Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is coming to theaters this weekend, and you should definitely watch it now rather than waiting for it to show up on your tiny screen. Also worth seeing: the Adam Driver-starring political thriller The Report and the National Enquirer doc Scandalous. Also, the Romanian Film Festival: Sixth Edition is not to be missed. 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. Plus, if you're in the South Sound, make sure to check out our guide to the best movies playing in Tacoma this weekend.
Note: Movies play Thursday–Sunday unless otherwise noted
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
Scarecrow Video
Friday only
Angel's Egg
In this post-apocalyptic fantasy by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), a strange young woman wanders through a gorgeously illustrated landscape while protecting a large egg that may hold hope for her world. Don't expect it to make a lot of sense, but be sure you'll sink into an atmosphere of uncanny serenity.
The Beacon
Sunday only
A Bullet for the General/Quién sabe?
When a group of revolutionary Mexican bandits rob a train, they find an unexpected ally in a genteel American who's eventually welcomed into their gang. But who is he really?
The Beacon
Sunday only
Part of To Win a Revolution: The Screenplays of Franco Solinas
Castle in the Sky
In Hayao Miyazaki's 1986 anime adventure, a young girl and her mysterious crystal pendant fall out of the sky and into the life of Pazu. Together they search for a floating island, the site of a long-dead civilization that promised wealth and power to those who can unlock its secrets.
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday
Cinema Italian Style
The Cinema Italian Style is a weeklong SIFF mini-festival featuring the best in contemporary Italian cinema. On the last day of the fest, watch Good Girls, about four desperate women who team together to rob a bank.
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Thursday only
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
Wide release
Downtown 81
This peculiar New York punk fairy tale is an invaluable document of 1980s vanguard country, starring none other than Jean-Michel Basquiat (who was homeless during filming) and featuring his paintings. The plot is something about Basquiat wandering the city trying to sell art, looking for a strange lady with a convertible, and kissing Debbie Harry. The bands DNA, Kid Creole and the Coconuts, and James White and the Blacks, as well as graffiti artists Lee Quiñones and Fab Five Freddy, also appear.
The Beacon
Thursday only
Everybody's Everything
This Terrence Malick-produced documentary focuses on Gustav Ahr, aka Lil Peep, a rising star just breaking into the mainstream when he died from an overdose at age 21.
Northwest Film Forum
Sunday only
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 Cinema Uptown
Friday–Sunday
Fast Color
Fast Color is not really a superhero film, though the family of black women at its center quietly wield supernatural powers that have been handed down through generations and have compelled them to live in hiding in a remote Midwestern town. The film is set in the near future, where rain has pretty much stopped, water is scarce, and “seeing the colors,” as family matriarch Bo (Lorraine Toussaint) calls it, is more dangerous than ever. Bo is the bridge between Ruth (Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the daughter who’s returned home) and Lila (Saniyya Sidney as the daughter Ruth abandoned years before). Fast Color is poignant, engrossing sci-fi with understated special effects, just enough action to draw you in, and a story that unfolds like a gently blooming flower. Simply brilliant. LEILANI POLK
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday & Sunday
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
Goodfellas
So many questions with Goodfellas. Is it Scorsese’s best movie? Is it better than The Godfather? Is it the best mafia movie ever? It’s definitely Ray Liotta’s best movie, right? Can you even cut garlic so thin with a razor blade that it just liquefies in the pan? How is that possible? How many times do you think you’ll shout “Oh shit it’s that one dude from The Sopranos!” before whoever you’re watching with punches your shoulder and tells you to shut the fuck up already? Is there anything funnier than Morrie’s wig falling off his melon-head while Robert De Niro chokes him with a phone cord? That last one has an answer. That answer is no. BOBBY ROBERTS
Cinerama
Thursday only
The Good Liar
I’ve been screaming about The Good Liar since August, when I found out that Bill Condon directed an AUSTERE SEXY ENGLISH THRILLER WITH A SEPTUAGENARIAN TWIST starring Dame Helen Mirren and Sir Ian McKellen. I can’t wait to watch the two greatest actors of the Silent Generation eye-fuck one another over a dining room table and double-cross all the way to the bank. SUZETTE SMITH
Various locations
Friday–Sunday
Harriet
With Harriet, audiences are given a live-action reimagining of Harriet Tubman’s journey to self-liberation: changing her name, hiding in bales of hay, being chased by dogs, and getting cornered by armed men on a bridge before jumping into the river. Harriet shows how Tubman (Cynthia Erivo) got help from a secret network of safe houses and trusted free Blacks (Leslie Odom Jr. and Janelle Monáe) who stuck their necks out to help her cause. Throughout the film, the only music you’ll hear, gladly, are negro spirituals—songs that enslaved Blacks used to express their sorrow and joy, and to secretly communicate. (Tubman, who was nicknamed Moses, would sing “Go Down Moses” as a signal to enslaved Blacks that she was in the area, and would help anyone who wished to escape.) Harriet doesn’t subject the sensitive viewer to excessive gore or violence (though there is one particularly unsettling scene), because for once, this is a story in the “slave movie” genre about tremendous triumph, leadership, and Tubman’s unwavering faith, both in God and herself. JENNI MOORE
Various locations
The Irishman
The time-honored trio of Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci are joined by Al Pacino for a grand,, elegiac, haunting film about Frank Sheeran, a hitman who worked his way up in the mob and, allegedly, fatefully crossed paths with Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa. Ty Burr of the Boston Globe writes: "The final moments are both pitiless and some of the most emotionally devastating in Scorsese’s catalog, as age and infirmity cut out the legs from under men who once thought they were invincible."
Cinerama & Crest
Friday–Sunday
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
Joker isn’t really the story of a good man gone bad; clown for hire Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is troubled from the outset. He’s barely scraping by, living with his mother (Frances Conroy), and coming undone due to cuts in social services. Sure, Phillips overdoes it with long, panning explorations of Fleck’s bruised, skinny ribs, but then again, men with insecurities about being skinny are presumably the film’s target audience. 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
Klute
A glamorous sex worker, Bree Daniel (Jane Fonda), and Detective Klute (Donald Sutherland), hired to tail her for a missing persons case, understandably start off on the wrong foot with each other. But when Daniel tells Klute that she's being stalked by a psycho, he sets out to protect her—and begins falling in love.
The Beacon
Saturday only
Part of Sex Work is Work
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
Various locations
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sounds
In what's being described as an "inspiring, entertaining, epic journey" for movie-lovers (Serena Seghedoni, Loud & Clear Reviews), longtime sound editor Midge Costin directs this tribute to the underappreciated art of sound design and the people who pioneered it.
Grand Illusion
Thursday only
Midnight Traveler
Hassan Fazili's Sundance World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award documents the filmmaker's own journey as a refugee as he is forced by the Taliban to flee his native Afghanistan with his wife and daughters. Right now, there may be few better ways to feel what it's really like to leave home under threat of death and try to resettle in safety during these xenophobic times.
Grand Illusion
Thursday only
Millennium Actress
The Forum 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
Sunday only
Motherless Brooklyn
Director/star Edward Norton’s decision to turn Jonathan Lethem’s postmodern neo-noir novel into a literal 1950s-set noir, with jazz music and vintage cars aplenty, is both an asset and a liability. Motherless Brooklyn is easy on the eyes, and the all-star cast conveys the sense—if not the suspense—of a twisty-turny mystery populated by crooks, dames, reporters, jazz musicians, and an ultra-powerful tycoon inspired by infamous New York City developer Robert Moses. But the movie’s overlong and unfocused, too, and there’s almost no emotional purchase, even as stakes escalate. NED LANNAMANN
Various locations
The Naked Kiss
Past Event
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Charles Mudede described one of The Naked Kiss director Samuel Fuller's other films as "at once ridiculous, impressive, funny, sinister, shameless, shocking, sad, and beautiful." The Naked Kiss is much the same: This story is about a mentally scarred ex-prostitute who becomes a nurse to children with disabilities in a suburb. But when her incipient romance with a philanthropist comes to a shocking end, she's in danger for her life. Don't miss this late-period noir by a master of lurid cinema.
Seattle Art Museum
Thursday only
Part of the Film Noir Series.
Nocturnal Emissions: Attack the Block
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 an unusual horror classic with "phantasmagoric" burlesque performances and other fun. This edition's film is Attack the Block, an energetic sci-fi-horror thrill ride about kids in the London projects fighting an alien invasion.
Northwest Film Forum
Thursday only
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
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 Egyptian
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. And here, you can see it on 35mm! JOULE ZELMAN
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday
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
Puget Soundtrack: Erin Jorgensen Presents 'The Night of the Hunter'
Past Event
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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
Saturday only
The Raid
The Raid: Redemption has a character or two, I'm sure; it has some plot, I think. But none of that matters, because in The Raid, those things are mere interludes in a nearly nonstop parade of stunning action sequences. The Raid is an action movie; it is about nothing more than action. And good action. The sort that used to be dealt by John Woo, before America ruined him. Or Tony Jaa, when he teased us with Ong Bak before going insane. Or Jackie Chan, by which I mean Drunken Master II Jackie Chan. That sort of action. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Central Cinema
Friday–Sunday
The Report
The Report is short for “The Torture Report,” which is short for “The Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program,” which is short for the 6,700-page account of one of America’s most horrifying and shameful stretches of history. Expertly distilling an infinitely complicated, infinitely disturbing chain of events, writer/director Scott Z. Burns follows the efforts of increasingly troubled Senate staffer Daniel Jones (Adam Driver, excellent as ever), who, under the oversight of Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening), works to discover and document the CIA’s continued use of barbaric and ineffective “enhanced interrogation techniques” on prisoners captured after 9/11. Burns spends just as much time studying the failed, Republican-led efforts to cover up America’s war crimes as he does examining both the ways they were justified (“You have to make this work. It’s only legal if it works,” says one CIA official, played by Maura Tierney) and rewarded, with a coda that not-so-subtly alludes to the fact that Gina Haspel, the current director of the CIA, oversaw a black site in Thailand where some of the atrocities documented in the report were committed. ERIK HENRIKSEN
Varsity Theatre
Rififi
Jules Dassin’s flawless diamond of a French caper film from 1955 is justifiably famous for the jewel heist that unfolds in breathless silence for 33 astonishing minutes—former Stranger film editor Jamie Hook called it a “sacrament of the cinema.” But the whole that surrounds this sequence is equally sacramental, equally nourishing. SEAN NELSON
The Beacon
Friday–Saturday
Part of And Not a Word to the Cops: Films by Jules Dassin
Romanian Film Festival: Sixth Edition
The Romanian film industry has been producing international festival hits since 2004, and the so-called New Wave filmmakers and their successors have never stopped innovating. This brief but mighty film festival screens movies that range from caustically funny to fearlessly intellectual. 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). You should check out the entire roster, but three features stand out: Corneliu Porumboiu's corrupt cop thriller The Whistlers (showing Saturday), a Palme d'Or nominee and Romania's submission to the 2020 Oscars; Serge Loznitsa's Ukraine-Romania coproduction Donbass (Sunday), a critically acclaimed dark comedy about propaganda and manipulation; and Andrei Gruzsniczki's The Escape (Sunday), a tense, morally thorny drama about two academics trying to smuggle a paper out of communist Romania. JOULE ZELMAN
SIFF Cinema Uptown
Friday–Sunday
Santa Sangre
A boy watches his mother's arms get cut off, gets institutionalized, and then returns to help her. Help her kill people. And he grew up in a circus. Alejandro Jodorowsky's waking dream must be seen to be believed.
The Beacon
Friday–Sunday
Scandalous
The strangest revelation in Scandalous—a new documentary directed by Mark Landsman that concerns the history of the National Enquirer from its birth to its recent attempt to blackmail the richest man on earth, Jeff Bezos—is not the tabloid's long obsession with UFO stories and other oddities. No, it's this: In the 1980s, Donald Trump, a huge fan of the National Enquirer, would call its reporters and rat on himself. He'd pretend it wasn't him, but the reporters knew it was Donald Trump on the other end of the line, dishing out dirt about himself and the celebrities who entered his circle of the rich and famous. The National Enquirer, which started in the early 1950s in New York City with a loan from the mafia, has had four distinct phases. One: Its gore moment. Two: Its grocery store check-out moment. Three: Its moment of respectability. And four: Its sharp turn to the right, which happened after 9/11. What has been in the DNA of the rag from its inception, however, is raw gangsterism. CHARLES MUDEDE
Grand Illusion
Friday–Sunday
The Secret of NIMH
Were it not for NIMH, the world of feature film animation might not still exist. In 1982, Disney was a clumsy, confused beast that couldn’t score a hit to save its life, despite its near-monopoly on children’s entertainment. Enter filmmaker Don Bluth—or rather, exit Bluth, in a frustrated huff, from Disney, along with a whole squad of talented animators sick of the rut they were stuck in. They grabbed a weird, gently moody little sci-fi/fantasy story for kids and let their ambitions run wild all over it—and kicked Disney’s ass with a beautifully animated adventure about a brave mom trying to take care of her kids. Not only did this success allow for new voices in animation to be heard, it forced Disney to fight for its crown. The animation renaissance of the ‘90s? You can thank Mrs. Brisby for that. BOBBY ROBERTS
The Beacon
Saturday only
SJFF Movie Madness Marathon
Past Event
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This year's Seattle Jewish Film Festival will get a mini-revival with a screening of three top films: A family film about baseball in Israel (Heading Home), an epic drama (Light of Hope), and a coming-of-age buddy flick about Sigmund Freud (The Tobacconist).
Stroum Jewish Community Center
Sunday only
Strange Negotiations
Strange Negotiations is an inspirational film—but not in the expected way. Directed by Brandon Vedder (Eddie's cousin), the documentary sheds light on Seattle singer/songwriter/guitarist David Bazan's struggle to maintain balance between family, being a touring musician, and dealing with alcoholism and the aftermath of losing his religious faith. Bazan had built a substantial fan base with the band Pedro the Lion, in which he created songs bolstered by his Pentecostal beliefs. Pedro the Lion sold hundreds of thousands of records and Bazan became the first crossover Christian indie-rock musician. But this archetypal burly, bald, bearded indie-rock dude gradually grew distrustful of Christianity—and consequently alienated many of Pedro the Lion's fans. Much of Strange Negotiations focuses on a pensive, lonely Bazan driving while speaking eloquently about his plight, his religious and political beliefs, his career, and the pain of familial separation. Fortunately, he's smart, introspective, and witty. Throughout Strange Negotiations, Bazan made me like him, even though I don't care for his music. DAVE SEGAL
Northwest Film Forum
Friday–Sunday
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
Wide release
The Woman Who Loves Giraffes
In 1956, just after graduating from college, Anne Innis Dagg went alone to South Africa to study giraffes. She was a pioneer in the research of a single animal in the wild, bringing back amazing film footage and observational notes. After returning from Africa, she earned a PhD, published numerous articles, wrote a foundational textbook on giraffes, and got into teaching. She wanted to do more giraffe research but found her way frustratingly blocked by sexist attitudes. So she worked to expose gender bias in academia and the failure to support women’s research. There’s been an effort lately to shine a light on women whose work may not have been adequately recognized before, and this documentary shows the important scientific contributions and fascinating life of a giraffe-loving feminist pioneer. GILLIAN ANDERSON
SIFF Film Center
Friday–Sunday
Zombieland 2: Double Tap
The problem with comedy sequels is that it's hard to tell the same joke years later, but funnier. Despite the ravages of time and changing tastes, filmmakers must suplex the lightning back into that bottle. But despite lurching into theaters a full decade after the original, Zombieland: Double Tap avoids those pitfalls while delivering a suitably zany Zombieland experience with the easy charm of an off-brand Mike Judge picaresque. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Abigail Breslin, and Emma Stone all return to banter and blast zombies, and their wry camaraderie speaks a seemingly genuine desire to play in this viscera-splattered sandbox again (rather than, as with many long-delayed sequels, simply the desire for a new beach house). Added to the mix are a spate of goofy newcomers, including a delightfully unapologetic flibbertigibbet (Zoey Deutch) and a pair of dirtbag doppelgangers (Luke Wilson and Thomas Middleditch). It's more a live-action cartoon than a serious entry in the zombie canon, but as a low-key genre comedy, it totally works. BEN COLEMAN
Meridian 16
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