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People might think they've seen this movie before, but the passion and realism in it might make you think again. Just Mercy is based on Bryan Stevenson's 2014 book titled Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption about the author's experience moving to rural Alabama as a Harvard Law graduate in 1989 to offer free legal representation to men wrongfully convicted or unfairly sentenced to death row. Being an idealistic, young, black man, the new lawyer in town has to survive discrimination against him as well as his clients. Just Mercy feels like a neighbor between two other real-life, legal, racism dramas To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and Ghosts of Mississippi (1996).

Something about the genre of war films always seems to create a catalyst for exciting and different storytelling, and our latest example of this catalyst is 1917. Two young British soldiers make a dangerous journey into enemy territory during WWI to deliver a message that will stop their fellow fighters from entering an outnumbered battle.

It seems no topic today is more polarizing, and more incendiary, than politics. And Jay Roach (All the Way, 2016) is still building a name for himself as a talented and topical director uniquely adept at telling political stories. But instead of showing us the high-stakes complications of mainstream political lives like he did with Recount (2008) and Game Change (2012), Bombshell tells a story about the politics of the workplace and the politics of gender.

If you couldn't get enough of the adolescent humor and wild visual effects of the previous Jumanji film from 2017...then have no fear! There's more computer-generated animals, more jokes about private parts, and more casual brushes with death.

Oscar-nominated director Todd Haynes (Carol, 2015) has crafted an intelligent, astute, real-life film about fighting for justice against enormous odds. A corporate lawyer (a reserved Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight, 2015) who defends large industrial companies starts investigating a small lawsuit from rural West Virginia in 1998 centered on dead farm animals and contaminated water. Searching through endless piles of paper (literally), the lawyer begins to discover repeated cover-ups of chemical pollution by the ubiquitous and mega-rich DuPont company and tries to bring their actions to justice.

Knives Out is a darkly comic murder mystery with a plot that is twisty and witty with a touch of some classic genre motifs. When an imperious wealthy patriarch (Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World, 2017) dies in his rapaciously decorative mansion, it's not quite ruled out as a suicide. So all the family members are possible suspects...bringing suspicions and judgments into the light.

It's films like this that remind me why going to the movie theater is special and memorable. Based on the 2004 historical fiction novel Caging Skies by Christine Leunens, this film starts out zany and spirited following a 10-year-old boy named Jojo eagerly attending a training camp to join the Nazi army in 1940s Germany. Watching the world through the overzealous eyes of a child gives the film an elevated sense of comedy and innocence which then begin to transform when Jojo discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

It's an awfully tall order to create a sequel to the iconic horror film, The Shining (1980), but first a little history.

Although this film was first screened in 2017, it has been refined and re-edited since then by its director to create this new director's cut. And it has finally gained wider distribution to now be shown throughout Utah. And in this case, good things come to those who wait. Historical dramas like The Current War: Director's Cut are often revered because they offer immersive portraits of history, and The Current War: Director's Cut does that wonderfully. But it also gives viewers a glimpse into the minds of some amazing people who created the foundations of modern life.

I know the official title of this sequel is Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, but I think a more appropriate title could be Maleficent: Everything but the Kitchen Sink. This film has so many sub-plots, so many characters to keep track of, and so many powers to explain within the realm of magical creatures, I was exhausted trying to keep track of everything.