With the event held not long after the celebration of the building's 150th anniversary and the decade-long rehabilitation of historic Forest Grove School Number Five, Kelly and Tammy Rundle of the Moline-based Fourth Wall Films will screen their documentary Resurrecting Forest Grove at the Bettendorf Public Library on January 18, this special presentation a program in the library's popular Community Connections series.

It arrived a few days late, but the undisputed movie tearjerker of 2023 finally landed in '24 with Thursday's Netflix debut of Society of the Snow, writer/director J.A. Bayona's foreign-language survival thriller about the 1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 disaster.

Either 2023 was a particularly outstanding year for movies or my standards are getting lower – though I suppose both could be true.

In its new musical incarnation, The Color Purple isn't a very good movie. But I'm not sure how much that matters.

I didn't “attend” the first film in my three-day sextuple feature so much as “plop my ass on the couch and watch” it. And for the first hour-or-so of director/writer/producer/star Bradley Cooper's Maestro, which started streaming on Netflix this past Wednesday, I couldn't imagine wanting to be anywhere else.

Writer/director Paul King's musical-comedy prequel Wonka isn't hard to enjoy. Yet I'd argue that it'll be even easier if you manage to divorce yourself from memories of previous Willy Wonkas – Roald Dahl's, for sure, but also Gene Wilder's and Johnny Depp's.

One of the most delightful romantic comedies in Hollywood history will enjoy at special December 22 showing when the Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox screens The Shop Around the Corner, the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch classic that inspired 1998's Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan hit You've Got Mail, was ranked number 28 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Passions list, and is included in Time magazine's ranking of All-Time 100 Movies.

Its setting may be wintry New England in the early '60s, and its story may conclude on Christmas Day, but don't even think about mistaking director William Oldroyd's Eileen for feel-good seasonal fare: It's a cup of eggnog deliciously laced with strychnine.

The central figures in this thrillingly unsettling dramatic comedy are constantly projecting images of themselves as they desperately hope to be perceived, yet all three of them are deeply deluded – and only one of them will emerge unscathed with delusions blissfully intact.

The deservedly lauded homegrown talents Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are clearly In Demand, which makes it all the more impressive and special that they would dedicate time, money, and resources to giving the Quad Cities what we've sorely lacked: a beautiful, conveniently located establishment devoted to the collective moviegoing experience that will provide, as Beck and Woods insist, something for everyone, and on a weekly basis.

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