We’re finally arriving at the best season of the year — filled with cool breezes, crisp leaves and a bounty of fall movies. Here’s a sampling of what’s on screen at Seattle’s indie moviehouses in September.
The Beacon
The Beacon wins the prize for the longest film-series title of the year, with a September series entitled “There Is No Need to Build a Labyrinth When the Entire Universe is One: Infinite Recursion, Ontological Vertigo, and the Territory Yielding to the Map” (in other words, films that concern themselves with “doubles, mirrors, invented memories, counterfeit histories, stories that become worlds, and worlds that reveal themselves to have been stories all along”). Among the films in this intriguing series: Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror” (Sept. 5, 8, 9), Jacques Rivette’s “Celine and Julie Go Boating” (Sept. 6), Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Spider’s Stratagem” (Sept. 9-10), Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” (Sept. 25, 28) and others. Also on screen this month are two William Wyler classics: the Oscar-winning post-World War II drama “The Best Years of Our Lives” (Sept. 20-21) and the Henry James adaptation “The Heiress” (Sept. 27-28).
4405 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle; 206-420-7328, thebeacon.film
Central Cinema
September kicks off with the 1999 made-in-Seattle-and-Tacoma rom-com “10 Things I Hate About You,” inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” and screening on a double bill with Christopher Nolan’s fascinatingly twisty breakout hit, “Memento” (both Sept. 4-9). The John Sayles comedy “The Brother From Another Planet” plays Sept. 11-16, and the 2006 comedy “She’s the Man” (another Shakespeare offshoot; this one’s based on “Twelfth Night”) screens with the 1993 Kurt Russell Western “Tombstone” (Sept. 18-23).
1411 21st Ave., Seattle; 206-328-3230, central-cinema.com
Grand Illusion
The Grand Illusion continues to host pop-up screenings. “Buddy,” a 2026 R-rated horror comedy about a children’s television character with a dark side, screens at Northwest Film Forum on Sept. 8. A 35mm screening of Spike Lee’s 2002 drama “25th Hour,” with Edward Norton as a drug dealer facing his final day before imprisonment, takes place at SIFF Film Center Sept. 11-13. The 1992 Hong Kong action movie “Full Contact,” starring Chow Yun-Fat, screens in a new restoration Sept. 14 at NWFF, and Tsui Hark’s rarely screened 1980 film “Don’t Play With Fire,” also in a new restoration, screens at SIFF Film Center Sept. 29-30.
Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., Seattle; SIFF Film Center, 167 Republican St., Seattle Center campus, Seattle; grandillusioncinema.org
Northwest Film Forum
The 29th annual Local Sightings Film Festival takes place at NWFF Sept. 18-27, kicking off with an opening-night screening with Aberdeen-based filmmaker Mia Moore Merchant’s new feature, “Again Again.” It’s followed by 10 days of features, short films, workshops and panels, all celebrating filmmaking talent of the Pacific Northwest. Full festival passes are $150 (or $250 for a dual pass); individual tickets are $15. Also at NWFF this month, should you be in need of something scary: a double feature of John Boorman’s “Exorcist II: The Heretic” and the documentary “Boorman and the Devil,” which tells the juicy behind-the-scenes story of how the film got made. Both are Sept. 5-6; $24 for both films.
1515 12th Ave., Seattle; nwfilmforum.org
SIFF
Both SIFF Uptown and the F.W. Murnau silent-movie classic “Faust” turn 100 this year, and you can celebrate both at a special screening Sept. 9, with live music by Invincible Czars. The series “Nouvelles Femmes: Modern Women of the 1960s French New Wave Cinema,” curated by Greg Olson, begins at Uptown with Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” (Sept. 16), François Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim” (Sept. 23) and Agnès Varda’s “Cléo from 5 to 7” (Sept. 30). And this month’s Community Screening at SIFF Downtown (tickets just $7 adults/$5 children) is a Hitchcock classic: Cary Grant in the pulse-racing thriller “North by Northwest” (Sept. 20).
SIFF Cinema Uptown, 511 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle; SIFF Cinema Downtown, 2100 Fourth Ave., Seattle; 206-464-5830, siff.net
Tasveer Film Center
Among the eclectic offerings at Tasveer this month: “Hope,” a Palme d’Or-nominated thriller from South Korea in which police officers and hunters pursue a mysterious beast (opens Sept. 9); “Late Fame,” a drama about a New York poet starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee (opens Sept. 11); and the documentary “Surfilmusic,” which follows Jack Johnson’s journey from surfer to filmmaker (opens Sept. 16).
4812 Rainier Ave. S, Seattle; tasveer.org
Majestic Bay
The Ballard theater’s Wednesday Retro Nights, with titles chosen by the theater’s social media audience, continue with the classic epic “Lawrence of Arabia” on Sept. 9 (with a special 6 p.m. start, to accommodate the film’s long running time), Penny Marshall’s baseball comedy “A League of Their Own” on Sept. 16, the soggy Kevin Costner actioner “Waterworld” on Sept. 23 and the horror comedy “Tremors” on Sept. 30.
2044 N.W. Market St., Seattle; majesticbay.com
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