• Gravity (great; the technical criticisms are overblown)
• The Wild Geese (for a classic movie about mercenaries, pretty dumb)
• Tea with Mussolini

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• My Name is Nobody

Highly recommend all three.

Finally showed the seven-year-old Star Wars this afternoon. (DVD Greedo-shot-first version, not that she gives a hoot.) She was delighted. Her previous reference for all the stuff in it is Angry Birds Star Wars. Culture! It's important!

I would not recommend watching Persecuted in theaters. However, I would recommend later acquiring it, preferably in some fashion that does not pay the filmmakers (paying for it would just encourage more films of this type). It looks like it would be fun to invite some humanist/liberal friends over, make popcorn, and poke fun at it MST3K-style.

Note: film is about evangelical Christians persecuted by a Evil Liberal Establishment. If you are deconverted, please do not watch it alone. It will just make you angry.

Suits: first 3 seasons are on Netflix. "Legal" Will Hunting, complicated by the the prohibition against practicing law without a law degree, no matter how good you are and how many tests you pass. (It's as logical as prohibiting someone from working for Google because they do not have a B.Sc.)

Excellent through the first 1.5 seasons, with good amount of humor, movie references, interesting and comprehensible legal cases. Downhill after that, with all kinds of complications, increasingly caricature-like description of some characters, unbelievable (in a bad way) plot twists. Still funny. Probably worth watching just for the dialog.

Several new or recent SF&F shows:

• Under the Dome -- explores some interesting issues of isolated small towns, the SF aspect is totally superficial. Meandering plot. Decent acting. Also good for eye-candy if you like the actors. I am guessing that the Dome will stay up for as long as the show's ratings allow.

• Extant -- Halle Berry gets mysteriously pregnant by her former boyfriend's ghost while on a long solo space mission, and has to deal with her android child once back. Then it gets worse. Way worse. There is already a government conspiracy and there will be evil aliens shortly, I'm sure. The show is as ridiculous as it sounds. Not recommended unless you are a Halle Berry's fan. Well, they do explore the issue of AI integration into the society, but it is not done well at all.

• The Lottery: basically Children of Men serialized, poorly. Annoying plot holes everywhere. Another government conspiracy, a cynical president, an evil head of a shady agency, just pick a trope and you have it. None of what the characters do makes any sense. If you like political drama, House of Cards is infinitely better.

• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Fantastic Mr. Fox

Both fantastically written by Wes Anderson.