Month: August 2025
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The Ballad of Wallis Island, a quiet gem
The Ballad of Wallis Island is a charming and funny tale about learning to live with lost love. It’s about a lonely man who lives on an island and what he decides to do with his large haul of lottery winnings.
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On Swift Horses, love or something like it in the 1950s
On Swift Horses is a character study set in the sexually repressed 1950s. This atmospheric drama deals with Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a woman who struggled to figure out where she belonged, and two brothers just back from serving in Korea. There are some spoilers in this review.
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The Amateur is out for revenge
The Amateur stars Rami Malek as a CIA computer coder named Heller who sets out on a revenge quest. It’s a hero’s journey for nerdy, smart guys. When his wife (Rachel Brosnahan) is caught up and killed in a terrorist attack at London’s Heathrow airport, he uses all his CIA resources to track down the…
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Pernille, season 1 review of this charming comedy
Pernille (Pørni) boasts five seasons, but I’ve only seen one so far. (I intend to watch them all!) The six short episodes in season 1 of this Norwegian series introduce us to the characters and set the stage for the kind-hearted and charming Pernille to win our hearts.
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Night Always Comes with an outstanding Vanessa Kirby
Night Always Comes is worth seeing. Not because it’s a good movie – it’s barely average – but because Vanessa Kirby gives a jaw dropping performance as a woman trying to save her family from being evicted from their home.
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Hostage, political drama with great stars
Hostage is a political drama in which Suranne Jones plays the British Prime Minister and Julie Delpy plays the President of France. I don’t know about you, but I’m already sold on this series knowing only that.
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Feel the Beat, a feel-good dance movie
Feel the Beat is one of those plots where a girl who dreamed of making it in the big city suffers a crushing defeat and has to return home where she discovers her true purpose in life. You’ve seen the same plot a million times before, but like a million romcoms, this plot always leaves…
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Butterfly, a fast-action thriller
Butterfly features Daniel Dae Kim, Reina Hardesty, and Piper Perabo in an action thriller full of spies and danger. It’s based on the Boom! Studios graphic novel by Arash Amel. For a series of this type it actually has a coherent plot that makes sense of all the violence and fight scenes. It throws in…
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Smoke, a firebug mystery series
Smoke was always interesting. Slow in some places, exciting in others. It was part mystery and part character study. Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett starred as an arson investigator and a cop assigned to work with him. This review does not contain major spoilers.