Our critics selected their favorite films this week, from wide releases to one-time showings, and we have the details on when and where to see all of them. If all of our picks seem a little complex and intense, consider checking out Northwest Film Forum's Children's Film Festival this weekend, through Jan 31, or take a peek at the other films on our movie times listings.

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LIMITED RUNS
1. Anomalisa
"One part of Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa is really great, and the other part is really predictable. The greatness has everything to do with its look (animated puppets and their world), and the not-so-greatness with its story. The good news is that the latter does not get in the way of the former." - Charles Mudede

2. Heart of a Dog
"If you've doubted Laurie Anderson's Renaissance woman credentials, her great new autobiographical film Heart of a Dog will convince you otherwise. She directed, wrote, scored, coproduced, coshot, and did the voice-over for this elegiac tone poem about love, death, and dealing with loss. That it also contains perhaps the best footage of a dog playing piano and painting that you will ever see may be a bonus to some. You don't have to be a canine-lover to appreciate Heart of a Dog, but it obviously helps." - Dave Segal

3. Inside Out
"If you've seen the trailers, then the basic plot may remind you of that early '90s Fox sitcom Herman's Head, in which four little characters—representing Herman's psyche—controlled his actions from inside his brain. Inside Out is almost exactly like that... except 50,000 times smarter, funnier, and more heartfelt." - Wm. Steven Humphrey

4. Kenneth Branagh Theatre Live: A Winter's Tale
Shakespeare’s timeless tragicomedy is reimagined in Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford's new production, featuring Judi Dench as Paulina and Branagh as Leontes, broadcast live from London.

5. Mustang
"By turns lyrical and wrenching, Mustang depicts the process by which five orphaned sisters relinquish freedom for a form of cultural bondage. Until then, they flirt with boys and play on the beach, but what looks like innocent fun to Western eyes earns reprobation from their insular Turkish community." - Kathy Fennessy

6. The Sprocket Society presents Saturday Secret Matinees
Watch the entirety of the highly regarded serial Spy Smasher over the course of twelve weekly installments. Each screening will feature one episode, plus a secret feature film that follows a monthly theme: classic comedies in January, serial heroes & heroines in February, and fantasy & adventure movies in March.

7. The World of Kanako
"All you need to know about The World of Kanako is that it stars the great Kôji Yakusho. Best known in the United States as the oblivious father in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's globe-trotting Babel, he's done his finest work in Japanese films, especially those of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, like the supernatural noir The Cure and the deeply strange psychological thriller Doppelgänger." - Kathy Fennessy

CONTINUING RUNS
8. The 5th Wave
"In the science fiction movie The 5th Wave, the aliens are not nice but very destructive. They want all humans to be dead. They mean business. Earth has real value to them, and they do not want to share any of it with the "third chimpanzee" (let alone the second or the first). That's the whole story. And the people who bankrolled The 5th Wave, which stars Chloë Grace Moretz, hope that it "will do for aliens what Twilight did for vampires." - Charles Mudede

9. The Big Short
"The most important film in the 2016 Oscar race is The Big Short, which has five nominations, one of which is for best picture. The reason for its importance is the relevance of its subject matter—the greed, stupidity, and corruption that led to the collapse of the financial markets in 2008." -Charles Mudede

10. Carol
"It's kind of strange that Todd Haynes—the director of Velvet Goldmine—has become a master of cinematic restraint, but Carol is perfectly attuned to the culture of mid-century repression it documents, and equally adept at showcasing the passions and prejudices that simmer below the surface." - Alison Hallett

11. The Martian
"I don’t know how high you’d have to be to not want to see a Ridley Scott film about Matt Damon getting stranded on Mars, based on Andy Weir’s startlingly sharp novel, and costarring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Donald Glover, and Jeff Daniels, among others." - Sean Nelson

12. The Revenant
"Judged on a scene-by-scene basis, The Revenant often feels like one of the most amazing movies ever made, with Emmanuel Lubezki's breathtaking cinematography capturing every vivid facet of nature's teeth and claws. Taken as a whole, however, the lack of tonal variance and unrelenting bleakness end up serving the director's monumental ambition more than the relatively sparse narrative. Still, even when it verges on self-parody—this is a movie where a character is listed in the end credits as Dave Stomach Wound—the sheer mad bravura on display makes it impossible to dismiss." - Andrew Wright

13. Ride Along 2
"What's particularly effective here is the staging: both action and slapstick exist in solid, comprehensibly established spaces. That may seem like faint praise, but even prestige blockbusters these days get sloppy with that stuff, and it's nice to see good fundamentals in what could easily have been a cash-in sequel." - Ben Coleman