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Arty Chick’s Middleburg Film Festival Download 2018

Another year at a fabulous festival! I wonder how long this little Virginia horse country festival can keep it up. It’s sure to burst its seams soon. This year’s slate was amazing, as usual. I was only able to fit in 10 of the 29 films offered in my three days of the festival and missed quite a few I really wanted to see. But what I saw was impressive. The big winner for me (it won the audience award, too) was Peter Farrelly’s Green Book, which will certainly be vying for the Oscar. But there really were quite a few standout films. Here’s my list with trailers and my preliminary impressions. Full reviews of select films will come later, so check back.

Zoolander 2

Zoolander 2 reminded me a lot of Dumb and Dumber To – a stupidly funny treat for diehard fans of the original. It’s not nearly as good as the first one, because, really, the novelty is gone. You know that former fashion model Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) will ultimately save the day with one of his signature looks, like the classic magnum, or blue steel.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (a.k.a. Pirates 4)

Pirates 4 is what it is what it is: Two-plus hours of swashbuckling hijinks on the high seas with Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) – and a bunch of other people – including franchise newbie Penelope Cruz as Angelica, a mysterious woman from Jack’s past.

Nine

If you are already a musical fan, you might enjoy Nine. I, however, am not a big musical fan so I went to see it hoping that it would be transcendent. It was not. The star-studded cast drew me in. Daniel-Day Lewis, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, even Sophia Loren… how could I resist? But I left underwhelmed. Only Marion Cotillard gave what I considered an excellent performance.