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Mercy

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  Mercy Starring Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis Directed by Timur Bekmambetov The idea of the "ticking clock" is a gimmick movies and television shows do to illicit excitement and anticipation in the viewer. It's easy to tell a story that can end whenever it wants, but when you're up against a timeline that gets closer and closer to some sort of catastrophe, your excitement levels go up because - even though 99.9% of the time everything is resolved at the 1 second line - we think that the end will come before the final verdict is reached. So when you have a story that could technically last awhile, but decide to throw in the "ticking clock," it turns something more mundane into an exciting thrill ride even though logically it shouldn't be. In the near future, lawmakers in Los Angeles along with LAPD detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) create the Mercy Capital Court, a judicial system controlled by Artificial Intelligence that ...
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We Bury the Dead

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We Bury the Dead Starring Daisy Ridley, Brenton Thwaites, Mark Coles Smith, Matt Whelan Directed by Zak Hilditch The zombie genre, much like its subject, has risen from the dead on multiple occasions. 1932's "White Zombie" introduced the concept, and it got a major overhaul with George A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" in 1968, which gave birth to how we see zombies today: shambling undead who desire to eat the living, and the only way to kill them is damage to the brain. Numerous iterations have continued the genre, with the likes of "The Walking Dead" focusing more on classic shamblers while "World War Z" and Zack Snyder's "Dawn of the Dead" introduced fast runners who are far more terrifying. Lately, however, it seems the zombie genre has returned to the grave, and while "We Bury the Dead" offers something a bit different, it won't be enough to make them crawl out of their graves again. On the island of...
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Blue Moon

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Blue Moon Starring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Scott Directed by Richard Linklater When you hear "they don't make movies like this anymore," Richard Linklater's "Blue Moon" would be one such film - a movie that doesn't include lavish set pieces, explosive action, twists aplenty, or exciting camera movements. What "Blue Moon" is is something magical: a one-set location movie that centers fully on conversations and character development, devoid of any of the bells and whistles that would distract people from the story being told. While that might fascinate some true cinephiles, it's not something this TikTok generation desires - quick, thirty second bits to keep them entertained. It's a dry movie, but one that highlights the exceptional acting talents of its stars, particularly Ethan Hawke, and makes you feel like you're watching a play on the big screen - which is no surprise, considering the film's the...
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Worst2First: Ranking All 144 Films I Saw in 2025

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   Worst2First:  Ranking All 144 Films I Saw in 2025 2025 was a great year for movies, and had a slew of instant classics that'll be talked about in the decades to come - and of course there's also a lot of stinkers that were so bad they were almost unwatchable - and everything in between. I saw 144 movies that were released in 2025 (I consider wide release as 2025, so some films were released in limited release in 2024 but I could them for 2025), and I ranked them all from worst to first.  You can listen to my ten best and worst films on my podcast, Poppin' Cinema with JoeMama and Friends, with my friend Max, but here is the entire list, from worst to first. To listen to my reasoning for choosing my ten worst and best, listen to my podcast here: Poppin' Cinema Each image is color coded for how I graded them, and most of my reviews are in full here that you can find on my Archives page. Red = movies I rated D+ to D- Yellow = movies I rated C+ to C- Blue...
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