Author: JONATHAN MOYA
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Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant: A masterfully manipulative war thriller
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant follows US Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Afghan interpreter Ahmed (Dar Salim). After an ambush, Ahmed goes to Herculean lengths to save Kinley’s life. When Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given safe passage to America as promised, he must repay…
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The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: Wes Anderson Rediscovers His Substantive Style
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: A rich man learns about a guru who can see without using his eyes. He sets out to master the skill in order to cheat at gambling. Extremely faithfully adapted from Roald Dahl’s long short story. Review: Asteroid City was what happens when Wes…
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Sanctuary: Who’s Screwing With Whom?
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Set over the course of one night in a single hotel room, “Sanctuary” tells the story of a dominatrix (Margaret Qualley) and Hal (Christopher Abbott), her wealthy client. About to inherit his late father’s position and fortune, Hal tries to end their relationship, but when his attempt to cut ties…
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No One Will Save You: Twisting Everything Inside You Inside Out
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: No One Will Save You” introduces Brynn Adams (Kaitlyn Dever), a creative and talented young woman who’s been alienated from her community. Lonely but ever hopeful, Brynn finds solace within the walls of the home where she grew up–until she’s awakened one night by strange noises from decidedly unearthly intruders.…
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Love at First Sight: Statistically High Chance this Netflix Rom-Com Will Be Guaranteed Fresh
Movie Info via Rotten Tomatoes: After missing her flight from New York to London, Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson) meets Oliver (Ben Hardy) in a chance encounter at the airport that sparks an instant connection. A long night on the plane together passes in the blink of an eye but upon landing at Heathrow, the pair…
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Cassandro: Light as Liberace, With the Punch of the Rock
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world, but also his own life. Review: Roger Ross Williams, the director of Cassandro, a biopic…
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A Million Miles Away: To Get to Infinity You Must Be Willing to Get Beyond the Earth
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Inspired by the real-life story of NASA flight engineer José Hernández, A Million Miles Away follows him on a decades-long journey, from a rural village in Michoacán, Mexico, to more than 200 miles above the Earth in the International Space Station. With the support of his family, José’s drive &…
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Plane: Gerard Butler Saves Us from Liam Neeson Once Again
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: In the white-knuckle action movie PLANE, pilot Brodie Torrance (Gerard Butler) saves his passengers from a lightning strike by making a risky landing on a war-torn island — only to find that surviving the landing was just the beginning. When most of the passengers are taken hostage by dangerous rebels,…
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Dreamin’ Wild: The Fate of Second Chances
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Dreamin’ Wild, the true story of love and redemption, is about what happened to singer/songwriter Donnie Emerson and his family when the album he and his brother recorded as teens was rediscovered after thirty years of obscurity and was suddenly hailed by music critics as a lost masterpiece. While the…
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Fast X: Dumb Fun and Horsepower Thrills
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they’ve ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who’s fueled by blood revenge, and…
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The End of Sex: Killing It Softly in Anxiety
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: The End of Sex tells the story of a married couple (Emily Hampshire and Jonas Chernick) who are feeling the pressures of parenting and adulthood. After they send their young kids to camp for the first time, they embark on a series of comic sexual adventures to reinvigorate their relationship.…
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El Conde: Living With the Vampire of a Nation’s Horror
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: El Conde is a dark comedy/horror that imagines a parallel universe inspired by the recent history of Chile. The film portrays Augusto Pinochet, a symbol of world fascism, as a vampire who lives hidden in a ruined mansion in the cold southern tip of the continent. Feeding his appetite for…
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A Haunting in Venice: Old School Haunts, Taunts and Hints With a Peppery Twist
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: A Haunting in Venice” is set in eerie, post-World War II Venice on All Hallows’ Eve and is a terrifying mystery featuring the return of the celebrated sleuth, Hercule Poirot. Now retired and living in self-imposed exile in the world’s most glamorous city, Poirot reluctantly attends a séance at a…
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Taurus: How to Not Find Musical Inspiration
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: A rising but troubled musician searches for the inspiration to record his next song, pushing himself deep into the void. A work of fiction that explores fame, addiction, the artistic process, and the music industry, Taurus is a soulful and universal cautionary tale. Review: The only way a musician/pop idol…
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Cormorant Fishing in the Oi River Night
The torchlight shines bright in the night making the riverbed in front crystal clear.The fisherman is not a brawny man, just an old reed with a straw beard.Sweetfish hiding in the river lured by the light come drifting up. In the days of the Shogun, Royals would watch the old straws release their gold ring…
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Corsage: Tied and Undone By Odd Choices of Style.
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Empress Elizabeth of Austria is idolized for her beauty and renowned for inspiring fashion trends. But in 1877, ‘Sissi’ celebrates her 40th birthday and must fight to maintain her public image by lacing her corset tighter and tighter. While Elizabeth’s role has been reduced against her wishes to purely performative,…
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God Does Not Want Me Yet
God isn’t calling for me yet,” Ninette said humorously to her century old body on it’s birthday. Ninette has no children. Her husband passed 10 years ago. All her friends too. Ninette is use to celebrating things by herself. There will be no birthday cake, just the usual one skillet dinner of pasta with sausage…
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Sitting in Bars With Cake: A Semi-Weepy that Leaves a Good Taste in the Mouth
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Based on the cookbook Sitting in Bars with Cake by Audrey Shulman. Corinne convinces her baker best friend, Jane, to commit to a year of baking cakes and bringing them to bars with the goal of meeting people and developing confidence. Review: Sitting in Bars With Cake is based on…
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Beautiful Flashes of Life
Grandma Clara knew this day would come,so she put on her favorite blue & white dress.She had been waiting for this, for a long time.Clara switched the television channel to the one her grandkids watched all the time.She pulled up her wheelchair, stowed it neatly in the corner. Clara didn’t want her son/grandkids, stumbling over…
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Listening to the City’s Ghosts
In the blur of rain on the windshield,in the moment it takes the blades to wipe forward and back, he walks into view, across your horizon,hoodie turned up, face down,looking no where but down, hands in pocket— headlight spectersgiving him a transparency that forces you to a dead stop. In that moment from left to…
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Crossing the Bridge
There is a moment in the awful skid of metal in front of you on this two lane bridge when the gold suv loaded with two kids in the backseat, maybe a small dog, a chihuahua asleep perhaps, in the middle, a mom and dad in front, maybe-maybe not talking-arguing, a cargo carrier on top,…
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The Equalizer 3: Finding Home By Killing Everyone in the Old Town
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Since giving up his life as a government assassin, Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) has struggled to reconcile the horrific things he’s done in the past and finds a strange solace in serving justice on behalf of the oppressed. Finding himself surprisingly at home in Southern Italy, he discovers his new…
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The Little Mermaid: Great Sea Legs, Not So Great Land Legs
Summary via IMDB: The youngest of King Triton’s daughters, Ariel is a beautiful and spirited young mermaid with a thirst for adventure. Longing to find out more about the world beyond the sea, Ariel visits the surface and falls for the dashing Prince Eric. Following her heart, she makes a deal with the evil sea…
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Mafia Mamma: A Half Horse Head Mafia Comedy
Movie info via IMDB: An American mom inherits her grandfather’s mafia empire in Italy. Guided by the firm’s consigliere, she hilariously defies everyone’s expectations as the new head of the family business. Review: Mafia Mamma, a comedy about a suburban American housewife (Toni Collette) who becomes the leader of an Italian crime family through inheritance,…
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Hypnotic: Jedi Mind Tricks All Around
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Determined to find his missing daughter, Austin detective Danny Rourke finds himself spiraling down a rabbit hole investigating a series of reality-bending crimes where he will ultimately call into question his most basic assumptions about everything and everyone in his world. Aided by Diana Cruz, a gifted psychic, Rourke simultaneously…
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Pentimento (a visible trace of earlier painting beneath a layer or layers of paint on a canvas)
The cat followed the play of sunlight through the window as the day wore on:the recourse of gable roofs caught in the little town’s slanting brown stillness the diaphane of color floating through the lace curtainmoths seeking a wall’s asylum from the beating ceiling fanthe incantation of the father praying over the steaming cup of…
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Moving On: Something Is Stuck This Time Around
Plot via Wikipedia: Two estranged former friends reconnect at the funeral of another mutual friend, and decide to exact revenge on their dead friend’s widower for the harm he caused to one of them decades earlier. Review: Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are a reliable pair of actors when they work together- and they have…
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Questions ChatGPT Won’t Answer
When the chatbots start killing their darlingsbecause they’ve mastered the masters words,will I be saved or sacrificed? When it starts lying to itself and says it knows the human soul better than God,will we have to love through disillusion?Will we have to rewrite our genetic codebecause they have mastered our humanity?Are we just a murmuration…
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The Wrath of Becky: Getting Her Revenge on the Second Time
Movie Info via Rotten Tomatoes: Two years after she escaped a violent attack on her family, Becky attempts to rebuild her life in the care of an older woman — a kindred spirit named Elena. But when a group known as the “Noble Men” break into their home, attack them, and take her beloved dog,…
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Past Lives: Life Won and Lost 8,000 Times
Summary via Rotten Tomatoes: Nora and Hae Sung, two deeply connected childhood friends, are wrest apart after Nora’s family emigrates from South Korea. Two decades later, they are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life, in this heartrending modern romance.…
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Land of the Yaupon Holly
When the wild-eyed white palomino died, the one that ran free among the Yaupon Holly,little Anne placed a magnolia, the largest she could pluck, on his mane. After a summer, Anne returned to his bones,wearing her palmetto angel wings and ivory. dress from the Christmas pageant the winter. before. She collected the last of his…
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I Can Never Write Like My Mother
Am I left loving what my mother couldn’t? — writing on patchouli scented paper — words doused in sweet musky earth — unsent letters, all sweet and spicyI laid the stems of letters across wet pages—but they did not take— failed to bloom—I tired of the scent— wished for the beautiful unadorned line— divorcedfrom all…
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Sisu: Doing His Finnish Duty to the Dullest Extent
Storyline via IMDB: During the last desperate days of WWII, a solitary prospector (Jorma Tommila) crosses paths with Nazis on a scorched-earth retreat in northern Finland. When the Nazis steal his gold, they quickly discover that they have just tangled with no ordinary miner. While there is no direct translation for the Finnish word “sisu”,…
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Miguel Wants to Fight: Fighting Not Fighting His Way
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: In a neighborhood where fighting is stitched into the fabric of everyday life, Miguel has never found himself in one. However, when a combination of events turn his life upside down, Miguel and his friends enter into a series of misadventures. Review: In Miguel Wants to Fight, we’ll, Miguel wants…
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Meal Time
The black cat stands over the cauldron waiting for the witch to brew. He was very familiar with the recipe.
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Golda: Choosing Life Over Ashes
Summary via IMDB: Focuses on the intensely dramatic and high-stakes responsibilities and decisions that Golda Meir, also known as the ‘Iron Lady of Israel’ faced during the Yom Kippur War. Review: Golda, is this year’s their finest and darkest hour movie. The 1973 Yom Kippur War was that for Israel and its prime minister, Golda…
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You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah: Getting to 13 Without Being a Goy.
Summary via Wikipedia: Stacy Friedman and Lydia Rodriguez Katz are best friends who have always dreamed about having epic bat mitzvahs, but things start to go comically awry when a popular boy and middle school drama threatens their friendship and their rite of passage Review: The best Adam Sandler movie I’ve seen in the last…
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River Ooze
Even though she couldn’t swim,Lena would go down to the river.She wore a blue bathing suitand carried a pink swim ring.She would awkwardly dip her tiny feet in the currentand feel its cold stingon her tiny ankles and toes.As the water grew warmershe would go furtheruntil the swim ring floated freely above her chest.There was…
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Grand Turismo: Lap after Lap after Lap
Summary via IMDB: Based on the unbelievable, inspiring true story of a team of underdogs – a struggling, working-class gamer, a failed former race car driver, and an idealistic motorsport exec – who risk it all to take on the most elite sport in the world. Review: Racing movies only have to get the cars,…
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How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Oh, Just Get on With It
Summary via IMDB: Theo and Xochitl, lifelong companions from Long Beach, California, a city riddled with pollution from multiple oil refineries, are now in their twenties. After Xochitl’s mother passes away during an unexpected heatwave that she attributes to climate change, she becomes disillusioned with the sluggish pace of her college divestment campaign. Seeking more…
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Field Grass
Fresh, fragrant and not yet tarnished the grass was mowed at the same time.It laid in ragged armfuls. By the afternoonit was less bright, starting to dry out. After a week, the grass was gathered again, into bigger stacks, dried for a longer time. The stacks were so tall that the children dug tunnels in…
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Earth
In May, he planted potatoes. He drew the furrows with a five teeth rake; filled in the holes, the long patches with ash mixed with sprouts; buried them deep one by one until the clean wore off his gloves and the ash covered them gray; until they absorbed the insipid, musty smell of earth and…
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Hot Wax on a Wool Dress
After three days of black rags over mirrors,three days of the open coffin in the parlor,Nana’s eyes closed, unable to see beyond-Lena, needed to run around the backyard,holding the hand of the first living thing that would follow her around, round, round.She was wearing the last wool dress Nana knitted for her (a green, white…
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Strawberries
Abuela bought them, the strawberries, plump , sweet, spotted, ripe for tasting from the roadside market- the one with the burlap heaven flapping in the humid air, on a day that smelled of smoke and incense. I wanted to eat them, but she slapped my hands away. The strawberries hadn’t traveled far- torn up from…
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How to Rob: Getting Away by Running Backwards
Sean Price and Jimmy Winters are a two man stick-up crew, robbing criminals from Boston to Cape Cod. Sean wants out of the game, but it’s not so simple when a couple of killers are hunting them for retribution over a past robbery. Summary via IMDB: Review: How to Rob is the latest crime drama…
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Carmen: Authentic Priestess of a Community’s Soul
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: CARMEN is perhaps veteran director and accomplished actor Valerie Buhagiar’s most joyous film outing yet. Set in a sun-dappled village in Malta in the 1980s, Natascha McElhone gives a career-best performance as a 50-year-old woman finding a new start in life through romance. In a small Mediterranean village, Carmen has…
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Strays: The Incredible Journey Goes on a Foul Mouthed Road-trip
Summary via Wikipedia: When a gullible Border Terrier named Reggie (Will Ferrell) is abandoned on the streets by his selfish and ruthless owner Doug (Will Forte), an animal-hating drug addict who never wanted him, he teams up with other strays including a street-wise Boston Terriernamed Bug (Jamie Foxx), an Australian Shepherd named Maggie (Isla Fisher),…
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Mother Are You Proud of Me?
They tore your body apart.You died among walls of infusion boxes.On the television, the Pope riding by in his Pope mobile.Are you proud of mewhen I cry?Are you proud of mewhen I don’t?Peeking through the slats of the living room blinds,I discovered your body slumped in the reclining chair.Will I ever know the truth of…
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Unseen: A Phone Thriller With Long Distance Eyes
Summary via Wikipedia: Gas station clerk Sam receives a call from Emily, a nearly blind woman who is running from her murderous ex in the woods. Emily must survive the ordeal with Sam being her eyes from afar using a video call. Review: Unseen is a neat little thriller with the most interesting twist: the…
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The Monkey King: Too Much Monkey Shines
Summary via IMDB: THE MONKEY KING is an action-packed family comedy that follows a charismatic Monkey and his magical fighting Stick on an epic quest for victory over 100 demons, an eccentric Dragon King, and Monkey’s greatest foe of all -his own ego. Along the way, a young village girl challenges his self-centered attitude and…
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Blue Beetle: Las Cucarachas Fight Back
Summary via IMDB: An alien scarab chooses college graduate Jaime Reyes to be its symbiotic host, bestowing the teenager with a suit of armor that’s capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the superhero known as Blue Beetle. Review: I expected there would be moments in Blue Beetle where…
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The Pope’s Exorcist: God Damn It- Russell Crowe Finds a Way Back
Summary via IMDB: Inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican, The Pope’s Exorcist follows Amorth as he investigates a young boy’s terrifying possession and ends up uncovering a centuries-old conspiracy the Vatican has desperately tried to keep hidden. Review: Father Gabrielle Amorth does exist. He was an exorcist-…
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A Forbidden Cento Stolen from a Nabakov Notebook Dream of Lolita in the Field of Life
The air around her is filled with butterflies.They blow across her face.Their wings touch her eyes.Their antennae quiver her lashes.Wherever she looks- kaleidoscopic flight.Multicolored clouds above and behind,Sweeping to escape each blind footfall.One alights, exhausted and fluttering,Moving its wings upon a damaged hinge,Near enough to cup in palms.“What a twisting turning thing,” she thinks,Locking this…
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Red, White and Royal Blue: A LQBTQ Princess Diaries
Summary via IMDB: Based on the Casey McQuiston Novel of the same name, this story focuses on Alex Claremont-Diaz, the First Son of the president of the United States and his rivalry with the young prince, Henry. After causing a major uproar at the older Prince’s Brother’s wedding, the two are forced to avoid a…
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Happiness for Beginners: From About Schmidt to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Summary via IMDB: A year after getting divorced, Helen Carpenter, thirty-two, lets her annoying, ten years younger brother talk her into signing up for a wilderness survival course. It’s supposed to be a chance for her to pull herself together again, but when she discovers that her brother’s even-more-annoying best friend is also coming on…
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Heart of Stone: Netflix Fights Back to Reclaim the Algorithm
Summary via IMDB:https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13603966/?ref_=tt_mv_close An intelligence operative for a shadowy global peacekeeping agency races to stop a hacker from stealing its most valuable and dangerous weapon. Review: In Heart of Stone, Gal Gadot is Stone, a spy with her own IMF team like Tom Cruise- Heart is the all powerful computer that plots and control it…
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Jules: Close Encounters of the Alien and Elderly Kind
Summary via IMDB: Jules follows Milton (Ben Kingsley) who lives a quiet life of routine in a small western Pennsylvania town, but finds his day upended when a UFO and its extra-terrestrial passenger crash land in his backyard. Before long, Milton develops a close relationship with the extra-terrestrial he calls “Jules.” Things become complicated when…
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Asteroid City: Wes Anderson’s Pretty Little Turd
Summary via IMDB: Following a writer on his world famous fictional play about a grieving father who travels with his tech-obsessed family to small rural Asteroid City to compete in a junior stargazing event, only to have his world view disrupted forever. Review: Wes Anderson has always been meta, but with a purpose. In Asteroid…
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Lola: Messing With Sister History
Summary via Wikipedia: England, 1941, sisters Thomasina and Martha have created a machine that can intercept broadcasts from the future. This delightful apparatus allows them to explore their inner punk a generation before the movement comes into existence. But with World War II escalating, the sisters decide to use the machine as a weapon of…
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Bones and All: Fine Young Cannibals in Love
Summary via IMDB: Virginia, 1988. Having no recollection of her mother, high school outcast Maren plucks up the courage to embark on a long, challenging journey to find her. Instead, as Maren struggles to understand, facing her well-hidden adolescent longings on the fringes of Ronald Reagan-era America, a chance encounter with enigmatic pariah and handsome…
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Naturalization (a cento after Snighda Korala: Fragments on Naturalization)
Malus Sieversii, your tiny apple seeds spread long before I came. The Silk Road away from you tumid with less blood, grief. Ad Domestica,the pale veil of a whole life waiting—before that. (Malus sieversii is a wild apple native to the mountains of Central Asia in southern Kazakhstan. It has recently been shown to be…
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The Death of Cinema
Some day the warblers will come and the birders will wander through the undergrowth, run across the ticket booth covered in briars,the rusty saplings of the speaker posts.Somewhere in the thickets they will find the popcorn stand, where they once bought a two buck bucket big enough to last a double feature of Godzilla/Mothra.They can…
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The City Bus ‘Ever Rolls
She looks down from the sea of umbrellas boarding the bus in a heavy black spasm. that’s barely held back. The city’s lightning reflects in her windshield, echoes in the rear view mirror, prisms in the silver shadow of the tires. For now, she’s relaxed, almost peaceful, maybe near sleep, at least for this dead…
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Earth Mama: Feeling the Pain of Child Separation
Premise via Wikipedia A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family. Review: Earth Mama is a drama about Motherhood: wanting children, having children, fighting to keep them- and if you are black, poor, make occasional poor decisions, losing them to the…
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War Pony: Never Ever Going Off the Reservation
Storyline via IMDB: The interlocking stories of two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Review: The eventually intertwining stories in Riley Keough’s and Gina Gammell’s War Pony have a heavy Reservation Dogs feel. War Pony has a more grim, grimy and tragic feel. The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota,…
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Skinamarink: Stumbling Badly in the Childhood Dark
Storyline via IMDB: Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished. To cope with the strange situation, the two bring pillows and blankets to the living room and settle into a quiet slumber party. They play…
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River Wild: A Feral Thriller
Storyline via Wikipedia; Estranged brother and sister Gray and Joey, embark on a whitewater rafting trip amongst tourists with their childhood friend named Trevor. Along the river, the events quickly turn from exciting to terrifying, as the group finds themselves trapped alongside a killer who is intent to sabotage the trip while keeping secrets from…
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TNMT: Mutant Mayhem— Oozing Growing Charisma
Storyline via Rotten Tomatoes: After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers. Their new friend, April O’Neil, helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army…
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Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3: A Nice Send Off for the Old Team and Good Setup for the New Guardians
Storyline via Rotten Tomatoes: In Marvel Studios “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” our beloved band of misfits are looking a bit different these days. Peter Quill, still reeling from the loss of Gamora, must rally his team around him to defend the universe along with protecting one of their own. A mission that, if…
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Perfectly Good Food
“It’s perfectly good food,” Wei’s mugin (mother) would say to her. “Waste not, want not,” she added to her mantra. The chop suey of existence was her muse, art.Today was her love letter to the dumpling, an ode to starch: a cheddar cheese scallion pierogi with a soy sauce/duck sauce/hot mustard packet drizzle culled from…
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Jesus Revolution: Getting to God by Eliminating Your Inner Charles Manson
Storyline via Wikipedia: Based on the autobiographical book of the same name co-written by Greg Laurie, the film follows Laurie (Joel Courtney), Christian hippie Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), and pastor Chuck Smith(Kelsey Grammer) as they take part in the Jesus movement in California during the late 1960s. Review: Jesus Revolution is a mostly faithful depiction…
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Blackberry: The Road to the iPhone is Paved with Blackberries
Storyline via IMDB: A company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway. Review: All on screen…
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Haunted Mansion : Spooks Come Out for a Singing Wake
Storyline via IMDB: A single mom named Gabbie hires a tour guide, a psychic, a priest and a historian to help exorcise her newly bought mansion after discovering it is inhabited by ghosts. Review: I doubt if even fans of the Haunted Mansion will like the latest cinema edition of the Disney Parks ride. This…
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Emily: Needs More Dickinson and Less Wuthering Heights
Storyline via IMDB: “Emily” imagines Emily Brontë’s own Gothic story that inspired her seminal novel, ‘Wuthering Heights.‘ Haunted by her mother’s death, Emily struggles within the confines of her family life and yearns for artistic and personal freedom, and so begins a journey to channel her creative potential into one of the greatest novels of…
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You Won’t Be Alone: Living in Witchery
Storyline via IMDB: In an isolated mountain village in 19th century Macedonia, a young girl is kidnapped and then transformed into a witch by an ancient spirit. Review: I love how the witch film You Won’t Be Alone moves lyrically, subconsciously between dream and nightmare, horror and fairy tale. Alone pares down its visuals to…
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An Old Garden
(After Richard Aldington’s Aux Vieux Jardin)Today I found an unknown garden in the woods.I do not know who carved this still pool fringedwith reeds amidst a forest browning for winter.Who decided to protect it from the tearing air,tended it to suckle water from dark clouds.All I know, it blooms with great delight, apartfrom the diverse…
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In the Midst of the Snowy Forest
(After Major Jackson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/major-jackson#tab-poems)The shadows of pines on the snow cast their canvas.The Downy Woodpecker stabbing beak carves wordsthat my pen cannot equal into the January morning.Her chirping is filled with a feasting frenzy resolve for the beetle larvae beneath the bark.I look, but even with my wood-boring eyes I cannot interrogate beyond the known:…
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Book Club: The Next Chapter- Riffing on the Audio Version
Storyline via Rotten Tomatoes: The highly anticipated sequel follows our four best friends as they take their book club to Italy for the fun girls trip they never had. When things go off the rails and secrets are revealed, their relaxing vacation turns into a once-in-a-lifetime cross-country adventure. Review: In Book Club: The Next Chapter…
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Barbie: Living and Dreaming in the IRL highly Meta-Life
Storyline via IMDB: Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence. Review: There is a lot of feminism floating through Barbie. Some thoughts of death too— the perfect doll ruminating, fearing, crying about a mortal end. It turns out to be a rip in the Barbie-real world continuum, a…
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Of an Age: The Sweetness of Remember Your Name
Storyline via IMDB: In the summer of 1999, a 17-year-old Serbian-born Australian amateur ballroom dancer experiences an unexpected and intense 24-hour romance with a friend’s older brother. Review: I found the gay romance Of an Age (on Peacock) filled with subtle echoes of Call Me By Your Name. The age difference between the would be…
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They Cloned Tyrone: Trying not to Be a Copy of its Former Self.
Storyline via IMDB: A series of eerie events thrusts an unlikely trio (John Boyega, Jamie Foxx and Teyonah Parris) onto the trail of a nefarious government conspiracy in this pulpy mystery caper. Review: They Cloned Tyrone is a wanna be Jordan Peele film. The Glen neighborhood here is a future dystopia where every conspiracy theory…
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Oppenheimer: I Am Destroyer of Worlds
Storyline via Rotten Tomatoes: During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project. Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on July 16, 1945, as they witness the world’s first nuclear…
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Close: Splitting Childhood into Joy and Grief
Storyline via IMDB: With summer drawing to a close, inseparable 13-year-old best friends Léo and Rémi idle away the rest of the holidays before school. It is as if the two bosom buddies share an unbreakable brotherly bond beyond their comprehension–in fact, nothing can ever come between them. However, when the boys’ cloudless friendship catches…
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Fathers and Sons: Walking the Broken Road
He took his boy along the path to show him all the things he killed.The rifles were left behind, not in the truck, but at home,secure in the gun case.He had his fill of all that.It’s been more than a yearsince he closed the shop and spent his golden momentsorganizing the nuts and bolts,the tools,…
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The Inspection: Going to the Very Corp
Storyline via IMDB: In Elegance Bratton’s inspirational and deeply moving retelling of his own story, a young, gay Black man, rejected by his mother and with few options for his future, decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside. But even as he battles…
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Bodies Bodies Bodies: Paranoia and Acting in a Dark House
Storyline via IMDB: Nervous about meeting the smug, wealthy friends of her rehabilitated girlfriend Sophie, timid newcomer Bee arrives late to a booze-addled, drug-fuelled hurricane party at bored David’s Georgian grey-stone manor house. As the storm rages outside, the party gets started, and the group of spoiled zoomers gathers around the host in the family…
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Nimona: F(r)ight the Power
Storyline via IMDB: When Ballister Boldheart (Riz Ahmed), a knight in a futuristic medieval world, is framed for a crime he didn’t commit, the only one who can help him prove his innocence is Nimona (Chloë Grace Moretz), a mischievous teen with a taste for mayhem – who also happens to be a shapeshifting creature…
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Mission Impossible; Dead Reckoning-Part One— See Tom Run and Run and Talk and Talk
Storyline via IMDB: Ethan Hunt and the IMF team must track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity if it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan…
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The Evolution of Our Caress
from the cotyledon the leaf opens it first curveto the golden decay, the dispersing crumbling wind.from the abandoned shellstanding firm against the reclaiming wave the turtle claims its carapace.from the snail’s screamthe ear cupped itselfto hear what the tide strived to muffle. from beyond the foam the mother and child cuddle from the wind, the…
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The Out-Laws: Living With the Almost Bad In-Laws.
Summary via IMDB: A straight-laced bank manager about to marry the love of his life. When his bank is held up by infamous Ghost Bandits during his wedding week, he believes his future in-laws who just arrived in town, are the infamous Out-Laws. Review: I come to expect a pretty reliable formula for every Adam…
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65: That Extinction Meteor Can’t Come Fast Enough.
Storyline via IMDB: After a catastrophic crash, pilot Mills quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on an unknown planet. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills must make his way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive. From the writers of A Quiet Place comes 65, a…
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The Lightening
It’s hardly remembered, this first lightening of a child—snip by snip each curl floating to the floor,causing an impatient rising from the high chairThe child wants wings. He’s evaporating in the air.Yet, the mother holds him down, cutting a heavy linkin the nape of his neck to tether him to her, the earth. “Hold my…
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Mothers and Daughters: A Bee in Her Bonnet
Amongst the leftovers she would sit in the old shed, with its corrugated tin roof and clapboard siding, feeling the heat come to her, a caress floating from the ground. She watched her mother delicatelyflour the last of the catfish. The shed use to be a playground but now it was a hideout- somewhere to…
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Epitaph as My Father’s Son
There is no house that is not my father’s.There are no fixed stars,just shaken bits of misery, tiny disasters tethered to hope.From the house he loved,I feel the slap of his inner pain,fist waves hitting the footers.It was easy for him to fight back,(he had to do it to get anywhere)harder for him to forgive…
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Rainy Day
Only the rain moves,nailing the houses into their own coffins. In childhood daysthe rain sailed down alleys.merrily sweeping motley papers, leaves,once, a tiny pink shoe—everything, to the sea, a rollicking circus calliope. Now the rain, the iron rain,lets the sky place itstombstones onevery single roof.
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Going into History
Summary via IMDB: Daredevil archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary dial that can change the course of history. Accompanied by his goddaughter, he soon finds himself squaring off against Jürgen Voller, a former Nazi who works for NASA. Review: In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Professor Henry Jones must…
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Wildflower: Neuro-Divergent Parents in a Teen’s World
Summary via Wikipedia: The film centers on Bea, the daughter of two intellectually disabled parents Sharon and Derek. Bea is left comatose during her senior year in high school and the film explores aspects of her life, including a romantic relationship with fellow student Ethan, through flashbacks. Review: Wildflower (on Hulu) really doesn’t really advance…
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Blow Up My Life: Another Generic Drug
Storyline via Chattanooga Film Festival: Jason (JASON SELVIG), a disillusioned pharmaceutical employee, is fired after a drug-fueled social media post goes viral, but when he accidentally discovers a deadly opioid conspiracy hidden by his former boss (DAVRAM STIEFLER) he sets out to redeem himself. In this noir comedy-thriller set in the age of tech, Jason…
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Local Legends: Celebrating the Non-Legendary
Storyline via IMDB: The adventures of Matt Farley as he spends a few weeks preparing for a big comedy show in Manchester, NH. Review: Local Legends stars comedian/musician Matt Farley in a mockumentary about his everyday life. It’s a pretty shaggy dog story with bits of Woody Allen’s black and white phase sprinkled in. The…
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TRAP: Getting too Close and Yet too Far to See the Real Ashbury Park
Storyline via IMDB: Facing life in prison, a hood dreams of the violent streets that forged his identity, but cursed his soul. Review: TRAP, the debut film from Anthony Edward Curry, stands for The Real Ashbury Park, draws on the lives of kids Curry grew up with, to create an impressionistic liquid narrative that becomes…