This weekend, cry over the genuinely lovely A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, take a cinematic voyage with the Seattle Turkish Film Festival, revisit the Wachowski sisters' steamy thriller Bound, or take the kids to see Frozen II, just to name a few highly diverse options. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.

Note: Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise noted

Another Day of Life
All the macho foreign-correspondent bullshit swirling around the documentary’s central figure, the renowned Polish writer and reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski, makes the first 15 minutes of this otherwise incredible film difficult to watch. But once all that nonsense settles down, the power of the story and the innovative way it’s told grabs hold and doesn’t let go. As Portugal shuffles off from its colonial grip on Angola, a civil war fills the power vacuum. Kapuscinski is one of the few journalists covering the war. As he travels through the war-torn country to the front line of the conflict, he meets communist fighters who change the way he thinks about the country and the whole idea of objectivity in journalism. The great innovation here is the use of animation. Rather than employing shitty historical reenactments to immerse you in the scene, the directors chose to animate the whole story. At times, the animation artfully and seamlessly gives way to real-world interviews with the film’s subjects, many of whom are still alive, which is something I’ve never quite seen before. Highly recommended. RICH SMITH
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
It’s unusual to witness real cinematic magic these days, but the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood absolutely has it. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) wisely avoids the visual slickness one might expect from a Tom Hanks-centric melodrama, instead employing a lived-in style and scene transitions that consist of miniature cities harkening back to the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hanks is totally committed to Rogers’ appearance and manner, but A Beautiful Day is more about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a fictional journalist profiling Rogers. (Vogel’s work is based on a 1998 Esquire profile by Tom Junod; as is the case with the film, Junrod’s piece sketches a beautiful yet enigmatic image of Rogers.) Where Heller’s film becomes transcendent is in its cinematic pressure points: The striking slowness of the narrative (it’s meant to emulate the pace of Rogers’ show, and you get used to it), the mirroring of Rogers and Vogel in their interview styles and drawn-out reaction shots, and a profound moment of silence that grips your heart like, “Did that really just happen? Why was that so intense?” SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

The Biggest Little Farm
Skeptics might wonder whether a 90-minute documentary on farming is better used as insomnia remedy than a night out at the movies, but John Chester's gorgeous film has been snatching up audience choice and best film awards all over the place. He and his wife, Molly, spent eight years striving to create a farm in California that was perfectly in accord with nature—despite drought, poor soil, and wildfires. Ultimately, they have to accept that they're not in control of nature and life. Come for the lovely footage of wildlife and farm animals, stay for the inspiration to fight for sustainability. After the film, hear from Nyema Clark of Nurturing Roots and member of Black Farmers Collective.
Mt. Baker Community Club
Thursday only

Bound
For reasons that I cannot explain in this blurb, the 1990s experienced a wave of superb noir films. There was One False Move by Carl Franklin, The Last Seduction by John Dahl, and, of course, Bound by the Wachowskis (who later made the Matrix series). Bound stars Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon. Tilly plays the classic noir black widow, but in this film there is a twist: The deadly and beautiful spider, who is married to a mobster, attracts a woman (Gershon). After steamy sex, the two plan a crime. But is the spider (cigarette smoke, red lips, black lingerie) luring her lover into a trap? How will all of this end? This is how you do noir. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Beacon
Part of 'Sex Work Is Work'
Friday–Saturday

Burn!
Marlon Brando stars in this dark historical drama as an English agent fomenting rebellion on a Portuguese-controlled Caribbean island. He learns that once slaves and oppressed people take revolution into their own hands, they don't necessarily align with British imperialist goals. This action-filled movie comes from director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas, the team behind the famed The Battle of Algiers.
The Beacon
Sunday only
Part of To Win a Revolution: The Screenplays of Franco Solinas

Depeche Mode: Spirits in the Forest
Anton Corbijn's film captures Depeche Mode's 2017/2018 Global Spirit Tour, which was attended by some three million fans.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

Doctor Sleep
Rather than trying to be a slavish follow-up to Stanley Kubrick’s inimitable The Shining, Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep is a looser, goofier trip that just so happens to wander some of the same territory that Stephen King first explored four decades ago. Decades after The Shining, Doctor Sleep finds Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) all grown up, still appreciating a good, cozy sweater, and drinking away the ghosts—both figurative and literal—that’ve haunted him since childhood. But when 15-year-old Abra (Kyliegh Curran) reaches out—revealing that she shares Danny’s paranormal abilities—the two stumble onto a rambling road that eventually leads to the ruined, long-abandoned Overlook. Sure, Flanagan’s no Kubrick, but he does pull off the too-rare trick of capturing the sprawling, earnest, weird vibe of a decent King novel, where the grotesque usually walks hand-in-hand with silliness. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Wide release

'Dragnet Girl' with Live Score by Coupler
The masterful Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu is better known for simple, tragicomic domestic dramas than for gangster flicks, but this 1933 jewel, about a hood and his dangerous romance with the sweet sister of a newly made man, bears the influence of Hollywood crime cinema. The musical group Coupler—at whose core is Ryan Norris, Rodrigo Avendano, and Rollum Haas—will provide a live score.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

Encounters in the Anthropocene
Georg Koszulinski's sci-fi-tinged short films explore the impending sixth mass extinction and the devastation of the Anthropocene.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

End of the Century
If you missed your chance to see this expressive Argentinian gay romance at the Seattle Queer Film Festival, you've got a second chance this weekend. Ocho and Javi have a fling after an initial missed connection, but things get complicated when Javi tells Ocho that they've met—and rolled in the hay—many years before.
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday

Everybody's Everything
This Terrence Malick-produced documentary focuses on Gustav Ahr, aka Lil Peep, a rising star just breaking into the mainstream when he died from an overdose at age 21.
Northwest Film Forum

Fantastic Fungi
At its worst, Fantastic Fungi gets too woo-woo wacky for its own good (when the film’s discussion turns to magic mushrooms, the visuals turn into what is, as far as I can tell, just a psychedelic screensaver from Windows 95), but at its best, the doc pairs fantastic time-lapse imagery with a good dose of actual, mind-blowing science. Affable, passionate mushroom researcher Paul Stamets is joined by talking heads Michael Pollan, Andrew Weil, and narrator Brie Larson to examine everything from massive fungal networks that carry signals between disparate, distant plants to the psychological benefits of psilocybin. It’s an uneven trip, but a good one. ERIK HENRIKSEN
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only

The Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo Drift
For car-lovers, The Fast and the Furious franchise has always provided two necessities: sweet cars and sweet pieces of ass. The Vin-less sequel, 2 Fast 2 Furious, faltered from an underwhelming script and over-the-top visuals. But this time around, the franchise has been rebuilt from the ground up—and not only is The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift faster, it's got "furious" to spare. Lucas Black is an American hillbilly who can't keep his foot off the pedal, so he's sent to stay with his pop in Tokyo. Though banned from climbing behind the wheel, he falls in with a group of Yakuza-connected street racers who specialize in "drifting"—managing hairpin turns with the perfect application of gas and brake. And while the first two F&Fs were fuel-injected crime sprees, Tokyo Drift is a revved-up, fish-out-of-water story that has more in common with Rebel Without a Cause than The French Connection. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations

Frozen II
It starts out with Young Elsa and Young Anna, and, I don’t know, this is just my opinion, but I didn’t think that part was very necessary, necessarily? I thought the story was good. I thought the parts were well thought out and they had some depth to them, if you know what I mean? Like some parts were really sad, and some parts could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. Also, you know how in the first Frozen, there’s like this main song that you know is the main song? In this one, there’s like three or four different songs that could be that main song. There were songs that like Elsa and Anna and Kristoff sang that could qualify for that position. I thought they were fine. SIMON HAM, AGE 12
Various locations

The Good Liar
The Good Liar is likely the most bonkers film I will see this year. What begins as a cautionary tale about the dangers of grandma’s online dating unfolds into a baffling series of reveals, all of which support the twist that we already gleaned from the trailer: Roy (Ian McKellen) is trying to double cross Betty (Helen Mirren) and take her money... but she's not that easy to trick! How all that happens, though? I could never have predicted it. What a septuagenarian mine cart ride!SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

Harriet
With Harriet, audiences are given a live-action reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s journey to self-liberation: changing her name, hiding in bales of hay, being chased by dogs, and getting cornered by armed men on a bridge before jumping into the river. Harriet shows how Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) got help from a secret network of safe houses and trusted free Blacks (Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe) who stuck their necks out to help her cause. Throughout the film, the only music you’ll hear, gladly, are negro spirituals—songs that enslaved Blacks used to express their sorrow and joy, and to secretly communicate. (Tubman, who was nicknamed Moses, would sing “Go Down Moses” as a signal to enslaved Blacks that she was in the area, and would help anyone who wished to escape.) Harriet doesn’t subject the sensitive viewer to excessive gore or violence (though there is one particularly unsettling scene), because for once, this is a story in the “slave movie” genre about tremendous triumph, leadership, and Tubman’s unwavering faith, both in God and herself. JENNI MOORE
Various locations

Honey Boy
Shia LaBeouf wrote and stars in this drama based on his own experiences as a child star with a difficult father (he plays the character based on his own messed-up dad, while Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges play the son).
AMC Pacific Place

Dan Savage's HUMP! Film Festival
In the beginning... there was porn. And some of it was pretty awesome! But a lot of it, you know, wasn't. Mainstream porn can be problematic in all sorts of ways—most notably that 90 percent of dirty movies are made for white dudes by white dudes. And why is there primarily only one body type (skinny and hairless)? And are any of the actors having fun? I mean, for real? These are the kinds of porn problems that inspired beloved sex columnist Dan Savage to create the HUMP! Film Festival—an annual celebration of amateur dirty movies that are for the people, by the people! HUMP! invites folks to submit five-minute mini porn flicks written, directed, shot, and—in a lot of cases—performed by these sex-positive amateur auteurs. The filmmakers are encouraged to express themselves sexually in whatever way they see fit—so instead of seeing the same, staid heteronormative clips you'll find on the internet, HUMP! is a virtual rainbow of diverse (AND HOT) sexuality! WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
On the Boards

The Irishman
A reality-inspired crime epic that spans decades, The Irishman’s heart is Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who “paints houses” for big-shot gangsters; his paint, it should be noted, only comes in blood red. Sheeran’s main employer/benefactor/BFF is the intense, sharp-eyed Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), though once Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) enters the picture, Frank’s torn between the sometimes clashing demands of two hard-willed, charismatic men. De Niro’s great (and, thankfully, the distracting, de-aging CGI fades into the background after a while), but this is Pesci and Pacino’s movie: With mania and fury, Pacino rips every scene apart, while Pesci takes a different approach, subtly and slowly building an aging crime boss who’s both heart-achingly soulful and blood-chillingly brutal. Seeing Scorsese masterfully track all this harkens back to Goodfellas and Casino, but the jarring, moving The Irishman is, remarkably, better than both. While the intense focus on Frank & Pals comes at the expense of other characters, like every single woman, the end result is still stunning: A saga that’s horrifying and funny and melancholy, sometimes in different scenes, sometimes all at once. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest

Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

Joker
The first half hour unfolds like a dog-whistle symphony for insecure guys who think they have it bad. Fleck berates his black social worker (Sharon Washington) for not listening to him when she’s obviously doing her best. He fixates on a black single mother (Zazie Beetz) after the briefest sign of camaraderie. Yet there are a series of trap doors throughout Joker that unexpectedly drop its audience into new perspectives. Early on, an obvious foreshadow shifts Fleck onto a new path, and as that plotline plays out, Joker offers some surprisingly rewarding reflections on the relationship between the villain and Batman. (Oh yeah! This is a Batman movie, remember?) Both men, Joker suggests, might be equally deranged, making sweeping moves against the world without regard for those who become collateral damage for their respective manias. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations

Knives Out
The director of The Last Jedi and Looper has assembled an amazing cast for a good old-fashioned ensemble whodunit. Watch Toni Collette, Chris Evans, Daniel Craig, Lakeith Stanfield, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, et al. go at each other with barbed wit and sharp implements. The film officially opens next week, but you can sneak in early at a few select theaters.
Various locations
Friday–Saturday

The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse, the second film from Robert Eggers, the director of the excellent, wildly disconcerting period horror The Witch, is... funnier than expected? Sure, it’s also fucked-up and intense and distressing, but there are significantly more fart jokes than one might expect. Robert Pattinson, with a voice like The Simpsons’ Mayor Quimby, and Willem Dafoe, with a voice like The Simpsons’ crusty old sea captain, play two lost souls manning a decrepit lighthouse on a miserable, unnamed island. Like The Witch, this is a story and a setting that feels old, and Eggers captures it in joyless black and white, antiquated dialogue, and a squarish, 1.19:1 aspect ratio. Pattinson and Dafoe squabble and fight and scream, and something is lurking on the rocky cliffs, and something else is lurking at the top of the tower, and man, this one seagull really hates Pattinson. Things get weird, and sad, and unexpectedly touching; Dafoe and Pattinson are both great, and if you’re going to descend into Eggers’s particular brand of fraught, bleak madness, one could hardly ask for better company. As we head into another dour, dark Northwest winter, Eggers’s whipping gales and damp despair are here to remind you that hey, things could always be worse. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Seattle 10 & Regal Meridian 16

Lola Montès
Max Ophuls made this fluidly, gorgeously filmed tale of a real-life courtesan and performer (Lola Montez was her stage name; her birth name was Marie Dolores Eliza Rosanna Gilbert, Countess of Landsfeld) who, as King Ludwig of Bavaria's mistress, helped bring about liberal reforms.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday
Part of 'Sex Work Is Work'

Lost Angelas
An aspiring screenwriter attempts to find his missing fiancée, a best-actress nominee named Angela Rose, by going through his memories of encounters with a sinister film director. William Wayne's non-linear neo-noir may be too far-out for some, but fun for lovers of twists and stories-within-stories.
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday
Director in attendance Friday and Saturday.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Once Upon a Time doesn't have the self-conscious, This Is a Quentin Tarantino Film™ feel of the filmmaker's past few movies. It feels neither reliant nor focused on those obsessions and quirks. We spend the bulk of our time with three people: Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an earnest, anxious, B-list actor whose career is right about to curdle; Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Rick's toughed-up, chilled-out former stuntman and current BFF; and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a bubbly, captivating actress who's just starting to enjoy her first taste of success in show business. How Tarantino plays with history in Once Upon a Time is one of the more intense and surprising elements of the film—and, thankfully, it's also one of the best. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest

Pain and Glory
Pedro Almodóvar has long warmed his filmography with flickers of details from his personal life, but Pain & Glory brings us closer to the flame. In it, we look in on Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a filmmaker in self-imposed exile due to a creative decline and a variety of physical ailments. Banderas stifles his melodramatic tendencies to subtly and powerfully reveal Mallo’s agonies and evolution. ROBERT HAM
SIFF Cinema Egyptian

Paprika
A dream researcher and her girlish alter ego, Paprika, try to stop a terrorist who can cause people’s dreams to invade reality. Satoshi Kon’s boisterous foray into the world of the unconscious practically explodes off the screen with magnificent madness. And here, you can see it on 35mm! JOULE ZELMAN
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Parasite
Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. It's a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies, though it's no less concerned with the state of society today. Set in Seoul, South Korea, the families and class issues at play reflect our global era, in which the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. Parasite follows the Kim family, who secretly scam their way into the lives of the wealthy Park family. Slowly and methodically, the Kims begin to drive out the other domestic workers at the Park residence, each time referring another family member (who they pretend not to know) for the vacant position. And so the poorer family starts to settle comfortably into the grift—until a sudden realization turns their lives upside down. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival, its essence echoed in the environments the characters inhabit. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Sunday only

Patlabor the Movie
The Patlabor franchise is sick. A popular addition to the mecha genre, the Patlabor world includes large, human-like robots, named "Labors," who essentially work in Amazon warehouses. The Labors produce labor more effectively than humans, but everyone is apparently surprised when Labors begin to randomly destroy buildings and commit crimes. Who's responsible for the chaos? The robots? The programmers? The politicians? The conversation is a little too timely. Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend would probably be popular in the political world of Patlabor. Patlabor: The Movie is a standout for the franchise, notably directed by Palme d'Or-nominated Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii. Released in 1989 but set in 1999, the anime focuses on the tension between naughty Labors and the specialized Patrol Labors (get it, "Patlabor," it's a portmanteau) assigned to keep the Labors in check. For a crime-fighting mecha anime, I find the film surprising, philosophical, and funny. Somehow, it doesn't seem like science fiction. CHASE BURNS
The Beacon

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Two men are stuck together during a protracted bout of holiday travel. One is well-off, irritable, and stuffy. The other is garrulous, simple, and annoying. The first man eventually learns to accept the second man, and in accepting him, acquires an emotional understanding of key Thanksgiving concepts.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Point Blank
In this classic tough-guy film, a criminal played by Lee Marvin is shot and left for dead. But he's just so damn tough, he pulls himself together and embarks on a path of brutal revenge.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Part of the 42nd Film Noir Series

'Remembering Our Mothers' Preview
See a sneak preview of this documentary about the murders of three women, Susanna Blackwell, Phoebe Dizon, and Veronica Laureta, and how local Asian Pacific Islander women in the community fought back against violence.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Rififi
Jules Dassin’s flawless diamond of a French caper film from 1955 is justifiably famous for the jewel heist that unfolds in breathless silence for 33 astonishing minutes—former Stranger film editor Jamie Hook called it a “sacrament of the cinema.” But the whole that surrounds this sequence is equally sacramental, equally nourishing. SEAN NELSON
The Beacon
Thursday only

Santa Sangre
A boy watches his mother's arms get cut off, gets institutionalized, and then returns to help her. Help her kill people. And he grew up in a circus. Alejandro Jodorowsky's waking dream must be seen to be believed.
The Beacon
Thursday only

Scandalous
The strangest revelation in Scandalous—a new documentary directed by Mark Landsman that concerns the history of the National Enquirer from its birth to its recent attempt to blackmail the richest man on earth, Jeff Bezos—is not the tabloid's long obsession with UFO stories and other oddities. No, it's this: In the 1980s, Donald Trump, a huge fan of the National Enquirer, would call its reporters and rat on himself. He'd pretend it wasn't him, but the reporters knew it was Donald Trump on the other end of the line, dishing out dirt about himself and the celebrities who entered his circle of the rich and famous. The National Enquirer, which started in the early 1950s in New York City with a loan from the mafia, has had four distinct phases. One: Its gore moment. Two: Its grocery store check-out moment. Three: Its moment of respectability. And four: Its sharp turn to the right, which happened after 9/11. What has been in the DNA of the rag from its inception, however, is raw gangsterism. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Seattle Turkish Film Festival
The Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington will present the sixth annual edition of their community-driven, volunteer-led festival featuring a rich panorama of new Turkish films. See crowd-pleasers like the opening film, Bold Pilot (Thursday), the entertaining-sounding documentary about the Turkish film industry in the '60s and '70s, Remake, Remix, Rip-Off (Saturday), or the critically acclaimed Nuri Bilge Ceylan film The Wild Pear Tree (Sunday).
Pacific Science Center & SIFF Cinema Uptown

Sundance Indigenous Shorts
Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program and Art House Convergence present six films by Indigenous and Native moviemakers from the Arctic Circle, Ho-Chunk land in midwestern America, Mi’gmaq territory in Canada, and elsewhere. Some subjects include the heritage of traditional crafts, the art of throat singing, and the Indian Pipe plant.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only

Terminator: Dark Fate
If nothing else, Dark Fate has one thing going for it: Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton is back, which means there's a Terminator movie worth watching again. Well, it's worth watching, I guess, if you, like me, have devoted entirely too much of your ever-shrinking life span to thinking about terminators. For everyone else, Dark Fate's appeal—which largely hinges on seeing Hamilton, Arnold, and various bloodthirsty murderbots back in action—might be limited. Deadpool director Tim Miller does a lot of things right: His action sequences are messy but intense; he knows to let Hamilton, with her wry eyebrows and smoke-scratched voice, steal scenes whenever she feels like it; and he somehow pulls off the insane-sounding task of making a Terminator movie that's legitimately, consistently funny. But at the end of the day, Dark Fate is another sequel that tries, with mixed success, to reboot a rusty series, and several of the attempts it makes to feel current land with a wet thud. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16

Unlikely
This investigative documentary by Jaye Fenderson, former admissions officer of Columbia University, confronts the inequality, debt, and drop-out rates of higher education in the United States.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday–Saturday

Uptight
The great director Jules Dassin returned to his homeland, the US, after spending years in exile directing some of the greatest European crime movies ever. He then made Uptight, an unjustly neglected adaptation of John Ford's The Informer about a group of Black Power activists who suspect a mole is in their midst. Seize your chance to see this rare gem.
The Beacon
Saturday only

Zombieland 2: Double Tap
The problem with comedy sequels is that it's hard to tell the same joke years later, but funnier. Despite the ravages of time and changing tastes, filmmakers must suplex the lightning back into that bottle. But despite lurching into theaters a full decade after the original, Zombieland: Double Tap avoids those pitfalls while delivering a suitably zany Zombieland experience with the easy charm of an off-brand Mike Judge picaresque. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone all return to banter and blast zombies, and their wry camaraderie speaks a seemingly genuine desire to play in this viscera-splattered sandbox again (rather than, as with many long-delayed sequels, simply the desire for a new beach house). Added to the mix are a spate of goofy newcomers, including a delightfully unapologetic flibbertigibbet (Zoey Deutch) and a pair of dirtbag doppelgangers (Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch). It's more a live-action cartoon than a serious entry in the zombie canon, but as a low-key genre comedy, it totally works. BEN COLEMAN
Meridian 16

Also Playing:

Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.

21 Bridges

The Age of Insects

Charlie's Angels

Downton Abbey

Kinetta

Last Christmas

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil

Midway

Playing with Fire