The Seattle International Film Festival is coming up next week, so start planning! In the meanwhile, there’s plenty to watch. Our critic was mildly disappointed with Pokémon Detective Pikachu—Morgan Troper writes, “There are a slew of incoherent plot twists, few of which resolve satisfyingly”—but it’ll probably please Poké-fans. And you can thrill to Zhang Yimou’s new epic Shadow, or the very different classics Alien and Kiki’s Delivery Service, or any number of indies. Plus, take your mama to a special screening of La La Land or a sing-along version of Mamma Mia. Follow the links below to see complete showtimes, tickets, and trailers for all of our critics’ picks. 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
Alien 40th Anniversary
Sci-fi classic Alien is really two movies. The first is a drama about work, labor issues, contracts, company rules, and so on; the second is just a horror film. In fact, one can see the unresolved management/labor problems in the first part of the film as being transmogrified into a monster that destroys the mining spaceship (the Nostromo) in the second part. From a wider historical perspective, the 1970s marked the end of an economic order that began at the end of the 1940s and witnessed the rise of unionized labor in the United States (this, in the film, is exemplified by the working-class characters on the spaceship factory—the late Harry Dean Stanton and the still kicking it Yaphet Kotto). The 1980s, on the other hand, marked the beginning of an economic order that transferred a massive amount of power to supermanagers. We have not left the 1980s to this day, which is why this film is still relevant. CHARLES MUDEDE
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday
