Film recommendations by Ky
updated daily!

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While we are all staying at home, we thought we would highlight a movie each day from our history and let you know where you can watch it at home...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is Ang Lee's 2009 film TAKING WOODSTOCK. Lee's film tells the story of Elliot Tiber and his family, who inadvertently played a pivotal role in making the famed Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the happening that it was. When Elliot...

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Our next Rialto Recommends feature is SMOKE SIGNALS with a screenplay by Sherman Alexie. SMOKE SIGNALS tells a familiar story from an underrepresented point of view, proving that a fresh perspective can help subvert long-established expectations...

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In honor of Ennio Morricone's passing our next Rialto Recommends is 1998's landmark film CINEMA PARADISO. A filmmaker recalls his childhood when falling in love with the pictures at the cinema of his home village...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is both a charming indie and a food movie. EAST SIDE SUSHI (2015) introduces us to Juana, a working-class Latina single mother. Forced to give up her fruit-vending cart in order to find a more secure job, Juana lands a position as a kitchen assistant at a local Japanese restaurant and discovers a whole new world of cuisine and culture...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is Jim Sheridan's 2003 film IN AMERICA, A rich and moving story about an immigrant family adjusting to life in New York. The Detroit Free Press called IN AMERICA "An achingly intimate and beautifully observed account...

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Sometimes independent movies come along that surprise you by being more than what a high-concept pitch line reveals. Such was the case with our next Rialto Recommends Jason Bateman's directorial debut BAD WORDS. Our owner didn't think the movie sounded like much...

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Our next Rialto Recommends takes you to Istanbul viewed through the eyes of its many street cats. KEDI is a cat fancier's dream, but this thoughtful, beautifully filmed look at Istanbul's street feline population offers absorbing viewing for filmgoers of any purr-suasion. The Boston Globe purred "Those who don't especially like cats...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is 2018's thriller WIDOWS. From Academy Award (R)-winning director Steve McQueen ("12 Years a Slave") and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn ("Gone Girl") comes a blistering, modern-day thriller set against the backdrop of crime...

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With her second feature film as a writer/director Niki Caro created an international profile as one the world's top female directors. Our next Rialto Recommends is that film, her 2003 feature WHALE RIDER. On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor...

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Are you ready to rock? Our next Rialto Recommends wants to rock your world. A downtown musical that took NY by storm when it appeared off Broadway, HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH has become a cultural phenomenon. Starring John Cameron Mitchell as the titular character and directed by Mitchell, HEDWIG was written...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is from Bay Area and LGBT film historian Jenni Olson. Her 2015 film THE ROYAL ROAD is a fascinating and unlikely reinvention story. THE ROYAL ROAD simultaneously explores cinematic spiritual channeling, the conquest and colonization of Mexico and the American Southwest, fading historical Californian urban landscapes...

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In 2011 we did a number of Rialto on the Road film festivals at the Sixth Street Playhouse. Our next Rialto Recommends is CIRCO which we presented in the spring. Tino Ponce operates Circo Mexico, which journeys across the Mexican countryside in search of paying customers...

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Our friends at the OUTWatch Film Festival first alerted us to our next Rialto Recommends title and recommend it for our monthly OUTWatch screening series which had to be put on hold due to the pandemic closures. DISCLOSURE: TRANS LIVES ON SCREEN takes an unprecedented look at the depiction of transgender people and experiences throughout the history of film and television...

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Our next Rialto Recommends takes us back to the Spring of 2010 when we presented the wonderful documentary WAKING SLEEPING BEAUTY and the former head of Disney Feature Animation Peter Schneider joined us one evening for a fascinating Q&A about the film and the golden renaissance of Disney feature animation...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is one of those films that came out and then disappeared from theaters all too quickly. Released in January, 1990 Mike Figgis' INTERNAL AFFAIRS stars Richard Gere, Andy Garcia, and Laurie Metcalf. Keen young Raymold Avila (Garcia) joins the Internal Affairs Department...

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It would be baseball season, so for our next Rialto Recommends we have chosen one of the best recent baseball movies 42 starring Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson. "42" tells the story of two men-the great Jackie Robinson and legendary Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey-whose brave stand against prejudice...

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We were saddened to learn of the passing of writer/director Joel Schumacher at the age of 80. A director of a number of iconic films as well as a handful of iconic flops Schumacher is also the director who fully leaned...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is a movie that is close to our owner's heart. BIG EDEN is a beautiful coming out story set in a fictional Montana town and film around Lake McDonald in Glacier National Park. Winner of multiple LGBT film festival awards the film went on to a regular theatrical...

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Our next Rialto Recommends celebrates the 45th anniversary of the release of a film that marked a seminal change in the Hollywood studio business model and ushered in the era of the modern studio blockbuster summer movie. Released on over 450 screens (exceptionally wide for the period)...

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We were saddened to learn of the passing of great English actor Ian Holm. Though he is not the lead in the film, our Rialto Recommends is 1994's THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE from director Nicholas Hynter, whose name you are probably familiar with from his many productions that have been featured in National Theatre Live. Based on Alan Bennett's acclaimed play...

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Several weeks ago we wrote about 80's B movies and provided a couple of our favorite examples. Today our Rialto Recommends is an example of a modern B caper movie that we rather enjoyed when it premiered at TIFF. THE ART OF THE STEAL (not to be confused with the exceptional documentary about the Barnes Collection of the same name from 2009...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is a film our owner has been a supporter of since pre-production. Based on the acclaimed novel SOMETHING LIKE SUMMER the film traces the tumultuous relationship of Ben and Tim, secret high school sweethearts who grow over the years into both adulthood enemies...

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Jon Stewart's second film IRRESISTIBLE comes out later this month, so it seems like a good time to revisit his debut as a feature film writer/director ROSEWATER from the Fall of 2014 which premiered at TIFF ahead of a theatrical launch. In 2009, Iranian Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari was covering Iran's volatile elections...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is the arthouse classic GO FISH from 1995. The selling of GO FISH to distributor The Samuel Goldwyn Company was memorably profiled in film sales rep John Pierson's book "Spike Mike Slackers and Dykes" about taking both GO FISH and Clerks to the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. This hit arthouse ensemble piece traces the romantic and political...

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Dan Ireland (Mrs. Palfry at the Claremont) directs our next Rialto Recommends 1996's THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. A touching and unusual love story, THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD was based on a memoir by Novalyne Price Ellis...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is 2014's THE WAY HE LOOKS. Leonardo is a blind teenager searching for independence. His everyday life, the relationship with his best friend, Giovana, and the way he sees the world change completely with the arrival of Gabriel in this Sao Paolo set feature. The Hollywood Reporter said "The sweet and beautifully observed feature debut of Brazilian...

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Our next Rialto Recommends takes us back to the spring of 2000 when this beautiful Iranian film came out in theatres. THE COLOR OF PARADISE wowed audiences across the country. Director Majid Majidi, whose Bacheha-Ye Aseman/Children Of Heaven was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an American Academy Award...

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Our next Rialto Recommends premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival before going on to theatres later that year. In DOPE, Malcolm (Shameik Moore) is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles while juggling college applications, academic interviews...

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Named after a Sufi word that translates roughly as "breath of life" or "blessing," BARAKA is Ron Fricke's impressive follow-up to Godfrey Reggio's non-verbal documentary film Koyaanisqatsi. Our next Rialto Recommends is a a tour-de-force in 70mm: a cinematic "guided meditation" (Fricke's own description) shot in 24 countries on six continents...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is Jeff Nichol's (Mud) acclaimed 2016 film LOVING. LOVING celebrates the real-life courage and commitment of an interracial couple, Richard and Mildred Loving (portrayed by Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), who married and then spent the next nine years fighting...

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Somewhere we saw playwright August Wilson referred to as "America's Shakespeare." His ten play The Pittsburgh Cycle certainly has produced some masterpieces. One of those FENCES won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play. In 2016 Denzel Washington directed an acclaimed film adaptation...

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Our next Rialto Recommends is a film that film critics had quibbles with but audiences enjoyed. Starring Chadwick Boseman, Josh Gad, Kate Hudson, Dan Stevens, Sterling K. Brown, and James Cromwell. Director Reginald Hudlin's MARSHALL, is based on an early trial in the career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall...

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One of the movies we were showing when we had to close our location in Sebastopol was THE BANKER. Inspired by true events, THE BANKER centers on revolutionary businessmen Bernard Garrett (Anthony Mackie) and Joe Morris (Samuel L. Jackson), who devise an audacious and risky plan to take on the racist establishment of the 1960s...

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At the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival the stunning film WAVES premiered. Set against the vibrant landscape of South Florida, and featuring an astonishing ensemble of award-winning actors and breakouts alike, WAVES traces the epic emotional journey of a suburban African-American family--led by a well-intentioned but domineering father...

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In 1997 George Tillman, Jr. directed the movie Soul Food which we loved. In 2018 he directed Audrey Wells adaptation of the young adult novel THE HATE U GIVE and delivers a powerhouse film. In THE HATE U GIVE Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer...

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Our next Rialto Recommends premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall before opening in theatres in January of this year. A powerful and thought-provoking true story, "JUST MERCY" follows young lawyer Bryan Stevenson (Jordan) and his history-making battle for justice...

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Our next Rialto Recommends was originally made for the Showtime network but received a theatrical release prior to making its debut on the Showtime network. Directed by Maya Angelou in her feature film directing debut, 1998's DOWN IN THE DELTA stars Alfre Woodard...

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Our Rialto Recommends tonight is Ava DuVernay's stirring 2015 film SELMA. Fueled by a gripping performance from David Oyelowo, Selma draws inspiration and dramatic power from the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr...

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In honor of Christo's passing our next Rialto Recommends is the 2018 documentary WALKING ON WATER about his Italian project Floating Piers. Bulgarian director Andrey Paounov's documentary chronicles famed environmental artist Christo's first major project...

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Cinema can be a powerful mirror for society. In 1989 Spike Lee delivered a masterpiece in DO THE RIGHT THING. A movie about racism where nobody is right, DO THE RIGHT THING is our next Rialto Recommends selection. Smart, vibrant, and urgent without being didactic, Do the Right Thing is one of Spike Lee's most fully realized efforts...

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Sometimes movies bring to our attention stories about people we didn't know of before or remind us of past events or cause us to look at our past in a different light. Our next Rialto Recommends is 2015's Oscar nominee TRUMBO...

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Our next Rialto Recommends came and went from theatres in 2007 with too little recognition from audiences. TALK TO ME stars Don Cheadle as Petey Green a former convict who becomes an influential DJ in Washington DC and Chiwetel Ejiofor...

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At the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival we discovered a film that we fell in love with and our later engagements of the film went on to become the 3rd and 8th best runs of the film in the country at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood in Berkeley and Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol. The film is FACES PLACES which chronicles a journey legendary filmmaker...

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Our next Rialto Recommends takes you into a world that could be as close as your own backyard or the meadows and ponds in France where it was filmed. 1996's MICROCOSMOS is documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography...

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Indie films come in all shapes and sizes. Yesterday our Rialto Recommends was an indie by superstar director with a big name cast. Today for Rialto Recommends we go 180 degrees in the opposite direction with a film that received some notable acclaim but had very limited theatrical distribution...

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Throughout his career Steven Soderbergh has gone from groundbreaking indie features like his debut film Sex, Lies, and Videotape to slick Hollywood features like his Oceans 11 remake to Oscar fare like Traffic and Erin Brockovich...

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Sometimes you just need to go to Lake Como in the Italian Alps. Our next Rialto Recommends takes you there. 1995's MONTH BY THE LAKE stars Vanessa Redgrave, Edward Fox and Uma Thurman. At a Lake Como resort, Miss Bentley, an attractive older guest, meets a handsome, well-to-do bachelor...

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Friday, May 22nd would have been Harvey Milk's 90th birthday. In 1977, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay man to be voted into public office in America. His victory was not just a victory for gay rights...

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As we've mentioned before classic films are a part of our DNA here at Rialto Cinemas so for our next Rialto Recommends we are choosing a classic from 1972 Peter Bogdanovich's WHAT'S UP DOC? starring Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal that is actually an homage to Howard Hawk's 1939 film Bringing Up Baby...

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There are a number of great food movies, both narrative and documentary. Scrolling through the bountiful offerings on Nexflix JIRO DREAMS OF SUSHI caught our eye. Jiro Dreams of Sushi is the story of 85 year-old Jiro Ono, considered by many to be the world's greatest sushi chef. He is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro...

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I resisted selecting our next Rialto Recommends film as it didn't feel right in March to suggest watching this fine French film about the early days of the AIDS pandemic in Paris during the start of a new pandemic. But with time and positive steps forward...

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Over the years we've shown serious Coen Brothers movies like No Country For Old Men and A Serious Man and some of their less serious films like Burn After Reading. Their 2016 film HAIL, CESAR! is our latest Rialto Recommends selection...

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Our next Rialto Recommends came to our attention via the Sonoma County Jewish Film Festival several years ago the they programmed THE WOMEN'S BALCONY. The women in an Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem are appalled when their synagogue gets a strict new rabbi who preaches rigid gender roles. The ladies soon decide to fight back against...

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Our next Rialto Recommends film could easily fall into the category of "Films You've Never Heard Of." A true indie from the 1999 film festival circuit, CHUTNEY POPCORN played regular theatrical engagements in the late summer and early fall of 2000...

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Aaron Sorkin is one of most gifted screenwriters. From movies like The Social Network, Molly's Game, and A Few Good Men (which was based on his play of the same name) to his crackling TV shows like Sports Night...

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Our friend Pamela Gray wrote A WALK ON THE MOON which is our next Rialto Recommends selection. Director Tony Goldwyn's A Walk on the Moon is a wonderfully realized, nostalgic (if you are as old as I am) melodrama set during the summer of 1969. It is a time of change across America--sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll--and a historic year in the space program...

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Before he swept the Oscars this year with his phenomenal film Parasite, Bong Joon Ho wowed us with 2007's The Host and 2014's SNOWPIERCER which is our next Rialto Recommends selection. In this sci-fi epic from director Bong Joon Ho (The Host, Mother), a failed global-warming experiment kills off most...

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Our next Rialto Recommends feature is 2018's WILD ROSE starring Jessie Buckley in a star-making turn alongside the always great Julie Walters. WILD ROSE tells the complicated story of Rose-Lynn, a woman on a quest to become a country music star, while also grappling with the responsibilities of being recently released from prison and a young mother of two children. Time Magazine said "Rose-Lynn is neither a wholly selfish character nor a selfless one...

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Our next Rialto Recommends takes you to Paris for the omnibus film PARIS JE T'AIME from 2006. Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories...

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Good love stories have both an element of truth and a bit of fantasy in their DNA. Our next Rialto Recommends feature was a big hit on the LGBT film festival circuit in 2007 before going on to theatrical runs and home video. Forced to give up his dreams of art school, Zach works dead-end jobs to support his sister and her son...

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2018 saw Moonlight director Barry Jenkins honored the source material of his second feature with a beautifully filmed adaptation while further strengthening his visual and narrative craft in IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK. Based on James Baldwin's book, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK is our next Rialto Recommends feature...

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Our next Rialto Recommends film featured the provocative tag line "Let's talk about sex" on its poster art. But far from a titillating sex romp, KINSEY starring Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard and Laura Linney is one of 2004's best films. The Observer raved "The great thing about Kinsey is the triumphant way it entertains...

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During the summer of 1979, a Santa Barbara single mom and boardinghouse landlord (Annette Bening) decides the best way she can parent her teenage son (Lucas Jade Zumann) is to enlist her young tenants - a quirky punk photographer (Greta Gerwig), a mellow handyman...

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Our next Rialto Recommends film is MY WEEK WITH MARILYN starring Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe with a supporting cast that includes Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh, Julia Ormond, Judi Dench, Emma Watson, Dominic Cooper, and Zoe Wanamaker...

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For our next Rialto Recommends selection we go back to the 80's and a b-picture that movie people used to refer to as programmers. Usually made by independent companies b-pictures and programmers gave a great many filmmakers their initial success...

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Our next Rialto Recommends selection is 2014's joyous film PRIDE starring Imelda Staunton, Bill Nighy, Dominic West, Andrew Scott, Paddy Considine, and many more. PRIDE is inspired by an extraordinary true story. It's the summer of 1984, Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike...

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Patricia Clarkson takes center stage in CAIRO TIME from 2009. A romantic drama about a brief, unexpected love affair that catches two people completely off-guard. The Seattle Times raves "Clarkson lights up Ruba Nadda's stately drama Cairo Time like the moon on a summer night, making every moment luminous with quiet, resigned longing."

We've got a double feature for you for Earth Day. In THE ELEPHANT QUEEN Athena is a mother who will do everything in her power to protect her herd when they are forced to leave their waterhole. This epic journey, narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor...

With Earth Day coming up on Wednesday we have a couple of shorter documentaries as our movie choices for Tuesday, April 21st. Our first choice is DANCING WITH THE BIRDS which is streaming on Netflix here. Stephen Fry guides viewers this charming and playful documentary that is suitable for all ages as we journey deep into the forest following...