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thenightling · 3 years

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Show and movie recommendations for people who like Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

This morning someone asked me for some movie recommendations that are like Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. There’s really nothing quite like The Sandman but I will list similar films and shows here.

1. Over The Garden Wall.

Over the Garden Wall was an animated mini-series that aired on Cartoon Network in 2014. It is a very unique mini-series that was shown as ten minute shorts. When compiled together the shorts tell a full length movie about two brothers lost in a surreal forest known as The Unknown. Most of the visuals are inspired by early twentieth century Hallowe’en greeting cards. This is a very, very underrated mini-series. I actually consider it my comfort food of media. I watch it when I’m not feeling well and it makes me feel better.

2. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare before Christmas.

I know a lot of people might think of this one as overrated and far too common place but when I was eleven-years-old I felt like I was the only one in the world who loved it. I saw Nightmare before Christmas in the threatre in 1993 and was fast obsessed. The King of Halloween is weary of his routine and feels like something is missing from his life so he discovers and attempts to do Christmas. It has a beautiful score by Danny Elfman and many surreal and wonderful imagery.

3. Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

Labyrinth is a fantasy film from 1986 featuring David Bowie as The Goblin King. A young girl named Sarah wishes away her half-brother. After the baby is actually abducted by goblins Sarah must solve an intricate maze within thirteen hours to save him before he is transformed into a goblin. The film is full of goblin creatures created by Jim Henson and you can see how it had some influence on certain aspects of The Sandman including Barbie’s dream world in the A Game of you story arc.

4. The Company of Wolves.

The Company of wolves is a horror film based on the short story collection The Bloody Chamber and other stories by Angela Carter. It was directed by Neil Jordan, director of Interview with The Vampire. Most of the film is set in the mind of a sleeping pubescent girl who is apparently having her first period. In her dream world she is Little Red Riding Hood. And her grandmother tells her various stories about werewolves. Werewolves fast become a metaphor for puberty, masculinity, and sexual awakening and all those confusing and frightening emotions that come with them. For all its symbolism and subtle beauty this is still very much a horror film.

5. Clive Barker’s Nightbreed

Sometimes sold as Night Breed or Nightbreed I strongly recommend tracking down the Cabal cut or director’s cut of this movie. It’s not just longer. Some scenes are entirely different from the theatrical release. It even has a different ending. The plot deals with a man named Boon who has been having strange dreams of a place called Midian. An underground city entirely inhabited by monsters. He yearns to be a part of that world. Meanwhile Boon’s own therapist frames him for murder and manages to even convince Boon that he might be the killer. But things get even more strange when Boon discovers that Midian and it’s monstrous inhabitants are, in fact, real. This film is based on the book Cabal by Clive Barker. This one is very much a horror film.

6. Pan’s Labyrinth.

Not to be confused with Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, Pan’s Labyrinth is a Spanish language film about a young girl in a very unpleasant situation so she escapes into a fantasy world where she is a lost princess. Beautiful, surreal, and very well made. Pretty much any film by Guillermo del Tor can fit on this list. My only complaint about this movie is that it is ONLY available with subtitles with no dub option. I understand that Guillermo del Toro does not like badly dubbed movies but this is very inconsiderate for the visually impaired. I am visually impaired and have to sit very close to read those subtitles. Either that or learn Spanish...

7. The Dark Crystal and it’s one season prequel series: Dark Crystal / Age of Resistance.

Similar to Labyrinth only with a surprisingly more serious tone and no song numbers, The Dark Crystal is a movie that takes you into a surreal fantasy world inhabited entirely by puppet creatures. The prequel series recently aired on Netflix and has the same charm and beauty as the original.

8. Swamp Thing.

The 2019 Swamp Thing series for DC Universe (now on HBO Max) only got one season but it features a character you might recognize from The Sandman. Matthew Cable. After Matthew’s death he becomes Morpheus’ raven in The Sandman. There’s actually a lot of atmosphere in this show and it is very underrated.

9. Lucifer.

Though not faithful to the comics the premise of Lucifer is based on events from The Sandman: Season of Mists and The Sandman: The Kindly Ones where Lucifer quits ruling Hell, moves to Earth, opens Lux and takes up playing piano.

10. Justice League: Action episodes Trick or Threat and Supernatural Adventures in babysitting.

The Justice League: Action episode Trick or threat features the first TV animated appearance of Cain and his House of Mystery as they appear in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. The Supernatural Adventures in Babysitting episode features the Magdalene grimoire. This is the spell book that was used to summon Morpheus in the very first issue of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

Bonus mentions:

MirrorMask Stardust Howl’s Moving Castle Princess Mononoke The Wizard of Oz Return to Oz (features a character Jack Pumpkinhead who helped inspire Mervyn Pumpkinhead on a superficial level) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (animated or TV mini-series)

10th Kingdom (TV mini-series)

Gulliver’s Travel’s TV mini-series (features a young Tom Sturridge) Rise of the Guardians Maleficent

Faust (1926 silent film) Tales from the Crypt (TV series) Tales from the Cryptkeeper (animated series) Carnival Row (TV series) Sleepy Hollow (1999 film) Neverwhere Good Omens @sex-and-games-in-new-york-city

#The Sandman #Sandman

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filthyjanuary · 3 years

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7-12 and 16-20 for the asks!

7. What do you dislike about your favourite season?

i think season 2 is the best, but as i’ve said before, my favourite is 4 solely because the first few eps i watched were from s4. i think season 4 is very solid and even though it’s a season that HURTS BAD because of everything happening between sam and dean, i think the show earns the conflict for the most part. the literal only thing that still haunts me is that the STUPID VOICEMAIL THAT GETS ALTERED IS NEVER ADDRESSED. like i hate more than anything that sam still thinks dean said those things. like i know jared’s said that sam knows dean loves him but i don’t care!!! sam /and/ dean deserve to know the voicemail was changed.

OH also literally everything with anna milton. she deserved better <3 sorry the fridged you and gave part of your arc to a man, queen.

also sam and dean should’ve found out cas let sam out of the panic room.

8. Thoughts on Sam’s demon blood arc

i love sam’s demon blood arc. his hot girl summer! in all seriousness, it makes perfect sense. mystery spot sets it up that sam goes dark when he doesn’t have dean, and s4 is the natural progression of that. i love sam being hellbent on revenge, and the blood drinking was hot sorry not sorry. like obviously the end result wasn’t stellar and the handling of the demon blood as an addiction was handled rather shittily in the show, but overall this arc is near and dear to me and if i couldn’t have the boy king, i’m glad i got this instead. and it brings up some really interesting concepts that get explored really well in fic.

9. Thoughts on the Moc arc

i hate this arc mostly because like dean was terrible...which makes sense, but even after the mark was gone it’s like... he never /really/ pulls himself out of that place. it also just dragged on for FAR too long. like it didn’t need to be like 30 episodes or however long. i do like that it gave us demon!dean being like sexythreatening, and that scene of sam cradling dean’s face and begging him to tell him that he had to kill all those people and just the general sam is dean’s colette of it all. also the end of s10 with sam on his knees and dean telling him to close his eyes is deeply fucked up and i love it for that reason and obviously that happened bc of the MOC storyline.

10. Fave underrated ep

i am highkey obsessed with 1x04 phantom traveller, 2x07 the usual suspects and 4x19 jump the shark and i feel like most people don’t really care about those episodes or bring them up much. phantom traveller is just interesting bc i think the character moments are fun and i am obsessed with plane crashes for some reason. the usual suspects i just adore because it’s really a great exploration of HOW WELL sam and dean know each other and just how alike they are. and unfortunately i really like the cop lady in this one. jump the shark was the second episode of supernatural i ever saw and for some reason something in my brain latched onto adam and never let go. i love him so much (i know it’s not really him in the ep but ukno) and i love how much you learn about sam and dean through it too.

11. Thoughts on BMOL

boring. like...the actors were not good at their accents. they wanted what bela talbot had in s3. i just didn’t find ‘the british are evil’ a compelling storyline in a supernatural show.... like girl i live in real life you don’t need to preach to me about the british. also like they set up ketch to be evil like worse than toni who i already hate because she tortures/sexually assaults sam by having him kill magda i guess? but then they end up redeeming him and he survives longer than both mick (affectionate) and toni (derogatory), like seriously one of the worst Big Bads they’ve ever had.

12. Thoughts on Mary

to be honest, i think bringing her back was kind of a stupid idea in the sense that the ENTIRE SHOW starts because of her death. but i felt like HAVING DONE THAT, trying to deconstruct her image as like this nuclear housewife was compelling and the whole clash of sam and dean who just want their mom versus mary who left her kids as a an infant and a small child and now has these grown men who are older than her needing things she doesn’t know how to give was very interesting. and i wish they’d done more with that.

16. Any criticisms of their world building/lore

well i think everyone’s said it better than me that they can’t seem to get their stance on monsters straight at all and the show suffers for it. i also hate how like the later seasons especially just blatantly retcon so much. the prime example is the garden of eden in s5 vs s15.... the s5 version was so much more interesting and i hate that they brought it back just to destroy their own lore. the whole concept of the abrahamic god being like the ‘real’ god vs other gods just being minor annoyances didn’t like...make sense or feel good either. i also would’ve loved more exploration of like what the fuck it means to be a vessel and also exploration of other monsters/urban legends. like ok we get it ghosts/demons/vampires/werewolves sure w/e but there’s so much to pull from. it got repetitive and there’s so many other things they could’ve tried. hell the SECOND EPISODE of the show mentions black dogs and we never actually encounter one. or like chimeras... like there’s just plenty to dig into and they just get lazy.

17. What did you like about s15?

15x20 <3 also just...jack....that’s my son! MICHAEL/ADAM IN 15X08!!!! i think there were a couple moments i liked in like...the gambler and last holiday, and i thought belphagor was funny. oh! also sam’s nightmare visions were kinda fun even tho they led back to lucifer :/

18. Thoughts on Lucifer

he was a really excellent and intimidating villain in s5.... and frankly i enjoyed hallucifer as well because sure he was presented comedically but he was a deeply dark presence hanging over sam as a reminder of what he suffered. everything after that...sucked!!! it sucked!!!!! overstayed his welcome, letting him out of the cage again totally nullifies sam’s sacrifice and frankly he lost every smidge of intimidation factor he ever had. he was just annoying and whiny and pointless and sam should’ve killed him <3 fuck that guy.

19. Most uncomfortable moments throughout the show for you?

answered here

20. Define the different eras in a few lines or words (s1-5, s6-7, s8-11, s12-15)

this was meant to be short... and then it wasnt... sorry.

kripke: PEAK SUPERNATURAL. racist AND sexist but like i frankly do not care because the actually storytelling is so GOOD. COHERENT. i long for what could’ve been had the strike not kneecapped s3 and we’d gotten boyking, but hell the arc we DID get... so good. so fulfilling. aesthetics go off the charts. character dynamics so good!!! conflicts are earned!!!! there was a fucking vision here and it was unique and interesting and the show was COMMITTED TO IT. literally iconic television i love her so much. eric kripke needs a therapist but i’m glad he wrote this show instead of going to see one.

gamble: sera THEE gamble.... overarching storylines kinda weak, but SO FUN! i had fucking fun! soulless sam is a comedian, godstiel was the last time cas was remotely interesting, like!!!! she gave us everything!!!!! gets slandered way too much by this hell fandom like yes the leviathans were stupid but the were FUN and the character moments in s6-s7!!! so good!!!! lots of excellent MOTW eps as well, which... as we know...i love. when the show lost gamble, it lost something great, i’ll die on this hill. i love u #girlboss.

carver: there’s a lot of good here and a lot i despise. dean steadily grows darker throughout the show but there’s like a real VEER into being awful in s9 that the show never recovers from. it makes dean very unlikeable for the rest of its run, mostly by virtue of the show not realizing how unlikeable it’s made dean because it needs him to always be right so the fact that he’s basically turned into john is never like....addressed in any meaningful way. some storylines (MOC!!) dragged on for too long, while others were way too short (TRIALS!!!) but ultimately i think there were some good ideas here and moments i’m fond of. season 11 is Beautiful. i love her so much. there’s some really excellent eps in s11 and the character moments are good.

dabb: i literally hate it here (jack sweetie you are not included in this assessment you’re doing great). it was just stupid. the characterizations of EVERYBODY sucked and fell flat. way too obsessed with pandering to the loudest faction on twitter. took the wreckage of dean that carver left and full destroyed him. like straight up could’ve done something meaningful if they’d bothered to address it at all but they literally didn’t ever make dean be accountable for his actions??? can’t tell u what cas was doing it was so forgettable he obviously had no purpose literally the only scenes i remember were a couple where he’s being cute with jack and that one ep where he and sam go to that old-timey town and sam gets brainwashed. sam like... exists, and his character is intact but it’s only intact because the writers that were left didn’t want to bother giving him anything meaty to do to so the were like *spins wheel* leadership arc that goes nowhere, and he just exists being kind and compassionate and putting up with too much shit. BUT HE HAD REALLY FUCKING EXCELLENT MOMENTS WITH JACK and that alone is why i think it’s worth the slog. sam/jack is my favourite dynamic on the show following sam/dean so...unfortunately based on that.... i can’t just burn the whole dabb era but seriously... way to make every character a hollow, one-dimensional shell.

send me supernatural asks

#ALLISON THANK U I LOVE U #asks #spn #long post #so-excuse-my-tantrum

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thehollowprince · 4 years

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Top 5 TV shows?

Okay, so I've thought long and hard about this and finally narrowed it down to five shows. And before we list them, to anyone who reads this, yes I am aware of the problems that these shows have, but I love them anyway.

In no particular order, here they are...

1. The Magicians

I fell in love with this show when I first saw the pilot way back in December of 2015. This was a show that spoke to me on a deep personal level. The characters were me, they were people I knew, they used pop culture references that I got and acted in ways that my generation has adapted to in light of (gestures vaguely) all of this.

And that's not even getting into the world of this show (and the book series that inspired it). The magic is grounded and almost tangible. There are times that I feel under the right circumstances (ba dum tsh), that I could do one of them. No wand waving or vaguely latin words. And the magic comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes and disciplines.

Its great.

Sure, there have been some bumps in the road along this ride, but I've made some great friends in this fandom fbat I wouldn't trade for anything.

2. Teen Wolf

I fully admit, the whole reason I started watching this show was the fact that I saw some stills of Tyler Posey as Scott McCall with his shirt off. Look, I'm not proud of it, but I'm a simple man with simple pleasures. Sue me.

But as it turns out, the show wasn't half bad. Not at all like the comedy that I thought it was going to be. A show that dealt with not only werewolves (an oddity in such vampire-infested times), but all sorts of other shapeshifting creatures from various mythologies and folklores. Sure, they missed the mark once or twice (*cough*skinwalkwers*cough*) but all in all I thought they did a really good job.

Also, this is one of the incredibly few shows that I've ever watched that I loved the main character. I usually either only tolerate them or can't stand them, but Scott McCall was a great character and a good friend, in an era of too much sarcasm.

3. Penny Dreadful

This show was criminally overlooked and underrated!

This has got to be one of the best shows I've ever seen, and that's not even factoring in my feelings on the plot. The whole show (all three - incredibly short - seasons) felt like watching a Victorian novel come to life. And I think that's where it lost so many people. PD wasn't like all of these other shows in this particular genre, with over the top action sequences and metaphysical powers like telekinesis and setting fire with your mind. This show was very internal, very introspective. There was a lot of dialogue and the story was character-driven rather than driven by the plot or action itself.

It was ahead of it's time. Here's hoping that the spinoff show, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels gets a better reception.

4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Yes, I am aware of Joss Whedon's less than stellar reputation, but I will take my love for this show to the grave. This was the first show I actually started paying attention to and watching with any kind of regularity (minus the Power Rangers, of course) and I wouldn't trade it. This show got me through so much growing up, even though I'm sure I started watching it when I was too young to understand what was going on.

Also, Willow's journey helped me with my own self-realization when it came to my own sexuality.

5. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

I love this anime. It's one of the few I've actually watched and one of the only of those few that I've ever rewatched. I highly recommend it to anyone who hadn't seen it because its amazing. And a lot more adult than you would think for an animated show, but it tackles a lot of really important issues while utilizing a middle-age "science" that is often left by the wayside on modern adaptations of anything occult or supernatural related; that being alchemy. They include things like homunculi and chimeras and even the fabled Philosopher's Stone.

And unlike a lot of animes, or even shows, there is an actual ending to this story that wraps up everything our heroes have gone through.

Bonus: Toy Boy - I'm including this because this is the show I just binged on Netflix. I thoroughly enjoyed it for just being a good, entertaining show. It's like a Magic Mike murder mystery, in Spanish. I loved it.

Bonus Bonus, because that's how I roll - I highly recommend Diary of a Future President on Disney+. I know people have issue with Gina Rodriguez, but its a great little show about a Cuban-American family and the issues that arise from being in middle-school. The kids actually look like kids, the mom actually acts like a mom, there's a nice storyline with the older brother realizing he might not be straight. And it's only ten episodes. You could finish the whole thing in five hours or less.

And there's my list.

#ask and ye shall recieve #top 5 tv shows #teen wolf #the magicians #buffy the vampire slayer #penny dreadful #penny dreadful: city of angels #fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood #diary of a future president #toy boy #toy boy netflix

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poetlcs · 4 years

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books I’ve read in 2020 (so far) + their ratings

non-fiction

crossing the line: australia’s secret history in the timor sea by kim mcgrath: important research into australia’s theft of oil in timor leste. didn’t rate

hood feminism: notes from the women that a movement forgot by mikki kendall: essay collection dissecting modern feminism, pointing out the exclusionary practices of mainstream feminism and offering new frameworks through which feminism should operate. really recommend. didn’t rate

the uninhabitable earth: life after warming by david wallace-wells: good introduction to environmentalism and the climate disaster. a little too introductory for me but good for those new to the topic. ★★★

homo deus: a brief history of tomorrow by yuval noah harari: it is simply not Sapiens nor as good as Sapiens. Looks at potentials for our future but, thought it was a little poorly researched. Some parts were still interesting though. ★★★

SPQR: a history of ancient rome by mary beard: a little dense at times, but super interesting and detailed look at ancient rome. enjoyed it a lot. ★★★★

sister outsider by audre lorde: collection of audre lorde’s essays and speeches, about feminism, lesbianism, the queer community, being Black and a lesbian ect ect. outstanding, important collection anyone interested in intersectional feminism must read. ★★★★★

all boys aren’t blue by george m. johnson: memoir about johnson’s experiences growing up as a Black gay boy in a poor neighbourhood. Very poignant memoir, written in such accessible language which I liked. guarenteed to get you emotional, another one everyone should read. didn’t rate because it’s so highly personal that felt wrong but highly recommend.

under a biliari tree i born by alice biari smith: memoir by an Aboriginal Australian detailing her life growing up learning traditional Aboriginal ways and how the lives of Indigenous Australian’s have been impacted through the years, specifically in Western Australia. Probably more aimed at school age people but still a 101 I think many Australian’s (and non Australian’s) can benefit from. didn’t rate

classics

maurice by e.m forster: gay man coming of age story in college + themes around class and sexuality. forster’s end note saying he thought it imperative to write a happy ending because we need that in fiction, i love him. ★★★★★

emma by jane austen: read before seeing the movie. loved emma as a character but thought this was okay compared to other Austen I’ve read. ★★★½

perfume by patrick suskind: a man with an incredible sense of smell starts murdering young women to try and bottle their scent for a perfume. weirdest shit I ever read still don’t know how to feel about it. ★★★

the color purple by alice walker: follows the life of Celie, an Black woman living in rural Georgia. deals with her relationship with her sister Nettie, her lover Shug Avery, and with God. this tore my heart to shreds absolutely everyone must read it, like even just for the beautiful writing ALONE. ★★★★

a study in scarlet by arthur conan doyle: its sherlock holmes #1 no further explanation required. not my fave sherlock story, was the weird morman subplot needed? ★★½

dracula by bram stoker: yeah vampires!! this was way easier to read and also way funnier than I expected. we STAN gothic aesthetics and Miss Mina Harker here. ★★★★

fantasy

the diviners by libba bray: teens with magical powers/abilities solving mysteries in 1920′s new york. reread. ★★★★★

lair of dreams by libba bray: the diviners #2. reread. ★★★★½

before the devil breaks you by libba bray: the diviners #3. reread. best one in the series hands down. ★★★★★

the king of crows by libba bray: waited so long for this series ender and it let me down lol. ★★★

clockwork princess by cassandra clare: the infernal devices #3. dont @ me this is my comfort reread series and I was travelling. ★★★★★

we unleash the merciless storm by tehlor kay mejia: we set the dark on fire #2. latinx inspired fantasy about overthrowing a corrupt government with an f/f romance. didn’t like as much as book one but still good, BEST girlfriends ever. ★★★½

wolfsong by t.j klune: basically feral gay werewolves and witches living in a town together. feels like a teen wolf episode but way more gayer. despite that hated the writing style and I don’t like age gap romances so yay the concept no the execution. ★★

the fate of the tearling by erika johansan: the tearling #3. finally finished this series, dunno why everyone loathes the ending so much I thought it was cool. underrated fantasy because it’s very unique. ★★★★

girl, serpent, thorn by melissa bashardoust: persian inspired fantasy about a girl who is cursed by a div to kill anyone she touches. has an f/f romance. bashardoust writes the most aesthetically rich settings I love her. ★★★★

crier’s war by nina varela: reread. f/f enemies to lovers where the main character poses as a handmaiden in order to try and murder the princess whose father killed her family. PEAK gay content literally a modern classic. ★★★★★

we hunt the flame by hafsah faizal: I was so disinterested in this book I barely can describe the plot but basically it’s a prince and a hunter who are enemies but are forced to go looking for this magical artifact together anyway it was boring. ★

ghosts of the shadow market by cassandra clare + others: short story collection set in the shadowhunter world. probably the strongest of her collections but they just don’t hit the same as her full length books. didn’t rate.

a storm of swords: part two by george r.r martin: a song of ice and fire #3. I WILL finish reading these books eventually i swear !! probably the best one yet though. ★★★★

amarah by l.l mcneil: world of linaria #3. high fantasy with politics, dragons, warring races. tolkein/asoiaf vibes if they had more women with agency. didn’t rate because I haven’t decided my feelings on the end yet.

science fiction

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: f/f enemies to lovers between spies on rival sides of a time war. good book but writing style wasn’t for me (others love this so eh take my opinion with a grain os salt: ★★★

not your sidekick by c.b lee: main character is from a superhero family but has no powers herself, so she takes an internship working with a superhero corp. has an f/f romance with a villain character. so much fun and super cute

speculative fiction:

the deep by rivers solomon: speculative fiction wherein pregnant African women thrown overboard by slave ships gave birth to babies that became mermaids. main character holds all the memories of her people’s past but runs away after being unable to deal with the burden. about self discovery, intergenerational trauma and the burden of remembering. a little short imo but still all round excellent book ★★★★

how long ‘til black future month? by n.k jemisin: short story collection, many with an afro-futurism focus. hard to explain because there is such a wide variety of stories but this is an AMAZING collection. didn’t rate because I don’t like rating short story collections but wish more people would read it.

mystery

the family upstairs by lisa jewell: woman inherits an english house and starts to unravel the secrets of a mass cult suicide that happened there years ago. loved it because it was wild. ★★★★★

the hand on the wall by maureen johnson: truly devious #3. boarding school mystery where the main character has to solve a murder that happened in the 1920s at her school while another mystery is happening in present time. my least favourite of the series but satisfying conclusion nonetheless. ★★★½

contemporary fiction

maybe in another life by taylor jenkins reid: dual timeline book showing the two outcomes of a decision the main character makes. cool concept but ultimately boring book because I didn’t care about the main character at all. didn’t rate because I didn’t finish it.

girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo: vignette stories of various women whose lives are vaguely interconnected. incredibly well written with such vivid characters. deserves the hype. ★★★★

tin heart by shivan plozza: australian YA, the recipient of a heart transplant wishes to connect with the family of her donor, after she discovers the identity of her donor. good story but didn’t like the writing style. ★★★

a little life by hanya yanigahara: follows the life of a group of friends living in life, especially that of jude, a closed off and damaged man with a troubling past. a little too torture-porny/Tragic Gays but I cannot deny the author has a beautiful writing style and I went through all the emotions. didn’t rate

a girl like that by tanaz bhathena: explores the events leading up to the main character dying in a car crash. set in Jeddah, saudi arabia and explores expectations on women, feminism and expressions of sexuality and relationships between women during teenage years. kinda no good characters but I loved it for it’s messy depiction of teen girls (whilst not condemning them for this). underrated. ★★★★

little fires everywhere by celeste ng: drama in white american suburbs when a new family moves in and the neighbours start investigating their past. eh, I heard a lot about this and thought it was just okay. ★★★

stay gold by tobly mcsmith: trans boy decides to go stealth at his new school and falls for a cheerleader, georgia. about navigating being trans and definitely felt like it was written to educate cis people. it was okay but ultimately not my thing and not really the story I was looking for, even though I respect it being written by a trans author and still would recommend to certain people. ★★½

everything leads to you by nina lacour: main character and her best friend have to unravel a hollywood mystery, all while the main character is trying to get over her ex-girlfriend and find work as a set designer. f/f romance and loved the focus on movie making and the power of stories. ★★★½

the falling in love montage by ciara smyth: a girl meets another girl at a party, but she’s not looking to date due to the amount of family issues she has going on. so her and the girl decide to spend the summer having fun, renacting scenes from rom-coms, but never dating. awesome family dynamics and the relationship between the two girls was sweet also set in ireland which is fun.

normal people by sally rooney: explores the relationship between connell and marianne, who meet in school, date secretly, and then are inexplicably drawn to each other for the rest of their lives. explores power dynamics, relationships, love and trust, and what we owe to eachother. great book, great mini-series, love it to bits. ★★★★★

the glass hotel by emily st john mandel: impossible to explain this book, but there’s a mystery about grafitti, a ponzi scheme and a character falling to their death on a boat under suspicious circumstances. honestly idk what happened in this book but I liked it. ★★★½

historical fiction

half of a yellow sun by chimamanda ngozi adichie: historical fiction about the biafran war loosely based on adichie’s family experiences. incredibly well written with an ending that punches you in the gut. ★★★★

hamnet by maggie o’farrell: explores the shakespeare family after the death of their child, Hamnet, from the plague, and how this leads to Shakespeare writing Hamlet. cool as fuck concept and boring as fuck book with such tropey female characters. ★★

all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr: WW2 fiction, dual perspective between a blind girl living in france and a german boy forced into nazi youth. I cannot believe this book is award winning it’s so boring and predictable and i reget the time i wasted on it. ★

poetry:

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong: poetry memoir. vuong writes a letter to his illiterate mother, knowing she’ll never read it, exploring their relationship, his experiences growing up as second generation Vietnamese-American, and hers during the Vietnam War. My favorite book I’ve read so far this year, just too good to explain, genuinely just feel like everyone is better off for having read this. ★★★★★

currrently reading:

girls of storm and shadow by natasha ngan

meet me at the intersection: edited by rebecca lim & ambelin kwaymullina

stamped from the beginning: the definitive history of racist ideas in america by ibram x. kendi

get a life, chloe brown by talia hibbert

#books #reading #booklr #book #book recommendation #mine #reading update #did anyone ask for this #no #did i do it anyway yes #its my continuing agenda to get book tumblr to read books that aren't soc and aftg aaldkskska #ok bye #after making this its become apparent to me I need to balance out how much fantasy I let myself read akdksks #i lov fantasy but im TRYING to read more uhh non fiction and lit fic

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i-was-bored-so-this-happened · 4 years

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pass the happy! 🌻🌈 when you receive this, list 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last ten people in the notifications!

I’ve been having a really bad couple of days and this honestly helped cheer me up, thank youu. This really made me feel so much better. I misread and thought it said 10 things and send to 5 people but I reckoned you wouldn’t mind me listing a couple more things. May have gone a bit overboard

In no particular order

Bread. In any form except white bread. Toast. Rolls. Garlic bread. Gingerbread. Naan bread. Banana bread. Breadsticks. Corn bread. Sourdough bread. Pita bread. Seeded bread. Baguettes. Bread

Socks. I just. Love socks. I don’t own a single pair of plain socks. They’re all bright and colourful or patterned or have Hogwarts or Stitch on them, and I have my fair share of slipper socks which are so soft. And yes, I do sometimes wear odd socks

Dinosaurs. I’ve always loved dinosaurs. I always wanted to be a palaeontologist, but I’m...not good enough at science. My longest-standing favourite show is all about dinosaurs coming through time portals. I just love dinosaurs

Books. Reading has always been my favourite hobby. I’m known for always having my nose in a book. I wish there was a proper bookshop where I live, it would be my favourite place in the world. A subcategory of this: Bookshops. God I love bookshops

Music. I play several instruments, I sing, I’ve composed music. I find reading music as easy as reading words. I love music. When listening to music, I particularly like music that makes me feel like I’m in a movie and piano music

History. I love history. I love to learn about the past. I love listening to music from long ago, walking around in centuries old buildings, seeing beautiful vintage clothes or furniture that are still so perfect. I’ve started work in a vintage shop, and I love it. What countries I want to visit are often influenced by historical things and

Underrated Disney. Lilo & Stitch, Hercules, The Emperor’s New Groove, Aristocats, Treasure Planet, the Muppet Movies, Bedknobs & Broomsticks, The Rescuers, Holes, Sky High, Dinosaur. I just. These movies make me so so happy, every time I watch them

Autumn. I love the colours. I love the leaves, how the crunch. The snow that melts before lunchtime and the consequent puddles and splashing. I love huddling into a café and my glasses steam up as I order hot chocolate and ginger cake. Knitted things, jumpers and hats and gloves even though all of mine are fingerless. Halloween, full of spooky-not-scary-because-wee-kids things and sweets

The Beach. The sound of the sea is just one of the best sounds in the world to me. I love going to beaches where there are caves I can go into, rockpools I can stand in. I love running into the ocean with my dog. I love climbing up the rocks, all the way back up to the grass. I collect shells and stones and sea glass and take pictures of jellyfish

Glass. I collect jars and bottles and. I love all the different shapes and textures. I put stones and shells and sea glass and flowers. There are some little bottles in the shop I work in that I fully intend on buying

Honourable Mentions: My Dog. Baby bean. Cuddly baby bean. Gets very upset when we leave, waits outside for us to come back, and whether it’s been five minutes or five days she always reacts the same Colours. I like jewel tones and muted colours a lot. Mustard yellow, olive green, burgundy, purple [I’m particularly fond of byzantium purple] Ice Cream. Most of all, Ben & Jerry’s Vegan Cookie Dough Flavours & Scents. Anything that tastes or smells of ginger, cinnamon, mango, lavender or mint I am all over. I love them so much Mythology. Whether vampires and werewolves or chimeras and centaurs, I just love mythological creatures. Fairies and trolls and dragons and brownies and kelpies and hippocami and gryphons and I could go on. I love reading about Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Aztec deities

#val-bti #mood boost #SUPER MOOD BOOST #this honestly made me feel so much better mate #seriously thanks

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nitrateglow · 6 years

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Halloween 2018 marathon 22-26

22. Son of Dracula (dir. Robert Siodmak, 1943)

Talk about underrated! This movie gets such a bad rap, but I think it’s one of the better 1940s Universal horror movies. With Siodmak directing, the film has a distinct noir quality, from the story to the visuals.

A lot of viewers take issue with Chaney Jr. as Dracula’s son. He isn’t as seductive as, say, Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee, or even John Carradine in House of Dracula. However, I don’t think Chaney is that bad. He’s menacing. He’s entitled. He’s smug about his social status and supernatural abilities, giving him the much-needed aristocratic flair. And as @majora-the-trekking-hobbit has often observed, he is more hot-blooded than we tend to see vampires in 1930s and 1940s films. So overall, I think he gives an interesting performance, one that doesn’t hurt the film.

At any rate, for me the femme fatale Kay is the highlight of the movie. She’s a southern belle craving power. She’s passionate and cold-blooded at the same time. She’s the chess master here and she is a joy to watch. I would love to see her tangle with Countess Zaleska, but alas.

And I was thrown by the ending, which left me horribly depressed. This movie is basically vampire southern gothic noir. I enjoyed it and might even say I like it best of all the 1940s Universal horror movies.

23. Son of Frankenstein (dir. Rowland V. Lee, 1939)

While I don’t think this movie is as good as the first two in the classic Frankenstein trilogy, it’s still an entertaining entry in the franchise. The expressionist camp aesthetic reaches an apotheosis here with the design of Frankenstein Castle. Bela Lugosi is hammy fun as the malicious Ygor. Basil Rathbone is a likable scientist. Lionel Atwill gives a memorable supporting performance as the wooden-armed inspector most will recognize as the object of parody in Young Frankenstein.

Overall, the movie goes by swiftly and is enjoyable. However, I never found any of the scenes to be as memorable as anything in James Whale’s take on Mary Shelley’s themes and characters.

I think what makes this film the weakest in the trilogy is the presentation of the Monster. In the first two, he is a more nuanced, human character, a lonely figure craving love who is only monstrous due to how he is treated by society. However, in Son he rarely shows such humanity and is basically the Muscle for Ygor.

24. Halloween (dir. John Carpenter, 1978)

LOVED IT SO MUCH. I was terrified watching this. While you might think a pivotal film in the slasher genre would be a bloody gore-fest, Halloween has extremely little blood. Though Michael Meyers is an almost supernatural figure in his resilience and physical strength, his killings are just so savage in concept and cold-blooded that you might trick yourself into believing there is more graphic content than there is.

I like how the film is a slow-burn. The first half has few killings. Instead, we see Michael select his victims in the most arbitrary manner possible. He stalks them as they go about their normal lives and we get to know these kids before they’re brutally cut down.

Jamie Leigh-Curtis is quite relateable and likable as Laurie Stroder. The scenes where she’s trapped in the house in the killer made my entire body clench up. The suspense and dread were so strong.

I would love to see this one again. It played on the big screen in my town last week and I am so mad I didn’t take the chance to see it that way.

25. The Howling (dir. Joe Dante, 1981)

A friend brought this one over. I’d never heard of it before. It was a fun, tense take on werewolves. The transformations are AWESOME, the kind of practical effects wizardry that makes you wonder HOW they did that without the aid of computers.

My favorite part of the movie is Karen White, the heroine played by Dee Wallace. She’s attacked by a werewolf at the beginning of the movie and spends the rest of the film dealing with the trauma as she tries to recall what happened. The film treats PTSD in a realistic manner and several scenes are disturbing. I squirmed through quite a few of them.

26. A Quiet Place (dir. John Krasinski, 2018)

I’m definitely in the minority on A Quiet Place. It is a movie I wish I liked more than I do.

While the acting was good and the production values classy, it seemed more like a parade of set-pieces than a coherent story. For me, the characters seem more like types than individuals and the emotional stakes were never as compelling as the physical threat of the aliens. I imagine this is more impactful in a theater, but a theater would only enhance the scares, not the characters or themes.

And even as far as scares go, I was never especially frightened, not because the family’s situation isn’t awful or the filmmakers aren’t clever with how they use the absence of sound, but because I wasn’t really attached to any of the characters. As I said, they never rise above being types for me and the inter-family conflict felt so underdeveloped (ex. the daughter’s belief that her father hates her, which I don’t get why she thinks that when he’s always warm and protective with her; maybe if he was portrayed as more distant or frustrated, I could buy that).

When I think of the horror movies and thrillers which truly terrified me, they have one thing in common: memorable protagonists or at least people you don’t want to see killed horribly. I like and connect with Clarisse Starling, Susy Hendrix, and Laurie Stroder, so the thought of grievous harm or death coming their way terrifies me. I feel sorry for Wendy and Danny Torrance, both victims of abuse, and don’t want to see them cut into little pieces. All these characters are distinctive personalities outside of the excellent performances used to bring them to life.

I’m not saying I hated the characters in A Quiet Place or that I was cheering for them to become alien dinner, but I was never engaged with them, maybe because the conflict within the family wasn’t interesting nor did ti really inform the conflict with the monsters the way, say, Clarisse Starling’s private demons have a connection with her desire to bring Buffalo Bill to justice in The Silence of the Lambs.

I just wasn’t satisfied. I can forgive plot-holes to a degree (and this film does have those) so long as there’s something else going for it. Outside of an interesting premise and good craftsmanship on a technical level, I didn’t find much I liked here or anything that entices me to revisit it. It’s a solid 6 or 7 out of 10 from me.

#halloween 2018 #thoughts #horror #thriller

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elizbethweir · 6 years

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if you could change ten things about the writing of the originals what would you change?

Oh man,that’s difficult. I’m actually not sure I’m good at this. Iknow lots of people think they could write the show better than the writers do and they might be right,but I’m not sure I’d be able to. (Yousee, instead of writing badly, I just don’t write at all. That helps.) I know what I like and what I don’t, but being able to spot problems is not the same as fixing them, and having better ideas. Writing well is hard. I don’t know how people do it.

Anyway, I dohave lots of vague awful ideas. I’m not sure these are THE ten things I’d change, because I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of important things. These are just 10 random things I thoughtof first.

1) I wouldn’t introduce a new villainor threat each season. I wouldn’t constantly have them run around on the vergeof death. Characters shouldn’t always be reactionary, fleeing away from onethreat or the other; they should be pro-active too. Their goals should gobeyond just surviving. It’s not always about who you’re fighting against, but also about what you arefighting for. In s1, this was kindastill the case, with Klaus and Elijah actively engaging in plans to turn NOLAinto their home again, rather than constantly being in mortal danger. In s2 thethreat of a villain worked really well, so I would’ve kept that one. But in theother seasons I would’ve put the focus on the family and the city, thedifferent factions and all the conflicts and alliances between them. I’ve saidbefore that my favourite plots are character-driven. I like internal conflictwhere there isn’t necessarily a right or wrong side. So this means getting ridof villains like The Hollow, and focusing more on the familial relationships,the alliances, the different conflicting visions for the city (which couldstill be dangerous in many ways). It should’ve been all about making NOLA thehome they would’ve gladly raised their daughter in. And if an actual villain/deaththreat does pop up, it’s probably amore effectual one because you haven’t been oversaturated.

2) Sort of related to that: I wouldn’t constantlyintroduce new secondary characters only to get rid of them again. A couple ofconsistent familiar faces among the werewolves/vampires/witches, even whenthey’re just in the background and don’t have a major role within the plot, areunderrated. It adds to the entire atmosphere and sense of reality of the show. TOreally only seems to create secondary characters so that later they can bekilled off again or something, but it’s not really that impactful if you hardlyknow the character, and it’s difficult to construct better secondaryrelationships if the characters keep getting replaced. By sticking with somesecondary characters for a longer period of time, it’s possible to give them alittle more depth and development. It makes them more interesting (secondarycharacters are often forgettable on TO, and that’s a shame). Josh is about theonly example of a familiar face. He’s stuck around. Even when he wasn’trelevant for the plot and sometimes didn’t appear in a lot of episodes, he stillserved as a reminder: there are more vampires than just Marcel. Sure, he usuallydidn’t add much to the plot, but if the politics of the factions had been abigger part of the show instead of the constant death threats (like I wastalking about in point 1), then these secondary characters would’ve automatically been more relevant. The show should’ve utilised the characters they already had, rather than inventing new ones all the time.(And again: if the plot were character-driven, the characters would automatically have had a role inside of it)

3) More flashbacks. Of the Originals,but also of NOLA, and the different factions, and the Trinity. Give us somemore historical perspective. The Originals are 1000 years old, they’ve seen andexperienced a lot in their time, so it makes sense that everything that happensto them in modern times looks similar to a certain part of their lives before;after all, history rhymes. Flashbacks of NOLA in the past also makes us betterunderstand the dynamics within the city, in line with the earlier points, andcould help to expand the mythology of the supernatural beings.

4) When Father Kieran died, I wantedCamille to take over his job as the representative of the human faction. Sheshould’ve been the bridge between the humans and the supernatural world. Tryingto make sure no humans get caught up in the mess of the supernaturals,advocating peace, balancing her obligations towards the humans with herintimacy to Klaus… it would be good. I also would’ve scrapped her turninginto a vampire and turning off her emotions etc. If she had to die, I would’vedone it in 3x10; I would’ve let her decide not to go through with thetransition. Butif I had full reign, I actually don’t think I would’ve killed her at all. Irather liked the perspective she brought to the show; she just needed betterwriting and a better purpose, and being a champion for the humans could’ve beenit.

5) I wouldn’t have put Hayley andElijah in a romantic relationship. I have a very complicated opinion about themas a ship. There are things I like about them, though those were mostly ins1-2. I liked that they were basically these polar opposites in almost everyway imaginable, who still had anunderstanding despite of that, and who became more and more similar as timewent on (mostly due to changes and developments on Hayley’s part). I might talkabout that some more later, because this is not really the place. But all ofthose things could still be part of their relationship if it was platonic and Idon’t think they have the type of chemistry to pull a romantic relationship off.They became very drawn-out in s3, and they kind of stopped making sensealtogether in s4. I think I would still have Hayley have a crush on Elijah atfirst in s1, since he was kind to her and protected her, but I would let thatfade away once she got closer to Jackson.

6) Elijah’s arc in s4 and s5. I thinkit was a good idea to have Elijah unravel in s4 just when Klaus got it moretogether, but the way in which they did it was very half-assed and the reasonfor it was not very clear. Elijah in an existential crisis because he thinksKlaus doesn’t need his help anymore is good, but that doesn’t explain whyElijah felt that way. I’ve tried to think of a reason, but so far I haven’treally come up with a satisfying one. I also would not have framed Elijah’scharacter as if he’s always been extremely violent, and this is just his realcharacter surfacing. I mean, he isviolent, but not more so than the rest, so that angle is just really odd to me.(I already wrote something about Elijah’s arc after s4 here,which I still mostly agree with – it’s kinda long though.) And the lack ofHope/Elijah scenes would only have made sense if we saw Elijah make a consciousdecision to avoid a relationship with Hope. I think maybe it would’ve been niceif it was similar to how he avoided a relationship with Marcel due to Klaus’ jealousiesand insecurities, but I’m not sure I like that yet. Idk, nothing I think of fors4 Elijah satisfies me, so I’m still unsure exactly of how I’d change it. Itdefinitely needed a lot more subtlety and a lot more screentime than it got though,that much I do know.

As for Elijah losing his memories in s5… The concept of the Red Dooris that Elijah hides things behind it that make him feel guilty, so that he canforget about them and doesn’t have to feel guilty about it. However, some of Elijah’s feelings of guilt have never been placed behind the RedDoor… like those towards Klaus. What if, instead of making Elijah forget all of hissiblings entirely, they would just have made him forget all of the things thatmake him so blindedly devoted to his brother? All of the things that madeElijah feel guilty towards Klaus, especially Mikael’s abuse, placed behind theRed Door and therefore out of Elijah’s conscious memory. I’m really curious ofwhat Klelijah’s relationship would look like then. Tbh I’m not even suremyself, but I think it would still lead to a fracture of their relationship,because Elijah now remembers a lifetime of doing everything for Klaus withoutquite remembering or understanding why he’d ever go so far for his brother. This could still lead him to decide to live his life away from Klaus, to create his own life elsewhere. Klaus would still feel abandoned. But he’d stillbe Elijah; he’d still love his family, and recognise their faces. I think it’dbe interesting without being as infuriating as the memory loss storyline was now. It’d be more subtle.

7) This is completely self-indulgent,but if I could choose without restrictions… I’d make all of the incestexplicit lmao. Same goes for their sexualities.

8) I wouldn’t have got rid of theTrinity so quickly. This is also self-indulgent, because I know it wasfrustrating that they weren’t killed off because it should’ve been so easy forthe Mikaelsons to do it, but I just liked them as characters so much, and therewas so much history and potential to explore. I’d still need a plausible reasonfor how this would work, but I haven’t figured that out yet. Ah well, details.

9) Hayley’s death. She should’ve lived.

10) More family moments. This is clichéand obvious so I put it last, but I couldn’t think of anything that I was moredesperate to have than that. Always more family moments.

#lmao i went for smaller changes at the end because my head was starting to hurt #this is why i don't write or commit to ideas i just keep secondguessing myself constantly #this was a fun question though!#let me know what you guys think - and if there are other things you would change #the originals #to thoughts #ask #mine #anon

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Best Movies Coming to Netflix in July 2021

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Movies are back. It at least feels that way when you see the numbers that films like F9 and A Quiet Place Part II are earning. But more than just the thrill of going back to theaters, July signals what is typically considered to be the height of the summer movie season. On a hot evening, there are few things better than some cold air conditioning and a colder drink of your choice while escapism plays across a screen.

That can prove just as true at home as in theaters. And as luck would have it, Netflix is pretty stuffed with new streaming content this month. Below there are space adventures, comedies, dramas, and more than a few epics worth your attention, either as a revisit or new discovery. And we’ve rounded them up for your scrolling pleasure.

Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

July 1

When the first Austin Powers opened in 1997, it was intended to be as much a crude love letter to the popular cinema of the 1960s as a modern day raunchy laugh-fest. Now with the benefit of another 20 years’ worth of hindsight, Mike Myers and Jay Roach’s spoof of Bondmania is itself an amusing time capsule of 1990s comedy tropes. There’s Myers’ cartoonishly larger-than-life characters—beginning with Powers but most dementedly perfected with Dr. Evil, the comedian’s riff on Ernst Stavro Blofeld—as well as the pair’s embrace of what they considered to be the defining trappings of the late ‘90s.

The film’s nostalgia for the ‘60s and its value as a piece of kitsch ‘90s nostalgia makes this Austin Powers (and to a lesser extent the second movie, The Spy Who Shagged Me) a fascinating relic, as well as a genuinely funny lowbrow symphony of sex gags, bathroom humor, and multiple digs at British stereotypes, including bad teeth. In other words, it’s a good time if you don’t take it too seriously. Just avoid the third one, which is also coming to Netflix.

The Karate Kid (1984)

July 1

1984’s The Karate Kid is the cultural apex of Reagan America’s obsession with martial arts movies and Rocky-style underdog stories. It offered ’80s kids the ultimate fantasy of learning martial arts to defeat local bullies and finding time to squeeze in a love subplot along the way. Granted, the Cobra Kai series has thrown a wrench into this film’s seemingly simple morality tale, but just try not to root for Daniel by the time you reach arguably the greatest montage in movie history.

There’s also something eternally comforting about watching Pat Morita beat-up ’80s thugs while validating parents everywhere by suggesting that you to can one day grow up to be a great warrior if you just sweep the floor, wax the car, and paint the fence.

Love Actually

July 1

Christmas in July? Sure, why not. This Yuletide classic likely needs no introduction. Writer-director Richard Curtis’ Love Actually is the ultimate romantic comedy, stuffing every cliché and setup from a holiday bag of tricks into one beautifully wrapped package. Perhaps its greatest strength though is it mixes in a touch of the bitter with its sweet, and doesn’t hide the thorns in its bouquet of roses. Plus, its use of “All I Want for Christmas” is still a banger nearly 20 years on.

Admittedly, we aren’t particularly inclined to watch this in July ourselves, but if you don’t mind the Christmas of it all, there are few better rom-coms in your queue at the moment.

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

July 1

This adaptation of the Arthur Golden novel of the same name was one of the highest profile literary adaptations of the early 2000s. It’s the story of a young girl sold to a geisha house in the legendary Gion district of Kyoto who then grows up to be the most famous geisha of 1930s imperial Japan… right before the war. The film (like its source material) had controversy in its day due to having a somewhat exoticized view of Japanese customs, as well as for the casting of Chinese actresses Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi in the roles of icons of Japanese culture, with Zhang playing central geisha Sayuri.

Movies

Black Widow Review: Marvel’s Most Feminine Film is a Brutal Action Movie

By Rosie Fletcher

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By David Crow

But whatever its shortcomings, Memoirs of a Geisha is still an exquisitely crafted melodrama that provides an often delicate window into one of he most graceful and misunderstood arts. The film won Oscars for its costumes, art direction, and cinematography for a reason. Plus whenever Zhang and the actually Japanese Ken Watanabe share the screen, unrequited sizzle is hot to the touch.

Mortal Kombat (1995)

July 1

Look, 1995’s Mortal Kombat isn’t a great movie in the classic sense of the word. Those looking for notable ’90s schlock might even have a better time with 1994’s Street Fighter and Raul Julia’s scene-stealing performance as General M. Bison.

Yet at a time when video game movies still struggle to capture the magic of the games themselves, Mortal Kombat stands tall as one of the few adaptations that feel like an essential companion piece. It might lack the blood and gore that helped make 1992’s Mortal Kombat arcade game a cultural touchstone, but it perfectly captures the campy, shameless joy that has defined this franchise for nearly 30 years.

Star Trek (2009)

July 1

The idea of a Star Trek movie reboot wasn’t greeted with universal enthusiasm when it was first announced but then J.J. Abrams delighted many fans by creating a Trek origin story that was both familiar and new. Chris Pine shone as the cocky Kirk, bickering with Zachary Quinto’s Vulcan Spock while trying to save the universe from a pesky Romulan (Eric Bana). This was a standalone that could be enjoyed by audiences completely ignorant of the Star Trek legacy which also achieved the feat of not annoying many long-term followers of the multiple series. It was a combination of humor, heart, action and a zingy cast that won the day – it’s still the best of the three Star Trek reboot movies to date.

Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2005)

July 1

Alongside Step Brothers, Tallageda Nights remains a a biting snapshot of the 2000s zeitgeist from writer-director Adam McKay. Eventually he would drop (most of) the crude smirks in favor of dramedies about the excesses of the Bush years via The Big Short (2013) and Dick Cheney biopic Vice (2018), however Talladega Nights remains a well-aged and damning satire of that brief time when “NASCAR Dads” were a thing, which is all the more impressive since it was filmed in the midst of such jingoistic fervor.

So enters Will Ferrell in one of his signature roles as a NASCAR driver and the quintessential ugly American who’s boastful of his ignorance and proud that his two sons are named “Walker” and “Texas Ranger.” He’d be almost irredeemable if the movie wasn’t so quotable and endearing with its sketch comedy absurdities. There’s a reason Ferrell and co-star John C. Reilly became a recurring thing after this lunacy. Plus, that ending where adherents of the homophobic humor of the mid-2000s found out the joke was on them? Still pretty satisfying.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

July 1

This is the movie that changed everything. Filmmakers had been experimenting with computer-generated visual effects for years, including director James Cameron with 1989’s The Abyss. But Cameron, as usual, upped his game with this 1991 action/sci-fi epic in which the main character — the villain — was a hybrid of live-action actor and CG visuals.

Those of us who saw T2 in the theater when it first came out can remember hearing the audience (and probably ourselves) audibly gasp as the T-1000 (an underrated and chilling Robert Patrick) slithered into his liquid metal form, creating a surreal and genuinely eerie moving target that not even Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brute strength could easily defeat. There were moments in this movie that remained seared into our brains for years as high points of what could be accomplished with CG.

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Terminator 2 at 30: How Guns N’ Roses Created the Perfect Hype

By Joseph Baxter

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Aliens and Terminator 2: How James Cameron Crafts Perfect Sequels

By Ryan Lambie

This writer prefers T2 to the original Terminator. It’s fashionable to go the other way, but the first movie, while excellent, is essentially a low-budget horror film, Schwarzenegger’s T-800 a somewhat more formidable stand-in for the usual unstoppable slasher. The characters in T2 are far more fleshed out, the action bigger and more spectacular, the stakes more grave and palpable. It was the first movie to cost more than $100 million but it felt like every penny was right there on the screen. And Cameron tied up his story ingeniously, making all the sequels and prequels, and sidequels since irrelevant and incoherent. We don’t need them; we have Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Underworld (2003)

July 1

Is Underworld a good movie? No, not really. Is it a scary movie, what with the vampires and werewolves? Not at all. Well, is it at least entertaining?! Absolutely. Never before has a B-studio actioner been so deliciously pretentious and delightful in its pomposity.

Every bit the product of early 2000s action movie clichés, right down to Kate Beckinsale’s oh-so tight leather number, Underworld excels in part because of the casting of talent like Beckinsale. A former Oxford student and star of the West End stage, she got her start in cinema by appearing in a Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare adaptation, and she brings a wholly unneeded (but welcome) conviction to this tale of vampire versus werewolves in a centuries-long feud. Shamelessly riffing on Romeo and Juliet, the film ups the British thespian pedigree with movie-stealing performances by Bill Nighy as a vampire patriarch and Michael Sheen (Beckinsale’s then-husband who she met in a production of The Seagull) as an angsty, tragic werewolf. It’s bizarre, overdone, and highly entertaining in addition to all the fang on fur action.

Snowpiercer (2013)

July 2

Before there was Parasite, there was Snowpiercer, the action-driven class parable brought to horrific and mesmerizing life by Oscar-winning Korean director Bong Joon-ho in 2013. The film is set in a future ice age in which the last of humanity survives on a train that circumnavigates a post-climate change Earth. The story follows Chris Evans‘ Curtis as he leads a revolt from the working class caboose to the upper class engine at the front of the train.

Loosely based on a French graphic novel, filmed in the Czech Republic as a Korean-Czech co-production, and featuring some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, with dialogue in both English and Korean, Snowpiercer is not only a truly international production that will keep Western audiences guessing, but it packs an ever effective social critique as we head further into an age of climate change and wealth inequality. Also, there is a scene in which Chris Evans slips on a fish.

The Beguiled (2017)

July 16

Sofia Coppola’s remake of the 1971 film of the same name (both are based on a Thomas Cullinan novel) is a somewhat slight yet undeniably intriguing addition to the filmmaker’s catalog. It’s the story of a wounded Union soldier being taken in by a Southern school for girls–stranded in the middle of the American Civil War–with salvation turning into damnation as the power dynamics between the sexes are tested. It is also an evocative piece of Southern Gothic with an ending that will stick with you. Top notch work from a cast that also includes Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell makes this a bit of an underrated gem.

The Twilight Saga

July 16

In July, not one, not two, not three, not even four, but all five of the movies adapted from Stephenie Meyer’s young adult phenomenon book series will be accessible on Netflix. Indulge in the nostalgia of Catherine Hardwicke’s faithful and comparatively intimate Twilight. Travel to Italy with a depressing Edward and Bella in New Moon. Lean into the horror absurdity of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2. Or marathon all five for maximal escapism into a world where vegetarian vampires are the boyfriend ideal, the sun is always clouded, and the truly iconic emo-pop tunes never stop.

Django Unchained (2012)

July 24

The second film Quentin Tarantino won an Oscar for, Django Unchained remains a highly potent revenge fantasy where a Black former slave (Jamie Foxx) seeks to free his wife from Mississippian bondage and ends up wiping out the entire infrastructure of a plantation in the process. Brutal, dazzlingly verbose in dialogue, and highly triggering in every meaning of the word—including quickdraw shootouts—this is a Southern-fried Spaghetti Western at its finest.

Movies

Quentin Tarantino Still Wants to Retire Since Most Directors’ Last Films Are ‘Lousy’

By David Crow

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

By David Crow

Perhaps its other great asset is a terrific cast of richly drawn characters, including Foxx as Django (the “D” is silent), Christoph Waltz as German dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Shultz, Leonardo DiCaprio as sadistic slaveowner Calvin Candie, and Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen. While Waltz won a deserved Oscar for the film (his second from a Tarantino joint), it is Jackson’s turn as a house slave who becomes by far the most dangerous and cruel of Django’s adversaries who lingers in the memory years later…

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husberttee · 7 years

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A Long Ass Guide To VAV

VAV – Very Awesome Voice

Soooo since there were some people who did like my idea of making a guide like this I thought ‘cool let’s do it!‘ I hope this can help people finde out about them and maybe motivate some of you do give them a listen and some love!

Ok so first some general facts;

They had their debut in 2015 with 6 members under AQ Entertainment, which is now A-Team Entertainment. I’d like to point out here, that this company provides ENGLISH SUBTITLES for us (!!!!) which is pretty damn awesome.The group underwent (is that a word) a couple of lineup changes which I will explain further when I come to the members individually. A Fun facts: they have a pretty big spanish following and were guests on a shit ton of youtube channels

Fanclub: Vampz (debut concept was vampires and werewolves and priests and. Yeeeh.Their debut was actually on Halloween. Supposedly there even was a whole ass webcomic but I never saw any of that, sadly.)

We’ll get to the number one most important part now

THE MEMBERS (in order of age)

1. St. Van – The Leader

Real Name: Lee Geumhyuk

91 liner

Main vocal (POWER vocal) / Leader

A father

Probably speaks better Mandarin than Jacob / lived more than 10 years in China

Loves Jacob; votes Jacob by default

tries hard and gets dragged for it by the younger members

it was revealed that he likes to watch girl group dances (he said it’s because he needs to learn them to be able to show something at fanmeetings and such. Yeah sure bro me too.)

hear someone laughing in the back? That’s him.

roommates with Baron

embarrassed. Generally.

Completely demolished ACE birthday cake with the help of ZeHan once

Likes cars

can drink a lot of water??

Has sleeve-like tattoo on his shoulder/upper arm

2. Baron

Real Name: Choi Chunghyeob

92 liner

Vocal

Fake Maknae 0.1 // he’s very cute

somewhat speaks english

Known for serenading a male fan with ‘I need a boy’

Super pretty // sweet voice // very good and underrated dancer // funny --> Real idol material right here

Apparently has ‘apple hips’ which are ‘popular’ among the members. Whatever that may mean…

Likes photography and making films

Plays games first thing in the morning

Talkative

A sunshine // scammed the company into giving him an extra allowance of 1000won in a game and spend it to buy fruit for the members

there’s a 26 second long video of him brushing his teeth on A-Teams official youtube channel (these hoes deleted it)

3. �� ACE

Real Name: Jang Wooyoung

92 liner

Vocal

A Mom // currently raising Ayno and Jacob

Probably dating Ziu atm

asks members for reactions when he does things

Practices phonation /articulation in his sleep (super noisy, even people in nearby rooms can hear him)

Talks a lot

Wears sunglasses in the pool aka. will fight you in the pool while wearing sunglasses (swag is better than actually seeing your surroundings)

‘I look thinner with my clothes on’ kinda person // he’s ripped

Really likes sport and working out

The groups elected MC

He always seems to know what he’s doing

Covered Winners ‘Fool’ and it’s amazing his vocals are super beautiful

Mullet

4. Ayno

Real Name: Noh Yoonho

96 liner

rapper

Participated in the survival show No.Mercy in which Monsta X was formed, but got eliminated in the final rounds

Joined the group as a new member early 2017

Voted to be the cutest by VAV

Fake Maknae 0.2

Part time grill master (Roasts his members)

*Looks at the camera like he is on the office*

Skilled dancer

Writes his own rap

First reaction after seeing Jacob cry was to lie himself horizontal on his lap as a form of comfort or idk that’s the kinda friend he is

in charge of meme

his ideal type is ACE, apparentely

released a mixtape

5. Jacob

Real Name: Zhang Peng

96 liner

Sub-Rapper / sub-vocal

Chinese

Quite introverted // worries his members cause they want to share his hard times but they feel like they can’t. What a family T-T

Manly manTM

Had a complete mental breakdown once with ugly sobbing and all after receiving a video letter from VAV

Voted himself visual of the group

Nickname ‘Cob’

Sassy af since he’s started to talk more

Idk but I think he’s rich he always wears expensive looking clothes

In charge of abs and keeping a straight face at all times // has super cute smile actually

‘I stream ‘Venus’ as soon as I get up in the morning’

Accidentally made out with ZeHan at pops in seoul

Got featured in the song ‘Trouble’ by former member XIAO

6. Lou

Real Name: Kim Hosung

96 liner

rapper

member since 2017

Very confident

Super deep voice

Can speak english

Not having any of anyone’s shit (pls let ur members live)

Maybe a bit mean

Pretends to be manly

Majors in acting

Finds lot of Joy in making fun of Ziu

Gets lots of affection in return that he absolutely really DOESN’T WANT

His most precious possession is the refrigerator

According to him his closest celebrity friend is James Bond

‘which place would you like to visit where you have never been?’ ‘my house’

7. Ziu

Real Name: Park Heejun

97 liner

Vocal // I love his vocals byE

joined together with Ayno and Lou in 2017

No homo? Yes homo. (no video goes by without him trying to kiss at least ONE of his members)

King of being fake touched and overreaction

Always gets exposed

Raids the dorm refrigerator at around 5/6AM

Eats while being asleep

Suffers a lot from the maknae position

Ended up being my bias somehow

Cucumber anti

a cheerful fella

_______________________________________

Former / Members on hiatus under the cut further down ~ ____________________________________

That was it so far, but...!

They also have a kind of reality show which is called What’S Up? VAV and it’s very fun so I defintely recomment watching it!! Here is a season 2 playlist

Sadly A-Team deleted / put most videos pre-Venus era on private. Their newer Malaysia Videos are really funny though!!!

______________________________________________

MVs

At first I’d like to point out that their earlier songs had quite low production and it’s noticable sometimes. People found that parts of the songs sounded ‘off’. However, they improved every comeback a lot and as they changed producers for Venus they seriously stepped up their game. They have improved SO MUCH, are still getting better and really work hard!!

Debut - Under The Moonlight

Brotherhood (this mv was so fanfiction worthy actually)

No Doubt

Recollection (the FeelsTM)

Here I Am (winter song jacob no lines still good)

Venus / Dance With Me

Flower (this one is my favourite look at that aesthetic and the song was so good wow)

Middle Of The Night / ABC (a bob)

She’s Mine (a super bob)

Spotlight & Gorgeous (two MVs but kind of a package deal cause they’re basically one comeback)

Give it to me

Senorita

So In Love

Thrilla Killa (this one? slaps.)

I’m Sorry

Give me more' (Feat. De La Ghetto & Play-N-Skillz) (I sometimes watch this ONLY for St.Vans sleeve tattoo)

POISON (MOST RECENT!!! WATCH DIS!! ITS AWESOME!!)

Thanks for making it until here and Please stan VAV

Former Members / Hiatus

I will keep these short since the post is already long AS FUCK and while these members DO appear in many of their past videos (Ateam deleted most of the videos :/), ‘advertising’ them here wouldn’t do much good since you’re not going to see them with the group from now on

Xiao

Chen Xiao

Rapper

89 liner

Went on hiatus in 2016 (it was said he has to take care of his sick father)

He once appeared in a VAV video after he left and spend a day with them; the reunion was very heart warming

he made his solo debut with

Bubblegum

and

Share Ya

his song

Trouble

feat. Jacob

ZeHan

Lee Seungmin

Vocal

94 liner

Left to pursue a career as an actor

Was my bias why must u do dis to me

GyeoUl

Jung Un

Vocal

95 liner

Left to pursue a career as producer

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vieuxnoyesrp · 7 years

Photo

Wills. You’ve popped up on our OOC dash and in our inbox on the Main a couple of times over the past few months, and we’ve always been happy to catch up with you. We were happier still to see that you wanted to rejoin the group, and missed having your bubbly presence around on a consistent basis. As such, we were excited to receive an application for you, especially for a character as wanted by us (but generally overlooked in the fandom) as Josh Rosza. You nailed his personality throughout your application, and we loved how much insight you gave into his headspace (like his tendency to self-talk). Your headcanons offered a unique twist on what we were expecting with regards to his feelings on family, and we absolutely loved the amount of vivid imagery in your sample application as well as how clearly we could hear Josh’s ‘voice’ as a character. All in all, we’re stoked to have you back in the group and Josh in the roleplay!

Wills, thank you very much for applying. As for Josh…

⚜ ~ WELCOME TO VIEUX NOYÉS!!! ~ ⚜

Wondering what to do next? Click here and let the good times roll!

⚜ Roleplayer:

⤜ Name/alias: Wills

⤜ Pronouns: He/Him

⤜ Age: 23

⤜ Timezone: BST

⤜ Activity: 5-7 Every now and then I may have bursts of activity higher than this, but as you guys know, I have two jobs and rarely get a day off. But, I never work mornings so I do stuff then as well as staying up after work :) Also, we just got a new staff member at my main job so my shifts are gonna calm down like a lot when he finishes his training at the end of next week.

⤜ Best form of contact: On the account I will make, should I be successful

⤜ Any Triggers? Nope :)

⤜ How did you find Vieux Noyés? VN is my home, that’s how

⤜ What drew you to the RP? Everything. From the incredible admins, to the amazing and well thought out plot, the brilliant players and every tiny aspect and detail.

⤜ What is one subplot/element from the Plot page that you are particularly looking forward to seeing in this roleplay? Vampires “riding high on a wave of species supremacy.” All waves break, be it softly against a sandy shore, or crashing on the rocks. Also “echoes of humans that are something more;” Gets me every time I read it. I NEED to know what this means

⚜ Desired Character: Joshua Rozsa

⤜ Why do you want this character?

I’ve always loved Josh and always fancied the idea of playing him. He’s such an underrated character and the cutest, most pure vamp ever IMO. I think the reason I haven’t applied for him before is that he is different to my go-to character type. Which is exactly what I need. I’d like to focus on the fact that even through homophobia, homelessness and death, he has managed to concentrate on what is going well for him.

⤜ What are your future plans for this character?

I’m really looking forward to developing Josh’s friendships. Yeah, he’s had a tough time in terms of his parents and y'know, dying and all. But he’s still a friendly young guy who wants to have a good time with good friends. Of course there are certain factors getting in the way of him having that good time, I’m hoping it’s not too late to play out the battle of the bosses between Klaus and Marcel. His connections are full of pot opportunities to play on and I love it. Also, not to be ship-oriented or anything, but I feel like one of Josh’s main attributes is his need for a family, for somewhere to belong and someone to belong to. So, I’d to at some point explore the possibility of relationships for Josh as a future plot. Though I stress, not ship oriented playing.

⤜ Put yourself in your character’s shoes. Give us a few lines to describe a day in the life of your character… Where do they live? Where and how do they spend their time?

Josh’s days have been turned on their head, literally. He can’t go out during the day, which does kind of bum him out, though he remains hopeful that he’ll get a daylight ring soon. IT wouldn’t be so bad if he at least had the night times to himself, that was his favorite time anyway, but of course, his nights are occupied by work.

His days aren’t so bad, most of the vampires that can tell him what to do are out, having lives or doing important vampire work, he didn’t know. So he’d spend his free time on his computer, trying to find his way into the New Orleans underground club scene, mixing sets that he’ll never play publicly, or messing with random coding. He has even found himself building an encrypted instant messaging service that he would never use. Though, spying on someone would be a lot easier if the person he was spying for wasn’t a thousand years old and could use such a system.

Around twilight would be when Marcel would usually find him, give him the ins and outs of what had happened that day and what he wanted Josh to do that night. There usually wasn’t a lot of information, he got the idea that Marcel trusted him, but everyone was always on a need to know basis. Josh apparently didn’t need to know a lot.

Luckily for Josh, his errands were never too time consuming and he was never put on duty to patrol the quarter, (Though he was more and more often finding excuses to be stationed to guard Davina) so his first few hours of darkness could be spent getting his work over with, before the labourious task of finding a way to get information to Klaus. Josh wasn’t obliged to do this every night, he didn’t get information every night anyway, but he figured the more often his puppeteer was updated, the less he’d start jerking on the strings.

⤜ Give us three headcanons regarding your character of choice.

Something I mentioned in the previous section, I think Josh would have fairly large amount of the storage space on his laptop occupied by DJ sets that he has mixed himself but doubts he will ever get to pay. As well as accompanying light shows that he doesn’t have the equipment to play.

He sometimes thinks he is a bad person for not really missing his parents very much at all. He likes to focus on the fact that biological bonds aren’t everything they’re cracked up to be and that his parents abandoned him, not the other way around. He has accepted what happened, he knew that it would happen and was able to come to terms with it before it even did, so he doesn’t regret it. Just sometimes feels bad about not regretting it. Though, he is optimistic that he will find a family of his own. He has eternity to do so now.

Since he learned about the supernatural community, the idea of sex with a werewolf has been on his mind a lot. He has always liked rugged guys and though he didn’t want to generalize werewolves, most of them seemed to fit that stereotype. Josh knows he is supposed to hate them, but he can’t help thinking about how hot it would be.

⤜ What are some plots you’d like to explore with your characater?

One that’s a little bit unrelated to any of the current plots going on, but I really like the idea of: Josh finding what could possily be a secret comminity of supernatural techies on a forum in a deep corner of the dark web. He can’t be sure, because they’re all speaking in code, but he thinks he has cracked it. I mean, maybe that could tie in woth the hunters guild or the Arcane Society, who knows?

As stated previously, his connections are a world of opportunity, his reationship with davina and the play off between Marcel and Klaus are already gateways to somepretty big plots that can go on for a while. His suspicion of the eerie Sabine could lead to some sort of involvement or trouble with the Witches beyond his connection to Davina. I think Jeremy is an interesting and although at first unexpected connection, it makes complete sense considering what they’re both into, a great opportunity for some fun threads.

⤜ Para sample: (Retained for privacy).

⤜ Would you like to be considered for another character if not accepted as your primary choice? The Mikaelson brothers and Isaac are my other babies

⤜ Have you read the rules?: Damn Skippy I have

⤜ Anything else? (Retained for privacy).

#to rpg #Joshua Rozsa #Joshua Rozsa RP #Steven Krueger #Steven Krueger FC #Accepted

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aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

A24 Horror Movies Ranked From Worst to Best

https://ift.tt/3dkDWeU

It is arguable that no studio, distributor, or production company has had a greater impact on the horror genre in the last decade than A24. While Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions might also lay claim to that legacy, the remarkable thing about A24 is the company lacks a particular house style or formula for its filmmaker-driven indie releases. And yet the words “A24 horror movie” call to mind words like weird, offbeat, and unsettling. They’re frequently slow-boiling, and almost always greeted with reviews celebrating high-quality.

Every A24 horror movie is distinct, but they nevertheless claim a mystique which in less than 10 years has helped some critics make the dubious claim that the 2010s were “the decade of elevated horror.” We personally don’t subscribe to the theory that horror is a caste system of “elevated” vintages vs. cheaper swill. However, we are ecstatic A24 and other companies have provided unique voices the ability to reveal profoundly artful interpretations of cinematic dread. For that reason, we’re celebrating the indie tastemakers by ranking their very best (and sometimes not-so-great) thrillers and chillers.

So sit back and join us for a list voted on by our critics and horror aficionados.

18. Tusk (2014)

We begin our countdown with the rare A24 horror movie that comes not from a new perspective, but an old, one-time favorite. A defining voice in comedy and indie filmmaking during the ‘90s, Kevin Smith drifted away from studios by the beginning of the 2010s in favor of trying his hand at horror. I wish I could say the results were better than Tusk, yet this dispiriting attempt at body horror might be the high-point of his latter day monster movies.

Movies

Why Kevin Smith’s Superman Lives Was Ahead of Its Time

By Mike Cecchini

Originally constructed as a joke on Smith’s Smodcast podcast, the finished film is every bit as listless and rambling as a weed-fueled diatribe. Not that the movie is lacking in talent. Justin Long makes an appropriately smarmy podcaster named Wallace Bryton who’s travelled to Canada to find oddballs to interview and mock, but gets more than he bargained for when he winds up in the home of Howard Howe (Michael Parks). Ever the scenery-chewer, Parks gives more gravitas to the material than it deserves as a shut-in obsessed with recreating from a human subject the walrus which saved his life one snowy night following a shipwreck. The subsequent makeup effects are grotesque, but the movie stumbles over their reveals like a standup comedian who’s forgotten the punchlines.

It’s a bizarre and repellent narrative, and can’t even be saved by Johnny Depp’s admittedly amusing French-Canadian accent and Peter Sellers-eque transformation as a late arriving police detective. – David Crow

17. Slice (2018)

Austin Vesely’s Slice plays like the pilot of a potential television series. This isn’t because when it’s over you wish there was more, but that the film is so muddled in its narrative threads that you’re sure it was cancelled before more talent could be wasted. It’s a shame because conceptually there is a lot of appeal in Slice’s setup. As a horror-comedy about a small town where ghosts walk among the living as second class citizens, witches are pushy real estate developers, and the local werewolf is a misjudged Chinese food-delivering vegan played by Chance the Rapper, on paper this reads as hilarious.

Movies

Best Horror Movies to Watch on Shudder Right Now

By Rosie Fletcher and 1 other

Buffy: The Animated Series – The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Spin-Off That Never Was

By Caroline Preece

Unfortunately, the actual film is paper thin. Loosely following a series of murders inflicted on a crappy pizza joint’s deliverymen, the film never unties its tangled and knotted threads about ghosts and humans living side by side, or witches manipulating local city politics in a bid for demonic gentrification. And more damning than its Gateway to Hell is that none of this is very funny. At only 83 minutes, Slice feels like an eternity of waiting for a pizza that never arrives. – DC

16. In Fabric (2018)

When it comes to horror movies, A24 has certainly done its best to (mostly) steer away from the traditional tropes of vampires, zombies, werewolves, and masked killers. As a result, the company has attracted talent like British filmmaker Peter Strickland, who followed up the atmospheric Berberian Sound Studio (2012) and the erotic The Duke of Burgundy (2014) with this bizarre tale of a haunted dress.

The clothing item in question is a red number that passes from one owner to another, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. Fortunately, Strickland plays a lot of this for laughs, smartly realizing that a sentient dress might test the patience of even the most diehard horror fan. The film is a slow burn, but Strickland finds just the right balance of weird humor and surreal horror to wring both laughs and genuinely eerie moments out of his odd premise. – Don Kaye

15. The Monster (2016)

Bryan Bertino’s The Monster is a strange one to include on this list, if only because at its heart this is an archetypal creature feature with little more to say than “boo.” Compared to other horror movies released by A24 this can seem slight, but when The Monster works, its boo is occasionally bloodcurdling.

Movies

Katharine Isabelle on How Ginger Snaps Explored the Horror of Womanhood

By Rosie Fletcher

BBC/Netflix Dracula’s Behind-the-Scenes Set Secrets

By Louisa Mellor

Centered on a mother and daughter trapped at night on a country road with an obscured beastie in the woods trying to get into their broken down car, The Monster could’ve been produced as B-schlock in the ‘80s. Why it’s better is twofold: First the film leans into its atmospheric use of shadows and silhouettes by cinematographer Julie Kirkwood—who takes Steven Spielberg’s “less is more” approach in framing the monster—and second, there is the headlong dive into the unpleasant by Zoe Kazan. Playing a young mother who has little interest in her daughter or her well-being, Kazan’s Cathy reveals in one flashback at a time a cruel apathy far more beleaguering than the attacks of the titular monster in the present.

Alas the third act turns into pure pulp when the creature comes out of the shadows, and the cast and body count are needlessly increased. Still, the effect of some of the attack scenes, and Kazan’s nuanced exploration of a mother who fails to impress even herself, makes The Monster worthwhile. – DC

14. The Hole in the Ground (2019)

Being a single parent is hard. Being a single parent is harder when your child suddenly turns into a monster and you have to deal with the consequences. Such is the plot of The Hole in the Ground, A24’s solid but vaguely underwhelming chiller.

Lee Cronin’s debut may hit all the right parental panic beats, summon up a couple of worthy performances, and stick the mysterious, open-ended landing, but it still suffers compared to other A24 efforts because genre fans have seen it all before. As the film slaps a slick coat of paint over its influences, from Don’t Look Now to The Babadook and beyond, it elevates its fairly standard ‘changeling child’ theme, but in doing so it also gives us way too much room to breathe when we should be suffocating under the weight of tension between Seána Kerslake’s spiralling mother and her demonic son.

The result? A middling horror that you’re more likely to describe as “quite good” rather than “great.” – Kirsten Howard

13. Life After Beth (2014)

When a relationship is over, it’s over and it’s never the same if you go back: This is the central theme of Life After Beth, a zombie comedy about moving on. Dane DeHaan stars as Zach, a boy devastated after the death of his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza). But when she unexpectedly returns from the dead things just don’t quite click. Is it because the relationship has run its course? Or is it that she’s gradually turning into a flesh hungry undead monster? Either way things can’t carry on…

Movies

Zombie Comedies Ranked

By David Crow

The Walking Dead vs. Real-Life Survivalists: How to Prep for The Zombie Apocalypse

By Ron Hogan

A light comedy with a strong supporting cast (Molly Shannon, John C Reilly, Anna Kendrick, Paul Reiser) Life After Beth made its debut at Sundance in 2014. Though zombie rom-coms are somewhat a dime a dozen these days, this one stands out for its performances and certain set pieces like zombie Beth hiking with an oven strapped to her back. – Rosie Fletcher

12. The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

As what I would argue is the most underrated horror gem in A24’s catalog, The Blackcoat’s Daughter is a wicked subversion of horror tropes that benefits from the less you know about its story. Suffice to say the film is a slow-burning march toward perdition told in triptych. With three protagonists, first-time writer-director Oz Perkins seamlessly drifts between the perspectives of Kat (Kiernan Shipka), Rose (Lucy Boynton), and Joan (Emma Roberts).

Movies

Gretel & Hansel and Returning to Dark Fairy Tale Roots

By Don Kaye

Movies

Best Modern Horror Movies

By Don Kaye

It is easy to see how the first two intersect, with Kat and Rose being the only two girls at their Catholic boarding school whose parents haven’t come to pick them up for winter break. How their long weekend connects with Joan’s separate hitchhiking through a snowy stretch of America is not immediately clear, but the bubbling sense of despair in all three narratives is omnipresent, even before Rose gives it shape by mentioning the urban legend of nuns worshiping the Dark One in the boiler room below.

The Blackcoat’s Daughter trades in horror archetypes, but then digs deeper by revealing untapped, feminine complexities to previously well-worn narratives where young women are merely vessels or victims. Unspooling like a waking nightmare, Perkins’ dreamlike atmosphere is only for the patient, but the climax is so shocking and brazenly subversive that it demands to be reexamined as the full extent of its desolation becomes clear. – DC

11. Climax (2018)

One could argue that every one of the five feature films directed by Argentine filmmaker Gaspar Noe, including such controversy-courting titles as I Stand Alone, Irreversible, and Enter the Void, has been a horror film in some way. Noe’s movies are often filled with nihilism, despair, and existential dread, with even the act of sex portrayed as an often violent invasion instead of an expression of love.

Having said that, Climax is clearly Noe’s most formal attempt at the genre yet, as a troupe of dancers isolated at an abandoned school begin to suffer from the effects of punch spiked with LSD during an after-rehearsal party. Predictably, the wheels quickly come off as the assembled dancers rape, beat, torture, and kill each other throughout the horrifying, increasingly frenzied night. – DK

10. Saint Maud (2020)

The directorial debut of Rose Glass sees a pious young nurse (Morfydd Clarke) who believes God talks to her directly, on a mission to save the soul of her dying patient (Jennifer Elhe). Saint Maud is a mix of psychological, religious, and body horror against the setting of a run down seaside town which plays like hallucinogenic social realism.

Clarke as Maud is terrific–slight of frame with a troubled mind, she is still a fierce warrior doing what she believes is God’s work from the humble hovel of her home. While Maud punishes her body in service of her spirit, her patient, Amanda, celebrates hers while it lets her down. As a former dancer, she will drink, smoke, and love in her final days.

Movies

The Scariest Films Ever Made and How They Frighten Us

By Matt Glasby

Movies

Saint Maud Review: Elevated Horror That’s a Revelation

By Rosie Fletcher

Glass’ debut is beautiful and powerful with a score, visuals, and setting that all contribute to a sense of disquiet that grows to a euphoric/horrific conclusion. An unforgettable film that singles Glass out as absolutely one to watch. – RF

9. It Comes at Night (2017)

The exact nature, origin, and spread of the grisly infectious disease that shreds society to pieces in It Comes at Night is never deeply examined; the movie is not interested in exploring the end of the world on some epic scale. Instead the effect it has is on a very small, very frightened group of people–two families that include Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Riley Keough, and Carmen Ejogo among their dwindling ranks–who are trying their best to stay alive and sane.

In that sense, the title of the movie (and, to a degree, the way it was marketed) is somewhat misleading. What comes at night is not some rampaging horde of flesh-eating walking corpses but rather the cold, insidious effect of fear, grief, and distrust. These two invisible threats eat away at what’s left of our civilized selves.

Director Trey Edward Shults (Waves) spares nothing and no one in this grim fable; by the time it reaches its inconsolably bleak conclusion, the cumulative effect of this quiet, bare bones film is devastating. – DK

8. Enemy (2013)

Before he tackled science fiction epics like Blade Runner 2049 and the upcoming Dune, French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve made smaller, independent dramas and psychological thrillers. One of those was Enemy, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal in a double role as two men who are exactly the same physically but quite different in temperament and personality.

Based loosely on the novel The Double by Jose Saramago (who wrote the horrifying novel Blindness), Enemy is less a horror film and more an exercise in neo-noirish surrealism. It’s anchored by Villeneuve’s chilly direction and two excellent performances from Gyllenhaal, who deftly explores the definition of manhood, the male-female dynamic (as he navigates the wife of one man and the girlfriend of the other), and the nature of identity.

Enemy doesn’t offer easy answers and its shocking ending is very much open to wide interpretation. It’s a challenging early work from a director who’s now moved on to become one of cinema’s most ambitious science fiction auteurs. – DK

7. Under the Skin (2013)

Jonathan Glazer’s loose adaptation of Michel Faber’s novel is a strange beast to be sure. Developed over more than a decade, using several first time performers with scenes shot with hidden cameras, it stars Scarlett Johansson as a predatory alien scouring the Scottish countryside, picking up men that she then lures into a strange black liquid which consumes them.

It’s a convincing look at humanity through the eyes of an extraterrestrial, in all its oddness–from the kindness of girls in nightclubs, the utterly futile act of a man trying to save his drowning wife, and in doing so ending both their lives, to the idiosyncrasies of beans on toast and Tommy Cooper. Johansson is a revelation, going unrecognized in her interactions with real people, bringing an authenticity and later an aching sympathy to her performance.

If the ending is bleak, and there are moments of true horror, there’s levity here too, as well as something quite profound to be said about human nature. – RF

6. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos–already a purveyor of the weird, surreal and darkly satiric before this or The Favourite, as seen with 2016’s The Lobster–went into full horror mode for this relentlessly unsettling tale of supernatural revenge in which a surgeon (Colin Farrell), his wife (Nicole Kidman), and their kids are made to pay for the death of a man who Farrell lost during surgery.

The impetus of all this is the man’s son, Martin, played by Barry Keoghan in one of the most disturbing performances of recent years. Farrell and Kidman are equally unnerving as their purposely stilted work in the early part of the film gives way to show the cracks in their seemingly perfect family façade.

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The Killing of a Sacred Deer is horror at its purest: an unexplainable examination of what happens when the irrational intrudes on the rational. It leaves you rattled without a single jump scare or visual effect. – DK

5. Green Room (2015)

Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier followed up his excellent breakout feature, 2013’s Blue Ruin, with this taut, suspenseful and dread-inducing thriller set in the grimy, sweaty environs of an out-of-the-way punk rock club. There, a hardcore group on a micro-budget tour of the Pacific Northwest manage to grab a make-up gig after their original show is canceled, but find to their horror that the bar is a white supremacist hangout… and they’ve just witnessed a murder to boot.

It’s not surprising that Saulnier rings maximum tension out of the situation since Blue Ruin was such an accomplished piece of work. What is surprising is seeing Captain Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, playing the local neo-Nazi leader with such believable, low-key malevolence. The rest of the cast, including the sadly missed Anton Yelchin and the always reliable Imogen Poots, is equally effective in making this an exceptionally smart, intense roller coaster ride. – DK

4. Midsommar (2019)

Emerging director Ari Aster made two very different horror movies for A24 virtually back-to-back with Hereditary and Midsommar, and was vocal about the mental and emotional breakdown that ensued thanks to this near-impossible endeavor. Accordingly, Midsommar evolved into what could be considered a “difficult second album,” one which managed to exorcise some of his personal demons for both the entertainment and discomfort of an intrigued audience.

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This ambitious, unsettling masterpiece about one young woman’s struggle to process trauma while she is simultaneously expected to perform the emotional labor of holding together a substandard relationship became a visual flipside to Hereditary’s darkness, creating a bright, horrifying world full of flowers, lush green pastures, and organic pagan rituals that all combine delicately to present us with a piping hot mug of “good for her” energy.

Though the argument over whether Hereditary or Midsommar is the superior film will probably never end, this often-hallucinogenic folk tale isn’t just one of A24’s best horror projects, but one of the greatest horror movies of all time, period. – KH

3. The Lighthouse (2019)

“How long have we been on this rock?” It’s a simple question posed by one lighthouse keeper (or “wicke”) to another in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse. But as anyone who’s viewed the movie can attest, its answer is nigh unknowable. Eggers’ follow-up to The Witch is as phallic as that first movie was feminine, as evidenced by the titular structure that old seaman Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) constantly demands his new second Ephraim (Robert Pattinson) keep scrubbed clean.

Filmed in black and white, and in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio—similar to what Fritz Lang used to shoot Expressionist serial killer movie M (1931)—The Lighthouse is steeped in the old ways of doing things, both as a piece of cinema and as a sea shanty of a tale. As writers, Robert and his brother Max Eggers revel in the nautical jargon of their characters, particularly Dafoe’s Wake, who is like a corncob pipe given legs. Yet Dafoe and Pattinson never descend into caricature; they instead feast on their Sisyphean characters.

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More esoteric and ambiguous than The Witch, some might defy categorizing The Lighthouse as a full-throated horror. But the picture’s haunting ghost story setup and heightened use of both claustrophobic interiors and barren exteriors beg to differ, as do the film’s final Lovecraftian overtures toward madness. A masterful exercise in the macabre and hellish, The Lighthouse confirms Eggers as one of the most interesting voices to emerge from his generation. – DC

2. The Witch (2015)

To fully appreciate The Witch, it must be made clear that there’s a literal witch in the woods. Writer-director Robert Eggers emphasizes this early on, allowing the audience to glimpse her scraggly and unholy shape as the crone sacrifices a newborn to Satan. This not only signals the movie is playing for keeps, it also removes any sort of psychological ambiguity about what’s going on.

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Intensely committed to immersing audiences in the daily lives and nocturnal dreads of 17th century Puritans, The Witch is steeped in a deep-seated anxiety for supernatural entities that could poison your crops, or live in every bump heard in the black of night. With a meticulous eye for historical detail, Eggers creates the best cinematic approximation of Calvinists ever put to screen, and in so doing, allows viewers to both live with superstitions of the Dark One taking the shape of animals, and to judge those obsessed with him.

For The Witch is also an unnerving character study about a family disintegrating before our eyes, and allowing their biases and patriarchal repressions to lead them toward the damnation. With a captivating ensemble of actors, including a star-making turn by Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, the Puritan who is desperate to remain pure, the film basks in its dexterity with early modern English. All of which heightens the tension until a transcendent third act, which can rightly be read as an embrace of despair or liberated ecstasy, depending on who you ask. More than just a great horror movie, The Witch is flatly one of the best American movies produced in this century. – DC

1. Hereditary (2018)

Ari Aster’s directorial debut has become something of a benchmark for horror of a particular kind, whether you want to label it “elevated,” “artsy,” or anything else. Whatever you want to call it, Hereditary is an exceptional debut and a crushingly oppressive work about a cursed family laden with grief.

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A shock scare about 20 minutes in will leave you reeling and everything just gets worse from there, leading to a finale that is so insane and horrific that it almost comes as a relief after the excruciating misery and unease of the rest of the movie.

Toni Collette won multiple awards (though notably she wasn’t Oscar nominated) for her extraordinary performance as Annie, the doomed daughter of the dead matriach whose demise sets in a motion a series of events that are disastrous for her disaffected son (Alex Wolff), stoic husband (Gabriel Byrne), and strange daughter (Milly Shapiro). A story about family, tragedy, and inexorable catastrophe Hereditary is one of the best horror movies of the century so far. – RF

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