Streaming: 'Station Eleven' is a wow. Give it a chance.

by Deborah Lipp

Station Eleven is a ten-episode mini-series that you may have avoided up until now, since it is largely about a pandemic. A lot of my friends tell me they can’t stand the idea. But bite the bullet and give it a try. In the world of Station Eleven (based on a novel written in 2014—long before COVID), a virulent flu wipes out 99% of humanity. It all happens in a week, so their pandemic is much less boring than ours...

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Review: Happiest Season

by Eurocheese

Yes, it’s that time. Even in this, the strangest year of most of our lives, there’s something comforting about knowing that holiday season always rolls around and we can put on our favorite holiday songs and movies to keep us company. Clea DuVall’s new film Happiest Season not only understands that we need this escape, but manages to find humor in a season that can also be high pressure and exasperating for those who don’t adore it.

Abby (Kristen Stewart) is one of these people. While her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis) seems over the moon for the holiday, it’s always been a tough time for her, connected to the loss of her parents. In a romantic moment, Harper impulsively invites Abby back to meet her family for Christmas. Abby jumps on the opportunity, and doesn’t pick up on Harper’s hesitance the next day… or her nervous vibe as they head out on the trip…

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Yes No Maybe So: Terminator Dark Fate

by Jason Adams

The longest time to pass between Terminator movies was twelve years, from James Cameron's action masterpiece T2 in 1991 to Jonathan Mostow's shoddy Rise of the Machines in 2003. Since then, even though they continually struggle to find and resituate their stories and main characters, it's been five to six years from film to film, taking us from Salvation to Genisys and to now, as of this fall, we'll have Dark Fate. Which, it must be said, finally brings the great Linda Hamilton and her iconic Sarah Connor character back for the first time since 1991.

Today they've just released the first fairly loaded teaser trailer for the film -- so let's take a look...

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Beauty vs Beast: Only a Mother's Love

Jason from MNPP here -- it's safe to say that there isn't a week (a day, an hour) where something having to do with John Waters doesn't drift through my happily polluted brain, but this week's really turning it out. (It's good to gear ourselves up for John's new book out in May, I suppose!) For one this upcoming Saturday the 25th anniversary of his last truly great film Serial Mom, starring a deliciously unhinged Kathleen Turner as the sunny recycling-prone Jekyll & Hyde of suburbia. And for another MoMA, as part of their "What Price Hollywood" series on cinema's transgressive sexual politics, is screening Female Trouble twice this month. So with Mother's Day already in the air (and by "in the air" I mean "on the seasonal shelves of my local CVS") I ask us for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to turn our eyes upon these two of John's most loving mothers...

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PREVIOUSLY Last week's Tully poll was relatively tight, which is as it should be with two characters so inextricable, but it was momma Margo who pulled it out at the end with 56% of the vote. Said JF:

"Charlize is straight-up one of the greatest screen actors of all time. Male, female, living, dead, any era, any genre, *tongue pop*. I have never been ready for how great she is an I hope I never am."

Beauty vs Beast: Nanny Dearest

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- today we're wishing a happy 32 to one of our absolute favorite working actresses, the great Mackenzie Davis. If you watched Halt and Catch Fire you got it the second her "Cameron" showed up and from that moment on it's just been a long slow waiting game for the rest of the world to catch up. But catch up they have, I think - I mean she is about to star in a Terminator movie so I think they have. Whether she'll have anything of actual substance to do in that we'll have to wait and see.

But we'll always have Tully! Jason Retiman's 2018 film was one of our faves (Nathaniel gave it several nominations and a win for its screenplay in his Film Bitch Awards), spinning an exquisite dissociative dramedy out of the newborn fugue state -- it reeks of new parent smell. The film's a showcase for Theron and Davis' easy charms -- one of the year's true pleasures was getting the chance to explore the constant moment of total anxiety in such capable hands. You feel a little bit saner on the far side of Tully.

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PREVIOUSLY Last week's Spring Breakers poll turned out to be closer than I anticipated, given how well James Franco's "Alien" was receieved at the time, but he won it only at 54% -- indeed nobody had anything kind to say about him or his performance in the comments. So we'll share some love for the girls, via Tom G:

"I give credit to Hudgens for trying to take risks with her career post HSM. She did Broadway as well and is generally regarded as the saving grace of the live musicals she appears in on TV."