Escaping Doppelgangers: "Coraline" Serves Up Adventure in a Parallel World
This delightfully odd horror movie presents a whimsically strange alternate reality to younger audiences.

Beth Walker, a lonely waitress desperate to escape her small Virginia town and repair her troubled marriage to Pete, her Afghanistan vet husband. Beth's world is turned upside-down when convicts brutally invade her home during an anniversary dinner that is supposed to mark a fresh start for the couple. In a surprising twist, the true reason for the night's events are revealed and allies become adversaries. As loyalties shift, all involved fight for survival. Only one will live to see dawn.
This delightfully odd horror movie presents a whimsically strange alternate reality to younger audiences.
These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.
This year, in light of the pandemic and the inability to gather with our loved ones, a few of our staff members reviewed their favorite holiday films with the hope of recreating some of the sentimentality that reminds us of home.
Mr. Malcolm's List is a pleasant promenade through a fantasy Regency-era England filled with people of color. For fans of Bridgerton, this is the PG version of the show, but with completely colorblind casting and a much lighter tone.
"Peter Pan & Wendy" is a diverse fantasy brought to life and an adventure for all ages.
If your upbringing was anything like mine, where the TV acted as an additional parent- there are so many new stories and perspectives to explore.