Starring: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Richard Haydn, Eleanor Parker, Peggy Wood

A tuneful, heartwarming story, it is based on the real life story of the Von Trapp Family singers, one of the world’s best-known concert groups in the era immediately preceding World War II. Julie Andrews plays the role of Maria, the tomboyish postulant at an Austrian abbey who becomes a governess in the home of a widowed naval captain with seven children, and brings a new love of life and music into the home.

Starring: Milla Jovovich, Sienna Guillory, Michelle Rodriguez

The Umbrella Corporation’s deadly T-virus continues to ravage the Earth, transforming the global population into legions of the flesh eating Undead. The human race’s last and only hope, Alice, awakens in the heart of Umbrella’s most clandestine operations facility and unveils more of her mysterious past as she delves further into the complex. Without a safe haven, Alice continues to hunt those responsible for the outbreak; a chase that takes her from Tokyo to New York, Washington, D.C. and Moscow, culminating in a mind-blowing revelation that will force her to rethink everything that she once thought to be true. Aided by new found allies and familiar friends, Alice must fight to survive long enough to escape a hostile world on the brink of oblivion. The countdown has begun.

Starring: Pamela Anderson, Temuera Morrison, Victoria Rowell, Jack Noseworthy, Xander Berkeley, Udo Kier

In the early 21st century, the USA is in the wake of the Second Civil War. The whole country is in a constant state of emergency. What was formerly called the American Congress now rules the country with fascistic methods. There is only one free city left, Steel Harbor, a coastal California industrial town which is headquarters for the resistance. This is the home town of Barb Wire, owner of the Hammerhead nightclub. As times aren’t good, Barb has a second job. She’s a bounty hunter and you probably wouldn’t want her after you. Barb’s credo is to never take sides for anybody and that’s the only way to survive these days in the crime-ridden streets of Steel Harbor. One evening, her former lover Axel Hood appears at the club asking for a favor to help him and his lover Cora D flee the country to Canada, Barb suddenly finds herself to be key player on high political stage. Now she has to take sides.

Starring: Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Paul Reubens, Rutger Hauer, Luke Perry

Sunday, July 31 show hosted by the 30 Years Later podcast, with hosts Ricky Camilleri (AOL Build) and Chris Chafin (Vox, Rolling Stone).

“All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die.”

Buffy! The movie that launched the show that launched the career of Joss Whedon, a man in his 50s with a legacy so influential and fraught that you might think he’s a former president, and not a guy who’s good at writing believable monster-fighting teenagers.

Starring: Lori Petty, Ice-T, Naomi Watts, Malcolm Mcdowell

This wild, futuristic action-fantasy is set in the year 2033 where drought and pollution have turned the Earth into a desert wasteland. The planet’s water supply is controlled by a despotic company that is opposed by a few courageous rebels who regularly risk their lives to poach the precious fluid.

Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Jonas Armstrong, Tony Way

Major Bill Cage is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously demoted and dropped into combat. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an alpha alien down with him. He awakens back at the beginning of the same day and is forced to fight and die again… and again… as physical contact with the alien has thrown him into a time loop.

Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Ben Foster, Jeffery Rifflard

Will and his teenage daughter, Tom, have lived off the grid for years in the forests of Portland, Oregon. When their idyllic life is shattered, both are put into social services. After clashing with their new surroundings, Will and Tom set off on a harrowing journey back to their wild homeland.

Oscar Snubs
Despite numerous nominations (including a win for Best Director by the LA Film Critics Association) and wide acclaim including 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, Debra Granik’s brilliant third narrative feature Leave No Trace did not get one single Academy nomination.

Jane Campion, one of only five women filmmakers every nominated for a Best Director Oscar said it best: “Over the last 20 years, Debra has become one of the most important voices in American cinema. And her film Leave No Trace is certainly one of the most moving dramas of the year… I am delighted that Debra has been nominated for Best Director at the Spirit Awards and won Best Director from the LA Film Critics. This is far-sighted recognition…. I believe she should be part of the Best Director Oscar conversation.”

Starring: Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Dolly Wells, Jane Curtin, Ben Falcone

The true story of bestselling celebrity biographer (and friend to cats) Lee Israel, who made her living in the 1970s and ’80s profiling the likes of Katherine Hepburn, Tallulah Bankhead, Estee Lauder and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. When Lee is no longer able to get published because she has fallen out of step with current tastes, she turns her art form to deception, abetted by her loyal friend Jack.

Oscar Snubs
While Can You Ever Forgive Me does have nominations (Best Actress, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Best Adapted screenplay co-written by Nicole Holofcener) we feel as if the Academy certainly feel that Marielle Heller should have received a Best Director nod and the film is definitely a Best Picture contender.

Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey

The most personal project to date from Academy Award-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien), Roma follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s.

Starring: Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Boluwatife Treasure Bankole

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum tells the story of Zain, a Lebanese boy who sues his parents for the “crime” of giving him life. Capernaum follows Zain, a gutsy streetwise child as he flees his negligent parents, survives through his wits on the streets, takes care of Ethiopian refugee Rahil and her baby son, Yonas, being jailed for a crime, and finally, seeks justice in a courtroom. Capernaum was made with a cast of non-professionals playing characters whose lives closely parallel their own. Following her script, Labaki placed her performers in scenes and asked them to react spontaneously with their own words and gestures. When the non-actors’s instincts diverged from the written script, Labaki adapted the screenplay to follow them.

While steeped in the quiet routines of ordinary people, Capernaum is a film with an expansive palette: without warning it can ignite with emotional intensity, surprise with unexpected tenderness, and inspire with flashes of poetic imagery. Although it is set in the depths of a society’s systematic inhumanity, Capernaum is ultimately a hopeful film that stirs the heart as deeply as it cries out for action.