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Love. Pain. Death.  Family.  These are the main themes of this excellent Amazon production. 

Set among the cold and beautiful New England scenery, the story follows Lee (played by Casey Affleck) as he goes back to his hometown to take charge of his teenage nephew, Patrick (played by Lucas Hedges) after the death of Lee’s brother.   

From the start, it is obvious that something more than grief is going on.  Lee is very reluctant to go back.  There are nudges and whispers by the townspeople at the sight of him.  Why does everyone treat him with kid gloves, and why is Lee such a jerk to them in

In this enjoyable remake of Disney's classic Pete's Dragon, Pete is on a trip with his mom and dad when a deer leaps into the road causing a fatal crash. Five year old Pete is the only survivor. Thanks to Elliot, a precious-looking dragon with hair like a soft grassy meadow, Peter survivors for six years in the wilderness.

When the townspeople find out the dragon is not just town lore or a figment of a lost boy's imagination, chaos ensues and thus beings an exciting and suspenseful adventure. Pete's Dragon has excellent animation and the actors interact quite successfully.  

Paterson is a quiet, beautiful love story.  It depicts a week in the life of a bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) and his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani). They live in the town of Paterson, New Jersey, which William Carlos Williams immortalized in his poetry. In his spare time, our Paterson writes poetry, mostly love poems about his wife. He writes down his poems wherever he can: in a small cupboard in the basement, in the bus before he starts work. He derives his inspiration from life around him so that the subtle rhythm of an average day becomes the beat of his poem. When Laura tells

I love a good cookie and a good murder mystery. When I heard about Murder, She Baked, based on Joanne Fluke's Hannah Swensen series, I couldn't wait to check it out. I have been meaning to read Fluke's Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder, which is first in the series and is the plot for this Hallmark TV movie.

We follow Hannah, a professional baker whose amateur sleuth tendencies come out when one of her friends is murdered in their small town. Hannah (played by Alison Sweeney) uses her local connections to retrace her friend's last steps and to uncover clues. Her sleuthing causes her to butt heads

It's 1845 Haworth, West Yorkshire, England. This historical depiction shows a very bleak and distressing side to the famous Bronte sisters lives. Back when there were very few opportunities for women, it tells of the hardships Charlotte, Emily and Anne faced. It also includes the downfall of their brother Patrick, who they all called by his middle name Bramwell.  His was a tortured soul that could not live up to his own expectations and took it out on his father.

To Walk Invisible created a desire for further research.

Why must movie trailers be so misleading? There have been many a movie where the finished product seems completely different from what the trailer hyped it to be. Like a comedy that is not that funny because the trailer gave away the only two humorous parts of the entire film.

After viewing the trailer of Table 19, I popped in the DVD expecting a romantic comedy. A girl meets a guy while at the wedding of her ex-boyfriend’s sister. She’s seated at the worst table but it’s filled with quirky characters who have laugh out loud hijinks. That’s not the movie I got.

Anna Kendrick’s Eloise has

David (Jesse Plemons) is having a rough year. He’s a comedy writer pushing 30 whose pilot wasn’t picked up. His boyfriend just dumped him. And now he’s moving home with his parents, to help take care of his mother (Molly Shannon) while she dies of cancer. These are setbacks that are supposed to befall other people, he confides in an old classmate who tells him, “Now you’re other people for other people.” It’s with this dazed adrift quality that David goes through the next several months, struggling to spend as much time with his mother as he can while figuring out a way to get his life back on

In portraying Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame, Love & Mercy perfectly evokes the Southern California of 1967. I left the theater deeply affected by the sweep of Wilson’s tumultuous life. Paul Dano is superb as the young Brian, and John Cusack is very moving as the deeply troubled middle-aged Brian. In fact, all the actors are superb. While I wasn’t a fan of either the man or the group before, I am now. This is a great movie and I’ve watched it at least five times.

My favorite scenes depict the recording of Brian's masterpiece, Pet Sounds. Highly recommended.

Miss Sharon Jones! is worth seeing for Jones' performance in a little country church of "His Eye is on the Sparrow" alone. Her grit, power and will to sing are amazing. The film covers a critical period in her life with her band, the Dap Kings, when she is dealing with intense cancer treatments and, at the same time, trying to keep the group together. Her humor, bravery and explosive talent fill the screen.  

Having seen Sharon and the Dap Kings at the 2016 New Orleans Jazzfest, I wanted to see more performance footage, but recognize we are lucky to have any at all. The film is equally moving

My Boyfriends’ Dogs begins with Bailey Daley running through the rain in a wedding dress. She’s drenched and has three dogs in tow. Hoping to get out of the rain she ducks into a diner, where she meets the restaurant owners, Louis and Nikki. She then spends the evening explaining to them how she acquired each pup.

Adam, a typically charming golden retriever; Eve, a shih tzu; and Shirley, a dalmatian, are special. Each has been adopted from an ex-boyfriend and each mirrors the man who had owned them.

With a new job teaching high school literature, and new dream home, Bailey has been looking

Justin Kurzel’s newest film, Assassin’s Creed, has been called one of the best video game based movies made so far. Unfortunately, that isn’t much of a compliment. In this film Callum, played by Michael Fassbender, is captured by the Abstergo Corporation and placed into a machine, the Animus, in order to access and relive memories locked in his genetic code. Using these memories The Corporation, run by The Templars and the Assassin’s sworn enemies, hope to find an ancient relic that will allow them to take control of all free will. As convoluted as that sounds it is pretty much the plot of the

"If you must blink, do it now. Pay careful attention to everything you see and hear, no matter how unusual it may seem. And please be warned, if you fidget, if you look away, if you forget any part of what I tell you, even for an instant, then our hero will surely perish."

Thus begins the saga of Kubo.

I don't want to give away plot details, so I'll talk about themes. There is exploration of family, both good and bad. Well-meaning relatives can want what they feel is best for you, but still be hurting you. But the ones who shelter you, no matter how flawed, will do their best by you. Love is

When it comes to animated films, talking animals is certainly not a new concept, but the idea of domesticated pets going on wild adventures when the owners are away becomes a fun driving force in the new movie The Secret Life of Pets. Delivered by the same animation studio that gave us Despicable Me and those lovable Minions, this wacky adventure is a little more grounded in reality, but nevertheless very funny. And if you like the Minions, you’ll be pleased to know it actually opens with a new short film featuring those lovable little yellow guys.

In my heart, I have always supported the right to die movement without knowing exactly why. Except that, I always euthanize my pets when their suffering outweighs all else. And I watched my Grandmother suffer indignities she would have been horrified by and wonder why we work so hard to prolong lives long over.  

How to Die in Oregon confirms my belief in the right to decide, with your doctor, when you want to end your own suffering. Those interviewed made their own decisions with their families, obtained a prescription from a doctor, and administered the medicine to themselves, under

I Am Big Bird is a must-see for fans of Sesame Street, Jim Henson, Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, or all of the above. It’s a documentary focusing on the life of Caroll Spinney, the puppeteer who plays both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, and also sometimes other famous Sesame Street characters like Bert. As I’m sure you already know, Sesame Street is like a big family where everyone helps one another to educate and entertain children. You will not only get the inside scoop on the puppets in this documentary, but you will also enjoy learning about Caroll Spinney, members of the Sesame Street team

The Librarian: Quest for the Spear is the story of a professional student who gets pushed out into the real world (finally, at the age of 30) to find that not everything is as it seems and magic is real. He is hired by "the library," an age-old institution that traps magical artifacts and prevents them from falling into the wrong hands. This particular mission is to find a magical biblical spear, whose parts are scattered around the globe, and which is also hunted by a mysterious nefarious group, the Serpent Brotherhood. Flynn is aided by his guardian, a woman skilled in martial arts but who

Photojournalist  Sebastiao Salgado is known for his pictures of less developed countries, most specifically of regions swept into economic forces unleashed upon them by Western industry. Some of his photos, while technically stunning, depict humanities worst atrocities – forced exile, exploitation, extermination. 

Here he is presented by legendary filmmaker Wim Wenders, also an accomplished photographer. Salgado responds to Wenders’ questions with answers that reveal the strain of seeing humanity at its worst. By extension, we are similarly affected. The Salt of the Earth is the kind of film

Cloud Atlas is a movie that, for me, gets better with every watching. Fortunately, I had been forewarned that it is confusing; otherwise I might have turned it off after the first few minutes. While I got the gist of the plot with the first viewing – several lives interweaving and affecting each other through time – with each subsequent viewing I was able to catch more detail and see layers I had missed before.

A number of themes are explored: human nature, freedom, relationships and how they affect us, past lives, fate, the future. Perhaps the most compelling, and confusing, aspect of the

I have long admired climbers for their singleness of purpose and puzzling assessment of risk. Dwindling food reserves. Lack of oxygen. Numb toes. Incoming avalanche. Keep climbing!

Offering a first ascent, Mount Meru attracts climbers with an insatiable hunger to test their mettle. I was expecting to witness an arrogant expedition. What I saw instead was less a story about adversity and triumph than one about the relationships between climbers. Meru poignantly captures the subtleties of human interaction when partners experience the unfortunate – keeping in mind these folks court misfortune.

This movie is crazysauce, that’s all I can say. Crazysauce poured over an amazing sci-fi spectacular with a generous dose of cheese and a side of over-the-top drama, and those with a healthy sense of the ridiculous will eat it up with glee. If you are not a fan of campy fun, it may not be your cuppa. But if you enjoy stylish space opera with a capital O, cult classics like Labyrinth and Dune, or fangirl over broody heroes, this movie will be your catnip. The Wachowski siblings have created a true extravaganza of beautifully designed worlds, costumes, aliens, human hybrid breeds, gadgets and

Will Smith is Dr. Bennet Omalu, a pathologist working in a Pittsburgh hospital. When an NFL Hall of Famer shows up dead, Omalu notices something strange about the way he died. After asking for samples of his brain, Omalu discovers something he names CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). When more football players end up taking their lives after experiencing similar symptoms, he goes to the NFL with this information. They not only ignore him, but try to discredit him.

Concussion is extraordinarily well done, factual without being sensational, and places before the public a very serious

This is a very interesting, hard-to-pin-down film. It's a Persian-language, American-produced and filmed, black-and-white vampire flick. The title itself, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, invokes our culturally-ingrained sense of danger at the concept of a woman being alone on the streets after dark. In this instance, since she's a vampire, it's the nameless girl of the title who is the danger lurking in the shadows. Again defying expectations, far from being a source of evil, it seems as though the girl is the ethical force in her chaotic and amoral surroundings. She warns a young boy to

Endgame, with Rico Rodriquez from Modern Family, is a make-you-feel-good movie inspired by true events. This independent film was shot in only nineteen days, and the children could work, at most, six hours per day. Other actors include Efron Ramiez, who played Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite, and Jon Greis, also from Napoleon Dynamite.

Jose, played by Rico Rodriquez, has a knack for chess, having played with his grandmother since he was five years old. Jose’s older brother, Miguel, is just as good at soccer as Jose is at chess, but their mother, Karla, only acknowledges Miguel’s abilities. Miguel

For those of us ready for autumn, cool weather and Halloween, The Monster Squad, released by Tri Star Pictures in August of 1987, is for you.

It's less a Stephen King horror story, and more like Scooby Doo. With a splash of cult classic, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A club of preteens, lead by Sean, meet in - what else? - a tree house in his back yard with Sean's five year old sister Pheobe tagging along. Sean's mother finds a book at an estate sale written in German and signed by Abraham Van Helsing (famous vampire hunter) and buys it for Sean. He and the group take it to the scary German

A camera looks up at the sky as seagulls follow a fishing boat for the detritus left behind. Then the image topples. Birds are upside down, the water rushing above them. None of this is unusual within the context of Leviathan, which says a lot about how well the filmmakers prepare us to see the world reversed.

Leviathan was made at the sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, and its filmmakers, Lucien Castain-Taylor and Verena Paravel, both have backgrounds in art and photography. Coming at filmmaking with an arts outlook, they’re inclined to veer away from the mainstream and push the

Paul de Marseul is the head of an esteemed family-owned winery in Saint-Emilion, France. He is an extremely overbearing father to his son Martin, who everyone assumes will take over the business one day from his father. But of course things get really interesting when the son of his estate manager returns the golden boy from his time in the Napa Valley.

From award-winning director Gilles Legrand, You Will Be My Son is a very emotionally charged and sympathetic film, with amazingly beautiful scenery of the Bordeaux region of France. The film stars French actor, Niels Arestrup (War Horse, Sarah

Rockumentaries can be pretentious, but not this one. The first thing you’ll discover in Andrew Horn’s documentary We are Twisted ­­­­­­­­F***ing Sister is that the band members are great guys: hardworking, kind, mostly sober. They’re also good storytellers. Who among us wouldn’t be charmed to hear how Dee Snider discovered the perfect garish shade of red lipstick, or how guitarist Jay Jay French and the rest of the band politely asked Dee’s wife, Suzette, to make them stretchy girly glam costumes? 

The film covers the band's early years when Twisted Sister worked a suburban bar circuit in

Deadpool finally gets his due. A far cry from his last portrayal in the dreadfully off-mark X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this Deadpool is the "Merc with a Mouth."

For those unfamiliar with Deadpool, this is the story of a mercenary, Wade Wilson, who falls in love, is diagnosed with cancer, and goes off the deep end, not necessarily in that order. When his experimental "cure" leaves him looking like leftover roadkill he goes hunting for the man responsible with gleeful enthusiasm and a lot of murder.

For those familiar with Deadpool, there's a lot of little details that aren't accurate (it's not

Johann is a guard at the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna, where he meets Anne, a Canadian visiting the city. A friendship develops that is intimate though not amorous; the absence of passion allows the film to forage for unique material. Museum Hours wanders, both in conversation and through Vienna, but is in no way adrift. Every image is anchored with importance, from trash on the corner to the Bruegels inside the museum, as the friends each discover the other through the lens of looking.  They’re neither quick nor clever, but their powers of observation are tremendous, and they’re

Sunshine Superman tells the story of Carl Boenish, an intrepid explorer pushing the limits of physical experience, and an inventive cinematographer of that boundary’s edge. He was a skydiver, whose footage from the 70s and 80s shows people seemingly capable of the ultimate assault on reality. They could fly. 

Lest we think Boenish jumps out of airplanes and off of buildings for the dopamine alone, documentarian Marah Strauch looks at the motives behind his love of jumping. She shows us interviews, offers reenactments, discusses what it means to goad gravity, and delicately handles two aspects