Category: movies
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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 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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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…
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The Weird Kidz: Just So Off-Putting
Summary via Chattanooga Film Festival: THE WEIRD KIDZ is a horror-inflected creature feature and an ode to ’80s coming-of-age films and favorite late night cinema tales. When three pre-teen boys and an older brother and his girlfriend take off for a weekend campout, none of them could imagine the horrors (and laughs) awaiting them in…
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Sour Party: Sparkly Colored Farts
Summary via Chattanooga Film Festival: Gwen and James are two broke, self absorbed, emotionally stunted 30-somethings, eking their way through a meager LA existence. They’ve tried everything to get rich quick from cliche artistic endeavors and failed business startups to sex work, playing the victims all the way. When Gwen realizes she forgot her older…
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New Religion: Feeling Red Grief
Summary via IMDB: Miyabi lost her only daughter in an accident. After her daughter’s death, she got a divorce. She now works as a call girl and is living with her new boyfriend. One day, she meets a weird customer who asks her to let him take a picture of her spine. She does as…
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The Last Movie Ever Made: In the End, Getting It Done Right
Summary via IMDB: With the world about to end, Marshall convinces a group of friends and strangers to help finish the sci-fi movie he abandoned in high school. Review: If the world should end, it should end with sweetness. In The Last Movie Ever Made, the last movie ever made is the one that remained…
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The Elderly: Parental Homicidal Tendencies Turn Real
Summary via IMDB: Octogenarian who enters into a state of dementia after the sudden suicide of his wife, sparking a series of paranormal events that will put his family’s lives at risk. Review: I admire filmmakers that stick to their vision no matter how weird and sordid it gets. In the Spanish horror film, The…
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Mrs. Booker on 8th Ave: Getting John Cassavettes Half Right
Summary via IMDB: Mrs. Booker on 8th Avenue follows Florence Booker (Daniella Alma) who feels increasingly isolated in her marriage in New York. A shared cigarette with an alluring line cook sparks an affair that causes the different layers of Florence’s life to unravel. Review: Filmed over ten days on the streets of Manhattan, Mrs.…
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King on Screen: King Directors Give Each Other Halos
Summary via IMDB: 1976, Brian de Palma directs Carrie, the first novel by Stephen King. Since, more than 50 directors adapted the master of horror’s books, in more than 80 films and series, making him now, the most adapted author still alive in the world . What’s so fascinating with him that the directors can’t…
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Brutal Season: Death of a Family’s Soul
Summary via IMDB: In 1948, the Trouths are facing no income and the hottest summer on record. When their estranged son inexplicably returns, the apartment is full again – but is it big enough for the gambling, trauma, and substantial life insurance policy that comes in his wake? Brutal Season is a throwback drama that…
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Hell Hath No Fury: Marriage Is So Deadly Funny
Storyline via IMDB: A husband and a wife separately and unknowingly plot to murder each other on the same fateful night. Review: Hell Hath No Fury is a murder comedy of errors. There are murders and infidelities and betrayals a plenty which all go merrily awry and right. One cohort dies with a knife blade…
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Polite Society: Committing to the Lunatic Vision of Adolescence
Storyline via IMDB: A merry mash up of sisterly affection, parental disappointment and bold action, Polite Society follows martial artist-in-training Ria Khan who believes she must save her older sister Lena from her impending marriage. After enlisting the help of her friends, Ria attempts to pull off the most ambitious of all wedding heists in…
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse- Lighting Refines Gold
Storyline via IMDB: Miles Morales returns for the next chapter of the Oscar®-winning Spider-Verse saga, an epic adventure that will transport Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man across the Multiverse to join forces with Gwen Stacy and a new team of Spider-People to face off with a villain more powerful than anything they have ever encountered.…
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Elemental: Fire and Water Will Mix
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes: Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental,” an all-new, original feature film set in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together. The story introduces Ember, a tough, quick-witted and fiery young woman, whose friendship with a fun, sappy, go-with-the-flow guy named Wade challenges her beliefs about the world they live…
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Chevalier: The Cock Crows So Sweetly Off
Storyline via IMDB: An opulent historical drama, Chevalier shares the story of Joseph Bologne, a Black composer and brings to light on a brilliant Black composer and violinist whose legacy has been woefully violin virtuoso who was a part of the court of Marie Antoinette. Seeming to surmount racial barriers, Bolonge, who was bestowed with…
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The Flash: Going Way Way Back
Storyline via Rotten Tomatoes: Worlds collide in “The Flash” when Barry uses his superpowers to travel back in time in order to change the events of the past. But when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation, and…
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Flamin Hot: Cheetos Go Grande
Storyline via IMDB: In 1966 southern California, Richard Montañez grows up as a hardworking child with a strict father and supportive grandfather. He faces challenges in his youth and later becomes involved in a life of crime. However, when his wife Judy becomes pregnant, they decide to turn their lives around. Richard struggles to find…
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Magic Mike’s Last Dance: A Lap Dance With No Release
Storyline via IMDB: Magic” Mike Lane (Tatum) takes to the stage again after a lengthy hiatus, following a business deal that went bust, leaving him broke and taking bartender gigs in Florida. For what he hopes will be one last hurrah, Mike heads to London with a wealthy socialite (Hayek Pinault) who lures him with…
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Transformers: The Rise of the Beasts: They Shouldn’t Have Touched the Bumblebee
Plot via Rotten Tomatoes: Returning to the action and spectacle that have captured moviegoers around the world, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will take audiences on a ’90s globetrotting adventure with the Autobots and introduce a whole new faction of Transformer — the Maximals — to the existing battle on earth between Autobots and Decepticons.…
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The Super Mario Bros Movie: Game On!
Plot via Rotten Tomatoes With help from Princess Peach, Mario gets ready to square off against the all-powerful Bowser to stop his plans from conquering the world. I’m not a gamer now. I don’t know and don’t care whether the graphics in The Super Mario Bros Movie are true to the games. The reviews from…
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Champions: Trading Farts for Hearts
Champions starring Woody Harrelson and a winning cast of intellectually disabled adults can be considered the more serious Dumb and Dumber. The Peter and Bobby Farrelly original featured protagonists with more hearts than smarts and lots of fart humor. The Bobby Farrelly directed, Champions amps up the heart, double downs on the smart-ass, and essentially…
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Somewhere in Queens: Getting Beyond the Sticks
Plot via Rotten Tomatoes Leo Russo (Ray Romano) lives a simple life in Queens, New York with his wife Angela (Laurie Metcalf), their shy but talented son “Sticks” (Jacob Ward), and Leo’s close-knit network of Italian-American relatives and neighborhood friends. Happy enough working at the family construction business alongside his father (Tony Lo Bianco) and…
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Sam and Kate: Starring Their Real Life Kids
Info via Rotten Tomatoes: A life-affirming family dramedy starring Oscar®-winners Dustin Hoffman and Sissy Spacek, Sam & Kate takes place in a small town in the heart of the country. Hoffman plays Bill, the larger-than-life father to Sam (Jake Hoffman), who has returned home to take care of his ailing dad. While home, Sam falls…
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Renfield: Getting Beyond the Blow and Suck
Plot via IMDB: R.M. Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) decides to leave his centuries-long line of work as a henchman and familiar to Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and finds a new lease on life in modern day New Orleans when he falls in love with a feisty but perennially aggressive traffic cop named Rebecca Quincy (Awkwafina) I…
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Flux Gourmet: A Burnt Offering
Plot via IMDB: Set at an institute devoted to culinary and alimentary performance, a collective finds themselves embroiled in power struggles, artistic vendettas, and gastrointestinal disorders. I know my wife loves to cook and I know she likes hearing the sounds of all that food prep: the chopping, dicing, oiling, boiling and sometimes the toiling.…
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80 for Brady: Making Me Hate Tom Brady Even More
Plot via IMDB: A group of friends made it their life-long mission to go to the Super Bowl and meet NFL superstar Tom Brady. I’m a Miami Dolphins fan and I unequivocally hate Tom Brady. I hate all the stupid Brady to the Dolphins rumors. I hate his greatness. I hate that he lives in…
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Air: Game Changer
Plot via IMDB: Follows the history of shoe salesman Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball, Michael Jordan. Ben Affleck has proven that he can find drama in the details of negotiation. Air, a sports drama about how Nike not only developed the…
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Rye Lane: Getting Past All the Ex-Misses
Plot via IMDB: Two youngsters reeling from bad breakups who connect over an eventful day in South-London. Rye Lane, streaming now on Hulu, is a romantic comedy that succeeds by breaking all the rules of the genre and dating. Don’t spend the date talking about your exes is the big one, especially if you want…
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A Good Person: The Addiction of Grief
Plot via IMDB: Follows Allison, whose life falls apart following her involvement in a fatal accident. Florence Pugh is one of the most versatile actors working today. In A Good Person, since her character doesn’t have to function as a self-actualization figure for a male love interest, Pugh is able to explore her character and…
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Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Dungeons, Dragons, Thieves, Oh My
Plot via IMDB: A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves serves up everything promised in the title and more. There are thieves. They are…
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Shazam: The Fury of the Gods- A Little too Much DC Universe
Plot via IMDB: The film continues the story of teenage Billy Batson who, upon reciting the magic word “SHAZAM!” is transformed into his adult Super Hero alter ego, Shazam In the sequel, Shazam: Fury of the Gods the superhero’s alter ego is the 17-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel), a foster child on the cusp of…
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The Magician’s Elephant: Soaring to Heights of Childhood Courage and Imagination
Plot via IMDB: The Magician’s Elephant follows Peter, who is searching for his long-lost sister. When he crosses paths with a fortune teller in the market square, he want to know, is his sister still alive? To get the answer, he must find a mysterious elephant and the magician who will conjure it, setting Peter…
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John Wick 4: Same John, Meaner Dog
Plot via IMDB: John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes. John Wick: Chapter Four like its predecessors is an endless kinetic display of…
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As They Made Us: A Different Kind of Big Bang
Plot via IMDB: A divorced mom tries to make peace with her dysfunctional family as she finds a second chance at love Actors trust actors. So Mayim Bialik, The Big Bang Theory and Jeopardy part time host, concentrated on putting together the best ensemble she could find for her directing debut, As They Made Us,…
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Knock at the Cabin: Shyamalan Gets Less Shocking Just More Twisty
Plot via IMDB; Wen, only seven years old, is vacationing with her two dads, Eric and Andrew, at a remote cabin. While catching grasshoppers, she is approached by a stranger named Leonard. Initially friendly, he explains that he needs Wen and her parents’ help to save the world. However, Wen becomes suspicious when three other…
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The Whale: A Lot of Emotional Blubber
Plot via IMDB: Idaho, 2016. Scarred by the profound wounds of grief and guilt, couchbound Charlie, an online writing instructor living with chronic obesity, now has a crystal-clear view of his secret intentions. And confined to his claustrophobic and musty apartment, the self-destructive shut-in has all the time in the world to contemplate the damaging…
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Violent Night: This Is One Die-Hardened Santa
Plot via IMDB: When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint I’m one of those film fans that thinks Die…
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The Good Nurse: Meds and Murder on the Side
Plot via IMDB: Amy, a compassionate nurse and single mother struggling with a life-threatening heart condition, is stretched to her physical and emotional limits by the hard and demanding night shifts at the ICU. But help arrives when Charlie, a thoughtful and empathetic fellow nurse, starts at her unit. While sharing long nights at the…
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Puss in Boots- The Last Wish: Knowing the Last Cat Life Is Not Really the Final Curtain Call
Plot via IMDB: Sadly, Puss in Boots, the undaunted Spanish lover and hero, is now down to the last of his nine lives, a decade after the events of Puss in Boots (2011). And as if that weren’t enough, the unstoppable bounty hunter known as The Big Bad Wolf is after him. To restore all…
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Babylon: Unable to Get Past the Partying into the Art of Moviemaking
Plot via IMDB; An original epic set in 1920s Los Angeles led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, with an ensemble cast including Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Jean Smart. A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled…
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We Have a Ghost: Going Beyond Spooky
Plot via IMDB: Seeking a fresh start in Chicago, the Presley family moves into a dusty fixer-upper they soon realize comes with a catch: a ghost in the attic named Ernest (David Harbour). Despite Ernest’s attempts at scaring teenage son Kevin (Jahi Winston), the detached, music-obsessed teen soon finds a kindred spirit in this trapped…
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Creed III: Rocky All the Way
Plot via IMDB: After dominating the boxing world, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) has been thriving in both his career and family life. When childhood friend and former boxing prodigy Damian (Jonathan Majors) resurfaces after serving a long sentence in prison, he is eager to prove that he deserves his shot in the ring. The…
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Bardo: A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths- Getting Caught in Self Deception’s Indulgent Purgatory
Plot via IMDB: Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths is an epic, visually stunning and immersive experience set against the intimate and moving journey of Silverio, a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker living in Los Angeles, who, after being named the recipient of a prestigious international award, is compelled to return to…
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Triangle of Sadness: Going Just a Little Beyond Gilligan’s Island
Plot via IMDB: In Ruben Östlund’s wickedly funny Palme d’Or winner, social hierarchy is turned upside down, revealing the tawdry relationship between power and beauty. Celebrity model couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared…
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Megan: Just Another Grizzly American Girl Doll
Plot via IMDB: When Gemma suddenly becomes the caretaker of her orphaned 8-year-old niece, Cady, Gemma’s unsure and unprepared to be a parent. Under intense pressure at work, Gemma decides to pair her M3GAN prototype with Cady in an attempt to resolve both problems-a decision that will have unimaginable consequences When you’re a robot engineer…
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Cocaine Bear: Zonked Out More than the Average Bear
Plot via IMDB: Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine…
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Eo: Transfiguring the Suffering of Every Living Thing
Plot via IMDB: The world is a mysterious place when seen through the eyes of an animal. EO, a grey donkey with melancholic eyes, meets good and bad people on his life’s path, experiences joy and pain, endures the wheel of fortune randomly turn his luck into disaster and his despair into unexpected bliss. But…
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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania— Getting Tinier and Tinier Until It Hardly Even Matters
Plot via IMDB: Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, along with Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, explore the Quantum Realm, where they interact with strange creatures and embark on an adventure that goes beyond the limits of what they thought was possible. It’s a cinematic truism that if a character says “It’s never over,”…
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Blonde: Going too Far Up the Skirt of the Blonde Dream
Plot via IMDB: From director Andrew Dominik, and based on the bestselling novel by Joyce Carol Oates, ‘Blonde’ boldly reimagines the life of one of Hollywood’s most enduring icons, Marilyn Monroe. From her volatile childhood as Norma Jeane, through her rise to stardom and romantic entanglements, ‘Blonde’ blurs the lines of fact and fiction to…
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Lyle, Lyle Crocodile: Hoping and Bopping to that Crocodile Rock
Plot via IMDB: Follows the title reptile who lives in a house on East 88th Street in New York City. Lyle enjoys helping the Primm family with everyday chores and playing with the neighborhood kids but one neighbor insists that Lyle belongs in a zoo. Mr. Grumps and his cat, Loretta, do not like crocodiles,…
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Tar: Going Beyond the Counterpoint and Dissonances
Plot via IMDB: Women at the height of their powers and prestige can fall and be corrupted just as easily as men. That is the premise of Tar, a film directed by Todd Field and starring Cate Blanchett, as a woman who is the conductor of the most prestigious orchestra in the world, the Berlin…
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Empire of Light: Living Within the Flickering Light
Plot via IMDB: Hilary (Olivia Colman) is a cinema manager struggling with her mental health, and Stephen (Micheal Ward) is a new employee longing to escape the provincial town where he faces daily adversity. Together they find a sense of belonging and experience the healing power of music, cinema, and community. Empire of Light takes…
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Be Anita and Not Maria from Westside Story
All the Puerto Rican girls from my neighborhood, way back in the early 1960’s wanted to be Anitafrom West Side Story- a chica, with caliente legs,red Cutex lips, golden earrings and suave dance moves.To be Maria, the heroine, was to be their mothers—boring, white dresses and crucifixes, Ave Maria’s tied up in a simple demure…
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To Leslie: An Honest and Worthy Oscar Performance of One Person’s Sobriety Journey
Plot via IMDB: Having squandered every single dime of her lottery winnings on liquor and drugs, defeated West Texas single mother Leslie Rowlands finds her way back home six years after the life-altering event. But now the money is gone, the already few friends are lost, and her long-suffering family has moved on with their…
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Women Talking: Getting to Exodus
Plot via IMDB Do nothing. Stay and fight. Or leave. In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling a brutal reality with their faith. “What follows is an act of female imagination,” is the opening title card to Sarah Polley’s talking debate drama Women Talking. The eight Mennonite woman gathered in…
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All Quiet on the Western Front: Getting Beyond 1917
Plot via IMDB A young German soldier’s terrifying experiences and distress on the western front during World War I. All Quiet on the Western Front, Germany’s official Oscar submission, echoes not only its Erich Maria Remarque source novel, but Sam Mendes, 1917, another World War I film. This is the first German language version of…
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Aftersun: Building to All Our Mournful Memories
Plot via IMDB Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t. AfterSun, a subtle debut feature from Charlotte Wells, shows how…
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Sundance: The Tuba Thieves
Plot via Sundance:A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story…
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Sundance: Mami Wata
Plot via Sundance:In the oceanside village of Iyi, the revered Mama Efe (Rita Edochie) acts as an intermediary between the people and the all-powerful water deity Mami Wata. But when a young boy is lost to a virus, Efe’s devoted daughter Zinwe (Uzoamaka Aniunoh) and skeptical protégé Prisca (Evelyne Ily Juhen) warn Efe about unrest…
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Sundance: When It Melts
Plot via Sundance:Eva struggles with human connection. Now that her younger sister Tess is moving out, and long estranged from her neglectful parents, the fragile Eva is finally truly alone. Already reeling, she’s instinctively revulsed by a social media post announcing the memorial celebration for a long-passed childhood friend. She emotionally recalls her sensitive 13-year-old…
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Sundance: Girl
Plot via Sundance:Mother-daughter duo Grace and Ama have established a deep bond that’s protected them from outsiders, but as they start anew in Glasgow, things begin to change. Ama’s burgeoning puberty and curiosity set off reminders of a past that 24-year-old Grace has been running from. The comforting fairytale-like origin story that Grace has been…
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Sundance: Scrapper
Plot via Sundance:Following her mother’s death, a resourceful 12-year-old girl, Georgie (Lola Campbell), continues to live alone in their London-outskirts flat. She makes money stealing bikes with her friend, Ali (Alin Uzun), and keeps the social workers off her back by pretending to live with an uncle. It works like a charm until Jason (Harris…
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Sundance: La Pecera (The Fishbowl)
Plot via Sundance:After years of remission, Noelia’s cancer has returned and is spreading quickly. Exhausted by relentless treatment plans and pills that do more harm than good, she seeks another way out. Brushing aside her boyfriend Jorge’s well-meaning but suffocating gestures, she heads back to Vieques, the blissful eastern Puerto Rican island where she grew…
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Sundance: Mama Cruz
Plot via Sundance:Devoutly religious Cruz leads a routine existence with her husband and precocious granddaughter Viky, while her daughter Carlota chases her dream of becoming a professional dancer in Vienna. A single errant click while attempting to navigate the internet momentarily exposes Cruz to online pornography. She’s mortified but suddenly reminded of her own desires.…
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Sundance: Slow
Plot via Sundance:Contemporary dancer Elena meets Dovydas when he is assigned to interpret via sign language in a class she is teaching to deaf youth. Their connection is immediate, kinetic, and frictionless. As they gravitate toward each other, resisting the forces and interventions of their separate daily lives, their bond deepens from platonic to romantic.…
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Sundance: Bad Behaviour
Plot via Sundance:Lucy seeks enlightenment. The former child actress makes a pilgrimage to join her guru, Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw), for a silent retreat at a beautiful mountain resort with a Tesla-crammed parking lot. Before she shuts off her phone to the world, Lucy reaches out to her daughter, Dylan — a stunt person training…
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Sundance: Animalia
Plot via Sundance:Heavily pregnant Itto looks forward to a day of peace and quiet when she gets her affluent household mostly to herself after her husband, Amine, goes away on business. She’s quickly lost sight of her modest origins and has adapted to her new family’s detached opulence. But when a mysterious state of emergency…
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Sundance: Heroic
Plot via Sundance:Eighteen-year-old Luis (Santiago Sandoval Carbajal) enlists as an infantry cadet in the Heroic Military College in the hopes of becoming an officer and supporting his struggling family. Tucked away in the mountains and surrounded by statues honoring Aztec gods, the school is constructed from giant slabs of stone and ruled by even more…
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Sundance: All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Plot via SundanceTender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place. Review notes: All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt…
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Sundance: A Thousand and One
Plot via SundanceStruggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and…
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Sundance: The Starling Girl
Plot via Sundance:Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling struggles to define her place within her fundamentalist Christian community in rural Kentucky. Even her greatest joy — the church dance group — is tempered by worry that her love of dance is actually sinful, and she’s caught between a burgeoning awareness of her own sexuality and an instinctive resistance…
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Sundance: Fair Play
Plot via SundanceHot off the heels of their new engagement, thriving New York couple Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) can’t get enough of each other. When a coveted promotion at a cutthroat financial firm arises, supportive exchanges between the lovers begin to sour into something more sinister. As the power dynamics irrevocably shift…
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Sundance: Fancy Dance
Plot via SundanceSince her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Lily Gladstone) has cared for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma. Every spare minute goes into finding her missing sister while also helping Roki prepare for an upcoming powwow. At the risk of losing custody to Jax’s father, Frank (Shea…
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Sundance: Mutt
Plot via Sundance:Feña, a young trans guy bustling through life in New York City, is afflicted with an incessantly challenging day that resurrects ghosts from his past. Laundromats, subway turnstiles, and airport transfers are the hectic background to this emotional drama that overlaps past, present, and future. Settling the disharmony of transitional upheaval in relationships…
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Sundance: The Accidental Getaway Driver
Plot via Sundance:Long, a Vietnamese driver in Southern California, answers a late-night call for a ride. Already in his pajamas, he reluctantly accepts, picking up a man, Tây, and his two companions. But the men, recently escaped convicts from an Orange County jail, take Long hostage at gunpoint, thrusting him into their getaway plan. When…
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Sundance: Magazine Dreams
Plot via SundanceKillian Maddox lives with his ailing veteran grandfather, obsessively working out between court-mandated therapy appointments and part-time shifts at a grocery store where he harbors a crush on a friendly cashier. Though Killian’s struggles to read social cues and maintain control of his volatile temper amplify his sense of disconnection amid a hostile…
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Sundance: Shortcomings
Plot via Sundance:Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an art house movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blond women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his…
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Sundance: Theater Camp
Plot via Sundance:As summer rolls around again, kids are gathering from all over to attend AdirondACTS, a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York that’s a haven for budding performers. After its indomitable founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma, her clueless “crypto-bro” son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) is tasked with keeping the thespian paradise…
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Sundance: Short Film Program 1; Six Shorts
Help Me Understand Plot: Six women must come to a consensus on a detergent brand scent. Review notes: There are heavy shadings of 12 Angry Men in the dozen brand testing panel women futilely trying to turn the mind of the lone hold out. As the stakes gets higher, the frustrations more real, the claws…
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A Man Called Otto: Tom Hanks Gets a Little G(r)umpy
Plot (Sony Pctures):Based on the # 1 New York Times bestseller “A Man Called Ove,” A Man Called Otto tells the story of Otto Anderson (Tom Hanks), a grump who no longer sees purpose in his life following the loss of his wife. Otto is ready to end it all, but his plans are interrupted…
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Missing: Google How to Overwrite a Thriller
Plot (from Wikipedia)When her mother disappears while on vacation in Colombia with her new boyfriend, June’s search for answers is hindered by international red tape. Stuck thousands of miles away in Los Angeles, June creatively uses all the latest technology at her fingertips to try and find her before it’s too late. However, as she…
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The Art of Graffiti Removal
I always believed until long after my mother died that she was the onlyperson who loved meand thatmy father was a shriveled man at heart.Once my mother fell hard on the floorand he never bothered to lift her up orgive her a helping hand. Then my mother died andhe tried to replace her,becoming more generous,more…
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Son of Monarchs
The monarch flutters above the ash and in its black and orange beautyexists all day and night. It flies up to meet the sun,the gentle maternal hand of life lived in the light.Only the scent of milkweedlures it down to ground for the paternity of feasting and breeding.In its flight between earth and sky, I…
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America: The Motion Picture- Doesn’t Let Alternate Facts Get in the Way of Its Own Inane History Lesson.
When filmmakers fall asleep and flunk high school American History, America: The Motion Picture is what’s created years later- an animated, anarchic, free association lunacy that mixes up the American Revolution with the Civil War and shows that it respects America by disregarding its truth and hyping its memes. In this alternate America, George-Bon Jovi-Washington…
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The Projection Room
If lucky I will die in a room of non-hospital green, on plump pillows, good linens, with good family and good friends,the ghosts of loves, the odoramaof nitrate seas, forests or mountains on walls.Room where well-cast dreams lived and died. Will my death be the end of a long love,mystery, tragedy or comedy,flashback to life…
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The Dig
Blow the dust of history off our bones. In the excavated ribs of ancient sailing shipsfind the burial chambers of kings. Blow the dust of history off our bones.In the dig just below them, but just over the rubble of the blitz are the cracks in the golden cathedral’s dome.Blow the dust of history off…
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Where Waldo Is Not
The greatest where’s Waldo paintings to be have him the tiniest spot at the very top in a population of near clones. After searching everywhere he will be the last thing you’ll find, the last thing you’ll see. Your life will have meaning again after generations of searching and playing the game. …
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A Gun and a Hotel Bible
No bad guy talks alone to a Bible in a hotel room with a gun in his hand. “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death…” the good book says or he thinks in a cold sweat. …
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Wolfwalkers
The town exists in harsh geometry, the forest— a fiery flow. The wolf leaps above their soul, a crescent moon. Run the wolf. Flee the wolf. Don’t go beyond the wall lest you be devoured. When the wolf howls they make work their prayer, their protection. They pray a whole…
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Small Axe: Lovers Rock
The music is the scent in the air that changes everything. “I’ve got no time to lie, I’ve got no time to play your silly games,” it croons with a sweet she reggae lilt pairing off the lovers from the pretenders, shedding bodies to kiss and writhe in adjacent rooms or the nearest alley until…
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Identifying Features
My mother wanted me to go away. I hardly sent her anything. From behind, we all look alike.