In the pines, in the pines ... terrible things are afoot. 

The poet Larkin was right, "They f*ck you up, your ma and da. They may not mean, to but they do." But this show takes it so much farther.

All Alex Dempsey wanted was a slice of the American dream. Not easy to come for a trans man and his pregnant wife in 2003. When Alex, a cop, loses his job in Detroit to the allegedly excessive violence, his wife suggest they return to the idyllic Vermont town she went to school in and start over. 
At first glance, being a deputy is an easy gig, the place practically oozes small town charm, and the locals are friendly. Sure, there's the leader of The Tall Pines reform school for troubled youths who is generously described as "a lot." But it's manageable to deal with. Worth it, really, to stay in a place so welcoming and nice.
Or is it?
Because the more Alex learns about the town, the townies, and his wife, the scarier it gets.
The closer his perfect dream inches toward the nightmare territory.

Mae Martin is a true Renaissance creator. They do standup, TV dramas, act, write, play four musical instruments and sing (they just released an album "I am a TV"). Super impressive. 
Wayward is a notable departure from their two seasons of romantic drama Feel Good. Both are immensely bingeable and utterly immersive. 
It's nice to see a creator who can ... well, hit so many different notes. Wayward may have some funny lines, but it is a terrifying journey, as compelling as the best works of dark psychological nature.
It may be the inherent genius of Toni Collette who slays it as the villain here, or my personal fascination with cults and unique family dynamics, but this show kept me glued to my TV and awake - which is a rare feat indeed.
Well written, well acted, well paced, and profoundly unsettling, Very well done, indeed. Recommended!

Lisey's Story is King's ode to his wife. A lovely gesture, but ...

There is a sea of difference between a novel and an ode. One I'm not sure should ever be crossed. Even the ever popular and beloved King as an odist leaves a lot to be desired.

I've not read the book (though a friend of mine with a very good taste in literature has and didn't care for it), so I'm not going to make a bunch of comparisons between the original and its screen adaptation.  The latter is enough of a disaster to be ripped on its own.

Ready? Here we go.
It's highly unlikely that anyone ever says no to King. Which is likely how this ridiculously protracted, soporific, sluggish, melodramatic nonsense came to be.
Presumably, once he expressed interest in writing his own teleplay, that was it.
No one questions that King is a good book writer. But writing for TV is a very different thing. And being good at one doesn't make someone good at the other. 
This mini-series is a striking proof of that.

TV is meant to be dynamic viewing, not a dramatic interpretation of the book. Nor should the adaptation take the same amount of time that the actual reading might. That means the visuals aren't keeping the pace with the narrative ... among other things.

Lisey's Story is wonderfully cast and beautifully acted. Julianne Moore is excellent, as always. Dane DeHaan is profoundly unsettling as a psychopath. Michael Pitt is mesmerizing as a morally torn father from one's worst nightmares. Etc. I mean, yes, Clive Owen (and his haven't-noticed-it-before old man gut) maintains his usual rumpled sock presence in both appearance and performance, but it's perfectly serviceable.
But the writing drags, looping on itself, in the worst possible way. The plot meanders, overfocusing on random aspects yet ultimately failing when it comes to meaningful explanations. The overall logistics hold up about as nicely as a newspaper in a river, disintegrating under the barest of intellectual scrutiny.
There is a nice love story in there, and some good meditations of the very nature of writing, but it gets buried under the ponderous weight of the production.

From what I've read about the mini-series and the original book, the additions made to the former were completely unnecessary. But again, no one said "No."

Overall, it's a total slug and a disappointment. It comes across as an exercise in self-indulgence. Outside of the performances, the only thing worth watching here is the brilliant starting credit sequence. Pass and save yourself time.

I haven't written a movie review in a minute (and I will work on that), but every so often I come across such an egregious offender, such a colossal waste of time, that words must be typed. Here be those words:

Because The Substance has been praised so widely, I've decided to make this my Halloween movie. Wrong choice.

The Substance is short on a lot of things, but chief among them is, ironically, substance. It's a body horror flick that really goes for it, reaching every height of disgusting. In fact, it is so busy grossing the readers out that it's oh-so-timely message of the disposability of women of a certain age in the showbiz industry gets rather lost amid the see of blood, gore, and guts.

Outside of the admittedly bravura performances by its leads, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, the movie essentially relies on its shock value to override the paper-thin plot AND the fact that said plot actually makes no sense when you think about.

But hey, let's think about it, since the movie creators has chosen not to: Demi Moore plays an aging star named Elizabeth Sparkle. Sparkle is an actress turned TV fitness guru, and (much like the woman who plays her) looks remarkably good for her age. Although not quite good enough according to the studio boss -- a disgusting, leathery chauvinist named (with the movie's typical subtlety of a train wreck) Harvey and perfectly cast with a man who just married in real life someone 40 years his junior.

Sparkle has just turned 50 (Demi is a least a decade older) and has therefore become disposable. This wrecks her so badly that she decides to commit to an experimental procedure she knows nothing about it - and you won't either, except for the superficial details, because the writers couldn't fathom a logical explanation for it.
The procedure allows Sparkle's body to (very violently) produce a younger self, with whom she is supposed to trade places every other week. But the younger self, the ever-perky Sue, gets other ideas, and things fall apart rather quickly.

Who didn't see that coming? Presumably the same kind of person who'd take experimental substance from an anonymous package. 

And yes, I get it, it's meant to be a satire of the industry's impossible standards and all that, but the best satires have cleverness behind their preposterousness. Not mere gross-out tricks.

At no point is it explained exactly what Sparkle gets out of having Sue in the world. Outwardly, it kind of looks like she's just losing time and complete bodily autonomy for no apparent reason. The two don't appear to be connected in the way that they vicariously live through each other. Her other version, Sue, with all the arrogance of youth, has no respect for the balance. When the sh*t begins to hit the fan, Sparkle chooses not to stop. Neither of the two can stop, in fact, which is ultimately their downfall.

For all the nuance, the writer/director has obviously meant to convey, she wrote two cliched, unlikable women in a nonsensical arrangement. And that is the unignorable fact of this overlong production for which no stylistic trappings and no amount of fake blood (and there was A LOT of it) can cover.

The Substance is a grotesque that'll send body horror fans swooning and the rest cringing. It's a striking movie, but it just isn't smart enough to say what it tries to say.
​

So, how do you like your comedy? Because if cringe if your thing, this tale of the pratfalls of male bonding will do wonders for you.
The rest of the audience may be less enamored.

This movie is a story of a friendship between Craig, a tragically unhip marketing executive, and Ausitn, his very hip weatherman neighbor (Paul Rudd, basically reviving an aged version of his Anchorman character).
They strike up the initial opposites-attract thing, but then it gets weird. Ausitn ditches Craig, and Craig loses his sh*t.

That's basically the entire movie in a nutshell.
Out of the nutshell, the commentary is clear. SO much so it's on the movie poster as a tagline: Men Shouldn't Have Friends.
Which is, of course, nonsense, because friendships of all genders are tricky. The issue here is with Craig being a total lunatic. In fact, that's also the main reason this movie didn't work for me -- it's difficult to impossible to believe that someone so unlikable, so strikingly unattractive in every way, so easily unhinged would get as far in life as he had.
Even though one must suspend disbelief to a certain degree while watching movies.

The acting is good, there are a few cringing laughs, but overall, it didn't do much for me. From what I've gathered by asking, it, unsurprisingly, works best for male audience. And diehard Paul Rudd fans ought be entertained too.
​

Oh, very. But not as bottomless as mother's love, apparently. 

That's basically what this movie is about. A rather thin story about a woman mourning a loss of her wife while dealing with repeated reappearances of her junkie daughter. But then there's a nice twist that sort of saves it all.
​
This isn't the sort of thriller to knock your socks off. But while your socks may remain firmly in place, you might enjoy a slow-moving drama with two excellent performances by Moore and Sweeney and one very slimy turn by Domhnall Gleeson.
Julianne Moore is always good, and in this grief-wrecked, makeup-free performance, she is, as expected very, very good. The surprise is Sydney Sweeney who, despite her bombshell looks, continues (Reality, Immaculate) to prove herself remarkably versatile and talented.
Here, as a through failure of a person: an addict, a liar, pathetic, charismatic, and dangerous, she is very effective.
All in all, a decent crime drama, but the key word here is drama.

So, hammering yet one more nail into the coffin of originality, here comes another remake. Or is it reimagining? 
Leigh Whannell is Australian for horror the way Fosters is Australian for beer. And this is his second take on a classic Universal monster, following by The Invisible Man.
That movie was a rather interesting modern revision, girl-powered for the perfect modern messaging platform and actor-powered by the talented Elizabeth Moss.

Wolf Man doesn't have that. What it does have is a very realistic, visceral, body horror approach to the theme. And yes, the practical effects are very impressive, but that's about it.
The movie dragged, despite its very reasonable length, and failed to wow at almost every turn. You could see what Whannell was going for, and you'd be very impressed just watching the special features on the DVD, but the movie itself was just so consistently underwhelming.

First, off, there's almost no story to speak off. The movie is essentially a three-player special--a family of three, mismatched and bizarrely cast. Meet Blake, Charlotte, and Matilda Lowell. They are not particularly happy and oozing chemistry, and yet when Blake's psychologically abusive father is finally declared dead, Blake can think of nothing better for their family than to take them from the big city and his wife's job for a summer in the woods to clean out his cabin.
Mind you, this is the very same cabin where Blake had endured a very traumatic childhood with a prepper type of dad. The same place Blake couldn't wait to leave as a kid and did as soon as he was able to. Makes you wonder just how bad Blake's memory is. Or does the tired trop of city folk who just need some time in nature override all good sense?

Anyway, once they get to the woods, things go bad immediately. And it's all downhill from there. The rest of the movie is dedicated to Blake's transformation into the titular monster much to his wife's and daughter's terror. Again, just the practical effects and makeup that took up to seven hours to apply are particularly impressive here.
To be fair, it stands to mention that Whannell tries for some dimensionality here by switching you to the Wolf Man's POV as he drifts further and further away into a world of his own - as in he sees eyes as glowing lights and cannot understand speech.

The acting? Christopher Abbot does a solid job with what he's given, though he isn't all that likable or sympathetic in any iteration. Garner, who plays Charlotte, is a perfectly decent actress, woefully miscast in the role of a mother of a ten-year-old. (Sure, she's technically old enough, but she looks much too young for Abbott's wife or Firth's mom), and consequently the entire family appears wildly mismatched.) The kid's great. Kid actors are almost always great.

But the movie doesn't thrill. Didn't thrill the box offices either, which is pretty unusual for Whannell's work. No matter how much it tries to growl and claw its way into the major leagues, it falls flat and stays flat. Pass.

The ubiquitous A24 is no stranger to horror. While a lot of their offerings tend to be woefully overrated--yeah, I'm looking at you Midsommar and I Saw TV Glow--Heretic hits all the right notes. In fact, it is a pitch-perfect symphony of dread, wrapped in arguably the most disturbing slice of real estate since H.H. Holmes' nightmare mansion and anchored by fantastic performances from its succinct cast.

It starts of simply enough with two young female missionaries, Sisters Barnes and Paxton from the Church of LDS--Mormons for those who don't go in for acronyms--paying a house call to a man, Mr. Reed, who signed up to receive more information.
They enter his house with the best intentions and slowly come to find out that they cannot leave.

You see, Mr. Reed has his own (deadly) game to play. His own conversion to offer, as it were. As the creeping unease mounts into edge-of-your-seat tension, Sisters Barnes and Paxton soon find themselves for their lives.

As it turns out, the theology-obsessed Mr. Reed has a very specific theory about religion and will go to any lengths to prove it. And his house is built for keeping people in.

This movie could have been many things had the stars (quite literally) not aligned to make it so freaking good.
As Mr. Reed, Grant (nominated for this role for BAFTA, Golden Globes, and Critics' Choice Awards) is sheer perfection. A creep extraordinaire. The winsome charm of his youth gets obscured in the wrinkles of age and turns on a dime into something utterly terrifying.

He's such an interesting actor, really, maturing from the floppy-haired, goofily charming Brit of the 90s rom-coms into a properly serious, fascinating, unpredictable character actor he is now. His aged cuteness, droll sense of humor, and a certain world-weariness collude to make him a perfect villain.

Sophie Thatcher as Sister Barnes (the more reserved, cautious, and cynical of the two) continues to impress. She's terrific on Yellowjackets, a perfect blend of strength and vulnerability that shines through here, albeit in a different light. And she's multi-talented too. Stick around for the credits to hear her beautiful cover of a classic tune.

Chloe East (Sister Paxton) I wasn't familiar with, but she has arguably the strongest arc in the movie and does a great job with it. 

What's interesting is that both Thatcher and East grew up Mormon, though both are no longer practicing. It is likely what fueled their stunning performances as young women whose faith gets tested in the worst possible way.

Another fascinating thing is how pro-religion the movie is. For the hyperwoke, avantgarde studio like A24 to produce a movie with such a strong message speaks volumes to the increasingly conservative American zeitgeist. 
I mean, this is very much a story about two young religious people whose faith is tested by the devil (or at least a devil) and (I'm about to give away the ending, watch out!) they come through with shining colors ... or at least with their faith intact.
Moreover, it is an overwhelmingly positive depiction of a religion with numerous controversial practices. Practically a recruitment video. Though Scott and Beck, the writers and directors of the movie, don't seem to have any Mormon associations. Go figure.

But sociopolitical connotations aside, Heretic is awesome. One of the smartest, best made horror movies I've seen in some time. Be a convert. Go see for yourself. 

People just can't get enough of a good real-life tragedy. This vulture-like appetite leads to the constant dissecting of the lives of the rich and famous in various formats. Larrain has made something of a career of it, lately gearing specifically toward iconic dead women. 

I watched his Callas drama first, before checking this out, so it's easy to see that he definitely has a very specific narrative style. And I don't think I like it.
Instead of focusing on the entire life or even a good chunk of it, Larrain zooms in on a specific time and place and eviscerates it with the voyeuristically macabre glee of a child pulling wings off a butterfly.
In this instance, his subject is Princess Diana, and his focus is on the 1991 Royal Christmas celebration which she attends against her will and spends the entire time contemplating leaving it all behind.
Diana is presented as a very fragile, moody, unstable, self-harming individual, prone to active hallucinations. The situation is politely volatile as it is blatantly clear that it's a bad fit for all parties involved.
It isn't a flattering representation, although apparently accurate enough to draw praise from some former royal employees. But more importantly, it isn't a very interesting one.
The movie is too narrow in focus and too idiosyncratic for proper appeal. It's pretty but dreadfully slow and soporific. And KStew in it ...
Well, here's the thing. KStew is a remarkably talented actress. Her career has managed to survive and evolve since being a kid actor despite various personal scandals and the dubious rise to fame via Twilight garbage. As far as depictions of real-life people onscreen goes, she does a lot here from inhabiting the voice and the accent to embodying the certain mannerisms. It was apparently enough to secure her nominations from Oscars, Golden Globes, and Critics Choice. And yet, the entire time I kept thinking that's KStew in funny hair doing a British accent. Despite being the same age as her character at the time and similar gamine physicality, she just didn't quite lose herself in the role to the point where it was no longer her.
Overall, the movie didn't work for me and was difficult to stay awake for. User milage may vary.

The Your Monster looks like yet another retelling of the Beauty and the Beast. But it isn't. It so wonderfully isn't. It's deeper and sadder and more disturbing. It's also kind of awesome.

Melissa Barrera, who has screamed her way through two Scream movies, before being canned for not being able to shut up about her political views, and also has slashed through the vampire delight that was Abigail, has certainly earned her street cred as a scream queen.
But with this movie, she finally gets a proper star turn. Utilizing her musical theatre background and her comic-horrific skills, she is pitch perfect in the role of a freshly dumped actress who moves back to her childhood home to lick her wounds and discovers a monster living there.
He growls, grumbles, and tries to kick her out, but they end up getting along famously, because fundamentally they are both profoundly lonely. And also, the monster is so freaking charming.
The more involved the two of them get, the more go-gettery and outspoken Barrera's originally meek character becomes. And then she starts getting carried away with it.
I'll avoid saying more, but it's a doozy of an ending.

Aside from Barrera, the movie's full of talented nobodies and lesser-knowns, with Dewey as the Monster being a real standout. Clever, morbidly whimsical, and as charming as the best kind of monsters, this is an absolute delight from start to finish. The poster may scream romance, but it's a completely unique take on it. And yes, it may scream :) Recommended.