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7 Women and a Murder (2021)
Filmmaker(s): Alessandro Genovesi

When the family patriarch is murdered, seven women find themselves trapped together in his mansion to solve the mystery.

Minivan to Chucky’s is a play that has been made into a movie a few times. I saw this Italian version dubbed into fairly good English. Its appeal is supposedly in the characters, and the economy of production. I’ll let others judge whether the interaction...


Published October 22, 2024
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Nimona (2023)
A new hero takes shape.
Filmmaker(s): Troy Quane, Nick Bruno

A knight framed for a tragic crime teams with a scrappy, shape-shifting teen to prove his innocence.

Your Local Manager came to this with kids, not knowing anything. The story is ordinary, with features borrowed from a familiar bucket. But it had energy, massive energy in more than one dimension. The title character, the city backgrounds, and most particularly the camera —...


Published October 19, 2024
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Wolfs (2024)
They're not partners. They're not friends. They're wolfs.
Filmmaker(s): Jon Watts

Hired to cover up a high-profile crime, a fixer soon finds his night spiralling out of control when he's forced to work with an unexpected counterpart.

Sundance Sundown of the advantages of age is that I’ve seen older films when they were new. If you consider film viewing as at least a craft — as I do — then it matters that you are able to bring the personal anchoring of...


Published September 29, 2024
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Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Did she do it?
Filmmaker(s): Justine Triet

A woman is suspected of her husband's murder, and their blind son faces a moral dilemma as the sole witness.

Pairy Maison framing here is a courtroom drama, very simple and straightforward. A process that is (mostly) inhuman with a prosecutor we want to hate. We never discover what actually happened, and the craft here is in taking a simple ambiguity — did this woman...


Published September 20, 2024
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Quantum Cowboys (2022)
Observation always affects the outcome.
Filmmaker(s): Geoff Marslett

Two hapless drifters, Frank and Bruno, team up with Linde to recover her land and trek across 1870's Southern Arizona to find an elusive frontier musician. The complex quantum time theory is blended with philosophical musings about art as the way we understand our history and memories, with gunfights, horses, dance halls, cacti, and saloons!

Overlapping Takes a bit of a philosophical stew but with naive ingredients. I don’t know how many movies we’ll get with this notion of parallel universes, each of which are occupied, or can be. But set that aside and accept it as a useful trope. In...


Published September 19, 2024
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The Wild Robot (2024)
Filmmaker(s): Chris Sanders

After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

Programmed the front I have to say that both the adults were affected, cried, emoted. This is a Mommy story in a sea of Daddy stories, especially animated ‘family’ fare. It pulled on some formulaic strings, enough for me to say that this knows the...


Published September 15, 2024
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Twisters (2024)
Chase. Ride. Survive.
Filmmaker(s): Lee Isaac Chung

As storm season intensifies, the paths of former storm chaser Kate Carter and reckless social-media superstar Tyler Owens collide when terrifying phenomena never seen before are unleashed. The pair and their competing teams find themselves squarely in the paths of multiple storm systems converging over central Oklahoma in the fight of their lives.

Surrey with the Fringe on Top might be enough to build a movie around special effects that don’t involve a fight or monsters. These usually fall into the catastrophe category. The key to that category it seems, is the noir necessity that the catastrophe happens...


Published August 25, 2024
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The Instigators (2024)
Worst. Heist. Ever.
Filmmaker(s): Doug Liman

Rory and Cobby are unlikely partners thrown together for a heist. But when it goes awry, they team up to outrun police, backward bureaucrats, and a vengeful crime boss.

Boston Underachievers what I think happened. These sorts of films are all about the characters, and some substantial part of that is either the skill of the actor, or whether the actor is more or less like the character. Willis, McQueen, Newman, Bogart, Wayne for...


Published August 15, 2024
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The Magic Flute (2022)
Believe in the magic of music.
Filmmaker(s): Florian Sigl

A seventeen year old travels from London to the Austrian Alps to attend the legendary Mozart boarding school. There, he discovers a centuries-old forgotten passageway into the fantastic world of Mozart's "The Magic Flute".

Peril at Vienna End found everything about this a failure. There’s a lot swirling around. An entire opera more or less. A parallel world with a portal where some shared challenges are met, but it is unclear what those challenges are. Confidence? We end up with...


Published July 21, 2024
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Pitch Perfect (2012)
Get pitch slapped.
Filmmaker(s): Jason Moore

College student Beca knows she does not want to be part of a clique, but that's exactly where she finds herself after arriving at her new school. Thrust in among mean gals, nice gals and just plain weird gals, Beca finds that the only thing they have in common is how well they sing together. She takes the women of the group out of their comfort zone of traditional arrangements and into a world of amazing harmonic combinations in a fight to the top of college music competitions.

Packaged Energy recall watching ‘Fame’ when it came out. It surely was not the first film that was a performance about a performance with a personal quest overlain. But it was the first in my film life. There have since been hundreds of these where...


Published July 6, 2024
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