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A Call to Spy

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  • Title: A Call to Spy
  • IMDb: link

A Call to Spy movie reviewSet during WWII, Stana Katic stars as Vera Atkins charged with finding and recruiting women to be spies for the Special Operations Executive in order to obtain vital information in Nazi-controlled Europe. Trained in sabotage and subversion, the SOE’s agents are sent in to build spy networks and relay information back about the enemy.

Based on true events, A Call to Spy focuses on two of Vera’s recruits Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas), who would become known to the Germans as “the most dangerous of all Allied spies,” and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) who became the first female wireless operator sent into occupied France.

A Call to Spy is an old school spy thriller about normal people standing up to do the extraordinary when called upon to serve a country that doesn’t value them as much as it should. Director Lydia Dean Pilcher and screenwriter Sarah Megan Thomas not only shed light on the women’s accomplishments but also highlight the sexism and racism they fought both abroad and at home by those questioning their loyalty and usefulness as part of the war effort.

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Black Beauty

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  • Title: Black Beauty (2020)
  • IMDb: link

Black Beauty movie reviewAnna Sewell‘s Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions, the Autobiography of a Horse has been adapted a dozen or so times over the past one-hundred years to both television and film. Disney+’s new version centers mostly on the relationship between the wild mustang (voiced by Kate Winslet) and an orphaned teenager named Jo (Mackenzie Foy) who bond at her uncle’s (Iain Glen) horse sanctuary following the death of Jo’s parents.

Recasting Beauty as a mare rather than stallion allows for writer/director Ashley Avis to reframe the story, in part, as female empowerment (with a bit of class struggle thrown in for good measure). It also, not so subtly, highlights the comparisons between Jo and Beauty who create a lasting bond that continues long after they are separated. The script highlights the themes of animal cruelty from the book as the script touches on Beauty’s later owners, a ranger (Hakeem Kae-Kazim), a farmer (Jacques Wuister), a carriage driver (Greg Parves), and finally an unscrupulous carriage business owner (Deon Lotz) who treat Beauty with varying levels of care before the horse comes back into possession of Jo at the end of the film.

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The Personal History of David Copperfield

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  • Title: The Personal History of David Copperfield
  • IMDb: link

The Personal History of David Copperfield movie reviewDirector Armando Iannucci‘s The Personal History of David Copperfield is a light and breezy affair filled with familiar faces like Peter Capaldi, Gwendoline Christie. and Hugh Laurie. The film takes a more theatrical stage view than Hollywood approach to casting the project, ignoring any racial overtones and simply casting the best actor available for any particular role (such as throwing together Benedict Wong and Rosalind Eleazar as father and daughter). While initially appearing odd on-screen, the color-blind approach turns out to be quite freeing to both the film and its actors.

Dev Patel stars as Charles Dickens‘s David Copperfield (from the novel of the same name). We’re introduced to young David (Jairaj Varsani) who is yanked from his idyllic childhood to London after his widowed mother (Morfydd Clark) marries the villainous Murdstone (Darren Boyd). The dastardly devil is only missing a moustache to twirl to make his effect complete. Putting David to work in one of his factories, that is where he remains until his mother’s death when he escapes and strives to find a new life for himself as a gentleman.

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Zappa

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  • Title: Zappa
  • IMDb: link

Zappa movie reviewAlex Winter (Bill of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure fame) helms the new documentary on musician Frank Zappa. The aptly titled Zappa is most notable for Winter’s level of access to Zappa’s extensive vaults of video and musical recordings (he apparently recorded everything) along with interviews from those who knew him best. A mix of celebration of a genius and portrait of a self-indulgent individual catered to by a small but fiercely supporting base, Zappa explores the musician’s driving force to translate and recreate the music heard in his mind into reality.

What Winter delivers is an unapologetic portrait of a man who would likely have been interesting to meet but impossible to live with. While Zappa loved his wife and children, the documentary shows a man who didn’t necessarily believe in the idea of friendship while being largely obsessed in using people to manifest his own dreams into existence. The documentary also touches on Zappa’s experimental style, his celebrity within the music business, his aversion to making hit records, working as an ambassador for Czechoslovakia, and his growing role against censorship of music.

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Franklin & Bash – The Complete Series

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  • Title: Franklin & Bash – The Complete Series
  • wiki: link

Franklin & Bash - The Complete Series DVD reviewFor four seasons Jared Franklin (Breckin Meyer) and Peter Bash (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) starred as best friends in this legal comedy focused on the unorthodox duo going to work for a large firm while still keeping true to their own madcap version of practicing law.

The box set includes all forty episodes from the show’s four seasons. Highlights include the pair using puppets and strippers to win a case, bringing a wrongful death suit against the real estate company for killing their client, a bet with Rachel (Heather Locklear) over whose case will garner the most media attention, brining a large stuffed grizzly bear into court, defending Peter’s mother (Jane Seymour) from charges of prostitution, and Jared given 50 hours of community service in small claims court.

Reed Diamond, Dana Davis, Malcolm McDowell, Kumail Nanjiani, and Garcelle Beauvais round out the core cast with the likes of Claire Coffee, Nicky Whelan, Seymour, Beau Bridges, and Alexandra Holden given recurring roles.

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