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Review: Magpie

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Official synopsis:  A couple, Annette and Ben (Daisy Ridley and Shazad Latif) find their lives turned upside-down when their daughter (Hiba Ahmed) is cast alongside a controversial major star. (Matilda Lutz) I find it amusing that in a film where a couple is having issues and actively working against each other would have parts of the actual film doing the same thing. On one hand, you have the actors giving very committed, nuanced performances. Especially Ridley. She's stoic yet overwhelmed and you want to scream at Ben through the screen to just HELP her. (Putting a pillow over his head and ignoring the crying baby in the middle of the night? Unforgiveable.) Then on the other hand, you have the composer who wrote a score that is trying its hardest to make this into a corny Lifetime thriller. It reminded me a lot of May December , which is also a good film with a terrible score. It just doesn't fit. It's so over the top and ridiculous.  Magpie might be a hard sell at first...
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Review: Knock Out Blonde: The Kellie Maloney Story

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Official synopsis:  The authorized documentary of Kellie Maloney, the famous British transgender boxing manager. This unique film will explore Kellie's story of truth and denial, as she confronted uncertainty and ultimately accepted herself for who she was. Full disclosure, I did not know who Kellie Maloney was before watching this film. I don't watch boxing, where she had a successful career when she was presenting as Frank Maloney. I don't watch Celebrity Big Brother, which she appeared on as well. This was my introduction to Kellie, and I'm glad to have "met" her.  It's beautiful when someone can finally feel like they can be themselves wholly. Kellie transitioned "late" in life, but it's never too late. The doc is very balanced with showing Kellie's early career. Her ex-wife, Tracey and daughters all get a say - and are very frank (no pun intended) that things were messy when Kellie came out and she and Tracey separated. Thankfully, a...
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TV Review: Andor Season 2

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It's hard to believe I was once one of those people who thought "Do we really need an Andor series?" when it was first announced. I hate my words after the first season, now even more after the second and final season. Andor is one of the best things Star Wars has ever put out. Now that it has come to an end, here is what I liked and disliked about season 2. Don't worry, I didn't dislike much. LIKES * Showing how every day people fight fascism. Star Wars has always been good vs evil but it's often framed through the Jedi fighting the Empire. Andor is a series that rarely even mentions the Force, and there's no Jedi to be found. Everyone is a regular person trying to fight oppression. I love how Andor was able to showcase this.  * The Ghorman Massacre was just as awful as I expected, but mirroring them after the French during WWII was pretty genius on the creators' parts. Ghorman is something that's been mentioned in other Star Wars shows, particul...
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Review: Love Me

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  Official synopsis: A post-apocalyptic romance in which a buoy (Kristen Stewart) and a satellite (Steven Yeun) meet online and fall in love after the end of human civilization.  "Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun in a sci-fi movie" is all you need to say to sell me. I especially loved the weird approach this takes, with them voicing a buoy and a satellite respectively. That is, I loved it for the first 15 minutes. Sometimes feature length films work better as shorts and Love Me is absolutely that kind of film. It takes far too long to get going and spends most of its run time hiding its gorgeous leads behind goofy looking animation. In fact, the film is kind of a mash up of animation, CGI, and live action. It's visually pretty ugly to look at most of the time. This is something the film likely could've gotten away with had its runtime been 25 minutes, but at 90 it just got frustrating.  Stewart and Yeun do give good voice performances and the little time we see them o...
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Review: The Room Next Door

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Official synopsis:  Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton) were close friends in their youth, when they worked together at the same magazine. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation. Director Pedro Almodóvar's first feature length film in English came and went without a lot of fanfare. Until I saw it as an option to watch on my recent flight, I had completely forgotten it had been released already.  Not only was this a surprise reminder, but it completely blew me away. I love this film, and I think I told every single one of my coworkers that they NEED to watch it on their flights home. This story is about death. About fearing it and accepting it, but it's also about friendship and how strong those bonds can be, even when you spent time apart and it was just so easy for me to fall in love with Ingrid and Martha. While there are some awkward moments between them, most of their time together is just so achin...
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Review: Thunderbolts*

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Official synopsis : After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must embark on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts. Thunderbolts is the Marvel film I've been anticipating the most post Endgame. (While I enjoyed Black Panther 2 , part of me still dreaded having to face that film without Chadwick Boseman) I had high hopes, and I was not disappointed. If anything, I was surprised at just what kind of film this ended up being. You see, I expected this to lean goofy. More Guardians than Avengers, and while there were some great laughs, mostly thanks to David Harbour's hilarious Red Guardian, I was not prepared for how this film would tackle mental illness. We all know Yelena (Florence Pugh) is suffering after Natasha's death, but we haven't really seen her address her feelings, and once she and her rag tag team meet Bob (Lewis Pullman) they are all faced with some pretty emotio...
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Series Review: Black Mirror Season 7

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If you've been reading here for a while, you probably already know how highly I regard Black Mirror. It's one of my favorite shows ever, it showed up a LOT during my Thursday Movie Picks run and a few years ago I ranked all the Netflix shows I had seen, and it was the easy #1. It's not always a perfect show. Anthologies rarely are, but even when I dislike an episode, I'm always going to watch whatever comes next. With the 7th season currently available to stream, here are my quick thoughts on each episode in the order I watched them U.S.S Callister - Into Infinity - I started out with the direct sequel to season 4's best episode The U.S.S Callister. I thought this was a solid start, it was definitely missing Michaela Coel big time, but Cristin Milioti is such a star. I think it took the logical next step for that story. Common People - This episode was absolute nightmare fuel and that's honestly Black Mirror when its at its best. When they started explaining the...
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