If you Saw the Light and subsequently shied away from all the warm weather festivities, don't despair: here are some weekend plans good enough for a quintessential Seattle vampire, many of which take place in movie theaters that have air conditioning. We've compiled our critics' picks for the best movies in town this weekend, along with links to our movie times listings for all of them, but, as always, there are even more choices on our complete movie times listings.
Want this in your inbox? Sign up for the Stranger Things To Do newsletter.
NEW RELEASES
1. The Boss
"The first act of The Boss is clunky, clumsily written, and forced, but thanks largely to a cast of gifted improvisational actors (including the terrific Cecily Strong, Kristen Schaal, Timothy Simons, and PETER MOTHERFUCKING DINKLAGE—who is so hilarious, he gives Melissa McCarthy herself a run for her money), the movie eventually gels and the laughs come fast and furious." WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
2. Demolition
"Once Davis Mitchell (Jake Gyllenhaal) loses his wife, he stops shaving and doing all that other Wall Street worker stuff. Instead, he becomes a demolition man who dismantles refrigerators, computers, and other items that don’t work as they should. The symbolism may be heavy-handed, and the message obvious—everyone mourns in their own way—but Gyllenhaal makes Davis’s funny-sad journey worth watching." KATHY FENNESSY
ONE-NIGHT SCREENINGS
3. Cat People
Scarecrow Video will screen Paul Schrader's 1982 erotic horror film about incest and "werecats," with a score by Giorgio Moroder.
(Thursday only)
4. Mussa
"Mussa, a documentary which screens tonight at the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, is about a 12-year-old black African refugee who lives with his family in a poor quarter of Tel Aviv and attends a posh private school, where he must hear other students (who are white) go on about how immigrants are bad people and will make their race impure. Mussa's response to this constant bombardment is to keep silent. He writes and types in Hebrew, but he will not speak at all. Sadly, this silence does not protect him from the realities of life sans papers." CHARLES MUDEDE
(Thursday only)
5. Work in Progress
"Adam Sekuler’s Work in Progress is a series of two-minute video clips, each depicting someone at work. That’s it. There’s no commentary, no introduction, and no conclusion, and yet the argument it conveys is powerful and precise. At its core, the film is an ode to labor—to the work that defines us, about the contribution we make to society that feeds us. But Work in Progress is cleverly in progress itself: No two screenings are the same, and it’s constantly being added to and edited." JULIA RABAN
(Friday only)
6. Drone Cinema Film Festival
"Created and curated by Kim Cascone—respected ambient-music producer behind Heavenly Music Corporation and assistant music editor for David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart—Drone Cinema combines drone-based music with complementary filmic imagery. Seems like a pretty straightforward concept, but with a mind as immersed in immersive sound and vision as Cascone’s, you can expect some deeply meditative and transportive sensory stimuli." DAVE SEGAL
(Saturday only)
7. Seijun Suzuki Retrospective
"The dominant image we have of Japanese culture is that it’s a very orderly society. Rules are rigidly followed, a person knows who is above and below them, there is lots of bowing, and women speak softly. But that view of Japan is very limited and is contradicted by the films of directors who constitute what is known as Japan’s silver age, 1960 to 1980. One leading figure of this moment is Seijun Suzuki, whose movies are celebrated for their visual and narrative excesses. His work often overflows with violence, sex, madness, and criminals. It’s not at all surprising that they influenced Quentin Tarantino. The copresented (Northwest Film Forum and Grand Illusion) Seijun Suzuki Retrospective will provide an excellent opportunity to enter and absorb the genius of this director, who is still alive." CHARLES MUDEDE
(Saturday only; Passport to Darkness)
8. Positive Force: More Than a Witness
Robin Bell's documentary about punk activist collective Positive Force was created over three decades, necessarily intertwining their musical pursuits and political entanglements.
(Sunday only)
9. Russian Ark
Alexander Sokurov's self-conscious, surreal historical drama from 2002 was filmed in a single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot, and features three orchestras and more than 2,000 actors.
(Sunday only)
LIMITED RUNS
10. April and the Extraordinary World
This French-Belgian-Canadian animated thriller, starring Marion Cotillard, is based on Jacques Tardi's 1976 graphic novel about an adventurer exploring a warped, fictional universe.
11. Embrace of the Serpent
"The Colombian film, nominated for best foreign language film at this year's Academy Awards, brings up images of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo and even Deliverance, by a short stretch of the imagination. Insanity inspired by the river and its surrounding wilderness, cultural conflict left behind and reencountered, and the punctuated momentum (alternating moments of paddling serenity with the anticipation of climbing ashore) all feel comforting—and like a part of a film that will soon join the ranks of our many river-based artistic landmarks." JULIA RABAN
12. The Invitation
Directed by Karyn Kusama, The Invitation is a new thriller/horror film about a dinner party that suddenly seems awfully suspicious.
13. Midnight Special
"Midnight Special, Nichols's latest, continues the director's winning streak. While on its surface an affectionate throwback to the kid-friendly sci-fi adventures of yesteryear (as the critic Matt Zoller Seitz said on Twitter, if this had been made in the '80s, it'd never stop playing on HBO), its underlying themes of families under pressure make it very much of a piece with the filmmaker's other work." ANDREW WRIGHT
14. Notfilm
Ross Lipman's very meta documentary about the making of Film by Samuel Beckett.
15. Point Break
Don’t worry—it’s not the shitty 2016 version, it’s the dependable 1991 version of this surfing/crime thriller starring Keanu Reeves.
16. Remember
"After more than a decade of more misses than hits, Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan returns to the characterÂ-driven intrigues of his early career. Instead of the young protagonists of Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, he builds the Benjamin August–penned Remember around two Oscar-winning octogenarians. A perfectly cast Christopher Plummer plays Zev Guttman, a Holocaust survivor with memory loss who transforms into a hit man after the death of his wife." KATHY FENNESSY
CONTINUING RUNS
17. 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
18. The Big Short
"The most important film in the 2016 Oscar race is The Big Short, which has five nominations, one of which is for best picture. The reason for its importance is the relevance of its subject matter—the greed, stupidity, and corruption that led to the collapse of the financial markets in 2008." CHARLES MUDEDE
19. Hail, Caesar!
"It doesn't matter that Hail, Caesar! barely hangs together. It's too much fun to watch. With Hail, Caesar!, [Joel and Ethan Coen] have foregone the brow furrowing and decided to revel in their favorite topic of all—movies. In what amounts to little more than an extended string of cameos and hilarious set pieces, Hail, Caesar! is a firm, feature-length pinch on Hollywood's swollen, self-absorbed posterior.” NED LANNAMANN
20. Zootopia
"Zootopia may ostensibly be an animated buddy cop flick with a few winks to Chinatown, but it's also chock full of smart, incisive observations on race and gender, as well as front-loaded with tons of laughs and heart. Disney is doing better." WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
