Ad Astra is a daring bit of storytelling subterfuge that will only grow in resonance as time goes by, the final pieces of its complicated puzzle an emotional moonshot of catharsis and fury unlike anything I could have imagined trying to fit together beforehand.

While Downton Abbey will undoubtedly please fans of the series more than it will newcomers to the material, this movie is nevertheless a great deal of breezy fun.

“I want to please people, sure, but I also what to say to them, wake up! Look under the surface. Look how aggressive and violent our society is. It’s just so anti-life, it lacks tenderness and nuance. We literally have to talk about things like this with monster stories because it’s too delicate a topic.”
– Larry Fessenden

Fessenden has composed a mesmerizing little riff on the Frankenstein myth, and over 200 years after its first publication Depraved makes it clear there’s still plenty of electrifying life in Shelley’s classic tale, life audiences will likely keep thrilling to for untold generations to come.

Hustlers is a movie that goes for broke right from the jump, it’s feminine gaze directed oftentimes within as it celebrates these friendships, cherishing the familial bonds the women end up creating even as society turns a blind eye towards their collective travails.

There’s a lot to unpack in regards to The Goldfinch, some of it good, some of it bad and most of it residing in a nebulous sea of grey I found fascinating and which others will undoubtedly deem as nothing less than a melodramatic slog impossible to comfortably tolerate.

“One of the things that attracted me about the script was that women just run the world in this movie. That all the men kind of take a backseat and it’s this awesome female-run coven/cult which I just felt like I hadn’t really seen before.”
– Chelsea Stardust

One of the best horror-comedies of the year, it’s likely most have sadly not heard of director Chelsea Stardust’s Satanic Panic, a gorily flighty hoot that tickled my funny bone and sent shivers buzzing up and down my spine with fiercely demonic enthusiasm.

“There’s a moment in this world where you have to sort of say that you understand what role you’re expected to play and shout out lout that you’re not going to be doing that anymore. Things are going change, and that includes that sad truth that some people are going to have to fall off your radar and some new people are going come on it.”
– Paul Downs Colaizzo