MARCH 5

Festival of (In)appropriation

This curated program features a dozen short works of contemporary experimental art cinema from the United States, the UK, Sweden, Hungary, and Australia. Two of the filmmakers will be in attendance for the evening's screenings.

Northwest Film Forum

VHSWTF

Classic rock videos, oddities, and gems from the golden age of MTV.

Central Cinema

OPENS MARCH 6

The Salvation

The movie stars Mads Mikkelsen (I sleep). The movie is a "Danish twist on the classic American western"(I still sleep). The movie has a small town whose mayor is also the undertaker (I'm now snoring). The movie stars Eva Green (now I wake up). Is that Eva from Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers? Eva with the eyes of ash and hurt? The Eva who really is the Charlotte Rampling of my generation (or at least my imagination)? Eva who is the current queen of sex and chic? Indeed, it is very much her. What has now vanished from every corner of this vast and expanding universe is the possibility that I miss this western with a twist. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

SIFF Cinema Uptown

Chappie

A South African robot/cop? That has consciousness? The movie has to be by Neill Blomkamp, the white African who made District 9—a film that essentially made my countrymen (Zimbabweans) aliens. I forgive him for that—District 9 is a masterpiece of '00s science fiction. I also must praise him for using the first saint of the 21st century, dubstep genius Burial, on the soundtrack of his second film, Elysium. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Cinerama

MARCH 9

Faust

F.W. Murnau's adaptation of the centuries-old German legend in 1926 was the last film he'd direct in his home country, before heading to America to direct Sunrise the next year. Tonight it's presented with live organ accompaniment as part of the Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays series.

Paramount Theatre

MARCH 10

L'eclisse

One name makes this 1962 classic by Michelangelo Antonioni: Monica Vitti. Is this human being not a miracle on two legs? And how the camera just loves everything about her—the elegant clothes she wears, her noble Germanic hair, her sure Italian figure. Indeed, I have seen this movie maybe three times, and all I can recall of it is not the story or the score (does it even have one?) but this human that cinema transformed into a creature from a world that is just too wonderful for us men and women of meat and bone to believe. I dream of Monica Vitti. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Seattle Art Museum

MARCH 12

Dwarves Kingdom

The subject of this documentary is somewhat hard to believe and evidently controversial: a Chinese amusement park called The Kingdom of Little People, where the primary attraction is its more than one hundred actors with dwarfism who play their condition for comic effect.

SIFF Film Center

OPENS MARCH 13

Cinderella

Disney gets drunk and—eyes glazed over, staring through the air at something we can't see—begins to tell us the same story again. We smile and softly squeeze his hand and then get up—remember to keep nodding, "Yes, I'm listening"—to pour him a glass of water and bring a blanket. Looks like he's crashing here tonight.

Wide release

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

Shit, man. There's a whole ghost dimension?

Wide release

Kung Fu Elliot

Very much in the tragicomic vein of American Movie, this is a documentary about a man's seemingly delusional quest to make his no-budget, no-timeline-for-completion movie project into a huge success and himself into a movie star.

SIFF Film Center

Wild Tales

Argentina's official submission to the Academy Awards, Wild Tales is a black comedy that is composed of six thematically connected but otherwise independent vignettes.

Seven Gables

Beloved Sisters

Beloved Sisters, a film about the life of the 18th-century German poet Friedrich Schiller, is simply and effortlessly beautiful. The movie is not fast, and lacks the force of a thrilling plot, but it contains sequences that grip and enchant the eye in the theater of the mind. One such scene involves a rushing river, a dog drowning in that river, a stupid child deciding to run into the river and save the dog, the poet Schiller (Florian Stetter) running into the river to save the stupid child, the poet saving the child but not the dog, and, at the end, a tree trunk and two sisters—one of whom, Charlotte (Henriette Confurius), has the most amazing lower lip—using their bodies to warm the poet's naked, river-chilled body. This is the condition of the erotic, which is always sex without fucking. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Grand Illusion

MARCH 14–22

Seattle Jewish Film Festival

The Seattle Jewish Film Festival is an annual, midsize film festival, which is now in its 20th year of operation. This year's program runs for just more than a week and includes 32 films, as well as several galas and events.

SIFF Cinema Uptown, AMC Pacific Place, Stroum Jewish Community Center

MARCH 16

People on Sunday

This silent film takes a slice-of-life look at leisure and lifestyle in Germany between the wars, and is notably one of Billy Wilder's earliest writing credits. Presented as part of Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays.

Paramount Theatre

MARCH 17

Red Desert

Michelangelo Antonioni's postindustrial meditation.

Seattle Art Museum

MARCH 19–22

The King and the Mockingbird

This is one of those storied animated oddities (like The Thief and the Cobbler) that is cited as influential and revelatory by top animators (notably Miyazaki, Takahata, and The Iron Giant's Brad Bird) and yet hovers pretty low on the public radar and is quite hard to come by. It's French and was created over a span of more than 30 years, finally receiving its limited release in 1980. Then, in 2013, it was restored and rereleased, and it stands before us today, with this very brief engagement at Northwest Film Forum.

Northwest Film Forum

MARCH 20

VHS Über Alles Presents: Killer Workout

VHS Über Alles are aficionados of the obsolete, hoarding the cartridges of the most bizarre and awful films that never quite made it into the digital age. This one, also known as "Aerobi-cide," is a tale of gym and murder.

Grand Illusion

MARCH 20–24

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Two lounge ladies cruise across the ocean, trying to sing and skank their way to fame, eligible bachelors, and, most importantly, some diamonds.

Central Cinema

MARCH 20–28

Also Like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien

This series features five films from the Taiwanese auteur that span 15 years of his life, copresented by the Grand Illusion and the Northwest Film Forum. All films will be presented in 35 mm, and each will screen twice: once at each location.

Northwest Film Forum, Grand Illusion

OPENS MARCH 20

The Gunman

Sean Penn (a man of, if nothing else, a remarkably consistent hairstyle) plays a calloused former spy who just wants to live out the rest of his life in gunless peace with his sexy French wife (don't we all?), but you know that's not going to happen, because you always get dragged back into shit. With Javier Bardem doing the dragging.

Wide release

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

As one who rates Fargo as one of the five greatest movies of the 1990s, and the Coen brothers' best work, I can't express enough of the excitement I feel to watch this movie, which is about a Japanese woman (Kumiko—played by an actress, Rinko Kikuchi, who in every way appears as a vision from some post-human future: her soul-slender form, her alien-dark irises, her brainy cheekbones) who, after watching Fargo, travels to cold Minnesota to find the loot that Steve Buscemi's character, Carl, buries in the snow near the movie's end. My only hope is that the directors, the Zellner brothers, do not treat Kumiko as cruelly as the Coen brothers treated Carl. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

SIFF Film Center

MARCH 20–21

Vox Docs Film Festival

Catch up on some festival favorites that have been successfully making the circuit for a while. This short film festival features Chasing Ice, K2: Siren of the Himalayas, and The Great Invisible as well as lectures from NPR's Mara Liasson and author Matt Taibbi.

Snowy Owl Theater, Leavenworth

MARCH 24

The Passenger

Michelangelo Antonioni's 1975 movie has Hollywood star power (in the form of Jack Nicholson), but don't let that fool you, we're still in the slow and challenging realm of art house.

Seattle Art Museum

OPENS MARCH 27

Get Hard

Kevin Hart helps Will Ferrell get hard, but not in the way you're hoping.

Wide release

MARCH 27–28

SEEDArts Cinema Series "Homegrown Documentaries"

Featured in this series of locally made documentaries are Evergreen: The Road to Legalization, My Last Year with the Nuns, and Oil and Water.

Rainier Valley Cultural Center

MARCH 27–29

Belle & Sebastian

"There is perhaps no cinematic bond stronger than that of the friendship between a boy and his dog," says SIFF of this purportedly inspiring new cinematic version of a popular 1960s French novel about a boy and his dog who guide war refugees to safety. SIFF apparently hasn't seen Zoo.

SIFF Film Center

MARCH 27–APRIL 2

Spring

"Phenomenal. A hybrid of Richard Linklater and H.P. Lovecraft," says the amorphous, post-human movie-reviewing entity RogerEbert.com.

Grand Illusion Cinema

OPENS APRIL 3

Furious 7

Promising to be the slowest, angriest film in the franchise.

Wide release

OPENS APRIL 10

The Longest Ride

Based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks, this is, of course, a romance that spans generations and "transcends time." And of course, there are cowboys. And of course, romance blossoms with the aid of a mechanical bull.

Wide release

The Moon and the Sun

Pierce Brosnan plays King Louis XIV, whose quest for immortality somehow ends up involving mermaids.

Wide release

Of Horses and Men

Horses fuck one another against a striking Icelandic landscape in this meditative comedy about equestrianism, love, death, and "the primal desires hidden within all of us."

Grand Illusion

APRIL 10–14

ByDesign

Copresented this year with Civilization, a Capitol Hill design firm, this short festival is intended to explore intersections of design and film. ByDesign '15 features an opening party, guest artists and speakers, documentaries, and panel discussions.

Northwest Film Forum

APRIL 11–19

2015 Langston Hughes African American Film Festival

Now in its 12th year, it's a film festival dedicated to "the tradition of presenting positive, provocative, and penetrating independent films created by emerging and established filmmakers."

Langston Hughes Performing Arts Institute

OPENS APRIL 17

Run All Night

Liam Neeson is an aging hit man and an estranged dad—a classic combo. Momentous thing happens: He protects his son from being shot, but in doing so, kills his former boss's son. The former boss doesn't like that one bit. No sir, he does not. And so the former boss decides that he's going to kill Liam Neeson's son and Liam Neeson.

Wide release

APRIL 19

Kelly Sears Screening

Kelly Sears is an animator and filmmaker whose experimental collage animation sources imagery from post-WWII America: discarded magazines, books, orphaned films, and other ephemera.

Northwest Film Forum

APRIL 23

Horrorism for Beginners, Beginners for Horrorism

The avant-garde German artists who've organized this show offer us these words on their piece: "This is a device that does not release pressure. This is a device that does not sooth, that does not relieve pain. This is a device that does not apply gentle massage. This is a device that does not ameliorate noise. This is a device that does not remember. This is a device that does not learn. This is a device that is always beginning, that does not know how to end. This device is like a sentient ocean whose behavior is beyond understanding."

Northwest Film Forum

APRIL 23–26

National Film Festival for Talented Youth

Hailed as "the Sundance for young filmmakers," NFFTY is the world's largest film festival for emerging directors. This festival showcases an assortment of documentaries, narrative shorts, animation, and experimental films, as well as workshops, parties, and kids with very expensive cameras.

Various locations

OPENS APRIL 24

The Age of Adaline

Adaline was born in 1908 but, after being struck by lightning or something like that, she ceases to age. The remainder of the film is dedicated to itemizing all the potential poignancy of this arrangement. Take, for instance, her having to watch all her friends and lovers get old and die. Never thought about that, did you?

Wide release

OPENS MAY 1

Avengers 2

All your favorite superheroes return for a nice, long money-printing session at the box office.

Wide release

OPENS MAY 8

Hot Pursuit

Reese Witherspoon, who is just a touch over five feet tall, plays a cop. Sofia Vergara, a Colombian.

Wide release

MAY 14–JUNE 7

The Seattle International Film Festival

SIFF turns a whole section of this city pretty much upside down for the better part of a month. People take holiday time to watch movies full-time. Actual movie stars come to Seattle. Directors from Greenland come to Seattle. Like always, we'll help you make sense of it all with our exhaustive guide, which hits the streets the week of the festival.

Various locations

OPENS MAY 15

Mad Max: Fury Road

What we have seen of this film in trailer after trailer on the web is a spectacle that wants nothing more than to become the biggest spectacle to ever hit the big screen. Isn't it amazing to think that the end of civilization could be so explosive, so exciting, so busy. And I will not even get into Tom Hardy's very pretty postapocalyptic lips. (CHARLES MUDEDE)

Wide release

OPENS MAY 22

Spy

Melissa McCarthy teams up with Bridesmaids director Paul Feig for this slapstick espionage comedy.

Wide release

Tomorrowland

The bad news: This is a movie based on a subsection of an amusement park. The good news: The director, Brad Bird, is the man who brought us The Iron Giant and Ratatouille.

Wide release

OPENS MAY 29

San Andreas

Satisfy your appetite for destruction (specifically, your appetite for the destruction of California's buildings and infrastructure) with this little bit of disaster porn, starring Dwayne "The Actor" Johnson as a rescue helicopter pilot.

Wide release

OPENS JUNE 5

Entourage

The principal cast of the cult HBO TV show reunites for their big-screen debut. The plot revolves around Vince's directorial debut going wildly over budget. Classic Vince!

Wide release