While I don’t think the film completely succeeds in explaining all the story elements from Stephen King’s novel, Stanley Kubrick‘s version of The Shining is something to behold. A master visual storyteller, Kubrick brings the empty hotel to life in vivid hues as Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the caretaker for the Overlook Hotel during the winter months along with his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd).
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After a flashback introducing and explaining the backstory of Alex (Francesca Noel), who is shown in multiple cameos in the two-part season premiere without explanation, and confirming that her mother (Ana Ortiz) is a piece of shit (and, from what we see in the present, not a very observant parent or cop), “The Haunted Car” picks up with her current situation while also dealing with the fallout of “Stay Out of the Basement” with everyone looking for the missing Trey (Stony Blyden). The two threads converge with Alex and Cece (Jayden Bartels) “borrow” Trey’s now haunted car searching for the person (Ethan Viera) who actually committed the crime she went to juvie for. However, things get bizarre when the car shows a mind of its own.
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Nearly four months after the release of Nights #11, the end of the opening arc finally hits stores with an extra-sized issue with big revelations and changes for multiple characters. The first-half of the issue focuses primarily on how well everything is finally going for our main characters as each has managed to grab and hold onto a little happiness as life begins to move on, happily for once. However, life is about to get a lot more serious with a trip to the local generic, if recognizable, theme park.
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Part body horror and part treatise on societal pressures of women over the age of 40, The Substance stars Demi Moore as a fading Hollywood celebrity now host of a morning exercise hour about to be replaced by the lecherous producer (Dennis Quaid). Learning of an experimental procedure where she might recapture her youth, Elisabeth (Moore) takes “the Substance” and emerges from the husk of her body as the distinctly different Sue (Margaret Qualley) whose beauty quickly reopens all the doors closed to her older self. However, in order for this miracle to work, Sue and Elisabeth share consciousness, each a week at a time when the other is unconscious with any negative or selfish action by one potentially hurting the other.
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Going back to basics, 2023’s Godzilla Minus One returns the story of Godzilla to post World War II Japan with themes of post-war trauma, regret, and anti-war and anti- nuclear messages so prevalent in the original film. Our protagonist is Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) who encounters Godzilla at the end of WWII while flying as a kamikaze pilot who refused to crash his plane. Two years later, after cobbling together a family of other survivors, and working to remove leftover naval mines, Shikishima encounters Godzilla again. Centered around Shikishima’s guilt and cowardice, the return of Godzilla allows for a chance at redemption by becoming the suicide bomber he failed to be during the war.
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