Episodes

After an introductory sequence set during World War II to introduce the massive ape, Kong, and the island he resides on, we spring ahead to 1973, where we find the United States’ government, in the waning days of their involvement in Vietnam, planning an exploration of the previously uncharted island in the South Pacific perpetually under storm clouds, hoping to lay claim there before the Russians get there first. Kong is there and greets the military choppers in the manner you’d expect, i.e. he...

Raoul Peck’s Academy Award-nominated documentary on famed author James Baldwin, whose unfinished manuscript for a proposed memoir on the deaths of several Civil Rights giants, tentatively entitled, “Remember This House”, provides the basis for the commentary about his experiences as an African-American in a country that continuously seems to not deal with its overbearing racism head on.

Set in the year 2029, we find a world where there are no newly born mutants, and the ones that did exist have been all but completely wiped out. Spirit broken, body beaten and losing its ability to quickly heal, and with a sense of self-loathing to the point where suicide seems an increasingly attractive option, Logan finds himself working as a limousine driver, trying to scrape together enough funds to help nonagenarian Professor Charles Xavier, who he has stashed in an isolated facility in Mex...

Daniel Kaluuya stars as photographer Chris Washington, a young African-American involved in a close relationship with the white Rose Armitage, so close that it’s time for Chris to meet Rose’s parents. Chris is nervous about their weekend retreat to Rose’s family lake house because Rose hasn’t told them that he’s black because it doesn’t matter to her, and her liberal parents should be all for it, she gathers. While seemingly fine, Chris undergoes a share of microagressions, assumptions, and patr...

Isabelle Huppert stars as Michele Leblanc, the manager of a video-game company. Michelle is raped by a masked man in her own home. Because of her checkered past, she decides to not report it to the police, and is reticent to tell friends right away. The perpetrator continues to stalk Michele, causing her to seek measures to protect herself, yet she is also conflicted by her fantasies, both terrifying and exhilarating, of what might happen should she be found in that position again.

In this follow-up to the wildly popular kinky romance drama Fifty Shades of Grey, we find perpetually blushing publishing-house editorial assistant Anastasia Steele making it through life without the help or attention of controlling Seattle-based mega-billionaire Christian Grey, mostly due to the fact that he couldn’t open himself up to her much beyond his taste for sado-masochistic sexual acts. While Grey tries to move on, he can’t ‘quit’ Ana, forging is way back into her life romantically (on ...

The Joker here is a bit more of a softie — still a madman, but one that knows the bond of hatred between himself and the Batman needs to be reciprocal so that he can be the yin to his yang. To cement himself as #1 on Batman’s hate list, Joker and a host of other baddies of assorted popularity are out to destroy Gotham City. Batman catches Joker in the act, but still sees him as just another perp to thwart, hatching bigger and bolder ideas to come from the clown madman in trying to assure arch-ne...

John Wick tries to go back into retirement after getting his revenge from those who’ve done him wrong. It would work, except that one particular party, an Italian crime boss named Santino D’Antonio, means to cash in on a marker, a favor he did for Wick some time back, that must be repaid, pulling him in to do another job in the form of an assassination of his sister so that he can take her place in the super-secret organization. Alas, the further Wick gets in, the more enemies out to snuff him o...

Adam Driver stars as Paterson, who coincidentally shares the same name as his town in New Jersey. We follow Paterson over the course of a week in his life, his routines, his conversations with his aspiring baker/singer girlfriend Laura, the conversations he eavesdrops on with the passengers in the city bus he drives, and his interactions with the inhabitants of the local bar he goes to when he takes his English Bulldog Marvin for a walk at night. We also get to follow along as he writes poems ev...

The story is set in England at an unspecified time in the future, where we find that Earth may have all but been completely dominated by some sort of invasive fungus that can latch itself and grow inside humans within seconds, turning them into Hungries, aka zombies who seek out non-infected humans and other forms of life in order to sate their thirst for flesh and blood. Within a heavily guarded military base, Earth uninfected soldiers, scientists and civilians are working diligently on finding...

Set primarily in the 1950s, we find Ray Kroc is a struggling traveling salesman trying to peddle an electric milkshake mixer that promises to spark sales by increasing the supply by shortening the wait time involved with having to churn out one milkshake at a time. Sales are not going well, until he receives one big order from someone he hasn’t spoken to directly. Sensing an opportunity for more business with this mysterious buyer, Kroc travels out to the source of the order in San Bernardino, ...

Hidden Figures seeks to showcase the little-known story of three adept African-American women, all computers who worked for NASA’s space program in the 1960s. In an age before computers did all of the calculations, these women were part of a team responsible for double checking the figures put out by engineers working at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. During this period, the gals helped with work to speed up the role of the United States in the Space Race, working on the Mercury pro...

Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel provides the basis for Martin Scorsese’s adaptation set in the 17th Century, regarding a couple of Portuguese missionaries, Father Sebastian Rodrigues and Father Francisco Garupe, who travel to Japan to find their long-lost mentor, Father Ferreira, after discovering a letter written by him a few years back detailing the suffering of the those wishing to spread Christianity there. Ferreira is believed to still be alive in the island country, though there is a question on...

Jackie is a speculative historical drama that seeks to give us a peek into the hypothetical goings on of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy in the week following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The First Lady has taken up temporary residence at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, MA, where she is visited and interviewed by a journalist working for Life Magazine for an exclusive expose. Keenly aware of how perception dictates reality, Jackie consents for the ...

Aisholpan is a thirteen-year-old nomadic Kazakh girl living in proximity to the snowy and treacherous Altai Mountains region of western Mongolia, who ends up being shown the ropes of becoming an ‘eagle hunter’ by her father, whose family has practiced the art for many generations, after the two end up capturing a female eaglet for her to train in the time-honored traditions of her forbears. Why this matters as a film is that it is extremely rare for a girl to be an eagle hunter, and further upen...

Felicity Jones stars as Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen Erso, a scientist-turned-farmer who once reluctantly helped design the Death Star for the Empire. Jyn had run away from harm when her father had been captured, under the iron hand of the director of the massive weapon project, Orson Krennic, who expects Galen to finish what he started. We catch up with her later, as an adult, having been traiend by Saw Gerrera on the ways of the solider, then imprisoned, but Cassian Andor, an espionage agent wo...

Emma Stone stars as a struggling actress named Mia, who works as a barista in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. lot, in between auditions that only serve to make her feel frazzled by the experience. Ryan Gosling is an ambitious jazz pianist, Sebastian, whose love of more traditional jazz sounds puts him at odds with those who wish to hire him, either for playing Holiday ditties as background music, or in modern jazz fusion bands who seem to cater to new crowds who don’t particularly care about s...

Manchester by the Sea is a drama concerning a contentious Boston ‘burb janitor named Lee Chandler, working with little joy for a meager wage and a basic one-room abode. It turns out that there is a reason for him being anguished at this stage in his life, which is something we come to know more about as the film plays out. He’s prone to getting into fights, he’s resistant to making emotional connections, and, in general, he’s a person too wrapped up in trying to suppress his own thoughts and fee...

Naomi Watts stars as child psychologist Mary Portman, living with her eighteen-year-old paralyzed stepson, Stephen, the victim of a car accident that saw Mary’s husband perish. Stephen has always been a problem child, something that Mary feels guilty about not being able to solve before choosing to send him away, and now feels even more guilty that she has made a decision to send him away again so that he can get better care and so that she can move on with her life. A cold front brings in a maj...

Warren Beatty’s film involves a real-life figure in billionaire Howard Hughes, though most of the action involves two young associates of Hughes. Set mostly in the late 1950s, we follow the attempts by a young, virginal, devout Baptist pageant winner named Marla Mabrey, who travels with her mother to Los Angeles in order to become an actress for aviation mogul Howard Hughes, who owns a movie studio and regularly grooms young women like her to become stars in his employ. Marla gets on the payrol...

Gleason is a documentary film around the trials and tribulations of Steve Gleason, a former NFL player who retired from the game in 2008, then was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2011, concurrent to learning of the pregnancy of his wife Michel with their first child. It’s a disease that has no cure, and those who are afflicted by it usually die within 2-5 years after diagnosis. The sufferer’s motor skills begin to erode, eventually losing them alto...

Eddie Redmayne stars as klutzy magizoologist Newt Scamander, the author of the future guide of magical creatures that exist in this world and, of course, where they may be found. Set mostly in New York City in 1926, we find those who can work magic living in a world where the No-Majs, aka, those who have no powers to speak of, are kept in the dark to all of the fantastic things going on around them due to spells of ‘obliviation’, which erases their memories of them. Scamander arrives in New Yor...

Moana is the chief’s daughter within her tribe on the New Zealand island of Motunui. Unlike most girls in her Maori village, she is destined to be the chief of her tribe herself one day, pushing them to further greatness in that insular community. Traveling beyond their surrounding reef is forbidden, but a lack of fish and disease in the plant life caused by a curse has Moana exercising her leadership skills by beyond the horizon to find enough food for all of them. In order to reverse the curse...

After twelve alien spacecraft have descended to various spots across Earth, American Amy Adams stars as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistics professor who is visited by representatives from the U.S. Army to try to decipher the alien language heard on a recording of their “voices”. Unable to process the language without being there in person, she is soon part of a team of scientists who enter one of the spacecraft above Montana in order to speak to the Heptapods (as the squid-like aliens come to be kn...