The Empire Cinema sits oceanfront in a small coastal English town in the 1980s. While times are turbulent, audiences and staff alike can find reprieve from the swirling changes in their society within the walls of the cinema and be transported to places near and far. But there is one among them who does not…
Category: Contemporary
The Fabelmans
Sammy Fabelman (Mateo Zoryan, Gabriel LaBelle) is an imaginative young boy growing up in post-WWII America. He is the oldest child of piano teacher Mitzi (Michelle Williams) and computer engineer Burt (Paul Dano). Because of Burt’s successes with IBM, the family finds themselves moving ever westward, first to Arizona, and finally to California. For a…
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Geppetto (David Bradley), an aged woodcarver, has fallen into a deep depression when his son, Carlo (Gregory Mann), was lost after a missile was dropped on their small Italian town. One night, angry and drunk, he carves a puppet in Carlo’s likeness, and while the old man is asleep, his home is visited by a…
Decision to Leave
Detective Hae-Jun (Park Hae-il) is called to the base of a mountain where Ki Do Soo’s (Seung-mok Yoo) body has been discovered after an apparent fall. Before he can rule the death a suicide, he interviews the immigration worker’s young Chinese immigrant wife, Seo-Rae (Tang Wei). The woman seems unfazed by her husband’s demise, and…
The Inspection
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was an official admissions policy for the United States military that was in effect from 1994 until 2011, which allowed non-heterosexual people to serve in the military on the caveat that they do not disclose their sexuality, nor are they allowed to be asked about it. It is 2005 when Ellis…
Argentina, 1985
Prosecutors Julio César Strassera (Ricardo Darín) and Luis Moreno Ocampo (Peter Lanzani) led an unlikely team of young paralegals in the 1985 landmark Trial of the Juntas which sought to bring justice to the victims of the National Reorganization Process, a military dictatorship which ruled over Argentina from 1976-1983. Julio and Luis faced a lot…
Strange World
Ethan Clade (Jaboukie Young-White) is the son of Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal), a farmer famed for harvesting a strange plant, Pando, which has energy-generating properties that are used to bring electricity and all the luxuries that come with it to the mountain town of Avalonia. When the crops begin to fail, Searcher is brought on a…
Bones and All
After a terrifying accident at a sleepover, Maren (Taylor Russell) and her father (Andre Holland) find themselves once again on the run. Finding a small rental in Maryland, Maren’s father eventually abandons the girl one night leaving behind only a birth certificate and a taped confession chronicling Maren’s history of cannibal tendencies. On her own,…
The Menu
The Hawthorne Restaurant is the most exclusive dining experience reserved for the most elite members of society with a set menu across a four-hour dinner service in a dining room that seats only twelve guests a night. Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) oversees the kitchen and his troupe of meticulous chefs, and the wait staff is…
