I’m sorry to interrupt the Halloween week horror programming, but it would be negligent not to write about a unique theatrical experience that may pass you by soon: the extravagant stop motion fantasy WILDWOOD. Director Travis Knight (KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS), writer Chris Butler (director of PARANORMAN) and the studio Laika (CORALINE) live up to their usual high standard of entertainment while aggressively pushing the envelope of what can be done in this medium.
I’m referring more to its scale than its subject matter. It’s a PG-13 movie, it has some stuff that might be too much for most little kids, but it’s basically a young people movie, based on a book by Colin Meloy of the band The Decemberists, illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis. I don’t know anything about any of that, but I can appreciate a LABYRINTH type going-into-a-fantasy-world-to-rescue-the-kidnapped-baby adventure as much as the next dork. This is a good version of that for a couple of reasons, the biggest and most obvious being that it’s maybe the most technically ambitious stop motion movie ever made, just staggering to look at if you appreciate the art form. (read the rest of this shit…)
MAESTRO is the straight-to-Netflix biopic of composer, conductor, music educator etc. Leonard Bernstein. It stars and is directed by Bradley Cooper (
As a director he’s also flexing and back-flipping with numerous large scale sequences, detailed depictions of multiple time periods, shooting in both black-and-white and color, and occasionally sliding between realism and fantasy. It shows so much effort and enthusiasm it’s sure to annoy the shit out of many, but fuck ‘em. I enjoyed it. 
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is a black comedy I heard some good things about and had been wanting to see for a while and then right around the time it came out on disc it got nominated for best picture, director, original screenplay, actress and editing Oscars. Okay – didn’t know it was gonna be that kind of party, but I’m down.
I’m kinda late on writing this one up, not sure if it’s even playing anywhere anymore, but what are you gonna do.
Remember how the driver in Walter Hill’s 
Last year I honestly couldn’t remember which one was LET ME IN and which one was NEVER LET ME GO. It’s similar to the great “A ______ MAN” onslaught that made it easy to mix up A SINGLE MAN, A SERIOUS MAN, A SOLITARY MAN, THE EXTRA MAN, etc. And Denzel made a movie called UNSTOPPABLE even though Wesley already had a movie called that, and Seagal made BORN TO RAISE HELL around the same time as a gay porn of the same name came out. It’s all so confusing.
