Nightmare Alley (2021)

Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is about as ambitious as a man can be. In 1939, "Stan" has to run away from a heinous act of violence and he ends up landing in a carnival and finds himself on the lam, working as a carny to survive.  The circus has a charming "clairvoyant", Madame Zeena (Toni Collette), who teaches Stan that her abilities are mostly grounded in the reality of how to read people, how to find the gullible, and how to put on the pageantry to swindle the weak and easily fooled into lining his own pockets.  So Stan and fellow circus performer Molly (Rooney Mara) ditch their colorful carny cohorts and set their sights on New York City and the upper crust of Manhattan as their new "marks".  There Stan meets and begins a relationship with Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a psychologist who is just as conniving and possibly twice as willing to sink even lower than the sideshow talent has ever sunk before to swindle the richest man in town, Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins).  As the newly dubbed "The Great Stanton" begins to intertwine his "talents" and abilities with more powerful people, he soon finds that he isn't playing games with the emotionally vulnerable anymore, but the powerful minds in the big city are playing games with him and his secretive past he ran away from soon explains the depths of depravity this anti-hero is willing to sink to stay out of harms way!  This remake of the 1947 original Nightmare Alley features an all-star award winning cast, including the insanely sexy Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara showing a bit of skin along the way!