An undercover DEA agent attempts to bust an international smuggling operation. A bereaved mother hunts those responsible for her teenage son's overdose. A tenured professor contemplates blowing the whistle on unethical Big Pharma practices. Haven't we all sat through previous versions of these shopworn tales before? Maybe even with Crisis leads Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, and Gary Oldman starring in them?

Serving as the second cinematic presentation in Fathom Events' seventh-annual TCM Big Screen Classics series, the iconic coming-of-age saga Boyz N the Hood celebrates its 30th anniversary with February 28 and March 3 screenings at Rave Cinemas Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX, the popular drama famed for making then-24-year-old John Singleton both the youngest person ever nominated for the Best Director Oscar and the first African American ever cited in that category.

Nomadland is a true anomaly: a low-key slice of life that's shot, and feels, like an epic. And it's a thing of singular, wondrous beauty no matter how you watch it – though maybe not if you watch it on your phone.

The completist in me is so delighted to be catching four new movies – three of them recently nominated for Golden Globe and/or Screen Actors Guild Awards – that I don't even mind that the collective titles are tackling subjects such as murder, suicide, imprisonment, torture, spousal abuse, a debilitating stroke, and temperatures even colder than the ones we're currently facing. Okay: I mind a little.

A special cinematic event in the Bettendorf Public Library's popular “Community Connections” series, the February 18 screening of Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe by local filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle will explore how the author and abolitionist's life-changing experiences contributed to her best-selling book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how the historical icon's anti-slavery sentiments expressed themselves in what would become America’s most influential novel.

Your overall enjoyment of Sam Levinson's Netflix release will likely depend on whether you view its only two characters as charismatic, damaged souls whose epic meltdowns both mask and reveal their deep love for another, or as helplessly, and hopelessly, gabby, self-centered whiners who just need to put a lid on it already. Levinson's film isn't hard to sit through, and it boasts outstanding individual moments, but it's frequently a pain.

Has late-middle-age paunch ever looked better on an actor than it does on Denzel Washington?

In a special cinematic offering presented as part of Fathom Events' Black History Month celebration, one of the most adored figures in science-fiction history shares her true-life tale of reaching for the stars in Woman in Motion: Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek, & the Remaking of NASA, an exhilarating new documentary tribute – screening at Rave Cinemas Davenport 53rd + IMAX on February 2 – featuring Star Trek's iconic Lt. Uhura, Nichelle Nichols.

This past weekend, our area's two debuting cineplex options were Our Friend, which is primarily about a young woman dying of cancer, and Heaven, which is peripherally about a young woman dying of cancer. It probably goes without asking, but no matter how much some of us may relish trekking to the movies these days, what kind of masochist would voluntarily make a double-feature out of such an ostensibly depressing two-fer?

This kind! So let's dive in, shall we?

Kicking off Fathom Events' seventh-annual TCM Big Screen Classics series in high style, Rave Cinemas Davenport 53rd 18 + IMAX will, on January 24 and 27, present screenings of the iconic Humphrey Bogart noir The Maltese Falcon, the legendary screen mystery celebrating its 80th anniversary, and an inclusion on the American Film Institute's list of “100 Greatest American Films of All Time.”

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