Because all the pretty girls get all the pretty things, and as director Emilie Blichfeldt explores in her directorial debut THE UGLY STEPSISTER (Den stygge stesøsteren, 2025), society has always been obsessed with the outer beauty of a woman, but to what end? There's a (pardon this accidental pun) grim realization that you're just not pretty enough, and this Norwegian reimagining of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of Cinderella, or The Little Glass Slipper, in a Cronenbergian body horror that…

"Have you been saying your prayers?"

Ted Bundy once said in an interview captured for the book Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer - The Death Row Interviews written by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth, while using a detailed explanation for his crimes in the third person, he described a dark intruder, a malignant force that overtook him when he stalked and killed. The interviewers noted at times Bundy's blue irises would blacken as if this entity wanted its presence…

As studios grapple with what will succeed at the theaters versus content for their streaming services, Disney initially conceived the live-action LILO & STITCH (2025) for their streaming service, Disney+, but luckily cooler heads prevailed since the core theme of the film, ohana, is best experienced in the communal setting of a good old fashioned movie theater, instead of the heartless pressing play and having the 108-minute movie entertain the kids as the adults get house chores done. Ohana is generally…

Stop me if you've heard this plot before: a terrorist holds hostages in a skyscraper and by luck, the police make with someone on the inside. Sounds a lot like DIE HARD (1988), right?

If familiarity is an issue, then you might not like a lot of films in general. In The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories (2004), a massive 700-page book by Christopher Booker, who offers critical analysis of storytelling and plot structure, and while many…

Nobody could cut a trailer for their film better than Alfred Hitchcock.

For FRENZY (1972), his penultimate film in his long career, Hitch is seen floating down a river, face and belly sticking up and out, like he's a lifeboat or something. The camera pushes in, and he tilts his face to the us, the viewers, and says, “I dare say why you are wondering why I'm floating around London like this. I’m on the famous Thames River and…