
Allied
Allied starts out similar to Casablanca. Same time (World War II), same place, comparable ambience. A male British agent, Max (Brad Pitt) and a French female agent Marianne (Marion Cotillard) are instructed to kill the German ambassador. The mission is very dangerous. They give themselves a 40% chance they will come out of it alive.

Whiplash
Whiplash preceded LALA Land in the creative collaboration between the writer/director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz. An aspiring drummer meets a hard driving foul-mouthed teacher at the best music school in the USA. You feel like getting lashed for most of film.

Lion
What a story amazing story from India! Rarely was I so moved. A five-year-old boy insists that his older brother take him to his secret night work. They sneak out their mother’s house but before long the little boy is too tired to continue on. So the older brother leaves the younger brother behind at a train station and tells him not to move until he is back. When the little brother wakes up and his older brother has not returned and he starts searching for his older brother.

Baby Driver
Baby Driver is fresh. It mixes genres action movie, crime and love story, and music video. Baby, a taciturn man in his early twenties, lost his mother and father in a car accident when he was about 10. The parents were fighting in the front seats, shouted at each other, and she did see the breaking truck. Baby sitting in the back, saw it all and—bam—was an orphan.

Blood Diamond
If you are about to get married and want to celebrate this significant event with a diamond, I do not recommend you watch Blood Diamond. Your enthusiasm for diamonds will be greatly diminished. You will no longer sing, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” It is hard to get the idea out of one’s head because of these sparkling objects many people to lost their lives and one may literally wear blood on one’s hands. We also learn how prices for diamonds are kept artificially high because large companies buy up supply and store tons of diamonds in vaults. The film tells a very good story that seems to be in large measure true.