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WATCHED THEM AGAIN. “Escape from New York.” / “Saturday Night Fever.” / “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” / “The Seventh Seal.”

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“Escape from New York” (1981, Roku) science fiction action film . Set in a then-near-future world of 1997, a crime-ridden United States has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country's sole maximum security prison .         Repeat: This is the year 1997 and the movie was made in 1981. And we are now in the year 2026. And we haven't yet seen the “dystopian future” regardless of the eerie divide among us. Uh huh.        Still in those years, movies of this “futuristic” sort never failed to entertain. As does Kurt Russell 's Snake Plissken. When I first saw this, I was in awe. Whoa! 1997? LOL! 🎥💻📽 “Saturday Night Fever” (1977, Pluto TV) dance drama. Star s John Travolta as a young Italian-American man who spends his weekends dancing and drinking at a local disco while dealing with social tensions and disillusionment in his working class ethnic neighborhood in Brooklyn . The story is base...
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HORROR THRILLERS. “The Monkey.” / “Out Come the Wolves.” / “Baby Ruby.” / “Blood Red Sky.”

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“The Monkey” (2025, Hulu) comedy horror film, written and directed by Osgood Perkins . Based on Stephen King 's 1980 short story about twin brothers whose lives are turned upside down by a cursed toy monkey that causes random horrific deaths around them.         This icky movie received generally positive reviews from critics and has grossed $68.9 million worldwide against a budget of $10–11 million. Weird, I say.        Rotten Tomatoes consensus: "Cruelly clever with some unforgettably gory set pieces.” Really? As for me, this eerie joint is cruelly stupid and the gory pieces are just that sort of mess, gory. Those whacked-out scenes are made to elicit boisterous laughter in a drunken, stoned frathouse. That's it. 🎥💻📽 “Out Come the Wolves” (2024, Hulu) Canadian horror thriller. A group of friends whose camping trip turns into a nightmare when they are stalked by a pack of wolves in a remote forest.  ...
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FOREIGN MOVIES. “She Walks in Darkness.” / “Another Round.” / “Someone, Somewhere.” / “Watchtower.” / “Lore.”

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“She Walks in Darkness” (2025, Netflix) Spanish political thriller. The plot follows Amaia, a Guardia Civil agent going undercover for years within the ETA ranks seeking to crack the location of the group's multiple weapons caches scattered in southern France.        Formed in 1959, ETA or Euskadi Ta Askatasuna is the armed Basque separatist organization in Spain and France.        Apparently the ETA's life is a significant subject matter in Spain's history but this political thriller, starting with Susana Abaitua's performance as Amaia, is lazily one-dimensional. No thrill to engage with, dramatic tension is lacking, and the pace is dragging. 🎥💻📽 “Another Round” (2020, Plex) Danish black comedy-drama. F our high school teachers experiment with maintaining a constant level of alcohol in their blood to boost creativity and confidence.         Deftly directed by the reliable...
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BASED on REAL PEOPLE/Events. “Tetris.” / “The Vanishing.”

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“Tetris” (2023, Apple TV+) black comedy thriller , based on true events around the race to license and patent the video game Tetris from Soviet Russia .        Tetris is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov , a Soviet software engineer . In typical Tetris gameplay, falling tetromino shapes must be neatly sorted into a pile. Once a horizontal line of the game board is filled in, it disappears, granting points and preventing the pile from overflowing. I guess you know that already. As of December 2024, these versions collectively serve as the second-best-selling video game series with over 520 million sales, mostly on mobile devices.        The plot follows Henk Rogers (an involved Taron Egerton) of Bullet-Proof Software , who becomes interested in Tetris during an electronics show in Las Vegas. Desperate to obtain handheld console rights for Nintendo, he takes trips between Japan, the United Sta...
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CRIME THRILLER. “Neighborhood Watch.” / “The G.” / “Beckett.” / “Becky.” / “Unhinged.”

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“Neighborhood Watch” (2025, Hulu) crime thriller . A mentally ill young man thinks he witnessed a woman being abducted but the police don't believe him. He gets his neighbor, a retired security guard, to help him search for the missing woman.          Director Duncan Skiles craftily turned Sean Farley's screenplay into an engaging ride. The narrative progressed at a thrilling pace + the performances of Jack Quaid as the mentally-challenged Simon and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as a “still there but out” retired security guard kept things very engaging.         Nice indie watch. 🎥💻📽 “The G” (2023, Amazon Prime) Canadian crime thriller . Stars Dale Dickey as a grandmother seeking revenge. Premise: After a corrupt legal guardian puts Ann, a grandmother, in a care home in order to take her property, Ann looks for vengeance with the help of her granddaughter Emma, who calls her "The G.” The film is set on the indust...
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