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
The consensus, allegedly.
Scores change. Arguments endure.
IMDb
6.0 / 10
4.9K votes
Rotten Tomatoes
8 %
Tomatometer
Metacritic
27 / 100
Metascore
TMDB
6.5 / 10
Community rating
External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.
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.
Cardboard Boxer
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The Safety of Objects
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In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Mammal
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Pimp
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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.
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.
Salomé
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After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
The Young One
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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.
Lorelei
Drama · 2020
A man is released from prison after 15 years. He reunites with his high school girlfriend, now a single mother of three. What follows is a lyrical take on love, regret and second chances.
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.