GPL Blog

Movie Review | Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind directed by Michel Gondry

From the distributor: When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) tells the story of Joel Barish after he discovers his (now-ex) girlfriend Clementine has erased him from her memory. Devastated and confused, Joel decides to have the procedure himself, hoping that forgetting their time together will heal the wounds of her seeming betrayal. He visits Lacuna, the business that erases memories, and gives them everything he has that reminds him of Clementine: gifts, journal entries, things they bought together and shared, etc. Later, after Joel falls asleep, two Lacuna employees come into his apartment to begin the procedure. Ideally, they’ll take…

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Movie Review | Luca directed by Enrico Casarosa

From the distributor: On the Italian Riviera, an unlikely but strong friendship grows between a human being and a sea monster disguised as a human.

Another year, another Pixar flick — the Disney industrial complex abides. Formerly an independent company and then semi-autonomous entity working in collaboration with Disney, Pixar has now been fully under the thumb of the Mouse House monolith for a decade and a half, and it’s fair to wonder how much of the imagination and artistry that distinguished works like Toy Story and WALL·E has been flattened as a direct result of their subsidiarization. Late 2015 inaugurated a run of mid efforts for the company (a deluge of sequels, the stinkers The Good Dinosaur and Onward, and the better but far from tops Coco

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Movie Review | Little Miss Sunshine directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

From the distributor: A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.

This 2006 tragicomedy follows the highly dysfunctional yet lovable Hoover family. When their seven-year-old daughter Olive gets a chance to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, the Hoovers have to figure out how to get her to Redondo Beach, California, some 800 miles away from their home in Albuquerque. There’s only one problem… well, no… there are several problems. Her dad Richard is a mean, sad man that’s trying to make a career for himself as a public/motivational speaker and making no money in the process. Mom Sheryl just picked up her brother, Frank, from the hospital after a recent suicide attempt, and he’s on 24/7 watch. Dwayne is Olive’s teenage brother who’s taken a vow of silence until he can…

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Movie Review | Chaos Walking directed by Doug Liman

From the distributor: Two unlikely companions embark on a perilous adventure through the badlands of an unexplored planet as they try to escape a dangerous and disorienting reality where all thoughts are seen and heard by everyone.

From its conception to this, its theatrical bow at last, Chaos Walking has remained a legitimate oddity. The choice to christen it the next big Young Adult movie franchise was always a dubious one, not least because of its sci-fi gimmick: a world where, due to a native germ on the colonized planet where the film takes place, everyone’s thoughts are heard out loud in a sonic cascade fittingly dubbed “Noise.” It’s a conceit without obvious cinematic application, a built-in problem in need of creative problem-solving. Enter…

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Movie Review | Promising Young Woman directed by Emerald Fennell

From the distributor: A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path.

This 2020 dramatic thriller stars Carey Mulligan as a medical school dropout that’s moved back into her parents’ house with little explanation and mostly keeps to herself. She daylights as a barista at a local coffee shop and spends her nights tricking men into thinking she’s too drunk to fend off their advances at various bars and clubs. She lets each one play the “nice guy” role and lead her home, only to snap out of her stupor and give them a scare before any assault on her can take place. It makes for some suspenseful, captivating scenes that ring a little too close to home for many young women. That said…

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