Review: 'Soft & Quiet' is anything but

by Matt St Clair

Soft & Quiet, the feature directorial debut from Beth de Araújo (a newly minted Gotham Award nominee), is the most anxiety-inducing experience you’ll have watching a movie this year. Taking place over the course of one stressful afternoon, this depiction of a group of like-minded women involved in a harrowing chain of events is bound to leave viewers squirming in various ways. 

When the women first meet up, it seems like a casual get-together. But, as they’re taking out refreshments, group leader Emily (Stefanie Estes) unwraps her pie with a swastika carved in the middle. It's a sudden revelation that this gathering is a meeting for their group called the Daughters for Aryan Unity...

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It's 'Armageddon Time' (...and other new releases)

by Nathaniel R

Jaylin Webb and Banks Repata in ARMAGEDDON TIME

Though Hollywood blockbuster lovers are waiting until a week from today for their holiday movie season to kick off with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever the rest of us have plenty to enjoy in theaters right now since "Prestige Movie Season" began a few weeks back. If you haven't caught up with The Banshees of Inisherin, TÁR, Till, Triangle of Sadness, and The Woman King yet, this is the weekend to do it since everything (well, maybe not Banshees) will lose screens to the Wakandans on November 11th. Tick tock tick tock. Get to the movies!

There's other even newer stuff this weekend, too...

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Star profiles, Heart stoppers, Shanghai blossoms, and more...

• THR Heartstopper (and other series) make Netflix the leader for the Children & Family Emmy nominations -- by a large margin, too
• Advocate Kit Connor (who plays Nick on Heartstopper) just came out as bisexual because he felt pressured to with the online accusations that he was queerbaiting. 
• Fangoria Talks to TV creator/showrunner Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) about Crystal Lake which will be a prequel series (of sorts) to the Friday the 13th movies

After the jump comes more movie news, fun articles, or actor profiles like the superstar who came back down to earth Jennifer Lawrence, and rising hotties Ismael Cruz Córdova (Rings of Power) and Harris Dickinson (Triangle of Sadness)...

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Dragula: Titans S1.E2 "Revenge of the Witch"

by Nathaniel R

Just give us dark beauty, right?

Challenges on competition reality shows are planned out in advance but sometimes it's fun to imagine they aren't but instead, forced by the previous episode. Last week, when Dragula Titan's competitors were asked to reinterpret a classic horror type for a Halloween party, nobody chose a witch, surely the most common costume of all. So for episode two, witches are the whole theme. Revenge! 

For those of you who need a little cinematic referencing in your TV (oh, maybe that's just me?) the guest judges were the "Demon Nun" herself Bonnie Aarons (The Conjuring 2, The Nun, Mulholland Drive) and director Darren Stein (Jawbreaker, GBF)...

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Doc Corner: Dustin Lance Black and 'Mama's Boy'

By Glenn Dunks

Good intentions can take a movie a long way. Who doesn’t like good intentions?! The problem with good intentions is that they can too often mask deficiencies. And in the case of Mama’s Boy, those good intentions suffocate director Laurent Bouzereau’s ability to tell a story that might venture outside of the lines of the one its subject has a firm and unwavering interest in telling. It’s a lovely story of empathy, compassion, a mother’s love for her son (and vice versa) that nonetheless suffers from rudimentary structure, unadventurous editing, and is built around one talking head interview in particular that lacks spontaneity, as if reciting from a script. Considering it's adapted from a memoir, that probably makes sense.

The central figure here is Academy Award-winning screenwriter and social activist Dustin Lance Black and the film is about him more than the more interesting figure of his mother. Your mileage about that will vary...

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