Mid-Century (2022):

Tom Levin (Shane West) is an architect married to a doctor named Alice (Chelsea Gilligan (“The Resident”). The professional couple rent a Mid-Century classic home for a weekend, having decided to do something different. What begins as a weekend getaway quickly morphs into a horror-thriller. It is an amazing house, left virtually untouched since the 1960s. Tom is left alone as Alice has to go to a job interview, and in checking the place out, he learns that it was designed and built by one of his architectural idols, a man named Frederick Banner (Stephen Lang) who was known, in life, as a legendary designer, as well as a man leaning towards the occult. As Tom explores the house, he is intruded upon by what can only be the ghost of a beautiful woman, and soon he seems to be under her spell. When Alice returns from her interview, she finds Tom gone, and she feels that someone or something is stalking her. Soon it is clear that even though the architect Banner has been dead for many years, he is still occupying the home he designed, and he has designs on Alice and Tom as part of a diabolical event that will spell their doom. Bruce Dern and Vanessa Williams also star. Rated 14A.

Cow (2022):

Nominated for a BAFTA (British equivalent of an Oscar) for Best Documentary, and celebrated at the Cannes Film Festival where it debuted to great reviews, this unlikely story that follows two cows over the course of several years. Luma is a female dairy cow with a young calf as the production opens, and the cameras and narration follow the day-to-day lives of the two bovines revealing some very interesting truths as well as creating some disturbing feelings about the domestication and captivity of cattle. Director of seven episodes of the TV series “Big Little Lies,” Andrea Arnold created this documentary because she had for some years wanted to tell the story through the eyes of a farm animal, originally choosing a chicken, but then changing her focus to cows. Many have seen this as a propaganda film of sorts, to promote the vegan point of view, but Arnold says that was never her intent, and it isn’t the point of the documentary. It’s simply an opportunity to see what a dairy cow goes through day after day, and how the people in its life react. Interesting film, but quite curious! Rated 14A.

White Elephant (2022):

Although all the heavy lifting in this action-adventure thriller is done by actor Michael Rooker (“The Suicide Squad,” “Guardians of the Galaxy”), top billing goes to Bruce Willis who really doesn’t do much here but whose face and name are still enough to get a movie made, sold, and distributed. Rooker plays Gabriel Tancredi, a former Marine now using his skills as a mob enforcer. He encounters a major dilemma when a police officer named Vanessa (Olga Kurylenko) witnesses a failed assassination attempt and is now marked for death herself. That hit was called for by ruthless mob boss, and friend of Rooker, Arnold Solomon (Bruce Willis). In order for Rooker to save Vanessa he has to break his code of conduct and his allegiance to Solomon which will set off a series of events that will lead to his own demise if he doesn’t do something creative. Bruce Willis worked on this film for just a couple of days and is relatively minor in the scheme of things, but it’s a serviceable, if derivative action story. Rated 14A.

Purple Hearts (2022):

This Netflix original is a romantic drama, or a dramatic romance, take your pick, about two young people from very different worlds, who come together with a common cause. He is Luke (Nicholas Galitzine who played Prince Charming in the recent Cinderella movie), a handsome young man from a troubled background, who has just enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. She is Cassie (Sofia Carson), a struggling singer/songwriter, and her past and present is very different from that of Luke. They agree to marry, but only so that she can have access to his military benefits such as healthcare, after a diagnosis that will change her life. As her illness becomes more pronounced, the couple must decide which part of their life was a marriage of convenience, and which part might be for much more than that. Rated 14A.

Operation Mincemeat (2021):

This film, based on actual events in WWII, was released by Warner Bros in the UK theatrically, and is being released by Netflix in North America. Colin Firth stars in this ingenious story of an espionage operation in 1943 that turned the tide of the war when a pair of British operatives used a combination of a corpse and false identity documents to deceive the Germans at a critical point when a huge build-up of troops was set to quash the allies. It tells the story of those who fight in the shadows, and whose true exploits are sometimes unknown and lost in the fog of war and the mirage of history. Rated 14A.