The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 28, 2022

Recently, I decided to dive into a horror saga I neglected over the years. The Final Destination films, spanning from 2000 to 2011, each tell a story of a group of people who escape a horrific, multi-casualty accident because one of them sees a premonition of minutes before. In the...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 18, 2022

In Bodies Bodies Bodies a group of young friends have a hurricane party at their wealthy friend’s parent’s house out in the middle of nowhere. They’re equipped with flashlights, extra batteries, booze and an array of drugs. As the storm sets in and the night heats up, they decide to...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 1, 2022

The Black Phone hit me hard in my suburban parent gut. The story revolves around a serial kidnapper the kids dubbed The Grabber. In this quiet 1978 suburban town, The Grabber takes tween boys walking alone, or right off their bikes in the middle of their paper route. No one...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on August 24, 2022

Fire of Love is an incredibly sweet and intriguing documentary about a volcanologist couple who devoted their lives to studying volcanic eruptions. It’s established early in the film that Katia and Maurice Krafft were killed in the 1991 volcanic eruption of Mount Unzen in Japan. The majority of what   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on July 23, 2022

This summer I’ve been utilizing my one on one time with my older son to take him to movies. Don’t worry, that’s not all we do, it would be a boring summer. We also frequent the parks and go roller skating. He’s had fun going to more movies in the...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 26, 2022

Happy Oscar weekend, everyone! Congrats on making it through another harrowing year. I’m so happy to go back to the movie theaters, even if I still wear a mask during the show (except when shoveling popcorn into my mouth). Let’s start off with a little game I like to play...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 25, 2022

The title CODA is an acronym for Child of Deaf Adults. The film follows Ruby (Emilia Jones) as she navigates her senior year of high school. She wakes up before dawn to help her dad and brother on their fishing boat, being the only one that can hear the radio....   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 24, 2022

Let me start off describing my personal experience watching Dune. My husband came home from a business trip where he watched Dune on his phone on a plane and was raving about how great it was. First, I condemned him for watching it on his phone, I’m sure Denis Villeneuve’s...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 21, 2022

The opening scene in Belfast shows a peaceful neighborhood suddenly erupt into violence. Nine year old Buddy (Jude Hill) is playing down the street, pretending to be a knight, armed with a trash can lid and a wooden sword. As he runs home for tea time, his friendly neighbors call...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 19, 2022

In the opening scene of Licorice Pizza it’s school picture day in the 1970s and we watch a fifteen year old boy pursue the photographer’s assistant, a twenty-five year old woman. The boy, Gary (Cooper Hoffman) is persistent, confident and packs a punch of charisma with his baby fat. And...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 17, 2022

There is no denying that Venus and Serena Williams are two of the greatest tennis players of all time, but how did two little girls from Compton rise to such greatness? In King Richard, we see that the answer lies in their family, their attitudes, and especially their father, Richard....   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 15, 2022

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car opens by showing us intimate, peaceful moments between Yûsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima). Like a musing poet, she poses elegantly in their bed spinning a tale about a girl so infatuated with a boy she breaks into his house j   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 10, 2022

Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley is a haunting and mesmerizing film experience. Set in the late 1930s, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is a man running from his past sins. The opening images of him hiding a body under floorboards and then burning the whole house down, haunt him. He stumbles...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on March 4, 2022

In Don’t Look Up a young scientist (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a comet heading directly towards Earth. It is estimated to hit in six months. With that horrifying knowledge, suddenly she and her professor (Leonardo DiCaprio) are sent to Washington to meet with the Head of Planetary Defense (Rob Mor   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 24, 2022

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is a slow paced, meditative drama set in 1920s Wyoming. Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) is one of the last real cowboys on the land. He’s as rough, tough, dirty, can castrate a bull with just a knife and his bare hands in seconds and...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on February 10, 2022

Like many, I had my doubts when I heard that Steven Spielberg was directing a remake of West Side Story. First of all, the man has never taken on a musical. Second, West Side Story is already a masterpiece. How could he, even the great Spielberg, improve such a wonderful...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 31, 2021

At the local Halloween store this year, I noticed a prominent figure I did not know. Everyone can recognize the Freddy Krueger gloves, the Michael and Jason masks, but this child sized animatronic in orange pajamas and a burlap sack over his head was not within my horror movie knowledge....   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 23, 2021

Forty years after that fateful Halloween night that killed Laurie’s friends, Michael comes home again. This time, the people of Haddonfield are ready to fight back. The movie picks up just at the end of Halloween (2018) and skims over what happened there. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) has a daughter,...   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 11, 2021

Nia DaCosta’s anticipated sequel to the 90s horror film is a refreshing new chapter to the Candyman story. The film takes place about thirty years after the original, in the same Chicago neighborhood, but it’s now gentrified. Anthony (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a young artist, looking for inspiration   read more

The Best Picture Project Posted by Alyson on October 2, 2021

While I’m a lifelong horror fan, somehow I’ve never seen Candyman. It’s understandable to have this blindspot; the original film came out when I was still in elementary school and the name Candyman doesn’t just hold as much street cred as names like Jason, Freddy or Leatherfa   read more