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Spies Like Us

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  • Title: Spies Like Us
  • IMDb: link

Released 40 years ago, Spies Like Us stars Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as a pair of governmental screw-ups turned would-be spies. Needing decoys for a top secret project, the Defense Intelligence Agency rush the pair through training and thrown into the field with the belief that they will take focus off the real team deployed into the Soviet Union (with the mission to fire a ICBM at the United States). Of course the running gag of the movie is that the pair manage to somehow keep getting out of trouble and by the end the fate of the entire world will rest in their hands.

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The Aristocats

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  • Title: The Aristocats
  • IMDb: link

Originally released in 1970, I first saw The Aristocats during one of its re-releases in theaters. The last film to be personally approved by Walt Disney, the last film to be released during co-founder Roy O. Disney‘s tenure as CEO, and notably worked on by five of Disney’s core animators, the film is an interesting mix of classic Disney animation with splashes of French styling and jazz thrown into the mix as well. Much like Disney’s next feature Robin Hood, released three years later, you can feel a change in the studio’s continued direction away (at least temporarily) from the classic princess films that built so much of the magic kingdom.

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The Thursday Murder Club

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  • Title: The Thursday Murder Club
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from the novel of the same name, The Thursday Murder Club is more notable for its setting (an outrageously opulent retirement home) and for its cast than its mystery. Through newcomer Joyce (Celia Imrie) we’re introduced to Cooper Chase and a group of retirees who spend their time solving old cold cases. Calling themselves the Thursday Murder Club, Joyce is invited to join Elizabeth (Helen Mirren), Ron (Pierce Brosnan), and Ibraim (Ben Kingsley) first offering her medical expertise on the group’s latest unsolved case and later the current death of the property manager which, thanks to coincidence of the most outlandish degree, will be linked together before all is said and done. 

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The Pickup

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  • Title: The Pickup
  • IMDb: link

I love of a good heist movie. The Pickup is not a good heist movie. It’s generous to call The Pickup a film at all. The braindead comedy features Eddie Murphy and Pete Davidson as armored car guards who get targeted in convoluted scheme by a beautiful young woman (Keke Palmer) with a sob story and a pair of goons (Jack Kesy and Ismael Cruz Cordova). There’s almost nothing believable about the script by Kevin Burrows and Matt Mider and less likable about the movie. 

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The Rundown

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  • Title: The Rundown
  • IMDb: link

Following his appearance in The Mummy Returns and The Scorpion King, in 2003 Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson began a series of middling to fair action flicks (most of which are easily forgettable, although The Rundown is one of the better ones). The Rock stars as Beck, a retrieval specialist working off his debt to Billy Walker (William Lucking) who offers to cancel Beck’s debt if he retrieves Walker’s loudmouth son Travis (Seann William Scott in the kind of role Ryan Reynolds would corner the market on by the end of the decade) from the Amazon where he’s searching for treasure.

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