Sure, the weather forecast is full of warm and sunny days—but that doesn't mean it's not a good time for a trip to the movies. First of all, you can check out our compilation of outdoor movie screenings, and second of all, movie theaters have air conditioning (unlike most Seattle residences). Our critics have picked their favorite films playing at theaters around Seattle this weekend, including hilarious nun flick The Little Hours, the Czech That Film festival, and the religious documentary Sacred. Plus, if you missed SIFF 2017's funny and moving opening night feature, The Big Sick, there's another chance to see it on the big screen. 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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THURSDAY ONLY
All Eyez on MeThis 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
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
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
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
Reservoir Dogs
This super-bloody crime thriller with a really subtle ear removal scene marks the moment when Tarantino became Tarantino.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
Czech That FilmThis touring film festival is billed as "the largest Czech cultural event in the United States," traveling around American cities while showing off the variety and talent in Czech cinema. When it stops in Seattle, audiences will have the chance to see seven feature films, from an animated take on The Little Mermaid to a horror film about the "Noonday Witch." Joule Zelman writes that The Noonday Witch "cadges clichés from horror filmmaking without fully investing in the genre" and offers "rural dysfunction, bickering couples, avuncular lechery, and unwanted intrusions." See the full schedule here.
SIFF Film Center
The Little Hours
Though nuns are often portrayed as beacons of purity, they’re anything but in The Little Hours, Jeff Baena’s film set at a convent in medieval Italy. These sisters unleash torrents of profanity, violently lash out at men, chug sacramental wine, and explore their sexuality with wild abandon. The film’s best moments come when we get to spy on them—wringing out the laundry, grooming the donkey, stealing turnips from the garden and later going to confession over the theft. The Little Hours finds comedy in mundanity; its jokes, thankfully, make up for its unoriginality. CIARA DOLAN
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Want to understand Los Angeles? One of the most important and engaging films about this city is Robert Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a live action/animated neo-noir about the exploitation at the heart of a LA’s biggest industry, Hollywood. The late Bob Hoskins plays the private detective who enters the maze of streets, image factories, and business offices to search for the solution to a mystery. The film’s rabbit happens to be married to a super-curvy femme fatale. CHARLES MUDEDE
Central Cinema
SUNDAY ONLY
SacredSacred, an expansive project by documentary filmmaker Thomas Lennon, presents an hour and a half of religious vignettes from around the world. The project’s wide scope is striking: audiences can feel the impact of ritual, from the way a Madagascan community buries and re-buries their dead to the way a dying woman methodically responds to Christian calls for prayer on Facebook. Don’t go in to the film expecting any social or political investigations—Sacred is not about ideology. Instead, the film offers a few moments of private observance, a number of communities united by custom and celebration, and a lavish demonstration of religion’s visual power. JULIA RABAN
Northwest Film Forum
ALL WEEKEND
Alien: CovenantAs 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
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 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
The Big Sick
This film comes with a few red flags attached (rom-com set in the world of stand-up, etc.), but haters be damned. The true story of Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley, Portlandia) and his real-life wife Emily Gordon’s tumultuous courtship is hilarious, warm, and genuinely affecting—a best-case scenario in every department. The cross-cultural differences at the center of the story are written and played with empathy and truth, and the performances (especially from Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter, and Adeel Akhtar) are deep, surprising, and bursting with multidimensional humanity. SEAN NELSON
Meridian 16
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
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, AMC Seattle 10, & SIFF Cinema Uptown
Spider-Man: Homecoming
Spider-Man: Homecoming isn't just the best Spider-Man film ever made—it might just be the current reigning champion in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead of being crammed with typical action set pieces and clunky character development, Homecoming is actually a good-natured teen comedy in the vein of John Hughes's best work, rather than the action-packed blockbuster behemoths we've grown accustomed to. It's the closest a Spider-Man film has come to capturing the insecurity and bubbly effervescence displayed in the Marvel comics of the 1960s, and Tom Holland's earnest, engaging style has a lot to do with it. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations
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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