Marriage Story
Director: Noah Baumbach
Writer: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, Azhy Robertson, Julie Hagerty, Merritt Wever
Distributor: Netflix
Rated R| Minutes: 136
Release Date: November 8, 2019 (Limited Theaters)| December 6, 2019 (Netflix)

Writer and director Noah Baumbach‘s Marriage Story is an emotionally crushing, yet very compassionate depiction of a collapsing marriage between two people and the irony of the realization that they must come together in order for them to go their separate ways. It also may be one of Baumbach’s greatest pieces of work.

Films about divorce rarely explore the heartbreak of two people who could not make it work with such honesty. But with Marriage Story, it feels raw and unnerving. The film moves like a stage play with its characters (played brilliantly by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) pouring out their souls for all of us to see as they go through one of the most difficult points in their lives.

Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil
Director: Joachim Rønning
Writer: Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster, Micah Fitzerman-Blue
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, Michelle Pfeiffer
Distributor: Walt Disney Studios
Rated PG | Minutes: 118
Release Date: October 18, 2019

You never know what to expect from Disney’s live-action adaptations of their animated classics. At times, they can be just as wonderful as their animated counterparts. Other times, they are just hollow, lacking any sort of distinguishing features. But for Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil, starring Angelina Jolie, it is the first sequel of its kind for the studio. This means, there are new stories to see and hear, new worlds to explore, new characters to meet, and more reasons to love the antihero fairy whose cold heart was warmed by Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning).

Sure, the first film was merely a CGI-saturated feature that could not match Jolie’s performance, but with the sequel has a much better cast, a fantastic story, and more epic action sequences. Check out the full review below.

In Search of Darkness: A Journey Into Iconic ’80s Horror
Written and Directed by David Weiner
Featuring Cassandra Peterson, John Carpenter, Heather Langenkamp, Keith David, Alex Winter, Tom Holland, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Don Mancini, Larry Cohen
Documentary
Runtime: 4 hours, 20 minutes
Release date: October 6, 2019 (Beyond Fest)

The ’70s were a time of shocking and visceral thrills for horror audiences, giving us era-defining classics like The Exorcist, Jaws, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Alien. The 1980s, however, was a decade of excess and that went for horror films as well. The normal expression is “less is more,” but in ’80s horror MORE was more. More blood, more nudity, more controversy, more slasher icons, more films to choose from, and more sequels. David Weiner‘s phenomenal new documentary, In Search of Darkness: A Journey Into Iconic ’80s Horror, gives the decade a comprehensive overview. As someone who grew up in the late 1980s and was eased into the genre by my love of the video store horror aisles and Freddy Krueger in 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 3: Dream Warriors, this documentary hit me in all the feels. It works both as a passionate nostalgia project and a genuine look at film history.

The Furies
Written & Directed by Troy D’Aquino
Cast: Airlie Dodds, Linda Ngo, Taylor Ferguson, Ebony Vagulans, Danielle Horvat, Tom
O’Sullivan
Odin’s Eye Entertainment
82 minutes | Shudder Exclusive
Release date: October 3, 2019 (U.S. & Canada)

Happy October, everyone! For me it’s just another month on the Horror 365 calendar, but for many, this is the month to binge all things horror, and where better to look than Shudder, AMC’s horror streaming service. Out today on the service is The Furies, an Australian slasher from writer/director Troy D’Aquino. On a tiny budget, D’Aquino packs in some truly gnarly gore effects, some kick ass horror ladies, and a unique twist to set it aside from others in the genre. And this is all packed into 82 adrenaline-pumping minutes.

Joker
Director: Todd Phillips
Writer: Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, Frances Conroy
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Rated R | Minutes: 122
Release Date: October 4, 2019

One of the worse things that a writer and director can do in a comic book film adaptation is misinterpret the source material. It is one thing to re-envision it in order to suit a vision of the story that you want to tell, but it is something else when you go far off the edge just to prove you can be the bleakest of the lot. That is what Todd Phillip‘s Joker does. Using Gotham City as a canvas, the film is painted with the colors of Martin Scorsese inspiration and the complexities of heavy themes of mental illness and social inequality, with a slight touch of DC, all of which makes Joker a dark, depressing, and gritty hardboiled crime drama that also happens to be the origins story for the clown prince of crime. The story delves into the mind of the lonely title character, played brilliantly by Joaquin Phoenix, who has been dumped on by society. But as fascinating as the lead performance is, everything else about it lacks complexities and nuance, and only further stigmatizes those who do suffer from mental illness.

My full review here below.