The Limey
A one-night-only screening of Steven Soderbergh's 1999 crime thriller, featuring a killer performance by Terence Stamp, and presented as the closing-night feature of SAM's 36th annual Film Noir Series.
Seattle Art Museum
Out of the Furnace
From the writer-director of Crazy Heart comes this gritty drama about two working-class brothers (Christian Bale and Casey Affleck) drawn into a twisty murder mystery.
Wide release
The Punk Singer
Sini Anderson's The Punk Singer feels like a revelation. Its subject: Kathleen Hanna, cofounder of riot grrrl, creator of the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, coiner of the phrase "smells like teen spirit," and spouse of Ad-Rock. I've been a Kathleen Hanna fan for decades; this film introduced her to me as someone new. To quote talking head Carrie Brownstein, it's "an empowering and surreal experience."
SIFF Cinema Uptown
At Berkeley
Master documentarian Frederick Wiseman made this expansive portrait (four hours!) of the eponymous University of California campus, hub of the 1960s student radicalism movement, now a highly ranked research school beset by severe budget cuts.
Northwest Film Forum
Let the Fire Burn
An award-winning documentary using archival news footage and interviews to tell the tale of the deadly clash between the City of Philadelphia and the Black Power group MOVE on May 13, 1985.
Varsity
National Theatre: 50 Years On Stage
A night of classic stage performances drawn from the archives of the National Theatre, featuring actors such as Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi, and Maggie Smith doing their thing in plays by Harold Pinter, Peter Shaffer, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, and David Hare.
SIFF Film Center
Next Dance Cinema
Now in its eighth year, Next Dance Cinema is the annual collaboration between Northwest Film Forum and Velocity Dance Center, which fills the Film Forum screen with contemporary dance on film, from staged work to choreography created specifically for the camera to animation.
Northwest Film Forum
Royal Shakespeare Company Live: Richard II
A live cinema broadcast from the Royal Shakespeare Company, featuring David Tennant in the title role of Richard II.
SIFF Film Center
Auntie Mame
Three Dollar Bill Cinema's holiday-time screening of the gayly beloved 1958 film, in which Rosalind Russell plays a woman so fabulous, fearless, life-loving, and drunk that she was immediately and forever crowned Queen of the Gays.
Pacific Place
Screen Style
A guided tour of fashion on film, with images selected and explicated by style-conscious Seattleites, including the Seattle Art Museum's Chiyo Ishikawa, designers Aykut Ozen and Julianna Vezzetti of the Ozen Company, and garment artist Mark Mitchell.
Northwest Film Forum
Improvement Club
The debut feature by Seattle filmmaker/choreographer Dayna Hanson is a dance film/mockumentary hybrid following an experimental dance/theater troupe. Instead of easy laughs about pretentious habits and the Actor's Craft, we're submerged in the reality of the situations (which still makes room for plenty of laughs). Small and lovely performances abound, including the ones given by Hanson and fellow choreographer Wade Madsen.
Northwest Film Forum
American Hustle
The latest from David O. Russell concerns two con artists (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) forced to work for the FBI in the world of New Jersey's corrupt political establishment and Mafia.
Wide release
Anchorman 2
The feverishly awaited sequel. It's kind of a big deal.
Wide release
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Coen brothers' latest is a Cannes-honored musical drama set in the 1960s folk scene in NYC.
Wide release
Saving Mr. Banks
A biographical drama about the production of the 1964 film Mary Poppins, starring Emma Thompson as Poppins author P.L. Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.
Wide release
Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along
Ignore Christmas with the greatest Jewish-themed musical of all time (screw you, Yentl), complete with a Chinese-food buffet at intermission!
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Grudge Match
Sylvester Stallone and Robert De Niro star as aging rival boxers coaxed out of retirement for one last fight. (Think Rocky meets Raging Bull meets Grumpy Old Men meets Lemon Party.)
Wide release
Her
Written, directed, and produced by Spike Jonze, Her is a "science-fiction romance" about a man (Joaquin Phoenix) who falls in love with the voice of his computer operating system (Scarlett Johansson).
Wide release
Mandela: A Long Walk to Freedom
A biographical drama starring Idris Elba as the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former president of South Africa.
Wide release
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
The big-budget adaptation of James Thurber's classic story, starring Ben Stiller and Kristen Wiig.
Wide release
The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese directs Leonardo DiCaprio in this darkly comic true tale of a New York stockbroker drawn into a securities-fraud case involving Wall Street corruption and the mob.
Wide release
Faust
Aleksandr Sokurov's contemporary reworking of the devilish legend.
Northwest Film Forum
A Touch of Sin
Winner of the best screenplay prize at Cannes, Jia Zhangke's latest follows four Chinese outcasts driven to a murderous rampage.
Northwest Film Forum
August: Osage County
After winning the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Tracy Letts's explosively brilliant family saga hits the big screen with nuclear star power, including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, and Benedict Cumberbatch.
Wide release
Lone Survivor
A dramatization of author/director Peter Berg's account of four Navy SEALs ambushed in the mountains of Afghanistan, starring Mark Wahlberg and Taylor Kitsch.
Wide release
The Golden Age of Italian Cinema
Eight weeks of classic Italian cinema, including The Bicycle Thief (Jan 16), Umberto D (Jan 23), I Vitelloni (Jan 30), Le Amiche (Feb 6), Il Posto (Feb 13), The Organizer (Feb 20), and 8 ½ (Feb 27).
Seattle Art Museum
Children's Film Festival
Eleven days packed with the best children's cinema from all over the world, from Belgian animation to Chinese shorts to Ethiopian features, all picked with an eye on the intersection of high aesthetic quality and family friendliness. Bonus delights: live musical performances, hands-on workshops, and a morning "pajama party" screening with pancakes!
Northwest Film Forum
I, Frankenstein
An action thriller set in a dystopian future where Frankenstein's monster must battle supernatural powers to protect the secret of his immortality or something.
Wide release
Oscar-Nominated Short Films 2014
Dueling programs of Oscar-nominated short films: one package featuring the five nominees for best animated short and another featuring the five nominees for best live-action short.
Varsity
Seattle Asian American Film Festival
For its second year, SAAFF graduates to Columbia City's Ark Lodge Cinemas, to present four days of the best in recent independent films by local and national Asian American filmmakers. See seattleaaff.org for full lineup.
Ark Lodge Cinemas
Visitors
From the man who brought the world Koyaanisqatsi comes another immersive documentary, featuring a succession of 74 "moving stills" projected for roughly a minute each and set to a Philip Glass score.
Cinerama
Like Father, Like Son
A Cannes-honored Japanese drama from director Hirokazu Koreeda, following two families who discover their children were switched at birth.
Varsity
The Rocket
An Australian drama about a scrappy 10-year-old Laotian boy drawn into a rocket-building contest, written and directed by Kim Mordaunt.
Varsity
