Thoroughbreds

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Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) is in a bad place.  She’s in trouble with her posh boarding school, and stuck at home between semesters with her well-meaning but uninvolved mother and douchebag-extraordinaire stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks).  He and Lily live together in hostile tension, both affecting a façade of chilly politeness that barely conceals their mutual hatred for one another.  Meanwhile, the mother of Lily’s middle school classmate Amanda pays her to tutor her daughter, itself a transparent excuse to provide Amanda with some social contact.  Amanda has become an outcast after brutally killing her family’s crippled horse, which in her mind was an act of mercy. Continue reading

Netflix Review: The Fundamentals of Caring

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Paul Rudd offers a handicapped boy his sausage in “The Fundamentals of Caring”

The Fundamentals of Caring stars Paul Rudd as Ben, a former writer who decides to try caregiving after a personal tragedy (read: dead kid).  His charge is Trevor (Craig Roberts), an English teen whose Duchenne muscular dystrophy leaves him paralyzed and without fine motor skills.  After developing an often-adversarial friendship with Trevor, Ben convinces him to join him for a cross-country road trip.   Continue reading