Browse Movies : Magnolia Pictures : NR

ShortsHD is once again bringing the OSCAR® Nominated Short Film program (Live Action, Animation, and Documentary) to theaters across the globe beginning January 29th.

Bitterbrush follows Hollyn Patterson and Colie Moline, range riders who are spending their last summer herding cattle in remote Idaho. Totally off the grid with only their dogs as companions, Hollyn and Colie brave inclement weather and perilous work conditions while pondering their futures. A portrait of friendship, life transitions, and the work of two skilled young women in the isolated and beautiful landscape of the American West, Bitterbrush is an intimate portrayal of a way of life rarely seen on film.

After a high-ranking North Korean official requests asylum, KCIA Foreign Unit chief Park Pyong-ho (LEE Jung Jae) and Domestic Unit chief Kim Jung-do (JUNG Woo Sung) are tasked with uncovering a North Korean spy, known as Donglim, who is deeply embedded within their agency. When the spy begins leaking top secret intel that could jeopardize national security, the two units are each assigned to investigate each other. In this tense situation where if they cannot find the mole, they may be accused themselves, Pyong-ho and Jung-do slowly start to uncover the truth. In the end, they must deal with an unthinkable plot to assassinate the South Korean president…

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Mary Harron (I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, AMERICAN PSYCHO), DALÍLAND stars Ben Kingsley as the titular Salvador Dalí, one of the most world-renowned artists of the 20th century and focuses on the later years of the strange and fascinating marriage between Dalí and his wife, Gala (Barbara Sukowa), as their seemingly unshakable bond begins to stress and fracture. Set in New York and Spain in 1974, the film is told through the eyes of James (Christopher Briney), a young assistant keen to make his name in the art world, who helps the eccentric and mercurial Dalí prepare for a big gallery show.

An unprecedented look into the life of conceptual artist and sculptor Chris Burden. He had himself shot, confined to a locker for five days, and was crucified on the back of a VW bug, only to reinvent himself as the creator of truly mesmerizing installations and sculptures, all in the name of art.

A writer, Alina Reynolds (Vanessa Kirby), loses her memory and finds herself adrift in New York City — with almost no sense of time, place, the season — or her own identity. Alina’s consciousness swings between imagined conversations, fragments of her own short stories — and the bustling city around her. She finds an anchor in a charismatic teenager (Simon Brickner), connecting with him and his free-spirited group of friends — as she makes her way through a disorienting but strangely beautiful cityscape.

What if we are living in a simulation, and the world as we know it is not real? To tackle this mind-bending idea, acclaimed filmmaker Rodney Ascher (Room 237) uses a noted speech from Philip K. Dick to dive down the rabbit hole of science, philosophy, and conspiracy theory. Leaving no stone unturned in exploring the unprovable, the film uses contemporary cultural touchstones like The Matrix, interviews with real people shrouded in digital avatars, and a wide array of voices, expert and amateur alike. If simulation theory is not science fiction but fact, and life is a video game being played by some unknowable entity, then who are we, really?

Follows 12-year-old Mully (Reid), who, after fleeing his father, steals a taxi and is shocked to find a woman, Joy (Colman), in the back seat with a baby. Joy has decided to give her child away to a friend, and Mully needs some distance from his debt-ridden dad, who’s after the cash Mully has with him. And so two lovable rogues – a complicated middle-aged mother and a troubled adolescent – go on a journey across Ireland, gradually finding in each other the friendship, love and learning they never knew they needed.

Concerns the misadventures of a team of five superheroes known as the Tobacco Force – Benzene, Nicotine, Methanol, Mercury and Ammonia. After a devastating battle against a diabolical giant turtle, the Tobacco Force is sent on a mandatory week-long retreat to strengthen their decaying group cohesion. Eventually their mission goes south when Lézardin, Emperor of Evil, decides to annihilate planet Earth.

Concerns a Wall Street heist story about a still-unfolding financial crime so big, it has the power to affect all of our wallets. Investors on the fringes of the financial world feverishly seek new alternatives for high-return investments in the global markets, and have found a goldmine in China. But when one investor discovers a massive web of fraud, everything else is called into question. Jed Rothstein’s documentary rings the alarm on the need for transparency in an increasingly deregulated financial world by following those working to uncover the biggest heist you’ve never heard of.

Erik and Anna are a professional couple with a dream. Along with their daughter Freja, they set up a commune in Erik’s huge villa in the upmarket district of Copenhagen. With the family in the center of the story, we are invited into the dream of a real commune; we participate in house meetings, dinners and parties. It is friendship, love and togetherness under one roof until an earth-shattering love affair puts the community and the commune to its greatest test.

In a seaside village on the outskirts of an Italian city, where the only law seems to be survival of the fittest, Marcello is a slight, mild-mannered man who divides his days between working at his modest dog grooming salon, caring for his daughter Alida, and being coerced into the petty criminal schemes of the local bully Simoncino, an ex-boxer who terrorizes the neighborhood. When Simoncino’s abuse finally brings Marcello to a breaking point, he decides to stand up for his own dignity through an act of vengeance, with unintended consequences.

The legendary Chelsea Hotel, an icon of 1960s counterculture and a haven for famous artists and intellectuals including Patti Smith, Janis Joplin and the superstars of Warhol's Factory, is under renovation. Soon it will reopen to the public as one of New York's most fashionable luxury hotels. Dozens of long-term residents, most in their later years, have lived amidst the scaffolding and constant construction for close to a decade. Against this chaotic backdrop, Dreaming Walls takes us through the hotel’s storied halls, exploring its living body and the bohemian origins that contributed to its mythical stature. Its residents and the walls themselves now face a turning point in their common history.

An alcoholic woman becomes involved in a nefarious ransom kidnapping scheme with a stranger from an AA meeting.

Little Richard: I Am Everything tells the story of the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll, exploding the whitewashed canon of American pop music to reveal the innovator – the originator – Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression, yet what he gave to the world he was never able to give to himself. Throughout his life, Richard careened like a shiny cracked pinball between God, sex and rock n’ roll. The world tried to put him in a box, but Richard was an omni being who contained multitudes – he was unabashedly everything.

Ana (Grace Van Patten) finds herself transported to a dreamlike and dangerous coastline. Once there, she joins a female army engaged in a never-ending war where the women lure men to their deaths with radio signals, like 20th century sirens. Though Ana finds strength in this exhilarating world, she comes to realize she is not the killer they want her to be.

Welcome to Riotsville, USA, a turning point in American history where the protest movements of the late 1960s came into conflict with increasingly militarized police departments. Focusing on unearthed military training footage of Army-built model towns called “Riotsvilles,” where military and police were trained to respond to civil disorder in the aftermath of the Kerner Commission created by President Lyndon B. Johnson, director Sierra Pettengill’s kaleidoscopic all-archival documentary reconstructs the formation of a national consciousness obsessed with maintaining law and order by any means necessary. Drawing insight from a time similar to our own, Riotsville, USA pulls focus on American institutional control and offers a compelling case that if the history of race in America rhymes, it is by design.

A documentary about The Villages, America’s largest retirement community – a massive, self-contained utopia located in Central Florida. Behind the gates of this palm tree-lined fantasyland, Some Kind of Heaven invests in the dreams and desires of a small group of Villages residents – and one interloper – who are unable to find happiness within the community’s pre-packaged paradise.

In 1904 an earthquake with a 5.4 magnitude on the Richter scale shook Oslo. Its epicenter was in the Oslo Rift which runs directly through the Norwegian capital. There are recorded quakes from the rift on a daily basis and geologists cannot be sure, but arguments indicate that we can expect major future earthquakes in this area. When - nobody can say for certain – but we know that the density of people and infrastructure in Oslo is significantly more vulnerable today than in 1904. What if a massive earthquake is looming?