This weekend at the movies, you can catch special screenings including The Bad Batch (which Sean Nelson describes as "a breathtakingly disturbing dystopian vision"), crude but truthful rock mockumentary I'm Not Fascinating, bizarre and entertaining art film Manifesto, and gentle and fantastical Miyazaki film My Neighbor Totoro. Also playing are blockbusters including Wonder Woman, Alien: Covenant, and It Comes at Night. For even more options, check out our full movie times page and our special events-filled film calendar.
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Jump to: Friday Only | Friday—Sunday | Sunday Only | All Weekend
FRIDAY ONLY
I'm Not FascinatingOriginally released in 1996, I’m Not Fascinating is the sort of cult film you’d expect from one of the founders of irreverent-to-the-max Detroit music zine Motorbooty. Director and cowriter Danny Plotnick parlays his caustic sense of humor and appetite for absurdity into a crude satire of the music industry starring hapless power(less) trio Icky Boyfriends, whose drummer Tony B. (aka Anthony Bedard) cowrote the screenplay. Plotnick and Bedard engineer plenty of rueful chuckles and ludicrous plot twists, and at the film’s core there wriggles a miserable kernel of truth. Speak to any current working musician at any level of the industry’s hierarchy and you’ll likely find that the same sort of mendacity and incompetence portrayed in I’m Not Fascinating still holds. DAVE SEGAL
Northwest Film Forum
FRIDAY-SUNDAY
After the StormHirokazu Kore-eda is one of the greatest directors in the world. His 1998 After Life is a masterpiece of 1990s cinema. That’s all you need to know about his new work, After the Storm, which is not too slow, too beautiful, too funny, too charming, too sad, and is not about much at all—there is a broken man, a death in the family, lots of old people in a quiet neighborhood, and very little money to go around. Drink a little sake before watching this film, which, like room-temperature sake, will make you all warm inside. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Cinema Uptown
The Bad Batch
The scariest thing I saw at the inaugural Overlook Film Festival, which features horror cinema from around the world, was a breathtakingly disturbing dystopian vision—all the more horrifying for its plausibility in the American present. The Bad Batch, written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour, creator of the ominous revisionist vampire western noir A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, is the first vision any artist has offered of what life might look like at the end of Donald Trump's second term. SEAN NELSON
Grand Illusion
Manifesto
While watching Julian Rosefeldt's Manifesto, a film that began as a 13-screen art installation, the audience is lectured at and berated for an hour and a half—but the result is surprisingly entertaining. Rosefeldt describes the script as a series of "text collages," each of which is made up of one or many artistic/political manifestos. A major draw of this movie is watching (and hearing) how Cate Blanchett can transform herself. Catching references is also fun, but even those unfamiliar with the quoted works will appreciate the thoughtful script that seems to recognize its own absurdity and pretentiousness. Some people will walk out of the theater with a vision of the world in which every one of us is full of art, fury, self-righteousness, and conviction. And hopefully everyone will enjoy the deeply funny Dadaist nonsense sprinkled throughout. JULIA RABAN
SIFF Film Center
SUNDAY ONLY
My Neighbor TotoroTwo young sisters befriend a magical forest behemoth, a fuzzy flying rabbit-owl with a huge grin and many unusual friends (who else loves Catbus?), in this gentle and fantastical film about family, love, and the mystical unknown. Presented as the first movie in the Studio Ghibli Fest, which will bring six anime classics to theaters around Seattle this year.
Lincoln Square Cinemas, Thornton Place, & AMC Southcenter
ALL WEEKEND
Alien: CovenantAs Alien: Covenant begins, its titular ship is under repair. After completing a fix, Tennessee (Danny McBride) picks up a stray communication, and the crew follows the signal to a pristine planet—at which point the film becomes four old Alien movies happening at once. David [the robot] shows up. (Surprise!) Bodies explode. (Surprise?) And, after 20 years, everyone’s favorite fanged penis-monster triumphantly returns. The result is a film that’s much less ambitious than Prometheus, but also significantly less pretentious and stupid. Covenant aims lower but hits more frequently. Covenant’s victory is minor—after 25 years, the Alien series has finally managed to make a movie that, however slightly, is better than 1992’s Alien3. BOBBY ROBERTS
Meridian 16 & Pacific Place
All Eyez on Me
This is a biopic about the overrated rapper Tupac Shakur. Now, I’m going to say something that might hurt but is just truth: The decline of hiphop is marked by the rise of Biggie Smalls and Shakur in the mid-90s. They were the first to successfully sell the soul of hiphop. And once the sale was made, we entered the age of the rapper as multi-millionaire—and considering the trajectory of Jay-Z and Dr. Dre, the billionaire rapper is not long in coming. Shakur, like Smalls, had to sell out because they were second-rate. A first-rate rapper has no fear (check out Ish of Shabazz Palaces). He/she can only, to use the words of Erick Sermon, stay real. CHARLES MUDEDE
Ark Lodge Cinema, Pacific Place & Sundance Cinemas
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
The music is uniformly great, the jokes are whip-smart and delightful, the action scenes are exciting CG works of art, the characters are identifiable and lovable, and BABY GROOT IS (as mentioned earlier) GODDAMN ADORABLE. While the characters of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 may be mired in their feelings, at least they have them—and aren't afraid to show them. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Pacific Place & Sundance Cinemas
The Hero
Lee (Sam Elliott) has cancer, he smokes a lot of weed, he is divorced from his wife and has been neglectful of his adult daughter, and his successful acting career is in the past. This is an intense, quiet movie about a man possibly facing his death and evaluating his life. There are some nice moments of levity provided by a drug-dealing friend (played by Nick Offerman). Sam Elliott is wonderful, and so are his eyebrows and mustache. (But a small—okay, big—quibble: Why can men in movies not date women within their own age range?) We root for Lee’s revitalization even as he questions whether it is worth it to try to buy more time. GILLIAN ANDERSON
Pacific Place, SIFF Cinema Uptown, & Sundance Cinemas
It Comes at Night
It Comes at Night tells the story of Paul (Joel Edgerton), who lives in a secluded woodland house with his wife (Carmen Ejogo) and teenage son (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). The world is sick—probably dying. An unnamed plague, fatal and incurable, has fragmented what we can see of society. Food, gas, and ammunition are in short supply, and bands of violent men prowl the roads. Every foray into the outside world carries the threat of contamination. Paul and his family must defend themselves from these threats and ensure they have enough supplies to last... a while. It doesn’t seem like any cavalry is coming to the rescue. Aside from the obvious similarities to Naughty Dog’s remarkable 2013 video game The Last of Us (which the film resembles both aesthetically and thematically), the more I think about It Comes at Night, the more it reminds me of a video game. In a good way! The film consistently evokes that very specific sense of risk/reward anxiety that makes survival games both punishing and fun. BEN COLEMAN
Various locations
Wonder Woman
In Wonder Woman, innocence is Diana’s foil. She’s read at great length about the world, but has never lived in it. And as Diana deals with her naïveté and her foes, Wonder Woman is exciting and fun—even though it devolves into typical blockbuster spectacle near its end, I’d recommend it to anyone who loves action films, and there’s also just enough subtext to feed a philosophical mind. How much harm does Wonder Woman do when she strides boldly into war? Is this what power looks like? Is it cool just because she’s a woman? Hopefully these questions will be answered in future films. For now, Wonder Woman is a thrilling start. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
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