If you're in the mood for some escapist entertainment this weekend, our critics have picked the best options for both at-home Netflix sessions and in-theater movie viewing. For the former: Ijeoma Oluo writes, "If you want to understand the anger and the mistrust that many black Americans have toward both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, please watch 13th." For the latter: Find your options below, ranging from festivals like HUMP! and Cinema Italian Style to big-budget films like Doctor Strange and Arrival to limited runs like Moonlight and Gimme Danger. As always, check out our complete movie times calendar for all of your options, or our Things To Do calendar for other events.
THURSDAY-SUNDAY
1. 12th Annual HUMP! Film Festival
Every year we put out the call to sex-havers everywhere to submit a homegrown amateur porn film depicting whatever they're into. The result is an incredibly diverse representation of human sexuality in all its straight, gay, trans, queer, kinky, funny, pissy, painful, and pretty forms. That diversity is also reflected in HUMP!'s audiences, making for a unique theater experience. The person sitting next to you might be seeing your everyday kind of sex for the very first time. In a world where fear and ignorance breed hatred, HUMP!'s demystifying inclusivity is on the front line of deflecting destructive alienation. And, like the best film festivals, it's also fun, thought provoking, and often hilarious. MARJORIE SKINNER
On the Boards
2. American Pastoral
Ewan McGregor directs and stars in this adaptation of Philip Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel American Pastoral, a book that deals with political terrorism, family upheaval, religion, and the history of the United States in the 20th century.
Guild 45th
3. Arrival
In this buzzy science-fiction film from Denis Villeneuve (Sicario and Prisoners) starring Amy Adams and Forest Whitaker, a linguistics professor leads an elite team of investigators in attempts to communicate to extraterrestrials that land on earth in giant spaceships.
4. Cinema Italian Style
The ninth annual Cinema Italian Style is an eight-day-long SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema. See the full schedule here.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
5. Doctor Strange
The psychedelic visuals, the clever asides, the pure pleasure of having as good an actor as Cumberbatch at the center of a silly superhero epicâall of that cast a spell on me, and I came out of the theater utterly content. Doctor Strange might have a lot of baggage, but more than anything else, itâs fun. SUZETTE SMITH
6. Don't Think Twice
The premise for Mike Birbigliaâs new filmâa follow-up to his 2012 debut, Sleepwalk with Meâprobably sounds insufferable. Basically, heâs gathered sketch-comedy performers from IFC, Comedy Central, and Netflix for a film about a New York improv troupe. Watch them succeed! Watch them fail! Watch them fall in and out of love! And thatâs exactly what happens. If the film isnât especially funnyâthe curse of most comedies about comedyâIâm not sure that was Birbigliaâs intention. Mostly, itâs like a lo-fi cover of Morrisseyâs âWe Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.â Kind of whiny, kind of mean, and kind of true. KATHY FENNESSY
Sundance Cinemas
7. The Girl on the Train
Just so weâre clear, this movie is not Gone Girl. It gets off to a deceptively boring beginning (and middle), with plenty of blue-tinted shots of a listless Blunt as Rachel, an unemployed alcoholic who fake-commutes on Metro North to New York, where she drinks vodka out of one of those water bottles with a built-in straw and sketches statues. On the way home to get blackout drunk, Rachel likes to watch a woman who lives in a house near the train and regularly hangs out on a deck wearing underwear and looking sad. Thatâs not really a creepy thing in and of itself, I guessâwhat is public transit in a big city for if not imagining the lives of other people?âbut then that woman gets murdered, and Rachel becomes concerned she may have killed her in a blackout. MEGAN BURBANK
Meridian 16
8. The Handmaiden
Based on a novel set in the Victorian era by Welsh novelist Sarah Waters, the film's story happens during Japan's occupation of Korea (the 1930s) and concerns a young female thief who is placed in the middle of an elaborate plot to scam a Japanese countess. But the plan is further complicated by the unexpected sexual attraction that grips the young thief, Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri), and the countess, Lady Hideko (Kim Min-hee), she works for as a handmaiden. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Cinema Uptown & Guild 45th
9. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Sure, Hunt for the Wilderpeopleâs scope is small, but it gives you everything you could want from a movie: Itâs smart, emotional, and even a bit action-packed once Ricky and Hec embark on an unplanned adventure in the forest. But most of all, itâs funny. So, so funny. Wilderpeople is a hugely loveable movie thatâs suitable for date night or the whole family, and I know that sounds like a hacky movie poster blurb. But when a movieâs this good, itâs tough to avoid clichĂ©s, so Iâll leave you with another: Donât miss it. NED LANNAMANN
Varsity Theatre
10. Moonlight
Moonlight is a film that has all of the major film critics in the country singing the loudest praises, and is already breaking box-office records, and happens to be a coming-of-age tale of a black American male. But I want to make this clear: The director of Moonlight, Barry Jenkins, did not come out of nowhere. He also directed and wrote one of the best films of the previous decade, Medicine for Melancholy (2008). The wonder is that it took him so long to make his second feature, which will most likely make a big splash at the next Oscars. Expect Jenkins to be one of the few black Americans to win the award for best director. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Cinema Egyptian & Sundance Cinemas
11. Sully
The story of US Airways Flight 1549âwhich, in 2009, pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger famously landed on the Hudson Riverâwas going to be made into a movie whether we wanted it or not. So the news that Clint Eastwood, nowadays a dimmed, decidedly disappointing figure, was going to direct was neither surprising nor exciting. I'm a bit relieved, then, to tell you that Sully is a far more successful exercise in both dramatic storytelling and patriotism than Eastwood's 2012 dialogue with a chair. NED LANNAMANN
Meridian 16
12. The Titicut Follies
Documentarian Frederick Wiseman shot this intense slice of life inside the Massachusetts Correctional Institution for the criminally insane, centered around the inmates' talent show. Once banned, this queasily fascinating film shows appalling conditions inside the institution. Presented in 35 mm, The Titicut Follies will be one of three original Wiseman documentaries shown at the Grand Illusion this weekend, along with High School and Hospital.
Northwest Film Forum
No showings on Saturday
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
13. Blazing Saddles
A spruce young black sheriff tries to defend a frontier town from a histrionic land-snatcher. His best ally: Gene Wilder as a watery-eyed, drunken sharpshooter. Featuring campfire farts and the classic antiracist speech: "You've got to remember that these are just farmers. These are people of the land, the common clay of the New West. You know, morons."
Central Cinema
14. Gimme Danger
Director/writer Jim Jarmusch doesn't pull any punches in his Stooges documentary, Gimme Danger, calling the Ann Arbor group "the greatest rock and roll band ever" in the first two minutes. At this point, we don't need an endless stream of very important musicians and critics to testify to the Stooges' magnificence. However, we do need to know how these dudes from inauspicious circumstances seeded the soil for punk rock and other heavy musical developments. Gimme Danger dramatizes that story efficiently and vividly. DAVE SEGAL
Guild 45th
15. My Neighbor Totoro
Two young sisters befriend a magical forest behemoth, a fuzzy flying rabbit-owl with a huge grin and many unusual friends (who else loves Catbus?), in this gentle and fantastical film about family, love, and the mystical unknown.
Central Cinema
16. Seattle Shorts Film Festival
The sixth annual Seattle Shorts Film Festival is perfect for an engaged and artsy audienceâno lengthy attention span required. In addition to a number of new and exciting short films, they promise guest speakers and special talks.
SIFF Film Center
FRIDAY ONLY
17. Quadrophenia
A teenage Mod grapples with other gangs, hated authority figures, and his own disillusionment in this angry-young-man portrait scored by The Who and set in early 1960s London. Fun fact: it also features Sting as "Ace Face."
Grand Illusion
18. The Who: The Kids Are Alright
This film cuts footage from The Who's concerts, backstage antics, and daily life for a portrait spanning 14 years of the wild, hedonistic, generation-marking band.
Grand Illusion
SATURDAY ONLY
19. High School
Peer into the lives of high schoolers and their teachers in the 1960s: the kids chafing against authority and old-fashioned gender and societal roles, the teachers butting heads with administrators, and all of them dealing with a culture in transition. Presented in 35 mm, High School will be one of three original Frederick Wiseman documentaries shown at the Grand Illusion this weekend, along with Hospital and The Titicut Follies.
Northwest Film Forum
20. Hospital
âIt is as open and revealing as filmed experience has ever been. You look misery in the eye and you realize thereâs nothing to be afraid of... By the end we are so thoroughly involved... that tears well up, because we simply have no other means of responding to the intensity of this plain view of the ordinary activities in Metropolitan Hospital,â wrote Pauline Kael of The New Yorker of this 1969 documentary from Emmy-winning Frederick Wiseman, which follows the daily activities of the emergency ward and out-patient clinics at the Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. Presented in 35 mm, Hospital will be one of three original Wiseman documentaries shown at the Grand Illusion this weekend, along with High School and The Titicut Follies.
Grand Illusion
SATURDAY-SUNDAY
21. We Are X
This rock-fueled documentary relates the life of existentially tormented Japanese megastar Yoshiki of X Japan.
Northwest Film Forum
