Drama

One Battle After Another

  • Title: One Battle After Another
  • IMDb: link

Strongly inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland, which Paul Thomas Anderson has been attempting to adapt, on and off, for more than two decades, One Battle After Another tackles a litany of themes including revolution, government corruption, interracial couples and racism, and the generational divide between a father and a daughter.

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Eleanor The Great

  • Title: Eleanor The Great
  • IMDb: link

Eleanor The Great is a story about love, loss, the lies we tell others, and the lies we tell ourselves while struggling through grief and searching for connection and meaning in this crazy ride we call life. We first meet the goodhearted truth-bending Eleanor (June Squibb) in Florida before her return to New York, for the first time in decades, after the death of her longtime friend Bessie (Rita Zohar). Living with the daughter (Jessica Hecht) she doesn’t get along with, and struggling for connection, Eleanor walks into a room which will change her life.

Mistaken for a Holocaust survivor, Eleanor shares Bessie’s story as her own finding a new community and a new friend in a college student (Erin Kellyman) struggling with the recent death of her mother, and the growing distance with her father (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who becomes interested in sharing Eleanor’s story unaware of the lie which holds all of it together.

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All The President’s Men

  • Title: All The President’s Men
  • IMDb: link

AMC Theatres’ release of All The President’s Men in select theaters is timely not only in honoring the passing of Robert Reford but in terms of current events with a corrupt administration hiding its crimes and going on an attack against the press and the First Amendment. Released in 1976, the film follows hungry reporters Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) looking into the Watergate break-in and uncovering a story so large it would eventually lead to the resignation of Nixon a year later.

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My Mother’s Wedding

  • Title: My Mother’s Wedding
  • IMDb: link

Released without much fanfare, I can’t remember seeing a single trailer for this film (which is saying something in this day and age), the directorial debut of Kristin Scott Thomas (who also co-wrote the script) stars Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, and Emily Beecham as the grown daughters who return home for their mother’s (Kristin Scott Thomas) wedding. While all three of the daughters have their own relationship issues, Johansson gets the biggest role here that ties into both her career in the Royal Navy and memories of the pair of lost fathers the girls suffered (both who died in the line of duty when they were children) which is shown through some simple, but effective, animation. 

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Elio

  • Title: Elio
  • IMDb: link

For their latest, Pixar delivers a story about a young boy who has to be abducted by aliens to learn about friendship and family. Following the death of his parents, a lonely Elio (Yonas Kibreab) struggles to connect with his aunt (Zoe Saldaña) or make friends while becoming obsessed with the idea of alien life and traveling to the stars to escape a world where he doesn’t seem to belong. Eventually Elio gets his wish when his message to outer space is overheard and he finds himself among ambassadors of a federation of planets, so to speak, known as the Communiverse (a moniker that is as awkward spoken aloud as it looks in print).

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