It?s a story that plays out entirely on computer screens: Skype calls, Google searches, YouTube videos, and so on. Watching Searching is like looking over the shoulder of someone using their computer (but in a good way, I promise). It?s not the first time this has been done: 2015?s Unfriended told a teen paranormal-horror tale the same way. In my review of that film, I called it ?the next step in found-footage: Screengrab: The Motion Picture,? and we will surely see lots of movies made with this coudn?t-be-more-of-the-moment cinematic conceit. There have already been a few others: the rightly little-seen 2014 thriller Open Windows did something similar; and there was the appalling Unfriended sequel, Dark Web, just earlier this summer.

None of these films achieved what Searching does (not that they even tried): with smarts and warmth and enormous humanity, first-time feature director and cowriter (with Sev Ohanian) Aneesh Chaganty has crafted an ode to the new digital lives we are all leading, one that neither condemns nor celebrates but simply acknowledges and describes. There are no supernatural boogeymen here, and this isn?t a cautionary tale about the dangers of the cyber world? or at least it?s not only that. Yes, there are elements to Searching?s story that touch on real pitfalls to be encountered online, such as the intimacy that social media can offer that we don?t always or immediately recognize as false. But there are joys to be found in our new digital lives, too, as well as myriad mundanities. And ironically, and unlike can be said of most films offered up as entertainment, it is the mundanities that make Searching so special. This is ostensibly the story of how San Jose dad David (John Cho: Gemini, Star Trek Beyond) goes about investigating the disappearance of his 16-year-old daughter, Margot (Michelle La). But before we even get to that, we get a charming introduction to this little family relayed entirely through the screens that document their lives. Where once, in stories set in the 1960s or 70s or 80s, we might have been treated to Super 8 or VHS home movies, or Instamatic or Polaroid snapshots, now we see someone creating a new user, on a desktop computer running an early-2000s version of Windows, for newborn Margot. We?re seeing only the screen, remember, so the user is unseen, but we soon understand that it is either David or, later evidence will suggest, his wife, Pamela (Sara Sohn: Furious 7), Margot?s mother. All the childhood milestones of adorable little Margot (played at various younger ages by Alex Jayne Go, Megan Liu, and Kya Dawn Lau) are represented digitally, from pix on the first day of school to MP4 files of her tween piano recitals. In the mix are similar digital artifacts that clue us in to Pamela?s struggle with cancer and ? oh no ? her death a few years before now.

Then we have the ordinary interactions between David and Margot now: the texts between them that pop up on his MacBook as he sends her a photo of the kitchen garbage bin she forgot to put out again, a FaceTime call as she blows him off by hurrying into a study group. We see their relationship sketched digitally, in a way that is all too familiar to us today: with their busy lives ? his job in some kind of tech, her school and piano lessons ? it?s easy for them to not actually physically see each other for days, but they?re still in such constant contact that it doesn?t feel that way. Which is why it?s actually more than a full 24 hours before David realizes that his daughter isn?t merely out and about living her life, but that something bad has happened to her that is keeping her away from home.

Or did she run away? That?s the conclusion police detective Vick (Debra Messing: Nothing Like the Holidays, The Women) comes to after a collaboration with David that looks at Margot?s life and movements, from her classmates who call her a bit of a loner to her melancholy Instagram photos of lonely places to the remote Google Maps location where her car was last caught on CCTV. The tiny touches that Chaganty layers up aren?t just about detective work but about how we use our devices and what they say about us. There?s the Google document that David starts to keep track of what Margot? Movie Review: A Father mounts an all-out online hunt for his Daughter in ?Searching? know about the last day she was seen, which he is able to share digitally with Vick because, you know, that?s a practicality of how we do things now, and it represents concrete action that is keeping David distracted from his frantic worry. But there?s the poignant reality that David didn?t have any contact info for Margot?s friends; he has to go into his dead wife?s old computer ? running clunky old Windows, such a contrast to David?s sleek new Mac desktop! ? to find her very detailed information on, seemingly, every other child (and their parents!) that Margot ever had any connection to. It? Searching review ? a hi-tech mystery without its finger on the button of Pamela?s absence, a meta commentary on how fathers often get away with not being deeply involved in the minutiae of their own children?s lives, and a smack in the face to David, who is coming to the startling conclusion ? for other reasons, too ? that perhaps he didn?t know his daughter at all, and that this is his failing as a father.

Watch October on Prime Buy the DVD at Amazon

October is a difficult film to watch, but not for the reasons one might expect. The drama of a young woman?s life forever changed by injury is merely the backdrop for a too familiar story of an undeserving male character?s redemption.

Varun Dhawan stars as Dan, a hotel management trainee with no likeable qualities. He?s a snob who?d rather delegate work than do it himself, especially tasks he deems beneath him, like cleaning rooms and doing laundry. He?s a know-it-all who loves telling more experienced people how to do their jobs. He?s lazy, yet competitive enough to resent fellow trainees who are smarter and more capable than he is.

Among the trainees, the chief recipient of Dan?s bad attitude is Shiuli (Banita Sandhu). Whether his being a jerk to her indicates some kind of stunted elementary school-type crush or if it?s just his standard jerkiness is unclear. Shortly into the film, Shiuli slips from a third floor balcony at a New Year?s Eve party, rendering her comatose and permanently paralyzed.

Dan wasn?t at the party, so he only learns days after the accident that Shiuli?s last words before she fell were, ?Where is Dan?? This sparks an obsession, leading Dan to spend all of his time at the hospital in the hopes that Shiuli will wake and tell him why she asked about him.

That sounds like the setup for horror movie, yet we know it can?t be, because Dan fits the mold of a common type of Bollywood hero: the boorish man-child who must finally become an adult. The arc for this character type is so familiar ? in the course of falling in love with a good woman, he learns to care for someone other than himself ? that director Shoojit Sircar and writer Juhi Chaturvedi treat the hero?s emotional growth as the inevitable consequence of his devotion.

But Dan doesn?t change in October. He ends the movie as much of an obnoxious know-it-all as he is at the start, correcting Shiulu?s mother Vidya (Gitanjali Rao) on how to properly care for her daughter and wanting praise for his contributions (which include hovering over a workman building a ramp for a wheelchair).

Dan?s dedication to Shiuli?s recovery stems from his wanting an answer from her. He uses his obsession as a measure of moral superiority, criticizing her friends for not spending every free moment at the hospital. He can?t understand that they have other obligations ? to the rest of their friends and families, and even to themselves ? that they must tend to as well.

Movie Review: October (2018) ?s because Dan?s misanthropy and willingness to ignore his own family leave him with no other relationships beside the one he invents with Shiuli, and he?s willing to sacrifice everything to maintain it. He skips work, stops paying rent to his roommate, and borrows money from everyone with no way to pay it back. He?s mean to hospital staff and other visitors.

But because Dan is the protagonist, his single-mindedness is depicted as positive. The little he does for Shiuli mitigates the rest of his awful behavior. On the rare occasions that he is punished, he fails upward. The movie is determined to maintain Dan? Movie Review: October (2018) , in spite of his actions.

All of this is driven by a one-sided devotion. From all indications, Shiuli wasn?t interested in Dan romantically before her accident, and they were barely more than acquaintances. Does she like him hanging around her at all times? If not, she?s physically unable to tell him to leave. Would she want him involved in the minutiae of her healthcare, monitoring things as intimate as the amount of urine in her catheter bag?

In an interview with the Hindustan Times, Sircar said that he and Chaturvedi drew on their own experiences caring for seriously ill parents when creating October. Yet the amount of influence Dan has over Shiuli?s care feels unrealistic. Certainly Vidya knows her daughter better than Dan, thus making her a better judge of Shiuli?s wishes ? especially since Dan is neither the one being subjected to extraordinary medical interventions nor the one footing the bill for them. Vidya?s ready assent to Dan?s will reinforces how little agency female characters have in October.

In his debut feature, Ari Aster?known for shorts such as ?The Strange Thing About the Johnsons? which is watch hereditary 2018 ?graduates into a full length picture that goes beyond mere melodrama into the realm of horror. But ?Hereditary? is not a simple slasher movie like the ?Friday the 13th? series but is instead for a discerning crowd. The film will draw people who do not need to see scenes of killings, each one occurring within five minutes of the other, all the cuts edited so quickly you can barely see what?s going on. Instead Aster is fond of long takes and intense close-ups, with patient buildups heading toward the inevitably concluding mayhem which is foreshadowed in a Hebrew inscription that fortells ?pandemonium.?

While the story does not match up to the hype the film received at the Sundance Festival, its chief talking point is a stunning performance from Toni Collette in the principal role of Annie Graham, who lives in a wilderness home of undisclosed location (filmed by Powel Pogorzelski in Utah). Annie, who creates and paints miniatures, has a mild-mannered husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) who is the only normal person in the family, a teen son Peter (Alex Wolff), and Peter?s thirteen-year-old sister Charlie (Milly Shapiro). It doesn?t take long to see that something is wrong with Annie and her children, with Steve doing his best to contain the schizophrenic-type rages and impulses of the family, all of which come emerge in full bloom after the death of Annie?s mother Ellen. When Annie delivers a eulogy for her mother she appears anything but broken up, yet her miniatures depict scenes from her life as though she is intent on holding fast to her personal history.

Yet this obsession with her recent past is based not on pleasant memories of her upbringing but with a feeling she cannot shake off that something was strange about her mother, something relating perhaps to the older woman?s belonging to a cult along with Joan (Ann Dowd). John, despite her neighborliness and support for Annie, appears to have supernatural powers to communicate with the dead. As though these were not problems enough, Annie must deal with her young daughter?s antisocial behavior and strange appearance and we in the audience catch a whiff of the thirteen-year-old?s macabre activities when she slices off the head of a pigeon that had died when crashing into a building.

ThanosTV takes a grisly turn when Peter, forced to take his kid sister to a school party, must deal with a sudden medical emergency when her sister, having eaten some chocolate cake at the party, has an episode of anaphylaxis and must be rushed to a hospital. She doesn?t make it. What occurs at a series of s�ances should not be revealed but should be experienced first-hand by the audience, but don?t expect to be riveted by unbearable tensions unless you have the same outlook on this horror film as some of the attendees at Sundance.

If you go back and watch a vintage blaxploitation film like ?Super Fly? (1972), it has a time-capsule quality that only enhances the low-rent documentary scuzziness of its atmosphere. The brightly littered Manhattan streets, the cozy squalor of the bars and drug dens, even the cruddiness of the apartments: All fuse into a bombed-out yet strangely liberated mood that lets you know why the hero would choose the life of a cocaine kingpin, because it?s the only way he has to leave behind the racist prison of ?a jive job with chump change, day after day.? The atmosphere told the story, and so did Curtis Mayfield?s music (?I?m a pusher man?), and so did Ron O?Neal?s suavely furious performance. In his flattened long hair and wide collars and designer sideburns, he may have looked like a coke-spoon version of D?Artagnan, but his need to claw his way out ? to use the drug game to defeat the man ? suffused every scene.

The new ?Superfly? transplants the tale to the swank environs of contemporary upscale Atlanta, and it gives its hero the 21st-century equivalent of O?Neal?s processed-pimp look. As click here , a coke dealer who has built a business while taking great care to remain under the police radar, Trevor Jackson, from ?Eureka? and ?American Crime,? sports a jutting abundance of luxurious inky silken flat hair, marked by an elegant slice of a part, plus a highly manicured beard, a pirate earring, and a pretty-boy scowl. If George Michael and Mr. T had a baby and dressed him in the sleekest of designer leather, he might look like this guy. Jackson is only 21 (O?Neal, when he played Priest, was 34), but he beats the holy crap out of people, fires pistols with gangsta heartlessness, and at one point even dodges a bullet, never losing his cool. Jackson does cool almost too well. He isn?t a bad actor, but it?s not like he finds many gradations within a young hustler?s survivalist pout.

His Priest is controlled and invincible, a leonine street king with two girlfriends, one African-American (Lex Scott Davis) and one Latina (Andrea Londo); when he takes a shower with both of them, it?s a misty porny daydream that ends as an erotic Piet�. The hero of ?Superfly? certainly has the right to be a stud, but the difference between the two movies is that the new version, directed by the Canadian-born hip-hop video veteran Julian Christian Lutz (who bills himself as Director X, a moniker that seems caught between black nationalism and ?What?s My Line??), has no resonance, no real atmosphere, and almost no social context. Shot in a functional, slammed-together manner that?s less sensually stylish than you?d expect from a music-video auteur, the film is a competent yet glossy and hermetic street-hustle drug thriller, less a new urban myth than a lavishly concocted episode. It holds your attention yet leaves you with nothing.

Priest, whose real power is information (he?s got it on everyone), is surrounded by player-predators who are less cunning but more crudely violent than he is. In the opening sequence, set at a throbbing nightclub, he establishes his dominion by publicly humiliating a street-cred rapper who owes him money. He also has a run-in with the Snow Patrol, a rival crew of coke dealers who dress in white. They?re led by the roly-poly, hard-as-rusty-nails Q (Big Bank Black), the closest thing this movie has to an authentic hoodlum, but it?s when Priest is attacked by Q?s hothead-sociopath prot�g�, Juju (Kaalan ?KR? Walker), that he realizes the time has come for him to take the money and run. He needs one big score to do it.

To ThanosTV that score, he screws over his mentor, Scatter (Michael Kenneth Williams), the veteran dealer who discovered him on the streets. Scatter won?t give him a bigger cut of drugs to sell, so Priest, accompanied by his scampish partner, Eddie (played by the scene-stealing Jason Mitchell, who?s like Tracy Morgan?s amoral little brother), goes right over his head by driving down to Mexico and connecting with the cartel that?s the source of their product.

Priest spends the rest of the film dancing among a trio of forces who are out to put the screws on him: the cartel, led by the always lively actor Esai Morales; the thugs of Snow Patrol; and a pair of corrupt white officers, played by Brian F. Durkin and Jennifer Morrison, who shake him down for a million dollars. Within the recent wave of gender-flipped casting, it?s fascinating to see Morrison portray the sort of scum cop who is never, in the movies, a woman. She upends the stereotype by digging into the role with relish.

Most drug dramas are set in New York or L.A. (at this point, a dated cinematic reflex), but what matters is forging a vivid sense of place. The Atlanta locale of ?Superfly? seems like the perfect high-low setting, but though Director X exploits a number of colorful locations (a hair salon that turns into a drive-by slaughter, a mansion that looks as big as Versailles), the film has very little visual texture or sense of place. It treats Atlanta the way all those thrillers of the ?90s treated Toronto, as a big gleaming anonymous generi-city. We get almost no sense of the dailiness of Priest?s existence. When a scene takes place in the budget furniture store he uses as a legit front, it?s news to us, because the setting drops in out of nowhere.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women

With the popularity this summer of Wonder Woman � surely the best and most popular film adaptation of a DC Comic since The Dark Knight Rises � this would seem to be the ideal time for this origin story about the creation of the comic strip to come out.

However, if you have a young daughter who was inspired by Gal Gadot�s super-heroine and wants to learn more about the character, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women may not be the ideal choice. That is, unless you don�t mind that there is a little bisexuality and light BDSM in the mix.

Now, before you get upset � if you are the type who may do so � keep in mind that while sex is a very essential component of Professor Marston�s storyline, the movie itself is not particularly explicit. You are looking at Bettie Page-level bondage here, lots of old-fashioned lingerie and tying people up, but certainly nothing particularly hardcore.

Still, though it is based on the creation of the comic book character, Professor Marston is very definitely an adult film. Politically as well as sexually. It looks back at the 1950s comic book scare, in which the federal government held trials to censor comics of perceived sexual or devious content.

When we meet Professor William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans, who just played Gaston in the live-action version of Beauty & the Beast), he is a Harvard Psychiatry professor in the 1920s. (Fun fact: he also invented the lie detector test.)

His wife was Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall), a brilliant, progressive, sexual woman in a time when women were not supposed to be any of those things. From a line of famous feminists � her mother was birth control advocate Edith Byrne and her aunt was famous feminist Margaret Sanger � Elizabeth sees herself as an equal to her husband, and he agrees.

Professor Marston felt that eventually women would take over, and he thought that it would be a good thing. He had a very cutting-edge theory of human relationships and behavior, which he called DISC: Dominance, Inducement, Submission, and Compliance.

Into this brilliant couple�s life enters a gorgeous student named Olive (Bella Heathcote). She becomes the Professor�s teaching assistant, and eventually becomes the couple�s lover. It becomes a perfect, idealized love triangle, all three members love and are devoted to both of the others. They even start sharing a family with both women having children.

However, when their unconventional � especially for that time � relationship comes to light, the Professor�s career is ruined. When he can�t get any jobs in academia or psychiatry, and his books are no longer selling well, Marston decides to take on a pen-name and create a pulp comic book series, one which will covertly expose the masses to his beliefs about the superiority of women � as well as his interest in voyeurism and bondage.

The comic book series, the first one with a female superhero (they are still extremely rare) becomes a smash success. Everything looks good for the threesome until religious activists point out all the tying up, spanking, highly-charged imagery in the series.

At https://www.thanostv.org/movie/professor-marston-and-the-wonder-women-2017 saw, a very loud and very insistent apparent comic book fan told those around him that the storyline of Professor Marston and the Wonder Women was based on unproven facts and full of suppositions. I don�t know who that person was or what knowledge he may or may not have had on the subject, but I will acknowledge that some of the connections seem unlikely or don�t exactly make sense.

However, it was an intriguing story, and it appears to at least have had a basis in reality.

If you are looking for a fun comic book movie, full of superhero action, you are in the wrong place. Wonder Woman is very much in the background here, and while you see the genesis of some of her attributes � the golden lasso and the arm bands, for example � you do not learn much about the character, and you only see her in some early comic book art.

Still, if you�re looking for a funny and slightly scandalous bio about a love triangle with a pop culture twist, you can do a lot worse.

 Delicious Fresh Baked Cookies from David's Cookies. All different sizes and flavors!

Not even Christina Aguilera?s cameo as an obsolete robot prostitute can save Drake Doremus? inanimate story of designer dating, a high-concept, low-reward romance that hopefully completes the ?Like Crazy? filmmaker?s trilogy of lifeless movies about the near future of love.

It began with ?Equals,? a moribund Kurt Vonnegut riff about a dystopian society where emotions have been outlawed. It continued with ?Newness,? a banal vivisection of relationships in the age of Tinder. Now this informal triptych bottoms out with ?Zoe,? a humorless (and characteristically half-baked) glimpse at a tomorrow in which singles are matched together by algorithms, and the tech community has started creating androids ? Synthetics ? to satisfy people who would rather build their ideal partner from scratch.

It?s Doremus? third consecutive film to explore the folly of trying to (m)end the heartache that makes us human, his third consecutive film to waste an impressive cast on some very inert material, and his third consecutive film to feel like a bland episode of ?Black Mirror.? The best thing that can be said about ?Zoe? is that it occasionally spices things up by feeling like a bland episode of ?Westworld,? as well. In a Drake Doremus movie, that?s what passes for diversity.

Toothless but still numb from the novocaine, ?Zoe? is set in the office of a Montreal tech start-up that?s supposedly changing the world, despite the fact that the headquarters looks like a renovated Starbucks and it only seems to have three employees. One of those employees is our Zoe (L�a Seydoux), a lonely young woman who longs for a man who will never leave her. Specifically, she longs for Cole (a sleep-walking Ewan McGregor), the sad-eyed founder of the company; he and his ex-wife lost faith in their marriage after receiving a low score on his patented compatibility test. Once the idea of their love had died, their love itself wasn?t far behind. Maybe ? Zoe Movie Review & Film Summary (2018) suggests ? love is nothing more than a shared belief in its existence.

People are so finicky. But androids aim to please. Take Ash, for example. Played by a standard-issue Theo James, this humanoid hunk likes to hang around the office and crush on Zoe. He?s an impressive piece of work, far more evolved than the consumer-grade Synthetics we spy doing physical labor or working as bartenders (these primitive models are embodied by actors doing the robot and spray-painted shiny like the ?silver men? you?d find in a tourist spot). He?s even further along than the Synthetics that are used for illicit sex work, the most popular of which looks an awful lot like Christina Aguilera. The robot prostitute equivalent of a cracked a iPhone, she?s built up so much wear and tear that her ?skin? is chipping off. Eventually, Tribeca 2018: Zoe Is a Poor Story of Love, L�a Seydoux, and Sex Robots ?s forced to wander the streets in desperate search for another charge. The character is onscreen for a grand total of roughly 45 seconds, and yet there?s more detail and genuine pathos to her than in the rest of Richard Greenberg?s script combined.

But ?Zoe? would rather focus on Ash. One of the film?s worst and most under-thought scenes finds him hosting an impromptu Steve Jobs-like address where he reveals his true nature to an awed crowd at a tech conference. It?s a game-changing innovation, unveiled with all the hoopla of a schoolyard fight. Wouldn?t Cole be an Elon Musk type, and not the mopey guy in the corner of the local bar? Wouldn?t this breakthrough development generate any kind of attention?

Doremus? naturalistic, day-after-tomorrow approach might have been well-suited to such philosophical material, but it?s absolutely disastrous for a movie that boasts such an unformed vision of the future (the gauzy cinematography doesn?t help, the soft focus of John Guleserian?s searching camera only reinforcing the generic feel of every setting, character, and scene). It?s one thing to focus on the emotional dimensions of this story; it?s another to just blitz past everything else in the hopes that nobody notices the abject lack of imagination on display. The film?s world is so poorly conceived that it almost starts to resemble our own.

And it?s not as though there are any strong characters to redeem it. Spoiler alert for a movie that?s rotten from the start: As remarkable as Ash may be, he?s got nothing on Zoe herself. Revealed at the end of the first act to be the most advanced Synthetic ever designed ? a twist that?s more surprising to her than it is to us ? Zoe turns out to be a sentient prototype, a dream girl who Cole designed to desire him. And so Greenberg?s script pivots towards the wistful territory of films like ?Her,? as Tribeca 2018: Zoe Is a Poor Story of Love, L�a Seydoux, and Sex Robots and his bespoke lover embark on a whirlwind affair as they try to find a happy medium for their hybrid love. It?s all skinny-dipping and make believe until an inadvertently hilarious accident reminds Cole that he?s head over heels for a glorified Fleshlight.

?Zoe? is barely engaging when it has a discernible plot, but it becomes interminable once Cole and Zoe are sent deep into their feelings and the film drifts towards abstraction. Scenes erode into shapeless moments of longing, Doremus relies far too much on Dan Romer?s (atypically) uninspired pop drone in much the same way that many of his previous movies leaned on Dustin O?Halloran?s gorgeous piano ballads when their stories weren?t strong enough to stand on their own. The script flails for new ideas as it begins to drown, some compelling (Zoe?s final form is a trip) and others not (Doremus and Greenberg are unable to mine even a mote of drama from a drug that simulates falling in love for the first time).

Doremus appears to have a sincere concern for the intricacies of desire, and for the bittersweet nostalgia of trying to rekindle the fire that forges two people together. His films recognize that humans are a flawed design, and insist that our heartache is more of a feature than a bug. But they also hint at the quixotic nature of being alive, hinging on a belief that many of us are defined by the things we?ve lost, and are ultimately unable to restore. But if we ever truly sympathize with Doremus? nebulous characters, it?s only because they help us appreciate how painful it can be to spend so much time trying to divine meaning from utter emptiness.

?Zoe? premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Amazon will release it later this year.

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Francisca's mother (Diana Agostini) used to be a surgeon in Portugal, or so she used to tell her daughter, with a specialisation in eyes, and to pass the time on their farm she would describe to the little girl (Olivia Bond) in detail precisely how to carry out operations, just in case that information should come in useful and besides, it keeps the child enthralled where she receives no other human interaction other than that of her father (Paul Nazak). However, one day somebody did show up; she and her mother believed Charlie (Will Brill) was a salesman, and he was carrying what looked like merchandise, but he claimed not to be selling anything and merely asked to use the bathroom. Her mother's big mistake was letting him into the house... If there was any indie horror movie that arrived with more hype than the others in 2016, it was The Eyes of My Mother, proof that the independent market for chillers was taking a lot more chances than anything in the mainstream. However, and this had become extremely predictable ever since The Blair Witch Project rewrote the rulebook for twenty-first century horror, for every viewer praising this to the high heavens, there was another, equal and opposite viewer accusing it of being a waste of their time and nothing like what they wanted in a shocker. Not that this example was going to be as influential as the Blair Witch, it was far too arty for that, but like that it was not sticking to the conventional. Therefore we didn't have jump scares, nor did we have the red of gore since the entire cinematography was rendered in gleaming black and white, though there were nasty scenes as characters were subjected to all sorts of tortuous indignities, and there was no music on the soundtrack other than what Francisca (played as an adult by the intriguing Kika Magalhaes) put onto her record player, mostly lachrymose Portuguese tunes of a far earlier vintage (though the precise time frame of the action was not quite able to be pinned down). https://www.thanostv.org/movie/the-eyes-of-my-mother-2016 and director Nicolas Pesce, here making his debut, was not about to deliver much of what audiences had seen before, which in this case was taking the creepy girl of many a horror and making her the heroine. You could see elements of Lucky McKee's May here, except this was far more serious and sombre in mood, not one laugh in it, but they did share a protagonist defined by one overpowering emotion: loneliness. Francisca tested your sympathy to the very limit with her actions, yet the way she was written and performed sensitively by Magalhaes suggested vast voids of isolation that she was unprepared for how to deal with, hence her misguided (to put it mildly) attempts to salve that ache in her soul. Her parents pass away and that leaves us in the present day, where her only friend (according to her) is Charlie, who now is kept chained up where she can pass the time feeding him and operating on him occasionally, but by this stage he has descended into insensibility - a punishment for what he does early on in the film. Francisca does make a pathetic move towards companionship when she picks up a girl in a bar (Clara Wong) and takes her home for activities even she is not sure about herself, but when the visitor is freaked out by her hostess's strangeness the encounter ends miserably, though Pesce had a habit of cutting away from the action that would be classed as horror, the attacks, basically, and leaving us seeing the aftermath. Therefore when Francisca goes even further and decides she wants to start a family of her own, the conventional route was not for her, nope, she goes ahead and kidnaps a baby to raise; the mother is even less fortunate, becoming one of the denizens of the barn. Obviously you could brand Francisca as the spiritual child of Ed Gein or cinematically, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and there was a nineteen-seventies austerity to many scenes, if through the filter of twenty-tens art movie, but the emphasis was on the supposed villainess's circumstances, as if her behaviour was more her parents' fault for being so twisted and passing that on to their offspring. As a result, this was one of the most melancholy, if revolting, of its kind, always a strange combination. THE EYES OF MY MOTHER is in UK cinemas 24th March 2017.

2015?s ?Daddy?s Home? was a pleasant surprise: some great one-liners, hilarious gags (Will Ferrell?s half court shot is a classic), and he and Mark Wahlberg were terrific together. Since sequels often underwhelm or completely fail in comparison to the original. I went into ?Daddy?s Home 2? with rather low expectations. I?d already sat through four or five different trailers over the past six months, showing (what I thought would be) practically the entire movie and the material wasn?t strong.

Well, it?s a Christmas Movie Miracle that a studio finally decided to save all the good stuff for the actual film. ?Daddy?s Home 2? is smarter and funnier than its predecessor and one of the best times I?ve had at the movies all year. Yes, it? thanostv over-the-top and often just plain ludicrous. But, bottom-line: I laughed, a lot. Credit goes to returning director Sean Anders (who also co-wrote the script) and the all-star ensemble.

Brad (Ferrell) and Dusty (Wahlberg) are still doing the ?co-dad? thing, and it?s all going pretty smoothly. That is until their own dads visit for Christmas. Brad?s father Don (played by John Lithgow) is the fun-loving Pop Pop. Dusty?s dad (who he hasn?t seen in five years) is the feisty Grandpa Kurt. Mel Gibson landed the role just after he earned a Best Director Oscar nomination for his WWII drama ?Hacksaw Ridge?. Gibson may not seem like the right fit for a holiday family comedy, but you can tell he?s having a blast and his firecracker energy is infectious.

?Daddy?s Home 2? is basically a series of vignettes involving the three blended families, all together in a vacation home, the week leading-up to Christmas. This is almost the exact same structure as the current ?A Bad Moms Christmas?. That sequel relies on being raunchy to generate laughs, lacking any level of genuine humor. ?Daddy?s Home 2? has just enough of an edge and while it does goes overboard, the writing is so much sharper. The quick, sarcastic, understated, straightforward deliveries very much present in the first ?Daddy?s Home? are even more of a gift here, as Lithgow, Gibson and John Cena (who only had a cameo last time) are right at ?home? with comic vets Ferrell and Wahlberg.

There are about two dozen separate set-ups, and most of them hit the mark. A few highlights: putting up the outdoor Christmas decorations (Ferrell gives Clark Griswold a run for his money), the kids meeting Santa, a night out bowling and the families participating in a live Nativity scene.

Holiday movies typically end with a song or a ?true meaning of Christmas? speech, and here we get both, in a unique setting that, well, just makes perfect sense. We?re still a few weeks from Thanksgiving, so consider ?Daddy?s Home 2? your first gift of the holiday season.

On The Official LCJ Report Card, ?Daddy?s Home 2? gets a B+.

James (Kyle Mooney) has spent his life in this bunker thanks to the toxic climate outside, and his parents Ted (Mark Hamill) and April (Jane Adams) are the only people he has spoken to in all that time. He does, however, have an internet connection to other survivors, and they use this to discuss their favourite television show, Brigsby Bear, which James has delivered to him via videocassettes to play in his room. He has become quite the expert on this science fiction production, where the titular bear has magical adventures fighting the evil Snatcher and teaming up with his allies, but an upheaval is about to occur in James' existence which will scupper his chances of completing it... There was a lot going on beneath the surface of this fable like effort that was not really a science fiction movie as those first ten minutes might have indicated, for it quickly becomes apparent our hero has been sold a lie for the past couple of decades. When the police turn up, he has to come to the realisation that the couple who said they were his parents are nothing of the sort, they have in fact kidnapped him at a young age and brainwashed him into believing the outside world is a hostile place where he will be in peril should he venture out into it. He may be in peril, but no more than anyone else making their way through life, though his background has damaged him mentally. Therefore you knew where you were, a comedian (Mooney) playing a manchild who struggles with the world and has to be helped through it by those kind enough to lend a hand, see anything from Being There to Blast from the Past for different methods of delivering this sort of tale. Yet watch brigsby bear 2017 that has become James' whole life added a different dimension; although it was completely manufactured by Ted who duped the small crew working on it into believing it was a production for Canadian television (these recreations of the part innocent, part creepy results were very well done by director Dave McCary). It has been such a major aspect of his incarceration that James cannot give it up. With that in mind, and on finding there are no more episodes and therefore no conclusion to the multi-story saga, the survivor decides to take matters into his own hands and finish it himself, using his sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins) and her friends as cast and crew. There was a lot to accept here, which made the need for a fantastical, not quite realistic air all the more important, and McCary managed to an extent, though start to ask questions like, where did Ted and April get the funds to create their bunker, and more importantly, for what possible reason, and the confection began to deflate somewhat. This indicated it was best to keep such queries to yourself until at least the film, brought into being by the Lonely Island troupe, was over and you could think back on it and go, "Wait a minute...!" since asking part the way through would find it had a serious credulity issue. On the other hand, take it as an allegory of the creative spirit under, shall we say, problematic circumstances, and Brigsby Bear grew more interesting. There seemed to be various motives at work here, most obviously the way appreciation of a series like Star Trek can become an obsession: this was ambivalent, or ambiguous anyway, as to the merits of losing your life to concentrating on pop culture, and if James was any indication it was breeding countless emotionally stunted adults. Then there was the process itself, reminiscent of the cult band The Shaggs, sisters who were forced to form a band by their father without ever hearing what pop music was, entertaining until you think on the details. Going further, it mused on how far you can enjoy a work of art or throwaway entertainment alike when you knew the creators were not exactly great people: if you've ever wondered if you can possibly appreciate a Roman Polanski movie again then much in this would chime with you. So plenty to think on, but it was more effective in its contemplation than its drama, or indeed its comedy. Music by David Wingo.

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