adding to the fine tradition of tales in which an everyday average Joe is pushed past their breaking point (Death Wish, Peppermint, The Brave One, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys), Paramount Pictures presents The Rhythm Section, a spy origin story about Stephanie Patrick (Blake Lively), an assassin who isn’t very good at killing.

Mark Burnell’s Stephanie Patrick spy novel series (this film is based on the first) debuted in 1999, so maybe that explains Rhythm Section’s dated anti-terrorism plot. But the involvement of two James Bond producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, led to speculation that this film could be the start of a new, woman-led spy franchise. Alas, this is a spy movie in which a woman James Bond isn’t very good at killing, tradecraft, or anything other than looking sad. But SHE IS SO GOOD AT LOOKING SAD.

The Rhythm Section opens on Patrick nostalgically watching camera phone video of her family—her parents and siblings—who died in a plane crash. A drug user and a sex worker, Patrick has all but given up on life, but when journalist Keith Proctor (Raza Jaffrey) tells her he's uncovered a conspiracy about her family’s death, she's filled with vengeful vigor. Why Proctor brings this information to Patrick is never explained. Why he offers her keys to his house is not only a mystery, but a repeating narrative device. Throughout the course of the film, Patrick looks at men sadly THREE TIMES, and each time the man in question offers her food and shelter, no questions asked.

Patrick limps around the first part of the film looking for revenge, slowly transitioning into recovery with the help of an ex-M16 operative (Jude Law) and eventually finding her rhythm section (it was in her heart all along). What’s weird about Rhythm Section is that, much like Patrick being a sex worker but never doing sex work, she turns out to be an assassin who doesn’t murder very much. I get that it’s her origin story and it’s supposed to be gritty, but whenever she's trying to kill someone, they just sort of trip and then... die, like they're in a Looney Tunes cartoon? I could speculate endlessly about why this might be: Did Lively's PR team request to keep her image bloodless? Is this some weird attempt to make Patrick's character less threatening to male audiences? There has to be some middle ground between a protagonist who goes from vegetarian yoga instructor to cold, hardened killer in a 15-minute montage and Patrick’s solid hour and 50 minutes of depressed gun fumbling.

There has to be some middle ground between a protagonist who goes from vegetarian yoga instructor to cold, hardened killer in a 15-minute montage and Patrick’s solid hour and 50 minutes of depressed gun fumbling.

Thanks to director Reed Morano and cinematographer Sean Bobbit, Rhythm Section almost puts on enough of a glossy cinematic show to disguise the film's glaring plot holes and creepy infantilization of its central character. Fuzzy, sensorial scenes and transitions apply a haze to the story's events—to the point where I’m not 100 percent sure Patrick actually had sex with her informant, Serra (Sterling K. Brown), or if that was a visual poem (?) about them looking at one another.

Rhythm Section succeeds on an atmospheric level, to such a degree that it approaches elegance—too bad the dated script is just regular ol' self-reliance porn that ends up being too sexist to even do that properly.

XOXO, Gossip Girl

The Rhythm Section is now playing at various theaters.

Lidia Yuknavitch Interview: Anti-Memoir, Carrie Underwood, and the Second Vagina in Her New Short Story Collection Verge

Suzette Smith — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 12:50:32 -0800

by Suzette Smith Portland favorite Lidia Yuknavitch brings her book tour up north for a reading at Third Place Books this Wednesday. AUTHOR PHOTO BY ANDREW KOVALEV / RIVERHEAD BOOKS
Lidia Yuknavitch is a creative force in Portland’s literary scene. Not only are her books award-winning best sellers, but they’re often groundbreaking, like her Oregon Book Award-winning anti-memoir The Chronology of Water, or her novel The Small Backs of Children, in which she strove to break the novel’s form. To discuss her new short story collection Verge, Yuknavitch invited me to Corporeal Writing—a downtown Portland space she uses to teach classes and host readings—which is named for an approach to writing that draws heavily on the body’s reactions and sensations. When I asked about her ongoing plans for the space, Yuknavitch mentioned she wasn’t trying to go too big. Which led me to ask the following:

THE STRANGER: You don’t want to go too big and flame out? Isn’t that kind of the antithesis of your writing style, which is: Go big and flame out?

LIDIA YUKNAVITCH: Flame up! As often as possible! Verge is certainly a whole book of big flame. These stories are all catching a character on the edge of something. They’re either gonna make the worst choice ever or the best choice ever. Change or grow or die. And they’re vibrating. All the times in my life when I was about to do something that was either gonna blow up my world or bring something great, I felt a vibration.

Verge is a collection of fiction stories, but some feel drawn from your life in ways that remind me of anti-memoir.

I am in the boat of people who see a very thin membrane between fiction and nonfiction.

Could you refresh us on the anti-memoir term? You have your own definition.

Chronology of Water broke all the rules of memoir writing that I had been taught, like “Maintain an authoritative and singular voice.” It broke off and did all sorts of inconsistent things. I wasn’t supposed to let the intensity of an image or an emotion subordinate plot, but I did. This is true in life, too. Whenever someone tells me, “Lidia, you can’t do that,” my response is always to double down.

“Whenever someone tells me, ‘Lidia, you can’t do that,’ my response is always to double down.” -Lidia Yuknavitch

Maybe your fiction reads like memoir still because it has such strong nuggets of your own life. And you’ve been so open with your past experiences that we can see the connections a little more clearly. In Verge’s first story, we can see you pulling from your experiences as a competitive swimmer, and an archetype of heroic sisters. But then you mold it into a narrative about the refugee experience. Can you talk a little about what inspired that?

It came from more than one place. One place was the experience of nationless athletes and the Olympics. I have friends who are those people, runners and swimmers. So some of it is an homage to them. Another place is, sometimes when I’m writing a story that has a little bit of magic in it, I’m trying to write new archetypes about girls. And it’s not even subtle. If I could, I would redesign the night sky with constellations of just women-related things. The third place is my life. The thing where one sister touches the other’s ear? That’s something my sister did. She would play with my ears to get me to take a nap.

What story in Verge is closest to your life?

There are a handful that are about a woman getting ready to do something, “A Woman Refusing,” “A Woman Apologizing.” I feel pretty close to those. As someone who has been married three times and been in three long relationships with women, I feel very close to some of those.

Do you feel like the one, “A Woman Signifying”—

I knew you were gonna ask me about that one!

Because the end has this Carrie Underwood “Before He Cheats” kind of rhythm to it, like when you write “By the time he gets home, she’ll be out already... By the time he gets home, she’ll be sitting at the bar with the most perfect wound imaginable.”

Bingo. It’s not intentional. But I meant to go to a similar place. A lot of people have different readings on that one. I’ve heard it reads as self-harm, and I completely understand how a reader would think that. But my intention was that she’s burning herself to make a second vagina.

“My intention was that she’s burning herself to make a second vagina." -Lidia Yuknavitch

Oh! Wow.

The feeling is, “You’re gonna treat me like I’m a fucking hole? I’m gonna wear the hole on my fucking face.”

Which reminds me, larger publishers used to ask you to take out the word “cunt.”

And they wanted me to remove incest stuff. Implications of sexual abuse from my father. And overt sexual stuff and violent stuff.

And that’s famously why you went with Hawthorne Books for Chronology of Water. But now are you at a level where bigger houses don’t ask that of you anymore?

I fucking hope so.

Verge is published by Riverhead, and they’re a Penguin imprint, so it’s nice that it can still have a lot of sex in there. There’s a lot of really nice sex in there.

It could be the way you put it, and I’ve gotten to a place where they’ll let me. Plus, I have a lineage of identifiable writers I’ve followed and learned from—Kathy Acker was one of my mentors—so I can say, “What about these people?” That’s probably helped. I don’t mean to aggrandize myself, but this is a feature of my personality. You can tell me no, but that doesn’t mean I’ll quit and go away.

With art, boundaries are meant to be broken. But does that attitude carry over to your personal interactions?

Yes, well. I have a string of disasters behind me.

42 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: January 30–February 2, 2020

Joule Zelman — Thu, 30 Jan 2020 14:28:00 -0800

Atlantics, The Romanians, Cunningham, and Other Critics' Picks by Joule Zelman

This weekend, Seattle's movie theaters are full of Oscar nominees (including the Animated and Live Action Shorts programs), new releases like the haunting should-have-been-nominated love story Atlantics, and unkillable classics like John Carpenter's The Thing and the Bill Murray-starring Groundhog Day. Plus, check out hidden Eastern European treasures at The Romanians: 30 Years of Cinema Revolution. See all of our film critics’ picks for this weekend below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise mentioned.

* = Nominated for a 2020 Oscar

*1917
Legendary screenwriter William Goldman once said of the film industry, “Nobody knows anything,” and this is still mostly true, with one exception: If cinematographer Roger Deakins shot the movie, that movie is worth seeing on the biggest screen possible. Even if 1917 were solely the most impressive work of Deakins’ remarkable career—which it is—I’d be recommending it. But the World War I movie is also one hell of a stunning storytelling experience from director Sam Mendes, co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and editor Lee Smith. “But wait,” you say, “isn’t the whole point of this movie that there aren’t any cuts? Why did they need an editor at all?” 1917’s hook (or less generously, its gimmick) is that it’s meant to unfold in a single, unbroken take. It’s one of the rare instances of a film’s marketing actually benefiting the finished film, because of the way this knowledge is both paid off... and then subverted. BOBBY ROBERTS
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects

2020 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Animated Program and Live Action Program
Sure, the Oscars’ depressing obsession with Joker (11 nominations! lol) has done even more damage to the crumbling reputation of an obsolete institution that barely even pretends to be anything other than an artistically meaningless, months-long bullshit marketing campaign. But once you look past a certain movie about how hard it is to be a white clown in America, there is some stuff getting recognized that’s actually good—and you’ve got a decent chance of catching some of it in the programs that collect this year’s nominated live-action, animated, and documentary shorts. If you’re only catching one of the programs, the animated one’s generally the way to go. ERIK HENRIKSEN
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Afghan Cycles
"The greatest form of protest is on display in Afghan Cycles: women daring to ride their bicycles even though it's forbidden," wrote The Stranger's Nathalie Graham on Sarah Menzies' SIFF-featured documentary. "It's a feminist anthem for the ages propelled by two wheels and the drive for freedom." This screening will feature an introduction by the director, plus a post-film group discussion.
New Holly Gathering Hall
Thursday only

After Hours
The funniest entry in the MSCU (Martin Scorsese Cinematic Universe) follows an office drone on a long night in New York’s underground, populated by punks, artists, and Cheech and Chong.
The Beacon
Sunday only

And the Winner Is...
Cinerama screens the "absolute best in filmmaking this awards season," including this weekend's selections: the lauded Parasite, the Academy-snubbed Uncut Gems, and Little Women.
Cinerama
Friday–Sunday

Claire's Knee
A young man enjoying his last summer as a bachelor, goaded by an old friend, begins a flirtation with a teenage girl...only to fall in love with the girl's sister. Another wry, light, moralizing satire from Eric Rohmer.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only

Clemency
A psychologically tortured death row warden played by Alfre Woodard finds herself growing close to the man she's supposed to help kill in this Sundance Grand Jury Prize–winning drama by Chionye Chukwu.
Regal Meridian

Cleo from 5 to 7
Agnès Varda's 1961 film tells the story of two hours in the life of a pop star, Cléo, as she waits to hear the results of an ominous medical test. It's a classic piece from the Left Bank of the French New Wave.
SIFF Film Center
Saturday only

Coeur Fidèle
Jean Epstein's expressionistic Marseille love story from 1924 was an excuse for the avant-garde filmmaker to explore innovative cinematic techniques, striving to create something as far as possible from other art forms. Film history enthusiasts shouldn't miss this screening.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday

The Deadly Spawn
The Beacon presents this ultra-low-budget 1980s flick about a teenage horror-movie enthusiast who's the world's only hope against an onslaught of alien flesh-eaters. The theater assures us: "It’s funny. It’s cozy. It’s creepy. It’s got that Something Is Happening vital energy."
The Beacon
Part of Haunted Light
Friday only

*Ford v Ferrari
F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Regal Meridian 16
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing
Thursday only

Grave Plot Film Festival
Resurrect Halloween in February with a panoply of gory, nasty, scary, funny short films.
Ark Lodge Cinemas
Saturday only

Groundhog Day
Bill Murray stars in this surprisingly light-hearted yet existential classic about time and death and consequences with Punxsutawney Phil. Bill Murray bears repeating.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Holy Flame of the Martial World
It's another cartoony, no-holds-barred, no doubt amazingly entertaining wuxia fantasy from the famous Shaw Brothers, replete with "wire-fu, murderous laughter, snakes used as weaponry, flying swords, somersaults, and candy-colored, flesh-peeling energy bolts" (according to cinema host Jazmyne Moreno).
The Beacon
Saturday only

*Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Production Design, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design

*Little Women
I say this with my whole heart: Greta Gerwig's Little Women is wonderful. Full of wonder, inspiring wonder, embodying wonder. Which is hard to do as the eighth adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved 1868 novel of the same name. Gerwig's adaptation—which she both wrote and directed—feels neither redundant nor stale. Rather, it's a fresh, modern-feeling take on a well-trodden story, stuffed with excellent performances, witty dialogue, and gorgeous costumes. The film jumps between Jo's "present" life in a post-Civil War America and her childhood, living at home with her three other sisters and mother, awaiting the family patriarch to return home from the war as they struggle to make ends meet. The direction and sense of characters are particularly strong in this adaptation. It fleshes each sister out so that she feels real and worthy of empathy, not purely serving as a star vehicle for Ronan in the same way the Winona Ryder version arguably did. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Florence Pugh), Best Costumes, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay

NT Live: 'Fleabag'
This stage show by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, about a mad and sexually hungry young woman trying to make sense of life, inspired the Emmy-nominated TV show of the same name. See it broadcast live from London.
SIFF Film Center
Sunday only

*Parasite
Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. It's a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies, though it's no less concerned with the state of society today. Set in Seoul, South Korea, the families and class issues at play reflect our global era, in which the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. Parasite follows the Kim family, who secretly scam their way into the lives of the wealthy Park family. Slowly and methodically, the Kims begin to drive out the other domestic workers at the Park residence, each time referring another family member (who they pretend not to know) for the vacant position. And so the poorer family starts to settle comfortably into the grift—until a sudden realization turns their lives upside down. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival, its essence echoed in the environments the characters inhabit. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon-ho), Best Film Editing, Best International Feature, Best Production Design, Best Original Screenplay

The Romanians
The Romanian New Wave began in the 2000s, and the country's film industry has been generating intellectual, thorny, blackly funny, inventive films ever since. This retrospective by the American Romanian Cultural Society (ARCS) presents some of the very best of these (as well as some older movies from the 1990s), including Snails' Senator, California Dreamin' (Endless), Stuff and Dough (one of the first of the wave, and highly recommended), and Niki and Flo, all at SIFF, plus The Train of Life at Northwest Film Forum.
SIFF Film Center & Northwest Film Forum
Thursday–Saturday

The Singing Shoes
Bulgarian singer Lеa Ivanova (whose communist country sent her to a labor camp for promoting "retrogressive" behavior in her music) and composer Edi Kazasyan are at the center of the 2016 docudrama The Singing Shoes, screened here for free.
Solo
Saturday only

The Thing
A very grumpy Kurt Russell, a very manly Keith David, and a bunch of other dudes (and dogs) on a remote Arctic station try to withstand a shapeshifting alien that can imitate other life forms in John Carpenter's eternally rewatchable landmark of horror. The real star of the show is special effects master Rob Bottin's revolting creature, still one of the grossest monsters ever committed to film. JOULE ZELMAN
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

VHYes
A collage-comedy shot entirely on VHS, Jack Henry Robbins's exercise in retro hilarity is about a teenager who accidentally tapes over his parents' wedding tape. The result: an invasion of TV madness into the boy's reality.
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

The Wonderland
Keiichi Hara, the director of Colorful and Miss Hokusai, has come out with a charming adventure about a young girl who's whisked away to a magical world that a mysterious alchemist tells her she must save—despite the fact that she just wants to go home.
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday

Also Playing:

Botero

Rhythm Section

The Turning

45 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: January 23–26, 2020

Joule Zelman — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 15:20:00 -0800

Color Out of Space, The Cave, Fantastic Planet, and Other Critics' Picks by Joule Zelman

There's a great diversity of excellent films, both new and old, on Seattle screens this weekend. Whether your tastes tend to searing documentaries (The Cave), botanical horror (Little Joe), or magnificent, classic crime dramas (Dog Day Afternoon), you can find plenty of options here. See all of our film critics’ picks for this weekend below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise mentioned.

* = Nominated for a 2020 Oscar

*1917
Legendary screenwriter William Goldman once said of the film industry, “Nobody knows anything,” and this is still mostly true, with one exception: If cinematographer Roger Deakins shot the movie, that movie is worth seeing on the biggest screen possible. Even if 1917 were solely the most impressive work of Deakins’ remarkable career—which it is—I’d be recommending it. But the World War I movie is also one hell of a stunning storytelling experience from director Sam Mendes, co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and editor Lee Smith. “But wait,” you say, “isn’t the whole point of this movie that there aren’t any cuts? Why did they need an editor at all?” 1917’s hook (or less generously, its gimmick) is that it’s meant to unfold in a single, unbroken take. It’s one of the rare instances of a film’s marketing actually benefiting the finished film, because of the way this knowledge is both paid off... and then subverted. BOBBY ROBERTS
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects

2019 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour
This annual film tour of abbreviated features includes the best of the best out of Sundance, all gathered together in one place for your viewing convenience. The seven 2019 films in the 96-minute theatrical program include the awkward yet sweet romance of Sometimes I Think About Dying, whose painfully introverted protagonist goes from wondering how corpse flies might feel walking around on her dead skin ("like a billion tiny massages?") to thinking about the thread count of her colleague's sheets; Muteum, a charming animated short from Estonia about a visit to the museum that takes a funny turn; and Short Film Special Jury Award for Directing winner Fast Horse, a doc about our country's first extreme sport, Indian Relay, where jockeys ride horses bareback and jump from one horse to another amid racing. Also screening: Suicide By Sunlight, Brotherhood,* The MINORS, and Crude Oil. LEILANI POLK
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday–Sunday

Always in Season
Not that long ago, white Americans in the South lynched black American men on the regular. These crimes not only went unpunished, but were actually popular events. White people—again, not too long ago—really enjoyed seeing innocent black American men swing with snapped necks from the branches of trees. The important documentary Always In Season explains why the blacks of our supposedly less barbaric times can’t just get over this history of blood and racial terrorism. It is still very much a part of our culture today. CHARLES MUDEDE
Northwest Film Forum
Friday-Sunday

And the Winner Is...
Cinerama screens the "absolute best in filmmaking this awards season," including this weekend's Academy-snubbed Hustlers and Best Picture nominees Ford v Ferrari and The Irishman.
Cinerama
Friday–Sunday

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
It’s unusual to witness real cinematic magic these days, but the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood absolutely has it. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) wisely avoids the visual slickness one might expect from a Tom Hanks-centric melodrama, instead employing a lived-in style and scene transitions that consist of miniature cities harkening back to the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hanks is totally committed to Rogers’ appearance and manner, but A Beautiful Day is more about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a fictional journalist profiling Rogers. (Vogel’s work is based on a 1998 Esquire profile by Tom Junod; as is the case with the film, Junrod’s piece sketches a beautiful yet enigmatic image of Rogers.) Where Heller’s film becomes transcendent is in its cinematic pressure points: The striking slowness of the narrative (it’s meant to emulate the pace of Rogers’ show, and you get used to it), the mirroring of Rogers and Vogel in their interview styles and drawn-out reaction shots, and a profound moment of silence that grips your heart like, “Did that really just happen? Why was that so intense?” SUZETTE SMITH
Varsity Theatre
Thursday only
Nominated for: Best Actor (Tom Hanks)

The Cave
The director of the devastating Last Men in Aleppo delivers a look into the lives of Syrian women doctors from 2016-2018. Despite danger and sexism, these women work to treat patients in an underground hospital under the city of Ghouta, near Damascus. This documentary won the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival.
Grand Illusion
Friday-Sunday

A Chinese Ghost Story
The Beacon calls this frenetic wuxia/horror/romance a "singular genre-leaping oddity" full of bizarre monsters and featuring a lovely ghost and a smartass monk. A timid tax collector spends a night in an abandoned temple and finds himself in strange company. Don't miss this film if you want to see the cream of 1980s Hong Kong fantasy action.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Chinese Portrait
Wang Xiaoshuai's portrait of his family traces his ancestors' migrations across China over the last century. In fixed long shots, we encounter rural ethnic minorities, Han Chinese urban workers, and others from far-flung regions in the diverse and populous country.
The Beacon
Friday-Sunday

Dog Day Afternoon
People tend to knock older films down a peg or two because they didn't "age well," as if it really matters that you can tell when they made it. Rare is the film so strong you easily look past the awkward cultural artifacts encased in its celluloid. Even rarer is Sidney Lumet's day-in-the-life crime classic from 1975, Dog Day Afternoon, a film that somehow only becomes more up-to-date and relevant with every decade tacked onto its age. But even if it was just a dated bit of film history, it would still contain maybe Al Pacino's single best performance, and any opportunity to see John Cazale put in work is an opportunity you should seize. BOBBY ROBERTS
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of How to Rob a Bank (and Why)

Fantastic Planet
I was really stoned watching the animated French film Fantastic Planet, for good reason—it’s trippy as fuck and can only be truly appreciated after a bong hit or two. In the distant future, humans are stolen from Earth and taken to the plant Ygam where they are kept as pets to a race of technologically advanced giant blue humanoids called Draags. The film follows a group of rebellious humans attempting to escape from Ygam to the Fantastic Planet where they are safe from the tyranny of these giant blue freaks. The Draags are a little disturbing to look at—their freaky, unblinking red eyes seem like they're beaming right into your soul. And the other creatures that inhabit this world are equally peculiar, coming straight out of the deep recesses of a surrealist subconscious. The score, composed by Alain Goraguer, blends elements of psychedelia, harpsichord, jazz, and wah-wah guitar that adds significantly to the far-out space-age-dystopia mood of the film. JASMYNE KEIMIG
The Beacon
Saturday only

*Ford v Ferrari
F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Regal Meridian 16
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

*Frozen II
It starts out with Young Elsa and Young Anna, and, I don’t know, this is just my opinion, but I didn’t think that part was very necessary, necessarily? I thought the story was good. I thought the parts were well thought out and they had some depth to them, if you know what I mean? Like some parts were really sad, and some parts could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. Also, you know how in the first Frozen, there’s like this main song that you know is the main song? In this one, there’s like three or four different songs that could be that main song. There were songs that like Elsa and Anna and Kristoff sang that could qualify for that position. I thought they were fine. SIMON HAM, AGE 12
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Original Song ("Into the Unknown")

The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie’s latest wisecracking shoot-em-up, about a British crime lord trying to make a deal with a rich Oklahoman pot kingpin, boasts a huge cast of likelies and unlikelies: Hugh Grant (!), Henry Golding, Colin Firth, Charlie Hunnam, Matthew McConaughey, and so on.
Various locations

Georgetown Super 8 Film Festival 2019 Encore
See films about the Duwamish Valley made on Super 8 film by denizens of Seattle.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

The Good Liar
The Good Liar is likely the most bonkers film I will see this year. What begins as a cautionary tale about the dangers of grandma’s online dating unfolds into a baffling series of reveals, all of which support the twist that we already gleaned from the trailer: Roy (Ian McKellen) is trying to double cross Betty (Helen Mirren) and take her money... but she's not that easy to trick! How all that happens, though? I could never have predicted it. What a septuagenarian mine cart ride! SUZETTE SMITH
Crest

*Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Production Design, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design

Kind Hearts and Coronets
One of the best (and most vicious) comedies to come out of London's famed Ealing Studios, Kind Hearts and Coronets stars Dennis Price as a down-and-out scion of a snobbish aristocratic family who sets out to gain the ancestral inheritance... by murdering all of his unloved relatives. All of whom are played by the magnificent Alec Guinness! It's mean, it's hilarious, and it features the adorable, deep-voiced Joan Greenwood, who should be much better remembered today. JOULE ZELMAN
The Beacon
Thursday only

*Les Misérables
Suburban poverty and police violence provide a throughline from the 19th-century setting of Victor Hugo's novel to the Muslim populace of present-day Paris in Ladj Ly's critically acclaimed, Cannes Jury Prize-winning adaptation. In a suburb of Paris, Brigadier Stéphane Ruiz takes part in an arrest that turns deadly, and the neighborhood responds with fury to the act of police brutality.
Regal Meridian 16 & AMC Seattle 10
Nominated for: Best International Picture

Like a Boss
Like a Boss is barely long enough to qualify as a feature film, clocking at an hour and 23 minutes—which makes total sense, considering there's not much meat on this story, aside from a couple of central themes: the evergreen dilemma of choosing between a career and motherhood, learning how to spot frenemies, and evolving for the sake of a valued friendship. Thankfully, the hilarious cast—which includes Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, and Salma Hayek—makes this mediocre movie watchable. JENNI MOORE
Meridian 16 & AMC Pacific Place
Thursday only

Little Joe
Little Joe is a science-fiction film that is not set in the future. Its scientists are developing a flower that makes humans feel happier. The more a human cares for this plant, the happier the plant makes its caretaker by way of a scent that connects the flower to the mammalian nose. The scientist leading the project is Alice Woodard (Emily Beecham). She knows what she is doing. She has great confidence in herself and in her command of the science of plant breeding. She has a son, Joe, in his tweens, and a broken marriage. Joe wants his mother to date a man at her lab who has the hots for her. The director behind Little Joe is the underappreciated but brilliant Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner. Hausner never rushes a scene but wrings as much as she can out of it—the performance itself, as well as the blocking of the performance, and the space of the performance. She wants you to be aware of the development of the story, but without losing a sense of its ambiance. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Film Center
Friday-Sunday

The Little Mermaid
Some of the most underappreciated European movies came out of Czechoslovakia in the 1970s, an era in which governmental repression had clamped down on artistic political dissent, so filmmakers turned to rich, surreal fantasy. Karel Kachyna, one of the greats of the Czechoslovak New Wave, directed this version of the Hans Christian Andersen tragedy; other masters of the dissident filmmaker movement, composer Zdeněk Liška and cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera, lent their art to this dramatic take on the story of love and sacrifice. JOULE ZELMAN
The Beacon
Sunday only

*Little Women
I say this with my whole heart: Greta Gerwig's Little Women is wonderful. Full of wonder, inspiring wonder, embodying wonder. Which is hard to do as the eighth adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved 1868 novel of the same name. Gerwig's adaptation—which she both wrote and directed—feels neither redundant nor stale. Rather, it's a fresh, modern-feeling take on a well-trodden story, stuffed with excellent performances, witty dialogue, and gorgeous costumes. The film jumps between Jo's "present" life in a post-Civil War America and her childhood, living at home with her three other sisters and mother, awaiting the family patriarch to return home from the war as they struggle to make ends meet. The direction and sense of characters are particularly strong in this adaptation. It fleshes each sister out so that she feels real and worthy of empathy, not purely serving as a star vehicle for Ronan in the same way the Winona Ryder version arguably did. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Florence Pugh), Best Costumes, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay

Mad Max: Fury Road
If there has ever been a more astonishing display of a filmmaker’s prowess with kinetic action sequences than this late-career Gesamtkunstwerk by George Miller, I haven’t seen it. And neither have you, because there isn’t one. The Mad Max reboot is a staggering, stunning, sweeping, astonishing, literally breathtaking exercise in the defiance of physics. It moves so fast, and for such sustained periods, that “visionary” isn’t really the word. (“Glimpsarian”?) Regardless, you’ve never seen anything remotely like it. See it on the biggest screen you can find, in 3-D if possible. It’s noticeably dumb in certain ways, but its visual intelligence and wit vastly outweigh its concessions to the genre. SEAN NELSON
Museum of Pop Culture
Sunday only
Presented as a "Campout Cinema" event: Bring your own blankets and pillows and hear environmental talks

The Muppet Movie
The Muppets made their feature film debut in James Frawley's beloved, meta-inclined 1979 film, in which Kermit the Frog and friends (and hitchhikers) journey to Hollywood but are sidetracked by the nefarious restaurateur Doc Hopper. Hop on the Electric Mayhem and reaffirm the Rainbow Connection with everyone's favorite floppy puppets.
Central Cinema

Murder on a Sunday Morning
This 2001 Oscar-winning documentary by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, co-presented by the Washington Innocence Project, presents an all-too-familiar story: A 15-year-old black boy is accused of murder, and a combination of racism, incompetence, and misconduct put him in jail for a crime he didn't commit.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

My Night at Maud's
A surprisingly rakish Catholic engineer conversationally spars with a free-spirited woman in one of Eric Rohmer's most celebrated (and most verbal) films.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Part of French Pleasures: The Films of Eric Rohmer

*Parasite
Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. It's a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies, though it's no less concerned with the state of society today. Set in Seoul, South Korea, the families and class issues at play reflect our global era, in which the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. Parasite follows the Kim family, who secretly scam their way into the lives of the wealthy Park family. Slowly and methodically, the Kims begin to drive out the other domestic workers at the Park residence, each time referring another family member (who they pretend not to know) for the vacant position. And so the poorer family starts to settle comfortably into the grift—until a sudden realization turns their lives upside down. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival, its essence echoed in the environments the characters inhabit. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon-ho), Best Film Editing, Best International Feature, Best Production Design, Best Original Screenplay

Patlabor 2: The Movie
The Patlabor franchise is sick. A popular addition to the mecha genre, the Patlabor world includes large, human-like robots, named "Labors," who essentially work in Amazon warehouses. The Labors produce labor more effectively than humans, but everyone is apparently surprised when Labors begin to randomly destroy buildings and commit crimes. Who's responsible for the chaos? The robots? The programmers? The politicians? The conversation is a little too timely. Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend would probably be popular in the political world of Patlabor. CHASE BURNS
The Beacon
Sunday only

Queen of Hearts
This dark tale, Denmark's submission to the Oscars, does nothing to dispel the image of Denmark's national cinema as ultra-bleak and morally challenging. An apparently upright married lawyer, Anne, becomes attracted to her husband's difficult teenage son from a previous relationship. As one compromise follows another, Anne draws her stepson into an increasingly dangerous situation that threatens the whole family. Robert Abele of the LA Times writes: "The tricky brilliance of Queen of Hearts is in how [director May] el-Toukhy uses a well-worn narrative—the unsuspecting, hidden passion with the appearance of erotic freedom—to unveil what in reality is a poisonous tale of abuse."
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Redoubt
Artist Matthew Barney’s experimental film, shot in the snow on Idaho’s gorgeous Sawtooth Mountains, tells the mythologically resonant tale of hunters “pursuing each other and prey.”
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday-Saturday

The Remains of the Day
If you wish to see the very summit of the Merchant-Ivory years, then you must see The Remains of the Day, which takes its name and story from a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Indeed, it can be argued within all seriousness that the movie is better than the novel. Set just before and just after World War Two, The Remains of the Day is about a British butler (Anthony Hopkins) who misses his one chance at actual happiness (Emma Thompson). It’s a sad story. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Beacon
Sunday only

*Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
I found The Rise of Skywalker, the last film in the Skywalker saga, boring. And it was not even a long movie, and I'm a fan of the director's (J.J. Abrams) work (particularly Mission: Impossible III—the best in that franchise), and many of the visual effects are impressive—particularly the haunting business of bringing the late Carrie Fisher back to life. But all together, the film is burdened by too much sentimental family stuff (you are my granddaughter, you are my son, you killed my parents, and so on), and its end did not know how to end for a very long time. CHARLES MUDEDE
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing

The Swan
Young director Ása Hjörleifsdóttir’s adaptation of Guðbergur Bergsson's classic novel is a coming-of-age story about Sól, an angry little girl sent to live with her aunt in the country after getting caught shoplifting. This slow yet beautiful film is part of the Forum's new series, Women in Icelandic Cinema, which will continue next month.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

White Snake
In this 3D-animated wuxia love story based in Chinese mythology, a snake catcher falls in love with a young woman, and the couple discovers a supernatural plot. This film is screened as part of Saturday Morning Cartoons, with coffee and doughnuts provided for viewers.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Saturday only

Also Playing:

Carmen Maria Machado Interview: Difficult Questions About In the Dream House

Suzette Smith — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 16:09:40 -0800

It’s important to tell certain stories and give certain stories space to exist. by Suzette Smith

Carmen Maria Machado isn’t teaching this year. In the spring of 2019 she won a Guggenheim Fellowship, so she’s taking the year to work on a new project. That didn’t stop her from teaching me, as we discussed In the Dream House, her new memoir focused on the dynamics of a relationship she was in while pursuing a master’s degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The book is groundbreaking—we would expect nothing less from the author of the outstanding 2017 short-story collection Her Body and Other Parties—in its exploration of romance that gradually descends from cautious bliss into gaslighting and abusive control. Despite the book’s heavy material, Machado is full of laughter on the phone and patiently professorial as she schooled me on the Gothic genres.

Is it difficult to discuss In the Dream House without feeling on trial for the romantic relationship it describes?

People have been really interested in talking about the relationship and talking about my ex. And obviously that’s an element of it. But for obvious reasons, I am least interested in talking about that part. I feel like that’s the most boring element of the book.

What would you like people to focus on?

The formal play of the book. The conversation about why it’s important to tell certain stories and give certain stories space to exist. That seems far more interesting.

Like the book’s structure being broken up into fragments? Or the house as a metaphorical site for the story?

When it comes to houses, and the idea of the home, houses don’t have inherent values. You can talk about a house however you want, and the home is big enough—it’s capacious enough—that it permits a lot of different kinds of metaphor.

Houses are places of great pleasure and happiness: hearth, contentment, and the domestic. And that can look like a lot of different things to a lot of different people. That can also be a trap, and traditionally, who gets trapped by the domestic sphere? Women.

In the Dream House flies in the face of a common perception that women—in this case, a petite blonde woman—are incapable of perpetrating abuse. Some people seem excited to talk about that in a way that makes me uncomfortable, and some people dismiss it as impossible.

People love to learn exactly the wrong lesson from things. They’re very excited to learn precisely the opposite of what they’re supposed to take away from something. It’s very stressful to me.

This book talks about a few relationships that are incredibly painful—not only with your ex-partner, but with the pastor in your church when you were young. Did you reach out to run things by these people? Was that possible?

No. The chapter about the pastor was actually drawn from an essay I wrote many years ago. This one is better because I’m a better writer now, but I did talk to other people who remembered that time.

I wasn’t interested in having a person who did something fucked up have a space to justify what they did. That is just not interesting to me. I’m not a journalist. I’m a memoirist. It’s not my responsibility to give people—my abuser, for example, or this pastor—space to create their own narrative.

Thank you for answering. I wasn’t sure if that question was a bridge too far.

No, it’s a fine question. There are people who might feel like the fact that I don’t talk to my abuser is ethically complicated. That was just a choice I had to make, as a writer, and I made it.

In the Dream House’s narrative trajectory and ending are so unusual that the story feels borderline mythical. Do you feel like your life has a mythical quality?

Don’t we all feel like our lives have mythical qualities? I’ve been very lucky in my life—in terms of privilege, but also I’ve always made really good friends. I’ve always found the people that I needed at the right time. But I don’t think that means anything. The word “mythical” suggests a higher organizing principle at work. I’m not religious. But it’s certainly a story. It’s an interesting bit of my life.

Is the interesting bit the story, or the idea that your life occasionally takes on, like, Southern Gothic style horror elements?

Southern Gothic is a very specific tradition. I certainly occupy Gothic. Southern Gothic has a sense of grotesqueness—like Flannery O’Connor’s work. Shirley Jackson was considered American Gothic, and I feel a little stylistically closer to Shirley Jackson than Flannery O’Connor for sure.

Speaking of Shirley Jackson, I’m always marveling that her collection The Lottery isn’t a core teaching text. You’ve talked about how difficult it was to get Her Body and Other Parties published—a book that I’ve described as so good “it lit me on fire.” Since this book is so fragmented, could it be seen as a short-story collection masquerading as a memoir?

Oh, interesting. I find something very interesting about the short-story collection and also the fragmented form in general. Lots of little things to tell one big thing. In the Dream House is nonfiction, but it does have that similar sensibility: fragmentation, telling one story through many stories or many modes.

As for why it’s so difficult to get short-story collections published, I actually have a theory: The reason they don’t sell well is that, in the US, we don’t teach them well. We read “The Lottery” the story, and we never talk about The Lottery the book as an entire thing.

One of my favorite fragments in In the Dream House is the Choose Your Own Adventure format. Can you talk about what inspired that?

Early on, my editor said, “You have to be playful. There has to be some levity in the book or it risks becoming entirely unreadable.” And I agreed. It would have been really hard—just ruthless and relentless—to try to tell it in a single mode.

I had an idea fairly early on. In a notebook, I wrote, “Gaslight the reader?” I wanted to create an effect where the reader would sense that the text was hostile in some way. I thought about introducing ideas as if I’d already talked about them, but people might just think that I was confused. So the goal was to create that effect while also letting the reader know I was creating that effect.

The Choose Your Own Adventure aspect is meant to make you feel like you have choices when, in fact, you have no choices. Most of the paths that you can choose are the incorrect path. And even the right path isn’t much of anything.

It’s very harrowing.

I’m glad. It’s supposed to be.

45 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: January 16–19, 2020

Jas Keimig — Thu, 16 Jan 2020 11:40:42 -0800

Weathering With You, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The 2019 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour, and Other Critics' Picks by Jas Keimig

The Oscar nominees were announced this past Monday, and many of the nominees, like Little Women and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood are still in or returning to theaters. We've noted which ones are up for awards below. (For more details on how to see all the nominees, check out our post here.) But there are many more fun and worthwhile films to watch, like the hallucinatory indie sci-fi trip The Wave, the silkily evil British classic Kind Hearts and Coronets, and the beautifully animated love story Weathering With You. See all of our film critics’ picks for this weekend below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Movies play Thursday–Monday unless otherwise mentioned.

* = Nominated for an Oscar

*1917
Legendary screenwriter William Goldman once said of the film industry, “Nobody knows anything,” and this is still mostly true, with one exception: If cinematographer Roger Deakins shot the movie, that movie is worth seeing on the biggest screen possible. Even if 1917 were solely the most impressive work of Deakins’ remarkable career—which it is—I’d be recommending it. But the World War I movie is also one hell of a stunning storytelling experience from director Sam Mendes, co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns, and editor Lee Smith. “But wait,” you say, “isn’t the whole point of this movie that there aren’t any cuts? Why did they need an editor at all?” 1917’s hook (or less generously, its gimmick) is that it’s meant to unfold in a single, unbroken take. It’s one of the rare instances of a film’s marketing actually benefiting the finished film, because of the way this knowledge is both paid off... and then subverted. BOBBY ROBERTS
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (Sam Mendes), Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects

2019 Sundance Film Festival Short Film Tour
This annual film tour of abbreviated features includes the best of the best out of Sundance, all gathered together in one place for your viewing convenience. The seven 2019 films in the 96-minute theatrical program include the awkward yet sweet romance of Sometimes I Think About Dying, whose painfully introverted protagonist goes from wondering how corpse flies might feel walking around on her dead skin ("like a billion tiny massages?") to thinking about the thread count of her colleague's sheets; Muteum, a charming animated short from Estonia about a visit to the museum that takes a funny turn; and Short Film Special Jury Award for Directing winner Fast Horse, a doc about our country's first extreme sport, Indian Relay, where jockeys ride horses bareback and jump from one horse to another amid racing. Also screening: Suicide By Sunlight, Brotherhood,* The MINORS, and Crude Oil. LEILANI POLK
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday

At the Video Store
The great fraud of streaming services—and, perhaps, the entire internet—is that we believe them to contain everything. But anyone who has been to Seattle's Scarecrow Video knows that this isn't true. Scarecrow, the world's largest video library, currently has around 130,000 available titles. Netflix, by my last count, has less than 4,000 available in the United States. Amazon's Prime Video, while roughly four times larger than Netflix, still only offers a fraction of what you find in Scarecrow's library. Which is to say, video stores are important. New ones, like Baltimore's Beyond Video, seem to be popping up as we head into the new decade and viewers realize the limitations of streaming. At the Video Store—a new documentary featuring interviews with John Waters, Bill Hader, Nicole Holofcener, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, Thelma Schoonmaker, and The Stranger's own Charles Mudede—catalogs the great remaining video stores in the United States, including Scarecrow and Portland's Movie Madness. CHASE BURNS
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

Bad Boys for Life
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are back for a sequel, but—happily—without Michael Bay as director. In the reprise of this long-dormant franchise, the two cops take on one last case after an assassination attempt almost kills one of them.
Various locations

Chulas Fronteras
Les Blank and Chris Strachwitz's 1976 film, recently selected for the Library of Congress's National Film Registry, is about the music of the Texas-Mexico border.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday

Death Race 2000
Comic book legends Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction will appear at this special screening of the exploitation classic set in the wake of a global economic crisis when the United States has abandoned democracy for totalitarianism and martial law—a plot that was probably much more shocking in 1975 (when the film was made) than it is now.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Dr. Strangelove
It’s difficult to gauge whether the picture’s evolution away from timelessness has more to do with its familiarity—its centrality, even, to the contemporary sense of humor—or with the inconvenient complexity of the current state of international affairs. Either way, Dr. Strangelove has changed. Or maybe it’s just gotten impossible to stop worrying. SEAN NELSON
Central Cinema
Friday–Monday

Edo Avant Garde
Linda Hoaglund's art documentary reveals the creativity and boldness of Edo-era Japanese artists by filming artwork in collections around the world in 4K.
Seattle Art Museum
Monday only

Faces Places
In 2016, beloved documentarian Agnès Varda took a trip through rural France with muralist JR, driving a box truck that doubled as a photo booth, creating murals of the people they met and establishing a friendship through their artistic (and uplifting) collaborations.
SIFF Film Center
Sunday only
Part of The Restless Curiosity of Agnès Varda

*Ford v Ferrari
F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Regal Meridian 16 & AMC Seattle 10
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing

Freaks
You'll get a startling education from Tod Browning's 1932 circus horror Freaks if you think that deeply fucked-up movies didn't exist before John Waters. A tawdry tale of carnival "freaks'" brutal vengeance against two heartless lovers who exploit them, Freaks is not exactly a heartwarming or enlightening portrait of people with genetic differences and atypical physiognomies. However, the "freaks" are played by people with disabilities, and they do so with humanity (though they're filmed with unsettling fascination). Given how few portrayals of folks with disabilities can be found in non-medical contexts in classic film, Freaks remains an essential piece of film history, even if the representation isn't everything it should be. JOULE ZELMAN
Central Cinema
Friday–Monday

The Gleaners and I
Agnès Varda's most well-known documentary (her classification "essay" is more apt), inspired by old paintings of the peasant "gleaners" who would sweep the fields, post-harvest, for free food, a practice still legal under French law. A tradition carried on in the present day by Roma as well as fun-seekers, and extended into urban life in the form of scavenging the remains of markets and dumpster diving, Varda's full tour into this world reveals insights with social, environmental, self-reflective, and artistic relevance that are, as is characteristic of her work, ahead of her time. MARJORIE SKINNER
SIFF Film Center
Saturday only
Part of The Restless Curiosity of Agnès Varda

The Hottest August
It's August 2017 in New York City, and it feels like the end of the world. In this strikingly shot documentary, Brett Story explores the apocalyptic fears of the current zeitgeist, touching on everything from white nationalism to climate change-induced natural catastrophes. Sinister, beautiful, tense.
Northwest Film Forum & SIFF Film Center
Thursday–Sunday

Jezebel
In director Numa Perrier's semi-autobiographical feature debut, a young woman named Tiffany is drawn—by her own phone-sex-operator sister—into the world of camgirling. Tiffany, the only black performer on her site, becomes very popular, and perhaps too close to one of their clients. By all reports, this film treats its sexually charged subject matter with tension and sensitivity instead of prurience. Seattle's own erotic dance celebrity Ms. Briq House will speak after the screening about sex and body positivity.
Ark Lodge Cinemas
Thursday only

*Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Production Design, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Scarlett Johansson), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design

La Collectionneuse
A free-spirited "collector of men" named Haydée interrupts the vacations of a playboy art dealer and his painter friend in Eric Rohmer's witty comedy.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only

*Les Misérables
Suburban poverty and police violence provide a throughline from the 19th-century setting of Victor Hugo's novel to the Muslim populace of present-day Paris in Ladj Ly's critically acclaimed, Cannes Jury Prize-winning adaptation. In a suburb of Paris, Brigadier Stéphane Ruiz takes part in an arrest that turns deadly, and the neighborhood responds with fury to the act of police brutality.
Regal Meridian 16
Nominated for: Best International Picture

Lifeforce
In Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)'s campy space horror, a vessel returns to Earth with only one survivor, plus a troubling guest: an insanely hot alien-vampire capable of sucking life energy from every human she comes across. The surviving astronaut races against time—and zombies—to save the world from this fierce feminine menace. As the Beacon writes: "What is LIFEFORCE? The object of a constructed sexual desire manifested and returned to destroy its subject? An inversion of ALIEN that replaces fear of bodily violation in a feminist register with the fear of losing control of an ideal exploited Other that exists only in the mind? An apocalypse of secret queer desire protested too much?"
The Beacon
Friday only

*Little Women
I say this with my whole heart: Greta Gerwig's Little Women is wonderful. Full of wonder, inspiring wonder, embodying wonder. Which is hard to do as the eighth adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved 1868 novel of the same name. Gerwig's adaptation—which she both wrote and directed—feels neither redundant nor stale. Rather, it's a fresh, modern-feeling take on a well-trodden story, stuffed with excellent performances, witty dialogue, and gorgeous costumes. The film jumps between Jo's "present" life in a post-Civil War America and her childhood, living at home with her three other sisters and mother, awaiting the family patriarch to return home from the war as they struggle to make ends meet. The direction and sense of characters are particularly strong in this adaptation. It fleshes each sister out so that she feels real and worthy of empathy, not purely serving as a star vehicle for Ronan in the same way the Winona Ryder version arguably did. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Florence Pugh), Best Costumes, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay

Macross: Do You Remember Love
In this '80s space opera, a young pilot falls in love with a pop singer whose voice mysteriously appears on a long-ago recording. The song holds repercussions for the Earth's war with giant aliens.
The Beacon
Sunday only

*Marriage Story
As was the case in Noah Baumbach's Squid and the Whale, the specifics are aggressively upper class: Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is a big-deal actress, Charlie (Adam Driver) is an acclaimed theater director, and along with their young son Henry (Azhy Robertson), they spend much of Marriage Story at either a bougie apartment in Manhattan or a bougie house in West Hollywood. But once again, Baumbach—within the film's opening seconds, even—drills down to unearth the singular combination of grief, fury, melancholy, and pain that can only come from divorce. Marriage Story is brutal and sharp, but it's also funny and sweet, and captures something that's impossible to put into words: The feeling of life as it changes, and the feeling of stories as they come to an end. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Big Picture
Friday & Sunday
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Adam Driver), Best Actress (Scarlett Johansson), Best Supporting Actress (Laura Dern), Best Original Score

My Twentieth Century
This sensual, feminist Hungarian fable by the surrealist filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi follows two separated identical twins, Dóra and Lili, who wind up on wildly different paths: One becomes an honest anarchist, the other a glamorous jewel thief.
The Beacon
Thursday only

*Parasite
Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. It's a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies, though it's no less concerned with the state of society today. Set in Seoul, South Korea, the families and class issues at play reflect our global era, in which the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. Parasite follows the Kim family, who secretly scam their way into the lives of the wealthy Park family. Slowly and methodically, the Kims begin to drive out the other domestic workers at the Park residence, each time referring another family member (who they pretend not to know) for the vacant position. And so the poorer family starts to settle comfortably into the grift—until a sudden realization turns their lives upside down. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival, its essence echoed in the environments the characters inhabit. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (Bong Joon-ho), Best Film Editing, Best International Feature, Best Production Design, Best Original Screenplay

Property Is No Longer a Theft
An unhappy Marxist bank clerk who's literally allergic to money takes up a life of crime, partly in order to irritate a former client known as The Butcher. This bizarre crime comedy by the director of The 10th Victim and other cult favorites is new to American screens—"perhaps because it's just so utterly weird," speculates the Beacon Cinema.
The Beacon
Sunday only

Queen of Hearts
This dark tale, Denmark's submission to the Oscars, does nothing to dispel the image of Denmark's national cinema as ultra-bleak and morally challenging. An apparently upright married lawyer, Anne, becomes attracted to her husband's difficult teenage son. As one compromise follows another, Anne draws her stepson into an increasingly dangerous situation that threatens the whole family. Robert Abele of the LA Times writes: "The tricky brilliance of Queen of Hearts is in how [director May] el-Toukhy uses a well-worn narrative—the unsuspecting, hidden passion with the appearance of erotic freedom—to unveil what in reality is a poisonous tale of abuse."
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday

Raw
The French make everything look delicious... including cannibalism, which happens to be the case in the wonderfully disgusting Raw. It’s a coming-of-cannibal tale by Julia Ducournau that’s as atmospheric as Let the Right One In, as dark as the 2007’s under-seen vagina dentata saga Teeth, and a Bildungsroman that makes The Hunger Games look like a tiptoe down the candy aisle. Bloody, stylish, and incredibly disturbing, Raw is a meaty piece of body horror about a virginal vegetarian who’s gagging for some sweet human flesh—figuratively and literally. COURTNEY FERGUSON
Scarecrow Video
Friday only

Spies in Disguise
I thought Spies in Disguise was very excellent. The plot device of someone turning into a pigeon through genetic manipulation was unique, to say the least. I think it may have been a little too complicated for some younger kids who may have been the target audience. I think some of it may have gone completely over their heads. Although that might not be true in any way. I’m almost definitely sure there’s going to be a second one of these. SIMON HAM, AGE 12
AMC Pacific Place & Thornton Place
Thursday only

*Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
I found The Rise of Skywalker, the last film in the Skywalker saga, boring. And it was not even a long movie, and I'm a fan of the director's (J.J. Abrams) work (particularly Mission: Impossible III—the best in that franchise), and many of the visual effects are impressive—particularly the haunting business of bringing the late Carrie Fisher back to life. But all together, the film is burdened by too much sentimental family stuff (you are my granddaughter, you are my son, you killed my parents, and so on), and its end did not know how to end for a very long time. CHARLES MUDEDE
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing

Vanishing Seattle Film Series Launch: Wa Na Wari
Over the last few decades, small businesses, family-owned restaurants, and other community-run spaces have been forced to shut down due to the immense amount of gentrification our city is going through. In 2016, activist Cynthia Brothers began Vanishing Seattle, a project that documents these places, acting as a space of remembrance and celebration of the communities that make Seattle special. The site is now embarking on a short-film series, the first one of which documents Wa Na Wari, a fifth generation black-owned home in the Central District that opened last year as a space for Black arts in the historically Black neighborhood. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Wa Na Wari
Thursday only

The Wave
If The Hangover took a hit of LSD and melted into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, then tripped into the space-time continuum, hitting A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life on its way down, you’d get something like The Wave. Justin Long stars as Frank, a corporate lawyer who is about to make a big chunk of change for his firm after finding a discrepancy in an insurance claim. It doesn’t take much for his friend and colleague Jeff (Donald Faison) to talk him into enjoying a (Tuesday) night out on the town. Of course, it’s not long before he ingests a drug that’s supposed to hit you “like a wave.” Instead, he wakes up in the same spot, finds his world has been turned upside down, and must retrace his steps from the night before in order to figure out what happened. There’s nothing really fresh in the premise, but throw in some existential ideas about karma and time, then add in some high-quality hallucinogenic camerawork, vibrant visuals, rotoscope animation, believable (and occasionally clever) dialogue, and a few over-the-top characters, and you’ve got yourself an entertaining 87 minutes. LEILANI POLK
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday

When Lambs Become Lions
Many of the reviews of the brilliant documentary When Lambs Become Lions—about elephant poaching in modern-day Kenya—will claim that the director, John Kasbe, does not take sides on the issue. The director hunts elephants with the poachers, and he patrols the park with the armed game rangers. The poachers don’t give a fuck about the elephants. They are poor, and they need the money. The rangers also need money, as they have not been paid in ages by the government. And it is here that the director takes a clear side, his film clearly denounces the extreme poverty that both the poachers and the rangers face. If the poachers stop killing elephants, then the rangers will lose their jobs. Therefore, we have the poachers exploiting the elephants, and the rangers exploiting the poachers. The problem then is not the poaching; it is, of course, capitalism. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain
Plunge into the wild world of '80s Hong Kong action movies in Tsui Hark's kid flick full of "flying swordsmen, ice maidens, wizard monks and the infamous Blood Demon," plus lots of lasers.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Also Playing:

The Grudge

Reality Queen

Three Christs

Underwater

In Weathering with You, Boy Meets Girl, Girl Crashes the Weather System

Suzette Smith — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 16:19:40 -0800

by Suzette Smith GKIDS
Weathering with You, the new animated feature from Your Name director Makoto Shinkai, starts out with a story I’d like to see more often: 16-year-old Hodaka Morishima runs away from home and spends a period of time living in capsule hotels and paying for showers before eventually sleeping on the Tokyo streets.

His savings dwindle as he desperately searches for a job. Eventually and by happenstance, Hodoka is hired by a small, sketchy tabloid magazine editor who lets him live in a basement office and pays him for chasing stories of UFOs and other supernatural phenomena.

It all falls somewhere between scary and gritty (running away is something people actually do) and the typically rose-colored view of anime (Hodoka’s office is situated on a beautiful sloped street, and no one’s moped breaks down).

And as it begins, Shinkai’s film boasts an intimacy that heightens both the fear and the satisfaction of a small, mundane solution becoming its own adventure.

So it’s kind of disappointing when Weathering with You sinks into the inevitable magical and science-fiction elements that audiences are bound to encounter in a Shinkai film. Then again, 2016’s Your Name became the highest grossing anime in the world, and the second-highest grossing anime film in Japan, right behind Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.

Audiences seem to love Shinkai’s approach of pairing an original plot with standard anime emotional blocking: boy meets girl, girl has weather powers, boy and girl reach for each another’s arms in climactic moments, a character runs until they are exhausted and then they keep running, and also someone must die.

Even when Shinkai introduces some interesting ideas about an impending climate apocalypse (oh, like us!), it all feels familiar: The world isn’t saved, but the world doesn’t end. The world continues, changed.

Find theaters and showtimes for Weathering with You here. See all of our movie times here.

36 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: January 9–12, 2020

Charles Mudede — Thu, 09 Jan 2020 13:17:00 -0800

Just Mercy, My Twentieth Century, The Hottest August, and Other Critics' Picks by Charles Mudede

Traditionally, January is not an auspicious month for film releases—but as you can see in this list, Seattle is still swimming in cinematic brilliance. Watch Michael B. Jordan in the based-on-a-true-story Just Mercy, see Audrey Hepburn's Oscar-winning turn in Roman Holiday, or witness the brilliance of the poaching documentary When Lambs Become Lions. See all of our film critics’ picks for this weekend below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings. In the South Sound? Check out our guide to movies playing in Tacoma this weekend.

Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise mentioned.

American Psycho
Based on the much-reviled book by Bret Easton Ellis, the movie is actually pretty good. Really. Set at the height of the Reagan '80s, American Psycho deftly satirizes the deadening effect of unchecked corporate wealth and power. ANDY SPLETZER
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Bombshell
When Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Margot Robbie all link up, what have you got? Well, a sizeable chunk of the Fox Newsroom, as it turns out. In this movie adapted from real-life events, Bombshell follows three women who accused late Fox founder and CEO Roger Ailes of sexual harassment, and the fallout when their accusations are made public. Kidman portrays former Fox host Gretchen Carlson, Robbie plays a fictionalized producer, and Theron seemingly fully transforms into Megyn Kelly. Announced in the months following Ailes’s death, the film will explore the toxic environment brewing over at the president’s favorite news channel. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations

Cats
Some people will never be able to enjoy a sung-through musical. Know going in that there is very little dialogue. Think of it as an opera that purrs. Many will also find humanoid cats with "digital fur technology" to be too freaky or sexy. I think this opinion is very suburban, even a tad snowflake-y, but also completely within reason. Andrew Lloyd Webber himself said Cats was a “suicidally stupid musical.” No one is under any illusion that this is Dunkirk. So, before you go and see Cats, which you should and will, I want you to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself: "What do I want from Cats?" Because I bet you will get exactly what you want. Or, perhaps, deserve. There continues to be a lot of pearl-clutching from critics and trailer-viewers around these kitties' bodies, and their lack of genitalia and buttholes, but I think these animated fur-bodies are respectfully similar to the stage musical's fur-bodies—except for one distinct, erect difference: their tails. Jason Derulo did not need to worry about his penis being erased in Cats' post-production, because his tail leaves little to the imagination. CHASE BURNS
Meridian 16 & AMC Pacific Place

Days of Heaven
Days of Heaven, which stars a young Richard Gere, is by far Terrence Malick’s best film. It’s also his second feature, was shot in the mid-1970s, and released in 1978. The film’s story is not worth mentioning, but its cinematography (Néstor Almendros Cuyás and Haskell Wexler) is just out of this world. After completing his masterpiece, which followed his first and second-best work, Badlands by five years, Malick did not make another film for two decades. His point of return was The Thin Red Line (1998), which is unwatchable. Malick has since made eight more films, none of which are any good. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Film Center

Duet for Cannibals
The great Susan Sontag, best known for her philosophical essays and fiction, also directed four films, the first of which was this Swedish-made dark comedy about partner-swapping intellectuals. When a German revolutionary instructs his young male student/secretary to keep his wife "company," it kicks off a round of dangerous romantic/sexual competition. It's screened here in a 2K restoration.
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday–Sunday

Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Meridian 16

Frozen II
It starts out with Young Elsa and Young Anna, and, I don’t know, this is just my opinion, but I didn’t think that part was very necessary, necessarily? I thought the story was good. I thought the parts were well thought out and they had some depth to them, if you know what I mean? Like some parts were really sad, and some parts could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. Also, you know how in the first Frozen, there’s like this main song that you know is the main song? In this one, there’s like three or four different songs that could be that main song. There were songs that like Elsa and Anna and Kristoff sang that could qualify for that position. I thought they were fine. SIMON HAM, AGE 12
Various locations

Fuselage Dance Film Festival: Winter Program
This program boasts short films of dancers in natural and interior settings around the world, from Seattle to South Korea to Ireland. They explore loneliness, isolation, memory, attachment, and other poignant emotions.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday only

Gunbuster
This was the directorial debut of Hideaki Anno, the creator of Neon Genesis Evangelion. A young girl enters the Okinawa Girls Space Pilot High School, hoping for revenge against the alien forces that killed her father.
The Beacon
Sunday only

Hecklevision: Tammy and the T-Rex
Denise Richards and Paul Walker star in this 1994 comedy, in which cheerleader Tammy (Richards) discovers that the brain of her boyfriend (Walker) has been transplanted into the body of a robotic tyrannosaur. You should see this movie because it's ridiculous and terrible and you need your brain flash-evaporated once in awhile. (Also, it's in "Hecklevision," which allows you to text snarky comments to the screen.) JOULE ZELMAN
Central Cinema
Thursday only

A Hidden Life
The first half of Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life stacks up with some of the best work the legendary filmmaker has ever done—right up there with Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line, and Tree of Life. The second half, though, feels a lot more like... uh, what's the term for Malick's more recent movies, like Knight of Cups, and that one about music, and that one with Ben Affleck? Nü-Malick? Let's go with nü-Malick. Nü-Malick movies aren't bad—even at their worst, they're generally better than many arthouse efforts, and there's never a shortage of the director's striking soundscapes and achingly beautiful visuals—but compared to Malick's best stuff, they rarely compare. (To be fair: Not many movies can.) Which is what makes A Hidden Life so frustrating: For a good chunk, it is that good, and then for another chunk, it's not. And it'd be a lot easier to justify the second half's nü-ness if A Hidden Life wasn't three hours long. ERIK HENRIKSEN
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

Ip Man 4
In the finale to the Ip Man saga, the Wing Chun genius and his son fly to San Francisco to settle a feud and mentor the young Bruce Lee. There, he discovers that homegrown American classic: brutal xenophobia. Watch those thrilling fight scenes as Ip Man battles disgruntled kung fu masters and bigoted policemen.
AMC Pacific Place & Regal Thornton Place

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Pacific Place

Literary Nerd Hour: Z-Sides Screening and Quiz Show
Obsessed with local literature? Turn to this televised program run by Jekeva Phillips, a wildly talented and active figure in Seattle's theater and literature scenes. Watch a screening of the bibliophilic Z-Sides, featuring readings and conversations with PNW writers, and then compete in a quiz game (with prizes!).
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

Little Women
I loved Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird so much that I went into Little Women with trepidation. Making a follow-up to a movie everyone loved is tricky! And every hater on my block asked why we needed another Little Women movie when the 1995 version is “perfectly fine” and “has Winona Ryder in it.” The answer: You don’t know how good you can have it! You don’t know how good Little Women can be, you poor fools! Gerwig’s Little Women is Romance-era-oil-painting gorgeous, but it’s also realistic, thanks to the performances of the film’s star-studded cast of March sisters: Saoirse Ronan as Jo, Emma Watson as Meg, Florence Pugh as Amy, and Eliza Scanlen as Beth. Directing her actors to talk over each other, Gerwig turns family scenes into rampaging rivers of voices, while also making sure nothing is lost in the chaos. We see the Marches as we see many families: A force bursting into a room. Laura Dern—for the first time in cinematic history—gives the girls’ mother a full personality. And when the girls’ father turned out to be universally beloved Bob Odenkirk (!) my friend straight-up punched me in the arm because she was already crying and couldn’t talk. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

Midnight Family
Both responding to a social need and out to make a buck, extralegal ambulance companies are essential in Mexico City, which only has 45 official ambulances. The Ochoa family strives to serve patients and stay afloat in the face of a corrupt police force.
Northwest Film Forum & AMC Pacific Place
Thursday only

One Sings, the Other Doesn't
When you think of Serious French Cinema, as embodied by Major French Filmmaker Agnès Varda (Faces Places, The Gleaners and I), you might not think of a joyful hippie musical about abortion, marriage, and sisterhood. Yet this 1977 Belgian-Venezuelan-French co-production is exactly that.
SIFF Film Center
Saturday only
Part of The Restless Curiosity of Agnès Varda

Pauline at the Beach
This, for me, is the core pleasure of French director Eric Rohmer's cinema: the movement of (usually two) actors during a long (and usually heady) discussion. For example: As a man says something philosophical about love to a woman, he walks to a huge nearby rock and puts a hand on it; as the woman responds by saying something about how his ideas about love are self-serving, she steps away from the man and looks at some trees in the distance. The flow of words is sequenced with the motion of bodies. Rohmer also manages to keep these movements as realistic as possible. They never overflow from the zone between natural and artificial, walking and dancing. The art of this great French director, who died in 2010, is the ballet of a conversation. SAM and Alliance Francaise de Seattle are celebrating his centennial during a nine-film series. CHARLES MUDEDE
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Part of French Pleasures: The Films of Eric Rohmer

Roman Holiday
A sprightly young Audrey Hepburn and a charming (if slightly wooden) scooter-riding Gregory Peck make an odd pairing in this classic rom-com from '53. Hepburn won a Best Actress Oscar for this performance, which was also her first starring role.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Set It Off
In Set It Off, four black women are squeezed into crime. One loses a job and her only way out of the ghetto; another loses her child to the state because she cannot afford childcare while she works for low wages; another is battling to keep her brother off the streets and on the path to college; another wants to buy the freedom to express her love for a woman (the last is convincingly played by Queen Latifah). These are not bad people. Their transformation from law-abiding citizens to villains is not simple, but accumulative. The numerous steps leading to their crime spree are clear and understandable. Indeed, the best and most touching scene in the movie happens right after they rob a bank for the first time and are splitting the loot. One of them (Tisean—the woman who has lost her child to social services) is told by another (Frankie—the woman who recently lost her good job over bullshit) that she doesn't deserve a cut because she got cold feet before the heist and split. But pressure from the other two women makes Frankie submit and agree to give Tisean her undeserved cut. At the end of the day, she is one of them. If that scene does not make you feel all warm inside, you are a monster. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday

Tangerine
Feydeau in the neighborhood, this film has all the elements of classic farce, the prisoner just out of jail, the best friend, the faithless husband, the cheating boyfriend, the mother-in-law from hell - but played at an entirely different pace, and with characters who radiate truth and immediacy. BARLEY BLAIR
Scarecrow Video
Friday only

Tremors (Temblores)
Not to be confused with the 1990 film about giant tunneling worms. Jayro Bustamante, Guatemalan director of the critically acclaimed Ixcanul, returns with the story of Pablo, a beloved member of a rich Evangelical family who turns their lives upside down when he leaves his wife for another man. But the homophobic family is not about to give up their father/son/husband so easily—even if their efforts to keep him in their religious community ruin his life. Carlos Aguilar of TheWrap.com writes that "the film isn’t kindly asking for tolerance but bluntly exposing the torment inflicted in the name of a prejudiced God."
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Varda by Agnes
The important French director Agnès Varda, whose career spanned the 1950s to the 2010s, made one last film before her death in 2019 in which she traced the course of her life and career.
SIFF Film Center
Part of The Restless Curiosity of Agnès Varda

Also Playing:

The Grudge

Like a Boss

Underwater

43 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: January 2–5, 2020

Charles Mudede — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 13:52:00 -0800

Golden Globes Nominees, Babylon, Tremors, and Other Critics' Picks by Charles Mudede

This weekend, it's a perfect time to look back on the best films of the year, including Golden Globe nominees (which we've noted below) like Parasite and Knives Out, acclaimed documentaries like The Biggest Little Farm, and recently restored masterpieces like Babylon. Plus, don't miss new releases like Tremors (Temblores). See all of our film critics’ picks for this weekend below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise mentioned.

Advocate
This documentary is a personal portrait of Lea Tsemel, a Jewish Israeli lawyer who has spent her career defending Palestinians in court. For her dogged human rights advocacy, she has been cast as a villain by right-wing Jewish Israeli factions.
AMC Pacific Place

American Factory
This feature-length documentary is the first work to emerge from Netflix’s partnership with the Obamas. The former president and his wife have a company, Higher Ground Productions, that finds and/or produces content for the California-based media distributor. American Factory is just amazing. It concerns a Chinese corporation, Fuyao Glass, that opened in Moraine, Ohio, a factory that makes glass for vehicles. The plant was abandoned by General Motors during the crash of 2008. In the Obama-produced doc, we not only see the comic and tragic clashes of two very different labor and management cultures, but a process that is actively shaping the world today. This is the American factory of tomorrow: lower wages, less benefits, higher production, no unions. Nevertheless, many of the American employees are just happy to have a job. As wages in China go up, wages in the US are going down. CHARLES MUDEDE
AMC Pacific Place
Friday only

The Apollo
For 85 years, Harlem’s Apollo Theater has essentially been a mecca for black American culture. So it makes perfect sense for a filmmaker of the stature of Roger Ross Williams (God Loves Uganda) to shoot a documentary about the 1,500-capacity palace, which has showcased the zenith of black musicians, comedians, and writers. From James Brown’s immortal 1963 Live at the Apollo LP to performances by Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, Richard Pryor, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, this venue has been an incubator and crucible for integral black expression in myriad forms. It’s past time to revel in the Apollo’s fascinating story. DAVE SEGAL
AMC Pacific Place
Sunday only

Apollo 11
Todd Miller's superbly edited new documentary on the Apollo 11 mission, which put Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the moon (and sent Michael Collins around its dark side), adds no narration or talking heads, other than contemporaneous sources. Although you know how things turned out, you're plunged into the suspense of the moment, when even the slightest miscalculation could have doomed the astronauts to a lonely or fiery death. Listen to that amazing sound design! JOULE ZELMAN
AMC Pacific Place
Saturday only

Aquarela
Movies are expensive, and going to theaters can be a pain, and “It’s a documentary... about water!” isn't the most rousing tagline—but Aquarela is worth every bit of effort to see on the biggest screen and with the loudest sound. Ranging from Russia to Miami to Venezuela, director Viktor Kossakovsky’s gorgeous, jarring film captures stunning sights and sounds: Massive, cracking icebergs lurch like breaching leviathans. Intricate blades of glacial ice slice the sky. Wind and rain whip through a devastated ghost-city, a hurricane screaming as Aquarela's camera cruises calmly through abandoned streets. Sailors are thrown by storms; flailing men plummet through ice; waves that seem the size of planets loom and loom and loom before exploding into chaos. The music, courtesy of Apocalyptica’s Eicca Toppinin, is thick with shuddering guitar riffs, underscoring Kossakovsky’s eye-widening, stomach-churning reminder of how, in comparison to a natural force like this one, the accomplishments and failures of humankind are laughably small and pathetically meaningless. Unspoken in Aquarela, but lurking behind each image, is another reminder: That, as we hurtle toward a changed climate, the water around us remains as beautiful and lethal as ever—and just as indifferent to our frail attempts to constrain it. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Pacific Place
Saturday only

Babylon
Set in Brixton (which is to London what Harlem is to New York City), starring Rasta singer Brinsley Forde (the frontman of reggae band Aswad), and cowritten by Martin Stallman (who also wrote 1979 UK cult favorite Quadrophenia), Babylon is a feature-length outing about black life, black music, and black struggles in early 1980s Britain. The economy is in the toilet, Margaret Thatcher has begun her assault on labor, and city after city is becoming what the Specials classically described as "a ghost town." The film is simply amazing. Every minute is rich with cultural information of a period and milieu that's rarely seen on film. Babylon also has a dub score that's dark, crackly, and deep. Those echoes, those old Brixton buildings, the dreads, the factory smoke, the street markets, the old ladies, the thick accents—all of this and more is just utterly wonderful. CHARLES MUDEDE
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
It’s unusual to witness real cinematic magic these days, but the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood absolutely has it. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) wisely avoids the visual slickness one might expect from a Tom Hanks-centric melodrama, instead employing a lived-in style and scene transitions that consist of miniature cities harkening back to the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hanks is totally committed to Rogers’ appearance and manner, but A Beautiful Day is more about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a fictional journalist profiling Rogers. (Vogel’s work is based on a 1998 Esquire profile by Tom Junod; as is the case with the film, Junrod’s piece sketches a beautiful yet enigmatic image of Rogers.) Where Heller’s film becomes transcendent is in its cinematic pressure points: The striking slowness of the narrative (it’s meant to emulate the pace of Rogers’ show, and you get used to it), the mirroring of Rogers and Vogel in their interview styles and drawn-out reaction shots, and a profound moment of silence that grips your heart like, “Did that really just happen? Why was that so intense?” SUZETTE SMITH
Varsity Theatre & Thornton Place
Nominated for: Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Tom Hanks)

The Biggest Little Farm
Skeptics might wonder whether a 90-minute documentary on farming is better used as insomnia remedy than a night out at the movies, but John Chester's gorgeous film has been snatching up audience choice and best film awards all over the place. He and his wife, Molly, spent eight years striving to create a farm in California that was perfectly in accord with nature—despite drought, poor soil, and wildfires. Ultimately, they have to accept that they're not in control of nature and life. Come for the lovely footage of wildlife and farm animals, stay for the inspiration to fight for sustainability.
AMC Pacific Place
Sunday only

Cléo from 5 to 7
Agnès Varda's 1961 film tells the story of two hours in the life of a pop star, Cléo, as she waits to hear the results of an ominous medical test. It's a classic piece from the Left Bank of the French New Wave.
SIFF Film Center
Saturday only
Part of The Restless Curiosity of Agnès Varda

The Edge of Democracy
Petra Costa's sobering documentary tracks the Brazilian regimes of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff as they dissolve in a divided country, creating a void that fascism fills.
AMC Pacific Place
Sunday only

For Sama
This heartbreaking film by documentarists Waad Al-Khateab and Edward Watts chronicles young mother Al-Khateab's experiences in Aleppo during five years of the Syrian Civil War. For Sama was awarded the Prix L’Œil d’Or for Best Documentary at Cannes, among other prestigious prizes.
AMC Pacific Place
Friday only

Good Time
This high-octane and gritty Josh and Benny Safdie brothers-directed movie will make you a believer in Robert Pattinson again. In Good Time, the British actor plays Connie, a New Yorker who takes his brother with special needs, Nick (played by Benny Safdie), out of care and convinces him to assist in a bank robbery. When the plan goes left and Nick ends up in jail, Connie finds himself increasingly desperate to get the funds in order to get his brother out of prison. This nervy, thrilling film will have you at the edge of your seat with its high-stakes plotting and Pattinson’s fantastic and believable performance. JASMYNE KEIMIG
The Beacon
Friday–Saturday

The Great Hack
Find out how Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have been using big data to sway elections and stoke political and social conflict.
AMC Pacific Place
Saturday only

The Hunger
Nothing beats the dark magic of seeing Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie and pre-Bernie-bonkers Susan Sarandon on a movie screen, nothing beats watching this erotic trio in the company of strangers. And then there is the beat of Bauhaus's gothic dub "Bela Lugosi's Dead." Are you feeling me? This is the 1980s in a state that's close to perfection. CHARLES MUDEDE
Central Cinema

It's a Wonderful Life
Shortly after It's a Wonderful Life's 1946 release, James Agee, one of the few American film critics of that era still worth reading, noted the film's grueling aspect. "Often," he wrote, "in its pile-driving emotional exuberance, it outrages, insults, or at least accosts without introduction, the cooler and more responsible parts of the mind." These aesthetic cautions are followed, however, by a telling addendum: "It is nevertheless recommended," Agee allowed, "and will be reviewed at length as soon as the paralyzing joys of the season permit." Paralyzing joys are the very heart of George Bailey's dilemma; they are, to borrow words from George's father, "deep in the race." The sacrifices George makes for being "the richest man in town" resonate bitterly even as they lead to the finale's effusive payoff. Those sacrifices are what make It's a Wonderful Life, in all its "Capraesque" glory, endure. SEAN NELSON
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Pacific Place
Nominated for: Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy; Best Performance by an Actor - Comedy or Musical (Roman Griffin Davis), Best Screenplay (Steven Zaillian)

Judy
A biopic about the last months of famed entertainer and Wizard of Oz star Judy Garland, Judy features an uncanny, spot-on performance from Reneé Zellwegger that’s unfortunately paired with a script that veers from affecting to eye-rollingly ham-fisted. Bouncing back and forth from Judy’s famed London Palladium gigs six months before her death and her childhood that was crushed under the abusive thumb of Louis B. Mayer while filming The Wizard of Oz, Zellwegger gives an honest, raw performance that lays bare Garland’s crippling depression and addiction. However her valiant attempts at subtlety are betrayed by a shallow script that relies too heavily on emotional manipulation. That aside, Zellwegger’s gloriously accurate hair and makeup is almost reason enough to see this film, and when she belts out “The Trolley Song,” you'll long for the days when consummate pros like Garland pushed past their personal demons to bring audiences to their feet. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Crest
Thursday only
Best Performance by an Actress — Drama (Renée Zellweger)

Labyrinth
It’s the film that introduced the public to the yet-to-be-fully-dismissed theory that David Bowie is, in fact, a Jim Henson creation.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Maiden
With all the depressing sexist crap going on in the world, you deserve an inspiring pick-me-up, and what better than a documentary on Tracy Edwards, the former charter boat cook who led the first all-female crew on the Whitbread Round the World voyage in 1989? By nearly all accounts, Maiden is a thrilling tribute to ambition and comradeship, a great contribution to the sports doc genre.
AMC Pacific Place
Friday only

One Child Nation
Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang's documentary takes a first-person look—namely, Wang's—at China's now-discontinued policy of requiring that parents only have one child. Revisiting China, Wang tracks down others who, like herself and her parents, remember what it was like to live under the decree. One Child Nation doesn't shy away from brutal realities: Xianwen Liu, a former "family planning propaganda official," clangs cymbals as he remembers the opera he wrote extolling the virtues of the one-child policy; Huaru Yuan, a now-84-year-old midwife who helped deliver Wang, estimates that in two decades of traveling to various villages, she particiapted in "between 50,000 to 60,000 sterilizations and abortions." "I counted all of this out of guilt because I aborted and killed babies," she tells Wang. "Many I induced alive and killed. My hands trembled doing it. But I had no choice: It was the government's policy."
AMC Pacific Place
Saturday only

Queen & Slim
Queen & Slim may be the best—and is almost certainly the Blackest—film of 2019, and is perhaps most poignant for its gorgeous, complex, and multifaceted portrayal of the Black experience, where sparks of joy and love exist alongside pain, struggle, and oppression. One of the reasons director Melina Matsoukas and screenwriter Lena Waithe's made the film with Universal Pictures was their guarantee that Matsoukas and Waithe would have say over the final cut—a choice Waithe says was to ensure the film wasn’t influenced whatsoever by the white gaze. They only did one test screening, with an all-Black audience; the result is a new American romance/drama written in the Black American language, told via a fully Black lens, and including a diverse array of characters who show that Black people are not a monolith. While there are definitely triggering parts (I cried twice), I also laughed a lot and, like many of the film’s characters, I genuinely enjoyed rooting for the criminalized, on-the-run protagonists. For 48 hours after seeing this movie, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. JENNI MOORE
Meridian 16

Richard Jewell
Clint Eastwood directs this based-on-a-true-story movie about an amateur security officer who, despite his heroic actions saving lives at the Olympics, is accused of terrorism. It's being called "a decent portrait of an injustice" (Gary M. Kramer, Salon.com) and "the most Clint Eastwood-y Clint Eastwood movie imaginable" (Bill Goodykoontz, the Arizona Republic), but has been marred by its false portrayal of a real-life journalist, Kathy Scruggs, as a devious and sexually manipulative woman, notably showing her offering to trade sex for a news tip. Scruggs is dead and can't defend herself. Not cool. JOULE ZELMAN
Various locations
Nominated for: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role (Kathy Bates)

Tremors (Temblores)
Not to be confused with the 1990 film about giant tunneling worms. Jayro Bustamante, Guatemalan director of the critically acclaimed Ixcanul, returns with the story of Pablo, a beloved member of a rich Evangelical family who turns their lives upside down when he leaves his wife for another man. But the homophobic family is not about to give up their father/son/husband so easily—even if their efforts to keep him in their religious community ruin life his. Carlos Aguilar of TheWrap.Com writes that "the film isn’t kindly asking for tolerance but bluntly exposing the torment inflicted in the name of a prejudiced God."
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday

Vagabond
In Agnès Varda's bleak story starring the brilliant Sandrine Bonnaire (who won a French Oscar for her performance), a ferociously independent woman wanders through French wine country in winter, slowing approaching a lonely death.
SIFF Film Center
Sunday only
Part of The Restless Curiosity of Agnès Varda

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
Cinephiles will be interested in this documentary about the much-debated film critic Pauline Kael, who is both inspiring (she had to fight to be heard in a male-dominated trade) and irritating (she could be deeply contrarian). It features interviews with the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, Quentin Tarantino, Camille Paglia, Molly Haskell, David O. Russell, Alec Baldwin, and Paul Schrader.
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday

Also Playing:

Downtown Abbey

The Grudge

Motherless Brooklyn

43 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle Over the Holidays: Dec 19–31, 2019

Brendan Kiley — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 13:48:00 -0800

Little Women, Uncut Gems, Cats (?!), and Other Movies Worth Watching by Brendan Kiley

Whether you're looking for something to watch with family or a place to hide out from the season's festivities (and early darkness) for a few hours, the holidays are a great time to take in a movie (or three). Our digital editor, Chase Burns, loved the furry freaks in Cats. He was, it seems, one of the very few critics with any affection for those horny humanimals (Portland Mercury critic Suzette Smith: "Cats is a horrorshow of computer-narrowed cat chins that can’t support singing, human-sized mouths"). Perhaps you'll feel the same way as Chase? Regardless, you should not miss Greta Gerwig's lovely Little Women and the Safdie brothers' harrowing Uncut Gems. (On the other hand, film critic Charles Mudede brands The Rise of Skywalker as "boring.") It's also a great time to see one-offs like Ingmar Bergman's glorious Fanny & Alexander or Norman Jewison's Fiddler on the Roof, or to catch up on Golden Globe nominees like Knives Out. See all of our film critics’ picks for the next week and a half below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

PLAYING CONTINUOUSLY

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Pacific Place

Only Cloud Knows
If you're feeling like a sticky-sweet, emotional, and perhaps rather manipulative romance about a widower looking back on his relationship, Xiaogang Feng's drama is for you.
Regal Meridian & AMC Seattle 10

THURS DEC 19

Beasts of the Southern Wild
Beasts of the Southern Wild—an emotionally and visually gorgeous film that’s full of newcomers, from its director, Benh Zeitlin, to its tiny star, Quvenzhané Wallis—is set in the Bathtub, a modern-day Southern swamp community populated with eccentrics who drink together, play music together, paddle boats made from household appliances and spare lumber, and throw boisterous parties, and where 6-year-old Hushpuppy (Wallis) lives with her father. When the inevitable big storm comes, the residents have to fight nature and forced community-shattering evacuations by the government. The film smartly and delicately blends reality with fantasy, tracking Hushpuppy’s childlike way of seeing and coping with her world as it breaks apart. BRENDAN KILEY
Northwest African American Museum

Marriage Story
In 2005, Noah Baumbach wrote and directed The Squid and the Whale, a movie that dug deep into what it feels like to be a kid in a family that's pulled itself past its breaking point. Almost 15 years later, Baumbach's written and directed Marriage Story, a movie that digs deep into what it feels like to be a husband and a wife in a family that's pulling itself past its breaking point. As was the case in Squid and the Whale, the specifics are aggressively upper class: Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) is a big-deal actress, Charlie (Adam Driver) is an acclaimed theater director, and along with their young son Henry (Azhy Robertson), they spend much of Marriage Story at either a bougie apartment in Manhattan or a bougie house in West Hollywood. But once again, Baumbach—within the film's opening seconds, even—drills down to unearth the singular combination of grief, fury, melancholy, and pain that can only come from divorce. Marriage Story is brutal and sharp, but it's also funny and sweet, and captures something that's impossible to put into words: The feeling of life as it changes, and the feeling of stories as they come to an end. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest

A Smoky Mountain Christmas
We can't really beat the Beacon Cinema's description and we're not going to try: "This movie is about how easy it is to adopt 27 children. It stars Dolly Parton as a country rock star who is sick of all the Hollywood headaches. Lee Majors plays a forest demon who will stop at nothing to win the hearts of those around him. There's a real witch with huge 80s hair who spills everybody’s glass of milk, and wants to kill Dolly Parton. And John Ritter is the best judge in the world."
The Beacon

DEC 19–23

Elf
In which Will Ferrell plays a grown man who has spent his entire life laboring under the delusion that he's one of Santa's elves. The side effects of this include a deeply ingrained sense of whimsy and a proclivity for concentrated sugars. Zooey Deschanel sings.
Scarecrow Video (Dec 19 only) & Central Cinema

FRI DEC 20

Krampus
Krampus operates like a feature-length Twilight Zone episode: Take some lightly sketched stock characters (Adam Scott as drinky dad, Toni Collette as uptight mom, David Koechner as Randy Quaid), thrust them into slowly escalating supernatural peril, and watch the dramatic gears grind out a morbidly satisfying conclusion. While it lacks the zany spark that animates Gremlins or the deconstructionist bent of something like Cabin in the Woods, Krampus is a solid exercise in form and function. Also, the creature designs are super creepy (and mostly teeth). If you see one movie this winter about a goat-hoofed anti-Santa, make it Krampus. BEN COLEMAN
Scarecrow Video

OPENING DEC 20

DEC 20–21 & 24

Carol
Carol is set in the 1950s, which was not a great time for gay people getting to live the lives they actually deserved. That makes it all the more remarkable that the film doesn't punish its characters by dooming them to misery or early death, like most of the nonhetero narratives Hollywood offers up. If creativity thrives within limits, Carol makes a pretty good case that love can, too—although it certainly shouldn't have to. ALISON HALLETT
The Beacon

DEC 20 & 24

A Very Beacon Christmas
The Beacon will present an evening of Christmas-themed animated films, from stop-motion to hand-drawn to puppets.
The Beacon

SAT DEC 21

The Beacon Holiday Party + Mystery Movie
Celebrate the Beacon's five months of existence (with 203 movies screened!) at this free party featuring a special surprise movie.
The Beacon

DEC 21 & 23

The Dybbuk
The last film in the Beacon's The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema series, The Dybbuk is a 1937 supernatural drama based on the early 20th-century play of the same name. A young woman is possessed by the soul of a kabbalah student with whom she fell in love before his death. Filmed in Warsaw and Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, The Dybbuk draws on German Expressionist influences to create some truly spooky imagery.
The Beacon

Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
For fans of Russian folklore and wintry witchcraft, this fantasy by the director of Viy — Spirit of Evil stars a flying witch, a moon-stealing devil, and a lovelorn blacksmith. Also vodka. And snow.
The Beacon

SUN DEC 22

Everybody's Everything
This Terrence Malick-produced documentary focuses on Gustav Ahr, aka Lil Peep, a rising star just breaking into the mainstream when he died from an overdose at age 21.
Northwest Film Forum

Fanny & Alexander
In Ingmar Bergman’s breathtaking turn-of-last-century tale, the eponymous siblings grow up in a loving and unorthodox household until their father, an easygoing man, dies young. Their mother remarries, making the mistake of choosing a martinet clergyman who clashes with the free-spirited children. This beautiful film, universally hailed as a masterpiece, captures the essence of childhood and its hunger for love, play, and autonomy in the face of authoritarianism. Also important to know: The version the Beacon's showing is five hours long. JOULE ZELMAN
The Beacon

Tokyo Godfathers
Three homeless friends—an alcoholic, a trans woman, and a teenager—find a lost baby in the trash and set out to find the child's parents in Satoshi Kon's weird and touching film about chosen family at the margins of the city.
The Beacon

THROUGH DEC 22

Celebration
We weren't supposed to see this documentary about Yves Saint Laurent. Director Olivier Meyrou's doc on the famed French fashion designer was filmed in the early 2000s, over the course of two and a half years, while Saint Laurent worked on his final collection. His longtime business partner (and former romantic partner) Pierre Bergé invited Meyrou to produce the doc, but when it premiered, Bergé was apparently shocked by what he saw. What Bergé didn't know was that the documentary would end up being less about Saint Laurent and more about him. Bergé appears as the central figure—the man behind the curtain, assisting and controlling Saint Laurent's hand. He tightly monitors every aspect of Saint Laurent's life, from his meetings with models to his birthday dinners. While Saint Laurent watches his garments move down the runway, the documentary's camera watches Bergé watch Saint Laurent. The New York Times reported that Bergé particularly did not like "the parent-child way the two interacted" in the film. It is not a flattering portrait. CHASE BURNS
Northwest Film Forum

DEC 22 & 24

Ghost Stories for Christmas
Much beloved among ghost story enthusiasts, the BBC's seasonal literary adaptations aimed to add a pleasurable chill to evenings around the telly. The Beacon is screening two favorites from the series: a screen version of M.R. James's terrifying Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad (the TV movie's a little less frightening than the story, but still plenty atmospheric) and one of Charles Dickens's thoroughly eerie, fatalistic The Signalman.
The Beacon

MON DEC 23

Black Christmas (1974)
The 1974 Christmas-themed flick starring Margot Kidder and Olivia Hussey, more or less regarded as the grandmother of the slasher film—and a surprisingly feminist one at that. Directed by the guy who made A Christmas Story. If you like the currently-playing remake—or even if you don't—check out the original.
The Beacon

THROUGH DEC 23

WED DEC 25

Fiddler on the Roof
Join SIFF’s holiday tradition of belting along with Tevye and family in Norman Jewison’s 1971 adaptation of the beloved musical. It’s a bittersweet story of a poor shtetl milkman as his daughters come of age and fall in love—and anti-Semitic feeling rises. Your ticket will include Chinese takeout from Leah’s Gourmet Kosher Food and pre-film klezmer music by Orkestyr Farfeleh.
SIFF Cinema Uptown

THROUGH DEC 25

The Two Popes
Popes Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) and Francis (Jonathan Pryce) argue over doctrine and politics in 2013 in this film by acclaimed director Fernando Meireilles (City of God).
Crest

DEC 27–28

Punch-Drunk Love
Director Paul Thomas Anderson, who is brilliant with visuals but a middling writer, teams up with Adam Sandler to create a decidedly wacked love story centered around anger, phone sex, pudding, and a harmonium. The result is a near-empty sonnet called Punch-Drunk Love, which, though vastly entertaining for the bulk of its lean 90-minute running time, immediately vaporizes upon exit of the theater. Co-starring Emily Watson and the always brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman, Punch-Drunk Love tells the confused story of Barry Egan (Sandler), a small-time business owner (his specialty: decorative toilet plungers) who is meek on the outside, but filled with gathering venom within. Enter Lena (Watson), who for some reason finds herself immediately attracted to Egan. Their blooming love is the pin upon which Punch-Drunk Love rotates, but, like everything Paul Thomas Anderson creates, there is oh so much more. Hence: phone-sex blackmail, frequent-flier miles via the purchase of pudding, and the aforementioned harmonium—a strange, beautiful piano/accordion-like hybrid that mysteriously appears in front of Sandler following a bizarre car wreck. BRADLEY STEINBACHER
The Beacon

DEC 27–31

My Neighbor Totoro
Hayao Miyazaki's famed Japanese animation film studio, Studio Ghibli, has been pointedly unstreamable in the US for forever. If fans wanted to watch beloved favorites like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, they had to either buy them or go see one of Ghibli's regular theatrical showings. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the entire Ghibli catalog will be available on the new streaming platform HBO Max in May. So, relish this chance to see My Neighbor Totoro in theaters. Opportunities like this may be rare in the future. CHASE BURNS
Central Cinema

SAT DEC 28

Female Trouble
I don’t know about you, but the saccharine nature of Christmas makes me want to lock obnoxious children up in an attic, rob a few stores, and fuck some drugged-out hippies. As luck would have it, John Waters’s Female Trouble is the Christmas movie that delivers all of these desires—along with murder, Divine jumping on a trampoline, and more murder. It’s a teen girl’s fantasy as envisioned by an acid-riddled homosexual in the 1970s. It’s also the best Christmas movie ever made—and if you don’t agree, you can go eat shit and die. CHASE BURNS
Scarecrow Video

TUES DEC 31

Moulin Rouge!
SIFF will continue its tradition of ringing in the New Year with Baz Luhrmann’s ode to 19th-century Paris and 20th-century pop. You'll get a "bling ring," a drink, and the satisfaction of belting along with Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, and company.
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Also Playing:

The Addams Family

Anna and the Apocalypse

Downtown Abbey

The Death and Life of John F. Donovan

Motherless Brooklyn

Watching Watchmen

Erik Henriksen — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 11:30:51 -0800

by Erik Henriksen Mark Hill / HBO
HBO’s Watchmen shouldn’t be as good as it is.

In the three decades since the debut of writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons’ genre-shattering comic, DC Comics has done everything possible to exploit it—always poorly, and always against the will of Moore. But every time I watch this new, wildly imaginative iteration of Watchmen, I wonder what Moore would think of it. And not just because this Watchmen, incredibly, lives up to the comic, and not just because this Watchmen, even more incredibly, makes the comic even better—but because, like the comic, this Watchmen is brave enough to be so fucking weird and say so much.

At first, the things that make this Watchmen so strange—and that have, no doubt, confused and turned-off many viewers—feel like sci-fi window dressing: Clones and memory drugs! Ominous mega-machines and absent gods! Squids that fall like rain! But as Watchmen goes on, its strangeness only intensifies (Mind control! Vietnam, America’s 51st state!), and it becomes clear that, in the show’s alternate America, all this bizarre shit is exactly what lets the show address the things that actually make people uncomfortable.

Mark Hill / HBO
In 2019, lots of art boasts about wrestling with America’s past. But Watchmen actually does, to jaw-dropping, fist-clenching effect. (Will there be a better episode of TV this year—hell, any year—than “This Extraordinary Being,” as it gouges into America’s festering wounds of race and sex?) Plenty of creators claim to fearlessly address current events, but they don’t do so as Watchmen does, with horrifyingly clarity. (The resurgent ideology of white supremacy, one character tells an ex-superhero, rests on one’s entitlement to be more powerful than everyone else, no matter the cost.) Plenty of books and shows and movies wring their hands about how social media has fractured the foundations of democracy, but despite the internet not even existing in Watchmen, the show knows—and says—why we cower behind masks and close ranks with those who challenge us the least.

“Make no mistake: This Watchmen is about racism in America—its history, its evolution, and its implications in daily life,” Ned Lannnamann wrote for the Mercury in October, adding that the show “has the volatility of kerosene” and “makes the provocations of Joker look like a bowl of wet noodles.” Watchmen is so strange, and so singular, because—like Moore and Gibbons’ comic, and the medium from which it was born—that singular strangeness is what lets Watchmen say things that other stories can’t and won't.

That’s something a lot of art tries—and fails—to do. Watchmen does it every goddamn episode. ERIK HENRIKSEN

Mark Hill / HBO
I agree, and I think a large part of why Watchmen is able to do what it's doing—aside from the obvious (and immense) talent of its many creators, behind and in front of the camera—comes down to a Damon Lindelof quote I didn't quite understand when I first read it months ago. After seeing what this season has achieved from a storytelling standpoint, I now understand completely:

“I do feel like the spirit of Alan Moore is a punk rock spirit, a rebellious spirit, and that if you would tell Alan Moore, a teenage Moore in ’85 or ’86, ‘You’re not allowed to do this because Superman’s creator or Swamp Thing’s creator doesn’t want you to do it,’ he would say, ‘Fuck you, I’m doing it anyway.’ So I’m channeling the spirit of Alan Moore to tell Alan Moore, ‘Fuck you, I’m doing it anyway.’”

The reason Zack Snyder’s 2009 movie feels like an airless simulacra of the book instead of being a good movie—and the reason most of DC Comics' attempts to both prequel- and sequel-ize the book have been mixed bags at best—is because there’s a fundamental dissonance between the reverence those creators have for the original, and the basic disrespect that comes with being a party to its corporate exploitation. Snyder once justified his decision to adapt Watchmen by suggesting that it was going to get made no matter what, so at least there’d be a fan acting as steward to make sure the book wasn't “ruined.”

But Lindelof is refusing to entertain the notion of pouring all this time and money into a demure, coquettish, by-the-numbers adaptation. He’s chosen instead to steer into that disrespect, openly and thoughtfully rearranging and replacing the building blocks of Watchmen. As a result, HBO’s version investigates themes and ideas the graphic novel barely, if ever, touched on. As an act of retconning, it's maybe the single most audacious and successful example in all of genre fiction—and definitely more successful at recontextualizing its source material than any of Moore’s post-Watchmen attempts at doing that very thing in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls.

Mark Hill / HBO
This is why the show feels more Watchmen than anything that's been done in Watchmen's name since 1985. Despite not really being a deconstruction of superheroes or comics, it shares the exact same “Fuck you” gene that made Watchmen feel so vital in the first place. Moore used superheroes as a means to explore larger societal constructs in a disarming and disruptive way. Lindelof's decision to reframe the whole of masked vigilantism as a form of therapy through the lens of America's fundamental, institutionalized, and unending traumatization of Black people feels alarming and shocking in deeper, more meaningful ways than the surface-level jolts that accompanied seeing extreme violence and depravity enacted in a DC-published comic book in the mid-’80s.

And yet, HBO’s Watchmen doesn't invalidate anything Moore and Gibbons did. It goes out of its way to say, “Yes, what happened before is still resonant.” But it's recontextualization of key characters shows that history to have been just a smaller, whiter, and maler microcosm of a larger, more difficult, and more necessary thing we have to wrestle with if we truly want to reckon with what it means to be any sort of a “hero” in America. It's absolutely a direct descendant of the provocative-yet-literary “fuck you” that Moore and Gibbons unleashed in 1985, and as proof, I present one last quote:

“Primarily, mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (A) their relatively reassuring childhoods, or (B) the relatively reassuring 20th century. The continuing popularity of these movies to me suggests some kind of deliberate, self-imposed state of emotional arrest, combined with an numbing condition of cultural stasis that can be witnessed in comics, movies, popular music and, indeed, right across the cultural spectrum. The superheroes themselves—largely written and drawn by creators who have never stood up for their own rights against the companies that employ them, much less the rights of a Jack Kirby or Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster—would seem to be largely employed as cowardice compensators, perhaps a bit like the handgun on the nightstand. I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.”

The man who fired that shot? Alan Moore, January 2017. BOBBY ROBERTS

Mark Hill / HBO
I came at Watchmen from a different place, having felt largely rejected by the work when it was only a comic book. I have a kind of cilantro gene when it comes to male-dominated comics. To me, they taste like dirt. HBO’s Watchmen, however—this Watchmen, I like.

The Watchmen comics had very little to offer in the way of women characters, despite the complicated mother/daughter dynamics of the two generations of Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter and Laurie Juspeczyk, who were, as was the style at the time, defined almost entirely by their relative sexiness, who they had fucked, and a situation of sexual violence.

By comparison, the women of the Watchmen TV show feel like actual people, defined by a rich mire of influences: memory, choices, family. Much of the show’s narrative hinges around the conflicts of vigilante detective Angela Abar (Regina King), FBI agent Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), and businesswoman/inventor Lady Trieu (Hong Chau). And they grace us with smoldering power plays, like in the episode “She Was Killed by Space Junk,” in which Abar and Blake repeatedly attempt to intimidate one another in a mausoleum. Swoon!

There’s a thrill to seeing Abar’s action-packed scenes that not only rule, but represent. You might remember tales of women spontaneously crying during the MCU’s first woman-focused superhero film, Captain Marvel. There’s a visceral feeling to seeing someone who looks like you winning—even as it is also the purpose of a story like Watchmen to show that, in the end, power and righteousness may stack up to very little. We’ll see on Sunday, with the final episode of Watchmen’s first, and possibly only, season. SUZETTE SMITH

(P.S. And oh, geez! We didn’t even talk about how great the music is! Or how amazing “A God Walks into Abar” was! Or Lube Man!!)

39 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Dec 12–15, 2019

Suzette Smith — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 12:53:00 -0800

It's a Wonderful Life, Celebration, The Beacon's War on Christmas, and Other Critics' Picks by Suzette Smith

Seattle's movie theaters are definitely feeling the holiday spirit, with events like the Holiday Film Series 2019 at Cinerama and the Beacon's eccentric War on Christmas lineup—plus the Grand Illusion's 49th consecutive engagement of the emotionally wringing It's a Wonderful Life. For non-holiday options, check out the Yves Saint-Laurent/Pierre Bergé documentary Celebration or Bong Joon-ho's Mother. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings. In the South Sound? Check out our guide to the best movies playing in Tacoma this weekend.

Note: Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

American Matchmaker
This month, watch Yiddish-language films shot in the USA and Eastern Europe that showcase the vibrancy of the Jewish cinematic community. Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour)'s American Matchmaker stars Leo Fuchs, the "Yiddish Fred Astaire," as a dapper bachelor who can't quite seem to get married. Maybe, as the Beacon suggests, we have a case here of the celluloid closet.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Daniel Isn't Real
A college student facing a family crisis brings back his sinister childhood imaginary friend in this super-stylized horror thriller that, critics say, gets progressively more assured and interesting as it goes along.
Varsity Theater
Friday–Sunday

Dark Waters
As infuriating and horrifying as the subject matter of Dark Waters is—it’s based on “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” a 2016 New York Times Magazine story about how Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), a corporate lawyer with a history of representing chemical companies, switched sides to reveal DuPont’s decades of catastrophic malfeasance—it is, in many ways, another paint-by-numbers, based-on-a-true-story legal thriller with the genre-mandated tropes: A delicate but driven score that sounds like the same delicate-but-driven score in every other fight-the-power thriller; a righteous speech (in Dark Waters, Tim Robbins gets the big one, and he takes full-throated advantage); and plenty of invectives like “The system is rigged!” and “They’re a titan of industry! They can do whatever they want!” None of that stuff’s bad—it’s pretty much what any lefty who’s excited to see Dark Waters, including me, is happily signing up for—but there’s a catch that elevates this movie to something better than usual. Portland arthouse director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Carol) oversees things here, capturing Dark Waters’ sickening story in chilly blues and jaundiced yellows while knowing exactly how to get the most from his cast. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16 & Thornton Place

GLAS Presents: Animation Next
See animated stories from "subterranean nightmares to sun-soaked coming of age stories" at this traveling showcase from the GLAS Animation Festival in Berkeley.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

Harriet
Aside from the assistance that the formerly enslaved Harriet Tubman got from the Underground Railroad, it’s hard to imagine exactly how she pulled off all her heroics. With Harriet, audiences are given a live-action reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s journey to self-liberation: changing her name, hiding in bales of hay, being chased by dogs, and getting cornered by armed men on a bridge before jumping into the river. Harriet shows how Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) got help from a secret network of safe houses and trusted free Blacks (Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe) who stuck their necks out to help her cause. Throughout the film, the only music you’ll hear, gladly, are negro spirituals—songs that enslaved Blacks used to express their sorrow and joy, and to secretly communicate. (Tubman, who was nicknamed Moses, would sing “Go Down Moses” as a signal to enslaved Blacks that she was in the area, and would help anyone who wished to escape.) Harriet doesn’t subject the sensitive viewer to excessive gore or violence (though there is one particularly unsettling scene), because for once, this is a story in the “slave movie” genre about tremendous triumph, leadership, and Tubman’s unwavering faith, both in God and herself. JENNI MOORE
AMC Pacific Place
Thursday only

Holiday Film Series 2019
Enjoy naughty and nice holiday-themed movies on the big screen, like this weekend's Gremlins, Scrooged, White Christmas, and more.
Cinerama
Saturday–Sunday

Honey Boy
Oh, how easily this could’ve gone sideways. There’s nothing more cringingly embarrassing than a privileged white artist depicting their tragic life on film, forcing their audience to wallow alongside them in their self-serving importance. But in Honey Boy—a mostly autobiographical depiction of Transformers star Shia LaBeouf’s scary upbringing as a child actor—there’s so much more. In a dazzling, heartbreaking performance, LaBeouf portrays his real-life father, a recovering addict, Vietnam vet, and frustrated performer who’s in the witheringly humiliating position of being employed by his successful 12-year-old son, Otis (a fantastic Noah Jupe). Running parallel are harrowing scenes featuring an adult Otis (Lucas Hedges), who’s working out some well-earned and very deep shit in rehab while trying to stave off an emotional implosion. Dreamy imagery from director Alma Har’el and cinematographer Natasha Braier brilliantly captures this slow-motion train wreck of a tale that, weirdly enough, supplies a modicum of hope while depicting the toxicity that fathers inflict on their sons—and what results from the poison they inherit. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
AMC Pacific Place
Thursday only

The Irishman
A reality-inspired crime epic that spans decades, The Irishman’s heart is Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who “paints houses” for big-shot gangsters; his paint, it should be noted, only comes in blood red. Sheeran’s main employer/benefactor/BFF is the intense, sharp-eyed Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), though once Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) enters the picture, Frank’s torn between the sometimes clashing demands of two hard-willed, charismatic men. De Niro’s great (and, thankfully, the distracting, de-aging CGI fades into the background after a while), but this is Pesci and Pacino’s movie: With mania and fury, Pacino rips every scene apart, while Pesci takes a different approach, subtly and slowly building an aging crime boss who’s both heart-achingly soulful and blood-chillingly brutal. Seeing Scorsese masterfully track all this harkens back to Goodfellas and Casino, but the jarring, moving The Irishman is, remarkably, better than both. While the intense focus on Frank & Pals comes at the expense of other characters, like every single woman, the end result is still stunning: A saga that’s horrifying and funny and melancholy, sometimes in different scenes, sometimes all at once. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest
Thursday only

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

Joker
The first half hour unfolds like a dog-whistle symphony for insecure guys who think they have it bad. Fleck berates his black social worker (Sharon Washington) for not listening to him when she’s obviously doing her best. He fixates on a black single mother (Zazie Beetz) after the briefest sign of camaraderie. Yet there are a series of trap doors throughout Joker that unexpectedly drop its audience into new perspectives. Early on, an obvious foreshadow shifts Fleck onto a new path, and as that plotline plays out, Joker offers some surprisingly rewarding reflections on the relationship between the villain and Batman. (Oh yeah! This is a Batman movie, remember?) Both men, Joker suggests, might be equally deranged, making sweeping moves against the world without regard for those who become collateral damage for their respective manias. SUZETTE SMITH
Meridian 16

'The Last Action Hero' with Andy Iwancio and Derek Sheen
Two terrific local comedians will host this screening of a massive Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring flop.
The Beacon
Thursday only

Light from Light
Jim Gaffigan plays a widower who asks a woman with paranormal abilities (Marin Ireland) to discover whether the ghost of his wife is lingering in the house. This isn't your usual haunting movie—rather than a scarefest, it's reportedly a thoughtful and poignant examination of grief, love, and trauma.
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Make Way for Tomorrow
Director Leo McCarey was fired from his Hollywood studio for making this uncompromising Depression-era drama about an old couple, played by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, who are forced to move in with their selfish children.
The Beacon
Friday only
Part of the War on Christmas

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence!
Nagisa Oshima's David Bowie-starring war drama portrays the homoerotic love-hate relationship between a New Zealander POW and the Japanese director of the camp, played by composer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto. Truly a brutal, unusual, hypnotic choice for a holiday movie screening.
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of The War on Christmas

Mir Kumen On
This Polish-made, Yiddish-language documentary is bound to provoke complicated feelings in the modern viewer. Set in a socialist, Jewish-run sanatorium for poor children suffering from tuberculosis, it reveals a world that was utterly destroyed in the Holocaust just a few years later—and a future that could have been had not genocide wiped out Poland's Jewish communities.
The Beacon
Part of The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema
Thursday only

Mother
If you were to categorize Mother, you could do worse than "murder mystery." When Do-joon (Won Bin) is accused of murdering a schoolgirl, his mother (a terrific Kim Hye-ja) takes it upon herself to clear his name at any cost. This is a standard, boilerplate premise, but Bong dodges conventional noir trappings whenever he can, for better or worse. The mystery in Mother is almost beside the point: Answers come languidly as Kim's detective work brings her into circles of lawyers, policemen, and a teenage girl who modifies cell phones with spinning plastic poop antennas. The resulting film is a collection of arresting moments, one that's slow in pace and scattershot in structure. Whether you consider Mother a mess or a masterpiece, by the last reel, one thing is (still) clear: Bong is an extraordinarily unique filmmaker to spend two hours with. DAVE BOW
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus
There’s no better holiday date for nerds than this Mystery Science Theater 3000 screening of Santa Claus, an astonishing Christmastime disaster that came out of Mexico in 1959. The plot, loosely: Santa Claus lives in an ice castle. Mrs. Claus is nonexistent but sometimes Merlin appears to help the man out… if you know what I mean. Also, the Devil sends a demon to fight Santa. Yes, a demon. Happy holidays! CHASE BURNS
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday

Mr. Arkadin
Orson Welles cast himself as the title's mysterious financial tycoon who hires a sleazy opportunist to investigate his (Arkadin's) own past—but why? When people start dying, the adventurer suspects that Arkadin knows more than he's letting on. This film exhibits in numerous versions and is usually regarded as an interesting oddity.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday
Part of The War on Christmas

Nocturnal Emissions: 'The Masque of the Red Death'
Dark-minded burlesque maven Isabella L. Price and Clinton McClung of Cinebago Events will return with their cheeky, sexy, macabre series Nocturnal Emissions, which prefaces an unusual horror classic with "phantasmagoric" burlesque performances and other fun. The final film will be the campy Vincent Price vehicle The Masque of the Red Death in December, preceded by burlesque by Price and Val Challah and comedy by Emmett Montgomery.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

Pain and Glory
Pedro Almodóvar has long warmed his filmography with flickers of details from his personal life, but Pain & Glory brings us closer to the flame. In it, we look in on Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a filmmaker in self-imposed exile due to a creative decline and a variety of physical ailments. Banderas stifles his melodramatic tendencies to subtly and powerfully reveal Mallo’s agonies and evolution. ROBERT HAM
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

Pink Flamingos
Even if you’ve never seen John Waters’ Pink Flamingos, you’ve probably heard of it. It’s the 1972 film where the late, great Divine gleefully chokes down dog shit on camera. It’s still one of the most transgressive scenes ever put to film. It’s just one of a bunch of great bits in a weird, colorful gem.
Scarecrow Video
Saturday only

Queen & Slim
Queen & Slim may be the best—and is almost certainly the Blackest—film of 2019. One of the most striking things about the movie is that it’s intentionally absent of the white gaze. The directorial debut of Melina Matsoukas, it’s also the first film-length screenplay written by Lena Waithe, who knocked bestselling author James Frey’s original story idea out of the park after also making the jump from acting and writing on TV. Queen and Slim (Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya) are ordinary law-abiding citizens who, after an okay Tinder date, get pulled over by a racist cop who decides to create a life-or-death altercation over a missed turn signal. After the unreasonably angry cop escalates the situation, unnecessarily searches the car, and shoots Queen in the leg, Slim ends up grabbing the cop's gun and killing the officer in self-defense. The two decide they have no choice but to evade law enforcement to survive. At the film’s heart are powerful, too-true themes about Black people’s constant search for freedom, even in modern society. In Queen and Slim’s case, their entire trip together is a relentless quest for freedom, and they have a really good run until the bitter—and iconic—end. JENNI MOORE
Various locations

Tammy and the T-rex
Denise Richards and Paul Walker star in this 1994 comedy, in which cheerleader Tammy (Richards) discovers that the brain of her boyfriend (Walker) has been transplanted into the body of a robotic tyrannosaur. You should see this movie because it's ridiculous and terrible and you need your brain flash-evaporated once in awhile. JOULE ZELMAN
Grand Illusion
Friday only

The Two Popes
Popes Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) and Francis (Jonathan Pryce) argue over doctrine and politics in 2013 in this film by acclaimed director Fernando Meireilles (City of God).
Crest
Friday–Sunday

Waves
The third feature-length film from writer-director Trey Edward Shults, Waves furthers Shults's obsession with the forces that keep families together and those that tear them apart. It follows a suburban black American family in Florida, at the center of which is Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a successful student athlete who's balancing schoolwork, partying, training, and hanging with his girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie). He's under immense pressure—especially from his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), whose dogged protectiveness of his family goes too far for their own well-being. The first half of Waves follows Tyler and the consequences of pushing past his physical limits; a shoulder injury threatens to sideline his wrestling dreams and deteriorate his relationship with Alexis. The second half shifts the focus to his sister, Emily (played by Taylor Russell with dazzling effect), who is left to deal with the fallout of her brother's explosive behavior, both in her family and in the greater community. The film's use of careening cinematography—its spinning, dizzying opening sequence; the greenness of the greens; the low, urgent movement of the camera—seems to almost-just tip the story over into disarray before righting itself and soldiering on. JASMYNE KEIMIG
SIFF Cinema Egyptian & Ark Lodge Cinemas
Thursday only

The White Reindeer
This gorgeous Scandinavian horror film, shot in Finnish Lapland in 1952, is probably your only chance all year to watch a movie about a sexually repressed vampire reindeer shapeshifter.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday
Part of the War on Christmas

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

21 Bridges

Black Christmas

Dial Code Santa Claus

Love Actually

Silent Night, Deadly Night

Playmobil

The Whistleblower

The Worst Friday the 13th Movie

42 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Dec 5–8, 2019

Joule Zelman — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:33:00 -0800

Die Hard, The Muppet Christmas Carol, Paranoid Data, and Other Critics' Picks by Joule Zelman

You have many new and classic options for moviegoing this weekend, like the beloved Muppet Christmas Carol, the cyberpunk series Paranoid Data: Pre-Millennium Tension in Film, or the brutal, wintry epic Market Lazarová. And don't neglect to celebrate the season with explosions and one-liners in Die Hard! See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Note: Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

The Aeronauts
Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) re-team for a tale of a 19th-century meteorologist and a daring pilot who set out to break the French altitude record in a hot-air balloon.
Varsity Theatre
Friday–Sunday

And With Him Came the West
Michael Plante examines the mythmaking of Wyatt Earp, who exploited the nascent film business to build his own legend—and a fantastical view of the American West—by consulting for early Hollywood Westerns. Plante will be present at this screening for Q&A.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday only

Comet in Moominland
In this Japanese adaptation of Tove Jansson's melancholy, magical world, the Moomin family welcomes a doomsaying prophet named Muskrat, only to learn that their planet is threatened by a giant comet. It sounds kind of like Lars von Trier's Melancholia, but infinitely cuter.
The Beacon
Sunday only

Die Hard
A year after Fox Plaza, a 35-story tower in Century City, Los Angeles, was completed (1987), it starred in a film that brought it and Bruce Willis fame, Die Hard. Fox Plaza plays Nakatomi Plaza, a building owned by a Japanese corporation, and Bruce Willis plays John McClane, a white NYC cop whose estranged white wife not only lives in LA but appears to have gone to the other side, the Japanese side. While McClane visits his wife at Nakatomi Plaza, things go crazy and we enter the world inside of the building: its elevator shafts, air ducts, and structural spaces. Here, postmodern architecture meets Reagan-era Hollywood cinema and makes lots of movie magic. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Beacon & Central Cinema

Doctor Sleep
Rather than trying to be a slavish follow-up to Stanley Kubrick’s inimitable The Shining, Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep is a looser, goofier trip that just so happens to wander some of the same territory that Stephen King first explored four decades ago. Decades after The Shining, Doctor Sleep finds Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) all grown up, still appreciating a good, cozy sweater, and drinking away the ghosts—both figurative and literal—that’ve haunted him since childhood. But when 15-year-old Abra (Kyliegh Curran) reaches out—revealing that she shares Danny’s paranormal abilities—the two stumble onto a rambling road that eventually leads to the ruined, long-abandoned Overlook. Sure, Flanagan’s no Kubrick, but he does pull off the too-rare trick of capturing the sprawling, earnest, weird vibe of a decent King novel, where the grotesque usually walks hand-in-hand with silliness. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16
Thursday only

Force of Nature Natalia
Star ballerina Natalia Osipova shook up the ballet world when she and her partner, Ivan Vasiliev, left the Bolshoi for the Mikhailovsky—a lesser-regarded company—in search of more “artistic freedom.” In Force of Nature Natalia, director Gerald Fox tells the story of her subsequent accession to the upper heavens of both the classical and contemporary worlds. Over at the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw says the film focuses on the sheer intensity of the work Osipova (now a principal at the Royal Ballet in London) puts into her incredible performances, rather than on her romantic life, which, he says, was “not irrelevant to discussing Osipova’s development as an artist.” Bradshaw calls her a “sylph of steel” who leaves visible bruises on the bodies of her partners. If you’re in search of a film to kick your lazy ass into gear, look no further. RICH SMITH
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations

Gremlins
Gremlins still holds up, 34 years after its original release. The very retro-ness of this comedy-horror-holiday flick adds to its charm. The mix of humor and scares still stands up, the mogwai is still too cute for its own good, the gremlins birthed from it still disgustingly funny and frightening, and the implausible story still draws you in. A man brings home the ultimate Christmas gift for his teenage son, an exotic pet he found in Chinatown that comes with very specific (and vital) care instructions that must be followed (don’t get him wet, don’t feed him after midnight, don’t expose him to light). Of course, it wouldn’t be a movie if he cared for the furry little creature properly. LEILANI POLK
Regal Meridian 16
Friday-Sunday

Harriet
Aside from the assistance that the formerly enslaved Harriet Tubman got from the Underground Railroad, it’s hard to imagine exactly how she pulled off all her heroics. With Harriet, audiences are given a live-action reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s journey to self-liberation: changing her name, hiding in bales of hay, being chased by dogs, and getting cornered by armed men on a bridge before jumping into the river. Harriet shows how Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) got help from a secret network of safe houses and trusted free Blacks (Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe) who stuck their necks out to help her cause. Throughout the film, the only music you’ll hear, gladly, are negro spirituals—songs that enslaved Blacks used to express their sorrow and joy, and to secretly communicate. (Tubman, who was nicknamed Moses, would sing “Go Down Moses” as a signal to enslaved Blacks that she was in the area, and would help anyone who wished to escape.) Harriet doesn’t subject the sensitive viewer to excessive gore or violence (though there is one particularly unsettling scene), because for once, this is a story in the “slave movie” genre about tremendous triumph, leadership, and Tubman’s unwavering faith, both in God and herself. JENNI MOORE
AMC Pacific Place

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

The Kingmaker
Lauren Greenfield's concerning documentary shows how Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the insanely corrupt Marcos regime, is staging a political comeback with the help of fake news and rewritten history (and no doubt the power of ill-gotten billions).
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse, the second film from Robert Eggers, the director of the excellent, wildly disconcerting period horror The Witch, is... funnier than expected? Sure, it’s also fucked-up and intense and distressing, but there are significantly more fart jokes than one might expect. Robert Pattinson, with a voice like The Simpsons’ Mayor Quimby, and Willem Dafoe, with a voice like The Simpsons’ crusty old sea captain, play two lost souls manning a decrepit lighthouse on a miserable, unnamed island. Like The Witch, this is a story and a setting that feels old, and Eggers captures it in joyless black and white, antiquated dialogue, and a squarish, 1.19:1 aspect ratio. Pattinson and Dafoe squabble and fight and scream, and something is lurking on the rocky cliffs, and something else is lurking at the top of the tower, and man, this one seagull really hates Pattinson. Things get weird, and sad, and unexpectedly touching; Dafoe and Pattinson are both great, and if you’re going to descend into Eggers’s particular brand of fraught, bleak madness, one could hardly ask for better company. As we head into another dour, dark Northwest winter, Eggers’s whipping gales and damp despair are here to remind you that hey, things could always be worse. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Seattle 10 & Regal Meridian 16

Maria Tallchief: America's First Prima Ballerina
Learn the story of Maria Tallchief—a Native woman from Oklahoma whose talent and partnership with George Balanchine led to the creation of the New York City Ballet—from a screening of Seattle-based filmmaker Sandy Sunrising's documentary. The director and her husband will be in attendance.
Town Hall
Friday only

Market Lazarová
Brutal, gorgeous, chilly, earthy—this medieval epic by František Vláčil, one of the greatest directors of the Czechoslovak New Wave of the 1960s, deserves a spot among the major historical dramas. In pagan Bohemia, an innocent, sheltered young woman is abducted by a rough tribe, where she's forced to marry the wild young Mikoláš. But the love that, against the odds, begins to unite the couple may not survive the tumult of internecine battles between their clans. JOULE ZELMAN
The Beacon
Friday–Sunday

Marriage Story
Noah Baumbach (Mistress America et al.) creates a portrait of a marriage falling apart and the family trying to endure in this drama featuring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Alan Alda, and Laura Dern.
Crest

Mulholland Drive
Movie endings leave you feeling either satisfied or unsatisfied. David Lynch's endings, particularly the one for Mulholland Drive, have an altogether different power: They send the viewer hurtling into a tizzy of desperate calculus, trying to figure out what the hell has been happening for the last two-and-a-half hours. Lynch films are largely resolution-free, and spill over with possible meanings, merging identities, and dream-reality crossovers so elaborate that it takes several viewings to decide whether the tricks add up. There's always a sense that the film could be a big practical joke on the cult of seriousness; Lynch, after all, is one funny bastard. Not only is Mulholland Drive no exception to this principle, it's his freaky ne plus ultra. SEAN NELSON
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only

The Muppet Christmas Carol
The Muppets make everything better, and this includes Charles Dickens’s timeworn holiday tale about miserly, uncharitable Ebenezer Scrooge (an early rich dickhead of literature) and the visitations from the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and yet-to-come (plus a few others) that compel him to change his callous ways. The 1992 Brian Henson production features Michael Caine as Scrooge, Kermit the Frog as his loyal employee Bob Cratchit, and all the other Muppet characters you’ve come to know and love in various other roles. (Statler and Waldorf are hilarious as the ghosts of Scrooge’s late business partners Jacob and Robert Marley, and Gonzo as Dickens narrating the thing is also priceless, especially with Rizzo the Rat as his sidekick.) For some of us, watching The Muppet Christmas Carol is a Christmas tradition. LEILANI POLK
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

New Life
Discover film from Bulgaria and its diaspora in this series, the Bulgarian Movie Circle. Нов живот/New Life is an affecting documentary about a group of Bulgarians who seized their chance to claim asylum in Canada just as Communism was collapsing across Eastern Europe. Bewildered by culture shock, these Bulgarians—many of them artists, musicians, and filmmakers—strove to adjust to the wide-open spaces of Newfoundland or the rich mix of cultures in Montréal. It's an interesting perspective on immigration and starting over, with some important insights on today's migratory movements. (One man, noting that the media seize on the fact that the majority of Syrian immigrants are young or middle-aged men, remarks that Bulgarian immigration was the same—men frequently leave the country first, in hopes of helping their families follow.)
Solo
Friday only

Night of the Hunter
This expressionistic fairy tale, from the '50s but decades ahead of its time, was the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever got to direct. Robert Mitchum famously embodies a roving preacher with a murderous hatred of women and a lust for money that puts him on the track of two child runaways.
The Beacon
Sunday only

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Once Upon a Time doesn't have the self-conscious, This Is a Quentin Tarantino Film™ feel of the filmmaker's past few movies. It feels neither reliant nor focused on those obsessions and quirks. We spend the bulk of our time with three people: Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an earnest, anxious, B-list actor whose career is right about to curdle; Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Rick's toughed-up, chilled-out former stuntman and current BFF; and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a bubbly, captivating actress who's just starting to enjoy her first taste of success in show business. How Tarantino plays with history in Once Upon a Time is one of the more intense and surprising elements of the film—and, thankfully, it's also one of the best. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest
Thursday only

Paranoid Data: Pre-Millennium Tension in Film
The forum presents two days of pre-millennial anxiety about information technology, propaganda, corporatism, totalitarianism, and other societal forces that have indeed led the world off a cliff. Spend your weekend watching WarGames, Johnny Mnemonic, Scanners, and Strange Days, and don't miss Videograms from a Revolution, the one documentary in the bunch, about the televised overthrow of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu.
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday–Sunday

'The Princess Bride' Quote-along
Everyone who can factually claim to be an American has seen The Princess Bride 150 times. So why go see it on the big screen? Here's why: It's delightful and hilarious, and the goopy framing device gets out of the way fast, and there's that amazing scene where our heroine stands atop a hill, exclaims, "Oh, my love!" and hurls herself into a full-body roll. LINDY WEST
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday

Promare
For fans of post-apocalyptic anime, Promare from Studio Trigger will deliver the maximalist visuals and frenetic action you desire (even if the story, about firefighters battling mutants, is a little thin).
AMC Pacific Place
Sunday only

The Snow Queen
This absolutely wild Finnish adaptation of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale looks kind of like a wintry Labyrinth on even more acid. The snow queen ("looking like a Butoh performer from Mars," as the Beacon describes her) abducts a boy named Kai to help steal an emerald. Kai's sister Kerttu sets out after the gelid royal to save her brother.
The Beacon

Tevya
This month, the Beacon showcases Yiddish-language films shot in the USA and Eastern Europe that reveal the vibrancy of the Jewish cinematic community of last century. This weekend, see the fascinating Tevya, billed at the time as the "greatest Yiddish picture ever made" and based on the Sholem Aleichem story that inspired the musical. Shot on Long Island in 1939, Tevya tells the story of a Jewish Ukrainian farmer whose daughter rebels when she falls in love with a gentile peasant.
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema

They Shall Not Grow Old
Peter Jackson has led a team of restorationists and lip-readers (!) to snatch back moments of World War I in living detail. Archival films from the era were colorized and repaired, and experts were called in to decrypt what the people in the shots were saying. The results, bolstered by interviews and reminiscences, are history as you've never seen it.
Various locations
Saturday only

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

39 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Nov 27–Dec 1, 2019

Jenni Moore — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 15:11:00 -0800

Knives Out, Queen & Slim, Marriage Story, and Other Critics' Picks by Jenni Moore

Need a break from family festivities? Luckily for you, most of Seattle's movie theaters are open over the holiday weekend. Speaking of domestic strife, Rian Johnson's splendidly cast Knives Out might offer some catharsis for pent-up stress via murder and mystery. Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, meanwhile, takes a more heartfelt and realistic approach to family friction. For something completely different, Melina Matsoukas's debut lovers-on-the-run drama, Queen & Slim, follows a Black couple as they seek refuge and freedom from judicial injustice. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Note: Movies play Wednesday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

Another Day of Life
All the macho foreign-correspondent bullshit swirling around the documentary’s central figure, the renowned Polish writer and reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski, makes the first 15 minutes of this otherwise incredible film difficult to watch. But once all that nonsense settles down, the power of the story and the innovative way it’s told grabs hold and doesn’t let go. As Portugal shuffles off from its colonial grip on Angola, a civil war fills the power vacuum. Kapuscinski is one of the few journalists covering the war. As he travels through the war-torn country to the front line of the conflict, he meets communist fighters who change the way he thinks about the country and the whole idea of objectivity in journalism. The great innovation here is the use of animation. Rather than employing shitty historical reenactments to immerse you in the scene, the directors chose to animate the whole story. At times, the animation artfully and seamlessly gives way to real-world interviews with the film’s subjects, many of whom are still alive, which is something I’ve never quite seen before. Highly recommended. RICH SMITH
Grand Illusion
Wednesday only

The Best You've Ever Seen: Beyond The Black Rainbow
This mash-up event brings together one band and one DJ to collaboratively reimagine a score for whatever movie they've chosen to screen that night. This time, DJ Lite Privilege and Purr Gato will create a mix for Panos Cosmatos's 2010 sci-fi Beyond the Black Rainbow, about a heavily sedated woman who tries to escape a commune where she's being held against her will (yikes). The film is visually remixed by blazinspace with liquid light art from the Liquid Light Wizard.
Parliament Tavern
Saturday only

Blast of Silence
This tough crime film from the early days of indie filmmaking is a downbeat noir about a hitman stalking his prey in New York around Christmas time.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday

The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
Two strangers—both Indigenous women—form an impulsive connection on the streets of Vancouver and try to weather abuse, birth control crises, and systemic prejudice in Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn's ambitious realist drama, which unfolds in real time on the screen.
Ark Lodge Cinemas & Northwest Film Forum
Wednesday only

Burn!
Marlon Brando stars in this dark historical drama as an English agent fomenting rebellion on a Portuguese-controlled Caribbean island. He learns that once slaves and oppressed people take revolution into their own hands, they don't necessarily align with British imperialist goals. This action-filled movie comes from director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas, the team behind the famed The Battle of Algiers.
The Beacon
Wednesday only
Part of To Win a Revolution: The Screenplays of Franco Solinas

Casablanca
Yes, Casablanca is a bonafide classic. The name conjures up notions of prestige and film nobility. It’s the worst possible thing that could have happened to Casablanca. The movie is a classic because it’s not a stuffy, high-minded piece of cinema with a capital “C.” It’s low-budget, tossed-off studio leftovers, and that’s why its genius is so remarkable. Don’t think of it as attending movie church. Leave your reverence in the lobby. Casablanca sure as hell doesn’t have any time for that shit. Instead, think of it as the half-improvised, made-up-as-they-went, seat-of-the-pants production that took studio spare parts and made some potent movie magic. BOBBY ROBERTS
Central Cinema
Friday-Sunday

Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations

In My Room
A decidedly offbeat post-apocalypse tale, Ulrich Köhler's In My Room follows a shallow German cameraman as he wanders a world in which it seems everyone but him has mysteriously vanished. Totally free but totally alone, the man tries to forge a new existence, only to realize that he's not the sole survivor after all. In My Room screened in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday-Sunday

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

Lost Angelas
An aspiring screenwriter attempts to find his missing fiancée, a best-actress nominee named Angela Rose, by going through his memories of encounters with a sinister film director. William Wayne's non-linear neo-noir may be too far-out for some, but fun for lovers of twists and stories-within-stories.
Grand Illusion
Wednesday only

Moomins on the Riviera
Join the Saturday Morning Cartoons club to watch this Finno-French adaptation of the books of eccentric Tove Jansson, following the Snorkmaiden, Little My, and the Moomins as they land on the Riviera, where jealousy and infatuation threaten their bond.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Saturday only

'The Muppet Movie' Sing-along
The Muppets made their feature film debut in James Frawley's beloved, meta-inclined 1979 film, in which Kermit the Frog and friends (and hitchhikers) journey to Hollywood but are sidetracked by the nefarious restaurateur Doc Hopper. Hop on the Electric Mayhem and reaffirm the Rainbow Connection with everyone's favorite floppy puppets.
SIFF Film Center
Friday-Sunday

Overture to Glory
The first in the Beacon's December series on Yiddish-language cinema, the Vilnius-set Overture to Glory stars the real-life cantor Moyshe Oysher as a synagogue cantor who abandons his religious post in order to become an opera singer. Go for a moving glimpse of a vanished world.
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema

Sailor Moon's Hearts in Ice
Usagi and friends interrupt their Christmas vacation to defend Earth from the Snow Queen Kaguya and her evil, icy plans.
The Beacon
Sunday

Roma
Watch Alfonso Cuarón's Academy Award-winning drama about a maid living with a wealthy family in Mexico City. After the screening, celebrate the passage of the Seattle Domestic Workers Ordinance, which ensures new protections for workers, with Hand in Hand and Casa Latina.
University Heights
Sunday only

Sátántangó
If you want some serious cinephile cred, you can't do better than this seven-and-a-half-hour epic by the Hungarian master Béla Tarr, known for making long, grimy, long, dark, strangely poetic, long movies like Werckmeister Harmonies and The Turin Horse. Sátántango (1994), restored in 4K, is based on László Krasznahorkai's brutal experimental novel about a collective farm collapsing under the weight of its members' greed, betrayal, and hopelessness. The Forum has mercy on those of us with shorter attention span—your ticket is valid for any screening day, so you can come and go, and you get free popcorn refills.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday

Sundance Indigenous Shorts
Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program and Art House Convergence present six films by Indigenous and Native moviemakers from the Arctic Circle, Ho-Chunk land in midwestern America, Mi’gmaq territory in Canada, and elsewhere. Some subjects include the heritage of traditional crafts, the art of throat singing, and the Indian Pipe plant.
Northwest Film Forum
Wednesday only

Terminator: Dark Fate
If nothing else, Dark Fate has one thing going for it: Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton is back, which means there's a Terminator movie worth watching again. Well, it's worth watching, I guess, if you, like me, have devoted entirely too much of your ever-shrinking life span to thinking about terminators. For everyone else, Dark Fate's appeal—which largely hinges on seeing Hamilton, Arnold, and various bloodthirsty murderbots back in action—might be limited. Deadpool director Tim Miller does a lot of things right: His action sequences are messy but intense; he knows to let Hamilton, with her wry eyebrows and smoke-scratched voice, steal scenes whenever she feels like it; and he somehow pulls off the insane-sounding task of making a Terminator movie that's legitimately, consistently funny. But at the end of the day, Dark Fate is another sequel that tries, with mixed success, to reboot a rusty series, and several of the attempts it makes to feel current land with a wet thud. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16

This Is What History Looks Like: Archival Footage from the 1999 WTO Protests
The archivists of Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound collaborated with director Jill Freidberg to create this found-footage collage about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, aka the Battle of Seattle. Discover this iconic strike against globalization through archival imagery and sound.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
I fell in love with Catherine Deneuve in the mid-'90s, when I caught a restored print of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. To call Jacques Demy's 1964 mini-opera a transformative experience would not be hyperbole. The movie, and the girl at its center, seemed to exist out of time: magical, romantic, alluring. JAMES S. RICH
The Beacon
Friday-Saturday

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

21 Bridges

Charlie's Angels

Last Christmas

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

The Room

Wallflower

When Harry Met Sally

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Is Cinematic Magic

Suzette Smith — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 15:21:46 -0800

by Suzette Smith Hanks as Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Sony Pictures Entertainment
It’s unusual to witness real cinematic magic these days, but the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood absolutely has it. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) wisely avoids the visual slickness one might expect from a Tom Hanks-centric melodrama, instead employing a lived-in style and scene transitions that consist of miniature cities harkening back to the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hanks is totally committed to Rogers’ appearance and manner, but A Beautiful Day is more about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a fictional journalist profiling Rogers. (Vogel’s work is based on a 1998 Esquire profile by Tom Junod; as is the case with the film, Junrod’s piece sketches a beautiful yet enigmatic image of Rogers.)

Where Heller’s film becomes transcendent is in its cinematic pressure points: The striking slowness of the narrative (it’s meant to emulate the pace of Rogers’ show, and you get used to it), the mirroring of Rogers and Vogel in their interview styles and drawn-out reaction shots, and a profound moment of silence that grips your heart like, “Did that really just happen? Why was that so intense?”

Here's the trailer:

And here's Savannah Guthrie's full (20-minute) interview with Tom Hanks on the Today show:

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is currently playing at various theaters around Seattle.

43 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Nov 21–24, 2019

Suzette Smith — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:31:00 -0800

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Knives Out, Dragnet Girl, and Other Critics' Picks by Suzette Smith

This weekend, cry over the genuinely lovely A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, take a cinematic voyage with the Seattle Turkish Film Festival, revisit the Wachowski sisters' steamy thriller Bound, or take the kids to see Frozen II, just to name a few highly diverse options. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Note: Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
It’s unusual to witness real cinematic magic these days, but the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood absolutely has it. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) wisely avoids the visual slickness one might expect from a Tom Hanks-centric melodrama, instead employing a lived-in style and scene transitions that consist of miniature cities harkening back to the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hanks is totally committed to Rogers’ appearance and manner, but A Beautiful Day is more about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a fictional journalist profiling Rogers. (Vogel’s work is based on a 1998 Esquire profile by Tom Junod; as is the case with the film, Junrod’s piece sketches a beautiful yet enigmatic image of Rogers.) Where Heller’s film becomes transcendent is in its cinematic pressure points: The striking slowness of the narrative (it’s meant to emulate the pace of Rogers’ show, and you get used to it), the mirroring of Rogers and Vogel in their interview styles and drawn-out reaction shots, and a profound moment of silence that grips your heart like, “Did that really just happen? Why was that so intense?” SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

Bound
For reasons that I cannot explain in this blurb, the 1990s experienced a wave of superb noir films. There was One False Move by Carl Franklin, The Last Seduction by John Dahl, and, of course, Bound by the Wachowskis (who later made the Matrix series). Bound stars Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. Tilly plays the classic noir black widow, but in this film there is a twist: The deadly and beautiful spider, who is married to a mobster, attracts a woman (Gershon). After steamy sex, the two plan a crime. But is the spider (cigarette smoke, red lips, black lingerie) luring her lover into a trap? How will all of this end? This is how you do noir. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Beacon
Part of 'Sex Work Is Work'
Friday–Saturday

Burn!
Marlon Brando stars in this dark historical drama as an English agent fomenting rebellion on a Portuguese-controlled Caribbean island. He learns that once slaves and oppressed people take revolution into their own hands, they don't necessarily align with British imperialist goals. This action-filled movie comes from director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas, the team behind the famed The Battle of Algiers.
The Beacon
Sunday only
Part of To Win a Revolution: The Screenplays of Franco Solinas

Depeche Mode: Spirits in the Forest
Anton Corbijn's film captures Depeche Mode's 2017/2018 Global Spirit Tour, which was attended by some three million fans.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

'Dragnet Girl' with Live Score by Coupler
The masterful Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu is better known for simple, tragicomic domestic dramas than for gangster flicks, but this 1933 jewel, about a hood and his dangerous romance with the sweet sister of a newly made man, bears the influence of Hollywood crime cinema. The musical group Coupler—at whose core is Ryan Norris, Rodrigo Avendano, and Rollum Haas—will provide a live score.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

Encounters in the Anthropocene
Georg Koszulinski's sci-fi-tinged short films explore the impending sixth mass extinction and the devastation of the Anthropocene.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

End of the Century
If you missed your chance to see this expressive Argentinian gay romance at the Seattle Queer Film Festival, you've got a second chance this weekend. Ocho and Javi have a fling after an initial missed connection, but things get complicated when Javi tells Ocho that they've met—and rolled in the hay—many years before.
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday

The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift
For car-lovers, The Fast and the Furious franchise has always provided two necessities: sweet cars and sweet pieces of ass. The Vin-less sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, faltered from an underwhelming script and over-the-top visuals. But this time around, the franchise has been rebuilt from the ground up—and not only is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift faster, it's got "furious" to spare. Lucas Black is an American hillbilly who can't keep his foot off the pedal, so he's sent to stay with his pop in Tokyo. Though banned from climbing behind the wheel, he falls in with a group of Yakuza-connected street racers who specialize in "drifting"—managing hairpin turns with the perfect application of gas and brake. And while the first two F&Fs were fuel-injected crime sprees, Tokyo Drift is a revved-up, fish-out-of-water story that has more in common with Rebel Without a Cause than The French Connection. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations

The Good Liar
The Good Liar is likely the most bonkers film I will see this year. What begins as a cautionary tale about the dangers of grandma’s online dating unfolds into a baffling series of reveals, all of which support the twist that we already gleaned from the trailer: Roy (Ian McKellen) is trying to double cross Betty (Helen Mirren) and take her money... but she's not that easy to trick! How all that happens, though? I could never have predicted it. What a septuagenarian mine cart ride!SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

Harriet
With Harriet, audiences are given a live-action reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s journey to self-liberation: changing her name, hiding in bales of hay, being chased by dogs, and getting cornered by armed men on a bridge before jumping into the river. Harriet shows how Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) got help from a secret network of safe houses and trusted free Blacks (Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe) who stuck their necks out to help her cause. Throughout the film, the only music you’ll hear, gladly, are negro spirituals—songs that enslaved Blacks used to express their sorrow and joy, and to secretly communicate. (Tubman, who was nicknamed Moses, would sing “Go Down Moses” as a signal to enslaved Blacks that she was in the area, and would help anyone who wished to escape.) Harriet doesn’t subject the sensitive viewer to excessive gore or violence (though there is one particularly unsettling scene), because for once, this is a story in the “slave movie” genre about tremendous triumph, leadership, and Tubman’s unwavering faith, both in God and herself. JENNI MOORE
Various locations

Honey Boy
Shia LaBeouf wrote and stars in this drama based on his own experiences as a child star with a difficult father (he plays the character based on his own messed-up dad, while Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges play the son).
AMC Pacific Place

Dan Savage's HUMP! Film Festival
In the beginning... there was porn. And some of it was pretty awesome! But a lot of it, you know, wasn't. Mainstream porn can be problematic in all sorts of ways—most notably that 90 percent of dirty movies are made for white dudes by white dudes. And why is there primarily only one body type (skinny and hairless)? And are any of the actors having fun? I mean, for real? These are the kinds of porn problems that inspired beloved sex columnist Dan Savage to create the HUMP! Film Festival—an annual celebration of amateur dirty movies that are for the people, by the people! HUMP! invites folks to submit five-minute mini porn flicks written, directed, shot, and—in a lot of cases—performed by these sex-positive amateur auteurs. The filmmakers are encouraged to express themselves sexually in whatever way they see fit—so instead of seeing the same, staid heteronormative clips you'll find on the internet, HUMP! is a virtual rainbow of diverse (AND HOT) sexuality! WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
On the Boards

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

Knives Out
The director of The Last Jedi and Looper has assembled an amazing cast for a good old-fashioned ensemble whodunit. Watch Toni Collette, Chris Evans, Daniel Craig, Lakeith Stanfield, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, et al. go at each other with barbed wit and sharp implements. The film officially opens next week, but you can sneak in early at a few select theaters.
Various locations
Friday–Saturday

Lola Montès
Max Ophuls made this fluidly, gorgeously filmed tale of a real-life courtesan and performer (Lola Montez was her stage name; her birth name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld) who, as King Ludwig of Bavaria's mistress, helped bring about liberal reforms.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday
Part of 'Sex Work Is Work'

Paprika
A dream researcher and her girlish alter ego, Paprika, try to stop a terrorist who can cause people’s dreams to invade reality. Satoshi Kon’s boisterous foray into the world of the unconscious practically explodes off the screen with magnificent madness. And here, you can see it on 35mm! JOULE ZELMAN
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Patlabor the Movie
The Patlabor franchise is sick. A popular addition to the mecha genre, the Patlabor world includes large, human-like robots, named "Labors," who essentially work in Amazon warehouses. The Labors produce labor more effectively than humans, but everyone is apparently surprised when Labors begin to randomly destroy buildings and commit crimes. Who's responsible for the chaos? The robots? The programmers? The politicians? The conversation is a little too timely. Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend would probably be popular in the political world of Patlabor. Patlabor: The Movie is a standout for the franchise, notably directed by Palme d'Or-nominated Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii. Released in 1989 but set in 1999, the anime focuses on the tension between naughty Labors and the specialized Patrol Labors (get it, "Patlabor," it's a portmanteau) assigned to keep the Labors in check. For a crime-fighting mecha anime, I find the film surprising, philosophical, and funny. Somehow, it doesn't seem like science fiction. CHASE BURNS
The Beacon

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Two men are stuck together during a protracted bout of holiday travel. One is well-off, irritable, and stuffy. The other is garrulous, simple, and annoying. The first man eventually learns to accept the second man, and in accepting him, acquires an emotional understanding of key Thanksgiving concepts.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Point Blank
In this classic tough-guy film, a criminal played by Lee Marvin is shot and left for dead. But he's just so damn tough, he pulls himself together and embarks on a path of brutal revenge.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Part of the 42nd Film Noir Series

'Remembering Our Mothers' Preview
See a sneak preview of this documentary about the murders of three women, Susanna Blackwell, Phoebe Dizon, and Veronica Laureta, and how local Asian Pacific Islander women in the community fought back against violence.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Rififi
Jules Dassin’s flawless diamond of a French caper film from 1955 is justifiably famous for the jewel heist that unfolds in breathless silence for 33 astonishing minutes—former Stranger film editor Jamie Hook called it a “sacrament of the cinema.” But the whole that surrounds this sequence is equally sacramental, equally nourishing. SEAN NELSON
The Beacon
Thursday only

Santa Sangre
A boy watches his mother's arms get cut off, gets institutionalized, and then returns to help her. Help her kill people. And he grew up in a circus. Alejandro Jodorowsky's waking dream must be seen to be believed.
The Beacon
Thursday only

Scandalous
The strangest revelation in Scandalous—a new documentary directed by Mark Landsman that concerns the history of the National Enquirer from its birth to its recent attempt to blackmail the richest man on earth, Jeff Bezos—is not the tabloid's long obsession with UFO stories and other oddities. No, it's this: In the 1980s, Donald Trump, a huge fan of the National Enquirer, would call its reporters and rat on himself. He'd pretend it wasn't him, but the reporters knew it was Donald Trump on the other end of the line, dishing out dirt about himself and the celebrities who entered his circle of the rich and famous. The National Enquirer, which started in the early 1950s in New York City with a loan from the mafia, has had four distinct phases. One: Its gore moment. Two: Its grocery store check-out moment. Three: Its moment of respectability. And four: Its sharp turn to the right, which happened after 9/11. What has been in the DNA of the rag from its inception, however, is raw gangsterism. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Seattle Turkish Film Festival
The Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington will present the sixth annual edition of their community-driven, volunteer-led festival featuring a rich panorama of new Turkish films. See crowd-pleasers like the opening film, Bold Pilot (Thursday), the entertaining-sounding documentary about the Turkish film industry in the '60s and '70s, Remake, Remix, Rip-Off (Saturday), or the critically acclaimed Nuri Bilge Ceylan film The Wild Pear Tree (Sunday).
Pacific Science Center & SIFF Cinema Uptown

Unlikely
This investigative documentary by Jaye Fenderson, former admissions officer of Columbia University, confronts the inequality, debt, and drop-out rates of higher education in the United States.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday–Saturday

Uptight
The great director Jules Dassin returned to his homeland, the US, after spending years in exile directing some of the greatest European crime movies ever. He then made Uptight, an unjustly neglected adaptation of John Ford's The Informer about a group of Black Power activists who suspect a mole is in their midst. Seize your chance to see this rare gem.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Zombieland 2: Double Tap
The problem with comedy sequels is that it's hard to tell the same joke years later, but funnier. Despite the ravages of time and changing tastes, filmmakers must suplex the lightning back into that bottle. But despite lurching into theaters a full decade after the original, Zombieland: Double Tap avoids those pitfalls while delivering a suitably zany Zombieland experience with the easy charm of an off-brand Mike Judge picaresque. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone all return to banter and blast zombies, and their wry camaraderie speaks a seemingly genuine desire to play in this viscera-splattered sandbox again (rather than, as with many long-delayed sequels, simply the desire for a new beach house). Added to the mix are a spate of goofy newcomers, including a delightfully unapologetic flibbertigibbet (Zoey Deutch) and a pair of dirtbag doppelgangers (Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch). It's more a live-action cartoon than a serious entry in the zombie canon, but as a low-key genre comedy, it totally works. BEN COLEMAN
Meridian 16

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

Playing with Fire

In The Good Liar, Mirren and McKellen Eye-Fucking Isn’t Enough

Suzette Smith — Sat, 16 Nov 2019 08:00:25 -0800

by Suzette Smith Chiabella James
The Good Liar is likely the most bonkers film I will see this year. What begins as a cautionary tale about the dangers of grandma’s online dating unfolds into a baffling series of reveals, all of which support the twist that we already gleaned from the trailer: Roy (Ian McKellen) is trying to double-cross Betty (Helen Mirren) and take her money... but she's not that easy to trick!

How all that happens, though? I could never have predicted it. What a septuagenarian mine cart ride!

Most of The Good Liar is totally silly, doublecrossy fun, filled with shots of Mirren and McKellen in cool outfits, raising their eyebrows artfully. But if you’re hoping that the two greatest actors of the Silent Generation eye-fucking one another over a dining room table is the reason to see this film, I regret to inform you that their roles as “ordinary people” mean the actors rarely peacock their dramatic flair. I wanted peacocking! (They do physically fight, though!)

In the film’s final third, a series of flashbacks uproot the spy vs. spy elder flirting and try to cram in some actual motive.

But this sudden, heavy seriousness drags everything down, and ultimately, The Good Liar is too serious for a movie about hot elders trying to pretend they don’t speak German. (Old people all speak German. You can’t trust anyone. Lock down Nana’s finances, and then lock them down again.)

Find theaters and showtimes for The Good Liar here. See all of our movie times here.

40 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Nov 14–17, 2019

Joule Zelman — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 13:50:00 -0800

The Irishman, The Romanian Film Festival, The Report, and Other Critics' Picks by Joule Zelman

Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is coming to theaters this weekend, and you should definitely watch it now rather than waiting for it to show up on your tiny screen. Also worth seeing: the Adam Driver-starring political thriller The Report and the National Enquirer doc Scandalous. Also, the Romanian Film Festival: Sixth Edition is not to be missed. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings. Plus, if you're in the South Sound, make sure to check out our guide to the best movies playing in Tacoma this weekend.

Note: Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

10 Cloverfield Lane
It starts conventionally: with a crash. Our heroine, Michelle, is driven off the road by a truck and careens into a nearby ditch. She twists and turns and flips – then, for the next two hours, 10 Cloverfield Lane takes us through its own wild ride. Essentially, what Dan Trachtenberg (a new face to the directing scene) has done is presented a compelling genre movie in a blender. Thriller and sci-fi. Sci-fi and mystery. Mystery and horror. They combine and intertwine and coexist so fluently, it's often difficult to tell what kind of movie you're seeing. But one thing's for certain: It's damn good stuff. JACOB LICHTY
Scarecrow Video
Friday only

Angel's Egg
In this post-apocalyptic fantasy by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), a strange young woman wanders through a gorgeously illustrated landscape while protecting a large egg that may hold hope for her world. Don't expect it to make a lot of sense, but be sure you'll sink into an atmosphere of uncanny serenity.
The Beacon
Sunday only

A Bullet for the General/Quién sabe?
When a group of revolutionary Mexican bandits rob a train, they find an unexpected ally in a genteel American who's eventually welcomed into their gang. But who is he really?
The Beacon
Sunday only
Part of To Win a Revolution: The Screenplays of Franco Solinas

Castle in the Sky
In Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 anime adventure, a young girl and her mysterious crystal pendant fall out of the sky and into the life of Pazu. Together they search for a floating island, the site of a long-dead civilization that promised wealth and power to those who can unlock its secrets.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Cinema Italian Style
The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema. On the last day of the fest, watch Good Girls, about four desperate women who team together to rob a bank.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

Downtown 81
This peculiar New York punk fairy tale is an invaluable document of 1980s vanguard country, starring none other than Jean-Michel Basquiat (who was homeless during filming) and featuring his paintings. The plot is something about Basquiat wandering the city trying to sell art, looking for a strange lady with a convertible, and kissing Debbie Harry. The bands DNA, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, and James White and the Blacks, as well as graffiti artists Lee Quiñones and Fab Five Freddy, also appear.
The Beacon
Thursday only

Fast Color
Fast Color is not really a superhero film, though the family of black women at its center quietly wield supernatural powers that have been handed down through generations and have compelled them to live in hiding in a remote Midwestern town. The film is set in the near future, where rain has pretty much stopped, water is scarce, and “seeing the colors,” as family matriarch Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) calls it, is more dangerous than ever. Bo is the bridge between Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the daughter who’s returned home) and Lila (Saniyya Sidney as the daughter Ruth abandoned years before). Fast Color is poignant, engrossing sci-fi with understated special effects, just enough action to draw you in, and a story that unfolds like a gently blooming flower. Simply brilliant. LEILANI POLK
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday & Sunday

Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations

Goodfellas
So many questions with Goodfellas. Is it Scorsese’s best movie? Is it better than The Godfather? Is it the best mafia movie ever? It’s definitely Ray Liotta’s best movie, right? Can you even cut garlic so thin with a razor blade that it just liquefies in the pan? How is that possible? How many times do you think you’ll shout “Oh shit it’s that one dude from The Sopranos!” before whoever you’re watching with punches your shoulder and tells you to shut the fuck up already? Is there anything funnier than Morrie’s wig falling off his melon-head while Robert De Niro chokes him with a phone cord? That last one has an answer. That answer is no. BOBBY ROBERTS
Cinerama
Thursday only

The Good Liar
I’ve been screaming about The Good Liar since August, when I found out that Bill Condon directed an AUSTERE SEXY ENGLISH THRILLER WITH A SEPTUAGENARIAN TWIST starring Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ian McKellen. I can’t wait to watch the two greatest actors of the Silent Generation eye-fuck one another over a dining room table and double-cross all the way to the bank. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
Friday–Sunday

The Irishman
The time-honored trio of Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci are joined by Al Pacino for a grand,, elegiac, haunting film about Frank Sheeran, a hitman who worked his way up in the mob and, allegedly, fatefully crossed paths with Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa. Ty Burr of the Boston Globe writes: "The final moments are both pitiless and some of the most emotionally devastating in Scorsese’s catalog, as age and infirmity cut out the legs from under men who once thought they were invincible."
Cinerama & Crest
Friday–Sunday

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

Joker
Joker isn’t really the story of a good man gone bad; clown for hire Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is troubled from the outset. He’s barely scraping by, living with his mother (Frances Conroy), and coming undone due to cuts in social services. Sure, Phillips overdoes it with long, panning explorations of Fleck’s bruised, skinny ribs, but then again, men with insecurities about being skinny are presumably the film’s target audience. The first half hour unfolds like a dog-whistle symphony for insecure guys who think they have it bad. Fleck berates his black social worker (Sharon Washington) for not listening to him when she’s obviously doing her best. He fixates on a black single mother (Zazie Beetz) after the briefest sign of camaraderie. Yet there are a series of trap doors throughout Joker that unexpectedly drop its audience into new perspectives. Early on, an obvious foreshadow shifts Fleck onto a new path, and as that plotline plays out, Joker offers some surprisingly rewarding reflections on the relationship between the villain and Batman. (Oh yeah! This is a Batman movie, remember?) Both men, Joker suggests, might be equally deranged, making sweeping moves against the world without regard for those who become collateral damage for their respective manias. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

Klute
A glamorous sex worker, Bree Daniel (Jane Fonda), and Detective Klute (Donald Sutherland), hired to tail her for a missing persons case, understandably start off on the wrong foot with each other. But when Daniel tells Klute that she's being stalked by a psycho, he sets out to protect her—and begins falling in love.
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of Sex Work is Work

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sounds
In what's being described as an "inspiring, entertaining, epic journey" for movie-lovers (Serena Seghedoni, Loud & Clear Reviews), longtime sound editor Midge Costin directs this tribute to the underappreciated art of sound design and the people who pioneered it.
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Midnight Traveler
Hassan Fazili's Sundance World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award documents the filmmaker's own journey as a refugee as he is forced by the Taliban to flee his native Afghanistan with his wife and daughters. Right now, there may be few better ways to feel what it's really like to leave home under threat of death and try to resettle in safety during these xenophobic times.
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Millennium Actress
The Forum continues paying tribute to Satoshi Kon with screenings of his magical film about a reclusive, aged film actress reminiscing over a secret search for a revolutionary that guided her throughout her career.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Motherless Brooklyn
Director/star Edward Norton’s decision to turn Jonathan Lethem’s postmodern neo-noir novel into a literal 1950s-set noir, with jazz music and vintage cars aplenty, is both an asset and a liability. Motherless Brooklyn is easy on the eyes, and the all-star cast conveys the sense—if not the suspense—of a twisty-turny mystery populated by crooks, dames, reporters, jazz musicians, and an ultra-powerful tycoon inspired by infamous New York City developer Robert Moses. But the movie’s overlong and unfocused, too, and there’s almost no emotional purchase, even as stakes escalate. NED LANNAMANN
Various locations

The Naked Kiss
Charles Mudede described one of The Naked Kiss director Samuel Fuller's other films as "at once ridiculous, impressive, funny, sinister, shameless, shocking, sad, and beautiful." The Naked Kiss is much the same: This story is about a mentally scarred ex-prostitute who becomes a nurse to children with disabilities in a suburb. But when her incipient romance with a philanthropist comes to a shocking end, she's in danger for her life. Don't miss this late-period noir by a master of lurid cinema.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Part of the Film Noir Series.

Nocturnal Emissions: Attack the Block
Dark-minded burlesque maven Isabella L. Price and Clinton McClung of Cinebago Events will return with their cheeky, sexy, macabre series Nocturnal Emissions, which prefaces an unusual horror classic with "phantasmagoric" burlesque performances and other fun. This edition's film is Attack the Block, an energetic sci-fi-horror thrill ride about kids in the London projects fighting an alien invasion.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

Puget Soundtrack: Erin Jorgensen Presents 'The Night of the Hunter'
This expressionistic fairy tale, from the '50s but decades ahead of its time, was the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever got to direct. Robert Mitchum famously embodies a roving preacher with a murderous hatred of women and a lust for money that puts him on the track of two child runaways. For an extra treat, Erin Jorgensen will perform a live marimba score.
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday only

The Raid
The Raid: Redemption has a character or two, I'm sure; it has some plot, I think. But none of that matters, because in The Raid, those things are mere interludes in a nearly nonstop parade of stunning action sequences. The Raid is an action movie; it is about nothing more than action. And good action. The sort that used to be dealt by John Woo, before America ruined him. Or Tony Jaa, when he teased us with Ong Bak before going insane. Or Jackie Chan, by which I mean Drunken Master II Jackie Chan. That sort of action. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

The Report
The Report is short for “The Torture Report,” which is short for “The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” which is short for the 6,700-page account of one of America’s most horrifying and shameful stretches of history. Expertly distilling an infinitely complicated, infinitely disturbing chain of events, writer/director Scott Z. Burns follows the efforts of increasingly troubled Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver, excellent as ever), who, under the oversight of Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), works to discover and document the CIA’s continued use of barbaric and ineffective “enhanced interrogation techniques” on prisoners captured after 9/11. Burns spends just as much time studying the failed, Republican-led efforts to cover up America’s war crimes as he does examining both the ways they were justified (“You have to make this work. It’s only legal if it works,” says one CIA official, played by Maura Tierney) and rewarded, with a coda that not-so-subtly alludes to the fact that Gina Haspel, the current director of the CIA, oversaw a black site in Thailand where some of the atrocities documented in the report were committed. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Varsity Theatre

Romanian Film Festival: Sixth Edition
The Romanian film industry has been producing international festival hits since 2004, and the so-called New Wave filmmakers and their successors have never stopped innovating. This brief but mighty film festival screens movies that range from caustically funny to fearlessly intellectual. This year's edition of ARCS's annual event, the sixth, is subtitled "Stories OFF the Wall," emphasizing overcoming barriers and borders (like the Berlin Wall, of course). You should check out the entire roster, but three features stand out: Corneliu Porumboiu's corrupt cop thriller The Whistlers (showing Saturday), a Palme d'Or nominee and Romania's submission to the 2020 Oscars; Serge Loznitsa's Ukraine-Romania coproduction Donbass (Sunday), a critically acclaimed dark comedy about propaganda and manipulation; and Andrei Gruzsniczki's The Escape (Sunday), a tense, morally thorny drama about two academics trying to smuggle a paper out of communist Romania. JOULE ZELMAN
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Friday–Sunday

The Secret of NIMH
Were it not for NIMH, the world of feature film animation might not still exist. In 1982, Disney was a clumsy, confused beast that couldn’t score a hit to save its life, despite its near-monopoly on children’s entertainment. Enter filmmaker Don Bluth—or rather, exit Bluth, in a frustrated huff, from Disney, along with a whole squad of talented animators sick of the rut they were stuck in. They grabbed a weird, gently moody little sci-fi/fantasy story for kids and let their ambitions run wild all over it—and kicked Disney’s ass with a beautifully animated adventure about a brave mom trying to take care of her kids. Not only did this success allow for new voices in animation to be heard, it forced Disney to fight for its crown. The animation renaissance of the ‘90s? You can thank Mrs. Brisby for that. BOBBY ROBERTS
The Beacon
Saturday only

SJFF Movie Madness Marathon
This year's Seattle Jewish Film Festival will get a mini-revival with a screening of three top films: A family film about baseball in Israel (Heading Home), an epic drama (Light of Hope), and a coming-of-age buddy flick about Sigmund Freud (The Tobacconist).
Stroum Jewish Community Center
Sunday only

Strange Negotiations
Strange Negotiations is an inspirational film—but not in the expected way. Directed by Brandon Vedder (Eddie's cousin), the documentary sheds light on Seattle singer/songwriter/guitarist David Bazan's struggle to maintain balance between family, being a touring musician, and dealing with alcoholism and the aftermath of losing his religious faith. Bazan had built a substantial fan base with the band Pedro the Lion, in which he created songs bolstered by his Pentecostal beliefs. Pedro the Lion sold hundreds of thousands of records and Bazan became the first crossover Christian indie-rock musician. But this archetypal burly, bald, bearded indie-rock dude gradually grew distrustful of Christianity—and consequently alienated many of Pedro the Lion's fans. Much of Strange Negotiations focuses on a pensive, lonely Bazan driving while speaking eloquently about his plight, his religious and political beliefs, his career, and the pain of familial separation. Fortunately, he's smart, introspective, and witty. Throughout Strange Negotiations, Bazan made me like him, even though I don't care for his music. DAVE SEGAL
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday

The Woman Who Loves Giraffes
In 1956, just after graduating from college, Anne Innis Dagg went alone to South Africa to study giraffes. She was a pioneer in the research of a single animal in the wild, bringing back amazing film footage and observational notes. After returning from Africa, she earned a PhD, published numerous articles, wrote a foundational textbook on giraffes, and got into teaching. She wanted to do more giraffe research but found her way frustratingly blocked by sexist attitudes. So she worked to expose gender bias in academia and the failure to support women’s research. There’s been an effort lately to shine a light on women whose work may not have been adequately recognized before, and this documentary shows the important scientific contributions and fascinating life of a giraffe-loving feminist pioneer. GILLIAN ANDERSON
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

Charlie's Angels

Downton Abbey

Last Christmas

Playing with Fire

31 Movies Worth Watching in Seattle This Weekend: Nov 7–10, 2019

Charles Mudede — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 11:00:00 -0800

Cinema Italian Style, Pain and Glory, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Other Critics' Picks by Charles Mudede

Cinema Italian Style, SIFF's celebration of the country's vital film industry, kicks off this weekend! Other noteworthy movie options include a Basquiat-starring avant-garde fairy tale, Downtown 81, the Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, and the wicked satire Greener Grass. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Note: Movies play Friday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

10 Things I Hate About You
Revisit one of the great '90s rom-coms that avoids saccharinity and sexism in favor of wit and genuine chemistry. Even though it's based on the most sexist Shakespeare play! Go for Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, stay for the genuine Seattle/Tacoma filming locations.
Central Cinema

The Battle of Algiers
Director Gillo Pontecorvo managed, along with actor, writer, and producer Saadi Yacef (who was himself a part of the Algerian liberation forces during the campaign), to re-create the revolution in the streets of Algiers with breathtaking honesty. Shot in stark black and white, the camera often handheld, the film achieves a level of realism that is really quite startling. It is not documentary-like, but something else, and that something brings me back to the word "document"; feeling as if it were living and breathing history, the film is so masterfully assembled that it is a perfect piece of cinematic art. BRADLEY STEINBACHER
The Beacon
Friday & Sunday

Cinema Italian Style
The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema. Notable films this weekend include the auteur Marco Bellocchio's mafia drama The Traitor, based on the true story of a gangster who flipped on his Cosa Nostra bosses, and Illustrious Corpses, a 1976 crime thriller by Franco Rosi, who also made Salvatore Giuliano. (These two films play Saturday.)
SIFF Cinema Uptown

Constantine
Constantine is far from perfect—the pacing drags, and the often silly plot (which has something to do with a requisite powerful relic) is unabashedly secondary to the premise. But Constantine's still a viscerally enjoyable, even philosophically intriguing treatment of religion: Christianity as an action film. ERIK HENRIKSEN
MoPOP
Saturday only

Doctor Sleep
Danny Torrance, the psychic kid from The Shining, is all grown up—and messed up, understandably. When he meets a girl with the "shining," the same ability as his own, the two allies must fight a cult that tries to exploit their power.
Wide release

Engauge Experimental Film Festival
This experimental film festival will once again screen "films that originated on film" from artists around the world. Tired of everyone being obsessed with narrative? Take a break from it with direct animation, experiments with time, and more.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday–Saturday

Escape from New York
John Carpenter’s 1981 classic sci-fi thriller film Escape from New York is a dystopian extravaganza starring Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, and Ernest Borgnine. After a botched hijacking, Air Force One crashes in Manhattan. The president survives, but, owing to the fact that the island has been converted into a maximum-security prison, finds himself among teeming hordes of violent criminals. A special operative named Snake is sent in to save him. Snake has a checkered past. The year is 1997.
Central Cinema

For Sama
This heartbreaking film by documentarists Waad Al-Khateab and Edward Watts chronicles young mother Al-Khateab's experiences in Aleppo during five years of the Syrian Civil War. Among other prestigious prizes, For Sama was awarded the Prix L’Œil d’Or for Best Documentary at Cannes.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday & Saturday–Sunday

Greener Grass
A hilarious, unsettling satire of suburban politeness, Greener Grass has my vote for this year’s unforgettable sleeper comedy, on par with films like Napoleon Dynamite or Wet Hot American Summer. But cowriters/directors/stars Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe have turned out something so much tighter than either of those films. Greener Grass is so relentlessly funny that I expect you’ll soon be hearing its lines traded around between film buffs. (“Do the children play soccer on graves? I haven’t noticed that before.”) My only criticism is in the time-honored casting of a large woman with greasy hair as one of the film’s more obvious villains, but then again, it’s suburbia—so really, they’re all villains. SUZETTE SMITH
SIFF Film Center

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Pacific Place & Thornton Place

Kamikaze Hearts + The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak
This double feature pairs Juliet Bashore's pseudo-documentary about the sexism and exploitation of the 1980s porn industry, Kamikaze Hearts, with Carole Roussopoulos's true documentary The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak, which witnesses the sex worker protest occupation of the St. Nizier church. The Beacon Cinema calls the latter "one of the best sex work documentaries ever made."
The Beacon
Friday only

Moving History
Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound presents another archival screening night, this time dedicated to Seattle's history of resistance in honor of the 20th Anniversary of the World Trade Organization protests.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday

Nailed It
Mixed-race Vietnamese filmmaker Adele Pham explores the eight-billion-dollar nail salon industry by diving into 40 years of Vietnamese American history.
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday only

Night and the City
The memorably weaselly Richard Widmark stars as Harry Fabian in what many consider to be the quintessential bleak noir, where things couldn't possibly get any worse...until they do.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Perfect Blue
In 1997, Satoshi Kon, a Japanese animator, achieved fame with the anime film Perfect Blue. It is a thriller about a retired idol (or, in Japanese, idoru). An idol is a pop star manufactured by a talent corporation. They are young, they sing, they model, they appear on TV shows, they retire. In Perfect Blue, the former idol, Mima Kirigoe, decides to become an actor, but her first role in a drama series called Double Bind fucks with her mind badly. It's hard out here for a retired idoru. CHARLES MUDEDE
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Rabid
An early outing from body-horror mage David Cronenberg, Rabid turns Montreal into an apocalyptic hellscape peopled by disease-ridden, blood-crazed biters.
Northwest Film Forum

Urusei Yatsura 2—Beautiful Dreamer
A gross boy saves the Earth by besting an alien princess in a weird competition, but then he has to marry her in this odd, dreamy anime by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell).
The Beacon
Sunday only

Words from a Bear
Jeffrey Palmer's film is a visual meditation on the work of Navarro Scott Momaday (Kiowa), a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who helped kick off the Native American Renaissance beginning in the 1960s.
Northwest Film Forum
Saturday only

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

Joe Versus the Volcano

Last Christmas