This weekend at the movies, our recommended special screenings include a quietly heartwarming feature by Hirokazu Kore-eda, a documentary about plutonium, a 2017 SIFF favorite about realistic musicians, and a fictional but dramatic culinary showdown. You can also catch blockbusters like Baby Driver, The Beguiled, and It Comes at Night. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, for even more options, check out our full movie times page and our special events-filled film calendar.
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Jump to: Thursday Only | Friday—Sunday | Saturday Only | All Weekend
THURSDAY ONLY
After the Storm
Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of the greatest directors in the world. His 1998 After Life is a masterpiece of 1990s cinema. That’s all you need to know about his new work, After the Storm, which is not too slow, too beautiful, too funny, too charming, too sad, and is not about much at all—there is a broken man, a death in the family, lots of old people in a quiet neighborhood, and very little money to go around. Drink a little sake before watching this film, which, like room-temperature sake, will make you all warm inside. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Nuclear Lands
Mount Baker’s Meaningful Movies series and the South Seattle Climate Action Network present Nuclear Lands: A History of Plutonium, a documentary on three spots in the world where plutonium is used or processed—one of which is Washington State’s Hanford facility. After the film, the director of Hanford Challenge health advocacy group, Tom Carpenter, will inform you of recent Hanford-related updates.
Mount Baker Community Club
The Room
Tommy Wiseau’s (writer/director/producer/lead actor/distributor) amusingly terrible PSA about sleeping with your best friend’s girl. Best watched under the influence of something or other.
Central Cinema
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
Band Aid
It’s strange the way movies can make you like people who would annoy you in real life. The married couple at the center of this surprisingly affecting and well-modulated feelings comedy are archetypal white millennial trash: a failed writer/Uber driver and a half-assed graphic designer who live on the east side of Los Angeles, smoke tons of weed, can’t/won’t fuck each other, and generally feel mordantly disaffected from their ever-more-successful contemporaries. Then Anna (writer-director Zoe Lister-Jones) has the idea of forming a band and transforming their recurring arguments into songs. It’s a thin premise that goes a long way because the songs are pretty good and the performers are game and credible. Midway through, you look up and realize you weirdly care about these people because they’re funny, and suffering is relative, and empathy exists in the world. Fred Armisen is very good as the band’s weirdo neighbor-drummer. SEAN NELSON
SIFF Cinema Uptown
I, Daniel Blake
British director Ken Loach has been making unapologetically leftist films for decades (check out Riff-Raff or Land and Freedom if you ever get a chance), and while I, Daniel Blake succumbs to some of the clichés of socialist realism, it’s still a potent experience, with flawless performances from Hayley Squires and Dave Johns (making his feature film debut). One heartbreaking scene, set in a food bank, demonstrates how personal dignity is eroded by a society that can’t even be bothered to feed its most vulnerable members. From just these few minutes, it’s clear Loach has more empathy for his fellow humans in the tip of his eyelash than Donald Trump and all his apologists and cronies have in all their bloated husks. MARC MOHAN
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Reservoir Dogs
This super-bloody crime thriller with a really subtle ear removal scene marks the moment when Tarantino became Tarantino.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
SATURDAY ONLY
Cook Up a Storm
Look forward to many glamorous close-ups of food being charred, chopped, and expertly prepared in this new movie about two chefs (one with plentiful training and a Michelin star, the other famous for their Cantonese street food) who go head to head in a culinary competition.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
ALL WEEKEND
Alien: Covenant
As Alien: Covenant begins, its titular ship is under repair. After completing a fix, Tennessee (Danny McBride) picks up a stray communication, and the crew follows the signal to a pristine planet—at which point the film becomes four old Alien movies happening at once. David [the robot] shows up. (Surprise!) Bodies explode. (Surprise?) And, after 20 years, everyone’s favorite fanged penis-monster triumphantly returns. The result is a film that’s much less ambitious than Prometheus, but also significantly less pretentious and stupid. Covenant aims lower but hits more frequently. Covenant’s victory is minor—after 25 years, the Alien series has finally managed to make a movie that, however slightly, is better than 1992’s Alien3. BOBBY ROBERTS
Meridian 16
All Eyez on Me
This is a biopic about the overrated rapper Tupac Shakur. Now, I’m going to say something that might hurt but is just truth: The decline of hiphop is marked by the rise of Biggie Smalls and Shakur in the mid-90s. They were the first to successfully sell the soul of hiphop. And once the sale was made, we entered the age of the rapper as multi-millionaire—and considering the trajectory of Jay-Z and Dr. Dre, the billionaire rapper is not long in coming. Shakur, like Smalls, had to sell out because they were second-rate. A first-rate rapper has no fear (check out Ish of Shabazz Palaces). He/she can only, to use the words of Erick Sermon, stay real. CHARLES MUDEDE
Pacific Place
Baby Driver
Once its tires grip pavement, Baby Driver becomes a full-throttle ballet of motion, color, and sound. The tunes are great, the getaway chases will leave you breathless, and the motley team of robbers—which includes Kevin Spacey, Eiza González, and an excellent Jamie Foxx—comes from the kind of screenplay you wish Tarantino still wrote. And a superbly villainous Jon Hamm shows there’s more to his post-Mad Men career than H&R Block ads. NED LANNAMANN
Various locations
The Bad Batch
The scariest thing I saw at the inaugural Overlook Film Festival, which features horror cinema from around the world, was a breathtakingly disturbing dystopian vision—all the more horrifying for its plausibility in the American present. The Bad Batch, written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, creator of the ominous revisionist vampire western noir A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, is the first vision any artist has offered of what life might look like at the end of Donald Trump’s second term. SEAN NELSON
Grand Illusion
The Beguiled
By taking the 1971 Clint Eastwood vehicle The Beguiled and touching it up with some Southern Gothic feminism, director Sofia Coppola has crafted an enchanting, dark, sometimes funny Civil War–era battle of the sexes that’s one of the more smartly provocative movies of the summer. It’s stunningly photographed by Philippe Le Sourd, and it conjures a humid, dreamlike mood that’s memorably transporting. Whichever characters you end up thinking the title applies to, it’s just as likely to refer to viewers of The Beguiled. MARC MOHAN
SIFF Cinema Egyptian & AMC Seattle 10
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
The music is uniformly great, the jokes are whip-smart and delightful, the action scenes are exciting CG works of art, the characters are identifiable and lovable, and BABY GROOT IS (as mentioned earlier) GODDAMN ADORABLE. While the characters of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may be mired in their feelings, at least they have them—and aren’t afraid to show them. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Pacific Place & AMC Seattle 10
The Hero
Lee (Sam Elliott) has cancer, he smokes a lot of weed, he is divorced from his wife and has been neglectful of his adult daughter, and his successful acting career is in the past. This is an intense, quiet movie about a man possibly facing his death and evaluating his life. There are some nice moments of levity provided by a drug-dealing friend (played by Nick Offerman). Sam Elliott is wonderful, and so are his eyebrows and mustache. (But a small—okay, big—quibble: Why can men in movies not date women within their own age range?) We root for Lee’s revitalization even as he questions whether it is worth it to try to buy more time. GILLIAN ANDERSON
Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown & AMC Seattle 10
It Comes at Night
It Comes at Night tells the story of Paul (Joel Edgerton), who lives in a secluded woodland house with his wife (Carmen Ejogo) and teenage son (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). The world is sick—probably dying. An unnamed plague, fatal and incurable, has fragmented what we can see of society. Food, gas, and ammunition are in short supply, and bands of violent men prowl the roads. Every foray into the outside world carries the threat of contamination. Paul and his family must defend themselves from these threats and ensure they have enough supplies to last… a while. It doesn’t seem like any cavalry is coming to the rescue. Aside from the obvious similarities to Naughty Dog’s remarkable 2013 video game The Last of Us (which the film resembles both aesthetically and thematically), the more I think about It Comes at Night, the more it reminds me of a video game. In a good way! The film consistently evokes that very specific sense of risk/reward anxiety that makes survival games both punishing and fun. BEN COLEMAN
AMC Seattle 10
Wonder Woman
In Wonder Woman, innocence is Diana’s foil. She’s read at great length about the world, but has never lived in it. And as Diana deals with her naïveté and her foes, Wonder Woman is exciting and fun—even though it devolves into typical blockbuster spectacle near its end, I’d recommend it to anyone who loves action films, and there’s also just enough subtext to feed a philosophical mind. How much harm does Wonder Woman do when she strides boldly into war? Is this what power looks like? Is it cool just because she’s a woman? Hopefully these questions will be answered in future films. For now, Wonder Woman is a thrilling start. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
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