What Movies Give You Nightmares?

by Cláudio Alves

There's no stopping A24, its ascension as distributor and studio one of the last decade's biggest success stories. Just this month, Civil War marked their most successful opening weekend, even expanding to IMAX. Speaking of those giant screens, A24 has been re-releasing some of their greatest hits in the format, starting with Ex Machina back on March 27th. Uncut Gems is coming May 22nd, while April's selection hits theaters tomorrow, beckoning audiences to relieve a movie nightmare like none other. It's Hereditary, Ari Aster's promising debut and one of the few theatrical experiences that caused me sleepless nights. Believe me, when you watch as many horror flicks as I do, that's rather special…

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Emmy Category Analysis: Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie

By Abe Friedtanzer

Lily James in Pam and Tommy

This is quite a lineup, though just one of its six nominees is from an anthology series and none are from TV movies (Jenna Ortega would have made a phenomenal choice for HBO Max’s The Fallout). Every character portrayed is based on a real person, with only Margaret Qualley’s Alex Russell adapted from author Stephanie Land into someone slightly fictionalized. Exactly half of these women star in projects nominated for Best Limited or Anthology Series, but there’s still support for the other three even if their projects underperformed. Only Lily James and Amanda Seyfried are brand-new to the Emmys, and, of the rest, all but Qualley have actually won before. I think it’s likely a race between the newbies, but let’s examine the lineup...

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Tweetweek: Multiverse Madness and Patti Lupone Worship

Amusing and/or thought-provoking showbiz tweets curated for you so you don't have to waste time on twitter!

All movies should be rated R so that children can't go to them.

— Eric D. Snider (@EricDSnider) May 10, 2022

  More after the jump including Toni Collette, Top Gun Maverick, multiverse mania, and responses to that story about Patti LuPone ranting at a maskless theatergoer on Broadway after Stephen Sondheim's Company...  

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One For Them, One For Me: M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" and "Stuart Little"

A New Series by Christopher James

Take bets: Who did M. Night Shyamalan find it was easier to write for - a human child or a mouse child voiced by a 38-year-old man?

Do one for them; do one for you. If you can still do projects for yourself, you can keep your soul.
— Martin Scorsese: A Journey

Even from the get go, M. Night Shyamalan’s career was idiosyncratic. He went from Oscar nominated wunderkind to punchline all within the span of less than ten years. With his most recent movie, Old, Shyamalan seems to have figured out a way to own his poor reviews. At a time where the definition of “camp” is constantly argued, Old feels like pure, grade A camp. He’s also regained a lot of his box office cred with Split and Glass, which connected to one of his earliest films, Unbreakable. 

In 1999, Shyamalan earned tons of accolades, including Best Director and Original Screenplay Oscar nominations, for his smash hit, The Sixth Sense. At that point, Shyamalan had only directed two movies, a personal indie called Praying with Anger that he starred in and a movie called Wide Awake that stars Rosie O’Donnell as a baseball fanatic nun. Few things could’ve prepared people for The Sixth Sense’s level of success. However, it wasn’t the only financial hit of the year for Shyamalan. He had done uncredited rewrites on movies like She’s All That, so he wasn’t above doing “one for them” to earn some money. However, he was credited as the writer of the Visual Effects nominated children’s film Stuart Little.

Is there anything that connects The Sixth Sense and Stuart Little together, other than coming from the mind of the same writer? Let’s take a look (age old spoilers ahead)...

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Review: "Nightmare Alley" only in theaters

by Matt St Clair

Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro’s anticipated follow-up to The Shape of Water, is quite a risk for the Oscar-winning auteur. Del Toro ditches the phantasmic monsters he’s known for in favor of human monstrosity, the beasts within all of us that drive our carnal needs. As with the original 1947 noir, Nightmare Alley is an exemplary exercise on the folly of man and what happens when the line between man and beast becomes blurred. 

The main anti-hero who toes that line is Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), a carny with a knack for manipulating people. His subjects include fellow carny and eventual love interest/accomplice Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara), Paul Krumbein (David Strathairn) and his fortune teller wife Zeena (Toni Collette), and a wealthy fearsome widower Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins). Cooper's piercing eyes and bewildering smile make him a perfect casting fit for the manipulative con man. He is a man of few words which is just as well; the words when they come are lies and deceit. It is in Cooper’s expressive face where we see Stan’s constant fear of his troubled past resurfacing...

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