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• Title: Mass
• IMDb: link

Written and directed by Fran Kranz, Mass offers an intimate setting to delve into two families’ pain. Six years after a school shooting, the parents of two children involved agree to meet in the basement of a local church. On one side we have Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the parents of one of the victims and on the other Reed Birney and Ann Dowd as the parents of the shooter who also took his own life. Both couples are still wracked with pain and seeking answers to a brutal event that changed both families forever.

Mass is a film designed to put its four characters, and the audience, through the wringer as both sides work through their pain attempting to make sense of a senseless crime as the family of the victim and that of the perpetrator discover a shared pain.

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• Title: The Nowhere Inn
• IMDb: link

The Nowhere Inn has one of my favorite opening scenes of the year as American musician Annie “St. Vincent” Clark, playing herself, is being driven by a confused limousine driver (Ezra Buzzington) with no idea who his latest passenger is, or why she’s famous, only to stop in the middle of a desolate highway and disappear. Seeds of the larger themes of the film are planted here, even if it never reaches the same heights.

The film’s plot involves Annie hiring her friend Carrie, also playing herself, to make a documentary about the band which the pair hope will help both of them reach wider audiences. What Carrie soon discovers, however, is life on the road isn’t all that interesting off-stage for the band. Carrie’s attempts to find an interesting hook for the story and Annie drastically changing her behavior slowly devolve into a situation where neither Carrie nor Annie can differentiate what is actually real.

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