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Titanic
Director: James Cameron
Screenplay: James Cameron
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet
If you somehow missed Titanic in the twenty or so years since it’s been out, you’ve been deprived of a bevy of satirical cultural landmarks. What did you think was going on when, on an almost daily basis (and still to this day), folks were standing on things and declaring that they were the “king of the world?”
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Free Willy
Director: Simon Wincer
Screenplay: Keith A. Walker, Corey Blechmann
Starring: Jason James Richter, Loir Petty
Unfortunately, after the release of Black Fish, movies starring orcas haven’t aged very well. And whatever you do, don’t Google “what happened to the whale from Free Willy?” unless you’re in the mood to be totally bummed out.
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Disney’s The Mighty Ducks
Director: Stephen Herek
Screenplay: Steven Brill
Starring: Emilio Estevez
A guy arrested for drunk driving has to coach a ragtag team of misfits on the finer points of hockey.
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenplay: Melissa Mathison
Starring: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore
This movie was good until they digitally replaced all of the FBI agents’ guns with cell phones. It was weirdly anachronistic and what were they going to do? Stop the flying bike by putting a call in?
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Delicatessen
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro
Screenplay: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, Gilles Adrien
Starring: Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Dominique Pinon
Perhaps one of the best variations on the “Soylent Green” theme is from this French director who’s best known for is twee masterpiece Amélie. Believe it or not, he went on to direct Alien: Resurrection and still couldn’t save that dumpster fire of a movie.
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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Director: Mark Herman
Screenplay: Mark Herman
Starring: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon
Here’s the inherent problem with this film, and we’re going to throw a spoiler warning on this: by the end of the film, the director wants you to feel bad for the Nazis. After the two kids are gassed, the audience is treated to this really annoying close up of two sniveling fascists mourning their dead son. No thank you.
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Jackass: Number Two
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Screenplay: Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, et. al.
Starring: Steve-O, Johnny Knoxville
Those of us who grew up with Jackass are probably less than willing to remember the sophomoric series too fondly but, damn, did they crush some of those pranks. We recommend watching this movie after a couple of cocktails and basking in the glow of idiot bliss.
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Punch-Drunk Love
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Adam Sandler, Emily Watson
Punk-Drunk Love was the film that shut the Sandler-haters up for good. The guy gives a tour de force performance as a man with severe anger issues going up against Philip Seymour Hoffman in one of his best roles as a small-time pimp-cum-mattress baron.
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Spawn: The Movie
Director: Mark A.Z. Dippe
Screenplay: Alan B. McElroy
Starring: Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo
People hated on this movie because it wasn’t very good. But for one brief shining moment, John Leguizamo held the record for most live bugs eaten on camera when he scarfed a pizza covered in maggots. The record had previously been held by, you guessed it, Nic Cage when he ate a cockroach (two, actually, as it took two takes) in the all but forgotten film Vampire’s Kiss.
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The Astronaut Farmer
Director: Michael Polish
Screenplay: Michael Polish, Mark Polish
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton
Stay with us here, because in this one Billy Bob plays a disgraced NASA scientist who never got to go to space. So what does he do? Builds his very own spaceship in a barn. Based on a true story (not really).
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Best in Show
Director: Christopher Guest
Screenplay: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy
Starring: Eugene Levy, Parker Posey
Christopher Guest is best known for his hysterical mockumentaries and this one is no different, which takes on the weird world of professional dog shows.
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Matchstick Men
Director: Ridley Scott
Screenplay: Ted Griffin, Nicholas Griffin
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell
Two of America’s greatest actors team up as conmen. Everything changes when a woman from the past shows up and then the con is on.
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Police Academy
Director: Hugh Wilson
Screenplay: Neal Israel, Pat Proft, Hugh Wilson
Starring: Steve Guttenberg, Bubba Smith
Nothing, literally nothing, is funnier to dads the world over than the guy who only talks in funny sounds. Holy moly that stuff is gold.
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Castlevania: Season 1–NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Director: Sam Deals
Screenplay: Warren Ellis
Producer: Adi Shankar
This animated take on the beloved vampiric video game series is being described as “like Game of Thrones,” but, since Game of Thrones comes back July 16th, who needs “like Game of Thrones” when you can have Game of Thrones?
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Lion
Director: Garth Davis
Screenplay: Luke Davies
Starring: Dev Patel, Rooney Mara
Dev Patel crisscrosses the world looking for his estranged birth parents using only Google Earth in one of the longest commercials for Google ever.
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Friends From College: Season 1–NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Screenplay: Nicholas Stoller, Francesca Delbanco
Starring: Keegan-Michael Key, Cobie Smulders, Fred Savage
Twenty years after graduation, it turns out things are still tough in the real world and love never comes easy for this group of formerly tight-knit friends. Judging by the description, this looks like a Gen-X version of The Big Chill.
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To the Bone–NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Director: Marti Noxon
Screenplay: Marti Noxon
Starring: Lilly Collins, Keanu Reeves
An anorexic girl moves into a group home with a quirky doctor in a film that is sure to be described as “raw,” “honest,” “heartbreaking,” and “heartwarming.”
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Chasing Coral–NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Director: Jeff Orlowski
Screenplay: Jeff Orlowski
Starring: Jeff Orlowski
If you’re tired of escapism or just can’t get enough horrible news, this documentary is about coral bleaching and how we as humans just love to ruin everything.
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Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile–NETFLIX ORIGINAL
Creator: Rian Wiesbrok
Screenplay: Tom Krajewski
Starring: Brian Atkinson, Ted Raimi
A truck-driving dog and a ferret that’s a mechanic go around and do stuff. You know the drill. It’s for kids. But what’s kind of cool is that it’s one of the first “choose-your-own-adventure” interactive television shows opening the door for other applications.
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Director: Gareth Edwards
Screenplay: Chris Weitz, Tony Gilroy
Starring: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna
This was a very okay Star Wars film but, when put up against some of its predecessors, it remains, like, the fifth (fourth?) best Star Wars film of all time. It’s kind of hard to follow the plot but things blow up and there are some pretty cool dogfights… but no lightsabers.
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