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Comrade Detective (Amazon Original) Season 1
Creators: Brian Gatewood, Alessandro Tanaka
Starring: Diana Vladu, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
A bonkers and blood-soaked cop show set in 1980’s communist Romania. The kicker here is it’s been overdubbed with a star-studded cast most notably Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Mahershala Ali.
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Lost in Oz (Amazon Original) Season 1
Starring: Ashley Boettcher, Nika Futterman
This is a children’s program but I’m pretty sure we can all collectively agree that getting “lost in Oz” would be terrifying. It’s a maximum-security prison filled with murderers, rapists and white supremacists.
Oh, wait, this isn’t a reboot of the HBO drama Oz? Got it. Carry on, then.
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Bad Company
Director: Robert Benton
Screenplay: David Newman, Robert Benton
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown
One of those Old West myth-buster dramas starring a peach-fuzzed Jeff Bridges playing an Ohio boy who dodges the Civil War and gets caught up with a group of young outlaws.
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The Tick (Amazon Original) Season 1
Creators: Ben Edlund
Starring: Peter Serafinowicz, Griffin Newman
After getting the go-ahead from the Amazon Prime viewers, the live-action reboot of the famed blue-suited bloodsucker is getting its first full season. Spoon!
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All Dogs Go to Heaven
Director: Don Bluth, Gary Goldman
Screenplay: David N. Weiss
Starring: Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise
The sweetest animated feature ever made about dead dogs with gambling problems.
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Benny & Joon
Director: Jeremiah Chechik
Screenplay: Barry Berman
Starring: Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, Aidan Quinn
Benny & Joon is the film that put Johnny Depp on the map as a weirdo leading man. Fun fact: his character is named Sam not Benny.
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Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey
Director: Peter Hewitt
Screenplay: Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter
While not as lauded as the original, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is sort of a surrealist masterpiece with odes to the films of Ingmar Bergman, among others. Bill and Ted find themselves dead after a villain from the future sends android Bill and Teds back to the past. They have to beat Death to return to life but must go through a truly terrifying depiction of Hell, purgatory and elsewhere. In retrospect, this movie is insane.
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Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Director: Stephen Herek
Screenplay: Chris Matheson, Ed Solomon
Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter
The film that started it all. Two slackers travel through time in a phone booth to finish a history project aided by a futuristic George Carlin.
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Breakdown
Director: Jonathan Mostow
Screenplay: Jonathan Mostow
Starring: Kurt Russell, Kathleen Quinlan
A man’s wife is kidnapped after their car breaks down (hence the title) in the middle of the New Mexican desert. Now, he’s on a race against time (and his own mind) to find her in this “taut” “surreal” thriller. Also, makes for a cautionary tale explaining why you should never trust banjo-picking desert people.
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The Dead Zone
Director: David Cronenberg
Screenplay: Jeffrey Boam
Starring: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams
Chris Walken wakes from a five-year coma to find that he now has psychic powers! On the flip side, he realizes that nuclear war is coming so he’s got to kill a guy. Whoopsie!
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High Noon
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Screenplay: Carl Foreman
Starring: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly
Just before he hangs his badge up for good, newlywed lawman Will Kane must settle an old score in this classic Western.
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The Mod Squad
Director: Scott Silver
Screenplay: Stephen Kay, Scott Silver, Kate Lanier
Starring: Claire Danes, Giovanni Ribisi, Omar Epps
If you’re trying to have an I-Love-the-Early-Aughts party, Mod Squad might be one of the best films to put on. It’s like an ironic homage to the turn of the century but, y’know, not actually ironic.
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Once Bitten
Director: Howard Storm
Screenplay: Dimitri Villard
Starring: Lauren Hutton, Jim Carrey
Once Bitten was Jim Carrey’s first starring role and kind of set the tone for the rest of his career playing either a normal guy who has weird things happen to him or a weird guy who has to do normal things (seriously, consider any of Jim Carrey’s roles and nine times out of ten they fit into either category). In case you’ve never seen this gem of a film, he gets bitten by a sexy vampire and begins to turn into a vampire himself. But can true love save him?
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Saw
Director: James Wan
Screenplay: Leigh Whannell
Starring: Cary Elwes, Danny Glover
Despite the ensuing cavalcade of subpar sequels (and one prequel), Saw remains a modern day horror classic. Amazon will be releasing all seven (seven!) of the films in the Saw franchise perhaps in anticipation of the upcoming Jigsaw, which will see an October release.
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Teen Wolf
Director: Rod Daniel
Screenplay: Jeph Loeb
Starring: Michael J. Fox, James Hampton
Before it became a sexy teen drama, it was a campy 80s movie starring Michael J. Fox. Why did becoming a werewolf make him a better basketball player? Also, the final basketball game in the film is literally fifteen minutes long. It makes zero sense.
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Wayne’s World 2
Director: Stephen Surjik
Screenplay: Mike Meyers, Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner
Starring: Mike Meyers, Dana Carvey
Sure, it wasn’t the revolutionary cinematic masterpiece that the original was, but Wayne’s World 2 certainly had its moments. The Sports Illustrated football phone, the naked Indian, Christopher Walken and Charleton Heston just to name a few.
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Nick Offerman & Megan Mullally: Summer of 69: No Apostrophe
Director: Jay Karas
Screenplay: Jeff Drake, Joe Mande, et al.
Starring: Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman
Nick Offerman and Megan Mullally might be the First Couple of Comedy and in their new special together, they sing and crack jokes about their life and love.
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My Bloody Valentine 3D
Director: Patrick Lussier
Screenplay: Todd Farmer, Zane Smith
Starring: Jensen Ackles, Jaime King
A pretty boilerplate slasher flick that is single-handedly responsible for why you have to wear those stupid glasses every time you want to see some Hollywood blockbuster. If it weren’t for My Bloody Valentine you wouldn’t have to pay six dollars more to see Spiderman: Homecoming in 3D.
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Hannie Caulder
Director: Burt Kennedy
Screenplay: Burt Kenned, David Haft
Starring: Raquel Welch, Robert Culp
A frontierswoman is raped and her husband is murdered. She hires a bounty hunter to help her learn the way of the gun so she can exact her revenge on the men responsible in this proto-feminist Western made in the spirit of I Spit on Your Grave.
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Superbad (Unrated)
Director: Greg Mottola
Screenplay: Seth Rogan, Evan Goldberg
Starring: Michael Cera, Jonah Hill
Superbad is still as hilarious today as it was ten years ago but, man oh man, it would never get made today. It’s incredible to think how much has changed in ten years but this film drops more f-bombs (not that f-bomb, but the other, way worse f-bomb) and casual jokes about sexual assault than probably necessary. But the world needed Jonah Hill. And this was the only way he was going to get born.
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