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The Shining (1980)

My problem with “The Shining” is that it was made at the wrong time by the wrong people. It should have been made by the Columbia Pictures short subjects department in the mid-1940s with Shemp Howard as Jack Torrance, Vera Vague as Wendy Torrance, Dudley Dickerson as Dick Halloran, and (in a loan-out from Hal Roach) Billy “Froggy” Laughlin as Danny Torrance. And behind the camera, Jules White would direct the film by filling the Overlook Hotel with a gorilla throwing pies and skeletons operating on clearly visible wires.
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The Last Rodeo (2025)

In “The Last Rodeo,” Neal McDonough stars as Joe Wainwright, a retired rodeo champion in his fifties who works as a blacksmith in a small Texas town. A widower, Joe wants his grandson Cody (Graham Cody) to follow him in bull riding, but his daughter Sal (Sarah Jones) is opposed – especially since Joe’s rodeo career ended with a neck-breaking accident that resulted her becoming his caretaker in the years before he regained his health.
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