a.k.a. ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
ROGUE ONE is the new Star Wars picture, but not episode VIII, but also not new exactly because it’s what happens before part IV, which is the first one. I look forward to explaining that to the first casual viewer I meet who thinks this little British heroine is the same one from THE FORCE AWAKENS.
She’s a new character though, Jyn Erso, played by Felicity Jones from THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING. She’s supposed to be some kind of criminal or something who’s snatched from a prison transport by the budding Rebel Alliance because they’re looking for her father (Mads Mikkelsen, VALHALLA RISING), a scientist who was abducted by the Empire when she was young and is helping them build a spherical planet-destroying space weapon (see also episodes IV, VI and VII). So like most STAR WARS leads she’s an orphan, then she was raised by a legendary guerrilla named Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker, BLOODSPORT) although the raising happens offscreen. (read the rest of this shit…)
There have been many types of Christmas TV specials over the years: the beloved cartoons like 
Fangoria Magazine is important to me. I’ve been reading it since some time in the ’80s. It covered not only all the great horror movies that have come out during all those years, but also the less great ones. I like that you could read detailed coverage of, like, 
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA is the heavily critic-worshipped third film by writer-director Kenneth Lonergan (YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, MARGARET*). It’s a story about loss and family and people trying to salvage their fucked up lives. It’s not as devastating as some people make it sound, but also not as ultimately-uplifting or inspirational as maybe you would hope. It’ll probly make you tear up a few times and laugh a few times in its 2+ hours. It captures the ways family, friends and beer can bring you both solace and pain.
*[Please note that it is not one movie called YOU CAN COUNT ON ME, MARGARET. It is one movie called YOU CAN COUNT ON ME and then another totally separate one called MARGARET. And if I had written it as MARGARET, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME I would’ve had the same problem.]
Brian Yuzna’s SOCIETY is about a nefarious, perverted secret among the rich, and how it’s discovered by a high school jock dude. I think Yuzna (who was making his directivational debut after producing 
A CHRISTMAS HORROR STORY is a misleading title because 1) it’s not a horror version of A CHRISTMAS STORY and 2) it’s more than one Christmas horror story. It’s an anthology of several but it jumps around between them like 
TOY SOLDIERS is a kid’s movie clashing with an action movie. It’s rated-R and surprisingly legit, opening with chaos in Colombia, where Luis Cali (Andrew Divoff, WISHMASTER), the son of a captured narco-terrorist, has a court room held hostage. Within the first four minutes of the movie they throw a woman out of a high window and a judge out of a helicopter (an impressive skydiving stunt). Later they will take over a boarding school full of the children of American politicians and super-riches, and being that Columbine has not happened they will have no compunction about shooting the place up.
“Confessions are only admitted under torture, otherwise you might confess just to avoid torture and it wouldn’t be a true confession.”
LOVING is a pretty simple true story about something that 
