Abomination
Year is only about halfway done and I'll say it: Adrian Chiarella's Leviticus is the best horror of the year. I mean-- something better might come in October (Eggers' Werwulf comes out December), but can't imagine what that might be, or how it can be.
I'm an alien, I'm an illegal alien
Easy enough to call Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day his reworking retelling reboot of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a film so elegantly worked out on the big screen you can recall most shots as being not just effortlessly lyrical but inevitable, locking in place to present a vast sound and light show, a once in a lifetime rock concert burnt into your brain the way the shape of Devil's Tower is burnt into Roy Neary's.
Disclosure is a different creature flavorwise. Spielberg's visual grammar (using his present favorite cinematographer Janusz Kaminski) has grown more sophisticated, his color palette more complex and mutedly realistic, his editing chops (with the relatively unfamiliar Sarah Boshar) if anything more daringly intricate. But that wide-eyed spirit is still there, for better or worse, that willingness to lift one's head up and look around to check if there's someone really out there.
Sunny with a chance of rain
Anthony Maras' Pressure (2026)-- based on a 2014 play by David Haig-- answers a question no one thought to ask before: can a riveting thriller be made out of weathermen? Not storm chasers (looking at you Twister); not disaster flicks involving climate change (You too Day After Tomorrow and Geostorm)-- I mean weathermen, folk who pore over isobaric maps and stare at thermometers and take windspeed readings. The science nerds.
Apparently the answer is yes if-- big if-- 1) We're talking Operation Overlord, 160,000 troops launched on 7,000 ships supported by 12,000 aircraft, arguably the largest seaborne invasion in history; and 2) Landing point's on the Normandy coast in France, at the center of one of the most unpredictable weather systems on the planet.
Talked about Curry Barker's Obsession and how his premise of the obsessed lover isn't anything new; Kane Parsons' Backrooms is if anything even less new dressed in world wide web clothing.
First to come to mind are the mindscapes described by Stanley Kubrick late in his career-- the vast redcarpeted mansion in Eyes Wide Shut; the urban ruins that stand at the end of Full Metal Jacket; above all the Overlook in The Shining with its infinite corridors dotted with secretive doors, looping on itself again and again like an intestine and lined with a carpet of repeated design dyed that maddeningly distinct burnt orange you see in interiors of the late '70s and '80s. Folks always maintained Jack Torrance was nuts from the beginning of the picture; I think that rug helped him along.
Marximum overdrive
Boots Riley's I Love Boosters is a truckload of fun. Gang of shoplifters (The Velvet Gang-- Corvette (Keke Palmer), Mariah (Taylour Paige), Sade (Naomi Ackie)) prey on a chain of fashion stores (Metro Designers) owned by ultrarich Christie Smith (Demi Moore); they're joined by Chinese factory worker Jianhu (Poppy Liu) and her band of laborers: high-style hijinks ensue.
(Warning: story and plot twists discussed in explicit detail)
Curry Barker Obsession (2025) is basically W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw," and "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" meet Fatal Attraction and Misery-- nothing startling new, only he's leaned into the sneaky comic spin of the premise, has a terrific cast to inhabit the roles, and the visual chops to tell the story with snap and zing.
Pig hunt
(Warning: plot and surprise twists in book and TV series discussed in explicit detail)
I remember reading William Golding's 1954 debut novel as a teen and having nightmares about running through the jungle with other boys in pursuit, waving sticks sharpened at both ends-- did not help the development of my socialization skills, lemme tell you.
The book comes off as a fable, the characters barely sketched-in symbols, the theme clear enough and neat enough for literature majors to milk for their theses: humans have this ingrown tendency to violence, and we flirt with or ignore it at our peril. Really that simple, the novel's chief virtue and key weakness, and folks who seek to adapt it flirt with this fact or ignore it at their peril.
