Spring is coming! Before you start celebrating all those spring holidays, it isn’t too late to curl up in a movie theatre and wallow in the winter. Our critics have recommended the best films this weekend for you to do just that—including many to transport you to places like the Amazon (via Embrace of the Serpent), Thailand (via Cemetery of Splendor), or the alien planet Thra (via The Dark Crystal). If you need more choices, check out our complete movie times listings, or our Things To Do calendar.
Want this in your inbox? Sign up for the Stranger Things To Do newsletter.
NEW RELEASES
1. The Bronze
The Bronze is a mutant baby of a movie that shouldn’t work as well as it does (though as the X-Men have proven, mutants can be cute, too). In Bryan Buckley’s clunky if affecting debut, the jerk-com melds with the rom-com in the tiny blonde form of Hope Ann Greggory (four-feet-eleven cowriter Melissa Rauch), a former Olympic gymnast whose post-athletic existence is so empty that she spanks it to a video of her 2004 bronze-winning routine. KATHY FENNESSY
2. The Confirmation
The Confirmation doesn’t whip up anything you haven’t tasted before, but like a home-cooked meal, its warmth and consistency make up for any missing spiciness. A sweet, gentle riff on Bicycle Thieves, it’s the directorial debut of screenwriter (and Stranger Genius Award finalist) Bob Nelson. Like his Nebraska, it’s a father-son story told with streaks of bleak humor. NED LANNAMANN
3. Hello, My Name is Doris
Michael Showalter’s Hello, My Name Is Doris banks on [Sally Field’s] mix of insecurity and charm to winning, if discomforting, effect…What starts out as Harold and Maude by way of Marvin’s Room ends like a John Hughes tale with an ever-so-slightly older heroine. KATHY FENNESSY
LIMITED RUNS
4. Better off Dead
Black comedy Better off Dead stars John Cusack as a teenager driven mad with something like love.
5. Cemetery of Splendor
Weerasethakul’s latest work, Cemetery of Splendor returns to this twilight zone, but this time there is less magic, less wonder…Cemetery of Splendor is not as fascinating as Uncle Boonmee, but many of its relaxed (or even tranquil) scenes provide an opportunity to absorb Weerasethakul’s impressive eye for things and landscapes. Often, a hospital room has a window that holds a stunning view of the lush landscape of rural Thailand. These moments matter. CHARLES MUDEDE
6. Embrace of the Serpent
Embrace of the Serpent is a densely packed, swiftly moving river journey that is constantly nodding at beloved cinematic tropes. The Colombian film, nominated for best foreign language film at this year’s Academy Awards, brings up images of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo and even Deliverance, by a short stretch of the imagination. Insanity inspired by the river and its surrounding wilderness, cultural conflict left behind and reencountered, and the punctuated momentum (alternating moments of paddling serenity with the anticipation of climbing ashore) all feel comforting—and like a part of a film that will soon join the ranks of our many river-based artistic landmarks. JULIA RABAN
7. The Filmy Quill: Writers and Writing on Celluloid
David Schmader draws a belly laugh out of me every single time I read him or see him perform. I have no doubt this live video essay about the way films portray writers will satisfy. Fingers crossed for a supercut of writers furiously writing with a quill pen. RICH SMITH
8. Kiki’s Delivery Service
A 1989 animated film by the reliably engaging and confusing Hayao Miyazaki, about a young witch earning her keep with her broomstick.
9. Within Our Gates
This afternoon, the Grand Illusion is presenting a masterpiece by Oscar Micheaux, the father and founder of black American cinema. The film, Within Our Gates, was made in 1919 and stands as the black response to D.W. Griffith’s hyper-racist The Birth of a Nation. In that film, a black man rapes a white woman. In Within Our Gates, a white man rapes a black woman. Considering the power that white men had over their black slaves, we can be sure that the latter happened far more frequently than the former. DJ Spooky, the NYC-based artist and hiphop experimenter, scored this silent film for the 21st century. CHARLES MUDEDE
10. Puget Soundtrack: Ecstatic Cosmic Union presents The Dark Crystal
This looks promising: a screening of Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s 1982 fantasy-adventure animated film The Dark Crystal with a new soundtrack created by Seattle wife/husband duo Ecstatic Cosmic Union (Rena Luelle and Aubrey Nehring). Even if fantasy-adventure cartoons don’t appeal to you (I’m a non-fan of the genre), it’s worth the trip to Northwest Film Forum to hear what XCU do with this phantasmagorical material. DAVE SEGAL
11. Requiem for the American Dream
In this documentary, which is short (73 minutes), Noam Chomsky, who is old, conducts the complex story of rising inequality in the United States into a flow of thought that is as limpid as one of those streams that form as ice is melting in the spring. Not everything Chomsky says is correct, however. He does make some mistakes, and he also has a touch too much nostalgia for the New Deal era, a period that had many, many problems. But for the most part, the ideas and insights that flow out of his mouth (so clear, so simple, so thoughtful) square with reality. CHARLES MUDEDE
12. Rocky Horror Picture Show
In this cult classic, sweethearts Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon), stuck with a flat tire during a storm, discover the eerie mansion of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a transvestite scientist. As their innocence is lost, Brad and Janet meet a houseful of wild characters, including a rocking biker (Meat Loaf) and a creepy butler (Richard O’Brien). Through elaborate dances and rock songs, Frank-N-Furter unveils his latest creation: a muscular man named “Rocky.”
13. Theory of Obscurity: A Film About The Residents
Theory of Obscurity revels in the paradox of this most notorious band of unknowns while poking at the embers of the myth, illustrating why the Residents will always be paragons of musical independence and inspirations to weirdos everywhere. DAVE SEGAL
14. Wings of Desire
This 1987 romantic fantasy film is screened as part of the Wim Wenders: Portraits Along the Road retrospective. (Thursday only)
CONTINUING RUNS
15. 10 Cloverfield Lane
It starts conventionally: with a crash. Our heroine, Michelle, is driven off the road by a truck and careens into a nearby ditch. She twists and turns and flips – then, for the next two hours, 10 Cloverfield Lane takes us through its own wild ride. Essentially, what Dan Trachtenberg (a new face to the directing scene) has done is presented a compelling genre movie in a blender. Thriller and sci-fi. Sci-fi and mystery. Mystery and horror. They combine and intertwine and coexist so fluently, it’s often difficult to tell what kind of movie you’re seeing. But one thing’s for certain: It’s damn good stuff. JACOB LICHTY
16. The Big Short
“The most important film in the 2016 Oscar race is The Big Short, which has five nominations, one of which is for best picture. The reason for its importance is the relevance of its subject matter—the greed, stupidity, and corruption that led to the collapse of the financial markets in 2008.” -Charles Mudede
17. Hail, Caesar!
“It doesn’t matter that Hail, Caesar! barely hangs together. It’s too much fun to watch. With Hail, Caesar!, [Joel and Ethan Coen] have forgone the brow furrowing and decided to revel in their favorite topic of all—movies. In what amounts to little more than an extended string of cameos and hilarious set pieces, Hail, Caesar! is a firm, feature-length pinch on Hollywood’s swollen, self-absorbed posterior.” – Ned Lannamann
18. How to Be Single
“Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the filmmakers focus-grouped my approximate demographic of women and attached sensors to us to see what made our hearts, brains, and nether regions tingle, then checked what we hearted on Tumblr, and then crammed all that shit into one movie with a crowd-pleasing soundtrack. Is this a cheap grab at our base emotions? Yes. Is it effective? Abso-fucking-lutely.” – Elinor Jones
19. Knight of Cups
Leaning hard into Malick’s trend toward abstraction, Knight of Cups—which deals with things as tangible as sex and earthquakes, but also spends time in orbit, watching auroras twist across the surface of the earth—can feel like watching Malick try to out-Malick Malick. True, Knight of Cups might not be for everybody—hell, it definitely won’t be for everybody—but for those of us who have followed Malick this far, it can feel like nothing less than a gift. ERIK HENRIKSEN
20. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
“WTF is well-cast, is what I’m saying, which is key for a film that seems unable to decide if it is a wacky fish-out-of-water comedy, or a serious tale of war, or an unlikely romance, or, IDK, an episode of This American Life? SURE. It’s uneven. But what’s utterly convincing is that somehow, this good-but-not-great movie has accurately captured that particular moment when a reporter discovers the ineffable joy of chasing a high-stakes story for the first time.” – Megan Burbank
21. The Witch
“The long wait for The Witch, the darling of last year’s Sundance Film Festival (which won Robert Eggers the best director award), has been worth it. If you like your horror smart, slow-burning, and suffused with allegorical dread, then you can’t do better than this dark folktale of colonialism, religion, family, and nature gone amok in 1630s New England.” – Sean Nelson
22. Zootopia
“Zootopia may ostensibly be an animated buddy cop flick with a few winks to Chinatown, but it’s also chock full of smart, incisive observations on race and gender, as well as front-loaded with tons of laughs and heart. Disney is doing better.” – Wm. Steven Humphrey
