Whether you're looking for something to watch with your family or a place to hide out from the season's festiveness for a few hours, the holidays are a great time to take in a movie (or three). Below, we've rounded up all of our film critics' picks for the next week and a half. You could use this time to prepare for the Golden Globes on January 7 and check out the erotic and melancholy Call Me By Your Name or the Aaron Sorkin-directed true-crime tale Molly's Game—or, if you're looking for something a little more festive, try It's A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, or Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. We've got all that and more below (except, notably, for the Darkest Hour, which did not at all impress Stranger film editor Charles Mudede). Follow the links for complete showtimes and trailers, or, if you're looking for even more options, check out our complete movie times listings, and our film events calendar.

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Jump to: Thurs Dec 21 | Dec 21-24 | Dec 21-28 | Opening Dec 21 | Dec 22-23 | Opening Dec 22 | Mon Dec 25 | Opening Dec 25 | Dec 26-30 | Opening Dec 29 | Sun Dec 31 | Playing Continuously

THURS DEC 21

Batman Returns
If you're 21 or older and like lolling around in blankets while watching nerd movies, see Batman take on Catwoman, the Penguin, and Max Shreck in Campout Cinema's screening of Tim Burton's 1992 Batman Returns. This party offers not only the movie, but also trivia, photo ops, giveaways, and more. Wear your most hideous sweater for a chance at winning a pass to Emerald City Comic Con, and bring your own cushions and blankets (no chairs).
Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP)

Beggars of Life
Silent film fans primarily know Louise Brooks for the film Pandora’s Box, in which she plays a guileless siren whom men can’t resist ruining themselves for. In William Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928), incidentally Paramount’s first movie with sound-dialog, she plays a girl who kills her gross stepfather, disguises herself as a boy, and rides the rails with other down-and-outs.
Northwest Film Forum

Dark Lodge Cinemas: Female Trouble
I don’t know about you, but the saccharine nature of Christmas makes me want to lock obnoxious children up in an attic, rob a few stores, and fuck some drugged-out hippies. As luck would have it, John Waters’s Female Trouble is the Christmas movie that delivers all of these desires—along with murder, Divine jumping on a trampoline, and more murder. It’s a teen girl’s fantasy as envisioned by an acid-riddled homosexual in the 1970s. It’s also the best Christmas movie ever made. CHASE BURNS
Ark Lodge Cinemas

The Florida Project
The real reason The Florida Project is a breakout success, and the reason everyone should see the film, is the rowdy, previously unknown seven-year-old actor Brooklynn Prince. Moonee, played by Prince, is a mischievous tyrant who spends her days terrorizing the Orlando hotel she calls home. Like director Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the characters in The Florida Project don’t want anyone’s pity. Prostitution, drugs, arson, assault—it all goes down in the Magic Castle, the purple hotel (or project) where Moonee lives. Prince—with considerable help from her costars, Baker, and screenwriter Chris Bergoch—resonates beyond the twee and cute. At the film’s climax, Prince delivers a performance that would make even the surliest curmudgeon cry. CHASE BURNS
AMC Seattle 10

The Square
The Swedish director Ruben Ă–stlund is a rising star in European cinema. And judging from the buzz about his latest film, The Square, it is only a matter of time before he conquers the United States. At the center of the film is Christian (Claes Bang), the head curator of X-Royal, a huge and powerful modern art museum in Stockholm. One day, three con artists on a city street lure Christian into a clever trap and mug him. He loses his wallet and slick smartphone. Back at the office, and still in a state of shock from what happened to him in broad daylight, he locates his smartphone on the web. It is in a place that we in the US would call the projects. Encouraged by a friend, he decides to take matters into his own hands and does something that changes his life. Before the act, the art was just about names, money, and academic concepts concerning the human condition in a world that has no alternative to neoliberal capitalism. After the act, the art is directly about his life, clothes, car, job, relationships, and city. The art asks: Why is there so much poverty in a rich city? Why is it so easy to ignore beggars? Why is wealth so unfairly distributed? And if it were fairly distributed, would crime vanish? What kind of animal is the human? CHARLES MUDEDE
Varsity Theatre

Thor: Ragnarok
Thor: Ragnarok is, finally, a legitimately great Thor movie—one that proves goofy comedy, goofier mythology, 1980s-tinged sci-fi and fantasy, and Led Zeppelin aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, all that stuff goes together like... whatever Norse gods eat instead of delicious sundaes! And the cherry on top is the Incredible Hulk! And a giant wolf! And Jeff Goldblum! Jeff Goldblum in space! Wow. This sundae analogy fell apart fast. I’m not great at sundae analogies, and to be fair, Ragnarok isn’t great at... ah... narrative cohesion. Some might quibble that Ragnarok is disjointed; I’d counter that its tone—exciting and quippy and sweet—is always dead on. For that, and for Ragnarok’s constant hilarity, we can thank Taika Waititi, the New Zealand director who, until now, has made slightly more low-key fare: Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Like those projects, Ragnarok is as good-hearted as it is clever; as much as its characters might smash each other across garbage planets, and as godlike and monstrous as they might be, Waititi treats them like real people. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations

DEC 21-24

Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
The Finnish film Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale may be the first to feature naked old men wrinkledly galumphing through the tundra while a little boy frantically begs for his dad to save his life by giving him a spanking. Expanding on a series of internet shorts, director Jalmari Helander strikes a fine balance between creepy and darkly comic, delivering a sharply askew Home Alone riff goosed by brief bits of more traditional horror splatter. While the pace does occasionally falter, even at 80 minutes, Rare Exports is ultimately a spooky, funny, weirdly heartwarming fable that—were it not for the aforementioned glimpses of non-CGIed geriatric bits—might actually be suitable for kids of all ages. Practice your eye-covering, parents. ANDREW WRIGHT
SIFF Film Center

White Christmas Sing-Along
This interactive screening of Irving Berlin's musical, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye, lets you join in the corny onscreen fun with a pre-movie sing-along and free jingle bells.
SIFF Film Center

Wonder
When a movie comes along that is good—legitimately, sincerely good, like flowers or soup or dogs—I find myself grasping at a way to describe it. Wonder is that good movie. It’s about a little boy, Auggie (Room's Jacob Tremblay), and his mom (Julia Roberts), his dad (Owen Wilson), and his older sister (Izabela Vidovic). Auggie was born with a condition that makes him look different, so that's what Wonder focuses on—but it’s not really what this movie is. This is a portrait of a group of humans—grown-ups and kids, but mostly kids—who are whole, complicated people, who have opportunities to be selfish and opportunities to be kind. Wonder defaults to kindness in a manner that feels both totally inspiring and completely organic. ELINOR JONES
Meridian 16

DEC 21-28

It's a Wonderful Life
Shortly after It's a Wonderful Life's 1946 release, James Agee, one of the few American film critics of that era still worth reading , noted the film's grueling aspect. "Often," he wrote, "in its pile-driving emotional exuberance, it outrages, insults, or at least accosts without introduction, the cooler and more responsible parts of the mind." These aesthetic cautions are followed, however, by a telling addendum: "It is nevertheless recommended," Agee allowed, "and will be reviewed at length as soon as the paralyzing joys of the season permit." 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
Grand Illusion
On Fri Dec 22, the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America will introduce the screenings and speak about advocating for a public bank.

OPENING THURS DEC 21

Pitch Perfect 3
The Pitch Perfect universe feels like a 1989-era Taylor Swift Instagram experience, before she deleted all her 'grams to get all self-serious and boring. It’s a shiny, flawless, and highly-edited world of pretty girls having curated fun, and if I could live in it, you bet your ass I would, because it is a delightful land to inhabit for a fast-paced, totally ridiculous 90 minutes. Pitch Perfect 3 trusts that its audience has seen the first two movies and banks on the characters’ established charm. It also crams in as much singing and silly choreography as it can, and leaves scant time for dialogue (who cares!) or character development (whatever!) or any male characters aside from a couple of minor romantic interests and some disappointing father figures (who needs 'em?! ). But the film makes up for what it lacks in normal human interaction with sequins, yachts, and an excellent application of Britney Spears’s "Toxic." Oh, and John Lithgow! All that stuff is way more fun than regular people having any sort of plausible life anyway. ELINOR JONES
Various locations

DEC 22-23

Elf
In which Will Ferrell plays a grown man who has spent his entire life laboring under the delusion that he's one of Santa's elves. The side effects of this include a deeply ingrained sense of whimsy and a proclivity for concentrated sugars. Zooey Deschanel sings.
Central Cinema, Meridian 16, Naked City Brewery

OPENING FRI DEC 22

Call Me By Your Name
As I sat watching the story of unexpected passion between a teenage boy and a slightly older male grad student staying with his family at their palatial Northern Italian villa during the languid, dappled, decadent summer of 1983, I thought three things: (1) James Ivory (Maurice, The Remains of the Day, Howards End), who wrote the screenplay based on André Aciman's novel, is the laureate of agonizingly slow-burning love shared by inexpressive people in stately houses, (2) Guadagnino seems able to make the air around this family actually swoon with intellectual fecundity and erotic possibility, and (3) honestly, what is Armie Hammer doing there? Hammer plays Oliver, the American grad student who captivates the imagination and emotions of young Elio, a musical prodigy poised at the frustrating age when you're supposed to start choosing a path but you can't seem to take a step in any direction. Timothée Chalamet (recently seen as the pretentious indie-rock rich kid boyfriend in Lady Bird) is perfect as Elio. He's coltish one minute, graceful the next, and always one step ahead of everyone. Intelligence streams out of him as convincingly as lust and longing. The question then becomes: Is Oliver, as embodied by Hammer, worthy of Elio's adoration? I just can't see it. This leaves a hole at the center of what would otherwise be—and still, semi-miraculously, is—a very involving, melancholy film. SEAN NELSON
Various locations

Downsizing
In Downsizing, Alexander Payne’s big idea is to try to treat his film’s title as literally as possible, positing a world where a Norwegian scientist has invented a shrink ray that can reduce organic matter to a thousandth of its original size. Why? Well, since we can’t enlarge the earth and its finite resources, maybe we can shrink ourselves to make them last longer. Matt Damon plays Paul, an occupational therapist at Omaha Steaks who eventually shrinks himself, leading not to a panacea of fulfillment, but to a woolly journey of self-discovery (not to mention some amazing sight gags, including one involving what I can only describe as a “man spatula”). Downsizing is more high-concept than metaphorical, but if there’s one aspect that hits close to home, it’s Paul’s realization that the only way he’s ever going to be able afford a better life is by shrinking himself. It’s a reverse American dream: Rather than increasing your capacity to consume, you reduce your consumption to fit your capacity. If Downsizing skewers anything, it’s the expectation that a film should have all the answers. It’s neither a perfect comedy nor a perfect allegory, but so long as you don’t watch it looking for a unified theory, it’s funny and thought-provoking and great. VINCE MANCINI
Various locations

MON DEC 25

Fiddler on the Roof Sing-Along
Join SIFF’s holiday “Traditionnnnn tradition!” of belting along with Tevye and family in Norman Jewison’s 1971 adaptation of the beloved musical. Your ticket will include Chinese takeout from Leah's Gourmet Kosher Food and pre-film klezmer by Orkestyr Farfeleh.
SIFF Film Center

OPENING MON DEC 25

All the Money in the World
It sounded crazy: Mere weeks away from the release of All the Money in the World, director Ridley Scott decided to erase every trace of Kevin Spacey from his movie following disturbing allegations of that actor’s sexual assault and harassment. Scott quickly refilmed large sections with Christopher Plummer, who replaced Spacey in the role of J. Paul Getty, founder of Getty Oil and one of the richest men of the 20th century. I can see why Scott went to such extremes. He knew he was sitting on top of a taut, exciting thriller about the 1973 Italian kidnapping of Getty’s grandson, John Paul Getty III, and damned if he was gonna let Spacey torpedo it. All the Money in the World is as fun to watch as a lit fuse. The story primarily focuses on Paul III’s mother, Gail (Michelle Williams), who teams up with Getty’s security man, former CIA agent Fletcher Chase (Mark Wahlberg), to negotiate with the Italian kidnappers. The script adroitly handles themes of money and family, and Scott’s virtuosic skill in building suspense serves him well in a handful of excellent, nail-biting sequences. This thing should have been a disaster. In Scott’s hands, it’s anything but. NED LANNAMANN
Meridian 16, AMC Seattle 10

Molly's Game
It does not matter that this film is based on a real story. Reality sucks if it is not fucked with, which will certainly be the case in this crime drama about a woman (Jessica Chastain) who was a world-class ice skater and also happened to run a world-class underground poker joint. The Russians were in on the action just like the 2016 election. The FBI bust her shit up. What did she do wrong? Girls just want to have fun. The over-acclaimed screenwriter Aaron Sorkin decided that this would be the first film he directed. Expect to enjoy parts this film that are devoted to crime, and expect to be bored by the parts devoted to redemption. CHARLES MUDEDE
Various locations

DEC 26-30

Princess Mononoke
As anyone who's seen a Hayao Miyazaki film will attest, the story you follow is secondary to the sights you behold. The craggy reality of his twisting tree trunks capped with windblown tufts of leaves; the weighty presence of the rocks, whether rough or slicked smooth by water; the breathtaking vividness of light when the clouds part; the crouched expectancy of animals at rest—all of these are rendered as gorgeously as any animation I've ever seen, and in fact make a better plea for ecological sanity than the sometimes heavy-handed script. BRUCE REID
Central Cinema

OPENING DEC 29

The Other Side of Hope
With this superb film, the great Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki returns to the subject that haunts Europe: immigration. In Kaurismäki’s 2011 Le Havre, the immigrant is an 11-year-old black African. In The Other Side of Hope, the immigrant is a Syrian refugee. The former is set in France; the latter is set in Kaurismäki’s country, Finland. The former film is a fairy tale; the latter is much less so. Its realism is in the understanding that though neo-Nazis are a bunch of buffoons, their politics present a real and consistent danger for a democracy. The film is also plenty funny. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Film Center

SUN DEC 31

Moulin Rouge! New Year's Eve Party Sing-Along
If you’re anything like me, the hardest part of watching Moulin Rouge on the big screen for the first time was not getting to sing along. From “Lady Marmalade” to “Rhythm of the Night” to “Material Girl” to “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” to “Your Song,” the soundtrack practically begs for vocal accompaniment. Now all the musical-theater nerds who love this movie will get their chance at this sing-along screening of Moulin Rouge. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
SIFF Cinema Uptown

The Room NYE in 10D
What more appropriate way to end this year than with the famously stilted, poorly written, outlandishly delivered cinematic calamity known as The Room? Central Cinema promises a gateway to the "10 Dimensions" of Tommy Wiseau's creation, including "Height, Width, (Emotional) Depth, Time, Taste, The Ability To See Dead People, Love, Greg Sestero, The Ability To Talk To Doggies In Flower Shops, and Spoons."
Central Cinema

PLAYING CONTINUOUSLY

Coco
The “Coco” in question is the oldest living relative of the film’s young protagonist, Miguel, but the story is driven by Miguel’s passion for becoming a musician—and the conflicted relationship he has with his family, who label music as “bad” for reasons he has yet to learn. But Miguel is tenacious when it comes to performing and after his abuelita smashes his guitar, Miguel steals the guitar of a famous ancestor. Since taking from the dead is a big no-no, Miguel crosses over into the Land of the Dead. Coco ends up being an exceedingly tender kids’ film with deep themes about mortality, ancestry, and memories—and any adult with a soul will be moved, too. JENNI MOORE
Various locations

The Disaster Artist
Even if you have never seen The Room, Tommy Wiseau’s infamous masterpiece of shocking artistic poverty, there’s plenty to recommend James Franco’s re-creation of its conception and creation. Much like Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, this film makes the case that a complete lack of talent and vision are not necessarily bars to entry for a life in show business, as long as you have an unlikely friend, and the strangest accent since Martin Short in Father of the Bride. Littered with hilarious cameos from the likes of Seth Rogen, Megan Mullally, and Bryan Cranston, The Disaster Artist is funny, sweet, and strange, with a central performance by Franco that rises to the level of either high camp or high art. SEAN NELSON

Lady Bird
Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan, never better) is a teenage girl striving to find a self she can live in while stranded in moribund, lower-middle-class Sacramento, "the Midwest of California." Her efforts begin with that name, which she bestowed upon herself—Christine was too normal—and loudly demands that everyone call her at all times. The crusade also manifests in the form of hair dye, petty crime, habitual lying, sexual experimentation with unworthy boys, and musical theater. Though Lady Bird will perform for anyone, the only audience she truly wants is her exasperated, judgmental, sharp-tongued mother, Marion (Laurie Metcalf, almost certainly the greatest living actress). It's an exquisitely observed portrait of a mother and daughter so intractably at war that they can't see how close they are until it's too late. SEAN NELSON
Various locations

Loving Vincent
We’ve already had a few fine cinematic attempts to tell the story of the brilliant yet tortured Vincent van Gogh. The one element missing was the beautiful, slightly unsettling look of Van Gogh’s groundbreaking artwork. Loving Vincent, the latest from animators Hugh Welchman and Dorota Kobiela, is the first of these biopics to get it right. That’s because the entire film is composed of actual paintings: The international production employed more than 100 artists to paint each frame of the film on canvas, copying the thick brushstrokes and brash colors of Van Gogh’s most celebrated works. The rest of Loving Vincent doesn’t hit the same heights. Kobiela and Welchman’s script is a leaden, Citizen Kane-style attempt to investigate Van Gogh’s final days in France through the efforts of Armand (Douglas Booth), a young postman’s son attempting to deliver the artist’s final letter. It’s a well-meaning way to let us cross paths with many of the villagers whom Van Gogh painted, but it’s hampered by conspiracy theories and a lumbering pace. ROBERT HAM
Meridian 16 & AMC Seattle 10

The Shape of Water
The Shape of Water is strange, sweet, and wonderful, and easily the greatest film ever made about a mute cleaning lady who falls in love with an amphibious fish man. A fairy tale set in 1962, it finds Elisa (Sally Hawkins) working the graveyard shift at the Occam Aerospace Research Center—a cold institution that marks a time, del Toro says, “where America is looking forward. Everything [is] about the future... and here comes a creature from the most ancient past.” That creature—wide-eyed, gilled, and played with strength and inquisitiveness by Doug Jones—is imprisoned at Occam. Locked in a tank and chained in a pool, he’s prodded by a reverent scientist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and tortured by a dominating military man (Michael Shannon). When Elisa finds him, she recognizes a kindred spirit—and feels an attraction that’s met with varying degrees of enthusiasm from her dubious coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her artist neighbor, Giles (Richard Jenkins). Whether they’re human or... whatever the hell the creature is, The Shape of Water’s characters are played by some of the best actors working today—all of whom give whole-hearted, nuanced performances, anchoring a story that can feel bigger (and weirder) than life. The characters’ depth is reinforced by del Toro: his stories are marked by an earnest affinity for outcasts—which, in the falsely idealized America of the 1960s, includes the mute Elisa, the closeted Giles, and the Black Zelda. ERIK HENRIKSEN
SIFF Cinema Egyptian

Star Wars: The Last Jedi
The spectacles in Star Wars: The Last Jedi are some of the most powerful and believable in the franchise—Luke Skywalker's dark island, the interiors of the First Order’s battleships, the space battles. The audience is completely immersed in this distant galaxy with its operatic narrative. But what do we find once we get there? A scene that's recognizably pro-vegetarianism; a sophisticated critique of the destructive, elitist principles of the Jedi religion; a feminist rejection of male impulsiveness and a celebration of rational, thoughtful female leadership; and a political economy that springs from the idea that many of the problems of this galaxy might be related to its laissez-faire market. All of this is in the new Star Wars film, which may disappoint Trump supporters but will certainly be enjoyed by every other human in this galaxy. CHARLES MUDEDE
Various locations

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
One way you know a film is written by a playwright is when everything everyone says in it is clever and wise and perfect. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, written and directed by Martin McDonagh, never fails on this score. The dialogue, particularly when given life by actors Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, is hilarious and provocative. But the biggest indicator that you're watching the work of a playwright is the sense that there's no way the story is what the film is really about. The three billboards in Three Billboards are signifiers and catalysts, but they're also red herrings (literally red, in fact). The billboards are taken out by Mildred (McDormand) as a way to publicly shame Ebbing's police chief (Woody Harrelson) for having failed to catch the man who raped and murdered her daughter. They also keep her grief alive and present tense. McDonagh depicts graphic violence and hateful language flippantly, in a style people like to call Tarantinoesque. But McDonagh is not a shock artist, not satisfied milking the disjunction of liking the bad cop or the mean lady. He's making the case that humans are complex, that "sympathetic" is relative, and that whatever horrible things people are capable of doing to each other (and they are indeed horrible), we still have to live together when we're done. SEAN NELSON
Various locations

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