Servant
Haunted house stories have always been my favorite. There's something so thrilling and unsettling about a place that feels and reacts to the people that occupy it. As I got older, I learned that haunting could mean many things. It could mean memory. It could mean joy, despair, humor, or fear soaking into the brick and mortar or reflecting our experiences back at us. If you look at it that way, isn't every house haunted? Continue Reading →
Dr. Death
NetworkPeacock,
SimilarAre You Afraid of the Dark?, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Dr. Death borrows its tantalizing title from the Wondery podcast, which similarly breaks down a harrowing true story about a neurosurgeon who — for whatever reason — keeps killing or permanently harming his patients on the operating table. Continue Reading →
Pig
Similar28 Weeks Later (2007), I Stand Alone (1998),
StudioEndeavor Content,
The sense of rot in Pig is almost constant. There’s progression but no real growth for much of its short runtime, no feeling of true human connection through its first half. For a while, its empathy only comes from within. It comes within its hero; its intimacy only blossoms when there’s no one else to dry it from the roots up. The man in question is Robin (Nicolas Cage). He was a well-known chef but has since jumped ship, living in a shack in the Oregon wilderness and hunting truffles with his foraging pig. His only consistent human interaction is with a yuppie-type named Amir (Alex Wolff), but that’s strictly transactional. Continue Reading →
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Awards season is upon us, which means all the studios and streaming services are breaking out their big guns. Luckily, one of the best films of the year comes to Netflix this weekend. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, based on the play by August Wilson and starring Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in his final role. A fictionalized snapshot in the life of the Mother of the Blues, Ma Rainey, George C. Wolfe's film imagines her in a sweaty, muggy Chicago recording studio in the 1920s, trying to record her most popular singles for white Northern audiences, far from her comfortable Black Southern crowds. Of course, tensions rise over everything from artistic freedom, racial animus, and Coca-Cola. Continue Reading →