The Moya View
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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. Itโs a pretty shaggy dog story with bits of Woody Allenโs 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 Familyโs 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 Oscarยฎ-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 Montaรฑez 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 Mikeโs 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 Shouldnโt 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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Mothers and Daughters: The Strawberry Smear
It may be hard to remember through all the broken plate moments that your daughter once looked you in the eye,that you were mermaids swimming in synchronicity in a clear blue ocean, that there was a time when her ideas would sprawl out of her head all over the homework, a big bang onto to…
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New Wave
I dangle my legs beneath the sea wall,the tingle of water making me aware of my existence between ocean and sky. Below, rainbow scales slip in and out,in perfect duplication of wavespounding, curling away from gabions.My feet follow the streamlineebbing away to the global mass just below the refracting sun.My hand fins, cutting Sโs in…
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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. Iโm not a gamer now. I donโt know and donโt 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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Statue
Inside this sculpted stoneโ the voice of a captured angel.โWhy me?โ, it cried to the sculptor and not to God-its lyric voice rustled from heavenโs memoryto be manโs inspired art.
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Sea-Son
The shells and scales will wash away.He has chosen to be a man.She will watch as the slick of him vanishesno longer swimming but walking away.He has chosen to be a man.In the cold crisp air her throats turns dry.She casts her whale song to the waves,but he can no longer hear it, feel it…
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What to Do with All the Love that Remains
The most beautiful thing is always the thing in front of you, my mother use to say. And she was a beauty, always smiling, a beauty markfollowing in front. To see such beauty was to die a little in the heart each day- Each day to give your heart away until there is noting left.Love…
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Juanitoโs Dream
Juanito grew up with a velveteen rabbitin his hand and a gun by his side.On his sixth birthday his junkyard owning Dadgave him a clutch of rainbow balloons.He climbed the rusted skeleton of a Cadillac, held the beautiful Mylar to the sky and prayed to be taken to heaven.The answer was the sour tasting rain.On…
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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 Leoโs 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 Oscarยฎ-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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A Desert Story
The desert scorched their lips,broke the heart of their embrace-a pink blister on their foreheadsthe sunโs reminder on how impossible it will be to hold on to these knowings.He will be left standing alone in the swirl of shadows and dust,abandoned by the mountains,living only in the patina of dwellings turning to relics. She will…
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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. Iโm 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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America Seen
The pictures of their dead childrenare strapped to the chain link of the ball field they played on.A bullet holed flag waves raggedly from the outfield,dawnโs light filtering every hole. The cowboy and his horse have long since bowed in grieffrom the red pitcherโs mound.The children in the tenementsjust behind, live in fear that the…
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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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Under the Tree of Knowledge
Let me lie here and knowwhy over this ground this apple tree makes a long shadowand a light sound.For a moment death will wait,but this tree will not,nor will it mourn for me when there is sweet birdsong all around.My sapling moment has passed, my winter comes and I have climbed and shaken every boughand…
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Answered and Unanswered Prayers
Many are the mothers who cry to Godfrom the release of woe for slain sons.How mother and child, prayed innocently with pure heart, to be spared violenceโs plagueBut from the high placesthe prayers that are grantedis for power, power and gloryand honor forever- and nothing more.
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Talking Away
I use to think about grief,building loss on loss, sorrow on sorrow,into a silent groan in my bowelsof ever churning lamentsmourning for the comfort of dead faces.All the sorrow and lost infused my words. It leaked out to the white spaces betweenunwanted vowels and syllables : to the house gone, parts removed,friends lost, the broken…
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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. Donโt 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 doesnโt 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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Rivers of Tears
We cried when the surveyors came and broke up the land into lines unseen.What the prophet had said became true:this land will be taken from us.We cried the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, Arkansas to overflowwith the waters of our sorrow, leaving behind trails of tears.We cried because you would not love it as we once loved…
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Opening Her White Parasol
With the push of a button, the delicate porcelain releases lace ribs from the handle- little dove wings- shading her dreams, memories of father, creating this object to protect her from the shriveling sun.
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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 superheroโs alter ego is the 17-year-old Billy Batson (Asher Angel), a foster child on the cusp of…
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The Magicianโs Elephant: Soaring to Heights of Childhood Courage and Imagination
Plot via IMDB: The Magicianโs 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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Nostalgia
They would feel it, every new moment- the echoes of who they use to be and what was once theirs-now dirty sheets caught in a dark tree.Everyday, the black river rolls by in blue remembranceand lilies float and drown in the burning stream.Here, the air hurts in the light of a browning sunand the stars…
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Wooden Boats on the Water
Under familiar stars the water blesses this wooden fleet.The carvers shavings fall away, oak leaves in the wavesdrifting behind, until only jug beams remain- the last swayof city lights, torches yielding to sky, night and moon-until only water remains- water waving forever.
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Poetry
It has been said, by someone wiser than me,that poetry is a wind from God.Than why do I find such beauty in the rhyme of dirtโWhy do I listen to the lonely voicesof dead poetsโWhy do I want to excavate their bones,roll in them until they breakโor burn them in the crematorium of my soulto…
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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 Iโm 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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First Snow
This is the gift the world has given him: snow in hallows on roofs, branches, streets, the long white candle on the window, burning to dusk while snow fills up the cityโ all these white contours filling his lifeโ starlight behind daylight wherever he gazes.
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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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Night Cat
Mine, mimes the black cat putting out his paw to her darkness. Letโs walk in the wood, black eyes imply,the scent of shadows rising from him.The snow, the city, the night dissolves. Mornings to come he will purr to her face.She hears a word of fur and thinks itโs love.Nights, he will slip out like…
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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๏ฟผ: 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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Dust
I find it easier to collect dust than move it around from feathery place to place.Dust is history. It holds the flavors of myself.Dust contains my words.It sits on my mantle adding more specks every year,life upon life on death.I see God in its ashesโHe is dust and Dust is everythingIt swirls in endless ribbons…
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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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nocturne in pastels for hibakujumoku
they fall like a strange red bird in a old snare they fall like a strange pink koi in an old net like a shadow of a Cherry blossom on a stagnant pool like a dying pearl in the depths of the East China Sea like Akiko Futaba singing forever beneath her casement these hibakujumoku…
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Bardo: A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths- Getting Caught in Self Deceptionโs 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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In the realm of twilight
the wind is dying in the umbral night all aroundthe small bridge becomes the canalโs umbrella weaving a shy blue garment for the waters,a silvery gown across the imponderable blue the moon glides free, an argent shadowthe rain dove purls a plaintive lay, drenching the darkening streets with a drowsy kissin these hours of tears
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Triangle of Sadness: Going Just a Little Beyond Gilliganโs Island
Plot via IMDB: In Ruben รstlund’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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Tell Me Why
Who can tell me the name of all my lost thingsthings so small not worth rememberinglike coins gone through a hole pocketgiven by mother father to buy the sweet things of life back then my ignorance was eternalmy world my own private thoughts not ready for the mourners hymning their dead all the walking apart…
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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 youโre a robot engineer…
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The Many Shrines of Mama Cruz
This is not a story about my mother,not even one about your motheror grandmother. Itโs about Mama Cruz,someone elseโs mother or grandmother.Mama Cruz believed with all her heart that Jesus shouldnโt wander far from her sight.At her small church she was the first to communion, confession and contrition.Her only sin, she knew of, was an…
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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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An Endless Telephone Call
I knew this pulse had traveled thru spacewith a shivery speedto reach this felt sole,these five yards of ancient twisted wires that gave it sound-striking its bell three times in mournful bursts.it was too early to hear the good news of friends.Yet, even not quite awake,I knew between the sounds of hello and goodbye my…
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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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Stranger Miracles
โThere are two ways to live your life โ one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.โโ Albert Einstein Nancy was a dancer until her toes crossed.Forty years later she met a salsa teacher.โI admire you. Iโm going to teach you.If you try hard you can…
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An Old Poet
The old poet walks downs the streets of his dying city.The ancient tenements, stories upon stories of them,rise up before him. He thinks he may have inhabited them. He remembers- he built them but never inhabited them. He looks closer and the bricks are in the shape of his mothers teeth-square and right and just;the…
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Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumaniaโ 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. Itโs a cinematic truism that if a character says โItโs never over,โ…
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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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We Dream Our Babies Dreams
Motherโs? Fatherโs? Which dreams will you acquire ?Heritage will whisper them to you. The universe its others.What you choose will steer future mothers/fathers.Just know, you will cry before you hope, will grasp for tomorrow and maybe catch a star or just dull sky.Throw the best out to the universe, the worst bury far.For now, sleep…
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Fireflies
The spark that comes from their belly denies the darkness its dominion and reminds the rest of a shining worldhow lonely the light really is. This light is brief in a darkness vast,an echo of the quick flare of tiny planets and suns filled with the enveloping night between. These bugs spend themselves and then…
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An Approaching Train
Youโll hear it, long before you feel it, feel it long before you see it.The train whistle is a glorious shriek, full of choral bass and tremble, Something that startles your skinโ an unexpected scream from a well-known space. Train steam splits the sky, its wheels sunder the earth. The water in its way parts,…
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Kisses from a Dark Piazza
From shadows he blew a kiss. It blossoms, rises to my lips.โIf youโll come back, kiss my walls.โNorth, South, East, West, he kisses them all. His peppermint teases my tears.I ache for this soldier once near.I am now his shadowy grace.Outside, there are geese returning to their mating place.Spring soon nears. Each new footfall brings…
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Taking Orders at the Caffe Florian
For Goethe, a Decafe to help him dream.For Lord Byron, a claret in his Abbott skull mug,spiced with a tuff of pubic hair from a girl he loved.For Marcel Proust, a Corcellett with milk, a croissantbrought to him at the brisk ring of his bell. For Charles Dickens, espresso shots, next to notes on Great…
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The Smoker
As is his habit, he smokes the rolled cigarette down to ashes before taking up the brush. He waits for the smoke to linger over him, for its aroma to stay in his hairโ the cue to push the first arc for the grey stones on the hill he so desperately wants to capture before…
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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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Travelers
The train takes them, these sleepless travelers, from a land known to them, to a land unknown. from a familiar sunrise to a foreign dawn. They are moving to a new country where the roads are not filled with shadows, the skies are not thatched with rain and shattered metal doesnโt block the sky.They notice…
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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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Mirrors of Her Self
Itโs the exact opposite of herself she sees,the cast away light she canโt cast away.the ugly reality that lives in her unrealitya reverse Narcissus drowning in her reflection.The things she hates are all there- and also all the things she loves.All she has to do is look awayand it will vanish from her sight.Yet, she…
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Girl Really Crying
She looks out of the corners of her eyeswondering whether to flee or stay.She had been a punching bag before, but this is much worse. This is not shame.It is fear. A fear grown deep in her heart and soul.Her tears are almost real,jagged specters of her inside-not part, yet part of this comic book…
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Down Swing
Iโm too old to swing in the air,let the wind blow my hair wild.I have grown beyond childish things. Gravity-time has chained me here.Now, I hold all of my fears dear,huddled in all my tears to care.This cheap pipe playground has rusted,lasting just one trusted summer.Childless, Iโm not my motherโs peer. She exists all dead…
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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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Sunflowers Flash Bye
In my car, I speed by a field of sunflowers following the light as the sun follows them, their life with me over in the flash of an eye, leaving only remembered halos in the shadows of buzzing bees whose journey, like mine, will be over by dayโs end.
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Parrots Call the Colors of a 1000 Names Remembered
They meet everyday in the vermillion walltender colors of viridescent and lapis lazuli thatcaress the blood before it stains then fades,calling the colors of a thousand names rememberedThey drop their cracked seeds to be mashed into the mud of the cobbled street belowpreening each otherโs feather to a quiet array,moaning softly, butting heads in ritual…
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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 1960โs 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 mothersโboring, white dresses and crucifixes, Ave Mariaโs tied up in a simple demure…
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Van Goghโs Last Self Portrait
He lost the battle in the cornfields when the sky gave the crows a victory.โWhat will be left of me,โ he thought.โMy sorrow will last forever,โ his last words.He walked the starless streets of Auver a pencil, sketchbook in hand and drew nothing. The rows of lamplights receded, becoming walls of yellow clay.At home, he…
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An Old Couple Happily Waiting
Theyโve been evicted, this old couple sitting outside, watching tv through the open window of the house across.A mystery is on. Theyโre waiting to be murdered, or so they think. Their son will be there soon, maybe.Heโll bring them food, hopefully. They sit, waiting happily for the ambulanceโs arrival.
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To Leslie: An Honest and Worthy Oscar Performance of One Personโs 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. โWhat follows is an act of female imagination,โ is the opening title card to Sarah Polleyโs talking debate drama Women Talking. The eight Mennonite woman gathered in…
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Battling Moby Dick
White whale, white demon you go down, yeah.Dive down, till the Ocean cries, โStop!โBut yeah shall not stop, not even at hell.Fire be jealous of flame. Alit it must reach higher.Yeah will beat your head against the jagged rocks until that dead manโs itch leaves yeah thoughts,blinding everything until all above yeah is blind,until that…
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Masks Strolling Veniceโs Square
A rogue with a stitched mouth steals bye,swiping a pearl from the porcelain womangazing adoringly at the moon-face lothario. The false Pope blesses the crying baptized child that Godfather death holds in his hands.The masks float along the Venice squaresinging dead languages, hiding their selvesin the faces of gods and goddesses sighing.
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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, Germanyโs 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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Rain
I have known other rainsRain destroyed my world (once) and will end itโ with other rain I am a man in rain beyond home The name of this is not mine but the rainโs My world is called rain Itโs the distance from home Yet, after each one after removing colors it resettles my world,…
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Autumn Leaves
The leaves gift an elegy to the earth below.The generous winds scatter them afar.Old berries fall for the new buds bloom.Silence yields to the rattle all around.The poetry of spring is being written, re-vised with each withered branch renewed.Silver fringed hope is pushing through.Autumn is passing with each sunbeam.
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