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The Great Gilly Hopkins

The Great Gilly Hopkins

Comedy · Drama · Family · 2015

Young and feisty Gilly Hopkins devises a scheme to escape from her new foster home and reunite with her birth mother.

Movie details

The Great Gilly Hopkins

“Family is where you find it”

2015 Comedy · Drama · Family 1h 39m

Critical arithmetic

One number, for now.

TMDB

6.6 / 10

Community rating

Young and feisty Gilly Hopkins devises a scheme to escape from her new foster home and reunite with her birth mother.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Great Gilly Hopkins?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Where the Red Fern Grows

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Set in the Ozark Mountains during the Great Depression, Billy Coleman works hard and saves his earnings for 2 years to achieve his dream of buying two coonhound pups. He develops a new trust in God as he faces overwhelming challenges in adventure and tragedy roaming the river bottoms of Cherokee country with "Old Dan" and "Little Ann."

Annie

Annie

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Annie is a young, happy foster kid who's also tough enough to make her way on the streets of New York in 2014. Originally left by her parents as a baby with the promise that they'd be back for her someday, it's been a hard knock life ever since with her mean foster mom Miss Hannigan. But everything's about to change when the hard-nosed tycoon and New York mayoral candidate Will Stacks—advised by his brilliant VP and his shrewd and scheming campaign advisor—makes a thinly-veiled campaign move and takes her in. Stacks believes he's her guardian angel, but Annie's self-assured nature and bright, sun-will-come-out-tomorrow outlook on life just might mean it's the other way around.

A Simple Twist of Fate

A Simple Twist of Fate

Family · 1994

When Michael McCann is thrown over by the woman he loves, he becomes something of a misanthrope and a miser, spending all of his spare money on collectible gold coins. Living in the same town is an affluent family with two sons: John and Tanny. Tanny's a wild boy, whom John cannot control, and one night he breaks into McCann's house, and steals the gold and disappears, which nearly confirms McCann's distrust of mankind. But then, a mysterious young woman dies in the snow outside McCann's house, and her small daughter makes her way to McCann's house and into McCann's life and heart.

Secondhand Lions

Secondhand Lions

Family · 2003

The comedic adventures of an introverted boy left on the doorstep of a pair of reluctant, eccentric great-uncles, whose exotic remembrances stir the boy's spirit and re-ignite the men's lives.

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins

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When a celebrated TV show host returns to his hometown in the South, his family is there to remind him that going home is no vacation!

Mixtape

Mixtape

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On the eve of Y2K, orphaned 12-year-old Beverly discovers a broken mixtape crafted by her teen parents. Raised by her grandmother – who struggles talking about her late daughter – Beverly sees the mixtape as a chance to finally learn more about her parents.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Stephen Herek

Written by

David Paterson

Sophie Nélisse

Sophie Nélisse

Gilly Hopkins

Kathy Bates

Kathy Bates

Maime Trotter

Glenn Close

Glenn Close

Nonnie Hopkins

Bill Cobbs

Bill Cobbs

Mr Randolph

Octavia Spencer

Octavia Spencer

Miss Harris

Julia Stiles

Julia Stiles

Courtney Rutherford Hopkins

Clare Foley

Clare Foley

Agnes

Court is in session

Put The Great Gilly Hopkins on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Sentimental Softie

“Sincerity is not manipulation.”

The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.

The prosecution The Cool Ironist

“The strings are showing.”

Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.