The Room Next Door

"Trumbo" is a 2015 biographical drama film that tells the story of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and his struggles during the Hollywood blacklist era of the 1940s and 1950s. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of writers and directors who were blacklisted by the film industry for their alleged communist sympathies. The film explores Trumbo's fight against the blacklist and his eventual triumph, as he wins two Academy Awards under pseudonyms.

Blue Crush taught us surfer-girls can have guts and soul. Now, considerably raising the stakes and the bar, Soul Surfer shows us just how courageous and soulful real-life surfer girls can be. Please do not allow Carrie Underwood's cameos to distract you from Soul Surfer's true heroine--Bethany Hamilton, on whose real-life triumph the movie is based. At 13, Bethany Hamilton lost part of her arm to a hungry shark, and her battle for survival garnered world-wide attention. The loss of the arm represents the loss of Bethany's dream: she aspired to a career as a pro surfer, and she had been well on her way. "At low ebb, Bethany discovers no surfing, no self. Travelling with a youth group to Phuket, Thailand, in the wake of the tsunami, Bethany discovers the possibility of making a difference in others' lives, and she pursues recovery and career with new-found purpose and resolve. The results: inspirational drama, and great surfing. In Soul Surfer's climactic scenes, we witness Bethany pushing her physical limits for the sake of inspiring others. In these scenes, we also credit director Sean McNamara with understanding the difference between "homiletic" and inspirational and keeping the most soulful parts of Soul Surfer genuinely tear-worthily inspirational."The Hamilton family collaborated in Soul Surfer's development, adding parts of the story Bethany had felt unwilling or unready to discuss in her autobiography. Welcome (almost) grown-up AnnaSophia Robb, who pours her own heart and soul into her portrayal of Bethany Hamilton. Welcome back Helen Hunt, beautiful and beguiling as ever, and extremely well cast as Bethany's mom. Also welcome back Dennis Quaid, reprising the good dad, and doing it well."

Upon her return from college Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan has a new and much more open mindedness to her philosophy in life. She wants to be a writer and takes on the task of getting the local black women, long considered the hired help in their Deep South area, to open up and talk of their lives and ambitions. This is a bad time and worse part of the country to attempt this but Skeeter is determined. At first the black women refuse to speak but then one and another speak up. New friendships will be forged and the times are changing for both races in this heartfelt Walt Disney Picture. mma Stone (Zombieland, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past) is Skeeter Phelan, the intrepid writer. Sissy Spacek (Coal Miner's Daughter, Carrie) plays the Missus Walters, Aibileen (played by Viola Davis from Eat, Pray, Love) is the first to begin speaking with the writer. And Aunjanue Ellis (The Good Wife, Motherhood) is Yule Mae Davis who also opens up with her story of life as one of "The Help" in the deep south of the 1960's. And they have a lot to say.

The Rabbit Hole movie's pivotal event, the gut-wrenching and heart-numbing tragedy that sends Becca and Howie Cotbett down the rabbit hole, is over and done before the movie begins: Their four-year-old son has run out into the street, been hit by a teen-age driver, and died. Rabbit Hole movie deals with the more complicated, considerably more disturbing question, "Then what?" Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize winning play that enjoyed a long and distinguished run on Broadway, Rabbit Hole literally "speaks to" grown-up audiences willing to listen to the nuances in the dialogue—the language of psychotherapy laced with bitter sarcasm and fierce rage."Nicole Kidman does not merely star in Rabbit Hole movie; she makes it her personal tour de force, playing Becca with all the brittle delicacy of Wedgewood china and all the fevered intensity of a serial killer. The marquee proclaims Aaron Eckhart also stars, but he really is the fern and baby's breath to Kidman's flourishing rose bouquet. Howie cheats on his wife, and Becca stalks their baby's killer, and somehow they convince themselves and the audience that really they are just a couple of struggling suburbanites "trying to find their way back to a life that still holds the potential for beauty, laughter and happiness." Rabbit Hole movie director John Cameron Mitchell drains away the film's melodrama and pathos by rendering it in "drab, functional, TV-movie naturalism," making it beguiling and terrifying. Through Mitchell's lens, the horrific events and overwhelming emotions seem exceptionally familiar and perfectly ordinary. Rabbit Hole terrifies everyday Cineplex audiences, forcing them to recognize just how easily they might become Becca and Howie.

Mike Flanagan adapts Stephen King's novella into a reverse-chronology epic about one ordinary man's life — anchored by Tom Hiddleston and a starry ensemble — and emerges as one of the year's most moving films.

Poor Things (2023) is Yorgos Lanthimos's darkly comic fantasy film starring Emma Stone as Bella Baxter, a woman reborn who discovers the world and herself in a surreal Victorian adventure.