Hide out inside a movie theater and check out one of these noteworthy films picked by our critics. For even more movies, check out our movie times listings.
LIMITED RUNS
1. Gremlins
A gadget salesman is looking for a special gift for his son and finds one at a store in Chinatown. The shopkeeper is reluctant to sell him the “mogwai” but sells it to him with the warning to never expose him to bright light, water, or to feed him after midnight. (Moral of the story? Don’t break the rules.)
2. It’s a Wonderful Life
“Paralyzing joys are the very heart of George Bailey’s dilemma; they are, to borrow words from George’s father, ‘deep in the race.’ The sacrifices George makes for being ‘the richest man in town’ resonate bitterly even as they lead to the finale’s effusive payoff. Those sacrifices are what make It’s a Wonderful Life, in all its ‘Capraesque’ glory, endure.” – Sean Nelson
3. Edward Scissorhands
A scientist (Vincent Price) builds an animated human being — the gentle Edward (Johnny Depp). The scientist dies before he can finish assembling Edward, though, leaving the young man with a freakish appearance accentuated by the scissor blades he has instead of hands.
4. A Kid for Two Farthings
Carol Reed’s twisted unicorn flick from 1955. It’s about a boy in London’s experience with fantasy creatures, and maybe also about the Holocaust.
NEW RELEASES
5. In the Heart of the Sea
“On the surface, it exploits the familiarity of Moby-Dick, but instead of Ahab, Ishmael, and Queequeg, all it offers are stiff clichés. The one through line is that the whole film feels both drawn out and rushed, lurching from scene to scene. In the Heart of the Sea clocks in at only two hours, but those two hours feel long enough to reread Moby-Dick.” – Erik Henriksen
6. Macbeth
“While the Big Scenes are rendered with a ravishing starkness, the connective tissue that’s allowed to remain tends to fall away into a low-toned dirge. Scholars and purists may still be left clutching their chests at what has been chucked over the side, but those roaring final moments ultimately make this Macbeth hard to shake. What it gets right is almost enough to convince you that you’re watching a masterpiece.” – Andrew Wright
7. Snervous (Tyler Oakley)
“The documentary is about a social-media celebrity named Tyler Oakley. His YouTube channel has nearly eight million subscribers. But why is Oakley famous? The good thing about the documentary is it makes no effort whatsoever to ask (and therefore answer) questions of that nature. They are pointless.” – Charles Mudede
CONTINUING RUNS
8. Brooklyn
“It’s refreshing to see this largely internal, cerebral journey of an introverted young woman play out onscreen, and Nick Hornby’s screenplay, never afraid of sentimentality, keeps such a contained narrative from feeling too cold or distant. That’s right: Brooklyn is good because it’s so wholesome, so emotive, so free of irony, without qualifiers, and your grandma will probably like it a lot.” -Megan Burbank
9. Creed
“If you loved the original Rocky—and its heart, and the sometimes unbearable tension it provided—Creed is a fun and worthy film-going experience. And an exception to the rule that lightning never strikes in the same place twice.” -Wm. Steven Humphrey
10. The Good Dinosaur
“A boy-and-his-dog story where the boy is a talking dinosaur and the dog is a little grunting caveman, The Good Dinosaur is one of Pixar’s best.” -Erik Henriksen
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 Night Before
“The Night Before might be the only Christmas movie that offers both a whole lot of dick pics and the sad, lonely sense of desperation that defines the holidays. But then Seth Rogen throws up all over a midnight mass, and all is right with the world.” -Erik Henriksen
13. The Princess Bride Quote-Along
Think you know all the words? Now’s your chance to prove it—although there will be subtitles for “all the best lines.” Plus, free inflatable swords and ROUS.
14. Spectre
“Spectre has all the evidence that director Sam Mendes is trying to make a movie that is simultaneously both a good movie and a good Bond movie, despite those things being mathematically and mutually exclusive phenomena.” -Sean Nelson
15. Spotlight
“It’s one thing for a reporter to break a story few people know about. It’s another thing entirely to tear the lid off a story everyone knows something about but whose true dimensions are too horrifying to imagine. Actor-turned-filmmaker Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, which re-creates the Boston Globe’s 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning exposure of the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal, looks at a case of the latter with riveting results.” -Kathy Fennessy
16. Trumbo
“Award season must be around the corner, because movies like Trumbo come out only when they can be considered. This kind of movie tends to be set in some yesteryear and plays jazz, smokes heavily, and wears a long silk dress as it approaches. Not to suggest that Roach doesn’t do a quality job here—as biopics go, this representation of Dalton Trumbo, a golden age screenwriter, is up there with the best.” -Jacob Lichty
17. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in Smell-O-Vision
There will be free “Wonkariffic goodie bags” at SIFF’s “smell-o-vision” screenings to make this classic actually delicious.
