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• Movie review query engine MRQE

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• A movie review index with links to over 120,000 full-text reviews covering more than 17,000 films from international, national, and local newspapers, arts and entertainment journals, and other sources. In addition to the index, includes prepared lists of reviews in the following categories: recent releases in the U.S.; upcoming releases in the U.S.; top 10 at the U.S. box office; U.S. video releases for the current month; U.S. video releases from the previous month; AFI's 100 greatest American movies; most popular title (last week, previous day, past 12 hours, past 3 hours); most reviewed titles; Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999); Gene Siskel (1946-1999); the 1990s in review; 1999 in review; 1998 in review. Also includes links to related services such as the Internet movie database and online vendors.
• "The Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE) is a database of links to online reviews (written by professionals and amateurs and drawn from hundreds of sources including newspapers, magazines and fan sites) along with other articles covering over 30,000 movies from all over the world. Users can search the MRQE using all or part of a film's title or consult pre-compiled lists of films, including films featured at various festivals, the top 10 films at the U.S. Box Office, recent video releases, most reviewed titles, and Academy Award nominees. Although the lack of search capability by any field other than film title could be seen as a drawback, the MRQE does provide links wherever possible to the vast Internet Movie Database, ( http://www.imdb.com/ External ) selected for the MARS Best 1999 list. (RUSQ. Fall 1999)"--"Best Free Reference Web Sites 2003," RUSA Quarterly, Fall 2003; reviewed February 7 and March 2, 2003.
• Clamen, Stewart M.

Created / Published

• [Montreal, Que.] : 144574 Canada, Inc.
• -  Motion pictures--Reviews--Indexes
• -  Motion pictures--Reviews
• -  Motion pictures--Reviews--Databases
• -  Began in 1993?
• -  Mode of access: World Wide Web.
• -  Title from home page (viewed on Oct. 10. 2003; last updated Oct. 10, 2003).

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• https://lccn.loc.gov/2003556326

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• Library of Congress Online Catalog (1,626,027)
• Book/Printed Material

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• Motion Pictures

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Chicago citation style:

Clamen, Stewart M. Movie review query engine MRQE . [Montreal, Que.: 74 Canada, Inc, 1993] Web.. https://lccn.loc.gov/2003556326.

APA citation style:

Clamen, S. M. (1993) Movie review query engine MRQE . [Montreal, Que.: 74 Canada, Inc] [Web.] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://lccn.loc.gov/2003556326.

MLA citation style:

Clamen, Stewart M. Movie review query engine MRQE . [Montreal, Que.: 74 Canada, Inc, 1993] Web.. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <lccn.loc.gov/2003556326>.

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Provides links to reviews of 48,000+ films, both historical and contemporary, from websites, newspapers, and magazines across the United States and Canada.

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Movie Reviews Search Engine: MRQE.com

Movie Reviews Search Engine: MRQE

Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE). Going to the movies is no longer an inexpensive evening’s entertainment, as we all know. We do not like to lay down our hard-earned jack for a ticket, only to end up disappointed, offended, etc., by what we see on the big screen. And the same holds true, of course, for movie rentals. Yes, there are reviews in your local paper, but maybe the reviewer’s tastes do not parallel yours. Well, you can always click around the Net and look at reviews from a number of sources — or you can save yourself a lot of time and effort by using the MRQE to cull through reviews on more than 40,000 different titles .

It’s a deceptively simple-looking website, designed and programmed by Stewart M. Clamen , a developer and systems designer who has worked as a consultant for movie review site RottenTomatoes.com . According to Clamen’s resume , MQRE’s database is populated by a Perl application that cruises the web, “automatically extracting current information from targeted review sources.” According to Clamen, “MRQE prides itself on promoting a diversity of opinion from around the (online) world – with sources ranging from mainstream media to independent individuals – in nine different languages.”

A simple keyword search box is available on the main page, as is a dropdown menu allowing you to view “precomputed lists of titles,” such as upcoming releases in the U.S. and UK, top 10 at the U.S. box office, recently released video titles, picks from the American Film Institute’s 100 Years series , festival award winners, and titles reviewed by such notables as Gene Siskel and Pauline Kael. You can see lists of the most popular titles searched for by users of the site over the past week, day, 12 hours and three hours, as well as the most reviewed films. Advanced search options include support for the Boolean AND, OR and ADJ. Results lists include direct links to full-text reviews online. According to the database statistics page , as of this past Tuesday, it contained “413461 articles of 40736 different titles, plus 51148 title aliases.”

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• MRQE.com, The Movie Review Query Engine

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MRQE.com is the Internet? ۪s largest index of movie reviews. Find reviews for new and recent movies in theaters, DVD and Blu-ray releases, and film classics.

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MRQE's 100 Best Ranked Films

1. Rear Window

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5. Citizen Kane

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10. Casablanca

11. The Godfather

12. Jules and Jim

13. Killer of Sheep

14. The Godfather Part II

15. Monsieur Hulot's Holiday

16. Paths of Glory

17. Singin' in the Rain

19. The Maltese Falcon

20. Taxi Driver

21. Children of Paradise

22. City Lights

24. The Third Man

25. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

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Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors, the supremes at earl's all-you-can-eat.

Now streaming on:

Not gonna lie, this had me in the first half. In its first hour, Tina Mabry ’s “The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat” is a bubbly, melodramatic story about the multi-decade friendship shared by three Black women. Based on Edward Kelsey Moore ’s same-titled novel, the comedy zigs—despite its name, it’s not actually about the musical group—and zags through these characters’ personal ups and downs. In some ways, its tonal shifts, light and airy, mirrors the tone seen in Black 1990s films like “ Soul Food ” and “The Best Man,” where the overriding love shared by the characters help them overcome seemingly insurmountable personal challenges. And, for a time, Mabry’s film is a wonderful addition to that canon.  

The non-linear story begins with a tired Odette Henry ( Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor ) sitting underneath a tree. She recounts how her pregnant mother, worried about baby Odette’s arrival, sought help from a witch, who recommended that she sit atop a sycamore tree. There, Odette was born. Ever since then, she has been fearless. Through her eyes, we leap to 1968: Odette ( Kyanna Simone plays her in her younger years) has dreams of becoming a nurse while her best friend Clarice ( Abigail Achiri ), a talented pianist, seems destined for a recording career. The pair befriend and save Barbara Jean ( Tati Gabrielle ) from her abusive stepfather following the death of her alcoholic mother, finding her a home with Earl ( Tony Winters ) and his wife at their family-owned diner. 

These early scenes are among the film’s strongest, fashioning a believable bond between these seemingly disparate people that makes the nickname many attach to them, “The Supremes,” apt. However, as we transition into their adulthoods and later years, the film unravels so quickly that it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where this initially enjoyable film flew off the rails. 

The early scenes, set in the late 1960s, certainly have flair. The period costumes are colorful and varied, leaning toward bright yellows and oranges. There is also some steaminess. Barbara Jean, for instance, falls for Chick Carlson ( Ryan Paynter )—a white busboy working for Earl, who is also a survivor of physical abuse. Within the racist milieu, Chick’s brother is a crazed, violent bigot; Chick and Barbara Jean’s love creates an intriguing bit of tension that the film, confusingly, lets fall away. 

Rather than tell a simple story of uncommon friendship, the film overreaches. When we flash forward to the present day, all of the women are working through deep hurts. Earl, their father figure, has passed away, leaving his superstitious widow ( Donna Biscoe ) and his level-headed son in charge. Barbara Jean ( Sanaa Lathan ) is on an alcoholic spiral after watching her present husband, Lester ( Vondie Curtis-Hall ), suddenly pass away. Clarice ( Uzo Aduba ) gave up on her dream of being a pianist, and now it seems like her husband Richmond ( Russell Hornsby ) might be cheating on her. Odette has a delightful, healthy marriage with James ( Mekhi Phifer ). But her life is upended with a sudden diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Somehow, that only scratches the surface of all the plot’s varied surprises. 

In the film's final half hour, the script seemingly throws another movie’s worth of sharp turns and unlikely leaps: divorces, murders, and tragic deaths that are juxtaposed by a taste for melodrama and an appetite for mordant humor. In fact, I’m still not entirely sure what I watched. I’m not sure any of the cast knows either. Despite their best efforts, their commitment goes for naught as their characters—in a film that clearly wants to be a kind of soap opera—make the most absurd decisions. Ellis-Taylor, who is riding an exceptional hot streak, mostly holds it together, but even her incredible talents can’t keep some scenes from devolving. Lathan is equally helpless as her character’s most outlandish beats startlingly become afterthoughts. 

Between the eye-catching period details and the warmth of the performances, you want to wrap your arms around  “The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat.” But this is a film that seems intent on pushing you away through its ludicrous plotting. There is a touching story here about Black women with high hopes running into life’s crushing realities lurking somewhere in the middle of this tangled, knotty work that essentially suffocates itself. But Mabry’s good intentions aren’t enough to save what feels like an insignificant work compared to its high ideals. 

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the  New York Times ,  IndieWire , and  Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the  Los Angeles Times , and  Rolling Stone  about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Film Credits

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (2024)

Rated PG-13

124 minutes

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Odette Henry

Sanaa Lathan as Barbara Jean Maxberry

Uzo Aduba as Clarice Baker

Mekhi Phifer as James Henry

Julian McMahon as Chick Carlson

Vondie Curtis-Hall as Lester Maxberry

Russell Hornsby as Richmond Baker

Kyanna Simone Simpson as Odette (Young)

Tati Gabrielle as Barbara Jean (Young)

Abigail Achiri as Clarice (Young)

Dijon as James (Young)

Cleveland Berto as Lester (Young)

Ryan Paynter as Chick (Young)

Xavier Mills as Richmond (Young)

Donna Biscoe as Minnie

Tony Winters as Big Earl

Raymond Greene-Joyner

Jason Turner

• Gina Prince-Bythewood
• Wyck Godfrey
• Marty Bowen
• Isaac Klausner

Costume Design

• Whitney Anne Adams
• Edward Kelsey Moore
• Tariq Anwar

Executive Producer

• Laura Quicksilver
• Jaclyn Huntling Swatt

Director of Photography

• Sean McElwee

Music Supervisor

• Robin Urdang

Original Music Composer

• Kathryn Bostic

Production Design

• Kara Lindstrom

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MOVIE REVIEW QUERY ENGINE

The Internet's largest database of movie reviews for over 100,000 titles. The continually growing site provides a searchable index of all published and available reviews, news, interviews, and other materials associated with specific movies.

The unique combination of reviews, news, and user discussion—all accessed through MRQE’s search portal—allows any user to read and add to the Internet’s most comprehensive collection of opinion about film. MRQE.com is commonly abbreviated as MRQE and pronounced “marquee.”

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, 1993-, Gratis. URL: www2.mrqe.com, Last visited August 2007

The MRQE: Movie Review Query Engine is a must for everyone whether films are a passion, a pastime or only an incidental experience. With 67,626 titles available and 627,624 articles (as of August 3, 2007), MRQE offers reviews of new and old films, including everything from Underdog (released in the USA August 3 2007) to older classics like The Grapes of Wrath or North by Northwest . For those who enjoy good "bad movies", campy films like Robinson Crusoe on Mars and minor cult classics like the original Meatballs are also included. Started in 1993, this is a great resource for students needing a quick review for class discussion, for aficionados looking for content on new DVD releases, and...

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Alien: Romulus ending explained – how it connects to Prometheus

No David in sight, unfortunately.

Will there be an Alien: Romulus sequel?

Alien: Romulus might be set 20 years after Alien , but its ending links it back to Prometheus in a shocking way.

The movie follows a group of young space colonists living on Jackson's Star mining colony. They spot their chance to escape for good when a decommissioned Weyland-Yutani station floats into the planet's orbit.

But their mission to retrieve supplies from the station goes horribly wrong when they come face-to-face with the Xenomorph. Unsurprisingly, it's all the fault of the company and their inability to leave the Xenomorph alone.

If you were left confused by the connection to Prometheus in Alien: Romulus and how it all fits together, we're here to help by delving into the revelations of the new movie, including its ending.

Look away now if you haven't seen Alien: Romulus as we're about to go into some major spoilers .

Alien: Romulus ending explained: What is the black goo?

Shortly after their first encounter with facehuggers, the group find out from the Renaissance's science officer Rook that the crew had recovered the original Xenomorph from Alien .

It wasn't as dead as they thought, causing the death of the entire crew and irreparable damage to the station before it was shot dead. Exactly why the Xenomorph was wanted isn't made clear until a few deaths later.

After Navarro, Bjorn and Kay (and her unborn child) are killed, Andy, Rain and Tyler find their way to the Romulus lab. It's here where Andy needs to carry out his new directive "to do what's best for the company", as instructed by Rook.

Before the Xenomorph destroyed the station, Rook was carrying out experiments on it to extract the parasite inside it that makes it a "perfect organism".

The company's objective is to use it to improve humanity as the people in their colonies are dying, their bodies unsuited to living in off-world conditions. (Of course, they're not doing it for humanity, really; they're doing it so that they have a workforce that can keep going as long as they want.)

Rook was attempting to create the Prometheus compound, which looks exactly like the black goo we saw in Prometheus . The goo was discovered on LV-223 in that movie, later experimented on by David to create new lifeforms including the facehugger, Xenomorph and more.

In Alien: Romulus , the company supposedly don't know this and see the Prometheus compound as a "divine gift to humanity". It's Andy's new directive to take the compound back to the colony on Jackson's Star.

Before he can do so, they discover that Kay isn't actually dead. She's been hooked up by the Xenomorph in the bowels of the station, in a similar fashion to the colonists in Aliens . Rain, Andy and Tyler rescue her, but at the cost of Tyler's life when he's attacked by multiple Xenomorphs.

Kay is badly injured and uses the compound on herself, assuming that it might heal her. Unfortunately, none of them spotted the mutated rat corpse in the Romulus lab, but they don't discover the consequences until they're back on their ship heading away from the Renaissance.

Rain puts Kay into cryosleep, but it's interrupted when her pregnancy is rapidly sped up by the compound. She gives birth to a facehugger-like egg which opens up to reveal a human-alien hybrid. (Think the Newborn from Alien: Resurrection mixed up with the Engineer from Prometheus , and you get the picture.)

The Offspring – as it's officially called in the credits – kills Kay and slices Andy's neck, incapacitating him. Much like Ripley in Alien though, Rain manages to put a spacesuit on and eventually eject the Offspring out into space.

While there might be an Alien: Resurrection link to the Offspring, director Fede Alvarez explained that the appearance of the new alien-human hybrid was more to strengthen the connection to the black goo .

"The black goo is the root of the whole thing that was introduced in Prometheus ," he explained. "It's the root of all life, but also particularly the Xenomorphs come out of that thing, which means it has to be inside them. It's the Xenomorphs' semen, almost.

"So we thought, if it affects your DNA, and the Engineers clearly came out of the same root of life, it made complete sense to me that [the Offspring] was going to look like that."

Alvarez also revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Disney pushed back originally on the ending, which is exactly the response he wanted.

"They did [push back] at the beginning, but not because they didn't like it. They just thought, 'Is it too much? Do we really have to go there?' And I was like, 'Yeah, now that you said that we shouldn't, I know that I will'," he recalled.

"If you're given an Alien movie by a corporation that is owned by Disney and they immediately say, 'Yeah, let's make it' then you are failing somehow. So we really pushed it to the limit, and I'm glad we did."

Technically, there already has been as we've got Aliens , set 37 years after Alien: Romulus , but that's not really what you're asking.

Once she's ejected the Offspring, Rain puts Andy into a cryo chamber promising that "I'll fix you". She then leaves the classic Alien sign-off message and sets a course for Yvaga III, the planet that the group had always planned to escape to.

There's no credit scene to tease what happened after this and whether they got to the planet. However, since Alien: Romulus has been a box-office hit, there could be a sequel and Alvarez has thought about it.

"For me, it's always been about story. So, once we finished, we started thinking, 'What do you think happens when or if they get to Yvaga? Is it going to be great? Or is it a terrible place?'," he told The Hollywood Reporter .

"We tend to believe it's probably a terrible place that they think is great and fantasise about, so we naturally started thinking about where it goes and what's going to happen. And then, a few minutes in, we go, 'Oh, that sounds like a sequel'."

Who knows, maybe we'll even see a closer collaboration between Fede Alvarez and Ridley Scott to cap off Scott's planned prequel trilogy , tied in with Alien: Romulus and its links to Prometheus .

Scott certainly sounds keen. "I hope Fede's got another one up his sleeve because I think this is going to do really well. He's got a streak of brilliance," he told the Los Angeles Times .

At this stage though, we'll just have to wait and see.

For more on Alien: Romulus, check out:

• Alien: Romulus review • How long is Alien: Romulus ? • The complete Alien timeline • When will Alien: Romulus come to Disney+? • Does Alien: Romulus have a credit scene?

Alien: Romulus is out now in cinemas.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor.  Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world.   After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.  

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Review: Well-intentioned ‘Rob Peace’ flattens out the complexity of a true story of race and fate

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Statistics about the social mobility of Black lives don’t always do justice to what it looks like up close for one person. That’s where movies come in handy as vessels of understanding and, in “Rob Peace,” a dramatization about a real-life Yale student whose trajectory defies easy categorization, writer-director Chiwetel Ejiofor (following up his impressive 2019 directing debut, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” ) proves more earnest than skillful at bringing heartfelt complexity to another tale of whiz-kid promise and resourcefulness.

Growing up in a blighted section of East Orange, N.J., 7-year-old Rob (Jelani Dacres) shows a flair for numbers, a gift his aspirational single mom, Jackie (a strong Mary J. Blige ), who works three jobs, wants to see nurtured in private school and college. But spending time with his big-hearted, drug-dealing dad, Skeet (Ejiofor) introduces this observant boy to the realities of survival in an underserved community. “You look out for people, they look out for you,” he tells him.

Both systems of individual progress — a mother’s hope for escape, a father’s belief in reaching behind you on the way up — are put to the test after Skeet is sent to prison for murder when Peace is still a boy establishing his academic prowess. Though he sails his way through a supportive prep school and gets accepted to Yale with a free ride, Peace (Jay Will takes over the role in adolescence), who dives into molecular biology with dreams of curing cancer one day, still toils at getting his father freed, believing him innocent. That sense of duty, coupled with an opportunistic boldness, leads this thoughtful, socially skillful collegian down a path that, while setting him apart as a purposeful prodigy, eventually puts his carefully cultivated future at risk.

Ejiofor, adapting a 2014 book about Peace by Jeff Hobbs, who was his roommate at Yale, is rightly convinced that the multitudes within his easy-to-admire protagonist are film-worthy. But Peace’s fascinating contradictions can awkwardly bump up against the think piece about two Americas that Ejiofor is also after, which results in a framework where anyone who isn’t Rob Peace — a classmate, a girlfriend (Camila Cabello), a professor (Mare Winningham), even a parent — can seem more like a thematic sounding board than a flesh-and-blood figure. (Sample dialogue: “You deserve your shot at being happy.” Or: “You bring people together.”)

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Camila Cabello with Chiwetel Ejiofor on the importance of empathy in their film, ‘Rob Peace’

Jan. 22, 2024

Will is magnetic as Peace, his personality and heft often making up for Ejiofor’s overuse of close-ups. (There’s also an inexplicable dependence on orange and red in Ksenia Sereda’s otherwise unfussy cinematography.) Will imbues Peace with a flowing, cagey charm, alternating between humor, wisdom and a breezy I-belong-here confidence. But he also knows when to let slip that his high-wire act is a burden, bringing underplayed pain to a wonderfully tense, defensive moment when he says to a doubter, “I’m the person you think I am.”

The actor is so good at casually upending our notion of an underclass hero that his portrayal hints at how richer a miniseries might have been at fleshing out the narrative around him, those situations and circumstances that made Peace’s approach to destiny so exhilarating and tragic. The movie that bears his name is good enough at conveying breadth and can articulate its nuances, but like the life itself, pinging with promise, it leaves you expecting more.

'Rob Peace'

Rating: R, for drug content and language Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes Playing: In limited release

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‘Incoming’ Review: Not Another Teen Movie

Freshman engage in some fairly predictable debauchery in this routine high school gross-out comedy streaming on Netflix.

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By Calum Marsh

“Incoming,” a bawdy teen comedy from the directors Dave and John Chernin, opens with a familiar gag: an awkward adolescent boy (Mason Thames) delivers a speech to the camera professing his love, only for a cut to reveal that he’s actually rehearsing in the mirror. In a genre rank with cliché, this is not a very promising start — it suggests that the Chernins, who also penned the screenplay, are satisfied with whatever joke is closest to hand.

The rest of the movie does little to dispel that impression. Its story of high school freshmen navigating a libertine house party follows exactly the trajectory you would expect, with few laughs and even fewer surprises. If there’s a cute girl incoming, she’ll be introduced in a slow motion montage. If a couple leans in for a kiss, they’ll be interrupted by a lewd gag. Will the dork score with the hottie? Will the rowdy teacher get out of hand? Cue the record scratch sound effect!

A generous interpretation is that “Incoming” is derivative as an act of loving homage. In practice, it just feels old hat. The movie is heavily indebted to the teen gross-out comedies of the late 1990s and early 2000s, like “American Pie” and “Van Wilder,” which were themselves indebted to the teen sex comedies of the 1980s, like “Porky’s” and “Screwballs,” and it’s so far from an original idea or point of view that it’s hard to see the point.

All it offers is ribald escalation: Instead of beer bongs, there are lines of ketamine; instead of fart jokes, there’s diarrhea in a Tesla. Maybe that’s progress. But I’d say the filmmakers flunked.

Incoming Rated R for strong language, drug use, sexual innuendo, mild violence and “Porky’s”-style shenanigans. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

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Reference Reviews

ISSN : 0950-4125

Article publication date: 18 January 2008

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Abbott, R.L. (2008), "MRQE: Movie Review Query Engine", Reference Reviews , Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 46-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/09504120810843140

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