The snow may have melted, but it's definitely still cold enough to bundle up for another string of movie nights, preferably with a steamy beverage and an array of snacks on hand. See our picks for this week below, from Shatara Michelle Ford's psychological-horror debut Test Pattern Past Event Like List to every single season of The Muppet Show Remind Like List on Disney+ to the Netflix con thriller I Care a Lot Remind Like List , starring Gone Girl's Rosamund Pike. We've also included some films that are streaming online and playing in IRL theaters, like Chloé Zhao's Nomadland Past Event Like List . Plus, Dan Savage's porn film festival HUMP! Past Event Like List continues this weekend—and if you get inspired to make your own movie, don't forget that its sister festival, the stoner-centric SPLIFF, is accepting submissions through March 5!
Jump to: Streaming: Local Connection | Film Festivals | Streaming: Nationwide | Playing in Theaters
Streaming: Local Connection
17 Blocks
Past Event
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List
You can't take your eyes off 17 Blocks for even a second. The raw, home video footage documentary offers an intimate view into the lives of the Sanford-Durants, a Black family struggling to find joy and stability in Southeast Washington D.C. So many of the documentaries we watch now are slick mash-ups of stylized reenactments and moody voiceovers, assuring us that history can be mapped neatly into an orderly sequence. 17 Blocks makes no such tidy promises. Instead, gritty, endearing moments rush in: A pair of brothers, 14-year-old Smurf and nine-year-old Emmanuel, play basketball in a neighborhood park. A friend helps Emmanuel put a caucasian skin tone bandage over a scrape. Their mother, Cheryl, points at an old photo of herself and says "Isn't that a pretty girl right there?" "That's you!" Emmanuel shouts. "That's not me!" Cheryl says. Emmy-award-winning director Davy Rothbart stitched these moments together, alternating between powerful portraits of poverty and warm moments of the family persevering, and cheering one another on. But, like I said, if you look away for a moment you're bound to miss some important detail to the puzzle that is this family's history. What happened to them? Well, a lot of things happened to them. SUZETTE SMITH
SIFF
Starting Friday
German Cinema Now: Sleep (Schlaf)
Past Event
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In Michael Venus's debut psychological horror, a flight attendant is tormented by the fear that she's living in a dream when she finds an in-flight magazine advertising a cabin that's long appeared in her subconscious, and which she discovers is eerily implicated in Germany's wartime history.
Northwest Film Forum
February 24-25
Reunion
Past Event
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In this psychological thriller, a pregnant woman returns home to her recently deceased grandparents' family home to spend time with her estranged mother (the terrific Julia Ormand). Creepy ghost children abound, it looks like!
SIFF
Starting Friday
Shivers
Past Event
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MoPOP's horror watch-along series "It's Coming from Inside the House!" continues with David Cronenberg's freaky 1975 sci-fi flick Shivers, featuring special guest Theresa Mercado, a programmer and host of the Scream Screen film series.
Watch party via MoPOP
Friday only
Test Pattern
Past Event
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After getting drugged and sexually assaulted by a stranger, a woman (who is Black) and her boyfriend (who is white) drive from clinic to clinic in pursuit of a rape kit. Described in press materials as "part psychological horror, part realist drama," Shatara Michelle Ford's debut feature reveals systematic oppression on both a wide scale and a more obscure interpersonal one. Stranger film contributor Chase Hutchinson talked with Ford about getting her film made, being emotionally truthful, and the absurdity of navigating a system not built to provide justice. Read it here.
Grand Illusion
Starting Friday
Thin Skin
Past Event
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Thin Skin, the newest brainchild of The Stranger's resident filmmaker/philosopher Charles Mudede, is a "music-infused, darkly comedic true story about keeping it together when you’re falling apart," according to press materials. It stars co-writer Ahamefule J. Oluo (a frequent Mudede collaborator and lauded jazz musician and storyteller) as a corporate underling on the heels of a broken marriage who finds solace in late-night sets at a jazz club.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday only — encore screening
Past Event
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also scheduled for Feb 27
Truth to Power
Past Event
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When Glendale heavy metal band System of a Down released their Top-40-reaching sophomore album Toxicity in 2001, just after 9/11, they had no idea that the political lyrics would be subject to scrutiny and pulled off the radio. This doc explores that moment and the impact it had on the band and its fanbase.
Grand Illusion
Starting Friday
Twilight's Kiss (Suk Suk)
Remind
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Two married, closeted Chinese men meet in a park and bond over their shared histories while contemplating a possible future together. "A story told with furtive glances and understated expressions, Suk Suk defies its potentially maudlin premise by bringing a pair of subtle and genuine performances out of its star," wrote Edmund Lee for the South China Morning Post.
Grand Cinema
Starting Friday
Film Festivals
Children's Film Festival Seattle 2020
Past Event
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Parents with restless children and adults who enjoy whimsical storytelling, rejoice! The Children's Film Festival will resume its latest edition online with the theme "Love and Light." That includes seven short film program screenings ranging from live-action to animation to documentary. Plus, all screenings will come with bonus activities like coloring pages, discussion guides, and more.
Northwest Film Forum
2021 HUMP! Film Festival
Past Event
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Every year, The Stranger puts out the call to sex-havers everywhere to submit a homegrown amateur porn film depicting whatever they're into (barring poop, kids, and animals, of course). The result is an incredibly diverse representation of human sexuality in all its straight, gay, trans, queer, kinky, funny, pissy, painful, and pretty forms. Let's see what wild spins people put on their submissions that were created during the lockdown, shall we?
EverOut
Friday-Saturday
Streaming: Nationwide
Amend: The Fight for America
With Will Smith at the helm, this six-part documentary series unpacks the history of the 14th Amendment, which states that an American citizen is constituted by any person born or naturalized on U.S. soil—a definition that, as a country built on slavery, wasn't always so clearly laid out in the U.S. Constitution.
Netflix
For All Mankind: Season 2
Remind
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What would our lives be like if America established a colony on the moon in the '80s? The second season of this Apple TV+ original paints a picture of a space race that never stopped.
Apple TV+
Starting Friday
I Care a Lot
Remind
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Tired of rewatching Gone Girl? Rosamund Pike returns with a suspiciously Amy Dunne-esque haircut as Marla Grayson, a con artist masquerading as a conservator (sound familiar? #FreeBritney) who preys on the assets of perfectly healthy old people by sticking them in nursing homes. Alas, her scheme is interrupted when an underground businessman played by Peter Dinklage catches her in the act.
Netflix
Starting Friday
It’s a Sin: Season 1
From the creator of Queer as Folk, this series follows three young men exploring their gay identities in London just as the AIDS epidemic is taking hold around the world. If you stan Neil Patrick Harris, know that he stars as Henry Coltrane, a character who sadly dies from AIDS in the first episode (sorry for the spoiler).
HBO Max
Starting Monday
The Muppet Show: Complete Series
Remind
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Latch onto your favorite character from Jim Henson's hippie-genius universe (we're partial to Miss Piggy) and retreat into childhood as you binge all five seasons of The Muppet Show.
Disney+
Starting Friday
Nomadland
Past Event
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After the economic collapse of her company in rural Nevada during the recession, Fern (Frances McDormand) sets out across the American West in her camper, guided by real-life nomads Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells.
Hulu
Starting Friday (also playing at various theaters; see here
Past Event
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for details)
Supernova
Hollywood gentlemen Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth star as longtime partners who take one final journey through Northern England as one of them succumbs to dementia. If you haven't had a good cathartic sob lately, the trailer alone should get your tear ducts locked and loaded.
Amazon Prime Video and other platforms
In-Person Screenings
* = Staff pick
NEW THIS WEEK
*The Cultures United
Past Event
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Duwamish Longhouse (Saturday only)
*Nomadland
Past Event
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Various theaters (opening Friday; also streaming on Hulu)
A Writer's Odyssey
Past Event
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Pacific Place 11 & Cinemark Lincoln Square - Bellevue
STILL PLAYING
*Judas and the Black Messiah
Past Event
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Various theaters (also streaming on HBO Max)
Land
Past Event
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Various theaters
The Little Things
Past Event
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Various theaters
The Marksman
Past Event
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Various theaters
The Mauritanian
Past Event
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Various theaters
*Minari
Past Event
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Cinemark Lincoln Square - Bellevue (also streaming via Northwest Film Forum & Grand Cinema)
*News of the World
Remind
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Various theaters (also streaming on VOD)
*Promising Young
Remind
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Woman
Remind
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Various theaters (also streaming on Amazon Prime)
Wonder Woman 1984
Remind
Like
List
Various theaters (also streaming on HBO Max)