Below, we've rounded up the biggest and best film openings and events you need to know about this season, including festivals like Local Sightings and the Seattle Queer Film Festival, series like an Abbas Kiarostami retrospective, and exciting new releases like Terminator: Dark Fate, Parasite, and Knives Out. Check out movie times and more film events on our EverOut Things To Do calendar, or check out the rest of our critics' picks from Seattle Art and Performance.
Jump to: Film Festivals & Series | Top Screenings and Releases
FILM FESTIVALS & SERIES
Sept 20–29
Local Sightings Film Festival 2019 This year, the regional film festival will get even more local, partnering with homegrown nonprofits and media production companies like Indigenous Showcase, Sustainable Seattle, Langston, Pr0n 4 Freakz, NFFTY, and more. Once again, the city will become a hub for indie filmmakers who eschew New York or LA for the earnest and eccentric Northwest. Local Sightings acts as a showcase and watering hole for regional filmmakers, VR artists, and others who range from emotional storytellers to nature documentarists to political essayists. Many of them will attend, which makes for an opportunity for local professional and aspiring moviemakers to meet at the screenings, workshops, and parties. JZ (Northwest Film Forum)
Sept 26–Oct 3
French Cinema Now For one week, Seattle turns into a center for French and Francophone cinema culture, offering some of the best movies you'll see all year. The fest will open with The Shiny Shrimp, a comedy about a flamboyant gay water polo team. (SIFF)
Sept 26–Oct 6
Tasveer South Asian Film Festival Always relevant and on the artistic vanguard, Tasveer's biggest annual event does its best to dispel myths about South Asian countries. This year, the film festival will focus on India, with an emphasis on #MeToo stories and diaspora. The opening film will be Danish Renzu's The Illegal, about a Kashmiri immigrant in Los Angeles. (Various locations)
Sept 26–Dec 5
The 42nd Film Noir Series Don't miss the museum's annual revisitation of some of America's darkest cinematic delights. It's billed as "the world's longest-running film noir series," full of crime, smoke, and sex appeal. This year's series will include treasures like Edward Dmytryk's tricksy Murder, My Sweet and Samuel Fuller's loony The Naked Kiss, as well as more unusual choices like the Marilyn Monroe-starring Niagara, Hitchcock's The Wrong Man, and Stanley Kubrick's Lolita. It'll finish off with David Lynch's mesmerizing, eternally rewatchable Mulholland Drive. (Seattle Art Museum)
Fri Sept 27
Outdoor Movies at the Chateau: Office Space Settle in with a glass or bottle of wine from the shop, which will be open extended hours, as you rewatch this comedy about the hell of micromanagement. (Chateau Ste. Michelle)
Sept 27 & 29
Manhattan Short Film Festival Judge finalist short films from all around the world at the Manhattan Short Festival, which tours worldwide. Your ballots for Best Actor and Best Film will be counted, along with those of thousands of other filmgoers. (Varsity Theatre)
Sept 29–Dec 18
Studio Ghibli Fest Fathom Events will present screenings of the best hits by this world-renowned animation studio, including The Secret World of Arrietty (Sept 29—30), Spirited Away (Oct 27—30), and Princess Mononoke (Nov 17—20). (Various locations)
Thurs Oct 3
Stories of Our Watersheds Learn about river systems and watersheds at this conservationist short film festival. Travel cinematically to British Columbia, Puerto Rico, Oregon, Arizona, Sequim, and elsewhere. (Northwest Film Forum)
Oct 3–10
Tacoma Film Festival Tacoma's offering to the Northwest international film scene, named one of the "Top 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee" by MovieMaker, includes more than 200 movies, talks by visitors from around the world, a VR studio, workshops, and parties. Students get in free! (Grand Cinema [Tacoma])
Oct 3–12
Social Justice Film Festival This film festival highlights fierce and powerful progressive movements around the world. As social justice provides the only throughline, many of the movies have little in common. But the selection skews toward limber, on-the-ground filmmaking in the midst of protests and conflicts. This edition's theme is "Courage." (Various locations)
Seattle Latino Film Festival This year's Seattle festival of Hispanic and Latinx cinema will feature 10 days of independent movies, filmmaker panels, workshops, and more, beginning with a splashy opening gala. (To be announced location)
Through Oct 6
Abbas Kiarostami Retrospective Treasured Seattle art house cinemas will revisit the masterpieces of one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th and 21st centuries: the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, who died in France in 2016. During his long career, he explored the fine line between documentary and fiction, the relationship between spectator and image, and the mysteries of life and death. As of this publication, you'll still have time to see six extraordinary movies: Taste of Cherry and And Life Goes On at SIFF Film Center, Through The Olive Trees and Close-up (on 35 mm!) at Grand Illusion; and The Wind Will Carry Us and a short film program at the Beacon. (Various locations)
Oct 7–21
Silent Movie Mondays Every year, the Seattle Theatre Group pairs screenings of underappreciated silent films with live musical scores, often performed on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ. This fall, the series will turn its attention to early black cinema—surely one of the most fascinating and unjustly neglected strains of studio filmmaking of the 20th century. Watch interracial drama The Scar of Shame, produced by the Colored Players Film Corporation in Philadelphia in 1927; Body and Soul, which marked famed black thespian Paul Robeson's film debut in 1925; and Within Our Gates from 1920, the "the earliest surviving feature film by an African American director" (Oscar Micheaux). (Paramount Theatre)
Oct 10–14
Orcas Island Film Festival Started five years ago by Jared Lovejoy, with curation help from SIFF's former artistic director Carl Spence, the Orcas Island Film Festival screens star-stuffed, A-list art-house films. (Various locations [Orcas Island])
Oct 10–20
Seattle Queer Film Festival Local shorts, indie features, and national or international releases will stoke and satisfy your appetite for gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and otherwise queer-focused films, from hot romances to incisive documentaries to perverse suspense flicks. The festival will open with the Judy Garland doc Sid & Judy and close with acclaimed French director Céline Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire. (Various locations)
Oct 17–20
Kinofest This festival, in association with the Portland German Film Festival, screens new and classic German-language cinema from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. (Northwest Film Forum)
Oct 23–27
Maddin Mini-Retrospective Revisit some of the surrealist filmmaker Guy Maddin's weirdest and most acclaimed works, like his debut, Tales from the Gimli Hospital; the 19th-century Alpine village-set melodrama Careful; and his classic ode to his central Canadian birthplace, My Winnipeg. (Northwest Film Forum)
Oct 24–27
NFFTY The "young filmmaker's Cannes"—Charles Mudede called it "world-class"—the National Film Festival for Talented Youth assembles the best films made by directors under 25. See works by promising cineastes who will make you feel very old. (Various locations)
Oct 24 & Nov 14
Nocturnal Emissions Dark-minded burlesque maven Isabella L. Price and Clinton McClung of Cinebago Events will return with their cheeky, sexy, macabre series Nocturnal Emissions, which prefaces unusual horror classics with "phantasmagoric" burlesque performances and other fun. The two films in fall will be the teen werewolf horror Ginger Snaps in October, and the John Boyega-starring Attack the Block in November. JZ (Northwest Film Forum)
Oct 25–27
Friday Harbor Film Festival The Friday Harbor Film Festival, founded by Lynn Danaher and Karen Palmer, is a good excuse to visit the San Juans, with about 35 documentaries focusing on Pacific Rim topics from culture to environmentalism, as well as discussions with filmmakers and special events. (Friday Harbor)
Oct 25–Nov 3
Guy Maddin's 'Seances' Mindful of the fact that "80% of films from the silent era have been lost," avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin, along with Evan and Galen Johnson, has created reinterpretations of some of these permanently vanished movies. During the Seances, these new films will be shown in recombinations that will never again be exactly reproduced. (Northwest Film Forum)
Oct 27–28
Nightmare Emporium: Horror Film Anthology Horror flick fiends can get their fix of frightful short films at this festival. (Central Cinema)
Nov 6–24
Dan Savage's HUMP! Film Festival The 15th Annual HUMP!, the world's biggest and best porn short film festival, premieres in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco this November! The HUMP! Film Festival screens in theaters and nothing is ever released online. HUMP! films can be hardcore, softcore, live-action, animated, kinky, vanilla, straight, gay, lez, bi, trans, genderqueer—anything goes at HUMP! (Well, almost anything: No poop, no animals, no minors, no MAGA hats.) DAN SAVAGE (On the Boards)
Nov 7–9
Engauge Experimental Film Festival This experimental film festival will once again screen "films that originated on film" from artists around the world. (Northwest Film Forum)
Nov 7–14
Cinema Italian Style The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema. (SIFF)
Nov 21–24
Seattle Turkish Film Festival The Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington will present the sixth annual edition of their community-driven, volunteer-led festival featuring a rich panorama of new Turkish films. (SIFF Cinema Uptown & Pacific Science Center)
Nov 15–17
ARCS Seattle Romanian Film Festival This brief but mighty film festival screens features from one of the most fertile, innovative, intellectual film industries in Europe. This year's edition of ARCS's annual event, the sixth, is subtitled "Stories OFF the Wall," emphasizing overcoming barriers and borders (like the Berlin Wall, of course). (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
TOP SCREENINGS & RELEASES
Mon Sept 16
Master Z: Ip Man Legacy If you're going to artificially extend the life of this already exhausted film series, you could do worse than getting Yuen Woo-Ping, Michelle Yeoh, Dave Bautista, and Tony Jaa to show up and whup ass. (The Beacon)
Tues Sept 17
One Cut of the Dead The premise of this film-within-a-film made me snicker: a low-budget zombie flick is being shot at an abandoned water filtration plant when a real zombie apocalypse actually begins, much to the excitement of the director, who insists that the camera operator continue shooting. It's basically a cheeky-as-fuck Japanese zom-com made with an incredibly low budget (¥3 million, or $25k) and a cast of unknown actors, but which saw international success and ultimately grossed ¥3.12 billion in Japan and $30.5 million worldwide. Also, it has a surprisingly high Rotten Tomatoes rating (100 percent). Is your curiosity piqued yet? Definitely for fans of the zombie film genre, but also anyone with an appreciation for a B-movie horror flick done right. LP (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Wed Sept 18
Putney Swope Robert Downey Sr.'s 1969 satire is about a token black advertising executive who, thanks to white hubris, is accidentally elected chairman of the board. A forebear of Sorry to Bother You? For Art House Theater Day, a celebration of our precious neighborhood cinemas, treat yourself to this new restoration of a film admired by Paul Thomas Anderson. (Grand Illusion)
Sept 18–19
Daisies The young and beautiful stars of this 1966 Czech film date and dump older men, giggle a lot, eat a lot, walk around the city, get drunk and rowdy, play with each other in bed, get philosophical about life and desire. They came from nowhere; they are going nowhere. They are happy to be here forever. What a lovely movie. CM (The Beacon)
Thurs Sept 19
We Are the Radical Monarchs Meet the Radical Monarchs, an Oakland-based group for girls of color who advocate for social justice in the face of the hope-crushing machine that is post-2016 American society. (SIFF Cinema Egyptian)
Sept 19 & 23
The Grandmaster Wong Kar-wai's film, starring Tony Leung and Ziyi Zhang, is about Ip Man, the legendary teacher of Wing Chun kung fu. (The Beacon)
Opening Fri Sept 20
Ad Astra Twenty years ago, an astronaut (Tommy Lee Jones) disappeared on a mission to Neptune to find extraterrestrial life. Now his son (Brad Pitt) sets out after him, into the hostile void of space. Director James Gray (The Lost City of Z) intends this film to realistically portray space travel in all its discomforts. (Wide release)
Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool Miles Davis was one of the greatest musicians ever. He was also a nasty motherfucker. Stanley Nelson's documentary Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool pivots on these two immutable elements of the jazz trumpeter's existence with a penetrating, analytical approach that doesn't stint on emotion. It's about as rewarding a dissection of a great artist and problematic human as one could hope for in under two hours. Nelson enlists an elite cadre of Davis's bandmates, wives and lovers, childhood friends, family members, promoters, music critics and historians, managers, and label bosses, plus Carlos Santana, to provide key insights into this tormented genius. DS (SIFF Cinema Egyptian)
Paris Is Burning Jennie Livingston's enthralling and heartbreaking portrait of drag ball culture in late-'80s New York is one of the best documentaries ever made. (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Rambo: Last Blood Sylvester Stallone is 73 years old. Please think about that when you watch this film, which promises to be the last Rambo ever made (the first and best one, Rambo: First Blood, was released back in 1982, when Stallone was in his mid-30s). The story of Rambo: He fought in the Vietnam War, he returned home and went savage on a bunch of rural cops, then he returned to Vietnam and blew up shit there. He also went to Afghanistan and basically helped Al-Qaeda beat the Soviets. This man knows death. This has been his whole life. And in Last Blood, he kills some more. Damn! CM (Wide release)
Sept 20–25
Half-Baked Surely this screening won't be packed full of highly stoned Chappelle fans softly giggling to their favorite lines in a rippling five-second radius both before and after they're recited on-screen. BOBBY ROBERTS (Central Cinema)
The Third Man If this movie doesn't glamorize the life of black-market profiteers in immediate post-WWII Vienna, then no movie ever did. Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, a "scribbler with too much drink in him," trying to clear the name of his recently deceased best friend, the nefarious Harry Lime (Orson Welles, at his cherubic pinnacle). The acting, music, photography, and dialogue (script by Graham Greene, the British author, not the Native American actor) are peerless. SEAN NELSON (Central Cinema)
Sept 20–26
Murder in the Front Row: The San Francisco Bay Area Thrash Metal Story Adam Dubin's new documentary about "Bay Area headbangers" features interviews with members of Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, and more. (Grand Illusion)
Sat Sept 21
Saturday Morning Cartoons: The Last Unicorn This glum gothic fantasy from 1982 features the voices of Mia Farrow and Jeff Bridges. (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Sept 23 & 25
SPL II: A Time for Consequences A Hong Kong undercover cop (Wu Jing) discovers a sinister organ-stealing operation when he's thrown into a Thai jail. Will a jacked Thai guard (Tony Jaa) help him escape a terrible fate? (The Beacon)
Wed Sept 25
Anthropocene Filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and Edward Burtynsky travel the globe to document the impact humans have made on the planet. (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Sept 25–26
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is surrealism as shaggy-dog story, but not quite surrealism lite. Like Mark Twain—another funny guy—Luis Buñuel's humor, even at its gentlest, still bites. If you enjoy laughing at yourself (ah yes, my friend, you too are bourgeois), you won't find a better classic than this film. BARLEY BLAIR (The Beacon)
Thurs Sept 26
Puget Soundtrack — Arrington de Dionyso's This Saxophone Kills Fascists Presents 'Emergency Labyrinth' Olympia music vet Arrington de Dionyso (Old Time Relijun, Malakait dan Singa) has been a force of radical sonic agitation for more than two decades. Blessed with extraordinary lung power (you should hear his throat singing), de Dionyso can rip on the sax like an American Peter Brötzmann. So it should be interesting to hear what ADD conjures for his live soundtrack to Emergency Labyrinth, a stop-motion animation of the creation of a 40-foot sumi ink scroll. DS (Northwest Film Forum)
Opening Fri Sept 27
Monos This is one strange beast of a movie. Set in the fog-enshrouded mountains of Colombia, the action centers on the scrappy, Lord of the Flies—like members of a guerrilla operation called The Organization. When they aren't dancing around bonfires, firing assault rifles into the air, and beating up on each other, the soldiers are training to do... something (the politics are intentionally vague). Recommended mostly for the jaw-dropping topography, Mica Levi's synapse-scrambling score, and the Apocalypse Now—level cinematography. KATHY FENNESSY (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Sept 27–Oct 1
Slither Guard all your orifices as you watch James Gunn's gruesome The Blob-esque creature feature about devilish little slug-monsters of death. (Central Cinema)
When Harry Met Sally One of the truly formative American romantic comedies, this film is also responsible for perpetuating the hetero-bullshit axiom that men and women can't truly be friends. (Central Cinema)
Sept 28–29
Through the Olive Trees Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees is one of the peaks of the Iranian new wave movement, which began around 1987 and ended in 2006. The movie is about a young and poor laborer who falls in love with a young and middle-class student. The laborer spends the entire film following the educated woman and making big promises—if they marry, he will be a good husband, he will give her all the intellectual freedom she needs, he will do all the work and she all of the reading. The ending of this film is, for me, the greatest ending in all of cinema. CM (Grand Illusion)
Sept 29–Oct 3
Becoming Nobody Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher, author, and former colleague of Timothy Leary, converses on camera with director Jamie Catto (who'll be in attendance at NWFF on the first night of the film's run). The interview is intercut with archival footage. (Northwest Film Forum)
Mon Sept 30
Hausu A hilarious landmark in bugout madness, Nobuhiko Obayashi's 1977 haunted house tale is about a group of doomed schoolgirls with names like Gorgeous and Kung Fu who fall into the clutches of a genteel—and secretly evil—old lady. Featuring butt-biting flying heads, a hungry piano, and one naughty kitty. JZ (The Beacon; also playing at Central Cinema, Oct 18–23)
Opening Fri Oct 4
Chained for Life Aaron Schimberg trenchantly examines othering and exploitation in this meta film about an able-bodied, traditionally attractive actress (Jess Weixler) cast in a problematic horror-ish movie featuring disabled and disfigured actors (including the romantic lead, played by Adam Pearson of Under the Skin). (SIFF Film Center)
Lucy in the Sky An astronaut played by Natalie Portman returns to Earth and, failing to adjust to terrestrial life, starts mentally unraveling in TV director Noah Hawley's film debut.(Various locations)
Oct 4–9
Legally Blonde A deceptively ditzy sorority queen turns into a surprisingly effective lawyer and champion of wronged women. (Central Cinema)
Re-Animator H.P. Lovecraft's blasphemous resurrector gets the cinematic treatment in this schlock classic. (Central Cinema)
Wed Oct 9
Metallica & San Francisco Symphony: S&M2 If you weren't able to attend Metallica's 20-year reunion with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, this concert will give you the vicarious experience. (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Oct 9–10
Desolation Center Experience the prehistory of Burning Man, Lollapalooza, Coachella, etc. recalling the glory days of DIY art and music festivals in Southern California. (Northwest Film Forum)
Oct 11–15
Night of the Creeps College nerds in the 'burbs take arms against "alien slugs, axe-slingin' zombies, and a dude-bro named Bradster." Ugh, Bradster. (Central Cinema)
Oct 11–16
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Cinema scholars have long agreed on the fact that the three finest films ever made are, in no particular order, Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941), Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), and Stephen Herek's Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989). ERIK HENRIKSEN (Central Cinema; also showing as a MoPOP Matinee on December 8.)
Oct 13 & 15–16
Alien (40th Anniversary) When I was 10 years old, I read in a newspaper that a new film called Alien was so terrifying that people were not only fainting out of fear during screenings but also taken out of the theater on stretchers. I badly wanted to see this movie: one that was so terrifying it could send a person to the emergency room. But Alien was rated R. "You too young to watch this movie," said the man in the box office of the theater that was near my school, Janney Elementary, in Washington, DC. I begged and begged; he said no and no and kept telling me that this film was only for grown people because it had an evil alien that was fucking scary. "But I just want to see people fainting and screaming," I pleaded. "The alien won't scare me none," I promised. He said no for the final time, and I, wearing tube socks and carrying a Charlie Brown backpack, walked slowly and sadly back to my elementary school. This happened 40 years ago. CM (Various locations)
Opening Fri Oct 18
Jojo Rabbit If anyone can make a warm hearted comedy set in Nazi Germany, it's Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, What We Do in the Shadows). An enthusiastic boy in Hitler's youth army finds out that his mother is harboring a Jewish girl. Will Jojo persist in being a horrible little fascist? Waititi co-stars as Jojo's moronic imaginary friend Hitler. (Wide release)
The Lighthouse Fans of the delicious-as-butter historical horror The VVitch are downright salivating for director Robert Eggers's follow-up, in which Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe play lighthouse keepers losing their minds in isolation. Film festival critics have been ecstatic, so don't miss this one. (Wide release)
Oct 18–23
Fright Night 1985's Fright Night boasts an almost entirely queer supporting cast and is hilarious to boot. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY (Central Cinema)
Sun Oct 20
Campout Cinema: 'The Fly' David Cronenberg directed a(n initially) beautiful young Jeff Goldblum in the role of a brilliant scientist fatefully transformed in a teleportation accident. It surely stands as one of Cronenberg's most tragic—and most viscerally disgusting—tales of science gone wrong. (MoPOP)
Thurs Oct 24
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Spooktober Edition) Spike up your anticipation for Halloween with some naughty mad science antics courtesy of Vicarious Theatre Project's shadowcast screening. (Central Cinema)
Opening Fri Oct 25
Parasite Fans of international thrillers and art-house movies are eagerly awaiting this Palme d'Or-winning film by Joon-ho Bong (Snowpiercer, Mother, Okja, The Host), a dark comedy about a down-and-out family that slowly insinuates itself into an upper-class household. (Various locations)
Oct 25–30
A Nightmare on Elm Street Wes Craven created one of the most memorable—and ubiquitous—baddies of pop culture in the ever-morphing Freddy Krueger. (Central Cinema)
Sat Oct 26
Saturday Morning Cartoons: April and the Extraordinary World This Franco-Belgian Canadian animated thriller, starring Marion Cotillard, is based on Jacques Tardi's 1976 graphic novel about an adventurer exploring a warped fictional universe. (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
Thurs Oct 31
The Room (Halloween Edition) If you're not sick to death of Tommy Wiseau's high-pitched emoting and you have nothing better to do on Halloween, there's this! (Central Cinema)
Fri Nov 1
Terminator: Dark Fate Arnold Schwarzenegger is 72 years old! Please keep this in mind when you watch Terminator: Dark Fate. That geezer has been playing a T-800 robot since 1984, when the first Terminator film was released. If you were born in that year, you are in your mid-30s now. Your middle years are just around the corner. But look up at the screen and there is Schwarzenegger, still shooting this, and still being shot at by that, still dealing with some shit that's happening in the future. Damn. Time does not fly. CM (Wide release)
Nov 8–10
Rabid An early outing from body-horror mage David Cronenberg, Rabid turns Montreal into an apocalyptic hellscape peopled by disease-ridden, blood-crazed biters. (Northwest Film Forum)
Sat Nov 9
Constantine Constantine is far from perfect—the pacing drags, and the often silly plot (which has something to do with a requisite powerful relic) is unabashedly secondary to the premise. But Constantine's still a viscerally enjoyable, even philosophically intriguing treatment of religion: Christianity as an action film. ERIK HENRIKSEN (MoPOP)
Nov 10 & 13
Perfect Blue In 1997, Satoshi Kon, a Japanese animator, achieved fame with the anime film Perfect Blue. It is a thriller about a retired idol (or, in Japanese, idoru). An idol is a pop star manufactured by a talent corporation. They are young, they sing, they model, they appear on TV shows, they retire. In Perfect Blue, the former idol, Mima Kirigoe, decides to become an actor, but her first role in a drama series called Double Bind fucks with her mind badly. It's hard out here for a retired idoru. CM (Northwest Film Forum)
Nov 13–14 & 17
Fast Color Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays a woman with superpowers forced to flee to her family's farmhouse in Julia Hart's dystopian drama. (Northwest Film Forum)
Nov 15–22
Paprika A dream researcher and her girlish alter ego, Paprika, try to stop a terrorist who can cause people's dreams to invade reality. Satoshi Kon's boisterous foray into the world of the unconscious practically explodes off the screen with magnificent madness. JZ (Grand Illusion)
Sat Nov 16
Puget Soundtrack: Erin Jorgensen Presents 'The Night of the Hunter' This expressionistic fairy tale, from the '50s but decades ahead of its time, was the only film the great actor Charles Laughton ever got to direct. Robert Mitchum famously embodies a roving preacher with a murderous hatred of women and a lust for money that puts him on the track of two child runaways. For an extra treat, Erin Jorgensen will perform a live marimba score. (Northwest Film Forum)
Nov 17 & 20
Millennium Actress NWFF continues paying tribute to Satoshi Kon with screenings of his magical film about a reclusive, aged film actress reminiscing over a secret search for a revolutionary that guided her throughout her career. (Northwest Film Forum)
Opening Fri Nov 22
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood It was only a matter of time before cinematic nice guy Tom Hanks was cast as modern saint Fred Rogers. Matthew Rhys (The Americans) co-stars as Tom Junod, the real-life reporter assigned to profile the TV host/all-around mensch. (Wide release)
Frozen II I have a warm spot in my heart for Frozen. Ironic! I went five years before I actually saw Disney's second-highest-grossing animated film—about a princess who sets out on a quest (with a group of helpful sidekicks, of course) to find her estranged sister after said sister's powers accidentally bring eternal winter to their kingdom—and enjoyed my first viewing in the ER with my daughter right before she had to be intubated due to croup gone wild. I saw it at least seven times over the four days she was in the hospital, enough that I was humming the melodies to "Let It Go" and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" near constantly. They're so catchy! Now Disney sequels are notoriously straight-to-video affairs, but Frozen 2 has been hyped to the max, all the old voice actors are back (including Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, and Josh Gad), and, most importantly, it's getting a theatrical release. Probably not gonna wait five years on this one, if only because I have to take my child to see it. LP (Wide release)
Nov 22–23
Warren Miller's 'Timeless' No one captured the magic of winter slopes better than the late, great ski and snowboarding filmmaker Warren Miller. Celebrate his legacy by watching pro athletes glide down mountains in this new film by Warren Miller Entertainment. (McCaw Hall)
Opening Wed Nov 27
Knives Out The director of The Last Jedi and Looper has assembled an amazing cast for a good old-fashioned ensemble whodunit. Watch Toni Collette, Chris Evans, Daniel Craig, Lakeith Stanfield, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana de Armas, et al. go at each other with barbed wit and sharp implements. (Wide release)
Queen & Slim When Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) and Queen (relative newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith) find their Tinder date interrupted by a violent white cop at a traffic stop, Slim acts in self-defense and the two are forced to flee together. Melina Matsoukas directs this lovers-on-the-run script by Emmy winner Lena Waithe. (Wide release)
Sat Nov 30
Saturday Morning Cartoons: Moomins on the Riviera A 2014 French Finnish animation based on Tove Jansson's beloved characters. (SIFF Cinema Uptown)
