Parasite (2019)

The Kims are a family at the bottom rungs of society. Literally, since their shitty, one bedroom apartment is in a basement. They’re so poor that they have to use a neighbors fumigation to kill the cockroaches crawling over their belongings. They’re willing to do just about anything to get ahead, even if that means lying, and getting other people fired. Which is precisely what they wind up doing when the son gets an opportunity to act as a rich girl’s English tutor. He forges a university degree, and when the parents of  this girl like him, he’s able to find the rest of his relatives employment as the rich people’s art teacher, driver and maid, respectively. All is well, until they realize that the maid they got fired has been hiding something in the rich people’s basement, and that they just might have walked into something far more dangerous than they could have imagined.

Saturday Fiction (2019)

It’s the first week of December 1941. At this point, Shanghai is partially occupied. The Japanese invaded back in 1937. However, because two-thirds of the city belongs to foreign powers, France and Great Britain, and because Japan is not yet at war with those nations, the city is divided, and there is an uneasy truce between both sides. Of course, neither party intends to keep that peace for long. Both are just itching for the chance to gain valuable Intel on the other. That’s where Yu Jin, a famous Chinese actress, enters the picture. Officially, she’s in Shanghai to star in a play directed by her long-time lover. Unofficially, however, she has many other reasons to be there. For one thing, her ex-husband has been taken prisoner. For another, her French foster father works as a spy for Paris, and he wants her to get him Intel from a Japanese general. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s a young woman following her, who may just admire her in more than a platonic manner. Will she be able to get the information she needs, and come out unscathed? Watch the movie and find out.

Luce (2019)

On the surface, Luce Edgar seems like the perfect son. He’s a star athlete. He’s valedictorian of his entire school. And that’s not even considering his past. He’s a former child soldier from Eritrea who, against all odds, seems to have put his trauma behind him, and formed a healthy, stable social life. “Seems” being the keyword here. See, one day, a teacher asks him to write an essay in the voice of a historical figure, and Luce delivers a piece emulating the style of Frantz Fanon, a pan-Africanist who argued that violence was necessary to settle political disputes. Disturbed, this same teacher breaks into Luce’s locker and discovers fireworks there. She alerts Luce’s parents to both of these things, and while neither of them wants to believe that their son could be capable of violence, as they do more digging, they realize that there might be more to their baby than once thought.

Captive State (2019)

Nine years after an alien invasion, humanity has been “unified” under a new order of “Legislators.” Crime is low. Employment is high. War is all but nonexistent. And, you know, every human being has a tracker implanted in their throat so that the Legislators can monitor their activities at all times. But, shockingly enough, not everyone is satisfied with this new arrangement. There is a small resistance group, The Phoenix, operating out of Chicago, who hope to spark a revolt. Over a 24-hour period, several stories, including The Phoenix’s plot to assassinate a group of Legislators, a Chicago PD Officer’s efforts to hunt the group down, and the brother of one of the Phoenix members’ attempts to get out, converge. Do any of them succeed? Watch the movie and find out.

Widows (2018)

When their husbands are killed in a botched robbery, and the gangster they stole from comes demanding reparations, a group of widows are forced to pull off an impossible heist to save both themselves and their families. This involves them finding a getaway car, a driver, codes to a safe, and guns. Lots of guns. They don’t want to kill anyone, but when you’re backed into a corner, who knows what will happen?

Bad Times At The El Royale (2018)

On a stormy night in 1969, a Priest, a Singer, a Hippie, and a Vacuum salesman all converge on the El Royale hotel. Built on the border between California and Nevada, the establishment was once the favorite getaway of politicians and celebrities, but now its all but abandoned. As such, it’s just these four people, and Miles, the nervous concierge. Things start off quiet, but as the night progresses, they quickly unravel, as it becomes clear that no one, save the Singer, is who they say they are, and that even the hotel has secrets.

Hold The Dark (2018)

In the remote town of Keelut, Alaska, children are being taken. Not by humans, but by wolves. Two Yupik youngsters have already gone missing. And now, it seems, a little White boy has as well. As such, his mother, Riley Keough, summons Jeffrey Wright, an expert on the animals, to come and find the pack that killed her son. When Wright gets there, however, he finds that all is not as it seems to be. For starters, Keough seems slightly crazy. (In one scene, she climbs into bed with him, and tries to get him to strangle her). And when Wright looks in the basement, he finds that wolves didn’t eat the boy. Keough, his own mother, killed him. This revelation, coupled with Keough’s disappearance, sends her husband, Alexander Skarsgård, an unhinged Iraq War vet, on a killing spree to find her, and leaves Wright, and local sheriff James Badge Dale, completely in the dark as to what the hell’s happening. Or maybe that’s just the audience.

Searching (2018)

When his teenage daughter, Margot, fails to come home, widowed father David Kim becomes worried. He calls her piano teacher, only to find out that she quit taking lessons months ago. He asks her friends if they’ve seen her, only to discover that they either didn’t know her very well, or hadn’t spoken to her in years. Things only get worse when the police get involved, and he is forced to break into her laptop to provide them with useful information. In so doing, he learns that she had a whole life he didn’t know about, a life where she was depressed, and possibly didn’t even want to live anymore.

A Simple Favor (2018)

Anna Kendrick is a cutesy, naive woman, with a nervous laugh and a pension for going “uh” and “yeah.” And in this film, she plays a Mommy Blogger, someone who makes videos on how to cook brisket and make friendship bracelets. One day, when she goes to pick her son up from school, she meets Blake Lively, the mother of one of her boy’s friends, who invites her over to her incredibly stylish house for some martinis. Lively is everything Kendrick isn’t–assertive, foul-mouthed, impeccably dressed–which makes her fascinating to the latter. That’s probably why Kendrick winds up doing everything Lively tells her to including picking her son up from school one day. This turns into more than a “simple favor” since Lively doesn’t return for several days, and the police suspect foul play, because she and her husband, Henry Golding, were having financial and marital problems. Kendrick doesn’t believe this, however, even after the cops find what they think is Lively’s body, and so does some digging of her own, uncovering some shocking, albeit rather silly, answers.

First Reformed (2018)

Ethan Hawke is the pastor of a small, upstate New York Church. He’s a veteran, a recovering alcoholic, and a man slowly dying of cancer. One day, he is asked by one of his parishioners, Amanda Seyfried, to counsel her husband, a radical environmental activist. The man is depressed, and she believes talking to a pastor would be good for him. Hawke agrees to do so, but finds himself unable to console the man, who believes that humanity’s damage to the Earth is irreversible, and that it’s not worth bringing life into an existence this shitty. Things only get worse when the man kills himself, and Hawke finds a suicide bomber’s vest in the former’s garage. Hawke slowly unravels from there, becoming radicalized into the dead man’s cause, and even planning to blow himself up and kill every member of his congregation in the process. Will he do so? Well, you’ll just have to watch the movie to find out.