Friday Releases: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice & The Front Room

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Directed by: Tim Burton
Studio: Warner Bros Pictures

Beetlejuice is back! After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.

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Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci
Comedy | Fantasy | Horror
PG-13 (for violent content, macabre and bloody images, strong language, some suggestive material and brief drug use)
USA (English)
104 minutes

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The Front Room

Directed by: Max & Sam Eggers
Studio: A24

A psychological thriller starring Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne, SLINGSHOT follows an elite trio of astronauts aboard a years-long, possibly compromised mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. As the team gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot maneuver that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space, it becomes increasingly difficult for one astronaut to maintain his grip on reality.

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Brandy Norwood, Andrew Burnap, Kathryn Hunter, Neal Huff
Horror | Thriller
R (for language, some violent/disturbing content, brief sexuality and nudity)
USA (English)
94 minutes

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His Three Daughters

Directed by: Azazel Jacobs
Studio: Netflix

From writer-director Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, The Lovers) comes this bittersweet and often funny story of an elderly patriarch and the three grown daughters who come to be with him in his final days. Katie (Carrie Coon) is a controlling Brooklyn mother dealing with a wayward teenage daughter; free-spirited Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is a different kind of mom, separated from her offspring for the first time; and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) is a sports-betting stoner who has never left her father’s apartment — much to the chagrin of her stepsisters, who share a different mother and worldview. Continuing his astute exploration of family dynamics in close-knit spaces, Jacobs follows the siblings over the course of three volatile days, as death looms, grievances erupt, and love seeps through the cracks of a fractured home.

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Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Jay O. Sanders, Jovan Adepo
Drama
R (for language and drug use)
USA (English)
101 minutes

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Rebel Ridge

Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier
Studio: Netflix

Terry Richmond enters the town of Shelby Springs on a simple but urgent mission– post bail for his cousin and save him from imminent danger. But when Terry’s life’s savings is unjustly seized by law-enforcement, he’s forced to go head to head with local police chief Sandy Burnne and his combat-ready officers. Terry finds an unlikely ally in court clerk Summer McBride and the two become ensnared in a deep-rooted conspiracy within the remote township. As the stakes turn deadly, Terry must call upon his mysterious background to break the department’s hold on the community, bring justice to his own family– and protect Summer in the process.

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Aaron Pierre, Don Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, David Denman, Emory Cohen, Steve Zissis, Zsane Jhe, Dana Lee, James Cromwell
Action | Crime | Drama | Thriller
Not Rated
USA (English)
131 minutes

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The Thicket

Directed by: Elliott Lester
Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films

When fierce bounty hunter Reginald Jones (Peter Dinklage) is recruited by a desperate man to track down a ruthless killer known only as Cutthroat Bill (Juliette Lewis), he rallies a band of unlikely heroes including a grave-digging ex-slave and a street-smart woman-for-hire. Together they embark on a perilous quest to track down Cutthroat Bill that leads them into the deadly “no-man’s-land” known as…The Thicket.

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Peter Dinklage, Juliette Lewis, Esmé Creed-Miles, Levon Hawke, Andrew Schulz, James Hetfield, Leslie Grace, Gbenga Akinnagbe
Crime | Drama
R (for violence, sexual assault, language and some sexual content)
USA (English)
108 minutes

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Look Into My Eyes

Directed by: Lana Wilson
Studio: A24

A group of New York City psychics conduct deeply intimate readings for their clients, revealing a kaleidoscope of loneliness, connection, and healing.

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Documentary
R (for language)
USA (English)
104 minutes

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The Mother Of All Lies

Directed by: Asmae El Moudir
Studio: Outsider Pictures

Young Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir wants to know why she only has one photograph from her childhood, and why the girl in the picture isn’t even her. She decides to explore the past and its mysteries by creating a handmade replica of the Casablanca neighborhood where she grew up. There, she begins to interrogate the tales her mother, father, and grandmother tell about their home and their country. Slowly, she starts to unravel the layers of deception and intentional forgetting that have shaped her life. The truth is hard to face, but in this sometimes surreal nonfiction film, El Moudir begins to draw what is real to the surface.

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Continue

Directed by: Nadine Crocker
Studio: Lionsgate

A girl suffering from depression is forced to get her life together when she is taken involuntarily to a mental institution after trying to follow in her fathers footsteps, but failing her suicide attempt. She finds unlikely friends, unwavering love, and a life she never imagined possible for a girl like her. All to find out some decisions can’t be undone. You only get one life.

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Nadine Crocker, Shiloh Fernandez, Lio Tipton, Emily Deschanel, Dale Dickey
Drama
R (for suicide/bloody images, language throughout, sexual content/nudity and brief drug use)
USA (English)
115 minutes

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Hoard

Directed by: Luna Carmoon
Studio: Sunrise Films

Seven-year-old Maria and her mother live in their own loving world built on sorting through bins and collecting shiny rubbish. One night, their world falls apart, and we join Maria a decade later, living with her foster mother.

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Hayley Squires, Lily-Beau Leach, Deba Hekmat, Alexis Tuttle, James Cooper
Drama | International
Not Rated
UK (English)
126 minutes

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The Cowboy and the Queen

Directed by: Andrea Blaugrund Nevins
Studio: Greenwich Entertainment

Monty Roberts, a nonviolent horse trainer who rejected traditional “breaking” methods, forms an unlikely friendship with Queen Elizabeth II. Bonding over their shared love for animals, they overcome Monty’s doubters to broadcast his gentle approach globally. From Academy Award Nominee Andrea Nevins, this uplifting film shows how trust can build a better world for both horses and humans.

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Queen Elizabeth II, Monty Roberts
Documentary | Biography
Not Rated
USA (English)
85 minutes

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I’ll Be Right There

Directed by: Brendan Walsh
Studio: Brainstorm Media

Wanda has her hands full: her 8-month pregnant daughter wants a wedding which her ex-husband is flaking on paying for, her mother thinks she’s dying, her wayward son is either going into rehab or the army, her long-time boyfriend doesn’t excite her, but her new girlfriend doesn’t either, and she barely has time for herself, not that she would know what to do with it anyway.

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Edie Falco, Jeannie Berlin, Kayli Carter, Charlie Tahan, Bradley Whitford, Michael Rapaport
Comedy
Not Rated
USA (English)
98 minutes

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Don’t Turn Out The Lights

Directed by: Andy Fickman
Studio: Quiver Distribution

Reuniting for an unforgettable weekend, a group of high school friends takes a break from their separate lives at college to travel by RV to a musical festival. Their exciting weekend plans quickly unravel as they find themselves fighting to survive each other and the unknown.

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Jarrett Austin Brown, Jasper Cole, Bella DeLong
Horror
Not Rated
USA (English)
109 minutes

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Red Rooms

Directed by: Pascal Plante
Studio: Utopia

The high-profile case of serial killer Ludovic Chevalier has just gone to trial, and Kelly-Anne is obsessed. When reality blurs with her morbid fantasies, she goes down a dark path to seek the final piece of the puzzle: the missing video of a murdered 13-year-old girl, to whom Kelly-Anne bears a disturbing resemblance.

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Juliette Gariépy, Laurie Babin, Elisabeth Locas, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Natalie Tannous, Guy Thauvette
Crime | Horror | International | Mystery | Thriller
Not Rated
Canada (French)
118 minutes

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Betrayal

Directed by: Rodger Griffiths
Studio: Saban Films

Three desperate brothers return to the remote Scottish woodland where they killed their abusive father only to discover his shallow grave is now empty, forcing them to question each another’s loyalty as fear and paranoia set in.

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Brian Vernel, Daniel Portman, Paul Higgins, James Harkness, Joanne Thomson
Horror | International | Thriller
R (for violence, and language throughout)
UK (English)
94 minutes

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Matt and Mara

Directed by: Kazik Radwanski
Studio: The Cinema Guild

A chance encounter leads Mara (Deragh Campbell), a young creative writing professor, to reunite with Matt (Matt Johnson), a charismatic, free-spirited author from her past who wanders onto her university campus. Bonded by their shared interests, the two begin to grow closer as she contends with her strained marriage to an experimental musician. When her husband suddenly cancels plans to drive Mara to a conference out of town, Matt accompanies her on the road trip, where pressure slowly mounts against their undefined relationship.

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Matt Johnson, Deragh Campbell, Georgia Tannis, Simon Reynolds
Drama | International
Not Rated
Canada (English)
80 minutes

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Stinky Summer

Directed by: Amanda Raymond
Studio: Epic Pictures

Join Olivia and friends plus a lovable skunk at Camp Clover as they outsmart international spies from stealing her dad’s secret invention in a wild summer adventure!

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Francesca Capaldi, Oakley Bull, Helen Day, Daniel Ross, Matt Servitto
Adventure | Comedy | Family
Not Rated
USA (English)
90 minutes

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Advanced Chemistry

Directed by: Etana Jacobson
Studio: Good Deed Entertainment

A scientist injects his best friend with a compound he’s created to help her stop cheating on her wife, but when the wife finds her new fixation suffocating, the wife gets a dose too, which backfires as she falls for the scientist.

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Samba Schutte, Chaunte Wayans, Sarah Burns, Kiran Deol, Iqbal Theba
Comedy
Not Rated
USA (English)
95 minutes

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The Demon Disorder

Directed by: Steven Boyle
Studio: Shudder

Graham is a man haunted by his past since the death of his father and the estrangement from his two brothers. Jake, his middle brother, contacts Graham claiming that something is horribly wrong. Phillip, their younger brother, is possessed by their deceased father. Graham reluctantly agrees to go and see for himself. With the three brothers back together, they soon realize they are unprepared for the forces against them. With Graham forced to accept that their younger brother is indeed possessed, they soon learn that the sins of their past will not stay hidden. But how do you defeat a presence that knows you inside and out? An anger so powerful it refuses to stay dead? A rage that wants revenge on the sons that murdered him….

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Charles Cottier, Dirk Hunter, Amy Ingram, John Noble, Tobie Webster
Horror | International
Not Rated
Australia (English)
95 minutes

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Holding Back The Tide

Directed by: Emily Packer
Studio: Grasshopper Film

Holding Back the Tide is an impressionistic hybrid documentary that traces the oyster through its many life cycles in New York, once the world’s oyster capital. Now their specter haunts the city through queer characters embodying ancient myth, discovering the overlooked history and biology of the bivalve that built the city. As environmentalists restore them to the harbor, we look to the oyster as a queer icon, entangled with nature, with much to teach about our continued survival.

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Thomas Annunziata, Hilary Asare, Meghan Dolbey, Hannah Lennon
Documentary
Not Rated
USA (English)
77 minutes

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Off Ramp

Directed by: Nathan Tape
Studio: Freestyle Digital Media

OFF RAMP tells the story of Trey and Silas, a couple of lovable, degenerate Juggalos who must sojourn through America’s hellish underbelly to The Gathering of the Juggalos, the one place on earth they feel accepted.

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Reed Diamond, Laura Cayouette, Kate Adair, Jared Bankens, Ashley Smith
Adventure | Comedy | Crime
Not Rated
USA (English)
90 minutes

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A New York Story

Directed by: Fiona Robert
Studio: Vertical

A young woman risks being ostracized from an insular New York clique led by her socialite best friend when she falls for a charming photographer.

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Fiona Robert, Sophia Robert, Paul Karmiryan, Richard Ellis, Carolyn Farina
Drama
Not Rated
USA (English)
96 minutes

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Great White Summer

Directed by: Nick Budabin
Studio: Gravitas Ventures

From the peaks of Cape Cod’s surfing waves to the murky depths below, trouble runs deep on this beloved New England seashore after the first fatal shark attack in eighty years upends the community. With the predator population on the rise, and increasing encounters placing lives and livelihoods in peril, Great White Summer chronicles a season of struggle as people demand action, priorities are questioned, personal allegiances shift, and growing suspicion clouds the waters. Nature, culture, commerce and human life collide, with sheer survival at stake as sharks, surfers, scientists and society fight for everything they value.

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Ian Cairns, Heather Doyle, Jerry Evans, Chris Fischer, Shred Hathorne
Documentary
Not Rated
USA (English)
79 minutes

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The Goldman Case

Directed by: Cédric Kahn
Studio: Menemsha Films

November 1975, Paris. The appeal hearing of Jewish far-left activist Pierre Goldman is set to begin. Sentenced to life imprisonment for four armed robberies, one of which resulted in the death of two women, Goldman pleads not guilty to the murder charges. The massively-covered court proceedings transform Goldman into a romantic figure and a hero of the intellectual left, even as the relationship with his young attorney Georges Kiejman frays. Ever the agitator for his ideals, the elusive and mercurial Goldman throws his own trial into chaos, risking a death sentence. The Goldman Case paints a psycho-pathological portrait of a militant revolutionary, but also of a society torn apart by patterns of racism and injustice that are still virulent today.

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Arieh Worthalter, Arthur Harari, Stéphan Guérin-Tillié, Nicolas Briançon
Crime | Drama | History | International
Not Rated
France (French)
115 minutes

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The Paragon

Directed by: Michael Duignan
Studio: Doppelgänger Releasing

Do you want to see the unseen? Dutch (Benedict Wall) may look like just another defeated and washed-up loser, but behind his pissed-off exterior lurks a hyperdimensional being of exceptional promise. His wife left him, his career as a tennis coach is floundering, and he would give anything to find the driver of the silver Toyota Corolla who hit him and drove off a year ago–the event that initiated Dutch’s downward spiral. Enter Lyra (Florence Noble), a witchy disciplinarian who offers to help Dutch unleash his latent psychic powers and break free from the illusion of linear time. After a crash course in telelocation and astral projection, the unlikely psionic prodigy is ready for his quest of cosmic revenge, but Lyra has other plans: she needs Dutch’s help to find a mysterious crystal known as the Paragon before it falls into the hands of her evil brother Haxan (Jonny Brugh) and his mind slaves. Everything converges towards the singularity in Michael Duignan’s feature debut, a hilarious rift in space-time.

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Benedict Wall, Florence Noble, Jessica Grace Smith, Jonny Brugh
Comedy | International
Not Rated
New Zealand (English)
85 minutes

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All I’ve Got & Then Some

Directed by: Rasheed Stephens & Tehben Dean
Studio: Cargo Film & Releasing

Based on a true story, All I’ve Got and Then Some follows a day in the life of Rasheed, a homeless stand-up comedian living out of his car in Los Angeles, giving everything he’s got to make his dreams come true. Having booked his first paid stand-up gig, this day is special for Rasheed, but what should be a smooth day quickly turns into a circus of events that could ruin his shot at getting his first big break. Supported by his best friend Rose, Rasheed stumbles through the untimely and often bizarre twists and turns of the day as he crisscrosses Hollywood, relentlessly reminding us that each day can be the best day of our lives.

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Nathan Alongi, Naiya Armour, Danny Boushebel, Brittney Brookshire, Terry Brown
Drama
Not Rated
USA (English)
79 minutes

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Lover Of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln

Directed by: Shaun Peterson
Studio: Special Occasion Studios

Lover of Men examines the intimate life of America’s most consequential president, Abraham Lincoln. As told by preeminent Lincoln scholars and never before seen photographs and letters, the film details Lincoln’s romantic relationships with men. Lover of Men widens its lens into the history of human sexual fluidity and focuses on the profound differences between sexual mores of the nineteenth century and those we hold today. The film fills in an important missing piece of American history and challenges the audience to consider why we hold such a limited view of human sexuality. Lover of Men is not only an exploration of gender roles and sexual identity, but also serves as an examination of American intolerance.

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Jean Baker, Thomas Balcerski, Birdie, Hanne Blank
Documentary
Not Rated
USA (English)
101 minutes

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Let Them Breathe:
City On The Ocean

Directed by: Candice Rogers
Studio: Atlas Distribution Company

A young boy goes to school only to awake two years later; he discovers not only did he lose his family but his best friend, Selena, is also missing. After being given clues on where to go, he finds himself traveling a route that takes him to the ocean, where he finds a small makeshift city.

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Yumiko Daniel, Boris Jumper, Candice Rogers
Animation | Drama
Not Rated
USA (English & Japanese)
112 minutes

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Art Dealers

Directed by: Roy Power, Adam Weiner, & Low Cut Connie
Studio: Dark Star Pictures

In the tradition of art-world documentaries like Stop Making Sense and American Movie, Art Dealers follows eccentric rock-n-roll artist Adam Weiner aka Low Cut Connie, and his band as they attempt to mount a concert production of their recently released album “Art Dealers” for a three-night run in NYC. The stunning high-intensity performances are laid against a backdrop of five years of footage that shows an artist plagued by bad luck, but who attacks each performance with humor and stagecraft.

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Adam Weiner
Documentary
Not Rated
USA (English)
80 minutes

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Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory

Directed by: Justinsuperstar
Studio: Kino Lorber

The documentary tells the story of Brian and Randi, a couple from the conservative town of Eau Claire, WI and their extraordinary journey to help Randi feel complete after her battle with breast cancer and subsequent mastectomy. Through Brian’s innovative and unorthodox solutions, the couple launches a project that grows from a labor of love into an unintended calling with the power to change thousands of lives through the sale of custom and handmade prosthetic nipples for their clients.

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Brian Johnson, Randi Johnson, Justinsuperstar, Jesse Johnson, Luke Johnson
Documentary
Not Rated
USA (English)
81 minutes

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Wolves Against The World

Directed by: Quinn Armstrong
Studio: Cranked Up Films

Two members of a defunct neo-Nazi metal band reunite at the site of their bandmate’s suicide. One sinks into depravity and grievance and one tries to atone for what he has done. What ensues is an occult battle of wills between two men who have done terrible things as one tries to lure the other back into the movement, unleashing the animals that hide inside them.

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Michael Kunicki, Quinn Armstrong, Jordan Mullins, Jim Azelvandre, Louie Kurtzman, Eric Six
Horror | Thriller
Not Rated
USA (English)
88 minutes

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Upstream

Directed by: Zheng Xu
Studio: China Lion Film Distribution

After suffering a number of disasters, including losing his job, having his savings wiped out and facing his father’s high medical bills, Gao Zhilei (Xu Zheng) takes up a job as a delivery worker, dealing with long days and stomach-turning events. Amongst crazy customers, tight deadlines and competition among app companies, he manages to form strong bonds with his fellow workers. But in his quest for success, he must face a choice: keep the new friendships he’s created or move to the next level in his new career by taking advantage of the new business world where he finds himself.

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Zheng Xu, Zhilei Xin, Xiao Wang, Bing Jia
Drama | International
Not Rated
China (Chinese)
121 minutes

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