We've sorted through all the films playing this weekend in Seattle and selected the cream of the crop, including the 1995 Ice Cube movie Friday, the trippily mesmerizing dance film Apple Pie, what may be your last chance to see I Am Not Your Negro in theaters, and more. See all of our critics' picks below, and click through the links to see specific movie times and trailers. For more options, check out our complete movie times calendar (as well as our list of special film events).

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Jump to: Thurs Only | Fri Only | Fri—Sun | Sat Only | All Weekend

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THURSDAY ONLY

1. Early Summer
"The films in SAM's tribute to one of the three masters of Japan's Golden Age of film, Yasujiro Ozu, are all beautiful and have at their core the quiet spirit of their times and places—mid-century, post-war Japan," wrote Charles Mudede. This week, watch Early Summer, a 1951 film about a 28-year-old single woman in postwar Tokyo whose family is concerned about her marriage prospects.
Seattle Art Museum

2. I Am Not Your Negro
Sixteen years after Lumumba, Raoul Peck, who is Haitian, has directed I Am Not Your Negro, a documentary about one of the greatest writers of 20th-century America, James Baldwin. Now, it's easy to make a great film about Baldwin, because, like Muhammad Ali, there's tons of cool footage of his public and private moments, and, also like Ali, he had a fascinating face: the odd shape of his head, the triangle of hair that defined his forehead, and his froggy eyes. Just show him doing his thing and your film will do just fine. But Peck blended footage of Baldwin with dusky and dreamy images of contemporary America. These images say: Ain't a damn thing changed from the days of Baldwin and the Civil Rights Movement. But they say this with a very deep insight about the nature of time. CHARLES MUDEDE
Varsity Theatre

3. Paterson
Paterson is beautiful throughout—visually, in how Jim Jarmusch and cinematographer Frederick Elmes capture the wondrousness of an urban morning, and aurally, with Paterson's poems (written by Ron Padgett) becoming as much a part of the film as Laura's bulletproof optimism or the rumble of the 23. But there's something else beautiful about Paterson: Jarmusch's clearheaded, straightforward reminder that the most worthwhile art is made by those who scrounge, who have day jobs, who are the same as us: the people who drive and ride the bus, or who try to take up guitar and wonder if they can sell their cupcakes, or who hone their rhymes while waiting for the washing machine. The people who get through each day, finding and sharing bits of hope and truth as the world crumbles around them. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Grand Illusion

4. Strike a Pose
Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan’s affecting documentary, Strike a Pose, revolves around six dancers—Carlton Wilborn, Oliver Crumes, Salim Gauwloos, Kevin Alexander Stea, Jose Gutierez, and Luis Camacho—from Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition tour (the seventh, Gabriel Trupin, succumbed to complications from AIDS). The iconic tour featured Catholic Church–baiting imagery and cabaret-dominatrix outfits from designer Jean Paul Gaultier, including an infamous conical bra, that found their way into Alek Keshishian’s resulting concert film, Truth or Dare, which showcased the dancers—mostly gay men of color—who appeared to own their sexuality as much as Madonna did. KATHY FENNESSY
Northwest Film Forum

5. A United Kingdom
What made Botswana a success and its next-door neighbor Zimbabwe a complete disaster? A part of the answer can be found in the new and excellent movie A United Kingdom, directed by one of the few working black female directors in the world, Amma Asante. The film is about the founder of modern Botswana, Seretse Khama, played by David Oyelowo (Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma). Though Kingdom's plot is centered on how Khama, a black African aristocrat, met, romanced, and married a middle-class British white woman, Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), it also shows how their interracial relationship was a diplomatic mess for the UK government, which still had close economic and political ties with a country, South Africa, that made racial separation (apartheid) official around the time the Khama/Williams romance began (the late 1940s). CHARLES MUDEDE
Ark Lodge Cinema

FRIDAY ONLY

6. Surround Sound Laydown
Surround Sound Laydown is a live show and immersive experience that incorporates music by Terror Pigeon with accompanying projected visuals. This iteration will include a screening of an experimental film by Linda Fenstermaker and a poetry reading by Lauren Moore, and you're encouraged to BYOBlankets, sleeping bags, pillows, or whatever fits your comfort needs.
Northwest Film Forum

FRIDAY—SUNDAY

7. Friday
It's not a great day for Craig (played by Ice Cube)—he got fired on his day off, and now he and his best friend Smokey (Chris Tucker) owe $200 to a violent drug dealer for smoking all his weed. But with no job, how will they pay up? This comedy meanders through a rough day on the tough side of LA, complete with drive-bys, religious pamphleteers, neighborhood psychopaths, and a scary dude named "Big Worm." Come for the antics, stay for the Mo-town and old-school rap soundtrack, featuring the Temptations, James Brown, Dr. Dre, Funkdoobiest, and Tha Alkoholiks.
Central Cinema

8. The Void
The partially crowd-sourced horror movie The Void does a commendable job in balancing overt scares with tantalizing hints of large-scale Otherworldliness. While it handles the close-up grody tentacled stuff with aplomb, its best trick is in creating and sustaining the mounting feeling that something Great and Cosmically Terrible is lurking just outside the frame. Beginning with a rather grisly home invasion, the plot follows a rural cop (Aaron Poole) who stumbles across a mysteriously injured man in the woods. After delivering the comatose victim to a remote hospital, he and the swiftly dwindling skeleton crew must deal with a mob of armed cultists gathering outside, as well as the growing signs that there’s something Not Right down in the basement. That last bit is an understatement, really. ANDREW WRIGHT
Grand Illusion

SATURDAY ONLY

9. Apple Pie
A trippily mesmerizing New Zealand 16 mm collage of choreography, stop-motion, science, and ambient music, this film was shot over three years in an isolated astrophysics lab in the USA and features Maori dancer Papali'i.
Northwest Film Forum

ALL WEEKEND

10. CHIPS
I have no doubt that Shepard, who also wrote and directed CHIPS, has a lot of love for the original CHiPs, but this reboot is much more a Dax Shepard movie than an homage to a ‘70s TV show. That works in the movie’s favor. Shepard won hearts and minds with his 2012 car chase relationship comedy Hit and Run, which featured Shepard performing his own stunts. That same approach of crunchy, real-life motorcycle riding is evident in CHIPS. The action scenes (there are many, and there are even more explosions) are tangible and natural, allowing the humor to take a more central position. SUZETTE SMITH
Meridian 16

11. Frantz
Ozon uses Frantz to investigate the nature of forgiveness following a war—though they shared a border, Germany and France were on opposite sides of the conflict—and the weight of grief. And he finds a simple but hugely effective way to symbolically reflect the moments when his characters find calm and comfort. While most of the film is in black and white, certain scenes—like Anna and Adrien enjoying an afternoon hike and a swim—are rendered in lavish color. That those florid moments are few, and even include a painful flashback to the war, only emphasizes how conflict and suffering can drain the wonder out of everyday life. ROBERT HAM
Seven Gables

12. Get Out
Get Out is a feature-length version of the not-quite-joking sentiment among African Americans that the suburbs, with their overwhelming whiteness and cultural homogeneity, are eerie twilight zones for Black people. Far from being a one-joke movie, however, Jordan Peele’s directorial debut is both a clever, consistently funny racial satire and a horror film, one that mocks white liberal cluelessness and finds humor in—but doesn’t dismiss—Black people’s fears. ERIC D. SNIDER
Various locations

13. I Called Him Morgan
The documentary I Called Him Morgan is about a great jazz trumpet player, Lee Morgan, his common-law wife, Helen, and the events leading up to the early morning hours of February 19, 1972, when Helen shot her husband in the gut (with a gun he had given her) between sets at the aptly named Slug’s Saloon in NYC’s East Village. A more comprehensive biography of Lee Morgan’s life and career would make a great documentary, but that is not this documentary. I Called Him Morgan is smaller than that and much bigger at the same time. It is about Lee and Helen and a love gone wrong; it is about how men use women; it is about genius and those who want a piece of it; and it is about what can and cannot be forgiven. Shot simply, delivered clearly, and accompanied by one hell of a soundtrack. AHAMEFULE J. OLUO
Northwest Film Forum
There will be no showtimes on Friday.

14. Kedi
The enchanting Turkish documentary Kedi works triple time as a nature documentary, a travelogue, and a meditation on the human-animal bond. Director Ceyda Torun makes a case for Istanbul as the new Rome for stray cats. When she isn't soliciting the thoughts of caretakers and observers, her cinematographer, Charlie Wuppermann, shoots the furry subjects from ground level such that they fill the screen while humans fade into the background. These street-smart cats congregate around teahouses and markets for treats and back rubs. Torun follows several around town, like the orange tabby that steals food for her kittens, the gray tabby that sleeps in an auto shop, and the black-and-white cat that chases mice from a restaurant. She exalts these hardy creatures while portraying Istanbul as a city of compassionate citizens. It's a side of Turkey we don't see often enough. KATHY FENNESSY
Guild 45th

15. Kong: Skull Island
In an interview with Suzette Smith, director Jordan Vogt-Roberts said: "Kong represents the vulnerability in all of us. He represents an unknown, mythic quality in the world. A big part of this film is also just about becoming okay with not having all the answers. There are things we cannot understand and the sooner we understand that the better off we are." SUZETTE SMITH
Pacific Place and Sundance Cinemas

16. La La Land
You guys, I LOVED La La Land, and you will too. Don’t be afraid of it just because it’s a musical about a struggling actress (Emma Stone) and a pretentious jazz musician (Ryan Gosling) who meet and fall in love and sing and dance in a romanticized, cartoony LA. Yeah, it’s splashy and grandiose and full of hazy violet Southern California sunsets, but its emotional core is genuine. Take it from shriveled-hearted me, the Unearned Sentiment Police: La La Land is a grand, over-the-top, razzly-dazzly love story that won’t make you puke one bit. It might even help you forget the horrors of reality, however momentarily—and after the year we’ve had, that practically makes La La Land a public service. MEGAN BURBANK
Pacific Place

17. Lion
Based on Saroo Brierley’s memoir A Long Way Home, the film, an inspiring drama that earns tears without jerking them, begins with five-year-old Saroo (played by a bouncing ball of energy named Sunny Pawar) becoming separated from his mother and brother and ending up a thousand miles away in Calcutta. Saroo’s path may be unclear, but Lion’s isn’t: Like the train that took him away in the first place, the film moves steadily toward its tearful destination, propelled by sincere performances and Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran’s gently urgent musical score. Kidman shows great tenderness as the adoptive mother, underscoring the theme of “family” not being limited by biology, and Patel is serious-minded and haunted. But it’s little dynamo Sunny Pawar that you’ll remember best, his infectious cheery optimism encapsulating the film’s hopeful tone. ERIC D. SNIDER
Majestic Bay

18. Logan
17 years after X-Men kick-started the superhero genre, we get something like Logan. Something that isn't just a great superhero movie, but a great movie. No disclaimers, no curve: Logan is fantastic. Make no mistake: Logan is such a superhero movie—such an X-Men movie—that at one point Logan (Hugh Jackman) flips through an X-Men comic featuring his spandexed alter ego, Wolverine. He's not impressed. "Maybe a quarter of it happened," he grumbles, "and not like this." Despite his crankiness, Logan is full of the same stuff as the yellowed pages of X-Men and Wolverine: superpowered mutants. Nefarious evildoers. A rock-solid belief that violence fixes everything. But for all Logan's nods to genre—and it's as much a western as a superhero movie—it's about bigger things, too. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Pacific Place & Sundance Cinemas

19. Personal Shopper
It took French filmmaker Olivier Assayas to make me appreciate the subtleties Kristen Stewart can convey. In 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria, she held her own with the great Juliette Binoche. Now, in Personal Shopper, her latest collaboration with Assayas, she again manages to be enigmatic but not vapid. The movie is a cinematic Frankenstein monster, stitched together from different genres into something that transcends its sources: Stewart plays a young American in Paris working as an assistant for a globe-trotting supermodel, buying high-end clothes but never getting to try them on. (It’s a metaphor.) She’s also trying to make psychic contact with a twin brother who died from a heart defect—a disease she also has. MARC MOHAN
Sundance Cinemas

20. Saban's Power Rangers
The film still hits all the classic marks—teen angst, lessons about uniting to overcome evil, swooshing noises whenever punches are thrown, MORPHING, and giant robot battles. But now the graphics are clean and luxurious, there are a lot more car accidents than I remember (is that what today's teens are into?), and way fewer guitar solos. The lessons are more inclusive, and, other than the distractingly large breast plates on the women's morphed costumes, it's more feminist. The black ranger isn't Black. And best of all, the fight scenes are brain-meltingly impressive. YOU DAMN KIDS DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT WE HAD TO PUT UP WITH IN THE POWER RANGERS OF YORE! Regardless, my fellow '90s kids should see this movie. BRI BREY
Pacific Place

21. T2 Trainspotting
The native visual wit of Danny Boyle's direction has only grown more delightful with age—he revels in mischievous references to the original film. And there's something undeniably satisfying in seeing the four actors from the original reunited, and looking weathered. (It's also nice to hear Ewan McGregor speaking with a Scots accent again.) The original film was like a bone-marrow biopsy of the zeitgeist of its period. By contrast, the sequel revels in pricking its characters' articulate, self-aware out-of-timeness. It confines them to a Scotland that is simultaneously collapsing upon itself (high mountains of garbage loom everywhere) and exploding outward into an indistinguishable Europeanness, and it surrounds them with reminders of the selves they never managed to become. SEAN NELSON
Meridian 16 & SIFF Cinema Uptown

22. Wilson
Wilson, the book, is composed of 71 single-page scenes, many of which end on a darkly funny/angry punchline, and at its best, the movie preserves that blackout-sketch feel. What it can’t replicate—even though Clowes himself wrote the screenplay—is the variety of visual styles the graphic novel employed to communicate different moods. It’s also hard to capture the book’s emotional starkness using real, flesh-and-blood actors. Still, Harrelson dives into the role, putting his psycho-eyed amiability to good use, creating something like the love child of R. Crumb and Larry David. If he were to see this movie, he’d like it, despite the dollops of sentiment that bubble up. And if others found it—or him—grating, so what? Most people are goddamn idiots anyway. MARC MOHAN
Sundance Cinemas

This post was updated to include The Void (#8).

Get all this and more on the free Stranger Things To Do mobile app—available now on the App Store and Google Play.