La Orca 

This current year, as well as the past several, has seen a slowly building increase in something the horror genre has required for quite a while in this critic's opinion...originality. I've stated before that I am very hard to please when it comes to this vein of the film industry's offerings, always leaning more towards that which sends chills through my very being in lieu of buckets of blood and gore.

Avatar: The Last Airbender's success fifteen years after its premiere proves the enduring power of its storytelling. But it's more than just a quality show.

From its visually stunning opening credits, which show women dancing through a forest to musical rhythms that sound almost primal, to its quiet, heartbreaking final frame, Mona Fastvold’s historical rendering of the Shaker religious movement is an experience that will stay with me for a long time.

After the untimely death of his brother by way of an ambush in Kandahar, Afghanistan, the protagonist, ‘81’(Alan Ritchson) unsuccessfully makes several attempts to become an Army Ranger. On his last mission to complete the Ranger selection process he and his squad encounter an otherworldly ‘soldier’.

I’m disappointed in The Woman in Cabin 10, but that’s at least in part because of my love of Ruth Ware’s novel.

In The Novelist's Film, Hong explores the meaningful things people share and inspire by virtue of simply engaging with one another.