The Seattle International Film Festival is approaching its third week. We've got a full guide to help you choose what to see, as well as a list of the best SIFF movies worth watching this week—but check out these non-SIFF movies. SIFF has already played First Reformed, but you can now see it in theaters, plus there's the magnificently kinetic Mad Max: Black & Chrome Edition and that eternally quotable classic, The Princess Bride. 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.

Note: Movies play from Thursday to Sunday unless otherwise noted.

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Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: Infinity War, Marvel’s attempt to put an exploding bow on 10 years of corporate synergy, is a lurching, ungainly colossus of a blockbuster, with far too many characters and storylines stretching across a series of planets that resemble 1970s prog-rock album covers. The thing is, though, while you’re watching it? None of these elements feel like debits. Sometimes, excess hits the spot. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo deserve a huge amount of credit for simply making sure all of Infinity War’s 5,000 performers hit their marks—but they also find room for most of these characters to get an honest-to-god character moment or two. The Russos aren’t exactly stylists, however, and there’s a flatness to the establishing scenes here that feels similar to Marvel’s first wave of films. A little bit of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther panache would’ve gone a long way. But once the action kicks in, the ridiculous scope of this thing takes over and sweeps away any quibbles. ANDREW WRIGHT
Various locations

Beast
Beast has many sources of needling tension, but the most gripping is the relationship between Moll, who’s clearly outgrown the confines of her childhood home, and her cold, authoritarian mother, who treats her daughter like a wild animal that could lash out without proper discipline. That all changes when Moll falls in love with another outcast, the ruggedly handsome hunter Pascal, who gives her the acceptance she’s never received from her family. But when Pascal is named as a suspect in the island’s serial killings, Moll’s feverish devotion becomes a ring of fire that further isolates her. Soundtracked by an angelic women’s choir, the film’s grotesque—but completely riveting and scarily believable—transformation from fairy tale romance to psychosexual horror is captured with striking, incongruent images, like that of dirt sullying a white couch or stuffed into Moll’s mouth. CIARA DOLAN
Meridian 16

Black Dynamite
Winner of SIFF's 2009 Golden Space Needle Award for Best Film, Black Dynamite is a ‘70s blaxploitation spoof. After The Man kills his brother and starts dealing smack to poor orphans in the ghetto, Black Dynamite is going to fight his way on up to the Honky House to get revenge. As full of clever, subtle humor as it is of really dumb jokes, Black Dynamite races along on the strength of Michael Jai White's amazingly funny performance—he's not so much playing a blaxploitation superhero as the actor PLAYING the blaxploitation superhero.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

Deadpool 2
Everything you could possibly want from a sequel to Deadpool is in place: the relentless breaking-down of the fourth wall; Deadpool’s twisted, self-flagellating humor and his snipes at pop culture, the X-Men franchise, characters in the franchise, the death of characters in the franchise. There are perfectly choreographed, partially slow-motion, and hilariously absurd CGI-augmented (and in some cases fully initiated) fight sequences; gratuitous and non-too-serious violence and carnage...Basically, Deadpool spends a lot of time wallowing in his own self-pity, the boundaries of his mutant-ness are tested, and once he figures out what he’s supposed to be doing—keeping a soldier from the future, Cable (Josh Brolin), from killing 14-year-old Russell Collins—the action re-starts in earnest. LEILANI POLK
Various locations

The Desert Bride
A live-in maid whose just lost the job she's held for decades sets out in the pampas and promptly loses her luggage. But she gains a friend, a silver-tongued man nicknamed Gringo (although he's not a gringo), and the film turns into a road movie about ordinary magic and coming into your own. Cecilia Atán and Valeria Pivato's feature won Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday

Diwa Filipino Film Showcase 2018
These short films reveal queer stories, love stories, painted stories, Saudi stories, and more by Filipino and Filipino diaspora creators.
Seattle Center Armory
Saturday–Sunday

Don't Break Down: A Film About Jawbreaker
The melodic punksters of Jawbreaker—Blake Schwarzenbach, Chris Bauermeister, and Adam Pfahler—reunite to talk about their careers and struggles. Catch up with them before they appear at Upstream the following day.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday only

First Reformed
Don’t make the mistake I made at the Telluride Film Festival when I skipped this unexpected magnum opus from the writer of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Paul Schrader’s latest film is a return to form. Infused with elements from his Calvinist upbringing and 1950s art-house cinema (check out his newly reissued book Transcendental Style in Film on Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer), First Reformed revolves around the Reverend Ernst Toller (portrayed with devastating restraint by Ethan Hawke). He is a former military chaplain ministering to a tiny congregation in upstate New York, and he can’t get past the deep grief and spiritual isolation caused by the ill-fated death of his enlisted son. When congregant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her troubled (and radical environmentalist) husband, Toller discovers his church’s distinguished financial savior is an amoral corporate polluter, and he becomes obsessed with saving a world he believes is destroying itself. The film also stars Cedric the Entertainer as a mega-church pastor and Toller’s overseer. CARL SPENCE
Meridian 16

Life of the Party
Life of the Party is more than serviceable—it’s wonderful! Melissa McCarthy plays Deanna, the fortysomething mom of a college senior, and when her husband unceremoniously dumps her for a blonde real-estate agent, she decides to go back to college at the same school as her daughter. The whole plot seemed obvious. Then there was a funny line. And then another. And then another fantastic supporting cast member rolled in with some subtly hilarious shtick. And before I knew it, I was doubled over laughing about... pretty much everything? What the hell? ELINOR JONES
Varsity Theatre

Mad Max: Black & Chrome Edition
When this film came out in May of 2015, I called it the greatest film of its kind ever made. The only thing time has done to alter that assessment is make me wonder if maybe “of its kind” was unnecessarily equivocal. Now, George Miller’s mega-masterpiece of style as substance is presented in a black-and-white print (which Miller says is how he truly envisioned the film) that promises a whole new way of seeing the miracle of its kineticism. SEAN NELSON
Ark Lodge Cinemas
Friday–Sunday

Nuclear Lands: A History of Plutonium
This film tracks the origin and uses of plutonium (from material from military to civilian) by exploring sites in Washington State, France, and Northern Japan. After the film, UW public health students will present their research on the Hanford nuclear site's activity this past year.
Keystone Church
Friday only

The Princess Bride
Everyone who can factually claim to be an American has seen The Princess Bride 150 times. So why go see it on the big screen? Here's why: It's delightful and hilarious, and the goopy framing device gets out of the way fast, and there's that amazing scene where our heroine stands atop a hill, exclaims, "Oh, my love!" and hurls herself into a full-body roll.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday

A Quiet Place
This rural horror starring director John Krasinski and Emily Blunt is a fun, brawny horror flick with a surprisingly sugary heart and an ingenious gimmick. Human civilization is basically kaput and giant scythe-hand stealth-crab anthropoids roam the earth. They’re blind, but their huge, opalescent inner ears alert them to the presence of prey from miles off. A Quiet Place begins well after the creatures’ conquest. A man, his pregnant partner, and their son and daughter live in silence on an isolated farm, every aspect of their existence adapted to minimize noise: sand-covered trails, sign language, light and smoke signals, even cloth game pieces. But despite their ingenuity, the family must take increasingly drastic measures to protect themselves even as the pre-adolescent daughter, who’s deaf, rebels against her father. Their everyday yet all-important routines are a neat device for ramping up tension during the exposition. At the preview screening, we were all flinching when a lamp upended, shushing a character who cried too loudly. But it’s during the moments of crises—particularly when Blunt starts giving birth at a very inconvenient time—that Krasinski really shows he can twist your nerves in a way that shuts down your critical faculties. JOULE ZELMAN
Meridian 16 & AMC Pacific Place

RBG
All hail Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Better known as “RBG” to her fans (and “Bubby” to her grandkids), at 85 years old, the US Supreme Court justice still has a fierce intellect, a duty to the law, and an immense inner and physical strength. Over the long course of her career, RBG repeatedly defended the rights of everyone to live free from bias, but, as Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg says, Ginsburg “quite literally changed life for women.” And she’s still doing it. With intimate interviews with family and friends, as well as RBG herself, the film captures the life of a woman with a heart none of us wants to stop ticking. KATIE HERZOG
Ark Lodge Cinemas & Meridian 16

The Sacrifice
Andrei Tarkovsky’s best film is, of course, The Mirror. Next is The Sacrifice, and third is Stalker. There is not one bad movie in his small body of work. The Russian director could only make exceptional films. The Sacrifice, Tarkovsky’s last film (he died in 1986), is about how most humans would experience the end of the world—at home and with friends and family. These films have those tracking shots that break with the narrative and, if translated to words, would be poems. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
Thursday only

Solo: A Star Wars Story
Much like its plot, Solo shouldn’t work. It doesn’t work. It wins anyway. Boy and Girl try to con their way out of their shitty lives. Boy gets away, and vows to return for Girl. Instead, he gets caught up in a freewheeling life of crime with a giant dog, a cranky thief, a well-dressed gambler, and a robot-rights activist droid. That last bit sounds sorta heavy for Star Wars, right? It is. Solo has the tonal consistency of a detuned piano, and it’s constantly throwing around interesting-but-unexamined ideas and characters, which pop up every few minutes and then are never seen again. But for those seeking weightless escapism with enough gags, winks, and in-jokes to fill the Millenium Falcon’s cargo hold, not to mention laboriously Marvel-esque, overly connected worldbuilding? You’re gonna have fun.
BOBBY ROBERTS
Various locations

Upgrade
Upgrade is a sort of schlock action sci-fi thriller that’s heavy on the viscera and light on the introspection. Written and directed by Australian Leigh Whannell, who helped write the original Saw short with James Wan, it stars Prometheus’s Logan Marshall-Green as “Grey Trace,” a beardy mechanic who makes a living restoring classic muscle cars even though it’s the future. He doesn’t understand these kids with their bleeping and blorping, their sexting and their self-driving AI cars, and that suits him just fine. Until the day he becomes the victim of a seemingly random act of brutality at the hands of cackling thugs straight out of The Crow. That’s when Eron, a boy genius who’s on the spectrum, makes Grey an offer he can’t refuse: to cure Grey’s disability with a microchip implanted in his spine. A chip that will not only restore him, but just might give him special powers. Upgrade becomes a sort of poor man’s RoboCop meets a basic cable Black Mirror. Whannell doesn’t have Paul Verhoeven’s gift for satire, but he does have a horror director’s facility for visceral gore and suspenseful compositions. VINCE MANCINI
AMC Pacific Place
Thursday–Saturday

Videoasis
Stas THEE Boss will spin a DJ set while you gaze at projections of music videos by FKL, Mario Casalini, jo passed, Ghost Soda, and others.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only

Also Playing This Weekend
Our critics don't recommend these movies, but they're major Hollywood films.

Action Point
Book Club
Breaking In

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