True to the fertility of spring, movie theaters are blooming with dazzling diversity this weekend—from the new totalitarianism comedy The Death of Stalin to the sweet gay high school romance Love, Simon, and from an Andy Goldsworthy documentary to the Taiwanese masterpiece A Brighter Summer Day. Find all of this weekend's noteworthy movies below, follow the links to see complete showtimes, tickets, and trailers, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our complete movie times listings or our film events calendar.
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THURSDAY ONLY
Animation Show of Shows
Celebrate the art of animation at the 19th Annual Animation Show of Shows, a six-day-long event that will feature more than a dozen films from artists Quentin Baillieux, Lia Bertels, Pete Docter, and many others around the world.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action and Oscar Nominated Short Films: Animated
If you aren’t going to see both programs, don’t miss the live-action films, which are suspenseful and deeply tragic. Reed Van Dyk’s DeKalb Elementary—set in an elementary school office during a hostage crisis—is bone-shaking in its empathy and realism. The tension that emerges between a substitute receptionist (Tara Riggs) and a mentally unstable young man (Bo Mitchell) simultaneously asks relevant societal questions and showcases the talents of both actors. Another standout is My Nephew Emmett, Kevin Wilson Jr.’s film about the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Told from the perspective of Till’s uncle, Mose Wright (L.B. Williams), My Nephew Emmett explores the weighty silence of a good man living in Mississippi under Jim Crow laws. Wilson spools the audience’s affection around Mose, then breaks him down before our eyes. In that heartbreak, the film offers an important lesson: We need to remember our past, and continue fighting for a better future. SUZETTE SMITH
SIFF Cinema Uptown
The Post
The Post is Spielberg’s clear and passionate ode to the adversarial press, and not only is it a refreshing departure from his past work, it also turns out to be a good fit for his slick storytelling style. Spielberg is, at his core, a populist—a guy who wants to make crowd-pleasers so badly that his name has become synonymous with them. With The Post, Spielberg’s skills are put to a purpose. Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, the chain-smoking, gray-suited editor of the Washington Post. Hanks is the perfect choice for a character who’s juuust enough of a salty old sumbitch to keep things from turning into mushy hagiography. In one of the first scenes, Bradlee tells Katharine “Kay” Graham—the owner of the newspaper, played by grand dame of cinema Meryl Streep—to “keep your finger out of my eye.” It’s 1971, and the drama of the day concerns the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of the United States’ disastrous involvement in Vietnam and the lies the government told the American people along the way. Daniel Ellsberg (The Americans’ Matthew Rhys, who has a great cloak-and-dagger face) has started leaking the report to the New York Times, which gets slapped with an injunction. With the New York Times silenced, The Post follows the Washington Post’s journey to (1) acquire the Pentagon Papers and (2) decide whether to publish, risking lawsuits and jail time. The story has obvious contemporary parallels, with the press risking it all to check the president’s power—and Spielberg, surprisingly, rises to the challenge. In a lot of ways, The Post is the movie Oliver Stone wanted Snowden to be. VINCE MANCINI
Admiral Theatre
Winter Light: The Films of Ingmar Bergman
Charles Mudede says, "You can almost live forever on a diet of just films of the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman." The last film in the series is Persona (1967), a shocking and beautiful tone poem about an actress who copes with the futility of art and love by going mute, and the naive young nurse she preys upon. It may be one of the most gorgeous filmic chamber pieces you'll ever see.
Seattle Art Museum
FRIDAY–SUNDAY
The Death of Stalin
From Armando Iannucci, the creator of Veep, and more importantly, the vastly superior British politics TV series The Thick of It (and the film it inspired, In the Loop) comes a film, The Death of Stalin, that recognizes that farce, not tragedy, is the operative mode of true fascism. At least in retrospect. This is one of the grimmest, most harrowing films to ever make you double over with laughter. The heavyweight cast includes Steve Buscemi (as Khruschev), Michael Palin (as Molotov), and Jeffrey Tambor (as Malenkov), all of whom prostrate themselves to appear devoted to the regime while frantically tap dancing for their own survival—and eventual seizing of power. They are abetted in their machinations by UK eminences like Andrea Riseborough, Paddy Considine, Simon Russel Beale, and Roger Ashton-Griffiths. There’s no missing the present day resonances in the depictions of a regime that is both totally corrupt and plainly mediocre, but Iannucci is keen to remind you that the distance between even a toad like Trump and Stalin—who ordered the actual murder of approximately 60 million of his own comrade countrymen—is important to remember. But if the best thing you can say about a leader is that he isn’t exactly Josef Stalin, well… This film’s grave, absurd, brilliant, and brutal historical context has a way of making the future look, if not hopeful, then at least familiar. SEAN NELSON
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
Leaning Into the Wind: Andy Goldsworthy
Leaning into the Wind is the second documentary film—following River and Tide—about artist and environmentalist Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is famously known for his temporal and site-specific installations made from natural materials. I will admit that a documentary is a hard sell; but a documentary about art? That’s even harder. But Goldsworthy’s work belongs on film the same way Planet Earth belongs in an IMAX theatre. Everything about this, from the opening credits to the final 10 minutes, is captivating. The scenery and sculptures are beautifully shot and every inch is scored with killer audio. LEAH ST. LAWRENCE
Northwest Film Forum
Loveless
Ciara Dolan, Portland Mercury reviewer, really did not enjoy Loveless, which she called "two hours of watching a divorcing couple argue viciously and search Moscow for their missing son, who they were considering putting in an orphanage anyway, while apocalyptic news broadcasts about the conflict in Ukraine play in the background." This is accurate, and the film will no doubt be incredibly bleak. However, it's also made by one of the most important European directors working today, the dissident Andrey Zvyagintsev, and it's won or been nominated for tons of awards, including the Jury Prize at Cannes. So if you've got a soul made of pure emotional muscle and don't mind crying, go.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Oh Lucy!
The life of a 55-year-old Japanese “office lady,” Setsuko, suddenly changes when she gets a blond wig from her American English teacher, John. The teacher also gives Setsuko a new name: Lucy. This is cultural immersion. This is how John rolls. Setsuko also follows the teacher to Los Angeles. Directed by Atsuko Hirayanagi, Oh Lucy! stars the great Kaori Momoi, who is actually 65 and has worked with the giants of Japanese cinema: Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa, and Shohei Imamura. It is not a surprise that the director of this film is a fan of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. The strong impression it left on her certainly inspired Oh Lucy!, her first feature film. CHARLES MUDEDE
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Pushing Dead
The problem with a film like Pushing Dead is that any summary is bound to make it sound like a bummer. It isn't. The title also makes it sounds like a horror movie. It isn't that either. Dan, the central character, is an HIV-positive poet, but this isn't a depressing drama, because it's pretty clear that he isn't going to die. How he's going to keep paying for his meds is another matter, but Tom E. Brown's directorial debut is mostly about how to live with HIV. Not just how to get from day to day, but how to participate in the world (the San Francisco-based director has been HIV-positive for 33 years). This makes the casting of Psych's James Roday so counter-intuitive. An irrepressible mugger on that USA Network comedy-detective series, he has to tone it down here. Miraculously, he does. KATHY FENNESSY
Grand Illusion
Step Brothers
I sometimes wince to recognize how deeply this movie makes me laugh. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play adult man-children who still live at home and dress and behave like 15-year-old BMX bandit virgins in 1985. Their idyllic lives are shattered when their single parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) fall in love and move in together, forcing them to share a home and an identity. They start as bitter rivals but soon form a deep, fort-making kinship. Everything about the set-up is stupid, in keeping with the general downward trend of American comedy from the past 25 years. However, the cast’s total commitment makes the film transcendently funny, blissfully surreal, and totally awesome. SEAN NELSON
Central Cinema
SATURDAY
Saturday Secret Matinees
Grand Illusion and the Sprocket Society will continue their tradition of pairing an adventure serial with a different secret matinee movie every week. This year, the serial is Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and the theme of the feature film will change every fortnight (maybe they stole the idea from the Stranger's new printing schedule. Though probably not). The remaining theme isa "Widescreen Thrills." The coolest part, from a film buff point of view? Everything will be presented on 16mm.
Grand Illusion
SUNDAY ONLY
A Brighter Summer Day
A teenage boy tries to cement his identity on the dangerous streets of 1960s Taipei, in a sprawling crime saga/insightful family drama that runs for nearly 4 hours. You may find yourself wishing for another 30 minutes, at least. Unusually long movies can generate their own strange gravitational hum, and the late director Edward Yang’s 1991 magnum opus proves bewitching from the get-go, bringing an astonishing vividness—Good Lord, that typhoon—to its semi-autobiographical narrative. A film that somehow manages to exist simultaneously as a painstakingly detailed coming-of-age story, a paean to the eternal awesomeness of rock and roll, and an entrancing tone poem. If this isn’t a masterpiece, then what is? ANDREW WRIGHT
Northwest Film Forum
Vertigo 60th Anniversary (1958) Presented by TCM
As a whole, Vertigo is not my fav Hitchcock film (that distinction goes to North by Northwest), nor do I much care for its super-creepy (or super-twisted) plot, which involves a death, a young blond woman, and a middle-aged man. But it certainly represents the No. 1 collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Hermann. Here the former’s direction and the latter’s sound are perfectly united from beginning to end. CHARLES MUDEDE
AMC Pacific Place
ALL WEEKEND
Annihilation
Annihilation could squeeze into just about any label you give it: a horror film; a science-fiction flick that toys with the possibility of extraterrestrial life; a wilderness adventure; a romantically yearning character study; a chilling, painfully suspenseful mystery; a “message” film about either the environment or male toxicity, depending on where you feel like directing your anger; an abstract, allegorical art piece with long stretches of dialogue-free visuals. The most accurate label is probably just to call it an Alex Garland film. After his stunning 2015 debut as director, Ex Machina, and now the gorgeous, terrifying, and spellbinding Annihilation, we’re starting to get a sense of what that is. These are films that use the tools of genre—science fiction and horror, predominantly—to explore the liminal space between what is human and what isn’t. Annihilation is the best kind of cinematic experience, one that floods the senses without battering them into submission, and one that moves the mind and heart without manipulating them. It’s a staggering thing to witness. NED LANNAMANN
Various locations
Before We Vanish
The Japanese film Before We Vanish is very funny, very bloody, and doesn't have a happy ending. Aliens from another world invade our world by a process that looks like demon possession. An alien enters the soul of a human, eliminates it, and replaces it with its own. The alien soul, however, doesn't fit very well in an earthling's body. The human seems too baggy for its mode of being. The alien invasion looks much like how bacteria infect a human by quorum sensing. But there is no need to closely examine any of Before We Vanish's plot materials with a microscope. It does not take itself and its story seriously. The director, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, spent almost nothing on special effects. He never shows us aliens (big head? small mouth?) and there is, to be honest, nothing really evil about their invasion. What makes this film work is its super-dry humor. Kurosawa very well knows that humans will never be attacked by aliens, and that the world will not end if humans are eradicated. The human world has its own real problems. It's filled with lonely people, with male bosses who sexually harasses female employees, and teens who cant stand their parents. This is the world the aliens are invading. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
No showing on Friday.
Black Panther
Because I do not want to spoil the experience of this movie, I will not describe the path of the film's plot to its core problem, which concerns the unification of black Africa with black America. Out of a comic book, director Ryan Coogler crafted an important concept about how, from the unification, a post-pan-Africanist global Africanism can emerge. It comes down to this: black Africans and black Americans have to admit their respective failings. (My feeling is that Coogler is much harder on black Americans than black Africans.) As a whole, Black Panther is lots of fun and will excite a lot of discussion and strong opinions. But the most revolutionary thing about Black Panther is its city. The capital of Wakanda has skyscrapers, a monorail, sidewalks of grass, green buildings, farmers markets, and no cars. The whole idea of private transportation is foreign to this fictional society. If this black African capital has anything to share with the world, it's its city planning. CHARLES MUDEDE
Various locations
Call Me By Your Name
Recently, The Stranger published a review of this film by noted heterosexual Sean Nelson, who couldn’t seem to shake his impression that Armie Hammer had never been near another man’s penis in his life. That may be, but focusing on that fact is beside the point, because the film holds out the possibility that these two characters (whom we also see having sex with women) are simply, inexplicably attracted to each other, “identity” be damned. Maybe they’re even straight, and it was just a charge in the air, a tension that had to be resolved, a mystery. This movie is a masterpiece and you should see it before Timothée Chalamet wins his Oscar. CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE
Various locations
A Fantastic Woman
A trans woman and an older man fall rapturously in love—but he dies suddenly during their torrid night together. The bereaved Marina struggles to maintain equilibrium and dignity in the face of her lover's intolerant family. This film by Sebastián Lelio is an Oscar winner and has won a jury prize, a Silver Berlin Bear, and a Teddy at the Berlinale, as well as numerous other awards and nominations. And—for once in an Oscar-winning movie—the film boasts an actual trans woman, Daniela Vega, in the role of a trans woman.
SIFF Cinema Egyptian & SIFF Cinema Uptown
Game Night
On the upside: Sharon Horgan has a small part in a halfway decent, big-budget Hollywood comedy! And so does Lamorne Morris! And hey, there’s Kylie Bunbury! They’re part of an overachieving supporting cast that makes the perfunctory Game Night a much better movie than it should have been. The comedy-movie genre is probably in its worst shape ever, so when Game Night achieves the bare minimum—making you laugh—it’s downright refreshing. The plot, not that it matters, involves Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams and a group of friends trying to solve a puzzle mystery that may or may not include Bulgarian gangsters, Fabergé eggs, and the kidnapping of Bateman’s brother (Kyle Chandler). Is it all a game? Is any of it real? I 100 percent guaran-fucking-tee you will not care. Look—Game Night isn’t worth a lot of deep thought, and it’s not going to provoke any type of cultural conversation. But it’s got some laughs, and that feels like a lot right now. NED LANNAMANN
AMC Pacific Place & AMC Seattle 10
I, Tonya
Tonya Harding was considered a freak, even though she was arguably the most technically skilled skater of her time. In the wake of the infamous 1994 attack on Nancy Kerrigan (which she may or may not have had a hand in), Harding was further ostracized, transformed by the nascent 24-hour news cycle into a white-trash demoness—so it’s important that any fictional depiction of her life acknowledge that she was also a real person who suffered. I, Tonya, is a solid attempt, largely thanks to Margot Robbie’s portrayal of a very human, very sympathetic Tonya. Without sugarcoating Harding’s personality (which could be caustic) or her tragic life (which was full of abuse and abandonment), I, Tonya tells a familiar story of a woman whose life was ruined by hapless, cruel men and sexist gatekeeping. It has been criticized for its stylized, darkly comic depiction of abuse, but it’s also one of the only portrayals I’ve seen that presents Harding as a person, and that acknowledges she was abused. It’s hard not to root for her in the film—she's a talented weirdo surrounded by bad men, whose raw determination can’t be blunted by an equally abusive and narcissistic mother (an excellent, unnerving Allison Janney) who teaches her to conflate being loved with being hit. It’s impossible not to empathize with Harding, and to imagine what her career and life might have looked like had she been able to make a clean break from her abusive family. MEGAN BURBANK
AMC Pacific Place
Love, Simon
If you're one of those people who only reads the first sentences of movie reviews, here you go: Love, Simon is FANTASTIC, and you should see it IMMEDIATELY. The best thing about it is Simon himself: A clever, kind kid with a loving family and good friends, he's having a hell of a time figuring out how—or if—he should come out. Not many YA protagonists feel as real as Simon, regardless of whether he's going through great stuff or drama. Simon's great stuff includes: a secret e-mail relationship with Blue, another closeted kid at his school. Simon doesn't know who Blue really is, and Blue doesn't know who Simon really is, but through hesitantly typed e-mails, the two find the beginnings of a relationship that's inspiring and complicated. Simon's drama includes: his dipshit classmate Martin, who stumbles onto his e-mails with Blue–and threatens to share them with everyone if Simon doesn't do what he says. Love, Simon thrums with heightened emotions, but it never feels false or silly; Greg Berlanti's smart enough to treat these kids like real, complicated people, and the result is a movie that feels both truthful and ridiculously engaging. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations
November
Follow Estonian director Rainer Sarnet's vision across a hallucinatory black-and-white landscape of forests, mud, ancient churches, and huts in a sinister, alluring story of a wild peasant girl, Liina, who's determined to marry her fellow villager Hans. But Hans becomes fascinated with a visiting German baroness, and Liina resorts to witchcraft and other tricks to win him back. The love triangle is well played out and tragicomically poignant, but the film's real magnetism is in the bizarre side stories: the dead returning on All Hallow's Eve for some roasted chicken and sauna time; the ensouled puppets made of junk that the villagers use to pilfer from each other; the veneer of Christianity over stubborn pagan practices.
Grand Illusion
No showing on Saturday.
The Party
Sally Potter’s eighth feature film is The Party, a 71-minute black-and-white movie that was, admittedly, panned by the best film critic in the US, Manohla Dargis, who, though comparing it to Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, Rope, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder, called it “brittle.” But it is still by Sally Potter, the director who gave the world two masterpieces in the 1990s Orlando and The Tango Lesson. She is almost 70 but has not made that many films. The fact that she completed a new one justifies watching it. The Party is set in London. And it stars an actress discovered by the late Prince, Kristin Scott Thomas. CHARLES MUDEDE
AMC Seattle 10 & SIFF Cinema Uptown
Phantom Thread
The alleged news that this will be Daniel Day-Lewis’s final outing as an actor would only be reason enough to see this film if you actually believe he truly won’t ever act again once he’s finished cobbling or whatever he’s doing this time. But really, all you need to know is that he’s in it. Boom, it’s a don’t miss. But then you see the trailer, in which obsessive jealousy burns slowly, causing terrible damage as it mounts, and you see the makings of a Paul Thomas Anderson gem, and another brilliant performance by Day-Lewis, one of the finest actors who ever drew breath. SEAN NELSON
AMC Seattle 10
Seattle Jewish Film Festival
This annual film festival explores and celebrates global Jewish and Israeli life, history, complexity, culture, and filmmaking. The festival showcases international, independent and award-winning Jewish-themed and Israeli cinema, and the audience votes on their favorites. This year, the theme is "isREEL Life" in celebration of Israel's 70th anniversary. On opening night, see Maktub, a mob comedy by Oded Raz, and attend a Tom Douglas-catered dessert party. There will also be an Eastside opening featuring the documentary Shalom Bollywood about Jewish Indian performers. Other highlights will include the excellent documentary Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story and a ceremony honoring filmmaker Tiffany Shlain (The Tribe).
Stroum Jewish Community Center, SIFF Cinema Uptown, AMC Pacific Place
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
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
Meridian 16 & Varsity Theatre
Veracity—Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun, which launches the Veracity: New Documentary Cinema series at Northwest Film Forum, is Travis Wilkerson’s journey into the disturbing history of his rural Alabaman family. Framing the history of his hometown, Dothan, within the context of the civil rights movement and contemporary black resistance, Wilkerson tracks down a secessionist great-aunt, visits Rosa Parks’s birthplace two hours away, and gathers invaluable testimony from a Dothan activist, Ed Vaughn. But he starts with his great-grandfather, S.E. Branch, a grocer who murdered a black man named Bill Spann in 1946 and was never charged. Rather than the origin of a family evil, Branch is the emblem of an institutional white male violence that, even in modern Dothan, still threatens people of color as well as whites who ask too many questions. If Wilkerson’s narration sometimes shades a little too Southern Gothic (“Have you ever been in a place that just feels like something terrible happened there?”), what he uncovers is a stark testament to black heroism, white self-examination, and the still-potent institutional will to shield the sexual and racial terrorism of respected white men from examination. JOULE ZELMAN
Northwest Film Forum
A Wrinkle In Time
A Wrinkle in Time is an engrossing fantasy about a teenage girl, Meg, who—despite her anxieties and faults, and with the help of some friends and three extra-dimensional beings named Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which—embarks on a cross-dimensional adventure to save her missing father from a terrifying monster of darkness and conformity named IT. Disney’s new blockbuster isn’t the A Wrinkle in Time I read as a child. Director Ava DuVernay (Selma, 13th) has updated the story and placed it squarely in the now: There’s an extended roller coaster-esque flight scene over otherworldly landscapes, a multiracial cast, instructions for self-care, and Oprah. DuVernay doesn’t cut the weird without adding wonder. Her update to the three Mrs. W’s is particularly spectacular. Rather than the beak-nosed ladies they were in the book, these Mrs. W’s are luminous, ever-changing chameleons in couture gowns. There’s an informal pairing off—one child for each extra-dimensional being—and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) is predictably charged with the anxious Meg (Storm Reid), who, like many of Oprah’s followers, just needs a little boost of self-confidence before she’s ready to stand up to a universe-devouring evil. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
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