Playlists > 💎BLEAK BUT BRILLIANT💎

💎BLEAK BUT BRILLIANT💎
Description:

No Hollywood happy dappy here, just some f*cking great films.
This playlist is entirely subjective, and I’ll only include films I’ve actually watched. Having said that, I’m totally not into torture porn, or gratuitous hack n slash shite. But… If it’s on this list, I’ve watched it and think it has merit. That doesn’t mean I enjoyed them all, hahahaha… even though I did.😎

🛠 Still under construction…


Creator: Merrigan Able
Posted: 3 years ago
 
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TV Show: We Need to Talk About Cosby ( 2022 )
Comic-director W. Kamau Bell explores Bill Cosby's life and work, weighing his actions against his indisputable influence through interviews with comedians, cultural commentators, journalists and women who share their personal encounters with him.
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Movie: Waiting for the Barbarians ( 2020 )
At an isolated frontier outpost, a colonial magistrate of an unnamed empire suffers a crisis of conscience when an army colonel arrives looking to interrogate the locals about an impending uprising, using cruel tactics that horrify the magistrate.
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Movie: The Master ( 2012 )
A Naval veteran arrives home from war unsettled and uncertain of his future - until he is tantalized by The Cause and its charismatic leader.
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Movie: Backcountry ( 2015 )
An urban couple go camping in the woods and find themselves lost in the territory of a predatory black bear.
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Movie: The Paperboy ( 2012 )
A reporter returns to his Florida hometown to investigate a case involving a death row inmate.
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Movie: Courage Under Fire ( 1996 )
A U.S. Army officer, despondent about a deadly mistake he made, investigates a female chopper commander's worthiness for the Medal of Honor.
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Movie: Match Point ( 2005 )
At a turning point in his life, a former tennis pro falls for an actress who happens to be dating his friend and soon-to-be brother-in-law.
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Movie: Body Heat ( 1981 )
In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman persuades her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.
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Movie: My Cousin Rachel ( 2017 )
A young Englishman plots revenge against his late cousin's mysterious, beautiful wife, believing her responsible for his death. But his feelings become complicated as he finds himself falling under the beguiling spell of her charms.
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Movie: The Beaver ( 2011 )
A troubled husband and executive adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communication.
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Movie: Sometimes in April ( 2005 )
When the Hutu nationalists raised arms against their Tutsi countrymen in Rwanda in April 1994, the violent uprising marked the beginning of one of the darkest times in African history which resulted in the deaths of almost 800,000 people.
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Movie: Ghost Story ( 1981 )
Two generations of men find themselves haunted by the presence of a spectral woman. When the son of one of the elderly men returns to his hometown after his brother's mysterious death, they attempt to unravel her story.
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Movie: Transsiberian ( 2008 )
A Transsiberian train journey from China to Moscow becomes a thrilling chase of deception and murder when an American couple encounters a mysterious pair of fellow travelers.
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Movie: Born Innocent ( 1974 )
Young girl runs away from her abusive family only to end up in a juvenile detention center for girls where she's raped and brutalized by her sadistic peers. Only one honest social worker shows interest in helping her.
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Movie: The Ninth Configuration ( 1980 )
A former marine arrives at a mental asylum housed in a remote castle to run it. There he attempts to rehabilitate the patients by letting them act out their craziest fantasies and desires.
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Movie: Dogfight ( 1991 )
Before leaving to fight in Vietnam, a group of teenagers play a game where they try to seduce the ugliest girl they can find.
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Movie: Infamous ( 2006 )
While researching his novel "In Cold Blood", Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.
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Movie: Monster's Ball ( 2002 )
After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African American wife of the last prisoner he executed.
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Movie: Demon Seed ( 1977 )
A scientist creates Proteus--an organic super computer with artificial intelligence which becomes obsessed with human beings, and in particular the creators wife.
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Movie: Lenny ( 1975 )
The story of acerbic 1960s comic Lenny Bruce, whose groundbreaking, no-holds-barred style and social commentary was often deemed by the Establishment as too obscene for the public.
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Movie: Biutiful ( 2011 )
A man dying of cancer tries his best to leave the world on his own terms.
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Movie: Dark Places ( 2015 )
Libby Day was only eight years old when her family was brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. Almost thirty years later, she reluctantly agrees to revisit the crime and uncovers the wrenching truths that led up to that tragic night.
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Movie: Pretty Baby ( 1978 )
A teenage girl lives as a prostitute in New Orleans in 1917.
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Movie: Use of Force: The Policing of Black America ( 2022 )
Police killings of unarmed black and brown men and women have brought relations between law enforcement and communities of color to an all-time low. What is happening? How can we solve this epidemic? USE OF FORCE is a documentary that delves into the fatal encounters between police and people of color in America. The film will highlight the personal stories of victims...Read all
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Movie: Light of My Life ( 2019 )
Parent and child journey through the outskirts of society a decade after a pandemic has wiped out half the world's population. As a father struggles to protect his child, their bond, and the character of humanity, is tested.
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Movie: Kramer vs. Kramer ( 1979 )
Ted Kramer's wife leaves him, allowing for a lost bond to be rediscovered between Ted and his son, Billy. But a heated custody battle ensues over the divorced couple's son, deepening the wounds left by the separation.
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Movie: The Family Fang ( 2016 )
A brother and sister return to their family home in search of their world famous parents who have disappeared.
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Movie: A Single Shot ( 2013 )
The tragic death of a beautiful young girl starts a tense and atmospheric game of cat and mouse between hunter John Moon and the hardened backwater criminals out for his blood.
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Movie: Looking for Mr. Goodbar ( 1977 )
A dedicated schoolteacher spends her nights cruising bars, looking for abusive men with whom she can engage in progressively violent sexual encounters.
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Movie: Ordinary Decent Criminal ( 2000 )
Brilliant, flamboyant master criminal Michael Lynch is more interested in his image and his posterity than the actual profit from his ill-gotten gains.
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Movie: Angels and Insects ( 1996 )
In the 1800s a naturalist marries into a family of British country gentry.
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Movie: Auto Focus ( 2002 )
The life of TV star Bob Crane and his strange friendship with electronics expert John Henry Carpenter.
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Movie: Strayed ( 2003 )
Emmanuelle Béart stars as a widowed schoolteacher who flees Nazi-occupied Paris with her children. A teenaged boy comes to their rescue by leading them into the forest -- their best shot at survival.
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Movie: The Morning After ( 1986 )
A washed up, alcoholic actress who is prone to blackouts wakes up next to a murdered man. Did she kill him and, if not, is she in danger?
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Movie: The Day of the Locust ( 1975 )
An art director in the 1930s falls in love and attempts to make a young woman an actress despite Hollywood who wants nothing to do with her because of her problems with an estranged man and her alcoholic father.
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Movie: Loving Pablo ( 2018 )
A journalist strikes up a romantic relationship with notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
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Movie: Exotica ( 1995 )
A man plagued by neuroses frequents the club Exotica in an attempt to find solace, but even there his past is never far away.
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Movie: Communion ( 1989 )
Oct.4 and Dec.26 the Strieber family drives from NYC to their cabin in the woods. Both nights there are some powerful lights outside and maybe aliens. The dad is mentally affected by the "bad dream", goes to the shrink and is hypnotized.
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Movie: Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11 ( 2008 )
ZERO has one central thesis: the official version of the events surrounding 9/11 can not be true. This documentary explores the latest evidence and witness testimonies.
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Movie: My Son ( 2021 )
Driving in the heart of the Highlands, Edmond Murray receives a call from his ex-wife, in tears. Their 7-year-old son went missing from a campsite. Soon it becomes clear that the child was kidnapped and the parents give way to despair.
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Movie: Lolita ( 1997 )
A man marries his landlady so he can take advantage of her daughter.
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Movie: The Accused ( 1988 )
After a young woman suffers a brutal gang rape in a bar one night, a prosecutor assists in bringing the perpetrators to justice, including the ones who encouraged and cheered on the attack.
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Movie: A Dry White Season ( 1989 )
Ben du Toit is a schoolteacher who always has considered himself a man of caring and justice, at least on the individual level. When his gardener's son is brutally beaten up by the police at a demonstration by black school children, he gradually begins to realize his own society is built on a pillar of injustice and exploitation.
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Movie: The Blood of Heroes ( 1989 )
In a future, where most of mankind and technology is wiped out, 6 people travel from place to place playing a brutal form of football with a dog skull. They hope one day to play in the league in a city.
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Movie: Beyond the Reach ( 2015 )
A high-rolling corporate shark and his impoverished young guide play the most dangerous game during a hunting trip in the Mojave Desert.
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Movie: The Killing Room ( 2009 )
Four individuals sign up for a psychological research study only to discover that they are now subjects of a brutal, classified government program.
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Movie: Love in the Time of Cholera ( 2007 )
Florentino, rejected by the beautiful Fermina at a young age, devotes much of his adult life to carnal affairs as a desperate attempt to heal his broken heart.
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Movie: Last Summer ( 1969 )
During summer vacation on Fire Island, three young people become very close. When an uncool girl tries to infiltrate the trio's newly found relationship, they construct an elaborate plot that has violent results.
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Movie: Jagged Edge ( 1985 )
A wealthy woman is murdered in her beach house. The husband is allegedly knocked out first. He inherits all her inherited wealth. He has a female corporate lawyer, criminal prosecutor 4 years ago, represent him in court. Guilty?
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Movie: Breaking the Waves ( 1996 )
Oilman Jan is paralyzed in an accident. His wife, who prayed for his return, feels guilty; even more, when Jan urges her to have sex with another.
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Movie: Just, Melvin: Just Evil ( 2001 )
An in-depth look at the director James Ronald Whitney's family history of incest spanning at least three generations and the devastating consequences that include drug abuse and alcoholism.
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Movie: Bullet Head ( 2017 )
Three career criminals find themselves trapped in a warehouse with the law closing in and an even worse threat waiting inside - a nigh unstoppable killer dog.
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Movie: Helter Skelter ( 1976 )
Chilling story of the investigation and trial of Charles Manson, leader of a strange cult which under his direction and 'control' committed numerous murders.
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Movie: Go Ask Alice ( 1973 )
A 15-year-old girl in late-1960s America is sucked into an odyssey of sex and drugs and eventually seeks help.
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Movie: The Shipping News ( 2001 )
An emotionally beaten man with his young daughter moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland to reclaim his life.
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Movie: Honest Man: The Life of R. Budd Dwyer ( 2010 )
Honest Man: the Life of R. Budd Dwyer is a movie about politics and corruption, suicide and survival. Four years in the making, it explores the scandal that led an honest, hard-working man to take his own life. This independently produced feature-length documentary follows Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania politician who infamously committed suicide at a televised press conference. The film chronicles Dwyer's meteoric rise to political power and examines the bribery scandal and subsequent trial that pushed him to his breaking point. Honest Man also delves into the controversy and consequences of the uncensored airing of Dwyer's death on television stations worldwide. Honest Man reveals a story that has remained untold for over 24 years. The film features exclusive new interviews, including William Smith, the man whose testimony convicted Dwyer, and Dwyer's widow Joanne--her last interview before her death in 2009. Was Dwyer venal, or a victim? Did he kill himself because he couldn't live with being guilty, or because he couldn't live with being innocent? Honest Man allows audiences to judge for themselves.
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Movie: The Star Chamber ( 1983 )
Disgusted with criminals escaping the judicial system via technicalities, an idealistic young judge investigates an alternative method for punishing the guilty.
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Movie: Consenting Adults ( 1992 )
During a joint dinner at the restaurant, the neighbors offer to exchange wives for one night. It was a joke, but only at first.
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Movie: Missing ( 1982 )
In September1973, in Chile, the American journalist Charles Horman arrives in Valparaiso with his friend Terry Simon to meet his wife Beth and bring her back to New York with him. However, they are surprised by the military coup d'état sponsored by the US Government to replace President Salvador Allende and Charles is arrested by the military force. His father Ed Horman, a conservative businessman from New York, arrives in Chile to seek out his missing son with Beth. He goes to the American Consulate to meet the Consul that promises the best efforts to find Charles while the skeptical Beth does not trust on the word of the American authorities. The nationalism and confidence of Ed in his government changes when he finds the truth about what happened with his beloved son.
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Movie: The Juror ( 1996 )
A juror in a Mafia trial is forced to convince the other jurors to vote not guilty by an obsessive mob enforcer.
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Movie: Factory Girl ( 2007 )
Based on the rise and fall of socialite Edie Sedgwick, concentrating on her relationships with Andy Warhol and a folk singer.
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Movie: Prick Up Your Ears ( 1987 )
This film is the story of the spectacular life and violent death of British playwright Joe Orton. In his teens, Orton is befriended by the older, more reserved Kenneth Halliwell, and while the two begin a relationship, it's fairly obvious that it's not all about sex. Orton loves the dangers of bath-houses and liaisons in public restrooms; Halliwell, not as charming or attractive as Orton, doesn't fare so well in those environs. While both long to become writers, it is Orton who achieves fame - his plays "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" and "Loot" become huge hits in London of the sixties, and he's even commissioned to write a screenplay for the Beatles. But Orton's success takes him farther from Halliwell, whose response ended both his life and the life of the up-and-coming playwright.
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Movie: Solitary Man ( 2010 )
A car magnate watches his personal and professional life hit the skids because of his business and romantic indiscretions.
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Movie: Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup ( 2009 )
An exploration of the viewpoint that the September 11, 2001 attacks were planned by the United States government.
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Movie: Burning ( 2021 )
Looks at the deadly Australian bushfires of 2019-2020, known as 'Black Summer'. An exploration of what happened as told from the perspective of victims of the fires, activists and scientists.
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Movie: Carnal Knowledge ( 1971 )
Chronicling the lifelong sexual development of two men who meet and become friends in college.
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Movie: Blue Sky ( 1994 )
Carly moves with her military husband and their two daughters to an isolated army base, only to quickly become part of a cover-up involving nuclear bomb tests.
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Movie: Boxing Helena ( 1993 )
A surgeon becomes obsessed with the seductive woman he once was in an affair with. Refusing to accept that she has moved on, he amputates her limbs and holds her captive in his mansion.
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Movie: Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle ( 1994 )
Dorothy Parker remembers the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table, a circle of friends whose barbed wit, like hers, was fueled by alcohol and flirted with despair.
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Movie: My Name Is Bill W. ( 1989 )
The story of Bill Wilson and the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.
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Movie: Fish Tank ( 2009 )
Mia, an aggressive fifteen-year-old girl, lives on an Essex estate with her tarty mother, Joanne, and precocious little sister Tyler. She has been thrown out of school and is awaiting admission to a referrals unit and spends her days aimlessly. She begins an uneasy friendship with Joanne's slick boyfriend, Connor, who encourages her one interest, dancing.
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Movie: Christiane F. ( 1981 )
A teen girl in 1970's Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.
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Movie: The Night Porter ( 1974 )
After a chance meeting at a hotel in 1957, Holocaust survivor Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) and Nazi officer Max (Sir Dirk Bogarde), who tortured her, resume their sadomasochistic relationship.
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Movie: The Secret of Marrowbone ( 2017 )
A young man and his three younger siblings, who have kept secret the death of their beloved mother in order to remain together, are plagued by a sinister presence in the sprawling manor in which they live.
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Movie: 'night, Mother ( 1987 )
What would you do if someone you loved sat down with you one night and calmly told you that they were going to end their life before morning? This is Thelma Cates' dilemma. Her daughter, Jessie, has had it. A middle-aged epileptic unable to hold a job or drive with a failed marriage and a drug-addicted runaway son on the wrong side of the law, Jessie can find no reason to go on living. Adapted from the play by Marsha Norman, "'night, Mother" is the story of a parent's worst nightmare. How can Thelma convince her daughter that life is worth living if she can't feel her pain? How can she end her daughter's embrace of death before morning?
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Movie: Aberdeen ( 2000 )
Kaisa is a Scot, a successful London lawyer, who snorts coke and has one-night stands with strangers. Her mother calls from Aberdeen with some story begging her to fly to Norway and collect her alcoholic dad whom she hasn't seen in years. The impatient Kaisa reluctantly agrees. The story is a ruse: mom is dying and wants her ex and her daughter together again. The trip gets complicated (dad is too drunk to fly and the hot-tempered Kaisa gets them banned from the airline): they go by ferry then car, needing a great deal of help along the way from a sweet lorry driver named Clive. Will they reach Aberdeen before mom's death, and will Kaisa find any stability within herself or in others?
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Movie: The Portrait of a Lady ( 1997 )
An American girl inherits a fortune and falls into a misguided relationship with a gentleman confidence artist whose true nature, including a barbed and covetous disposition, turns her life into a nightmare.
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Movie: Little Nikita ( 1988 )
An F.B.I. Agent works to uncover an All-American family as Soviet sleeper Agents, and gets caught up in friendship with their unaware son.
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Movie: Welcome to Sarajevo ( 1997 )
Journalist Floyd from the U.S., Michael Henderson from the U.K., and their teams meet at the beginning of the Bosnian war in Sarajevo. During their reports, they find an orphanage run by the devoted Mrs. Savic near the frontline. Henderson gets so involved in the kids' problems, that he decides to take one of the children, Emira, illegally back to England. He is assisted by American aid worker Nina.
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Movie: Nitram ( 2021 )
Nitram lives with his mother and father in suburban Australia in the Mid 1990s. He lives a life of isolation and frustration at never being able to fit in. That is until he unexpectedly finds a close friend in a reclusive heiress, Helen. However when that relationship meets a tragic end, and Nitram's loneliness and anger grow, he begins a slow descent that leads to disaster.
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Movie: Appaloosa ( 2008 )
Two friends hired to police a small town that is suffering under the rule of a rancher find their job complicated by the arrival of a young widow.
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Movie: The Brood ( 1979 )
A man tries to uncover an unconventional psychologist's therapy techniques on his institutionalized wife, amidst a series of brutal murders.
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Movie: Scandal ( 1989 )
Based on the Profumo Scandal of 1963, an affair between an exotic dancer and the Minister of War shakes up the British government.
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Movie: House of Games ( 1987 )
A psychiatrist comes to the aid of a compulsive gambler and is led by a smooth-talking grifter into the shadowy but compelling world of stings, scams, and con men.
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Movie: Boys Don't Cry ( 2000 )
A young man named Brandon Teena navigates love, life, and being transgender in rural Nebraska.
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Movie: Waterland ( 1992 )
In 1974 Pittsburgh, a high-school history teacher seeking closure tells his class about his experiences as teenager in England during World War II.
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Movie: Indecent Proposal ( 1993 )
A billionaire offers one million dollars to a young married couple for one night with the wife.
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Movie: I Melt with You ( 2012 )
When four 40-something college friends meet up for their annual reunion, things start to spiral out of control, and a pact they made as young men is revisited.
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Movie: Don't Look Now ( 1973 )
A married couple grieving the recent death of their young daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond.
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Movie: Against All Odds ( 1984 )
Against All Odds is a 1984 American romantic neo-noir thriller film directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Rachel Ward, Jeff Bridges and James Woods alongside Jane Greer, Alex Karras, Richard Widmark and Dorian Harewood. A remake of Out of the Past (1947), the film's plot is about an aging American football star who is hired by a mobster to find his girlfriend.
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Movie: Ode to Billy Joe ( 1976 )
At last, we're given the answers to the questions raised by the haunting 1967 Bobbie Gentry song of the same title. Eighteen- year-old Billy Joe McAllister is in love with Bobbie Lee, but ...
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Movie: Beyond Rangoon ( 1995 )
Laura is trying to pick up the pieces of her life after the murder of her husband and son, and goes on vacation with her sister to Burma. After losing her passport at a political rally, she is left on her own for a few days, during which time she falls in with students fighting for democracy. She and their leader, U Aung Ko, travel through Burma, whilst witnessing many bloody acts of repression by the dictatorship, in an attempt to escape to Thailand. Based on a true story.
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Movie: Sleeping Beauty ( 2011 )
A haunting portrait of Lucy, a young university student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of unspoken desires.
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Movie: The Glass Castle ( 2017 )
A young girl comes of age in a dysfunctional family of nonconformist nomads with a mother who's an eccentric artist and an alcoholic father who would stir the children's imagination with hope as a distraction to their poverty.
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Movie: Gummo ( 1997 )
Lonely residents of a tornado-stricken Ohio town wander the deserted landscape trying to fulfill their boring, nihilistic lives.
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Movie: Nil by Mouth ( 1997 )
A rough, short-tempered patriarch of a working class family has his life and the relationships around him slowly unravel.
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Movie: An Open Secret ( 2015 )
AN OPEN SECRET looks at the lives of children betrayed and abandoned by a system that essentially funnels them towards sexual predators without any oversight or regard for their safety. It documents not only these young peoples' experiences, but also how some have emerged stronger for their speaking out. It beg the questions of why children working in entertainment aren't afforded the same protections they are afforded at school, and argues for more effective treatment and stronger penalties for child sex offenders.
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Movie: Equus ( 1977 )
A psychiatrist attempts to uncover a troubled stable boy's disturbing obsession with horses.
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Movie: Matewan ( 1988 )
A labor union organizer comes to an embattled mining community brutally and violently dominated and harassed by the mining company.