NIGHTBOOKS: Stylish Kid's Horror with a Focus on Acceptance
Nightbooks, the newest entry in children's horror, honors classic horror films, focuses on themes of acceptance, and has awesome production design.

Miner Junpo's daughter is seriously ill and needs urgent treatment. Junpo goes to the mine owner's house to demand money that is owed to him. To no avail. Unable to raise money anywhere for his child's treatment, in desperation Junpo kidnaps his boss's daughter. At the same time, several other unrelated people are involved, either by coincidence or on purpose, in the whole affair. The situation spins out of control. Some will lose their lives, some will be sent to jail, some will have to flee all their lives. A multifaceted story about crime, forgiveness and love in the scenery of the cold Chinese mountains.
Nightbooks, the newest entry in children's horror, honors classic horror films, focuses on themes of acceptance, and has awesome production design.
Even without the messaging, Mercy does not hold up as a movie. It's sloppily done and the mystery doesn’t tie together at the end.
The Gates, John Burr’s new thriller film, is a disturbingly realistic portrayal of three Black twenty-somethings - Derek (Mason Gooding), Kevin (Algee Smith), and Tyon (Keith Powers), as they accidentally take a wrong turn into a gated community that’s more like a modern-day sundown town. The three friends witness a variety of crimes in their new surroundings, including an attempted homicide and an attempted rape. As they attempt to alert the authorities and do the right thing, they are thwarted at every turn by the worst horror stories of American conservatism - racist white suburbanites, reckless gun violence, corrupt police, religious mania, and a megalomaniacal pastor.
With raw and unapologetic performances by Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman, stories about the hardships of Black musicians are weaved in with The Blues.
One of the reasons I love watching movies is that, much like books, they serve as windows into other times and different places. Productions from around the world offer valuable insights into the history and culture of their respective countries. And just like literature, cinema can help us understand the present by showing us the past.
"Ladies First" has a fundamental misunderstanding of what's feminine because of the patriarchy and what women do because they genuinely enjoy it.