It’s time to look back before we scream forward! Join Andrea and Alex for horror and non-horror faves and a game that will decide their fate for 2024.
Alex’s Horror/Horror Adjacent Faves
1. Red Rooms (dir. Pascal Plante)
2. Godzilla Minus One (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
3. Talk to Me (dir. Danny and Michael Phillippou)
4. The Curse (TV, created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie)
5. Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
6. Fall of the House of Usher (TV, created by Mike Flanagan)
7. Beau is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster)
Andrea’s Horror/Horror Adjacent Faves
1. Talk to Me (dir. Danny and Michael Phillippou)
2. Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
3. Huesera: The Bone Woman (dir. Michelle Garza Cervera)
4. Godzilla Minus One (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
5. The Blackening (dir. Tim Story)
6. The Last of Us (TV, created by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin)
7. Red Rooms (dir. Pascal Plante)
8. Fall of the House of Usher (TV, created by Mike Flanagan)
2. Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
3. Huesera: The Bone Woman (dir. Michelle Garza Cervera)
4. Godzilla Minus One (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
5. The Blackening (dir. Tim Story)
6. The Last of Us (TV, created by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin)
7. Red Rooms (dir. Pascal Plante)
8. Fall of the House of Usher (TV, created by Mike Flanagan)
Alex’s Non-Horror Faves
Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright
Monster: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
The Cure live in June
May/December (dir. Todd Haynes)
Past Lives (dir. Celine Song)
Andrea’s Non-Horror Faves
Inscryption (PC)
Slay the Spire (PC)
Vanderpump Rules (TV)
Tetris (dir. Jon S. Baird)
If Books Could Kill podcast
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Loads of fun and good recommendations as usual! Thank you!
FYI – check out the Andrea and Tatiana Schmaylyuk’s pics – they could have been separated at birth. Schmaylyuk is the vocalist for the nu metal band Jinjer 🙂
I like Mike Flanagan’s films (including “Hush”, where Kate Siegel is the actual lead and has the film focused on her), but not his miniseries. Haunting of Hill House was one of his less objectionable ones, but it was a fundamentally bad idea to adapt that novel (which worked great as a feature film in “The Innocents”) as a 8+ episode family drama, which forced an ending entirely at odds with what preceded it. For Poe, we’ve also seen the ideal way to adapt multiple short stories from him: as segments within an anthology. They aren’t supposed to form a “universe”. I think Flanagan’s sensibility is at odds with Poe’s. Montressor never receives any comeuppance for entombing Fortunato alive, because Poe writes stories set in an amoral universe. The closest thing to a Faustian bargain is in “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”, which is just a joke story, although adapted effectively in the “Toby Dammit” section of “Spirits of the Dead” (one of those anthologies I mentioned that did better job than this). Part of the blame goes to Netflix for pushing for miniseries over features to feed the content maw.
Poor Things was good and only somewhat less accessible than The Favourite, but I’m looking forward to Lanthimos going back to Filippou’s scripts rather than McNamara’s.
Godzilla Minus One was pretty good, but Shin Godzilla is still the best 21st century Godzilla movie I’ve seen.
For a recent horror movie about motherhood, I recommend Birth/Rebirth. Most of the film doesn’t lean that much into horror, but it’s more of a Frankenstein movie than Poor Things.