Lists

Picture of a movie: Manchester by the Sea
Picture of a movie: Heartbeats
Sort by:
Recent Desc

Inspired by this list

Picture of a movie: Mommy
movies

Mommy

2014
Forty-six year old Diane Després - "Die" - has been widowed for three years. Considered white trash by many, Die does whatever she needs, including strutting her body in front of male employers who will look, to make an honest living. That bread-winning ability is affected when she makes the decision to remove her only offspring, fifteen year old Steve Després, from her previously imposed institutionalization, one step below juvenile detention. She institutionalized him shortly following her husband's death due to Steve's attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and his violent outbursts. He was just kicked out of the latest in a long line of facilities for setting fire to the cafeteria, in turn injuring another boy. She made this decision to deinstitutionalize him as she didn't like the alternative, sending him into more restrictive juvenile detention from which he would probably never be rehabilitated. However, with this deinstitutionalization, she has to take care of him which means only being able to do home based work. Despite they always yelling expletives at each other and Steve sometimes demonstrating those violent tendencies toward her, Die and Steve truly do love each other, his emotions which are sometimes manifested as an Oedipus complex especially as he seems to need her complete attention most specifically when it is being directed at possible male suitors. Their lives, both individually and as a family, are affected with the entrance of two of their neighbors. The first is Paul, a lawyer, who does have that sexual interest in Die as he tries to help Steve through his legal problems. The second and more important is Kyla, who lives across the street with her husband Patrick and their adolescent daughter, they who are in transit in their life to wherever Patrick's job will take them. Kyla is a high school teacher on sabbatical as she deals with her own emotional issues, which are manifested in stuttering whenever she feels incapable of dealing with her life. Kyla may find that she needs the Després as much as they need her.
Picture of a movie: Elephant Song
movies

Elephant Song

2015
It's January, 1966 at St. Christina's Psychiatric Hospital in Northwestern Ontario. Dr. Toby Greene and Nurse Susan Peterson are individually being interviewed by Dr. Craig Jones, one of the hospital's administrators, about the incident that occurred just before Christmas, the day that their colleague, Dr. James Lawrence, inexplicably did not show up for work. As Dr. Lawrence disappeared the day before during a session with one of his regular patients, a young man named Michael Aleen, the belief among some is that Michael may have had something to do with Dr. Lawrence's disappearance. That day, Dr. Greene took over Dr. Lawrence's patient-load, which included a session with Michael to try and discover if he indeed had some nefarious role in Dr. Lawrence's disappearance. Dr. Greene did not know Michael at all, and was unable to read his case file before meeting with Michael. Regardless, Dr. Greene believed he could read Michael and glean as much from his lies as from his truths. Conversely, Miss Peterson was well-acquainted with Michael and his overall mental state. On the surface, Michael seemed to be able to take control of the situation with information he was able to obtain about Dr. Greene and Miss Peterson to play one off the other, as well as information about secrets about the hospital the administrators believed were well hidden. Michael's emotions also came into play in what happened that day, the question being whether either Dr. Greene or Miss Peterson were able to break through those emotions to the core of what was happening with Michael and Dr. Lawrence.
Picture of a movie: Café de Flore
movies

Café de Flore

2011
A love story about people separated by time and place but connected in profound and mysterious ways. Atmospheric, fantastical, tragic and hopeful, the film chronicles the parallel fates of Jacqueline, a young mother with a disabled son in 1960s Paris, and Antoine, a recently divorced, successful DJ in present day Montreal. What binds the two stories together is love - euphoric, obsessive, tragic, youthful, timeless love. In 1960s Paris, a working class woman gives birth to her first child, Laurent - a Down Syndrome son. Undaunted she embraces the challenge of raising her beloved offspring as normally as one would any other child. Her husband abandons them both. She bravely brushes this additional hiccup aside as Laurent replaces her spouse as the perfect man of her dreams. As Laurent approaches school age Jacqueline's aplomb becomes obsessive and cloying. Her increasingly self-destructive attachment to her son is raised to a fever pitch when, at the age of seven, he meets a Down Syndrome girl (Véronique) and experiences his first crush. His sudden desire for independence, and his attraction to Véra, are the catalysts that transform Jacqueline from a loving mother into something resembling a lover scorned. What emerges is a love triangle of potentially tragic proportions. In 21st century Montreal, a forty year old divorcée, Carole, is trying to restart her life after her divorce, two years earlier, from Antoine, a devastatingly handsome, successful touring DJ. Soul mates who've been a couple since the age of fifteen, their divorce is a schism that might prove impossible for either of them to put in the past. Making the transition even more difficult for Carole is the fact that her two daughters, one teen, one tween, are about to gain a stepmother, a stunningly beautiful, heartbreaking blonde, a woman about to "steal" away the perfect man of her dreams. The young girls are being cruelly pulled in two different directions, Antoine's father, a recovering alcoholic, seems to side with his ex-daughter-in-law, and Carole is succumbing to fits of depression and potentially dangerous bouts of sleepwalking. What emerges is a love triangle of potentially tragic proportions.