Flix At :48

Recently, I watched the drama Tigertail. Growl! But everybody calm down. This film has nothing to do with the documentary miniseries Tiger King currently on Netflix.

Lost Girls is a dark murder mystery based on a true story and adapted from the 2013 non-fiction book by Robert Kolker called Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery. This film was released in March 2020 and is currently available through Netflix as part of their original content.

This film started at Sundance in January 2019 and was fully released to the world on March 13th this year through the personal streaming platform Hulu. Big Time Adolescence is an R-rated, coming-of-age comedy about an awkward teenage boy and his friendship with a pot-smoking, aimless, college dropout in his twenties.

Since movie theaters are closed to everyone, I watched a film through the streaming platform of Netflix called Horse Girl (released earlier this year). Sometimes a film is described as "mainstream" to explain its wide-ranging appeal and entertainment value to the largest audience possible. Horse Girl is not one of those films. So far, Jeff Baena has only directed darkly twisted comedies like The Little Hours (2017) and Life After Beth (2014). But Horse Girl is a quiet experimental drama about grief, isolation, and mental illness.

When a group of random strangers wake up outside together scattered across a lightly forested meadow, it's not long before bullets start whizzing and blood starts splattering. Surprising deaths and blunt punchlines fill this dark comedy as unwitting Americans scramble for survival. But the literal hunt of this film is not an ordinary fight with just guns and knives. The gleefully nasty violence is also delivered with arrows, grenades, stiletto heels, and kitchen utensils.

Ben Affleck (Gone Girl, 2014) is evidently not afraid to embrace a difficult leading role in this plaintive drama directed by Gavin O'Connor (The Accountant, 2016). Ben Affleck's movie star power was almost lost forever in the mess of the DC Comic films Justice League (2017) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). But The Way Back has shown us he can still offer good performances. Affleck plays a lonely aching man who begrudgingly accepts an offer to coach basketball in his former high school in southern California to help the immature players improve their game.

Universal Studios officially launched a new movie campaign in 2017 called Dark Universe advertising upcoming films retelling classic monster stories through a contemporary lens. This campaign began with The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, and it was one of the worst movies of 2017. The Dark Universe campaign ended as soon as it had begun.

Based on Jack London's novel first published in 1903, this book has been the homework for many junior high and high school English students. The Call of the Wild centers on a mischievous domestic dog who is kidnapped from his home, taken to the outskirts of Canada, and sold as a sled dog to work in the unforgiving winter of the Yukon Territory during the Gold Rush of the 19th century. As various humans pass through his life, the dog learns perseverance and courage in the differing faces of danger and gradually embraces his wild ancestral nature. This book is based on the author's own experiences working as a gold prospector in uncharted areas of Canada.

First of all, let me clarify the full title of this film shown on the poster and in the film's credits.

When a place crash kills a young Englishwoman's family, she spirals into depression and prostitution (and not the fancy kind with leather boots and perfume). Actress Blake Lively (A Simple Favor, 2018) shows us she can embrace the "de-glam" of a woman come undone. But the spiral stops when the young woman learns the plane crash was orchestrated by terrorists. Vengeance will be hers!