Super Mario Bros. (1993) | Rocky Morton & Annabel Jankel

Super Mario Bros. features the emergence of an alternate dimension caused by (what is now known as) Brooklyn being struck by a meteorite millions of years ago.  In this alternate dimension, humans evolved from lizards, rather than monkeys, as believed in our own realm.  There is also only one city, Dinohattan, surrounded by endless desert, and currently presided over by the evil Koopa (Hopper, Red Rock West).  President Koopa (Dennis Hopper) is out to get a powerful rock crystal, a fragment of the original meteorite, that he needs to merge the two dimensions, giving him more realms to conquer. Here is where we meet our heroes, a couple of plumbers named Mario Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi Mario (John Leguizamo), who, in pursuit of a kidnapped new friend in a paleontology student named Daisy (Samantha Mathis), who happens to have the rock in the form of a necklace, find a portal into the Dinohattan dimension.  Dangers lurk all around, as the brave brothers must battle the mighty Koopa and his lizard horde to rescue Daisy and thwart Koopa’s evil plans to destroy their world. 

Double Dragon (1994) | James Yukich

Set in the futuristic year of 2007, in a city dubbed New Angeles, after having been reconstructed after a giant earthquake that happened a decade before in Southern California, where gangs and criminals mostly have their run of the city streets at night. Outside of the ineffective New Angeles Police Department, a vigilante group called the Power Corps, with direction from a teenage girl named Marian (Alyssa Milano), is the only organized force willing to take on the evil forces around the town. She knows talent when she sees it, so when she stumbles across a couple of martial-artist orphaned brothers named Jimmy (Mark Dacascos) and Billy (Scott Wolf) Lee, she recruits them for the cause of good. Their top adversary is a megalomaniac tycoon named Koga Shuko (Robert Patrick), aka ‘The Shadow Master’, who has become quite powerful in all but taking completely over the streets, utilizing his ability to change into shadow form and take over the bodies of others. The Lee brothers and their guardian Satori (Julia Nickson) have half of a powerful, mystical ancient Chinese medallion, while Koga has the other, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get his avaricious hands on it.

Street Fighter (1994) | Steven E. de Souza

In the Southeast Asian country of Shadaloo, where General M. Bison (Raul Julia) has been waging a war with the A.N. (the Allied Nations — a U.N.-like military force) after he has taken several dozen A.N. hostages, putting them up for a ransom of $20 billion dollars.  Leading the A.N. counterattack is United States Colonel William F. Guile (Jean-Claude Van Damme), a headstrong and gifted fighter that Bison can’t wait to challenge in hand-to-hand combat.  Many others would converge at Bison’s stronghold, including television reporter Chun-Li Zang (Ming-Na), arms dealer Victor Sagat (Wes Studi), and a couple of roguish martial artists named Ken (Damian Chapa) and Ryu (Byron Mann).

Coming 2 America (2021) | Craig Brewer

Coming 2 America is the much-belated sequel to one of Eddie Murphy’s most popular of starring vehicles, 1988’s Coming to America. Murphy returns to his role as Akeem Joffer, an obscenely wealthy prince of the fictional African kingdom of Zamunda, living in bliss with his wife, Lisa (Shari Headley), and their three daughters. With his father ailing (James Earl Jones), Akeem is set to become the king, but this will leave Zamunda, which has only been ruled by men, with no male heir. General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), the warmongering leader of the neighboring country, Nexdoria, has come around to intimidate his way into a marriage between his son and Akeem”s eldest daughter, Meeka (KiKi Layne). However, Akeem is soon informed that he may have had an illegitimate son when he was sowing his wild oats in America thirty years prior. Akeem and his right-hand man Semmi (Arsenio Hall) return to Queens, New York to find the 31-year-old son and heir he didn’t know he had, the street-wise ticket scalper Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler). Akeem flies out Lavelle and his mother Mary (Leslie Jones) to Zamunda to receive his training and perform tests of courage before he can be the prince.

Tom & Jerry (2021) | Tim Story

Set in New York City, Chloe Grace Moretz stars as Kayla, a street-wise con artist who steals the resume of a highly qualified applicant and lands a temp position with the upscale Royal Gate Hotel. Through a series of mishaps, Jerry the mouse ends up taking unofficial residence in the five-star establishment while Kayla hires Tom the cat to be the exterminator that will preserve the immaculate reputation of the hotel, especially as they are set to host the “Wedding of the Century” between a couple of social media celebrities. Meanwhile, Kayla’s rival within the hotel, Terrance (Michael Pena), is out to make sure she fails before she gets the advancement he’s been sucking up for years to attain. Unfortunately, with a mouse, a couple of cats, a bulldog, and some elephants roaming around, trying to keep calamity from ensuing is going to be a near-impossible task for all of them.

Promising Young Woman (2020) | Emerald Fennell

Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) lives with her parents in Ohio while working in a dead-end job at thirty years old, a barista in a small coffee shop. Her parents have been encouraging her to get on with her life in ways that aren’t even subtle. Their latest birthday gift: a suitcase.

Cassie spends her evenings at the local watering holes to the point where she’s in an obvious stupor. Inevitably, someone will offer to do the right thing and give her a ride home. However, temptation gets the better of them and they’ll tell the cab driver to take her to their home instead. There, they reveal themselves as not so good and she’ll reveal herself to be not so drunk, shaming them for essentially trying to rape a woman who is too intoxicated to truly give consent.

At work, Cassie has a run-in with Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham), a former colleague from medical school now working as a pediatrician. Here we pick up clues learning about how she was once on a fast-track to becoming a doctor, but she dropped out for mysterious reasons involving her best friend Nina Fisher, the victim of a sexual assault that never got justice – until Cassie made it her mission to stop predators in their tracks. Ryan seems different, cracking through Cassie’s tough exterior, offering a bright future. However, when she learns that the person most responsible for Nina’s rape is nearby and about to get married, she has to decide which path she should go down, the path of promise or the path of vengeance on everyone who done them wrong, including the seemingly indifferent school educators and lawyers who downplayed the allegations.

Emerald Fennell writes and directs.

The Hunt (2020) | Craig Zobel

The Hunt is a violent satire in which liberals kidnap and hunt down “deplorables”, aka Trump supporters. These deplorables wake up in an undisclosed rural area gagged online bloggers and internet trolls claimed to expose online as “Manorgate,” but are left with keys, tools, and weapons to potentially defend themselves and get free. The private jet-flying, caviar-consuming liberal elites hunting them down like giving them a sporting chance, though the odds are heavily stacked against them. However, one of the captives is able to give the hunters a run for their money.  Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Wayne Duvall, Ike Barinholtz, Emma Roberts, Ethan Suplee appear in this film written by Nick Cuse and Damon Lindelof, directed by Craig Zobel.

Soul (2020) | Pete Docter & Kemp Powers

Jamie Foxx voices Joe Gardner, a middle-aged music teacher at a New York public middle school, frustrated by his lack of success toward becoming a professional jazz club musician. He’s offered full-time status with the school when another door of opportunity opens. A former student mentions that a legendary jazz saxophonist named Dorothea Williams is auditioning for a new pianist in her jazz ensemble. Nailing the audition, Joe is exuberant, failing to notice an open manhole before falling into it. He next finds himself disassociated with his body in an afterlife existence, a soul waiting for its final destination (dubbed “The Great Beyond”).

With dreams unfulfilled, Joe desperately wants his life back, escaping his fate by posing as a mentor for new souls in a pre-life training area called “The Great Before.” Joe’s assignment is to direct a soul called 22 to find her spark that will keep her happy and productive before assuming her role in the living world. However, 22 is a special case, spending eons avoiding the process under other mentors (even Mother Teresa lost her cool with her). When Terry, the accountant for souls, notices one is missing, she pursues Joe after he escapes back to Earth to regain his life.

Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) | Dean Parisot

The story involves the Bill (Alex Winter) & Ted (Keanu Reeves), now married with one child each, suffering a mid-life crisis, realizing that they never united humankind through their music as foretold. In fact, contrary to the end montage of Bogus Journey depicting their success, Face the Music shows the duo jaded after a career where they are more laughing-stock than the most popular band on Earth. The pressure to fulfill their destiny finds their marriage on the rocks, seeking couples therapy, but one where both couples are involved simultaneously; the duo’s inability to separate their codependency is one of the issues. Someone from the future tells them they need to write the song within the next 77 minutes to achieve global peace and harmony, or the universe will come apart in a cataclysmic event called the Unraveling. Their plan: use the phone booth time machine to travel forward in time to steal the song from their future selves. Dean Parisot directs this third entry in the Bill & Ted series.

The One and Only Ivan (2020) | Thea Sharrock

The story centers around Ivan, a silverback gorilla who lives in a cage as the star of a struggling animal show at a suburban shopping center called the Big Top Mall & Video Arcade at Exit 8. Ivan’s main schtick is to roar and look intimidating, but behind the scenes, he is a thoughtful and sensitive soul. Other talented animals under the care of beleaguered ringleader Mack include a baseball-playing chicken, a sassy poodle, a bunny, a seal, a parrot, and an elderly elephant named Stella, plus a stray mutt called Bob.

Ivan befriends the young daughter of the mall cleaner who hands him supplies to draw, and it becomes something he takes an interest in doing, which has Mack seeing dollar signs to save his floundering circus attraction. An adorable baby elephant named Ruby arrives to become the latest attraction, under the tutelage and loving guidance of Stella. The drawing and painting, plus Ruby’s arrival, trigger Ivan’s memories of his childhood of freedom in the wild with his family, and Stella doesn’t want Ruby to live a sheltered life as she has had. Ivan plans to break free and deliver Ruby to a life of freedom.

Featuring Bryan Cranston, Ariana Greenblatt, Ramon Rodriguez, Owain Arthur as live actors. Voice work by Sam Rockwell, Danny DeVito, Brooklynn Prince, Angelina Jolie, Chaka Khan, Ron Funches, Helen Mirren.