3 Best Movies To Watch After Alice Darling (2022)

Jem Starling’s (Eliza Scanlen) wardrobe is too much for the Kentucky heat. Yet others say her bra is still too visible. She tries to praise the Lord through dance with attempts progressive yet accessible to her church. Still, her peers claim the music she picks is too aggressive. Her instructor, Misty (Jessamine Burgum), gently scolds her individuality in class. Meanwhile, at home, her family warns against not just sex but intimacy of any sort. Such is standard for a 17-year-old girl growing up a fundamentalist Christian. Body and soul are omnipresent in The Starling Girl, as much as they are mutually exclusive.  Continue Reading →

The Inspection, the narrative feature debut of writer-director Elegance Bratton, aims to be a fictionalized treatment of Bratton’s own real-life experiences as a young gay Black man attempting to turn his life around by, of all things, joining the Marines. As dramatic hooks go, that’s a compelling one, but the finished film seems strangely unwilling to grapple with it in any meaningful way. Instead, what could have been a unique, deeply personal narrative is eventually reduced to a well-meaning but largely undistinguished military melodrama that is ultimately too familiar for its own good.  Continue Reading →

Though it resulted in some of the finest genre films of the 21st century, including The Babadook, Hereditary and Midsommar, it wouldn’t be all that bad if we got a break from horror movies that are about grief for a little while. Real life is about as bleak as it’s ever been, and while horror has always in some way reflected current events, maybe we can take a breather and return to a brief, glorious run of masked killers or radioactive giant rats. If not for that, then because it’s a genre that’s no longer bringing much to the table except more suffering and anguish. Taneli Mustonen’s The Twin, while well-acted and capably directed, seems almost committed to trying nothing new with the genre. Even a third act twist that essentially negates everything that happens up to that point is derivative in its own separate way. Continue Reading →