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Hidden Gem – Playing by Heart

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  • Title: Playing by Heart
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“Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.”

Playing by Heart

Released in 1998, Playing by Heart follows the formula of several romantic dramedies (Love Actually being the best) which feature interlocking stories of couples in various states of their respective relationships. Written and directed by Willard Carroll, the film is notable for it’s impressive ensemble cast as well as a pair of the six stories which slowly come together during the film’s final act.

My favorite of the group features Angelina Jolie, as the beautiful but high-maintenance Joan, and Ryan Phillippe as the aloof young man with a dark secret who seems immune to her obvious charms. Also worthy of note are Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands as an elderly couple dealing with both the looming specter a life-threatening medical condition and a long-simmering old argument as the pair prepare to renew their vows on their 40th wedding anniversary.

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WWE Superstar is one of Canada’s fiercest Bounty Hunters

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  • Title: Bounty Hunters
  • IMDB: link

bounty-hunters-dvdOriginally entitled Bail Enforcers, the low budget Canadian action film stars former WWE wrestler Trish Stratus as Jules, a bounty hunter who works part-time at a strip club (I swear I’m not making this up). We meet Jules dressed in a school girl costume in the middle of a Mexican stand-off as the movie opens.

Things go downhill from there as we flashback to the events that led Jules, her partner (Boomer Phillips), and her boss (Frank J. Zupancic) to let one bounty (Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll) go free in order to stare down a gangster (Joe Rafla) who offers the team $1,000,000 to buy the group’s latest prisoner, a mob informant (Enrico DiFede) with a $100,000 bounty on his head.

The film’s story hinges on a dilemma that isn’t really even made as the group has a falling out during the hand-off and spends most of the movie trying to figure out what to do after pissing off a mobster with psychotic killers (Andrea James Lui, Christian Bako, Richard Ha) in his employ.

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Zero Dark Thirty

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  • Title: Zero Dark Thirty
  • IMDB: link

Zero Dark ThirtyDirector Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Marc Boal‘s examination of one woman’s 10 year odyssey to track down Osama bin Laden is an amazing piece of filmmaking that earned the top spot on my list of the Best Movies of 2012. Jessica Chastain stars as the increasingly obsessed CIA agent who isn’t lacking in self-confidence or knowledge but could use better people skills. Plucked from high school after 9/11 the movie follows Maya’s mission to find the illusive courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti (Tushaar Mehra) who she is certain will lead back to bin Laden.

Bigelow delivers a hard look at the successes and failures of the operation which finally bore fruit thanks to Maya’s (Chastian) dogged determinism. The movie doesn’t shy away from controversial issues such using torture to extract information, but it neither endorses or condemns the methods used over the decade long search for the man responsible for the attacks on 9/11.

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Ripper Street – Series One

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  • Title: Ripper Street – Series One
  • tv.com: link

Ripper Street - Series OneSet in Whitechapel during the late 19th Century, only months after the last of the Jack the Ripper killings, Ripper Street stars Matthew Mcfayden as Detective Inspector Edmund Reid of Whitechapel H Division. After failing to catch Jack, and fearing his eventual return, H Division is responsible for 1.25 square miles of East London filled mostly the poor and homeless.

Assisting Reid in his work are the tough as nails Detective Sergeant Bennett Drake (Jerome Flynn) and surgeon and former Pinkerton Agent Captain Horner Jackson (Adam Rothenberg) who makes his home in a local brothel and whose past is shrouded in dark secrets.

Subplots of the first season include Jackson and house madam Long Susan (MyAnna Buring) fearing their past will catch up with them, Reid’s estranged relationship with his wife (Amanda Hale), various trouble inside the brothel, and Drake falling in love with one of Long Susan’s whores (Charlene McKenna).

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Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman

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  • Title: Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman
  • IMDB: link

Batman: Mystery of the BatwomanBatman: Mystery of the Batwoman was the third and final straight-to-DVD animated film put out by Warner Bros. Animation following the cancellation of Batman: The Animated Series (Mask of the Phantasm doesn’t fit into this group as it was made a decade earlier and saw a limited theatrical release). The movie keeps the Bruce Timm style of the series as well as most of the show’s regular voice cast including Kevin Conroy returning as the voice of Batman.

The show returns familiar villains the Penguin (David Ogden Stiers) and Rupert Thorne (John Vernon) as well as introducing mid-level gangster Carlton Duquesne (Kevin Michael Richardson) and his impetuous daughter Kathy (Kimberly Brooks), who acts as Bruce Wayne’s love interest for the movie. The movie also introduces a new version of Batwoman (Kyra Sedgwick) who uses lethal force to stop Penguin and Thorne’s illegal arm sales leading her into confrontation with Batman.

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