See the 20 best movies to watch from Feb 3-5, 2017.
There are lots of events happening this weekend, but if you’re in the mood for a good old fashioned dinner and a movie, you also have lots of options. Our critics have picked the best movies playing in Seattle this weekend, from Bridesmaids to the Pioneers of African-American Cinema series to the continued run of How to Be Single. If you’re still not satisfied with these options, check out our complete movie times listings, or our Things To Do calendar.
NEW RELEASES
1. 10 Cloverfield Lane
It starts conventionally: with a crash. Our heroine, Michelle, is driven off the road by a truck and careens into a nearby ditch. She twists and turns and flips – then, for the next two hours, 10 Cloverfield Lane takes us through its own wild ride. Essentially, what Dan Trachtenberg (a new face to the directing scene) has done is presented a compelling genre movie in a blender. Thriller and sci-fi. Sci-fi and mystery. Mystery and horror. They combine and intertwine and coexist so fluently, it’s often difficult to tell what kind of movie you’re seeing. But one thing’s for certain: It’s damn good stuff. JACOB LICHTY
2. Knight of Cups
Leaning hard into Malick’s trend toward abstraction, Knight of Cups—which deals with things as tangible as sex and earthquakes, but also spends time in orbit, watching auroras twist across the surface of the earth—can feel like watching Malick try to out-Malick Malick. True, Knight of Cups might not be for everybody—hell, it definitely won’t be for everybody—but for those of us who have followed Malick this far, it can feel like nothing less than a gift.
LIMITED RUNS
3. Bridesmaids
Everything about the marketing campaign for and the critical reaction to Bridesmaids drives me fucking crazy. On the front end it’s all (paraphrasing), “ZOMG, chick flick for doodz!” and “The Hangover for wimminz!” and “There are farts in it, we promise!!!” and on the back end it’s all (direct quoting), “Chick flicks don’t have to suck” and “These are smart, funny women!” Sigh. I can’t believe I’m bothering to say this, but: Women are funny. Women are smart. Tina Fey exists, and Kristen Wiig exists, and Bridesmaids exists, and Bridesmaids—as a movie, not as a woman-movie—is astoundingly good. LINDY WEST
4. Embrace of the Serpent
Embrace of the Serpent is a densely packed, swiftly moving river journey that is constantly nodding at beloved cinematic tropes. The Colombian film, nominated for best foreign language film at this year’s Academy Awards, brings up images of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo and even Deliverance, by a short stretch of the imagination. Insanity inspired by the river and its surrounding wilderness, cultural conflict left behind and reencountered, and the punctuated momentum (alternating moments of paddling serenity with the anticipation of climbing ashore) all feel comforting—and like a part of a film that will soon join the ranks of our many river-based artistic landmarks. JULIA RABAN
5. Pioneers of African-American Cinema
This four-week series at Grand Illusion delves into the genre of the “race film,” which were films “funded, written, produced, directed, distributed, and often exhibited by people of color” during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. They’re not well known due to the fact that they were only circulated in low-quality 16mm prints, but they’ve now been restored. This Sunday, watch the 1941 The Blood of Jesus and the 1931 Hell-Bound Train.
6. Puget Soundtrack: Lori Goldston Presents Echoes of Silence
Puget Soundtrack, presented by Northwest Film Forum, invites musicians to create a live score for a film of their own choosing. This time, cellist and composer Lori Goldston will create a live soundtrack for Peter Emmanuel Goldman’s Echoes of Silence.
7. Requiem for the American Dream
In this documentary, which is short (73 minutes), Noam Chomsky, who is old, conducts the complex story of rising inequality in the United States into a flow of thought that is as limpid as one of those streams that form as ice is melting in the spring. Not everything Chomsky says is correct, however. He does make some mistakes, and he also has a touch too much nostalgia for the New Deal era, a period that had many, many problems. But for the most part, the ideas and insights that flow out of his mouth (so clear, so simple, so thoughtful) square with reality. CHARLES MUDEDE
8. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums
Every art movement has a golden age and a silver age. And each age has three masters. In the case of Japanese cinema, the three masters of its golden age, 1930 to 1960, are Akira Kurosawa, Yasujirō Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi. Each of these directors perfected a mode that formed the foundation of the art. In the case of Mizoguchi, the oldest of the three masters, it was the translation of Japanese aesthetics of impermanence (the ghostly) into the terms of cinema. And it is this that we see, Japanese beauty, in a film from his middle period, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum. The movie is about a male kabuki actor who plays female roles for a living. It is set in the 19th century. And though there are no ghosts in Chrysanthemum, as is the case with Mizoguchi’s greatest work, Ugetsu, it is altogether ghostly. CHARLES MUDEDE
CONTINUING RUNS
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. Hail, Caesar!
“It doesn’t matter that Hail, Caesar! barely hangs together. It’s too much fun to watch. With Hail, Caesar!, [Joel and Ethan Coen] have forgone the brow furrowing and decided to revel in their favorite topic of all—movies. In what amounts to little more than an extended string of cameos and hilarious set pieces, Hail, Caesar! is a firm, feature-length pinch on Hollywood’s swollen, self-absorbed posterior.” – Ned Lannamann
11. How to Be Single
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the filmmakers focus-grouped my approximate demographic of women and attached sensors to us to see what made our hearts, brains, and nether regions tingle, then checked what we hearted on Tumblr, and then crammed all that shit into one movie with a crowd-pleasing soundtrack. Is this a cheap grab at our base emotions? Yes. Is it effective? Abso-fucking-lutely.” – Elinor Jones
12. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
“WTF is well-cast, is what I’m saying, which is key for a film that seems unable to decide if it is a wacky fish-out-of-water comedy, or a serious tale of war, or an unlikely romance, or, IDK, an episode of This American Life? SURE. It’s uneven. But what’s utterly convincing is that somehow, this good-but-not-great movie has accurately captured that particular moment when a reporter discovers the ineffable joy of chasing a high-stakes story for the first time.” – Megan Burbank
13. The Witch
“The long wait for The Witch, the darling of last year’s Sundance Film Festival (which won Robert Eggers the best director award), has been worth it. If you like your horror smart, slow-burning, and suffused with allegorical dread, then you can’t do better than this dark folktale of colonialism, religion, family, and nature gone amok in 1630s New England.” – Sean Nelson
14. Zootopia
“Zootopia may ostensibly be an animated buddy cop flick with a few winks to Chinatown, but it’s also chock full of smart, incisive observations on race and gender, as well as front-loaded with tons of laughs and heart. Disney is doing better.” – Wm. Steven Humphrey
