These films are ones that I watched for the first time this year and are the best I have seen this year. They are not usually released this year. Here are the films in no particular order:
Pressured by his deceased mother’s ghost to return home to the family he abandoned, a former addict grabs a bag of pills and a sack of marijuana and hits the road to Dallas.
This synopsis doesn’t do the film justice, it’s a film about family. I can’t express how much I enjoyed this and how good the actors’ were in it. I found a new respect for Ryan Phillippe.
One Child (2014) Rated TV-MA
The journey of Mei a Chinese-born young woman as she is called back to Guangzhou by her birth mother in desperately seeking help to save her son who has been wrongly accused of murder. The journey explores Mei’s inner battle as she decides how far she will go to help the woman who gave her away and the brother she’s never met.
The miniseries is just an overall, very well done series. I wonder where they were taking Mei throughout the film and even with a very satisfactory ending, it just made think this is an extraordinary film.
He was the chosen king who loved God and committed the acts of sin.
This film is a very good, biblical sound story of David.
A world-weary political journalist picks up the story of a woman’s search for her son, who was taken away from her decades ago after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent.
I feel for this mother and what she went through trying to find her son. It doesn’t help that they based this on a true story.
When pregnant, 12-year-old Tui tries to kill herself in a freezing New Zealand lake, Detective Robin Griffin has plenty of questions for the girl. But when Tui suddenly disappears, Griffin finds herself knee-deep in small-town secrets.
Another miniseries, that left me thinking. It kept me intrigued and I even though, I tried to figure out who the father was, the filmmakers left me guessing.
A man who has made a new life for himself and the daughter left on his doorstep 6 years ago finds his family threatened when the birth mother resurfaces.
I think if you watch this film thinking you are going to see a father and daughter film of togetherness, you will be in for a shock. This film takes you on twists that you don’t see coming and I won’t be surprised if you need Kleenex’s.
In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.
I went back and forth on whether or not to include this film in the top ten. One because it does a good part of including the different ways the white people viewed slavery during slavery but I also thought that it was too clichy and very few slaves got to experience all of them. Like how they showed Solomon Northup, but that’s because they actually don’t have much on record of his life.
A trail guide escorts a group of women from Chicago to California to marry men that have recently began settling there.
Again, this film covered everything for a wagon train would discover on the way west. It could be a little too much but I still found the film enjoyable. I still rolled my eyes on each adventure but I also wanted to find out if they were going to make it west.
A young Hasidic Jewish woman is pressured into an arranged levirate marriage to an older widower.
This film intrigued me since I first saw the trailer. It held up to my satisfaction.
An Arab surgeon living in Tel Aviv discovers a dark secret about his wife in the aftermath of a suicide bombing.
This movie does show what the families of suicide bombers can go through, especially if they are westerners.
Synopsis’ are by IMDB.