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
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.