Full disclosure, The Stand is my favorite Stephen King novel so I’m predisposed to liking this. I came to the novel in ideal circumstances: with a summer cold on vacation in Maine. Sort of like reading with the 4DX experience. Naturally when I watched the adaptation on VHS as a kid, I fucking hated it. The earnest spirituality, the emotional resonance, the twangy western score. Gross. None of that was how I imagined the cool plague book. 

But now, having…

One of my dad’s favorite movies so I was excited to receive it in a blu-ray blind grab bag. This is the extended cut, which neither he nor I had ever seen. 

I always assumed this film wasn’t directed by Roland Emmerich because I had ed it A Serious Film. It isn’t really but is also kind of is?? I miss the early 2000s epic movie trend (Gladiator, LOTR, Troy), in which this definitely fits. Though it is a bit…

Another day, another auteur-driven King adaptation. The Dead Zone is not what people usually expect from Cronenberg. It’s a far more mainstream and accessible affair than much of his work. I adore the tone of this movie. It maintains the typical objective remove of Cronenberg while managing to also be earnest and emotional. There is no body horror but at the same time there is a similar sense of losing control, just internalized fully inside the mind. The changes are…

I had a bit of trouble picking up what this film was putting down. Despite its small scale and focus on few characters, Nightcap feels looser than your average Chabrol film, with some disparate threads that don’t quite seem to fit together. This is a movie that begs for tightness so it’s odd to see it be so nonchalant. ittedly I was pretty tired while watching, which is fitting given the subject matter, so my attention wasn’t what it should…