Need a break from family festivities? Luckily for you, most of Seattle's movie theaters are open over the holiday weekend. Speaking of domestic strife, Rian Johnson's splendidly cast Knives Out might offer some catharsis for pent-up stress via murder and mystery. Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, meanwhile, takes a more heartfelt and realistic approach to family friction. For something completely different, Melina Matsoukas's debut lovers-on-the-run drama, Queen & Slim, follows a Black couple as they seek refuge and freedom from judicial injustice. See all of our film critics’ picks below, and, if you're looking for even more options, check out our film events calendar and complete movie times listings.
Note: Movies play Wednesday–Sunday unless otherwise noted
Another Day of Life
All the macho foreign-correspondent bullshit swirling around the documentary’s central figure, the renowned Polish writer and reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski, makes the first 15 minutes of this otherwise incredible film difficult to watch. But once all that nonsense settles down, the power of the story and the innovative way it’s told grabs hold and doesn’t let go. As Portugal shuffles off from its colonial grip on Angola, a civil war fills the power vacuum. Kapuscinski is one of the few journalists covering the war. As he travels through the war-torn country to the front line of the conflict, he meets communist fighters who change the way he thinks about the country and the whole idea of objectivity in journalism. The great innovation here is the use of animation. Rather than employing shitty historical reenactments to immerse you in the scene, the directors chose to animate the whole story. At times, the animation artfully and seamlessly gives way to real-world interviews with the film’s subjects, many of whom are still alive, which is something I’ve never quite seen before. Highly recommended. RICH SMITH
Grand Illusion
Wednesday only
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
It’s unusual to witness real cinematic magic these days, but the Fred Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood absolutely has it. Director Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?) wisely avoids the visual slickness one might expect from a Tom Hanks-centric melodrama, instead employing a lived-in style and scene transitions that consist of miniature cities harkening back to the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Hanks is totally committed to Rogers’ appearance and manner, but A Beautiful Day is more about Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) a fictional journalist profiling Rogers. (Vogel’s work is based on a 1998 Esquire profile by Tom Junod; as is the case with the film, Junrod’s piece sketches a beautiful yet enigmatic image of Rogers.) Where Heller’s film becomes transcendent is in its cinematic pressure points: The striking slowness of the narrative (it’s meant to emulate the pace of Rogers’ show, and you get used to it), the mirroring of Rogers and Vogel in their interview styles and drawn-out reaction shots, and a profound moment of silence that grips your heart like, “Did that really just happen? Why was that so intense?” SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
The Best You've Ever Seen: Beyond The Black Rainbow
Past Event
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This mash-up event brings together one band and one DJ to collaboratively reimagine a score for whatever movie they've chosen to screen that night. This time, DJ Lite Privilege and Purr Gato will create a mix for Panos Cosmatos's 2010 sci-fi Beyond the Black Rainbow, about a heavily sedated woman who tries to escape a commune where she's being held against her will (yikes). The film is visually remixed by blazinspace with liquid light art from the Liquid Light Wizard.
Parliament Tavern
Saturday only
Blast of Silence
This tough crime film from the early days of indie filmmaking is a downbeat noir about a hitman stalking his prey in New York around Christmas time.
The Beacon
Saturday–Sunday
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open
Two strangers—both Indigenous women—form an impulsive connection on the streets of Vancouver and try to weather abuse, birth control crises, and systemic prejudice in Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn's ambitious realist drama, which unfolds in real time on the screen.
Ark Lodge Cinemas & Northwest Film Forum
Wednesday only
Burn!
Marlon Brando stars in this dark historical drama as an English agent fomenting rebellion on a Portuguese-controlled Caribbean island. He learns that once slaves and oppressed people take revolution into their own hands, they don't necessarily align with British imperialist goals. This action-filled movie comes from director Gillo Pontecorvo and screenwriter Franco Solinas, the team behind the famed The Battle of Algiers.
The Beacon
Wednesday only
Part of To Win a Revolution: The Screenplays of Franco Solinas
Casablanca
Yes, Casablanca is a bonafide classic. The name conjures up notions of prestige and film nobility. It’s the worst possible thing that could have happened to Casablanca. The movie is a classic because it’s not a stuffy, high-minded piece of cinema with a capital “C.” It’s low-budget, tossed-off studio leftovers, and that’s why its genius is so remarkable. Don’t think of it as attending movie church. Leave your reverence in the lobby. Casablanca sure as hell doesn’t have any time for that shit. Instead, think of it as the half-improvised, made-up-as-they-went, seat-of-the-pants production that took studio spare parts and made some potent movie magic. BOBBY ROBERTS
Central Cinema
Friday-Sunday
Dark Waters
As infuriating and horrifying as the subject matter of Dark Waters is—it’s based on “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare,” a 2016 New York Times Magazine story about how Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), a corporate lawyer with a history of representing chemical companies, switched sides to reveal DuPont’s decades of catastrophic malfeasance—it is, in many ways, another paint-by-numbers, based-on-a-true-story legal thriller with the genre-mandated tropes: A delicate but driven score that sounds like the same delicate-but-driven score in every other fight-the-power thriller; a righteous speech (in Dark Waters, Tim Robbins gets the big one, and he takes full-throated advantage); and plenty of invectives like “The system is rigged!” and “They’re a titan of industry! They can do whatever they want!” None of that stuff’s bad—it’s pretty much what any lefty who’s excited to see Dark Waters, including me, is happily signing up for—but there’s a catch that elevates this movie to something better than usual. Portland arthouse director Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Carol) oversees things here, capturing Dark Waters’ sickening story in chilly blues and jaundiced yellows while knowing exactly how to get the most from his cast. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16 & Thornton Place
Die Hard
A year after Fox Plaza, a 35-story tower in Century City, Los Angeles, was completed (1987), it starred in a film that brought it and Bruce Willis fame, Die Hard. Fox Plaza plays Nakatomi Plaza, a building owned by a Japanese corporation, and Bruce Willis plays John McClane, a white NYC cop whose estranged white wife not only lives in LA but appears to have gone to the other side, the Japanese side. While McClane visits his wife at Nakatomi Plaza, things go crazy and we enter the world inside of the building: its elevator shafts, air ducts, and structural spaces. Here, postmodern architecture meets Reagan-era Hollywood cinema and makes lots of movie magic. CHARLES MUDEDE
The Beacon
Friday-Sunday
Doctor Sleep
Rather than trying to be a slavish follow-up to Stanley Kubrick’s inimitable The Shining, Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep is a looser, goofier trip that just so happens to wander some of the same territory that Stephen King first explored four decades ago. Decades after The Shining, Doctor Sleep finds Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) all grown up, still appreciating a good, cozy sweater, and drinking away the ghosts—both figurative and literal—that’ve haunted him since childhood. But when 15-year-old Abra (Kyliegh Curran) reaches out—revealing that she shares Danny’s paranormal abilities—the two stumble onto a rambling road that eventually leads to the ruined, long-abandoned Overlook. Sure, Flanagan’s no Kubrick, but he does pull off the too-rare trick of capturing the sprawling, earnest, weird vibe of a decent King novel, where the grotesque usually walks hand-in-hand with silliness. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16
Fantastic Fungi
At its worst, Fantastic Fungi gets too woo-woo wacky for its own good (when the film’s discussion turns to magic mushrooms, the visuals turn into what is, as far as I can tell, just a psychedelic screensaver from Windows 95), but at its best, the doc pairs fantastic time-lapse imagery with a good dose of actual, mind-blowing science. Affable, passionate mushroom researcher Paul Stamets is joined by talking heads Michael Pollan, Andrew Weil, and narrator Brie Larson to examine everything from massive fungal networks that carry signals between disparate, distant plants to the psychological benefits of psilocybin. It’s an uneven trip, but a good one. ERIK HENRIKSEN
SIFF Film Center
Wednesday only
Ford v Ferrari
If you’re a lover of car-racing movies, you should probably check out Ford v Ferrari—because this film is likely to be one of the last of its kind. A biopic about the late ’60s rivalry between failing racecar company Ferrari and the “wants to be sexy soooo bad” Ford Motor Company, F v F is about how corporations can’t help but crush the passion and innovation they so desperately need. In this case, the crushees are race car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and driving phenom Ken Miles (Christian Bale), both of whom are forced to cajole, finagle, and manipulate the suits at Ford in an attempt to win the famed Le Mans road race. Director James Mangold (Logan) smartly avoids the emotionally manipulative tricks found in other sports biographies, and Damon and Bale are, unsurprisingly, excellent and affecting. The problem? It’s impossible to ignore the two elephants in this room: The fetishization of white male toxicity and car culture, topics which society is trying to deal with and solve… not celebrate. This makes Ford v Ferrari a very good movie that, a decade ago, would’ve been considered great. Now it feels like a brand-new film that’s already an antique. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
Various locations
Frozen II
It starts out with Young Elsa and Young Anna, and, I don’t know, this is just my opinion, but I didn’t think that part was very necessary, necessarily? I thought the story was good. I thought the parts were well thought out and they had some depth to them, if you know what I mean? Like some parts were really sad, and some parts could be interpreted in a lot of different ways. Also, you know how in the first Frozen, there’s like this main song that you know is the main song? In this one, there’s like three or four different songs that could be that main song. There were songs that like Elsa and Anna and Kristoff sang that could qualify for that position. I thought they were fine. SIMON HAM, AGE 12
Various locations
Gremlins
Gremlins still holds up, 34 years after its original release. The very retro-ness of this comedy-horror-holiday flick adds to its charm. The mix of humor and scares still stands up, the mogwai is still too cute for its own good, the gremlins birthed from it still disgustingly funny and frightening, and the implausible story still draws you in. A man brings home the ultimate Christmas gift for his teenage son, an exotic pet he found in Chinatown that comes with very specific (and vital) care instructions that must be followed (don’t get him wet, don’t feed him after midnight, don’t expose him to light). Of course, it wouldn’t be a movie if he cared for the furry little creature properly. LEILANI POLK
The Beacon
Friday-Sunday
Honey Boy
Oh, how easily this could’ve gone sideways. There’s nothing more cringingly embarrassing than a privileged white artist depicting their tragic life on film, forcing their audience to wallow alongside them in their self-serving importance. But in Honey Boy—a mostly autobiographical depiction of Transformers star Shia LaBeouf’s scary upbringing as a child actor—there’s so much more. In a dazzling, heartbreaking performance, LaBeouf portrays his real-life father, a recovering addict, Vietnam vet, and frustrated performer who’s in the witheringly humiliating position of being employed by his successful 12-year-old son, Otis (a fantastic Noah Jupe). Running parallel are harrowing scenes featuring an adult Otis (Lucas Hedges), who’s working out some well-earned and very deep shit in rehab while trying to stave off an emotional implosion. Dreamy imagery from director Alma Har’el and cinematographer Natasha Braier brilliantly captures this slow-motion train wreck of a tale that, weirdly enough, supplies a modicum of hope while depicting the toxicity that fathers inflict on their sons—and what results from the poison they inherit. WM. STEVEN HUMPHREY
AMC Pacific Place & AMC Seattle 10
In My Room
A decidedly offbeat post-apocalypse tale, Ulrich Köhler's In My Room follows a shallow German cameraman as he wanders a world in which it seems everyone but him has mysteriously vanished. Totally free but totally alone, the man tries to forge a new existence, only to realize that he's not the sole survivor after all. In My Room screened in the Un Certain Regard competition at Cannes.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday-Sunday
The Irishman
A reality-inspired crime epic that spans decades, The Irishman’s heart is Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), who “paints houses” for big-shot gangsters; his paint, it should be noted, only comes in blood red. Sheeran’s main employer/benefactor/BFF is the intense, sharp-eyed Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), though once Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) enters the picture, Frank’s torn between the sometimes clashing demands of two hard-willed, charismatic men. De Niro’s great (and, thankfully, the distracting, de-aging CGI fades into the background after a while), but this is Pesci and Pacino’s movie: With mania and fury, Pacino rips every scene apart, while Pesci takes a different approach, subtly and slowly building an aging crime boss who’s both heart-achingly soulful and blood-chillingly brutal. Seeing Scorsese masterfully track all this harkens back to Goodfellas and Casino, but the jarring, moving The Irishman is, remarkably, better than both. While the intense focus on Frank & Pals comes at the expense of other characters, like every single woman, the end result is still stunning: A saga that’s horrifying and funny and melancholy, sometimes in different scenes, sometimes all at once. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest
Jojo Rabbit
The latest from Taika Waititi starts off with a bright, Wes Andersonian whimsiness: Young Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) joyously bounces about at summer camp, having the time of his life as he frolics and laughs with his second-best friend Yorki (Archie Yates) and his first-best friend, the imaginary Adolf (Waititi). Just one thing: Jojo is at Hitler Youth camp—their campfire activities include burning books—Adolf is Adolf Hitler, and World War II is winding down, with Germany not doing so great. Both because of and in spite of its inherent shock value, Jojo Rabbit—based on a book by Christine Leunens—is just as clever and hilarious as Waititi’s other movies, but as it progresses, the story taps into a rich vein of gut-twisting melancholy. There’s more to the complicated Jojo Rabbit than first appears, and only a director as committed, inventive, and life-affirmingly good-hearted as Waititi would even have a chance of pulling it off. He does, to unforgettable effect. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations
Joker
The first half hour unfolds like a dog-whistle symphony for insecure guys who think they have it bad. Fleck berates his black social worker (Sharon Washington) for not listening to him when she’s obviously doing her best. He fixates on a black single mother (Zazie Beetz) after the briefest sign of camaraderie. Yet there are a series of trap doors throughout Joker that unexpectedly drop its audience into new perspectives. Early on, an obvious foreshadow shifts Fleck onto a new path, and as that plotline plays out, Joker offers some surprisingly rewarding reflections on the relationship between the villain and Batman. (Oh yeah! This is a Batman movie, remember?) Both men, Joker suggests, might be equally deranged, making sweeping moves against the world without regard for those who become collateral damage for their respective manias. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
The Kingmaker
Lauren Greenfield's concerning documentary shows how Imelda Marcos, the former First Lady of the insanely corrupt Marcos regime, is staging a political comeback with the help of fake news and rewritten history (and no doubt the power of ill-gotten billions).
Grand Illusion
Friday-Sunday
Knives Out
Knives Out [is] Rian Johnson's phenomenally enjoyable riff on a murder-mystery whodunit. The less you know going in, the better, but even those familiar with mysteries will likely be caught flat-footed. Things begin in the baroque mansion of famed mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), who is very, very dead. Through flashbacks, monologues, and the genteel but razor-sharp questioning of investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), we meet the rest of the Thrombeys—played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, Katherine Langford, and more, with everyone clearly having a goddamn blast—and we hear about a billion motives and a billion alibis. Somebody killed Harlan, and while Benoit Blanc is on the case, Knives Out quickly spirals into unexpected territory. In a time when filmgoing is dominated by familiar franchises, seeing an original movie executed with as much care, glee, and skill as Knives Out feels like an experience that's entirely too rare. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Various locations
The Lighthouse
The Lighthouse, the second film from Robert Eggers, the director of the excellent, wildly disconcerting period horror The Witch, is... funnier than expected? Sure, it’s also fucked-up and intense and distressing, but there are significantly more fart jokes than one might expect. Robert Pattinson, with a voice like The Simpsons’ Mayor Quimby, and Willem Dafoe, with a voice like The Simpsons’ crusty old sea captain, play two lost souls manning a decrepit lighthouse on a miserable, unnamed island. Like The Witch, this is a story and a setting that feels old, and Eggers captures it in joyless black and white, antiquated dialogue, and a squarish, 1.19:1 aspect ratio. Pattinson and Dafoe squabble and fight and scream, and something is lurking on the rocky cliffs, and something else is lurking at the top of the tower, and man, this one seagull really hates Pattinson. Things get weird, and sad, and unexpectedly touching; Dafoe and Pattinson are both great, and if you’re going to descend into Eggers’s particular brand of fraught, bleak madness, one could hardly ask for better company. As we head into another dour, dark Northwest winter, Eggers’s whipping gales and damp despair are here to remind you that hey, things could always be worse. ERIK HENRIKSEN
AMC Seattle 10 & Regal Meridian 16
Lost Angelas
An aspiring screenwriter attempts to find his missing fiancée, a best-actress nominee named Angela Rose, by going through his memories of encounters with a sinister film director. William Wayne's non-linear neo-noir may be too far-out for some, but fun for lovers of twists and stories-within-stories.
Grand Illusion
Wednesday only
Marriage Story
Noah Baumbach (Mistress America et al.) creates a portrait of a marriage falling apart and the family trying to endure in this drama featuring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Alan Alda, and Laura Dern.
Crest
Friday-Sunday
Moomins on the Riviera
Join the Saturday Morning Cartoons club to watch this Finno-French adaptation of the books of eccentric Tove Jansson, following the Snorkmaiden, Little My, and the Moomins as they land on the Riviera, where jealousy and infatuation threaten their bond.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Saturday only
'The Muppet Movie' Sing-along
The Muppets made their feature film debut in James Frawley's beloved, meta-inclined 1979 film, in which Kermit the Frog and friends (and hitchhikers) journey to Hollywood but are sidetracked by the nefarious restaurateur Doc Hopper. Hop on the Electric Mayhem and reaffirm the Rainbow Connection with everyone's favorite floppy puppets.
SIFF Film Center
Friday-Sunday
Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
Once Upon a Time doesn't have the self-conscious, This Is a Quentin Tarantino Film™ feel of the filmmaker's past few movies. It feels neither reliant nor focused on those obsessions and quirks. We spend the bulk of our time with three people: Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an earnest, anxious, B-list actor whose career is right about to curdle; Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), Rick's toughed-up, chilled-out former stuntman and current BFF; and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), a bubbly, captivating actress who's just starting to enjoy her first taste of success in show business. How Tarantino plays with history in Once Upon a Time is one of the more intense and surprising elements of the film—and, thankfully, it's also one of the best. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Crest
Overture to Glory
The first in the Beacon's December series on Yiddish-language cinema, the Vilnius-set Overture to Glory stars the real-life cantor Moyshe Oysher as a synagogue cantor who abandons his religious post in order to become an opera singer. Go for a moving glimpse of a vanished world.
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema
Pain and Glory
Pedro Almodóvar has long warmed his filmography with flickers of details from his personal life, but Pain & Glory brings us closer to the flame. In it, we look in on Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), a filmmaker in self-imposed exile due to a creative decline and a variety of physical ailments. Banderas stifles his melodramatic tendencies to subtly and powerfully reveal Mallo’s agonies and evolution. ROBERT HAM
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Parasite
Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. It's a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies, though it's no less concerned with the state of society today. Set in Seoul, South Korea, the families and class issues at play reflect our global era, in which the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. Parasite follows the Kim family, who secretly scam their way into the lives of the wealthy Park family. Slowly and methodically, the Kims begin to drive out the other domestic workers at the Park residence, each time referring another family member (who they pretend not to know) for the vacant position. And so the poorer family starts to settle comfortably into the grift—until a sudden realization turns their lives upside down. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival, its essence echoed in the environments the characters inhabit. JASMYNE KEIMIG
Various locations
Queen & Slim
Queen & Slim may be the best—and is almost certainly the Blackest—film of 2019. One of the most striking things about the movie is that it’s intentionally absent of the white gaze. The directorial debut of Melina Matsoukas, it’s also the first film-length screenplay written by Lena Waithe, who knocked bestselling author James Frey’s original story idea out of the park after also making the jump from acting and writing on TV. Queen and Slim (Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya) are ordinary law-abiding citizens who, after an okay Tinder date, get pulled over by a racist cop who decides to create a life-or-death altercation over a missed turn signal. After the unreasonably angry cop escalates the situation, unnecessarily searches the car, and shoots Queen in the leg, Slim ends up grabbing the cop's gun and killing the officer in self-defense. The two decide they have no choice but to evade law enforcement to survive. At the film’s heart are powerful, too-true themes about Black people’s constant search for freedom, even in modern society. In Queen and Slim’s case, their entire trip together is a relentless quest for freedom, and they have a really good run until the bitter—and iconic—end.JENNI MOORE
Various locations
Sailor Moon's Hearts in Ice
Usagi and friends interrupt their Christmas vacation to defend Earth from the Snow Queen Kaguya and her evil, icy plans.
The Beacon
Sunday
Roma
Past Event
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Watch Alfonso Cuarón's Academy Award-winning drama about a maid living with a wealthy family in Mexico City. After the screening, celebrate the passage of the Seattle Domestic Workers Ordinance, which ensures new protections for workers, with Hand in Hand and Casa Latina.
University Heights
Sunday only
Sátántangó
If you want some serious cinephile cred, you can't do better than this seven-and-a-half-hour epic by the Hungarian master Béla Tarr, known for making long, grimy, long, dark, strangely poetic, long movies like Werckmeister Harmonies and The Turin Horse. Sátántango (1994), restored in 4K, is based on László Krasznahorkai's brutal experimental novel about a collective farm collapsing under the weight of its members' greed, betrayal, and hopelessness. The Forum has mercy on those of us with shorter attention span—your ticket is valid for any screening day, so you can come and go, and you get free popcorn refills.
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday
Sundance Indigenous Shorts
Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program and Art House Convergence present six films by Indigenous and Native moviemakers from the Arctic Circle, Ho-Chunk land in midwestern America, Mi’gmaq territory in Canada, and elsewhere. Some subjects include the heritage of traditional crafts, the art of throat singing, and the Indian Pipe plant.
Northwest Film Forum
Wednesday only
Terminator: Dark Fate
If nothing else, Dark Fate has one thing going for it: Sarah Connor. Linda Hamilton is back, which means there's a Terminator movie worth watching again. Well, it's worth watching, I guess, if you, like me, have devoted entirely too much of your ever-shrinking life span to thinking about terminators. For everyone else, Dark Fate's appeal—which largely hinges on seeing Hamilton, Arnold, and various bloodthirsty murderbots back in action—might be limited. Deadpool director Tim Miller does a lot of things right: His action sequences are messy but intense; he knows to let Hamilton, with her wry eyebrows and smoke-scratched voice, steal scenes whenever she feels like it; and he somehow pulls off the insane-sounding task of making a Terminator movie that's legitimately, consistently funny. But at the end of the day, Dark Fate is another sequel that tries, with mixed success, to reboot a rusty series, and several of the attempts it makes to feel current land with a wet thud. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Meridian 16
This Is What History Looks Like: Archival Footage from the 1999 WTO Protests
The archivists of Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound collaborated with director Jill Freidberg to create this found-footage collage about the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, aka the Battle of Seattle. Discover this iconic strike against globalization through archival imagery and sound.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
I fell in love with Catherine Deneuve in the mid-'90s, when I caught a restored print of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. To call Jacques Demy's 1964 mini-opera a transformative experience would not be hyperbole. The movie, and the girl at its center, seemed to exist out of time: magical, romantic, alluring. JAMES S. RICH
The Beacon
Friday-Saturday
Waves
The third feature-length film from writer-director Trey Edward Shults, Waves furthers Shults's obsession with the forces that keep families together and those that tear them apart. It follows a suburban black American family in Florida, at the center of which is Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a successful student athlete who's balancing schoolwork, partying, training, and hanging with his girlfriend, Alexis (Alexa Demie). He's under immense pressure—especially from his father, Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), whose dogged protectiveness of his family goes too far for their own well-being. The first half of Waves follows Tyler and the consequences of pushing past his physical limits; a shoulder injury threatens to sideline his wrestling dreams and deteriorate his relationship with Alexis. The second half shifts the focus to his sister, Emily (played by Taylor Russell with dazzling effect), who is left to deal with the fallout of her brother's explosive behavior, both in her family and in the greater community. The film's use of careening cinematography—its spinning, dizzying opening sequence; the greenness of the greens; the low, urgent movement of the camera—seems to almost-just tip the story over into disarray before righting itself and soldiering on. JASMYNE KEIMIG
SIFF Cinema Egyptian
Wednesday–Thursday
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Our critics don't recommend these films, but you might like to know about them anyway.
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
