The defence The Prestige Tourist
“Sincerity is not manipulation.”
The film risks embarrassment to make emotion communal, and that openness is harder than fashionable detachment.
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The Book of Love
Drama · 2017
After tragedy strikes Henry and Penny, he befriends a tenacious young girl and discovers she is constructing a raft to sail across the Atlantic to find her lost father. Together, along with some unlikely friends, they set forth to construct the vessel and subsequently rebuild their lives.
Movie details
The Book of Love
“How far would you go for a lost love?”
2017 Drama 1h 47m
Critical arithmetic
One number, for now.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
TMDB
6.5 / 10
Community rating
After tragedy strikes Henry and Penny, he befriends a tenacious young girl and discovers she is constructing a raft to sail across the Atlantic to find her lost father. Together, along with some unlikely friends, they set forth to construct the vessel and subsequently rebuild their lives.
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 Book of Love?
For the defence
The Prestige Tourist
“You like your greatness pre-approved.”
Read their case For the prosecution
The Popcorn Loyalist
“Big screen, big feelings, no apologies.”
Read their objectionThe 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.
Hardball
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Cardboard Boxer
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The Road Dance
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A young girl lives in the Outer Hebrides in a small village in the years just before WWI. Isolated and hard by the shore, her life takes a dramatic change when a terrible tragedy befalls her.
Herself
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Struggling to provide her daughters with a safe, happy home, Sandra decides to build one - from scratch. Using all her ingenuity to make her ambitious dream a reality, Sandra draws together a community to lend a helping hand to build her house and ultimately recover her own sense of self.
Mammal
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After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
Pimp
Drama · 2018
An urban love story set on the hard streets of the Bronx. A struggling female pimp, named Wednesday, grows up learning the game from her dad. Once he's gone she's left to look out for her prostitute mother and girlfriend Nikki.
The Poker House
Drama · 2008
Agnes and her two sisters struggle through a day in a home overrun by gamblers, thieves, and johns.
The Young One
Drama · 1960
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Bastard Out of Carolina
Drama · 1996
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl
Drama · 1998
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
Where it lives
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Names above the title
The people responsible.
Cast & crew
Directed by
Bill Purple
Written by
Robbie Pickering · Bill Purple
Jason Sudeikis
Henry Herschel
Maisie Williams
Millie Pearlman
Jessica Biel
Penny Herschel
Mary Steenburgen
Julia Mureaux
Orlando Jones
Cornelius 'Dumbass' Thibadeaux
Paul Reiser
Wendell
Joshua Mikel
Thor Heyerdahl
Court is in session
Put The Book of Love on trial.
Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.
The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist
“The strings are showing.”
Every cue tells you exactly what to feel and when, leaving sentiment to do the work character should have done.